| Thursday,
February 24, 2000 The rains have stopped or at least
paused, leaving me with a million things to do. There are some
questions over in mail for today.
BLURB: Mary Mosquera provides the Washington lowdown and Jerry
Pournelle opines on this week's chip news in Byte.com's Week in
Review.
MP3 version: http://img.cmpnet.com/byte/weekinreview/thisweek.mp3
LAST WEEK'S SHOW IS NOW: http://img.cmpnet.com/byte/weekinreview/te-20000218_wir.mp3
Trinoo apparently is now in Windows machines. See
mail. I haven't had time to look into this much. You will recall that I
warned everyone to go check their own machines for vulnerability. Just
because something wasn't used doesn't mean it won't be, and it was only a
question of time until Windows systems got incorporated into the world of
the zombies. Happened even sooner than I thought, apparently.
I read at
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1555637.html
The Windows version also allows the tools to be spread
as apparently innocuous email attachments, much like ordinary viruses.
Computer security experts say they haven't seen this happen yet, but that
the Windows platform makes it relatively easy to do.
and that sounds more like the usual scare tactics of "experts"
hoping to promote their services. Many, indeed most, "security
holes" are found by security experts, often working at Universities,
and the holes are fixed before the public ever becomes aware of them. Then
there is a loud cry of "Wolf!" That is the problem: with reports
like the above we have heard them so many times that we don't listen much.
Perhaps this one is real, perhaps it is merely theoretical, perhaps it is a
hoax like the evil virus that sets your refrigerator to defrost. I wish my
colleagues in the industry would be a bit more careful on some of these
reports.
I'm sitting here in my pajamas doing all this because I am waiting for
some other stuff to happen, so I can get dressed, walk the dog, and get to
work on fiction. I also have errands to run. Now perhaps I can make some
phone calls...
My thanks to Earthlink: they managed quickly to solve my wife's problems
of access to here site (it's maintained there, unlike mine which is at PAIR.
She just doesn't want to change.)
And here's this:
Subject: The date 12/31/2107
Dear Mr. Pournelle,
When Mr. Fuhrhop mentioned the dates 01/01/1980 and
12/31/2107, I recognized them as the minimum and the maximum values of the
MS-DOS date/time structure, used by all the FAT file systems. It's 32 bits
long, where the last 7 bits determine the year offset from 1980, and 1980
+ 2^7 - 1 = 2107.
Just in case this is of interest for someone...
Kind regards,
Stefan Fleischmann
-- Homepage: http://www.winhex.com
I put that here because if I had a product of the week it would be
WinHex; a very good hex editor, although the unregistered trial version
has enough annoyances that I very nearly didn't find out. But it's worth
the rather small price. More than worth it. It's the hex editor I use now.
And then:
From: gossg@mindlink.com
Subject:Here's a better hyperlink to help us
buy your book "The Burning City"
You provide a link to the Amazon listing for your
book. However, there is a boycott running of Amazon in a significant
portion of the computer nerd community. (in the activist atmosphere of the
Internet, there are ALWAYS boycotts running -- I've been involved in three
since summer)
The following link calls up your book from a book
shopping comparison service. Amazon is there, but so are a dozen others.
One of them is 23% cheaper if we're willing to wait for stock. Another is
8% cheaper and in stock.
http://www.bestbookbuys.com/cgi-bin/bbb.cgi?ISBN=0671036602
The Amazon link, as I think I have said many times, provides me with a
small "finder fee" for books bought using that link; I like the
notion of getting higher royalties. But that's trivial compared to buying
it at all, so if you hate Amazon....
If you LIKE Amazon: The
Burning City
Thanks
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