thwartedefforts

You can tell a lot about some people just from how they respond to random stuff found on the Intartubes.

The Test topic

Guitar Captured with Enough Coke Stashed Aboard to Take Us All to Electric Ladyland

Responses

August: OH DANG! They got my guitar!

Joel: my, that is a lot of coke

Dennis: how the hell did they find that? ahh: “The Man noticed a bit of telltale powdery residue poking out of a conspicuous spot”. THE MAN

Peter: I’ll take the chunk they broke off

Dan: hah, it was the bargain brand Squier ironically enough

Will: Wasn’t there a Cheech and Chong movie where they drove around in a truck made from marijuana?

Mike: fucking hilarious. You gonna buy one?

Kurt: damn drug addict musicians

At 2:48pm on September 14th, I entered San Francisco by crossing over the city/county line in the middle of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

The limited contact one has with co-workers means they can end up thinking of you in ways you don’t have control over. First impressions are important, but impressions continue to develop over time. However, the way Rob Warmowski has classified me is a new one. As someone who is used to the moniker “asshole”, his classification scheme is refreshing.

So this makes me want to know exactly how many “Andys with root” Rob actually knows, or plans to eventually know? Is he forever cursed with being under the authority of system administrators named Andy? Or have system administrators named Andy made a distinctive, hopefully good, impression upon him? Is an Andy themed song in order? Or do these Andys share a common culture and style that is best communicated through apparel? I’m specifically thinking of my continued (verbally silent) claims of No, I won’t fix your computer, and the constant threats of reading your email (but why bother? your email is god awful boring).

Me: here’s something interesting… driving around town last night, there was a road block on Elston with signs that said “Voluntary Survey” and an SUV marked “Sheriff” was redirecting people into the Microcenter parking lot
Me: signs all the place that say voluntary survey. we had 5 people in my mustang.
Me: it was about 2am. this woman approaches the car. someone in the car thought to ask “is this a state or federal operation” and she said “federal”. asked me if I’d like to answer questions as part of a survey, completely anonymously.
Me: I said, “this is hardly anonymous, you have the ability to take my license plate number”
Me: which caught this woman off guard. “we aren’t collecting that, sir”.
Me: so I denied to take the voluntary survey, and she asked if I’d consent to an anonymous, voluntary breathalyser test
Me: and I said “no”
Friend: wow, that is really fucked up man!
Friend: It is getting out of control
Me: which apparently was unexpected, because she called over some other woman and said “this guy says he doesn’t want to participate”
Friend: whoa
Me: and the other woman said, “well, they can go” and kind of gave a surprised look at the survey woman, like “duh, it’s voluntary”
Friend: voluntary breathalyser “survey”
Friend: that stinks like week old fish
Me: well, the first part was apparently questions
Me: I wonder if they were supposed to offer the breathalizer if one said they didn’t want to answer the questions
Me: they had like three or four cars lined up talking to them
Friend: Hmmmmm
Friend: How many people will actually refuse such?
Me: exactly
Friend: Is it not really a violation of your privacy to even stop you without due cause?
Me: when we were talking later, it came up “I bet they were thinking, ’shit a car full of educated white people, better not push it’”
Friend: Bingo
Me: it’s not unreasonable search if it’s “anonymous”
Me: apparently
Friend: Did it look like busts were happening?
Me: no
Friend: Right I remember those bullshit rulings about the road blocks
Me: but the sheriff car gave it an air of legitimacy

Here’s a Google map of where the voluntary survey checkpoint was.

Update (2007-08-04): idolatrare found this survey methodology description (Pilot Test of New Roadside Survey Methodology for Impaired Driving DOT HS 810 704) that very closely matches the experience (up to the part about actually participating, which I have no information on). Check out this bit in “Basic Survey Technique”:

As the motorist came to a safe stop in the bay, the data collector recorded basic demographics based on observation (e.g., the number of passengers, use of a safety belt by the driver, and the gender and ethnicity of the driver). These data were recorded so that we would have descriptive information of potential subjects who refused.

Anonymous should mean no identifying information. However, they only made a claim that taking the survey was anonymous; one does not have a right to privacy if one refuses the survey, apparently.

