AlienSplicer

Archive for the ‘From the Web’ Category

• Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain http://ow.ly/2bD4P – "What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship." ->

There is a very short article at MercuryNews by Jennifer Squires of the Santa Cruz Sentinel discussing a growing trend of people receiving scam calls by a purported tech support specialist from Microsoft (or some other large computer company) that offer’s tech support via phone.  However, when people follow their instructions, instead of fixing their computer, they unknowingly end up installing a remote access program that allows the scammer to gain compete remote control of their computer. 

The article discusses an example of someone receiving one of these scam calls, that its’ a growing trend, and that the scammers will sometimes ask for payment for their “service.”

Then she wraps it up with:

People can add themselves to the Federal Trade Commission Do Not Call registry to prevent phone solicitation by calling 888-382-1222.

I’m sorry, but that seems a bit detached from reality.  If someone is going to call you and try to scam you out of something, be it money or the security of your computer, they are NOT going to be concerned, one iota, whether or not your phone number is listed at the FTC’s Do Not Call registry.
 

Brook Greenberg looks and acts like a 6 month old girl, but she’s actually 12 years old!

I found this on Digg; the link to a video of a WBAL11 newscast on Brook Greenberg’s unique condition:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/41926/forever_young/

Brook has apparently remained in her 6-12 month old state for the last 12 years. Although she hasn’t aged at all in that time, she has had medical issues—strokes, seizures, ulcers, severe respiratory problems and a tumor—and has been near death 4 times. Incredibly, she recovered each time.

Dr. Laurence Pakula has been Brooke’s pediatrician since she was born.

“In height, weight, she’s 6 to 12 months,” Pakula said. “If you ask any physician who knows nothing about her, the response is that she is maybe a handicapped 2-year-old.”

. . .

Pakula points out that the girl has a strong sense of self and of sibling rivalry. Brooke has no language skills, but she does have enough motor skills to pull herself up in her crib or scoot across the kitchen floor.

Pakula said Brooke has thrived because of the support of her parents and three sisters.

“When one sees how much she has accomplished, it’s a wonderful reminder that even for someone who’s limited, it’s a wonderful world out there.”

NOTE: This newscast aired in mid-2005. There are many, many articles on the web that link to the article WBAL originally posted on their website. Unfortunately, these are all dead links. It appears that after their article was picked up by the Drudge Report, WBAL moved the article to a slightly a different location on their site:

http://www.thewbalchannel.com/news/4484968/detail.html

This is kind of cool and might be useful: a webpage that integrates Zip Code data with Google Maps to show you an outline of where your zip code is.

The Zip Code Boundaries page.

The page can be used as a reverse look for zip codes, allowing you to figure just where a zipcode might be located. For example, is there a zip code “10001,” and if so, where is it?

Update to Swiping your ID: a follow-up study of Hotel key-cards.

Robert Mitchell writes how Computerworld and MagTek inspected 100 key-cards gathered by their own staff while visiting hotels over the course of a month.

Although they were able to find readable ISO Standard data on about 15% of the cards while using an off-the-shelf USB card reader, the data didn’t appear to have anything personally identifiable — the single exception being one card that included four digits in an otherwise random string of characters that were the same as the last four digits of the credit card used to reserve the room.

Magtek also used specialized readers to view non-ISO data stored on the cards and were unable to find any personally identifiable data on them.

The article, and associated sidebars at the bottom of it, go on to provide a summary of how hotel key-card systems work and why it would be very unlikely that credit card info or other sensitive data would be stored on them. Although they conclude that there shouldn’t be anything to worry about while traveling in the US, they also cautioned that there may key-card systems in Europe, and possibly some older key-card systems still in use in the US that could have credit card data on the key-cards, but that it’s not very likely.

Losing your hotel key-card might put more than just your travel clothes and baggage at risk!

In Robert L. Mitchel’s blog [computerworld] he discusses how Peter Wallace, IT director at AAA Reading-Berks in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, has been taking a magnetic card reader with him when traveling to see what information the magnetic strip on hotel key-cards contain:

To his dismay, a surprising number have contained his name and credit card information – and in unencrypted form.

In some cases, the cards included his billing address too!

I personally find this very troubling. In the past, We’ve been in the habit of either returning our key-cards to the registration desk or simply leaving them in the room when we checkout. A desk clerk or cleaning person could easily get away with pocketing these cards — hotels pretty much treat them as disposable and don’t appear to make any attempts to account for them.

I may have to take Wallace’s advice and bring them home to be shredded — I may also have to pickup a USB attached card-reader and start checking them myself.

UPDATE (02/14/2006 @ 0640): Follow-up Article: Just a Key-Card.

