Geek Stuff category archive

El Reg reports (emphasis added):

Staff at hospitals across Sheffield are battling a major computer worm outbreak after managers turned off Windows security updates for all 8,000 PCs on the vital network, The Register has learned.

It’s been confirmed that more than 800 computers have been infected with self-replicating Conficker code. Insiders at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Trust said they suspect many more machines are affected but have not been reported to IT.

The Trust told The Register it now has the outbreak under control and is engaged in “clearing up” remnants. Non-urgent appointments in the medical imaging department had to be cancelled while its computers were disinfected. A Trust spokeswoman said no other direct impact on patient care was known.

The decision to disable automatic security updates was taken during Christmas week after PCs in an operating theatre rebooted mid-surgery. Conficker was detected on December 29.

Of course, turning off Windows updates is a bad idea, because Windows security is so fundamentally flawed that fixing it is a career, not a task.

I set my Windows boxes to download updates and let me decide when to install them. That way, the updates can’t install themselves while the user is, say, committing surgery.

Running around and manually installing updates on 8,000 computers, either directly or remotely, would be a daunting task for the IS folks, but it sure would be better than rebuilding 800 computers that have been conflicked up.

Everything goes digital:

Beginning Feb. 1, the Coast Guard and other service and rescue personnel will respond only to digital 406-MHz Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons, or EPIRBs, for distress calls.

They will no longer respond to older-model analog EPIRBs that transmit at 121.5 or 243 MHz.

The digital beacon’s signal is 50 times more powerful than the 121.5-MHz beacon. This better enables satellites to detect it, shrinking the search area to about 100 yards and allowing rescue crews to reach victims within minutes.

Oh, my.

Here.

I played once and got 9.55 (lower is better).

Via Gene Weingarten.

Via the Beez.

I’m waiting for my rowboat to come in; I’m in the market for a new MP3 player, one that supports OGG Vorbis (the open source audio format). Two of my favorite geeky podcasts have stopped doing MP3s and are exclusively OGG now.

One thing I really like about using my cheapo Radio Slum clearance sale MP3 player with Linux is that the device mounts just like a harddrive or a memory stick.

I plug it in and there it is.

I can copy files to and from it using the standard copy (“cp“) command; I can change directories (“cd“) to it just as if it were any other directory; I can delete files from it with the standard remove (“rm“) command.

No proprietary software; no “syncing”; no crap.

So I decided to see whether I could do the same with an iPod, which lives inside of Apple’s Walled Garden.

I could.

Testing Details Follow

Todd has been at the Consumer Electronics Show this week.

Frankly, I’m not particularly interested in learning what the new toys are quick like a bunny; I’ll learn about them soon enough and decide that most of them mean nothing to me.

But his description of the equipment that he took along so that he could report on the show–now that’s something else. When he refers to his traveling studio, he ain’t kidding:

For the best coverage of CES, go to Geek News Central.

Thank heavens!

Microsoft has officially released the first Windows 7 beta. While it’s been one of the web’s worst kept secrets, Microsoft was still keeping quiet about the details and timing of the final release at the time of writing.

Prediction: Lots of favorable teaser articles from persons who think Windows is computing; followed by a much-ballyhooed release; followed by massive fail; followed by rumors of how the next next Windows release, codenamed Passaic or Fresno or something or other, will fix all the problems; followed by . . . oh, never mind.

Addendum, the Next Morning:

Typical Microsoft Bletch and Switch tactics.

Fix your laptop yourself!

Via the Lip.

Over at El Reg.

(Warning: Questionable Content. Then, again, it is El Reg.)

The computer mouse turns 40.

Slackware runs this site.

The review is here.

They’re not dummies. They like it.

No, not Bill.

Tim, the smart one.

Bill Shein had nine helpful hints.

Todd over at Geek News Central is having a contest with a very big prize.

You have to listen to his podcast to learn how to enter.

Linux laptops, at that:

Vahan Gureghian, chief executive officer of Charter School Management Inc., which runs the school, and his wife, Danielle Gureghian, are giving 1,400 XO computers to the school, for use by students in third to eighth grades. The Gureghians are paying about $400,000 for the laptops, said spokesman A. Bruce Crawley.

The school has about 2,400 students and is the largest non-cyber charter school in Pennsylvania.

Though the focus of the One Laptop project continues to be on sending laptops to developing countries, other American schools are trying them out as well.

In a related story, Ken Starks shares an example of too stupid for words and his follow-up in which he regrets his delivery, though not his message. (Aside: The moral of the story is that, when writing something in the heat of emotion, put it away for an hour or a day and look at it again before sending it. It was true in the days of snail mail and is even more true in the days of insta-mail.)

Both stories via TLLTS.

Google betrays net neutrality:

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same — nobody is supposed to jump the line.

This is not good.

Addendum, Minutes Later:

Josh Marshall has more, including a denial from Google.

Via Atrios.

Slackware 12.2 released.

The router’s kicking up. Getting a new one tomorrow.

Woke up this morning to no blog.

Sometime during the night, the router reset itself to default settings, which means that it closed port 80 and denied access to the webserver without a password.

Since no password is set up for remote access to the network in the router’s default settings, well, d’oh!

Cure: 1/2 hour of panicky trouble-shooting, followed by unplugging the router for 10 seconds, plugging it back in, teleporting into it using the default highly insecure password, reopening port 80, and changing the password to something secure.

As with most trouble-shooting, finding the problem was the worst part; fixing it was easy.

Normally, I’d blame the cat. She likes to curl up in the network entrance and has knocked me offline before, but the door to the cabinet was closed.

I think I’ll blame the cat anyway. She’s got to be good for something besides mousing.