2007 August 06

Bob’s Junkmail 192

Your pleasant respite from Bob’s Junkmail is over!I have been on a boat ride for most of the past three months. We took The Minnow from Key West, through the Panama Canal, up to Los Angeles, and on to Hawaii.

For most of the trip there were two people on the boat, but occasionally four. We were in races from St. Petersburg to Mexico, and from Los Angeles to Hawaii. You can read all about it here:

http://hmsminnow.blogspot.com

We were thrown out of the Mexico race because we motored the last 150 miles towing one of the other boats, but we got second place in the Multihull division of the Transpac race. Out of two. Here are some Transpac Photos:

http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk192/photos/transpac.htm

I’ve been out of touch for a while, so I read through some of the most popular stories on digg.com. Microsoft’s Surface, its new computer, was slightly less popular than “Paris Hilton Loses Inheritance.” Maybe I didn’t miss much.

Extra Vigilance

The Transportation Safety Administration has asked general aviation pilots to “exercise extra vigilance.” I suppose this was intended to encourage pilots to catch terrorists, politicians, and other scoundrels, but it would make more sense for general aviation pilots to exercise extra vigilance in avoiding bad weather and maintaining a 1:1 takeoff-to-landing ratio. After all, isn’t that what transportation safety is really about?

Up To As Many As

The Business Software Alliance has promised to pay up to $1 million to anyone who turns in their employer for using unlicensed software. “Up to” is the catch. Techdirt will pay up to $1 million to anyone can offer proof of the BSA awarding anyone $1 million.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20070702/165355.shtml

I like it! I’ll pay up to $1 million to the next person who washes my car. The actual amount is at my sole discretion, just like BSA’s terms and conditions.

https://reporting.bsa.org/usa/rewardsconditions.aspx

As a software vendor, I don’t think people should go to jail for copying software. I consider it free advertising. If my software is any good, maybe I can sell them an upgrade. In fact, here you go. Have a free download of Photo Mud. Then buy an upgrade someday so I can pay someone to wash my car.

http://xpda.com/photomudsetup.exe

Way Faster?

From an AP news article:

“Mancuso is testing new equipment this week and even on unfamiliar skis she was way faster than the rest of the field with a time of 1:11.80.”

Newt Gingrich is against bilingual education. I’d settle for any lingual education for AP.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-31-ging…

MPAA Law

Recording a 20-second video in a movie theater can cost you a year in jail. It’s the law. That seems a little stiff to me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…

On the other hand, the MPAA considers itself above pretexting (fraud) laws.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070410-riaa-and-…

Trojan

Back in the “good old days,” viruses and trojans were primarily recreational. Someone would write a virus to see how much it would propagate, occasionally deleting data for fun.

Now, there’s money involved. You can take temporary control of a PC and use it to send spam, for example. If you have a collection of these zombies, you can sell spammers access to them.

You can also use trojans collect credit card info and passwords, and then sell the information to financial miscreants.

Here is a good article about how a recent trojan works, with technical details. They are getting pretty advanced. This one manages to hide its registry entries from regedit, and collects data in spite of SSL/TLS encryption.

http://www.secureworks.com/research/threats/gozi/

Who writes these things? People like Joanna Rutkowska, I guess.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=334

In other not-so-legit computer news, some spammers have figured out how to get around the Hotmail and Yahoo barriers, and have created thousands of bogus email accounts. I think that’s kind of funny. I imagine it won’t take long for Yahoo and Hotmail to backtrack and disable the spammer accounts.

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/07/08/spammer…

The Vassa

The Vassa was a warship built in 1628 in Sweden under King Gustaf Adolf the Great.

They ran a stability test and had 30 sailors run back and forth on the deck. The Vassa almost capsized. When they loaded 64 24lb guns onto the boat and sailed with the gun ports open, the ship did capsize and sink, just minutes into its maiden voyage.

