I’ve removed the offending files and am still auditing my site looking for more. I’ve also upgraded much of the software on the site in case the script kiddies weaseled their way in through some outdated PHP script.

In one day, my site has had more hits than it normally gets in a full month. If you found my site by clicking on a link that looked like http://kevin.godby.org/page.php?id=... then I apologize. The link you clicked on would have taken you to a site with a few hundred keywords, but no useful information. And to top it off, the site tries to install malware on your computer.

Some details on the exploit: The Russian and Ukrainian hackers uploaded the page.php file at 14:36:27 PST on November 1, 2008. The page.php file looks at the ID number at the end of the address and downloads a web page from a server in Germany. Once downloaded, the page is streamed to your browser (so it looks like I’m hosting the page). The page contains a litany of spammy keywords and a list of links pointing back to the page.php file on my site (with different ID values).

I’ve already emailed the technical contact for the block of Internet addresses used to host the spam and malware pages. I’m not sure if their server was also hacked or if they’re willingly hosting the link farm.

I’ve also contacted Dreamhost, my hosting provider, and provided them with details of the exploit. Unfortunately, my site was not the only one to fall victim. I wrote a small program to download pages with other ID numbers from the server in Germany, and they have links to other Dreamhost servers. Hopefully, Dreamhost can help everyone clean up their sites or shut down traffic to the server in Germany.

According to McCain, there are “21 billion barrels of proven oil reserves” offshore.

The next question is: how long will 21 billion barrels last? According to the Energy Information Administration, the United States consumes over 20 million barrels per day.

Okay, now that we’ve collected the numbers, let’s do a little math.

If we were to use only the oil from the offshore oil reserves, then that oil would be entirely used up in less than three years. (We run out of offshore oil 30 March 2011, according to these figures.)

My best support experience has definitely been with Vircom.

A number of years ago, I worked at a small local ISP. I was the network admin and also handled most of the tech support calls. We used Vircom’s Windows-based email server.

Someone at MCI Worldcom had upgraded the software on their routers and ended up knocking their entire backbone offline. So none of my customers could get on the Internet. I had been on the phone all morning explaining the situation to our understandably upset customers. One of the phone calls I received was from Yves of Vircom. I was subscribed to many of the Vircom discussion lists and he noticed that the messages being sent to me were bouncing.

I immediately apologized for the bounced messages and explained the situation. He understood and informed me that he hadn’t called because the bounced messages were causing him problems, but because he wanted to make sure that our mail server wasn’t the problem.

That’s right: he saw the bounced messages and thought that our email server may be having problems so he called me to offer tech support.

During HCI 522: “Scientific Methods of Human–Computer Interaction”, we wrote a blog entry each week along with a class presentation. I’ve mirrored my blog entries here in the past.

Now we’ve collected our favorite blog entries from that class and compiled them into a book: Shiny Happy Users. We published the book through lulu.com. There’s a hardcover edition and a paperback edition. And if you’re not convinced to buy a copy of the book, you can even download the PDF for free.

In addition to the book, we’ve created a companion DVD that contains our video presentations and slides.

And if all this weren’t enough, the books and DVD are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. That means that you can give copies of our work to your friends and you can make derivatives of our work. Some examples of derivatives would be: translate it into a different language, rework the essays into lecture notes for a class, and transform the work into a different format (say, for e-book readers).

Visit the Shiny Happy Users website for more information and samples of the essays and presentations.

I did all the typesetting for the book, so I’m sure there are plenty of errors and typos. if you find any, please let me know!

Update: I’ve uploaded a video of my talk.

I just wanted to advise you that your package was mailed to you by me, a SECOND time! The original package that I mailed to you was opened for inspection by the USA Postal Service, under their Homeland Security procedures, or to see if it was, in fact “media mail” or unauthorized mailing items and the address label somehow got destroyed and was finally sent back to me for repair.

I have repackaged your item and you should get it in a very short time. The Postal Service has agreed to reimburse me for the first postage fee paid so all is not lost.

I’m very sorry that this has held up you delivery and I hope you receive it soon. Could you please let me know when your item arrives so I can cross it off my long list of things to worry about?

I’m not sure how it’s possible to confuse a cardboard-wrapped hardcover book with a bomb or anything else the Department of Homeland Security would be concerned with, but my book did eventually arrive.

Last night we had 5 inches of snow dumped on us along with some ice. My yard is now a graveyard for tree branches. My neighbor’s tree had a branch fall into my driveway. One of my trees threw branches at my bedroom and at my other neighbor’s car. Another tree in my backyard has a branch resting across the power and cable lines going to my house. You can find more photos at http://godby.org/ice.

