The National Park Service has posted their draft dog management plan for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The plan is open for public comments until April 14, 2011.
For my comments and response see Response to GGNRA Draft Dog Management Plan on my main blog (I Thought He Came With You).
The current pushback on the nasty choice between nude backscatter photos vs. ‘enhanced’ TSA groping got me thinking.
If I really wanted to blow up a plane (which I don’t) I wouldn’t mess around with printer cartridges or shoe bombs. I’d combine some explosive containing breast implants with a trigger disguised as a pacemaker. Some terrorist cell somewhere must be working on this or something like it.
How would the TSA respond? Would we need an MRI before boarding?
I think the radiation scare is overblown – far lower than the risk from hanging around at 30,000 feet. But it’s not ridiculous to refuse and getting to third base with the TSA doesn’t seem like it’s making us much safer.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Boob Bombs #etc #tsa #mri Would it be possible to build a bomb out of breast implants and a pacemaker? How would the TSA react? )
I (used to) use Facebook for people I know well, LinkedIn for weaker ties and Twitter mostly for people I don’t know at all.
Over time though I’ve created identities on pretty much every network. With the increased interconnectedness of such sites when I stop using them I don’t stop posting…
I just discovered (in a spam filter) that someone was having a one sided conversation with me on Plaxo Pulse. I’m also actively posting (but not paying attention) on Buzz and goodness know how many other networks. I’m sure this inflates their active user count admirably but I’m now worried that undead me is being rude.
The social graph needs to work better in the other direction. Everything I post and comment on syndicates out like crazy but keeping track of responses just isn’t working.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Zombie Robs #etc #facebook #linkedin #twitter #plaxopulse #buzz #socialgraph Zombie Robs (how not to follow one - you can reach me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or preferably just here). )
Don’t tell me to think before printing your email.
Firstly, it’s not that special. You’re lucky if I’m reading it at all. Do you really think I want a copy for posterity? Am I going to have it framed? Let’s face it, your target audience is pre-Internet execs who have their secretaries print their emails out so they can dictate a reply back later.
Secondly, do you think your sanctimonious footer comes at no cost? Using the power of randomly Googling facts each bit takes 4.6µJ and 2.8 million emails are sent every second. Assuming a 60 character nag if everyone indulged that’s over 12kW of smugness. For approximately no pages of paper saved.
And don’t get me started on lawyers. We could probably stop global warming if they’d just skip the fifteen page footer explaining how it’s somehow your fault if they send their emails to the wrong address.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Think before you print? #etc #globalwarming #email Do you really imagine that I might care enough about your email to print it? )
AT&T's MicroCell extends their famously inept network into your home or office. It does a tragically good job — you can use your broadband connection to not make calls rather than not making calls through an AT&T tower.
It's actually worse, because at least on the actual network you know when your signal sucks. With the MicroCell my phone shows five bars but will often refuse to make or receive a call. The first clue is often leaving the coverage of the device and finding out what you've missed. In fact, I think it might even be illegal under the Communications Act of 1934 as it's effectively a jammer.
Even if I can make a voice call the wretched thing screws up geolocation. In order to comply with E911 the device is registered to a specific address AND requires a GPS lock to function at all. Despite this it tells my phone that it's in Berkeley. Switch the MicroCell off and I instantly get the correct location in San Francisco. Switch it on and I'm teleported to Telegraph Avenue. My Google Latitude history has whiplash every time I leave the house.
Reading the AT&T forums I'm lucky. Other users are located in the wrong state, and have choppy voice when they can make a call at all.
(Published to the Fediverse as: AT&T MicroCell Woes #etc #at&t #microcell #geolocation How AT&T's MicroCell cure is worse than the disease (the disease in this case being AT&T's regular network). )
The metadata required to use the like button looks like this:
[code:html][/code]
But the property attribute isn't valid html or xhtml. The “Open” Graph Protocol says that it's inspired by Dublin Core. DC manages to get by using the name attribute like any other meta tag - why can't Open Graph? It's not the worst problem but it just seems needlessly irksome. Facebook has published a presentation describing their design decisions. This would be great, but it's in that Lessig one word per slide style and so it's attractive but completely useless without the presenter.
