From the Risks Digest 20.75:
There has been heated debate in the Berlin newspapers about the fire
department's computer problems over New Year's. It seems that just after
midnight the dispatching systems broke, but they broke in an unexpected way:
they told the dispatchers that an alarm had been given to a fire station,
when in reality the fire station did not receive the alarm, and kept playing
cards and wondering why there were no fires this nice New Year's Eve. [This
is in itself a very hard to avoid security risk.] At one point an
exasperated police car drove to a fire station, which was just around the
corner to ask if they needed an engraved invitation or what?!
Whoa!!
More from the same digest:
Viridian Curia Member Laura Stinson points out that people unwise enough to
use "Microsoft Outlook" cannot read the entire "Manifesto of January 3,
2000." That's because one line of the text happens to begin with the word
"begin," followed by two spaces. When Microsoft Outlook sees this, it
interprets everything that follows as an attachment.
I'll bet you didn't know that you could blind Microsoft Outlook readers
merely by placing the innocuous term "begin" in a text, thus giving a
preferential advantage to readers who spurn Microsoft products. Now you know
this. I hope you don't put your newfound powers to any sinister use.
Cool!
SlashDot reports that the next version of BeOS (an operating system designed to be optimal for designers and multimedia - say, like MacOS - only efficient) will be free for private and non-commercial use. Sounds like a nice thing to do, but it ain't free software. I may give it a whirl, though. Nah. Don't think so.
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