Blackmoor Vituperative

Note to self: The next time I am in an interview and I am asked if I am willing to provide support to users, do not simply say “Yes: I like working with end users because it helps me understand what the system I am developing is supposed to accomplish for them.” Reason: that answer assumes I am actually DEVELOPING something, rather than acting as a glorified help-desk for poorly designed COTS software.

Second note to self: The next time I am in an interview and I am asked if I am willing to provide support to users, make sure that such support is provided during normal working hours ONLY, and that the portion of my time spent on such support will be no more than 15% (rather 50%-70%).

File under “as if you needed yet another reason to swich to OpenOffice”:

A weakness in how Office applications handle Macromedia Flash files exposes Microsoft customers to cyberattacks, experts have warned.

Flash files embedded in Office documents could run and execute code without any warning, Symantec said in an alert sent to customers on Thursday. The security issue is the third problem reported within a week that affects Microsoft Office users.

“A successful attack may allow attackers to access sensitive information and potentially execute malicious commands on a vulnerable computer,” Symantec said in the alert, which was sent to users of its DeepSight security intelligence. The vulnerability was reported by researcher Debasis Mohanty.

The issue relates to the ability to load ActiveX controls in an Office document and is not a vulnerability but an Office feature, a Microsoft representative said. “This behavior is by design and by itself does not represent a security risk to customers,” he said. An ActiveX control is a small application typically used to make Web sites more interactive.

(from ZDNet, Microsoft Office hit by another security problem)

Microsoft Office, Flash, and ActiveX? Wow, that’s a trifecta. If it was put to music, it’d be a country music song. All it’s missing is a Sony rootkit, and you’d have the four horsemen of the software apocalypse.

More evidence of the absurdity of intellectual property law in the USA (specifically software patents, this time):

Microsoft loses appeal in Office patent spat

I’m all for the “little guy” standing up to Goliath. Nonetheless, software patents are an inherently bad idea. The sooner we rid ourselves of them, the better off all of us — including Microsoft — will be.

Google unveiled on Monday a new version of its Google Earth application, which features greater coverage and higher resolution, even showing people walking in some locations–detail you get with aerial photography and not usually satellites.

The downloadable Google Earth 4.0 runs on PCs, Macs and Linux-based machines and is available in localized versions in French, Italian, German and Spanish, according to Michael Jones, chief technology officer of Google Earth. Jones, speaking here at Google Geo Developer Day, said the improvements will eventually show up in the Web-based Google Maps site.

(from ZDNet, Google Earth zooms in)

While you are over there, check out Google Sketchup.

I had a great idea for a vacation. I was going to buy tickets to Wicked during one of the breaks between Susan’s classes, and we’d fly to wherever it was playing, stay there a few days, and then come back home. As it turned out, the show is playing in Costa Mesa, CA during Susan’s end-of-summer class break. This is down the road from one of my sisters, as well as being practically next door to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. I even found a deal on a four star hotel in Los Angeles for almost half price. Everthing was working out.

So we sat down today and planned out the dates, so that we would get the best prices on airfare (the most expensive part of the trip). Leave Virginia on Tuesday, go to Disneyland on Wednesday and Friday, Knott’s Berry Farm on Thursday, go to the beach Saturday and Sunday dutring the day, see the show on Saturday night, visit my sister on Sunday night, come back on Monday. Everything meshed perfectly.

So I go to the web site to order tickets. Not available online. So I call. They do not go on sale until 2006-06-19. No problem: I can wait a few days to order them. Out of curiosity, I asked if shows at this theater normally sold out.

Him: “Oh, this show will sell out very quickly. In fact, there are only a few seats left, in the balcony at the back.”

Me: “Wait a minute: I thought you said that tickets wouldn’t go on sale until June 19th.”

Him (cheerfully): “That’s right.”

Me: “…”

Me: “How is it that the seats are almost sold out if the tickets aren’t on sale yet?”

Him: “Oh, season ticket holders, and some American Express premiere card members have bought tickets. Over 80% of them have been sold already.”

I wanted to say something really nasty, but I didn’t. What I did say was, “I guess we won’t be going. Nevermind, then.”

I would still like to say something really nasty.

I’m not sure what, if anything, we will do for our vacation now. I’m kind of bummed.

Welcome to Urville, the imaginary city.

http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=361

http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/gilles.cfm

http://www.urville.com/

Fake crab meat. You know what I’m talking about: that sweet, white-with-red-stripes substance that you can get for about one-quarter the price of real crab meat. I love it. I can eat a pound of it at a time (preferably cold).

But I always wondered where this stuff came from. From a factory somewhere, certainly. But how is it made? Like sausage? Like lunch meat? Like soylent green?

Today I found out:

How products are made — imitation crab meat

Wow. I had no idea that the underlying technology that makes fake crab meat possible had been kicking around since the 16th century. That’s wild. I also would never have guessed that the sugar and sorbitol in fake crab meat served an essential manufacturing purpose. I always just figured it was there to make the product sweeter so that we fat-assed Americans would buy it.

The Internet really is amazing, you know. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

A major spammer who was accused of sending up to 25 million e-mails per day has settled a lawsuit with Microsoft and the state of Texas.

The settlement has cost Ryan Pitylak $1 million, as well as the seizure of many of the assets he accumulated during a short-lived career as one of the world’s worst spammers.

At the peak of his spamming activity, the 24-year-old Texas resident was listed as the world’s fourth most-prolific spammer by antispam group Spamhaus.

Now Pitylak is claiming something of an epiphany, saying he has seen the error of his ways and will dedicate his efforts to trying to rid the world of nuisance e-mail. He has even taken to referring to himself as an “antispam activist” in an apparent change of heart of epic proportions.

(from ZDNet, Spammer settles suit for $1 million)

Well of course he’s seen the error of his ways — his business has been shut down, and his only hope of recovering from this catastrophe is to switch gears and try to leverage his experience as a scumbag spammer into a consulting gig.

Maybe he really has learned his lesson. One million dollars is a lot of money to most individuals. But I’m still not sure that’s as good a deterrent as the alternative.

I currently work at Circuit City as a programmer/analyst. From time to time I make suggestions intended to bring my department into compliance with widely-known best practices concerning security, server administration, the development process, and so forth. Thus far, not a single one of these suggestions has been recognized as addressing a valid concern, much less implemented.

So it was with some interest that I read that Circuit City’s online forum was hacked to infect users with spam bots. To be fair to Circuit City, in this instance I do not believe they were any more irresponsible than most companies who run web sites — including my own. The patch for their forum software was released on 2006-05-17. Their forum was hacked on 2006-05-30. That’s less than two weeks.

Of greater concern to me is that the people who are the real victims of this hack, the visitors to Circuit City’s web site, would only have been affected if they were stupidly, inexplicably still using Internet Explorer as their web browser. What the hell is wrong with you people? For crying out loud, switch to Firefox already!

Alex Toth, creator of Space Ghost and a giant of 20th century cartoon design, died at his drawing table on May 27, 2006.