the art of writing is discovering what you believe
I guess this is one of the new ones I keep hearing about (Netsky, Bagel, et al). It seems to be making really malformed http requests: you can see that they are running about 6 kbytes on size (an average line is about 160 bytes).
# tail -1 httpd-access.log | wc
1 12 6405
Just a lot of crap following a NULL.IDA? query. Interestingly, it’s all coming from one PC (located at 61.62.23.41) on Sony Network Taiwan Limited’s network.
The Underground Man: The Rights of Man
Reading these, it’s interesting to see where they echo the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and where they differ. I especially like Article 4:
Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
The language seems a little stilted, and I assume it’s the translation (in article 4, I think anything makes more sense than everything.
And this document acknowledges a Supreme Being explicitly, rather than a Creator (which need be a Being at all).
It would be interesting to compare and contrast these documents from different countries: where do various cultures draw the line between rights and responsibilities?
John over at inluminent was wondering about the proposed benefits of Longhorn and WinFS, the datastore that is slated to to replace filesystems, as we know them, with a database.
I’m skeptical of anything that abstracts away files and replaces them with SQL queries. That just seems like a potentially brittle solution.
If you just need to index and query some on-disk repository, try this: Nav4 Search Engine Patch Kit – Think Tank 23 Contextual Navigation Solutions.
If Googling your email is what you fancy, try Zoë. Runs everywhere Java does (OS X, Windows, linux, FreeBSD . . . ) and does more than I can explain here.
And in the time it takes for Longhorn to lurch into existence, even with the full understanding that bits and pieces will ship early, expect other solutions to emerge.
ongoing — The Last Emperor:
Tim Bray notes some conflicting ideas about Open Source as a business proposition and, as excerpted below, a political statement . . .
Choosing software is not a neutral act. It must be done consciously; the debate over free and proprietary software can’t be limited to the differences in the applications’ features and ergonomics. To choose an operating system, or software, or network architecture is to choose a kind of society. We can no longer pretend that free and commercial software, or Internet standards and protocols, are just tools. We have to admit at least that they are political tools. After all, fire and the printing press are ‘just tools.’
Part of that political decision-making goes to how much control and authority you want to keep and how much you’re willing to cede to a vendor. Defining capacity, performance, and stability/maintainability are all very well, but there are intangibles to consider as well. As people are finding with the perpetual virus/worm threats, instability, and lack of choice with the Leading Brand, maybe they can decide where they want to go today by themselves.
Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things:
Researchers in Iowa have identified a virus related to Hep C that appears to shield its victims from the effects of HIV.
Not the first time something like this has been discovered: as noted here, sickle cell anemia sufferers have an improved resistance to malaria.
SecurityFocus HOME Columnists: Faith No More:
Microsoft is making great strides toward product security, and I’m proud to be part of the movement. But now it is time to fully commit to security by stopping support for products that can’t be secured. If clients are still using Windows 9x along with the associated legacy support software, it should be a pretty good indication that they are not really interested in paying for decent software security.
Maybe they think they already paid for it and don’t see why they should pay for their vendor not doing it right the first time . . .
And the notion that it’s only the older versions (WIN9x) that are unsecureable is laughable. We see exploits against the newer, more secure versions as well. Great strides, indeed . . .
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: February 29, 2004 – March 06, 2004 Archives:
So, to get a feel for the impact of these attacks on the country, the number of people who lost loved ones, know others who did, and so forth, multiply that death toll by 11 or 12 times in order to get a feel for the number in American terms.
A good ballpark point of comparison is what it would be like to have around 2000 people killed in one day in this country. And, of course, that’s not that different from the 3000 who were killed here on September 11th.
So multiply each victim of the current instability by 10 or so to get a sense of how painful their liberation is proving to be. And picture how it would play out in domestic newspapers, to have 2-3,000 worshippers killed in places of worship on a religious holiday.
“neither shall there come upon on you a garment made of two kinds of material.”
Now that literal interpretations of holy writ are being discussed more widely, isn’t it time we addressed the evils of permanent press fabrics and other blends? As Leviticus 19:19 shows, wearing blended fabrics — along with sowing with mixed seeds (so much for that wildflower mixture we see along the nation’s highways) and cross-breeding animals (so much for the humble mule) — is an affront.
Apparently, there’s more sin hidden in the nation’s closets than we realized . . .
