MyDoom
The latest virus has swept the world, and is now responsible for numerous e-mail slowdowns and other weirdness. The anti-virus companies’ hype machines are working overdrive, with one trumpetting from the rooftops that it’s the worst ever.
The media are happily lapping it up. Funny thing is the different names that the various anti-virus companies have given it. Try and guess which name is being used by the mainstream media.
- MiMail
- Novarg
- Shimg
- MyDoom
Whoa, stop right there. MyDoom. What a fabulous name! Mimail sounds like a warm fuzzy free e-mail service. Novarg sounds like some Eastern European city. Shimg? What the hell is that? You want us to sell papers warning the punters about Shimg?! Ah MyDoom, it’s gotta be MyDoom.
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Rain
It started with a little rain, gushing down the sides of the train. When we got to the next stop, in the sudden quiet you could hear it hitting the window, and people began to look up from their newspapers and books. It was pouring down in almost a surreal manner, making ripples on the windows as the train rolled along. And then a short burst of hail. Most people looked rather bemused at the storm’s ferocity, and at Caulfield I could hear people laughing as they got off the train and ran through the rain.
I got home soaked, despite the umbrella. I got changed and toasted a hot crumpet to cure the cold and wet, before heading out in the car for dinner.
Later in the night as I dropped off to sleep, I could hear more rain pelting down on the verandah, and I grumbled to myself about the washing that had been on the line since Wednesday. At this rate I don’t expect it to be dry until 2005. Oh well, at least there was no flooding, unlike some suburbs, and the garden won’t be looking quite so dry and dead.
Woke up this morning to get into work by 8:30 for a team breakfast. Cool. But by time to leave the house I was running a little late for the train. Not usually a problem; with a train about every ten minutes max in rush hour, it’s not worth worrying about, but for a team breakfast I thought it was worth making the effort.
So I thought I’d cut the usual 8 minute walk down by a few minutes by taking the lazy way out and driving some of the way. Got to the car and found I’d left the car window a couple of centimetres open overnight. Driver’s seat soaked. Aaaaaaarrggggghh. Swearing copiously under my breath, I closed the window fully. Hopefully it’ll dry in the sun today, after all as we know from a thousand sad newspaper reports from pokies carparks, cars heat up quickly. Though now I’m wondering if I should have soaked some of the water up with a towel and if the car will stink of damp seat padding forever more.
I ended up running most of the way to the station. I got there just as the train pulled in and stood in the doorway, sweating like a pig, wishing someone would open a window. Should I take off my jacket? What if there were sweat patches all over my shirt? Ewwwwww.
I left it on, and eventually cooled down. No seats left. A father and daughter sat together, sharing the ride until she got off at Armadale to go to school. A mother and son got on there. Obviously a new starting student, in the uniform for my old school. His bag and jacket were shiny, his top button done up, his tie scruffily fitted. Perhaps his first or second day?
At Richmond I changed to a Flinders Street direct train. Two women, friends obviously, noticed each other across the carriage, and had a conversation for one stop, most of those in the vicinity listening and smiling at their anecdotes. We got into Flinders Street and the guy on the PA announcing where the train was headed next was talking with the enthusiasm of an auctioneer. “Ringwood train… Ringwood train!” Rain was dripping steadily down into the Degraves Street subway, the harried commuters dodging around it.
Got to work in plenty of time for breakfast at La Scala in Australia On Collins, only to find some others delayed half an hour or more in rain-inspired traffic jams. Food was okay but not brilliant. Waitress was surly, and guarded the portions of butter like they were pure gold. Those having tea and coffee found condom-like plastic liners in their cups. We ate, had some laughs, and left no tip. Somewhere else will get our breakfast business next time.
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Stuff
The ticket inspector on the tram the other week was incredibly polite “Thank you very much” when he noticed I had a yearly ticket. He wasn’t to know that I’d bought it on the last day of last year to avoid the price rise, saving about $200 in the process.
The guy in the desk next to me at work has only shown up for two half-days in the last (almost) two weeks. Obviously has very relaxed working hours.
After the whole etiquette thing the other week, I now feel obligated to snatch my bag off the seat next to me on the train as soon as there is the merest hint of crowding.
From the top of the hill in Footscray Park on Monday afternoon, was able to hear the Hoodoo Gurus playing the Big Day Out. Well, when the wind was blowing in the right direction.
Lots of infected e-mails flying around with the latest worm/virus in them, causing general virus-type havoc. What’s doubly annoying is the warning messages I get from other people’s mail servers telling me I sent an infected mail. No I didn’t: these things fake the “From” address deliberately. Even the detailed geeky mail headers (such as “Message-Id”) show they didn’t come from me. My machines are clean, thank you very much.
