Category: Random Ramblings

Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.

A comparison of online photo editing sites

If you have tons of photos and are looking for a way to work with them and edit your images, there are a number of good online services. Since the annoyance of uploading images, editing them, and downloading them again is pretty high, TechCrunch takes time to point out some that have sufficient value to justify the extra legwork.

Most of these online services also offer editing tools that go beyond simple rotation, resizing and cropping and start to creep into Photoshop territory. Here’s a few of the better ones, along with our most recent testing notes:

Highlighted are Fauxto, Picnik, Picture2Life, Preloadr (by the way, what the hell is up with the Web 2.0 hang-up on dropping the ‘e’ from site names?), PXN8, and Snipshot.

[tags]TechCrunch’s profile of online photo editing sites[/tags]

Border agents shoot Mexican drug runner, face jail time – but should they?

This news is a few weeks old, but I’ve been so busy with some other projects that I’m behind in a lot of postings that I’d like to get out. As the healine indicates, the basic bit of this story is that two border patrol agents shot Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, a Mexican drug runner, in the back, and are now serving time for violating Davila’s civil rights. There is apparently quite a bit of grassroots support for freeing the agents, typically with some variant of a “They should not be imprisoned for doing their job/defending our borders” as the reason. I will admit that I don’t see why these men should be imprisoned for doing their jobs, but there is a bit of murkiness to the affair that makes it not so clear cut.

Compean and Ramos were found guilty in a jury trial of violating the civil rights of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila when they shot him in Fabens, Texas, about 30 miles east of El Paso, then tampering with evidence by picking up shell casings from the shooting.

The ex-agents say Davila had a gun, and that’s why they fired at him, but a gun was never found.

In exchange for his testimony against the two agents, Davila was granted immunity from prosecution by the U.S. government for attempting to smuggle nearly 750 pounds of marijuana – which had a street value of over $1 million – into the United States on the day he was shot.

. . .

“They also had received arms training the day before; that said, if you have an incident like this, you must preserve the evidence and you must report it promptly. Instead, according to court documents, they went around and picked up the shell casings. Furthermore, they asked one of their colleagues also to help pick up shell casings. They disposed of them.”

Ramos and Compean were convicted on 11 of 12 counts.

“The facts of this case are such that I would invite everybody to take a full look at the documented record,” Snow said. “This is not the case of the United States saying, ‘We are not going to support people who go after drug dealers.’ Of course, we are. We think it’s incumbent to go after drug dealers, and we also think that it’s vitally important to make sure that we provide border security so our people are secure.

“We also believe that the people who are working to secure that border themselves obey the law.”

He added: “I do think that there’s been a characterization that somehow the government is turning a blind eye toward the law in enforcing the law.”

I’m not big on granting Davila immunity from prosecution, but there is the smell of some kind of cover-up by the agents, and thosebehind the investigation and decision to prosecute may have just been looking for a way to get more information on what happened. Picking up shell casings and not reporting the shooting sounds fishy, even if it is totally innocuous. Without a lot more information on what happened, what is known, what was found in the investigation, and so on, this seems too hard to judge by outside observers. Maybe I’m wrong on that, though. Should these men be serving prison time? There has been an appeal to President Bush to pardon the two men. Should that be done?

If you want to find out more to help form an opinion, naturally Google news is a good source. From Google, I found a good source of extra information at NewsMax, as well as some good recent updates from Fox News. The basic information I’m seeing certainly makes the shooting in self-defense claims of the agents believable, but the clean-up and delayed reporting still muddies things up.

[tags]Border agents jailed for shooting drug runner, Should the border patrol agents be released after suspicious shooting?[/tags]

CNN’s 101 dumbest business moments

I love these worst of kinds of lists. Although there are a lot of things that are just the results of plans not going as expected, there are always a few really amazing blunders. So to see what bad business moves have been made by others, check out CNN’s 101 dumbest moments in business (here’s the obligatory shorter link as well).