See also the Executive Summary.

Not that anyone seemed to have any trouble breaking the ice or starting up a conversation, but TECHcocktail should have some kind of bingo game, treasure hunt, or something like that. This way, people have another excuse to chat each other up, can check things off, gather points, and there can be prizes at the end that you can effectively “earn” rather than just get lucky and win.

To get things started, here’s a sample list of point generators and things to find:

• If you’re a recruiter, you get one point for each minute you accidentally talk to another recruiter thinking they are in technology and looking for a job.
• You get one point for each person who introduces someone else as their significant other.
• If you unexpectedly meet an old significant other of your own, give yourself 10 points.
• Getting interviewed by someone who is carrying a tape recorder nets you a point. If you have to spell out a domain name into a tape recorder, you get one point for each letter in the domain name.
• One point for each domain name someone drops like it’s a household name but you’ve never heard of it. Two points if you’re the only one within earshot who has heard of that domain. Three points if you’ve actually been to the domain in question.
• One point for each person who, apparently being so new to this Internet thing, appends every domain name with .com, no matter how many times you say .net, .org, or .us.
• One point for each founder of a company whose product is not live yet. Two points if they have a known/estimated release date. Three points if it’s next week. Four points if the product is already live.
• One point if someone says “web two point oh”. One point for “web three point oh”. Two points for “web one point oh”.
• Three points when someone utters “ontology”. Subtract four points if it’s immediately followed by “Sorry, I’m not sure who’s familiar with that term”.
• On your trip to the restroom, you acquire one point for each person talking on the phone in there. Two points if they’re typing into a blackberry.
• One point for each mention of “D&D”, “Star Trek” or “Star Wars” you overhear. Two points if it comes up in a conversation you’re having.
• Distribution of professions:
  • One point for each “project manager”.
  • Two points for each “founder” or “partner”.
  • Three points for any “designers”, “programmers”, “system administrators”, or “network administrators”. Bonus if they make known their “flavor” (Flash, Air, .NET, Cisco, Linux, Windows, OSX, PHP, RoR, Oracle, etc). Extra bonus if they’ve written a book.
  • Three points for each “lawyer”.
  • Zero points for recruiters.
• One point for each claim of “Internet Celebrity” status. One point if you recognize their name. Bonus if someone overhears and is awestruck.
• If you hear someone say “It’s my blog” and the person they are talking to responds with “What’s a blog?”, double your points (I kid you not, this actually happened).
• One point if a conversation you’re having gets cut short when someone needs to take a phone call. Two points if it was a legitimate phone call. Three points if they come back to continue talking after their phone call is finished.
• One point for each person who hands you a business card that is actually for the business they are talking with you about.

Overall, it was an enjoyable couple of hours. Free drinks are always nice. I’m told by those from Arstechnica who were there that the previous ones had more actual tech people and fewer, ahem, recruiters. I was kind of hoping to find some people to fill in the expertise gaps in the projects I’m working on or people to bounce ideas off of, but honestly I didn’t really know what to expect. I did definitely met some interesting people, people that I plan on following up with.

And then there’s this conversation August (aka Mayor Awesome) and I had:
“So, there don’t appear to be too many technology nerd chics here.”
“There aren’t even that many true nerds for that matter. But, yeah, it’s a sausage fest.”
“Shit, there’s even a sponsor for this sausage fest,” pointing at a logo for Poll Everywhere projected on the wall.
“See, even they know it’s mostly a big buncha guys.”

When the hell is Apple going to get their head out of their asses and catch up with the rest of the Internet? Does anyone else use QuickTime to distribute marketing videos on the Internet? Does anyone else use QuickTime to distribute videos over the Internet that they actually expect people to watch? The entire Apple website is centered around marketing, and I, as the consumer, have to go download some additional tool in order to witness the marketing? Apple, you’ve lost the web-browser-embedded video-via-a-plugin war (although technically, since QuickTime is pretty much a one-trick pony compared to Flash, you barely even showed up at the battle). It does not matter how interesting the video is, or what better kind of quality QuickTime has over Flash-based video, the barrier to entry to have to install yet another thing, just for a rarely used feature, is just too great.

