Things that matter – Page 5 – Blah, Blah, Blahg

Unopened rebate forms found in dumpster

You’ve bought your cool new gadget. You cut out the UPC. You fill out the rebate form. You photocopy everything you are sending in. You sent it all, wisely chosing registered mail so you know when it was delivered. And yet, you still don’t ever get your rebate. WTF?

Well, maybe somebody threw out your submission along with those from your 1299 closest friends?

This is a picture of the 1,300 unopened rebate forms a Mercury News reporter found in a dumpster near Vastech, a rebate processor for Fry’s Electronics.

When confronted, the company’s owner blamed it on a lazy employee who no longer works for Vastech and offered to process and sign checks for all of the envelopes in front of the reporter.

Reminds me of the scandal years back where so many Publisher’s Clearing House entries were found in the trash. Unfortunately, I cannot find a link to anything about that scandal, so you’ll have to either remember the issue yourself or trust my increasingly faulty memory.

I suppose this could explain why, nearly 9 years later, I’m still awaiting 2 rebate checks from CompUSA for memory and a hard drive. I’m starting to suspect I won’t actually get them, CompUSA contacts’ assurances to the contrary.

[tags]Unprocessed rebates, Consumerist, Rebates[/tags]

Crash Internet Explorer in one line

I don’t really think figuring out an exploit to crash a browser is a great and fantastic feat, given how insanely complex, large, and bloated most are. However, crashing a browser in just a single line of HTML and CSS code is pretty impressive.

A Japanese blogger who goes by the name Hamachiya2 has discovered a single line of HTML and CSS that crashes IE 6. The line is:

Ohhhh, the suspense is killing me. I guess I’ll just have to read the article to find out how easy it is.

[tags]Security, Crash Internet Explorer, Browser vulnerabilities, Another kick in the nuts[/tags]

Political facts

I’ve been reading FactCheck.org for a few years now, and have been subscribed to their email newsletter as long as I’ve been reading the site. The site, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, works to point out the misleading statistics, factual inaccuracies and errors, and flat-out lies spread by politicians and the organizations that support them. I’ve learned so much about politics over the years just from learning where politicians have mislead us (the general public).

While catching up on my FactCheck reading today, I learned that there is another source of political fact checking on the web now – PolitiFact. Going beyond FactCheck’s more reserved misinformation corrections, PolitiFact gives you the Truth-o-meter to simplify evaluating statements from the bearers of (mis)truths.

PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to help you find the truth in the presidential campaign. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ will analyze the candidates’ speeches, TV ads and interviews and determine whether the claims are accurate.

I think it is worth taking 2-3 minutes to read more details on the Truth-o-meter to see how it works and why it is worth checking. Interested in who is lying or misleading us? Well, here are a couple of quotes for you to check out for factual accuracy. I’ve chosen individuals from both sides of the US political debate, and selected short quotes with short PolitiFact responses or analysis.

Sen. Joe Biden: “The president is brain-dead.”
Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Sen. John McCain: Sen. Clinton said “the surge of troops in Iraq was ‘working.’ Now…. Sen. Clinton says the surge ‘has failed’ and that we should ‘begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.'”
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 in a news release

I appreciate the fact that those running the site have enough of a sense of humor to even include the Biden comment, and the linked article includes links off-site to explanations of what exactly constitutes brain death. Each story has a graphical label for true, barely true, pants on fire (i.e., liar), and so on. I wanted to include the images for the above stories, but haven’t received permission from PolitiFact yet to do so. If I get a response, I’ll update my article with the images.

[tags]PolitiFact, FactCheck, Truths and Lies from politicians, The watcher watchers[/tags]

Out with the old. In with the boob?

All over the news today: Alberto Gonzales resigns.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is resigning, Bush administration officials said, after months of accusations that he politicized the U.S. Justice Department and misled Congress over the firing of U.S. prosecutors and wiretapping of suspected terrorists.

The officials, who requested anonymity, confirmed a New York Times report that Gonzales is stepping down. Gonzales will hold a news conference at 10:30 a.m. Washington time. Solicitor General Paul Clement, the administration’s top courtroom lawyer, is expected to take over on a temporary basis until a permanent replacement is named, Justice Department officials said.

Rumor has it that he is to be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Oh, and the “In with the boob?” bit in the heading was just an attempt to make a less drab title – I don’t know of anything that actually suggests Chertoff would be a bad choice. He’s experienced and seems to have done a decent job in his current position.

