I’m not sure if I’m the only one bothered about this, but have you seen the publicity that has recently started to air on Digg.com? Acne treatment creams, Anti-Age products, Dating services, and other assorted, spam-like ads.
This really leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Usually, only sub-par, crappy sites that resort to popups display such commercials, so why would Digg management accept these on their site? Are they assuming (Or the company that serves ads for them) that digg users are lonely, pimple-faced idiots? It seems that about 25% of their ad inventory is filled with those, which in my opinion, is already too much. I know that corporations have to make money in order to prosper, but this is going too far.
I am constantly amazed at how much smaller the world is becoming, due to groundbreaking applications such as Google Earth. The Google Earth blog has reported that the Portugese town of Marvão can now be seen in 3D in Google Earth. This is in addition to being able to see the 3D version of the Irish town of Westport.
Here is the file you need to load in GE to see it for yourself. But here is a screenshot. Truly remarkable and breathtaking. It’s almost like being there in person.
Applications such as Google Earth bring the concept of “virtual reality” one step closer. How much longer before entire cities are created in 3D images? How long will it be before you can take entire “Total Recall” vacations to 3D versions of locations? Can’t afford to go to the real Paris or London? How about a trip to their virtual counterparts instead?
On a more sinister note, how long will it be before we enter a Matrix situation where you can’t tell the difference between reality and virtual reality?
According to experts, one of the strongest implementations of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) out there is owned by Yahoo!. Last week, Russian hackers cracked the CAPTCHA by achieving a 35% recognition rate of CAPTCHA images by an automated system.
Let there be no mistake: the CAPTCHA that Yahoo! deploys is believed one of the most difficult CAPTCHA’s to crack. It utilizes bended alpha numeric characters and other features you might expect from a strong CAPTCHA, and still it’s easy to solve by humans. I think this is a great leap in character recognition and the death punch to the CAPTCHA
The hacker said that only a 15% recognition rate is needed to become economically viable to intruders at 100,000 guesses per day, versus the going rate for human CAPTCHA recognition, which is a penny per decode. At 35% accuracy, automatic locking features designed to prevent guessing at 3 tries is defeated as well.
The hacker claimed to have notified Yahoo! of the issue, but released his cracking code onto filesharing networks anyways. From Computerworld here:
This week a programmer using the pseudonym “John Wane” and claiming to be a Russian security researcher posted code for a decoder system that he said can attain an accuracy rate of about 35%.
In a statement, Yahoo said it is aware of attempts being made toward automated solutions for CAPTCHA images, and is working on improvements to the system and other defenses.
The obvious impact of this security defeat is that more free email addresses can be automatically registered for phishing, spam, and fraud. Other online resources are threatened as well, such as blog spam prevention and commenting, online purchases of goods, or even concert booking and ticketing.
We don’t have Dominos Pizza over here in Germany (at least not where I live) but I can’t help but admire their new concept to attract more custom. Dominos is today rolling out an online feature where you can track the status of your pie – from the moment you order it to the moment it leaves the store.
When you feel the need for a double pepperoni with extra cheese, you can go to dominos.com , click on the “Pizza Tracker” link and follow the progress of your pizza masterpiece. You can find out when the pizza is in the oven, when it has been placed in the box and when it finally heads out the door. Unfortunately from then on, you will have to remain in a state of constant paralyzing fear, not knowing its precise status while it makes its way towards your front door.
The new system is aimed at people who spend lots of time online. Rival Pizza Hut is said to be “unimpressed” with Dominos latest gimmick. One critic said dismissively “I guess they’ll sell a ton of pizzas to people with no social life who are sitting in front of computers.”
For the past few days, my WordPress blog, which is hosted by Yahoo Webhosting, has been “playing silly buggers” (as we Brits like to say). I would get up each morning to check my blog RSS count and upon getting to the page, discover that WordPress has reverted back to the default template.
