Will the Hackers ever stop?
It continues to amaze me how many times a day hackers try to break into servers on the web. The majority are from China and Russia, but there are still plenty of others in the USA and Europe. If you install a brand new server on the internet I guarantee within 24 hours you’ll start to be flooded with break-in attempts, no matter where you are in the world. Nothing seems to stop the flood of ssh, email, and web attacks.
What does surprise me is how poorly protected most default installs of linux are. One company I was chatting with recently decided to block all IP requests from China and Russia from day one. May not be in the spirit of the Internet, but frankly I can understand why they did it. They certainly get less break-in attempts and for their primarily US based clients it does not seem to hamper their business.
Just imagine how much more we could do if these same people used their time more productively.
Bill Joy – A Truly Exceptional Programmer
Bill Joy is still far and away the guy I most look up to in the world of software. Thirty years on and I’m still using Vi and Csh. Yeah, they might be newer versions and not his actual code anymore but to me they are still his. Without Bill Joy we’d never have Berkeley Unix which was the catalyst for the Unix phenomena. Back in the late 70’s/early 80’s when the Clash were still the best band in the world, the Bell Labs strain of Unix was struggling, System V was a disaster and although we’ll always be thankful to Ritchie and Thompson for starting it all some new blood was needed. Bill Joy fitted the role with room to spare.
Networking, the internet, software tools, editors, open software, and programming languages would never have had the impact and growth they experienced without him and this was all before he co-founded Sun Microsystems.
My passion for software all began as I studied the amazing poetry written by this true Software Genius.
Thanks Bill!
Myself with my two children at DisneyLand.
Hard to believe I’m actually doing this. I guess I’m writing this blog for the following reasons:
- to keep my eye on the wonderful Drupal,
- to remind myself why, after over thirty years of writing code, I still love it with a passion,
- to relive some of my Glory Days of coding.
Hopefully, we’ll have some fun along the way.