/misc/ramblings/techno/geek

Diggfan.com

Thank you to all the folks that gave me kudos for running diggfan.com. As you can see from my long post there, I will only take from digg and never give back. I will never submit stories, I will never report stories, I will never promote stories and I most certainly will never comment on stories again.

As far as I know, Ash has grown tired of digg and will no longer be updating his Firefox Extension. The coolest FF extension for digg ever developed in my humble little opinion.

I will continue to blog here, things that I find interesting.

Pr1nt3r H@x0r

Just when you thought you'd secured your network. Now the idiots that insist on making life hell for Sys Admins have decided that hacking printers is the new hotness....This article over at ComputerWorld offers a brief look...

Duplicity

So here's a question. The big no-no on digg is not submitting duplicates. Their submit function even checks for duplicate submissions by URL and god knows what else. It's well known that the search functionality doesn't work all that well, but I digress. My question is this. Why is it so bad that a post that someone submits is a duplicate from one already submitted to digg? I don't mean the 560 odd posts over a single hour, announcing Apple's new macs. I'm talking about stories submitted 2 days ago, 64 days ago, or 200 days ago. What if I submit a story and find a duplicate submitted 56 days ago, but my title and my description is BETTER than the duplicate and the original only got 3 diggs (indicating it never made it to the front page)?? Is this so wrong?

Using digg as a social bookmarking tool doesn't work. It's search functionality is worthless and I really think that it's depriving diggers of good stories by not being able to submit duplicates....

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr..

When Captcha Text Goes Bad..

As all one of you who read my blog realize, I frequent digg. A lot! I also submit a lot of stories that I find interesting. One thing that has frustrated me to no end is their word verification hoop that you need to dive through in order to submit a story. I almost NEVER get the text right the first time. Sometimes it takes me 3 to 5 times typing in the text in order to get it right. It's become almost like playing slots. You pull the handle and hope for the best. When you get it right, the payoff is good!

For instance, here are examples of the captcha text from digg:

is this KCep, kCep, Kcep or kcep?


is this KCyLes, kCyLes, kcyLeS, KCYLeS, kcyles, kcyleS, Kcyles, kCyles....blah..blah..blah


is this jLEPCas, jLEPCaS, JLEPCAS, jlEPCas, jLEPcaS....blah..blah..blah
and what the hell are the tiger stripes for?

Here is an example of good captcha text as found on blogger:


it's really obvious that this is batggcv


again fairly obvious what this is


again with the obvious....

So digg, if you're listening, please fix the word verification scheme that you have because it's hurting my eyes...

New Study Blames Downloading for Growing Apathy Towards Music

An article over at Ars has this to say about music in general

"The accessibility of music has meant that it is taken for granted and does not require a deep emotional commitment once associated with music appreciation," said music psychologist Adrian North.

The study concluded that because of a greater than ever level of accessibility to music (including legal and illegal downloading, Internet broadcasts, and MP3 players), people in general had a more apathetic attitude towards music appreciation.

The only part of this that I can agree with is the easy accessibility of music but I don't think that's the root cause of our apathy towards it. Think back prior to the late 1990's. My favorite bands would have singles on the radio or on MTV. If I liked that particular single, I had to purchase the entire cassette or album, just to get that one song. It was a very rare occurence that I would listen to an entire cassette or album of even my most revered bands. The record companies could give a shit less, whether you listened to the entire album. No, what they were more concerned with is that you purchased the entire album...even if it was for just one song. They measured success by the number of albums sold.

Since the late 1990's, we've had relatively easy access to single songs. We don't have to purchase an entire album for that one song. I'm sure that this also translates into less people falling in love with a group and more people falling in love with single songs. We've gone from group focus to song focus....which could also be misinterpreted as apathy...

Let's face it, the artists and the record companies would much rather have you spend $16.99 on an entire CD instead of $.99 on one song. It's like having to purchase the entire car when all you want are it's new tires.....

A Followup To China and Censorship

This is a followup to my previous post regarding MSN Spaces and the pro-democracy blogger from China.

Microsoft employees are now officially defending Microsoft's removal of the offending blogger. They're justifying it by basically saying that a business model will ALWAYS SUPERSEDE any basic human rights...

In China, there is a unique issue for our entire industry: there are certain aspects of speech in China that are regulated by the government. We’ve made a choice to run a service in China, and to do that, we need to adhere to local regulations and laws. This is not unique to MSN Spaces; this is something that every company has to do if they operate in China. So, if a Chinese blog on MSN Spaces is reported to us by the community, or the Chinese government, as offensive, we have to ask ourselves: is this blog adhering to our code of Conduct? In many cases, the answer is “yes, this site is fine”. But, in some cases, the answer is “no”. And when an offense is found that actually breaks a national law, we have no choice but to take down the site.

I would have to question then why anyone would do business in China? It's about the almighty dollar. Money before freedoms. As long as Microsoft can pursue a quick buck in China, it's willing to turn it's head when it comes to basic human rights. The very ones that we hold so near and dear in this country. It's astounding to me that they don't recognize this.

Flash-Based Apples To Be Released Next Week?

There's a rumor going around that a new flash-based Apple Notebook will be released as early as next week.

Is it wrong to lust after this?

The Dell^™ UltraSharp^™ 3007WFP 30-inch Wide-screen Flat Panel LCD Monitor is a wide aspect desktop display that enriches the performance of LCD displays with a stylish design and enhanced functionality. The 3007WFP wide aspect LCD has WQXGA resolution of 2560x1600 pixels and also provides 11 ms (grey-to-grey) response time to enable crisp clear images when using the display for fast motion video. The 3007WFP is optimized for video editing, pre-press editing, 3D modeling, CAD, visualization, digital photography and gamers. With 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 located on the side, the 3007WFP gives users convenient access points to plug in devices such as keyboards, digital cameras, secondary hard drives and printers. An integrated 9-in-2 multimedia card reader allows easy access to download photos or files. With 3.54 inches (90 mm) of height adjustment virtually every user can adjust the display to their exact comfort level and help reduce eye and neck strain. This Flat Panel LCD Monitor comes with a 3-Year Advance Exchange Service

China and Censorship

Say what you will about living in the United States, we still don't have it as bad as people living in Communist China.

Microsoft, in a move that has me scratching my head, apparently pulled a pro-democracy, Chinese bloggers, blog, from MSN Spaces under pressure from the Chinese government. Robert Scoble (a technical evangelist at Microsoft) writes

Well, you ignore the voices of individual people at your peril. And, I’ve been raised by people who taught me the value of standing up for the little guy. My mom grew up in Germany. Her mom stood up to the Nazis (and got a lot of scorn from family and friends for doing so).

Amen. Where will this end? I have to wonder if this were a pro-communism blog and the United States government had asked Microsoft to take it down, if they would have?