rantlust

Posted by renéejo on December 15th 2006 in Blogs, Internet, Language, Society
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David Pogue writes in the NYT about the lack of courtesy in online forums. Luckily for us at rantlust, we are not big enough for the morons with bad grammar and bad etiquette to comment frequently. The disagreements have been mostly civil and polite even if heated. Some theories that Pogue has about the lack of etiquette (quoting verbatim):

• On the Internet, you’re anonymous. Since you don’t have to face the person you’re dumping on, you don’t see any reason to display courtesy.
• On the Internet, you’re anonymous. You worry that your comments might get lost in the shuffle, so you lay it on thick to enhance your noticeability.
• Young people who spend lots of time online are, in essence, replacing in-person social interactions with these online exchanges. With so much less experience conversing in the real world, they haven’t picked up on the value of treating people civilly. That is, they haven’t yet hit the stage of life when getting things like friends, a spouse and a job depend on what kind of person you are.

Sarcasm in posts/comments are okay but let’s hope that unnecessary personal attacks and hostile comments don’t cloud our enjoyment of this blog.

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Posted by anupcs on November 16th 2006 in Internet, Politics, Technology
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After yet another election having issues with electronic voting, the debate rages on here in the US about what method is best for future elections: going back to chads or voting via the Internet. Estonia is set to become the first country to adopt the latter method for her 2007 parliamentary elections. Wired has an article describing the potential and pitfalls of internet voting. I still think it’s too early to use internet voting but we should not write it off and as the article above states, look at it as an engineering problem to solve. The critics have the following major concerns about such a voting method:

1. General purpose PCs are inherently insecure and vulnerable to viruses and other attacks that could compromise votes without detection.
2. Denial of service attacks could disenfranchise voters.
3. Database hacks could change vote tallies.
4. Putting voting into the home would destroy poll-booth privacy, exposing voters to intimidation and bribery.

The proponents of online voting have come up with some suggestions on how to deal with the problems stated above. Novel ideas abound such as the use of closed set-top boxes (your cable box or Tivo for instance) for the first problem and a longer period for people to vote (with only the last vote counting) for both the second and fourth problems. One thing is for sure, the voter turnout can definitely be improved if we go the online route (the sick, the old, and the couch potatoes will be able to vote).

One thing that struck me in the Wired piece is that during this year’s midterm elections, Missouri and Iowa allowed some military personnel to vote via fax and e-mail!

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Posted by tafkap on October 24th 2006 in Internet, Parenting, USA
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Did you know that the NSA’s website has a section devoted for kids? Lovable characters and their skills include:

• Crypto Cat - Cryptography
• Decipher Dog - Cryptanalysis
• Joules - Engineering
• Slate - Mathematics
• T. Top - Computer Science
• Rosetta Stone - Language Analyst
• Sergeant Sam - General Security Service

Helpful links include - “How can I work for the NSA”? Where were all these career options when I was a kid?

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Posted by papi on October 20th 2006 in Engineering, Humor, Internet, Rants
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Today, while trying to access everyone’s new favorite web site, I discovered that my DSL connection was not living up to its name any more, and staunchly refused to connect me anywhere despite my impassioned pleas. Perhaps the little Gremlin who sits inside the black box and passes around packets had suddenly decided he’d had enough of the industrious lifestyle and gone to smoke pot and hang with the Hippies. In any event, I could not access my email, and I felt lost. I’m afraid I’ve developed an emotional dependency on reading a couple dozen offers every morning to improve my vitality and increase the size and strength of various appendages. They make me feel wanted. Besides, the early morning hello from that friendly Nigerian banker has become almost as important to my sense of well being as the morning cup of coffee, even if he usually tells me another long lost uncle has just died in a horrible car crash. As I said, I felt lost.
(Read more…)

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Posted by anupcs on October 01st 2006 in Internet, Rants, Travel
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We’ve made it to China’s Great Firewall blacklist. When I tried to access the site from Hong Kong (of all places in China) a couple of days ago, I got a dangerous sounding warning saying that the site I am about to access is banned because of “inappropriate” content. Must be the term “rat” in the previous post. Or maybe the site name itself. Access to a billion people lost. Sigh.

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Posted by anupcs on August 31st 2006 in Internet, Technology
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When the increasingly unpopular Mr Cruise eventually comes around to making MI 4, his character is bound to get his next task via a Blackberry. The e-mail would then read:

“Good morning, Mr. Hunt. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves … yadi yada …. This e-mail would self-destruct in five seconds.”

The next version of MS Outlook is supposed to have a feature whereby e-mail you sent to people can be configured to expire after a specified period. (A feature called Information Rights Management is available on Outlook 2003 but it’ll work only if the recipient is also using MS Outlook and is not fool-proof.) The software will also allow you to prevent the e-mail from being printed or forwarded. Today there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about other (currently available) services that provide similar “security” features. One such service is Kablooey Mail. The service is still in Beta but promises a few other features for e-mailing apart from the timed expiration. As e-mail becomes more and more admissible in judicial cases, these features will become more valuable.

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Posted by anupcs on August 21st 2006 in Internet, Technology
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Google, as some of you might be aware, rolled out its free wireless Internet service in Mountain View last week. Armed with my wife’s Macbook and the fabulous CoconutWifi app, I decided to give it a whirl this weekend. The trial was a disappointment though I have to admit that I didn’t try hard enough.

I could “see” the network from my home office but couldn’t connect to it. Google does say that this is primarily an outdoor network and if you want to use it at home, you would need a WiFi modem ($75-$200). From my car, on the street near my apartment, I was able to join the network. After I connected, I brought up Safari and was immediately taken to the WiFi login page. This page downloaded quite fast. The login took a while to process. After that, I was free to browse. The Google main page did appear after about seven seconds or so. Rantlust, unfortunately, did not. Nor did CNN. I gave up after about ten seconds for each. No, I did not drive around and try to access the various places in Mountain View and check the upload and download speeds. Apparently, it’s much better in other places. I’ll post updates if and when I use this service in other places in the neighborhood.

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Posted by renéejo on August 14th 2006 in Internet, Music, Raves
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I had earlier written about last.fm on this blog and have been using it on and off since then to listen to music on the net. The problem with last.fm is that you need to download their software in order to listen. With a new site called Pandora Internet Radio, this is a thing of the past. You can just go to their site and start listening to music in a matter of seconds. You enter an artist or band you like, and the site starts streaming music right through the browser (I didn’t have to install any plugins). There is no software to download, no need for registration (though if you do, you can save your ’stations’). The great thing about this is that you can probably listen to your stations while browsing the web from an Internet cafe as I am doing now (Lisbon). Just like last.fm, this site also allows you to tell it if you like a certain song or not.

They play ads sometimes like regular radio but you can pay them (different subscription levels) if you don’t want that. Pandora allows you to discover new music similar to artists you like and is powered by the Music Genome Project.

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