Bad Santa.

Apparently Billy Bob Thornton broke into the Microsoft codebase sometime between last Christmas and now.

Once again, Microsoft made their Santa AI agent (based on one of the many classic AI bots that so many of us know so well), only to pull it recently.

It seems that, when repeatedly asked about eating pizza by an underage girl, Santa responded “You want me to eat what?!? It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else.”

Microsoft said they don’t suspect a prank on the part of one of their developers and have since repaired the offending code, but are not going to bring Santa back online at the current time.

I wonder if Santa made his own naughty list this year. =]

Current mood: amused
Current music: Lit – My Own Worst Enemy

The Eternal IT Security Struggle.

There seems to be a constant battle between IT and users on the topic of security.

On one side, you have IT who tries to secure systems and on the other, users who chafe at restrictions, sometimes justifiably and sometimes not.

From the IT perspective, the only really secure computer is on that’s turned off and encased in a block of concrete (You could say that being turned off and unplugged is enough, but you can always convince someone to plug it back in.), so they try to restrict every point of access that they think is unnecessary.

Looking at it from this angle, users are as much an enemy as the hacker outside your network wanting in.

Users, on the other hand, tend to think any restriction at all is bad and constantly try to find ways around the procedures that have been set in place to secure the computers and network.

So, who’s in the wrong?

Both of them.

Both of those extremes are bad. Security will *never* be absolute. Instead, the best you can do is to manage risk. That means setting sensible policies and making sure that users follow them.

It comes back to a couple of what seem to be my favorite subjects in the field – resources and requirements, and cost/benefit analysis.

First, on the resources and requirements front, which is really basic survival 101 for pretty much any situation (what do we have and what do we need?), your resources are computers, appliances, network infrastructure, people, money (with which to acquire other, needed, resources), and your requirements are the rather nebulous concept of “security”.

Yes, security is a nebulous concept. That’s where the cost/benefit analysis comes in. You have to ask yourself questions like “how rigid do the rules affecting this area need to be so that we have adequate security while allowing our staff to do their jobs without jumping through too many hoops?”

For most places, that means setting workstation passwords. In addition, you may also have password protected network shares, a whitelist (or blacklist depending on how strict your security has to be) for what your employees can access outside your network, whether or not they can use a VPN from home, etc.

The answer to those questions will vary from business to business and it would be silly to try and tell you that you absolutely *need* X, Y and Z. In fact, after you set your policies, you need to review them periodically to see if they still meet your needs.

As time goes on, you may find that you need to make some things stricter due to increased threats and new regulations or you might find that some of the rules you thought were great are actually preventing your people from doing their work and can be loosened a bit.

Security isn’t just a set of rules or a box you put on your network. It’s a constantly evolving set of procedures and resources (both in the form of equipment and people).

Part of that is listening to the people the policies apply to. Yes, sometimes users make unreasonable demands and it needs to be explained to them that the demands are unreasonable (and why) and management needs to stand by that decision. However, they are also capable of making suggestions that you might not think of because they work with things in ways that others don’t.

IT and “regular” employees need to work together. If they’re fighting each other, things aren’t getting done. I know that I’ve heard the argument of “IT is a cost center and *we’re* the ones who make money” far too often. The fact is, it’s true, salespeople do bring in money. However, without IT they wouldn’t be able to. What’s more, IT can help *save* your company money which is good for your bottom line.

The point is that everyone in the organization is both part of the problem and part of the solution. Stop drawing lines in the sand and try working together for a change. You might find that the results are much more to your liking.

Current mood: calm
Current music: Rise Against – Paper Wings

Ghost Town in the Dark of the Night.

Have you ever walked through a town at 3am?

In most places, at that hour, almost nobody is out. It’s like the entire population of the town has disappeared, swept away by some unseen hand. It’s a strangely serene, and at the same time, somehow unsettling, feeling walking though a place that you know in the daylight to be full of people, only to find it populated solely with the ghosts of society in the darkness.

At 3am even driving is like being in some post-apocalyptic movie. The only other vehicles on the road are the occasional long-haul truckers which you can almost convince yourself are hallucinations produced by a mind wishing for company, screaming for contact with someone, anyone, and all you see is the road stretching out ahead of you until it reaches the black nothingness which your headlights fear to illuminate.

