Geek Stuff category archive

Warning: Language.

Via Linux Outlaws.

Addendum, Later That Same Afternoon:

Lisa Scottolini, mystery novelist and writer columnist for the ex-local rag, discusses her plans to sell her rough drafts because, hey! Apple does it. An excerpt:

I bought two iPads at Christmas, one for Daughter Francesca and one for me, only to see Apple come out with the iPad 2.0 three months later. The new iPad has a camera and a better way of turning on and off. Why they couldn’t have done this at Christmas, I don’t know. Why they couldn’t have told me at Christmas, I do know.

And so do you.

Apple makes fraud cool.

iFraud.

Dick Destiny explains.

The Chicago Tribune recites an object lesson.

Eben Moglin, speaking at a meeting of the Internet Society’s New York branch on Feb 5, 2010, on the internet, the erosion of privacy, and the cloud (whatever that is):

It is here of course that Mr. Zuckerburg enters. The human race has . . . susceptibility to harm, but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record.

He has done more harm to the human race that anybody else his age.

Because he harnessed . . . Friday night, that is, everybody needs to get laid, and he turned it into a structure for degenerating the integrity of human personality and he has, to a remarkable extent, succeeded, with a very poor deal, namely, I will give you free webhosting and some PHP doo-dads and you get spying for free all the time–and, it works.

Follow the link for video, audio, and links for more information.

A year-long Department of Homeland Security undercover operation targeting prospective “sex tourists” was torpedoed last month after a blogger unwittingly stumbled upon a sleazy web site set up by federal agents and engineered a reverse sting on investigators she mistook for pedophiles, The Smoking Gun has learned.

A citizen stumbled across the site and notified the police. Investigation ensues. Left hand, meet right hand and all that.

Buried down in the story was this little gem, which warmed my little Linux-loving heart:

The computer programmer also noticed that the “Precious Treasure Holiday Company” site appeared to have been designed using a 2003 version of Microsoft’s FrontPage. In retrospect, she remarked, the use of such outdated software should have tipped her to the fact that the site was a U.S. government production.

Persons who know what they are doing generally don’t use FrontPage.

El Reg:

British people carry an average of nine keys around with them, but can identify only six of those, with no idea what the other three came from, or what they unlock…

The figures come from esure, who asked a thousand or so average people and discovered that women carry 10 keys, compared to a chap’s eight, but the girls are slightly better at remembering what they’re for – only 20 per cent mysterious compared to a man’s 23 per cent.

Not me. I went through all my keys last week and discarded a half dozen.

Follow the link. After the snark are some good hints on key safety.

Facebood Street View:

“No one can change me,’’ reads a quote from this personality’s newly established Facebook page. “I am a monster!!!’’

The page belongs to Alger Street in Brockton, a stretch of potholed, pitted asphalt that has crushed tires, shattered shock absorbers, and rattled the teeth of drivers for years, if not decades.

The new trend: Giving up Facebook for Lent.

Afterthought:

The most impressive Lenten observance I have ever seen was done regularly by my old co-worker, Jack.

A smoker of three decades, he would regularly give up cigarettes for Lent. It was not an attempt to quit. He started smoking again after Lent.

Anyone who has ever tried to quit will know how impressive that is.

On one level, this begs for snark, but, on a deeper level, it is somehow very sad.

Facebook is launching a system that allows users to report friends who they think may be contemplating suicide.

The feature is being run in conjunction with Samaritans, which said several people had used it during a test phase.

Facebook is, after all, nothing more a than website with a database. Many, including me, have found it to be a useful tool, but it’s still a tool.

Making visible the invisible:

Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from Timo on Vimeo.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

March 6, 2011 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Geek Stuff | Bookmark this post

John Naughton has doubts about Apple’s dominance, via Itunes’s, in the on-line media sales world. A nugget:

Umberto Eco once wrote a memorable essay arguing that the Apple Mac was a Catholic device, while the IBM PC was a Protestant one. His reasoning was that, like the Roman church, Apple offered a guaranteed route to salvation – the Apple Way – provided one stuck to it. PC users, on the other hand, had to take personal responsibility for working out their own routes to heaven.

Eco’s metaphor applies with a vengeance to the new generations of Apple iDevices, which are rigidly controlled appliances. You may think you own your lovely, shiny new iPhone or iPad, but in reality an invisible virtual string links it back to Apple HQ at One Infinite Loop, Cupertino.

