Entries in "June, 2007"

Paris Hilton - World Class Idiot

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 10:52 AM

Anyone else catch her Larry King Live interview? Neither did I. I just caught the snippets being passed around the web. Really, all I can say is.. Wow. Really though, need I say more?

The best was when Larry asked if she read the bible in jail. She said she read it daily. The following ensued:

Larry: What is your favorite verse?
Paris: Umm ... *sigh* ... hrmm ... Well ... I don't have a favorite.

Classic!

Technorati Tags: idiot, larry king, paris hilton

 

Facebook Privacy and Policies

Friday, June 22, 2007 - 9:29 AM

Like a whole lot of other people, I have a Facebook account. I don't use it very often, but it is a nice site and I prefer it over MySpace any day of the week. I ran across this video that was posted on GNUCitizen blog this morning. It claims that Facebook has ties to the CIA, DoD and the IAO. It asks the question:

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

GNUCitizen posting is here

Technorati Tags: business, facebook, privacy, cia

 

MacBook Woes

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 - 7:46 PM

After years of defending Apple products, my 6 month old MacBook has decided to take a dump on me. Take that last part any way you please... Anything for humor. Anyways, the battery would no longer charge. The status light on the magna plug no longer gave any indication either. No more amber or green colors for me to let me know what the hell was going on! I tried resetting the "PMU" as well as some other tricks, but nothing worked.

In the end, the Genius at the Genius Bar took a shot and got no further than I did. Locked up the MacBook on a 3-5 day sentence. Hopefully when I get it back I can continue to boast about the quality of Apple gear. Honestly, it would take a lot to get me to give up OS X and go back to a FreeBSD workstation.

Technorati Tags: apple, macbook, os x, genius bar

 

Texas Hold'Em - Bad Beats

Friday, June 15, 2007 - 11:45 AM

You can see in the blurb to the right, that I am a horrible poker player. Thing is, I don't know if I am THAT bad of a player, or if I make smart plays at the wrong times. I prefer to think that I am just cursed with bad luck at the table. I feel I have a good understanding of the game and the strategies used by most players. I have played for nearly 5 years and have read a few books, including Super System, Super System II and Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players. Still, I find myself in bad spots or making bad plays constantly.

I admit, there are times when I try to trap an opponent too often. This usually ends with him/her catching up and beating me. I can't seem to remember the "little pot" philosophy. Take lots of little pots, or one big pot every hour. Also, I will take a huge bad beat and play too aggressive to try and recover the money I just lost. In other words, I go on tilt. I was playing in the $1/$2 No Limit game (high roller over here) at the Hawaiian Gardens Casino last night and had 3 brutal bad beats. For your reading pleasure:

1. - I was dealt A-J off suit in the big blind. A pretty tight player raised it to $12 and everyone folded to me. I didn't like my position, but put him on a middle pair 7-9's (6x the big blind is a large raise which usually means he doesn't want any callers). I call. Flop comes J-10-J. I check so I can trap him, and he bets out $6. Very small bet considering he raised to $12 pre-flop. I raise to $18 and he thinks for a good minute and finally calls. This SHOULD have sent a red alert in my mind but I still felt I had the best hand. Turn is a blank, 4d, so I push my remaining $32 in the pot and he quickly calls. He had pocket 10's and flopped a boat. I guess this isn't so much a bad beat, as he just out played me. Figure it belongs here anyways =)

2. - I bought back in the game and slowly started building my stack to a breaking even point. I'm about $15 away from being even when I am dealt A-Q off suit on the button. I raise to $8 and get one caller from the person who was under the gun. Flop comes 2-Q-5. Awesome flop. He bets $20, which is basically the pot size. I raised to $60 hoping to end it right there. He goes all in and he has about $75 in front of him, so its only another $15 for me to call, which I did. Turn comes Q and he gets all excited and shows his cards, Q-6 off suit. Out of position, he called my pre-flop raise with Q-6 off suit! I turn over A-Q and he lets out a "Awww!!" Next card? Of course, a 6. He made a boat on the river. Lady luck, why do you hate me?

3. - Now I am left with about $25 left. I am dealt Q-Q on the next hand. Guy directly to my right raises to $10. I push all in and only he calls. Of course, he has A-A. To make it worse, the guy across from me says "Ohh, I threw away A-Q" which realistically leaves me with 1 out. Now, I catch a huge break on the flop. It comes as 6-K-Q! Woah, the case queen! I couldn't believe it. The guy with the rockets says "Hey, you deserve it after your beats tonight!" and I couldn't agree more. Turn is a 2, so there is only 1 card left in the deck that can beat me and that is the case Ace. River? Ace of fucking spades!! Hah, I can laugh about it now, but I promptly shook the guys hand and wished everyone luck and left. Needless to say, I was fuming!

