/bill's House O Insomnia : Mindless Babbling

Using Facebook to launch a Botnet army

William — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:07:41 GMT

Wired has a piece talking about how easy this would be to do. It's not entirely speculative since researchers built such a beast. I think the hype is a bit much though. The argument they make could be made for any mechanism that can get people to install software on their own computers. But unlike most other means, such an attack seems really easy to countermeasures. It wouldn't take long to figure it out and Facebook could easily send out a notice telling you to uninstall it. Much like human viruses, computer viruses and botnets are only really effective if they are allowed to exist in the infected host for a period of time, at least long enough to spread in the case of viruses, or long enough to be used in the case of botnets. I'm not so naive to think that some Facebook users aren't all that computer savvy, but overall I think it's a demographic that's fairly sophisticated. And they talk to each other a lot. Even if every facebook users downloaded the app (something really hard to fathom), it seems it would be pretty easy to eradicate. The more popular and more pernicious the bots, the more buzz there would be. That's not to say they don't raise some good points and that Facebook shouldn't try to prevent such things from happening, but it seems like it's only worrisome in the theoretical sense.

Chrome's EULA

William — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:32:30 GMT

Yah, I'm probably like the 10 trillionth person to post about it, but until now I hadn't really had a chance to look at it. This morning Gizmodo had a piece on it which definitely makes you shake your head thinking WTF. However like most things, I'm guessing that there's a huge gulf between 'reserving the right' to something and actually using that right. Additionally, I'm guessing a lot of this is just legal CYA. For instance, they could want access to information you post on a blog for efficiency purposes (being privy to it directly instead of having to crawl for it later) and just use language like this to avoid battles over the content. Then again, i'm just speculating as I'm not a lawyer and have no clue.

I decided to search around and see how much was written about this and as of the time of this post, the terms "Chrome EULA Controversy" returned over 7,430 hits if taken together and well over 15k if you leave out the quotes. And if you've been following this then you no doubt are aware that Google capitulated and is taking all the yucky stuff out. If you're trying to roll out a new product and have a big impact, then you definitely wouldn't want the type of press Google was getting over this.

Their quick capitulation is some food for thought though. the most likely answer is that they didn't really think they were doing anything bad b/c they weren't intending to use it, it's boilerplate etc etc. So it's no sweat off of their backs to just get rid of it. If you wanted to be conspiracy minded about it (I can only imagine for instance the Cow Alex Jones is going to have over it), it wouldn't be hard to imagine that they threw it out there, willing to take it back but more than willing to use and abuse it if public outcry wasn't too bad. I'm guessing there's a small shred to that theory but little more.

All in all though, I think Chrome's introduction is a good thing. Firefox kicked off a ferocious battle that led to IE becoming a much better browser. With another major player entering the market (and one that certainly has gotten under MS' skin when it comes to search), I'm guessing MS will pull some rabbits out of hats with IE 8 and when the dust settles, we'll see some awesome functionality. In the meantime, I like Chrome ok, but still sticking with IE for the foreseeable future.

Create a Mobile office with Windows Mobile

William — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:23:20 GMT

With such a compelling title, I figured the article would be quite intriguing.

I've had a lot of phone drama recently, dropping my WM 6.1 Dash and breaking it, leaving the replacement on the roof of my car and driving off, buying another imate but dropping it into a diet coke. So I reverted back to my old beloved Voq. A coworker of mine got in iPhone and hacked it up so it would play relatively nice with T-Mobile. He wanted to get rid of it though so I ended up buying it off of him (I can almost hear Sahil gloating now). Shortly afterward, I received a Samsung i780 as a gift so I've mainly been switching between the two (I still can't get the iPhone to work with my T-Mobile data service which gets frustrating). I mention this b/c while the Dash was a pretty nice phone, it really didn't perform all that well. In fact, it was often frustrating. The 6.1 Flash made it a lot nicer but it still was rather slow compared to an iPhone. I had gotten rid of my original iPhone before I really got a chance to use it b/c at first, i didn't like it. After using it regularly for a while though, I'll admit that its usability is very impressive. Its frozen up on my twice in about a month and a half (with heavy usage) compared to the daily freezes I experienced with the Dash. The comparison isn't completely fair b/c hardware wise, the dash is a lot cheaper. And so I guess I'll just come out and concede that Sahil was right, with respect to consumer features, the iPhone provides a much better experience even when you factor in hardware differences. 6.1 mitigates some of that, but there's still a way to go.

Although the iPhone's screen is quite responsive, I think I still prefer an actual keyboard. Unless I'm extremely careful, I almost always spend more time correcting stuff then I do typing when what I'm working on is more than a sentence. Away from that though, there's the Push with Exchange and Sharepoint integration (which surprisingly, I find myself using quite a bit). B/c I don't have wireless Internet on the iPhone, it might be a bigger deal than it should be but AFAIK, Push/Exchange isn't available on iPhone yet. Another really annoying thing w/ iPhone that makes Windows Mobile more 'business friendly' is copy and paste. I never realized how much I used it until I lost it. And I guess I end up using copy/paste much more when I'm mobile then at work b/c typing is still not much fun but being able to quickly edit Excel sheets and paste stuff from word to Outlook and vice versa is huge. And I don't know if it's a true iPhone limitation again b/c I don't have my gprs, but I don't see any way to do internet sharing - from what I can tell, it's not doable with standard USB or Bluetooth.