It was raised from the Baltic in the 1950’s, and is now on display in Stockholm. It is amazingly intact, because the deep, cold water kept the worms, bacteria, and other wood rotters from rotting the wood. The ship is surprisingly ornate for a warship.

http://www.nonk.info/cool_pictures/cool_pictures/vassa_…

The Definition of “Unlimited”

Verizon advertised unlimited EVDO wireless data service. Then they defined “unlimited”. It seems odd to me that “unlimited” should have so many limits.

Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine to machine connections or peer to peer (P2P) file sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. …

A person engaged in prohibited uses, continuously for one hour, could typically use 100 to 200 MBs, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GBs in a month. …

Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice.”

– Verizon formally redefines “unlimited” in the user agreement for its unlimited EVDO Wireless Data Service

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2111373,00.asp

Bombs

Last April the police arrested guy named Cody for making a bomb threats. They caught him using cell phone records. Unfortunately for Cody, the police didn’t match the records very well. Their time was off by an hour or so. Cody had nothing to do with the bomb threat.

Cody is a 15-year-old high school student who had never even had detention. He spent 12 days in juvenile detention center.

A judge was shown proof that the bomb threat wasn’t made by Cody’s cell phone, and he dropped the charges. But the officials at the juvenile detention center wanted to keep the kid even longer! They said he should undergo psychiatric evaluation because he wouldn’t admit to making the call. They also said, “Legally, we were OK. We didn’t step on this kid’s rights.”

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribunereview/news/west…

http://kdka.com/topstories/local_story_094135948.html

There is a real bomb waiting to go off at Eta Carinae. Actually, Eta Carinae is the bomb. It’s a giant star about 7500 light years northeast of Locust Grove. It will probably blow up sometime in the next thousand years. Luckily, Eta Carinae is not aimed at the earth, else the energy from the explosion could wipe us out.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/06/20/eta-car-t…

$7 Million a Month

Ford lost $12.7 billion in 2006. Ford boss Alan made $28 million for working four months. I would have done his job for half that, and I bet I wouldn’t have lost as much money for the company.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/companies/ford_exe…

Wiretaps

Electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking programs to spy on US citizens have been approved by the White House. Of course, they are White House programs.

Luckily, congress will pass a new law allow some wiretapping without a warrant, sometime in the next day or two. I feel safe!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…

Global Warming

Global Warming is now a national security problem. Why not? Everything else is.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles…

Emergency Evacuation

In April, Hillary Clinton ordered the emergency evacuation of some Americans at the Russian arctic base of Barneo, because the ice was breaking up. I’m not sure what authority she has in this area, but she probably needs a bit more information in her decision-making process. The ice was fine, and they planned to stay and the base a couple more weeks. It was all a false alarm. Hillary said of the fiasco, “Oops.”

http://www.mounteverest.net/news.php?news=15894

Presidential Power

Some people think the White House is getting too much power — more than is allowed under the Constitution. I’m not sure what’s allowed under the Constitution, but I think the government has been doing even more stupid things than usual over the past few years. And Congress helped!

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/pushing_…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…

http://wonkette.com/politics/dept’-of-don.t-worry-it.s-…

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/2007071…

Dutch Crop Circles

These were made by a guy running from the police, not aliens.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id…

Record Opium Crop

Afghanistan’s economy is booming. There is a record opium crop this year in southern Afghanistan.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2112348,…

FEMA Excels Again

Someone at the Federal Emergency Management Authority accidentally sent out real emergency radio and TV broadcasts instead of tests. Either that or it was a failed coup attempt by FEMA. People from Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Michigan enjoyed the fake emergency.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/06/fema-hijac…

Explosive Cars

Last month there was a big to-do over explosive-packed cars loaded with fuel and nails in London.

The cars contained butane, gasoline, and nails. Butane and gasoline are not explosive unless mixed with oxygen. It’s likely that these cars would have made a nice fireball, but they would not explode like dynamite or even gunpowder.

Butane and gasoline (and dust and flour, for that matter) will explode if they are mixed properly with air, confined, and ignited. If they’re not mixed properly, they just burn. Either way, they probably wouldn’t explode fast enough to send nails flying out to kill people.

