Nihaorr1 web infestation

Are you safe? A virulent and effective new “virus” is sweeping the Internet that attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on unsuspecting web users visiting legitimate websites. It’s proving effective, since the attack vector is SQL injection on genuine, reputable websites that do not properly enforce good security practices, and so, many users would not reasonably expect to get a problem from such sites. It attempts to exploit 8 known vulnerabilities in Windows software, although these vulnerabilities have now been closed if you have used Windows Update recently. High profile victims include the USA’s Department of Homeland Security and parts of the UK’s Civil Service website. A Google search for the attack code returns over 100,000 results.

Webmasters should check through their website (using an eg ’site:’ search on Google) for the existence of the attack code, which has proven most successful on websites running IIS and MS SQL Server, whilst ensuring that all user-submitted content is properly sanitised to limit the risk of being susceptible to SQL Injection.

More info here.

Fortunately, we don’t speak like that

Get Fuzzy is currently featuring Mac Manc McManx, a cockney cat, that has appeared in various previous episodes. Darby Conley seems like a real Brit-lover (main human character Rob is a rugby fan, bizarre by most American standards) and his characterisation of Mac is, well, bizarre. But nonetheless it is very funny, but I would just like to reassure you that the majority of Brits do not talk like this, and in fact, I know very few cockneys who do use so much slang.

And if you’re not familiar with Get Fuzzy, then it’s a great addition to your daily email fodder.

Are you a Scrabuluser?

The Urban Dictionary is a fun website which serves as a kind-of “underground” dictionary, featuring words from everyday “street” vernacular, that you might not find in your average Collins dictionary. Certainly, most of the words would make a proponent of the Queen’s English shudder and shake in frantic disbelief. But nevertheless, it’s a great website, featuring all kinds of humourous stuff. It’s edited somewhat liberally, and resultantly some of the funniest entries are those with a genuine user-submitted definition.

Some examples:

• Sandbagging
• Bogart
• Homing from Work

The dictionary is made up of user submitted entries, and woop-de-doo, I’ve had one published. Based on my (now waining, thankfully) addiction to Scrabulous, I coined the term Scrabuluser - a contraction of Scrabulous and luser to mean someone who spends all their time playing Scrabulous. Go me.

If you like the site, you may consider getting their nifty word of the day email.

(This was the 600th post on this blog. Marvellous.)

Blast from the past

One of the funniest TV shows ever: Whose Line Is It Anyway? Friday night, around 1030pm was always a humourous time if you weren’t our drinking (in which case, it was perfect hangover fodder for the morning after.)

And if you didn’t know, the (original) UK version was a lot better than the US version, despite featuring the majority of the same, predominantly American or Canadian, comedians. Richard Vranch (on the piano) was one of the smoothest men on television.

Heaps more at YouTube. What’s fantastic about the show is, because it’s all improvisation, you get genuine, fresh comedy, from genuine, fresh comedians. So rather than relying on a script as a lot of entertainers do nowadays, you get to see if people are genuinely funny.

And who better to illustrate my point, than Robin Williams:

Pure gold.

Bull’s Eye! Seems I hit a nerve

I recently posted a rather flippant attack (for want of a better word) about Yahoo! Answers. In it, I linked to a chap named Doug who is one of the more prolific answerers. I accused him of taking himself a little too seriously, given his rather staggering point count. Well, bless his li’l cotton socks, within a couple of hours of posting it (must have been a slow work day), he responded with a rather scathing full-scale rebuttal. Now, I’m not one to make random “enemies” for no apparent reason, but the only purpose it serves is to validate my original point.
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Make your Macbook Pro fly: upgrade!

I have the latest generation of Macbook Pro, which came as stock with the Intel Core Duo 2 2.5ghz processor, 250gb 5400RPM HDD and 2gb RAM. As standard it was flat-out awesome, incorporating the new touchpad that is seen on the Macbook Air and some of the features you get from the iPhone and iPod Touch. OSX Leopard was pre-installed and is fantastic and a perfect example of what milestone releases should be like: Tiger was great - Leopard has taken that and actually enhanced it, whilst maintaining all the stability and core features you were used to. Unlike certain other upgrades, which took a reasonably stable operating system (XP) and created a whole shitstorm of a mess with its “upgrade” (Vista.)

But if you’re anything like me, then “stock” really isn’t good enough and I was intrigued to know what tweaks and upgrades I could make to really make this beast fly. So here are a few pointers:
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Strike 2, Apple

Internet trolls might call me an Apple fanboy, but I wouldn’t say I am. I am just one of the happy people who made the switch a couple of years ago, and I am well-pleased that I did. I started with the Mac Mini - which seemed like the cheapest way to find out what the switch would be like - all went well - and so have since bought a Macbook Pro. Which all went great, aside from a snafu over the definition of Apple retail versus Apple store.

Anyway, with the new stock MBP in hand, I started looking at upgrading the RAM, from 2gb to 4gb. After finding the specs, first stop was the Apple store to see their prices. You can imagine I was a little taken aback to see that 4gb (2 sticks of 2gb) was a staggering $600 - I’m well aware that Apple hardware is more expensive than most, but $600 seemed ridiculous. And indeed it is - I picked up 4gb of Kingston (a more than reputable memory manufacturer) for $125 from Amazon. I could also have got Crucial or Samsung, for a similar price. Intrigued, I decided to call the Apple store, just to find out why their RAM was so damn expensive. I mean, $200 I could undrstand, maybe $250, but a full FOUR times more expensive? No way. I didn’t really know what answer to expect, so I just went ahead:
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