Ready for May flowers? First, a last April shower of this month’s most trafficked posts:
Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks
April Fool’s Day: “Since the dawn of time, geeks have been playing harmless…
April 2008
Monthly Archive
Wed 30 Apr 2008
Wed 30 Apr 2008
Wed 30 Apr 2008
Ron Guilmette writes “As reported in the Washington Post’s Security Fix blog, a substantial hunk of IP address space has apparently been taken over by notorious mass e-mailing company Media Breakaway, LLC, formerly known as OptInRealBig, via means that are at best questionable. The block in question is 134.17.0.0/16, which I documented in depth in an independent investigation. (Apparently, the President of Media Breakaway has now admitted to the Washington Post that his company has been occupying and using the 134.17.0.0/16 block and that front company JKS Media, which provides routing to the block, is actually owned by Media Breakaway.) Remarkably, the president of Media Breakaway, who happens to be an attorney, is trying to defend his company’s apparent snatching of this block based upon his own rather novel legal theory that ARIN doesn’t have jurisdiction over any IP address space that was handed out before ARIN was formed, in 1997.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wed 30 Apr 2008
cgh4be writes “I have been working in the IT industry for about 12 years and have had various jobs as a consultant and systems engineer. Over that time I’ve had the chance to do a little bit of everything: programming, networking, SAN, Linux/AIX/UNIX, Windows, sales, support, and on and on. However, over the last couple of months I have become a little disillusioned with the IT industry as a whole. Occasionally, I will get interested in some new technology, but for the most part I’m starting to find it all very tedious, repetitive, and boring and I’m no longer really interested in the hands-on aspect of the business. I suppose going the management route is one option, but I would still be dealing with a lot of the same frustrating technology issues. The other route I had in mind was a complete career change; take something I really enjoy doing outside of work now and try to make a career out of it. The only problem is that I have a wife and kid to support and my current job pays very well. Have any of you been through this kind of career ‘mid-life crisis?’ What did you do to get out of the rut? Is making a complete career change at this point a bad idea?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wed 30 Apr 2008
You don’t have to be a programmer to appreciate the joys of plain text, and there’s no better way to wrangle your text files than a solid text editor. Plain text files are appealing because they’re…
Wed 30 Apr 2008
goombah99 writes “Princeton Professor, Ed Felton, has posted a series of blog entries in which he shows the printed tapes he obtained from the NJ voting machines don’t report the ballots correctly. In response to the first one, Sequoia admitted that the machines had a known software design error that did not correctly record which kind of ballots were cast (republican or democratic primary ballots) but insisted the vote totals were correct. Then, further tapes showed this explanation to be insufficient. In response, State officials insisted that the (poorly printed) tapes were misread by Felton. Again further tapes showed this not to be a sufficient explanation. However all those did not foreclose the optimistic assessment that the errors were benign — that is, the possibility that vote totals might really be correct even though the ballot totals were wrong and the origin of the errors had not been explained. Now he has found (well-printed) tapes that show what appears to be hard proof that it’s the vote totals that are wrong, since two different readout methods don’t agree. Sequoia has made trade-secret legal threats against those wishing to mount an independent examination of the equipment. One small hat-tip to Sequoia: at least they are reporting enough raw data in different formats that these kinds of errors can come to light — that lesson should be kept in mind when writing future requirements for voting machines.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wed 30 Apr 2008
Wed 30 Apr 2008
Microsoft has delayed the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 after discovering compatibility issues between the SP3 release and its point-of-sale application for small and midsize retailers.
Wed 30 Apr 2008
Wed 30 Apr 2008
Smart-Open Files and Applications for a Cleaner Desktop [Mac OS X Tip]
Posted by admin under UncategorizedNo Comments
Mac OS X tip: If you’re keen on keeping a desktop free from the clutter of a hundred open windows, weblog AppleDoes points out a simple OS X keyboard shortcut that will simultaneously open a file or…