Gunpowder also burns, but it carries its own oxygen (in potassium nitrate). When it’s confined and ignited, it will explode. But, like gasoline and oxygen, gunpowder is a mixture of different chemicals (potassium nitrate, sulfur, and carbon), rather than a chemical compound (such as trinitrotoluene or ammonium nitrate), and it explodes relatively slowly. Even so, a gunpowder explosion is fast enough to propel nails at lethal speeds.

High explosives decompose rather than burn. The shock wave from a TNT, dynamite, or ammonium nitrate explosion is a LOT stronger and faster than that of gunpowder. Plastic explosives can explode even faster.

The “explosive-laden cars” in London were more like large Molotov cocktails, much less lethal than the car bombs and IEDs going off daily in Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/06/29/london.alert…

Got Vista? Want XP?

Microsoft has made it easier to “downgrade”. Some people have found that not all their software win run properly under Vista and they want their XP back.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=543

The Yes Men vs. Exxon

The Yes Men is a small group who go around embarrassing organizations they don’t like, such as the WTO.

http://www.rtmark.com/legacy/more/articles/yesmennytime…

They recently managed to speak at the 2007 Gas and Oil Exposition in Calgary, impersonating representatives from Exxon Mobil and National Petroleum Council. Their speech included Vivoleum, a fictional fuel oil made from dead humans.

They said that “current U.S. and Canadian energy policies (notably the massive, carbon-intensive exploitation of Alberta’s oil sands, and the development of liquid coal) are increasing the chances of huge global calamities. But he reassured the audience that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could ‘keep fuel flowing’ by transforming the billions of people who die into oil.”

The two speakers were escorted off the stage, but a third yes man was left to answer questions about Vivoleum and the Yes Men.

http://newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2007/14/c508…

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/14/214445/536

The funny part of this story is that the next day, Exxon managed to get Broadview Networks, the Yes Men’s upstream ISP, to shut down their web site until any mention of Vivoleum and Exxon was removed from the site. I guess Exxon doesn’t agree that parody is included under the first amendment.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2007062…

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/22/13810/0052

ASCAP Royalties

If you intend to play a guitar and sing at a coffee shop or bookstore, you might have to write your own music. ASCAP is suing even small places now.

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/…

Box Canyons

A few Junkmails ago I wrote about box canyons in the mountains and in Manhattan. Since then, Cory Lidle’s family has sued Cirrus, the airplane manufacturer, since bad judgement is the fault of the airplane.

Here’s an interesting article about a Canadian C-130 in a box canyon, in Afghanistan a few years ago. They acted soon enough to get out alive.

http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/dfs/docs/Epi/CC130327_e.asp

Armed Robots

There are news stories going around about armed robots, and how inherently unsafe they are. But the armed robots released in Iraq are not autonomous. They are remote controlled. And a slow-moving remote control robot with a gun seems a lot safer to me than a missile with a high-explosive warhead moving hundreds of miles per hour. I would prefer to be a thousand miles from either, however.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/httpwwwnational.html

Social Security

In most cases, the most vulnerable part of a security system is its people. Need to get into an airport? Don’t hack the computer. Just borrow someone’s badge.

Need to get information from someone’s tax return? Don’t hack the IRS computers. Just ask an IRS agent for the password. In a recent test, this worked 61 out of 102 times. So you might have to ask twice.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18091

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but my favorite method (if I were to try) of getting into a computer network is to litter the parking lot with USB drives, each of which autoloads a keylogger and forwarder. Some of the employees are bound to pick it up and plug it in.