As far as development goes, well, I'll give Apple some props for the iPhone SDK and I can't say I've spent more than a grand total of 15 hours trying to build stuff with it, but all else being equal, I still think that if I had to build any sort of critical business application, the compact framework not only makes it an easier trip, but it opens up a lot more doors. I don't want to run my big mouth too loudly b/c some of what appear to be limitations may just be limitations with my familiarity of the SDK, but I'm pretty sure that WCF integration is off the table with the iPhone, as is MapPoint / LiveEarth. Same seems to be the case for connecting w/ Sql Server or Oracle although the local db solution offered by Apple does the job pretty well.

At the end of the day, i can say I've really grown to like the iPhone and well, I already like Windows Mobile, even with some of the performance issues that would drive me nuts at times. But I find myself using them for totally different purposes other than of course, to talk. In the same way that I use my UMPC totally differently from my laptop, I find myself switching between these phones the same way. It'll be interesting to see how things develop b/c there's no doubt Microsoft is going to use Silverlight to greatly enhance user experience w/ Windows Mobile 7 and it's a similarly safe bet that Apple is going to try to make the iPhone better at business applications. For now, I'm just really glad I can swap out a SIM card and use whichever I want b/c having to make a firm choice between one or the other would be a real bummer.

Utter Coolness compliments of Roku

William — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:01:14 GMT

My first Roku Soundbridge joined the family back in 2005. As far as wireless media players go, it was a bit pricey. But it looked really cool and I got it through a special offer making it a lot more reasonable. The form factor and styling was the main thing I attributed the cost to, but I quickly learned that it was all the cool features that were responsible for the cost. That was pretty much the case with each Roku product I've owned, they looked really cool and had all sorts of unanticipated goodness brimming throughout. With Windows Home Server, an XBox 360 as an extender and a few Media Center pc's in the house, it's been a while since I looked at any Roku products, mainly b/c I just didn't really need them - one network media player is usually plenty, let alone several. But when I saw Endgadget's latest post on the sheer coolness of Roku, it made me realize what I was missing.

So at first glance, it looked like Roku came up with a streaming media player which served up content from Netflix. I always found Netflix's pre-addressed envelopes a really nice touch - and a convenient one at that. But Every time I've signed up for Netflix, it ended up being a waste of money b/c I don't typically get around to watching many movies in any given month. So I've signed up a few times only to cancel my account b/c of lack of use (Kim and I just can't seem to let go of paying for movie rental late fees ;-) ). After the third or fourth time, i just sort of gave up on the whole thing. By the second sentence in this paragraph, I realized it's time to rethink that policy - and go enable my subscription.

Roku is a truly innovative company with nothing but cool products, but it looks like they might have just raised their own bar.

[This comment is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Cult of Scientology International]

William — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:05:00 GMT

This is a pretty kick a55 video, I especially like the creepy background music. Tom Cruise better whip out some of his OT7 powers and teach Anonymous a lesson, huh?

"I don't know" is an answer we should hear more often

William — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 07:25:01 GMT

We've all heard the adage "It's better to remain silent and be thought of as dumb than to speak and remove all doubt." While this is certainly good advice, I don't think it's entirely correct. Let me digress for a moment...

Tonight, I was doing some last minute Christmas shopping which was the perfect excuse to pick up another computer to use as a Windows Home Server. The sales people were particularly aggressive and every time I just stood there looking at stuff for more than a minute, someone would come by and ask "Can I help you find something?" Each time I said "I'm just looking" , they'd press me. It was honestly like they had a sales quota or contest going on. On three different instances, I had someone try to explain something to me in such clueless imbecilic terms that I doubt anyone would believe if I told them about it. I was 1/2 tempted to turn on my phone's voice recorder and go ask for clarification on a few things I had just been 'taught' just so I'd have proof that I wasn't making up what I heard. And in large part, it seemed to be inspired by one guy. He was the ideally stereotypical computer guy at a big box store. He would walk around and butt into conversations people were having and would then enlighten people with unsolicited advice. This in turn seemed to make the other guys feel compelled to not look stupid, which caused them to play buzzword bingo and talk about things they honestly had absolutely no clue about.

I could only think to myself "Some day, these guys are going to reflect back on their time here and when they realize how much BS they pulled out of their butts, they are going to cringe with shame". In each case, if they had simply answered "I don't know", I would never for a second have thought they were idiots. In each case, I had spent a few hours reading up on the stuff I was looking for and even then I had only a cursory knowledge of the stuff. So if some random guy at a big box retailer didn't have a clue, it wouldn't have surprised me in the least. Instead, I started to think "What a f_______ tool" Not just b/c they were kind of invading on my shopping experience, but b/c they talked with such an air of authority. And I started to think, 99% of the people that come in here are just looking for a good deal on X. They know they want a computer or router or flat screen and want to get one and not get ripped off. Instead, they get these longwinded lectures that invariably makes them feel a little small and in many cases, the guy doing the pontificating is just freestyling. And I started thinking "If you're going to force me to accept your help, can you please just stop insulting my intelligence quite so badly. I mean, being told that Windows Home Server is actually just Windows Vista Ultimate with a few Registry settings changed was bad enough. But when I asked if they had any Windows Media Center extenders and was told "there isn't really any product called a Media Center Extender per se, it's just a generic term used to describe routers that can stream media and then having him point to the router rack and say "All of these are essentially Media Center extenders" - that was too much.

