Diary of a Network Geek

I love this site!

Okay, it's a store and it's a parody of some of the best computer books available, but it's just so darn funny. O'Really.com makes fun of O'Reilly Publishing, but in a good-natured way.
Why not check them both out?

Whoops!

Looks like the US military has "accidentally" sold restricted parts to foreign governments. At least, according to this article on Australia IT, they have. Haven't heard about it in the US media, that I'm aware of. I wonder why that is? Hmmm....
Anyway, it looks like the Government is still catching up to the ebusiness issues that most of us dealt with a long, long time ago. Ah, the glory of bureaucracies! Interesting reading, no matter what country you hail from.

At least, if they give away your domain.

No, really, according to this article on Wired News, the guy who lost sex.com to a felonious spoofer has been granted the right to sue Network Solutions, who lost him the site. All these years, NetSol has been saying that they're not responsible, but they really seem to be! Ha!
Now, maybe we can hear about something else from Wired News, besides Sex.com!!

Here are two sort of disturbing notes about identification.

First, according to this article at the Register.co.uk, there's a move afoot to have smartcard, biometric passports in the US by the end of 2004. There's already a move to have get them in the EU. This will, allegedly, make for more secure documents and identification of US citizens, but... And, there's always a but, isn't there? My concern is, how close will this take us to internal passports? How long before even my driver's license is a smartcard that has all kinds of "security" data on it? I don't know, this just bothers me a bit.
Secondly, according to this article on Wired News, moving to an "e-system" may not be the best idea. There are already problems with death certificate systems, so, do we want to accelerate those problems by putting them on a network? Would these problems make it harder or easier to get a falsified "smartcard" passport? There's a lot of stuff that needs to be worked out with these two issues before I'm entirely comfortable with either.

Strange, but true.

And, it's from Microsoft, so you know it has to be good! Hey!! Stop laughing!
Seriously, though, this article on Microsoft Research has some interesting things to say about security and passwords. Now, how long before someone implements this. Or, something like it, since no doubt Microsoft already has the patent on it. Still, as a Psychology Minor, it has a certain appeal to me. Visual memory, that is a memory of an actual picture, is clearer than memory of an abstract, like, say a random string of characters. I can see how it would be helpful, but I have a hard time imagining how it will be implemented.
Food for thought, though.

Hey, that's not cool.

Look, I think SCO are a bunch of blood-sucking bottom-feeders, but hacking their website is just not cool. And, it doesn't help anyone but SCO in court, either. But, according to this story on Australia IT, some, un-named hacker hit SCO with a very directed DOS attack. (That's Denial Of Service, not Disk Operating System, BTW.) C'mon, they're going to be proven wrong in court, so why stoop to their level? It just shows some real "fuzzy thinking" on someone's part. Linux deserves better press than this.

But, are they the right skills?

Sorry for the "l33t" speak in the title, but it illustrates a point. According to this article on Australia IT, computer people with project management skills are in high-demand. And, as we all remember from our basic Economics courses, high-demand is usually created by a small supply. So, being a very, very skilled geek isn't quite enough to get by in today's market-place. Project management is where it's at, boyz and grrls. At least, in Australia it is. Based on what I've seen in the industry, it's true in the States, too.
Personally, I've never really liked doing project management. It's usually fairly tedious and the worst end of IT management, but, it does pay the bills. Not for me, at the moment, but it has in the past. In any case, it looks like I'll be chasing after a project certification soon. Like I already mentioned, it pays the bills!

So speaks Linus Torvalds.

In this interview on eWeek, Linus Torvalds, the Father of Linux, refutes the claims that SCO has been making, based on the "leaked" code samples. Basically, what he says is that the code in question is really, really old code found in BSD and the "original UNIX" archive made available by Dennis Ritchie. In fact, it looks to be code written by Ken Thompson, the Father of UNIX, himself. (Ritchie is one-half of the team responsible for the C programming language, among other things.) In short, SCO doesn't seem to have a leg to stand on, unless they're hiding a bunch of code somewhere.

And, yes, Mr. Torvalds actually said, "They are smoking crack" in response to a question regarding SCO.

Photoshop running on Linux?

Apparently so, according to this article on eWeek, several studios have gotten together to get Photoshop working on Linux via WINE. Normally, one wouldn't expect folks like this to get together on a project, since they're so competitive, but they did. I guess if the need is big enough, any differences can be set aside to get things done. And, isn't that the premise of the whole Open Source movement?
Anyway, it's an interesting read.

Okay, kind of technical, but cool.

To me, anyway. I love these websites that tell me how stuff works. Even if they get a little technical and dry. This site, telling me how magnetic disk drives work, is no exception. Sure, it's kind of a technical subject, but I still find it interesting. Maybe the gentle reader will, too. Enjoy.