Facebook's documentation is frustratingly sparse. For example you need to specify the owner of the page using a Facebook ID, and once you've chosen a name for your profile this is hard to find. The information vacuum has been filled with many erroneous blog posts saying to use the name, or some number from a shared photo (the best source is http://graph.facebook.com/robert.ellison, substituting your own username). Once you've got the admin ID wrong, you can't correct it - the first admin specified is fixed forever. What happens if a site is hacked and a bad actor sets themselves up as the admin? Surely something like the Google Webmaster Tools authentication scheme could have been used instead?
Describing the object being liked in the head element limits you to one object per page. For some sites this is perfect, but what about a blog where you have many posts on the home page? It would be useful to have a like button per post, pointing at the permalink for the post in question. I've worked around this by having a like button for the blog on the home page, and a like button for each post on the post pages. Not ideal. I'm using the iframe version of the gadget, possibly there's some more flexibility with the XBML variant.
Let's say you've spent the past couple of years building up a Facebook page for your site/band/blog/movie and have thousands of fans. When you click your new like button for the first time you create a whole new page. There's no way to tell the like button about the existing page or the existing page about the like button. You now have at least two pages to worry about managing and potentially many, many more. You're also starting from scratch on the ‘like’ count, so even if your brand is already popular on Facebook it's back to Billy no-mates for you.
I can't believe this won't be fixed at some point. As with admin authentication above there must be a better way to establish ownership of various objects in the social graph.
For better or worse Facebook has the inexorable pull to start making the semantic web a reality. Given this, and that there are something like twenty-four thousand verbs in the English language it's time for more expressiveness than ‘like’. You also can't comment on the ‘liked’ item in your stream (yet) so no clarification or discussion is possible.
--
Having said all that, if you enjoyed this post please click the ‘like’ button above ;)
(Published to the Fediverse as: Top 5 reasons to hate the Facebook like button #etc #facebook #like #lessig #dublincore #semanticweb #opengraph #metadata Why can't you link to an existing page? How can you have a like button per blog post on your home page? Are we headed towards a world with only one verb? )
3/5
A good enough holiday read and nice to see Patterson return to a straight psychological thriller rather than the last few OpEds loosely wrapped with some plot.
5/5
Comprehensive introduction to low level .NET debugging - when you need to fire up WinDbg to check out the state of the managed heap, or debug a crash dump from the field you'll find this book invaluable. I wish it had been available when I started figuring out how to use SOS.
5/5
Wonderful collection of all of Ballard's short stories. It's a huge book with surprisingly few duds. My favorites include The Illuminated Man, clearly the inspiration for The Crystal World, which includes meaning bombs like "It's almost as if a sequence of displaced but identical images were being produced by refraction through a prism, but with the element of time replacing the role of light." and The Ultimate City (which isn't using ultimate in the sense of being good...). I've read most of Ballard's novels but not many of the short stories before. They're well worth the time.
- Microsoft Agrees With Apple And Google: “The Future Of The Web Is HTML5″ from TechCrunch (Which makes it all the more tragic that a huge number of clients will still be running IE6 :().
- UK Political Parties: Do They Cut It? from Information Is Beautiful (Handy).
- Comedian criticises BBC 'rebuke' from BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition (The problem isn't that it was anti-Semitic, it's that it wasn't funny.).
- UK 'has a high early death rate' from BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition (That'll be the deep fried mars bars and chips.).
- Oklahoma, where women's rights are swept away from All Salon (Competing with AZ to be the most fucked up state? Sigh :().
- New Google Maps Option: "Avoid Arizona" (alright, it's a joke) from Boing Boing (ROFLATSDOON).
- Cameras capture 'Highland tiger' from BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition (Tabbs was bigger than that (a house cat)).
