Someone else has tried to hack my web site. They were at 62.150.201.14 which resolves to somewhere in Kuwait. From the server log:
62.150.201.14 – – [19/Sep/2004:20:36:23 -0400] “PUT /kwkh.htm HTTP/1.0” 403 1287 “-” “Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider DAV 1.1”
Maybe I should set up WebDav onto a honeypot, so I could see what the loser is up to.
When I first got my 40GB iPod (3G) this summer, it was great. Except for one small problem. My music was stored on an external hard drive. The music played fine through iTunes while the external drive was mounted. Unfortunately, the iPod was not recognized through the external hard drive’s second FireWire port. I really didn’t want to blow another $35 to get a FireWire hub.
So I had to have a friend with a ton of free drive space copy all the music to his hard drive, import it all into his iTunes, then we conncted my iPod to his computer. Then we drag and dropped the music to the iPod. After it copied, Josh disconnected the iPod, removed the music from his iTunes, and erased the MP3s from his computer.
Now all I have to do to add new music to my iPod is manually copy the files within my iTunes. But I can’t get the music off of my iPod onto my new Powerbook G4. And what’s going to happen when I get a new iMac G5 later this year? Is Apple expecting me to re-rip all the CD’s I have?
That’s where a very cool program called iPodDownload entered the picture. iPodDownload adds a plugin to iTunes that allows you to copy music files from your iPod to your hard drive. Very cool, should save me a ot of time. So I downloaded it yesterday, figuring I would work with it this weekend. Well, I am glad I got the program when I did. Because Apple threatened this guy’s web site for distributing “unauthorized Apple iTunes® code.”
Thanks, Apple. I paid for these 2,177 songs, either from the iTunes store, or by ripping the CDs I have. You aren’t making any friends by limiting people unreasonably. And I think it is unreasonable to limit people from copying their music between their computers and devices.
Two news articles about this: MacMinute: Apple shuts down iTunes plug-in and MacNN: Apple forces developer to remove free iTunes plugin.
I recently sent an email referencing CDT and it’s Pennsylvania law suit, and in a bounced message I found a wonderful example of a bad regular expression to use in your blocking lists. Someone decided that any email message that has this pattern of letters in it should not be allowed to be delivered: pen?s. This search string is obviously too broad, and is resulting in false positives.
I’ve been using Qualcomm’s Eudora for the Mac since the day I started at CDT, June 1, 1999. I’ve moved my Eudora settings file from Mac to Mac as I’ve upgraded machines over the years. And I’ve changed versions of Eudora many times since then. And changed from OS 8.something to my current OS X 10.3.5. And this morning I came into the office, opened Eudora, it started checking my mail, and promptly crashed. No joy.
I have extensively customized Eudora. Tons of mailboxes, messages, filters, address book. It just works. Yes, the stupid ad box is very annoying, but on my 15″ PowerBook G4 it is fairly unobtrusive. And paying an annual licensing fee to get rid of the ad box is not going to happen. 15 users in the office, times $50 per year. Sorry. We’re a non-profit, we need that $750. I’ll go through my mailboxes and see exactly how huge my Eudora setup is.
Coincidentally, I just got the October 2004 issue of Macworld. A cover story is “Mail Call! The Ultimate E-mail Survival Guide.” They make a point of reviewing Apple Mail, Microsoft Entourage, and BareBones MailSmith; and of explicitly not reviewing Eudora, because “the e-mail landscape has changed and, regrettably, Eudora has been slow to change with it.” It looks like I need to investigate MailSmith.
Someone tried to deface PlanetMike yesterday. From my server logs:
200.140.36.178 – – [01/Sep/2004:01:36:43 -0400] “PUT /Hack3rz.htm HTTP/1.0” 403 1293 “-” “Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider DAV 1.1”
A google search turned up some info on these “Hack3rz”, but not much useful information. And a All-Nettools.com search showed that IP address to be in Brazil. Maybe I should simply firewall out all Brazilian IP addresses.
I was looking through the blogs for the Presidential Campaigns. It’s interesting that George Bush’s blog does not allow people to post comments, while John Kerry’s blog does allow public comments. (Ralph Nader does not have a blog.) I don’t know if the comments on Kerry’s blog are from “real” people or not, but based on a few of the comments I looked at, there isn’t much editing of them going on.
I wanted to take my family to the Prince William County Fair next week. So I visited the web site to get information on hours and ticket prices. The PWC Fair is exactly backwards in how they charge for tickets. If I wait to buy tickets at the door, it is $14 per ticket (adults start at age 7, what’s up with that???). If I buy the tickets online, they cost an extra $1.98 each. But if I physically mail a ticket request to the PWC Fair staff, it is $4 cheaper. Well, the deadline for that is today, so I’d rather not do that, since there is no guarantee that my request be processed in time for our visit.
It should be cheaper to order tickets online than in person, or via mail order. So now I am planning on buying ticket when I get to the Fairgrounds. And now I am not as likely to go, since if the weather is bad the two days I have free next week, I don’t have any $$$ invested in going to the Fair.
The Electoral Vote Predictor tracks the electoral vote state by state for the 2004 Presidential Elections. Very cool project.
“Microsoft’s first beta of Longhorn, the next major Windows client release, has been delayed until the second half of next year and could delay the expected 2006 release date even more; ” Infoworld.
An interesting study of the primary gurus of web design: These web sites are identical? or are they?.