Nice Photos

(They’re not mine)

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/index.php?sort=ratin…

iPhone

The Apple iPhone will blend.

http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&…

Optical Dillusion

Don’t try this if you have epilepsy!

http://www.neave.com/strobe/

Doctored Photos

Al Qaeda was found to be using doctored photos. Disgusting.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/researchers-an…

http://gigglesugar.com/324414

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/genetics/2007-07-2…

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/iphone-photos…

DVD Key

There is an encryption key that can be used to unlock the copy protection on DVDs. So now you can use software to copy your DVD to your computer or other mpeg player. That is, if you don’t mind potentially bending the rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The Advanced Access Content System folks were trying to get every copy of the key (except maybe this one: 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2) removed from the internet. Of course, this only caused it to spread like wildfire.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6615047.stm

http://www.aacsla.com/home

Now it’s even on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy

Excellent Cursor

http://www.1-click.jp/

Accurate IP Trace

Any web site can see what town you’re calling from. You can anonomize your IP, but that’s more trouble that it’s worth to me. It also slows things down.

http://www.ip-adress.com/

Terrorism Safety

http://www.safenow.org/

Photos of Today!

The Minnow, from the top:

The reef at San Blas Islands, Panama:

Underwater at the San Blas Islands:

Red Sky at Night:

Artillery Battery, Fort Sherman, Panama:

A bird on a swell from Tropical Storm Barbara:

Kayaking Fun

The Minnow at Guadelupe Island

For more photos of the boat trip:

Key West to Isla Mujeres

Isla Mujeres through the Panama Canal

Panama to San Diego

Transpac Photos

If you are a real glutton for punishment, you can find even more photos here:

http://xpda.com/minnow07

Monday, August 6, 2007 Posted by xpda | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Bob’s Junkmail 191

Bittorrent Video Store

The motion picture industry (MPAA) does a lot of whining and complaining about bittorrent and its users. They say bittorrent users steal movies and music. I would like to point out that it is not stealing if the original owner still has what was supposed to have been stolen. Illicit copying of music and movies may by a violation of copyright laws, but, by definition, it is not thievery.

Now Bittorrent is selling movies. Well, they at least rent movies. You pay $2.99 or so to download a movie, and you can play it on one computer for 24 hours. It’s a little like Pay per View on satellite TV. I tried it out and bought a movie.

http://www.bittorrent.com/search?category=Movies+and+…

If I didn’t like the 24 hour limit, I might use the fair use provision of the copyright law and softwareFairUse4WM… to strip the DRM from the WMV file. Then I would be able to watch the movie later or on my laptop. But the MPAA wouldn’t approve of my behavior if I watched the movie I paid for when or where they didn’t want me to.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/27/viodentia-responds…

It seems that Digital Rights Management is managing to offend more than a few music customers.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/drm/how-i-became-a-musi…

Coincidence

A Russian expert named Paul was interviewed on “Dateline NBC” a few weeks ago about the guy in the UK who was murdered with radioactive poison. He said the Putin and the KGB were responsible. About 4 days later, Paul was shot and killed in front of his Maryland home. The FBI said, “Oh, it’s just a coincidence.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17424538/

War on Tearer

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was almost blown up by a bag of ladybugs a few weeks ago.

http://www.wfmynews2.com/news/watercooler/article.aspx?…

This one was probably not one of the terrorist insects.

Music Editing

Here’s a great video. A guy named Lasse edit some drum beats and piano notes into some pretty entertaining music. Lasse doesn’t know how to play the drums or piano, but he’s pretty good on the computer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo

iTunes

The iTunes end user license agreement (EULA) requires you to agree not to use iTunes for the “development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.” Darn!

http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk191/itunes.pdf

Internet Records

The US Justice Department wants to require all internet service providers to keep records of anyone who uploads photographs or videos to a web site. This will not affect anybody’s privacy. This is only to catch terrorists, child pornographers, and ladybugs.

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6163679.html

This would have caused an uproar just a few years ago. But things are different now. If you want to pass a law requiring the federal registration and surveillance of all red angus cattle born on Thursdays, you only have to use the terms “terrorism” and “child pornography” in the same paragraph. The cattle have lost their constipational right of privacy!

