Posts by Daniel B.

Women

We do need more IT women! I've known at least two girls that break the "dumb girl" stereotype: one of them is a developer, and the other one was able to fully use her HP-49g calculator ... *in RPN mode*. Oh, and they're both pretty, so no "ugly techie" jokes there ;)

Its actually our culture & education that make them go for non-IT stuff, and the "geek factor" that makes them think IT's full of geeky types. If you raise a "Barbie Girl", she'll go for stupid careers. If you do take care about her in the early stages of learning, she might steer towards choosing something less fluffy in college.

stevie-boy learns!

So... It seems like Apple finally realized their iPhone was not much of a "smartphone" without REAL apps.

Though now I am sad, as these announcements mean that the iPhone now might be a real competitor against RIM. Aaaaagh!

Though the iBone's still got its quirks: no QWERTY physical keyboard!

Gates and the 1st place

I think this is the first time he gets knocked down *in the Forbes list*. Though in practice, it would be more like Buffett knocked down Slim, who was #1 back then. Ouch.

Carlos Slim also has a pretty good record to begin with; he revived the entire Alameda Central block in Mexico City that had turned into slums and rubble after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, and has made several social programs, including scholarships for poor students.

Of course, he's incredibly rich as he owns the #1 Mexican telco (Telmex is like BT over here) and the #1 mobile co (Telcel/America Móvil). Oh, and the only Mexican I know that has been buying US companies. Anyway ... I do prefer Slim over Billy Gates. Why?

Both give expensive products... except Slim's telecoms & mobile services actually WORK as they should. ;)

Online encyclopedias

Hm... Wikipedia made me lazy... but that was because I was already fed up with doing online searches and finding tons of crap on whatever search engine I used. My personal favorite from my first Internet contact, Altavista, is not the good thing it used to be. Yahoo ... well, lost to Google some years ago. And Google? Been some time since their links have gone downhill too.

I remember that 1996-ish I found out that using search engines was a time-consuming task, as I had to filter out those geocities "fake info" pages. I remember once searching info on marijuana medical uses, and finding what was basically an anti-pot propaganda site which said "Marijuana has no medical uses, only THC." Ok, even taking out the obvious lack of citations there, its like saying "Coffee doesn't keep you away, only caffeine." Yeah, right.

Now its about getting loads of forum babble postage as top results, displacing useful info in lots of cases. Wikipedia made it easier to search stuff. Too bad it's gone basically sour with all this.

So? I think I'll have to revert to using ProQuest and other similar pay-for information sources, you know, those that actually are based on scientific research and stuff. That's where I first heard about "Captain Cyborg" Warwick, for example.

But just google-searching won't cut it anymore, search engines are on the fritz, even more when some "results" send you down to ... another search engine!!!

Off while roaming

IIRC, my Blackberry has a "Disabled while roaming" option for data, so you can avoid getting reamed by overpriced data roaming charges should you go overseas.

Still, I think roaming charges should be cheaper.

Google Groups

Isn't that basically Usenet-via-google, basically???

Collaborating tools

Hm... I'd say Lotus Notes would be the closest I've seen able to do anything near "collaboration".

And I'm also annoyed by PowerPoint presentations, my 16 year old HyperCard presentations were better than that... and I made 'em at age 10!!! Plus chain-mailers now use it as a "de facto" chainmail standard. This is the main reason I no longer bother with chain-mails ... (or "forwards" as they are known over here)

As for Google Apps, I give my opinion on that: "Don't send a web browser to do a native OS program job" ;)

@Andy Bright

"Even the crappiest mobile phone can understand that you don't need to dial the area code to make a local call."