#9) A computer glitch in the tax rolls of Porter County, Ind., causes the valuation of a house in the city of Valparaiso to shoot up from $122,000 to $400 million – boosting its annual property taxes from $1,500 to $8 million. Though the county’s IT director spots the mistake and alerts the auditor’s office, the wrong number nonetheless ends up being used in budget calculations, resulting in a $900,000 shortfall for the city and a $200,000 gap for its schools.

#11) In August, Starbucks directs baristas in the southeastern United States to e-mail a coupon for a free iced coffee to friends and family members. But e-mail knows no geographic boundaries and, worse, can be printed repeatedly.

After the e-mail spreads to every corner of the country and is reproduced en masse, Starbucks yanks the offer, leading disgruntled customer Kelly Coakley to file a $114 million class-action lawsuit.

#24) In April, just nine months after a Business 2.0 cover story trumpets the wisdom of Raytheon CEO William Swanson and his folksy hit book, Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management, a San Diego engineer makes a shocking discovery: 17 of Swanson’s 33 rules are similar – and in some cases identical – to those in The Unwritten Rules of Engineering, a 1944 text by UCLA professor W.J. King.

While conceding that he failed to give proper credit, Swanson insists he didn’t intend to plagiarize, suggesting that old photocopied material may have wound up in his “scraps.”

By way of punishment, Raytheon’s board freezes Swanson’s salary at its 2005 level of $1.1 million and cuts his restricted stock grant by 20 percent.

And 98 others. Well worth reading at least a few, but I know reading them all can be a bit time consuming. (via Bill at DQ).

[tags]Dumbest moments in business[/tags]

An easy way to steal identities online

Catching up with my online reading a bit tonight, I found a link to a site which will check if your social security number is in their database of known stolen SSNs. I’ll not link to the site directly, because I want to save any of the less intelligent web users who accidentally find me site from doing something not-very-bright (I know both the regular readers of my site are so astonishingly above average intellect that not only would they not fall for this, they can actually read the mind of criminals attempting to steal their SSNs). All you have to do to see if you are in this stolen SSN database is enter your SSN into the handy-dandy search field. This news is a couple of days old already from the DownloadSquad folks, and thankfully there are a number of commenters there who have already pointed out the problem with this service.

So where did they get their data from? Well from the FAQ on their site, here is their response. “The information that powers StolenID Search is found online, by looking in places where fraudsters typically trade or store this kind of information. All information behind StolenID search is publicly available, but not in places where search engines such as Yahoo and Google would look. TrustedID abides by all state and federal laws in the collection and provision of this compromised information. The information behind StolenID Search comes from collection efforts led by TrustedID directly and also from other reputable companies that assist us in finding this information on our behalf. One of those companies is Cyvellience.”

Note that I am not saying StolenID Search is a web site operated by evil ub3r hackers. I am not saying you can’t trust the folks holding this information to protect the information you enter or the information they already have. I’m not even saying you will be exposed to any actual risk of identity theft if you use the site. I’m pointing this site out and warning against using it because giving out this information online just isn’t something you should ever do when you can avoid it. If you ever see something like this, please think carefully about what risk you are taking sending this information to people unknown. The site seems to have the recommendation of some seemingly trustworthy security and privacy resources. The site may be run by the most trustworthy people in the universe, and a chorus of angels may accompany everyone associated with the site to protect them from ever suffering ill. That still doesn’t make me feel I should send them my SSN.

[tags]Brilliant way to steal identities online, How to dupe trusting people[/tags]

A (loooong) analysis of the cost of DRM in Windows Vista

I’ll admit to posting this before I’ve finished reading it, but if I don’t, I’ll have forgotten it all by the time my readers get through it. I am still working through this massive Cost Analysis of Windows Content Protection by Peter Gutmann (and a shorter link for extra goodness). As the title suggests, it is a deep look at the cost of content protection and user rights restrictions in Windows Vista. There is also a response at the end to a rebuttal Microsoft made of the analysis (shorter link for linebreak protection).

