Stupid spam robots…
You may notice that the "furballs coughed up... #### today alone!" number in the header of this blog seems oddly inflated. Your observation would be correct: I suspect no more…
I have an asshole. I have an opinion. Any questions?
New iPhone: or why I cancelled my Rogers account
I’ve had a couple of tiring and rather stressful weeks at work in a row, so I decided to take Friday afternoon off. Since it was cold (and getting colder) I couldn’t really go for a ride on my motorbike. Instead, I decided to practice some retail therapy and “upgrade” my BlackBerry Bold to an iPhone.
My BlackBerry is on Rogers, so off I went to my local Rogers Plus store…
Getting tough on spam users…
I run a simple little blog here. I don’t make any money off of my site even, although I’m not adverse to doing so as long as it isn’t obtrusive. I don’t sell anything, nor do accept submissions other than comments. The posts here are my own: they aren’t scraped, syndicated from, or re-posted from anywhere else. Mostly, this site is a vanity site, like a billion others on the Internet.
Despite the complete lack of commercial value to my site, it gets spammed. Comment spam was a problem a few years ago, and I’ve managed that via Akismet and Bad Behavior plugins for WordPress. There are still about about 100 spam comments a day hitting my site, but only one or two make it through my watchdogs. Lately, however, there has been a new irritant: spam users.
End of American manned presence in space…
The last shuttle mission has flown and, with nothing to replace it, the U.S. manned presence in space has ended with it. The shuttle astronauts in the picture below are the last ones we will ever see.
DARPA worried there aren’t enough young geeks…
The U.S. Defence advanced research guys are worried that not enough young Americans are pursuing the sciences or engineering. They are looking for ways to encourage more young people to…
Newsflash: people who don’t like computers prefer non-geeky workspaces
According to a recent study at the University of Washington, people who aren’t really interested in computing science are even less interested if asked about it in a room with science fiction paraphernalia, games, and soft drink cans. Apparently some of these non-technically-inclined people are women. Glory be, we have a great discovery!
Actually, not really, at least not in my uneducated opinion, with which you are free to disagree…
Time to eat the neighbour
I have been hearing about this book “Time to Eat the Dog?” that, as I understand it, goes into the carbon footprint of the pets we share our lives with. According to this book, a medium size dog has a greater carbon footprint than an average SUV. The conclusion, presumably selected for its shock value, is that we should only keep animals if we plan on eating them. I’ve found a fair number of articles on line, including this one on the BBC site, that take this proposal at least somewhat seriously.
I personally think that my cats and, when I had them, dogs were pretty darned important parts of my life. So my “shock value” proposal is a bit different: I suggest we start eating our neighbours…
Clear evidence of what is important…
A young man in the United States stands accused of a horrible crime. Federal agents recently raided his home, and he faces as much as ten years in a federal…
Cyberwar? No, malicious script kiddy
According to the lead Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, the U.S. should launch an all out retaliation against North Korea for their role in the recent cyber attacks on American and South Korean internet targets. Unfortunately for the American people, Mr. Hoekstra is either an idiot, willfully ignorant, or intentionally twisting reality for his own political ends. The best experts in the industry agree that the attacks were launched by an attention-seeking amateur.
Iran repression: the other side of the technology story
The news has been full this week with stories of what is going on in Iran, and more specifically with how technology is helping protesters get their message out. Without…