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Tuesday, February 04, 2003 |
I was kind of hoping that OJR would look at how we covered the Shuttle disaster, but it still focuses on the "real" journalists, and lumps bloggers into an amorphous blob. Maybe it's because there's only one letter diff betw blog and blob. Who knows. Maybe someday we'll get some respec. [Scripting News]
9:43:57 PM 
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Outsourcing rejection. I screened job applicants over the phone for a company I didn't work for. My favorite part: Arrogant middle managers who suddenly began to grovel when they realized I wasn't the receptionist. [Salon.com]
9:41:12 PM
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Question. When I get Slashdotted we get about 5000 reads. I've noticed that number is about what some Manila and Radio sites have gotten when they were Slashdotted. Now, according to Joel Spolsky he gets about 400,000 reads from a Slashdot link, about 80 times the flow. Now here's the question. Why? [Scripting News]
9:38:38 PM
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Internet Slammed Again: Quick but brutal attack hobbles service providers and web sites. By Steven M. Cherry, IEEE Spectrum.
This piece gives some info I haven't seen elsewhere (e.g., about what
happened with the BoA ATMs) an easy-to-grasp explanation of how the Slammer worm operated and some also accessible analysis.
2:32:28 PM
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Wired: "Disney has invested in Sonicblue, even though it is also one of the outfits suing the firm." [Scripting News]
6:15:26 AM
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Matt Blaze: "Although a few people have confused my reporting of the vulnerability (in master-keyed locks) with causing the vulnerability itself, I can take comfort in a story that Richard Feynman famously told about his days on the Manhattan project. Some simple vulnerabilities (and user interface problems) made it easy to open most of the safes in use at Los Alamos. He eventually demonstrated the problem to the Army officials in charge. Horrified, they promised to do something about it. The response? A memo ordering the staff to keep Feynman away from their safes." [Hack the Planet]
6:01:35 AM
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Microsoft sues 3 firms in NE Ohio, by Chris
Seper, Plain Dealer.
In separate lawsuits, Microsoft accused Erie Shores Computer
Inc. in Elyria; A2Z Computers in Aurora; and LLS Technologies of Eastlake
of selling counterfeit versions of Microsoft software.
The suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, charge copyright and
trademark infringement, among other things.
Tipped off by Microsoft's complaints, the FBI searched the offices of A2Z
Computers and confiscated hundreds of thousands of dollars in suspected
pirated software. That investigation may lead to federal mail fraud
charges, law enforcement and company officials said
5:30:07 AM
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The Mythical
Threat of Genetic Determinism, by Daniel C. Dennett (CHE).
If this is genetic determinism, then we can all breathe a sigh
of relief: There are no genetic determinists. I have never encountered
anybody who claims that will, education, and culture cannot change many,
if not all, of our genetically inherited traits.
. . .
. . . . Aren't we under just as much of a threat from the dread
environment, nasty old Nurture with its insidious indoctrination
techniques? When Nature and Nurture have done their work, will there be
anything left over to be me?
Does it matter what the trade-off is if, one way or another, our genes and
our environment (including chance) divide up the spoils and "fix" our
characters? Perhaps it seems that the environment is a more benign source
of determination since, after all, "we can change the environment." That
is true, but we can't change a person's past environment any more
than we
can change her parents, and environmental adjustments in the future can be
just as vigorously addressed to undoing prior genetic constraints as prior
environmental constraints. And we are now on the verge of being able to
adjust the genetic future almost as readily as the environmental future.
. . .
. . . . The issue is not about determinism, either genetic or
environmental or both together; the issue is about what we can
change
whether or not our world is deterministic.
4:29:58 AM
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