A history of viruses on Linux

We recently gave you a brief history of viruses on the Mac and as requested by a user we wanted to give you a history of viruses on Linux. Given the tight security integrated into Linux, it is difficult to take advantage of a vulnerability on the computer, but some programmers have found ways around the security measures. There are several free options for anti-virus on Linux that you really should use, even if it isn't always running - a weekly or monthly scan doesn't hurt. Free anti-virus solutions include: ClamAV, AVG, Avast and F-Prot. 1996: The cracker group VLAD wrote the first Linux virus named Staog. The virus took advantage of a flaw in the Kernel that allowed it to stay resident on the machine and wait for a binary file to be executed. Once executed the virus would attach itself to that file. Shortly after the virus was discovered the flaw was fixed and the virus quickly became extinct. VLAD was also responsible for writing the first known virus for Windows 95, Boza. 1997: The Bliss computer virus made its way out into the wild. The virus would attach itself to executables on the system and prevent them from running. A user had to have root access for the virus to be affected, and to this day Debian lists itself as still being vulnerable to this virus. The threat to Debian is minimal though as users do not typically run as root.  1999: No significant viruses were reported this year but oddly enough a hoax message went around stating there was a virus that was threatening to install Linux on your computer. At the time the Melissa virus was ravaging PCs worldwide and on April 1, 1999 (April Fools Day) a message went out warning that a virus named Tuxissa was running about secretly installing Linux on unsuspecting computers.  2000: A rather harmless virus, Virus.Linux.Winter.341, showed up and inserted itself into ELF files; ELF files are executable Linux files. The virus was very small, only 341 bytes, and would insert LoTek by Wintermute into the Notes section of an ELF file. The virus was also supposed to change the computer name to Wintermute but never gained control of a machine to effect the change.  2001: This was an eventful year for Linux viruses; the first was the ZipWorm, a harmless virus that would simply attach itself to any zip files located in the same directory it was executed in. Next was the Satyr virus which was also a harmless virus, it would simply attach itself to ELF files adding the string unix.satyr version 1.0 (c)oded jan-2001 by Shitdown [MIONS], http://shitdown.sf.**(edited as URL causes Avast to block page). There was also a virus released called Ramen which would replace index.html files with their own version displaying Ramen Crew at the top and a package of Ramen Noodles at the bottom. Later a worm by the name of Cheese came out that actually closed the backdoors created by the Ramen virus. There were several other viruses released this year that were relatively harmless.  2002: A vulnerability in Apache led to the creation and spread of the Mighty worm. The worm would exploit a vulnerability in Apache's SSL interface, then infect the unsuspecting victims computer. Once on the computer it would create a secret connection to an IRC server and join a channel to wait for commands to be sent to it.  2003: Another harmless virus showed up, it was called the Rike virus. The virus, which was written in assembly language, would attach it self to an ELF file. Once attached it would expand the space the file required and write RIKE into that free space.  2004: Similar to the virus from the previous year, the Binom virus would simply expand the size of the file and write the string [ Cyneox/DCA in to the free space. The virus was spread by executing an infected file.  2005: The Lupper worm began spreading to vulnerable Linux web servers. The worm would hit a web server looking for a specific URL, then it would attempt to exploit a vulnerable PHP/CGI script. If the server then allowed remote shell command execution and file downloads, it would become infected and begin searching for another server to infect.  2006: A variant of the Mighty worm from 2002 named Kaiten was born. It would open a connection to an IRC channel and wait for commands to be sent and executed.  2007: An exploit in OpenOffice led to the spread of a virus named BadBunny. This virus would infect Windows, Mac and Linux machines. The virus creates a file called badbunny.py as an XChat script and creates badbunny.pl, a Perl virus infecting other Perl files. There was also a trojan horse released by the name of Rexob. Once on the machine, it would open a backdoor allowing remote code execution.  2009: A website for GNOME users to download screensavers and other pieces of eye-candy unknowingly hosted a malicious screen saver called WaterFall. Once installed on the machine it would open up a backdoor that when executed would cause the machine to assist in a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS). The DDOS attack was very specific and targeted a specific website, MMOwned.com.  2010: The koobface virus, a virus that spreads through social networking sites targets Windows, Mac and, in a more recent variant, Linux computers. Once infected, the virus attempts to gather login information for FTP and social networking sites. Once your password has been compromised the virus will send an infected message to all of your friends in your social network.  This is by no means a complete list of Linux viruses but it does cover the major ones. It also points out that most of the viruses found on Linux are fairly harmless. That doesn't mean they don't exist though. Be sure to keep an eye on what your downloading and where you're going on the Internet and you will most likely stay virus free. An occasional virus scan wouldn't hurt either.  Sources: hackinglibrary.ws wikipedia.org irc-security.de securelist.com f-secure.com cnet.com techrepublic.com lwn.net crenk.com

Windows 95: It sucks less

Windows 95: It sucks less 24 Aug 2010 7:00 AM Today marks the 15th anniversary of the public release of Windows 95. During the development of Windows 95, one of the team members attended a Mac conference. And not as a secret agent, either. He proudly wore a Windows 95 team T-shirt as he strolled among the booths. The rest of us back at the mother ship wished him well and started discussing how we could get access to his dental records so we could identify his remains when they were sent back to us from the conference. When he returned, we didn't kill a calf in his honor, but we did marvel at his survival skills and asked him how it went. — I got a lot of funny looks. And one guy, upon confirming that I really did work on the Windows 95 project, said to me, "I have to commend you guys on Windows 95 so far. It sucks less." That backwards compliment tickled the team's funny bone, and it quickly became the unofficial team motto: Windows 95: It sucks less. source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/08/24/10053386.aspx