I'll say this, unless you answer "I don't know" to something that you should unquestionably know as part of your job, it's really doubtful anyone will walk away and think you're a moron. Look around the internets and see what people often say about the Geek Squad or FireDogs or whatever. I only found a few examples where people complained that the sales person said "I don't know". But there are zillions of stories about some know-it-all feeding them a ridiculous line of BS. And the point is always "The guy was such an idiot he didn't even realize how utterly stupid what he was telling me was". A few people might be fooled by this routine, but do it enough and you're going to look like a fool in front of most people, and you're not just going to look a little foolish. You're going to look foolish and be thought of as a BS artist - a rep that's really hard to shake once you get pegged with it. In most cases, there's no shame in saying "I don't know" and there's always less shame than trying to play it off when you don't have a clue. If I ran one of those big box stores, honestly, I'd make new employees say "I don't know" 200 times just so they realized they could say it and the world wouldn't come crumbling down. And if done in each case that someone didn't know something, I bet very few people would walk out of my store talking about what idiots I had working for me. (Ok, I wouldn't actually make them say it 200 times, but you get the point).

Business Travel Sucks

William — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:09:32 GMT

I don't remember the details exactly, but at some point in my very early childhood, me and the folks were flying to Pittsburgh for the holidays. I remember pop being really adamant about "flying 1st class so we don't have to put up with all the B__S___". I had already flown a few times with my mom and didn't know the difference but it sounded cool. Until we got on the plane. I remember thinking "This is it?" and wondering what the big deal was. Business travel has been the same sort of anti-climactic event. Except unlike flying first class, business travel actually sucks.

I don't mean when you're 22 and out of college that it sucks. Going places and meeting different people is cool. Until you've done it 20000000 times. Then it sucks. Actually, by the time you hit 4 digits on your travels, business travel will have long been sucking. Jobs involving travel sound cool and important, but seriously, unless you're young and out of school, it sucks.

In case you doubt me, I'm going to explain why in terms I don't think *anyone* can argue with:

1- Airports suck. Going to them sucks. Leaving them sucks. Waiting around for your baggage sucks. Standing in line sucks. Going through security sucks. Airline personnel are largely union which for some reason, makes them hate everyone. Assuming the union doesn't make them bitter, dealing with unappreciative obnoxious a-holes all day does them in every time. Until they make kid|idiot|slow people|complainer free airports, they will continue to suck (trust me, if you're reading this you won't see the day that this will happen)

2- Business travel isn't the same as recreational travel. Unless you don't matter, your home office is going to want you back as soon as possible. So when you leave, you have to come back, quickly. B/c of the travel time, in the 300000 I've been to Seattle, I've only got to hang out with friends about 10 of them. Only twice, and that was when I was self-employed, did I get to go to Portland and hang out with my homie + his lovely better 1/2. You call up friends, say "Hey, I'll be in town" and quickly come to realize unless you can squeeze in lunch or something, chances are you won't get to see them. When you don't, you always look like a douche for not stopping by

3- The only people that drive worse than the people in your city, are those that drive in other cities. Growing up in Miami, it really took a lot to impress me here. Most people had little problem doing 8 lane changes on I-95 and using your turn signal will get you arrested or killed. But you don't sit in traffic all freaking day. In fact, you can't even drive slow in Miami. In Seattle, it's great as long as you don't battle rush hour or get lost downtown. If you do, you'll end up around a bunch of crazed Scientologists, tranvestite prostitutes, drug addicts, vegan homeless kids with laptops and cell phones. It's awful. Pittsburgh, you'll end up going through a tunnel and never seeing daylight until the next day. Boston, well, my good buddy Michael is from Boston so I can't really advocate blowing it up and starting over - but it's not an argument without merit. Minneapolis? Hmmm, I ended up in the hood (scary even by Miami and Atlanta standards) WITH a GPS in the car, got lost every time I tried to get to our office, and got to ride in a taxi with the guy who was voted "Most likely to wage jihad against infidels via his taxi cab". You know it's a bad trip whenever you ask the cabbie "So, you had any famous people in your cab" and he responds "Sure, Keith Ellison and Ibrahim Hooper". "Yah, I was thinking something more along the lines of actors, athletes, models, hot chicks..." and I could just tell by his look and silence that none of those were coversation topics he enjoyed engaging.

More than that though, you have to navigate places you probably haven't been and you're in a hurry. If you do know you're way around, you can't stay anywhere long enough to enjoy it. Ick!

4- Time zones. My family goes to sleep between 9-10:00. I dont' sleep unless it's chemically enhanced by Ambien CR. So getting out of work at 6:00 means it's bed time for the folks at home. 7 makes it late and after that it's getting rude. Well, by the time you get back to your hotel or whatever it's usually too late to call. To make up for it, your loved ones may try to call you first thing in the morning. Which is usually around 4:00 AM

5- Flight delays, cancellations etc are non-billable in most contracts and most companies consider those in the non-billable hour pool meaning you aren't getting much for it. So even in benevolent companies like mine, flight delays get balanced on your free time. I mean, they need me back Monday to be at the client. If my plane is a day late, the client still needs me there. On seasoned engagements, if you can find a way to be billable (usually called VPN + Broadband) than that mitigates it if the client is cool, but the problem still remains.

