December 19th, 2000

There are lots of great articles, and some really bad ones, on the Internet. Though we link to all of them at MacOS News Around The Web, some of them deserve special mention here. Most of what we will mention within these pages will be among the best, but on occasion we will talk about articles that are so bad or so wrong we just have to say something. Consider them mini-editorials on our part about things we think you might also be interested in.

Best [3:00 PM] Low End Mac - My First Mac - Leaving Wintel behind
How often do you hear from a long time Wintel user who big into gaming, but switched to the Mac because they were tired of the maintenance/upgrade cycle? Not that often. Most of them love the fact that they have learned how to deal with things that Mac users take for granted that they never have to worry about. Our favorite quote fromthis piece:

With my iBook, a crash simply meant I needed to shut down and restart. It was not necessary to go into a registry to look for problems or to fool with the hardware. This translated to less down time.

Music to our ears! An enjoyable read from an enjoyable series. Reviewer - Bryan Chaffin


Best [3:00 PM] ZDNet - Hackers caught in security ihoneypoti
Smell that? Thatis the smell of justice mixed with a bit of revenge. Smells good, no? ZDNet reports on HoneyNet Project, a private security firmis effort to learn fro hackers by laying out a trap, or a honeypot. The firm then learns from the sendonhanders who creep into the system as they are watched every step of the way. Way too funny. Our favorite quote from this piece:

But what they had done was walk right into a trap known as a honeypot -- a specially equipped system deployed by security professionals to lure hackers and track their every move. For a month, every keystroke they made, every tool they used, every word of their online chat sessions was recorded and studied. The honeypot administrators learned how the hackers chose their targets, what level of expertise they had, what their favorite kinds of attacks were, and how they went about trying to cover their tracks so that they could nest on compromised systems.

This gets the Tee Hee Hee Award for the day. A very good read. Reviewer - Bryan Chaffin


You can find these links, and lots of other links for Mac and Tech Industry stories, at MacOS News Around The Web.