Enough! Enough! I've had enough of this Private Eye crap!

*rants at self*

Time to resume life!

*drinks beer, raves at self*

I'm going to turn my class tonight into a pure Visual Statistics experience by dispensing with most of the lecture and having everyone spend 3 hours in the computer lab!

*teacher gets to intermittently blog internet while students play with sampling distributions, hehe*

From the Toronto Star posted September 8, 2000

We should be proud of Dan, he's a super cyber-sleuth!

"These days, Ikea is Swedish for giving the world the names of its customers. The names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of 144,229 North Americans sat exposed on the company's Web site earlier this week.

      But whether it was a malicious attack or a security shortfall depends on whom you talk to.Dan Huddle, chief technology officer at Internet publisher Xanga.com, said he discovered the information when he visited the Ikea site to order the company's catalogue Monday morning. After submitting his contact information, an error message appeared.

      According to the message, a database file at a specific location, or path, had received too much information and overflowed.

      That was the Huddle's first clue that something wasn't right. On a secure site, an error message with specific information about the location of the database wouldn't appear on an outside user's screen. It would be sent to the person who maintains the site.

      Huddle quickly realized the location listed in the error message could probably be accessed by anyone.

      "I was just in disbelief," said Huddle. "Normally you would put a file like that in a directory that the public couldn't access, but Ikea didn't do that. So I went right to the file and downloaded it."

      Huddle found the names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses for the 144,266 Canadians and Americans who had requested the Ikea catalogue over the long weekend."

Is this the same Dan Huddle as mentioned (Nov '97) here? :

"The old office had more character; this is more businesslike," said Dan Huddle, a 20-year-old Motley Fool Web programmer whose desk is lined with boxes of Fruity Pebbles cereal. His bosses mention the company budget more, he said. Huddle recently was asked to sign a code of conduct. And with the added space, he said, employees e-mail one another more, speak to one another less.

Hrmm...Prometheus points out, as does Biz himself on his bizstone.com journal, that Biz is taking a one-way trip to Califronia...  Meeting up with someone named Greg Yaitanes, perhaps? Hey, doesn't Bianca, the great Xangan marketeer, live in California, too? 

A few more cyber-tracks leading to no end, of no great apparent importance, yet filling out some picture.  Registration information for Biz Stone's domain, www.bizstone.com :

Registrant:
YAITANES, GREG (BIZSTONE2-DOM)
12400 Wilshire Blvd # 850
LOS ANGELES, CA 90025
US

Domain Name: BIZSTONE.COM

Administrative Contact:
STONE, BIZ (BXS329) bizstone@aol.com
BIZSTONE
295 Weston Road
WELLESLEY, MA 02482
781 235 4920
Technical Contact:
Hostmaster, Domain (HD8000-ORG) hostmaster@DOTEASY.COM
Doteasy Technology Inc.
Suite 607 - 4538 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC V5H 4T9
CANADA
604-608-6868
Fax- 604-608-6832
Billing Contact:
YAITANES, GREG (GY799) applepantz@AOL.COM
YAITANES, GREG
12400 Wilshire Blvd # 850
LOS ANGELES, CA 90025
310 826 7751

Record last updated on 14-Aug-2000.
Record expires on 27-Feb-2002.
Record created on 27-Feb-2000.
Database last updated on 28-Mar-2001 20:20:00 EST.

... Is this Greg Yaitanes the writer/director who served as a visual consultant on Hanging Up and Unstrung Heroes with TV directing credits to include: Nash Bridges, VIP, Martial Law, and America's Most Wanted  ?

Creating a viable revenue model for Xanga is the topic Prometheus is seriously yet humorously tackling over there on his blogspace.   His challenge: "Who can come up with the best ways for xanga to make money."  ...So check that out!

Meantime...

It seems Biz Stone himself, creative director of Xanga, Inc., is not impervious to pondering such considerations.  Below are some excerpts from an interview Biz conducted with Evan Williams, the founder of Blogger:

Labs, Robots, and Giant Floating Brains: The Amazingly True Story of Blogger!, March 9, 2001 in webreview.com

(beginning of excerpts)

“Like many others, Blogger found itself in a dangerous situation—up the creek without a revenue model. And so the fabulous "Blogger Seven" was reduced to one. But is this remaining member just a robot? A brain floating in bio fluid? Will Blogger survive?

To answer these questions and more, Web Review.com recruited me, Biz Stone, self-proclaimed genius.

…

(This is Biz with a warning: weak of heart need not read on!)

Ev:...the Internet bubble burst, the second round of financing was never acquired, we failed to execute on alternative plans to generate revenue, we ran out of money, we flailed around with a couple acquisition and merger deals that never came together, the rest of the team either decided or was forced to leave, I decided to stay and am currently still plugging away.

Biz: I see. Eh-hem.

…

Biz: Hey, whose idea was the "Blogger Server Fund?"

Ev: Probably the first person, internally, to suggest we ask for voluntary payments from our users was pb. I was never comfortable with the idea, though most of the rest of the team was encouraging it over the last couple of months. As things became more desperate, I became more open to it and finally had the idea to ask specifically for help buying new servers.

Biz: How much did you end up making total?

Ev: We ended up with about $12,000 from users, plus another $4,500 from Web Techniques. We bought four new servers. Far beyond my expectations.

Biz: Wow. I should start the "Biz Server Fund" except instead of buying servers, I'll just pay my overdue taxes—did I just say that out loud?

…

Biz: Is it just fundamentally wrong to charge for basic Blogger? Am I gonna get stoned to death for mentioning it?

Ev: I'm sure some people would be upset if we started charging for basic Blogger, but in general I think there's a growing awareness that the free-lunch Internet is a thing of the past. People realize that the money has to come from somewhere, and based on many emails I've received, I know a lot of Blogger users would be greatly relieved to pay for the service, because they would be more confident it's not going away.

...

Biz: So are you going to focus on Blogger Pro now?

Ev: I'm not focusing on it yet. I'm trying to figure out a more long-term plan, both in terms of business strategy and technology direction, before I launch Pro—which was based on assumptions that I'm not sure are still valid, regarding where we're going and why. Is that vague enough?

Biz: Mind games—I'm onto you, Ev—I'm onto you!

All right, back to business, how do you plan to make money with Blogger?

Ev: Okay, well, things could change because nothing is official yet, but (knock on wood), by the end of this week, I should be able to announce a deal or two I've been working on that will provide enough income to keep the service up for quite some time—even without charging for it—and that will also be complimentary to a longer-term strategy.

I do still plan on launching various levels of paid-for versions of the tool, but only when I'm confident I can offer a professional-quality level of service.”

…

 (end of excerpts)

 …"various levels of paid-for versions of the tool"!  I see the visions of sugarplums dancing in Biz’s head    ~!~!~!~!~