Book and film titles are normally italicized, but since the whole post is italicized, they're in bold italics. Short-story titles are in quotation marks. AP style, or something like it.
Microsoft is now confirming what was speculated: About 8:45pm PT Thursday, Microsoft.com and Windows Update went down for several hours. One reason was a DDOS attack Microsoft says was unrelated to the MSBlast worm.
Wonder if Microsoft is pointing the domain names to new server IP addresses to thwart the attack before it begins (assuming the worm code works that way). Until the domain name servers update themselves and that update propogates, microsoft.com and Windows Update will appear to be gone, even if they are still up at the new IP addresses.
That's how whitehouse.gov deflected a similar attack a couple of years ago. And it worked.
I was asked today why Mac OS doesn't have the same problem as Windows (in this case, XP and 2000, primarily). Simple: Three percent mass market penetration does not an appealing target make for a virus-writer who wants to be notorious.
Oddly, it's almost a badge of honor for an OS to be the target of virus writers. It means there's enough of an installed base to make it a tempting target.
(And no, none of this is a comment on the functionality or benefits of any specific OS. Just the market penetration at this time.)
Just in case others got misled by the general press reports: The MSBlast (and its two known variants) worm attack against WindowsUpdate.com will really start at 4 a.m. Pacific Friday (Redmond time). As noted in this News.com piece the widely-reported "midnight" is really "when a PC clock shows midnight" -- whenever Friday becomes Saturday, starting across the International Date Line in Anadyr, Russia. Set your TiVos accordingly, assuming you have power.
The tech in My Pal Mickey sounds similar to the IR triggers used in art museum audio guides. That is, you enter a room wearing the special headphones, and an IR signal "tells" the headset which track to start playing. These were used for the travelling Van Gogh exhibition a couple of years back and are more and more widely used. So the tech isn't brain surgery, though it's an interesting application. I mean, Disney could have set up a beaming station to download similar data into a Palm OS device, without the location-sensitive triggers. But triggering a plush plus doll as you walk through the park fits more in with the park's theme and is a lot more convenient.
And it's a far better use of this kind of tech than Microsoft's old ActiMates line of interactive plush from 1997-1999. Barney, Arthur, D.W. and the Teletubbies were triggered by emitters hooked to a PC (for supported software) or TV sets (for supported PBS shows and video tapes). Back then, the plush doll was $100 (dropped to $50 for the Teletubbies) and the PC and TV packs were $50 extra, each.
Charging $50 for the combo guide/souvenir seems like a bargain. As long as some marketers don't get the idea that it needs to start touting other merchandise.
Assuming you didn't pay cash for My Pal Mickey, they can already track you all the way home. The technology is called your credit card... or the printed address on your check.
It's only spyware if you didn't intend to load it. But many people who actually spent money on WildTangent games and loaded the engine knowing how it works are being told it's "spyware." Ad-aware and Lavasoft are wrong on this one and are deleting WildTangent files from people's PCs who use Ad-aware's defaults... then those customers call WildTangent wondering what happened to the products they paid for, not realizing Ad-aware took the files off with all the other stuff that Ad-aware properly removes.
There's lots of real spyware out there, but WildTangent's game engine isn't it.
The smartest independent game developers, even when they have a hot "commercial" game, don't tie every title up with a single big publisher. Instead, they let the income from commercial success(es) fund the stuff they want to experiment on or just screw around with.
Unless, of course, they get greedy. Then they're doomed.
One look at indie developers in the Seattle area was published in Seattle Weekly recently. It's written for a mass (non-developer) audience, but points out how invisible most developers are to the general public -- partly by their own desire, and partly by publishers' design (who don't want the world to know "their" hit game was developed by someone else, and perhaps a very small someone else). And, it notes there's a wide range of game types cranked out by the indies. Still, most indies deserve more credit than they get.
Seattle Wireless actually talked about this earlier this week on the NPR affil in Seattle, KUOW-FM, during the Weekday program. It's pretty interesting stuff... if it all works out. The KUOW.org site has an audio stream of the hour-long show.
