John Russell: “Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.” [Quotes of the Day]

Larry Gelbart: “One doesn’t have a sense of humor. It has you.” [Quotes of the Day]

From a few sources (But most notably Neil Gaiman) : Beware the Cat with Hands

For me, the smell of home is fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Yesterday I had this urge to make some, but didn’t actually get up the energy to do it until just a while ago. Now the last batch is in the oven and I’ve got piles of cookies to enjoy. And the house smells like cookies. Yay!

I also used mom’s big mixer to make them, which I have to say is just so much easier than using a hand mixer. When I get my own place again I am going to have to get one.

For those of you looking for a new web game addiction: WEBoggle. You can play Boggle over and over and over again. You can blame jenett.radio for this one.

Edit: Bah, it seems to crash Safari randomly.

William Gibson: “The ‘Net is a waste of time, and that’s exactly what’s right about it.” [Quotes of the Day]

Via a MUD I hang out on, The Accidental Video Game Pron Archive.

Ogden Nash: “People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.” [Quotes of the Day]

J.J. Jackson, an original MTV VJ…
J.J. Jackson, an original MTV VJ passed away yesterday. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

I remember going over to a friend’s place regularly to watch MTV and way back when, since my parents didn’t believe in cable at that point in time. That was back when you had to have a special box to get MTV in stereo!

I’m pretty sure I know exactly where that ATM must be, since I spent way too much time in Baker hall when at CMU.

ATM Crashes to Windows Desktop
Yesterday, an ATM in Baker Hall at Carnegie Mellon University crashed, or had some kind of software error, and ended up displaying the Windows XP desktop. Some students started Windows Media Player on it, playing a song that comes preinstalled on Windows XP machines. Students took photos and movies of this.

There’s no way to tell whether the students, starting with the Windows desktop, would have been able to eject the ATM’s stock of cash. As my colleague Andrew Appel observes, it’s possible to design an ATM in a way that prevents it from dispensing cash without the knowledge and participation of a computer back at the bank. For example, the cash dispensing hardware could require some cryptographic message from the bank’s computer before doing anything. Then again, it’s possible to design a Windows-based ATM that never (or almost never) displays the Windows desktop, failing instead into a “technical difficulties — please call customer service” screen, and the designers apparently didn’t adopt that precaution.

A single, isolated failure like this isn’t, in itself, a big deal. Every ATM transaction is recorded and audited. Banks have the power to adopt loss-prevention technology; they have good historical data on error rates and losses; and they absorb the cost of both losses and loss-prevention technology. So it seems safe to assume that they are managing these kinds of risks rationally…. [Freedom to Tinker]

I’m not sure I want ATMs running any commercial OS. I want them to run something custom made to only be an ATM, not something that also doubles as a desktop.