AT&T was sued for helping the government spy on Americans. Their defense? It’s too secret to explain in court; therefore they have to be innocent. I think the KGB used this defense in the 1960’s.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/03/its_too_secret…

The US Patent Office, at the apparent prodding of the recording industry, has announced that file sharing is a threat to the national security of the United States. And I thought the problem was ladybugs. Why is the US Patent Office getting into the national security business, anyway? Aren’t they bungling enough already?

http://www.shadowmonkey.net/articles/general/uspto-file…

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070308-patent-of…

Google has announced a policy of randomizing their search records so the searchers can’t be identified after 18-24 months.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/taking-steps-t…

If you’d like to test this policy, just click here:

http://www.google.com/search?q=portable+nuclear+weapon+…

Some people prefer to do their web surfing anonymously. That’s too slow for me. Here’s how:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=…

But Everybody’s Doing It!

Boston Globe writer Ron was suspended from his job for a couple of months for plagiarism. He copied some sports news from the Tacoma News Tribune.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/03/06/upiUPI-2007030…

Ron said, “But everybody’s doing it! That’s how you get into college!” (or something like that).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/arti…

Censoring Science

There’s a report out on science and censorship. It’s a little biased (or maybe a lot biased) but it has some good points.

http://ncac.org/science/political_science.pdf

WGA Notification

Windows Genuine Advantage is some software that Microsoft uses to patrol Windows users to find illegal copies of Windows. The WGA Notification has stirred up some controversy. Some people don’t like their computer sending data to Microsoft without their knowledge or approval. Of course, most these people had already clicked on the “I Agree” button and agreed that it would be very nice for Microsoft to do this.

Here’s what Microsoft WGA Notification sends:

http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/03/07/wga-noti…

I don’t think it’s that big a deal, but I don’t like them slowing down my computer. On a dialup, cell phone or satphone it can cause problems, especially if there are 12 other programs checking for updates.

Godaddy

Godaddy.com is a domain registrar, maybe the biggest. They’re cheaper than Network Solutions. A while back I wrote about Godaddy shutting down seclists.org.

http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk188/junk188.htm#GoDaddy–M…

Godaddy recently cancelled and sold the domain familyalbums.com because the email address they had for the domain owner didn’t work. The domain had not expired. Godaddy cancelled it anyway because of the bad email address. Then they sold it. Then, when news hit the internet, Godaddy told the original owner he could have the domain back. Then, after things died down a bit, Godaddy said, “Never mind. We sold it and you can’t have it back.”

http://domainnamewire.com/2007/02/27/godaddy-deletes-do…

http://domainnamewire.com/2007/02/28/godaddy-responds-t…

http://www.e3internet.com/greenhouse/nick/03/03/2007/fa…

Car Salesman

Here’s a story of an “extraordinary rendition” customer.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-elmasri3mar03…

Vegetable Oil Power

David from Decatur is 79-years-old. He has a 1986 Volkswagen Golf. David converted the car to run on vegetable oil and a little diesel. People were impressed. Then the government got involved.

Two Illinois Department of Revenue agents came to visit David. They said David owed road taxes on his vegetable oil, was operating as an illegal fuel supplier, and was in big trouble for almost everything except child pornography and terrorism. Now some politicians are coming to David’s rescue.

http://www.herald-review.com/articles/2007/03/01/news/l…

TIA – Keeps On Running

The Total Information Awareness system was big database system with personal information on people living in the U.S. The government was using this to combat the millions of terrorists operating in the U.S.A. In 2003, Congress outlawed TIA because of privacy concerns.