Nope. Not here, sometime before 1999 Telcel required *all* 8 digits to be dialed, then when we switched to 10 digits, all 10 of 'em. Only after several years the area code was made optional. Good thing though: I only have to dial the 10 digits, as long-distance prefixes here depend on the other side's phone:

01 - Long Distance (like your 1)

00 - International

044 - Local cellphone

045 - Long Distance cellphone

At least my mobile doesn't require all that. Add to this the nice complexity of having variable-length areacode/localphone mixups: Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey have 2 digit area codes and 8-digit phone numbers, the rest of the country has 3 digit areacodes / 7 digit phone numbers... and that's post-2002, back in the 8-digit number days the rules were even more fuzzy (1/7, 2/6, 3/5 areacode/number combinations.)

Of course, I would like my mobile phone to recognize partial phones against the full number stored in my addy book: say 5325-9000 should map to "Ticketmaster (o) 55-5325-9000", for example. If it can't... well lame programming by the handset manufacturer.

NiN

Hm... I really didn't care that much about Radiohead. But Nine Inch Nails does... and I'm sure as hell buying the $5 version... at least. I remember that Trent Reznor once asked his record label why his stuff was so expensive while pop-crap was getting cheaper by the day. The answer? "Your stuff is good stuff, and people will pay more to get it. Its the pop crap we need to discount so it gets even sold at all."

So he cut away the middleman, and he's now selling even *cheaper* than the crappy music dudes. Me? I paid $20-ish for the Year Zero album, so I don't complain about $5/album in lossless formats. Hey, it's practically on the same level as allofmp3/mp3sparks, and that's affordable for me!

Plus, I get to renew my mobile's MP3 collection which hasn't grown much since my job blocked mp3sparks ;)

Hm... nice...

... and me thinking that was the whole idea behind NIPRNet and SIPRNet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPRNET

to have all "sensitive" traffic go through the secure, encrypted, physically separated from the rest network. (the concept someone above pointed out as the "green" and "red" network.) And even *if* you have to send stuff over the not-so-secure network, there's a metric ton of crypto software/hardware in the military for that.

Stuff like this makes me think that if the internet had existed back in WW2, GCHQ would have been out of a job, as anyone setting up a *@luftwaffe.com or *@kriegsmarine.com addy would have got more info than anyone else...

Ah...

Backlash against the grammar nazis! Good!!! =) Only thing he did get right was the "nucular" but then, anything Dubya says sounds retard anyway.

The "decimate" discussion reminds me of the "bizarre / bizarro" discussion I once heard in the radio. Even when the modern meaning of the word "bizarro" is the same as "bizarre", some people insist that the meaning is wrong, having some other obscure meaning (can't remember which.)

I'd be more concerned about those who don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose" or other blatant mistakes in spelling ;)

it could have been worse

... He could have posted "I did not have sex with Rachel Marsden."

That, combined with "white stains" would have been hilarious, indeed. It seems Jimbo didn't learn Clinton's lesson...

Wahoo!!

Though thumbs-down on Sony making this US-only. Now I'll have to pay $100 more for my round-trip to the US border to get my PS3!!!

Anyway, THIS is what I've been waiting for: a *cheaper* PS3, rumble feature, AND MGS4... which will have the Halo3 equivalent effect on the PS3; though I'd prefer to call it the "FF7 effect" because Halo3 is "just another FPS, but nice looking."

I just hope this release actually tilts the scale over to the PS3. Ok, maybe it won't overtake the Wii, but at least the xbox 360 it should... :)

Ah...

someone out there has actually watched "Split Second", while most people I talk to think about some TV show or haven't heard about that movie at all. Similar thing with Event Horizon... hm... quote?

"Liberate tu-tamek Ex Inferis" (mental note: do NOT go to the ship transmitting that message!)

I suddenly realized that most of those 42 lines are familiar with me, excepto for some old movies like Forbidden Planet, Flash Gordon and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Most of the rest I have seen... and theoretically, H2G2 could have entered the poll, but as some other people mentioned, the movie wasn't exactly great. (Though it wasn't that bad, either...)

Re: Theyv't got nothing on LOTR fans

True. I know a LOTR fan who overshoots any Jedi fan.

@Gabor Laszlo: I am the Kwisatz Haderach!

