Ever notice that microscopic dimensions are often given in relation to the width of a single human hair? “That fiber there is less than a third the width of a single human hair.” It must be important to mention a “single” hair. Scientists don’t want us thinking they’re talking about our entire head.

Do you know “off the top of your head” how wide one of your hairs is? Upon hearing something like the above, do you immediately reach up, yank out a hair (sorry my bald friends, you can use armpit hair) and stare at it trying to conceptualize a third of it?

They ought to just state the measurement for all the good it’s doing them to try and create a metaphor for something that thin. And use the metric system. We don’t know what that’s all about, either.

And while I’m on the subject of worn-out metaphors, on the other end of the scale, why is everything compared to the length of a football field? Why not say 100 yards? Not everybody’s a fan of U.S. football. There’s also the economy of words to consider.

People need to use clichès and metaphors selectively, carefully. Sometimes they make more mischief than provide clarity.

KUSI television reporter Rod Luck was arrested in a San Francisco suburb on suspicion of hitting his girlfriend.

The 42-year-old woman said Luck, 58, punched her in the mouth a little before 8 p.m. Friday, according to a statement from the South San Francisco Police Department.

The woman had visible injuries to her mouth and upper lip, police said.

The station had no comment on his arrest.

http://www.10news.com/news/16227288/detail.html

Today was going to be the last day of work prior to a much anticipated (for the last 3 years) week-long vacation. Not a vacation as other’s may enjoy. A week to spend finishing up the move into my bungalow…building a storage shed, moving my stored items into it (those that survived the rains under flimsy tarps), finishing painting the bathroom and kitchen, completing the unpacking of kitchen items, hanging the rest of the paintings currently stacked in the closet…

But the boss is sick. We’re a three-man shop, so having one of the two remaining staff sick may scotch my plans for a week of domestic completion.

I await the word.

Thank goodness the little guy was able to pull it together enough to accomplish his final goal.

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It’s a cool Windows-only (the only negative aspect I’ve encountered) client for my blog tool. Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein

It’s 30–day trialware, but appears to be well worth the $39 registration.

As privacy and data protection commissioners began to express
reservations about the legality of requiring domain name
registrants to disclosure their personal information, CIRA proposed
a new policy in 2004. After two major public consultations,
mounting opposition from law enforcement about its loss of
“unfettered” access to whois data and years of operational delays,
CIRA last week began informing registrants that the new policy will
take effect on June 10, 2008.

Under the new policy, CIRA will continue to collect the same contact
information from registrants as under its current policy. However,
it will no longer require that such information be publicly
available through its whois directory. In its place, CIRA will only
require the public disclosure of limited technical information,
though individual registrants may voluntarily “opt-in” to providing
more personal information.

While the CIRA policy protects the privacy of individual
registrants, corporate or organizational registrants will typically
have their full information publicly disclosed. The policy
recognizes that corporate information does not raise specific
privacy concerns since corporate information does not constitute
personally identifiable information. Moreover, consumers may often
want to access corporate whois information when judging the
reliability of a website.

In order to ensure that domain name registrants can still be
contacted, CIRA has also established a unique message delivery
system. CIRA will allow the public to contact domain name
registrants without access to their personal information by
relaying the message through a Web-based submission form.

The Canadian changes may be long overdue, however, they also
instantly catapult the dot-ca into a global leadership position.
With more than a million Canadian domain name registrations, the
resolution of the whois issue ensures that the Canadian domain name
space is set for continued growth as it now features a “privacy
advantage” over other domains struggling to strike a similar
compromise.

From the Toronto Star

Domain name policy puts us in Internet vanguard
by Michael Geist

Mon 28 Apr 2008
Page: B02
Section: Business

Within the last month I’ve upgraded 13 blogs, two just today. All the upgrades went smoothly because I follow WP’s suggestions and do the following:

1. Backup, content and database
2. Deactivate all plug-ins (don’t remove, just deactivate)
3. Upload all the files in the upgraded version except wp-content.
4. Log into your site, perform the database upgrade (one mouse click) then log in again
5. Reactivate your plug-ins
6. You’re done

Microsoft could stand to learn a thing or two from its competitors.  I just received this…

…this is George from OfficeZilla.com with an update about some new features I have added to your account that you can start using right away!