Use Google Like a Pro

About 9 out of 10 internet users use Google and 8 of those just don't know how to get the exact results. They just know how to type in "a whole long story" click search and get "a whole wrong collection of results" Then you will spend all your time trying to scroll looking for some relevant result. I have compiled a few tricks you can use to get specific results fast and precisely. 1. Don't use irrelevant conjunctions. Don't use irrelevant conjunctions like and, when, or. Just use the key words in your search unless you couldn't get the results you needed. e.g iphone 4 launch don't use "news about the iphone 4 being launched" 2.Search results only from a particular website. At times you need to get some stuff from a particular website. Google search can do this effectively. Just type in your search terms followed by site:website = replace website with the website you want to fetch results from e.g "joe biden visit africa site:bbc.co.uk" 3. Searching particular File types. At times you need to download particular files concerning a topic. for example you might be in need of notes about a particular topic or some litrature. Most of the books on thee internet are conveyed through Portable Document Format (PDF) files. syntax = search terms filetype:doc replace "search terms" with your exact search terms and "doc" with the file type eg pdf,doc, ppt,txt, rtf e.t.c e.g principles of marketing filetype:pdf 4. Define a word. Some times it is necessary to directly go to a word defination other than just search it. start your query with "define:" e.g define:phobia 5. Weather You need to know the weather for your town? don't type "weather for kisumu", it might take you an eternity. Just type weather:kisumu and there you are with instant results. 6. Google news. If you are in google news and you want all news from a particular country, just type your such terms followed by location:country. Replace country with the exact name of the country you need to get the news from. e.g constitution review location:kenya 7. Currency converter. Do you have to call your bank to just know roughly for how much a dollar is worth. just type you amount source currency code "in" converted currency code. e.g. 100 usd in kes With these I hope you are in a position ahead of the crowd.   =======================================       "Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day"   =======================================

First human 'infected with computer virus'

source: bbc.co..uk A British scientist says he is the first man in the world to become infected with a computer virus. Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading had a chip inserted in his hand which was then infected with a virus. The device, which enables him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone, is a sophisticated version of ID chips used to tag pets. In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems. If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said. Medical alert Dr Gasson admits that the test is a proof of principle but he thinks it has important implications for a future where medical devices such as pacemakers and cochlear implants become more sophisticated, and risk being contaminated by other human implants. "With the benefits of this type of technology come risks. We may improve ourselves in some way but much like the improvements with other technologies, mobile phones for example, they become vulnerable to risks, such as security problems and computer viruses." He also added: "Many people with medical implants also consider them to be integrated into their concept of their body, and so in this context it is appropriate to talk in terms of people themselves being infected by computer viruses." However, Dr Gasson predicts that wider use will be made of implanted technology. "This type of technology has been commercialised in the United States as a type of medical alert bracelet, so that if you're found unconscious you can be scanned and your medical history brought up." Professor Rafael Capurro of the Steinbeis-Transfer-Institute of Information Ethics in Germany told BBC News that the research was "interesting". "If someone can get online access to your implant, it could be serious," he said. Cosmetic surgery Professor Capurro contributed to a 2005 ethical study for the European Commission that looked at the development of digital implants and possible abuse of them. "From an ethical point of view, the surveillance of implants can be both positive and negative," he said. "Surveillance can be part of medical care, but if someone wants to do harm to you, it could be a problem." In addition, he said, that there should be caution if implants with surveillance capabilities started to be used outside of a medical setting. However, Dr Gasson believes that there will be a demand for these non-essential applications, much as people pay for cosmetic surgery. "If we can find a way of enhancing someone's memory or their IQ then there's a real possibility that people will choose to have this kind of invasive procedure." Dr Gasson works at the University of Reading's School of Systems Engineering and will present the results of his research at the International Symposium for Technology and Society in Australia next month. Professor Capurro will also talk at the event.

Acer Ferrari One 200

source: http://tech.tbreak.com/2010/01/acer-ferrari-one-200-review/ Like the car it represents, this laptop will make eyes turn and engines burn. Posted on January 12, 2010 by Abbas Jaffar Ali Editor's Score Features: Performance: Value: The Verdict: Slightly bigger but much faster than a netbook, the Acer Ferrari One hits all the right spots. The Acer Ferrari One sure brings back memories. Before I switched to Macs, I was a proud owner of the 3200 series which was based on the Mobile Athlon CPU and a Radeon 9700 GPU. This was in the year 2004 and back then, it was one of the fastest laptops along with being a bit big and heavy. The Ferrari One that I'm looking at today is targeted towards the smaller/lighter market segment but still manages to throw a punch or two compared to other laptops in its class. Acer/AMD dont want to call the Ferrari a netbook but judging it by its size and pricing, it could very well fit in that segment like the Sony P series. Packaged in a mean looking black box, the Ferrari One comes with bare essentials- a charger, a quick start guide and with a cleaning cloth. I did receive an Acer branded external optical drive that was outside the package but this unit came to us directly from AMD instead of Acer. So although I'm not sure if the optical drive is bundled with the retail packaging, I'd be surprised it it wasnt. The Ferrari One is nice and small in size- comparable, but not as small as some of the netbooks we've looked at. The lid, like earlier Ferrari models, is a shiny red color and features the prancing horse badge on it. Needless to say, it looks magnificent. The right side of the Ferrari One has a Gigabit LAN port, power connector, SD/Mem Stick reader, two USB ports and audio input and output jacks while the left side has an additional USB port, the VGA DSUB connector and XGP Port which technically allows you to connect and external graphics cards. Towards the front, you have sliders to enable/disable WiFi and Bluetooth. Flipping the lid open reveals a 11.6 inch LED screen with a 1366×768 resolution. The slightly larger than netbook size accommodates an excellent keyboard with keys that feel as big as your desktop keyboard. Above the keyboard, the power switch emits a brilliant red light while white LEDs let you know of any hard disk activity and NUM/CAPS lock. Below the keyboard, you have an interestingly shaped trackpad that supports multi-touch. The palm rest looks like its made of carbon fiber. The Ferrari One we received featured a 1.2GHz dual core AMD Athlon X2 L310 CPU along with 3GB RAM and a 5400 RPM 320GB Hard Drive. The onboard Radeon HD3200 GPU takes some RAM out of your system memory but offers pretty impressive performance. Acer uses the 802.11n draft specification for WiFi along with Bluetooth 2.1. While the model I recd did not offer HSDPA connectivity, there apparently is a model that will allow 3G access. Audio is powered by the Realtek. Usability-wise, the Ferrari One feels extremely zippy. The dual core processor, while low in clock speed, does a good job of keeping up with everyday usage applications while the onboard GPU is very capable of playing 720p movies or even a bit of gaming with less demanding games like World of Warcraft. I liked the keyboard very much as well with the larger sized keys that seemed easy to type on. The touchpad, although small in size, works quite well and the mouse buttons don't require much pressure to click. We ran our usual set of benchmarks on the Ferrari One to see how it compare to other netbooks/notebooks. It produced a Cinebench 10 score of 2134, PC Mark Vantage Score of 2089 and WinRAR score of 548. This makes the Ferrari One MUCH faster than your 1.6GHz Atom based netbook- even the ones powered by the nVidia ION chipset which score around 1529 in Cinebench, 1797 in PCMark and 472 in WinRAR. Battery life on the Ferrari One is decent. While it doesn't match some of the netbooks we've looked at, such as the ASUS 1101 with a battery life of almost 7 hours, it is in line with other netbooks that offer close to a four hour battery life with their standard batteries. Heat was not much of an issue with the Ferrari One either- yes, it did get warm during heavy loads but not the levels of being intolerable like some of my MacBook Pro machines. Acer also does a good job of keeping the Ferrari running quietly- you'll barely hear the fan. Overall, I am extremely impressed with the Ferrari One. It costs about AED 2,999 (US$800) which is somewhat between netbooks that cost about 1,400 to 1,800 and decent notebooks that are in the range of 3,500 to 4,000. Atom based netbooks have often left me frustrated because of their sluggish performance while bigger laptops are often a bit heavier and larger than I like to lug around. The Ferrari One proves to be a perfect middle-ground.

