Microsoft is now saying that a flaw in the NT4.0 RPC system is too difficult to fix. Their solution: put your NT4.0 boxes behind a firewall and pray... I mean, block port 135 [The Register]. Of course the same flaw was found in Windows 2000 and XP and they were both fixed. Somehow, I think Microsoft is using this as a lever to try and get administrators to upgrade. 10:45:45 AM    comment []  

Ants are able to solve some difficult problems of finding and transporting food. No single ant in an ant community is responsible for orchestrating the communal behavior, but the complex interaction of the ants forms a system that is surprisingly effective. Douglas Hofstadter, in his famous book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, used the analogy of an intelligent ant community to illustrate how other autonomous systems, like the brain, are able produce consciousness. I think it is a worthwhile analogy to follow since it allows us to visualize the interaction of autonomous agents (ants) interacting to form a system with important emergent characteristics.

There are a growing number of researchers who are working on applying ant or swarm learning techniques to the computer world. In particular, a paper was recently published showing how self-assembling networks could be created using these techniques [Slashdot]. 10:35:21 AM    comment []