A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
All those cameras and now "give us your keys."
People in the UK who encrypt their data are now obliged by law to give up the encryption keys to law enforcement officials…[Source]
Note: I have not confirmed the above against any other sources.
Per capita there are more surveillance cameras in the UK than any other country in the world…
The average city dweller can expect to be captured on film every five minutes…
Have you ever unexpectedly been unable to move, delete or rename a file because of a "file sharing violation?" Perhaps you have been frustrated by one of these messages:
Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.
Cedrick ‘Nitch’ Collomb has written a fantastic program to deal with these annoying situations without even having to reboot the computer! It is called Unlocker 1.8.5 and I highly recommend adding this to your toolkit! I also encourage giving Cedrick Collomb a paypal donation. It’s worth it!
For those that don’t want to click through, that’s in reference to bulletproof backpacks.
Do you like looking at your stats files? Do you often wonder just where all those IP addresses come from? For those that do not know, an ip address uniquely identifies a computer on the Internet. Type an ip address into http://www.ip-adress.com/ (note address is spelled with one d) and it will show you a map with an approximate location of the computer.
There are more than 30 events planned in Knoxville for a National Night Out against crime. [Source]
The squirrels have been sent in!
A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country’s borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. [Source]
I can’t get the squirrels out of my attic. How do you capture trained spying squirrels?! Perhaps Boris and Natasha were on contract! "We’v ‘ave Moose on our side now as doolble agent."
Thank you Ray Kurzweil!
It’s that damn DRM. Yesterday Cathy’s computer gets this message:
Some of the items in the iTunes library, including "Rough Boy", were not copied to the iPod "Pavlov" because you are not authorized to play them on this computer.
Then it goes on to list a whole bunch of songs…basically anything she has ever purchased through iTunes. (Blingo has been good to her!) Oh, it also removed the tunes from the actual device. I am sure this has something to do with Sarah or Tommy plugging their iPods into Mom’s computer. How do families with multiple iPods but only one computer get their music?
DRM sucks. Even Bill Gates says DRM stinks. (see also)
[Biill Gate’s] short term advice: "People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then." [Source]
So, my next step will be a long, arduous customer service fight with Apple (oh the bad karma and wasted time!). Simultaneously I suppose I will research how to cripple DRM since, frankly, Cathy is being hassled for legitimately buying music and that doesn’t fly with me.
Update: Some resources that look like they will be helpful. Mark’s(we)blog and one digital life (showing a backup procedure for your tunes).
Update: The solution was actually pretty simple. 1) Logged out of Sarah’s iTunes login. 2) Logged into Cathy’s iTunes login. 3) Under the iTunes->Store menu choose "Authorize this computer." Done.
Now anyone can go past the airport security gates.
Update: FBi issues take down order for site then seizes computers. See Boing Boing for all the details including the seizure and questions of legality. Schneier on Security has some excellent comments.
I have long since given up on Symantec’s Norton Antivirus and McAfee. These guys used to be the top dogs but now add so much bloatware that their efforts to keep your machine clean can greatly degrade performance. I often clean machines of viruses and spyware. I am good and I enjoy it. I usually encourage people to go with Avast or AVG as their antivirus of choice. Ryan at CyberNet Technology News alerts us that Virus.gr has ranked the leading antivirus solutions. Be sure to check out the comments Ryan is receiving. Click More to see the list.
Cathy likes to joke about my conspiracy-mindedness. I like to makeup conspiracy theories as jokes. Here is some fuel on rigged elections. The comments make some valid points about why this would be hard to do in practice such as the injected number of votes not matching the recorded number of voters.
I really like the comment that suggests we get a vote receipt like an atm receipt. When the polls close all votes are published on a website. You could then match your vote receipt to the published vote to see if it differed. If it differed then you could dispute it. This would not allow for changing votes because you are reporting that it is different than the information printed on the vote receipt, not that it is different from your memory.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.Exerpt from The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus as found on a bronze plaque inside The Statue of Liberty [Source]
Except for you and you and, hey, yes, you–the Asian guy.
If you aren’t going to secure your security cameras (why yes! Some of those do say k12 and edu), then perhaps you should not name them "Peniswart" and "greenshit".
For the voyuers out there, someone has put several of the public cams on one page.
High tech thieves are targeting keyless entry cars. Becoming more prominent is the option to enter your car and start it without a key. We rely on the quality of the software and the strength of encryption. But what happens as your car ages and over time strong encyption becomes weak encryption? I can see a day where a thief simply walks past older cars in a mall parking lot to have doors pop open or engines start. Or perhaps I sit down in the drivers seat to see a message on the dash "Important security update available! Download now?" I’ll ponder my watch knowing I’m already late but a security update means a vunerability in my security system has been found and the thieves know it. BUT! If I update and restart my car, it might not work. I am powerless but to turn on my best Shatner, clench my fists, look to the ceiling, and as the camera pans out scream "Gaaaaattees!" (hear Shatner)
[Source]