Please explain: why Google wants your Wi-Fi data

Google Australia will today be sent a "please explain" letter from two local privacy organisations demanding to know why the company has been collecting personal Wi-Fi network data from Australian homes alongside the images it takes with its Street View cameras. The letter comes in response to recent reports that the company has been quietly collecting Wi-Fi data around the world when taking pictures of streets and houses for its mapping service. Street View, which has already rolled out in a number of countries including Australia, displays panoramic street-level photos taken by specially equipped vans which are also equipped with Wi-Fi receivers that scan private network signals as it drives through neighbourhoods. The Google Street View car. Photo: Ron Erdos The Street View photos are overlayed onto Google Maps and concerns that Wi-Fi data could potentially be used to match mobile devices to residential addresses has privacy campaigners on alert, and they claim Google has failed to explain adequately the purpose for which the company is collecting this data in Australia. "The question is why an organisation like Google that already knows so much about individuals, that is driving around and taking photos of every street in Australia, is collecting data that could enable it to physically map that information to a physical street and presumably a physical house," asked Geordie Guy, vice-chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia. The EFA and Australian Privacy Foundation are jointly drafting a letter that will be sent to Google today. Privacy concerns Google has taken some heat lately about its commitment to privacy after officials from 10 governments - including New Zealand, Canada and France - wrote a letter to chief executive Eric Schmidt to express their concern over data collection for Street View and the implementation of its Buzz social networking tool. Google claims the Wi-Fi data is only being used to help pinpoint the location of mobile devices on Google Maps and other location services much like a GPS signal, and that no details it collects about the network are published online. However, privacy advocates are seeking details of exactly what data is being captured by the Street View cars as well as assurances that its use will not extend beyond this application. "In terms of what they are collecting about Wi-Fi networks, there's a bajillion questions we have that aren't answered there, and we're likely to have more. Google talks about wireless routers at home but what about the printers, computers, mobile phones and other devices that might be sending out wireless information?" Guy said. The German government was surprised last month to discover that Wi-Fi data was being collected alongside Street View photographs. German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that Germany's Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar was "horrified" by the revelations. The UK Information Commissioner's Office said it was also ignorant of the practice. "At no point did Google make us aware that it would be scanning Wi-Fi too," ICO spokesman Nick Day told New Scientist magazine. Little is known about Google's collection of this data. Although the company argues the information is public and therefore not in breach of any laws, it conceded last week that it could have been better publicised. In response to why Google had not specifically informed governments of its activities, the company's privacy spokesman Peter Fleischer said: "Given it was unrelated to Street View, that is accessible to any WiFi-enabled device and that other companies already collect it, we did not think it was necessary. However it's clear with hindsight greater transparency would have been better." Wi-Fi data in Australia Google Australia confirmed yesterday it was collecting Wi-Fi data in Australia. It said the collection of such data was commonplace, although the EFA said it was not aware of any such projects here. One of the companies gathering this type of data for creation of location-based services is Skyhook Wireless, which operates from the US. Guy said: "If what Google's doing is an apples-to-apples comparison with Skyhook, and that information is already collected globally by Skyhook, why not buy it off them? Cheaper than driving a van down every street in Australia, right? "Google is in a position to make inferences about that kind of data. Skyhook doesn't have a year's worth of search history." Karen Curtis, Australian privacy commissioner, who did not sign the letter from government officials to Google last month, said she had been informed of the Wi-Fi data collection by Google. "From a privacy perspective, our preliminary inquiries have indicated that the information about Wi-Fi data that Google is collecting would not be considered personal information under the Privacy Act," she said. However, Guy said more assurances were needed. "A MAC address on a home wireless connection or any other piece of electronics that uses Wi-Fi is a serial number, it's unique. If Google rang you up - or anyone else - and asked you to read out a serial number of your mobile phone, what would you say? I'd tell them its none of their business. If I saw them on the street with binoculars trying to read it, I'd close the curtains." Social network security This is not the first time Google has been questioned over its privacy policies. The botched roll-out of its Buzz social network, which made the contact lists of Gmail users public to other subscribers, was highlighted in last month's letter to the company from international privacy officials. "It is unacceptable to roll out a product that unilaterally renders personal information public, with the intention of repairing problems later as they arise. Privacy cannot be sidelined in the rush to introduce new technologies to online audiences around the world. "Unfortunately, Google Buzz is not an isolated case. Google Street View was launched in some countries without due consideration of privacy and data protection laws and cultural norms. "We therefore call on you, like all organisations entrusted with people's personal information, to incorporate fundamental privacy principles directly into the design of new online services," the letter to Google said. Google responded to that letter this week with assurances that it took personal privacy seriously. "Respecting privacy is part of every Googler's job. We also have a team of seasoned privacy professionals, including legal, policy, security and engineering experts, to help guide the development of responsible privacy policies across Google," it said.

