Hotmail Crash & Burn - using MSN support

I installed a "silly" (MSN recommended) security feature in place to "block cookies" on our work systems as recommended BY MS.

I then went to access my hotmail account (VIA pop) and low and behold, pop not working.
While I assumed it was the new cookie blocker... I just thought I would "follow the rules" and go to the MSN hotmail help site.

The image below is a screen shot of what I got. Zip, nothing the MSN "help" is down.

While I know they were not trying to be "funny" by alerting me to a cookie flaw and how to fix it that intern generated and security flaw that finally brought me to the originating help site that was "down".... This was a I.T. scream of a joke on me. You guys bust me up...

The "Person Of The Year" self absorb "megalomaniac" who needs constant self approval

You — Yes, You — you shallow, self absorb "megalomaniac" have listened to enough media to believe that you alone Are TIME's Person of the Year I remember how self absorbed & oblivious I was when I entered the internet age over a decade ago. As time progress I found myself not becoming "me" but becoming more of "them".

So when they say "YOU" are the "Person Of The Year", what they mean is THEY are. Because YOU have become "content" utilized for marketing and social change at their hands.

As humans we ALL beg for acceptance, individualism, recognition and self affirmation... general media knows clearly knows this and uses the internet to take advantage of every issue that makes "YOU" feel that you are "important". ( Condition know as NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder )

How to write context for new media articles (paid for by their sponsors ;-)
  • Yes - buying that dress shows you care about animals, buy it!
  • Yes - you look very smart in that suit, buy it!
  • Smart people buy this car, buy it!
  • Caring people donate here - donate now!
  • rep/dec vote this way based on this "stuff" so vote now based on this "stuff"
  • This "stuff" is better, throw out your old "stuff" and buy better....
  • People who care about the environment buy this stuff or vote this way - SO DO WHAT WE SAY or your a bad person!

Hey I could do this all day folks, bottom line is that the internet makes far less of "YOU" than you could ever imagine... you just become one of them.

Picture rights of slate.com

Is your IT budget an Oxymoron

Paul Strassmann is a fellow who has been critical of IT spending for some time now. His resume is about as impressive as they come; he has also authored many seminal works in the field, including the Squandered Computer, which I have reviewed before ( The ROI Hath No Clothes .)

A good exercise for the start of the new year will be to calculate your Information Productivity Index, which measures exactly how much output you are getting out of your information processing dollars. Paul explains exactly how to do this in this Baseline 500 writeup. You will probably be surprised at how low your score is; in fact, half of all companies don't even get a positive score, implying their entire IT program is just a hobby. Where are you?
 

'They're geeky, but they don't know what to do with their geekdom,'

On a recent nationwide test to measure their technological 'literacy' -- their ability to use the Internet to complete class assignments -- only 49 percent of the test-takers correctly evaluated a set of Web sites for objectivity, authority and timeliness. Only 35 percent could correctly narrow an overly broad Internet search."

Geek to Live: Lifehacker Zeitgeist

In the spirit of the Google Zeitgeist, today I've got Lifehacker's top dozen most popular posts of 2006.

Harvard Spot on Digital Disobedience

...we're holding an event on Cyberactivism and Culture Jamming ... where we'll explore the interplay between digital technologies, activism, and the ability to modify and critique cultural institutions.
 
 
Here are the details:
Ji Lee, Artist and Creator of the Bubble Project
J. Salvatore Testa, Defender of Truth and Liberty, Hacktivismo
Prof. Fred Turner, Stanford University and author of "From Counterculture to Cyberculture"
Prof. Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Harvard VES Dept., teaching "Art and Activism since 1989: Culture Jam"
 
Sponsored by Harvard College Free Culture and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society with support from the MIT Computing Culture Group and the Culture Jam course.
Here's a video of the event "left" (click to play, ) Also for cDc -   Syndicate of London have recently released a book (entitled End of Dayz) of Britain's finest t-files from the early 1990s to the present.  End of Dayz is a selection of the best articles released in the SOL journal since its foundation.

