Geek Stuff category archive

I have another podcast up at HPR.

This one may be of wider interest than the others I have there. It describes how I use the free and open source Gnu Image Manipulation Project (commonly called the GIMP) to edit pictures for posting here. The GIMP is freely available for Unix, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

I based the podcast on this picture.

It is hardly an exhaustive description of the GIMP, which is a huge and powerful program, but, if you are interested in exploring the GIMP and freeing yourself of proprietary image-editing programs that cost umpty-ump hundreds of dollars, I think you will find it a useful introduction.

For detailed tutorials on the GIMP, you can do no better than this.

First, they lull you into a sense of security, and then . . . .

Truckers following faulty directions by global positioning systems devices have hit bridges in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County more than 200 times in the past two years, the New York Democrat said in a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday.

About 80 percent of bridge strikes in New York state, where parkways with low overpasses are supposed to be closed to commercial traffic, are caused by GPS misdirection, Schumer said. Even if the roads are well-marked, GPS devices may not note restrictions on trucks and buses, he said.

Senator Schumer wants the government to update GPS technology.

In the meantime, maybe the truckers should consider supplementing their gadgets with a fallback technology.

I believe it’s called “road sign.”

The Denver Post explores how Apple ihypes its iJunk while herds of iJunkies line for their iFixes. You’d think it was a the holy iGrail.

Some consumers, such as Aurora resident Darvell Davenport, say they enjoy the experience of showing up early for a product launch.

“It’s fun, you meet new people and interact,” said the 21-year-old, who

Customers line up outside Park Meadows mall near Denver Friday morning in hopes of being among the first to snag an iPhone 5. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
has also camped out for an iPad and basketball sneakers. “Just the sleep part is messed up.”

(snip)

“We’re very social animals,” (Univ. of Colo. Professor Phil–ed.) Fernbach said. “When we see someone else doing something, we automatically infer from that that it might be a good thing to do.”

At the San Jose Mercury-News, Apple’s local rag, Larry Magid worries about whether the media are playing into Apple’s hype strategy:

I don’t blame Apple for all the hype. It’s their job to maximize interest in their products. But I do blame the press — myself included — for obsessing over them. I keep telling myself to put Apple products into perspective, but I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to covering Apple more than other companies. It’s partially competitive pressure and, in my case, it’s partially demand from radio and TV stations I work with. And when it comes to blog posts, there’s another incentive — stories about Apple products get more hits than other stories. So if you’re looking to maximize viewers (which often translates into more revenue), then you can’t go wrong by writing about Apple, which, of course, is exactly what I just did.

Trending downward:

But the really bad news for the Romney campaign is that the trend has been downhill, not uphill, since the Democrats left Charlotte. In fact, Romney’s best day on Facebook since the (Democratic) convention wasn’t as good as his worst day during the convention.

Facebook’s facial recognition feature is one of the creepiest of may creepy things Facebook does.

Facebook said Friday it had switched off the facial-recognition tool that prompts users to “tag” photographs uploaded to its website following a privacy investigation.

The feature was identified by regulators as one of the main privacy threats posed by the social networking site.

The story implies that this is only for Europe and that Facebook plans to find some way to turn the feature back by sneaking some kind of “user consent” past the regulators. If they do, no doubt they will turn it on, change everybody’s settings, bury the facial recognition settings many fathoms deep, and dare users to find it.

That’s just how they roll.

Fruit users, take note: The aRrogance of Apple aCcelerates aPace:

Apple is being insane enough to sue an online grocery store! Reuters is reporting that Apple is suing an online Polish grocery retailer named A.pl, which is an obvious pun to the fruit name “Apple” that happens to be their company name too. Apple has also filed a complaint with the Polish Patent Office claiming that the Polish company copied Apple’s logos on its website.

Follow the link to compare the logos. Then point and laugh.

Via LQ.

Via PoliticalProf.

My hosting provider had some issues this afternoon, but seems to have everything up and running now.

Nevertheless, I will leave the site be until tomorrow, so my hosting service can finish cleaning out the dustbunnies.

I’m not complaining. They’ve been rock solid for two and a half years. Computers are stuff. Stuff breaks.

Addendum, the Next Day:

Todd gives a good explanation of what is known so far in his most recent podcast. The relevant part starts about ten minutes in.

Facebook never deletes anything. They may remove it from view, but it’s there somewhere in the Faceborg.

According to the warrant, White’s Facebook account is being maintained by someone else while he is in custody. Police believe White is Facebook friends with possible witnesses in the case, and the warrant said investigators have “knowledge of personal threats against complying witnesses,” but no one has been charged with making threats in the case, Johnson said Friday.