@Fraser: I'm 26, and while 2 out of 3 movies were already out, I was able to watch the *entire trilogy* on the big screen, sometime around 1985. Which is definitely more bearable than the 10+ hour LOTR trilogy. And I've also seen "Spaceballs", which seems to be unknown to newer generations :)

Protests on census: Try "Pastafarianism", "Sith", or "Schwartz". Personally, I'd go for "Spockism": LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!! ;)

I can't believe it.

Worse than "Pootie Tang"? "Crossroads"? "Spiceworld"? "Battlefield Earth"? "Gigli"?

Ok, then again I think "Pootie Tang" wins hands down for worst-ever against the other ones. Though Pootie at least did $4m, while PH's movie bomb is of an epic proportion.

Had the original Blair Witch project movie gotten that much on box office, they would've had $7k profit, minus advertising. Ow.

@Autonomous Death Bots

Ah ... somebody beat me to reference the "Autonomous Mobile Sword" from Screamers. Which is based on a Phillip K. Dick novel, by the way ...

Remember to implement IFF on your killbots instead of programming "kill all humans with a pulse" into them. They'll eventually out-smart your tags and overrun humanity ;)

stoopid shareholders

Ah. So these guys decided to whine because they aren't going to make money. Sheesh, the only way they would earn money would be to short-sell the shares, 'coz they're sure to plummet if that happens.

I'm actually gaining respect for Yahoo! because of turning down this deal. The suing shareholders should be made liable if Yahoo goes down, merger or not.

g.net

Hey, google as a telco might not be a bad idea. That would give them income for those other hippie projects... Or giving some ISP's true reasons to upgrade their networks ;)maybe if they promise fiber-to-the-premises... :)

Re: real reason for needed upgrades

Nah, its because the zoom isn't good enough to catch the Spring Breakers getting wasted on the other side of the border, thus saving billions on GGW videos. ;)

iBone goes BB

Heh. Ok ... the iPhone:

- Has no QWERTY keyboard

- Has no crypto services (Content Protection)

- Is unable to run 3rd-party apps (hacks don't count, especially when talking about business use)

- Is marketed as a "fun gadget" (remember what happened to the Amiga???)

so how exactly do they plan on competing with BlackBerry??? I got my BB8300 for the content protection, 3rd-party app support and of course, the unlimited data plans (ok, iPhone's got that one ;) and well... I don't care about "webapps". Oh, and I wouldn't "downgrade" from a real QWERTY keyboard to a touchscreened one, after many mishaps with my old HP Jornada I really don't care for those anymore.

Cell

Ah ... I just hope this picks off well enough so we can get Cell-based servers ... or even better, Cell-based PC's and finally break away from the bloody x86 curse.

Shame on Apple for ditching PPC and killing the last mainstream non-Intel desktops!! At least the PS3 can be made to work like that ;)

Yankee Doodle

Ah, this trend seems to go back all the way down to the 80's, when the "Yankee Doodle" virus started killing others: Cascade and Ping-Pong, at least. And some ingenious virus that was, as it "re-wrote" the virii so they would self-destruct, actually.

Some AV's had an alternate name for it, as "VACSINA" which meand Vaccine in ... some other language. As a plus, the virus would play "Yankee Doodle" every now and then on your PC speaker =)

AvTvPvBvFvJv...whatever...

"But can we wait until they've released Alien v Terminator v Predator v Batman Requiem, please?"

Not before they release Tarzan v. Predator. Hey, that's a Dark Horse comic! I still wish Alien3 had been based on Alien: Earth War instead of ... whatever that thing ended up being. Anyway, I think it was DH who started the "X vs. Y" trend, though they themselves may have been inspired by the "Godzilla vs X" Japanese trend. And there was a "Superman/Batman: 05/05/2010" poster in I Am Legend... could it be they're planning on this?

Anyway ... I actually am looking forward for T4, as I've always wanted to see the "future war" in all its glory, not just 2-minute segments. Notice that T1 shows more of this than T2, for example... and it was actually left open thanks to T3, it isn't like "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" which was motivated to milk the cash cow.

