Berners-Lee Wins Technology Prize

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee today was named recipient of the first-ever Millennium Technology Prize.

The honor, which is accompanied by one million euros, is bestowed by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation as an international acknowledgement of outstanding technological innovation that directly promotes people’s quality of life, is based on humane values, and encourages sustainable economic development.

“The Web has significantly enhanced many people’s ability to obtain information central to their lives,” says Pekka Tarjanne, former secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union and chairman of the International Award Selection Committee. “The Web is encouraging new types of social networks, supporting transparency and democracy, and opening up novel avenues for information management and business development.”

Full press release here.

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the simplest changes. Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code.

Full essay at http://mindprod.com/unmain.html

‘Cabir’ Mobile Phone Worm

So the first ‘worm’ for mobiles has been discovered – that took a while then 😉

http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=149499226

“Cabir” does not contain a destructive payload but can transfer itself via Bluetooth to other Symbian devices and could be considered a proof-of-concept for what can be achieved. I guess it’s only a matter of time before a malicious version appears in the wild.

Cabir

Again this underlines the importance of secure code-signing to protect unsuspecting users from malicious applications. Symbian has started their “Symbian Signed” program, but unless users are educated about the potential dangers and are made aware of the damage that can be done by blindly installing rogue apps, then I predict widespread chaos on mobile networks.

http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2004/pr040518.html

Operators can assist by automatically scanning content that is downloaded via their networks, but as Bluetooth circumvents the commercial wireless networks, there is little that can be done to protect yourself other than installing personal firewall and anti-virus products on your own device.

Genesis

Here I go again. I had previously installed Serendipity weblog engine from s9y.org, but it had a few niggling bugs and seemed a bit immature still. It’s a shame because it has a fantastic WYSIWYG editor, but I need something more stable. So I’ve plumped for WordPress instead based on some recommendations.

So far it seems to do the job 🙂

Now to try and copy my previous entries from the Serendipity database *sigh*