Jeffrey Parson, the creator of the ‘Blaster’ worm was sentenced today to 18 months in jail. 18 months is the shortest sentence possible under Parson’s plea agreement. Prosecutors were apparently aiming for the maximum sentence of 37 months.

At its 2003 peak, the Blaster virus had infected over 50,000 computers.

Parson is hoping that others can learn from his mistakes. With the help of the Seattle Public Schools he has created a video describing how “wrong it is” to publish viruses.

Source: IT Observer - Blaster Maker Behind Bars

This is a pretty cool idea, and I’m sure more have followed suit. Kyle Van Horn taped a disposable camera to foam core board and dropped it in the mail to a friend. On the board he asked any postal workers who handle it to take a picture. Kyle admits on his web page that his experiment was not the original, but he does list several of his attempts.

24 of the 27 pictures came out to some degree. The other 3 were blank. Click here to see them all.

This February a new magazine is coming out of Europe. It’s called Free Software Magazine, and focuses on free software. You can subscribe to a print version, but they have a PDF version available for free on their site.

Trust me - it’s addictive. The text is Japanese, but the concept is pretty simple. You click to start a chain reaction of explosions. 150 is a perfect score.

Lexus Landcruiser 100 models LX470 and LS430 are apparently vulnerable to a new virus spreading through the on-board cell phone.

The virus appears to only affect the navigation system. Fortunately, the brake and steering systems are not under total control of the computer. But, it’s a scary thought that a future virus may be able to turn off the brakes on your car.

Also fortunate is that the car must be within 15 feet of an infected host to get infected themself.

Source: Mobile virus infects Lexus cars

Amazon.com introduced the first phase of a new service called A9.com Yellow Pages. With this release, the phone directory includes 20 million images from 10 cities to make it easy to find what you’re looking for.

When the user clicks on a business; they are shown contact information, a map, reviews, and a photo of the business. Also available is a feature called ‘block view’ in which the user can ‘walk’ around the block and see nearby businesses.

A group of vans armed with GPS and digital video recorders collected the pictures of an estimated 1 million individual businesses.

A9.com is a new search engine that debuted in September.

Source: C|Net - News.com: Amazon search pictures your destination

Is the iPod just too mainstream for you. If you feel up to the challenge, try building this MP3 player inside a Altoids tin.

PHP is an interpreted language; and as such, the computer needs to process the script each time it is run. Honestly, I don’t know much about the internal workings of PHP; so I don’t know how it handles comments in the code. More specifically, I don’t know how well it handles comments.

I have seen sites over the web going back and forth on whether it’s possible to have too many comments. Most I found said that it didn’t really matter; a few said it slowed execution. As I tend to be the type to over comment my code, I decided to test it for myself with some over the top commented code. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you miss your Nintendo, GameBoy, or Sega? Click on over to EveryVideoGame.com. Just don’t do it while you’re at work. You won’t get anything finished :-)

A recent job posting on Google’s web site has led to speculation that the search engine giant plans to buy unused fiber optic lines. These so-called ‘dark fiber’ lines are fiber optic lines, typically dating from the dot-com boom of the nineties, that is now laying unused. The high costs of getting these lines operational has left thousands of miles of fiber optic cabling available.

Source: C|Net News.com - Google wants ‘dark fiber’