Thursday, October 27, 2005

A quick word on Internet Governance

Check out these articles (1 and 2) for some quick reference on internet governance and why it's such a hot topic these days. The short story is that the rest of the world wants the US to free up control over the internet that it maintains through ICANN, and the US does not want to. Now here I see both sides of the argument. The US says that it is not so simple as handing over control of the domain names and day to day operations of the internet, and that giving up control may lead to a fractured and bureaucratic mess of an internet instead of the awesome and clean structure we have today. The other countries say that no government body, US or otherwise should be in power of the internet, and I tend to side with them. The internet might have started here, but it has grown immensely since it's inception and to keep is locked up in the US is something...Actually its something the US would totally do, proudly. My biggest problem with keeping the US in control of the internet can be illustrated using the domain fight over the .xxx domain which would have been reserved for pornography sites. What was previously an approved domain name by ICANN was tabled right before official approval because the dept. of Commerce (A US governing body, the one that oversees ICANN) said they got to much push back and disagreement from conservative Christian groups (what a shocker, yet again they are complaining about something that has little to do with them). This example right here should give considerable weight to any argument a country brings against the US concerning over-reaching rule of the internet by one country. A simple suggestion for the internet which is shared globally is shot down by pressure from a one small segment of a one small country. Does that really make any sense to anyone? It can't even really make sense to the people who told ICANN to table the idea indefinitely. I think someone needs to table these Conservative Christian groups indefinitely.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

An Actual 419 Email!!

Yeah I knew I would be able to give an example of the 419 Emails that I have been talking about these last few days. I actually have not received one of these in a very long time, I think it's funny that I just received one, this is one of the classics.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: NEWMAN AKUME
To:
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: DEAR(Aki)GET BACK TO ME ASAP.
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 14:52:04 +0300


FROM MR.NEWMAN AKUME DIRECTOR INCHARGE OF AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING UNIT,CONTINENTAL BANK,COTONOU-BENIN REPUBLIC Dear Friend , Is my Pleasure writing to you at this moment of the day, I am MR NEWMAN AKUME, the director incharge of auditing and accounting Unit of Continental Bank in Cotonou-Benin Republic. I and my colleagues deem it fit to contact you regarding to a transaction that will favour both of us at the end, and i got your contact in my search for a reputable and reliable person to help me claim the fund in question. We discovered the sum of Fifteen million United States Dollars (USD15M) belonging to a deceased customer of this bank. The fund has been lying in a suspence account without anybody coming to put claim over the money since the account owner late Dr. Hamid Ayed from Idaho State, who was involved in the December 25th Benin plane crash. Here is the air crash website on cnn =
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/12/26/benin.crash/index.html The said fund is now ready for transfer to a foriegn account whose owner will be portrayed as the beneficiary and next of kin to the deceased customer of the bank. The foriegn account owner will impost himself as the next of kin to the deceased and respond positively like a true next of kin who wishes to speed up the release and transfer of his inherited fund. If the over due fund if not claimed by the end of next quarter, the government of the Federal Republic of Benin will take over the ownership of the fund in line with the Federal Edict Act of 1979. We do not want the government to take over the ownership of this money, that is why I contacted you for us to do the deal together, so that we will portray you as the bonafide next of kin to the deceased whose name is Dr. Hamid Ayed. If you accept to carry out this project with us, we will offer you 30% of the total sum, while I and my colleagues involved will take 70% of the total sum. Upon your acceptance to do this deal with us, we will jointly effect the transfer within 10 banking working days. Be rest assured that, this transaction carries no risk and no extra responssibilities on your part, except the above mentioned roles and normally you will be required to maintain absolute information and absolute secrecy throughout the duration of this transaction, because discussing it with a third party might jeopardise the entire transaction. Before we proceed in this great deal,i want you to forward to me ASAP the following information below as to establish a mutual understanding; 1)Your Residential/Office Address. 2)Your Telephone/Fax Number. 3)Your Age/Marital status. I am looking forward to receiving your interesting response on this project as this will greatly enrich both of us at the end. please You may contact me through my private email: or phone+229 97480 932

BEST REGARDS,
Mr NEWMAN AKUME(newman_akume1@chile.com)

Monday, October 24, 2005

An Apple Media Bias, and The inner workings of those pesky Breathalizers...

And just like that my Rugby season has come to end with a crushing defeat at the hands of The Pittsburgh RFC, 17-10. It was a nasty game played in terrible conditions (if you were anywhere on the east coast this weekend you know what I'm talking about). Reasons for the loss? Short Prep/warm up time, not having the regular starting 15 all there and good to go at the same time, rainy cold conditions, and a general lack of preparedness. This is a team we spanked at the beginning of the season, and while we have gotten better, I would say they stayed the same. We simply did not bring our A game. Too bad, its over now with nothing but free time and the gym to look forward to in the upcoming death season some like to call Winter. We did not get home until around 12:45am, but that did not stop us from going out. Everyone on the team was generally disappointed so the night could have been better, but it was still a fun time. Because the weather was crappy I chose to leave my camera in the bag, so no good pictures this weekend, save for the late night video I like to keep to myself.