Not all things are black and white

Wired- "futurism has no future,"

Wired Issue 14.10The bubble-era vision of a utopian Internet is dented and dirty. Technophobic refuseniks are likely to carry out violent resistance, and they may have good reason: Out-of-control technology is a distinct risk.
 
The erosion of our future?
 The future of the Internet lies not with institutions but with individuals. The Net itself will recede into the background. If you're under 21, you likely don't care much about any supposed difference between virtual and actual, online and off.
 
Erosion of self
...only to have my paperback writing slow down as I began to spend uncontrollable amounts of time surfing and blogging. This experience is both grand and problematic. It reflects not two extremes but the slider-bar that is my everyday life.
 
...development doesn't surprise me. Frankly, I saw it coming.   Read full from - Bruce Sterling here
 

First sign on the apocalypse

Lock up your daughters and backdoor and run for your life!
The November Comscore numbers show the inevitable: MySpace Is Biggest Site on InternetFox Interactive (mostly MySpace) now has more page views than the combined Yahoo sites, taking the no. 1 spot for the first time.
This was less to do with MySpace growth than with a 9% dip in overall Yahoo traffic (total Internet traffic for all sites in November dipped just 3%; Google was up 5%).
 
Still, MySpace has every reason to pop the champagne today and celebrate their 200% growth in page views over the last twelve months.

VIA-www.techcrunch.com (thanks guys)

IBM and the Holocaust

IBM and the Holocaust (VIA hugg.com)- Short video based on the Pulitzer Prize-nominated international bestseller book "IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black. The book, which documents IBM's direct links to Hilter and his so-called "Final Solution" by providing the Third Reich with census machines and punch card technology, caused IBM to issue a formal statement claiming that the Nazis controlled the operations of IBM Germany during the war.  » original news

Hacking A reputation in MySpace and Facebook

Schneier on Security "Fake Your Space" is a site where you can hire fake friends to leave their pictures and personalized comments on your page. Now you can pretend that you're more popular than you actually are... What's next? Services that verify friends on your friends' MySpace pages? Services that block friend verification services? Where will this all end up?
Comments I left are said at best...
After 20 years of being part of the "collective" (since Commodork64 BBS years)
I must "assimilate" my life and take back the creative, unique, professional & social skills that the "collective" internet has eroded in me... because "the Internet is way better at letting us be weird than it was at helping us be normal."
I have great fear for my family, my friends & our future after watching the "social" networks turn our great nation into criminal, self absorbed, socially dysfunctional, deviant junkies... I thought that was the governments job ;-)
Wow, a reference to "Whuffie"... I love your readers!

Internet is better at letting us be weird than helping us be normal.

The internet will suck you in, and you'll never escape.... ha, ha, ha, hahhhaaa!

Andrew Sullivan has posted a youtube of the old AT&T "You Will" ads about all the things AT&T would make possible through the Internet. I think these are the most emblematic advertisements of the era, defining the way that big companies totally missed the point of the Internet. They were like Thomas Edison declaring that the phone would bring opera to America's living rooms -- AT&T posited that the Internet would just amplify our normal, everyday lives, so you could "tuck your kid in from a phonebooth."

What they missed was that for all the normalcy that the Internet could enable, it would be much, much better at enabling deviance -- all the behaviors that were suppressed by society, or impossible to engage in given social constraints. Also Because There are no more good Hackers - Just Evil and Anyone can say anything on the Internet but that doesn't make it true or right

Go ahead follow the weird online. Link (via Global Nerdy -VIA (boingboing.com)

Vista Designed to Make Malware Easy

Slashdot.org reports "Trojan horses masquerading as 'cracks for Vista' are starting to appear on pirate boards. More worrying though, Microsoft has confirmed that Vista's image-based install process is designed to allow third-party software to be slipstreamed into the installation DVD. Great for corporate deployment of Vista with software pre-installed, but also a huge benefit for malware writers, who can distribute Vista images with deeply-rooted malware." Link

Goolge drops honest webmaster after site was hacked

J. J. Ramsey writes "Talk.Origins Google pulled the plug on its search engine, giving only the vague reason: 'No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines.' This was apparently triggered by a recent cracking of the site that added 'hidden links to non-topical sites,' but Google won't say just what the violations were. Talk.Origins webmaster Wesley R. Elsberry believes that this Google policy harms honest webmasters."

