Month: January 2004

Blogger Code

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Last post for the night, then I’ve got to get to bed. I just wanted to toss up my blogger code:

B9 d+ t+ k+ s u f+ i o x+ e+ l c– (Decode my blogger code)

I did (kind of) cheat on one answer, though, I must admit. For the Technical Quotient (the ‘t+‘ mark), I had to choose between two possible answers:

  • I manage my blog with Greymatter, Movable Type, or other management system running on my own web host. [t+]
  • I use Blogger, BigBlogTool, or similar service to update ablogspot, Geocities, or other hosted site; or I use diaryland,livejournal, or another service with built-in updating and content management. [t-]

Technically, t- is the more correct answer, as Eclecticism is hosted and powered by TypePad, a hosted service with definite similarities to those listed. However, as TypePad is based on MovableType and I use heavily-modified templates that take advantage of many of the MT-specific tags; as I’ve used (and paid for) MovableType on earlier versions of this weblog; and as I currently have MovableType installed and running on a server here in my apartment hosting both my dad’s weblog and my friend Kirsten’s weblog (each on their own domain name), I figured I could get away with claiming the more technically-proficient t+ rating.

Other than that, it’s all entirely accurate.

(via Snowblink)

iTunes: “Zigular” by Poems for Laila from the album Another Poem for the 20th Century (1989, 3:30).

Weblog Review

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From a suggestion by Doc on the TypePad User Group, I’m submitting my site to The Weblog Review. I have no idea how long it will take them to get around to me, but in the meantime, I’ll just hope that they have nice things to say.

I like ego-stroking. ;)

Update: Nevermind. They’re not accepting site submissions unless you pay them. I don’t need ego-stroking that much.

iTunes: “Strawberry Fields Forever (Raspberry Ripple)” by Candyflip from the album Madstock…the Continuing Adventures of Bubblecar Fish (1990, 5:54).

Microsoft vs. the web

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One of the standards that has been part of web browsing for years is a method of including a username and password in a hypertext link, in order to facilitate being able to conveniently logging into a protected site. For instance, were my site password-protected, one could add username:password@ to the beginning of the web address, creating a link that looked like http://username:password@www.michaelhanscom.com/ in order to log in with a single click.

The downside to this is that because that information is optional and not always used, a web browser ignores any characters up to and including the ‘@’ symbol if they are included in a link, as they are not part of the address being requested. The target webserver will also ignore those characters if it is not configured to require login information to access its hosted web pages.

This has led to one of the more common forms of ‘link spoofing’ — I’ve seen it myself in hoax e-mails purporting to be from PayPal. The perpetrator will create a false page on a webserver they control that appears to be a page on PayPal’s site that asks for the victims credit card information. They will then create an e-mail also formatted to appear as if it came from PayPal, asking the victim to log in and verify their information. When they give a URL to click, it will look something like http://www.paypal.com@12.345.67.890/verify.html — which to many people, appears to go to PayPal’s site. However, because the browser is ignoring the ‘@’ and everything before it, the browser is actually pulling a page from the IP address 12.345.67.890 and not from PayPal, and any credit card information they enter into that page will go not to PayPal, but to some anonymous criminal taking advantage of people’s ignorance of how the web works to collect useable credit card numbers.

Making the matter worse, versions of Internet Explorer prior to 6.0 (Service Pack 1) on the PC had a bug where if a (false) web address was included in a link before the @ symbol, that address would display in the browser’s address field rather than the address of the site actually being visited. In other words, in the above example, the user would see http://www.paypal.com/ in their web browser address field rather than http://12.345.67.890/. This bug has been fixed in IE 6.0sp1, but far too many people have yet to upgrade.

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that enough is enough, and are taking steps to combat this type of hoax. How are they doing this? Not by attempting to educate their customers in any way, releasing a patch for other versions of IE to fix the bug, or by adding a simple ‘This type of URL may be dangerous’ warning dialog when links formatted this way are clicked (something that I think would be fairly easy to add — just scan the link to see whether or not it follows the username:password format before the @ symbol; if it doesn’t, pop up an alert box). No, instead of any of those options, they’re breaking the long-standing standard.

