You know it's a good day when you ask someone, "Will you be my moo?" The best part is I don't know what it means, I just thought it sounded funny. Plus I really need to start living up the craziness of the aoeu message from last week... :0
Potpourri this evening:
- The wxWidgets book manuscript has finally been submitted after a series of extensions (remember it was originally due March 1st). We also have received a first draft of the cover; it was quite a thrill seeing my name on it! I knew it would be there, but seeing it made it real.
- In an extensive collaboration with several other wxWidgets users, today I committed a patch that will hopefully yet again make BitWise more reliable on Linux and Mac OS X; random, infrequent socket-related crashes have still been showing up from time to time. This patch specifically address "random, infrequest socket-related" things. :) Check it out if you like: it's version 1.35, my initials are to the right: wxWidgets web CVS log for src/unix/gsocket.cpp.
- Another rash of new and recurring viruses continue to plague MSN. Read More. Of course, there's really nothing particularly brilliant about these attacks, which simply send links to malicious programs that people naively click and install on their computer. Of course, such viruses could plague any IM system. Is there any way to stop such threats?
- Lastly, the new web site continues to being developed at full steam. Most of the Professional web services were migrated today to the new site. Almost all of the feature pages are done. I've selected a presentation style for the whiteboard, I just have to figure out what exactly to show and what to say for it. Besides the features and web services, and a few graphics, every major element of the site is complete. Tweaks will still be needed throughout though, but it's very encouraging to see it as it is now!
I still hope to show a few screenshots of the site by the end of the week. :)
"Of course, such viruses could plague any IM system. Is there any way to stop such threats?"
Google stopped spammers from exploiting a certain forum bug by filtering search requests generated by the program. An IM blacklist could be created in the same way, no?
Well, the difference with Google was that the terms were highly targeted and specific; the worm was programmed to search for the same terms all the time. A blacklist would quickly become outdated because the exact wording, the URL, or any other identifiable property of the malicious link/program could easily be changed.