How many times must I say "I will never play poker again!"? My wife thinks I have a problem, but the tables always call me back. Damn that poker muse and her voluptuous body that keeps me coming back for more abuse. So, I'll probably stroll into the HG or Commerce tonight. See ya there!

Technorati Tags: bad beat, casino, gambling, hold em, poker

 

Black Hat Hackers Own Us!

Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - 5:16 PM

The Register has an interesting article about black hat hackers. It contains a list of 10 reasons why the black hats have us "outgunned" Snippet:

1. The Black Hats form a well integrated community that shares knowledge effectively.

Should you, after months of research and effort, create an exploit that allows you to hack Windows or any other frequently used software product, you can auction the exploit on the internet in a well organised manner. Yes, the hackers have their own auction sites (it's true). And if you're looking to write a virus, say, well, there are hundreds of sites out there that can provide you with source code to help you construct something really fiendish. Different modules for setting up a mail server or planting a specific Trojan or whatever. Open source is all the rage, even among hacker

5. There's a market for your data

"OK, I go out onto the net and try an exploit here or there and I hit pay dirt - a whole file of thousands of credit card details. What do I do now?" My advice to you dear boy, is forget about trying to buy stuff on eBay or Amazon with all that stolen data. Simply sell the data and leave it to someone else to do all the dirty work. How much to sell for? Well it depends, but you should be able to get $30 per credit card as an absolute minimum and if you've got really lucky and managed to get the PIN number of the card (a difficult data item to get your hands on) then it should be close to $500 per card. Yes, there are markets out in cyberspace where you can sell data - not just credit card data, but Social Security Card data (for US citizens), birth certificate data, billing data, and driving license data (all of which can be used to set up bogus bank accounts).

6. There are botnets to rent

Don't tell me, let me guess. You've got a great scheme in mind to flood the world with a particular kind of spam and it's bound to pay off. But you just don't have the computer power you need. Let me introduce you to an Asian friend of mind who's been established in the Black Hat trade for a year or two. He repeatedly floods the internet with Trojan viruses to continuously assemble and grow a botnet. He has to keep on doing it because every now and then PCs get cleaned and fall out of the net and anyway the bigger the botnet the more the commercial opportunity. My friend will rent you a portion of his botnet for 20 cents per PC per day (roughly current rates) and he'll throw in a whole database of email addresses too. He thinks of himself as an Internet Service Provider.

10. Not all businessmen are entirely averse to the odd hack (on a competitor)

As you seem determined to embark on a life of cybercrime I have one last piece of advice for you. Don't ignore the business world as a lucrative source of income. I know what you're thinking. Those guys are my prey. Well it's true that some of them are, but some of them could become your customers - if you make the right contacts and do the right kind of marketing. I mean, which businessman could fail to be pleased when his major competitor suffers a big data hack or loses a few days web business because of a DOS attack. Which businessman doesn't think, "hey what if I arranged for something like that to happen?" And which businessman having formulated a good competitive tactic doesn't put it into practice. There's good money to be made in focused hacks, theft of intellectual property, denial of service and large scale data theft. You might even get paid twice - by the customer and the victim.

Apparently, it's the end of the world as we know it. The sky is falling... No really!

Seriously, identify theft has become such a major threat to the average consumer. Dealing with it can take years to straighten out and your credit may never be the same. E-Tailers need to take more precautions when dealing with customer data. I have worked at companies that retain quite a bit of user information and while their practices were decent, most needed to do more. I pointed it out, and usually action was taken... But not always!

Tsk Tsk.

Technorati Tags: black hat, e-commerce, hackers, security, software

 

Sopranos - Jip or Genius?

Monday, June 11, 2007 - 10:56 AM

I am not quite sure how to feel about the series finale episode last night. I absolutely feel ripped off, in the sense that I just want to KNOW the outcome! Then again, I feel it was the best ending because it really lets us use our imaginations. There were so many clues put in this episode leading to the demise of Tony Soprano in one way or another. I have a big interest in organized crime in America, and there were many lines, or details, in this episode that actually happened in real life mafia situations.

This is what I picked up on. Some of it may be me reading to much into the situation, but I felt it relevant.

1. Black

The show ends with a black screen and credits without any music. This is the first time no music has been played on a show famous for the music selection played during the credits.

A few episodes back there was a scene where Tony & Bobby were in a row boat together. They were chatting it up and the subject of being "hit" came up. "You probably don't even see it coming" (para phrasing here) was used. Tony even said something about "Just goes black".

When Meadow was coming into the restaurant, there were 2 black guys who came in before her. Tony & Christopher tried to use 2 black guys to kill Carmine back when Johnny Sack was trying a take over. Only to back out on the hit, double cross the black guys (kill them) and piss off Johnny Sack.

