EMC buys VMWare

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("Press release":http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031215/ap_on_hi_te/emc_vmware_1) I don't get this move... EMC does storage services, and "VMWare":http://www.vmware.com/ makes software that lets you run Windows on a Linux machine, or Linux on a Windows machine, in a window. My guess is that they're trying to become the next "Computer Associates":http://ca.com/; branching out into a larger vendor of both hardware and software. I fail to see the synergy, however.

Craigslist

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Via "Joey 'AccordionGuy' deVilla":http://accordionguy.blogware.com/, I "see":http://accordionguy.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2003/11/17/6344.html that there now is a "Craigslist, Pittsburgh":http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/! Having already moved away from the greater NYC area when it caught on, I haven't really experienced the love that is Craigslist, but hopefully if it catches on I'll be able to do some snarky "Gawker-style commentary":http://www.gawker.com/archives/009050.php on recent postings. Right now "they're":http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/ats/19456458.html "fairly":http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/ats/19274661.html "lame":http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/for/19282483.html.

W32.Blaster

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As wave after wave of "Blaster":http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp "continues":http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Technology&storyId=772980 to wash over the net, I'm just enjoying looking at my firewall logs. About 1000 pings turned away in the last 12 hours, and 98% of them are on port 135, which means that it's almost all Blaster traffic. I have a feeling that "windowsupdate.microsoft.com":http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ is gonna get _pummeled_ Saturday.

Mozilla's Thunderbird

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I started using Thunderbird at work yesterday. I'm trying to move away from using IE as much as possible, since IE6 is the new IE5 (which, coincidentally, is the new Netscape 4). I know that the project isn't all that far along, all things considered, but I was still very impressed by how solid the build is. I imported my address book and messages from OE(Outlook Express) without a problem, and it's now running as my default mail client. I really like how configurable everything is. Want to quote the original email in a reply and start your typing underneath? Sure. Want to start at the top instead? Sure. Set preferences as far as sending HTML(HyperText Markup Language) email, plaintext or a combination of both? Systemwide or by domain? Sure.

A few small gripes so far (and ones I hope they'll fix eventually... after all, it's still in development):

* A keyboard shortcut for "Get New Mail", please! I'm very used to a little Ctrl+M action in OE(Outlook Express) to get new messages without having to use the mouse, which I'm trying to cut down on lately since I've noticed my hand hurting a bit. * Some sort of indicator in the message list pane to show which messages I've replied to. OE(Outlook Express) has a couple of different icons to show read, unread, replied and forwarded. I'd like to see the same thing here.

The RIAA can eat my ass.

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Came home from work today to find this message window popped up in KaZaA Lite: bq. COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT WARNING: It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. Distributing or downloading copyrighted music on the Internet without permission from the copyright owner is ILLEGAL. It hurts songwriters who create and musicians who perform the music you love, and all the other people who bring you music.

bq. When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC, either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a "file-sharing" system like this.

bq. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified. You also may have unlocked and exposed your computer and your private files to anyone on the Internet. Don't take these chances. Disable the share feature or uninstall your "file-sharing" software. For more information on how, go to http://www.musicunited.net/5_takeoff.html.

bq. This warning comes from artists, songwriters, musicians, music publishers, record labels and hundreds of thousands of people who work at creating and distributing the music you enjoy. We are unable to receive direct replies to this message. For more information about this Copyright Warning, go to www.musicunited.net.

Um, excuse me?!!? First of all, I have sharing turned off, just like they suggest. Second of all, I have my firewall set to not allow any sort of "server" activity at all for that program. My guess is they're just getting a list of logged-on users, and spamming them en-masse.

To quote jwz, please choke on a bucket of cocks.

Holy crap, that's annoying!

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So, apparently all the "GO" statements that SQL Enterprise manager spits out when you create an export of tables/stored procedures/etc. _aren't understood by SQL Server_! I've been sitting here banging my head against a wall for a day now, trying to figure out why my installer program isn't working, and is spitting back errors about "syntax error near 'GO'", and all along I just needed to rip those statements out. Motherfucker.

Hey, Boo-Boo! Gimme that pic-a-nic virus!!!

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Got my first email virus yesterday. Actually sorta suprising, considering how many there are out there. I guess my friends and family are a little smarter than the average bear. But with that ham-handed segue, I regret to inform you that yesterday my mom fell victim to the new and extra-hot Bugbear.B email virus. It was new enough yesterday that my virus definitions didn't catch it, although I didn't open the attachment. I've sent the removal instructions (and the updated virus pattern definition) to my mom, so I hope she can get it off of her system, as it seems to be a fairly nasty one.

