[20/03/2003]
Luap's incredibly useful advice in preparing for war/terror/armageddon.
First and foremost, convince yourself, and your colleagues, friends,
neighbours, and random people on the street that this really is it,
death and destruction are coming to place near you soon.
What you need to buy: Torches. Lots of them. Ones with solar panels,
wind-up torches, even old-fashioned battery ones. And lots of
batteries. Remember, if you see someone else taking the last torch
from the shelf, you must beat them to a pulp and get that torch. Also
buy candles. Lots of candles. Candles will still give you light after
an electromagnetic pulse has fried your torch bulb. Candles are also
useful for gently warming your baked beans over. Don't forget to buy
baked beans. They come in trays of 24, and you'll probably get about 6
trays in your boot (trunk), which should be enough to survive on. Also,
buy plastic sheeting, and lots of rolls of gaffer tape.
Now, go home and prepare.
Pick a room in your house where you will stand the highest chance for
survival. Ideally you want no windows, just one door, and no drains or
vents that might let in dangerous gases from outside. If there are any
doors, windows or vents, nail them shut, gaffer over them so they're
airtight, then gaffer some plastic sheet over them, just to make sure. If
you have loved ones in the room with you, cocoon them in gaffer tape so
that they can't endanger themselves or you by breaking the seal on your
room when they lose their minds in panic. It might be wise to tape them
to the floor once they're securely cocooned.
While you're in your survival room, remember to make as little noise as
possible. The people outside are probably contaminated, and they want
your food and torches. Do not look out of the window, as the contaminated
people might see you. Do not open the door under any circumstances. Do
not believe anything that anybody on the other side of that door tells
you. Remember, they want your food and torches, you need your food and
torches to survive.
[04/03/2003]
Mantra for today: "A firewall is not a panacea".
(This results from my conversation with our IT manager today
"They've discovered a flaw in Sendmail. Our mailserver is vulnerable,
and needs patching"
"But its behind the firewall"
"Yes, but the firewall is configured to let people talk to the mailserver,
so they can send us mail"
"erm....")
[24/02/2003]
Press release: Intention to cease support for Microsoft products
On 24th February 2003, Paul Norton declared his intention to withdraw
his support for all microsoft products. He cited what he called the
"ridiculous amount of patching required" in order to keep up with security
updates, Microsoft's seeming inability to program software which cannot
be abused by a buffer overflow, and Microsoft's apparent hostility (on
its web pages) for anyone using "an alternative browser".
He also stated "It is evident, by Microsoft's own admissions that in
this day and age, we require trustworthy computing. Microsoft have,
for the past decade, been delivering to me untrustworthy, and unstable
computing products. They have failed to learn from their mistakes. Its
time to draw a line in sand, make a stand, stand up for what's right,
and read Microsoft's last rites". The audience was not impressed with
his flurry of cliches.
In a separate disclosure to currently supported users, Mr Norton detailed
that windows and MS office support will tail off over the forthcoming
month, and assistance will be provided to any users making the transition
to Open-source alternatives.
[19/02/2003]
Lots of little unfinished things. I've got to get better at taking a
concept to its conclusion. There's far too may projects loitering in
that stage where I've proved my idea, and got bored with it.
I've ordered a snakeboard now. That'll give me less time to finish
projects. Particularly if I break my legs, and become immobile.
Work is boring, and sucky.
[05/02/2003]
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
[03/02/2003]
Erm. Bored. I plan to, when I can be bothered, do something about my
sidebar code, which is, I reckon, pants. I plan to tell Orange they can
stick their contract, because I'm not getting as much usefullness out
of this phone as I would from a new hard drive every three months; add
to that the fact that the handset is f'd, and Orange's best offer was
"hmm, you've been with us for nearly three years now, and, oh, you're
still using your original handset, hmm, I think I can authorise 20% off
our over-inflated price". Well, their 20% off loyalty deal thing still
doesn't beat the marketplace price for a new contract. The only thing
I'll be sorry to lose is the everyday-50-ness of my contract, which you
just can't get anymore. I can't even find a new mobile contract that gets
you 1p/minute for calls off-peak after you've run out of free minutes.
I think generally, I'm stepping out of line, and saying "not for me,
not at that cost" on a lot of things. Maybe if I go far enough down this
road, I'll go and live in a commune and raise goats or something.
[16/01/2003]
You really do have to despair when you're trying to talk techinal with
a guy from the drawing office, and he looks at something you've written
on a diagram, and says "200um, what's that? What units are they?"
________________________________________________________________
Old plan entries at http://icculus.org/~luap/oldplan.txt