May 24, 2005
Back in the days, Internet extortionists used to capture various computers through virii or other means. They would then take control of these servers (called zombies) and use their CPU and bandwidth to create DDOS attacks against financial institutions, gambling sites, and any other site that stands to lose a lot of money if it were to lose connectivity for extended periods of time. They would then demand money from these institiutions in order to stop.
These days, however, it seems they are demanding payment from the average joe by doing the following: you download a virus, it encrypts all your data. You can unencrypt your data only if you pay the extortionist $200!
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Looks like the Adsense page has fallen victim to the 302 hijack.
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May 20, 2005
Filed under:
tech — emad @ 9:17 am
don’t forget to register!
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Filed under:
funny — emad @ 9:00 am
Why does it seem that I’ve seen this in far too many elections debates.
Also, available is how to be funny which rick thinks bill should read but I’ve heard Rick’s jokes and trashtalking. <yawn> 
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Marc at O’Reilly Radar reports that a Google engineer insinuated that an API will be made available so that all the google maps hacks will not be hacks anymore. Marc intrpreted this as meaning a Google Maps API may become available.
This means that google will support the additional costs of these hacks through hardware (map-renderring), bandwidth, licensing, etc. In general, most license structures reveloving around either map data or map renderers (i.e. telcontar or mapquest) involve a cost structure based on number of “map renders” (or how many times people viewed the map or the data which powered it). That means these data providers probably won’t complain to google about these services (because they will be paid for each render…assuming that is their cost structure)…but it also means google will pay the cost for them.
Well, I’m sure these additional costs are small incremental costs to them but I would imagine google would want to leverage these services when and if they are a substantial source of traffic (and if they don’t become that, it will, at a minimum, be a sign of good will and the “don’t be evil” mantra google tries to uphold). Could we see links on the maps (i.e. attribution statements that take you to google) that generate google direct-domain traffic? Maybe we will see google advertisers (ones that have specified a locale to advertise in) on or near the maps? Maybe there will be another optional API that plugs into advertisers (remember their advertisers in RSS feeds) that can be rendered on or near maps as an option to those who wish to generate revenue off of their applications (the same way Adsense generates revenue for content providers)? We’ll just have to wait and see.
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Filed under:
funny — emad @ 7:59 am
UCSC plays Super Mario in their windows…real windows, not microsoft
They basically used approximately 3800 colored sticky notes to act as pixels and rendered the sprites on the windows.
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May 19, 2005
Filed under:
tech — emad @ 2:40 pm
Anyone managing tech people should understand the importance of listening and encouraging engineers to come up with great ideas. I’ve worked at a place that was stifling and forced ideas through from the leaders or product and completely threw out what came from technology in the past.
When Google CEO, Eric Schmidt spoke at a Gartner Symposium, he said they let engineers run rampant. He also stated the best ideas come from those engineers rather than the leaders and that an open door policy (to listen to even the wackiest of ideas) goes a long way. Here, here!
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Filed under:
search — emad @ 2:26 pm
Google has launched a personalized homepage service to compete with my yahoo but it is still in their labs section.
It includes mail, movies, weather, news, stocks, word/quote of the day, directions, and more. Some of the news sources include google news, slashdot, wired, BBC, and the NYT.
One thing that differentiates it from my yahoo and my MSN is that it seems to be a lot less cluttered and, therefore, more organized. I guess part of that is my fault due to adding too many modules on my yahoo. Since google limits what you can put on there, it seems a bit less cluttered. I also love the ability to drag and drop the different sections and move them around the 3 columns.
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On Friday, my coworkers and I are headed off to the Arclight in hollywood (on Sunset) to watch Star Wars (what a bunch of geeks!).
Well, I’ve joked numerous times about star wars nerds but I had to do it one more time seeing as this is the last episode.
So, without further ad0, here’s Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes.
…and as for you HHGTTG fans, Try searching on google for “What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?” … it’ll give you the correct answer.
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