6- The more you pack the less likely you'll be to get caught without something important. But the more you pack, the more you lug around, the more you have to wait for at Baggage and the more likely something will be broken or damaged. So you'll make tradeoffs and if you're like me, they'll always be the wrong ones.

7- Kids. Ok, if you *have* to fly with your kid, I hereby, just like my Catholic forefathers did, offer you a Indulgence (except mine's free). I'm not talking about the people that fly here and there with their kids. I mean the regular road warriors. And everyone else, all the new age parents with kids with annoying names like "Dakota, Cody, Madison, Taylor" [why are they all lame throwbacks to the wild west or distilled of gender to the point they are completely androgonous?] yes, that's who I'm talking about. I want you to have happy kids. I want your kids to have self-esteem. I really want the best for all of you. But can you do it without your stupid kid yelling and throwing tantrums the whole time right? If not, how about an apology? I know you have to have some pretty powerful sedatives on you, so how about sharing? No, no such luck. Instead, Trevor will kick the back of the seat the whole time b/c of his ADD and mom can't tell him to stop b/c of his self-esteem.

8-Rental Cars - it's hit or miss here. But in the terminals like DFW or San Fran, where you have to drive to another state on a bus before you get to the rental car terminal - yuck.

9- Unhot stewardesses. Ok, the hot comment is childish and infantile but I'm old enough to remember those days. Anyway, they get crapped on. They deal with the world's biggest a-holes at their worst so obviously these people are almost saintly just to be able to make it through a shift. Except the ones that aren't so nice. The ones that are bitter. The ones that - well, like the ones on my flight last night.

10 - Expense reports. REmember to always ask for a receipt. Make sure you got Neat Receipts or you better be orgainzed. Make sure you rush right home and do your reports. Even at places that are fast, the turnaround time is usually at least one pay period. Go racking up 3800k every two weeks like I did, and you can't miss too many of those before people start wondering if you're developing a drug or gambling problem. But you'll forget reciepts. You'll lose them. You'll throw some out by accident. That's when the fun starts.

I'm already funning twice as long as I wanted and I just got started. So trust me on this, Business Travel sucks.

Calling People "Resources" doesn't make you cool

William — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:09:28 GMT

I know I huff and puff about this a lot, but it drives me insane. Recently, in the ADO.NET NG, a recruiter posted the following. As annoying as it is to have recruiters post in public newsgroups, do they have to talk like such tools? Moreover, I understand it's hard to run Spell and Grammar check these days, but if you're trying to recruit people, it might help to at least do a quick coherency check at the end.

Hi,
Please find the requirement below and answer ASAP with updated resume
and contact details....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TPVS Consultant (Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling)

Location: Colorado
Duration: 4 + Months
Rate: Open

********US Citizens only************

We need a very senior and experienced TPVS resource.
This resource would need to travel to Colorado and the engagement is
expected to last till 03/31/08.
TPVS stands for Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling, a
module within the SCM suite of applications.
This is a niche skill set and hard to find.
The resource should preferably have upgrade experience if not
implementation experience in a custom environment would be a close
second qualifying option

Now, if you talk like this anywhere else, you'd sound like a complete tool and in fact, you sound like a complete tool talking like that in the office too. But people seem to forget this. They seem to think that not only don't they sound stupid, but they sound cool.

Let's try some simple substitution to bring home this point

"Honey, can you please call both of our Senior and Experienced Resources and tell them that we'll be spending Christmas in Atlanta this year but will be by their houses on Christmas eve and of course, will have the junior and inexperienced resource with us"

As opposed to "Honey, can you please call both of our parents and tell them that we'll be spending Christmas in Atlanta this year, but will be by their houses on Christmas eve and of course, we will have __________(insert Child's name) with us?"

Sounding stupid is one thing, but sounding really stupid b/c you're trying to sound edgy, hip and cool is another thing altogether. Someone needs to learn how to BullFight

Wordpress Vulnerability

William — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:22:04 GMT

When I saw Bruce's post on using Google crack MD5 Hashes for you, I had to chuckle. Here's a link to the article Bruce is referencing. Once again, it shows a pretty good case of the damage that can happen by overlooking the seemingly obvious. (Would you want to be the developer that told your boss "Don't worry about it their Chief, our security is pimped out . We got those passwords hashed and locked down" only to read some guy's blog showing you blew it?) Whenever someone thinks their security is breached, you often hear complex impressive sounding explanations of the exploit, but in reality, what usually happens is either they were wrong about being hacked in the first place, or they or someone else actually gave away information and didn't realize it. I remember reading 2600 back in the day, then reading Kevin Mitnick's book and Mitnick's whole game was Social Engineering and using people (the weakest link in the chain) to handle business) I would guess that creating a strong password and changing it regularly would protect you from a lot of things. Keeping the password to yourself and learning enough about your software that you can manage basic functions yourself probably doesn't hurt either.

