J-Walk Blog: July 22, 2003 Archives

22 July, 2003

Death and Passwords

Wired has an article about a topic that I've thought about on several occasions: Dead Men Tell No Passwords.

The man in charge of archiving and maintaining electronic copies of Norway's most important historical documents is dead and so is access to those archives. So the director of the Norwegian cultural center is pleading for hackers to help him crack the center's password-protected database.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Ugly Cars

Yesterday I was driving around and I saw a Honda Element on the road. It gave me an idea: write a blog entry about ugly cars.

Well, somebody named Maddox saved me the trouble: The top four ugliest cars on the road. The Honda Element is #3.

Apologies to all readers who actually own a Honda Element.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Field Guide To Spam

Learn all about the spammer's tricks.

Compiled by Dr. John Graham-Cumming, a leading anti-spam researcher and member of the ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force, the ActiveState Field Guide to Spam is a selection of the tricks spammers use to hide their messages from filters, providing examples taken from real-world spam messages.

This is fascinating stuff. And if you want even more, you can move on to the Advanced Tricks section.

Here's one of many examples. This trick is called Hypertextus Interruptus:

What: Split words using HTML comments, pairs of zero width tags, or bogus tags
Popularity: Common
Complexity: Clever
Date added: January 17, 2003
Examples from the wild:

millionaire

Fi</n>nd N</n>ew </n>Fri</n>end</n>s

Vi<b></b>agra

F<XYZ>r<XXYA>ee

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Yet Another Animated Clock

Man, there are a lot of animated clocks on the web. Here's another one. This one shows stacks of blocks being built.

Somebody (Wendy?) should pull them all together and make a master collection of Web clocks. It would be very popular on New Year's Eve.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Bad Romance Book Covers

Here's an annotated collection of the worst romance book covers.

Generally covers land in the worst category for one of three reasons. First, they can be badly rendered - our winner is a champion in that department. These are the covers that look like the art department not only phoned them in, but also did it from a cell phone in a moving car. Then there are the covers that suffer from an overblown sexuality that seems dated to the modern reader. The final category (and my personal favorite) is comprised of those covers that make you wonder, "What were they thinking?" These are the ones with elements or concepts so bizarre that one wonders how anyone even thought them up in the first place.

The cover shown here is the 6th-place winner.

Most who voted for it chose it because of the awkward body positions and bizarre facial expressions of the hero and heroine. Several readers offered explanations for their looks, but Lisa's was my personal favorite: "It's as if the man on the cover had a few too many prune puddings and is now regretting it.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Computer Museum

A computer museum called DigiBarn.

The DigiBarn Computer Museum seeks to capture personal stories and track technological evolution through a large collection of vintage computer systems, manuals, videos, interviews, and other fossil relics of the "Cambrian explosion" of personal computing that ignited in 1975.

Particularly notable for programmers is Mother Tongues, a huge graphic that traces the roots of computer languages through the ages.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

A Lesson From Chuck Berry

The New York Post offers Kobe Bryant some advice, courtesy of Chuck Berry.

The rock 'n' roll pioneer, like Kobe, was good-looking, famous, wealthy - and black. Berry, who toured all over America just like an NBA player, was always afraid he'd be charged with rape after having sex with willing women who flocked to his dressing room - not to say that Kobe's accuser is in this category. But Berry protected himself with a Polaroid camera. Before he'd have sex with a fan, he'd insist she strip and pose for a photo with him, smiling with their arms around each other. If Kobe had a Polaroid shot like that, he might have a much stronger defense.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

DoubleClick Fraud

From CNET: DoubleClick hit by fraud complaint

DoubleClick, an online marketing services company, is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging it helped deliver millions of fraudulent online advertisements meant to dupe Web surfers into clicking on them. The suit, filed July 11 in Allegheny County, Penn., civil court, is similar to a case against Bonzi Software, which was charged with deceiving Web surfers into clicking on banner ads by presenting them as computer security warnings.

Good luck. Every small step to clean up the ever-growing Web sleaze will help.

In other news, DoubleClick See Profits Jump 29 Percent in Q2

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Amy's Diary

Actually, Amy calls it Dear Dairy (as in cows).

Amy found her third grade diary, and ten entries have been painstakingly colored with crayon and narrated by experts to preserve the essence of the third grade gestalt.

Each diary entry is read aloud (using Flash).

(via Reenhead)

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Throwing Phones

The 4th Annual Mobile Phone Throwing contest is scheduled for August, in Finland.

Once again, the aim of the event is to free the participants of their mobile phone frustrations by means of playful contests.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

The Eighth Wonder of the World?

A collection of man-made islands is being created in the United Arab Emirates. It's called The Palm.

Each island will add sixty kilometers of shoreline to Dubai, increasing the United Arab Emirate's beachfront by an extraordinary 166%.

Shown here is a satellite image from January of this year. It will be completed sometime in 2004, and it will eventually be filled with hotels and luxury homes.

(via Boing Boing)

Posted on 22 July, 2003

CD Baby and Digital Distribution

CD Baby is a great place to buy music CDs by independent artists (i.e., those who aren't members of the RIAA).

They recently announced a new digital distribution deal for artists.

Whatever income is generated from your music and paid to us, we keep only a 9% cut, paying you 91%. NO additional hidden fees or exceptions. NO recurring fees. NO expenses taken out of your 91%

I wonder what kind of deal RIAA members get for digital distribution? You can be sure that it's not even close to this!

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Lassie, the Web Site

Everything you've ever wanted to know about Lassie, the TV dog, is at the Unofficial Lassie Website. I couldn't find an official Lassie Website.

Lassie remains one of my earliest TV memories: I recall sitting in front of the television watching extremely snowy reruns of Jeff's Collie on Boston's WBZ as I also watched the new Timmy episodes on Sunday nights at 7 p.m.. I remember the advent of the ranger and the all-animal episodes, being disillusioned as the stories grew steadily more "relevant"--and unfortunately more boring, of having high hopes for The New Lassie, and finding only one outstanding story--and one real "howler"--in the lot.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Yahoo's Most Emailed Photos

Popular photos at Yahoo (I mean Yahoo!). Changes daily.

This site has a daily challenge that uses those photos:

The challenge was to take the top 3 most emailed photos on yahoo and create a hopefully amusing story about the sequence.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Fun Words

If you like words, check out Martha Barnette's Fun Words Archive.

For example, you'll learn that plutolaty is an excessive devotion to wealth. And bloviate is a verb: to speak or write pompously and windily.

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Products From Dana Wyse

You'll find lots of good stuff from Dana Wyse. For example, you can buy some seeds that will make your canary sing the national anthem.

It's all for fun, of course. But it's very clever and well-done.

(via The Presurfer)

Posted on 22 July, 2003

Gold Teeth

Gold teeth from GangstaGold. If your name is Mike, you might like these:

For $300, you get: Six 14kt Solid Face Yellow Gold With four White Gold Diamond Cut Pave Letters and two Extended Fangs

Gotta love those extended fangs!

Posted on 22 July, 2003