This was more than a little irritating because plugins that I had installed on my preferred theme would malfunction on the default theme. How many RSS subscribers have I lost because the template was going all Kamikaze on me? I dread to think. Plus if you’re trying to exude an air of professionalism, having your site template jump back and forth isn’t going to help.
I have never really got into the whole gaming thing. Despite giving it my best shot more than once, I have often found PC / console games to have a very limited attention span for me. Once I’ve shot one person, the thrill kind of wears off and I suddenly want to surf the internet. I had a Gamecube for 3 weeks and then never used it again.
But I know enough gamers (my girlfriend’s brother for one) to know one sure fact – never seriously criticise the games or the people who play them. The people who love playing these games love them as if they are related to them by blood. Criticise the game and by extension, you’re criticising the gamer. This is not good if your aim in life is to live peacefully and not bring any attention upon yourself. Gamers tend to take criticism of their pastime rather personally.
This is a fact that Cooper Lawrence is learning the hard way. The author of “The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Overachiever” has seen her Amazon page wrecked by irate gamers. The gamers went on the virtual rampage after Lawrence went on Fox News and criticised a X-Box game called “Mass Effect“. The game is apparently one of the most popular games of 2007 but Lawrence made the rather foolish decision to trash the game on-screen – despite admitting she had never played it or seen anyone play it.
The game apparently has a romantic sub-plot and supporters have asserted that what you see is no more risque than evening television. But that didn’t stop Lawrence who sneered the game and its “full-frontal nudity and explicit sexual activity”. But she didn’t stop there. She decided to dig an even deeper grave for herself by continuing with :
“Here’s how they’re seeing women: they’re seeing them as these objects of desire, as these, you know, hot bodies. They don’t show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality. And it’s a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with.”
This was too much for the dedicated gamers. They decided to get their revenge by going to Lawrence’s Amazon page and giving her a one star rating for her book along with some fake nasty reviews. At one point, there were over 400 one star reviews. Then Amazon wised up to the situation and began removing the fake reviews, leaving about 80 to go. The book was even tagged with keywords such as “hypocrite” and “trash”. Ouch.
One reviewer said :
“I, for one, am appalled that such slanderous filth would end up on bookshelves where any child could walk into the store, drop a couple dollars, and leave this store with this trite, poorly written, racist bible for the Neo-Nazi consortium of modern America.”
Whatever happened to writing a letter of complaint, sticking a stamp on the envelope and mailing it in?
Lawrence has now decided to eat humble pie by declaring she was wrong about the game. She now claims to have seen someone “play it for about two and a half hours”. Her take now on the “full-frontal nudity and explicit sexual activity”? “It’s not like pornography” she now asserts, “I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”
In the past few weeks, I’ve tested a few disaster recovery procedures for [GAS], and I thought that sharing those with the blogosphere could be of value to a lot of bloggers out there. If you’re among those who’ve been religiously backing up their WordPress blog since day one, let me ask you a question: Have you ever tried restoring a backup of your data on a non-production box? After a data-loss disaster, this procedure could make a huge difference between losing everything you’ve worked on since your blog went online, or being up and running in under an hour.
“The torch” is a $300 Flashlight that is so powerful, it can actually melt plastic and light up paper within seconds. Needless to say, I wouldn’t use that thing in your house or point it in your eyes. You’ve been warned!
After reading the last installment of Geek Lair, you’ve probably been waiting to find out how to complete the perfect den of Geekdom. As we all know, the epicenter of a cool cave is the computer desk; that place where you keep your most valued possessions. The setup is home to your monitors, computers, gadgets, expired Bagel Bites, and most of your free time. Obviously it should be decked out for maximum comfort and productivity.
Click on for awesome ways to pimp your lair, but tread softly, and keep your credit card in the freezer.
We don’t have Dominos Pizza over here in Germany (at least not where I live) but I can’t help but admire their new concept to attract more custom. Dominos is today rolling out an online feature where you can track the status of your pie – from the moment you order it to the moment it leaves the store.
After reading Kiltak’s recent post on 