Ah, the irony... I was once given the choice of re-watching T3 or Pirates of the Caribbean... I chose T3. When I was actually forced to re-watch Pirates, I fell asleep for almost the entire movie.

@Provide what you advertise

True. I hate seeing all those "why should you pay the same as I that don't download stuff" people not getting the point. You are actually *using* what was advertised. I always wondered how it was possible for us (Mexico) to have 4Mbps maximum speeds with DSL when the US was having 20Mbps links, and searching for some kind of missing telecom secret I was not aware of. Nope, it was more like the US ISP's were overselling with a 200:1 contention ratio, it seems.

Me? Residential DSL service is 1Mbps (1024Kbps) standard, and I'm happy with it as it usually fluctuates between 850 and 1024. The only thing they've done recently is a port 25 blockage, and even that can be removed by user request. I'd usually complain about blocking ports, but you know, port 25's been used by spammers, so I think they do have a point; and anyone soliciting port 25 unblocking has enough background to secure his net. (Or so I hope...)

@The Other Steve

Well said! "Security by Obscurity" is a myth, a cypher is only as secure as the weakest link; you could argue Alan Turing was "spending too much time and effort on crypto cracking schemes" ... yet he didn't publish his findings. So while the Nazis thought they had an uncrackable Enigma cypher, GCHQ was happily reading along all their messages. A pseudo-random number generator exploit opened up the Lorentz cypher too, and incidentally led to the first computer in the world (Colossus).

Anyone who thinks the "RAM cooler" exploit is overkill should read Schneier's stuff, even if you'll end up being more paranoid than usual. I think I'd rather have some specialized hardware doing the crypto for me, and using a smart-card for keeping the key instead. That way, you'd be able to take the smartcard out when going to the loo or whatever, therefore trumping the "sooper sekrit ninja attack" described here. ;)

So...

She sent an unencrypted e-mail containing confidential data? That would get most people fired.

The house-breaking analogy is false, but not because "reporters should have respected confidientality" but because containing confidential information is the sole responsibility of the bearer. Just ask the DoD what would happen if someone sent an e-mail with TOP SECRET classified data, unencrypted, to his Hotmail account. Oops!

@Paul Young

"I don't see anyone moaning about rising petrol or bread prices!!!"

So, you didn't watch the news last year? That was *exactly* what sparked the Saffron Movement in Burma. And I've seen plenty of widespread protests against the (Mexican) government upping petrol prices. Are you blind???

Of course, there's the thing that eBay and food/transportation are not exactly on the same topic, so I doubt you'd see someone complaining about this in an IT site. ;)

Anyway, it seems like eBay's Latin American offspring is the one that's actually thriving, as over here distrust in these kind of systems is such that MercadoLibre has had to implement a functional buyer/seller protection, and still cares about individual sellers. So it seems like now I'll be the one actually finding rare stuff instead of the regular eBay users! Sheesh....

Seymour Cray

Cray would be proud for IBM showing that his "2 oxen vs. 1024 chicken" analogy was correct. Of course, you'd expect that with technology upgrade rates and Moore's law, we'd have 1024 oxen boxes by now; but most IT managers went for the Intel chickens anyway.

I only wish that I had the money to buy one ... though that "mid-range 100k" mainframe is only twice the starting price for a Sun 25K ... if I had that money, I'd sure go for the big iron! Though I'd buy anything, as long as it's not x86 or Windows based.

BOTTOM&50 (ISPF's version of the "nodding duck" so my session won't time out ;)

I have heard this before....

"screen locks, hibernate, sleep, switch user etc. should all dump/overwrite crypto keys immediately"

Isn't that what the Blackberry OS (supposedly) does?? Somewhere deep in the help files, it states that it combines public-key crypto with AES to do this feat: the device's password unlocks the private key. When you "lock" the device, the priv key is securely wiped from RAM, the process is shown by a small "lock" icon that closes when the process is complete. Any incoming info to the device after that would be "encrypted by the public key" (which I assume means "AES key generated, data encrypted, stored, AES key encrypted with public key which then is stored along with data???). Thing is, the method not only protects the device's data while locked, it protects *any new data the device receives while locked*, which really sounds very secure.

