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The SANS Internet Storm center, which has found itself dealing with the fallout on the Internet from a quite literal storm, is reporting that a vulnerability in Dameware (apparently a remote admin system for Windows) is being exploited. Ordinarily the solution would be to tell people to download the update… but the Dameware website is in New Orleans. Fortunately, the UK-based site is up.

Not everyone in New Orleans has gone offline. Netcraft reports that domain registrar DirectNIC has held on through Katrina and its aftermath. Being located 11 floors up in an area that hasn’t flooded yet probably helps. That, and having three weeks’ worth of backup power.

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A quick question for people who discount the idea that global warming could be caused, in part, by human activities on the basis that we can’t possibly impact the climate as much as natural events and cycles affect it.

Do you also discount the well-documented depletion of the ozone layer by interaction with CFCs and similar chemicals? That seems to be a major environmental impact, and one that clearly has an anthropogenic component.

Nearly two decades after we cut back on CFC use, it looks like the ozone layer is finally starting to recover—or at least it’s stopped shrinking. Of course, it’ll take time. The whole reason we started using CFCs is that they didn’t seem to react with anything, so they’ll stay in the atmosphere for decades. UCI’s Sherwood Roland (who won a Nobel Prize for research on this topic) is quoted as saying, “This problem was a long time in the making, and because of the persistence of these chlorine compounds, there is no short-term fix.”

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Opera BrowserOpera Software celebrates its 10th anniversary today with an online party and free registration codes for a day.

I first discovered the Opera web browser in college, probably 1998 or back in 1999. A friend who worked with me at the Artslab showed it to me, and I was impressed by how fast it was and that the installer fit on a floppy. Opera was shareware only back then, with a 30-day trial period, and I had no objection to paying the $15 or $20 $18 it cost with a student discount. (I remember scanning my student ID and emailing them a JPEG to prove I was a student.)

By the time Y2K rolled around, Netscape 4 was showing its age, and Mozilla was still early in its development cycle. IE—well, IE had won the browser war, and was arguably better than Netscape at this point, but as far as I was concerned they had cheated to do so instead of winning solely on merits. Opera was a lean, mean browsing machine.

Things changed during 2000, though. Opera 4 and 5 started getting cluttered, and Mozilla was starting to stabilize. Side projects like Galeon started branching off of Mozilla. Pretty soon I was using Mozilla all the time on Windows and Galeon on Linux.

I kept up with new releases, though, and the latest version of Opera is excellent—on both Windows and Linux. I mostly use Firefox these days, but I’m using Opera a lot more than I used to—and not just for testing!

Check out Opera, grab a free reg code while they’re still available, or just drop in on the party.

Seen in rounds at WaSP Buzz, Slashdot, and Opera Watch.

Also interesting: the Opera 10th Anniversary T-Shirt reminded me of Joi Ito’s comments on wearing Firefox (via a*dot). I wonder how people would react if I wore a Firefox shirt and an Opera hat, or vice-versa?

(Other notable tens this August: Windows 95 and Internet Explorer)

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One of the first tours we signed up for on Hawaii was a whale watching tour. We figured even if we didn’t see any whales, we’d still have spent a couple of hours on a sailboat. It was April, near the end of the season, and we booked a tour through Red Sail (via Travelocity) on their catamaran, the Noa Noa:

View of catamaran, the Noa Noa

Continue reading →

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There are two books I picked up recently that demonstrate how not to tell a story with pictures: Teen Titans #27 and the manga of The Nightmare Before Christmas.

First, Teen Titans #27, first half of a two parter by fill-in team of Gail Simone and Rob Liefeld. I’d planned on writing a more thorough review, but Comics Should Be Good beat me to it. And yeah, reviewing Liefeld’s art feels like a cheap shot, but sometimes ya just gotta go for it. Simone’s story isn’t bad, but it’s hard to follow. In particular, there are too many places where the art isn’t about story or action, it’s about showing the heroes or villains in dramatic poses. And yeah, you want the occasional dramatic pose, because you want to show off the costumes. That’s part of the genre. But you need to convey what’s actually happening. As dramatic as the last two pages were, I couldn’t figure out just what Kestrel was doing without looking at the “Next issue” blurb!

And then there are the places Liefeld left out dramatic poses that should have been there. The issue introduces a quartet of teen villains, but only one of them gets a full-body dramatic view, two get only action shots, and one—well, let me put it this way. I had to flip back to the beginning to be sure that there really were four of them and not just three. He’s in two panels with only his head and shoulders visible in the entire book. He’s not named, there’s no sign of powers or special skills, and he’s wearing a shirt and tie. I have to wonder whether Liefeld just didn’t get around to designing a costume since the character gets eliminated halfway through the book.

Anyway, onto The Nightmare Before Christmas. Continue reading →

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I’m sure every English-speaking chemistry student has joked about “Avocado’s Number” (the number of particles in a guaca-mole). Now the joke has gone professional, with this package we found at Trader Joe’s.

Avocado's Number Guacamole package from Trader Joe's

The back has a bit about Avogadro’s number, and admits that “there aren’t 6.0221367×10²³ avocados in here, but 5 plus avo’s isn’t bad!”