…goes to The Breakfast Club Personality Test, which is on this site. Here’s my result:
Home Alone and Baby’s Day Out, but I think part of the problem is that he stopped writing Molly Ringwald vehicles. All worship The Molly. And her very nice New York apartment.
From The Official Ninja Webpage:
Hi, this site is all about ninjas, REAL NINJAS. This site is awesome. My name is Robert and I can’t stop thinking about ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.
Facts:
1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
Damn, they’re mammals? On the Internet, you learn something new every day.
Warning: The Official Ninja webpage has some really annoying background music. Turn down the volume on your speakers.
Here’s a great story about how AppleScript (a scripting language for Macs) helped keep sensitive data safe and helped recover a stolen iMac. The iMac’s owner managed to access his stolen machine remotely, wrote a script to set the AOL client to dial his home number, which gave him a caller ID trace. I think we have an early candidate for “Hack of the Year,” folks…
(Thanks to Leandro for the link.)
On Janauary 15th, Bill Gates sent out a memo outlining an inititiative for something he calls Trustworthy Computing. The memo can be read in its entirety here.
Here are some snippets which should give you the gist of the initiative…
Trustworthy Computing is computing that is as available, reliable and secure as electricity, water services and telephony.
“Reliable and secure as electricity?” Obviously he didn’t live in California during the start of 2001.
Today, in the developed world, we do not worry about electricity and water services being available. With telephony, we rely both on its availability and its security for conducting highly confidential business transactions without worrying that information about who we call or what we say will be compromised. Computing falls well short of this, ranging from the individual user who isn’t willing to add a new application because it might destabilize their system, to a corporation that moves slowly to embrace e-business because today’s platforms don’t make the grade.
Of course, what he doesn’t say is that a lot of the system destabilization that comes from installing new apps is Microsoft’s fault. I once had a customer call me with a problem where after installing an app I’d written, his printer was no longer working. And no, it wasn’t my fault.
That customer was a victim of what Windows developers call DLL Hell. The quickie explanation for non-technical people is that DLLs are software Lego blocks that are shared by many programs that perform functions that are common to many programs. For instance, the “Open” and “Save” dialog boxes you often see are services provided by the Windows Common Dialog DLL; by using this DLL, developers are saved from having to write, test and debug new “Open” and “Save” dialog boxes for each application and the users get a consistent experience every time they want to open or save. So far, so good. The problem is that DLLs are often upgraded, and sometimes the new version of a DLLs is not backwards-compatible with an old version. As a result, programs that relied on the old version of a DLL may suddenly stop working properly. A real-life analogy: imagine the kind of tragedy that would occur if someone changed all the coffee — a shared utility that many workers rely on — in your office from regular to decaf without telling anyone.
The events of last year — from September’s terrorist attacks to a number of malicious and highly publicized computer viruses — reminded every one of us how important it is to ensure the integrity and security of our critical infrastructure, whether it’s the airlines or computer systems.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, being “low-tech, high concept” operations — had nothing to do with computers, but they do make a convenient bogeyman. As for the highly publicized computer viruses, most of them took advantage of Windows systems.
Our new design approaches need to dramatically reduce the number of such issues that come up in the software that Microsoft, its partners and its customers create. We need to make it automatic for customers to get the benefits of these fixes. Eventually, our software should be so fundamentally secure that customers never even worry about it.
Well, duh…
More in upcoming postings. Lots of work to do today.
My friend Adam Smith used to have this quote from The Mythical Man-Month as a .sig for his e-mails:
Conway’s Law: Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
Adam summarizes this statement as “You build what you are.”
Sometimes, when people find out that I’m a computer programmer, they ask if I’ve ever broken into any computer systems or cracked someone’s security. I reply that I’ve only done so once, but it was Microsoft headquarters. It is a tale that makes hacker boyz lick my Airwalks in abject worship and hacker girlz swoon and offer me backrubs and lap dances.
Okay, maybe not. But it’s a good story, and it does illustrate Conway’s Law in action.
Back in February 2001, the company for which I used to work was considered to be a leader in the P2P software development community. (Now, please remember that this is hardly cause to crow. I’m sure having the title “the brightest kid on the short bus” would carry more prestige.) Anyhow, I got sent to an invitation-only, covered-under-pain-of-death-NDA all-day seminar at their headquarters in Redmond.
I drove my rental car to building forty-something, where M$ holds its meet-and-greets. I unknowingly parked my car in the area reserved for employees, which meant that the door leading into the building was locked. Above it was a video camera, and to its right was a card scanner. I probably could’ve gone back to the car and driven to the correct garage or simply walked out the garage and circled the building and entered through the front. However, I decided to try something else.
I took my passcard for the company’s Toronto office and passed it over the card scanner. Naturally, it had no result. I tried it again, and then once more. I then looked up at the camera with a confused “howcum it don’t work no more?” big-eyed expression and pointed at my card.
I heard a loud click come from the door. I gave the door a try, and it opened easily. I smiled at the camera and gave the gullible security wonk a wave.
“Just like their software,” I’m sure I said out loud, as I opened the door with a big “J03Y 0WNZ J00” grin.
Next: Microsoft’s “Trustworthy Computing” Initiative
(and yes, I still have some other “part two” postings to finish…)
Johnny Cash is one cool dude. Wore all black before the goths, wrote about shootin’ and killin’ before the gangsta rappers and has kicked more ass that all of Limp Bizkit, Korn, Kid Rock and the other poseur tough bands combined.
Here’s an ad he took out in Billboard magazine back in 1998. Click on it to see it close up.
It’s his message to the Nashville music establishment and country radio for all their support.
Remind me to do one of myself for the company for which I used to work.
