Two Slashes

I don’t know when, exactly, but a thought came to me at some point this weekend, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.

I find it highly unlikely that anyone has noticed (or, if they have, they haven’t bothered to say anything) that the software on my projects page hasn’t been touched in at least a year, in some cases quite a bit longer than that.

Considering my interests as a computer scientist, I guess I find it kind of funny that I could let such a thing happen.  I must admit that I myself am using some of the current “active” projects less and less.  Since I started using the Windows 7 beta (and now the release candidate), I have little use for SkipTo as I can simply press the Windows key, type a few characters, and away I go with the same application I would have launched with my own tool.  (Admittedly, I could have done this in Vista, too, but I won’t bother beating a dead horse, especially one I refuse to ride.)

Alright, maybe I caused this particular bug. I guarantee that you don't know what the solution was, though.

At heart, my best guess is that this is something of a motivation issue.  After hammering away at code for hours on end at my summer job, and after all of the work I’ve put in over the previous school year, it’s been a little hard as of late for me to come home, sit down, and find the desire to stare at monospaced fonts and locate misplaced semicolons for a few hours in hopes of doing anything productive.

I’ve also noticed that whatever efforts I’ve put into any form of development (outside of work) as of late have been for personal use with no intent of making them public, or helping other people with their own unique problems.  I’ve hacked together a tool to help me rename and reorganize my MP3 library, butchered the Last.fm plugin I use for WordPress into something that displays my application-usage statistics from Wakoopa, and made minor tweaks to various tools to enhance my own productivity.  I’ve modified WordPress themes, helped design a new one from scratch, and experimented lightly with Blogger (for 20SB, of course, as I have no intention of leaving WordPress anytime soon).  This lack of sharing and public utility isn’t something I’m completely proud of, and I hope to rectify it at some point, but (as any regular well knows) I have an odd habit of promising things here and then not delivering, so a promise this is not.

The best way I see to motivate myself at this point is to scrap the “crap” I’ve got sitting in my projects page (honestly, Visual Basic 6 is dying, anyway), and start working on a few fresh projects.  What I need, however, are the ideas for the replacement projects, things people like you might actually have a use for or that might be useful as a proof-of-concept.  I’ve picked up a few decent suggestions over the past few days from a handful of people, but I’d be more interested in working on things that more than one or two people would ever find useful.

If you have a suggestion, leave a comment.  In the meantime, I’ll be staring at that blinking line trying to decide what I’ll be making it run away from.

Caution:  This post includes gratuitous amounts of speculation about web services and the Internet in general.  If you prefer to deal in the world of concretes, I suggest you read yesterday’s newspaper instead.  Or send me a cement mixer.

Almost a year ago, we had Cuil.  Claiming to be an instant success over Google, and even grabbing up some of the behemoth’s staff, Cuil ultimately did exactly what most people expected to happen:  it flopped.  Earlier this year, Wolfram released Alpha and came to the realization that, while people are looking for the facts, their approach isn’t one that applies universally.  And at the beginning of June, Microsoft decided that they wanted to “Bing it on” and found that renaming your search engine might earn them a place above Yahoo!, but it doesn’t really get anywhere near the top, especially when marketed as a “decision engine.”  And now, I think someone’s going to try again.

To be honest, none of the major tech outlets have anything to say about them (yet), and the only reason I know of their plan is through their increasingly-common spidering of this blog.  Bear with me a moment, because I’m sure you’re just as confused as I was.

A quick glance at Apnoti’s home page doesn’t tell you much about their intentions.  In fact, all you really find out is that they seem to have been playing a variation of the product search game for more than a year, and they’ve differentiated themselves by offering the ability to watch prices on Amazon for the things you want.  To the best of my knowledge and examination, there’s no explanation for or mention of any other projects they’re working on available for consumption.