Remember the attempt by Junior and Livia to kill Tony? They used 2 black guys for the failed attempt.

2. Restaurant

A popular place for mob hits, in both movies and real life, have been restaurants. Of course, the Michael Corleone scene where he shoots Sirlotzo (spelling?) and McClusky the dirty cop. Then there are the real life mob hits. John Gotti had "Big" Paul Castellano killed in front of Sparks Steakhouse on a very crowded Manhattan street. Carmine Galante was also shot gunned to death while dining at an Italian restaurant.

Now what about the guy who walked in right before AJ? He was at the bar and repeatedly looked towards Tony. Then he goes into the restroom? Sound familiar? Very similar to the scene in the Godfather (referenced above). Also, in the episode credits, that man was listed as NICK LEOTARDO? Phil's brother/cousin/son possibly?

3. FBI

When told about Phil Leotardo being executed, FBI Agent Harris said "We're gonna win this thing!" and slapped his hand on the desk. Remember that agent Harris had given Tony information about where he could find Phil Leotardo! In effect, he was an accomplice to the murder. Why is this important? Because real life agent R. Lindley DeVecchio had said the exact same words "We're gonna win this thing!" (with the slap on the desk) when told by a colleague about a mob hit. DeVicchio passed on information on the whereabouts of the victim of that hit. He had given information to "top echelon" informant Gregory Scarpa. Scarpa also happened to be a psycho and mass murderer for the Columbo crime family. Greg eventually died of AIDS and DeVicchio is currently under indictment for wrong doing during the Columbo family war of the early 90's. He is said to have assisted in multiple murders, commited by Greg Scarpa.

4. Snitch

So it was confirmed that Carlo flipped and will be testifying against Tony. Being that Carlo was a top guy, he most likely would be able to put Tony away. A RICO conviction would probably mean 20+ years for someone like Tony. Basically a death sentence in my eyes. Even though Tony is a younger guy (mid 40's) he is obviously very unhealthy and I would assume he would die in prison.

5. STOP

While Tony was at the restaurant waiting for his family to show up he played "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. As the music played his family showed up one at a time. In the last split second of the episode, tony looks up and the screen goes black. I don't know why this stuck with me but the last word played of the song before going black was "stop". Stuck with me from the look on Tony's face. This is one of those "reading to much into it" moments, but I just feel like it had some importance.

I'm sure i'll come up with some more ideas once I watch the episode again. So is the final episode a jip or genius? A little from column A, little from column B.

Technorati Tags: finale, hbo, sopranos

 

Asking A Silly Question

Thursday, June 7, 2007 - 2:13 PM

OK, I know I have a warped sense of humor, but come on! Even YOU find this funny...

From Craigslist:

I have 2 dogs & I was buying a large bag of Pal at Big W and standing inline at the check out.

A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Pal Diet again although I probably shouldn't because I'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IV's in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Pal nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her.

Horrified, she asked if I'd ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned. I told her no; it was because I'd been sitting in the street licking my balls and a car hit me.

I thought one guy was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard as he staggered out the door.

Stupid b*tch...why else would I buy dog food??

Technorati Tags: funny, joke, life, story

 

Django, metaWeblog and Amazon S3

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - 11:11 AM

This is a quick write up about adding support for Amazon S3 to your Django weblog. I added support for metaWeblog API by using the this write up from All Your Pixel. Most, if not all, blogging clients support the metaWeblog API so I think it was a good choice.

Why use Amazon S3?

• It's super cheap (probably cost you less than $1/mo)


• Performance is improved by moving static media away from your Django/Apache instance.


• Amazon worries about managing and scaling the storage back end.

First off, let's edit the settings.py that is in your Django project's directory. We will want to add your Amazon access information. Note: You can get your access information by signing up for S3 at the Amazon site. Add the following to your settings.py file:

AWS_ACCESS_KEY = 'Your Key'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'Your Secret Key'
BUCKET_NAME = 'Your Bucket Name'
AWS_S3_URL = 'http://s3.amazonaws.com'

So, I am going to assume you are using the xmlrpc.py and metaweblog.py that was provided in the All Your Pixel posting (linked above). Be sure you are importing the Django project settings file by using:

from django.conf import settings

This will also require the Python S3 module that is provided by Amazon. Get this file and add it to your project, or your Python path. Import that module, and the mimetypes module which is used to guess the type of the file being uploaded.

from yourproject import S3
import mimetypes

Now we will create, or edit, the metaWeblog_newMediaObject method. This is what is called when your blogging client attaches, or uploads, a media file to your blog post.

