Got a chuckle off of Geek.com this morning, though I suppose it's really not funny in the long run.

There's a new worm ciculating, called Cisum.A. Once your computer is infected with it, it pops open a window with the words, "YOU ARE AND IDIOT!" It then plays and MP3 file with the same words repeated vocally every five seconds. Geek's got more on this nasty.

This Apple Xserve RAID box looks simply amazing. I thought about this hardware again as I read Steven Hill's current issue column on IP Storage Devices. Steven looked at storage technology and solutions for mid to small companies. He didn't cover the Apple solution directly but Don MacVittie mentions it in his Survivor's Guide to 2005: Storage and Servers column.

Want to know why I like this Apple system? Small footprint, good performance, fault tolerance, capacity, and price. Check out the reliability built into the architecture. Read on......

See that jerk over there yammering out loud on his cell phone about the stupid Jets game a couple of days ago? Yeah, we're all upset too, but we don't really need to hear about how his buddy in Albany lost $120 bucks on the game.

You know them -- those rude cell phone talkers who force everyone to listen in on their half of their conversation. It doesn't matter if you're in a resturaunt, supermarket, movie theatre or funeral home -- they're loud and they don't care. A confrontation is the last thing you want to have, but you just can't take it anymore, right?

The Society for HandHeld Hushing, or SHHH, hears your plight and is here to help.

The fictional organization is the brainchild of Designers Jim Coudal of Chicago's Coudal Partners and Aaron Draplin of Portland, Oregon-based Draplindustries Design. Jim and Aaron, along with Jim's wife, have created a set of handy-dandy downloadable cards that you can quietly place in front of the offending gabber and then walk away. The cards have phrases like, "The rest of us don't care what he/she said to you." and "The world is a noisy place, you aren't helping things."

Of course, it may not guarantee there won't be a confrontation, but at least it will be a memorable one.

I hadn't until just this morning, but apparently it's a relatively new scam in town -- and if you advertise on search engines, you should too.

The scam involves someone clicking on your ad multiple times -- not to buy the product -- but to increase your ad spending, bump your ad off the search engine, or even make money off you.

Worst of all, there appears to be no real solution at this time.

A couple of days ago I attended one day of the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Conference 2005. I was only there one day because that was the only day they had sessions that weren't classified. That I was there at all, though, was a novelty, since this was the first time (in the four years of the conference) that they've invited anyone from the press. There were some interesting presentations (including one you'll hear more about by the general who's now in charge of all DoD computing), but like any conference, some of the most interesting information came when we were away from the conference sessions.

While eating lunch, I got into an interesting conversation with someone who works at a government computer forensics lab. I asked him how the forensics tools available to business compared, in features and function, to the tools he had at his disposal. He said that three years ago there was a huge gulf between the two, but that civilian forensics programs were catching up fast--and he gave the credit to Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, HIPAA, and the other regulations that make IT executives crazy. The engineer said that the need to discover, with certainty, not just that corporate information had been taken, but who did the taking, and where they sent the information, was pushing business forensics to develop quickly, and in good directions.

When I talk about unintended consequences, most of the time I've seen something truly bad, but if SOX, GLB, HIPAA, and the rest can drive better tools into the hands of corporate information security professionals, maybe they weren't such bad ideas after all.

OK, so they got me. Only a couple of days ago I called up Airespace, then wrote here that any merger was a way off. Little did I know that the "way" was about 48 hours long.

Now that the merger has been announced, what is it likely to mean for customers (and potential customers) of the Airespace wireless networking system? The answer is going to depend on exactly what Cisco sees as valuable in the Airespace aquisition. Cisco has proven, in the way it handled the Linksys merger, that it's capable of allowing a company to continue to do business and trade on its own name while gradually becoming more thoroughly tied to the Cisco way of networking. Of course, they've also proven through purchases like Procket that a company can be swallowed by the big green networking company with nary a burp to mark its passing. So which is Airespace likely to be?

I suspect that the final result will be the Airespace line of Cisco wireless switches and access points. As I wrote in my earlier post, Airespace has wireless security technology that should be a super fit for Cisco's Network Admission Control (NAC) vision of network security. Depending on exactly how they play it, Airespace can add tools ranging from sharply improved wireless monitoring to robust user authentication and authorization to Cisco's device-oriented view of the network.

Of course, the merger marks a real opportunity for companies like Aruba and Trapeze, who can try to fill the OEM void that will be left by Airespace's marriage to Cisco. It will be interesting to see which of the remaining wireless switch companies will be the most aggressive in going after Airespace partners. As for me, I think I'll head back to the lab, and leave the rumor-wrangling to others...

Here's something to 'brighten' your day. According to a recent survey on the future of the Internet, 66% of more than 1,200 tech experts and analysts predict that the 'Net will experience a devestating and severely damaging attack within the next ten years.

Either that, or they forsee an assault on the nation's power grid sometime around 2014.

It's encouraging to see that so many folks in our industry have such a bright and positve outlook for the future. I guess we better get an early start on our "Surivor's Guide to 2015." Should be an interesting read.

The security consolidation rumor-mill is at it again, this time renewing the notion that Airespace is about to be purchased by Cisco. I made some calls, and it seems like this is a rumor that's at the very least ahead of the facts--while they wrapped everything in standard "We can't confirm anything" language, I didn't get the impression that a purchase is happening in the next couple of weeks.

Don't get me wrong--an Airespace buyout makes some sense from Cisco's perspective. They've certainly shown no reluctance to buy good technology (Procket, anyone?) and some of the things Airespace has done would mesh nicely into Cisco's Network Admissions Control (NAC) framework for network security. From the Airespace point of view, a purchase would make sense in terms of rewarding investors and employees, though they would certainly pay for the rewards in reduced independence and increased organizational overhead.

Airespace has a number of reseller deals with major networking vendors, and the rumored deal for Airespace to play a major role in Microsoft's new internal network has certainly increased the chatter factor about the company. I think it would be a shame to see Airespace sell out this early; they--along with Aruba and Trapeze--have helped push wireless networking security and performance much faster and farther than it would have gone had everything been left to the companies who's major stakes are in the wired network world. The time for consolidation and payoff is coming, but I hope it's later, rather than sooner.

A sign that there are some truly despicable individuals in the world (I refrain from using humans). A new email scam reaching inboxes is that of fake requests for help from "Tsunami victims." The messages ask for donations through a Web site or an offshore bank account. Of course, the money never reaches the real survivors.

This should be a given, but obviously if you want to contribute to the Tsunami relief, you can do so through any number of official and legal charitable organizations (CNN provides a detailed list).

It may be 2005, but folks are spending plenty of time talking about the year that just was -- and what kind of technological impacts, trends and challenges we faced (or feared).

Over at Geek.com, they're offering several Malware Top 10 lists for 2004.

Jump over to CNN, where their editors present their 2004's top stories in technology.

Not to be outdone, MSNBC pitches their top tech stories for 2004 -- aka "The good, the bad -- and iPods for everyone."

Meanwhile closer to home, our friends at VARBusiness highlight the people behind the technology with their Top 50 Innovators Of 2004. Our amigos at TechWeb have their own list -- the biggest surprises in five major industry sectors during 2004.

Of course, when you're done reminiscing about the past, don't forget to take a look towards the future -- namely the brand new year. Our Survivor's Guide to 2005 will start you on the right path to IT success during the next twelve months.