K-Squared Ramblings

Plastic Revolution

Well, I finally found out the reason for the Grass Under Renovation signs. I passed a median where a road crew was setting out what I first thought was sod, but then realized was Astroturf.

Nice one. I suppose it’ll save money on water and maintenance, but then so would painting the concrete green.

Couldn’t they just put in some native plants and leave them alone?

This ain’t spam

Why do some spammers insist on prefacing their junk with statements like “THIS IS NOT SPAM?”

Some idiot just posted a bit long letter offering to let me put my “products” on their online store. No, they didn’t send me an email about, say, the comic book collection I’m selling. No, they didn’t offer to sell prints or digital copies of my photography. No, they didn’t offer to publish my writing or Katie’s writing. They certainly didn’t look for contact information on any of those pages, because if they had, they would have found it and used proper channels. (Well, probably. I occasionally get comments on my Flash site via eBay’s “Question to Seller” feature because people don’t see the email address at the bottom of the page, but they do see the link to my eBay profile.)

They posted a very generic form letter—so generic that I can’t tell what they’re offering to resell—as a comment on a two-year-old blog post in which I remarked on some new comic books I had started reading.

And you know what? That’s spam. You can yell all you want that it isn’t, but when you post a completely off-topic advertisement on someone’s site, when you send someone a (supposed) business offer without checking to see whether it’s relevant—particularly when you claim to have checked them out, but clearly haven’t bothered—that’s spam.

And denying that fact won’t make me accept the offer (or leave the comment visible) any more than the “Please do not discard” statements on credit card offers will get me to fill out an application.

Grievous Entrance

We went to see Howl’s Moving Castle (Miyazaki’s latest, excellent as always) tonight, and as we walked past the Oakley store, I suddenly realized: that’s why General Grievous looked familiar!

Though Katie pointed out, it also looks rather like the Omni-Droid.

Those sushi chefs are such cut-ups!

Well, technically, the fish is severed…

Wee Little Puppet Man

OK, I have officially changed my mind about the four covers for Angel: The Curse #1.

If they weren’t publishing alternate covers, there’s no way they would have used a fully-painted picture of the puppet Angel. Update: Scan added.

The guy at the comic store said, “of all the people who had it on their pull list, I figured you’d appreciate this one the most.” Good call!

Based on which recent purchases?

I let Amazon.com send me notices every once in a while, just in case something interesting pops up. This qualifies, though not in the way I expected:

Based on your recent purchases, we thought you might like to know that you can save up to 65% on summer favorites in men’s, women’s, children’s, and shoes.

The thing is, I’ve never bought clothing from Amazon! Books, CDs, the occasional DVD, some computer software. But no clothing, though they’ve tried to convince me. T-shirts aside, I prefer to be able to try something on before I buy it.

Assuming they actually are using their recommendations system, I think they must have just checked the clothing category for the mailing, and left the “based on…” phrase in the template. Though sometimes cross-category recommendations can be strange. I’m often amazed at things I find in my rec list that have no relation to the things I bought or rated that supposedly triggered the recommendation, simply because those items are popular enough to cut across multiple interests. Of course, right now the only thing they recommend for me in “apparel” is a Darth Vader mask, which I find somewhat disturbing…

We’ll fight for you!

Actual spam subject lines:

let us fight with your creditors

afraid to fight your creditors? we’re not

I’m imagining two guys in a boxing ring with the viking warriors from those Capital One commercials. If only Spamusement had a submissions page!

The Puzzle Blimp

From time to time on our morning (and sometimes evening) commute, we’ve spotted a multicolored blimp. Sometimes it’s in the air, sometimes it’s parked on a field.

For obvious reasons, we’ve started calling it the “puzzle blimp.”

We kept wondering just whose blimp it was. There was no logo we could see, and blimps are mainly used for advertising. Well, that last photo we caught turns out to have the answer:
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Suggestive logo

Here’s another example of using a design that suggests a logo, rather than using it outright. This is a “Win Compatible” badge from the package of a KVM switch. (I think it was from IOGEAR.)

What I like about this is that it manages to get the idea across clearly even though it doesn’t use the actual Windows name or logo. “Win” is enough to get the name across, and the overlapping colored rectangles immediately call to mind the look of Windows 2000, Windows Me, and Office 2000. Sure, it’s one redesign back, but it’s still recognizable.

As for why they made their own logo? Well, it’s all hardware, with no drivers needed, so there really isn’t any point in putting it through the OS compatibility tests. You might as well label a monitor as being “Designed for Windows.” But not everyone knows what is and isn’t OS-dependent. Even those who do are more likely to buy it if they have that reassurance. I’ve looked at devices that I was 90% certain should work with any OS, but bought the one that specifically mentioned Mac or Linux compatibility because it filled in that last 10%.