Beneath the shopping lies hopes and dreams of being something more, though.  The page hosted on the subdomain that keeps showing up in my statistics (smart.apnoti.com) is simple enough, bearing only a countdown to August and the suggestion that real-time search is coming.  But what’s left to search in real time?  My guess:  blogs and other sites refreshed with new content at semi-regular rates.  Think about it.  Google Blog Search might exist, but it’s far from showing you what’s happening in real time (unless you enjoy hitting refresh repeatedly, that is), and scraping Twitter only gets you so far, especially when there are already so many variants.

If what I envision is true, imagine being able to type in a recent event, like Michael Jackson’s death, and watch as the blogosphere fills up with reports and commentaries about the event.  Not trivial-length blurbs and “I can’t believe this happened!”-type posts, but posts of a reasonable length and with some backing to them.  It’s a niche that I have yet to see filled, and I think it has the potential to be a great service, provided the sites they index maintain some level of credibility.  (If you need a description, imagine something along the lines of Twitter Search, Facebook’s timeline, or Profilactic as your search results page, sorted with the newest posts first, and the ability to click a link and have any new results that have shown up populate into your present view.

Whether there’s a market for this sort of thing is another question altogether.  There’s no doubt that everyone and everything is moving toward real-time information sharing, so it makes sense to me that this is a logical step along that route.  On the other hand, such a move is a costly risk; one false move, one mistake, and all that hard work becomes a black hole for money.  There’s also the massive resource requirement to consider, as it’s no easy task to index the countless blogs available online and come away with even a decent index of all the content they offer.  Add to that the load required to keep their results fresh and relevant, and the requirement shoots up even further.

Of course, I’ve proven that I have a mediocre track record when it comes to predictions, so I might just be further cementing myself as a crackpot when Apnoti decides to open up the site as some sort of gadget guide.  However, even if I’m far off, I would still like to see this idea.  One day.

This post is partially because feel this weekend deserves an excellent recap, partially because I want to acknowledge some of my newfound friends, and partially because I don’t want to make the same mistake I made by not posting about the tweetup I attended a few months ago hosted by Tricon.

A brief explanation of the occasion is probably in order first, I suppose. For those of you who were not in the loop, the 20 Something Bloggers decided that this weekend would be a great time for (the first) summer meetup, a way to meet the people behind some of the blogs and forum postings keeping the community alive, and, as a central location for a good number of the group (as well as being an event-filled and tourist-friendly location for those who would be traveling), it would be held in Chicago.

Thursday
Of course, no trip to a blogger meetup in Chicago would be complete without Rachelskirts or her friend Sean, so we jumped on an inbound train and found ourselves in the Windy City one long (though fun-filled) train ride later, just in time for the “official” pizza dinner.

After some wackiness with the Giordano’s we originally had planned to eat at, we ended up spending quite a bit of time waiting outside Pizzeria Due (an extension of Uno’s ), chatting, deciding that street sweepers were worthy of grand theft auto, and generally enjoying each other’s company before heading in to discover that Dell Mini 9s (like mine) make excellent cell phone chargers in a pinch, realize that some people easily confuse Dr. Dre with Dr. Who (*ahem*), and determine that I’ve helped enough people out to earn the rank of “The #$&#ing Man.”

Friday
Long train rides aren’t necessarily entertaining or comfortable when riding solo, so I skipped the events on Friday (in the physical sense), instead opting to poke and prod at everyone on Twitter.  (In retrospect, being underage and spending the evening at a bar probably wouldn’t have been the most pleasurable of times, anyway.)

"You're doing it wrong!"

Saturday
Saturday was supposed to be the official 20SB wine tasting, but Rachelskirts, LovelyAnomaly, and I decided that we didn’t want to participate. (Well, that wasn’t much of a choice for me, but I wouldn’t have gone anyway.) Instead, the three of us took a hike (a painfully-crowded bus, actually) north to visit a nature museum, decide that the age limitations on children’s play areas don’t apply to us, (in Rachel’s words) “hack” the exhibit kiosks (because visiting about:blank is akin to hacking, apparently), and (with many thanks to the Subway that thoughtfully had its operating license suspended the day before) discover what Lovely and Rachel described as the best darn crêpes ever.

