Vendors, line up to endorse the Rat's Olympic Games
The Rat has been looking forward to the wave of Olympic media coverage as a good excuse to catch up on some burrow cleaning. The only thing Olympic about the Cyberrodent is that he occasionally gets mistaken for the Atlanta games' computer-generated mascot, Izzy. Of course, when the Rat hears "torch" and "Atlanta" mentioned in the same breath, he thinks back to his days serving under Gen. Sherman.
Our hero discovers a surefire antidote for help desk abuse
The calm before the storm of summer trade shows has given the Rat a chance to catch up on actual network work. Or perhaps it's just that the noise from the tech support desk finally grew loud enough to penetrate his concrete cubicle and spur him to action. Putting aside work on his Nietzsche Web page, the Rat rose to quiet the techs' murmuring. Chief among their gripes was a rash of stupid user tricks,
Hackers wreak havoc on systems
Ah, spring. The Rat, enjoying relief from the worst winter on record, has been observing the time-honored rites of the season: cherry blossoms, high pollen count and courtship rituals among phreakers and hackers. The Rat is taking advantage of the season to do some spring cleaning and change all his PIN numbers and passwords. A rodent can't be too careful in this dial-up, Webified world. Just ask New York's finest.
Go West, young Rat,and beware the Web bandwagoneers
The developer faithful made a pilgrimage on Tax Day, gathering in Los Angeles for Microsoft's TechEd conference. The city was waiting to greet them. One visitor nearly was carjacked at knifepoint, and the LA Convention Center's doors were cut open so computers could be stolen. It was as if IBM owned the town, the Rat mused.
Rat plays mole with Socks, uncovers some news for Defense
The Rat is still shaking off net-lag. Disguising himself as one of Socks' cat toys last week, he took advantage of Hillary's book tour to get a free ride to the West Coast, where he tunneled with impunity into the nets of Microsoft and Borland. The first packet the Rat turned up had some good news for the Defense Department. Microsoft will release the Defense Message System pieces for its Exchange e-mail server at the
Notes 4.0 arrives at last as Lotus slips OpenDoc a Mickey
The Rat tunneled his packets on down to the Lotusphere celebration in the home of that round-eared rodent in Orlando, Fla., late last month. The atmosphere was, well, Disneyesque. Lotus and a crowd of friendly faces officially greeted the somewhat tardy release of Lotus Notes 4.0, complete with a futuristic dance ensemble that looked like escapees from an Epcot Center display.
A D.C. fortune cookie: Stay unruffled in govt. game of chicken
B y the Chinese calendar, it's the Year of the Rat, but yours truly accepts no responsibility for what's happened so far. Actually, it's looking more like the Year of the Cognitively-Challenged Higher Primate. The blizzards that iced Washington this month blanketed the end of the second federal furlough of the fiscal year. Mother Nature wasn't the only one doing a snow job, the Rat mused.
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