Reflective Surface
Still powered by a contradiction in terms
Archive for Internet Culture
February 11, 2003 at 2:41 pm · Filed under Internet Culture
The site of Defensive Thinking, Kevin Mitnick’s security consulting company, was hacked two times in the last few weeks. In the first break-in, somebody calling himself BugBear defaced the site, adding a new page that congratulated Mitnick for his return to freedom and informed him that hacking into his site had been easy. A few time later, another person hacked the site to ask Kevin to hire him as the company security officer.
Ironically, Defensive Thinking’s site runs IIS, Microsoft’s Web server. I thought somebody who is in the security business would know better than use such flawed application. Although Mitnick dismisses the invasions as amusing, I wonder what kind of company will trust him to help them secure their assets.
(via Adriana)
February 8, 2003 at 7:19 pm · Filed under Funny / Weird, Geek Stuff, Internet Culture, Random
For profit:
- Free as in Freedom, a book detailing Richard Stallman’s individual trajectory in the open source movement, is available for free at O’Reilly.
- Cascading versus Indexed Menu Design is a study of three common kinds of site navigation menus that seeks to determine which of them is more usable. The conclusions it reached were interesting.
- Unix.se published an interview with Dennis Ritchie.
For fun:
- The Mystery of Time and Space is an simple Flash game resembling some solo role-playing games.
- How good is your spelling? Take a test featuring 50 commonly misspelled words chosen by a copy-editor in the course of his professional years. I managed to score 84%, even making some with some dumb mistakes.
January 29, 2003 at 10:29 am · Filed under Internet Culture
There are some things that can only happen in the Internet: the complete staff of ZDNet Tech Update is for sale on eBay. The bid descriptions says:
Complete staff of ZDNet Tech Update, formerly a vital division of one of the top ten highest-trafficked sites on the Web, currently available to instantly implement professional Web site or print magazine. (…) Resumes available to highest bidder. Bidders should be prepared to make a total annual commitment for salary and benefits in the high six figures. Sellers will also consider contract work. Please e-mail any questions before bidding.
The current bid is at US$ 8.50, and interested buyers have three days to make their bids. First, it was a town. Now, people. What’s next? A planet?
(via Ben Hammersley)
Update: The Register reports that eBay pulled the auction because of its wording. The Register also speculates that it might have been a hoax.
January 2, 2003 at 12:30 pm · Filed under Internet Culture
Ben Hammersley thinks that the LazyWeb is becoming self-aware. I will have to agree with him. That thing is showing an uncanny ability to help itself grow.
Jokes apart, it’s great to see what the Internet and weblogs are helping to create: a great community to which the whole world can contribute. Although the LazyWeb seems selfish, it’s actually an incredible way to spread knowledge and get things done — a kind of open source by demand. Let a thousand requests bloom!
December 17, 2002 at 6:57 pm · Filed under Internet Culture
Good news in the fight against the DMCA: ElcomSoft was found not guilty on all counts. The company has been cleared of charges that it illegally created a program to disable encryption on Adobe eBooks. They are the employers of Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian developer who was arrested during the Las Vegas DefCon after he gave a talk on the flaws of Adobe’s eBook software.
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