In the LA Times there is
another article about those awful 419 scams, named after the Nigerian law that prohibits them. This article is a lot better than the one I posted about Microsoft helping Nigeria's cyber crime department in cracking down on these scams. This article deals more with the culture of the scammers and one man's adventure in the game, and why he chose to leave it. I am gonna have to say that the best part of the article is the few lyrics to the theme song of the 419 scammers called "I Go Chop Your Dollar". This whole concept seems absurd, but at least they can make a cool song/video out of it.

Here is something you don't read every day. Tech writer John C. Dvorak is complaining about the Apple media bias in newspapers and tech stories. Dvorak's main hypothesis is that because the people who write tech columns and stories are mostly 1)unknowledgeable about technology and 2) Mac users there is a bias in the media about Apple announcements while Microsoft gets the shaft even if they release a slew of good products. The theory behind this media bias thinking is good, but I don't agree. I think that media bias exists for certain topics and groups, but just not for Apple. If people keep on reporting things from the Apple camp, it could simply mean that Apple announcements and release of products is what is interesting people more, it's what's selling papers and getting readers to come to the site. Apple has been releasing a lot of consumer products lately which might make it look like there is a serious media bias, but I can't remember the last consumer product that Microsoft came out with. I mean besides Anti-spyware beta, the revamping of the MSN franchise, and the continuing updates to vista that your average user has no interest in, I don't really think Microsoft has done anything of real note that would compare to a story about Apple's Nano music player. I am not trying to knock Microsoft (which Dvorak also says is a bi-product of this media bias), I'm just saying that what he sees as a media bias may just be everything coming up Apple.

A reprieve for those that have been caught for driving under the influence in Florida. A law in Florida guarantees the right of those accused of a DUI to get all the details of the technology used to convict them. This gives them the right to get the hardware specs, manuals for use and related documents to the device and any changes to the device not contained on those documents. Well now the defense wants a little more,
they are asking for the Source Code of the breathalizer itself. This does seem a little ridiculous, but the breathalizer in question was once recalled for a software bug so its not impossible that problems with the device could be found by inspecting the source code, but I doubt it. The company refuses to give up the source code because they claim its a trade secret. I am interested to see how this plays out, the company will most likely be forced to give up the code. Who is going inspect it? The company and lawyers will probably have to agree on a neutral party or something. I wonder if they are going find anything?

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Internet Addicts?! No Way!



Yes Way, at least according to China. This article is about China's internet addiction among young males and the steps they are taking to stop it. As I read this I was thinking "These fuckers are crazy. I cannot believe they are putting these people in clinics and making them wear these ridiculous helmet/mask things". Then I really started thinking about it. We have internet addicts here, admittedly I use the internet for a lot of things. We have little kids who don't do anything besides email and play video games right after school, but all we do is bitch about it. Well your not going to do anything about the situation by just talking about it folks, and apparently the Chinese are starting to take some action. I like how the last and most important magical step to the rehab is to exercise (read:do something else besides be on a computer for hours). That is pure genius! No wonder they are taking all of our jobs, this is the very reason. Seriously, this is not such a ridiculous idea, mostly just funny because the clinic is located in the same place as the rehab for drugs and alcohol. I can't even imagine the mixing of those three groups of people. Hilarious.

Just in case anyone hasn't been paying attention there has been some serious hoopla recently over videogame violence and its effect on children (Will someone please think of the children...). I swear this crap comes up like every 8 years or so. As the evolution of videogame realism and graphics goes on, people find something new to be offended by. The last huge one I remember clearly was the Mortal Kombat blood in/blood out craze on Genesis and Super Nintendo (Genesis had blood in, Super Nintendo had blood out). For pete's sake, that was a battle that just should have not happened. This time the sparkplug was none other than the new quintessential game of violence: Grand Theft Auto: San Adreas, or more specifically, the
Hot Coffee Mod. This one was a doozy. Here you could bang a girl (which you could do before) but this time it was explicitly graphic. Although this was not originally available in the game, performing a few steps would unlock it. Now I agree this is a bit much to be in a videogame, and Rockstar, the maker of the game, apologized/blamed hackers for the whole thing. Unfortunately this has now sparked such a huge nerve in America's golden society that along with public outcry, California has recently passed a law banning the sale of mature games to minors. There is already a videogame ruling board by the way that rates games and puts the warning right on the box (ESRB), but this is different. Furious about this move ESA (entertainment software association) is suing California over the law. I am actually pretty happy about this. There is no need for this banning, mostly because as the law is written it is totally ambiguous. It leaves a lot to interpretation and personal preference of what you think constitutes certain acts. Sounds a lot like what parents should be doing naturally when it comes to their kids, but then people not taking responsibility for themselves is nothing new here. Good luck to ESA.