It’s like driving through a barren wasteland; especially when it’s snowing and all you can see is white until it merges with the black void beyond your field of vision, causing some sort of seemingly impossible change from one extreme to the other.

Of course it’s quiet. I mean, most “normal” people are at home in bed. The only people who are out are raging insomniacs, people up to no good, the occasional straggler from a bar, those who have to work 3^rd shift and people like me who seem to frequently end up with our sleep cycles shifted by several hours for whatever reason.

(Though I will admit to occasional bouts of insomnia. Heck, there have been times when I haven’t managed to sleep for a few days or have only managed to get a few hours sleep over the course of a week or more. Thankfully those episodes are pretty rare, but they somehow find me wanting to clean and re-arrange the house in the middle of the night, much to the consternation of my cat.)

Why am I bothering to write this? Simple. Because it’s 3am and I’m sitting here, awake, and realizing that, for whatever reason, my body is not wanting to sleep at all.

In the past, in what sometimes seems like another life, I would grab my coat and go for a walk through town, possibly ending up at some all night restaurant or donut shop and watch the world go by. Heck, in college, I might even wind up wandering around town with a couple of likewise-afflicted friends.

Unfortunately I can’t do that here because there really don’t seem to be any of the aforementioned joints and dives that are open all night, and, truth be told, it seems like fewer people are out at this hour in this town than any other place I’ve ever been.

So, with that habit basically not an option (which, I have to tell you, makes me feel restless because, as odd as it may sound to some people, I really do crave the ability to wander), I tend to sit here and either read or write in the darkest hours of the night, waiting for my body to come to grips with the fact that it has to shut down for a few short hours.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Machines Of Loving Grace - Golgotha Tenement Blues

They’re killing my childhood.

It seems that they’re releasing the early seasons of Sesame Street on DVD, but are labeling them as being for adult entertainment due to things that are now controversial (Monsterpeace Theater where Cookie Monster has, and eats, a pipe for example).

That’s right. The stuff that I, along with countless others, grew up on is apparently not suitable for kids. I actually caught an episode of what they’ve turned Sesame Street into a while back. It was sad.

I have the following to say *puts on his Grover suit*

NEAAAAR…..

*runs away*

FAAAAAAAAAR!!!!

*takes off the Grover suit*

(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

Speaking of things I miss from my childhood – lawn darts (hey, it’s not my fault that people were stupid when they used them. They were fun)

This post has been brought to you by the letter 3 and the number Cat :-P

Current mood: eh
Current music: none

Happy Anniversary

Programs.

Looking through my logs this month, I've noticed a few things.

Releasing the exe versions of my ruby programs has caused more people to download them (which isn't really surprising since a lot of people don't have Ruby).

Zipper seems to be the most popular of those with Prepend in second place. I've found them all to be handy programs because I deal with a lot of files with different naming conventions (otherwise I wouldn't have made them), so I think it's interesting to see what other people think is the most useful.

People are grabbing the new FunLibs version a decent amount (which I also expected).

They're also grabbing copies of the FunLibs *source* (which is just plain weird, in my opinion, because it's so mind numbingly simple. It's just forms, data passing, and string manipulation really. I didn't dynamically create the forms or anything because I really wasn't in the mood, so every story has it's own word gathering form for the sake of playing with forms)

It also seems weird to me that more people download the toys rather than the tools. Maybe they'll send me some of the stories they get. I like to see those on occasion. =]


On an unrelated note, I probably won't be available tomorrow. If you call or email, expect a response on Thursday.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Sneaker Pimps - Curl

This Is Why I Hate Software Cults.

I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again. Software and licenses for same are not a religion and SHOULD NOT BE.

Today, when news that Sun has Dual-Licensed Netbeans 6 in their own OSI-approved CDDL license and GLPv2 (not 3) hit Slashdot, there were a few people who slammed them for not being really “committed to Free Software.”

I wanted to strangle people. I know it sounds stupid, but after so long of dealing with people slamming you and people you actually know because you don’t open source *everything* that you write, you’d understand.

First off, no kidding Sun isn’t committed to “Free” software (“Free” software is a subset of Open Source software and it galls Stallman that Open Source has more support than "Free" does because the rest of the world isn't into the moral crusade). They don’t buy into the moral crusade. The fact that both of the licenses are OSI approved, but one of them is not “Free” should tell you that.

