Diary of a Wolfeman

ISPs gang up on spammer-run websites | The Register

Here’s the short version: send out spam with a website link, and the ISP shuts down your website, thus removing the financial incentive to send more spam. Bye-bye, thanks for playing, now kindly piss off. I love it!

The Oregonian has this story about what is being called by some a “back-door draft”. Here’s a snippet:

The soldier’s lawsuit contests an increasingly controversial tool used by the Army to bolster combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. What the military terms “stop loss” orders prevent soldiers from leaving the Army either at the end of their tour or in retirement if their unit is mobilized for Iraq or Afghanistan.

In Oregon and across the country, soldiers who thought they were about to finish their military careers find their tours overseas extended or they are dispatched with units mobilized from the United States.

I don’t know about you, but it sounds like fascism to me. As usual, write your elected officials and let them know how you feel.

I was reading this over at Frizzen Sparks, and one of the comments got me to thinking. The commentor stated that ants, bees and the Borg are socialist, but this is wrong: they are hive minds with the queen as dictator. He wasn’t too far off the mark though, since in ST:TNG, they opennly proclaim that they have no need of money, that each individual’s needs are taken care of, freeing them all to work for the betterment of mankind.

Yup. Socialists.

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I have been doing some more writing lately, one of the reasons I haven’t been blathering on about other things.

I expanded the original story some, and have a cast of characters and their history for the most part pegged. There are also several pages of dialog written to explain that history, but it’s waaaaay to boring to feed you all at once – I need to throw some plot-building scenes in between segments.

You might even get an update soon, if yer lucky.

Well, I talked to the EMC’s husband today, and they are seriously considering moving out of the area soon, due to the rising cost of housing here in the Rose City. I can understand their point of view, but they’re thinking about Spokane, which is a six-hour drive. This means I would AT BEST be seeing my daughter every other weekend, and chances are that wouldn’t work out.

Now, many of you know my history and know how important it is to be a larger part of my daughter’s life than that. So, we’re looking for other options to keep them closer to me, since I’m not leaving Portland. I’ve lived in enough other places to know that PDX has the best combination of climate, opportunity and people. It is just an unfortunate coincidence that right now it has a lousy job market.

Blurgh.

Today happens to be Friday the 13th, what many people refer to as an unlucky day. This has rarely been the case in my family. Today, my son proved that a calmly presented and well-reasoned argument can be used to get your way, even in high school.

So, let’s hear from the rest of you – any odd occurances on a 13th? Good luck, bad luck or just outright weird, let’s hear it.

I was watching Between the Lions with my daughter this morning when they devoted part of the show to the dangers of opening unknown email, virus infections, and how to use antivirus software to cure them. I was very impressed, since my daughter does have access to the computer (even though she is always supervised when online.)

Score one for PBS Kids!

You’re in for it now folks – I got bored the other night and did some writing. Having nothing better to torture you with, I decided to link it here.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I was reading through the latest edition of Linux Format last night, and I ran across a handy little shell script for Linux that works with KDE really well. It’s a one-click dictionary lookup. Heres the code:


#!/bin/bash
NAME=`dcop klipper klipper getClipboardHistoryItem 0`
konqueror http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=$NAME


Save this as ‘dictionary.sh’ someplace in your home directory, make it executalble and create a link on your desktop. Highlight a word somewhere and click the link, and it will open Konqueror up and get the definition for you. The sheer simplicity of this amazes me.

Change the http:// link to thesaurus.reference.com for another good script.

Article: Stealth wallpaper keeps company secrets safe | New Scientist

I’ve always been big on security. For a couple years, I was even seriously considering starting my own business as an electronics surveilance expert. My education in electronics gives me a great understanding of this relatively simple field, and movies like Sneakers just egg me on.

Now a company in England is offering something I’ve thought about before: wallpaper that will block wireless signals in a specific spectrum. The article elaborates:

A type of wallpaper that prevents Wi-Fi signals escaping from a building without blocking mobile phone signals has been developed by a British defence contractor. The technology is designed to stop outsiders gaining access to a secure network by using Wi-Fi networks casually set up by workers at the office.

It is the work of moments for an employee to connect a paperback-sized Wi-Fi base station to a company network. That person can then wander around the office with their laptop while remaining wirelessly connected to the internet.

But it is also the work of moments then for an outsider to breach that company’s computer security using the Wi-Fi connection. Unless the Wi-Fi base station is protected by security measures that most amateur users would not bother to set up, it gives anyone up to 100 metres away the chance to bypass the corporate firewall and wirelessly hack straight into the network.

Until now, the only way to ensure people are not illicitly gaining access to company secrets has been to turn offices into a signal-proof “Faraday cage”, by lining the walls with aluminium foil, and using glass that absorbs radio waves in the windows. This ensures all electromagnetic emissions are absorbed, but it also means that no one can use a cellphone in the building.

The technolgy is simple to design, but slightly harder to manufacture – at least, it was before now. Anyone familiar with Faraday’s work knows that radio signals are waves of energy that travel in a straight line from the antenna. Each frequency has it’s own wavelength, which is described by a physical measurement. This wallpaper is designed with cross-shaped ‘holes’ designed to only allow specific wavelengths through those holes, blocking all others. Since the FCC has regulated what services can use certain wavelengths, it is a simple matter to calculate the size of hole you need to block a certain signal.

It is true that part of the WiFi spectrum is also used in some cordless phones, but this won’t be an issue, since the phone’s base station will be inside the wallpaper ‘cage’. You just won’t be able to take the phone with you when you step outside for a smoke.

At about $900 (500GBP) a square meter, however, I doubt you’ll be seeing this offered at your local home improvement store.