Monday, July 16, 2001
“Sheilds up! They're hitting us in DNS!”
I've noticed some very odd network activity recently here at the South Lab. At 8:02 pm EST yesturday I got slammed with DNS. For nine seconds I received an average of 10 requests per second for DNS resolution from 22 different IP addresses (an average of 4 requests per IP address).
Very odd.
But then, exactly 12 hours later, again, for nine seconds I received an average of 10 reqeusts per second for DNS resolution from 22 different hosts; the same hosts as 12 hours earlier.
Very odd …
The Lost Wages of the Ancient World
Jorn Barger, of RobotWisdom fame, has an interesting theory about the ancient Minoan culture—that it was the Las Vegas of the ancient world (which is my take on the theory and not Jorn's words at all). An interesting theory for sure. And would that mean that the famed maze at Knossos, which held the Minotaur (half man, half bull), was an attraction? “Survive the maze, and win fabulous prizes!”
Hmmmm …
The Lost Games of the Ancient World
And speaking of the Las Vegas of the Ancient World, recent archeological findings have brought to life some of the games they used to play there.
I'm guessing that betting on survivors of the Minatour Maze wasn't everybody's cup of tea back then.
Microsoft Madness
I was surprised to find “Property of Acme Widgets, 301-555-1212” in the .EXE file from 0x6000 to 0x14FFF. The compiler had obviously just grabbed a big chunk of disk space and stuffed it into the file, without bothering to clear it first.
Via RobotWisdom, Uncleared disk space and MSVC
Even scarier are the articles about Microsoft and nuclear material tracking. Shudder
Load Size
There are five settings on my washing machine for load size, ranging from small load to large load. I never know just how much makes a certain size load, and there's no guide telling me how many pounds of clothes (or to what level) constitutes a load size.
What? Like I know laundry?
Stop with the HTML in email already!
MSN Explorer Tech support states "that MSN Explorer and MSN.com send web-based HTML e-mail ONLY and cannot be configured to send plain text."
However, if you use MSN as your mail service (i.e., username@msn.com) you can simply go to Hotmail.com and send e-mail from there in plain text (via their so-called PASSPORT system). Same inbox, address book, etc.
You just have to remember to send or reply to POP3 and plain text e-mail from Hotmail and not from MSN. A real nuisance but at least an option.
Unfortunately the transfer to Hotmail from MSN e-mail takes you through 3 screens and requires you to reenter your password even if you checked the "remember my password" box.
Via CamWorld, Configuring Mail Clients to Send Plain ASCII Text
I'm currently on a mailing list where one of the members uses MSN for email and yes, it is very annoying to get email from that person in all HTML (when you are using an email client that doesn't support HTML and no, getting a new program is not the answer! (Anymore than forcing Microsoft Windows users to switch to something more sane, like Unix) It's nice to know there is a way that person can avoid sending HTMLized email, but somehow, given the instructions (and the @#$&@# attitude of Microsoft towards Internet standards and conventions) that this person will change.
