I saw a license plate today that read,
I ♥ SPAM
I was a little surprised, but then I saw the “Made in Hawaii” plate holder and realized they were talking about the lunch meat.
*whew!*
Category: Tech
Recent Tech Links: Unmaintainable Code, XKCD on The Cloud and More
- How To Write Unmaintainable Code – what not to do when programming.
- Computer de-evolution: Features that lost the evolutionary war –
ITworldComputerWorld (via Slashdot) - Two XKCD comics: First, “The Cloud” explained. Second, anyone who has used command-line utilities on Linux will appreciate Manual Override.
- International Usability – Big Stuff the Same, Details Differ (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
- Who really owns your photos in social media? (PBS/MediaShift, via This Is True)
- Smartphone marketshare: Android keeps growing, iOS passes Blackberry, and WP7′s on life support.
App Store: Apple vs. the English Language
A few months ago, Amazon opened a section of their online store where they sell apps for Android devices. Following the same boring-but-descriptive naming scheme that Microsoft pioneered with such products as a word processor called Microsoft Word, a flight simulator called Microsoft Flight Simulator, and so forth, they call it the Amazon Appstore.
Apple, of course, is suing them for trademark infringement. Amazon’s stance: “App store” is a generic, descriptive term for a store that sells apps. Apple counters: “Is not!”
It’s a bit more eloquent than that, but look at this:
“Apple admits that the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘app’ as, in part, ‘[a]n application, esp. an application program,” Apple said in the court filing. “Apple further admits that the current edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary defines ‘store’ as, in part, ‘a retail establishment selling items to the public: a health-food store.'”
And the best part:
“Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words ‘app store’ together denote a store for apps,” the document said. [emphasis added]
Really? Funny, I thought that was how the English language worked.
(In the interest of full disclosure: I own an Apple laptop, and Android phone, and use Amazon’s affiliate program…but not their app store.)
Links: Ancient World, Eudora, Area 51
- Familiar yet alien ancient views of Earth – photorealistic simulations of the world as seen from space, millions of years ago.
- Back in 2006, Qualcomm effectively discontinued Eudora, though they sponsored a project to extend Mozilla Thunderbird with the look, feel, and some features of Eudora. I lost track of it over the years, but it turns out they finally released Eudora OSE last September…four years later.
- Revealed: How Area 51 Hid Secret Craft. Advanced designs by humans, of course, not alien ships.
If You Teach a Man to be Phished…
I’ve dealt with a couple of companies that try to plug the general lack of security in email by using a “secure email” service. The way this works is:
- The company sends you an email with a link to a third-party or co-branded website, asking you to click on it in order to read important information about your financial/insurance/whatever account. (Or better yet, the third party site sends you the mail on the company’s behalf.)
- You click on the link and open the site in your web browser.
- You register for the site (which usually involves entering your name, choosing a password, and possibly entering other personal detail like a reminder question.)
- You log into the site and actually read the message.
Can you see what the problem is?
That’s right: Steps 1-3 are exactly what you see in a phishing attack. Only in a phishing attack, the third-party site is a fake that’s trying to collect account information (like your login and password) or personal information (like your SSN).
So while they may be solving the immediate problem of “someone might intercept this message,” they’re perpetuating a broader problem by training people to fall for phishing attacks.
Sadly, this is not new.
Update 2022: A decade later, they’re still doing it.
“Bad Link” Webmaster Spam
In clearing out my spam folder today, I found the following message:
Bad Link on hyperborea.org
Dear webmaster,
There was a link that didn’t work for me on this page of your website, http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/flashpoint.html. It points to a Constitution Day page that doesn’t seem to be there any more, [link removed].
We published a great resource on the U.S. Constitution Day on Online Law School.Net: [link removed]. It would make a great addition to your resources and replacement for the page that no longer works.
Sincerely,
Maddie Bryant
[email removed]
On the surface, it sounds like a reasonable message. If you’ve got a broken link, then you want to know, and hey, if they’ve got an alternative, so much the better, right?
But here’s the thing: The broken link isn’t on the page. I don’t think I link to that page anywhere on my site. There is a reference to the 22nd Amendment, but not to anything about Constitution Day.
In short, it’s another form of link swap spam based on automatic keyword matches with no real intelligence to it.
That’s not really something I want to be linking to.
Even Microsoft Hates IE6
Microsoft has jumped on the ditch-IE6 bandwagon with IE6Countdown.com, following in the footsteps of such campaigns as Browse Happy, End 6, and Save the Developers.
Of course, since it’s a Microsoft-sponsored campaign, it’s only promoting upgrades, rather than promoting an upgrade-or-switch message.
Static HTML points out why you might want to put your effort into some other campaign instead. Because IE6 Countdown is only an upgrade campaign, and IE6 users are all on Windows XP or below (Vista ships with IE7), they can only ever upgrade as far as IE8. Given the huge gap between IE8 and IE9 in terms of standards support, HTML5, CSS3, and so forth, IE8 will soon become the new millstone around the web’s neck.
So instead of plugging IE, consider plugging your own favorite browser, be it Firefox, Chrome or Opera. Or perhaps plug another switch campaign. After all, there are quite a few alternative web browsers out there!