Sun Java SDK on Ubuntu or Debian
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Thunderbird and Firefox certificate dialog boxes crash programs
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“Lock keys failed” error when importing photos from Canon Powershot S1 IS
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AIM virus
I saw an interesting virus yesterday on my roommate’s computer. (Need I mention that it’s a Windows XP box?) It hooks into AIM and sends messages to all the people on the Buddies list. Each message says something like “Nice picture:” or “Check this out!” and includes a link to a .COM file on a temporary website, in this case earthlink.net accounts. In this case, it sent me the former: “nice picture: http://home.earthlink.net/~kriskay3126/IMG00030.com“. I have to admit that I did click on it, though in the back of my mind some warning bells were going off. My computer asked me, “What do you want to do with this file? The MIME-type indicates that it is a Windows executable.” Unfortunately, I declined to download it, so I won’t have a chance to dissect it. I fired off a note in response, letting him know what was up, and temporarily blocked him (It kept sending me messages).
Captchas as currency
In the computer world, the traditional valuable limited resources are time (speed), memory, and storage space. But computers do not stand alone — they are designed to complement the activities that we cannot yet automate, such as creativity, fuzzy analogies, and complex visual perception. It’s that last one that interests me.