Geek Stuff category archive

I’ve spent the afternoon messing around with the blog, updating the sidebar to add some Virginia blogs to the list, moving stuff around to what I hope is a more convenient order, and adding a “Donate” button on the theory that it can’t hurt and might help.

Expect more tinkering over the next couple of weeks.

Yeah, I know. Nobody looks at the sidebar anyway.

Richard Clarke has a new book out, which means that “Cyberwar” hype–also known as full employment for computer security consultants–is making the rounds of the talk shows.

The list of luser$ hacker countries of which we should be very, very afraid commonly includes North Korea, China, Iran, and whatever other nation is the bad guy of the moment.

People buy into the hype because, for most of us, a computer is a magic box we don’t understand–so it’s easy to believe it can be used to saw the beautiful assistant in half and then reassemble her.

It’s akin to your older relatives who, in the early days of electricity, feared that current could somehow leak from an outlet that had no plug in it. As George Smith points out,

Why, all those wily North Koreans have to do is rent a hotel room in China and launch a cyberattack on the US on the 4th of July against government websites hardly anyone visits!

This is not to say that computer security is unimportant. It is. There are safety rules for computers just as there are for electricity.

As George Smith also wonders, does the recent boo-boo by McAfee warrant adding them to the list of rogue states?

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The Boston Globe offers a “How To Twit.”

Luk–booty on @balcony.

Bill Shein. A nugget:

QUESTION: When I opened the box, I found my new iPad was wrapped in a black turtleneck. Why?

ANSWER: The black turtleneck is the official symbol of our iLord and iMaster, Steve Jobs, praised be He. Every iPad comes lovingly wrapped in a turtleneck that has been Blessed by Steve™ at no additional charge. As you may have heard, five of these shirts were once worn by Steve. If you get one – which will smell strongly of pure genius – you’ll win a tour of Apple’s secret design studio. During your visit, you’ll learn about upcoming products like the Everlasting GatesStopper and the iHuxley, the perfect device for our brave new world of permanent distraction.

From a Twitter convert:

The Twittersphere is an odd and uncanny place. It’s something like having fairies at the bottom of your garden.

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Read how AT&T tried to take over the broadcast waves in 1922.

Think net neutrality.

AT&T story via GNC.

Via GNC.

The Guardian:

When Business Week reports that an iPhone app has been developed to celebrate the internet cult Epic Fail, you know – to use another meme that has penetrated popular culture – it has reached tipping point.

In truth, this probably means the putdown phrase has now – ahem – jumped the shark . . . .

In other news of fail, I was listening to Linux Outlaws yesterday when Fab tried to say “a fail on my part” and failed on his part.

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Clay Shirkey describes how major media is responding to the digital world (emphasis added):

To pick a couple of examples more or less at random, last year Barry Diller of IAC said, of content available on the web, “It is not free, and is not going to be,” Steve Brill of Journalism Online said that users “just need to get back into the habit of doing so [paying for content] online”, and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp said “Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use.”

Diller, Brill, and Murdoch seem be stating a simple fact—we will have to pay them—but this fact is not in fact a fact. Instead, it is a choice, one its proponents often decline to spell out in full, because, spelled out in full, it would read something like this:

“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”

South Dakota has passed a law:

The South Dakota Legislature thinks that scientific laws are made up by people to suit agendas.

Accordingly, they have invented some agendist stuff to make a political declaration that climate change is a myth.

Follow the link to link to read the text.

Next: South Dakota decrees that bumble bees can’t fly.

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Via the Inverse Square Blog.

There’s a big fuss up in Massachusetts over whether Rachel Maddow is considering running for the Senate (she says not) and Senator Cosmo Brown trying to use her name in a fund raiser and is not returning her phone calls or she’s not calling him.

Read the whole story. It’s as mixed up as Y&R (Victor is my hero).

Any moment now, Edward Brooke’s long-lost twin is likely to reappear to claim the inheritance after having been held prisoner by Anne Bonney in Valhalla.

Or something.

And it began with a twit:

In a controversy since dubbed “walshgate,’’ the speculation began with a tweet that got away from the chairman of the state Democratic Party, John Walsh. Walsh was trying to contact someone who was being urged to run against Brown. “I goofed up and instead, tweeted it to the world,’’ said Walsh.

.

I grew up on a farm.

To me, farming=work. It makes me go all over Maynard G. Krebs.

Not so, apparently, city folk. The BBC attempts to understand the fascination of Farmville:

A Bulgarian official has been sacked after being caught milking a virtual cow on the hugely popular online farming game, FarmVille. So what is it about it that’s made it so popular?

Video tour of the USS New Mexico.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a long story about the history of the Lower Merion School District laptop spying case. The district was able to remotely and secretly turn on the webcams in the Mac laptops they gave to students; the district claims that they used the power solely to track computers reported stolen. Some parents and students question this claim.

When I activate the webcam on my laptop, a light comes on. According to Klaatu’s March 15 podcast, those Macs do not show when the camera is turned on.

One quotation sums up why many feel queasy about the school district’s power:

Network technician Michael Perbix, in computer forums and in a Webcast, would recount how he could hunt down and monitor the laptops without anyone knowing.

“If you’re controlling someone’s machine,” he said, “you don’t want them to know what you’re doing.”

I have not yet met a power that someone wasn’t tempted to abuse.

Bricking cars remotely:

According to Threat Level, a man has been charged in Austin, Texas for allegedly hacking into the computer of his employer, Texas Auto Center, and activating WebTeck remote horn triggers and kill devices installed in over 100 cars owned by the company’s customers — all from the comfort of home.

Via GNC.

At Broadband dot gov. The FCC is collecting information about the quality of broadband connections.

Go there, because your ISP probably doesn’t want you to. (My ISP tested out pretty well, about 18 megs down and four megs up.)

Via Balloon Juice.

Enough with persons (or more likely bots) registering as “stripteasegirl” and “sexywebcam.” Ripping them out of the database is annoying.

Any real live person wishing to register here, not that registration conveys any benefits since I switched to Askimet for filtering comment spam, can email me using the link at the top of the page.

(Poor taste alert)

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