Saw Cathy Freeman having a coffee in Centre Place last night as I was walking to the station to go home.
School is back today. I can’t quite believe Jeremy is in grade 1 already – let alone Isaac being in grade 3.
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Night
It’s late. Or is it early? 2:49am and I’ve been sitting here almost an hour and a half, watching the work computers, waiting for some guys to finish their night time firewall work.
It looks cold and grey outside.
Thankfully it’s only very occasionally that I have to do this kind of thing. Anyway usually I waltz into work whenever I feel like it with impunity, so I can’t really complain.
Still, I’d rather be in bed.
Update: It wrapped up around 5am. Yawn.
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Hazard for cyclists
Spent yesterday driving up to Kyneton and Castlemaine. Just for exploring, the country air, and the company.
Noted on the freeway, a sign saying “Dull day? Use your low beam headlights”.
Well, we were having a quite interesting day, so the headlights stayed off. We did see a number of other people in cars who were obviously fairly bored though, as their headlights were on…
Spotted in Kyneton — just another hazard for the cyclists to watch out for: horse shit in the bike lane.
If I were a cyclist, I’d be complaining to the local council. After all, there are no signs indicating it is a Horse Shit Lane.
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Instant Movie Review
The Rage in Placid Lake. Very very enjoyable. Ben Lee not being a wanker. Hilarious parents played by Miranda Richardson and Gary Mcdonald. Sure on the face of it it’s a little Ab-Fabbish, but there’s enough other stuff going on to make it very funny — and the scene with the short film is hilarious. 
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Food rumour
Hot and totally unsubstantiated rumour is that Cadbury are thinking of altering their Australian chocolate recipe, making it sweeter to bring it into line with their UK and European operations.
Damn globalisation. I like it the way it is, and on this Australia Day, I call on all right-thinking Aussies to march on Parliament to demand we keep our Aussie chocolate!
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Ancient geeks: a short history of MSN
Cleaning up a bunch of old junk recently, I came across a cheque from 1995, from MSN. Dunno if anybody remembers, but MSN was originally not a web site, it was a proprietary online service, with its own set of dialup Points Of Presence (locally called OnAustralia), and its own media standards. They launched it with Windows 95 in August 1995, and they’d obviously planned it in the year or two beforehand, before the web became popular.
(Despite later claims, Windows 95 didn’t come with a web browser as standard. You originally had to buy it as an extra in the Microsoft Plus package.)
Before launch, they approached numerous content providers to get them to put stuff on the MSN network. It was pretty clunky, but they included the option to put content on that one could charge a Per View amount for. I happened to be working in Online Training at the time, heard about this venture, and wondered if I should sign up and put some of my Toxic Custard stuff online. Since they were waiving all publishers’ fees, I thought I’d give it a go, and got my mate Brian (who wrote a set of stories called Rocket Roger in uni) to have a go too.
We put some stuff up for free, some for a small fee for viewing, under the banner name of “In Your Face”. I think it had an icon which looked like a Windows Folder, but with a face that was sticking its tongue out.
In summary, it was a complete waste of time. It was not a case of “Built it, and they will come”. Hardly anybody looked at the free stuff, let alone the paid stuff — we made $6.73 all up. By the time MSN launched, the web was taking off, nobody was interested in paying for content. Not to mention that the standard for presenting anything remotely clever media-wise was horrible — a hideous thing called MediaView, which presentation-wise was similar to the web, but absolute murder to write anything in.
It was just a few short months later in December 1995 when Bill Gates made his famous U-turn — the realisation that the Internet really was the bees knees, it was a bandwagon they should definitely be jumping on.
They dumped all of MSN’s proprietary side. MediaView morphed into something not quite so hideous called Blackbird, which then got renamed as Internet Studio, which then died a very well-deserved death. The OnAustralia dialups were given to Telstra and became the basis of Bigpond, they ramped up developement on Internet Explorer (thus starting the browser wars in which IE eventually triumphed over Netscape), they re-engineered MSN to be a number of web sites, and eventually bought Hotmail to sit in the centre of it.
With the Internet (and particularly the Web) as pervasive as it is now, looking back, it’s hard to believe that Microsoft was genuinely clueless enough to launch a proprietary online service in the face of the Internet (arguably I was just as clueless to bother to put content onto it), or even to launch a major version of Windows as late as 1995 with no built-in Web browser.
In these enlightened times, of course, nobody believes a word of it.
And we never did cash that cheque.
Read on for some more geeky artefacts Read more
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