DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Scanning my logs, I was shocked to see that Code Red (or variants thereof) continues to hammer my server, attempting to infect it. There are a lot of infected IIS servers out there… debris.com has been hit over 300 times in the past 5 days.

If you’re running a webserver with PHP, you can easily send a warning email to administrators of infected machines. The code goes into your 404 (“document not found”) handler, so unless you do have a file called default.ida, this should work for you.

The source code is here: PHP Code Red Warning Generator

Anyone taking bets that the dancing monkey boy is on the verge of a massive coronary?

Seriously, check out the sweat rings, the pained grimace, and the way he tries to mask the fact that he can barely breathe. Bill Gates ought to be shopping for a new CEO right about now. And Ballmer is in desperate need of a healthier lifestyle.

(Thanks to camworld for the “developers! developers! developers!” link.)

Patronize these links, man:

• Mirror sites
• Related humor

Jamie Zawinski reveals one of the unforseen risks of running a nightclub in San Francisco.

A friend pointed out this fascinating article (second link, below) on Claude Shannon, whose research in the 1930s and 1940s on “information theory” set out a blueprint for digital media and communications: encoding, compression, transmission, etc. He sketched the first digital circuits in 1937.

Here’s his “groundbreaking” 1948 paper, A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Warning: it’s not called the “most important master’s thesis of the 20th century” because it’s easy to read!

If you’re interested in media, communications, or cryptography, check out this article: Claude Shannon: Reluctant Father of the Digital Age

My favorite part of the article is the description of a device Shannon built called the “Ultimate Machine”:

…a box with a large switch on the side. Turn the switch on, and the lid would slowly rise, revealing a mechanical hand that would reach down, turn the switch off, and withdraw — leaving the box just as it was.

Ha!

If you run a website, you might have been upset to learn that Microsoft’s “Smart Tags” would alter your content to show Microsoft’s advertising as links within your pages. Microsoft postponed this plan, but apparently another company has launched a similar technology.

The technology is called TopText. The marketroids who vomited this onto the Internet work for eZula.com.

First, read the original report from the Chron: Mystery Links

Next, read the Slashdot analysis: Don’t Eat the Yellow Links.

Then, opt out by emailing support@ezula.com.

Kudos to miester for the warning!

Update: you can sign a petition to shut down ezula.com!