Well, we’ve been pretty tied up lately, but (hopefully) we’re back to updating this little news and nonsense spot a little more regularly.
Speaking of this little spot… you may have noticed that we’ve been unreachable since late Thursday or early Friday. It appears that someone hacked the ISDN router that connects this machine to the internet. With the expert help of Trevor at Cyberramp, the router has been reconfigured and is working like a champ. And I believe that the security whole has been plugged. We’ll see. Those of you connecting with a modem should be immune to this type of attack.
If you have a statis IP, check the manual on your router –ISDN or otherwise– and change any default passwords and –unless you configure your router from the beach– turn off remote administration. The upside to our situation is that our server was never compromised. I’m not an expert on security on other platforms, but the MacOS does an admirable job in that regard. Not perfect, but solid.
We’re a small operation: myself, and a few people that help on a part-time basis. So, my sarcastic side wonders why this target? Perhaps… chance. Perhaps… someone doesn’t like that we believe that businesses can support the arts and political causes and have no problem hosting material on our business site of a political or artistic nature. My really sarcastic side wonders, how weak a hacker has to be to go after a one-person company. Perhaps… the individual isn’t good enough to attack "real" targets?
But, enough complaining. We –meaning I– know the risks of hosting a server. You place yer bet, ya take yer chances. For those into great goth bands –if the term doesn’t ring a bell, think dark rock somewhere beyond alternative and you’ll only be in the wrong city. Anyway, check out local goth band Gropius over at www.skinney.net. Even better, check out their limited run CD that we helped crank out recently. About a third of the run sold the first night.
But, enough complaining. We –meaning I– know the risks of hosting a server. You place yer bet, ya take yer chances. For those into great goth bands (if the term doesn’t ring a bell, think dark rock somewhere beyond alternative and you’ll only be in the wrong city. Anyway, check out local goth band Gropius over at the killer website www.skinney.net. Even better, check out the limited run CD that we helped crank out recently. About a third of the run sold the first night.
On another artistic note, this year the Slam Poetry Nationals will be just down the road in Austin. Just before hand –August 16, 1998– this "fabulous" city of Dallas will host an invitational involving eight of the teams. If you’re in the area, watch for the next issue of the Word for details. If not, you send an email to us at the datawranglers and we’ll get someone to mail details.
On the political front, just in case someone is wondering about our politics, there is at least one member of the ACLU here. If you want to know more about that organization, check out their website at www.aclu.org. Just thought you’d want to know.
Finally, some computer notes. AMD and Motorolla have signed a technology sharing agreement. They’ll be trading all sorts of dark, mystical and usually boring geek speak and techno secrets. But, Motorolla will be sharing copper technology with AMD. Which means what? Well, AMD makes a clone of the Intel Pentium chip that’s much faster than the comparable Intel chips at a much lower price. According to the salesperson at the CompUSA up the road, their most popular machine running Windows 95 has an AMD chip, not an Intel chip. And then there’s copper. Most people are aware that the actual chip in a computer is made of silicon. But, that silicon has to connect to the rest of the computer somehow. That’s been done with aluminum, because aluminum is easy to work with at very small scales. But, it is not nearly as conductive as copper –such as what’s probably in the wires in your walls. Early this year, IBM announced they had mastered using copper instead of aluminum in chips. That means less resistance and that means faster processors. As a result, AMD expects to have 1 gigahertz (1000 megahertz) processors sometime around the end of the century. And that should allow AMD to increase their already impressive speed advantage versus Intel.
In the boring, but very profitable world of databases, two of the biggest vendors –Informix and Oracle– are expected to announce this week that they will join the ranks of commercial software vendors who support the only alternative to Windows that is gaining market share: Linux. Oracle in particular deserves kudos. Larry Ellison may be slightly slimey –well really slimey– but his firm has database offerings available and coming for an unreal range of systems: about thirty, including Mac OS, Palm Pilot and now linux. Washington may be screaming monopoly, but the market seems to like ensuring Bill Gates doesn’t control every nook on the planet.