The Bush administration was undeterred by the minor inconvenience. They brought the program back under at least two other names. Now called ADVISE, the project is once again being investigated by Congress.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20070308-124323-438…

I think it won’t be outlawed this time because people are more used to federal eavesdropping, email monitoring, financial transaction monitoring, and things like that. People used to complain that the Patriot Act infringed on personal liberty, privacy, civil rights, and such. Now the FBI doesn’t even stop at the limitations of the Patriot Act.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117500898919450465.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-08-patr…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/national_security_letters;_y…

The new FBI instructions on phone records tell agents there is no need to follow up with national security letters or subpoenas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…

Here’s a good article about a National Security Letter from the FBI. If you get one, you can’t talk about it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…

Not to be outdone by the FBI, the New York City police did a lot of spying on Americans and Canadians across the continent before the 2004 Republican National Convention. Didn’t Nixon do something like that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/nyregion/25infiltrate.html

Spamming Stock

A lot of the spam I get now is hyping small-cap stocks. I wrote a little about that last December:

http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk187/junk187.htm#Spam-Scam

Now the SEC is halting trading on these stocks whenever a blast of spam comes out hyping one. I hope it works.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=int…

Phishing

Microsoft is offering Office Ultimate 2007 software to Australian students for $75, a 97% discount. But Windows Live OneCare was warning people that the educational site was a suspected phishing site, scaring off potential customers. I think that is pretty funny. It’s probably fixed now.

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;793219138

Presidential Mud

What’s wrong with your presidential candidate? You can find out here. They have the dirt on all of them.

http://www.oppodepot.com/

Martian Water

It looks like there’s a lot of water on Mars, frozen underneath the south polar region.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/mars-200703…

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/031507-military-s…

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070315_martian_be…

Portable Cell Systems

LGS developed a “tactical base station router” that provides cell phone service at local sites anywhere in the world. I assume that there needs to be some wired telephone or satellite communications service in the area also. You essentially take a box to the front lines in Afghanistan or Tanu-Tuva, then people can use their GSM cell phones. It’s only available to the government, which means it costs a whole lot and it doesn’t abide by FCC rules. It’s still pretty cool.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/031507-military-s…

Fat Patents

About three years ago I did some minor ranting and raving about Microsoft’s submarine patent of the File Allocation Table (FAT) system for formatting hard drives and compact flash cards. Microsoft waited until the entire world was using the FAT system before trying to collect royalties on the patent, which, in my opinion, shouldn’t have been awarded for such a simplistic idea.

http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk148/junk148.htm

Someone in Germany finally agrees with me! Microsoft’s FAT patent was declared invalid because it lacked “inventive activity.”

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86141

The U.S. Patent Office is instituting a pilot project to put patent applications online and allow comments from ordinary people. Maybe this will stop some of the ridiculous patents that get by now. Such as the FAT patent.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…

Check out this patent on a linked list, a technique that has been taught in beginning computer science classes around the world for more than 30 years.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7028023.html

Computer Forensic Institute

The Department of Homeland Security is opening its Computer Forensic Institute in Hoover Alabama to educate law enforcement, judges, and prosecutors (those who still have their jobs) on gathering and using computer evidence to investigate and prosecute. I think this is a good idea. There is an awful lot of computer ignorance in the upper levels (i.e. old people) of the justice business, resulting in occasional stupid decisions. The institute is supposed to open in the middle of 2008.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070313-dhs-secre…

Dubai

I guess Halliburton got tired of all the harassment in the US and moved to a more friendly environment – Dubai. Last month, special inspector general for Iraq found Halliburton overcharged the U.S. government $2.7 billion. Last year, Halliburton earned $2.3 billion in profit.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Business/story?id=2942429&amp…

Dubai is one of the more progressive countries in the mid-east. However, Dubai has nowhere near 20% of the world’s construction cranes as has been reported in the news lately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai

UAVs

A team of students from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa is working to break the endurance record using a solar powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Since the plane will fly at night, it has to have a few batteries. They’ve launched a couple of Sun Sailor prototypes, which flew successfully until they crashed. They plan to break the 17-year record sometime soon.

http://www.tfot.info/content/view/117/71/

NASA is using a civilian version of the Predator B to make some long research flights. It’s a little bigger and slightly more expensive than the Sun Sailer. The Ikhana (a Choctaw name, probably something Bill Kendrick came up with) is 36 feet long with a 66-foot wingspan. It can carry 400 lbs of sensors internally and 2000 lbs on its wings.

