Slashback: Exactitude, Fortitude, Picnic

Slashback tonight with another assortment of corrections, amplifications, looks backward (and even looks forward to looks backward). In this last case, it looks like you may even get fed.

You mean we have to reprint all the invitations? Reader Ian Cowley wrote with a slight correction about the end of an era:

"Your article on slashdot.org about the billionth second of the epoch is sort of (but not entirely) flawed.

Yes, UNIX systems will report 1000000000 seconds at 01:46:40 on 9th September. Which of course means the 1 billionth number will be 01:46:39.

But, these systems do not account for leap seconds. According to TAI (international atomic time), the 1 billionth second since the beginning of January 1st 1970 will occur at 01:46:17 on 9th September 2001, as 22 leap seconds have been inserted since 1970 (the first was 1972, the last 1999).

So celebrations of the 1000000000th second should be at 01:46:17, whilst 01:46:40 can be reserved for celebrating 1000000000 displayed on UNIX system clocks."

Errr ... thanks. We'll just have to start at "Unix Day, Observed."

What price the capture and humiliation of virus spreaders? JayHerrick writes: "We have posted a small bit of JSP that reports the number of times our server has been queried for a 'default.ida' page. It's stylish, it's cool, and it'll probably get Pepsi all mad at us because we ripped the Code Red logo off one of the bottles." Equally stylish, despite the name, is a small tool named codeRedNeck, described by reader mindriot thus: "As CodeRed probes port 80 of a machine, CodeRedNeck first answers on that port and then goes silent, thus forcing the worm to wait until the connection times out." He advises: "Read the original idea by Tom Liston. Heise also has more on this."

Even More Auspicious dates. No matter which date you choose to mark it, Linus' little kernel-that-could is about to mark its tenth birthday. ikluft writes:

"The "Linux10" Linux 10th anniversary picnic and BBQ will be held on Saturday, August 25 from 11AM to 6PM at Sunnyvale Baylands Park in Sunnyvale, California. Details and directions can be found at Linux10.org. If you can attend, please use the RSVP form so the organizers know how much food and soft drinks to provide (only provided if you RSVP.)

Linux10 is being organized as a family event -- bring the kids. In support of that goal, it is also a no-media event. Linux and Open Source enthusiasts who work for the media may attend and participate while off-duty.

Linux10 will gladly link to other Linux 10th anniversary events. Let us know the URLs for those events."

Reader big_drew adds: "The event is free (food, softdrinks, cds -- sorry, no free beer, but byo is ok)" and says "If you can't make it out to CA, you can still get the t-shirt (profits will be used to fund the picnic)."

Anyone want to organize a picnic in the vicinity of Knoxville, TN? :) I can bring some pasta salad and watermelon.

Ten candles all around here, too. Simon Spero writes: "As noted in http://www.w3.org/History.html, today, August 6th, is the 10th anniversary of the first public release of the CERN Web Software."

Re:Much Easier...

[Pathwalker]

Why bother writing your own caching code when you can just let your Webserver [roxen.com] do it for you?

With Roxen's cache [ofdoom.com] tag, I just threw <cache minutes=15> </cache> tags around the cpu intensive parts of mine [ofdoom.com] and let Roxen handle the rest.

I do have a cron job that parses the logs every 15 minutes, and updates the backend database. (I could have done that from the web page as well, but then my samples wouldn't be taken every 15 minutes).

Re:Whats that mean for me?

[psychalgia]

shit, i woulda said that about the netscape one, but the browser "comingling" in KDE is sweet. I have always used GNome cuz thats what we have to program in at school, but KDE has some nice features (its fast as hell too) - if it would support half life, I would move everything there.

Re:01:46:40 on 9th September

[Coyote]

Which time zone? The one you're in. Its your computer that's going to tell you what time it is at 1:46:40

Stopping Code Red II

[Anonymous Coward]

Been too busy working to think on this but since Code Red II installs a web accessable cmd.exe, how hard would it be to listen for Code Red II (set up a fake default.ida) and then respond by sending a query that tells NT to shut down.

Does anyone think that sending a shutdown command to an attacking machine is unreasonable? Any ideas on how to do it (my NT command line knowledge is minimal).

Re:JSP Garbage

[mcdurdin]

I'd second that -- I've now had almost 14000 attacks on my server in the last 7 days. Apart from blowing out all the logs, it has cost me about $40 in bandwidth as well. Where can I send the bill?

Re:JSP Garbage

[quartz]

Too complicated. And PHP is for wussies anyway. :-) Who needs logfiles? Real men write mod_perl apps embedded in the web server and intercept default.ida queries even before they can make it to the logfile. That way you can keep a separate customized log just for Code Red :-), and then you're free to do fancy reports w/o hogging the server.

Set This Code Red List Up, Too

[waldoj]

At www.waldo.net/misc/codered [waldo.net] I set this up this afternoon. I've personally alerted the owners of several of these IPs, but I hope that the public viewing may lead to them disconnecting their machines. <fingers crossed>

Oh, yeah, I did it in PHP, of course. :)

-Waldo

Visualizing a billion units of time...

[Speare]

Did I get my math right?

About a billion seconds ago, the first man walked on the moon. (~31 years)

About a billion minutes ago, the first man was said to have walked on water. (~1860 years, sorta close to the 0 CE mark)

About a billion hours ago, the first man walked through what we now call Europe. (~111600 years, homo sapiens in upper pleistocene)

About a billion days ago, the first man walks. (over 2.6 million years, a bit before the oldest known homo habilis)

About a billion years ago, the first multicelled animals form. (eukaryotes supplant prokaryotes)

About a billion decades ago, the Milky Way galaxy began to form.