def metaWeblog_newMediaObject(user, blogid, struct):
  ret = {}
  fext = os.path.splitext(struct['name'])[1].lower()
  fname = generate_fname() + fext
  try:
    conn = S3.AWSAuthConnection(settings.AWS_ACCESS_KEY, 
                                settings.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY)
    buckets = conn.list_all_my_buckets()
    if not settings.BUCKET_NAME in [b.name for b in buckets.entries]:
      # BUCKET_NAME doesn't exist, create it!
      res = conn.create_bucket(settings.BUCKET_NAME)
      if res.http_response.status != 200:
        raise
      filename = 'uploads/' + fname
      res = conn.get(settings.BUCKET_NAME, filename)
      while res.http_response.status == 200:
        # File exists, generate new filename
        fname = generate_fname() + fext
        filename = 'uploads/' + fname
        res = conn.get(settings.BUCKET_NAME, filename)
      content_type = mimetypes.guess_type(filename)[0]
      if not content_type:
        content_type = 'text/plain'
      res = conn.put(settings.BUCKET_NAME,
                     filename,
                     S3.S3Object(struct['bits'].__str__()),
                     {'x-amz-acl': 'public-read',
                      'Content-Type': content_type}
      )
      if res.http_response.status == 200:
        ret['url'] = '%s/%s/%s' % (settings.AWS_S3_URL,
                                   settings.BUCKET_NAME,
                                   filename)
    except:
      pass
    return ret

I should mention that the method generate_fname(), which is used above, is just a function to generate a MD5 hash which will be used as a file name of the new file being added. It is not required, but you may want to use something similar. A quick run down of what this code does:

1 - Generates a file name to use.
2 - Creates an S3 instance.
3 - Gets a list of all your S3 buckets.
4 - Checks to see that the bucket you want to use exists. If not, it creates it.
5 - Checks to see if the file already exists. If so, it generates a new file name.
6 - Guesses the file type.
7 - Uploads the file to S3.
8 - Returns the file URL to your blogging client.

That's it! There are a few other articles written about this. Check them out as well!

Technorati Tags: amazon s3, blog, development, django, geek, python

 

The iPhones Are Coming!

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - 8:50 AM

Since the announcement of the Apple iPhone, the tech community has been a buzz with chatter. I saw one of the TV Ads the other day and got a little excited (read into that what you will). The phones are set to be available on June 29th, a mere 24 days away! I have to think that this will change the mobile phone business in some form. Probably not in the way that the iPod effected the music business, but I am sure it will change for the better.

There are drawbacks however. Mainly that the phone will be limited to use with the AT&T wireless service. A lot of people currently tied to contracts with other services will be wondering if it's worth it. Is it worth the cost of the current termination penalty? I think I pay $150 with T-Mobile, PER LINE (I have 3 lines!) Maybe I can finagle the deal to leave my wife & daughter on T-Mobile while I head over to iPhone bliss? Even if that's possible, the low end model of the iPhone is $499. That's a lot of green backs! Plus general service costs, etc. I can be looking at nearly $1000 to make the move.

Let's see... Overhaul my motorcycle... Or new iPhone??? Which one will turn more heads? Probably the iPhone.

When they do come out, I will probably sit and wait a few months so that any glitches, and there will be glitches, can hopefully get worked out. If you are one of the wild ones, and feel like sharing, please let me know how you like the phone. I am very interested to see how this one turns out!

Technorati Tags: cell phone, geek, iphone, ipod, apple, t-mobile

 

500 Internal Server Errors

Saturday, June 2, 2007 - 7:09 PM

Woooooops =) In my haste last night, I accidently added a change that wasn't completed yet, and it effected individual post views. The result was an Internal Server Error, it was related to the comment form. Sorry about that, and thanks for the emails letting me know there was an issue.

Just need to remember to test as much as possible before taking newer code live. I mean it really isn't that big of a deal as this is just a personal site, but still the habit should be in place.

Technorati Tags: blog, development, geek, oops

 

Boom! More Software Updates

Friday, June 1, 2007 - 6:22 PM

Just a quick post to update the status of the CMS software that is running this site now. I have added a few new features to it.

Tagging - I wrote some quick stuff to parse the Technorati tags from each post, and tag the actual entry on the back end as well. I used a simple method, just 2 models named Tag and Tagmap. Tag is the tag name itself and Tagmap is a map that puts the actual database blog entry to the Tag and vise versa. Pretty simple really, but I will write up a blog post about it when I have the time. FYI: There is also an awesome app called Django-Tagging that would probably be best for most situations.

Amazon S3 - I added support for the Amazon S3 service via the metaWeblog API code. When my blogging client uploads an attachment, the blog software itself will take the data and store it on the Amazon S3 servers. This has the advantage of keeping static media off the Django server. Plus, it's super cheap storage! I plan on writing up a post for this as well very soon.

[Update] Oops. You can view the tag cloud here.

Technorati Tags: blog, development, django, geek, python