Category: 43 things

The General has a mission for all patriotic Americans and their legally registered household staff:

WA Utilities Commission seeks public comment on NSA spying:

My inner Frenchman is forcing me to post the following letter he received from the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission. He says that it’s very important that citizens of Washington State submit comments. My inner Frenchman knows how these things work. The more comments the Commission gets, the more pressure they’ll feel to do something.

Follow the rules and submit valid comments. Pay special attention to the question about WAC 480-120-202. Make a persuasive argument that it applies.

Read on for more details. If the General — or his notorious inner Frenchman — thinks this is worth your time, it is.

Continue reading “Orders from the General”

WordPress Trackback Patch (1.22) by Elliott Back:

Since I’ve been getting a half-dozen trackback spam or more per day, I decide to code up the following to prevent botnets from placing trackback onto my blog.

I’ll give it a try. I don’t care that much about trackbacks but it will be interesting to see if his methods work.

Continue reading “killing trackback spam”

After reading this post (1), I thought about my recent/current reading:

• I picked up “Silent Spring” (Rachel Carson) this weekend. I’m about 1/2 way through and I’m struck by the familiarity of what she writes with current events, even 40 years on. People who object to eating foods treated with pesticide sprays are not always viewed as “fanatics or cultists” but you wouldn’t have to look hard to find some folks who regard such objections as silly or unfounded.

I wonder just how much has changed. I realize we use fewer herbicides/pesticides (biocides, as Carson calls them) and many of the ones written about are now banned. But I can remember using Chlordane dust, just shaking it out of the bag. I’ve used household foggers, and various consumer products whose labels I never read.

• I also read “Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” (Malcolm Gladwell) in about two days. Gladwell’s voice is so seductive and unassuming: one can almost hear his voice as he slowly builds his case through a mixture of fact and anecdote. I found myself wondering how I had survived with what felt like such a limited ability to thin-slice, as he calls the unconscious and intuitive assessments we all make. He finds such extraordinary examples: I find myself wondering how these gifts were distributed through the general population.

eBay item 5168017777 (Ends Feb-27-05 10:53:32 PST) – 128 Mb Apple RAM DDR SODIMM for G4 iBook: not 3rd party:

Selling a 128 Mb Apple RAM DDR SODIMM for G4 iBook: not 3rd party. It came from my iBook and was installed by Apple in manufacturing, not added later.

Now playing: Art Of Dying by George Harrison from the album “All Things Must Pass [Disc 2]” | Get it

I have gotten two phishing attempts so far today, one of which was quite convincing looking: it appeared in full PayPal livery.

That leads me to wonder why secure sites don’t clamp down on the use of their images with some rudimentary checking of HTTP_REFERER values: for phishers who are so lazy as to link to the images at paypal or ebay, have the server return a big skull and crossbones image with FRAUD in big letters under it.

Of course, some will simply copy the images to their own server and negate the effectiveness of that, but it might cut down on the risk for some intended victims.