Geek Stuff category archive

In which I discuss OTR on the WWW.

“Trending on Twitter” means nothing.

And this surprises us how?

Coming soon to a peephole near you!

Probably not illegal, but definitely creepy.

I am particularly impressed by the whole fake profile thing, which probably violates the TOS of the sites they are using.

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 Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.

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

Note: Meetings are normally on the first Thursday of each month.

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)

Hacker Public Radio makes it easy.

Read more »

Support the Sonar Project. Please also spread the word. The deadline approacheth has passed.

Addendum:

Take a minute to walk in someone else’s shoes. Listen to Jonathan Nadeau walk Pokey through installing Linux without a monitor, using accessibility features.

Addendum-Dee-Dum-Dum:

The project raised over $9,000, due in large part to a strong last-minute push from the Linux podcasting community.

Unlike a kickstarter campaign, in which a project that doesn’t meet its goal gets nothing, the Sonar Project will receive the pledges. Compliments to all who donated.

Cosmo Boy tries to master technology.

If you can’t beat ’em, fool ’em.

The Pirate Bay today said it filed a report with the Finnish police alleging that an anti-piracy group committed copyright infringement when it created a Pirate Bay parody site.

This follows a threat last week in which the Pirate Bay said it will sue the makers of the copycat website for copyright infringement. The Pirate Bay, of course, is used by many to distribute and download torrents of copyrighted files (it calls itself “world’s largest site for cultural diversity and file sharing”). The torrent site explains that it normally wouldn’t mind copying, but it takes offense because this incident’s perpetrator was the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) in Helsinki.

Via GNC.

The San Jose Mercury-News has a long article about Microsoft’s advertising campaign designed to impugn Google’s integrity.*

Given Microsoft’s history of duplicitous, underhanded, and monopolistic business tactics (PDF at link), it really isn’t in the position to impugn anyone’s anything.

But there’s a bright spot.

They’ve hired someone with a proven record of fail to manage it.

Now the Redmond, Wash., software giant is waging a high-profile, election-style blitz against its Mountain View rival — using public opinion polls, for example, to shape rapid-fire attacks — with the help of Mark Penn, a veteran public relations executive and former campaign adviser to former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Penn, who previously consulted for Microsoft, was hired full time last year.

Afterthought:

I seldom use Google. I use Startpage (ixquick in the UK).

____________________

*Not that I’m a big fan of Google, but they do seem to have a shred of integrity, unlike their biggest competitors, Facebook and Microsoft. Google is not a paragon, but neither is it a paragoons.

When iJunk casts its spell (emphasis added).

A cider shop in Norfolk (UK–ed.) has had to change its name after receiving up to 24 phone calls a week from fanbois with computer problems.

Since an Apple Store opened in Norwich, locals have been calling mistakenly phoning the Apple Shop in Wroxham Barns, with their iPhone and Apple-related woes.

Apple Shop owner Geoff Fisher told the BBC: “My telephone number has a Norwich prefix and so people unawares ring up the Apple Shop. All I can say to them is, ‘I’m very sorry, I can’t help you, but please do come along and get some proper Norfolk cider to get over your sorrows’.”

Some persons couldn’t pass a licensing test for driving a computer.

(It’s probably just as well. Apple Computers probably would have sued him. They do stuff like that.)

Aside:

Funny, I thought iJunk “just worked” in a trouble-free starry-eyed paradise sort of way.

I would hate to have to index the blither.

Something’s going on out on the innerwebs.

Akismet has caught over 500 spam comments to this blog in the past 48 hours. That’s about 450 more than the normal crop for two days.

Somehow, the damned cat managed to open the Opera preferences dialog, navigate to the “Advanced” tab, scroll down to “Cookies,” and set Opera not to accept cookies (I keep it set to “Accept only from the site I visit”), thus preventing me from logging in and compelling me to use another, less feature rich, much better known, and somewhat clunkier browser, until an error message from another site (“Hey, we need to drop a cookie, doofus!”) alerted me to what might have gone wrong.

Retiring twits, who manage cover-up–oh, never mind.

In which I interview Mark A. Davis of the Tidewater Unix Users Group.

If at first . . . .

The “Facebook Stalker,” a 20-year-old South Jersey man arrested last fall for threatening a woman on the social-media network, was charged again Wednesday with making terroristic threats.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

Join the new TWUUG forums and help them grow, then join us Thursday in person.

Tidewater Unix Users Group

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 Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)

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

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)

Nowhere to hide (emphasis added):

Facebook Inc. (FB) is developing a smartphone application that will track the location of users, two people with knowledge of the matter said, bolstering efforts to benefit from growing use of social media on mobile computers.

The app, scheduled for release by mid-March, is designed to help users find nearby friends and would run even when the program isn’t open on a handset, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public.

It appears that, once again, you’re zucked.

On the Media investigates the coverage of the hacking of the New York Times.

Mark Zuckerberg failed to make Business Week’s list of the worst CEOs of 2012–by the width of an electron.

Two other executives—Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and Andrew Mason at Groupon (GRPN)—almost made the list. The rap on Zuckerberg is his “massive ego,” while both men get demerits for immaturity and shares that move in only one direction, and not the right one.

Follow the link to see who did make it.