So it seems my Blackberry is impervious to this method ... as long as it gets nicked while in "locked" mode. ;)

Ahh... the Olympics

You know, you'd think that if all these "activists" really gave a flying fudge about human rights, there would have been some of them boycotting Mexico 68. You know, that October 2, 1968 student meeting that ended up being a mass murder massacre, decades before Tiananmen... and it occured DAYS before the Olympics innauguration.

However, the mere fact that the Olympics were taking place here, made the thing get a worldwide coverage. There were eventually changes, but that took some time; too sad that the current president seems to be reverting to the pre-1968 days of opressive police forces.

I think that more than anywhere, the Olympics can be something that put people's eyes on a specific country; the 1968 student movement in Mexico was sparked in part because of the Olympics. Even after 2-October, there were a few dissenting voices, like the giant "black dove" that flew over the Olympic Stadium as a sign of protest for the massacre.

I didn't see the US complaining much about this, though...

Vegeterianism is only good if you're already grown up.

Now this comes from a Biology teacher, and from some researchers at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional from Mexico City I worked with during a high school project that, well, went a little too much beyond a simple HS task.

The reason veggies *seem* to be so healthy is because they were not veggies since birth, but decided to turn into veggies at some point in their life. Actually doing the full-veggie diet since day 1 (ok, since you can eat food then) would end up with weak, underdeveloped children with nutrition problems. We *need* some animal protein, especially during our development phase. That said, this isn't a free pass to go 100% meat, you also need the veggies or you'll have even worse things (fat, cholesterol, colon cancer and such) so its better to have a well-balanced diet.

By the way, current studies show that a protein-rich diet helps us lose weight, or at least avoid gaining more. Why? Because with protein-rich diets, the body feels well-'fed' and doesn't demand more food that much. Check it out, actual medical studies have found that out.

I'm 26 years old, I'm not fat despite eating big quantities of food, and have no food-related health problems. Hell, I even have a slightly overdeveloped immune system, as I am able to ward off some nasty diseases without antibiotics by myself! ;)

WiFi-ness

Please. Every single "out-of-the-box" WiFi/DSL router I've seen for the last 4 years or so is WEP-enabled by default; turning it OFF would take at least some technical knowledge. They have even made it easier by providing the WEP key on the router itself, so you don't have to hassle with that "weird key generation" thingy. On my apt block alone, I've seen at least 8 SSID's... all of them secured, with the default ssid's though: 2wire334, 2wire123, and such.

Because of how WiFi/DHCP works, an open and unsecured a.p. is fair game, and could actually be tested in any court. The *real* reason for going after wifi freeloaders is because the ones that are actually suffering are the ISP's themselves. On my previous apartment I gave wifi access to some neighbours in exchange for a fee; with 4 of 'em my link basically paid itself... but in the ISP's eyes, they're losing 4 potential clients even if I gave them that access for free!!! (Then again, I was planning to increase my bandwidth before I moved, so maybe it wasn't that much of a loss for them.) If ISP's let everyone go hippie-sharing their hotspots, they fear they'll lose $$$ because of that. Some broadband providers already have "no sharing" rules in their T's & C's.

SOAPy stuff

Ah... and this comes about 3 weeks after I found out that one of the Web Services we have to call from another business is not welcome in the new WS thingy that comes with NetBeans. I am only told "rpc/encoded not supported", some forums say "use document/literal" or JAX-RPC... which Netbeans doesn't let me use anymore. Fortunately, we're using Weblogic 8.1, which does accept rpc/encoded and generated my "proxy classes" there.

But that ugly experience, along with others (ever tried to pass any object that *isn't* a String, Boolean, or Integer?) have really put me thinking on what kind of drugs the WS-* folks are taking, because it seems that every new standard iteration breaks what was perfectly working before. I still remember once having so much trouble I ditched the entire SOAP and WS stacks and set up my "webservice" by hand. (Ok, I did still use a standard XML parser.)