A little more wandering, an El ride, and a confusing map of the Merchandise Mart later, we found our way to Bucca di Beppo, where we caught up with the rest of the group and met Tim, perhaps the best server I’ve ever met (and little did we know his name was actually Tim until we got the receipt – we were simply calling him that to give him a name until that point). Too much food, good atmosphere, and plenty of people to talk with.

Sunday
I might not have had a chance to physically meet up with everyone (again), but I did get a chance to claim that I have seen the present-day version of the time machine from Back to the Future, find a $150 keyboard marked down to $10, assist with softmodding a Wii, and work on other things related to the next episode of TechCentric, so I can’t complain that the day was wasted.

Monday
Why might I be including Monday, the day after the meetup officially ended? Well, if taking the hijinks back online wasn’t enough, Monday has been a crazy day of people trying to find those last few stragglers on Twitter, Facebook, the 20SB site, their blogs, or wherever else they may be, swapping stories, and helping each other write up their experiences (when you have a group of bloggers hanging out, it’s expected that they all write up something about it, right?). Oh, and deciding that MomInRealLife owns everyone’s phones, of course.

It’s been fun meeting and trading jokes with some of the people behind the curtain, so to speak.  I’m glad I went, and I’m more than willing to do it again (sooner than next year, even).  Here’s to the success of the 20SB Ultimate Meetup!

Every time I get to read about the RIAA (or, as the case may be here, ASCAP) and their crazy schemes for raising royalty money, I grow a little more confident in thinking that these organizations are doing nothing but trying to alienate their members with each passing day.  And, so far, this thinking hasn’t let me down.  I’m especially loving the idea to charge for incoming calls proposed by ASCAP as reported by TechDirt a little while ago.

I’m not trying to defend the phone companies (they’ve got enough wrong with them to warrant a small novel), but let’s stop here for a second and think.  It’s downright impossible for the phone company to keep track of what ringtone your phone emits, let alone that there’s no reason for them to want to collect that data or care that one person is alerted to calls by Garth Brooks while another listens to Pink Martini or a third plays back the bridge from a Creative Commons-licensed song they found on Jamendo.  Obviously, we have licensing issues to take into account, because there’s certainly no way AT&T is liable for a song in the public domain.

Then there’s also the difficulty of determining whether whatever song they’ve identified is even being played publicly.  For example, I have an ‘instrumental’ chop of The Limousines’ “New Year’s Resolution” currently set as the ringtone on my Treo.  Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that AT&T knows this (perhaps because their friends at the NSA have nothing better to do and tipped them off).  Now, how do they determine which of the following scenarios is currently in effect?

1. My phone is in ring mode.  The phone will proudly play The Limos to anyone and everyone standing near me every time my mother calls.
2. My phone is in vibrate mode.  The phone will play absolutely nothing, even though it wants to play something, but instead will silently bounce around if placed on a table while being called by Don.
3. I have a pair of headphones plugged in.  Regardless of the ring/vibrate setting, my phone will pipe “New Year’s Resolution” into my ears while the phone waits for me to pick up a call from Google Voice.

By my understanding and thought, only that first scenario would be even remotely a public performance and only in such a case would AT&T have to pay for the playback of my (awesome) ringtone.  And, admittedly, it’s hard to call any ringtone a public performance when (usually) the clip being played is less than thirty seconds in length because the call is picked up or sent to voicemail.  Get a bunch of people in a large crowd, each with a different 30-second chunk of a song, and call them in the correct order, and maybe you’re onto some artsy project that needs licensing, but, for the typical cell phone user, I think that’s just dumb.  And let’s not even get into how many people need to be within x feet of the phone in order for it to be considered a public performance or anything like that.

