“Groovy Motherfucker”

Agent Orange

I’m glad we have Dave Barry to think about the important issues:

What if, for the past year or so, terrorists, working in U.S. factories, have been putting lethal biochemical agents on… duct tape?

Arrested Development

Daryn just got back to me. SpamArrest have posted an apology on their front page:

Spam Arrest Apologizes

Recently we have received some inquiries regarding a mailing we delivered to some verified users of Spam Arrest.

While this contact was completely covered by our privacy policy, our customers concerns come first.

Because of this, Spam Arrest has ceased sending such solicitation and will not send unsolicited bulk email again. Spam Arrest apologies for any inconvenience this action may have caused anyone.

I still hope they rot in hell for ever thinking this was a good idea, but I’ll stop forwarding him my spam. On Monday.

Time is Relative

Lots of people blogging bitching out that Symantec knew that Slammer was coming. This stems from a press release put out by Symantec this morning.

From the Wired News article (emphasis mine):

“Within 10 minutes of debuting at 5:30 a.m. (UTC) Jan. 25 (9:30 p.m. PST, Jan. 24), the worm was observed to have infected more than 75,000 vulnerable hosts,” the researchers’ report read in part.

According to Symantec spokesman Yunsun Wee, Symantec issued an alert about Slammer to DeepSight Threat Management System subscribers “at approximately 9 p.m. PST on Friday, Jan. 24.”

Most of the rest of the Internet didn’t spot Slammer until shortly after midnight EST on Saturday, Jan. 25th.

So apparently “the rest of the Internet” didn’t see Slammer until “midnight EST”. Symantec knew about it at “9pm PST”. So… that would be exactly the same time then. (0500 UTC)

The real problem here is that Symantec are boasting that they gave their customers a whole 40 minutes notice of a problem. At midnight. On a Friday night. Woo! Sign me up for that service.