Here is the executive summary. If you are going to read this (I will, and I hope others do as well), be prepared to invest some time so you really understand it and the rebuttal.

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.

Do you think rights restrictions are a good idea? Does this analysis change your view of digital rights mangling (DRM) controls?

[tags]A cost analysis of Windows contect protection, Analysis of Vista DRM costs with MS rebuttal and author’s reply to that[/tags]

Looks like people are still falling for the scams

Every once in a while, you’ll hear about someone doing something that YOU know far too much to fall for. This is such a tale. A tale of someone falling for one of the oldest online scams known (and the obligatory shorter link in case the original is broken).

The longtime treasurer of Alcona County in northeast lower Michigan has been removed from his job and charged with nine felonies for allegedly stealing county money to invest in the notorious online Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud Scheme, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced today.

Thomas Katona, 56, was arraigned in Harrisville today after an investigation that began in December when county officials learned he had directed eight unauthorized wire transfers totaling $186,500 to beneficiaries linked to the Nigerian Advance scheme, Cox said in a statement. Investigators also found that Katona had wired $72,500 of his own money to the same accounts.

An audit of county books in December indicates a shortfall of $1.25 million, more than a quarter of the county’s annual $4-million budget, the Cox statement said.

So sorry to hear that. It seems once again the most gullible are penalized heavily for that. On the other hand, if this had been the one time the scam paid out, think what he could have done for the county treasury.

[tags]Another victim of the Nigerian bank scam, The uninformed pay greatly for not knowing[/tags]

John Kerry, revisionist historian

Since I know it seems I only bash on President Bush (OK, I almost exclusively bash President Bush – I think he’s a horrible President), I wanted to be sure to share this wonderful display of, ummm, I don’t know what, by John Kerry that a friend sent me recently.

In a recent talk Kerry gave, he spent time covering a lot of the shortcomings we Americans suffer from in regards to our possibly failing to engage in sufficient diplomatic talks with Iran prior to Iran’s current president getting elected. With all the things we’ve done wrong, Kerry makes sure to point out:

“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

But there is a little, teensy weensy problem with griping about President Bush bailing on the Kyoto treaty:

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification. . . .

Yeah, you read that right. Clinton was the one who walked away from the Kyoto treaty (based in part on a resolution which Kerry voted for). President Bush just never went back to it, what with the lack of timetables and targets for waste producers like China. And I agree with President Bush. Signing the Kyoto treaty as it was presented penalizes us while leaving other large pollutors off the hook.

And one other thing in the linked post I have to agree with:

Why should we believe anything that comes out of this guy’s mouth? It’s bad enough that he’s sitting next to one of America’s enemies bad mouthing his own country, but he’s flat-out lying in what he’s saying as well.

So yes, why listen to him? If you want to see me bashing more politicians besides President Bush, Mr. Kerry is a good target to direct me toward. And my dislike of him grows often.

[tags]John Kerry creates fictional American history, Kerry lies and tells the bad guys (um – Iran) what bad guys we are[/tags]

Bill stops game and geek talk, tells us about the housing market

You know I like Bill. I put more value in his views and reviews of games and the gaming industry than any of the supposed major gaming sites. He doesn’t say a lot, really, but what he says is usually dead on. So when he skipped the gaming talk one day last week and decided to talk work, numbers, and the housing market, I figured it was worth the 5 minutes it would take to read. Turns out that was well spent time, in my not so humble opinion.

Probably the most-disputed segment of the economy right now is housing. There was a massive housing boom in this country that lasted for years. It created so much additional liquidity in the economy, both from people selling their homes for a profit or taking out home equity loans, that it took on a life of its own. And like most booms, toward the end it was being sustained by all kinds of dubious tactics–most notably, the gigantic increase in sub-prime and “alternative” loans.

. . .

