"Master, I have a big head . . . and little arms."

I'm reading much drama and angst over the new flagging feature for LJ. The LJ powers posted an update with some clarifications, but the main problem I see with the system has not been addressed -- more on that in a moment after I rant about some of their other comments.

Some clarification of their clarifications.

• LJ sez: "As additional measures to prevent abuse of the flags, only accounts registered for over a month may use the flagging feature, and use of the flags is limited to five per user every twenty-four hours. Misuse of this sytem [sic] will result in the user's flags not counting towards the threshold for review."

That's about the only good clarification within the update. Now someone tell them to fix their spelling. Moving on . . .

• LJ sez: "Most importantly, logged in users over 18 will not see any of the changes made by the settings of this program unless they choose to. You won't see any of the lj-cuts related to this system and your friends page will appear exactly as it always has. We feel it's important that this doesn't impact adults using LiveJournal."

However -- in your user view settings located at http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/ you might notice that the default setting way at the bottom of the page is "Use Moderate Filtering." So if you don't like having your content censored, and you've entered in a birthdate indicating you are over the age of 18, you should go now and "fix" that setting to "Do not filter my results."

• LJ sez: "This system will not accept flags on friends-only content. Although a flag icon may be present on the navigational strip, if you click it while viewing friends-only content it will only give you the option to flag the journal. Friends-only content is not affected by or included in any part of this system.

How does that actually make this feature useful to concerned parents? The kids that want to hide their emo thoughts from the adults have already marked their journals friends only, so the children are well educated about how that feature works. Meanwhile the predators here are likely marking their stuff friends only and adding their targets to their own friends list and luring the kids to view their stuff. Remember folks, you add people to your list so others can see your private entries. Not the other way around. This feature seems exactly backwards to me.

• LJ sez: "The date of birth used when you create your account is the way that your age is calculated by LiveJournal. If you did not enter a date of birth when you registered, it will default to the date on your profile (which you can enter but hide on the Edit Profile page). If a user has not entered a date of birth, the first time they click on an lj-cut generated by these systems they will be prompted to enter a date of birth. That will then be the system-recorded age (so they shouldn't have to enter it again)."

This . . . this is my main concern. For this feature to be at all worth having, there must be a way to verify the age claimed by the user. For now, any person who is under 18 years old and wants to see "Adult Content" on LJ is simply going to lie about their age.

Worse, I cannot think of anyway to verify ages that isn't draconian in nature -- and even those methods are easily spoofed. There isn't a foolproof way for websites to gather proof of anyone's age without drastic and privacy threatening measures. Credit cards? Not even. Fax paper records? Steal Dad's or Mom's ID for a few minutes. There. Is. No. Good. Way.

Greater minds than LJ can afford have been struggling with this problem for years. We still don't have a good answer.

I'm just not sure how well this plan was thought through.

Master? Master?

Have we really become

Biloxi's recovery shows post-Katrina divide

Two years later; Many Katrina victims still have no power, but they can see their wrecked homes and FEMA trailers at night by the glare of nearby -- newly rebuilt -- casino signs.

Yet in the wrecked and darkened working-class neighborhoods just blocks from the waterfront glitter, those lights cast their colorful glare over an apocalyptic vision of empty lots and scattered trailers that is as forlorn as anywhere in Katrina's strike zone.

"At night, you can see the casino lights up in the sky," Shirley Salik, 72, a former housekeeper at one of the casinos, said this month while standing outside her FEMA camper with her two dogs. "But that's another world."

It seems shocking, but the stark realist in me accepts this disparity in our societies priorities. And that saddens me deeply.

I need to rethink MY priorities.

More phishing - Equifax customers alerted

Dear Equifax Customer,

We’re sorry to inform you about a recent “phishing” attack on Equifax. Phishing" or "spoofing" is an e-mail threat where fraudulent e-mails appear to be from a well-known company and ask you to provide, update or confirm certain confidential information – such as User ID or password.


This week, we detected e-mail phishing activity by fraudsters attempting to solicit sensitive personal information, including user IDs and passwords, from Equifax customers and consumers. For your protection, please know that Equifax never sends out requests for personal information via e-mail or phone.

If you received an e-mail that appears to be from Equifax and requests personal information, please do not respond and delete the e-mail immediately. If you did respond to an e-mail that appears to have been from Equifax, and you provided personal information, such as your user ID and password, please let us know by following the “Contact Us” links from www.equifax.com so we can assist you further.

As a general rule, to help safeguard your identity – we recommend that you never click anywhere within a suspected “phishing” or “spoofing” e-mail, and never hit “reply”.
At Equifax, your privacy is extremely important to us and we wanted you to know about this unfortunate situation. Your continued trust and confidence in Equifax is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Your Equifax Personal Solutions team.

I have seen the future, or, why Microsoft needs to wake up

I hate to be a party pooper the weekend that Microsoft is finally seeing a rally for their share price. But some thoughts arise about the situation, and something new in the field has crept into view - silently in the night so to speak.