Naturally, if your carrier had to pay for your pleasure, they’re going to want their profit margins exactly as they were (if not a little more padded), and the call is obviously your fault, so there’s nothing like passing on the cost to their customers (just like they do for incoming SMS messages, for example).

If this gets even a little support outside of the usual groups, I can’t see things going well for consumers.  And if you we do start paying for our ringtones…by all means, make full use of your library.

Chances are, if you’ve logged into Facebook anytime in the past two days or so, you were probably greeted by the following notification above your news feed informing you of Facebook’s switch to usernames.  (Of course, it was also probably readable , but I like trying not to overrun the sidebar.)  For a service that has long required you to refer to yourself by number, almost as if you were helpfully and willfully subjecting yourself to a prison sentence (and there are reasons for me selecting this metaphor in particular, but they’re outside the scope of this post), the ability to individually identify yourself on your own terms is quite a jump.

Despite this huge change for Facebook, though, I think I’ve still seen more posts about Twitter (alright, I get it, it’s the hot new thing thanks to Oprah, but there’s only so many times I can read about a new startup *cough*Spymaster*cough* without looking for the nearest stabbing implement to use on myself) show up in Google Reader or on Digg or Reddit.  So, what’s the big deal?

I suppose you could think of this in terms of license plates.  You could go with whatever random assortment of letters and numbers your state assigns you when you register your car, and play along regardless of if you get W376JSB or 3826273, or you could jump through whatever hoops are required and get a plate that has your name, IRC nickname, or favorite type of cheese on it.  This is Facebook’s equivalent to giving you vanity plates for that Camaro of yours.  You know, unless prison numbers are your thing.

Of course, all cool news has to come with some strings attached, and Facebook is of course not one of those extremely rare exceptions.  However, according to the Facebook Blog, they’re rather tame things like that you can only use the “Romanized alphabet” (I think someone meant to say “Latin” here, and it’s not me), numbers, and periods.  (There’s the obvious technical issue of using things like question marks, hash marks, and ampersands in a URL here to blame.)  That shouldn’t be a big deal, though.  It’s not like you can put an interrobang on your license plate, though Facebook also warns that they’re looking into extended character support.  Of course, once you claim a name, you can’t change it (which is not the case over at Twitter, though MySpace still wrote your name in permanent marker the last time I was there), so there’s no gaming the system to reserve “CutiePie” for your girlfriend…you know, unless YOU want to be referred to as “CutiePie” (and who wouldn’t?).

Once you reserve that name, you get the awesome perk of being able to use facebook.com/yourusernamehere to refer new friends directly to your profile instead of making them search for you, dig through all the people with similar names to find the one with the right network and picture (if you have a reasonably useful picture, that is), and worry for three days about whether they attempted to befriend the right person or not.

Being the technical weenie I am, the rules Facebook imposed also gave me a slew of ideas of how Facebook could improve this system.  I put my head together with Nick Schwab, and we came up with the following in less than a minute:

• Since those “Romanized” characters are more or less the only legal characters in a domain name (excepting the hyphen), it would be easy for Facebook to give users a subdomain rather than append their name to the end.  In an ideal circumstance, both methods would work the same way, but it might provide for more “ownership” of that username and profile if a subdomain were used instead.  (If you’re not following me, think yourusername.facebook.com as opposed to that example above.)
• Facebook could use these unique URLs (either the method I’ve suggested using subdomains or Facebook’s original implementation) to support OpenID, an identification technology that you might have heard of considering its extensive use here on this blog.  Considering Facebook seems to want a piece of the identity market (Facebook Connect, anyone?), allowing users to use this would be a feature I suggest they implement.
• Again, excepting hypens, the character range covers everything usable in an e-mail address.
  • Perhaps Facebook will allow users to send e-mail to username@facebook.com, which would be a great way to get in touch with people without them having to make their e-mail address public.  Admittedly, this kind of detracts from the use of Facebook’s built-in messaging.
  • If Facebook went after the subdomain system I outlined above, they would be in a great position to provide an e-mail-based interface to the site, something that would make Facebook accessible from an even wider range of devices and platforms.  Perhaps sending a note to wall@username.facebook.com would allow you to post on someone’s wall remotely, while message@ would provide the same functionality as sending a private message.  Want to post some photos?  Attach them to a note and fire it off to photos@, where they’ll immediately be added to an album titled by your subject line.

