Geek Stuff category archive

If you’re still not sure why all the fuss about SOPA/PIPA, listen to last week’s episode of the Network Security Podcast (podcast download at the link).

The podcast normally reviews computer security news from the week, concentrating on issues of substance, rather than the gee-whiz scary stories and consultant hackery that makes it into television news and newspapers. Such stories are designed to create FUD leading to consultancy contracts to design defenses that won’t work against threats that don’t exist. (Dick Destiny keeps a close eye on that kind of stuff).

On last week’s NetSec podcast, the panelists chose to concentrate on one issue: SOPA/PIPA and the internet protest of a week ago Wednesday. That spun into a fascinating conversation that explored copyright, piracy and allegations of piracy, and corporate business models and practices for nearly an hour–twice the usual length of the podcast.

If you were unclear on the implications of SOPA/PIPA/ACTA before, you won’t be after loading this up in your podplayer.

Selective twits:

The social network Twitter is facing a storm of criticism from users, after revealing that it has implemented a system that would let it withhold particular tweets from specific countries.

The company has insisted that it will not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as already happens when governments or organisations complain about individual tweets.

Much more at the link.

Fed app with it all.

The FBI is seeking to develop an early-warning system based on material “scraped” from social networks.

It says the application should provide information about possible domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps “using mash-up technology”.

Absolutely nothing could go wrong with this.

Also, pigs, wings.

The ACLU takes a look at Google’s new privacy policy.

If you ever log in to Google (Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Plus, YouTube, or anything else Googly), you should read it.

Kudos to Google for explaining in plain English that you can check in, but you can never leave.

As my two or three regular readers will see, I played around with the CSS a bit yesterday, changing the

• font size of posts,
• color of links,
• padding, margins, and background color of blockquotes.

Anyone who was watching while I was testing would have seen thing change with every page refresh.

I leaned towards green rather than blue for links because of the whole pine tree thing.

Feedback welcome.

Shadowy stealth twits.

El Reg:

Clothes that track your every move could fill Apple fanbois’ wardrobes after the fruity tech titan patented new wearable technology. The designs, approved yesterday, describe “smart garments” with embedded sensors and a two-way communications link to an external database.

The more of this sort of stuff I read about, the less I participate in social spybots networks.

I would not be surprised if someone starts selling call-home clothing without telling us.

Aside:

If you are reading this on Facebook, know that the posts are automated. I actually sign in less than twice a month unless I get a message in email (also automated).

I have seen several posts from various bloggers saying that they supported yesterday’s blackout, but feared taking down their sites because they were afraid they couldn’t get them back up.

The solution is simple–you don’t take down your site. (I’m tempted to add, “For Pete’s sake!”)

When a browser hits a site, it resolves by default to a file named index.html. If no index.html is present, it looks for index.php, and so on, through the various recognized formats.

I created the redirection page to send browsers to nosopa.org and added a little text to it, so, if the redirection were delayed for some reason, users would know they had landed at the right place and why there was no there there.

I then used FTP to rename my index.html and index.php files to index.html.orig and index.php.orig (the browser doesn’t know what to do with a *.orig–my term for “original”–file) and to send my new index files to the website. I left the rest of the website untouched.

When a browser hit the site, it saw the new index files with the redirection command and sped over to nosopa.org.

Late last night, I used FTP to delete the special index files and renamed to *.orig files back to their regular names, and Viola! the site was restored.

Piece of cake.

The prosecution presents Exhibit 1,342,923,673.5.

Via Balloon Juice.

It’s been a year since I redesigned the appearance of this site and it’s time to mop up some loose ends, as well as mix a few metaphors.

Since I started this blog, I’ve chosen to surround quotations with links, rather than to insert the link to the source elsewhere in the post, which is the more common practice. It seemed to me to indicate a direct quotation without requiring extraneous words–I have enough extraneous words already.

It was the first independent design decision I recall actually thinking about.

I finally took some time to figure out how to turn off the underlining in quotations, one thing I’ve wanted to do for some time now, because it truly clutters up longer passages.

It required changing this bit of css almost halfway down the stylesheet; the change took a lot less time than tracking down the culprit:

.posttext a {
/* text-decoration:underline */
text-color:blue
}

The “/* */” at the beginning and end of the second line “remarks out” (marks to be ignored) the underlining. The third line I added so that the text color would distinguish the link. (Remarking out the entry makes it easy to undo, if need be. Undoing is, fortunately, easier to do in HTML than it is IRL.)

I also changed the global “hover” quality (“hover” is when the mouse is held over an item) to display an underline by adding the third line below, for those who might have trouble distinguishing the color (the “color” line changes the color to a shade of red on hover). “Global” means this behavior will occur everywhere in this blog:

a:hover {
color:#753206;
text-decoration:underline
}

At this point, I have one more tinker for when that round tuit finally arrives–to make the dashes longer. (Update: Done!)

All rapped up in evolution:

Via Delaware Liberal, which has more, including an explanation of bling.

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.)

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, January 5.

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)

What most users don’t know is that the new features being
The medicine show breaks in a new grift. Follow the link for details.

What most users don’t know is that the new features being introduced are all centered around increasing the value of Facebook to advertisers, to the point where Facebook representatives have been selling the idea that Timeline is actually about re-conceptualizing users around their consumer preferences, or as they put it, “brands are now an essential part of people’s identities.”

The name itself is cleverly designed to conceal the fact that your profile no longer arranges information chronologically. Yes, things are laid out by year and by month. But, when it comes to what’s displayed to your social circle at any given time, other metrics, including direct payments to Facebook itself, will now influence the ranking and placement of stories. This payola will be a crucial part of the graph rank, the new metric for placement that the social network uses to determine what appears on your profile.

Achtung! You vill comply!

A fellow left his employer, taking his twits with him. Now his ex-employer is at twits end:

PhoneDog Media LLC, sued in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming that Kravitz’s Twitter list was a company customer list and demanding damages. Legal experts told the paper that the case will set precedent regarding ownership of social-media accounts and the relationship of popular Twitter users to companies.

You may think he left them twitless.

You would be half right.

Unless you tell it not to, Facebook will take your picture and arbitrarily pop it into ads shown to your “friends,” implying that you “like” whatever it is.

Some Californians have had enough:

Facebook Inc., the world’s most used social-networking service, can be sued by people who claim showing advertisements that their friends apparently like violates a California law regarding commercial endorsements.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose rejected Facebook’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit on Dec. 16, ruling the plaintiffs may pursue claims that the company’s sponsored ads violate state law and are fraudulent. Koh granted Facebook’s request to dismiss a claim that it unjustly enriched itself with the sponsored ads.

The California law says that you can’t be shown as endorsing a product without your permission. This hearing was not about the merits of the suit, but about standing.

I expect that Facebook will argue that accepting its terms and conditions equals giving it permission to do whatever the hell it wants to do.

If you care to hear my dulcet tones, I have a podcast up at HPR.

It was recorded and edited in Audacity. A thank you to all the geeks who posted audacity how-to videos on YouTube.

Russian edition.

I’ve found that persons who resort to name-calling are the persons shortest on reasoning power.