(old found draft post)CyberWar – Ref Links

Apr 26, 2009 @ 12:05
I will return to the topic of CyberWar sometime in the near future.
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Robot News (links – no post)

I was going to write a post on this along time ago. Instead, I just follow this blog – robots.net . So, I am dumping these links. I may write on robotics now and then.

Found While browsing: The Terak

I followed a a stray through while browsing on the internet and re-found the Terak.

Scraped from: http://www.threedee.com/jcm/terak/
The Terak was the Micro Computer I used in my first college programming
class – CS302 Honors Intro to Computer Programming (using Pascal). While I had done some programming with BASIC on Apple 2s and a Dec PDP11, this was [...]

Netbook Purchase?

I am thinking about buying a netbook to replace a long dead laptop. Any suggestions or counter-suggestions?

Reference: Intro to Programming for Kids aka Growing a Young Computer Geek

Phrogram
http://phrogram.com/Default.aspx
Not Basic but look interesting. Designed for Kids.
Intro Book for Kids: http://www.amazon.com/Phrogram-Programming-Absolute-Experience-Technology/dp/1598634437
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ALICE
http://www.alice.org/
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and [...]

Oracle buying Sun Microsystems

So, Sun Microsystems will be no more.
I used admin lots of Sun servers which were acting as various types of internet application servers or network operations servers. They were good solid Unix Servers. Their apps where pretty good too. The rise of Linux running on Intel platforms took care of their fat profits (yeah capitalism).
I [...]

Answer: “I will blow a hole in your eardrum with the power of my voice if I have to”

Question: What did Purpleslog just yell at an ISP vendor this afternoon?

Found On You Tube: A Complete “Intro to Computer Networking” Class

You can watch the courses in turn here.
Here is the first lecture:

They have lots of engineering classes here.

A reminder of why companies need to block outbound SSH

Noted in a comment at SlashDot:
One day, I set up a PPP over SSH tunnel between my home computer, and my desktop at work. Transferring large binary files from my office network to my home computer was much closer to the original 3Mb/s speeds.
There is no legitimate reason for the above. I t would be [...]

1234567890

For Unix geeks and number freaks from the ISC Handler:

Today is Friday the 13th, and also the day when we reach the symbolic 1234567890th second of Unix time.  This will occur at  11:31:30pm UTC on Feb 13, 2009.
 A quick note:  To see when this time is going to occur in your locatime:
perl -e ‘print scalar [...]

I am being abused by Verizon mentally

Verizon, you suck.
I am on-hold right now with the Verizon Business technical support super secret escalation number.
I am being abused by their on-hold music.
It is playing a disco/techno instrumental version of Stairway to Heaven.
Why would a business do this? Do they want their customers to hate them more?
By the time I am brought off [...]

“For the past five months, Amanda’s Medicaid payments have been delayed because of problems at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services”

It is being blamed on the computer system:
Officials within the state agency acknowledge they’ve had trouble with a new $64.2 million computer system that handles Medicaid services. Glitches with the automated system caused a backlog of claims, preventing the state from processing some prior authorizations for therapies and medical equipment.
The agency has been unable to [...]

“The key to OB1, retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger tells Waterman, is the “separation kernel,a piece of software guaranteed to keep the different networks separate.”

Well, this should get hackers and foreign cyber militia fired up. It sounds like there are just using software virtual machines. I think there could be problems.

There is nothing like a good challenge and a profit motive to fire up hackers

Is VisiCalc responsible for the Current Finacial Crisis? (“On the Bailout” Series)

John C. Dvorak thinks so. He makes an interesting case.

Where are the old programmers?

In PaulDotCom episode 133 there was a throwaway line about “where are the old programmers”.
You don’t see to many that’s for sure.
I was burned out after 5 years of programming professionally (preceded by 8 years in high school and college). The group I was in was young and after 3-6 months I was the de-facto [...]

Link: Network Cheat Sheets

http://packetlife.net/cheatsheets/

Unfortunate Typos in IM while at work

Sometimes my bad/lazy typing has a cost as in this this business IM I made a few minutes ago:
The cocks look fine to me now. How do they look to you?
Yikes.
I will be keeping a low profile at work for the next couple of hours. I was referring to Clocks (network/IP based time clocks run [...]

ISP Employees Suck – The ATT Edition

I am trying to order ATT uVerse service (really Very High Bit Rate DSL) for a site to replace a Comcast connection that has just never worked (don’t get me started on Comcast).
The ATT person has the address and phone for the business location.
It is not in the ATT business system.
So we are [...]

TWC just sucks as a Business ISP

I have been getting the run around on issue(s) for going on a week now. Nobody in the organization (technical, managerial, national accounts sales) want to take ownership. They fling me around from group to group.
Escalations to management are repaid with petty slowdown/refusals of support on other issue by folks working for that management tree. [...]

Weird work emails that are making me giggle at 7am

I have lots of emails from bosses and bosses’ bosses about moving forward on the “Cox” plan.
Things like “Ditto on the Cox”, “Cox works for me” and “let’s move on the Cox”.
I know it is stupid and juvenile, but I can’t stop laughing…I hope nobody hears me! Luckily it is pretty early in the [...]

Finally, a computer fast enough to play Civ4…

…with a full map and maxed number of Civ is here:
“‘Microsoft and Cray are set to unveil on September 16 the Cray CX1, a compact supercomputer running Windows HPC Server 2008. The pair is expected to tout the new offering as “the most affordable supercomputer Cray has ever offered,” with pricing starting at $25,000.’ Although [...]

Nifty Weather Tracking Site: www.stormpulse.com

I like it – http://www.stormpulse.com/
It has google-maps like functionality, and Ican track how bad weather is going to hit my remote sites.

Tactical Deployment of a Network Sniffer

SlashDot – “LordApathy” – commenter says:
I’ve got 3 fucking servers in my system room that nobody knows what they hell they are for. The are all running 2.4 kenels so they are as old as the fucking hills. Nobody knows what the passwds are to get into them so I can’t log in and find [...]

“The First Help Desk Call”

This was being passed around the office today:

Best E-Mail I got today from a co-worker

“You will be summarily hanged at dawn”