On a less serious note (There's a blogger who's loves trashing Community Server and digs Wordpress. Now I know the mere mention of the name Anthony or Wordpress, is enough to fan the flames of of any love-struck fool's man-crush so my apologies if I got anyone excited. the mere mention of Anthony is enough to make the poor guy start babbling about Ryan O pulling off exploits that would make the KGB jealous. RO's hacking skills are about as real as A & Mel's wedding date ( although CC doesn't get complains about how RO won't ever get himself some hacking skills so maybe my analogy isn't so good).

How not to pick up chicks

William — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:37:14 GMT

Obviously these aren't being used in the field, at least I hope not. If they are being used in the field, I'm pretty sure their efficacy leaves something to be desired.

Uhhh, you're kidding right?

William — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:56:00 GMT

I know some men that pretty much refuse to buy feminine products for their significant others b/c they can't take the embarrassment. Personally, I always wondered a little about them b/c it seems you really have to feel shaky in your manhood to let something like that get to you. It also seems as unwise as it is uncool, I mean, would the time you were asked to make such a purchase really be the time you wanted to anger your significant other? Not me.

So feminine products are fine with me, but there's no way in hell I'd ever be talked into buying this (It's a real food product from a well known company and is sold on on Amazon but it does have that NSFW vibe to it). Whoever named this stuff is either the biggest moron on Earth or is pretty clever with a wicked sense of humor. And I'm pretty sure that no matter how tough you look, if you get caught buying this stuff more than once, you're manhood is getting questioned.

I'm glad this stuff wasn't for sale back when I was pledging my fraternity. They had us buy so many embarrassing things, this would have been on the daily purchase list as well as the daily consumption list. I totally dodged a bullet.

The internet addiction test

William — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:48:31 GMT

I scored a pretty low 33. I'm surprised, i thought I'd have done worse. However, if they substituted "computer time" with "internet" I don't think I'd have faired quite as well.

Guitar Hero III - Misc comments and a few questions

William — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:54:30 GMT

When I first picked it up, I was really wondering whether or not it would be value added in any way in my life. Like I mentioned before, my TV has virtually no usage on it (until about two weeks ago) and sitting on my couch in front of the TV is not something I felt was missing in my life. GH III has managed to eat up about 45 minutes to an hour each night though. I started on easy and felt like I wimp. Moved up to Medium and got to the point that I could pwn any of the songs on it the first time around (at least in the first three groups). Moved up to hard last night. Since it was Saturday night, I didn't feel bad wasting more than an hour. Literally, I said "this is it, one more game and I'm hanging it up for the night" and I managed to finish - 89% on hit me with your best shot.

Got up this morning and got to where I can finish everything in the first two groups on Hard. Decided to go into Career mode. Moved back to medium for it. Finally got to Battle Tom Morello and got my a55 handed to me repeatedly until I learned to shock him by moving the guitar up. When I get to Atlanta tonight, I'll probably give it a go on hard just b/c I feel like a wuss if I'm not playing there. Winning was cool so far but it was medium so it doesn't really count.

I've found that although it's a waste of time in terms of productivity, it is very effective in terms of clearing the cache. No matter what's on your mind, after a few rounds of intense concentration, you've forgotten about it. To that end, I guess i'm ok with it. If I start spending more time on it or something though, I'll probably revert back to my original curmudgeonly ways.

--- Question though.... I really hate a lot of the songs on there. Poison? Barf. Foghat? Dude, you spilled the bong water. Hit me with your best shot is cool b/c even though it's wussyish, Pat Benetar is cool. The Killers? Uhhh. Barracuda? Bitchin but how many times can you play it? Painted Black - totally rules. So can you pull down other music? I went to the store and EVERYTHING Sucked. Not just sucked but sucked on wheels or at least so it seemed.

Is there a way to get stuff that in the words of Beavis and Butthead, Rules? Metallica (Old), Linkin Park, NIN, Prodigy???????????? or something along those lines? Even if not stuff that awesome, I'd settl,e for way cool, Pink Floyd or anything old school that didn't blow chunks. If so, pretty please, fill me in.

Slight rant - Back in high school, I'll cop to liking a lot of really whack stuff. College was even worse. But never did I go for Poison, or even know anyone that owned Poison cd that I knew of. They just sucked. Stewart might as well have worn a Poison shirt b/c Brett Micheals was no cooler than Kip Winger. Who on Earth made the call to put Poison in GH III? I could sort of see missing the ball and doing it in GH I. But I can only believe that kids of today must think Poison sucks and I know everyone in my day hated them. And that Social Distortion crap, WTF? I honestly never heard that song before GH III and I just feel dirty afterwards, like I've basked in a cesspool of unadulterated suckiness. I can almost hear Butthead saying "Change this or Kill me"

----

So I've found that no matter how bad you suck the first time you play, you can get good quickly. I mean, I went from bombing out in the first section to busting pretty high numbers on Hard in under 2 hours. Sarah was playing with me too last night. She went from never playing to jamming in the 90s on Easy in under an hour and a half. Kim's still not playing but I'm hoping she will soon. However I tried Expert today and just got smoked. After repeated attempts, I wasn't getting better. So I can't say the same for expert but I'm guessing by this time next week, I'll change my tune. I just stubbornly kept going when I was sucking and got better fast so If you're playing now and suck, a little practice will get you there. Not even a lot of practice, just a little.