An offer you can’t turn down

Some amusing “word salad” variations:

To update passive your e-mail address regulator from <remove> to cellist, please visit adoptive My Profile barge.

I got another one with the same structure, and they’re just dropping random words into the sentence. But I kind of like the idea of a “My Profile barge.”

If you would rather not receive E-mail outshine diffuse alerting you of special offers, product announcements, sensuous and other news, just let us know by rapier

Oh, the temptation!

Missed it by that much

I recently picked up a new domain name for a stand-alone website I’ve been working on. Since I got a good deal from Yahoo last March when I registered googolplextheaters.com for $5/year, I went with Yahoo again. I was slightly annoyed to see the price was now $9.95, but I remembered $4.98 had been a promo price, and $10/year is still not bad. Heck, I remember when then-monopoly Network Solutions dropped the price of a domain name from $100 to $70.

Anyway, it seems that Yahoo still offers $4.98 domains—depending on how you get there. Some of their ads offer the lower price, and if you come into the service through the ad, you get the discount.

It’s kind of like an automatic coupon.

It’s also a bit annoying that I could have spent half as much if I’d clicked on a different link.

Still, it’s only a $5 difference. I spend that much on lunch.

Reinventing the Upgrade Wheel

The internet is a hostile place. Viruses, worms, and worse are constantly trying to break or break into your computer. Software developers are constantly fixing the holes that can let them in. It’s become critical to keep your system up to date. Unfortunately this can be very frustrating, even for a power user, for one simple reason: you have to keep track of each program individually.

Sure, the operating systems have their own centralized places. Microsoft has Windows Update, and Apple has Software Update. But every application that exposes itself to the network directly or opens untrusted files has to be updated, and there are many that aren’t part of the operating system.

So Symantec has Live Update. Real Player has its own updater. iTunes and QuickTime for Windows can update themselves. Adobe Reader has an update function. Firefox is redesigning its update system. Games check for updates when they connect to the network.

But wouldn’t it be nice if Windows would grab the Acrobat updates overnight, instead of waiting until the next time you launched it? Wouldn’t you like to be able to patch everything on your system at once and just not worry about it? As a software developer, wouldn’t you like to be able to let someone else deal with the update problem instead of re-inventing the wheel yet again?
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The power of color

I was looking for a list of requirements for Opera, and found this browser comparison table. Opera is compared to “Browser 1″ and “Browser 2″ on various features, speed, security, etc. Browser 2 doesn’t look too favorable, but Browser 1 looks terrible.

Of course, even if you don’t recognize the specs, you can identify them easily by the column headers:

• Opera is red
• Browser 1 is blue
• Browser 2 is orange

Hmmm….

Interestingly, I’ve got a project I’ve been working on off-and-on for a couple of weeks, and I’ve already put together a design using just color to represent different browsers.

It looks like I may have been on to something.

Update August 8: Apparently there are countries in which it is illegal to mention a competitor by name in ads, which might explain the tactic. Also, Opera has taken down the page, replacing it with a note that “This page is under development.”

Devoured by the Mandriva

The Mandrake/Conectiva merger has had a chance to sink in. I’m almost getting used to the name Mandriva. But I’m still trying to figure out last week’s announcement that Mandriva has bought Lycoris—or rather, has “purchase[d] several assets from Lycoris.” The big news is that they’re combining Mandriva Discovery (their entry-level desktop OS) with Lycoris Desktop/LX.

The main thing is, I can’t make out just what Mandriva has and has not bought. I can’t figure out whether there’s anything left of Lycoris, the company. Their CEO is moving to Mandriva to head up the new product. Their software collection and user forums are moving to Mandrake Club. Their flagship product is being merged with one of Mandriva’s. But the wording of the press release implies that they haven’t bought everything. If I were to guess, Lycoris might start focusing on their Tablet PC line.

What does seem to be happening is that Mandrake has begun collecting a number of the smaller commercial players in the Linux arena. Who knows? They may be in a position to challenge Red Hat and Novell soon.

Resolving SELinux audit errors on boot in Fedora Core 4

I’ve upgraded two systems at work from Fedora Core 3 to Fedora Core 4: a desktop using the normal installer, and a test server upgrading with yum. The yum upgrade worked well except for two snags. The first was a conflict with the old kernel-utils package. I followed the recommendation by installing the new kernel first, rebooting, then removing the old kernel.