Researcher reveals Safari zero-day bug

Computerworld - Apple's Safari browser contains a critical, unpatched bug that attackers can use to infect Windows PCs with malicious code, researchers at US-CERT and other security firms said today. Hackers could compromise PCs with simple "drive-by" attack tactics, researchers added. The vulnerability, first reported by Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia and confirmed by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), was disclosed by Polish researcher Krystian Kloskowski on Friday. The bug is caused by an error in the handling of the browser's parent windows. "This can be exploited to execute arbitrary code when a user visits a specially-crafted Web page and closes opened pop-up windows," said Secunia's alert. The vulnerability can also be exploited by attackers who dupe users into opening rigged HTML-based e-mail within Safari, added US-CERT in its advisory. That scenario likely would involve tricking users into opening malicious messages in a Web mail service, such as Gmail or Windows Live Hotmail. Both Secunia and US-CERT confirmed today that the proof-of-concept attack code published by Kloskowski successfully compromises the Windows version of Safari 4.0.5, the most up-to-date edition. Secunia rated the vulnerability as "highly critical," the second-most-dangerous ranking in its five-step threat scoring system. It's not known whether the vulnerability also exists in the much more widely used Mac OS X version of Apple's software. "Other versions may also be affected," cautioned US-CERT. Charlie Miller, the noted vulnerability researcher who won $10,000 by hacking a Mac in March at the Pwn2Own contest, was out of his office and not able to verify that the bug also exists in Safari on Mac OS X. US-CERT urged users of the Windows version of Safari to disable JavaScript as a temporary defense. Apple last patched Safari in mid-March when it fixed 16 flaws, including six that applied only to the Windows version of the browser. It's not unusual for Apple to patch Windows-only vulnerabilities when it updates Safari. Apple patched Miller's $10,000 vulnerability in mid-April by plugging a hole in ATS (Apple Type Services), a font renderer included with Mac OS X. Miller accessed the ATS bug via Safari during Pwn2Own.

Was Apple right? Adobe Flash crashes twice during mobile demo

Nothing sucks more than being on stage in front of a bunch of techies and having your demo crash on you twice. Actually, the only way that sucks more is if you're Adobe and it's Flash that's crashing on a mobile device, forcing folks to wonder if Steve Jobs was right about the stability of Flash. This incident happened last week at FlashCamp Seattle, according to a blog post by Jeff Croft, a Seattle developer who also moderated a panel at the event. Flash Platform evangelist Ryan Stewart was demoing Flash Player 10.1 on a Nexus One phone during the opening keynote when things went bad and then got worse. Croft wrote in his blog: Here's what happened: On his Mac, Ryan pulled up a site called Eco Zoo. It is, seemingly, a pretty intense example of Flash development — full of 3D rendering, rich interactions, and cute little characters. Then, he pulled up the same thing on his Nexus One. The site's progress bar filled in and the 3D world appeared for a few seconds before the browser crashed. Ryan said (paraphrasing), "Whoops! Well, it's beta, and this is an intense example — let's try it again." He tried it again and got the same result. So he said to the audience, "Well, this one isn't going to work, but does anyone have a Flash site they'd like to see running?" Someone shouted out "Hulu." Ryan said, "Hulu doesn't work," and then wrapped up his demo, telling people if they wanted to try more sites they could find him later and he'd let them play with his Nexus One. Ouch. To be fair, Croft notes that the problem with Hulu may not be the fault of Adobe and may be more with Hulu - but no one knows for sure. Also, he notes that Flash on Android is beta, which means it's expected to be "crashy and buggy" at this stage. Still, the natives are getting restless, he says, and are anxious to see a full Flash player that works well on mobile. A demo that crashes does little to help build confidence around a product or to prove that it's almost ready for prime time. Under normal circumstances, a crash at during an on-stage demo at a techie conference might have been no big deal. But the public sparring between Adobe and Apple over Flash has put the topic into the spotlight. The pressure is on for Adobe. Croft is right in suggesting that Adobe avoid any more demos until it's really solid.

Did Your Boss Thank You For Coding Yourself to Death?

by Alan Skorkin on February 25, 2010 Programmers love to work long hours! There I said it, c'mon admit it, your job/boss doesn't make you do it, we do it to ourselves. Alright, I'll concede, maybe not all programmers love long hours, but surely with the amount of overtime that is prevalent in this industry at least half of us must love it. Right? I can hear the excuses already. "No, no that's not it, we just love working with cool tech and don't want to leave a problem unsolved. It is actually a good thing it's what makes us awesome!" I say – you're not seeing the forest for the trees. Here is some perspective, you're not doing this for yourself, you're doing it for "the man". Admittedly he might be a nice man, but you don't owe him slavish commitment. Here is even more perspective, how often are you actually playing with interesting problems and cool tech and how many times are you churning out code desperately trying to get something delivered and meet some arbitrary deadline that someone has assigned to you? But hey, you're a business savvy developer, you're helping the company succeed, your manager has explained the financial situation to you – it has to be done, we're relying on you. Well, unless that same manager is right there with you, entertaining you with amusing anecdotes at 2 am, his words are worthless. Let me tell you a story that a friend once told me. It is about a brilliant developer – lets call him John. John was a superstar, a one in a million programmer. He had an uncanny ability to understand and write code and was 20 times more productive than anyone else. One day the company got a big contract that needed a fast turn-around. The client sent a massive spec document – to everyone's dismay. John came to the rescue, he took the spec home and noone heard from him for 3 days. When he came back to work, he looked like hell, but he had gone through the whole spec and had an outline of the solution already finished. Except for one bit which was impossible to implement, though the spec said otherwise – even the client didn't realise this, but John picked it up. Amazing! When I first heard that story, I was pretty impressed, my first question was, "So, where is this guy now?". To which my friend replied – "He is dead, too much hard living!". Too much hard coding would be more like it. Kinda takes the wind out of that story a little bit – John was in his early 30s. Programmers take a perverse pleasure from sharing death-march war stories. Even when we do it with disgust, it is a disgust tinged with pride – daring our peers to do "better". But it is a bit like those guys who wear their pants so low you can see ALL of their underwear or the people who take up smoking for the "trendy image". They and their friends think it's cool – everybody else thinks it's stupid. Making A Bad Situation Worse I can see the necessity of occasionally putting in some extra effort and burning the midnight oil at work for a day or two. But when "occasionally" turns to "often", when your boss stops thanking you profusely for your efforts and just treats it as norm, this is when we're all in trouble. It sets bad expectations, not just for you, for the whole industry. Humans are like dogs, we're eminently susceptible to positive and negative reinforcement. And this whole industry has been conditioned by years of death-marches to the point where it even rewards this behaviour. Every time we give-in to the long hours argument, we continue to negatively reinforce this trend. It doesn't help that we're herd animals, you only need to get one person and everyone else wants to conform. Guilt comes into the equation – "we can't leave our mates by themselves to do the hard-yards, we gotta help them". The more people conform, the more pressure on the rest of the herd to do so until the whole team is chugging coke and eating pizza at midnight. But how do they suck even one person in, where is that famed programmer independence. We're happy to "stick it to the man" and do whatever we want in school, but as soon as we're in the workforce all bets are off. It is puzzling. Interestingly, sometimes these gargantuan efforts aren't even tracked properly, as it would make the project look bad. So they "cook the books", as far as the client is concerned everybody is doing 40 hours a week (i.e. they get billed for 40 hours) and the project is coming in on schedule (maybe), never mind the other 40 hours that everyone on the team puts in. OK, maybe they'll track the real effort in a "second set of books". Accountants go to jail for these kinds of shenanigans, but our industry expects it – nay almost demands it. The Sustainable Pace Effort Most Agile processes talk about sustainable development pace. But, I've seen even self-confessed agile teams knuckle under and put in the hours, you know, for the greater good and all. They were still agile though, and don't you dare say otherwise. When I think about this stuff I am always reminded of lawyers. You come in as a new lawyer and you put in massive amounts of effort and time, it is the accepted way to get ahead in that industry. No developer wants to be compared to lawyers, but often the situation is similar except you're not going to get ahead by doing a lot of overtime as a developer (unless you're working for a big 4 consulting company and then you might as well be a lawyer :)). So, lawyer vs programmer, which one is the chump? Studies about productivity declines when working more than 40 hours a week surface with disturbing regularity. As a developer your creativity declines, you make more mistakes, you miss existing issue etc., to the point where you're doing more harm than good. Should I even mention the health concerns when you spend that much time engaged in the same activity (they even had rules about spending too much time at work in the Soviet Union, and those guys were all about putting in the time for the good of the people). What about diet, you can only survive on coke for so long – poor John couldn't even make it to 40. Can you tell that I am against long hours and death marches yet :)? Maybe one of these days I'll tell you how I got my wake-up call, it is an interesting story. Herding cats is easy compared to getting developers to make a concerted effort in the same direction, it is something I both love and hate about our people (programmers) :). But I do wish that once in a while all the smart developers just took a stand to eliminate at least one of the truly crappy and counter-productive trends in our industry. As far as I am concerned, smart programmers don't like to work long hours and won't be pressured into it – there is more to life. SOURCE: http://www.skorks.com/2010/02/did-your-boss-thank-you-for-coding-yourself-to-death/

