This Blog has been closed down. Below are the archives and the final 2 posts.
Edit as of 26th October 2004
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Saturday, May 8

Attempting an all-day library fest. Been here since 10am. Planning on leaving at 8:00pm tonight, though we shall have to see what transpires.

As I said, the demo went well, bordering on great. I kept composed and confident and answered everything asked in a manner I though was thorough and interesting. There were 2 moments of concern. The first was when my tutor came in a few minutes early and told me to "make a good impression" on the other envigilator* as they were notoriously hard to please. Not good. The second moment was my tutor mentioned he'd tried to contact a third envigilator - one who specialised in AI. My mind reeled at this. Was I deemed too tall for 2 of them to easily eviscerate? Were they planning some kind of Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, with small modification of no Good Cops whatsoever but an apparent abundance of evil bastards? Or were they planning on tag-teaming somehow, stopping only to sip their mochachinos and watch with a toothy grin as the active member of their trio beat the stupid of me?
The third envigilator didn't arrive, in the end. And afterwards my tutor said many things that encouraged me to think I'll be receiving a 2:1 for my Project at least.

* Weirdly, it can be spelt either "invigilator" or "envigilator" or though whether this is a colour/color Americanism issue is beyond me. As always, Everything2 provided both the correct spelling, definition and a funny write-up.)

Edit: The brought down the Sasser worm creator - an 18 year guy from Germany. Personally, I like the way that the press has defined him as an "18 year old man", as if in fear of the fact that effectively a kid could create a program (in C++) that would cause networks across the world to crash and burn. What puzzles me, though, is the fact that this guy was so stupid - not only did one of his supposed original attacks target a local Education authority (which, by the way, is quite possibly the most retarded thing I've ever heard - "Gee, I hate school. I'm going to create a worm that'll cause thousands of dollars and take down networks and services across the world, all so I can get rid of my crappy school.") but he also re-used code and made references to his latest creation in an older version of a different worm.
You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to work that kind of stuff out. Secondly, he held onto the code and on his computer as well. If I was going to create a virus/worm, I'd do it, release it from somewhere unsuspecting (cybercafe for example) and then delete all references to it on any hardware I have. It'll be dissected, referenced and all over the internet anyway.
Dumbass. The only respect I have for the guy is conceiving of a such a worm, which I'm guessing he didn't even do as he's suspected of being part of a virus ring anyway.
Gah. I'd rock at anarchic virus creation/network hacking.