Slashback: Slammer, Frames, Pop-Ups

Slashback tonight with more on SBC's claim to own patents covering basic Web navigation techniques, an eyebrow-raising look at Slammer's spread, bad news for Ogg streams from the BBC, and more. Read on for the details. Update: 02/04 00:13 GMT by T : And late-breaking good news from SDF regarding its Public Access UNIX System.

FedEx should take notes. nweaver writes "We have completed our preliminary analysis of the Sapphire/Slammer SQL worm. This worm required roughly 10 minutes to spread worldwide, scanning at a peak rate of over 55 million IP addresses per second, making it by far the fastest worm to date and nearly two orders of magnitude faster than Code Red. It infected at least 75,000 victims and possibly considerably more. The remarkable speed was due to the use of a bandwidth-limited scanner. There were also two bugs in the random number generator. Copies of our analysis are available from CAIDA, Silicon Defense, and UC Berkeley."

"Sir, this patent application needs to filled out in ink. Not Crayon." We recently posted that the company SBC was calling in the chips on patents it holds which the company claim cover certain types of navigation links found on many web pages. Dan Gillmor writes "Noticed the link to Cringley's piece. Well, I did ask readers for prior art and got quite a bit, some of which I've posted..."

Speaking of SBC, theodp writes "The SBC Intellectual Property folks are back in the news, this time for donating a $7.3 million virus screening patent to the University of Texas. While patent donations are one of the latest twists on corporate philanthropy, the practice has aroused the curiosity of the IRS as a possible tax avoidance scheme."

I wonder how much they'd feel justified in writing off if they donated their web patent portfolio to the FSF.

Can we call this an on-again, off-again relationship? Albanach writes "It seems the BBC who had pioneered Ogg Vorbis broadcasting on a serious scale have abandoned Ogg indefinitely. They say other work commitments make Ogg support no longer a priority. Their statement can be read here"

What, and let all my pigeons escape? FedeTXF writes "We already love pop-up blocking in Mozilla and some other related browsers, now Blogzilla is reporting a great trick to get rid of embedded ads (banners and iframes) using plain CCS and the always amazing Mozilla flexibility and openness. Go check this page if you are anxious to see how to set it up."

Did you have your video camera trained on Columbia? Finally, Child of Apollo writes ""For anyone who has recorded video or taken photos that they believe may be of aid in the investigation of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, NASA has established a special location on the Web where Internet users may upload their media files to be reviewed by NASA." Although sad news all around, thanks to pleasant for the link."

Here's the late-breaker. fonixmunkee writes "looks like SDF will return soon. a message stating that they negotiated a new contract graced the single page in the "members area" of the temporary www.lonestar.org, but did not cite who specifically with. a few different ideas were tossed around for hosting, so only time will tell with who. i also just today got an e-mail from the Washington State Attorney General's Office that offered a small ray (read: none) of hope for assistance with SDF's run-in with NWLink. (NWLink breached SDF's contract.) hope all is well soon." This is good news, especially so soon after SDF got the rug yanked from under them.

Comments

So you want a "structured document browser"?

[Pac]

I will give you a "structured document browser". Its name was Gopher and it was the structured document browser" before fancy graphics and godammed blinking text took the servers by storm. Will you have a coke with that prior art, sir?

SBC and Money

[Valiss]

"The SBC Intellectual Property folks are back in the news, this time for donating a $7.3 million virus screening patent to the University of Texas. While patent donations are one of the latest twists on corporate philanthropy, the practice has aroused the curiosity of the IRS as a possible tax avoidance scheme."

SBC should seriously consider burning in hell. I mean how low can they go? Is M$ thier model company? First off, thier whole Frames(tm)(r)(c) is complete bull, and we all know it. I doubt that will win, and they must know this, so why do it? What do they have to gain?

Now seeminly random donations to the of Texas (nothing against U of T). Perhaps they should just focus on having the DSL lines up 24/7 and not persuing meaningless lawsuits and then attempting to cover them up with some bs donation. Someone want to explain to me what "patent donations" are? If it's what I think then I'm calling shenanagens on them.

Re:Ah, yes

[pla]

Why would you want to look at a website that has been sanitized?

Kudos for making your point (nice and sharp... I approve), but ads do not count as part of the artistic merit of a movie/website/landscape. Usually the director/author/wildlife don't even know what ads will end up appearing in their creation, so unless the intent of a work involves making fun of ads, the ads just detract from it. Skipping commercials does not mean "sanitizing".

Re:'Photos Show Odd Images Near Shuttle'

[uhoreg]

"...taken with a Nikon-880 digital camera..."

"...but it showed up clear and bright on the film when I developed it..."

Huh?

I must be alone but...

[Stigmata669]

Sometimes I like banner adds if they aren't insane flashing gifs. I visit thinkgeek from slashdot banners sometimes when I see something cool, and often use banners on PC hardward sites to find good online vendors for 'specialized' parts.

I find tasteful or site specific banners helpful rather than hurtful to my browsing experiance. Plus, I think the user can help keep the ad supported web alive if they don't kill all ads.

I believe that the model is failing because websites are too indiscriminate in chosing ads to run.

Re:NASA doesn't need more video

[KewlPC]

Aside from the no-immediate-use stuff like "How do ants behave in space?" (answer: they dig like crazy), sooner or later we are going to have to send humans off-planet on a permanent/extended trip. Maybe we decide to start mining asteroids, or whatever, but it will most certainly require a human to be present.

There is only so much that a probe can do. A human geologist on-site could learn more about Mars' geology in a short while than a probe could over the course of its entire mission. You're forgetting that if you landed a probe on Mars, it would be extremely difficult to maneuver it, because of things like a 20 minute communications lag, the fact that you can only communicate with the probe for part of the day, and the limited computing power of the probe's computer.

The onboard computer is limited because it has to not only be extremly reliable, but it also has to be rad-hardened (maybe not once on Mars, but to survive the trip), which means using slower technology (it's slower because, in order to decrease the odds of cosmic radiation flipping bits, the gates and transistors have to be larger).

Besides all that, there is the "being there" aspect of it. Seeing what the earth looks like from the moon, school children communicating with astronauts (and even thinking up experiments to try in space, like the ants thing I mentioned above), and things like that, which may not have a direct and immediate scientific value, are no less important.

Or we could listen to you and just sit here, think small, look up at the stars and planets, but never visit them, because you think it's too expensive and dangerous.

Your post reminded me of something someone once said:
"We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
-John F. Kennedy