First the events that sparked this round:

Microsoft announced higher than expected earnings due mostly to Halo 3, Vista and Office 2007 -- with a dash of Windows Live and other server offerings in the mix.

Just prior to the market news, we heard that Microsoft decided not to continue any appeals to their loss in the European anti-trust cases and will settle for a cash payment (which in the broad view of things is a tiny payment indeed: only 357M!) They also settled the lawsuit against them in South Korea.

So what's really driving this rally, and will it last?

I believe that investor interest has increased because of both the above events. Either taken singly may not have spiked the rally. The trouble is, as soon as the next big lawsuit comes along we'll be back into fuzzy territory and investors will once again look elsewhere, which will drive MSFT back down at worst. At best it will hover at current prices for a long period of time until that uncertainty is resolved.

Meanwhile back at the farm:

While we've been focusing on the big news about Microsoft, their battle with the EU, the states desire to renew and extend oversight from the US anti-trust case and slipping dates for Longhorn and Dynamics NAV . . . Sun has been going open source with their operating system and file technologies. That in itself is perhaps not too remarkable. What's interesting is the way a legal fight between a patent troll company named "Network Appliance" and Sun is evolving over a file system called ZFS that Sun gives away for free.

It's my belief that Sun is in the clear in this matter. They have years and volumes of prior art for the technology. The patent troll, according to some rumors, may be a shill for Microsoft (shades of SCO vs IBM/Linux) but in the end this will not matter.

The reason this is significant may be due to the way that Sun is reacting to the lawsuit. It may change the market for us forever. And if Microsoft refuses to open their eyes it may well be the turning point and endanger their future market dominance.

Sun's CEO posted a blog entry explaining the position they will take in response to the situation at http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/harvesting_from_a_troll . . .

Notice the URL which I left unchanged instead of href'd.

Key points:

1) Sun indemnifies all its customers against IP claims like this.

2) Sun protects the communities using their technologies under free software licenses. Even Apple . . . who is using ZFS in the upcoming Leopard OS X.

Those two points are unprecedented, as far as I know. If Sun succeeds in their counter-suit and defense against Network Appliance and if they indeed make good their promises to protect their customers, the market may see a change in how business is done concerning enterprise class software and services.

Permission to speak freely

"My freedom is more important than your faith."

- Pat Condell

Thanks to fiveforfun for the heads up!

Email spam gets noisy

Stock "pump and dump" spam is migrating to audio. (Link pops)

If you see email from an unexpected sender with an attachment purporting to be elvis.mp3, ljcooldj.mp3, or "nameyourartisthere.mp3" . . . you might want to mark it as spam and delete it unheard.

Anger and dismay over the iPhone update

Seen today on the DailyTech site (link pops . . .) -- buried in the comments:

"To me, it's like GM breaking into my garage and slashing my tires and taking a baseball bat to my windshield because I put new headers on my Vette!

Voiding my warranty? Sure. Having the company purposely destroy my property that I legally purchased just because they don't like the way I use it?

No."

I don't have an iPhone. After observing Apple's treatment and attitude towards it's paying customers I am fairly sure the temptation to own one will never cross my mind again.

Upon observing traffic today while riding a motorcycle

Anger makes you smaller,
while forgiveness forces you to grow
beyond what you were.

- Cherie Carter-Scott

Anti-Phishing training

The music needs some work; but the information you learn through this interactive tutorial about Internet Phishing scams could save you from ID theft.

http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/antiphishing_phil/

Anti-Phishing Phil is an interactive game that teaches users how to identify phishing URLs, where to look for cues in web browsers, and how to use search engines to find legitimate sites.

Our user studies have found that user education can help prevent people from falling for phishing attacks. However, it is hard to get users to read security tutorials, and many of the available online training materials make users aware of the phishing threat but do not provide them with enough information to protect themselves.

. . .

Anti-Phishing Phil was developed by members of the CMU Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory with funding from the US National Science Foundation (Cyber Trust initiative) and ARO/CyLab.

I managed to get every answer correct. Can you?

Microsoft Excel 2007 flunks Math 101 . . .

I bet someone somewhere got really excited when their financial spreadsheet showed $34,465 over their bank statement.

Try this in your spreadsheet program:

Enter the formula =77.1 * 850 into a cell.

What you should see is the result 65,535.

If you're running Excel 2007 (and if you're reading this before the upcoming patch is released) then you may see the incorrect result 100,000 . . . More "accurately," Microsoft says the calculation is correct behind the scenes, but Excel is failing to display the solution correctly.

It appears that any formula that results in one of about 12 solutions triggers this calculation bug.

The specifics for you spreadsheet guru's may be perused at http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2007/09/25/calculation-issue-update.aspx .

Patch is coming, although it's a guess whether it will make this months patch cycle.

Edit: In spite of the above claim that the error is limited to what's displayed, if you reference the cell that display's the incorrect value in another calculation (this IS a spreadsheet after all, so duh, yes we're likely to do that) the secondary calculation will use the incorrect value too.