Archive for September, 2010
| Newer Entries »Captcha’d Forever
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 4, 2010 by admin in Technology
Saturday, September 4th, 2010The best use for those annoying squiggly log-in words called Captcha’s? COMICS!
I’ve often joked that the web is an excellent reflection of humanity and the human psyche. This is reflected in the fact that most internet traffic is generated by sex, trying to meet someone who likes you, or getting the free stuff you think you deserve. In the broader view – as often happens in the real world – the evolution of the web went something like this: some smart clever people create something cool, less smart people come along and join in, everybody has fun for a while, and then their stupider, greedier, eviler friends show up and eff it all up. This pattern is probably why a lot of humanity’s energy seems to be devoted to protecting itself. Like building thousands of nuclear bombs to make sure no-one uses them, or destroying your freedom to protect it. On the web, this behavior is why we have so many tools for proving you’re human, i.e., the many variations of the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart). You know, those squiggly words you can’t read with your blurred vision and splitting headache the morning after a hard night of partying, when you’re trying to check your finances online to see if you burned your bank account in the last few hours of the night, the ones you don’t remember after buying the entire strip bar a round to prove to your favorite lap dancer that you’re loaded. It’s amusing that with Captchas we’re just protecting all the “good” web applications (useful web services) we write from “bad” web applications (spambots) we write. Typical human acts of futility. In any case, in spite of their assumed usefulness, Captchas have been cracked in a number of ways. Or have they? Jeff Atwood of CodingHorror.com points out some interesting fallacies in this article, and claims he has a 99% bot-blocking rate with what he calls a “naive captcha”, which is simply a well-designed captcha image that never changes! If you don’t think conventional Captchas are good enough, there a some alternative methods like this math-based Captcha, which will not only keep out spambots, but probably everyone but Stephen Hawking or Richard Feynman as well. Other versions include solving a tic-tac-toe puzzle, or this one, based on pictures of cats and dogs, or this one, which requires you to solve hieroglyphics. And then of course, companies like Google or Microsoft will try to figure out ways to make or save money with them. Microsoft’s idea is to make you look at ads; Google uses Captchas to make you read the words their scanning technology can’t. Yup. Your obstacle to the content you want is Google’s free labor force. Probably the best use of Captchas I’ve run across though is using them for making comics. This Something Awful forum may have started it, but there are amusing collections here and here. Some images may be NSFW. My quick stab at it is below. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Is There A Nascar Track At The Oklahoma City Bombing Site?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on September 3, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Friday, September 3rd, 2010Sure. Call it a “street”. That’s like calling a mosque an “Islamic center”. If we don’t dismantle this affront to our way of life, the rednecks have already won.
 Why did we let the rednecks build a Nascar track here? |
The other day I mentioned that I thought it was strange that given so many Americans’ universal hatred of Muslims because of September 11, I found it odd that we don’t hate all rednecks from Michigan for the Oklahoma City Bombing . Fortunately, some friends set me straight on a few facts. First of all, many Americans ARE rednecks. And secondly, the ones who aren’t, DO. Hate rednecks, that is. Ironically, that second point was made by a Russian friend of mine, who also said – on behalf of rednecks – that at least “they don’t go around burning the American embassy after we draw them in funny ways“. To which I replied with something like “yeah, they just blow up abortion clinics and stuff“. The irony in my Russian friend’s defense of rednecks being that not too long ago, Russians were the enemy. Which for me is the real bitch in all of this. Anyone who bothers digging deeper than the frothing idiocy of ratings-driven anchortainers or polarized partisan blog punditry knows very well that this irrational contempt for all things Muslim has its roots in the fact that when the Cold War ended, the military industrial complex had a serious problem on their hands, i.e., an enemy crisis. Who better to fit the bill than a culture that most Americans know nothing about? Which frankly could be just about any culture. But handily, most Americans – in spite of being incredibly ignorant of history in general – are experts on the wars between Christians and Muslims, and strangely eager to start them again, even if they don’t really believe in God. The level of ignorance swirling around the whole topic of “Islam as our enemy” is frighteningly depicted in the Onion satire Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims. I say “frighteningly” depicted, because the satire is so close to reality as to be nearly indistinguishable. So if an Islamic center at “ground zero” is going to be a test of freedom and tolerance in America, I think we should at least be consistent and remove the Nascar track that’s in front of the Murrah Federal Building site, and ban all sales of Pabst Blue Ribbon in Oklahoma City, and eliminate any other redneck insults to the federal government in the area. And don’t try that “it’s not a Nascar track it’s just a street” argument on me. That’s like saying a mosque is “just an Islamic center“. I hope I’m sounding utterly irrational with what I’m saying here. Because it would be un-American of me to do otherwise.
This Viral Will Fizzle Fo Shizzle
[ 12 Comments ]Posted on September 2, 2010 by admin in Music
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010Snoop Dogg’s campizzle with Norton Antivizzle is entertaining but probably won’t sell much software.
 You’d have a knowing smirk too, if all you had to do for this kind of exposure was give away two concert tickets. |
Whoever wins the new Norton Antivirus/Snoop Dogg anti-cybercrime rap contest over at HackIsWack.com is destined to be at least as famous as M. E. Hart. Oh. Sorry. You probably didn’t know he was the “rapper” in the 1994 Don’t Copy That Floppy campaign (video below). You know, the one you don’t remember. This marketing campaign by Norton is so full of fail in so many ways that I don’t know where to start. First, I’ll acknowledge that yes, I’m talking about Norton Antivirus, which is part of their goal. In fact, here. Go buy some
Wheeling & Dealing In Michigan – A Hemp Based Auto Industry?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on September 1, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010Could legalized hemp solve Michigan’s economic woes? Even if it didn’t, the recreational use would sure take the edge off Michiganders’ trademark up-tightness.
I think the solution for Michigan’s economic woes is sitting right under our noses. Or perhaps in someone’s bong. You may have heard recently about the Kestrel, a new electric car with a biocomposite body being engineered by Motive Industries of Canada. What do they mean by biocomposite? Hemp. You may already know that hemp is a versatile material for manufacturing, but you may not be aware of hemp’s connection with the very origins of the auto industry. It seems that Henry Ford not only originally envisioned a world full of automobiles fueled by ethanol (with hemp as one of the primary sources of biomass) but even built a hemp composite car all the way back in the 1930′s . So weed and wheels have a long history. Given Michigan’s recent foray into legalizing medical marijuana, maybe the state should just go all the way and make a commitment to cannabis as an industry. The broad industrial uses are obvious, the medical benefits are becoming widely accepted, and if they then just decriminalized the recreational usage of the stuff, we’d have a powerful tool for dealing with the typical Michigander’s trademark up-tightness. Just be careful with your wheeling and dealing, even if you have a license to do both.