- Abuse raised as Pope visits Malta from BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition (,also mentioned the war...).
- Seat Selection from xkcd.com.
- MI5 dumps staff lacking IT skills from BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition (MI5 has staff without computer skills?).
- NSFW: I Admit It, The iPad Is A Kindle Killer. I Just Wish It Weren’t Going To Kill Reading Too from TechCrunch.
- The Internet Provides. from jwz (Disturbing).
- Who Really Spends The Most On Their Military? from Information Is Beautiful (Click through to the Guardian blog post, interesting reading.).
If you send email to customers it's important that you let them know where the email will come from and then use then use this address consistently. Using different email addresses is a recipe for getting trapped in spam filters. This is equally important for marketing and other messaging like bills and canceled flights.
I bring up flights because I'm flying to the UK later today and was planning to return on Sunday. British Airways' Cabin Crew is going on strike this weekend and my return flight has been canceled. Instead of sending a text message BA tried to notify me by email. This would have been fine if they used the address they've used for years, but instead they used a new address and a new domain. In fact in the process of canceling and re-booking I (eventually) got email from britishairways.com, my.ba.com, email.ba.com and pop3.amadeus.net.
Since I've had the same email address for twelve years now I get a fair amount of spam. I use SpamArrest to keep myself sane:
94.9% of my email is spam. Since I started using the service SpamArrest has eaten 482,494 messages for me. I'm far from alone in using white list based email filtering so if you want your message to get through transparency and consistency are the way to go.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Email marketing - don't shoot yourself in the foot #etc #britishairways #spamarrest #spam #email Transparency and consistency are important when sending email. Let the customer know where the email comes from and always use the same address. )
Yes.
Some more color. I use Intuit's assisted payroll service, which is fantastic. You run payroll straight out of QuickBooks and Intuit handles all the tax disbursement and filing for you.
I got an email today with an attachment called securedoc.html claiming to be a message from Intuit. The idea is that you open the attachment and then login to view the message.
It really couldn't look any more like a phishing email, however I called Intuit and remarkably it's a real message. They seriously expect me to open an email attachment and provide account information. The support person at Intuit was able to read the message to me and it was just a routine acknowledgment that some tax rates had been updated.
Intuit is seriously training its customers to fall victim to phishing attacks. The right approach would be to say that a message is available and to log in to your account to retrieve it, or better still to send a message through the existing system in QuickBooks. Securedoc.htm is just begging customers to provide their account information to the bad guys.
Intuit's payroll service stores bank account information, employee Social Security numbers and other data that you really don't want to expose. If you're an Intuit Payroll customer please call and complain. If you've received one of these messages I'd also recommend forwarding it to [email protected], their address for reporting phishing attacks.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Is Intuit Insane? #etc #spoof #phishing #intuit #quickbooks Intuit is training its customers to fall victim to phishing attacks by sending messages using securedoc.html )
Does Facebook now hate MMS? For the past couple of weeks every time I tried to send a photo I got the following error message:
You have uploaded from an unrecognized address. For instructions on how to upload photos to Facebook, go to http://www.facebook.com/mobile"
I got this sending to both [email protected] and 32665. The referenced page is no help at all, and my phone number is registered with Facebook Mobile.
It turns out that there's a new secret email address. On the Facebook site click the icon to share a photo:
Then click Upload a Photo:
Then click upload via email:
Your personal email address is finally revealed and can be used to send a photo via MMS.
Facebook - update your error message to point this out!
(Published to the Fediverse as: MMS Photo Upload to Facebook #etc #facebook #mms How to MMS photo Upload to Facebook via the hidden personal upload email address. )
Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel
International Date Line Longitude, Latitude Coordinates
Is it safe to open securedoc.html (Cisco Registered Envelope)?
3D Printing a 72-58mm step down Camera Filter Adapter
3D Printing a Window Mount for a Google Nest Indoor Wired Gen 2 Camera
3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat
Fixing dropped wireless connection for Linksys E4200