Category: Internet

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Oops, I missed the Lolcats!

The original Lolcat image: I can has Cheezburger?

OK, I’m obviously so over-committed that I’m now officially Out Of Touch. I didn’t know what a “lolcat” was until I stumbled across this article.

At the risk of completely ruining my credibility as someone who’s supposed to Know Stuff About Teh Intertubes by summarising something that’s already been reported in the mainstream media — which means the Sydney Morning Herald‘s “Stay In Touch” column will run it next week — here’s the skinny…

Eric Nakagawa was “between jobs” in January when he found the picture at right. On a whim he and a mate created a website around it, I Can Has Cheezburger. Six month later, they’re getting 500 new submissions and 200,000 unique visitors every day.

Mr Nakagawa doesn’t need that day job any more.

Read the Wall Street Journal article explaining the history of the lolcat, and Anil Dash’s fantastic essay on the linguistic aspects, Cats Can Has Grammar.

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Australia’s Top 100 Companies (Asia)

Red Herring magazine published a list of companies worth investing in. Laurel Papworth has extracted the Australians in the Top 100.

She notes that most of them are selling un-sexy products and services — but in a comment I point to the very un-sexy example of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, and that company ended up generating huge successes.

I guess that helps make up for the silliness I’ve published here over the last week. A shame I have to do other things today, I’d much rather be writing.

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Nuclear reactors hacked

Just so you can get a sound night’s sleep before a busy working week, here’s the news that it’s easy to hack into US nuclear power plants:

The first time Scott Lunsford offered to hack into a nuclear power station, he was told it would be impossible. There was no way, the plant’s owners claimed, that their critical components could be accessed from the Internet. Lunsford, a researcher for IBM’s Internet Security Systems, found otherwise.

“It turned out to be one of the easiest penetration tests I’d ever done,” he says. “By the first day, we had penetrated the network. Within a week, we were controlling a nuclear power plant. I thought, ‘Gosh. This is a big problem.'”

Yes, Scott, I reckon it is.

Of course Australia’s “critical infrastructure” wouldn’t have any problems like this, would it.

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First stranger-friend

Excellent. One week into using Facebook and I’ve just had my first “friend” request from a complete stranger. Silly man, he didn’t even provide a message to suggest why I’d want to be his friend.

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Three Friday Rants

Ah, yet another busy week! So that I have at least some content to offer, here’s links to three pieces I found worthwhile.