Tonight, I arrived home hoping to jump right in to my “moonlighting” gig only to discover that an issue with my computer from this morning had persisted. For some reason, something, some application was causing a consistent amount of traffic (not large amounts of it mind you) across my local Ethernet connection. Fortunately for me, I am somewhat tech savvy and thus commenced troubleshooting to discover the source rogue application.

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While browsing one of my favorite automobile wallpaper web sites, I ran across this amazing video. I’ve seen the Lotus Elite against a combat helicopter, but a car vs. fighter jet, how much more wicked can it get!

Tonight, whilst experimenting with the various advanced Google search techniques (hacks) to locate web content, I had an epiphany. Any web directory/folder that has indexes enabled (show an index of the contents of the folder of no directory index file exists) will list the contents of said directory with the phrase “Index of” followed by the actual root-relative path to available list of assets. This is due to the fact that the directory/folder does not have an index document/file present, so the web server spits out the entire list of the folder’s content. But I digress.

I have been using WordPress as my blogging platform for a few years now. Before that was a hybrid of PHPBB and custom PHP application I wrote. WordPress works great and has robust features that make blogging a snap for the more technical (such as myself, ehem) and also for the less technical netizens out there. Now, one of these great features is the ability to upload pictures and files (content) through a web interface. What a great concept (this is where the epiphany came in) except if you weren’t planning on listing up the contents of your entire uploads folder to the world. which happens to be the case with some (okay a lot of) default installations of WordPress.

Lets say you “Google” the “Index of” any WordPress uploads folders (/wp-content/uploads). You don’t have to be a rock scientist (yes, that was a joke) to realize the possible implications. Let me give you an idea of the figure as of tonight: 4,143,000 indexes. That’s 4,143,000 WordPress installations that have directory indexes enabled and are completely wide open to crawlers and spiders that can pilfer (argh) their content.

Try it yourself: http://www.google.com/search?q=Index+of+%2Fwp-content

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Got this from a friend today. Since I do not own an iPhone (but I do own a smartphone), this is a little disturbing to me.

Here is the original article on hacking the iPhone on FastCompany.com.

Not sure exactly what prompted my interest in this topic tonight, but I recalled a Japanese simulation I saw online a while back in which an enormous interstellar object (like an asteroid or comet) was shown to have impacted the earth. I was able to find various renditions on YouTube and am posting the one I felt had a good accompaniment.

Incidentally, it turns out there is a known asteroid that has the potential of impacting the earth (somewhere near the year 2800 AD).

• Averting Asteroid Armageddon
• NASA/JPL on 1950 DA
• Wikipedia on 1950 DA

So I’ve overloaded my PDA. Apparently, installing too much in the main memory can cause it to halt, and then never boot again. The problem is that with Windows Mobile 5, it has this neat “feature” that keeps data in the RAM even after a “hard reset”. This does not really help me, since I have too much in the main RAM. So, you do whats called a “clean” reset. Thanks HP for the help.

1. Press and hold the Calendar button, the Power button, and the Messaging button.
2. While holding these buttons, use the stylus to lightly press the Reset button on the bottom of the HP iPAQ.

Apparently certain scientists were deprived as children in not having seen the The Secret of NIHM. I wonder if they would have been so anxious to further this research had they actually seen what happens when you mix rats with genetic research.

The mouse that shook the world

As I worked over 60 hours this week, I haven’t had time to really even see anything out there interesting to write about. I did have this in my inbox from a while ago so I figured I’d put it online. Not quite the Robotech Mecha that I would like to see, but hey, its a step forward in the right direction.