GATES will give it all away... can't take iot with him

El Lobo writes "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation To Spend All Its Assets within 50 years of both of them dying. The foundation focuses on improving health and economic development globally, and improving education and increasing access to technology. It also focuses on fighting diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The Seattle-based foundation plans to increase spending to about $3.5 billion a year beginning in 2009 and continuing through the next decade, up from about $1.75 billion this year." The Wall Street Journal (excerpted at the link above) called the foundation's decision "a decisive move in a continuing debate in philanthropy about whether such groups should live on forever." Link

Your not dumb, your just running DOS

thinker.png

The brain is like a computer... so there really aren't any stupid people.
Just people running DOS.

Get to work... Myspace & YouTube SUCK you in, and you'll never escape.

"Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet."

"on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

This is as funny as the day I posted it in June: "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
 
 

No more good Hackers - Just Evil

Hackers Not Afraid of Being Caught In an interview with Honeynet Founder Lance Spitzner where he says "Years ago it was hackers who were doing it for the bragging rights, now it's the criminals. The motivation has changed, hacking is now profitable and there's so much money to be made with very little risk to the actual hackers."  Link

First computer 150 BC

slide showAncient Astronomical Computer Decoded"A mechanical device from 150BC was found in a shipwreck. Upon examination with X-Rays, the device appeared to be a revolutionary computer used to calculate lunar cycles. This device "is technically more complex than any known for at least a millennium afterward." >From the article "The hand-operated mechanism, presumably used in preparing calendars for planting and harvesting and fixing religious festivals, had at least 30, possibly 37, hand-cut bronze gear-wheels, the researchers said. A pin-and-slot device connecting two gear-wheels induced variations in the representation of lunar motions according to the Hipparchos model of the Moon's elliptical orbit around Earth." See a slideshow about the mechanism

Simple DVD's from your videos

avi2dvd.png
Windows only: Freeware program Avi2Dvd converts AVI video files to ISO files you can burn to DVD, VCD, or SVCD.
If you've ever tried to burn AVI files you've downloaded to DVDs, you probably know that there isn't much in the way of free, simple ways to do it. While Avi2Dvd isn't a one-click solution, it seems to work fairly well; that said, it's still in beta, so you probably shouldn't expect the world. Avi2Dvd is freeware, Windows only. For a bit more help on authoring DVDs, check out our previous call for help.
Avi2Dvd [TrustFm via freewaregenius.com]

You may need me to update your Ibook

Apple Patches 31 Security Holes Apple Computer today released software updates to fix at least 31 separate security flaws in computers powered by different versions of its Mac OS X operating systems. Users can download the free updates using OS X's Software Update feature, or directly from Apple Downloads. The first update listed in Apple's advisory addresses a problem with the built-in wireless cards on certain Mac systems that researcher HD Moore detailed earlier this month and which can be exploited by attackers to install malicious software. Apple said the vulnerability is present in eMac, iBook, iMac, PowerBook G3, PowerBook G4, and Power Mac G4 systems equipped with an original AirPort card; systems with the AirPort Extreme card are not affected. Other fixes released today mend easily exploitable conditions, such as bugs that attackers could use to install malicious code just by convincing the user to visit a specially crafted site or font files.

New Challenge: Consider the "Six Degrees of Energy Efficiency"

Green IT Blog's - They cleaerly never heard of me ;-)

Ever heard of Green IT Blog's?  
ecoIron (http://ecoiron.blogspot.com), is a blog discussing all aspects of green computing.
They've been around for almost as long as EcoGeek and covering a lot of the same stories. ecoIron links to a cool site (http://green500.org/Home.html) that measures the performance of various super-computers not by performance, but by performance per watt. The difference per machine is astonishing. Though, what's not surprising, is how comparatively inefficient the older machines are. If you're an EcoGeek reader with an eye for some high-quality IT ecogeekery, I suggest becoming an ecoIron reader as well.

Green Computer with Biodegradable Peripherals

Image and video hosting by TinyPicImagine this: you buy a new computer monitor, take your old one and just bury it in the garden. 3 years later the monitor has biodegraded and your prized tomatoes are growing better than ever. The world's first 100% biodegradable computer components have arrived from MicroPro, a company based in Dublin, Ireland who produces eco-friendly computers, keyboards, mice and flat-panel monitors.  » original news (VIA-hugg.com)

Anyone can say anything on the Internet but that doesn't make it true or right

I remarked that the blog generation is going to has a completely different sense of what privacy is.  But maybe not.  Maybe no one will ever learn that anyone can say anything on the Internet but that doesn't make it true or right. ...(read more) http://clicked.msnbc.msn.com/members/Will+Femia.aspx

The bloat of the blogs...

Technorati founder David Sifry continues his excellent quarterly reports on the "State of the Blogosphere" -- a statistical roundup of the blogs seen through the lens of Technorati's gigantic blog-scraper. Here's the big picture:
* Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
* Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
* Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
* About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
* About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
* There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
* The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
* Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times. Link (VIA-boingboing.com)

UN says western nations must stop dumping illegal electronic waste in Third World

The head of the UN Environment Program said today that technological progress and increasing western consumerism is leading to an increase in the amount of dangerous electronic waste being dumped on the world's poorest nations. 75 per cent of these items including old TVs, CPUs and phones are defunct - in other words e-waste, in other words long distance dumping from developed country consumers and companies to an African rubbish tip or landfill,' he said. Some 20 to 50 million metric tonnes of electronic waste are > Read the full article (VIA - www.vnunet.com)

Microsoft Windows Comes Of Age - Happy 21st Birthday!

Believe it or not Windows was 21 years old on Monday.  When it was launched in 1985 the PC market was barely out of it's infancy, and whatever you may think of Microsoft it is amazing what they Bill Gates & Co have built in such a relatively short time.
 

10 OS X Apps You Might Not Know About But Should

Over the past couple of years of running The Apple Blog, I've tried out literally thousands of applications.  A lot have been great apps that I still use today, but infinitely more have just been plain bad.  I know I'm not the only one who's experienced this.  Link:   http://theappleblog.com/2006/11/26/10-osx-apps-you…

The Air Is Free, and Sometimes So Are the Phone Calls That Borrow It

Growing Problems With Electronics Waste

"The BBC is reporting that many countries are dumping their e-Waste in poorer African nations. From the article, 'The world's richest nations are dumping hazardous electronic waste on poor African countries, says the head of the UN's Environment Program (Unep).' The problem with e-Waste (versus other wastes) is that the gases and chemicals that make up a lot of electronics are particularly harmful for the environment. I suppose nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."   Link

Ethical Hacker training course

ceh.JPG The Certified Ethical Hacker training course will teach the techniques used by hackers and intruders to infiltrate, control and compromise computer systems.

"The key to catching cyber-criminals is learning to get inside their heads and start thinking like them," said Hailey. Cyber-criminals are using increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud consumers and businesses, including online identity theft, phishing scams, malicious code attacks and the creation of botnets. Those fighting computer related crime need to know first hand how these attacks are perpetrated, and the evidence to look for. Keeping current by attending this training is one of the best weapons. "

For more information on the Washington State High Technology Crime Investigation Association, visit:
www.wahtcia.org