Some people aren’t as happy about the change, though.  I vaguely recall one person (I don’t recollect where I saw it or who said it, so if it was you, speak up in the comments) comparing Facebook to MySpace in this respect, saying that the former is moving towards the latter in terms of usability and obnoxious features, and another person suggesting that this is just the next step in Facebook’s transition to “become” Twitter.

Of course, I could be the world’s biggest idiot for getting excited over this (to the point where it’s managed to be added to my Google Calendar), but I’ll gladly be one of the first people to claim their name.  So, what do you think?  Are you going to be eagerly waiting for a chance to prove how much of a “Cool.Kid.123″ you are, or would you like those prisoner numbers tattooed onto your neck?

When people think back to all the time they spent playing video games as a kid, they think back to all the time they wasted trying to rescue the princess in Super Mario Bros. or how many times they defeated the Covenant in Halo.  There have to be a few games they considered crap and played only briefly, though, right?  Those games they thought sounded interesting, but were perhaps too good to be true, or picked up from a bargain bin in hopes of getting a cheap thrill, then sold right back to the used game store of their choice?  Why don’t they mention those?

In an effort to share that side of my life as a non-gamer with you, as well as these horrible excuses for entertainment, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and review old and lame games once in a while throughout the summer as a semi-regular feature.  (Of course, I have many to choose from thanks to my siblings, but I’d rather review games you had an interest in, so feel free to leave suggestions in the comments or my e-mail inbox.)

Seriously, doesn't this read as Speedball Tournament 2?

This week’s game is Speedball 2 Tournament, Speedball Tournament 2, or something of the sort, and it comes from November of 2007.  (Alright, so it’s hardly old, but I doubt you’d heard of it until just now.)  I really can’t figure the name out, because the logo clearly reads Speedball Tournament (to me at least), but Wikipedia, Steam, and most other sites seem to agree on the first version.  To avoid having to worry about that, I’m just going to refer to it as Speedball.

I wouldn’t have even known about the existence of this game if a friend of mine hadn’t found an online magazine giving away CD keys (and informed me that the game was on Steam, which means this game will be following me to the grave).  I can’t say it’s a bad thing, because I can’t argue with free stuff, but I’m sure they could have picked a better game to give away.  Obviously, this also means that I have never played the original.

If I had to sum this game up in as few words as possible, I would call it the older-teen equivalent to the Backyard series for little kids.  Essentially, it’s the same thing as a game of soccer, except made to be all futuristic, the characters carry the ball rather than kicking it up the field, and there’s definitely some language I wouldn’t expect to find in a kids game going on in here.  There are even little power-ups all over the field.  And, just to take the name into consideration (as well as the opening video and all of the violence), you could similarly compare the game to Unreal Tournament with a metal ball instead of Redeemers and a closed-in pit rather than Morpheus.

Speaking of fields, there are four (at least, four that are unlocked when you start the game, and I’m not expecting there to be any more) for you to play on.  They call come complete with a cute little animated crowd cheering you (or the other team, you don’t really know, do you?) on and booing and cheering as appropriate.  There’s not much to them, because, little things like the general shape of the outer stadium (which you won’t see) aside, there isn’t that much difference between the four of them.

The controls aren’t that hard to pick up, though you’re probably going to resort to what I did and just start clicking buttons and pounding on the spacebar in hopes of watching the little animated characters do something.  It won me a match or two, but it probably isn’t what the developers were intending for you to do.

