Just came across some interesting discussion on comp.games.development.design about “honeypots.”
What’s a honeypot? Think of Whinnie the Pooh when presented with a pot of honey. He simply can’t resist it. From what I’ve read, a computer honeypot is a service/computer/etc. that’s very attractive to hack, that’s meant to be hacked. But once hacked, it actually does no damage, and provides information about the hack to the person who set up the honeypot. Cliff Stohl essentially set up a honeypot when he found a hacker using an account; Stohl let the hacker continue using the account but set up tracers on it so that Stohl could keep an invisible eye on everything the hacker did and track him down. All the hacker saw was a vulnerable account that was continuously available.
Some folks have set up honeypots for spam. They’ll put a link on their homepage to PleaseSpamThisAddress@mydomain.com (replacing “mydomain” with their domain name), and will set up a mailbox and some software for that mailbox. That mailbox then collects spam, and the honeypot software strips out the spams’ originating IP information and collates it so that it can be added to spam filters.
Oh, and there’s a new poll. I’m curious to see how popular online photo services are (amateur and professional).
Writing Thoughts
Blah. I haven’t written a thing in, um, two weeks?
It’s frustrating, because I love to create. I think I have a real skill at creating worlds.
But sometimes, I just can’t. Or don’t want to. I don’t have the urge, the push, the internal need to write.
And I don’t know if I should be harder on myself, or if I should accept these ups and downs as a natural part of my life. :sigh:
I am beginning to think that I suck at long projects. I can finish a short story, but I keep starting novels and never finishing them. And while it would be good to improve that problem, perhaps now is not the time to work on it. Perhaps I’d be better off writing shorter works for now, and at least get into the rhythm of writing.