Month: April 2003

I almost fell victim to an identity-stealing scam

I got this email today, and I almost believed it. It’s a typical http://user:password@hostname/ trick. In this case, the user is tricked into thinking that http://www.paypal.com:secure-verifyaccount968ktz642@p9.da.ru/ is a PayPal URL when in fact it’s actually a website served up by http://p9.da.ru/ Here’s the full source of the email message: Return-Path: <anonymous@m1.netfirms.com> Received: from m1.netfirms.com (m1.netfirms.com […]

How to Be a Programmer

I stumbled across How to Be a Programmer, a 40-page paper by Robert L. Read, a principal engineer at Hire.com. It’s a relatively good paper so I’d recommend it to anyone who’s new to the field or is a college student considering a career in Software Engineering. The distinction between Computer Science and Software Engineering, […]

Court rules P2P networks are like VCRs

Looks like the courts are finally realizing that copyright owners shouldn’t have control over everything. They cornerstone of today’s decision is that P2P netoworks, like VCRs, have substantial noninfringing uses. A federal court denied a request to shut down Internet song-swapping services Grokster and Morpheus on Friday, handing a stunning setback to the record labels […]

On Kitniyot and Passover

With only 52 hours left in this year’s Passover holiday, I just got an email referencing Rabbi Golinkin’s teshuvah about Eating Kitniyot (Legumes) on Pesach. It was written almost 15 years ago, yet people here in the Diaspora (outside of Israel) continue to discuss it year after year as if it’s breaking news. Unfortunately for […]

Back in the connected world

After two days of chag and a day of Shabbos, I’m back online again. That three day respite was great, even if it meant that I had 200 new messages in my Inbox. We hosted a wonderful seder on the first night, enjoyed a relaxing first day of chag (and an impromptu lunch with a […]

Pesach Kashering

On the day before Erev Pesach, we kashered the kitchen and searched the house for chametz. Hannah came over to help clean the kitchen and cover the countertops with contact paper: Here we are “discovering” some challah and setting it aside for the next morning: