Democrats lose political map case

US state lawmakers can redraw electoral maps to favor their own parties at any time, the Supreme Court has ruled. Lets see if Democrats can get away with this any time soon.

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Flashback

I just remembered something that happened in 5th grade. Since I was nearly a year younger than everyone else in my class, I was pretty much the shortest one in the room. My 5th grade teacher had the entire class sing the Randy Newman song "Short People" to me. If you aren't familiar with the lyrics, they go "Short people got no reason to live."

By the way, the same teacher went to the church I was forced to go to as a kid and would always preach to us.

BlueFrog = Anti-Spam

In case you haven't heard, spam (unsolicited e-mail) is a major problem that no-one seems to be able to solve. American politicians, most of which have probably never sent an e-mail themselves, passed a law (called CAN-SPAM) stating that if you send out solicited or unsolicited e-mail, you must allow the person to opt-out of receiving any further messages from you. Of course I'm summarizing, but you get the point.

That all seems fine, but the major problem is that the people sending out spam know that they are difficult to track down, and they feel that it's their right to consume more than 50% of e-mail traffic with promises of larger genitalia.

Why am I talking about this? There is a company called Blue Security that is attempting to offer a way to force the spammers to stop sending messages to people that don't want them. Apparently a few of the larger spammers are complying with the requests, but during the last week, it seems that a bunch of the leeches have joined forces and are currently initiating a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) that basically kills all traffic going to the web sites of Blue Security. It seems that the spammers don't like receiving approximately 500,000 messages requesting that a user be removed (one message for each e-mail account registered with Blue Security).

The second phase of the attack is (apparently) the people that are registered with Blue Security are being targeted with more spam, but that would only generate MORE traffic back to the spammers requesting opt-outs on behalf of the end-users.

Why would they do this? Greed and laziness are good motivators. Spammers get paid a lot of money for flooding the Internet with crap (greed), and it doesn't take a lot of effort on the spammers part to actually send out the messages (laziness). Asking them to stay out of my inbox and spamfolder by finding a real job would apparently be too much to ask, so until then we will need to use tools like Blue Security to keep them in check. Therefore, I ask that anyone reading this go to http://www.bluesecurity.com, download the software, register your e-mail accounts, and fight back. Sticking your head in the sand will only make matters worse.

Device allows Digital Camcorders to record straight to an iPod

A forthcoming product will provide an interface between a Digital Camcorder and your iPod so you don't need to mess about with tapes.

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Wind Power Becoming Cheaper Than Conventional Power

Wind energy power is now cheaper than convention sources in at least two areas: Austin, Texas and Colorado. A newly published report says that this trend is will likely be seen in other parts of the U.S.

When will the rest of the country see the advantage of wind/solar? First they need to get over the "it ruins the view" crap. A lot of morons, Walter Cronkite included, don't want wind power from a wind farm that would be 6 miles offshore because they say that it would ruin the natural beauty of the horizon. The fact that the windmills would appear at most 1mm to humans seems to be moot.

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Movie studios may be moving against region encoding hacks, other exploits

A brief investigation into the matter suggests that Disney, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Time Warner and and Universal Studios are pursuing the company for being "hacker-friendly," inasmuch as the company has developed products that allow savvy users to bypass the limitations imposed by content owners.

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A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA

Now all we need is the entire Republican party to resign for the same reason (incompetence). . .


George C. Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday. Common sense has prevailed.

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The Diebold vs. Honesty saga continues

In yet another flagrant display of how scared Diebold and the Republican party are of a voting fraud investigation, Alaska has refused to turn over the vote results that are supposed to be PUBLIC RECORD. Anyone should be able to go down to their registrar's office and ask to see the vote results, but for some reason, Diebold has this shield of invisibility. Could it be that the former head honcho over there is a huge supporter of Republicans? This is the guy that publicly stated that his company was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President".

The Democratic party is simply trying to investigate voting irregularities, which happened in other districts that used Diebold machines. If there was no voting fraud, turn over the data and prove it. Otherwise it's a "The lady doth protest too much" scenario.

For those of you thinking "Bush won, get over it", I say this: Just because he "won" doesn't mean that he, or his political party, aren't capable of fraud. Were the roles reversed and Gore or Kerry had won against Bush, and fraud were suspected, wouldn't you want an investigation just to be sure that the next election will be more accurate? Otherwise, we are politically nothing more than a banana republic (and I'm not talking about the store at the mall).

By the way, Diebold's primary competitor is a company called ES & S and it's owned/run by the brother of the owner/honcho over at Diebold (the Urosevitch brothers). Together the count around 80% (if not more) of the votes in this country, and based on what Alaska's government says, those votes are off limits.