Additionally, there is no native Linux version of QuickTime. In comparison, I’m not a big fan of Adobe’s Linux support, releases for Linux usually being late in coming after the Windows and Mac versions, but least they recognize the diversity of the Internet and their (potential) customers. Apple getting more into consumer electronics means they are not marketing to some exclusive thinks-they’re-something-special crowd anymore. Additionally, the message doesn’t need to get out to the washed masses who have already sipped the reality distortion field koolaid and who can access what is effectively proprietary content without jumping through extra hoops, it needs to get out to the unwashed masses.

It’s more secure to use public/private key authentication with ssh and to disable password authentication, but it’s not secure to store the same private key on every machine that you may be sitting down at. I have two machines I use regularly, a desktop and a laptop, and I, well, my accounts, on them should have the same “identity” no matter which one I’m using and how I’m getting to the various accounts on servers I need to maintain and that I develop on.

I didn’t appreciate the power of the openssh agent until recently. For a long while, I wanted to have a single private key on a removable drive that I can carry around with me, but the disadvantage of having to mount and unmount the drive, and figure out its device name, when I just wanted to read for a few seconds it was more trouble than it’s worth. On top of that, some of the systems I have put the home directories in different places (/home/users, for example, ugh!), so it wouldn’t be as straight forward as just issuing the same mount command every time.

This can be done by using autofs though, in a machine independent manner — the only thing that needs to be customized on a per-machine basis is files in your home directory.

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A lot of the debate and discussion about Network Neutrality is about tiered service, that ISPs will charge different amounts of money to both ends of a connection based on traffic priorities set by their own best interests. Meaning that if Comcast offers a VoIP service, they think they should be allowed to restrict access to competitors’ VoIP services (through outright denying connections or by traffic shaping to limit bandwidth) to encourage their customers to use their own services. In some respects, this could be considered double-dipping. From a business standpoint, if it makes sense for a company that already has unreliable service and problematic customer service (but I use Comcast solely as an example here, they are hardly the only provider to think like this and to have problems) to spread themselves thinner by expanding into other products is left as an exercise for the reader.

But this is only half the debate. ISPs can charge whatever the want if consumers of their services have an option to go someplace else: doing so is the bedrock of competition in the marketplace. Many ISPs are a monopoly in their area and have no effective competitors. Being allowed to be a monopoly and having common carrier status go hand in hand. If an ISP is going to restrict or limit the kinds of traffic that goes over the connection that the customer is paying for, they should lose the right to be a legally recognized/mandated monopoly. If there is proper competition for the base packet transfer service (”Internet service”) and the ISP is not a monopoly in the market (rarely the case in most major metropolitan areas in the US) then they should be able to set prices and restrict services however they see fit and let the market decide if doing so is a good idea for the company.

Sex sells, especially when you’re selling sex products. Take this image for example:

You may recognize this as Shredder, of late 80s kids television cartoon fame, fucking April, also of late 80s kids television cartoon fame, from behind. The guy can’t even be bothered to take off his cape. April appears to be saying “I am your Woozy-Oozy Cutie little Brain”, and the caption reads “Our pills made him so sweet”. I believe those are stylized cartoon pills behind the text. What’s even better about this is that the spam email that contained this contained only this image, no links or names of products or anything.

But that’s nothing compared to this spam subject line, though:

Starscream DOA

Talk about getting rilled up! When I read this in my inbox, I immediately clicked to read the full message, since Starscream was one of my favorite characters from the Transformers television series. Unfortunately, the email contained no further information on Starscream, why or how he died, or information about contacting his next of kin. Only information about male enhancement drugs.

These guys just gotta new agents. With TMNT back on the big screen, with Transformers not far behind, I hope they can get back on their feet and not have to stoop so low as to do the Internet equivalent of late-night television shows hawking male enhancement wares.

As an alternative to the creation of the .XXX TLD, the adult content industry can self-police by instituting the use of a defacto standard subdomain for adult content other than www, placing their content under adult.example.com, or further subdomains thereof, thereby cheaply and effectively labeling content on a domain basis without the involvement of third-parties.

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