So if you can help me out with finding some better songs, I'll be indebted in a big way - if I can get any of the above 'cool bands' on there I'd be wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy appreciative.

If Brian Madsen is really a friend, then he'll...............................

William — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:12:00 GMT

Sahil and I have been friends for a long time since then, but to this day, he's yet to give me the Cobra, Turbin and Flute that I've been hitting him up for. Yes, I'm still salty about it.

Well, I just saw this piece on how bad a55 Dingos are. . Well, since Brianis in Australia, if he and Rob Farley are as cool as I think, I'll have a Dingo arriving in the mail by the end of the week.

Fighting the Bull

William — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:15:28 GMT

A few years ago, I read a truly excellent book called Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide . I really liked it b/c I was working at a place with a whole lot of people who were really into talking in business speak and thought they were really cool for doing it. Little by little, they all battled with each other to outdo the other ones. At the same time, they all started to think that talking ambiguously, meaning answering questions by not answering the question was some kind of holy virtue. Meetings were bad enough, but this idiocy makes them unbearable. Because talking in business speak is all about trying to convince people you're smart and hip, it turns into a pissing battle. You only need one of these people in a meeting to really make it so painful it hurts, but G*d help you if you get three or more b/c they will spend the whole time trying to outdo each other. And that's when they aren't battling to be the first to say 'That's a great point" every time a boss says something. They think it makes them sound important and I have yet to find anyone that seriously respects this style of communication. When i read the Bullfighter's Guide, it was really liberating in the same way it's always liberating to find out that not only aren't you alone, that there are many others that agree with you out there.

Purely for therapeutic value, I'd like to describe the phenomenon in a little more detail. The crux of this post is about a tool that's been around for a while and a book that's been around for a while. The book is mentioned above and is an in depth look at the annoying phenomenon known as Business Speak and how to avoid it. There is a Word Add-In that you can use to analyze documents and help you remove Bull as well as let you compute a Bull Index. Better yet, you can create your own lists and add your own words, so this tool can adapt to fight this evil phenomenon.

Here's what it looks like:

You can run the tool (the left hand icon) which works like Word's Spell Checker, or you can compute the Bull Index:

So why is this necessary? Well, because not only do many people think talking in Business Speak is cool, many people now it's stupid and pretentious, yet are uncomfortable saying so out loud b/c it will invariably anger at least a few coworkers. It's a classic case of the Emperor having no clothes. And today, at least in my experience, talking like this is the defacto standard. For example, a few years ago, I was talking with a few of my former coworkers (we all worked for the same Big X Consulting firm where talking like this was mandatory). A competitor of ours actually made Bullfighter. We'd run it on our documents (which were called Deliverables - can you ever imagine talking to your wife or kid and use Deliverable in a sentence? Can you imagine using the term Deliverables ANYWHERE other than work without causing confusion and laughter?) and try to remove all the bull we could find. We'd send it up the chain to the project manager and then to the managing partner, and what we got back was our document, except with Bull words added back in. Just to put it in perspective, this was back in the day when we were still called Resources. Again, imagine telling your wife "Honey, I'm going to be at work pretty late tonight, would you mind running by the school and picking up our resources and making sure our resources get their homework done?) I think the current word is Asset but I hear Resources still lingering around. Is Asset the most up to date one, or is there something newer?

In high school, you have the kids that are teacher's pets. They are the kids who love lecturing you about how 'immature' you are for laughing at potty humor. In a classroom discussion, they always figure out what the teacher's opinion is and spout it out as though it was their long held belief. Then they head off to college. The second week into school when few students know what they really want to do and are busy trying to get drunk and find easy freshman, you often hear these folks at the lunch table or on the sideline of the intramural fields raping people's ears. You hear some poor chap ask them "So what are you majoring in?" and it's all over. They haven't finished a single course or even taken their first test and you hear "Well, I'm going to double major in Poli-Sci and English. You know, 98% of lawyers at the nation's top firms were English majors. So I'm going to go to school on summers and take my LSAT's in my 3rd year. If I score over 190, then I'll be heading off to UVA or Princeton. If I score between 160 and 189, I'll shoot for Penn or Columbia. but i may take the dual MBA/JD program because there are so many MBAs and JDs, that you really need both to distinguish themselves." Then your senior year it turns into "Well, I'm going to work for a few years to get experience and find a company that will pay for my MBA. You know, you can't really get into a MBA program without work experience" They torture their first few sets of coworkers with this nonsense and say really smart sounding things like "You know, the market is going to close up today" every freaking day as though they were the only people in the world that know that the futures markets and market open often indicate the overall mood the traders that day. They start to see that no one likes their ideas and that they offer very little. Then they think "If only I was in management...." At that point, it fully takes over and what you get is a platitude generating Dilbertesque robot that induces vomit on a regular basis.

