Hey there, loyal listeners! Before I blog about the topics we covered in this week’s episodes of TechStuff, I want to thank all of you who continue to write in with questions and suggestions. We love to get feedback from our listeners. Just don’t send us your theory on how Microsoft came up with the name for Windows 7 — we answered that one last week.

On Monday, Chris and I talked about denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Malicious hackers use these kinds of attacks to target Web servers to slow them down or even take them offline. If the server’s administrators aren’t prepared to respond to the attack it can take days to recover. Practically every major Web site has been the target of a DoS at some point. Some system administrators are constantly countering attacks. Recently, Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal suffered service issues due to a DoS attack originating in Russia. The people behind the attack were targeting a specific user — all of the rest of us were collateral damage. Listen to the podcast for a further description.

Wednesday’s episode was all about airplane technology. We cover everything from transponders to the famous black box. I also reveal one of my previous jobs before my life at HowStuffWorks and how it ties in to airplane technology.

On a side note: this week Josh and Chuck of Stuff You Should Know fame asked me to appear on their podcast to talk about the Necronomicon, a fictional book of malignant power drawn from the literature of H.P. Lovecraft. I had a great time talking about eldritch terrors with the guys. Check out their podcast — it’s good stuff.

Thanks for listening! If you want to learn more about airplanes and computer security, I suggest taking a little trip to HowStuffWorks.com:

How Zombie Computers Work
Could a single hacker crash a country’s network?
How Black Boxes Work
How Airplanes Work