Pan Admun Republic of Western Blog

That Pepsi Girl, hum...

Some think this is a flog, a fake blog by corperate marketing to harness the blog power to draw people to their ad campaign.

Whether this is a flog or not, the commerical indeed seems quite successful, credit to the cute girl (name Mandy, as reported), another case of sex sales.

On the other hand, I was watching Chinese cable TV the other night, there was a commerical from a Rogers wireless retailer. It has a cute Chinese girl too, but the effect is nowhere near the pepsi girl. Ok, the viewer community is much smaller, but it's about making an impact to the viewers.

This commerical feels so cheezy; A somewhat cute Chinese girl dancing hip-hop happily, and phone ring so she grabs it. The girl acts quite unnaturally, at least I think so. Then there was one close shot that showing her belly button (the sex-sale-punch), it just plain ugly.

US army is deploying robots to fight. The usual response from people are: a) oh, no. Terminator is coming b) yeah right, you rich boy trying fight your dirty war with toys again

This actually remind me of Fuchikoma , the 4 legs AI tank in Ghost in the Shell. It fights along its master to provide transportation, armor protection and fire support. It is kind of like these robots, especially the Talon. I could imagine having these robots deploy with troops and fight along with soldiers. It just like a Fuchikoma without a brain.

Also see here

圍村盆菜

Is it a good thing to teach about writing virus, spamware, worm and spyware?

Why not? Without classes like this, people are figuring out by themselves how to write such program anyway. I believed virus/spymware/worm is not a very hard piece of software to write, any decent programmer with good knowledge on the platform can write one. And a good evil coder can write some very damaging software, as history had shown.

However, I have one reservation on the idea. The emphasis of the course should be on how this type of software works and how one can counter it. If I'm teaching such a course. I will set up a closed network and release tons of virus, worm, and spyware for students to find them, disect them, and find fix for it. I will also have them write post motem report to explain why such problem exists and how to prevent such problem in future design. I do believed many of these security problems are origin from a poor design that didn't consider from the security point of view. Such a class can drill in the idea how to design a secure software, IMHO.

This is how we raise the next generation of virus/spam/worm fighter.

Way to Go, UoC.

p.s. For the record, I graduate from UoC in 98'

CBC News: University to offer e-mail spam course

The guy creates Apple. Cool talks for geeks.

You learns first by doing it, then move up a level and re-visit it from another angle to understand and make sense of it. What a way to learn by yourselves.

IT Conversations: Steve Wozniak Part 1 - Gnomedex 4.0

These people have no moral, caused others problem and grief for their own fortune... yet it's not personal? I don't get it.

Interview with a link spammer | The Register

Who's know where Internet come from? Eh, the DoD reserach project in the 1970's?

Here's some answer.

The 'Complete' History of the Internet - www.WBGLinks.net

Because there are too many services out there want me to put a button on my blog to allow others to add me, I decide to not put any. The only exception is the RSS and ATOM feeds, which is popular standard.

It sounds like a good idea to me, solving the too-many-buttons-press problem.... but my guts feeling is it's not going to happen, since someone need to put forward resouce for it to work. Also, there are concerns on privary and other issues.

Scripting News: 1/11/2005

more relasted:
A nice summary here
here
here