What happens usually is that someone in your office, usually a younger person on the verge of making management, starts it. These folks spot them and try to copy everything they do. All of a sudden you're in a meeting and they are asked a question and they reply "I'll be glad to take this off-line with you." At that point, you can see the eyes of all the kiss asses and management wannabes light up and you can almost hear them thinking "ooooh, impressive, I need to use that." Two days later, everyone is taking things offline instead of talking to you after the meeting. In another meeting you hear the trendoid say "Well, I have concerns that you may not have the bandwidth..." The same folks mentioned before perk up and take note. Bandwidth, oooh, now that sounds impressive. And then they discover the wonders of ambiguity. Next thing you know everyone is talking about bandwidth and everyone with some pathological agenda is talking about their concerns or telling you that so and so manager has concerns about something {something almost always directly related to their own agenda}. By using concerns, every petty tyrant in empowered to wreak havoc on their coworkers. You see, if you tell people "Well, John said Mr Whoever is pissed off about the network downtime" and John gets called on it, He'll just hide behind the ambiguity "Well, Mr Whoever did have concerns, hugh amounts of downtime is not good for business {all such people also love to slip in completely obvious truisms and state them like it's something profound}, but that's all I was saying. But when they said it in the meetings, they emphasized it in such a way that said "If this isn't fixed, heads are going to roll". The ambiguity is perfect for them because they can get people worked up or hide behind someone else's name and then have complete deniability if they get called out. In short order, they'll start using "We" all the time, so they can take credit if management agrees with their point, but pawn it off on others if management doesn't. This all starts creeping in, just like the business platitudes. These people then start freestyling with each of these techniques:

Bill: "Hey, John, the full database backup didn't run last night nor did the incrementals. I looked into it and the job wasn't enabled. Did someone disable it after you enabled it or did you not enable it before you left?"

John: "Well Bill, we have to do everything possible to take care of customer data. We might be staff here but we are customers at many places and we certainly want our data handled as carefully as possible. It's critical that we leverage each of our core competencies to strategically manage our client's data, even if we're running low on bandwidth or getting pushback about it"

Bill: "Uhh, ok, but I didn't have a chance to look at the error logs, I just want to know if it was left disabled for a reason, or it was an oversight, and if there was a reason, can we re-enable it now, it's been 8 hours since we've had a backup."

John: "Well, we look at our business model as the key to our success and you have to do what's best for the customer and do things that make sense. Right now, I don't have a comfort level with the backup strategy and we may need to have a meeting. I understand you have a concern about it and we totally share your concern. Maybe you could google it and see what comes up and then you can call a meeting and share your findings."

As stupid as this sounds, it's not far from a real conversation I've had and ones I've overheard. I know I'm really long on this rant which is slightly ironic b/c what I'm complaining about is poor communication, but it's because this nonsense is so prevalent that I often wish things were different. the thing is that if you talk to people individually, everyone will tell you they hate this sort of stuff. Depending on the guilt level, you'll typically hear some level of apologetics for their own sins. On the other hand, you just know that there are some people you could never even bring the subject up with, b/c for them, talking like this is absolutely critical to their existence. And if you look deep, you'll find that the more someone talks like this, the less technical skills they have. There are a few exceptions of talented people that speak like this, but the folks with talent are doing it b/c they think it's expected. For the rest, they literally depend on this sort of stuff.

Why do I mention all of this? because I'm going to bet that every single person that reads this works with someone like this. In fact, I bet they work with more than a few people that talk and behave like this, and have worked with many in the past. And these people have driven you nuts. And you've wanted to call Bullsh*t as loudly as possible. At one point, you actually fell for it, thinking that they speak so confidently and sounds so sophisticated that they have to really know what they are talking about. Then you realize that every morning on the ride into work, they hear about the futures markets and that alone is what dictates their daily market predictions. You realize taht without the fancy lingo, they have nothing to offer. And it drives you nuts. If you've felt this and want a good laugh, pull a sample of about 20 of their emails or memos. One day, in a meeting, bring in your notebook and just type in as many phrases as you can without attracting attention. Then run the Bullfighter (yes, it works on everything from Word 97 to 2007) and laugh at the results. Then look at their Bull Index. When you see their pathetic Bull Score, sit back and laugh to yourself knowing they are absolutely full of it as measured by a good objective standard. And run it on your own work just to make sure you never go over to the dark side (the lowest I've scored is a 5.5 and the highest is an 8. I usually score in the 7.0s. The more I use it, the more I 'get it' and hopefully I can improve that.

If you have any really good examples of Business speak (I know I've asked before but figured there are some new good ones based on what I"ve been hearing lately) or memos, Please please please post them or send them to me. I'll keep them confidential unless you tell me it's ok to mention it. For some reason, I find this quite amusing.

I can almost hear Jeff Foxworthy saying...If you write blog posts at 5:00 AM about how much you like running writing analyzers on office memos, you might be a DORK.

Impostors and phonies getting as bad as spammers

William — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 02:44:54 GMT

The community server panel , like all mainstream blog engines, has a feature that allows you to approve comments. You can create word lists to automatically filter comments in an effort to eliminate spam. You can search your comments marked spam and delete them. The major problem though is that the spam feature shows the results in a gridview which provides paging. But there is no 'Delete all Spam comments' or at least, there's not one I know of (if there is, I'd be mighty grateful to hear about it). Each time I've tried to clear out all of my spam comments, they accumulate faster than I can delete them. Since I don't have access to the source tables, I can't just delete all of them at once. Dealing with spam has been one of the most cumbersome aspects of being a blogger.

