Cheap thoughts: the Super Bowl revolution

I got to thinking with the protests in Egypt going on for the past two weeks how alive those people must be feeling right now. Millions of people are taking to the street, braving water cannons, rubber bullets, real bullets, whips, and Molotov cocktails – risking their very lives – to demand their freedom. They are standing up to their hated, repressive government and taking charge of their own future.

All this stood in sharp contrast as Americans everywhere spent Sunday evening parked on the couch watching the Super Bowl, during which the television commercials are often the highlight of the night. Hey, sometimes we can’t be bothered to get up to change the channel, much less march for our freedom.

Porno scanner

I made my first trip through the porno scanner at RDU’s Terminal A. Didn’t quite mean to, but I didn’t look up from my rush to get through security to realize in time why the line I chose was so short. Almost all the other travelers were choosing to use the metal detector but I failed to notice until my bags were on their way through the X-ray.

I stood on the mat as instructed as the TSA guy said “and your pockets are completely empty, right?”

“Yes,” I said, absent-mindedly.

“Do you have a belt?”

“Yes, I do.”
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Reluctant (but successful) customer service

I had an amusing interaction yesterday with the guy in the shop of Agri Supply in Garner. Agri Supply is an amazing warehouse-style store, stacked from floor to ceiling with mechanical parts of all types. The guys from Mythbusters would have a field day in this store. I knew it was the place to go when I realized my hand truck tire needed replacing.

After quickly finding the proper replacement tire, I asked the man at the counter if there was any way I could get the store to install it. “Is there any trick to it?” I asked.

Another customer leaned over. “Oh, yeah!” he answered. “It’s a lot more trouble than it seems. You’d be much better off getting the store to install it.”
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AOL Mail is hopelessly FUBAR

You've got stupid!

I swear, the folks running AOL Mail couldn’t find their asses with both hands and a flashlight.

First, they lose their customers’ email in a huge crash, taking until yesterday to restore the email archives of users. Then in the middle of this disaster, they mistakenly flag my mailserver on their spam list. Only one anti-spam list (Barracuda Network’s) out of a dozen showed my server as blacklisted, but that was enough to kick me off of many services, as I said before. Barracuda immediately cleared my server but AOL continued to show it as a spam source. When I learned that a friend’s mailserver had also been mistakenly blacklisted, I grew more concerned.
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Cantiga Pa Pedra

I’m on a Mario Lucio kick now. This is a great album.

CANTIGA PA PEDRA
(Song to a stone)

Lyrics & music Mário Lúcio
© 2009 Africa Nostra (SACEM)

Pedra pedra
De parduero de obelisco de capela de pirâmide
De jade de xadrez de construçon de vulcon
De enxofre de sal de açucar de um pedrada
De Buda de moinho de mula faca e espada
De espuma de mar de algum lugar de lua
Fundamental divina filosofal preciosa
De Pedro de Sisifo de Jesus de Madalena
Esculpido lascado polido rolado
Ngabado sustedo ncunhado perto de ncunhal
Na sapato na bolso na mon
Riba cabeça
De alicerce
De pula e salta de brinca e trinca
De pedra pardo pa arde
parte
Perto prata pedra ingrata
Chã de Pedra
Pedra contra pedra
Que pena Pedra empena cristal de agua
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Free Pool of IPv4 Address Space Depleted

The Internet’s growth reached a major milestone today when its original IP address space, IPv4, assigned the last of its free addresses. That means the Internet’s growth will now depend on the new IP addresses, IPv6.

IPv4 provided for a mere 4 billion (or 4,000,000,000) addresses. The new IPv6 provides for 340 undecillion (or 3,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) addresses. Hopefully that will last us for a while!

The Number Resource Organization NRO announced today that the free pool of available IPv4 addresses is now fully depleted. On Monday, January 31, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority IANA allocated two blocks of IPv4 address space to APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry RIR for the Asia Pacific region, which triggered a global policy to allocate the remaining IANA pool equally between the five RIRs. Today IANA allocated those blocks. This means that there are no longer any IPv4 addresses available for allocation from the IANA to the five RIRs.

via Free Pool of IPv4 Address Space Depleted | The Number Resource Organization.

Statistician finds big flaw in scratch-off lottery tickets

Wired has a fascinating story of a statistician who found a fatal flaw in some scratch-off lottery tickets, allowing him to pick winning tickets 90% of the time.

As he points out, the games offer only the illusion of chance.

Srivastava realized that the same logic could be applied to the lottery. The apparent randomness of the scratch ticket was just a facade, a mathematical lie. And this meant that the lottery system might actually be solvable, just like those mining samples. “At the time, I had no intention of cracking the tickets,” he says. He was just curious about the algorithm that produced the numbers. Walking back from the gas station with the chips and coffee he’d bought with his winnings, he turned the problem over in his mind. By the time he reached the office, he was confident that he knew how the software might work, how it could precisely control the number of winners while still appearing random. “It wasn’t that hard,” Srivastava says. “I do the same kind of math all day long.”

That afternoon, he went back to work. The thrill of winning had worn off; he forgot about his lunchtime adventure. But then, as he walked by the gas station later that evening, something strange happened. “I swear I’m not the kind of guy who hears voices,” Srivastava says. “But that night, as I passed the station, I heard a little voice coming from the back of my head. I’ll never forget what it said: ‘If you do it that way, if you use that algorithm, there will be a flaw. The game will be flawed. You will be able to crack the ticket. You will be able to plunder the lottery.’”

via Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code | Wired Magazine.

Could the Internet be shut down in US?

Wally Bowen of the Mountain Area Internet Network ponders whether the U.S. could be cut off from the Internet the way Egypt was.

After seeing what some anti-spam servers can do, I can say wholeheartedly that it can.

On National Public Radio last Saturday, host Scott Simon opined that a “central shutdown” of the Internet as occurred in Egypt was “unthinkable if not impossible” in the United States given the “thousands of Internet routes and providers” here.

Simon noted that Egypt’s four primary Internet service providers could be shut down “with just a few phone calls.” But the U.S. has only four companies — Comcast, Time-Warner, AT&T and Verizon — controlling most of our broadband access. More than 90 percent of U.S. broadband users have only one or two providers, a cable or telephone company, to choose from.

via Could the Internet be shut down in US? | citizen-times.com | Asheville Citizen-Times.

Smoking Ban Approved for New York Parks

On the heels of Raleigh restricting smoking in its parks, New York City has banned smoking in its parks and beaches. Times Square is even included.

New York now joins Raleigh, Los Angeles, and Chicago in restricting smoking in its parks.

After a bitter debate over individual liberties and the role of government, the City Council on Wednesday handily approved a bill to ban smoking in 1,700 city parks and along 14 miles of city beaches.By a 36-to-12 vote, the Council passed the most significant expansion of antismoking laws since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pushed to prohibit smoking in restaurants and bars in 2002.

By a 36-to-12 vote, the Council passed the most significant expansion of antismoking laws since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pushed to prohibit smoking in restaurants and bars in 2002.

The Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said the ban was an affirmation of the rights of nonsmokers. “Their health and their lives should not be negatively impacted because other people have decided to smoke,” Ms. Quinn said at a news conference.

via Smoking Ban Approved for New York Parks and Beaches – NYTimes.com.