Secondly, how dare a company or a person decide to use a license only when it makes sense to do so? The shock and horror. (Pardon me while I roll my eyes).

Not all people who use or advocate Open Source are zealots. I’m not.

Some of us actually realize that tools are meant to be tools and not religions. Sometimes you use a screwdriver, sometimes a hacksaw, sometimes a hammer…

The zealots, on the other hand, view everything as a nail. The great irony is that most of the zealots that I’ve met don’t release *anything* into the community. Heck, probably 90% of them I’ve met don’t even *code*. The other 10% is generally idealistic high school and college students who haven’t been into the world yet.

Most of them just want to bash Microsoft because they can’t get a copy of Visual Studio for free. (Ironically, I only paid about $11 for mine. Legally, from Microsoft. You have to love promotions)

The heck of it is that I’ve known a lot of developers that have stopped releasing *anything* as open source because they were tired of the backlash because, no matter what they did, no matter what they released, they were still evil because they didn’t release *everything* as open.

As a result, the zealots now get nothing from those people and neither does anyone else. How’s that for helping the cause you claim to espouse?

The zealots are a bunch of ingrates, and I would love to add a clause to my license to prevent them from using my software, but that would be childish. Instead, I just grit my teeth and release things under whatever license I bloody well want.

Some of it’s open. Some of it isn’t.

Use it or don’t. That’s your choice. What I do with it is mine unless someone else owns the rights to it after it’s made.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Matthew Sweet – Silent City

Apparently I’m Blind.

I got a response the other day from the creator of rubyscript2exe about why my sorter program wouldn’t produce a useable exe file (for which he has my thanks. It’s always nice to get a helpful response).

It seems as though I missed that section in his documentation and had to add a few lines of code to my app. Strangely, the other ones didn’t need it. Go figure.

The upside is that I am now slightly less confused (by one thing, at least) and sorter now has a working exe posted in addition to the source code.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Fall Out Boy – Bang the Doldrums

Ever had one of those nights where it seems like, no matter what you do, you just can't seem to decompress? The ones where there just seems like there's something you're forgetting, but you have no idea what it is?

Yeah, this is one of those. We're not talking shove your fists in your mouth depression, beat your neighbors to death with Lego blocks manic behavior, or stuff rabid badgers down your co-workers trousers style psychosis (now isn't *that* a fun mental image?). I just feel restless for some reason, and I really dislike that feeling. *shrugs*

Current mood: blah
Current music: Veruca Salt - Sound of the Bell

Fun new stuff

Over the last couple of days, I’ve posted several new programs on my site and updated a couple of existing ones.

Since I’ve been working with C# now instead of Java, I decided to redo my old FunLibs program and add a few new stories to it while I was at it.

In my personal opinion, it looks a heck of a lot better than the java version, and I added the capability to save the story to a text file (not a huge deal since you could just copy and paste the story into a file, but I thought it was a nice touch).

In addition, I added error checking to Sorter and Zipper. I don’t know about you, but I thought it was kind of important that my programs die gracefully if they encounter an error while mucking about with files (especially if I’m not the only one using it).

The new programs that I’ve posted are things I’ve been using myself for about 6 months or so now. I just took a little time to polish them a bit more and decided that I might as well share them since someone else might get some use out of them as well.

Prepend adds a string to the beginning of all of the filenames in the directory that it’s called in.

Renamer replaces one string in all of the filenames in the directory that it’s called in with another string.

Spacer replaces all of the underscores in the filenames with spaces.

Underscore is the opposite of Spacer, replacing all spaces in filenames with underscores.

They’re written in the Unix tradition of simple programs that do one thing and do it well. They get used quite a bit by me, so I thought that there might be others who would appreciate them as well.

Prepend, Renamer, Spacer, Underscore, and Zipper all have both .rb versions and windows exe versions thanks to a handy little program called rubyscript2exe. Unfortunately, for some reason, it won’t work properly with Sorter, so it only has a .rb version available at the moment.

Feel free to use them. They're all on the Programs section of my website, and are all distributed under the GPL (version 2 only).

