Category: Random Ramblings

Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.

Staying on the down-low on P2P

All the cool kids are in to peer-to-peer filesharing these days. Estimates suggest anywhere from 30% to 90% of all internet traffic (depending on which source you believe) is P2P filesharing traffic, so this is clearly something that a lot of folks online are using. Naturally, the companies responsible for distributing physical media resources for distributing this information (here I’m thinkg of companies like the RIAA and MPAA since they are the most visibly affected) want to stop this online trading, and have taken steps to disrupt the data-streams.

Recently, University of California, Riverside researchers studied filesharing traffic, looking to see how much those sharing files are watched. Condensing that report to a highlights summary, PhysOrg has this brief article about the results of the filesharing observation work.

“We found that a naïve user has no chance of staying anonymous,” said Banerjee. “One hundred percent of the time, unprotected file-sharing was tracked by people there to look for copyright infringement.”

However, the research showed that “blocklist” software such as (PeerGuardian, Bluetack, and Trusty Files) are fairly effective at reducing the risks of being observed down to about 1 percent.

Read the linked PhysOrg story for a little more information, or download the full PDF paper, titled P2P: Is Big Brother Watching You? to see what the researchers found. This should help you understand how to protect yourself and minimize your exposure to the industry watchers who are looking for downloaders.

While I don’t propose folks start stealing songs, movies, TV shows, and so on from the content producers, I agree with one of the researchers who points out that this technology is not going away, and these industries would have a much better future if they worked to leverage the technology and offer reasonably priced options to users rather than trying to just shut down P2P.

[tags]P2P, Peer to peer, Filesharing, Is big brother watching you, Big Brother, MPAA, RIAA[/tags]

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Fox sports usability

While catching up on with the latest news about the worthless fuckers who shot a man in an attempted robbery at the university where my wife works, I saw the following three indecipherable links to sports stories. Can you tell WTF they are supposed to say? If you were in charge of the Fox Sports web site, would you have a talk with your site layout designers?

fox-sports-01 “Another early playoff exit, another off-season of questions, Ken Rosenthal says. The big one? Who’s seen their last days in N.Y.?”


fox-sports-02“Which star do you want on the mound in October – Schilling or Clemens? After Sunday, Mark Kriegel thinks the choice is clear.”


fox-sports-03“The Lions have looked like contenders at times and pretenders at others. Alex Marvez breaks down the inconsistency.”


And those images showed up the same in Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer. It seems that someone needs a little lesson in CSS or usability and user interface design.  Sure, with squinting and reaaalllllly focusing on the images, you can just make out the text.  Personally, I think better coloring on the background would work that problem out just fine.

[tags]Fox Sports, User interface design, Usability, WTF[/tags]

Stupid people doing stupid things

I’m certainly no fan of President Bush and his war-work, but really, can’t we do something to get rid of the folks who go overboard like this? (absolutely NSFW Let’s go ahead and start with folks like this:

zombie_ny-wtc-hater.jpg

I can understand some of the sentiments expressed by protestors in some of the photos, but very few and I don’t think the excessive stances help anything.

And my goodness, why can’t we have more hot chicks at the nude and topless protests instead of the androgynous freaks seen in almost all those photos?

[tags]Overboard, Overreacting, Me thinks thou dost protest too much[/tags]

Image manipulation experts helping track down a child abuser

There are scumbags out there who think it’s cool to sexually abuse children. Some of the extra stupid of them post pictures on the internet of themselves with children they’ve abused. Thinking that simple photo manipulation will keep their identities secret, these idiots thankfully don’t realize that such editing can be undone. Recently, Interpol posted one such partially restored image and asked the public to help identify an abuser who has for years posted images of himself with many different children.

msn_interpol_hmed_630a.hmedium.jpg

Interpol sought public help Monday in identifying a suspected pedophile, revealing a technique to unscramble digitally altered images to show the face of a man seen in Internet photos sexually abusing young boys in Vietnam and Cambodia.

. . .

[Interpol child abuse database overseer] Persson said he personally had opposed making the photos public because it demonstrated to criminals that police can now unblur pictures. But that consideration and the risk that the man could face public humiliation or even violence now that he is recognizable were outweighed by the desire to protect other children from abuse.

Points for the good guys, and hopefully they’ll catch this bastard soon. Sadly, people like this, when caught, are often kept in solitary confinement to protect them from other prisoners. Even among criminals, child abusers are looked down upon. According to folks I’ve known in law-enforcement, child abusers tend to be especially abused in prison if not kept separate.

[tags]Sexual abuse, Interpol, Hunting child abusers, Image manipulation[/tags]

Wi-Fi detection via shirt

Walking around looking for a Wi-Fi connection to leech off of, you’d probably wish for some kind of portable wireless network connection detection device. But those suckers are bulky, not very good, a little pricey, and often have poor user interfaces. Thanks to ThinkGeek, you now have the answer in the ultra-portable, easy-to-understand, take anywhere Wi-Fi detecting shirt.

wifi_shirt_anim.gif

Here at ThinkGeek we’re pretty lazy when it comes to technology. We expect our gadgets to do all the busywork while we focus on the high level important tasks like reading blogs. That’s why we hate to have to crack open our laptops just to see if there is any wi-fi internet access about… and keychain wi-fi detectors, we would have to actually remove them from our pockets to look at them. But now thanks to the ingenious ThinkGeek robot monkeys you can display the current wi-fi signal strength to yourself and everyone around you with this stylish Wi-Fi Detector Shirt.