The iPad: Pros and Cons

by Robert Quigley | 6:08 pm, January 27th, 2010 So: if you have just awoken from a coma and/or discovered the Internet, Apple rolled out their tablet today. It's called the iPad. After the wave of iTampon/Max-iPad/other feminine hygiene product-related jokes died down, folks came to this realization: there are some good things about the iPad, and some bad things about it. It's fair to say that the reaction to the iPad has been mixed. This can be explained away, in part, by the absurd buildup to the thing. But what substantive features define it? The good and the bad: Pro Third-party support: the iPad will be able to run third-party apps without modifications. Kind of like the iPhone! Yes, Apple will profit off of an even more hyped-up app store, but users will benefit from the flexibility and creativity brought in by (mostly profit-seeking) developers. Also key: the iBooks e-reader app. It may not instantly rescue all of journalism, but it's a start, and this may make the iPad an attractive choice for consumers who don't want to buy black-and-white, restricted Internet e-readers. More broadly, in the words of David Carr, "the iPad is creating and killing categories at the same time;" the free market says that third-party devs will best be able to figure out what to do with all of that potential. Con It's running on the iPhone operating system (currently, version 3.2); no OS X. Among other things, this means no multitasking: as in, you can't run two applications at the same time. Also: no Flash (see below). Engadget: "There's no multitasking at all. It's a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once. No multitasking means no streaming Pandora when you're working in Pages… you can figure it out. It's a real setback for this device." Pro HTML5, the still-developing next generation of HTML, has been thoroughly embraced by the iPhone's OS, and, by extension, the iPad's. HTML5 isn't yet fully there, but it's promising: Ask a bunch of web geeks about HTML5 and you'll hear a lot of answers to the effect that it's the future of the Internet, both because it patches up much of HTML4's clutter and because it's seen as a freer, more open development platform. (Counterpoint: see H.264 codec) Con The flipside of that: no Flash. This isn't totally a minus — see above —  but the Web is a long way to go from being all HTML5, with the result that big chunks of it will be shut off to early iPad users. The top comment on a critical thread on Reddit:  "[N]o Flash support. It literally is just a big iPod Touch with some free apps included." Pro The cheapest iPad, which has the minimum 16 gigabytes of storage, costs $500; this is well below the $1000 pricetag predicted by some. Con The cheapest iPad doesn't come with 3G coverage; for that, you'll need to bump it up to $629, which doesn't factor in the $30/month you'll be paying for unlimited data. (because you will be paying for unlimited data and not 250 MB a month, right?) Pro 10 hours of battery life while watching video, with up to a month of standby! At least according to Steve Jobs. Given that it's so thin and weighs only 1.5 pounds, this is pretty remarkable. Con The battery is built in, which means you're screwed if it conks out. This was one of the things that people most disliked about the MacBook Air. Pro The iPad has a digital compass, 3G-assisted GPS, accelerometer, ambient light sensor, Apple's custom 1 GHz Apple A4 chip, and is multitouch-compatible. Con For all of that, no camera, at all. No Skype, no augmented reality, no photos on the go. Seriously: the accelerometer over that? Again: the iPad is a mixed bag, and it is not the mythical unicorn-like creature that the hype cycle inevitably built it up to be. But there's a lot to like about it, and, like it or not, when it hits shelves two months down the road, there are going to be some long, long lines outside the Apple Store. SOURCE: http://www.geekosystem.com/ipad-pros-and-cons-specs-features/

Antisocial Networking?