To mitigate the issues that are discussed in the “Background information” section of this article, Microsoft plans to release a software update that removes support for handling URLs of this form in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer. After you install this software update, Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer do not open HTTP or HTTPS sites by using a URL that includes user information. By default, if user information is included in an HTTP or an HTTPS URL, a Web page with the following title appears: Invalid syntax error

Great idea, guys.

Update: According to CodePoetry, it appears that Microsoft may actually be following standards, and the use of usernames and passwords in URLs is officially discouraged. If that’s the case, then…well, that’s that. I guess it’s not such a bad thing after all (if a little inconvenient in some instances).

And here’s another goodie: there are a few other various ways that malicious people can craft, hide, and spoof URLs that take advantage of bugs in various versions of IE so that the URL displayed in IE’s address bar is not the URL of the site actually being visited. Microsoft has issued a tech note explaining that the most effective way to be sure that you are visiting the sites you really want to visit is to simply type the address into IE’s address bar manually.

So, to be absolutely sure that you are visiting the two Microsoft Support documents that I’ve linked above, please do not click on the links. Instead, move your cursor into IE’s address bar, click and select the displayed address, hit ‘Backspace’ to erase that, and type the following two URLs manually into the address bar:

  1. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;%5bLN%5d;834489
  2. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[ln];833786

No typos now!

There. Don’t you feel better, safer, and more secure now?

I know I do. But then, I haven’t used Internet Explorer in ages.

(via codepoetry and Mark Pilgrim)

iTunes: “Vinegar and Salt” by Hooverphonic from the album Magnificent Tree, The (2000, 3:20).

Pickled Dragon found

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Pickled Dragon

Everyone else is convinced it’s a hoax, but just for fun, I think I’ll enjoy playing with the idea that this pickled dragon could be real.

A pickled “dragon” that looks as if it might once have flown around Harry Potter’s Hogwarts has been found in a garage in Oxfordshire, England.

The baby dragon, in a sealed jar, was discovered with a metal tin containing paperwork in old-fashioned German of the 1890s.

Allistair Mitchell, who was asked to investigate the dragon by a friend, David Hart, who discovered it in his garage, speculates that German scientists may have attempted to use the dragon to hoax their English counterparts at the end of the 19th century, when rivalry between the countries was intense.

Hoax, shmoax. I can believe in dragons if I want to!

Besides — living as close to Capitol Hill as I do, believing in fairies is easy enough. Why not dragons too? ;)

(via BoingBoing)

iTunes: “Another Samba” by Ugly Duckling from the album Journey to Anywhere (2002, 4:01).

The ‘Dean Scream’ – in context

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By now everyone has heard (or at least heard of) the ‘Dean Scream’ — Dean’s post-Iowa speech to his assembled fans which culminated in a soundbite played over and over (more than 700 times on television, apparently), not to mention being heavily sampled across the ‘net.

What wasn’t as heavily reported, though, was the atmosphere of the room itself — packed to the gills with rowdy Dean fans that were yelling and cheering as Dean promised them that he wasn’t finished, and that he’d continue to campaign and attempt to gain the Democratic nomination.

In an unusual media “mea culpa,” however, Diane Sawyer followed up on her interview with Howard and Judy Dean (which is excellent by the way, and worth watching — unfortunately, it’s gone to a pay-to-play link now) by taking a look at not just the footage that was broadcast all over the world with a direct-from-the-microphone audio feed, but at footage taken from within the crowd itself. Because this vantage point captures the energy and noise level of the room, all of a sudden Dean’s yell doesn’t seem nearly as ridiculous.

