meta-roj

fresh off the chocolate, i think i stumbled into this bbc story following a link from pseudorandom.

the common thread here is the polyphenyls. live forever with low blood pressure on the chocolate-and-red-wine diet. maybe.

the space telescipe science institute (the people that bring you hubble data) have released a new set of mars images.

hmmm. it didn’t look much like that from my back yard….

the boston globe (among many others – this one is just to sweet for news outlets to pass up) is
reporting that chocolate may help lower blood pressure.

the skeptic in me notes that it’s based on a two-week study of 13 people. but hey, any excuse for some good chocolate. i recommend valrhona.

(ok, that’s a classic british headline)

the australian herald sun is reporting that “Prince Harry could be fitted with a surveillance microchip during his year in Australia.”

now, say what you like about princes playing polo and having bad tempers (that’s in there too), it’s just nice to know that the chipping of humans is starting near the top.

ok, this isn’t so much a business model, but, it’s a good-neighbor thing.

i’ve noticed, and i’m sure many other people have noticed that my servers regularly get scanned for exploitable formmail scripts. now, there’s surely some educational value to all this hacking, but it’s a scripted tool, and it’s just not polite.

so, here’s the proposal, it comes in two parts.

part, the first: someone writes a bit of code to monitor the server logs, and watch for multiple attempts to “find” formmail from the same ip in a short period of time. this is pretty strong evidence of a “formmail scan” – and it has to come from an ip. take that ip, do a quick lookup on it, and there is likely to be a net administrator responsible for this ip. they might have an abuse-complaint address. compose a nice, polite (i can’t stress this enough, polite) message to the designated abuse-handler, and explain (maybe with a little paste from the log), that someone’s attempting to use your server without authorization, and would they please look into the matter. vet this bit of code in public, make sure it’s not overly stringent, and get it installed and running on a LOT of servers. this, of course will start a war with the formmail-exploit scripts as they try to avoid detection. that’s ok. here’s that educational value in the hacking again.

part, the second: the isps that get these complaints would like to handle them as quickly and efficiently as possible. so, install a filter that watches for these “automated abuse complaints” (and make sure they’re easy to identify, like, with a designated subject-leader), and “file them.” if several [hundred, thousand] complaints come in from different servers that are being scanned by this ip, then someone is behaving badly, and you can automatically shut them down for a day… a week.. whatever.

the net effect (heh. love that.) script-kiddie formmail exploit attempts get “voted off” the net until they modify their behavior.

this, of course, is extensible. it needs a schema. it needs more buzzwords. but, i like the idea of distributed behavior modification. what do you think?

i’ve been completely trumped on this one, but it’s such a great business model of the hour, i had to give it a nod:

Degrees of Viral Separation

i should say more, but this is a major, major deal
alone want to speculate if derivative “creative industry” sourced from this huge collection will catch up, economically, to the lockdown in the united states?

update: woah. that entry got chopped up pretty bad. let’s try again.
i should say more, but this is a major, major deal
if all the lawyerly-issues can be resolved (and that alone might squash this whole thing), with global access, video- and audio-editing-capable machines readily available, the hecklebot destroying the carefully crafted marketing of the american film industry (heh), and the riaa suing music customers into settlements, does anyone want to speculate if derivative (even if non-commercial) “creative industry” sourced from this huge collection will catch up, economically, to the lockdown in the united states?

the associated press is reporting (and as of this moment, only non-american news outlets – canada, india, austrlia and the uk- are carrying), a story suggesting that the united states is moving forward with plans to expand detention capacity in guantanamo bay. the story was apparently “broken” by the miami herald on sunday. of course, access to the facility is pretty tightly controlled, so i have to assume most of the data is derived from official sources or leaks.

when “camp five” is ready, we will have the ability to hold 1100 persons indefinitely, outside any system of justice.

also interesting, “The contractor is Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, Texas-based Halliburton. The watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense says the subsidiary received $1.3 billion in government business last year — much of it, like this, without having to enter a bid.”

there are 660 detainees, plus another 68 former detainees (64 released, 4 transferred to saudi arabia). of these 728 detainees, bush has named 6 eligible for trial (that’s military tribunal trial), and none has been charged.

as an american, i will not be silent.

this is wrong

i’m still wading through the ever-expanding pile of reading material, and today i found this, which is ticketmaster’s response to the string cheese incident’s lawsuit.

quick background: string cheese incident is a jam band. and a popular one. with a whole set of businesses wrapped around their music and performances. one of those businesses is a ticket-service business. as you might imagine, bands like to sell tickets, it’s kinda how they do business.

now all this is news, but it’s an old story (pearl jam went one round with ticketmaster in 1994 and lost). so, i’ve been following, but not commenting, until now. it just got interesting (and i’m a couple weeks behind). in an august 11 press release, ticketmaster makes the following statement in response to the sci lawsuit:

SCI’s ticket demands have forced Ticketmaster’s clients to make an unfair choice: either breach their contracts or lose the ability to host the band’s performance. SCI’s unfair leveraging of its popularity to achieve its for-profit ticketing goals is both improper and illegal.

leveraging popularity to achieve for-profit ticketing goals is both improper and illegal? someone remind me: how did ticketmaster get these venues to sign these contracts? i’m sure it had nothing to do with leveraging popularity, because that would be improper and illegal. right?

the tragedy is not the shrill voice of the bad people, it is the silence of the good people.