Read the whole thing.

Toys. All toys.

Andy Borowitz reports:

A new combatant entered the so-called tablet war today and it’s already getting a big thumbs-up from gadget aficionados: the Etch-a-Sketch 2.

The E2, as its called, looks very similar to its predecessor, but in the words of the company spokesman who unveiled it at the TED conference in Long Beach, “This is not your father’s Etch-a-Sketch.”

(snip)

“The Etch-a-Sketch 2 is more than just another tablet,” said Tracy Klugian, spokesman for Ohio Art, the manufacturer of the E2. “It is going to totally change the way you think about completely unnecessary devices.”

Details at the link.

Google deploys street-view tricycles.

Google’s Street View service has mostly been limited to places where cars mounted with cameras can drive. But now, Street View increasingly will include images of public and private sites ranging from selected hiking trails of the Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve near Los Altos to Sea World Orlando to Kew Gardens in London.

Follow the link for pictures. The trike looks like a cross between a giant Big Wheel and the Seattle Space Needle.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk-Employee Cafeteria. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, March 3.

Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)

Via Balloon Juice.

Bad news:

In a Super Bowl ad for the Chevrolet Cruze, a young man uses voice commands to check Facebook and grins when his OnStar communication system reads his date’s message: “Best first date ever.”

Good news (emphasis added).

It’s heartwarming to some, downright scary to others, who worry that in-car technology is too distracting. But mostly, it’s a work in progress. General Motors Co. is still testing the OnStar Facebook system, and it may never become a standard feature. No other manufacturers are offering a way to check Facebook with voice commands, either.

The article goes on to describe other research automobile manufacturers are doing to ensure that drivers don’t see us before they hit us.

Stu Bykofsky offers a typology of Facebook friends at Philly dot com. Follow the link for his comments on Facebook’s friend suggestions.

• Me, ME, ME!!: Braggers and self-promoters. I do some promoting myself, when I post a column that I think far-flung FFFs might enjoy. But I’m not running an Amway operation, selling mood rings, gold or vitamin supplements, like some FFFs.
• Bold Liars: “I’m taking Janice to Paris for the weekend,” Jim writes. I know him. He’ll be diving in Dumpsters on Moravian Street for dinner.
• Collectors: Overly competitive, they promiscuously sign up thousands of FFFs. (The greater the number, the higher the PQ – Pathetic Quotient.)
• Self-Impressed: “I’m going to lunch with my favorite judge.” “I just got back from the Super Bowl.” “I went to the ballet.” Not a word about what happened, just “I went, I did.”

Afterthought:

I’m torn. Can’t decide whether I belong in the first category of the last one.

Building a better Watson:

Via the San Jose Mercury-News, which reports

Relax, humans. Watson may have beat the most successful champions of “Jeopardy,” but it doesn’t mean machines are ready to take over the world.

Even Dan Gruhl, a researcher at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose who worked on Watson — a four-year project that involved about 20 to 25 people throughout IBM’s eight research labs — says so. He points to the 55 sparring sessions that Watson took part in from November to January before the big showdown with Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the game show’s most successful champions, this week. Watson — which IBM calls a DeepQA machine made up of custom algorithms, terabytes of storage and “many, many CPUs,” — won 71 percent of those mock games. Was Watson’s progress incremental, GMSV asked Gruhl in a phone interview Wednesday. “Oh, heck yeah,” he said.

Apparently, this is some kind of automated alert device:

The Palo Alto Police Department on Wednesday asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate a mobile device that flooded the city’s emergency communications center with 566 calls over a five-hour period in January, according to a police official.

“I asked (the FCC) to open an investigation … on the problems this device was creating,” said Charles Cullen, technical services director for the Palo Alto Police Department. “And that’s where they have jurisdiction, because it’s a mobile device.”

The phantom calls started pouring into the city’s emergency communications center the night of Jan. 13 and continued into the early morning hours of Jan. 14. Cullen said it appears the device was in a Mercedes-Benz and is also likely responsible for flooding the California Highway Patrol’s Vallejo dispatch center with 2,225 calls over a roughly 21-hour period between Jan. 25 and 26.

In both cases, it comes out to over 100 calls per hour, indicating a redial after each disconnect.