"HEY, you're a dork," said the girl to the boy with a smile. "Just wanted you to know." Enlarge This Image Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times Andy Wilson, 11, left, and his brother Evan, 14, go on Facebook in their treehouse in Atlanta. "Thanks!" said the boy. "Just kidding," said the girl with another smile. "You're only slightly dorky, but other than that, you're pretty normal — sometimes." They both laughed. "See you tomorrow," said the boy. "O.K., see you," said the girl. It was a pretty typical pre-teen exchange, one familiar through the generations. Except this one had a distinctly 2010 twist. It was conducted on Facebook. The smiles were colons with brackets. The laughs were typed ha ha's. "O.K." was just "K" and "See you" was rendered as "c ya." Children used to actually talk to their friends. Those hours spent on the family princess phone or hanging out with pals in the neighborhood after school vanished long ago. But now, even chatting on cellphones or via e-mail (through which you can at least converse in paragraphs) is passé. For today's teenagers and preteens, the give and take of friendship seems to be conducted increasingly in the abbreviated snatches of cellphone texts and instant messages, or through the very public forum of Facebook walls and MySpace bulletins. (Andy Wilson, the 11-year-old boy involved in the banter above, has 418 Facebook friends.) Last week, the Pew Research Center found that half of American teenagers — defined in the study as ages 12 through 17 — send 50 or more text messages a day and that one third send more than 100 a day. Two thirds of the texters surveyed by the center's Internet and American Life Project said they were more likely to use their cellphones to text friends than to call them. Fifty-four percent said they text their friends once a day, but only 33 percent said they talk to their friends face-to-face on a daily basis. The findings came just a few months after the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that Americans between the ages of 8 and 18 spend on average 7 1/2 hours a day using some sort of electronic device, from smart phones to MP3 players to computers — a number that startled many adults, even those who keep their BlackBerrys within arm's reach during most waking hours. To date, much of the concern over all this use of technology has been focused on the implications for kids' intellectual development. Worry about the social repercussions has centered on the darker side of online interactions, like cyber-bullying or texting sexually explicit messages. But psychologists and other experts are starting to take a look at a less-sensational but potentially more profound phenomenon: whether technology may be changing the very nature of kids' friendships. "In general, the worries over cyber-bullying and sexting have overshadowed a look into the really nuanced things about the way technology is affecting the closeness properties of friendship," said Jeffrey G. Parker, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama, who has been studying children's friendships since the 1980s. "We're only beginning to look at those subtle changes." The question on researchers' minds is whether all that texting, instant messaging and online social networking allows children to become more connected and supportive of their friends — or whether the quality of their interactions is being diminished without the intimacy and emotional give and take of regular, extended face-to-face time. It is far too soon to know the answer. Writing in The Future of Children, a journal produced through a collaboration between the Brookings Institution and the Woodrow Wilson Center at Princeton University, Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia M. Greenfield, psychologists at California State University, Los Angeles, and U.C.L.A. respectively, noted: "Initial qualitative evidence is that the ease of electronic communication may be making teens less interested in face-to-face communication with their friends. More research is needed to see how widespread this phenomenon is and what it does to the emotional quality of a relationship." But the question is important, people who study relationships believe, because close childhood friendships help kids build trust in people outside their families and consequently help lay the groundwork for healthy adult relationships. "These good, close relationships — we can't allow them to wilt away. They are essential to allowing kids to develop poise and allowing kids to play with their emotions, express emotions, all the functions of support that go with adult relationships," Professor Parker said. "These are things that we talk about all the time," said Lori Evans, a psychologist at the New York University Child Study Center. "We don't yet have a huge body of research to confirm what we clinically think is going on." What she and many others who work with children see are exchanges that are more superficial and more public than in the past. "When we were younger we would be on the phone for hours at a time with one person," said Ms. Evans. Today instant messages are often group chats. And, she said, "Facebook is not a conversation." One of the concerns is that, unlike their parents — many of whom recall having intense childhood relationships with a bosom buddy with whom they would spend all their time and tell all their secrets — today's youths may be missing out on experiences that help them develop empathy, understand emotional nuances and read social cues like facial expressions and body language. With children's technical obsessions starting at ever-younger ages — even kindergartners will play side by side on laptops during play dates — their brains may eventually be rewired and those skills will fade further, some researchers believe source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/fashion/02BEST.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1272877228-Io2cOlZpLaEr9zVdC2hksw

Microsoft Cancels Innovative Courier Tablet Project

According to sources familiar with the matter, Microsoft has cancelled Courier, the folding, two-screen prototype tablet that was first uncovered by Gizmodo. We're told that on Wednesday, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer Microsoft execs informed the internal team that had been working on the tablet device that the project would no longer be supported. Courier had never been publicly announced or acknowledged as a Microsoft product. It appeared from the leaked information last year that a Courier prototype was probably near to completion. The combination of both touch- and pen-based computing was compelling. Perhaps the strong launch of Apple's iPad, currently the only available "mobile tablet" from a major vendor, caused Ballmer to reassess the commitment of Microsoft in a soon-to-be-crowded market. We contacted Microsoft, who confirmed that Courier will not go into production. Microsoft Corporate VP of Communications Frank Shaw told us: At any given time, we're looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It's in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time. It is a pity. Courier was one of the most innovative concepts out of Redmond in quite some time. But what we loved about Courier was the interface and the thinking behind it—not necessarily its custom operating system. In fact, it makes sense for Microsoft to continue to trim away splinter versions of its core operating systems and focus on Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 unity across all its devices. Hopefully some of the smart thinking we have seen in Courier will find its way into Microsoft's tablets, whether they're powered by Windows 7 or Windows Phone 7. If we hear anything more, we'll let you know. As always, feel free to contact me if you have additional details. SOURCE: GIZMODO.COM

