Jimmy's weblog

A sign on a Trenton, NJ railroad bridge says “Trenton Makes, The World Takes.” In light of recent history, a sign at Sea-Tac airport should probably read “Microsoft Makes, The World Quakes.”
For the second time this year, Microsoft is the source of a major internet security event. First was Slammer/Sapphire in January that [...]

During ancient Greek times the Oracle of Delphi held court in the temple of Apollo and dispensed wisdom and advice to those who visited.
Writing in this month’s Scientific American, John Hale, Jelle de Boer, Jeff Chanton and Rick Spiller postulate that the oracle’s trance-like state may have been a narcotic effect caused by ethane [...]

During January of this year, the Recording Industry Association of America’s website was hacked and some of their webpages replaced.
In case you’ve missed the news recently, the RIAA is the organisation that is:

Suing college students for potentially billions of dollars and forcing them to settle to avoid massive legal costs
Planning to sue music downloaders for [...]

Four US psychology professors have published a study concluding that political conservatism is motivated by a resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality. After examining fifty years of research literature, and involving over twenty two thousand participants, the researchers reported that conservatism was linked to common psychological factors including:

Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance [...]

Are you a Linux user feeling left out because your operating system doesn’t support the Mblaster trojan? Fear not, as you too can enjoy the Mblaster experience*.
Simply compile the following code, run as root (required to bind to port 135), and enjoy…
* Random rebooting and DDOSing of Windows Update features will be only available [...]

For anyone following the SCO versus IBM lawsuit it should come as no surprise to hear that SCO executives have been dumping their stock holdings in the company while the price is artificially high. What does come as a pleasant surprise is to read two articles critical of SCO in The Salt Lake Tribute [...]

While watching the start of the Australia V South Africa rugby game on Saturday night I started thinking about our national anthem. The official Australian national anthem is “Advance Australia Fair” which replaced “God save the Queen” on April 19, 1984.
Australia also has an unofficial national anthem which is often played at sporting events [...]