Looking at all metropolitan areas with populations of 50,000 or greater, Ithaca, N.Y. ranks No. 1. Home to Cornell University, a whopping 7.92 percent of residents hold Ph.D.s. Ames, Iowa, where Iowa State University is located, is second, at 7.2 percent. Other university towns round out the top five: In State College, Pa., the figure is 6.04 percent; for Corvallis, Ore., it’s 5.63 percent; and in College Station, Texas, it’s 5.14 percent.

<wistful thinking>
Someday I may join their ranks—after I write my master’s thesis, finish my Ph.D. coursework, and write a dissertation.
</wistful thinking>

For those interested in the talks, but don’t have 20 hours to watch them, I recommend sessions 4 and 10 for the most lively discussions.

While reading Kurzweil’s book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, I came across a section in chapter 6 titled “The Longevity of Information.” In this section, Kurzweil discusses how it’s difficult to keep digital information accessible in lieu of changing media formats, file formats going extinct, and degradation of magnetic and optical media. In footnote 42, he writes:

Stweart Brand, “Written on the Wind,” Civilization Magazine, November 1998 (“01998” in Long Now terminology), available online at http://www.longnow.org/10klibrary/library.htm.

The link is dead and now leads to a 404 page.

Unfortunately, the irony doesn’t end there. I started at their home page to try to find a copy of the article. I clicked on Projects thinking that the “10klibrary” mentioned in the URL may be listed there. Instead, I found a description of the “Long Server” project. It sounded similar to what I was looking for, so I clicked on the Long Server heading and found myself on yet another 404 page.

In any case, I’ve found an article by Tim Berners-Lee (FOAF) that may be useful: Cool URIs don’t change.

April 5, 2006 is CSS Naked Day! CSS Naked Day is the day when many sites disable the stylesheets that provide the nice looking presentation of their websites so that you can see the underlying structure in pure, unadultered HTML. It also highlights some of the semantic bugs that a site may normally hide under the façade of the stylesheets.

So for today only, here’s my site without the normal stylesheets. Enjoy!

I think that students should be allowed to bring their laptops to class with them, for a myriad of reasons:

• In large lecture halls, it’s difficult to find a seat that allows me to see the whiteboard or slideshow. It’d be great if the slideshow were simulcast to my laptop.
• With a laptop, I’m able to answer my own questions without pestering the teacher, thereby freeing up her time to help other students.
• I can supplement the lecture with material from the Internet.
• I can type my notes much more quickly than writing them longhand.

To counter some of the counter-arguments:

• If my use of a laptop is distracting you, then either (a) the lecture isn’t interesting enough or worthy of keeping your attention (which is partially the fault of the instructor), or (b) focusing your attention is your problem, not mine.
• If I do show up to class and play solitaire on my laptop, then at least I showed up to class. Why did I come to class? Because I might miss something important, and I felt that there was some value in being there. As a professor, you should take some minor comfort in that. It could have been worse: I may have determined that it wasn’t worth showing up at all.

[It's 9 am and Kevin is sound asleep. His cell phone rings. Groggily, he presses the phone to his ear and mumbles...]

Kevin: Hello?

Caller: Uh.. is this the meeting?

Kevin [not comprehending]: Wha—? Meeting?

Caller: Uh, yeah. The conference?

Kevin: Uh, no. It’s not. You must have the wrong number.

Caller: Oh, okay. Sorry. Bye. [Caller hangs up.]

[A few seconds later, Kevin's phone rings again. Kevin notices that it's the same caller ID number and shunts it to his voice mail.]

This sort of thing has been happening for the past six months. Tonight, at 7 pm I received thirteen calls—most of them from Winnipeg. I managed to eek some information out of a couple of the callers and determined that GoToMeeting is the culprit. The GoToMeeting number is 641-985-1010. My cell phone number is the same, with two digits transposed.

I sent GoToMeeting “feedback” on their website. Hopefully they’ll be more careful about the phone numbers they give out in the future and will correct this typo soon. Both I and their customers will appreciate it.

I obviously have nothing better to put in my blog. Must work on that. Of course, that’d require getting a life so as to have something to talk about. Hmm.. Nah. Too much work.

Which File Extension Are You?

I like to hang around with friends, chatting, dancing, all that sort of thing. We don’t appreciate outsiders, and do our best to discourage others approaching us. I enjoy occasionally wandering around randomly, and often find that when I do so, I get to where I wanted to be.

What Video Game Character Are You?