Archive: November 27th, 2001

If playwrights wrote plays whose titles were anagrams of their names…

David Mamet gives us "Dammit, Dave".

What would "2001: A Space Odyssey" be like if it were written by David Mamet?

This is one amazing piece of Flash. I’m starting to realise just how much can be accomplished with ActionScript.

I’m trying to learn some Flash. Luckily for me, there’s now an O’Reilly book devoted to ActionScripting (I guess that means it can now be considered a "real" programming language).

Time for a trip to Amazon, methinks.

Every Sunday, I send out an email newsletter for The Session to all the folks who have subscribed to receive it.

This week, after sending out the newsletter (using a PHP driven administration tool), I noticed a lot of replies coming back with some weird content: a blank HTML page with an iframe tag.

Yup, it’s a new worm.

It doesn’t affect me directly (I use a Mac). It does affect a large proportion of the population, though:

"The worm can infect computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and unpatched versions of Outlook, and is aimed at slackers who haven’t stayed current with Microsoft’s cavalcade of patches."

On the one hand, I think "yeah, you should be keeping your software patched!".

On the other hand, I think "how can one piece of software need so many patches!?".

I’m sure Microsoft have covered their ass in that licencing agreement that nobody reads when they install software. Still, I find it criminally negligent that a mail client so riddled with security holes was ever released to the public.

The BadTrans.B worm: turning the "embrace and extend" motto into reality.