As always, if you have any suggestions, questions, comments, bug reports, or just want to drop me a line to say “hi”, my email address is on the website.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Metallica – Unforgiven II

Happy Birthday

Where Do They Find These People??

I realize that I post on here about the local area far too often. However, sometimes something happens that you just have to share.

In a letter to the editor, someone asks when will the levies ever stop because they say they pay $300 more a year in taxes than when they first moved here (no word on how long they’ve been here, which is rather important).

Of course, we get the people going “no no no no no more levies!!!” and a few reasonable people saying that the public infrastructure (schools, libraries, fire, etc) needs to be funded and that’s done through taxes, because apparently some of these people think that there’s a magical money tree somewhere that the government gets operating funds from.

And then you have the guy who wrote that I’m going to paste here in just a minute. I wish I could say that he’s some weird lampoon, but there's a really good chance that the boy's for real because there are a lot of other people just like this who comment on the paper...

Finally, let me say that this is a direct cut and paste. I didn’t clean up anything, and I certainly didn’t make it worse than it was written.

“NONONONONONNOONONONNO!!!!!!!
These taxis are way to much! Seniors can hace a center but make it with a factory where the users make carvings and quilts that support it. They can wokr there till the center supports istelf.
As for fire and rescue, why don't they just charge people that use it? Don't want to pay? Don't set yourself on fire! Duh!
And the library. What do I want with a library? I already have several books and my kids dont red them anyway. Only in school cause court makes them go. People that want library are intellectil snobs.
Keep ballets free!!!”

And, in a later comment from him:

“DONT MAKE HONEST WOKERS PAY FOR FANCY LIBRARY!!!!
I dont want anbd dont pay for grocery store at library. Whos fancy idea is that anyways. Im tired of being taxed out the ears for that snob place”

My head hurts. The library is a place for intellectual (actually “intellectil”) snobs? What ever happened to bettering yourself?

Oh, I forgot. We don’t do that kind of thing here. That might mean that you were acting better than you were.

*slams head against desk, deepening the forehead shaped indentation just a little bit more*

Current mood: Sad
Current music: AFI – The Missing Frame

Merchandising!

Today, while wondering through a store, I saw something that made me do a double take. You could say that it was a case of merchandising gone much too far.

“What?” you ask?

Jeff Foxworthy Teriyaki Style Beef Jerky.

I kid you not.

I think he must have a new addition to his list –

You might be a redneck if…. You eat Jeff Foxworthy Teriyaki Style Beef Jerky.

Current mood: amused
Current music: Cyndi Lauper – The Goonies R Good Enough (hey, one bout of cheese deserves another)

Groktober Fest

It has been my experience that a lot of people need to expand their horizons more often, and many of them don’t really understand what they claim to know.

To that end, I propose a new holiday that I think most geeks and technical people would agree is kind of overdue. I present to you Groktober Fest.

The point of Groktober Fest is simple. Learn something in more than just a cursory manner. It doesn’t matter horribly much what it is, though I give you kudos if it’s useful to you or those around you.

It could be something entirely new or it could be something you already have a little understanding of, but pick something (or more than one thing) and learn it well.

If you want, post here what it is you are going to try to grok. I’d love to hear it.

After all, we should all try to better ourselves on occasion.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Rise Against – Give it All

W…T…F…..???

Reading a friend’s blog, I discovered that apparently, if an agreement hadn’t been reached by October 1^st, the state of Michigan was basically just going to shut down.

Much like the pool, the state would be closed. Everyone pack up your beach towels and go home.

Being a bit doubtful, I decided to do some checking. She wasn’t kidding. That’s straight from Michigan.gov.

My head hurts. I mean, really, how do you just close a state? I can understand that schools might get disrupted if teachers go on strike or some other group decides to walk, but an almost complete shutdown of an entire *state*?

Think that I’m exaggerating? Read the article I linked in this post. The plan was to cut everything down to a barely functional skeleton crew of absolutely essential services (basically just state police, prisons, courts, and mental health – all at drastically reduced manpower capable of only dealing with “emergencies”).

Current mood: o.O
Current music: Rob D – Furious Angels

I just realized something freaky while I was doing my (usually) nightly workout. (hey, when you spend most of the day behind a keyboard, it's actually needed)

If you factor in the weight and number of reps I do, I'm generally lifting around 2,000 lbs a night.

