Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point) takes the reader through a delightful investigation of people’s incredible ability to snap to a conclusion or first impression in mere moments. Blink! talks about everything that goes on in your brain during those incredible milliseconds before you consciously become aware of your impressions. Gladwell explains how people appear to fit explanations to their ‘Blink’ impressions as historical after-the-fact fact-fitting. Fascinating stuff and an engrossing rapid read.
polyphase.ca
In Soviet Canuckistan, Blogs Read You!
Only in Canada can this really be happening. Highway 2 is basically the equivalent of a US interstate freeway.
Today, as I drove through downtown Calgary I saw a sign indicating that the downtown portion of highway 2 would be closed and to expect a detour.
Imagine my surprise as we drove past to discover the reason for the closure… A street hockey tournament. No, I’m not joking.
Three whole days of street hockey.
They even had TV coverage on TSN and EPSN.
Being a street hockey player in Calgary means never having to yell “Car!”.
For the record, there is a freeway bypass for downtown so it isn’t quite as crazy as you might think, but it is plenty crazy.
I was recently doing some work related research on ARM linux, and while visiting the ARM linux website I noticed their excellent mailing list etiquette guidelines.
Of particular note, the well formed anti-top-posting signature:
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Of course, now is a fantastic time to get reacquainted with RFC 1855, as you already know, it’s all about netiquette and internet communications.
Abstract
This document provides a minimum set of guidelines for Network
Etiquette (Netiquette) which organizations may take and adapt for
their own use. As such, it is deliberately written in a bulleted
format to make adaptation easier and to make any particular item easy
(or easier) to find. It also functions as a minimum set of
guidelines for individuals, both users and administrators. This memo
is the product of the Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) Working
Group of the IETF.
I’ve decided to apply one of the Creative Commons Licenses to the content on this site, since it more-or-less accurately reflects my desires for licensing. You can read more at the Canadian Creative Commons site or the main CC site.
PCWorld.com – Hackers Crack Microsoft’s Antipiracy System:
(Emphasis is mine)
…
A posting on the Boing Boing blog claimed that a JavaScript command string could bypass a check that Microsoft instituted Wednesday through the Windows Genuine Advantage 1.0 program.
According to the posting, users can override the WGA by pasting the string
javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')
in the address bar of their browser and pressing Enter. The code ‘turns off the trigger for the key check,’ according to the blog posting.
1.0 indeed!
…
A Microsoft spokesperson conceded on Friday that hackers had indeed succeeded in cracking the WGA program, …
Cracking?! Since when is setting the on/off global variable in a script to ‘off’, cracking?! Wow.
… but said that the software giant will fix the flaw they exploited in an upcoming version of the WGA program.
…
By renaming the variable to “g_sReallyLongHardToGu3ssN4ameD1s4bl3WS4″.
…
The exploit came soon after Wednesday’s launch of the program, the spokesman said. ‘Within 24 hours, hackers claimed to have circumvented the process and it appears that they did,’ he said. ‘This is a hack that exploits a feature that enables repeat downloads in the same session so that a hacker never has to validate as a genuine user,’ he said.
…
Wow, so basically these guys drove a truck through a design that arguably could accommodate a Grey Hound Bus. Nice work!
(Via PC World.)
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