Categories
Web

National Park System break in

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

No rain for at least five days. Five Whole Days! It must be MacWorld — Apple brought us a break in the rain. (Well, they sure didn’t bring us anything exciting technologically).

Tomorrow I hit one of my favorite walks — Golden Gate to Presidio to Crissy to Embarcadero.

Speaking of walks and the great outdoors, this one was sure missed. The National Park Service web site is offline because of a court order. Why? Because a hacker was able to break into the system.

Now, breaking into the National Park System isn’t that big a deal; after all the FBI, the CIA, the White House and several other sites have been broken into. Many times. However, the same agency that controls the NPS — The US Department of the Interior — also controls a multi-billion dollar Native American Trust Fund. And the US Department of the Interior is currently involved in a lawsuit brought by several Native American Tribes over said handling of the trust fund. And the court reviewing this case was the one who sanctioned the hacker to break into the system (and into the trust fund itself) to show that it’s vulnerable, and therefore could be a security risk to said trust fund. So because the NPS web site was cracked, it was ordered pulled indefinitely until security can be assured for the site. And we all know how we can guarantee web server security, don’t we?

End result: yours truly — in an effort to achieve peace, calm, and enlightment through a lovely walk — goes out to my favorite NPS web site to get a map of the paths of the Presidio and finds that the site is down, thereby leading to a search to find the reason, thereby finding the only reference to this event at SF Gate, thereby beginning to burn yet again.

If this continues, your favorite bird that burns is going to be extra crispy.

More on this:

FOXNews

Updated: 1/12/02 You can find several articles on this story by doing a Google with Alan+Balaran+hacker as the search term.

Categories
Weblogging

Blogger Lexicon 2

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Karl Martino of Paradox1x sent me an email with a new Lexicon entry he found at Dangerousmeta:

Flowbe:

    •  a weblog site that “sucks you in and then chops you into little pieces”

Thanks a lot Karl! I agree with you, it is a good addition to the Lexicon. We’ll use it until we get sued. In the meantime, go have a Blogsticker, on me!

Categories
Writing

Doubletree hotel

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

One more quick blurb. My apologies to my readers for my sexist comment earlier in the day. Even though it felt REAL GOOD to say it at the time, I shouldn’t have. It was an inappropriate comment. And no, I don’t really mean it. As I said, there is guts and glory in BOTH sexes within the weblogging world.

I was bad. My Irish temper got the better of me. I screwed the pooch with this one.

I’m a bad, bad, bad girl. Naughty.

Want to spank me?

-earlier-

Thanks to Justin, we’ve found a standing link to the PPT presentation. Copy it now, it’ll probably be pulled soon.

Here tis http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/DoubleTreeShow_files/frame.html#slide0001.html

Also, Dave — yes my comment was sexist. Very. Monumentally so. Hugely. Astronomically sexist…

…and it worked.

Snideness aside, I do appreciate you reposting your blurb.

-earlier-

Dave posted a permanent link back to his original posting about the infamous PowerPoint presentation of a very bad hotel. His reason for pulling the posting is because he believes the manager has got the point.

Nah. Dave. Disagree. Read the email he sent to Cory today. Today!

Did he get it? Or did he just suck up to the USA Today people?

Cory has it right — the guy is clueless. You do not have to have permission to reference a person’s name or company on the web. You could be in danger of liable, perhaps — but not in violation of any copyright law. Particularly if you’re not making a profit off the name.

Read this person’s communications to Cory. Then read the USA Story. I don’t think Mike the Night Clerk was the one that needed the retraining.

If Crosby had left well enough alone, this whole thing would be over with the USA article. Another web legend with old links and occasional references to “Remember that PPT about the hotel?”.

I can take clueless. And I can take arrogant. But I can’t take arrogant cluelessness.

-earlier-

Dammit all, Dave! You pulled your posting!

Now my link in the last blog blurb is going to some bullshit Apple thing.

Don’t do that! Take a chance! Pull the phone number if that caused the problem — but leave the posting!

Sometimes I think the only people with any balls in weblogging are women (until I read Cam or Chris and am reassured that guts and glory live on in both genders).

-earlier-

I don’t necessarily agree with Dave’s calling the hotel, but I do agree with the point — who is Joseph Crosby to say when we can or cannot discuss a story. Who does Mr Joseph Crosby of the DoubleTree Club Hotel in Houston think he is?

Well, duckie, you pissed off the wrong crew with this one. Let’s take this sucker to the top of the Daypop 40. Everyone link to the Craphound story at http://www.craphound.com/misc/doubletree.htm. And be sure to say a big Hi and Hello to Mr. Joseph Crosby at the DoubleTree Club Hotel in Houston while you’re at it.