Are you addicted to Slashdot? This might help you kick the habit...or make it worse. Try MicroSlash instead of the real thing. It's a Flash version of Slashdot that reads the Slashdot RSS feed, so it only shows you the last ten articles.

Ever wonder why not as many people own Mac versus PC? Do you own a Hilti? Do you even know what a Hilti product is? If you're a PC owner, that's why you don't own a Mac; you don't need one.

How to completely screw up a recall election:

1. Get a federal panel of three judges to declare a delay to a state special election until March 2004, effective in seven days.
2. Wait.
3. Get the rest of the circuit to agree to review the case.
4. Wait.
5. After the original seven days are up, get the rest of the circuit to agree with the first three judges, and tell everyone to take it up with the Supreme Court.

There, you've now completely screwed up the election because all this time has passed and October 7th is here before you know it. Even if the Supreme Court overturns the original two decisions, guess what? You're screwed because too much time has passed and some of the voting districts have closed up shop.

Mark my words. With reguards to the California recall, there are going to be people who will say after the recall election is over that they didn't know they could vote 'No' to 'Recall Davis' and still vote for candidate.

Just thought I'd journalize that...

Slashdot is great. People who complain about trollish or spam comments should learn how to use Slashdot. There are those who choose to post comments that other people don't like. It's really easy to avoid those types of comments by using the moderation modifiers found in the Comments Preferences.

Anyone who complains about comments that have been properly moderated is a bonehead. If you can't handle the content found in certain comments, you're not using Slashdot correctly.

Objection: "But I read comments before they get moderated."
Reply: You're an idiot. Wait until they're moderated.

Objection: "But I want the news right when it's posted."
Reply: Nothing is stopping you from reading the articles. Why are you reading Slashdot for current news? It's usually a few days old. Check out arstechnica.com.

Objection: "But the moderators mod up spam all the time."
Reply: Get over it. It's a volunteer system.

Tehre was tihs airtlce toady on Shodalst aubot jlbuemd leettrs not mankig mcuh of a dreeffncie in gntteig one's pinot aocsrs.

One rllaey cool use for this peehnnmoon is andvoiig secrah eginne icsnie. Of cosure, that assuems that scearh egnnies are ouiilovbs to this mohted of ofouicbtasn. If it taeks of in pptoirluay, I bet serach enngeis wlil tkae this into anuocct.

I've used ROT-13 to ltcoae pgaes. It's iieesttrnng how mnay aallctuy do come up. Not a lot, but just eonugh to srapk one's crosuiity.

Some day the MPAA will invent an almost invisible watermark for DVDs that will be on every frame of the movie. This watermark will be a serial number unique to that DVD. The watermark also move so that it won't be easy to cover up or mask. The only sure fire way to get rid of this watermark would be to rescale the movie to such a size that people who really want to enjoy it would be able to.

That'll be fun, won't it?

First of all, you need to subscribe to Slashdot. You need this because you have to be able to read messages in The Mysterious Future.

Second, you need an atomic clock. If not, you'll fail the first time, but from then on, it'll work. Just pay very close attention to the time.

Steps:

1. When an article in The Mysterious Future appears, click on "Read More..."
2. Take note of the timestamp for this message (not so mysterious, is it?). This is a bug, it shouldn't show the timestamp here. If there's no timestamp, then the bug has been fixed. This hack should still work though. The timestamp is just helpful in reducing the number of refreshes.
3. Click the "Change" button. Normally, this is used to change your threashold.
4. Now modify the URL and change the word "Change" to "Reply" and hit enter (you have now hacked Slashdot).
5. You can now write and preview your comment. If you submit it, you'll get an error if the message is still in The Mysterious Future. But once the article leaves The Mysterious Future, you'll be able to post it. Your advantage here is that you get a 20 second head start because your form is older than the timestamp in The Mysterious Future.

It's not a perfect system. Chances are, they'll fix it so that if you modify the URL in The Mysterious Future, it won't show the form or something. And now that I've made it public, you'll probably have a hard time for a while.

If you're the author of a future book titled Slashdot Hacks, make sure and give me credit for this one, assuming they don't fix it by then.

Some of you are confused by my mirror. It's simple. I'm trying to make a buck. But I am trying to also understand the dynamics behind the interesting geek demographic.

See, most of you aren't actually geeks. I have embedded a lot of javascript in the mirrors (once I've retired them) to help me figure out which of you are geeks and which of you are just regular people who are fascinated with us.

First of all, you've probably realized my mirrors don't stay up very long. Some of you have expressed frustration that my policy is to only keep the mirror up for as long as the slashdot effect is ... in effect.

Once I replace the mirror with a message, I'm still careful not to just bombard your browsers unless you do something specific. Even then, it's light bombardment, in my opinion.

In fact, back in April when I first started doing this, I tested an idea someone gave me where I'd embed Amazon's cookies in the mirrors while the slashdot effect. No popup at all, and I'd leave the mirror for as long as possible.

I've since stopped that practice even though it was very successful because eventually, someone who got my cookie would go to Amazon on their own and buy something. I couldn't see how this benefitted Amazon because I wasn't actually advertising them, just re-writing cookies.

So now, I actually ask permission to open a popup. My replacement for the mirrors have a link on the screen that informs the reader that the are about to see a popup. I figured no one would ever click on it. But they do. All the time.

This has resulted in indirect sales because once they go to Amazon, they'll might buy something within 90 days, which is how long the cookie lasts.

So that's my angle. Super simple. You may also notice that I have some strange javascript that updates images on the screen when certain events occur. Those events would be things like clicking ok or cancel on the popup warning I show. I want to know which one people click most. Today, 70 clicked on ok, and 20 clicked on cancel. Interesting.

I also show a fake DRM message that asks the user if they will agree with my DRM policy. Today, 35 agreed and 30 disagreed. Weird.

There's also a rabbit hole. If you understand javascript, you might be able to figure out how that plays in. But I'm not going to explain that one.

Like slashdot's polls, this is completely unscientific. But it's still fun to watch.

I went to a coffee shop last night with a friend. There were three other people with laptops besides us. Out of the five laptops at the coffee shop, four were Apple TiBooks of one model or another. I don't know if that parallels any real world market-share statistics, but it's pretty impressive.

Apple has done superb marketing lately. Not only that, but even non-vendor specific advertizements are working in favor of Apple. Every computer magazine I look at has at least one picture of the 15" TiBook. They aren't selling the Apple's notebook, but they use it in the ad because it's so pretty. They treat it like it's a like model.

I'm pretty sure Microsoft has even used the TiBook, but I can't be sure. For instance, this picture looks like a doctored image where they removed Apple's logo. An image like it used to be on Microsoft's main page when the worm first hit. It didn't show the area of the notebook where the logo would be, so I figured it had to be a TiBook.

Who knows.

Chewbacca acts as midwife to Natalie Portman's Padmé when she gives birth to twins Luke and Leia. We hope he washes his paws first.

I just got my server co-located, and I've been having some fun with it. Everyone who's had a web server or virtual host with access logs have seen those annoying little worms floating around. One of the most common is default.ida, or the Code Red Worm. Other common ones are requests for cmd.exe and such. You really notice them when your site has low traffic like mine.

I noticed that they were all getting status 404, and a short response. So I created a 100Meg file of random junk and called it default.ida. It's interesting because after 32k, it just drops the connection.

So, I wondered if the data rate was lowered, how long would it stay connected? To do this, I had to write an executable. It was easy enough to just write a servlet. I just map every URL pattern that I suspect is a worm to it. Here's my all purpose HoneyPot servlet:

package martinStudio.website.http;
 
import martinStudio.om.DBUtil ;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import org.apache.commons.logging.Log ;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory ;
 
/**
  * <p>Title: martin-studio</p>
  * <p>Description: Martion Studio Web Site</p>
  * <p>Copyright: Copyright (c) 2003</p>
  * <p>Company: </p>
  * @author <a href="mailto:anthony@martin-studio.com">Anthony Martin</a>
  * @version 1.0
  */
 
public class HoneyPot extends HttpServlet {
 
//Initialize global variables
  public void init ( ) throws ServletException {
  }
 
//Process the HTTP Get request
  public void doGet ( HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response )
      throws ServletException, IOException {
 
    int contentLength = 0 ;
    long start = System.currentTimeMillis() ;
 
    log.info("Method: " + request.getMethod()) ;
    log.info("Query String: " + request.getQueryString()) ;
    log.info("Headers: ") ;
    for ( Enumeration e = request.getHeaderNames() ; e.hasMoreElements() ; ) {
      String key = (String) e.nextElement() ;
      String vals = "" ;
      if ( key.equals("content-length") ) {
        contentLength = Integer.parseInt(request.getHeader(key)) ;
        vals = contentLength + "" ;
      } else {
        for ( Enumeration f = request.getHeaders(key) ; f.hasMoreElements() ; ) {
          vals += (String) f.nextElement() ;
          if ( f.hasMoreElements() ) {
            vals += ", " ;
          }
        }
      }
      log.info(key + ": " + vals) ;
    }
    if ( contentLength > 0 ) {
      log.info("Content:\n" + DBUtil.readContent(request.getInputStream(), contentLength)) ;
    }
 
    for ( ; ; ) {
 
      try {
        Thread.sleep(10000) ;
      } catch ( InterruptedException ie ) {
        log.warn("Got interrupted: " + ie.toString()) ;
        break ;
      }
 
      try {
        response.getWriter().print((char) (Math.random() * (Math.random() * 1000L))) ;
        response.flushBuffer() ;
      } catch ( IOException ioe ) {
        log.warn("Remote host gave up: " + ioe.toString()) ;
        break ;
      }
 
    }
 
    log.info("Total elapsed time: " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - start)) ;
 
  }
 
//Clean up resources
  public void destroy ( ) {
  }
 
  private static final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(HoneyPot.class) ;
 
}

It's really just a simple game of chicken. I won't give up until the response gets an IOException of some kind or if the server shuts down. It seems like all I can ever serve up is 2 to 4 characters. But it takes up to 60 seconds. I think more people should do something like this. If we did, there'd be less of this annoying traffic.

The next step in user interfaces should include a clipboard on your person in the form of a ring, watch, bracelet, or whatever. The idea is that you touch a metal plate on one computer that copies information to your personal clipboard. Then, you touch a metal plate on another computer to copy the information back out.

Or, you could shake hands with someone with the same setup, and the information is transferred to them so they can take it to another computer.

The technical challenge will be in transmitting the information quickly. You don't want to have to shake hands for thirty seconds. Depending on who it is, people might start to wonder.

About them Slashdot Trolls,
they don't make no sense!
Goin' on Slashdot,
postin' weird comments.
About them Slashdot Trolls,
are they on a team?
Postin' first is their thing,
what an odd meme?
Look at all them Slashdot Trolls,
what a waste of bits?
Most are modded down it's true,
what a good riddance.
How to be a Slashdot Troll,
don't need a ticket,
think up something really weird,
then anonymously post it.