Ed Horch: Completely Nonymous

...especially if you're any sort of system administrator or tech support person:

http://thewebsiteisdown.com

As to work-safeness, consider it rated PG-13 for sidelong sexual references, use of the "F" word, and whatever effect your literal LOL will have on your cow-orkers.

Thanks to

blamedstarlie for the link.

Something I have been wanting to see for years is going to happen. People and organizations will be able to create their own top-level domains, alongside .com, .org, etc. I won't be looking to snap up .horch any time soon, because initially, it's going to be a very expensive process.

Some people are saying that it's going to be hard for corporations, because there will be that many more places they have to register their names. It'll be like whitehouse.com (no link because that's a porn site) to the nth degree. Every company would have to register their name in thousands of places.

I think it's the exact opposite. Sure, Microsoft will still want microsoft.com, but so what if I own the .urinal-cakes TLD? You think anyone at Microsoft will lose any sleep because they haven't registered microsoft.urinal-cakes when they already have anything-they-want.microsoft?

That said, what top-level domain would you want, why, and what subdomains would you want?

Whoops, I just double checked. TLDs have to be letters only in any alphabet, according to the above article. So much for strongbad.compy.386, and my other example would have to be something like microsoft.urinalוcakes.

If you're like me, and all you want to do is read the damn comic, you can do it here:

http://www.dilbert.com/fast

Call Bob the Dinosaur to give the designers of this mess and their PHBs a collective wedgie.

I've had my horch.org vanity domain for almost ten years now. It's up for renewal next month, and I decided to switch to another registrar. I'd been using Network Solutions, but over the years they've gotten both more expensive and more evil in their business practices--they're fast becoming the Ticketmaster of domain registrars. So, I decided to switch to PairNIC, because their prices are reasonable and some friends of mine had good experiences hosting with Pair.

Now let's see how hard I get spammed by Network Solutions.

BTW, I wanted horch.com, but somebody grabbed that one a couple months before I registered, amid rumors that a German automaker was about to resurrect the Horch marque. Horch.net used to be owned by a German software consultant ("horch" was a shortening of his company name), and is now parked by some German registrar. It might be cute to get hor.ch, but that would confuse my grandparents.

The most surprising (to me) result of yesterday's poll was how many people have contributed to Wikipedia, or some such. Question: What did you contribute?

I fixed some mistakes in the entry for ClearCase. In the "some such" category, I've also submitted some definitions to Urban Dictionary.

...are Time's Person of the Year, and by "you", they mean "us". So how much of what Time said about "you" is true?

Poll #891959 I am Time's Person of the Year because...
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

There are a lot of sites out there whose names are common typoes of well-known sites, often pr0n, but sometimes offering a related business. It's pretty annoying when you try to go to some common place and get taken to some fly-by-night operation, of whatever stripe.

But how mad could I get, when I tried to go to T-Mobile, and found myself starting at this instead (it's work safe)?

Update: Turns out they have several versions of their home page, which you can see if you keep refreshing. ( I got... )

Yech! Someone in BEDC's prudish IT department configured our web-cop software to block the images at PostSecret! You can see the blog itself, but not the pictures. Sure, some of them aren't exactly work-friendly, but they're nothing like the stuff you see in banner ads.

So which is geekier? This:

...or the fact that I spent two hours last night tagging 90+ LJ posts?

When I comment on someone's post, then they later take it to a restricted friends list that I'm not on, I'm no longer entitled to read my own comment. Odd. :)

Actually, this sort of points to why I will never take my journal friends-only (and for that matter rarely make restricted posts). It's said that a little security is worse than no security at all, because you tend to think you're protected more than you really are. In the LJ world, not only are there vulnerabilities like Frienditto, but there may be things in the future that we can't predict today.

Back in the dark ages before the Internet, there was Usenet. Users were admonished not to post anything you wouldn't want your current or future employers to read, but that was kind of time-tied. Posted messages were expired off the servers, usually in under a month, and very few places considered the content (like the decades-long abortion flame war) worth backing up. We operated under the idea that even if you posted something you regretted, it'd be gone bofore too long.

Fast forward to 1996. My mother gets Internet access. In the meantime, an outfit called "Deja News" (subsequently acquired by Google and rechristened Google Groups) had somehow unearthed a reasonably complete archive of old Usenet posts. Now, anyone with web access can find drivel I posted back in 1984. So, decades after the fact, that admonishment retroactively includes family and friends in addition to employers, if they can figure out how I identified myself back then.

I can't be sure that something similar to this will not happen with the LJ databases. I'm not afraid to post things of a personal nature, but I'm not going to expect that a friends-only post is significantly more secure than anything I post publicly or in any other board/forum/blog/etc.

OK, not none, more like one or two a month, even though I have a vanity address that I give to friends, and I can change ISPs at will (which is why you never get "my new email is exdj31337@ispoftheweek.net" from me).

Here's how I do it. ( Read on but be warned: It's long... )

Slashdot points to an L.A. Times article that talks about people disconnecting from the Internet, surrendering to the onslaught of spam and spyware. This is tragic, that the skript kiddies and bottom feeders can completely ruin the Internet for average people (and even some experts).

I have never had a single piece of spyware on my PC. This is how I do it:

Never EVER click on an attachment whose origin you're unsure of.
Never EVER install software whose origin you're unsure of, including "free anti-spyware" programs.
Use good protection software like Zone Alarm and Symantec Anti-Virus, and keep the definitions up to date.
Check Windows Update regularly and apply all critical security patches.
Ditch Internet Explorer and Outlook and use Firefox/Thunderbird or Mozilla instead. (Better yet, ditch Windows altogether, but I know that's not practical for most people.)

You may have noticed that the last two items are in conflict: Windows Update only works with IE. I resolve that conflict by making Windows Update my IE home page. I have to use IE once every week or two for various things that only work on IE (shame on you if your site is one of these and you're not Microsoft), so stopping off at Windows Update on my way to wherever I'm going is a nice way to check for new critical patches.

Also, if you have DSL or a cable modem, install a hardware firewall. This will keep most of the bad guys away from all your home machines (including your houseguest's laptop) without any intervention from you. I use this one from Linksys, which also adds wireless. Before going wireless I used this one. It's a very cheap insurance policy.

Basically what you're doing here is mending most of the holes in the screen where the bad stuff gets in, and training yourself not to tear the screen any more.

Next: How I only get 1-2 spams a month.