October 2004 Archives

I went to Mammoth Mountain this weekend with Matt and Matt after hearing that they opened wearily with 12 feet of snow on the ground. What an awesome trip. The snow was fantastic, fresh and plentiful. And as an added plus it snowed Saturday night while we were on the mountain leaving fresh power for our Sunday session. This was the inaugural trip for my new Burton Cartel Bindings. The toe cup is amazing and comes highly recommended to all. Now all I need is a pair of DC Judge Boots and my feet will be all set. If you were to ask Christina she would tell you how much I have been driving her crazy waiting for the snowfall to come. If this weekend is any indication of the upcoming season I will be floating of cloud 9 for months to come. I guess it's time for me to start making my Christmas list of snowboard stuff.

Craigslist has been an amazing community based message board. Slowly and organically grown by word of mouth, the message board has slowly grown over the past couple of years and now supports dedicated posting for most cities. With the amount of viewer ship increasing it was only a matter of time before the Trolls showed up.

troll v.,n. 1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on the Internet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you do not fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. 2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they merely want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he is just a troll."

See: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/cpg/46309207.html, or http://losangeles.craigslist.org/cpg/46255755.html, or http://losangeles.craigslist.org/cpg/46106006.html for examples. Large web based message board systems (like Slashdot and Kuro5hin) have been battling this for quite some time now. What does this mean for Craigslist? Well if you follow the path that others have taken: 1st) a community based message moderation system were randomly a visitor on the site is asked to review/rank a posting, and then ultimately 2nd) the end of anonymous posting. I believe in privacy rights, I believe that what you do when you are on the internet should be completely anonymous. But when you start posting to web pages and sending email your anonymity should end there. It's amazing the type of people that surface from the woodwork when their names are not available to the audience. And unfortunately a small group of people will undoubtedly spoil a good thing for everyone.

If you have ever sat through a meeting with a technology vendor, you have undoubtedly heard your share of the industry lingo. For those of you wondering what "Ecosystem" has to do with your network you are not alone. Next time you are on a conference call with vendor x check out Bullshit Bingo. I found this a few years ago, but with the latest RFP that I am involved with I had to dig it out.

Via Feh!: Google Groups Beta Slowly but surely Google is releasing services to compete with Yahoo. The strategy is simple... Advertising is king of revenue again for online properties. Anyone who has read Google's IPO prospective or watched Yahoo's acquisition of Overture knows the dollar amounts involved. Today the model is built around targeted CPC (cost per click) advertising based on relevancy (i.e. if you were to run a search for Intel, you would receive advertisements for companies selling Intel equipment), tomorrow's advertising is going to extend the relevancy model to included geo-location (where in the world is the eyeball) and next demographics (male/female, age, etc.). Yahoo has the lead in this right now because they have a rich service with the Yahoo Mail and Instant Messaging products. Users are interested in signing up and filling out profile information to receive these services. Google is working like crazy to get this profile information on their user base. The friend network Orkut, gmail, picassa, groups, etc. are all geared towards making Google more sticky to the end user, and in turn giving Google more data. Now all they needs is for a a few million profiles to be collected.

Over the past couple of months I have used Google less and less, and have found myself wandering over to Yahoo! for most of my web searches. Why? Because Yahoo! Search returns better results. Case in point. Search for Max Clark on both sites. It's interesting that Google Google returns my listing on BlogShares over my web site. Or a whole slew of email that I have sent out in the past, but not my Blog. Yahoo on the other hand, lists my blog correctly first. Of course I am biased with this search, but start experimenting on your own and I know you will see the same things.

I was discussing computer platforms with someone the other day when a discussion of Apple vs. Dell came up. One of the arguments that was made was how well functioning the Apple system was compared to a WinTel OEM system. Of course he was right, but there is more to the story. Apple (and Sun, and other Unix/Mainframe vendors) is a closed system. The same vendor makes the hardware and software for the platform, or selects a very limited list of hardware that will integrate into the platform. With this reduction of "options" the software that is deployed onto the system will no doubt function better. It's the old "do one thing really good, or lots of things okay" approach. As I watch the Linux kernel mature I wonder the same thing. Will there be a point where the system is attempting to be soo broad base that it isn't great at any one thing? So far this hasn't been the case... I would imagine it is a hard pitfall to avoid.