Feature #1: Name the modules
Some people like Forums some people like Message Boards… I am not going to hold it against you if you wished you could name a module something different! In the past that was impossible but now you can and it is really easy to do. Just login to your account, click on Admin then click on Configuration. On that page you will see a new link called Modules. Click there and you will see all of the modules, the checkboxes to turn them on or off and an empty box next to each where you can put in your own module name.

Feature #2: User Directory
Many companies and organizations want to have a user directory now there is a module just for that purpose called Directory. This lists all of your users so they can be found easily by other users. Users can exclude themselves from the directory by clicking on Options then clicking the checkbox off next to Directory. Directory is not automatically selected to display so be sure to click on Admin > Configuration > Modules to turn it on.

Feature #3: Private Messages
Sometimes an email is too much, private messages allow users to contact each other, you also have a tool in your admin that allows you to send personalized private messages in bulk. To use this you have to turn it on from Admin > Configuration > Modules. For now private messages (if turned on) are sent from the Directory module but sometime in the near future I will expand this to every feature. I am excited about this feature and how it can make your virtual office much more interactive

They’re bleeding money like a Silicon Valley startup, but they can still afford Google ads and free checking.

Bank of America ® - www.BankofAmerica.com - Free Checking Plus Online Bill Pay, Security Protection, ATMs & More.

In the course of re-consolidating my blog content, I’m noticing that a few topics that got imported here really belong on my other main blog. This makes deciding which blog to post a specific article or comment to confusing for me, as the writer, and you as the reader.

So over the next few days I’ll be clearing up the confusion as best I can, moving posts around while attempting to preserve the timeline.

Jeber’s will be, as it was initially intended, primarily a personal blog addressing my life and some of my interests. Since my primary interests are technology, the internet and online communities, Jeber’s will be where I explore tech and social networking. I’ll be importing from my tech-oriented blog all the posts there, then making that URL a pointer to this site. All my posts on social issues will be relocated to the blog I mentioned above.

My hope is that not only will this make it easier for my readers to locate content, but also it will permit me to blog more often with fewer sites to maintain. Currently I’m spread a little thin.

My newsletter will reflect the content and interests of this site.

Comments, suggestions, advice? Please let me know.

The sophisticated mass infection that’s injecting attack code into hundreds of thousands of reputable web pages is growing and even infiltrated the website of the Department of Homeland Security.

While so-called SQL injections are nothing new, this latest attack, which we we reported earlier, is notable for its ability to infect huge numbers of pages using only a single string of text. At time of writing, Google searches here, here and here showed almost 520,000 pages containing the infection string, though the exact number changes almost constantly.

Other hacked sites include those belonging to the United Nations and the UK Civil Service.

The attack causes infected sites to redirect visitors to destinations that attempt to install malware on vulnerable machines. At time of writing, the malicious payloads attacked vulnerabilities that already have been patched. And in any case all three of the redirection sites were down, possibly because they were unable to handle the demand. But should the attackers get their hands on a newer exploit - say, one targeting a zero-day vulnerability in QuickTime - it would be relatively easy for them to swap out the payload.

One reason the infection has spread so widely is the attackers have managed to find a single attack string that seems to work on tens of thousands of different sites. Most web applications are custom -built for a particular site, so attackers likewise have to custom design attack parameters to exploit weakness. Not so here.

“These guys look like they’ve found a methodology to get a successful SQL injection generically across [many] websites,” said Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security, which helps companies secure web applications. “That right there is like a skeleton key.”

While the number of pages that have been infected is high, not all are able to launch an attack once a user visits them, according to Roger Thompson, chief research officer of anti-virus provider AVG.

“Very often they’re on a page but the stuff doesn’t actually fire when you get there,” he said. “This is not a cunning, premeditated task; it’s just a blast. They’re just planting the stuff where they can and the result is a lot of pages [that] don’t do anything.”

