January 2010
29 posts
6 tags
Isn't it ironic..
mikehudack:
dihard:
Isn’t it a little ironic that the same law that the Democrats changed in 2004 is what lost them the Massachusetts Senate seat in such a dire time?
(The Democrats, fearing Mitt Romney would appoint a Republican Senator if Kerry were to win the presidential election and vacate his Senate seat in 2004, submitted a bill to change the law to require a special election within...
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“Companies are understandably reluctant to discuss their security failures. But...”
– “Software Firms Fear Hackers Who Leave No Trace”, New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/technology/20code.html?em)
4 tags
I am hungry.
And SeamlessWeb is busted.
When will companies start to realize that bad performance and/or downtime costs them revenue? It doesn’t go away with an ill-timed “oops, maintenance” notice, or “some of our users are experiencing troubles”. Guess what, some of your users may not give you a second chance. Or worse, this could be your second chance.
The key to a strong...
“Everyone spoke of an information overload, but what there was in fact was a...”
– Richard Saul Wurman, What-If, Could-Be (1976)
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“No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence,...”
– E. B. White, The Elements of Style
“The key is not the “will to win” - everybody has that. It is the will to prepare...”
– Bobby Knight (Retired American basketball coach. Knight head coached three NCAA national championship basketball teams. He has also won 902 games in men’s NCAA Div. I basketball, more than any other coach in history.) (via freethrows) (via steve-thesportsguyz) (via tgoss)
Could not agree more....
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Google and China
So, one enormous thing stands out in this statement from Google — they make no mention of working with the Chinese government to prosecute the attackers. You’d think, with the ongoing sovereignty issues between China and Taiwan, they’d jump at the chance of making an example out of the Taiwanese sourced hackers.
But they’re not.
The absolute lack of a statement of working...
Google, Citing Cyber Attack, Threatens to Exit... →
Holy crap, the world is waking up.
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Dashboard just changed...
…no more Tumblarity?
mikehudack:
“Say each passenger flying through a U.S. airport received on average 10 minutes of questioning from one guard. That would work out to 7.35 billion minutes, or 123 million hours, of work annually. We’d need 3 million full-time guards to perform it. That’s 200,000 more people than the total number of active and reserve military personnel, and twice the number of U.S. Wal-Mart...
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Hey You! Reblog This!
Yes, you!
It’s a random Saturday morning, and I’d like to find out about some of you folks.
Reblog with a little blurb about yourself.
Me? I’m 26, live in Manhattan, and I’m a full-time geek, and secretly a dirty hipster (due to my music tastes). I don’t like long walks on the beach because, they’re long. And I think the right pair of sneakers can go with...
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A New Challenger Has Entered The Game
Well sort of new, more like, an old crusty challenger has entered the new game.
Looks like AT&T is rolling out their own cloud storage solution. At this point, I don’t see it grabbing much market share, it’s just a value-add prop for their existing customers (who may be using Amazon S3).
https://www.synaptic.att.com/staas
Please insert 25 cents to continue, and press start.
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Woot! Got my Nexus One
And it is f**kin’ sweet.
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Dear Time Warner NYC, You suck.
So, I’m calling to cancel my service.
7:47pm, Attempt #1: Go through the IVR, sit on hold for 1 minute, then get some dude stumbling over his words. I obviously interrupted him with real work, so I hang up and try again.
7:50pm, Attempt #2: Go through IVR, sit on hold for 1 minute, get hung up on.
7:53pm, Attempt #3: Go through IVR, sit on hold for 1 minute, get hung up on.
7:56pm,...
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I'm cancelling my cable TV service
Luis S.: Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable. We are currently testing our live chat function and appreciate your patience. At the end of our chat you will be given the option of taking a brief survey.My name is Luis S. Please give me a moment while I access your account.
Me: ...
Luis S.: Hello Mr.Ogali!
Me: hi
Me: 1-2 times per week, an HD channel I'm watching goes blank
Luis S.: I understand that you are having cable issues, am I right?
Me: i either reset the cable box, or give up and start watching another channel
Me: this is highly annoying
Me: what can be done to resolve it?
Luis S.: I can send some signals to your box, if that does not work I can set up an appointment with a technician.
Me: both of which have been done by other people in customer service
Me: i've called in and had countless resets
Me: and had a technician come out and run new inside wiring
Me: this has been an ongoing issue for ~6 months
Me: i just reset my box, and usa hd is still blank
Luis S.: I can send the technician and I will gladly credit you once we have solved this issue.
Me: that's all well and good, but how many more times do i have to go through this scenario where i call in, and a technician gets dispatched?
Luis S.: Please let me check!
Luis S.: I apologize for this inconvenience. The next available date is for January the 8th.
Luis S.: From 8 am to 12 pm.
Me: a time which doesn't work for me
Me: what other times are available?
Luis S.: Do you want morning, afternoon, or night?
Me: what is the technician going to do, that can't be done from your location?
Luis S.: You can go to the store and exchange the box, but I recommend you to set up an appointment in order to check the box and the installation.
Me: so one technician doing that wasn't enough?
Me: please cancel my cable tv service
Me: the [poor] service quality and repeated customer service calls are annoying
Luis S.: I will credit you and I will send the technician to have this problem solved as soon as possible.
Me: and i'm trying to explain that a technician already came out for this exact same problem
Me: so sending another one is not instilling any confidence in me regarding time warner's ability to give me good cable tv service
Me: so please cancel my cable tv service
Luis S.: I am sorry to hear that you are leaving our company; we appreciate you as a customer. In order to process the disconnection of your account please contact us at (212) 358-0900.
Me: thank you.
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Just as I suspected...
Instead of buying proxy services from a 3rd-party, people are firing up EC2 instances with Squid and proxying their web traffic via Amazon. (Or firing up Squid+EC2 instances, and selling proxy services).
Same deal with the growing number of crawlers out there, originating from Amazon.
174.129.51.104 - - [06/Jan/2010:09:38:59 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.0” 200 1037 “-”...
Generic URL Watcher Script
After I made the last post and talked to Tim, I realized that URL watching is something I’m probably going to do more of, so the script should be reusable, and as a result, more generic.
#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
echo "$0 <email> <url> [check interval, in seconds]"
exit 1
fi
email=$1
url=$2
if [ $# -eq 3 ]; then
interval=$3
else
interval=300
fi
md5file=`mktemp...
Nexus One Launch Page
So, I like to spot subtle differences in things, today, we’re focusing on the Google Nexus One launch page.
Go to http://www.google.com/asdgkdhgsjdgkhasjk. Standard Google 404 page, right?
Now go to http://www.google.com/nexusone. Slightly different 404 page. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Now, for my favorite exercise as of lately… shell scripting automated...
Manhattan and Taxis
Ever since I moved back to Manhattan, I’ve gotten into this habit of taking taxis almost everywhere. I guess it’s due to impatience (not wanting to wait for the train).
In December, I spent a shameful $261 on yellow taxis. So this year, I vow to exercise my patience (and my feet) a bit more, by taking less taxi rides. But New Year’s resolutions were made to be broken, so I need...
stephstephanie:
Auto reblog love this song!
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