Configuration Details: Local ASN - 3000 ISP ASN - 2000 Local Networks - 10.1.1.0/23, 192.168.50.0/22 Cross-Connected Circuit to ISP - 172.16.100.0/32 (ISP Router = 172.16.100.1, Customer Router = 172.16.100.2 Interface = FastEthernet 1/1/1) interface FastEthernet1/1/1 ip address 172.16.100.2 255.255.255.252 router bgp 3000 network 10.1.1.0/23 network 192.168.50.0/22 neighbor 172.16.100.2 remote-as 2000 neighbor 172.16.100.2 soft-reconfiguration inbound neighbor 172.16.100.2 filter-list 100 out neighbor 172.16.100.2 next-hop-self ip as-path access-list 100 permit ^$ ip route 10.1.1.0/23 null0 distance 250 ip route 192.168.50.0/22 null0 distance 250

General rule of routing: A static route will always override a route learned from a routing protocol (i.e. OSPF, BGP, etc...). Or so I thought (and everyone I have spoken to lately)...

My wife sent this to me... should I be concerned?

Something tells me there is a lot more to this story.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - A elderly Romanian man mistook his penis for a chicken's neck, cut it off and his dog rushed up and ate it, the state Rompres news agency said Monday. It said 67 year-old Constantin Mocanu, from a village near the southeastern town of Galati, rushed out into his yard in his underwear to kill a noisy chicken keeping him awake at night. "I confused it with the chicken's neck," Mocanu, who was admitted to the emergency hospital in Galati, was quoted as saying. "I cut it ... and the dog rushed and ate it." Doctors said the man, who was brought in by an ambulance bleeding heavily, was now out of danger.

Pamela Jones does a good job explaining this in real world language. Read her Groklaw article: Kodak Wins Java Lawsuit Against Sun for the full story.

Kodak bought some patents from Wang in 1997. The patents cover a method by which a program can "ask for help" from another application to carry out certain functions, which is more or less what Java does. Kodak's business is suffering from the digital revolution, so it decided to sue Sun for infringing its purchased patents. It claims that Sun pilfered its technology. The two companies worked on some joint projects together at one time that involved the same technology at issue in the lawsuit, which Sun argued was an indication of Kodak's implied consent. [snip] Kodak now says it will seek, in the damages part of the trial, $1.06 billion in past royalties, which they calculate represents *half* of Sun's operating profit from the sales of computer servers and storage equipment between January 1998 and June 2001. Why do they feel that is fair? Because Java provides "the engine for such computer equipment". Puh-lease. This is their workaround. You can download Java free, so I gather they wish to grab their royalties loot from Sun's hardware sales instead. I would expect them to also try to work out some kind of ongoing royalty deal as well, until the patent runs out. What kind of an upside-down, irrational Alice-in-Wonderland world do we live in, where such a result is possible?

So I am sure everyone has received one of these in the past. I wasn't supprised to see that the spammer is starting to personalize the email to catch more unsuspecting victims. If only I had an uncle named Frank.

Dear Clark I know definitely,this message might have come to you as a surprise butall the same i have longed to getyour email address, but infact, before now i dont know you but probably your brother Mr.Frank Clark who was my client so i dont know if my client clevely informed you about me before his death.. I am Barr. Calvin Stone, the personal attorney to Mr. Frank Clark, an American, who died along with his family on the 28 NOV 1998 in a plane crash, the aircraft name is Boeing 747-200B (Operator) South African Airways, This crash happened in Mauritius, Indian Ocean in Africa, and the registration number of the aircraft is ZS-SAS. My client had deposited about seven million five hundred thousand US. Dollars (7.5 Million USDollars) in finance house some wherein west Africa, while working with a tourism development centre in West Africa as the head. Since then, there had not been any trace of claim from any person as the fund remains dormant in his account with this bank. Although, I kept this information secret within my jurisdiction to enable me put claims and transfer the said amount through a trustworthy friend overseas whom I shall present to the bank as the bonafide next-of-kin to the deceased for a profitable and successful project. Ever since I have been trying to locat e the next of kin or any of the relatives to come forward and make thisclaim, but to no avail. Right now, the bank is experiencing some internal problems which could lead to failure, and total forfeit of my late client's deposits. Please, if you are related to my client in any way or you know my client's actual relatives, and then re-contact me, so that I can link them up to make the claim. But if you cannot contact them, you can come up and make the claim, because I do not want the money to be forfeited, as I expect to benefit from the money also. Please contact me via my alternate emailaddress:stonee_ca@uymail.com My gratitude in anticipation of your urgent response. Barr. Stone Calvin .esq.