Idiomatic Expression

So you say you want to find a cure for Cancer? Well put your processor where your mouth is, and download the grid.org client. The two current projects are finding a Smallpox vaccine candidate, and a processing data for Cancer research.

For the OS X challenged here is a step-by-step guide on sharing iTunes between multiple users on the same computer.

I haven’t seen this reported in a US paper yet, so for your reading enjoyment. The Taipei Times is reporting that Citibank is admiting to a “computer error” that disclosed the personal information of over 2000 customers. The article doesn’t specifically state this, but I believe this was limited to Citibank’s Chinese language website based in Taiwan.

Look at who is fighting to defend SPAM!

At Nick’s urging I have joined Friendster. I am still not quite sure what I think of it. It is built on the “Web of Trust” model that PGP has made famous, but you automatically trust your friends as “Trusted Introducers” with a maximum trust depth of four. Therefore if I add Nick as a friend, Nick’s friends, Nick’s friends’ friends, and Nick’s friends’ friends’ friends are seen as valid members of my “Personal Network”. Of course Nick is seen as inherently valid as I have personally designated him as a friend. I would be much happier if the trust depth was definable per friend. I might trust Nick to a depth of three, but there may be other friends that I only trust to a depth of two, or for some friends, whoose ability to judge the character of others is questionable, I may not trust them to introduce me to their friends at all.

If you are a member of Friendster, feel free to add me as a friend. I feel like such a loser with only three friends and no testimonials. Wait a second… I am a loser!

(NOTE: These keys are stale, but i’ll leave the entry for posterity –Randy)

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1

For those who might be interested the PGP Public Key block for my
public email addresses is in the extended entry.

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
Version: PGP 7.0.1

iQA/AwUBPs5xSSz1SuFlICHfEQK6xwCeIPwDmWYWJdqLyRiV8OTIKW8rea4AoMEp
SZYwjlamSwSBrD3xnGD07Wfp
=Qusu
—–END PGP SIGNATURE—–

If you use MS Windows either by choice or by force, you have probably been perplexed as to what in the hell was going on inside your little beige box. Compared to OpenBSD, Solaris, or OSX the tools supplied by MS don’t give you an easy way to monitor the internal workings of the windows family of operating systems. I have spent the last week working with a CA beta product and had been having a pretty tough time until on of the CA programmers I was working with recommended DebugView to monitor the debug output.

I have also found TCPView extremely helpful in determining the root of problems with the distributed application that I am working with. TCPView shows all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, I have even started running this on my laptop to keep an eye on my network connections (you never can tell when your employer is going to try and slip some new spy ware on your computer)!

There are quite a few other useful tools at Sysinternals.com, and none requires more than unzipping the .exe and starting the program.