Static in the Ether » Web Randomness http://lair.moria.org/blog Unix, Information Security & Systems Administration Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:14:29 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 A Mafia take on the OSI stack http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/163 http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/163#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:29:39 +0000 Barry Irwin http://lair.moria.org/blog/?p=163 Laura A. Robinson has a nice piece describing the traditional OSI stack in terms of the negotiation of a meeting between two mafia a Dons.  While probably not for the technically minded ( I’m sure most people in the networking and security fields have their own little mnemonics to remember the PDNTSPA acronym), I think it may serve as a useful example when illustrating things to people who have at least seen the Godfather trilogy or the Sopranos.

]]> http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/163/feed 1 Phishing on Phacebook ? http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/150 http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/150#comments Sat, 25 Oct 2008 06:14:03 +0000 Barry Irwin http://lair.moria.org/blog/?p=150 I came across the following on facebook while doing my monthly catchup on who is who in the zoo. Is it bad design to allow users to inject their own content like this ? In this case is more a case of a litmus test of the awareness of social networking users , in terms of awareness to this.

Is it really this easy, to get people to give up the proverbial crown jewels?

Is it really this easy, to get people to give up the proverbial crown jewels?

I would assume the person in question either has savvy friends who have not fallen for the ploy, or has no friends ;)

*info redacted to protect the curious*

]]> http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/150/feed 1 Happy 30th 8086 Father of the x86 architecture http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/48 http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/48#comments Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:30:43 +0000 Barry Irwin http://lair.moria.org/blog/?p=48 Thirty years ago today (8 June 1978) , Intel unleashed the 8086 16-bit CPU on the world, some four years after the debut of the 8080 which powered the Altair computer (something I wish I could find to own!).
Computer world has a really nice writeup on the history and development of ver the last 30 years and corresponding brief time line

Intel’s own Microprocessor Hall of Fame describes the chip as:

A pivotal sale to IBM’s new personal computer division made the 8088 the brains of IBM’s new hit product–the IBM PC. The 8088′s success propelled Intel into the ranks of the Fortune 500, and Fortune magazine named the company one of the “Business Triumphs of the Seventies.”

Intel also has a nice image (300K) of the 8086 and 8088 die.

While purists will probably grumble about the horridness of the x86 family instruction set in comparison to some RISC and embedded controller instructions sets, it has proved highly scalable, and extensible over the last 30 years.

]]> http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/48/feed 0 A web 2.0 we go… http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/31 http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/31#comments Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:53:33 +0000 Barry Irwin http://lair.moria.org/blog/?p=31 Having a quiet evening at home is a fairly rare occurrence, but tonight it happened. Consequently I got so spent some quality time exploring the wealth of plugins available for WordPress.  After some picking and choosing Ive added a couple, and as the title sugegsts they are “web 2.0″ – for varing definitions of the term that is.

My big concern is how much does the addition of such content actually slow down the loading of a page ? Something I’ll need to keep an eye on. Now if only I could get Slimbox to behave itself as advertised.

]]> http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/31/feed 0 Google with a MacOS X feel http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/19 http://lair.moria.org/blog/archives/19#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 09:00:24 +0000 Barry Irwin http://lair.moria.org/blog/?p=19 Quick and dirty, google mashup that has a MacOS-X feel

http://www.theplaceforitall.com/googlex/

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