brainwagon

Quad-City Times Newspaper Online reports that a local man who wished to remain anonymous found that the recently uncovered bicycle lock vulnerablities apply just as strongly to the gun safe that he uses to keep his kids away from firearms. Yeow.

Try reading this chilling report of one reporters experience during the RNC: 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC. Maybe we should start spelling Amerika with a K.

The news is reporting that a large blast and mushroom cloud has been sighted over North Korea. Apparently the explosion was large enough to have been noticed by satellites. Speculation is that the Koreans may have been engaged in some kind of nuclear testing or that the explosion may have been accidental. Scary stuff.

During one of my many explorations of the net, I found mention of a program called TimeTrax, a program which converts songs broadcast over XM Satellite Radio into mp3 files that you can play on your computer. This is especially nifty since XM radio doesn’t have DJ’s or the like, and you end up with […]

My brother and I had a conversation recently about police merely making up laws to roust you about. Apparently some cops think they can make using your computer in public a crime. For God’s sake, don’t they have anything better to do with their time?

SFGate.com reports that Senator Ted Kennedy was delayed in boarding because his name appeared on a terror watchlist as an alias. Oh, dear, God. Apparently it took three separate calls by Sen. Kennedy’s staff to be removed from the list. In a hearing yesterday, Kennedy asked: “If they have that kind of difficulty with a […]

In the decade to come, it’s clear that the Internet will face two related challenges: Increasing volume of spam, and Increasing sophistication of viruses. These two are related because spam is being increasingly used to spread viruses, and viruses are increasingly used to subvert security measures on computers and to turn them into spam relays. […]

Bruce Simpson, designer and builder of a low cost, homebrew cruise missile, has posted a rather interesting plea to sell his services. He claims that after the New Zealand government shut down work on cruise missiles, his family has been placed under significant economic stress, and he is how willing to design low cost cruise […]

If you use Internet Explorer, the terrorists have already won! The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer. Apparently this has touched off a run on Mozilla/Firefox, which are being downloaded at greatly […]

Holy crap. It isn’t often that I get a chance to read something as high in drivel as Ken Brown’s rebuttal to Andy Tanenbaum’s critique of Brown’s Samizdat, an as yet unreleased critique of the Linux operating system, Linus himself, and open source software in general. If you haven’t read Andy’s comments on Brown, by […]

It’s fascinating the degree to which Microsoft/SCO backed front companies are trying to create FUD around the use and authorship of the Linux operating system. In a Slashdot article today, they link to an article by Andy Tanenabaum about Ken Brown’s claims that Linux Torvards is not the author of Linux. Brown’s argument seems to […]

Today’s Quote of the Day comes from Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. According to this report, Microsoft spends 12% of its budget on online advertising. Said Ballmer: I want to make sure (a user) can’t get through … an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad. Welcome to the vision of the future proposed by Microsoft: […]