The second was that SELinux denied access to about a dozen services on start-up. It was in auditing mode, not enforcing mode, so the services still worked, but I wanted to be able to start enforcing the policy once I resolved some other issues.
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Dark Angels

Two bits of news on some of the less conventional “Angels” of comics.

Writer Jeff Mariotte reports that Joss Whedon and Fox have approved a second Angel comic book miniseries to come out late this year, which may interest fans of the show who want to know what happened after the final episode:

While The Curse is strictly an Angel solo story with the other characters just showing up in flashback, this one will include most of the gang (those who survived NFA, anyway)—although some of them in unexpected ways. More than that I will not say. It’s the only approved, official continuation of the TV series, though

Meanwhile, Peter David has confirmed that the new artist on Fallen Angel is J.K. Woodward, and posted this sample of his art style. This isn’t just a cover—this is what the interior art will look like!

Spinning Beach Balls of Death!

The Mozilla-based Camino web browser for Mac OS X has just launched 0.9 alpha 1, and the release notes* include this item:

Rarely see “beach balls of death”.

I don’t remember whether I’d heard the term before (I recall the “spinning pizza of death,” or maybe of doom), but I knew exactly what it meant.

*In spring 2007, they restructured the website. The release notes for the 0.9 series have been incorporated into the notes for 1.0.

A Visit to Kilauea

Picking up the oft-delayed vacation photos series, here’s the first half of our trip out to Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park and the volcano Kilauea.

Kilauea is often referred to as the most active volcano in the world. To give you an idea why, its latest eruption started in 1983… and is still going!

We got to the park fairly late in the day, partly because we underestimated the amount of time it would take to drive there from Kailua, and partly because we stopped at various points of interest along the way. It was mid-afternoon by the time we got to the visitor’s center, where Katie stood transfixed by the lava videos and I checked out the maps.

We stopped for a late lunch at Volcano House, an old hotel built on the edge of the Kilauea Caldera. Check out the view! (The image links to a slightly larger copy.)

The crater Halema‘uma‘u, which contained a boiling lava lake from 1823–1924, is visible near the center. The southern slope of Mauna Loa rises in the background. The whole caldera is roughly elliptical in shape, and Volcano House is one end of the longer axis. I don’t remember exactly how far it is from one side to the other, but judging by the map I’d say it’s about 2×3 miles.

Off to the right, behind a tree in the panorama, are the steaming bluffs. Groundwater gets heated by the magma below the volcano and seeps out through cracks all over the caldera.
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Opera and Acid2

The WaSP Buzz writes that once the Opera web browser passes the Acid2 test on the desktop, the mobile version will pass it too.

OK, that makes sense. AFAIK they have one rendering engine that they use across platforms. If the Windows, Linux and Mac versions display sites identically (aside from fonts and form controls), there’s no reason to assume that the version for cell phones and PDAs will be any different. What’s interesting here is the link to a forum thread on Opera’s Acid2 progress.

The Perfect Couple

A perfect pairing on a movie marquee:

Allergen-free? Try again!

Saw this sign on a display in Whole Foods the other day:

Okaay… but what if you’re allergic to fish?

Watch where you point that thing!

This roller coaster ad was supposed to say, “Ready. Aim. Scream.” But when we got stuck waiting for a long turn signal, the view from the passenger’s seat suggested that the Silver Bullet gets some people a little more excited than that.

What it all Mean’s

Katie spotted this example of apostrophe abuse in an office parking lot.

The best service mean is…? Statistical analysis of dumpster service?

Is there any *ahem* meaning for which this would actually make sense?

Lava Graffiti

Amid the old lava flows on the west coast of Hawai‘i, locals have a tradition of arranging coral on the jumbled rocks to create temporary graffiti. It tends to be “friendly” graffiti, more like carving one’s initials in a tree than tagging a freeway wall with spray paint.

We drove past a beautifully drawn whale several times before we finally decided to stop by the side of the road, and Katie stepped out to get a picture:
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Beware of Invisible Cows

Up at the visitor’s center for the Mauna Kea observatories, there’s a sign that says, “Beware of Invisible Cows.” It was dark when we were there, and I tried to get this picture without using the flash since there were people with portable telescopes ten feet away, so it’s really blurry:

Fortunately someone in charge recognized the humor value, and the visitor’s center sells bumper stickers:

Of course, it turns out other people, visiting during the day, have snapped better pictures of the sign.

Note: Our visit to Mauna Kea was on Saturday, April 9, 2005.

Spike and (Fallen) Angel

You know, I should have made the connection when Fallen Angel moved to IDW that it’s the same publisher that picked up the Angel (as in the vampire with a soul™ from the Buffy-verse) license. And I should have remembered that Peter David is writing a Spike one-shot comic book that should be out soon (August, apparently).

