Mercury News | 09/09/2002 | Domain firm sets rules for children Internet zone - A news article points out an attempt to set up a kid-friendly zone on the Internet. Sounds like a great plan - set up a zone of the Internet that will be friendly to kids and be safe for parents to allow their kids to peruse. Unfortunately, I see such a zone becoming a prime target for hackers and other miscreants, and until the web becomes more technically mature and controllable, I don't see how such a policy will be enforceable. The FCC does a good job monitoring the airwaves (although I personally feel their 'family values' have slipped a great deal in the past 25 years), but how do you apply that same monitoring/censoring to a medium that is so easy to publish to? And what happens when trusting parents take the 'easy road' and put all their trust into the kids.us domain to babysit their children's Internet browsing? Just look at how many parents plop their children in front of the TV nowadays without monitoring what their kids are watching! What happens when they do the same with their kids on the 'net?

< >I really believe that setting up something like this will only lead to a false sense of security. If you care about what your kids are exposed to, there's only one way to enforce it - personal responsibility, and on the Internet, that means browsing WITH your children, because pornography and other 'not meant for Johny's eyes/ears'-material is likely only a click away.

Aren't computers the funniest things? We loaded up a new Xeon-MP multiprocessor computer with Windows 2000 Server. The Xeon MP processor has a special ability to emulate a second processor on each physical processor, giving up to 30-40% more performance in multi-threaded application performance. HOWEVER, because Windows 2000 Server kernel code works on up to 4 processors maximum, these virtual processors are not recognized in our new 4-way server. We would have to purchase Windows 2000 Advanced Server to make use of the additional capabilities afforded by our hardware. It doesn't seem quite fair, though, considering that when the second set of 4 processors come online - they'll only be 30% of the performers that the actual processors are.

What's interesting is that it's real hard to take sides on this. Microsoft can't very well just give away the Advanced Server kernel to anyone just because they have this virtual processor capability. On the other hand - if I licensed SQL Server by the processor, they wouldn't make me pay for an 8 processor license...so why is it not the same with the OS. As for Intel, they gladly informed me that Linux doesn't have any restriction on the amount of processors that the OS uses out of the box.

It's a very interesting topic. It's called hyperthreading, and Intel has some whitepapers about it (and Windows vs. Hyperthreading) right here.

Do you use the Internet at all? Of COURSE you do! Well, as a user concerned with the security of your machine, you should be aware that patches for your Operating System and your software are constantly being patched and upgraded. For example, the Flash plug-in in your Internet Explorer (or Netscape) has an update out this week due to the following bulletin: Macromedia: MPSB02-09 - Macromedia Flash Malformed Header Vulnerability Issue

You're going to want to click on that link and follow the instructions so that you don't get targeted by the next 2 or 3 worms/viruses that come out. You see, new viruses tend to utilize fairly recent vulnerabilities (weaknesses) in the software you use, but may not realize you use. In this example, the Flash player is the software that allows you to view my 'typing text' animation at the top of my page. So, if at the top of the screen, you see some text typing across, you're using Flash player software, whether you knew it or not.

I've changed the minimum version for Flash on this page. It will attempt to force download the new one. If you clicked on Yes when the install box popped up, you've already been upgraded to the new version of Flash. If you clicked no, you're still vulnerable.

Why do people gamble online with money? There's places online you can go to and win cash without risking your hard earned greenbacks. Sites likeGamesville! are out there - play to win $2500 on some of their games, and the only thing you have to give up is your time (which you're going to give up anyway) and your attention (ad-driven site..).

Love stupid criminal stories? They're common in the weekly newsletter that Randy Cassingham puts out called This is True(�). Here's a story from last week that Randy's posted a visual on. You might find this story quite amusing. Sign up for Randy's newletter for free while you're at it. It's worth every penny and more..

Just say No! to Vanilla Coke. Ok, viewers and readers - I'm going to save you a trip. A trip to your local grocery store to buy the new Coke flavor, Vanilla Coke. I just bought one, you see. As most of you probably already know, I'm a caffeine addict, tried and true America style, but I prefer sodas to coffee. I drink Pepsi, Cherry Coke, Dr. Pepper, Mr. Pibb, Code Red, and a variety of other soft drinks. But NONE of these can compare with the horrid feeling of aftertaste that Vanilla Coke will leave you with. Drinking this concoction leads you down a false path of 'nothing wrong here' up until you stop your sipping. Then, and only then, the rush of actual Coke washes down your gullet only to leave behind the sticky and pervasive taste of vanilla. You know what? There's a reason that vanilla comes in those small little bottles. You're just NOT supposed to use that much of it. Ugh, what can I say? Yet another experiment gone sour, much like 'New Coke'...

Wanted: A broker that can respond to complex problems in market conditions. Must have Internet account management capability, and not have unwieldy requirements for small-time investors. Know of such a brokerage? Please, send me an email.

Finished the upgrade to RedHat 7.3 last night. The Anaconda upgrade script had bombed out when it got to the lilo/grub part probably because I didn't have a bootloader installed on the hard drive at all in 7.2. So, I copied over the new kernel and initrd code to my boot floppy and was good to go. For a window manager now, I use Xfce, which is a small footprint window manager kind of like KDE. It's only 3MB in size, and for my machine that has only 64MB RAM, it runs nice and fast. Last night I compiled my first 2 or 3 applications using the Gtk libraries to start learning how to develop X applications. With Mac OS X being based on Unix, and with Gtk having libraries available for the Microsoft platform(s), I should be good to go from a development standpoint. It's hard to program without a goal, though. So much software is already available for the Linux platform that I don't have any real goals as to what type of system I want to write, so it's gonig to be hard deciding what I want to write.

This article about how Yahoo edited email messages is just TOO funny for words. Not only did they edit folk's email messages without telling them, but they did a half-assed job of it. If the article is gone by the time you read this - here's the gist...

Yahoo mail replaced words that could be used by hackers to run email viruses on the HTML-enabled web-based email system that they offer for free. They changed words such as 'eval' to 'review'. But that's not the half of it. The bonus piece is that they didn't bother to do searches on full words..So, if you sent a message asking for something to be evaluated - it would be delivered with the word 'reviewuated' - YUCH! I'm sure there were other words too - searches on Google for 'reviewuated' and 'reviewuate' showed some interesting results - including the editing of some resume's of Educators...exactly the place you wouldn't want such gaffes.

Oh, and no more peeps out of North American Telephone Network...congratulations on getting it right finally!

Well, finally got through at 7:32 to Scott in Customer Service. He promised to add me to their do-not-call list. THEN, I got a call from a Katrina of NATN asking me about the voicemail that I had left in Mr. Wilkes mailbox (where I had not left a message, but I assume my number was recorded.) I was hunting down NATN's business number so that I could call them tomorrow during business hours if necessary, and Mr. Wilkes was the only name I had to punch into their automated dialer, so I did, but decided to wait until tomorrow to leave a message. Anyways, Katrina here knew about my foray into attempting to reach the CEO at home. Seems she wanted to make sure I had the phone number for his office. Yeah, I got it. Then she promised me no more calls from their sales team, and got Scott's name from me so she could follow up to make sure I was on the do-not-call list. She also mentioned that I couldn't possibly be receiving calls from their sales team since they all go home at 9PM. I don't know about her, but their sales team DEFINITELY called me last Thursday night well after 11PM, and there certainly sounded like a large number of employees in the background. That's a FACT. I told her this, and, robot employee that she likely is, she repeated her assertion. Sorry, brainwashing only goes as far as someone without the facts...I'll continue to blog the facts...it's a convenient place to put them.

Well, no more phone calls last night. Let's see if this keeps up.