Every once in a while you stumble on something really exceptional. For example, consider the two links below:
In case those links go down, here are screengrabs of the links above. They are not as impressive as the real thing, but they will give you a good idea of the detail and complexity of these pages:
Ok, so this is not pure ASCII art. These images use color, but hell - I’m still impressed.
Here is a brilliant image painted on the ceiling of a smoking room. Click on the image to see the full version at the original location:
It’s quite striking.
Did you know that you can escalate you can become the SYSTEM user on a WinXP box simply by using the at command? Try this at home:
at 11:45pm /interactive cmd.exe
You just scheduled a job that will pop up a new cmd window exactly at 11:45pm. Who is the parent of this window? Why SYSTEM of course. But we are not done yet.
Have the new cmd window up? Good. Now kill explorer.exe using the Task Manager. Yes, just kill it! Keep the new cmd window open though. Use it to run explorer again by typing in explorer.exe. Done!
You are now logged in as SYSTEM. You can now go ahead and do all the nifty admin things that you always wanted to do but your IT department wouldn’t let you. 
You might get in trouble when they find out though. So, don’t go crazy with your newfound power.
If you still don’t believe me, here is a video that shows you how it’s done.
A while ago I read an interesting article that claimed that our current URI addressing scheme is counter intuitive. I do not necessarily support this point of view but I thought it was an interesting point. If you think about it, most URL’s look like this:
subdomain.domain.tld/folder/folder/file.ext
What is so counter intuitive about this? Well, the information is scattered all over the place without any logical arragnement. For example, why do we specify sub-domain before domain, even though in most of our other conceptual models, the child node comes after the parent? Why is the topmost container (TLD) smack dab in the middle of the address? Wouldn’t it be more logical to structure url’s this way:
tld.domain.subdomain/folder/folder/file.ext
Here we have a logical progression - first you type in the most general element of the address (tld) and then you drill down to more specific domain, sub-domain and the actual file. Just like the telephone number, when first you specify the area code.
Obviously, com-dot does not roll of the tongue like dot-com. It seems rather awkward, but the proposed structure is sound from a logical point of view. I’m not advocating changing the current scheme. That would be really stupid. But it’s food for thought.
Now if I could just remember who originally came up with this URL reversal idea… Any clue?
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