netjeff.com

Most people who overclock consider the risk of damaging the CPU due to overheating. But the other more subtle risk is computational errors introduced by running the chip faster than its rated for. Most people may dismiss these errors, until they happen in Quicken! (of course its still not very likely).

For a graphic example of the problem of bad calculations, take a look at the SETI@home newsletter #7. Scroll down to figure 3, and read the text above it. Proof positive that overclocked processors do make mistakes.

Read this for a very interesting (and kind of frightening) account of the DDoS attack against grc.com. I especially liked the transcript between Steve Gibson (grc.com owner) and ^b0ss^ after Gibson reverse-engineered the zombie program and spied on the hackers. :-)

(http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,1870,48097,00.html)

But a recent bomb scare leads police to discover the gadgets concealed all over Taipei, ending the puzzle of why so few have been caught speeding

By Lawrence Chung
STRAITS TIMES TAIWAN BUREAU

TAIPEI – A device hidden illegally on a tree to warn motorists of anti-speeding traps was mistaken for a bomb, which led police to uncover even more of such gadgets in all sorts of concealments, including street lamps and cracks in the walls.

The discovery had unravelled the puzzle as to why so few offenders were being booked for speeding recently.

If not for the bomb scare, the traffic police of Taiwan would have remained in the dark when it toughened the traffic law today to inflict more severe punishments on the island's legion number of errant motorists. In the past week, armed with high-tech electromagnetic wave tracers, police have left no stone unturned at major roads where speed detectors are installed to ferret out the illegal transmitters.

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The Internet Engineering Task Force has a new draft RFC that explores how the Internet will work across the solar system — Interplanetary Internet (IPN): Architectural Definition.

Since space is so big, the Internet can't quite work the same way it does here on little old Earth. In fact, the delay of bouncing signals off of satellites (that are only a several thousand miles a way) already causes some problems with our terrestrial Internet.

Unlike the draft itself, one of the authors, S. Burleigh, has waxed poetic to summarize the differences between the Internet on Earth and the Internet that will span the planets:

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There is an email circulating claiming that sulfnbk.exe is a virus that has infected windows computers, and that you should delete this file (as reported at Vmyths.com). But the file is actually part of the MS Windows operating system.

So now computer viruses have come full circle: just like a "real" virus, this email virus is completely inert until it infects a biological host — in this case a human being. For the record, it does not appear that this email was an intentional piece of social engineering.

like SlippyToad's post in a 22 May 2001 post (#33) on this Slashdot thread regarding the book "Digital Copyright":

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Time once again to post my "black hole" meme, which I hope will propagate up to the people who need to hear it the most, and encourage them to vote with their work for the system that benefits them the most: I speak to the artists, authors, and creators of copyrighted material.

Current copyright laws are, in my opinion, going to put the 20th century's greatest artistic outpourings into a legally mandated black hole. Most artists and authors have an expectation that their work will immortalize them. Otherwise we wouldn't have such things as the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame (as biased and political an organization as it is) or the Grammys, or the Oscars, or any other prizes and awards for great contributions to the field.

The problem with this expectation is that in order for your work to be immortalized, it has to survive beyond the first generation of its fans. Just because the Baby Boomers put down in their book that Bob Dylan was somebody fuckin' great, doesn't mean that I will. And it is my generation that will be responsible for ensuring the longevity of art created by my parents' generation. In order for a work to survive past a generation, copies have to be made. Lots of them. Vinyl albums are incredibly fragile, and are easily scratched by careless children, and left on radiators or in attics and warp. CD's get dropped behind the sofa. Cassette tapes are left on the dashboard and melt. Boo.

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