Life, the Universe, and Everything Feral

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Saw this nifty site this morning which uses's Google's Related Sites feature to create a dynamic map in Java of a site's relationship to others. Here's mine: Click for full-size

Seems like most of the related-ness for my site comes from the music section, which is sorely out of date. I was tossing around the idea this weekend of creating another MT(Movable Type) log for the music stuff. It would probably greatly increase the chances of me updating it.

MetaFilter → GoogleBrowser

I also saw this story, which made me laugh out loud. It will probably make you do the same.

Good Deed Done

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While looking around for info on how to capture onclick events for a CheckBoxList nested inside a Repeater control (don't even ask...) I came across a site that was throwing an error. The error looked something like this: Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0401'

Expected end of statement

/search/dsn.asp, line 4

sprovider=""server=216.xxx.xxx.xxx;Database=xxx;UID=xxxxx;Password=w0nd3rful;applicationName={default}"

Notice how the full IP address, username, and password are exposed because of the error in the pag? This is A Bad Thing(tm). So, being the concerned Netzien that I am, I fired off an email to the webmaster of the site concerned. This morning I see the site's error has been fixed, and all is well. I didn't get any sort of email reply tho. (shrug) Maybe someone else emailed him first.

RSSexy

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After seeing everyone gushing about SharpReader I thought I should give it a go. It is _extremely_ suave; I read a bunch of different news sites and blogs during the day, and now I don't have to open up a bunch of different web pages to see who's updated; it's all just in an email-like interface. Click a message, see a summary, and (optionally) click through to the full article. This inspired me to also convert my own RSS(Rich Site Summary) file to have the full post (instead of an excerpt). One thing that's annoying so far is that because posts come from all the place, some have different time stamps. Some blogs must be a lot closer to the dateline, because there's already posts from tomorrow. I see in my own MT(Movable Type) template it specifies what timezone I'm in, so I suspect that some feeds are just not playing nice. I want my date-ordered view to date-ordered by GMT(Greenwich Mean Time) (with perhaps an option to change the display so it shows up as EST(Eastern Standard Time).

Here comes the new Mozilla, same as the old Mozilla.

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Mozilla.org yesterday released their updated roadmap for their browser, email, etc. Seems to me that most people seemed to be pretty thrilled by the news (my favorite is News.com.com.com.com.com, who was probably just dying to use that "Phoenix rises from Mozilla's ashes" line. They're a bunch of hacks over there, but that's a different post entirely), but I'm a little apprehensive. Here's why: While Mozilla is certainly smaller/faster than the average browser, it still is "bloated" and "slow". Why? Because everyone (collectively) wants all the (collective) features that are in Mozilla. It started out as a great idea; a way for Netscape to escape from underneath the boot of AOL, and take their browser with them.

But something happened. Although it took them far too long to release their initial browser, when they finally did, people started using it. And wanting more features in it. So many that it started to become a joke. And now people are complaining that Mozilla has become the same bloated piece of crap that Netscape 4.7 was. And there's cute, lithe Phoenix in the corner. Isn't she pretty? Phoenix was the same sort of escape pod for Mozilla that Mozilla was for Netscape before it, and my fear is that the same sort of feature creep is going to come into Phoenix, because consumers will demand it.

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

Various (mostly nerdy) bits.

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# The whole Puma ads thing has taken on a life of its own (much like a certain oversized snack food), with threatening letters from lawyers flying around. Gawker seems to be following it most closely.# This post is the first one that I'm trying to format with Brad Choate's MT-Textile plugin. It's basically just a way to use shorthand to do your formatting. The thing that got me was the shorthand way to handle those crazy abbreviations, which is handy when you're talking about CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) and XHTML(eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) all day long. MT-Textile is the new black, as far as I'm concerned. # It looks like Wrox Press is taking a dirt nap. Unfortunate, because I always thought their books were the best of the bunch. Maybe they'll open up all their content on ASP Today, although I've had a subscription that's been expired for at least 6 months now, and they haven't gotten around to turning it off. I have been wondering what will happen to stores of paid content when the company that owns them goes under. I guess we'll see with Salon soon enough. # They had been hard to find before, but it seems like .Nizzle-centric weblogs are finally out there. It's a good place to see people swapping info, and working on some cutting-edge stuff, as my older standbys seem to be updating less frequently than they were. # Looks like someone found a way to easily accomplish my Music listing using Trackbacks in MT.

new video card

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finally gave in and ordered myself a fancy new video card last week. i had an old TNT2 that i just never got around to replacing, but the last straw finally came last week, when i couldn't play the new NOLF2 demo on my machine with anything close to acceptable framerates, and the battlefield 1942 demo won't run at all (needs geforce2 and above cards). so, just to tide me over until the radeon 9700 gets cheaper, and doom3 comes out, i should be fragging with reckless abandon with my new card, at least as soon as it gets here.