Build Date: Sat Oct 3 10:10:44 2026 UTC
RoR, man... deli meat and black, black blood
-- Doctor Murdock
Gnutella "Worm" written in... VBScript?
2000-06-05 11:04:51
Oooh.... so there's a scary Gnutella worm out there giving nasty warning messages to Gnutella users. Eeeek! Scary virus like software makes me afraid to turn on my computer!
Give it a rest. OK, I can see how frightening a thing like this is on the surface, but what's going on here? Someone has made a bullshit straw dog for the media to ignorantly sink their teeth into. The breathless scare-hype is out that if you use that scary bad pirating-condusive software you could have horrible things happen to you.
First of all, you can't have them happen to you without double-clicking on the damn icon to run the script. This ain't no Outlook Express "run it before you know it's been downloaded" deal. It takes actual participation. And this begs the question: Who in their right mind is out there downloading files CLEARLY MARKED as VBScript from a totally unknown source and then running them? You've got to really really want the monster in your living room to do that, or else be too stupid to get the correlation between moving the mouse and seeing the little arrow move on the screeen, in which case Gnuella may not be the choice for you anyhow.
Once again, we watch a media feeding frenzy designed to scare us using no hard facts, and lots of smoke and mirrors. Maybe those people at ZDNet should stop smoking whatever it is they smoke over there and snorting stuff off of those mirrors. Then they might go to the library and look up the words "responsible" and "journalism". Then come back here and bring us a 12-page essay on how those words might be used in combination with one another.
Eroding the users' trust in Gnutella? More like eroding the readers' trust in Journalism.
T O P S T O R I E S
John Dvorak has passed. I’m of mixed emotions. First off I’m more positive about his contribution to the overall technology journalism of the early PC days through the 90s, despite how many things he got wrong. He was a firebrand and commanded attention. (More...)
America's National Recording Registry Inducts Culturally Significant Artist - Weezer!
America's Library of Congress calls them "defining sounds of history and culture" and "audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time based on their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage." Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Weezer! (More...)
The Crossroads are real and The Blues is a place; The enduring myth of Robert Johnson (More...)
California Glory Hole attracts huge crowds
A glory hole at Napa's Lake Berryessa is drawing huge crowds. According to Chris Lee, the general manager for the Solano County Water Agency, the glory hole hasn't been active since 2019, and only restarted operations on Feb 4. (More...)
Republican State Senator busted after soliciting a teenage girl
Republican State Senator Justin Eichorn of Minnesota was arrested for soliciting a teen girl on Monday just hours after he introduced a bill proposing "Trump derangement syndrome" (TDS) as a form of mental illness. (More...)
Parents claim measles is not that bad after having only one child die
The parents of a Texas girl who died from the measles are defending their decision not to vaccinate their daughter. "She says they would still say 'Don't do the shots,'" an unidentified translator for the parents said. "They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be." (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
During a magnificent sunny day in a fast receding autumn, the Spock Science Monitor reporters once again blew the playa dust off of their computers and covered the 2002 Burning Man Decompression – held every year just east of Portola Hill in beautiful San Francisco. Both an afternoon and evening issues were released to the unsuspecting crowd of freaks attempting to in some small way experience the euphoria of the playa – if but for a brief afternoon far from the desolation of Northern Nevada. (More...)
A Blast from the Past! Pao Tzu goes over and under the crucial variables in the production and consumption of Salvia Divinorum. A must read for psychonauts of all stripes. (More...)
Clowns Take on God in Mysterious Annual Ceremony
Last Sunday's (the 6th) Grimaldi Service at a small church in East London was a red-letter day for clowns worldwide. About a hundred old-school red-nosed clowns made the sombre trip to darkest Dalston to pay their respects to clowns who died in the last year and to thank God for the gift of laughter in a bizarre ceremony presided over by the eccentric Reverend Clown Roly, resplendent in a garish red lumberjack shirt with oversized gold lapels. (More...)
Vacationing from Somnambulant Narrow Realities
So about six months ago, I was chilling in Chang Mai, Thailand with ICBINJ, perursing the Bangkok Times over my banana pancake and Big Chang breakfast when I spotted this article reprinted from the LA Times. It was about some kooks from California (where else?) who were claiming to have been to the front lines in Afgahnistan in mid-December and had recorded the whole feat on their website. "Holy Fuck!" I thought, "Now That's web journalism. Who are these guys!?" (More...)
We here in SMRL's Beverage Research Lab realize that there is more to life than just drinking spocktails. It's important to have other activities. One such activity that we wholeheartedly support is dancing six or more hours to Trance music. So we have designed a drink to accommodate this. (More...)
It was early in May last year when I first heard about Spock Mountain Research Labs. I was working on a story about a Hungarian scientist's new approach to nucleopeptide synthesis when I got a call from my friend Albert. (More...)