The difficulty levels are definitely labeled appropriately.  Easy made it seem like the AI wasn’t even on half the time, but step it up to advanced and suddenly you won’t have to worry about who’s carrying the ball, because it most certainly won’t be you.  Unfortunately, it’s a little disheartening to watch the computer score so easily against you in so little time (or maybe I just play a poor defense), which is another reason to put it down rather quickly.

Given that I couldn’t even beat the computer AI, I didn’t want to bother spending the time checking out the multiplayer aspect of the game.  Given that the game’s rated so poorly on MetaCritic (and it’s not hard for me to see why), there probably aren’t that many people sticking around waiting for someone to play.  Of course, there’s some law that states that there’s that one devoted fan signed in and waiting for someone to play against, but he or she will have to keep on waiting, because that most certainly won’t be me.

If there’s one redeeming quality to the game, it’s the music.  It’s of a techno-rock variety, and it’s not that bad to listen to (or perhaps it’s just me). It reminds me more than a little of the older Need for Speed games (think Porsche Unleashed or older).  I may actually go through the effort of ripping it out at some point just to have something more to listen to while I’m doing homework or coding.  But we’ll see.

Would I play this game again?  Maybe.  But I’d probably rather play Half-Life 2, or at least something with a little more polish.  For the little time I’ve actually bothered to play this game, I’d probably give it somewhere around a 5 out of 10.  (Note to self:  Come up with witty grade chart for next review.)

If you’re interested in getting a copy of Speedball for yourself, you can pick a copy up on Steam for $20.

Wanted:  two hours of my life back.  Wasted them watching S.Darko, looking for someone with time machine or means to reclaim time.  Will compensate handsomely.  Please contact me if you can help.  If you can’t help, I’d like to take this moment to warn of potential spoiler alerts for both Darko movies.

It’s funny how something you had just a little hope for (just a little, mind you) can turn out to be so disappointing.

Somewhere around a year and a half ago, I was introduced to Donnie Darko by a bunch of guys in my dorm.  We watched one or two movies (occasionally as many as five) every Friday night, with our choices usually being something at least one person in the group hadn’t seen before.  It worked out well, because the movies were all enjoyable, and we tended to lean towards the thought-warping titles (think The Matrix if you need a well-known example) more than the cheesy action flicks.  (Alright, maybe we had a Die Hard marathon in there at some point, but…well, yippie ki yay, I seem to be running off in tangents here.)

Is it me, or does the smaller "S" almost remove the idea that this is about Samantha rather than Donnie?

To quit beating around the bush, suffice it to say that I enjoyed Donnie Darko at least as much as any other movie I watched with that group.  It had a certain ring to it that, at some level, I hoped would be carried on, though I knew that ultimately any attempt to extend the story would ruin the mystique, just as the Wachowskis are blamed for doing with The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions.  And that’s where S.Darko, and the point of this post, come into play, as they do just the same thing.

I’ll try not to give too much away as far as this review goes, but suffice it to say that I found the film rather ridiculous right from the get-go.  The movie starts off with a Star Wars-esque block of text scrolling up the screen to give you the backstory for the film, though I felt that it really didn’t do much explaining:

Middlesex, Virginia. 1988.

Donnie Darko was killed when a jet engine fell from the sky and crushed him while he was sleeping.  The government never located the plane from which the engine fell, nor did they even admit the incident ever occurred.  But that was just the beginning of the tragedy…and the mystery.

Now, 7 years later, Donnie’s youngest sister, Samantha, seemingly alone and lost in the world, has run away from a home shattered by the death of her brother.  Drowning in sadness and unable to dream, she has drifted deeper and deeper into the darkness of her sleep.  And when darkness consumes the starlight, nightmares rule the night.

The first pair of sentences neatly sums up the first movie for those who never saw it.  Except for, you know, the whole government admission part.  (Weren’t those workers there removing the engine and investigating at the end of the movie? )  Ignoring that nasty, comma-filled sentence about Samantha running away, the rest of this blurb reads exactly like I would expect it to if I were watching a horror film.  (That’s funny, I don’t see ‘horror’ listed at IMDB.)  “And when darkness consumes the starlight, nightmares rule the night…”?  Seriously?