But webmasters should not be complacent about removing the injected code from their sites and fixing buggy web apps to make sure more don’t spring up.

“It’s the cleanup effort that’s just going to be monstrous,” said Grossman, who said affected companies will have to either remove each overwritten table record one at a time, or revert to a recent backup. “Either way, it’s going to take forever.”  (Source)

As our dependency on networked computers grows, our need to provide robust safeguards increases as well.  To be less than completely vigilant is to invite disaster.

Last March I received a phone call at work from GoDaddy to notify me that my oldest domain, svarri.com, was up for renewal. This is the only domain I have registered with GoDaddy. All my other domains are registered through 1and1. This incident illustrates just one reason why.

The caller offered me a good deal on an annual renewal, so I agreed to pay $107 for a year’s renewal of the domain and hosting.

On April 12th I received an email.

Per your request, the items listed below have been cancelled
from your account, xxxxxxx:.COM Domain Name Registration - 1 Year: svarri.com

I made no such request. In fact that’s exactly what I paid $107 for in March. I replied informing them that this was obviously in error and asked that the situation be cleared up promptly.

I received no immediate reply and presumed the matter had been resolved and they would be notifying me of that shortly.

The next day I received a reply informing me the domain was now the property of Andrew Browne, a resident of Port Huron, MI. I don’t know Mr. Browne and have no reason to believe he’s anything more than another victim of GoDaddy’s screwup. Now they’ve gotten paid twice for the same domain.

I’ll be calling GoDaddy tomorrow to demand either a return of the domain to its rightful owner, me, or a full and complete refund of my renewal payment. I’d really like to have what I paid for, but on the other hand perhaps a refund would be more acceptable. I have full backups of the database and content of my “former” domain. And once I have my refund, I will no longer have any reason to deal with GoDaddy. No more will I fall victim to their poor record keeping. Never again will I have to suffer from trying to navigate their horrible home page, strewn with more ads than links to useful content, a perfect example of “user unfriendly”. I will never have to wonder if I should recommend them as a web host.

I’ll be posting follow-ups to this.

It’s all good. Wallace, Gromit and Queen. Enjoy.

I’ve been seeing questions raised within the tech crowd regarding the absence of women in high tech.  One such conversation mentioned a tech conference that was scheduled to have 20 some odd speakers, only one of whom was a woman.

I’m not questioning the validity of that observation.  I agree that there are too few women in prominent positions within the community.  That’s not to say there aren’t women in the tech field.  They just aren’t often given as many opportunities as their fellow male counterparts to be highly visible and influential.

But it did get me thinking; is technology neutral on sexuality?  There’s certainly tech gadgets and applications geared toward men, women, children, tweens, just about every demographic one can imagine but one.  Gays.

Why are there no prominent gay voices within the tech field?  Is there any application or program that especially appeals to gays?  I know there are gay themed websites, but where are the gay entrepreneurs, the gay VCs, the proudly gay developers?  Is being gay of no consequence to technology?

I sense an increasing merge between social networking and productivity.

Tools like Zoho Office and Google Docs facilitate creation as well as collaboration. Zigtag and Shyftr add a social element to our bookmarks and RSS feeds.

What was once a solitary endeavor; write a blog post, bookmark a favorite website, eventually became a shared experience (think StumbleUpon) and now has evolved into a fully interactive social activity. Even boring old Micrsoft allows me to write a document in Office Live then collaborate with others on it.

Now it appears the potential downside to social productivity is being discussed on Friendfeed and Twitter, sites that are far more social than productive. Once we share our content does it remain ours or become the property of the web? How can we know when and where comments and feedback are posted? The conversation is at risk of becoming fragmented, spread around to too many places, sites we may not frequent. Do we have any control over what we send out to others? Do the concepts of licensing and intellectual property need to be re-evaluated?

Back in the “old days”, the social web and productivity were isolated. I could type a document in Word or chat on IRC, but the two never crossed paths. These days that boundary has been breached, well before we’ve clearly thought out how we want to engage in the cross-talk.

What are your concerns? Is social productivity a big step forward or a pointless step sideways?

(Click image for larger version)