Police are investigating “the deleting of information” and believe access to the account “may reveal information related to Defendant’s pre-murder behavior, associations, and activities as well as post murder behavior and conversations,” the warrant said.

Mark Cuban, who is rich because he knew when to get out of the dot-com bubble, says wasn’t suckered in Facebook stock. Instead, he zucked himself.

(Cuban wrote–ed.) “I bought and sold FB shares as a TRADE, not an investment. I lost money. When the stock didn’t bounce as I thought/hoped it would, I realized I was wrong and got out. It wasn’t the fault of the FB CFO that I lost money. It was my fault. I know that no one sells me shares of stock because they expect the price of the stock to go up. So someone saw me coming and they sold me the stock. That is the way the stock market works. When you sit at the trading terminal you look for the sucker. When you don’t see one, it’s you. In this case it was me.”

(snip)

(Blomberg’s Jonathan Wiel comments–ed.) In spite of the shareholder lawsuits filed against Facebook, I have seen no indication that the company’s executives lied to the public about its performance or prospects. Facebook’s prospectus warned about the risks. The decline in Facebook’s rate of revenue growth shouldn’t have surprised anyone. In 2010, sales grew 154 percent. In 2011, they rose 88 percent. By the first quarter of this year, the year- over-year rate was 45 percent. Last quarter, Facebook’s first as a public company, it was down to 32 percent.

Russia doesn’t trust Google. Asia Times reports:

It has been well publicized that Google collects personal data from Android users in order to target them with advertising. Less than pleased that that sensitive information could find its way into US government, the Russian defense ministry has developed its own stripped-down and encrypted version of the operating system especially for government and military devices. This week it was announced that the prototype platform would be available to the public by the end of the year.

Lots of details at the link.

The ACLU does not think much of Apple’s iJunk iNanny.

A nugget; much more at the link:

Wired reported last week that the Apple App Store has rejected an app that compiles news reports in order to map overseas U.S. drone strikes, and provide users a pop-up notification whenever a drone strike has been reported.

(snip)

An app providing a stream of basic information about the conduct of a policy that is the subject of current public debate would seem as American as, uh, apple pie.

Of course, Apple is a private company not covered by the First Amendment, and the App Store is not a public forum. In fact, Apple is arguably like the New York Times, with a right to pick and choose what it “publishes.”

But aside from what Apple has the right to do, you have to wonder how many of its customers say to themselves, “wow, I got a new iPhone, oh boy, now I can access all the information in the world that Apple allows to filter into my new device because nobody finds it objectionable!”

Join us tonight.

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, September 6.

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)

Facebook is cracking down on fraudulent “Likes.”

Ensuring the integrity of “Likes” is serious business for Facebook, which depends on advertising revenue. Many of the ad campaigns companies conduct on Facebook are designed to garner “Likes,” a sign that their marketing message has resonated with consumers.

“It’s their currency,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at research firm Altimeter Group. “Facebook is playing the Federal Reserve, to take the counterfeit currency off the market to ensure that there’s quality in the marketplace.”

I wonder how many regular users actually pay attention to who likes this corporation of that bit of over-priced lickspittle merchandise.

Facebook is messing with its privacy settings again with a view towards duping you into giving away your deepest darkest.

The wise Facebook user will check his or her settings immediately or, better, just get the heck out. Otherwise, you are zucked.

If I didn’t use Facebook to pimp this blog, I would have left it long ago. For years now I’ve put almost nothing but blog posts up there (First Son said that my Facebook page was “a very weird internet place”) and, even before that, I knew that the internet is a public place and exercised due care. I try to behave when I’m in a public place. It fools people.

Via the Network Security podcast, which you should subscribe to if you don’t already.

What Dick Destiny said.

Spent yesterday trying to get my new modem on line. For some fool reason, it and the router would not talk.

I actually arranged for my ISP to send out some techs. They walked into the room, looked at the modem, and it starting talking to the router.

As we used to say in tech support, FM.

Now to catch up on the old RSS feeds.

A fatwa on selling twits?

Dick Destiny explains the magic of how Facebook knows everything about you (or at least thinks it does).

The Bears have it.

Facebook Inc. (FB)’s 45 percent drop since its initial public offering generated returns of more than 500 percent for European investors that bought structured products benefiting from the stock’s decline.

A put warrant, a security for speculating on the future direction of a company’s share price, which predicted Facebook would be at $22 by March, cost 6 euro cents ($0.07) to buy in the week after Facebook went public with an initial price of $38. Today, with Facebook trading at $21.10, the warrant is worth 37 euro cents, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Follow the link for a somewhat murky explanation of the even murkier world of betting that stocks will go down.