New Senate Broadcast Flag Bill Would Freeze Fair Use

Hollywood now wants their old business model frozen into a law to prevent any technology newer than their "historical" distribution method from being created. This would have prevented iPods and Tivos from ever being considered. Yet another corp. shill acting like a senator

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U.S. details tax breaks for hybrid cars

Finally, congress is giving tax breaks for fuel efficient vehicles as opposed to Hummers. If you didn't know, for the last few years, people buying Excursions and Hummers got a huge tax break while people that bought fuel efficient cars got nothing.

"The credit, which was enacted by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, may be as much as $3,400 for those who purchase the most fuel-efficient vehicles."

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Apple's FireWire gets nod from High Definition Audio Video Network Alliance

For many years, I've wanted audio and video equipment to use a standard digital connection. Imagine a world where the speakers, DVD player, and TV Audio all plug into a bank of firewire ports on the back of the stereo. It doesn't matter which one because the stereo configures everything automagically and all the signals are digital.

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Star Trek Computer Interface (LCARS)

All I can say is "where do they find the time to do this. . .oh, right, they don't date":

The LCARS Standards Development Board at http://www.lcarsdeveloper.com features near-exact replications of the LCARS interface seen on Star Trek (particularly Voyager). As you'll see on the site, there's more to LCARS than just random colors and numbers, everything actually means something! You can even learn how to pilot the USS Voyager!

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Shareaza spyware?

I was using the P2P program Shareaza the other day (downloading non-copyrighted files, I assure you) and I noticed that my anti-virus software was filtering outgoing mail. The strange part about that is that I don't have a web client configured (I use Gmail). I began trying to figure out which application was trying to send the mail and it turned out that it was Shareaza which is not supposed to have any spyware. The scary part was that the message was being sent to a Russian domain.

I couldn't find the e-mail that was trying to be sent (by checking in AVG's outbox), and after a quick search through the source code, I couldn't find any reference to a .ru address. I'm going to assume that the application has been hijacked somehow, but I used the opportunity to wipe the hard drive and make sure my file system was intact.


UPDATE: after doing some searching on spyware in Shareaza, I managed to find these comments suggesting that it does, in fact, contain spyware:
http://www.download.com/Shareaza/3641-2166_4-9062723.html

UPDATE 2: I managed to find this posting on Shareaza's Wiki:
http://wiki.shareaza.com/static/Troubleshoot.Email
Basically, a computer that Shareaza is trying to connect to is using port 25 as it's "listening" port. This is reserved for SMTP, but when you put Shareaza into "Random Port mode", 25 could occasionally come up. Based on this info, Shareaza does NOT (currently) have spyware.

UPDATE 3: In case you didn't know, the Shareaza domain has been hijacked by scammers, and they have released a version of Shareaza that is loaded with spyware. Do not use Shareaza unless you get it from Sourceforge

http://torrentfreak.com/scammers-move-to-seize-shareaza-trademark-080302/

According to Wikipedia, here is the latest info:

Domain takeover / transfer

On 19 December 2007, the project's domain name, shareaza.com, was redirected to an unrelated site, promoting the download of an spyware client known as ShareazaV4.^[4] As a result, the original project was forced to move their home page to SourceForge.net.

Since 1 January 2008, the new domain takes advantage of Shareaza's built-in automatic update feature to suggest to users that the ShareazaV4 application is an update to Shareaza. This vulnerability was fixed in Shareaza 2.3.1.0.^[5]

The La Societe Des Producteurs De Phonogrammes En France (SPPF), the representative of recording labels in France, has taken legal action against Jonathan Nilson since his name was under the domain shareaza.com at the time.

Attempted trademark takeover

On January 10, 2008, the new owners of Shareaza.com, Discordia Ltd (iMesh Inc.^[6]), filed for trademark registration of the Shareaza name, claiming that the first-ever use of this name was on December 17, 2007.^[7] The Shareaza Development Team urged users of the program to send Letters of Protest to the patent office and set up a legal defense fund.^[8]

Statutory rape

First of all, don't read too much into this post. Take it for what it is.

Why is it that if you have consensual sex with a girl under the age of 18 you can be convicted of rape, but if you marry her, everything is fine? What is it about marriage that makes consensual sex with a minor ok?

Just thought I'd ask.

Rough draft of my Wikipedia entry

Christopher Clark (1967 - present) is an often misunderstood philosopher/software engineer currently residing in Florida. He is best known for his wealth of trivial information, and his logical and methodical outlook towards subjects that others consider inherent.

