Geek Stuff category archive

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.

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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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Alex Beam in the Boston Globe:

I have never knowingly tweeted, and to my 18 loyal followers I say: Don’t wait up. The Globe maintains a Twitter feed for my columns which recently attracted this e-mail: “Fungie the Dolphin would like to follow your tweets.’’ Well, it’s a free country.

My laptop, which is my primary computer for daily use, is a Dell 1545 which came with Ubuntu. It works fine, and I’m a believer in “if it ain’t broke etc.”

Linux can be especially dicey as regard wireless, because many makers of wireless devices do not make Linux drivers or, if they do, they do not make good Linux drivers.

And the wireless in this thing works great, so I’m not touching it.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to write some posts on Geekazine about installing and using Slackware (you can read them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6). As part of doing that, I upgraded one of my old inherited desktops to Slackware Linux 13.0 and configured it up.

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From the Guardian:

Twitter users were warned to look out for a phishing scam which sends tweeters a message saying “This you????” followed by a link. Curious recipients who click on the link are taken to a fake Twitter login page, where scammers are waiting to get their details.

iYawn.

Addendum, the Next Day:

Andy Borowitz chimes in here.

I was running errands, so I was requested to pick up parsnips.

As I wandered the produce department, i realized I wouldn’t know a parsnip from a parking ticket. I had been told parsnips would be near the carrots. They were, if being along the same wall qualifies as “near the carrots.”

So I whipped out my cell phone, fired up teh Google, and giggled some parsnip pictures.

Viola. Problem solved.

The novelty might be wearing off. Ricky Gervais:

Leaving the microblogging site after less than a month of tweeting, he complained that celebrities used it for “showing off” and he did not need to make “new virtual friends”.

For an example of a twit too fantastically stupid to comprehend, go here.

Brad Friedman in the Guardian:

Free money just to stay stuff, that doesn’t even have to be true, accurate, correct or even coherent is celebrated at Fox. Palin has just landed her dream job.

Bill Shein.

Today at about 11 a. m. EST, Todd Cochrane begins his third (?) annual 24 hour podcast. Jeffrey from Geekazine is scheduled to participate.

Check it out.

I have avoided the Tiger Woods thing for two reasons: It’s boring, and he has never set himself up to dictate the definition of virtue to others.

But it is a reminder:

E-mail is about 27 years old, person-to-person texting 16. Yet smart, powerful, prominent men in amorous situations seem unable to understand the brute facts. As in e-mail is forever. (Even if you melt down your computer, your e-mail is on someone else’s hard drive, too.) As in text messages and voice mail are not secure. Not. Secure.