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Entries for July 2004
A biblical view of the Grand Canyon from a book approved by the National Park Service. “The vast majority of the sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon were deposited as the result of a global flood that occurred after and as a result of the initial sin that took place in the Garden of Eden.”
Microsoft employee hacked into Altavista to obtain source code. Suspect works on MSN Search.
Man downloads 100 millionth song from iTunes Music store and wins Powerbook, iPod, and 10,000 free songs. Winning song was by Zero 7 and remixed by Danger Mouse.
Last 100 posts
(Trying out a new feature on kottke.org today in which I revisit the last 100 or so posts — about 2-3 weeks worth — and follow up on some of them. We’ll see how it goes.)
Ken Jennings is still 0wn1ng Jeopardy. He’s won 28 straight games and $920,960. If he ever loses, expect a book deal and a made-for-TV movie, I Was Never Really in Jeopardy: The Ken Jennings Story.
Apple has created a bit of a shitstorm with Dashboard. Cries that they ripped off Konfabulator have given way to the improper addition of new tags to HTML, improper namespaces, and even that a new round of browser wars are beginning. Does anyone dare try to add new features to HTML before the lumbering W3C can get around to it? (Yes, please.) Dave Hyatt is publishing lots of info on his site about Dashboard and Safari.
The whole Plain Layne thing continues to limp along. First noted here, it was eventually revealed to be a hoax. Odin Soli, the man behind the curtain, is still publishing as Plain Layne, but now that everyone knows it’s fictional, it’s unclear whether anyone will still be interested in reading it (I’m not).
Anil won the SEO contest and is all but blamed for cheating. My take: most SEO “professionals” are hucksters, scammers, and have a poor understanding of what makes Google tick.
Friendster, which can’t make up its mind about their priorities with regard to security, is allowing Dreamworks to create fake profiles to promote Anchorman (noted early on by waxy.org, a favorite source of Wired News stories), even after they raised a hell of a stink about the whole fakesters thing. No, no, this is different, says the company…there’s money involved this time. Friendster gets dumber every day.
Fahrenheit 9/11 has taken in $80 million so far at the US box office and will probably be the first documentary to break $100 million at the box office. People are fact-checking the movie and I’m sure there will be fact-checking of the fact-checking, ad infinitum, but with all the partisanship going on around this movie, actual facts will be hard to come by. On the plus side, I will never again forget how to spell Fahrenheit. Celcius Celsuis Selcius Centigrade is another matter.
The Atlanta Time Machine was a popular link and a reader sent in a link to similar then/now photos of Marietta, Ohio.
Got lots of emails that the 8th grade exam from 1895 is a hoax. Wrong. What Snopes actually says is the assertion that “an 1895 graduation examination for public school students demonstrates a shocking decline in educational standards” is false. That may be, but the test itself is authentic (PDF).
Greece prevailed in the final match of Euro 2004. If you missed seeing the game in the US (because it cost $20 on PPV), Fox Sports World is showing reruns of the quarters, semis, and finals. Check your local listings.
This is actually a Google recruiting Web site. A correct answer takes you to Google’s Web site.
Pennsylvania man gets flipped off by George W. Bush. Between this and the Cheney “fuck”, the current administration seems almost human.
Low carb, schmo carb, how you approach eating is as important as what you eat. The French paradox goes double for the Italians.
The John Ashcroft Video Project contest. “Sexiest one minute video that includes a discussion of Attorney General John Ashcroft”
Yahoo! acquires Oddpost. Yahoo! to get Gmail-esque GUI and a newsreader.
Antarctica has its own currency. Who knew?. Check out all the currencies from other countries as well.
What webloggers are reading this summer. You reading anything good?
Area man on an unprecedented tear on Jeopardy. Streak stands at 26 games and $868,960.
It appears that “Plain Layne” is blogging again. The man behind the site is continuing his experiment in realtime fiction.
Wired News on blogger burnout. Couple quotes from me, including one in which I drop the f-bomb a la Dick Cheney.
While NYC goes with Gotham for Freedom Tower cornerstone, Jersey goes with Times New Roman for its 9/11 memorial. “Both Gotham and New Times Roman will suitably render the names of the victims of 9/11, and will do so with clarity and consistency.”
Typeface on Freedom Tower cornerstone is Gotham, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones. I told you 2004 was the year of Frere-Jones.
Explore the links between ExxonMobil and the funding of climate change skeptics. From the creator of They Rule.
I think this is either Gothamist’s new LA blog or a blog about Southeast Asians. Or is that laoist.com?
Security at Friendster either not a priority or a big concern
A small update on my recent policy post, wherein I quote a Friendster rep saying in a Wired article:
We have a policy that we are not being hacked. Security isn’t a priority for us. We’re mostly focused on making the site go faster.
A couple of readers pointed out that in the article I linked to, the text actually read:
We have a policy that we are not being hacked. Security is a big concern. We haven’t seen this problem, though. No complaints about it.
The statement I quoted in last week’s post was from the print version of the online article, which I suspect is the original version. At some point, it seems that Friendster realized the braindead aspect of the original and got Wired to change it. Does anyone have the paper copy of the June 2004 version of Wired to compare? Contact me if you do.
Update: Several people wrote in to say that the paper version of the article did indeed contain the “security isn’t a priority for us” version of the quote. Scott has a scan of the text. (Thx, everyone.)
Also, I got this dumb SuperFriends email from Friendster. Why are some small/medium-sized companies in such a hurry to act like big stupid companies?
Gmail and fuzzy whitelisting
Many feel that Google’s invite-only distribution of Gmail accounts is a shrewd marketing move designed to create artificial demand. More likely, they’re just rolling the service out slowly; it is still in beta testing after all and 40 million people at once would probably have been a nightmare for them to deal with.
But wouldn’t it be fun if the real reason that Google is distributing accounts the way they are is to build whitelisting into their system? With the Gmail economy that’s sprung up to facilitate the trafficking of invites (now somewhat curtailed), not all Gmail users are known by the people who invited them, but certainly some fuzzy whitelisting could be utilized to improve Gmail’s spam filtering.
Getting started with Ruby. I should get started on something.
Fantastically detailed illustration of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Zoom, zoom, zoom in to see details.
Wee pocket bikes all the rage in Cali. May the pocket SUV craze follow.
Google removes the definition links from their search results. Noooooooooo!!!! I use that all the time! Update: the defs are back. Phew.
I have a policy that this will be the best weblog post ever
Somehow I missed this story about dating hackers in last month’s issue of Wired. Quite interesting. Near the end of the article is a bit about hacking social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster:
Moore’s buddy Matt Chisholm chimes in to tell me about a similar hack, a JavaScript app he wrote with Moore that works on Friendster. It mines for information about anyone who looks at his profile and clicks through to his Web site. “I get their user ID, email address, age, plus their full name. Neither their full name nor their email is ever supposed to be revealed,” he says.
Notified of the security holes Moore and Chisholm exploit, Friendster rep Lisa Kopp insists, “We have a policy that we are not being hacked.” When I explain that, policy or no, they are being hacked, she says, “Security isn’t a priority for us. We’re mostly focused on making the site go faster.”
“We have a policy that we’re not being hacked.” That’s my new favorite thing right there. No longer do I need to acknowledge any deficiencies in my life; policy will take care of that. I have a policy that I’m fabulously wealthy. I have a policy that I can dunk a basketball. I have a policy that I’m the the life of the party. I have a policy that I’m dating Nicole Kidman *and* Gwyneth Paltrow. I. Feel. So. Free. You really should try this for yourself. I have a policy that it’s great.
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