[tags]Gonzales resigns[/tags]

Approval ratings

Just in case you forgot to check these out lately:

For the record, the link to the Congressional ratings points to CongJob.htm, but I really believe ConJob.htm would be more appropos.

I would guess the truly spineless nature of the Democrats in bending over, lubing themselves up, and spreading wide open for Bush and his hatred of American freedoms, allowing him to take away more of our rights every chance he has, probably play heavily into the approval ratings for Congress sitting below those of the President.

[tags]Approval ratings, Congressional approval ratings, Presidential approval ratings[/tags]

Anyone care to remind me how much a single bullet costs?

Man, people like this really peeve me. Enough for me to feel we need harsher punishments for people who intentionally cause harm to children – thus the price of one bullet question above.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – A Florida woman accused of using aliases to adopt 11 New York children received as much as $2 million in child welfare payments even as she starved, bound and abused them, police said Tuesday.

. . .

Authorities believe Leekin held the adopted children like prisoners in her Port St. Lucie home, often handcuffing them together and forcing them to soil themselves because they weren’t allowed to use the bathroom.

. . .

Leekin’s lawyer said his client denies the allegations.

Every time I read crap like this, I think how much we need another update to the comic character Vigilante (and his updated version known as Vigilante). Read the full article to get a better idea of just how bad this was. I’ve left out some of the more disturbing details. Sounds like the kind of thing that would make one of the children who have since moved out turn all Samuel L Jackson on the worthless ass of this woman some day.

[tags]Woman abuses children and welfare payment system, People who need to not waste oxygen, Where is a vigilante when you need one[/tags]

The future of hi-def DVD?

Some interesting rumbles going on in the retail market lately. Rumblings from the sales-outlet side indicate Target will carry only Blu-Ray players this holiday season, Blockbuster will expand Blu-ray offerings but not HD-DVD movies, and BJs wholesale will stop carrying Hi-Def DVD movies in store (although the format will still be available to online shoppers for the wholesaler). Microsofts support of HD-DVD aside, this suggests Blu-ray is going to push further ahead in the fight for next-gen DVD supremacy.

Could Sony have avoided the Beta-Max/PSP Memory Stick Duo/Digital8 losing format problem they seem to have suffered since the days of the Walkman? It is looking like Blu-ray is coming out on top this time, which has to be good news to Sony. (some information via Joystiq and more Joystiq)

[tags]Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Next-gen hi-def video, Target, Blockbuster, BJs wholesale, Format wars[/tags]

New portable applications USB hardware spec

If you are part of the geek-set, you probably already know about U3 format USB keys. These are USB drives with a special partition that has an auto-run tool used to enable specially written programs which run entirely off the USB key. This means they don’t store information in your registry. It’s handy, because you can just carry your U3 drive and have all your applications and data available on pretty much any modern Windows system. Sadly, the U3 format doesn’t work with Windows Vista for most hardware versions of these drives. So much for any modern Windows system, then (well, Vista kinda sucks and doesn’t seem so modern from what I hear, but it’s still going to infest most of the home computing market).

To rectify this, Microsoft and Sandisk are working together on new technology to let you do pretty much the same thing while still giving manufacturers more of your money to let you do what you are already doing with XP.

Microsoft is teaming up with peripherals manufacturer SanDisk in an effort to develop smart USB devices that will allow users to carry their complete personal computing environment on a device as small as a thumb drive, Microsoft announced Friday.

Under the plan, Microsoft will develop software that will let users store their applications and data on small, Flash memory-based devices that connect to their computers’ Universal Serial Bus. SanDisk will design and manufacture compatible hardware.

The first products from the collaboration will be available in mid-2008, Microsoft said.

Oh, by the way, we won’t actually have this option any time near the launch of the latest Microsoft infestation system, what with Vista already launching and the technology being nearly a year away. Still, it won’t be too long before you can pay your fees to Microsoft and others to keep doing what you just paid companies for a year or two ago when you got your U3 drive.

Might I take this opportunity to point out that you would probably be better off just buying an inexpensive USB drive and loading it with portable open source applications that usually do all the same things for far less. If you don’t like that site, well, you can choose any of numerous other such sites for your legally free portable software and not continue to pay unneeded fees every time Microsoft and others decide they need a new way to get your money.

Here are a few more sites which provide links to other portable application information, if the previous four didn’t suit your fancy.