Mike Bolesta, of Baltimore, MD, wanted to quietly protest a $114 installation charge, so he paid it with $2 bills, and ended up arrested, in leg irons, and handcuffed to a pole (article requires registration; use bugmenot90@mailinator.com/bugmenot — thanks to BugMeNot.com).

”Humiliating,” the 57-year old Bolesta was saying now. “I am 6 feet 5 inches tall, and I felt like 8 inches high. To be handcuffed, to have all those people looking on, to be cuffed to a pole — and to know you haven’t done anything wrong. And me, with a brother, Joe, who spent 33 years on the city police force. It was humiliating.”

Bolesta buys a car stereo from Best Buy and is told it will fit in his son’s car. It doesn’t fit, so they exchange it for another model that does. When he asks about the installation fee, they tell him “No installation charge, because of the mix-up. Our mistake, no charge.”

But the next day, Best Buy calls him at home and demands he pay the $114 installation charge — the one they had previously told him they would waive — or they’ll call the police. Bolesta agrees to pay them, but as a form of protest, decides to pay in $2 bills, of which he has plenty on hand since he specifically asks his bank for them for use in his business, Capital City Student Tours.

The trouble began when the Best Buy cashier was apparently unware that the $2 bill is legal tender. After initially refusing the bills, she accepted them, marked them as counterfeit, and called the Police — supposedly because the ink on some of the bills was smeared.

Bolesta found himself under arrest, placed in leg irons, and handcuffed to a pole for hours at the Baltimore County lockup while they waited for the U.S. Secret Service. Secret Service agent Leigh Turner later verified the bills were legitimate and also confirmed that “Sometimes ink on money can smear.”

Mr. Bolesta’s sons now shy away from $2 bills, apparently afraid they might also be considered counterfeiters and receive the same harsh treatment.

Aside from the fact that Best Buy owes Mr Bolesta a very public appology, the treatment he received at the hands of the Baltimore County police is outrageous and definitely over the top. That Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey defended their actions with “It’s a sign that we’re all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world,” doesn’t help with cover the fact that they placed a man in shackles and irons — a treatment that should be reserved for terrorists and the extremely violent, not a citizen who was attempting to pay his bill using (easily confirmable) legal U.S. currency.

Finally, a positive story about alcohol consumption!

According to Ananova, a news website in the UK, a man trapped in his car by an avalanche was able to free himself by consuming large quantities of beer and urinating out his car window onto the snow:

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

Aparently rescue workers found him drunk and staggering about the mountains a few days after his car had become entombed by the avalanche.

Gopal Kapur wrote an interesting piece in ComputerWorld on writing project status reports in inverted pyramid style — starting with the facts, their effect on the project, the solution, if any, and then the explanation or reason behind the facts — a reversal of the normal method of status reporting, which generally starts with the explanation up-front. Gopal explains how communciation is improved by putting the details, or the heart of the issue, first.

To illustrate his point, he describes how he taught this method of reporting to his children and how it was tested one night when they received a phone call from his son, who was late returning home:

”Dad, I’m OK; the bull is dead.”

He goes on to explain how his son continued, providing further details, indicating he had been in an automobile accident and where it was located.
Naturally, the rest of the article revolves around the reporting process, which is interesting enough. But having read the article completely through at least twice, I find that I’m left with an overwhelming and troubling question: What about the bull?!?

JP Aerospace is America’s other Space Program, independent of NASA. They have a unique approach for reaching space that doesn’t involve high-powered rockets or high “G” forces: a series of blimp-like airships and stations.

Excerpt from ATO — Airship to Orbit (PDF):

The first part is an atmospheric airship. It will travel from the surface of the Earth to 140,000 feet. The vehicle is operated by a crew of three and can be configured for cargo or passengers. This airship is a hybrid vehicle using a combination of buoyancy and aerodynamic lift to fly. It is driven by propellers designed to operate in near vacuum.

The second part of the architecture is a suborbital space station. This is a permanent, crewed facility parked at 140,000 feet. These facilities, called Dark Sky Stations (DSS), act as the way stations to space. The DSS is the destination of the atmospheric airship and the departure port for the orbital airship. Initially, the DSS will be the construction facility for the large orbital vehicle.

The third part of the architecture is an airship/dynamic vehicle that flies directly to orbit. In order to utilize the few molecules of gas at extreme altitudes, this craft is big. The initial test vehicle is 6,000 feet (over a mile) long. The airship uses buoyancy to climb to 200,000 feet. From there it uses electric propulsion to slowly accelerate. As it accelerates it dynamically climbs. Over several days it reaches orbital velocity.

The term “electric propulsion” appears to be referencing an ion drive, similar to that used by NASA in Deep Space 1, the space-probe that intercepted the Borrelly comet in September 2001.

According to the ATO document, they should reach their goal in only 7 years using currently available technology.