HP Buys Palm: The Optimist’s View

By Harry McCracken  |  Posted at 1:48 pm on Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Wow. The rumormongering about Palm ends today: HP is buying the struggling mobile pioneer for $1.2 billion. One of the largest tech companies on the planet will own WebOS, one of the best available mobile operating systems–but one which has failed so far to make much of an impact as it's shipped on Palm's Pre and Pixi handsets. It qualifies as a shocker given that most of the scuttlebutt about possible purchasers involved Asian manufacturers such as Lenovo and HTC. When a huge old-school company buys a scrappy (relatively) little one, my instinct is always to be worried. There are far more examples of such mergers failing than there are of ones that have thrived. And there aren't many examples of companies in distressed condition getting turned around big time. But let's play optimist for a moment… When it comes to phones, HP is a blank slate. Yes, it makes a couple of obscure Ipaq handsets, but HP hasn't really ever tried to get into the phone business. Those Ipaqs are, basically, targeted at big HP corporate customers who might buy HP phones if they're available. With no serious HP heritage in phones, there's no need for a messy merger of product lines and technologies. The DNA of HPalm phones will come mostly from Palm, and that's good. It makes sense for HP to own a mobile OS. Integrating hardware and software appears to work fairly well for Apple, no? I can see why a company with enough bucks to buy an OS would prefer to do so–especially with all the nasty legal warfare going on among intellectual-property owners. And HP bought itself a really good OS. HP might be able to take WebOS places that Palm couldn't. After the Foleo fiasco, Palm quite reasonably chose to stick to its smartphone knitting. As a much larger, more prosperous company, HP might reasonably decide to put WebOS on slates or set-top boxes or other devices that Palm would likely have avoided. A Palm without a little cloud over its head is a good thing. With the era of uncertainty over the company's viability over, retailers may be more excited about stocking Palm products, and consumers may be more confident about buying them. I can't think of an outcome that would have been clearly better. Okay, I wish Palm had been able to stay independent–the happiest ending for this story would have been it bouncing back on the strength of its products. But that didn't seem to be in the cards. And I can't think of another company with a billion dollars to spare that would have clearly taken better care of Palm's assets. The last time Palm was acquired, it worked out okay. The first time I ever met with the company was back in 1995. Execs told me about the first PalmPilot–not yet called that–and said that the company had just been bought by USRobotics. It was the beginning of Palm's greatest era, and hey, that's a precedent! Your take? SOURCE: http://technologizer.com/2010/04/28/hp-buys-palm/

Adobe Gives Up on iPhone App Development After CS5

The saga of Adobe and Apple or, more precisely, Flash app development for the iPhone, is drawing to its inevitable conclusion. It all started with Apple’s change to its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement – the notorious article 3.3.1 – which banned the use of the Flash-to-iPhone converter. In the simplest of terms, the article makes it meaningless for developers to create Flash apps that target the iPhone because Apple can ban them at any time.

Now, Principal Product Manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform at Adobe, Mike Chambers, puts a full stop to the story from Adobe’s side. In a lengthy blog post, he calls developers of Flash apps for smartphones to focus on Android () and stop developing apps for the iPhone. He also announces Adobe’s intention to stop working on the Flash-to-iPhone converter.
“We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature,” Mike says. In the post, he also criticizes Apple’s treatment of developers. “If you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at anytime, and for seemingly any reason,” he says.
So, that’s it for Flash apps on the iPhone. Apple may have won this round, but the wall around its garden just got a little bit taller.

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/04/21/adobe-gives-up-flash-iphone/

Microsoft: Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 released to manufacturing

At the end of the day on April 16, Microsoft officials said Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 were released today to manufacturing.
According to the company, more than 7.5 million people have downloaded the beta of the “2010 set of products” for the PC, mobile phone and browser. That’s more than three times the number of individuals who tested Office 2007, company officials said in a post to the Office 2010 Engineering blog.
MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to download the final bits starting April 22, company officials said.
Volume licensees with Software Assurance for these products will be able to download them in English from the Volume Licensing Service Center on April 27. Customers without SA will be able to get these products through the VLSC starting May 1.
The launch of Office 2010 is on May 12 in New York City. Virtual launch events also kick off that day. Office 2010 will be available in retail stores in June in the U.S.
SOURCE: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=5932&tag=col1;post-5932

Microsoft wants tattooing passwords on patients with pacemakers

 Microsoft researcher has suggested tattooing passwords on patients with pacemakers and other implanted medical devices to ensure the remotely-controlled gadgets can be accessed during emergencies.
The proposal, by Stuart Schechter of Microsoft Research, is the latest to grapple with the security of implanted medical devices equipped with radio transmitters they can be controlled without the need for surgery. Besides pacemakers, other types of potentially vulnerable devices include insulin pumps and cardiac defibrillators.

In 2008, researchers demonstrated that heart monitors were susceptible to wireless hacks that caused pacemakers to shut off or leak personal information. But equally devastating are scenarios in which physicians are unable to provide emergency care because they don't have the access codes needed to control the devices.

In a paper published last week, Schechter proposed that access to such devices be controlled with encryption similar to what's used on wi-fi networks. Access keys would then be tattooed on patients using ink that's invisible under most conditions. "We propose that a user-selected human-readable key be encoded directly onto patients using ultraviolet-ink micropigmentation, adjacent to the point of implantation," he wrote. "To increase reliability the encoding could be augmented to include an error correcting code and/or be replicated in full on the base of the patient's leftmost foot - at the arch." Equipment used to remotely communicate with the implanted devices would be equipped with an ultraviolet light and a keypad or touchscreen for transmitting the code. Schechter said patients can't be counted on to provide the code because they may forget it or lose consciousness during an emergency. Bracelets, meanwhile, may reveal the patient's condition to strangers or potential attackers. Passwords transmitted by RFID, or radio frequency identification, technology, are susceptible to snooping, he said. The proposal comes five months after boffins from Switzerland suggested using ultrasound waves as a way to prevent attacks on radio-controlled pacemakers. A PDF of Schechter's paper is here. ® SOURCE: www.theregister.co.uk

James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, has resigned from Oracle

James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, has resigned from Oracle, he announced in a blog entry on Friday

Gosling resigned on April 2 and has not yet taken a job elsewhere, he reported.

"As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good," he wrote.

Gosling was the chief technology officer for Oracle's client software group and, before that, the chief technology officer of Sun's developer products group.

In 1991, he led a small group of engineers in a project, then called Oak, to build an object-oriented programming language that would run on a virtual machine, which would allow programs to run on multiple platforms, such as television set-top boxes. This work evolved into Java, which took off in conjunction with the growing use of the Internet, thanks in part to its inclusion into the Netscape browser.

Gosling follows a number of other noted ex-Sun employees out the door since Oracle's purchase of the company was finalized in January, including CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and XML co-inventor Tim Bray.

Less than a month ago, Gosling had stressed the importance of Java to Oracle. "Oracle has certainly been incredibly committed to keeping Java and the whole ecosystem as strong and as healthy as can be," he said, during a talk at a Java symposium in Las Vegas.

But around the same time he also expressed dismay over the growing politicization of the Java Community Process.

Fellow ex-Sun alumni Bray tweeted that he was "astounded that Gosling held on so long."

SOURCE: http://www.businessweek.com/

Google TV is Coming to a Living Room Near You

Not too long ago we got word that Google is working on a TV search project with Dish Network, and now there’s every indication the search giant wants even more direct involvement with the television ecosystem. According to the New York Times, they’re partnering with Sony and Intel in a new Android-based platform literally dubbed Google TV.