Triple-boot XP, Vista, and Ubuntu

This work wonderful for me.... CH
triple-boot.png
Blogger Ilya Hevnikov has posted a really nice tutorial for triple-booting Windows XP, Windows Vista, and the Linux distro du jour, Ubuntu, on one hard drive.
This undertaking is not for the faint of heart, but it is a great way to try out a different OS or two without abandoning what you're comfortable with. — From Lifehacker.com How To Triple Boot (XP, Vista, Ubuntu) With Single Boot Screen

FREE Wikipedia CD (All platforms)

wikipedia%20logo.jpg
All platforms: Download a CD containing 2,500 hand-picked educational articles from Wikipedia.
The CD was compiled by volunteers for "the world's largest orphan charity," SOS Children. The articles, all of which are from the English language portal, cover common educational topics such as geography, science, dinosaurs, plants and animals, to name a few.
Looks like a great tool for kids and schools! The CD is free and should work on any platform. —  (Thanks lifehacker.com)
Wikipedia CD Distributed Over BitTorrent [TorrentFreak]

Should Google Go Nuclear?

Baldrson writes "One of the founders of the US Tokamak fusion program, Dr. Robert W. Bussard, gave a lecture at Google recently now appearing as a Google video titled 'Should Google Go Nuclear?'. In it, he presents his recent breakthrough electrostatic confinement fusion device which, he claims, produced several orders of magnitude higher fusion power than earlier electrostatic confinement devices. According to Bussard, it did so repeatably during several runs until it blew up due to mechanical stress degradation. He's looking for $200M funding, the first million or so of which goes to rebuilding a more robust demonstrator within the first year. He claims the scaling laws are so favorable that the initial full scale reactor would burn boron-11 — the cleanest fusion reaction otherwise unattainable. He has some fairly disturbing things to say in this video, as well as elsewhere, about the US fusion program which he co-founded."  Link to full read

Unimpressed With US IT Workforce

United States
theodp writes, "'The IT work force is not skilled enough and almost never can be skilled enough,' said Robert Cresanti, Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology. So what does the Poli Sci grad and ex-General Counsel for the ITAA think is the answer? Open the gates to more foreign workers, urged Cresanti, including H-1B holders."

Thanks for link slashdot.org

Get back to work tool for IT zoomibes

kiwicloak.jpg
Long-time readers remember the Invisibility Cloak, a Greasemonkey script which blanks out web sites you're trying to avoid in the name of getting actual work done during certain times of the day. Well, Javascripter Jeremy Freese has modified the Invisibility Cloak to blank out sites for a certain amount of time at the top of each hour, so he can avoid checking Gmail or Bloglines more than once an hour.
 
The result - called the Kiwi Cloak - can be edited to your preferred time. So, for instance, the first 10 minutes of the hour those time-sucking web sites are yours to browse; the rest of the time you'll get a message from the Kiwi Cloak telling you how long you have to wait. Neat riff on the cloak, which has saved me from diving down the rabbit hole more than once. You'll need Firefox with the Greasemonkey to run this one. Thanks, Jeremy & Gina Trapani

Who maintains the internet?

"The internet has the potential to incite belligerence on a global scale, or even to empower demagogues and repressive regimes in ways that were historically impossible to achieve previously." wikipedia

Could you lose your internet? - (yes of relevant content )

Maybe you already have? - (yes well 90% of it ;-)

Due to mass media and marketing you don't even see half of it and never will - (You see what we want, not maybe what you want)


Why do you think you found this page "random chance"? Hardly

Not possible on the internet...

The 57 Million blogs maintained on the internet and that number doubles in size approximately every 230 days.

So, about 100,000 new weblogs are created each day...

In the December 2006 survey we received responses from 105,244,649 Web sites with content...

While Al Gore has done a lot to promote his books & movies... he did not create and does not maintain the internet, these guys do ;-)

Why "Who Maintains the Internet Matters"... Here’s a little something to think about while the UN makes the case for greater international control of the internet turning a large class of people into social misfits, deviants and criminals and terrorists...

Who maintains YOUR internet? - Hoz

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