The Internet Is Dangerous?

“Is the Internet becoming a little more hazardous? The Bagle virus took a turn for the worse yesterday, with some variations now able to infect PCs without any user intervention,” says an article on the Motley Fool today in response to Bagle worm variants.

The Internet is safe, people. I’m sitting here on my MacOS X machine with no worries about Bagle. So are Linux, *BSD, Solaris, BeOS, QNX and users of every OS except Windows. The problem is not the Internet. The problem is not a virus. The problem is that there is code in use by the majority of computer users that will allow executables to run with no user intervention. Here’s the corrected headline:

Is the use of Microsoft’s Windows operating system becoming a little more hazardous? The Bagle virus took a turn for the worse yesterday, with some variations now able to infect PCs without any user intervention.

The British Underclass

[submitted on behalf of nessuk]

Whilst reading through the Daily Telegraph on my way to work recently…I came across the following article, about the burgeoning British Underclass (a humorous guide). This lead to the following website, detailing the ways to ‘spot’ said British Underclass. I live in Kent….therefore the local reference for so called underclass is “Chavs”. Is this unique to the British Isles…and is there something similar in the US? : )

Sure, we call them “rednecks.” 😉 – mneptok

Orkutized

Google is jumping headlong into the associative web community market (i.e.Friendster) with a new service called Orkut. It’s gonna be huge.

Right now it’s in beta, so going to the link isn’t going to be too rewarding an experience. The only way to get in is to be invited by an existing member. Soon enough, though…

Friendster has been hobbled by its popularity. At least, I hope it has. Site performance at Friendster is horrific, and has been for months. I have to hope it’s because of load and not inattention. With the wind of Google in their sails, Orkut suffers none of that. At least not yet. We’ll see how it scales, but I’ll bet they’ll do fine.

I’ve already found an issue where I cannot post karma info for people with Safari and need to use Firebird. That needs to be fixed before release, folks.

It’s been fun poking around the past day or two, despite it being flaky at times. It’s like Friendster, but without the suck. I’m surprised by how many people I know are in on the beta. I’d invite you all, but that’s not in the spirit of things. No blanket invitations.

Watch for an Orkut invite, or announcement of its release. This thing will be massive. As friend Scot’s blog remarked last week, “If Google can do for social networking and blogging what they’ve done for search, and once their web services APIs become available to developers, they’re going to become the unstoppable internet platform.”

Snatched

GarageBand has some interesting loops. I was mucking about with them and found that I could recreate the theme from Snatch with built-in loops in about 3 minutes.

Don’t believe me? Try it yourself. Here’s the recipe.

  • Percussion Combo 8
  • Upright Funk Bass 17
  • Shaker 8
  • Club Dance Beat 54
  • Far East Drums 1

Still don’t believe me? Can’t run GarageBand? Too lazy? Click here to play.

Mix liberally and add chilled over an overly litigious attorney and there’s a recipe for disaster.

I hope Guy Ritchie is an Apple fan.

And since DK is curious, this was made on a G4 500 with 384MB of RAM.

Steve Jobs Gets A Woody

I just went back to watch the GarageBand demo Steve Jobs did during the keynote address at Macworld/SF 2004. I’m glad I was listening closely.

Steve starts doing the demo of loops by a non-musician. He makes a GarageBand project, adds the first loop and starts playing it. Then, I swear, he says “And then I’m going to go get a woody … I’m going to go get a bass.”

Go watch the movie. Scroll ahead to 1h19m~10s.

Wow. That’s good software.

Or is that supposed to be subliminal? Everybody reacted pretty favorably to GarageBand. Is The Steve