The shirt isn’t available yet, but should be in just a couple of weeks. You can pick one up at the product page for just $30 (minus a penny).[tags]Wi-Fi, Wireless detection, Think Geek, Geek shirt[/tags]

Off-duty sheriff’s deputy goes on shooting spree at a private home

This is just freaky news:

An off-duty sheriff’s deputy went on a shooting rampage early Sunday at a home where seven young people had gathered for pizza and movies, killing six and critically injuring the other before authorities fatally shot him, officials said.

. . .

The circumstances of the shooting were hazy Sunday and it wasn’t immediately clear what the gunman’s motive was, but the mother of a 14-year-old victim said the suspect may have been a jealous boyfriend. The shooting occurred in a white, two-story duplex about a block from downtown Crandon.

The shooter in question is 20 years old, and apparently touched in the head (and not in the good way).

[tags]WTF, Shooting spree, Touched in the head[/tags]

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If you love your children, you’ll get them proper protection

As a full-fledged member of the tinfoil hat self-protection society (note: I am not aware of an actual society with this name, merely making something up to promote the effectiveness of this post), I realize the importance of protecting not only my own brain from s00000per-sekrit thought-penetrating waves, but also that of my unborn child (note: I am not actually capable of carrying my unborn child, nor am I aware of any unborn children I might have in the future that would currently need protection).  While I can (and most certainly do) wear a tinfoil hat for my own protection, I’ve always wondered what I could do to protect my child properly.  Now, thanks to the brilliant minds at MummyWraps, I have a way to prevent my child’s corruption from evil-doers who would seek to infiltrate his thoughts with bad things.

From conception to birth, your baby undergoes the most rapid growth of its life, with incredibly fast cell-division taking your precious one from a single fertilised ovum to a beautiful baby in just 9 short months. However, such incredibly rapid growth also carries with it great risk of cell mutations that could cause major medical problems or even miscarriage.

Electro-Smog, or Electro-Magnetic Radiation (EMR) as it is more commonly known, is a complex and pervasive energy field radiating from both natural sources and from man-made electrical and electronic systems. EMR sources include cosmic rays, x-rays, radar, microwaves, TV and radio stations, cellphones, and all other wireless communication systems. International research has shown that prolonged exposure to EMR can be detrimental to human health, particularly that of unborn children.

Oh.  Well.  So they say they are protecting from stray electric and magnetic pollution.  I still think it’s a front for s000per-sekrit thought penetration electro-waves brain penetration protection.  And for $70, you can’t pass up that kind of safety.  (via Futurismic)

[tags]Tin-foil, s00per-sekrit, tinfoil hat, Brain protection, Thought waves[/tags]

Blogger fired for blogging about work

This would be easy to hear about initially and start griping about how wrong it is, but in the end it’s just a case of properly being punished for being stupid.  A young lady from Nintendo posted to her blog things about work.  She criticized cow-orkers, perhaps thinking that because she didn’t name them specifically she wouldn’t get in trouble.  Someone at Nintendo found out about her blogging and she was fired.

fired_blogger_clip On August 31, Jessica Zenner was driving her 3-year-old son to day care when her BlackBerry rang. It was the human resources director at Zenner’s work calling to tell her she was fired. The cause, Zenner says, was because her bosses at Nintendo discovered her personal blog, Inexcusable Behavior.

. . .

One post on Zenner’s blog—titled “The Daily Weed”—begins with her disputing her friends’ perception that she is a pothead. She digresses into a wry tirade against one of her bosses: “One plus about working with [a] hormonal, facial-hair-growing, frumpy [woman] is that I have found a new excuse to drink heavily,” Zenner writes. “My gut tells me that this woman hasn’t been fucked in years.”


Now really, I totally get griping about cow-orkers.  I tell others allllll the time about the stupidity I see and suffer through at work.  But I’ve been careful to not gripe too specifically on the Blahg about work, and decided to remove the one really bad post I made after I put it up last year.  Blogging and anything about one’s job just don’t go together for non-work blogs.  It’s not wise, and anyone who thinks about it can see why companies are not keen on having their employees blog about work – even anonymously (although claiming the post anonymously and posting a picture of yourself on your blog aren’t really compatible thoughts).

I feel for her, because she’s young and made a mistake that an older worker probably would have realized could be trouble.  But I’ve seen others call out first amendment protections or claim that since she wasn’t blogging AT work, she can’t be fired for it.  I don’t think those are applicable here since she’s not at all anonymous nor can one freely criticize others and not face consequences just because one doesn’t use specific names.  If it’s easy to figure out who she’s talking about, she’s going to cause trouble for her employee.

On the plus side, she has since found a new job, and I’m pretty sure her new employer knows about this and has most likely already specifically condoned further personal blogs (although I bet they have advised her on things not to blog so she doesn’t get into this kind of trouble again).  (via Joystiq)

[tags]Stupid, Blogger fired for personal blog, Protected speech[/tags]