After my interview with Dean and his wife in which I played the tape again — in fact played it to them — I noticed that on that tape he’s holding a hand-held microphone. One designed to filter out the background noise. It isolates your voice, just like it does to Charlie Gibson and me when we have big crowds in the morning. The crowds are deafening to us standing there. But the viewer at home hears only our voice.

So, we collected some other tapes from Dean’s speech including one from a documentary filmmaker, tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd, not just the microphone he held on stage.

[…]

Dean’s boisterous countdown of the upcoming primaries as we all heard it on TV was isolated, when in fact he was shouting over the roaring crowd.

And what about the scream as we all heard it? In the room, the so-called scream couldn’t really be heard at all. Again, he was yelling along with the crowd.

The article includes a link to a video clip of Diane’s segment looking back at the scream, which has both the originally aired clip and a clip from within the audience. It’s quite a difference.

I’m afraid it may be too little too late — Dean’s already taken a tumble in the polls, though I’m not about to write him off yet (politics has seen far stranger things than a possible Dean resurrection) — but still, kudos to Diane for coming back to this instead of just letting it lie as-is.

(via Mark Sundeen)

iTunes: “I See You (Extended)” by X Marks the Pedwalk from the album New Dark Noise: The Darkwave Dance Floor Killer No Filler (2002, 5:11).

Blasphemy

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I’m probably the last Mac blogger to mention this, but I just couldn’t let it pass by. There are special circles of Hell reserved for people who do this…

[Update: Turns out that it’s a hoax. The page on Overclockers.com has been updated with an e-mail from the person behind this explaining that they got an empty G5 shell and decided to have some fun. Whew! Nice troll. ;)]{.underline}

I got a shiny new Apple G5 for Christmas. I loved the case, but I’m no Mac user. So I….

  • Get a brand new dual processor G5, then
  • Rip out everything,
  • Cut out the back of the case so I can use a PC motherboard, and
  • Install an Athlon motherboard.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure G5 is a great computer, but I wanted a Dell for Christmas. I don’t have any programs for Apple and didn’t feel like waiting for them. I thought about selling it, but my parents would be upset with me. After all, this was a very expensive gift and it meant a lot to them to give to me.

It’s a good thing my parents don’t know anything about computers, because I’m sure they would be really angry if they knew what I did. I have to say that I’m happy – I can keep on using XP.

![The monstrosity]

[The monstrosity]: https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/2004/01/graphics/G5_wreck_1.jpg {width=”363″ height=”143″}

(via lots of people, but the picture was shamelessly ganked from Lane)

iTunes: “Let Your Body Die (Television Overdose Overdosed)” by Cyber-Tec from the album Cyber-Tec (1995, 6:29).

Fire!

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My first indication that something was going on was hearing the sound of emergency vehicles from the street outside my window. Not an entirely unusual thing, but normally they’ll pass on by — hearing the blast of sirens combined with the compression of air brakes got my attention. Going to my window, I looked down the four stories to the street and saw fire trucks all over the place — one heading down the street to the west of our building (the Park Seneca apartment), another diagonally across the intersection of 8th and Seneca, a Fire Department blazer parked on the lawn of Town Hall, and I could see reflections from another set of emergency lights in the window of the building across the street.

As I looked up across the street at the people looking out their windows, I realized that one window had three women in it, waving to get my attention and pointing towards the far end of my building. Leaning out to look that direction, I saw smoke pouring around the corner of the building — not a good sign. Waving my thanks, I tossed on a pair of pants and went out into the hallway — but nothing seemed to be terribly amiss. No smoke, and none of the doors seemed warm as I pressed my hand against them working my way down the hall.

Smoke from next door

Starting to wonder if it was the Jensonia Hotel next door, I tried to slide the window at the end of the hallway up, only to have it fall off in my hands. A little startling, and I almost lost my balance, but once I set it down and looked out the window, I saw the source of the smoke. An old chimney on the Jensonia was belching out wave after wave of thick, black smoke. Obviously something had caught fire next door — not a happy thought, but happier than if it had been my building. I wedged the window back into place, came back into my apartment and sat back down.