So as the housing market slows, people are still in severe denial that any of this is really a problem, and they’re desperately wanting to claim that the bottom has already been reached (short version: it hasn’t). Here’s what came out this morning:

Sales of existing homes fell in December, closing out a year in which demand for homes slumped by the largest amount in 17 years… For the year, sales fell by 8.4 percent, the biggest annual decline since 1989…

There has been data coming out in this vein for almost a year now, and every time it does, realtors immediately claim that the market has bottomed. I read some of the most bizarre, amazing explanations from the realty industry. Here’s today’s gem from the realtor’s “chief economist”:

David Lereah, chief economist for the Realtors, said that even with the December setback, he still believes that sales of existing homes have hit bottom and will start to gradually improve.

And I’ll leave it to either of my readers to go read the rest. I’m also sending this to my brother. He’s been talking about buying a house for a couple of years now, but has held off because he’s not sure the market will keep improving. Now it looks like he may have been right.

So, does that make any of you reconsider your near future housing plans?

[tags]Bill talks on housing, The improbable numbers the realty experts share[/tags]

Netflix working to changehow you watch movies. Again.

The New York Times recently ran a post about how Netflix is again changing the way we watch movies (also here is a shorter link in a). After changing movie rentals via DVDs by mail, Netflix is taking on video downloads via streaming which monitors time watched rather than time since downloads. It’s really clever, and it should have been obvious, but this beats the streaming video options from all the other providers I have seen.

Already, you can buy movies from iTunes, for example, but the selection is tiny (250 movies), and you pay about as much as you would for a DVD. CinemaNow and MovieLink offer online movie “rentals” for about $4. But again, the selection is fairly small, at least once you subtract the mind-boggling gigabytes of B movies – more like C or D movies – like “Addicted to Murder III: Bloodlust” and “Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood.” The copy protection is a bit overbearing, too. You can download a movie, all right, but it self-destructs 24 hours later.

All of these services permit you to start watching a movie after only a minute or so, before it’s been fully downloaded – but you can’t fast forward (or, in some cases, even rewind) until you’ve got the whole thing on your hard drive.

Continue reading “Netflix working to changehow you watch movies. Again.”

Chris Pirillo has a different view of the iPhone than I do

It would appear that Chris (and his brother) don’t share my pessimism on the prospects for Apple’s success with the iPhone. In responding to what his brother said about the iPhone, Chris writes:

My brother Adam isn’t a geek – and he’s never written to me about any other device (from Apple or any other manufacturer). It’s not even out yet and I already hate the iPhone… largely because someone else didn’t make it four years ago. Seriously. Apple gets the consumer in ways that no other company ever will. It makes my new Smartphone seem so… ancient.

I still don’t see why a business would spend that kind of money on employees for an admittedly cool smartphone with iPod functionality, and it is a phone priced completely out of reach of the folks I typically know. So either I miss the business reason for the iPhone getting into company hands, or I don’t know the right “typical” consumer who would be buying this thing. Priced lower, I can see it taking off. I just don’t see it bringing enough to the game to justify the planned price (and lock-in to a single provider to even use the phone). So tell me what I’m missing here, folks? Would you buy an iPhone and agree to a service commitment with Cingular? Will businesses buy these for their travelling employees? Is this going to succeed on merit, or one-upmanship, something else, or just not meet the market penetration Steve Jobs is calling for?

[tags]Chris Pirillo speaks of the iPhone, Another view of the iPhone’s future[/tags]

Try City of Heroes/City of Villains free -for 14 days

Occasionally, I write about things in CoH/Cov, because this is easily my favorite game on the market now. If you haven’t tried the game and want to see if it is something you would enjoy, read this post at the Co* forums about FileFront’s 14-day free trial. As an added note, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this week-end (January 26th through 28th) are double XP weekend, so any character you play this week-end will advance more quickly than normal, which will give you a chance to taste a bit more of the character’s abilities more quickly than normal.

[tags]Free CoH/CoV 14-day trial, Try City of Heroes/City of Villains for free[/tags]