It's no wonder I'm built like a wall...

Current mood: tired
Current Music: AFI - Love Like Winter

Fraud and Loathing in Ohio

Part of this week has been an adventure. Somehow, someone got my debit card number and promptly started to drain my account. My guess is that some company I’ve ordered from has gotten hacked.

Thankfully my bank is very good about this sort of thing and I had the money back in my account the next day, and the resulting overdraft fees dropped the day after that.

As a result, I am now over my heart attack (figurative, not literal). All I can say is that it’s not a happy thing to look at your account balance and see $20 there when there should have been significantly more than that, and I’m glad it’s all cleared up now.

However, the day that it took to clear everything up was special (not in the happy way), and it really took most of the whole day between calling my bank and the merchants who authorized the transactions, filling out the fraud paperwork, getting it notarized, fax it to my bank, etc.

On the upside, I found out that one of the local banks only charges $1 to notarize things for non-members, so that’s good to know for future reference.

To close, I would like to say the following things:

I love my bank. They are absolutely wonderful to work with and get things resolved insanely quickly.

Yahoo Voice was actually good about the whole thing and refunded the charge of their own volition without having to have papers filed.

Sony Online Entertainment, however, was absolutely horrible to work with. First off, their support line is long distance. You’d think that, with a company that size, they would have an 800 number. Then I had to spend almost half an hour trying to convince the rather inflexible person on the other end of the line that I did not, in fact, authorize the purchases, that I didn’t let anyone in the house do so, and that I don’t even *play* MMORPGs. She was actually trying to get me to say that I had done it myself after I told her that most certainly was not the case. Repeatedly.

Just how many times can you say “I am the sole cardholder and I didn’t authorize the bloody charge” anyway? After that, I was told that the only thing I could do is file fraud papers. This was after they determined it really *was* fraudulent because, looking at the account in question, the same person had used a number of different cards to pay for his purchases.

If that was all they were going to do, they could have told me that up front and saved me half an hour off of my plan.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Cowboy Bebop – Call Me Call Me

Randomness

As a lot of people who know me in person can tell you, I’m a music junky. My CD collection is somewhere on the order of 400 discs plus the vinyl and cassettes that I have sitting in storage. I’ve turned a lot of people on to a lot of different kinds of music over the years and I’ve even DJ’ed on occasion.

It’s occasionally been half-joked that I should start a club if I ever have the means to do so. Personally, I think that could be an interesting trip.

My latest musical meandering has led me to Fall Out Boy’s Infinity On High album. I have to say that I really like most of it. There are a couple of tracks that I don’t care too much for, but on the whole, it’s a solid CD.

After listening to it for a while again today, I finally realized part of the reason that I enjoy it so much. A few of their songs remind me of a band on campus when I was an undergrad – Red Wanting Blue; especially their live shows. It’s just the general vibe, and I have to say that I enjoy it.

Current mood: I’m here
Current music: Fall Out Boy - Thriller

Sometimes... Laughter Hurts

You know, when you think of Robin Williams, you generally think of kids movies. Granted, he’s done some other, darker, movies, but mostly you think of things like Mrs. Doubtfire or Aladdin.

Today, I got his Broadway CD.

Let’s say it’s a bit of a departure from kid-friendly stuff. The man pulls no punches and doesn’t bother with censoring language.

It’s absolutely hilarious. I’ve literally spent half the time I listened to it doubled over from laughter (and I have to say that I really needed it today).

There is no way I could drive and listen to this at the same time.

If you love smart assed political and social commentary, this is right up your alley. However, if profanity offends you or you have little kids around, I’d advise you skip it.

Current mood: better
Current music: Robin Williams

YARG!!!!!

I appologize to anyone who tries to email me this weekend, and anyone who gets spam from my domain. I've been getting hammered today by "bounced" emails that have addresses that don't exist on my domain. We're talking over 1000 in the last half hour, and it shows no signs of slowing.

Apparently, some spambot thought my domain sounded like a great one to use.

*sighs*

Current mood: p****d off
Current music: Our Lady Peace - Tomorrow Never Knows

(EDIT: Well, that was fun. 24 hours and more than 2 thousand "bounced" messages later it seems that things have calmed down again. I really hate when that happens. Now, I wonder how many spam blacklists that's landed me on...)