Then the fire alarm in our building went off.

My lord those things are loud.

Quickly I pulled on socks, shoes, and a sweater, tossed my coat on, and headed back out into the hall, just in time to be passed by three of the firemen. “Where’s the fire?” they asked.

“Next door.”

“What?”

Firemen in the hall“Here — there’s smoke pouring out of the chimney next door.” I and another tenant who’d come out of his apartment showed the firemen to the window, pulling it back out of the casement again so they could see the source of the smoke. They radioed down to the rest of their crew, some of whom were already investigating the building next door, and I headed downstairs to the street.

Heading down the stairs, I had to laugh a bit. Seeing the ladder from a fire truck extended to the roof of your building outside your hallway window just isn’t an everyday sight (thank goodness)!

Fire truck with extended ladderOut on the street, I joined a small crowd of other tenants who’d also evacuated. Most of them didn’t know what was going on, so I filled them in on what little I knew while we waited. After a few minutes, the firemen were sufficiently convinced that our building was safe after all to give us all permission to head back in. Unfortunately, the fire alarm was still merrily wailing away — the switch to turn it off is behind a locked door, and our on-site property manager has a second job and wasn’t at the building, and nobody had her emergency contact number on them. We all stood around watching the firemen assigned to our building pack up and maneuver their equipment out of the street (ever seen a fire truck parallel park before?) while they decided what to do next.

Eventually, the simplest solution seemed the best, and a few of the firemen went down to the basement to force open the door to the sprinkler system. A few moments later, the alarm stopped, and we all started filtering back in.

Hose attached to the standpipeBefore going back in, another tenant and I asked the firemen just what had gone on. It turns out that there was a small (but very smoky) boiler fire next door that sent smoke right up the old chimney. Because of the rain and slight breeze, though, it sent the smoke nearly sideways over our building, so that as they were driving up the street towards us it looked like there was a huge blaze coming up right from our roof. They figure it was probably when they hooked their hose to our building’s standpipe and started pumping water into it that our alarm got triggered.

So. That was my morning. How was yours?

Here we go again…

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From Business 2.0‘s 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for 2003:

36: Think they’ll buy the April Fool’s joke thing again? Nah, better go with the bit about the top-secret location.

Michael Hanscom, a temp worker at Microsoft’s in-house print shop, is fired after posting to his blog a photo that showed workers at the facility taking delivery of several Apple G5 computers. His supervisor insists that Hanscom was fired not for showing the company relying on the product of its chief rival, but for revealing the location of one of its shipping and receiving departments.

(via BoingBoing)

Update: CNN has summarized this article (along with the my mention). Thanks to Jon for pointing it out!

Look out, Bush

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From Daily Kos’ look at the results of yesterday’s New Hampshire primaries (I’ve updated and expanded it with the final reported numbers):

The best story of the night? The one that should unite us all? From the Republican primary results:

Bush 53,749
Kerry 1,420
Dean 974
Clark 851
Edwards 808
Lieberman 511
Kucinich 28
Braun 15
Gephardt 14
Sharpton 11

That’s 4632 registered Republicans who wrote in a Democrat in their ballot.

That’s got to scare the shit out of Rove.

Meanwhile, Kerry again took the top spot, with Dean in second this time. Still a lot more primaries and possible jostling to come, though.

One cookie = $10 billion

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TrueMajority.org has a nicely effective flash animation posted using Oreo cookies to demonstrate how easy it really could be to fund social needs and keep our military budget at a resonable level.

oreobudget.jpg

This is one of the most effective pieces of political advocacy I’ve ever seen. Ben Cohen, the Ben of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, narrates a short Flash movie for TrueMajority.org, in which he explains — using Oreo cookies — the way that the federal budget is currently apportioned, and how little rearrangement would be necessary to renew all of America’s social programs. The examples are vivid and charming, and the logic is compelling.

(via BoingBoing)