Plenty of Web traffic and computer power drained in vain

OMBIE attacks on this site have persisted for over a month and have shown no sign of abatement. In fact, it only gets worse as more diverse locations get targetted for the puspose of referrer spam injection.

I have ultimately grown tired of these attacks rather than become accustomed to them. Each day, over 1,000 attacks are launched against my domain (2 of them actually) by hijacked Windows-powered machines. To remain kind to all genuine visitors, thus far I have re-directed suspicious page requests internally, displaying a forbidden (error 403) page. This has gotten me nowhere as the attackers are not deterred by any of this. Only more and more Windows computer get hijacked and ‘puppeteered’, so brute-force is never an issue.

Yesterday I became slightly more emotional and perhaps courageous enough to forward all of these leeches to microsoft.com/this-is-YOUR-zombie-NOT-mine. Let us wait and see how Microsoft handles nearly 50,000 of these zombie attacks per month. In my defence, all I do is merely pass on the zombies to the domain which I find responsible for their misfortunate existence. I look forward to some form of response from Microsoft with great anticipation.

A week back I enquired in nntp://uk.legal as to whether Microsoft could be held accountable directly for these attacks, which are due to major loopholes in their flagship O/S. Opinions which I received in response were mixed, but no doubt Microsoft’s faulty product, which allows computers to be used as weapons, ought to take at least part of the blame. I previously explained more on that stance of mine and arguments regarding liability.

An older Web-based presentation (April 2005, London)

received some encouraging news last night. My submission to the MIAS-IRC annual symposium has been accepted for an oral presentation. To make matters even better, a paper of my colleague, in which I am among the authors, has been accepted as well.

This maintains a good record of consecutive oral presetations (rather than posters). At the moment I continue working towards two looming deadlines for international conferences. I have also begun to prepare the upcoming presentation, the Ph.D. thesis and I foresee the possibility of supercomputing in the near future.

Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

Microsoft released a report that is very damaging to the image of their operating system. As Paul Murphy from ZDNet put it, ‘Unix beats Windows’ – says Microsoft!.

What’s noteworthy about it is that Microsoft compared Singularity to FreeBSD and Linux as well as Windows/XP – and almost every result shows Windows losing to the two Unix variants. For example, they show the number of CPU cycles needed to “create and start a process” as 1,032,000 for FreeBSD, 719,000 for Linux, and 5,376,000 for Windows/XP.”

Microsoft are still trying to defend their new operating system called Singularity, but in the process they lead to public confusion and doubt. As we approach the release of Windows Vista (due next year), the Gartner group suggests that Vista should be ignored until 2008.

Companies shouldn’t rush to upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista, according to analysts at Gartner, who believe most firms could safely hold back until 2008.

The majority of improvements in Vista will be security-related and most of this functionality “is available via third-party products today”, Gartner claimed in a research note published on Friday.

Believe it or not, Microsoft decided to include Linux equipment in their network environmernt, as was reported last week.

The next time Bill Gates sends an e-mail through Microsoft’s shiny new Wireless LAN it will be passed through a behind-the-scenes Linux-based network appliance.

[...]

Pandey’s (senior director of Microsoft IT) appraisal of Aruba’s technology is in stark contrast to Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” rhetoric which places Windows as a more secure, and higher-performing choice over Linux.

I decided to take this a step further and compose a pseudo BBC article on Bill Gates’ full migration to Linux. Notice that the URL clearly contains the word ¨Amusement¨, which gives context and clarifies that all is cynicism, I hope.

“Me loves me penguin…”

In short, I read the following item, which I believe is old news despite the datestamp:

The world’s largest maker of personal computers, Dell, has reported a fall in third-quarter profits after taking a charge to repair faulty parts.

Putting two and two together, the following item on bad Intel capacitors got Slashdotted a short while ago:

At issue are faulty capacitors on motherboards that store power and regulate voltage. Defective capacitors found in the Dell Optiplex workstations, some Apple iMac G5s, HP xw-series workstations made in 2004 and PCs with the Intel D865GBF motherboard have been found to bulge, pop, leak and crust over, causing video failure and periodic system shutdowns.

I have recently discovered a UK shop that sells laptops without an operating system (i.e. without Windows) and offers many AMD options too. Thus, they are entitled to have a link.

Related link: Linux on the laptop

Encouraging news to Open Source advocates have been published today.

Firstly, OpenDocument (a la OpenOffice) attracts further interest, much as in the Massachusetts case, which stirred similar interest elsewhere:

Big guns in the software industry are massing behind OpenDocument as government customers show more interest in open-source alternatives to Microsoft’s desktop software.

Secondly, IBM, Sony and Philips sidle closer to Linux:

Three of the world’s biggest electronics companies — IBM, Sony and Philips — have joined forces with the two largest Linux software distributors to create a company for sharing Linux patents, royalty-free.

Well, somebody’s happy!

A sign that is sure to get people’s attention

ATHER common these are aptly-orchestrated campaigns that attract media attention and stir talks among people. It is a form of free advertisement, which benefits from people’s willingness to propagate a message.

Take this code debugging project for example. They offer beer, they offer a trip to Roumania (timely due to Halloween) and finally they receive a free advert on Slashdot and free labour to test their program. Slashdot editors, among others, fell for it…

The winning formula:

• Set up a contest
• Make the reward interesting
• 1^st prize: Get free ads
• Invite just the ‘talented’ few
• Users test program
• Hacks found and fixed
• 2^nd prize: Profit

Jeff Veen explains why the idea of invites is similar. WordPress.com takes this approach when accumulating users for a new Web service, possibly following the tactics of Google Mail. This also may prevent misuse and bad activity as I previously explained. From a commercial point-of-view, it is a disguised form of playing hard to get, though there true intentions behind it, namely quality assurance (e.g. misuse of 2 GB mail account for MP3 sharing and storage) and reliable moderation, e.g. spam flagging in Akismet, which can be tricky.