The new set-top box will allow users to surf online video from the comforts of the couch, and will compete with the likes of the Boxee Box and the Popbox we got our hands on at CES this year, the Roku set-top device, and to some extent video game consoles that have the ability to stream content from Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, and others. Beyond straight up video, the idea is to give users an interface to access popular social sites like Twitter () and browse photos on sharing sites like Google ()-owned Picasa () on their TVs as well.

As with Android () itself, Google TV will likely be an open source platform, with Sony stepping up to manufacture the first hardware that will run it — likely including both set-top boxes and internet-connected TVs. Meanwhile, peripherals manufacturer Logitech is reportedly working on accessories for Google TV devices like a remote control with a small keyboard.

The project is reported to be a few months in already, although without official commentary from Google itself the news technically remains in rumor status. Would you be interested in having a Google-based TV experience?

SOURCE: MASHABLE DOT COM

10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse (GeekDad Wayback Machine)

Everyone has annoying habits, and a sizable part of every successful marriage is learning to live with those things each other does that annoy you. I think it’s safe to say, too, that geeks have some habits that we think are awesome, but that non-geeks find a little…less awesome.

Now my wife is a geek, but she’s not as much of a geek as I am, so I asked her for some help putting together a list of ten things geeks do that annoy their spouses. She was perhaps a little too enthusiastic about helping out, but here are the results:

1. Punning - I remember when I was young, and thought that I must be the only geek (well, possibly nerd at that point) who loved to pun. Then I went to my first science fiction convention, and quickly learned that not only was I wrong, but that there were plenty of far worse offenders than I. That gave me something to aspire to, of course, which I did for a while. Since college, I’ve scaled back on the relentless punning I used to practice, but I’m sure I’ll never quit completely.

2. Using “frak,” or Klingon, or both, instead of regular swear words - Yes, this is a marvelous way to avoid accidentally using real, English swear words in front of the kids. I suspect that’s one of the reasons it can be annoying to others, though: it’s like a loophole in the no-swearing-in-front-of-the-kids rule. I caught my wife using “frak” the other day, now that she’s gotten into Battlestar Galactica, too (yes, just as it’s about to end), but she claims to have done that just to make me smile and says it still annoys her when I do it. Still, I figure she’d be more annoyed by my using real swear words, so I think I’ll stick with it.

3. Weird or over-the-top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays - Geeks rarely do anything by halves, as anyone who’s ever been to a costume contest at a major sci-fi convention can attest. So if we want to celebrate something we’re likely to go all-out. This can mean going to great lengths with Halloween decorations, or, as I’ve done several times, making tentative plans to serve rabbit for Easter dinner and venison for Christmas dinner (yes, I know, reindeer are caribou, but it’s close enough). No, I’ve never carried through on these threats plans, but when the kids are old enough not to be upset by the joke I might just. I do insist on playing Tom Lehrer’s Christmas Carol at least once each December.

4. Dissecting movies - Geeks, in my experience (and myself included), have a habit of picking movies apart, particularly just after watching them. We will discuss everything from the special effects to the minutiae of costume and prop design, but what gives us the most pleasure is identifying plot holes (no matter how small), anachronisms, and goofs in general, and, in adaptations, picking apart the cuts and modifications. For some reason, this tends to annoy non-geeks who, I guess, don’t enjoy the process.

5. Wearing obscurely geeky T-shirts to “normal” places - Every geek has at least a few of these; don’t try to deny it. We love them, because we get the jokes and we know that only other geeks will get them, too. Unfortunately, they can make our less geeky significant others feel a bit conspicuous when out with us—or maybe they feel the geekiness will rub off on them, I’m not quite sure. Still, I feel that if I have to occasionally let my daughter wear a Hello Kitty shirt out of the house, I can wear my shirts from ThinkGeek.

6. Requiring extra room in the house for geeky things - Not all geeks have exactly the same space needs, but we’ve all got more than most people. There are the comic book collections accumulated over several decades, the stacks of board games and RPGs, and the old computer equipment that might be useful someday, you never know! Some of us need just a good-size closet or two, some of us need a room, and some of us take over the entire basement. For some strange reason, the people we live with tend to get a little annoyed at this.

7. Geeky toys and decorations can be hard to explain to kids - Long has my plush vorpal bunny languished atop a tall bookcase, waiting for the day when my kids are old enough not to be scared by its huge bloody fangs. And how to properly explain my model of Minas Tirith to kids not quite old enough for The Lord of the Rings? I mean, if we say “You remember The Hobbit?
Well, it’s in the same world, but a country not mentioned in that book, and it figures heavily in a later story,” that will only prompt a thousand questions about it. That’s not a bad thing, of course, but it can get a bit tiresome. At least the Warner Brothers cartoon sericels hanging on the walls are easily explained by simply putting in a DVD.

8. Looking up information while a discussion/argument is still in progress - So what are laptops and mobile phones for, if not to resolve disputes or questions wherever you happen to be? Why would anyone get annoyed when you pull out your iPhone in the middle of a discussion about, say, a news story, and a minute later break back into the conversation with the details of the story that everyone else had forgotten? Yeah, it beats me, too, but my wife insists this belongs on the list.

9. Needing to watch certain TV shows ASAP to avoid spoilers - It’s tough enough to find decent geeky shows on TV these days; think of how much worse it would be to accidentally hear or see a spoiler for an episode before you’d had a chance to watch it. And keeping away from
Twitter and Facebook and other social websites and services in case a spoiler happens to come across it just isn’t viable for that long because, let’s face it, we’re geeks and we’re addicted to the internet.
Non-geeks have shows they’re addicted to, too, of course, but, at least in my experience, not to quite the same extent.

10. Geeky projects that take over the house and whole weekends - We’ve done dozens of posts on projects big and small, from hacking IKEA bunk-beds to DIY iPhone stands. Some geek projects are simple and won’t take but a few minutes, and some just seem to take every bit of available space in your house. I think most spouses of geeks at least understand this behavior, but I suspect it annoys them more than they let on.

So, any additions to the list? Any spouses of geeks out there want to add a few of their own pet peeves? Please leave a comment.

Read More http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/03/10-annoying-habits-of-a-geeky-spouse-geekdad-wayback-machine/#ixzz0iKyIyAnc