One challenge is convincing the masses, who already are just starting to understand what Wi-Fi is, that Wi-Fi ISN'T just wireless Internet... that's it creates a wireless network that can move damn near anything digital without ever touching the Internet(voice, video... bits is bits). But perception lags reality.
Too much of the mass press fawns all over every Microsoft product or technology pronouncement as though it's indicative of the Second Coming.
Part of the reason is that general assignment reporters (especially in TV) frequently don't know better -- they don't know the history or the industry. Another reason is that some reporters who depend upon access to Microsoft for news are afraid to lose that access by being outright negative without attributing it to someone else.
Reminders that Microsoft can fail, has failed and continues to fail are good for critical consumer thought. That is: Don't buy that new gadget just because it has Microsoft's name on it. They don't always get it right.
On the other hand, Microsoft failing and trying again isn't indicative of the company being a failure. They have succeeded (that is, been profitable) at some things outside of Windows and Office and keep trying to push that limit back even more. But there's a fine line between knocking on opportunity's door and banging your head against the wall repeatedly.
If you read the article, you'll notice it also talks about Microsoft's nascent successes in the corporate market (SQL Server, Exchange Server, and Windows Server).
The point is not that Microsoft fails. It's that Microsoft fails and tries to make it look like it hasn't failed (find a mention of "Microsoft Home" in the official product timeline). Simultaneously it keeps plugging away -- sometimes with good results, sometimes with those reminiscent of Don Quixote.
Yet the perception among the masses is that Microsoft is infallable. Reminders about limits to Microsoft's growth, to date, don't hurt as a reality check.
I think you can safely call Xbox a "qualified" success: It's selling a lot of units, but is not profitable yet. The good news Microsoft pointed to in its earnings call was that the Xbox had a high attach rate -- 5.4 games/other items sold to every Xbox sold in the U.S.. That's where the money is, not in the hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
Book and film titles are normally italicized, but since the whole post is italicized, they're in bold italics. Short-story titles are in quotation marks. AP style, or something like it.
Precisely. And that's why the parenthetical remark came after the city name. The next Nebulas will be in Chicago in late April 2005, BTW.
Microsoft is now confirming what was speculated: About 8:45pm PT Thursday, Microsoft.com and Windows Update went down for several hours. One reason was a DDOS attack Microsoft says was unrelated to the MSBlast worm.
And Microsoft sources also say the company has moved at least the Windows Update domain (and perhaps Microsoft.com itself) to new IP addresses isolated from the rest of their networks to blunt the expected worm attack.
Wonder if Microsoft is pointing the domain names to new server IP addresses to thwart the attack before it begins (assuming the worm code works that way). Until the domain name servers update themselves and that update propogates, microsoft.com and Windows Update will appear to be gone, even if they are still up at the new IP addresses.
That's how whitehouse.gov deflected a similar attack a couple of years ago. And it worked.
Just a guess.
I was asked today why Mac OS doesn't have the same problem as Windows (in this case, XP and 2000, primarily). Simple: Three percent mass market penetration does not an appealing target make for a virus-writer who wants to be notorious.
Oddly, it's almost a badge of honor for an OS to be the target of virus writers. It means there's enough of an installed base to make it a tempting target.
(And no, none of this is a comment on the functionality or benefits of any specific OS. Just the market penetration at this time.)
Just in case others got misled by the general press reports: The MSBlast (and its two known variants) worm attack against WindowsUpdate.com will really start at 4 a.m. Pacific Friday (Redmond time). As noted in this News.com piece the widely-reported "midnight" is really "when a PC clock shows midnight" -- whenever Friday becomes Saturday, starting across the International Date Line in Anadyr, Russia. Set your TiVos accordingly, assuming you have power.
Symantec Antivirus Research Center (at http://www.sarc.com) also reported this morning a second clone that's been renamed "Penis32.exe". Really.
The tech in My Pal Mickey sounds similar to the IR triggers used in art museum audio guides. That is, you enter a room wearing the special headphones, and an IR signal "tells" the headset which track to start playing. These were used for the travelling Van Gogh exhibition a couple of years back and are more and more widely used. So the tech isn't brain surgery, though it's an interesting application. I mean, Disney could have set up a beaming station to download similar data into a Palm OS device, without the location-sensitive triggers. But triggering a plush plus doll as you walk through the park fits more in with the park's theme and is a lot more convenient.