[tags]Portable applications, Portable freeware, Windows wants more of your money, U3 format dead, New portable software pen drives next year[/tags]

The safest place to sit on a plane

You’ve heard the comments that it doesn’t matter which seat you sit in on a plane in case of a crash, right? Well, conventional wisdom is apparently based on the assumption that if the plane crashes, it will get all explodified and you will, therefore, be all deadified. But rather than accept conventional wisdom, some smarties (people, not the candies) at Popular Mechanics looked at the hard data and figured where the safest seat in a plane is if there is a crash.

In the wake of nearly 200 passenger deaths in a Brazilian airliner accident, we take an exclusive look at 36 years’ worth of NTSB reports and seating charts. The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus.

Well crap. The authors may be smarties, but they suck at telling jokes and stories – they give away the ending in the first paragraph. I guess that can’t be helped now. Let’s go on and see why that is.

The funny thing about all those expert opinions [that there is no safe seat in a crash]: They’re not really based on hard data about actual airline accidents. A look at real-world crash stats, however, suggests that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front.

That’s the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework.

Real numbers. Real analysis. Real work. They explain the survivor numbers and how they arrived at the conclusion. Good news for us cheapskates that always end up in the back because we bought the $27 ticket 39 weeks ago over Carls-Cheapest-Tickets-Ya-Weasel.com when we heard we were going to travel.

[tags]The safest seat on the plane, Air travel, Safety, Popular Mechanics[/tags]

Unsurprisingly TSA no flight is wrong again

Some people still don’t get that maintaining a list of names is an idiotic way to determine terrorist threats and using that list to deny airplane entry is beyond moronic. Especially in the case where an 8-year-old boy isn’t allowed to fly home because he’s on the list of known terrorists.

An 8-year-old boy expecting to catch a plane home is denied entry for appearing on a terrorist no-fly list, reported MyFoxKansasCity.com.

Bryan Moore was set to catch his first plane trip when he arrived at an airport in Cortez, Colorado to fly home after visiting his sister, said the report.

According to the story, the TSA rules specify that children aren’t to be barred when their names appear on the list. Of course, given how poorly known the rules are by TSA employees, that’s small comfort in general and it was clearly worthless in this case. That shouldn’t matter, though, because the number of false positives from this are absurdly beyond any acceptable level of lost time due to error. Senator Kennedy has been denied entry to an airplane because of this list. Catherine Stevens, wife of Senator Ted Stevens, has been denied access to planes because her name is close to that of barred singer Cat Stevens. The accuracy of this list has been covered all over the web-o-tubes (hint: it’s horridly low). The problem with non-unique identifiers as blocking a mechanism has been well-covered by many security experts. Yet instead of implementing smarter security, our government just trims 20% off the list and calls it done.

Poor kid just wanted home.

[tags]8-year-old blocked from travel as a terrorist, Further proof of non-security of names of terrorists, Security , Terrorism, TSA[/tags]

Excessive tanner dies from skin cancer

Oh my {$diety} this is scary, although not necessarily surprising. A woman who started using a tanning bed twice a day at age 14 developed cancer after 7 years of abusing her skin this way. Recently, she passed away from skin cancer at age 29.

Zita Farrelly began using a sunbed at the age of 14 and saved up to buy one when she landed her first job.

For seven years she had tanning sessions twice a day. When her worried mother stopped her using the sunbed more than twice a week she borrowed a friend’s.

I’m guessing her friend might look at this and think something like “I helped cause that.” At least, I know I would.

[tags]Skin cancer, Excessive tanning bed use[/tags]

Beware the fake battery

I know the appeal of buying off-brand batteries for your cell phone or laptop. However, there is often a reason the off-brands are less expensive, and sadly sometimes the generics can be very unstable and cause real serious problems when they fail.

A man has died in China after his mobile phone battery exploded in his chest pocket.

Welder Xiao Jinpeng was working at the Yingpan Iron Ore Dressing Plant in the western province of Gansu.

. . .

He died at a nearby hospital after emergency treatment failed.

Motorola said it was “highly unlikely” that one of the company’s products was to blame – and suggested the dead man might have been using a fake phone or battery.

So the new rule for buying generics is that while you might be OK buying generic/refilled ink-jet cartridges, you probably don’t want to buy off-brand batteries. Admittedly, even the name brand batteries have problems at times, but I believe they still have much lower failure rates. While we don’t know that this man was using a generic battery, I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess it wasn’t a genuine Motorola.

[tags]Exploding cell battery kills man, Dangerous battery, Generic batteries[/tags]