This morning I had a great conversation with Robert Scoble. I’ve not really followed his blog, but I know he reads widely and is widely read, so I decided to check it out once I got back to my desk.
I found this post which could almost be cut and pasted out of the last few minutes of our conversation. From the timestamp, it looks like he posted it almost as I was heading out the door.
It’s my sad duty to announce that Marshall Poison, my collaborator, is dead.
We had a falling out over a woman and a jar of pickled vegetables (or something) and in the ensuing scuffle, I must have hit him pretty damn hard, because when the dust cleared, my hair was a mess, and old Marshall had gone to meet his maker.
In the aftermath, I wasn’t sure what to do with this weblog. As you can see, Marshall has been the driving force since its inception. I may have provided the technical know-how, weighed in on subject matter and editorial tone, but Marshall did all the day to day work and I wasn’t sure Geekfun could continue without his contribution.
It took some hard thinking, but I realized that Marshall’s passing presented me with a new opportunity, and so, I decided to abuse my position as Marshall’s literary executor and appropriate everything he has written as a foundation for my own turn at writing this blog. I may not do better than he has, but I’m sure you can all agree, it would be hard to do worse.
Rest in Peace, Marshall Poison.
The windows operating system from Windows 95 through Windows XP contains a critical flaw in the code responsibile for viewing JPEG images (the most prevelant image format on the web). Malicious parties can create JPEG files that execute arbitrary code embedded in the image file. As a result, it is possbile to become infected with viruses simply by viewing a web page or opening an e-mail with an attached image — practices formerly regarded as safe.
So far, the actual threat from this vulnerability is small, but the potential threat is huge, and so it is important for people to patch their systems.
Microsoft has started to address this problem through the automatic update process, but so far, their approach is totally half assed. Automatic update will only patch the vulnerability in the operating system and internet explorer. It will also install a scanning utility which will help you identify other software containing the flaw, but only if that software was produced by Microsoft, and even then, you must take additional meausres to actually patch the Microsoft software.
The problem is that there is a lot of non-microsoft software out there which might also contain the vulnerability. Fortunately, a 3rd party has created GDI Scan which will help identify other software containing the flaw.
This article explains how to use the utility to find problems, and the steps you can take to fix them.
Yahoo! News Message Boards Top Stories
I’m very pleased with myself, in less than 5 minutes, my post to the yahoo message board for their lead story on the debate tonight has racked up 5 reccomendations.
W looks tired, whines about “Hard work”
by: floonist 09/30/04 11:39 pm
Msg: 133891 of 134000
5 recommendationsHe kept repeating himself, trying to reinforce his talking points. I’m sure he wanted everyone to think that Kerry is inconsistent (this coming from the guy who was saying “no nation building” even as the members of his future administration were laying plans to invade Iraq).
What really struck me though, is that he kept saying that Iraq and the war on terror were “hard work.” Everytime he said it, he sounded like he was whining. He looked and sounded tired, too.
I think it’s time he and Dick take a break and let someone else do the job.
Salon.com News | The Cowardly Broadcasting System
CBS has scrapped a 60 Minutes segment critical of Bush’s case for invading Iraq, saying that it would be inapporpriate to air so close to the election.
I say they are running scared after giving creedence in a recent report to supposedly new and now discredited documents which casxt even more doubt over Bush’s already extremly dubious National Guard service.
In any case, there are copies of this story floating around outside CBS (Salon has one). It would be really cool if someone encoded it and started spreading it arround P2P networks and BitTorrent.