It has a Honeywell turbine engine with a digital electronic controller. Most turboprops flying to day don’t have electronic fuel controllers. I’m jealous.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/NewsReleases/20…

Petroleum Business Info

This site takes and answers questions on most aspects of the oil business. It’s really interesting.

http://www.theoildrum.com/

Caffeine Data

How much do you drink?

http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database

Calorie database — how much do you eat?

http://www.dietfacts.com/fastfood.asp

Consistency in Government

Early last year, the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, CO fired 32 people because of a $28 million budget shortfall. Two weeks later, the President went to visit the lab. Just before he went, the 32 people were unfired and $5 million was given back to the lab. I guess that made a better audience for his speech.

I’m not sure what happened between now and then (maybe an election?), but the National Renewable Energy Lab is now getting an additional $107 million.

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/03/18/national-renew…

I don’t know whether the lab needs more, less, or any money, but it sure seems like they could do better work and spend money more efficiently if they didn’t constantly hire and fire people because of budget changes.

http://www.nrel.gov/

Got a Current Backup?

I ask people regularly if they have a current backup, usually just before I tear into their computers. My mother is usually a little vague in her answer. A guy in Alaska was probably a little vague in his, just before he wiped out a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of data.

The news reports say it’s $38 million in data, but it will only cost about $200,000 to key in the information from paper records. I bet it costs an additional $50 or so for a bunch of DVDs for backups.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/20/america/NA-GE…

RIAA Extortion

The Recording Industry Association of America used to provide technical data and support for record companies. Now the RIAA is famous for writing letters to people it thinks may be sharing music and demanding thousands of dollars. It reminds me of an extortion racket.

Universities get a lot of these letters, with no-so-polite instructions from the RIAA to forward them to the user of a particular IP address.

The University of Wisconsin, who gets 10-20 of these cash-demanding letters per day, not-so-politely told the RIAA to take a hike.

http://badgerherald.com/news/2007/03/19/uw_warns_musi…

http://www.joegratz.net/archives/2007/03/16/university-…

The Universities of Maine and Nebraska agreed with Wisconsin.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070320/171228.shtml

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070328/150737.shtml

The University of Michigan has developed a quantum processor, more or less.

http://www.techspot.com/news/20165-university-of-michig…

As a result, it seems to have agreed both to and not to turn over personal student information to the RIAA.

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/03/university_of_m.html

Vista Sales Double

The Microsoft news release printed in most newspapers around the U.S. stated that Windows Vista is selling at more than double the rate of Windows XP. They neglected to mention that today there are almost twice as many PCs being sold, and Microsoft’s sales figures include the backlog of upgrade coupons bundled with XP computers sold since last October. So I guess the market penetration is about the same.

Stolen MD-87

A Russian company called Siviera purchased a 1987 MD-87 jet from a New Jersey guy named Peter. But Peter didn’t get all his money, according to Peter. And Siviera didn’t get all their fuel tanks, according to Siviera. It was a 2-year-long ongoing dispute.

Finally, Siviera took the plane anyway and headed back to Russia. They left Fort Worth for Goose Bay, Canada on the first leg of the trip.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N871DP

But Peter did not go for that. Siviera got as far as Milwaukee when they were forced down by F-16’s. Antiterrorist officers were “all over the plane” when it landed in Milwaukee. Then the FBI said there was no criminal problem.

http://www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story…

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/6695347.html

There are a lot of holes in this story. Someday I’d like to learn what really happened.

45 Million Credit Cards

I read not long ago about some people who got caught buying a million dollars worth of merchandise using stolen credit cards. I thought that was an awful lot of credit card purchases.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/03/23/winnersarrests.html

It turns out that they copied about 45 million credit cards numbers from the computers of TJX, the parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods. TJX said most of the cards were expired or incomplete, but apparently a lot of them were still good. That is a LOT of credit cards!

http://www.siliconvalley.com/latestheadlines/ci_5544721