Ecce Signum

Begin 9:00pm update

Back at work, doing a partial upload of a client site which will launch at 8:00am. We are still waiting on “minor” last-minute content changes. We will see…

Back a couple of years ago I came across a site which stunned me with it’s simplicity, novelty, and the sheer genius of the idea. I marveled at it, admired it for a while, then kind of lost track of it in the shifting prismatic landscape that is the internet.

Well I just stumbled across it again. It is still up, it is still doing its thing. So, without further ado, and with an eye toward spreading the word to all corners of this benighted world, I present to you the Prime Number Shitting Bear .

End 9:00pm update

Those of you who are worried about the Blaster worm, go here for info and go here for the tool to use to remove the worm . Note that Symantec is a third party debugging Microsoft’s software for them, since the powers that be at M$ seems incapable of doing it themselves.

To reiterate: this problem is 100% the fault of Microsoft. Any attempt to justify incomplete or buggy software by using the x-manufacturing simile, where x = [cars, architecture, television,social engineering], is simply a non-sequitur. Cars are cars, and software is software. The one will never be the other.

That having been said, I will continue to use Microsoft products and I will continue to wish a slow and painful death on everyone who works at or is a shareholder of Microsoft, who believes anything other than that the convenience of the end user is more important than paychecks, stock prices, and indeed, the existence of the company.

Dear Microsoft: Take some fucking responsibility for your actions.

Yup. It hit me. Blaster, that is.

I was running an update of my firewall, and as part of the test to make sure everything is working properly, the firewall shuts itself off for about 1 second. In that 1 second Blaster got in. The firewall – which came back on immediately – said “Do you want to allow msblast.exe to access the internet?” I said “NO!!!!!!”, which effectively removed Blaster’s teeth.

So I now have a GREAT deal of respect for Zone Alarm. I had no idea it was doing such a good job. Getting Blaster the Hell of my PC will be much easier than the many horror stories I have heard have led me to believe. If it can’t access the int0rw3b it can’t do much damage.

On the other hand, I have nothing but contempt for the idjits at Microsoft who allowed the release of this Swiss cheese operating system.

News reports say M$ is spending millions to hunt down the people who write these viruses, while doing little to patch their product unless people complain. This reminds me of a standard sanity test: You walk into a room and see that a faucet is on and a sink is overflowing onto the floor. Do you (a) run to shut off the faucet, or (b) run to grab a mop? Microsoft is (c) running for the person who turned on the faucet.

Getting rid of the person who wrote the virus doesn’t alter the fact that the virus has already been written. The law does not prevent; it punishes.

Dear Microsoft: You are responsible for everyone who releases a virus which affects you software. That fact that it is vulnerable is YOUR FAULT. The fact that you released a product with HUNDREDS OF KNOWN VULNERABILITIES which cost users HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR is contemptible beyond redemption.

Dear Microsoft: I use your product, which I paid for, and that makes me your GOD. As your GOD, I command you to, in the next 24 hours, fix everything that is wrong with every one of your products, and do not release a single line of code to the public until everything you do is 100% perfect. Your opinions, wishes, livelihood and health on this matter simply are not important.

And as for all you Mac and *nix users laughing in your sleeves: Shaddap.