Because, you know, the whole point behind Web Services was "seamless interoperability between heterogeneous platforms" like say ... J2EE and .NET ... or PHP, or (god forbid) Ruby. I'm supposed to be able to "point-and-click" my way to call the thing and not worry about SOAP, UDDI, HTTP or whatever, as the "contract" is given in the WSDL.

Yeah, right.

Microsoap

Microsoft eating Yahoo! is worse than Yahoo! itself.

As much as I despise some of Yahoo!'s doings like the Chinese stuff and renaming Konfabulator to a lame "Yahoo! Widgets", it still is better than the crappy Microsoft camp.

"I'm intrigued: in what way? In that they can crash and burn with their principles intact?"

I'd rather see Yahoo! go down in flames than in Microsoft's hands. I still remember what happened to HoTMaiL after the MS takeover.

I fail to understand...

.. how someone can't get humor out of UML. Maybe we need the xkcd webcomic author to do something on that? I did some diagrams about convoluted procedures that had stuff like "Stupid User" actors, "use-less cases" and other stuff.

Even some (usually) unfunny error messages can be manipulated to show funny stuff, like:

$ make love

I don't know how to make love. Stop.

(though it won't work on newer versions where it says "target 'love'" instead.

Ah, and that other article about errors made me remember my good old C-64:

?ERROR

my Mac Plus:

"[BOMB] Sorry, a system error occured." (or the SAD MAC)

or the two most confusing messages I've found:

"This is not an error."

"Error: Success" (you get this if you use perror() after a system call that *doesn't* fail)

@Oliver Jones

Hm... nice for kicking on online gaming, but you know ... gaming isn't the only thing that uses incoming connections, or UDP.

Point in case: VPNs. Blanket dropping of all incoming connections and UDP effectively kills any VPN entry point, and well VPN endpoints actually require UDP (not TCP) traffic these days.

Cable internet operators nationwide (this is Mexico) use NAT, so every single cable internet subscriber has a private IP (the standard class A private network 10.0.0.0/8 range is their favorite) which means they can't play games with non-cable users (if they're hosting), and well with some recent portblocking and traffic shaping that went into effect around mid-2007, p2p is practically dead.

Telmex's ADSL service, on the other hand, has been stable for some time now, with 1Mbit for residential (and REAL 1Mbit: 1024Kbps) while having 2Mbit and 4Mbit options for commercial lines. I get a real, public and routeable IP, no firewalls, proxies or anything else. Somehow I'd think it would be easier for other telecom giants to be able to provide something like this in the US, UK and similar places.

Wasn't one of the major reasons behind the dot-com crash the "overexpansion" of backbones over what was really needed? I remember reading something like that, and asking "Gee, if that's true, why do I still have to pay $300/month for a DS0 link?". While most web-surfing wasn't that demanding, my Quake, Quake2 and TeamFortress needs were complaining about 400+ms pings, and the term "LPB" was fairly common. Remember that??? So surely, if you believe that crap, telecoms should have all the backbone they need for the next 10 years (back in 2000, they said 20 years, didn't they??)

RRoD

Hm... why does this look so ... familiar?? Except 10 years ago it was Win95 (or 98?) and a BSoD. And with Billy G up there!

I'm still saving my dosh for the PS3...

Smoking

Ahhh... so now I will buy a fire extinguisher for *my* apartment. I have a strict NO SMOKING policy in there, but my previous method of "bucket of water over smoker" is no longer viable because I actually have good furniture in my living room now. ;)

Seriously. Its bad enough having a co-worker who doesn't give a crap about no-smoking policies and smoking right next to you; you don't have to take that crap in your own flat! Wanna smoke at my place? Open the window and smoke with your head outside. Don't want to? Then get out! A fire extinguisher might not have been the best solution, but it definitely must have been veery fun!

mine's the one with the CO2 extinguisher</coat>