Geek Stuff category archive

Putting words in your mouse . . . .

Candice Kilpatrick couldn’t help but laugh when she came across a novelty item on Amazon.com: a latex horse’s head with a bushy mane.

Knowing her friends would get a kick out of the mask too, she shared the link on Facebook.

Soon her friends began seeing an update from Kilpatrick on their Facebook pages that appeared as if Kilpatrick was encouraging them to buy the mask: “Good news everyone. These are 40% off today.”

But Kilpatrick had not posted it. Facebook had turned the link into a personal endorsement called a “sponsored story” paid for by Amazon.

It’s growing practice. Google has given it a “+1.”

If you agreed to the TOS, you have agreed to let them do this (with Facebook, the TOS and privacy policies are moving targets–they change them so much). It’s still slimy.

Much more at the link.

Since I seem to have the mother of all colds, I took a tablet.

I ordered it last week and it arrived today, just in time to distract me from the miseries (to use the term my grandmother would have used).

It is quite nice. It’s very fast, multitasks superbly, and has a refreshing lack of “branding” crapola.

You can expect (or dread) to hear more about it later. I’m already making notes for the podcast.

The headline writers today are clutching their pearls at this:

The National Security Agency is gathering email and instant messenger contact lists from hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens worldwide, many of them Americans, The Washington Post reported late Monday.

These people suffer a severe shortage of clues. They have no idea how the internet or networks work.

Email addresses and most emails travel across the net in the clear.

When an application for tracking and mapping your bicycle rides* wants access to the contact list on your phone, persons willingly run through Facebook in their digital birthday suits, phishing@hooklineandsinker.ru has been emailing everybody for years, and persons (like me) make email addresses public on blogs and websites, I just cannot get worked up over this. It is much ado about not much of anything.

________________

*Map My Ride (no link–find it yourself). And that’s why I didn’t install it. I use Move! Bike Computer.

Yesterday morning, my attempts to connect to From Pine View Farm repeatedly errorred out with this message.

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Apache Server at www.pineviewfarm.net Port 80

I started a support ticket with my hosting provider and called to follow up on it this afternoon.

Over the course of ninety minutes, we tried a number of diagnostics and support finally concluded that I had outgrown my hosting plan and will migrate the site to a different server with a different setup to allow more concurrent connections. (I have noticed that my stats plugin has been showing an increase from an average of 300-350 unique visitors to 500-550 unique visitors per day.)

With luck, normal inanity will resume shortly, but I’m going to allow a while for the migration to be completed smoothly.

Too many readers is not a problem I ever expected to have, but one which I find most gratifying.

Thank you, you troublemakers you, every one!

Afterthought:

If you notice any glitches, particularly with linking to or inside the site, please use the “Contact” link at the top right to report them.

Why do I find this disquieting?

Delta Air Lines is jettisoning pounds of paper navigational charts and manuals from its cockpits, replacing them with electronic versions in Microsoft Surface 2 tablets issued to 11,000 pilots.

I used to say that “if you die and go to hell on Delta, you’ll change at Atlanta.”

Now, you get a bonus wait for a virus scan and defrag.

Jack Ohman:

The world was basically a better place before Tweeting. I tweet, reluctantly, and I have some friends who tweet every hour or so. I don’t know what the revenue model is on the that, but I can assure you that what you don’t tweet can’t hurt you #askAnthonyWeiner.

One of my favorite presidents, “Silent” Calvin Coolidge–why? Because he was a jerk– was famous for his terse responses. My favorite was when a drunk woman came up to him at a reception and said, “My husband bet me I couldn’t get three words out of you.”

Coolidge responded, “You lose.”

Backstory at the link.

The ACLU takes on the Zuckerborg’s limitations of statue.

Trouble in the walled orchard’s workers’ paradise.

About 2,000 Chinese employees of an iPhone assembly company fought a pitched battle into the early hours of Monday, forcing the huge electronics plant where they work to be shut down.

Authorities in the northern city of Taiyuan sent 5,000 police to restore order after what the plant’s Taiwanese owners Foxconn Technology Group said was a personal dispute in a dormitory that erupted into a mass brawl.

However, some employees and people posting messages online accused factory guards of provoking the trouble by beating up workers at the factory, which employs about 79,000 people and is owned by the world’s largest contract maker of electronic goods.

Via LQ.

Oh, my.

Like, like, dude.

Hitting the “Like” button on Facebook is an element of free speech protected by the U.S. constitution, a federal court ruled Wednesday, in a case closely watched by employment lawyers.

The U.S. Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Virginia, made the judgment in the case of a Virginia sheriff’s department worker who claimed he was fired for exercising his free speech rights — in this case “liking” a political opponent of his boss.

Breaking Bad News.

Using Facebook to find stolen bicycles.

I know that I would be most upset if my bike disappeared. Not just because it’s my bike, but because it came from the Urban Bike Project to which Second Son introduced me and because it’s old, like me, and still functions, like me.

But mostly because it’s fun to ride.

Facebook is mucking with its “privacy” (c’est rire) policy once again in its continuing effort to parade you naked through the internets.

Thom reports on Verizon’s attempt to ration your internet so they can collect money on both ends.