Gnodal Journal

The M$ $erver $aga Continues: A nice little page of security-related links from showmyip.com
Yesterday I found a few good links (one is “Putting your web servers under lock and key” from business2.com) reading a couple of good overviews of the $QL $lammer on CNN Tech, (“Experts: Internet attack hunt difficult” and “As Net attack eases, blame game surges“). In the latter I came across this quote from Andrew Schulman, software litigation consultant and author:

“Part of the problem is that Microsoft has always been oriented toward growth rather than consolidation. Getting them to say ‘Let’s take what we do now and make better and more bug free’ is a big challenge.”
“It would be great for someone to tell them, ‘Go back and clean up the whole mess you made.’ That would be terrific. But it’s not going to happen.”

Now that rang my bell, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to post it … maybe too much like kicking someone down … maybe a limited capacity for appalling truthes. But it came to mind very strongly and I decided to blog it when I read Eric Meyer on a related thread:

“[T]he more I hear about the things that can happen to IE/Win users, the happier I am about being a Macintosh user who works for Netscape. The very idea that a Web browser can be taken over, and seriously mess up the operating system in the process, makes my eyes cross. I’m starting to wonder how any company with the slightest shred of concern over security could possibly justify running IE/Win.”

*sigh … so it’s not just me … *sigh*

Out of the fire, into the frying pan! Uhhr no, or .. yes! Or no. *sigh* Slashdot | DTD vs. XML Schema

Wow … what a night! First, news of US$6B for Project BioShield *!yikes that’s a lotta spendolas!* and now I read at tantek’s blog that “The W3C CSS working group has just published an updated CSS 2.1 working draft. Much (most) of the feedback on the previous draft has been incorporated. There are still a few unresolved issues (which is why this isn’t a last call draft) mostly surrounding overflow and “shrink-wrapping”. Gooooood night!

A looming meme … I’m starting to encounter alternative thinking on the subject of FS … yaa, the question of file systems. (How much of FS falls into the domain of “namespace”?) This clip (“Synacasaurus“) from Disobey Nonsense Network — Daily Cultural Enjoyment noodged me into starting a theme here (*sigh* which means I should dredge my bookmarks and notes). “Whilst I heartily disagree with the debate over how hierarchical filesystems are bad, I admit I’m one of those “programmers” who thinks it’s a “really wonderful thing”. I also collect far more than the average person when it comes to downloadable files (mp3s, movies, images, text files, etc.). I like organizing my files – I hate being told how to use my computer.”
I guess the paper that’s on my mind at the moment is “Name Spaces As Tools for Integrating the Operating System” from NameSys / ReiserFS (a DARPA sponsored project).
*Ooh boy … a break in regular programming for Dubya’s State of the Union address … yessir, sometimes bifurcation comes down to homely truthes. What really bothers me is the idea that policy is being dictated by the notion of getting people to feel secure … feelings are tricky things, very subject to manipulation, and not terribly rational at the best of times. Ahh, the Sargeant at Arms has made the announcement.*

Addendum to M$ $QL worm: from NYTimes Tech 28JAN03, Worm Hits Microsoft, Which Ignored Own Advice … “The frantic message came from the corporation’s information technology workers: “HELP NEEDED: If you have servers that are nonessential, please shut down.”
“Microsoft has been blaming the users, saying they have to keep their patches up to date,” said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technical officer of Counterpane Internet Security Inc., a company that manages security for customers. “On the other hand, their own actions demonstrate how unrealistic that position is.” A spokesman for Microsoft, Rick Miller, confirmed that a number of the company’s machines had gone unpatched, and that Microsoft Network services, like many others on the Internet, experienced a significant slowdown.”
Wellll, it’s far better than having some variation on “we wouldn’t actually call it a bug …”

7th inning stretch department: Metacrap. heh … huh huh huh … haaahahahaha!

Fresh off the press (27JAN03): from LinuxWorld, “
Larry McVoy on BitKeeper, kernel development, Linux Torvalds [sic] & Bruce Perens“. (This followup to “Meet the Perens” part 1 and part 2 was initiated by McVoy’s request for corrections; from the intro: “[t]hinking that a story on BitKeeper — the controversial proprietary source management tool currently in use by Linus and others for Linux kernel development — that also carried McVoy’s corrections would be more interesting to our readers …”)