Last but not least, this is a story that hits close to home. If your reading this that means you most likely have email which surely means you have seen the infamous "Nigerian Money Scam" email or some other variation. This thing has been giving us a black eye for more than enough time. I mean it really sux that a country with as much potential as Nigeria has just as much corruption fighting against that potential. I mean, computer usage is not very high there, but what is there are scams and phishing attempts. Well I guess you gotta start somewhere. Oddly enough, Microsoft has decided to help out Nigeria by teaming up with there Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to stop the so called "419" scams. Good for Microsoft, I like to hear stories about how the evil giant has learned the good lessons of help and sharing, warms my heart.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

The Weekend In Review

This weekend marked the first time I went to a bachelor party. I know you are all thinking "How is that possible, such a cool guy like yourself must have been to several bachelor parties in your short but exciting lifetime". While I have been invited to a few, this is the first one I actually went to and now I am asking myself why it took so long for me to go. It was freakin' hot. It was me and my boys from the Rugby team at a fellow teammates party, needless to say we got a little out of control. Coming off the extreme high of crushing the Flint Team 27-3 (thanks guys for a good game, but we really needed a win), we went to the aftergame in an extremely good mood that carried itself all the way to 7am when I finally went to sleep. The strippers were top-notch (Good job S'wich) and I finally saw in real life stuff I really thought I would only see in porn. No details, but it was freakin' hot. "Who wants a mustache ride" was actually an applicable question. After the aftergame and the bachelor party we hit the bars with a fever that was a few hours too early. We had been partying for so long that by the time we got out it was still really early, but we were really wasted. Getting to bars and finding them sort of dead was a big blow that you think might have slowed us down, but in retrospect it was only a short time until the rest of downtown Rochester was on the same page we were. It was what I would call an extremely relaxing weekend. I woke up at around 11:30am with little hangover, decent fatigue, and a sore body from the game the day before. Pretty good I would say.

Here I will state that I did do some things I am not particularly proud of this weekend, and this being my own little soapbox let me throw my apologies out to anyone I offended, more specifically during the debaucherous night that was Saturday. I was wasted, but that is still not a great excuse, so sorry.

As for stories of tech news and politics, I got some serious humdingers including Microsoft finally helping to put a stop to the infamous "Nigerian Money Scam". What they are going to do to ease this internet menace is still left to be seen, but this and other stories will have to wait to the next hot issue of BB&S, work and the pressing need to leave it are calling my attention away for now...

Thursday, October 13, 2005

I'm Back!

After a long long hiatus, I am back in the saddle. My fall rugby season will soon be over and with it the constant pain my body is in will vanish, or at least subside. It has been a sweet run, and there is a possibility we might make the playoffs. If that happens I will probably be playing until sometime in November, but only time will tell if that will happen. Along with my rugby commitment, work has also been really stressful and busy. Not productive and fun busy, but stupid busy. It's difficult to describe the difference between the two, but essentially I am not developing some phat new project or testing some hot new camera, just fixing messes and rushing to get things done that shouldn't really be completed in the time frame given. I guess that's why they pay me the big bucks, c'est la vie...

A lot of things have happened since I last wrote. I have moved around the corner from my old house and not only inherited and upstairs and 30" widescreen TV (thanks Herbert) but a much cooler landlord and cool roommates who live in the other half of our house (they also happen to be my rugby teammates as well, so you can imagine how that is going). It has really been a blast living there so far. I am even closer to my favorite bar now (Prepps, they just got Wi-Fi. Yes a bar with wi-fi), and am still living around the yuppie but cool park ave area. And while I just move around in Rochester, a really good friend and long time lover (just kidding C-Dawg) is moving away. She thinks that if she leaves here her life will be better what with the nice Florida weather. Hurricanes and storms are much worse than a lot of snow in my opinion, so I will take what I know. I wish her the best the luck in her new life, and expect to see her back here within a few months, another victim of the curse of Rochester. Many people try to leave this place only to realize it was pretty nice when they were here. I will point you to this article in USA Today (a.k.a "McNews") about a random trip to Rochester that a travel reporter took. Shining reviews are the best and this one is pretty bright. If anyone wants to come and visit and have me prove to them the good times that can be had here, please be my guest.

I recently secured a new Camera, the Kodak V550. I have wanted this camera since the day I saw it. After being involved in a 2 week camera study using the thing, I realized I had to have it, and after a $90 Kodak discount realized that it should already be in my pocket, so expect more shots of my antics while I am out painting the town red now that my camera fits comfortably in my pocket. If I could post video here I would, but maybe in the future. For those expecting some news stories, you will have to wait till my next entry. I just decided to leave this one as a re-intro to my blog since I have been reading a lot of stories about other peoples blogs and did not want this to turn into my much loved AOL webpage, (see first entry) I decided I better keep up with this thing. See ya...