Oblomovka

2002-09-06»

Quote from Adrian Wright, the expert “quoted” in a ZD Net story which claimed spammers were using open WiFi points to send “millions” of unsoliticed e-mails :

It seems I’ve been everso slightly misquoted in that I actually said ‘could’ in this presentation. i.e. “These people COULD simply drive up to a building armed with their… Apart from that it looks like a good story!

Although I know of no hard evidence that this practice of wireless drive-by spamming is taking place, I would be surprised if it was not happening – given the increasing difficulties spammers face in retaining legitimate ISP access – within the more developed nations anyway.

My emphasis. In other words, “drive-by spamming” is still a something that some people endlessly predict will happen if you leave your AP insecure, but of which no record exists in the wild.

Adrian also said that drive-by spamming had been covered many times (true) and ZDNet was one of the most prominent new sources documenting the existence of this practice. Wait – you’re using as an authority the very organisation who completely misquoted you? On the same topic? Is that wise?

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2002-09-05»

Hmm. C|Net ZDNet UK is reporting that “millions of mails” are being sent by people who pull up to open wifi networks, and use them to anonymously spam.

Okay, I’m suspicious. Spamming through open networks was always a theoretical possibility (indeed, I remember people referring to drive-by spamming almost as early as wardriving was coined), but I’ve never heard of it happening in the wild. I’ve just left a message with Adrian Wright, the British security expert quoted in the article, to see if he has any concrete cases. I suspect either either he’s pulling the examples out of his imaginary analyst hat, or he’s been misquoted.

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2002-09-04»

I’m not sure, but I think Americans believe more fervently in the saving grace of the almighty Law than the British. I occasionally reel off dozens of fantastically repressive UK laws (including the one that forbids gatherings that include “the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”) to looks of perfect horror here. Then I end it all by saying “Of course, no one pays any attention! Ahahaha!”, and watch everybody fall off their seats. In the US, there’s a background buzz that nothing keeps your neighbour in check but the letter of the law and the iron force of the Constitution. Gotta keep the rule of law, or society will collapse in a hail of gunfire, trespassing, double-parking and moider. There’s no pity for those who break the law. In Britain it’s much more “Okay do what you want – but try not to get caught, alright?”

I’ve grown far more sympathetic to the American line over time, but I’ve never seen anyone state the alternative position quite as elegantly D² Digest. Bit too elegantly, in fact. If you read his work – including the entry on why Lessig is too damn sincere, and why drug laws don’t work, and why we should keep them – you could conclude that they’re the careful posings of a Economista Angry Young Arse. Not surprising – if you’re going to insist that bad laws can have good effects (or Antinomialism, as he calls it), it always helps to be nice young Oxonian who can probably talk your way out of a tight corner with a Christchurch-educated judge when the need arises. But at least he’s not a libertarian Angry Young Arse, right?

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2002-09-02»

“Kinda public beta”: official RSS feeds of the BBC News site.

RSS feed of the front page
RSS feed of technology news
RSS feed of UK news
RSS feed of World news

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Aha! Mozilla 1.1 supports LINK tags out of the box – try clicking on the “View…” menu option then “Show/Hide”, “Site Navigation Bar”, and finally “Show Only As Needed”. On sites that support it, a little mini-toolbar of navigation links will pop up at the top of the browser window whenever Mozilla spots them. You can also discover which sites have RSS feeds, thanks to Mark’s RSS link suggestion (they’ll be hiding under the “More” folder).

This feature’s been in Mozilla builds for a while, but they never had any GUI options for it because slowed down page loads. I wonder if that’s fixed? I’m still not sure I like it – ironically Mark’s addition means that it pops up on more sites than it’s really useful. In those cases it does eat a fair bit of real estate, and is a bit of a distraction.

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Stuck for what to say on your livejournal today? Just enter “girlfriend” into the automatic journal entry generator. Also available in Polish.

Even though she seemed much better she still wasnt sure how much longer shed be around-and this was something that we were all aware of but didnt dwell on. She has the gift of making you love her even though she drives you totally batshit :> It was totally cool to be able to provide so much pleasure even though im just lying there and enjoying the feeling and the show ;> Its pretty sad that this is the only way i seem to be able to get along with my supervisors… Everytime i try to get along with him he does or says something to piss me off. Nice boy and im glad he and jo are such good friends but we differ in too many ways to get along. You amaze me and im glad were both on the same level! Some are on the same page as my good ones.

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2002-09-01»

I’ve spent the last few days at ConJose, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention. It’s like a bank-holiday weekend visiting relatives. Fandom is clearly closely allied to the people and sub-culture I know, but with its own rituals and relationships and strange, orthogonal paths. Like family, it’s been by turns exasperating, entertaining, informative, irritating, and a bit wonderful. So far, the best bits have been listening to Vernor Vinge‘s presentation on the Singularity; the panel on nerdcore sf writing with Cory, Eileen Gunn, James Patrick Kelly and Charlie Stross; and the Hugo Awards.

The Hugos go to show how witty an awards ceremony can be if most of your winners are writers. It also has the side effect – given the underappreciated lot of most of them – of creating almost infinite gratitude in the recipients, which is much more fun to watch than the usual self-grooming celebs. Neil Gaman seemed genuinely amazed and moved to win Best Novel. His fine acceptance speech ended with him trailing off, staring at the statue, and saying “Fuck. I got a Hugo.”.

The Hugo list, as I suppose is the plan, is now my reading list for the next few months. I’ve just read Ted Chiang’s award-winning short story “Hell is the Absence of God”, online at FictionWise. You can download it for free at that link. It’s fantastic – a great short story, sf or not. And if you haven’t already read Charlie Stross’ Lobsters (again free online), you’re missing a treat. Vinge’s novella “Fast Times at Fairmont High” is the next on the list.

I was also supposed to be at ConJose to meet a trade mission of publishers to brief them about the EUCD, but someone at the DTI nixed that when they found out I was a journalist. You see? Just days into accepting the description, and I’m already getting excluded from all the best parties.

It turned out okay: Seth covered the meeting better than any journalist would, and instead that evening, I shared a ride with the man who plays Mr Shake Hands on the American version of Banzai.

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2002-08-29»

I haven’t seen this before (except from whence I stole the link, at web-graphics). It’s Edward Tufte on the uses and abuses of Flash. He likes praystation!

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2002-08-28»

Warren Ellis, comic author of the perfectly respectable Transmetropolitan, creator of the mighty hypercolumnist Spider Jerusalem, terrifyingly prolific prose writer, and unremitting booster of the comics economy now has a blog. As well as one the best domain names you can get these days, damn him.

die puny humans is my newsmine. I wanted a place to put my research that was accessible, searchable, and, crucially, not cluttering up my bloody computer. This is it. Means I can get to my stuff from anywhere with a web connection. Anything I find on my daily trawls around the web that interests me goes up here.

Via Technovia

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Tom “plasticbag” Coates just had his machine fixed by a friend, remotely via ssh for the first time, and does appropriate double-backflips of delight. Unix is so cool that way.

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