May 2006 Archives

Well so much for the regular blog posting. I've been pretty busy this past week. I flew to Fairfield, CA last Monday to troubleshoot a network. I got home Wednesday night and then turned right around and drove to Tulsa on Thursday. The trip to Tulsa was Dual-purpose. Elanna I and were getting her house ready to sell and I wanted to go visit my father's grave on Memorial Day. We got everything we could possible do ourselves done on Elanna's house. It probably needs the roof replaced but we still haven't decided if we want to do that before selling it or just tell the buyer we will before closing. We met with the realtor and put the house on the market yesterday so hopefully we will get an offer soon.

I saw X-Men 3 on Friday. Eh. It wasn't completely terrible (like fantastic 4) but it didn't even come close to the first two. I heard there is supposed to be a Wolverine movie now.

Oh and somehow in all the busy-ness and probably a little conscious indifference on my part, I neglected to mention that 1 Year Anniversary of my completion of Cancer Treatment. April 27th was the Official end of treatment, so I am now over one year Cancer Free. Next Milestone, Five years.

Blue Security incorporated came up with an innovative way to fight spam. You signed up for thier service , then they would ask spammers to stop sending you email. These requests were, of course, ignored, so Blue security would send them again and again and again. Thousands of times per day in fact. They basically spammed the spammers with requests to stop spamming. Many of the spammers gave in and reomved Blue Security cusomters from thier lists. One of the major spammers, from Russia, fought back with one of the largest Denial of Service attacks perpetrated so far. In order to avoid an all-out cyberwar Blue Security has closed down thier website and thier service. You can read all about it here.

This is courtesy Demigoblin. This guy supposedly got ahold of the script for the upcoming Transformers live action movie. He says it's great. There's a link at the bottom to another review with spoilers.

I'm back in school now. There's only a short break between Spring and Summer Classes. My past courses were over Network Security Architecture, Cryptography, and Risk Assessments, which encompasses what I would consider the technical parts of Information Security. Unfortunately, Information security is about half technical and half accounting. I'm into the accounting part now. My latest course is called "Trusted Systems" which really doesn't give you any idea what it's about. It’s about Protection Profiles. A protection profile is a formal specification of security requirements for a commercial system. Basically, if you wanted to protect your "widget server", you would write a protection profile that details therequirements and throw it out to a security vendor and say "Make that!' No one implements security in this way. You know who does? The Feds. In fact, all the documents on how to write a protection profile are written by federal agencies. So to sum it up I'm taking a class on how to Specify Security Requirements the way the Federal Government does. (I'm MMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLTTTTTTTTIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNG)

Have you heard about Net Neutrality? Basically, it's how the internet operates today. You pay an ISP for access to the internet. Web sites like Amazon and Google pay ISPs for access to the internet, albiet a bit more than you and I pay. The various ISPs are all interconnected so no matter what ISP you may have and no matter what ISP Amazon uses you can still get to them. This is called Network Neutrality, everyone is connected and no one's traffic is more important than anyone else's. The large ISPs (Sprint, AT&T, MCI, etc) do no want this, they want to be able to charge websites like Google or Amazon whenever the traffic comes across thier lines. So if you connect to the net through AT&T and pull up Amazon's website, which has to cross Sprint in order to get to Amazon's , Sprint wants to be able to charge Amazon. If Amazon doesn't pony up the fee then No Access. What it boils down to is that the ISPs want to be able to control what traffic runs across thier lines, the end result being that they want to control what you can access on the internet. This would be somewhat like how the cable companies operate, where you can get the sci-i channel if you have Cox but not if you have Comcast. This is a really BAD IDEA. I'm sure you can see why.

Tons more Info and a Petition you can sign at Save the Internet.

I really coudln't think of anything to blog about today, then I saw this. Yes in yet another example of how there are no new ideas, they are remkaing Knight-Rider. The article says they want to make it "dark" and not a comic send-up of the original. I disbelieve. The article also mentions that they are considering remakes of "The Fall Guy" and "Magnum PI". And they wonder why no one goes to the movies anymore?

E3 is going on so there is a flood of video game news this week. The PS3 details are out, supposedly it's going to cost around $500. I doubt I'm going to buy that and an Xbox, though that's what I said the last time around. Blizzard announed the new Race for World for Warcraft and that there is going to be a Warcraft Movie. I haven't played WoW too much latley. I've been too busy with work and getting Elanna moved in. I have been playing Oblivion though. It's a very cool game though it suffers from bugs. That seems to be the norm for all PC games now though.I feel sorry for the people who are playing it on XBox360. They'll probably have to jump through some serious hoops to patch thier game.

A vulture hit the Space Shuttle during liftoff testing last year. Apparently, the poor bird bonked into the side of the orbiter and then fell into the exhuat flames. Nasa is now making an effort to rid the area of vultures.

I'm just about finished here in Virginia. The network cutover went well. I worked all night Monday night and just slept most of the day yesterday. Today I'm here working on Documentation, which is really exciting let me tell you. It will be good to get back home. I haven't been back in over a week now. My friend Reptile accepted a position with the City of Arlington and he and his wife will be moving down in stages this month. Speaking of Reptile here's a guide to everyone's nickname in the Blogosphere. (My gradnmother says she doesn't know who anyone is. She got worried when I wrote that I was engaged to Elanna, thinking I had gotten engaged to someone else.)

I go by Zero and Xoran. (or Firehawk and Rexor from the time before blogs)
Elanna - My Fiancee
Phlome - Old Friend, Lives here in Dallas
Ninsianna - Phlome's Wee-Fay
Halo - My Brother
Khuul, Demigoblin, Monketo, Donut - The non-blogging Dallas Crew
Hagrok - Khuul's Brother
Rev Layle - Which isn't much of a nickname, friend from High School and College
Bunny - Friend from here in Dallas
Reptile - Friend from Florida moving here to Dallas this Month
Reptile's Wife- who has yet to get a nickname
Jessy - Arkansas Friend went to High school with Ninisianna
Neko - Arkansas Friend, Lives near Jessy

There now you have a guide to who I'm writing about.