And it's a far better use of this kind of tech than Microsoft's old ActiMates line of interactive plush from 1997-1999. Barney, Arthur, D.W. and the Teletubbies were triggered by emitters hooked to a PC (for supported software) or TV sets (for supported PBS shows and video tapes). Back then, the plush doll was $100 (dropped to $50 for the Teletubbies) and the PC and TV packs were $50 extra, each.
Charging $50 for the combo guide/souvenir seems like a bargain. As long as some marketers don't get the idea that it needs to start touting other merchandise.
Assuming you didn't pay cash for My Pal Mickey, they can already track you all the way home. The technology is called your credit card ... or the printed address on your check.
It's only spyware if you didn't intend to load it. But many people who actually spent money on WildTangent games and loaded the engine knowing how it works are being told it's "spyware." Ad-aware and Lavasoft are wrong on this one and are deleting WildTangent files from people's PCs who use Ad-aware's defaults ... then those customers call WildTangent wondering what happened to the products they paid for, not realizing Ad-aware took the files off with all the other stuff that Ad-aware properly removes.
There's lots of real spyware out there, but WildTangent's game engine isn't it.
The smartest independent game developers, even when they have a hot "commercial" game, don't tie every title up with a single big publisher. Instead, they let the income from commercial success(es) fund the stuff they want to experiment on or just screw around with.
Unless, of course, they get greedy. Then they're doomed.
One look at indie developers in the Seattle area was published in Seattle Weekly recently. It's written for a mass (non-developer) audience, but points out how invisible most developers are to the general public -- partly by their own desire, and partly by publishers' design (who don't want the world to know "their" hit game was developed by someone else, and perhaps a very small someone else). And, it notes there's a wide range of game types cranked out by the indies. Still, most indies deserve more credit than they get.
Seattle Wireless actually talked about this earlier this week on the NPR affil in Seattle, KUOW-FM, during the Weekday program. It's pretty interesting stuff ... if it all works out. The KUOW.org site has an audio stream of the hour-long show.
One challenge is convincing the masses, who already are just starting to understand what Wi-Fi is, that Wi-Fi ISN'T just wireless Internet ... that's it creates a wireless network that can move damn near anything digital without ever touching the Internet(voice, video ... bits is bits). But perception lags reality.
Too much of the mass press fawns all over every Microsoft product or technology pronouncement as though it's indicative of the Second Coming.
Part of the reason is that general assignment reporters (especially in TV) frequently don't know better -- they don't know the history or the industry. Another reason is that some reporters who depend upon access to Microsoft for news are afraid to lose that access by being outright negative without attributing it to someone else.
Reminders that Microsoft can fail, has failed and continues to fail are good for critical consumer thought. That is: Don't buy that new gadget just because it has Microsoft's name on it. They don't always get it right.
On the other hand, Microsoft failing and trying again isn't indicative of the company being a failure. They have succeeded (that is, been profitable) at some things outside of Windows and Office and keep trying to push that limit back even more. But there's a fine line between knocking on opportunity's door and banging your head against the wall repeatedly.
If you read the article, you'll notice it also talks about Microsoft's nascent successes in the corporate market (SQL Server, Exchange Server, and Windows Server). The point is not that Microsoft fails. It's that Microsoft fails and tries to make it look like it hasn't failed (find a mention of "Microsoft Home" in the official product timeline). Simultaneously it keeps plugging away -- sometimes with good results, sometimes with those reminiscent of Don Quixote. Yet the perception among the masses is that Microsoft is infallable. Reminders about limits to Microsoft's growth, to date, don't hurt as a reality check.
I think you can safely call Xbox a "qualified" success: It's selling a lot of units, but is not profitable yet. The good news Microsoft pointed to in its earnings call was that the Xbox had a high attach rate -- 5.4 games/other items sold to every Xbox sold in the U.S.. That's where the money is, not in the hardware.