Until recently that is. In the past few weeks, I've been deluged with comments of a few different sorts but all of which appear to be part of a campaign to cause someone some serious problems. I've had a few comments where people attacked me fairly vigorously, only to find out that they weren't from the people they purported to be from. I've had a ton of comments that were somewhat unrelated to anything being discussed which really laid into people. There were comments, which appear to have been Me, agreeing with the comments being posted. In so doing, some of the people who's names were used contacted me and informed me that they were not the author of the comments, that someone is pretending to be them. Then I was told that the comments were in fact from at least one of the people and that they got cold feet and realized they didn't want to fight the battle they picked.

It got so bad that one person actually wrote me and said essentially that The comments there weren't from me. If I do post comments here, I'll write you an email and confirm that it was really me. If you care about the integrity of your comments, you'll delete them. Then within a few hours I got several emails from the same person, telling me off, calling me all sorts of names and unquestionably trying to provoke a fight. The tone was completely belligerent and 180 degrees away from the earlier email they sent. To put it in perspective, imagine getting some hostile comments from someone you've had some trouble with in the past but who you had pretty much forgotten about and had no problem with currently (and for the record, someone you no longer foster any animus toward and would just prefer to peacefully move on from). Imagine then that they contacted you via email and told you that the comments weren't authentic and were the result of someone pretending to be them. Imagine then that a few hours later, they wrote you back (after you took down the comments in question, essentially complying with their request) telling you off, insulting you, your friends and a few family members. Knowing that the person had suffered a horrific tragedy recently, you just assumed they flipped out and you decided to ignore the latter emails, even though they would otherwise warrant a response. Then you get a few more emails, each getting increasingly provocative. Then a few of the person's friends post comments on your blog getting all over your case (which was the same pattern that has happened before). Then you see a few more comments that are clearly fakes from the same people. I'm not sure what's going on but I suspect it's one of the following:

The person in question never wrote the comments. When they saw them, the tried to clear them up. The person who's attacking them has access to their personal email account and then sends out a few emails trying to provoke a fight.
The person in question wrote some of the comments. When they saw the fakes, they tried to clear it up. Afterward, they regretted extending the pleasantries and decided to make it clear that things are not ok

I have a strong suspicion that it's the former, I just have a feeling. Since my strong guess is that their email account has been breached by someone who clearly doesn't like them, I figured I'd post this. This way they can take the hint , change their password and start keeping an eye on things, without me having to write them an email which would tip the person off. On the other hand, if their email is breached, it's highly likely the person who's breached it is reading this.

Every now and then I start to feel old and long to be back in high school. But then I see crap like this and how lame it is and every bit of nostalgia just dries right up.

JesOS (TM) The First True Christian (TM) Operating System

William — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 02:09:03 GMT

I'm probably going to hell for even reading this, let alone posting a link to it. Atheists/Agnostics and Christians that can laugh at some of the less desirable aspects of their faith will get a good chuckle out of it. If you are of the persuasion that thinks that laughing at any aspect of religion == laughing at God, then you'll probably be somewhere between extremely and totally offended.

Man bites dog

William — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:16:59 GMT

A few of these clips are definitely NSFW b/c of the language. In fact, more than a few are. But if you look at some of Jimmy Justice's video, you'll probably laugh your butt off.

Basically, he's a citizen vigilante who goes around and photographs cops doing things they shouldn't be. In just about every one I've seen, he's a complete jerk but the arrogance of the cops defies words. If you have a few minutes and want a few laughs though, Jimmy Justice may be able to help

Rootkits anyone?

William — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:13:13 GMT

Since I was a youngster, I've always been a fan of Sony stuff. I'm old enough to have spent a few years alive before CD's came out. I was still a little guy when I got my first Sony Portable CD player. Even though there were only a few CDs available at the time (The Firm - Mean Business, Pink Floyd - The Wall, The Miami Vice Soundtrack, some Robert Plant CD and a few others were all that was available). There was a huge battery pack that made it really clunky for mobile use, but you could hook it into your home stereo or you could use self-amplified speakers like the Bose 101s which is what I opted for.

When I got a little older, I remember our first Trinitron, a tradition we kept for a while. I try to avoid TV as much as possible, but even today I have a Sony TV to play video games and watch movies on.

The PlayStation was absolutely freaking awesome, as was the PS 2. The PSP I recently purchased is quickly becoming one of my favorite gadgets.

The first cool MP3 player I had was a Sony Memory clip, which had the coolest form factor of just about any gadget I've had before or after.

One of my favorite Laptops has been my first Vaio.

For much of my life, I've had a long running love affair with Sony products.

But this is just freaking pathetic. Even more so in my opinion b/c I have two vaults. The biometrics stuff is a nice touch but not something I honestly get too excited over, but it was a small factor in picking them up. You really need to read the article itself to appreciate how lame it is. Hearing a corporate executive whine about how their heart was in the right place with something like this is just plain sad. If this didn't just happen, it'd be one thing. But for godzsake it was practically yesterday this just happened.

From a manufacturing and R&D point of view, Sony rocks. They have great quality and good products. But they are making so many stupid stupid mistakes, it's hard to fathom some times. I really hope this is the last such screw up.

And Apple Basic is included for Free!

William — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 17:23:00 GMT

Twenty years from now, we'll be laughing about the same sort of stuff