So it really shouldn’t surprise me that Spike: Old Times will feature a full-page ad for the new Fallen Angel series.

Jedi vs. Sith, Order vs. Chaos

I was thinking about Star Wars, the “bringing balance to the Force” prophecy, and RPG character alignments, and realized that while you can neatly map the Jedi and Sith to good and evil (Anakin’s confusion notwithstanding), you can’t map them so neatly to order and chaos.

The Sith are a chaotic organization. They thrive on emotional chaos, they spread chaos to meet their ends… but when they get in charge, they impose order on everyone else.

The Jedi are extremely ordered. They try to purge emotions, they deny attachments. They’re hidebound by tradition. The organization is very structured. And yet they fight not to impose order but to protect it. The Jedi actually strive to preserve the balance of law and chaos.

I’m actually reminded a bit of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, in which the cosmic balance between order and chaos is treated as its own faction. The Eternal Champion, in his various incarnations, always fights for the Balance, bringing order to Chaos worlds and chaos to Order worlds.

So the Sith are chaotic, but impose order, while the Jedi are ordered, but fight for balance. The problem, of course, is that the Jedi are not balanced themselves. Anakin does three things to correct this:

1. He destroys the old Jedi order
2. He destroys the Sith (two decades later)
3. Destroying the Jedi ensures that Luke and Leia, heirs to the Force, will grow up as people first, Jedi later.

Luke and Leia have the opportunity to re-create the Jedi without all the baggage that dragged the old Jedi order down… and they can rebuild it with Jedi who are actually in balance themselves.

Viruses: They’re not just annoyances anymore

If you’ve been paying attention to computer security, you already know that spam, viruses, and organized crime have been in bed together for at least a year. The recently-discovered theft of 40 million credit card numbers [edit: originally linked to Yahoo News] illustrates this point clearly:

CardSystems was hit by a virus-like computer script that captured customer data for the purpose of fraud, [MasterCard spokeswoman] Gamsin said. She said she did not know how the script got into the system. The FBI was investigating. (emphasis added)

Given the current porous state of many networks and operating systems, and the general public’s attitude that catching a computer virus is as inevitable as catching a cold, I’d guess it got into the system the same way most spyware does. An email attachment squeaked by the filters. Someone installed a tool that claimed it would make their web access faster. Someone got a well-designed phish, followed the link, and got infected by a backdoor because their browser was behind on security patches. Someone brought a laptop home, plugged it into their insecure home network, and brought back a virus.

Sadly, I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of this.

Update June 20: Netcraft is reporting that it was indeed lax computer security that did them in:

MasterCard International said it “worked with CardSystems to remediate the security vulnerabilities in the processor’s systems. These vulnerabilities allowed an unauthorized individual to infiltrate their network and access the cardholder data.” Officials at affected institutions were not specifying the vulnerability and exploit used to breach CardSystems’ security. (emphasis added)

Netcraft seems to think it was likely their website, which runs on Windows 2000 and IIS 5, and they go on to promote their own security consulting services. So it’s not entirely an unbiased look at the incident.

Sequelitis is profitable

An interesting read on the Most Lucrative Movie Franchises, not so much for what it gets right, but for what it gets wrong.

Tonight’s premiere of Batman Begins marks the sixth in the series. And that’s only counting the “modern” era of Batman flicks, dating from 1989’s Batman from director Tim Burton.

Sixth? Are they including the cartoon Batman: Mask of the Phantasm? If so, why not Batman: Sub-Zero? (Curiously, the table on page two only indicates five Batman films.)

And where do they get four Lord of the Rings films? I suppose they could be counting the Bakshi cartoon, but what about the Rankin-Bass Return of the King and The Hobbit.

Where are they getting their numbers?

Is that a promise?

A mortgage spam:

THIS IS OUR CLOSING TRY

We have made an effort to speak to you on many occurences and now is the time to respond! … However, based on the fact that our previous attempts to speak to you have failed, this will be our last notice to gain for you the lower rate. [Emphasis added]

Please!

3 Quakes in 5 Days

5.3 4.9 near Yucaipa just minutes ago.
7.2 off the coast of Crescent City early yesterday morning.
5.2 near Anza Sunday morning.

Quakes measuring 5+ are fairly common. CA gets several each year.

Three in a week, aside from aftershocks, is unusual.

Of course, the craziest was probably the two unrelated 7+ 7.3 and 6.5 quakes in Landers and Big Bear that hit within hours of each other back in 1992.