My email address was: 2:293/608.23

Yes, really.

While looking for some older post I once made, I discovered one of the first I made.
Ever. At least on the internet. It was 1995. Thats roughly a decade and a half worth of live on the tubes that google searched through, in the blink of an eye.

Impressive, but people forget that life did not start with this "internet" stuff.

Before that, I used "FidoNet". It's logo was this:

                 __
                /  \
               /|oo \
              (_|  /_)
               _`@/_ \    _
              |     | \   \\
              | (*) |  \   ))
 ______       |__U__| /  \//
/ FIDO \       _//|| _\   /
(________)     (_/(_|(____/

Yes, younglings, that's a logo, from the days when a "GIF image" was a state of the art extravagance (which required switching to another application). And just in case you are wondering, that's a dog holding what we use to call a "floppy". Not the fancy-smancy 3.5 inch hard-plastic kind, but the good old "five and a quarter" slab of floppyness.

Those were the days of booting up an XT, firing up a "fancy" editor to type in your email, "packing" it, "tossing it", firing up the modem, listening patiently for it to connect (you could diagnose many connection problems by listening to the "handshake sounds"). Then off your mail went, and if you were really lucky, there was a zipped email waiting for you at your providers location. Mail was routed organically, and could take several days to travel across continents. "Discussion group" post could take a couple of days to reach everybody in the country. And attachments, although technically possible, would get you flogged by every "sysop" down its route.

The good old days... men were men, women didn't exist. Modems were big enough to stop a bullet for you (maybe even a runaway bull). And had blinking lights!

What it did not have were things like "the wayback machine", or "archive.org" to act as a historian of all these years of content. There is no way to ever find the text again of my first shy post. Or the "really funny joke" about the carrot and the nurse. Or the discussion that founded some companies are architecture setups that are in use still today.

"All the moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain."

Now get off my lawn!

Half a car ?

I saw this zipping by me on highway 101.
Does anybody have an idea what this is? An escape pod?

It takes a govermental agency to be this security clueless!

Recently, I had to look up something on website ran by a local college. Of course, the site broke (the pages did not load within the session timeout), so I fired off an email to their listed support email.

Here is what I got back:

Auto-Reply

We have received your email enquiry. Please try one or more of the suggested solutions below. Web help is available Monday through Friday 8am - 4:00pm (not available weekends and holidays). If you reply to this email, please provide your full name, Soc. Sec. No., birthdate, and your current address.

Quick help



New Applicants: you will be able to login to the WebAdvisor one business day after you have submitted your application.

Step-by-step Web Registration Instructions:

http://(removed)/spring09/fullSchedule.pdf


Account Lock-out:

Wait 10 minutes and try again

Password and login help:

If necessary, please go to the WebAdvisor web page and select "What is my User ID?" from the Student Menu. Provide the required information to obtain your User ID.
Then select "What's my password" from the Student Menu.
Select "I don't remember my password" and provide the required information.
A new password will be emailed to you.

Password must be 6 to 9 characters in length and include both letters and numbers, no special characters

If you are still having problems, please contact the appropriate
Admissions & Records Office
(Contact Information removed here)

Thanks

Class assignment: List all security violations in this reply, discuss.

On Kafka and child porn

Interesting application of child porn laws:

In the Pennsylvania case, a school official seized the phone of one of the boys after he was caught using it during school hours in violation of a school rule, according to local police Capt. George Seranko. The official found the picture on the phone, and after some interrogation, discovered that two other girls had also e-mailed photos of themselves in the nude to friends. That's when the school called police, who obtained search warrants to seize the phones and examine them. Police showed the images to the local district attorney, who recommended they bring charges.

I've seen this happening so many times: An ambitious politician creates a law "for the good of the children" and before you know it people with pitchforks are setting libraries on fire.

Imagine this:
You are alone in your room. You look at yourself naked in the mirror. You take a picture of yourself, and you instantly are sex offender, branded for life. Any friends you send it too, instantly are too.

Or...

Two kids having consensual sex. Legally. The can invite kids of their own age to watch. Or even join in. When they watch through a window, they are legally OK. When they watch using a web cam, they all are instant sex offenders.


Or how about... you are surfing myspace and stumble across a profile page of a teen posting nude pictures of him/herself. Yes, that teen would be in violation of (amongst other things) the TOS. But still your browser dutifully downloads and stores the offending JPG. From then on, any computer forensics package run on your PC will provide the proof to convict you of possession of child porn.

Personally, I don't know what is scarier these days. The "evil hackers on the internet" or the "knights that protect us".

One group will try to to rip you off, and steal your money. The other can take away your home, freedom, custody of your kids.

As predicted: Google "Lively" dies!

The official Google blog confirms that "Lively" wont make it to 2009.


I can't really say I am surprised, as I predicted this months ago. Instead of trying to make a list "what did they do wrong?", just ask: "What did they do right?".