Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Browse by Tags

All Tags » Fascinating geek stuff   (RSS)

I get spam :)

I just received this spam message the other day: From: Microsoft [mailto:customerservice@microsoft.com] Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 11:13 PM To: Larry Osterman Subject: Security Update for OS Microsoft Windows Dear Microsoft Customer, Please notice Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2008 9:13 AM by LarryOsterman | 17 Comments

THIS is what a Windows PC should look like…

We had a neighborhood picnic on Saturday at our neighbors house.  While we were chatting in the kitchen, I noticed their new computer. They had an HP TouchSmart computer , and I have to say that I was blown away by it.  I really liked the industrial Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 05, 2008 8:53 AM by LarryOsterman | 18 Comments

Oh Wow, Dr. Horrible is AWESOME!

Someone just pointed me to http://www.drhorrible.com , which is Joss Whedon’s newest epic. The first two acts are up on the web (the final act will go up on Saturday). They are spectacularly cool, especially to a musical nut.  I knew that Neil Patrick Read More...
Posted Thursday, July 17, 2008 11:34 AM by LarryOsterman | 4 Comments

Wow - We hired Crispin Cowan!!!

Michael Howard just announced that we've hired Crispin Cowan ! This is incredibly awesome, I have a huge amount of respect for Crispin , he's one of the most respected researchers out there. Among other things, Crispin's the author and designer of AppArmor Read More...
Posted Friday, January 18, 2008 10:31 AM by LarryOsterman | 5 Comments

Playing Librarian...

Those of you who know me (and my family) from beyond my blog know that among my our many passions, one of the biggest is books. And we've got a lot of them. A couple of years ago, Valorie got me a Flic barcode scanner and a copy of the program Book Collector Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 03, 2008 9:22 PM by LarryOsterman | 24 Comments

Every Domain Name tells a story, I wonder what this one's was.

And I'd love to know the story behind this site: http://www.modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com/choosing_your_fabric.htm . I ran across it while shopping online the other day. The root page of the domain ( http://www.modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com/index.htm Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 01, 2008 3:17 PM by LarryOsterman | 10 Comments

Hanselminutes

A couple of weeks ago, Scott Hanselman stopped by my office, and we chatted for almost an hour for his Hanselminutes podcast. On Monday, he posted the interview - it's mostly me rambling on about security and other stuff, but my ego requires that I mention Read More...
Posted Wednesday, November 21, 2007 8:29 AM by LarryOsterman | 6 Comments

So Amazon brought out this "Kindle" thingy... But I have one question for them...

Amazon just brought out a new eBook reader called " Kindle ". It looks pretty cool, but I have one question: "Where can I go to try one of these out before I fork over $399 for one of them?" I have a real problem with buying a new technology item (especially Read More...
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 11:25 PM by LarryOsterman | 14 Comments

Think Geek Responds

Valorie just received the following email from Think Geek ( in response to our previous issue with them ): From: Caroline Offutt [mailto:<email address at thinkgeek.com>] Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 7:05 PM To: <valorie's email address> Read More...
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 11:19 AM by LarryOsterman | 14 Comments

How to lose customers without really trying...

Not surprisingly, Valorie and I both do some of our holiday season shopping at ThinkGeek. But no longer. Valorie recently placed a substantial order with them, but Instead of processing her order, they sent the following email: From: ThinkGeek Customer Read More...
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 3:21 PM by LarryOsterman | 25 Comments

Got Tetris?

I just wanted to take a quick break from threat modeling to point to a video that Valorie passed on to me that's nothing short of remarkable (from the blog of one of my favorite magazines, Mental Floss ): Advanced Tetris Gameplay : The magic happens about Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 12, 2007 8:38 AM by LarryOsterman | 7 Comments

Actually, the Internet IS a series of tubes...

Alaska's Senior Senator Ted Stevens was widely disparaged for a speech he gave back in June of 2006 when he compared the Internet as a " series of tubes "[1]. The backlash against the comment was quite remarkable, IMHO. People seemed to believe that this Read More...
Posted Monday, July 30, 2007 9:36 AM by LarryOsterman | 26 Comments

The C abstract machine

I mentioned yesterday that the C/C++ language was defined to operate on an abstract machine. At the time I didn't know of an online reference to the C or C++ language standard, but a little birdie pointed me to this , which is a draft of the C language Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2007 3:50 PM by LarryOsterman | 21 Comments

Where did the second parties go?

We were chatting at lunch the other day about 3rd parties building solutions on the audio engine. One of the people in my group asked "Why do we call them 3rd parties?" It's one of those "things that make you go hmm". There's general consensus in the Read More...
Posted Friday, March 30, 2007 11:47 AM by LarryOsterman | 37 Comments

A snapshot of a developers morning...

Wednesday evening, I went to a local computer store and bought a new 250G SATA drive for my dev machine. Yesterday morning, I tried to install it. I was a little bit apprehensive - my dev machine already has 2 IDE hard disks in it, and although the motherboard Read More...
Posted Friday, March 16, 2007 9:17 AM by LarryOsterman | 23 Comments
More Posts Next page »
 
Page view tracker