For example, Christopher's outlook towards parenting includes the following:
1) The world is overcrowded already, why make more babies?
2) I've seen too many relationships/marriages/lives ruined by having children.
3) Children are too much of a financial and emotional burden to have.
4) Parents are ultimately responsible for the upbringing of their children. If a child commits a crime, the parent should be punished as well.
5) Marriage is simply a contract to give away half (or more) of your stuff, especially from the male perspective. It has nothing to do with commitment or love. If you want to prove your dedication and love to your partner, don't cheat on them, don't abuse them, and be their friend.
6) All politicians should be considered corrupt and then prove their honesty and goodwill through their actions (this is a result of the Republican party's hubris and misdeeds over the last decade or so).
Disclaimer: Christopher is a registered republican
7) As a recent study has proven, organized religions (mostly the ones of middle-eastern origin) are more of a detriment to society than and so on.

As you can see, many of his views aren't very close to "mainstream".

It probably comes as no surprise that, mostly based on his views of parenting, Christopher has spent most of his life without a girlfriend (and has obviously never married). Friends agree that he has a lot to offer a woman, namely honesty. This, however, hasn't been enough to overcome the "baby fever" that is drilled into most women's brains from the time they get their first baby doll and stroller. This doesn't seem to bother him as much as it would most people, as he was recently quoted as saying "my life is uncomplicated right now, and that makes up for solitude".

Howard Stern Shaking up the industry

Howard isn't leaving terrestrial radio until Dec. 16th, and Infinity has been really jerking him around. They blame him for the problems they are having when the reality is the stagnant radio market. They relied on him for years to bring in Billions of dollars in revenue and now that he is leaving they have to actually work for a living. They are crapping in their pants now and I feel no pity for them. They brought it on themselves with limited playlists, annoying DJs and way too many commercials. As far as I'm concerned, my Sirius radio and my iPod have completely eliminated any need for local radio.

Whether you like Howard or hate him, he has an enormous influence on the industry. If Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, or Don Imus left the airwave, it would not have a negative effect on the industry. Stern leaves and the largest radio corporation completely changes its business model and some radio stations (that carried Howard's show) went from #1 in their market to #20.

Another year older and deeper in debt

I just turned 38 the other day. Whoopie. Just another day.

Still working as a web developer. Pretty cool work, but it would be nice to be making a little more $$$. I have a butt-load of college related debt to pay off, so I don't really get to enjoy the spoils of my edumacashun.

I did pick up a 37" HDTV. It's a Westinghouse LVM-37w1 (Google it) and I'm using it as my computer monitor as well as my TV. The old Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2200 cable box didn't work very well with the new TV, and it couldn't output any HD channels, so I had to upgrade to the shiny Explorer 8300 HD. It's ok, but compared to my ReplayTV (think Tivo, but better), Scientific Atlanta could do a hell of a lot better. The standard channel guide interface is the same one they've been using for the last 10 years or more, which looks crappy on a standard def TV, imagine what it looks like on a HDTV.

The 8300 does record HD channels (which my ReplayTV couldn't do), but there are a few problems with that too. If you want to start a show (that's currently being recorded) at the beginning, you have to rewind all the way from the "live" position to the start of the show. What happened to the "Play from beginning" feature ReplayTVs have had for 6 years or more?

If you are watching a show being recorded, but you aren't at the "live" position, the show will jump to live when the recording stops. This means you have to navigate to the recorded show and fast forward to the point where you left off.

I sent these, as well as a few other, complaints to BrightHouse Networks and they gave me the standard "thanks for your input but we can't do anything about it" e-mail. If I wanted someone to take my money and ignore me, I'd get married.

Laters

Hurricane Dennis

Ok, we dodged another bullet. Hurricane Dennis skirted the bay area on its way to Pensacola. We had some high winds and some heavy rains, but overall we didn't have any problems.

New Job, New Home

Like I said earlier, I have a new job doing some web dev work. It's working out pretty good so far, but there is a lot for me to learn. It's a little weird working in such a small office. I always feel like I need to be careful what I say and do, but I guess that goes for any new job.

I also found a new apartment in Clearwater. It's only a year or so old, clean, and close to work. Maybe in a couple of years I'll be able to afford a bigger place, but for now this one is fine.

Work

Ok, I found a job!! Pay isn't great, but it'll definitely cover the bills and my enormous student loan debt. Plus, it's a web programming job, so that's cool. We'll see how it goes.

I was a little cautious about taking the job because I was given a counter-offer at my old employer, but it was a toss-up between doing embedded programming in boring old C or doing jsp, xml, sql, and a bunch of other acronyms. Not to mention the fact that I'd have to move back to Orlando. Ugh.

Now I need to find an apartment (I hate Ybor city) and try to find a girl willing to go out with me.