Of course, that’s just the first few seconds of the movie.  Things don’t get much better, as just about everything has some special effect to “enhance” it (extreme overuse of time-rewinds, anyone?), and they reuse a lot of the concepts from Donnie Darko so blatantly that it gets hard to tell whether any original content even went into this film.  There are also numerous plot holes, such as how Roberta Sparrow’s book comes to be in Samantha’s ownership as it was never given to Donnie in the first place (thinking through the timeline of the first movie).

This isn't the best pair of images to be using for a comparison, but they look similar to me (compensating for the age difference, of course). Yeah, Jim, I'm just as surprised as you are.

Some of the actor choices seem almost intentionally designed to get your memory drawn elsewhere.  One character bears (what I call) a strong resemblance to Jake Gyllenhaal, while another looks almost like a younger version of Jim Carrey in his role as Edward Nygma (“The Riddler”) from Batman Forever.  In one scene of the movie, I almost want to say there’s a slight resemblance to Javier Bardem in there, too.

At times, I also got a subtle preachy vibe, almost like the movie was trying to be an infomercial for God rather than a source of entertainment (HAHA!  HA! Ha…ha…eh…), which I found an amusing juxtaposition with the supposed supernatural components of the film.  I couldn’t identify exactly what the writers were trying to go for given what little development the characters involved went through, but it certainly could have used a little work.

In short, I was rather disappointed with the movie from all aspects.  It’s not the worst thing I’ve seen, but I would much rather watch something else.  If I had to place it on a scale somewhere, it would probably land between “I’d rather walk around in public wearing a bikini swimsuit” and “I’d rather listen to Ben Stein sing in the shower.”  (I love arbitrary scales, don’t you?)

Oh, and if you want a lesson in how NOT to design your user interface, you should check out the movie’s web site.  I particularly recommend trying to read the synopsis and cast lists they provide in their entirety without shooting yourself.

If you’re reading this, the topic of Windows 7 has probably already been worn so thin it’s liable to be used as the cling-wrap protecting your next party dish.  If it has, I apologize in advance.  If it hasn’t…well, I’ll put up money towards the first person who isn’t tired of a Microsoft-branded discussion by the end of this.  Oh, and the Geeky categorization?  It’s been earned at least three times over in this post, so avoid at all costs if you don’t want to be wearing a confused look for the next month.

The release candidate for the next version of the must-have-if-you-work-in-an-office-setting operating system has been put out and the critiques are already coming in.  (In short, they can be summed up as saying that Windows 7 is the better-looking younger brother to Windows Vista, though they’re both of about equal intelligence, but that’s beside the point.)

The group of people I’ve been most concerned with hearing from regarding the operating system upgrade is security researchers.  Given that this is a field I take  a reasonable amount of interest in, I’m actually rather alarmed that the only topic I seem to be watching pop up is the same “issue” that’s plagued Windows for over a decade.  And yes, those quotation marks are intentional and completely reasonable.

Once upon a time, there was DOS and Windows 3.1.  You were limited to 11-character filenames in the “8-dot-3″ format, where the first 8 characters were a user-specified name for the file and the last three were an extension denoting the type of file it was.  Then came Windows 95, and lo and behold the world was amazed that you could have these amazing 255-character filenames (which were really just an overlay to the old 8-dot-3 system) and give your files reasonably descriptive names!  And you could use punctuation (granted that the punctuation you wanted wasn’t a question mark, backslash, forward slash, pipe, or any of another two or three characters) too, which made things even better!  Sure, the file extensions were still there (and are to this day, as is the legacy 8-dot-3 filename), but nobody complained for they could name their files “My Letter To My Boss About Me Quitting Next Week.doc” and all was right with the world.

Of course, nobody complained until this file extension voodoo was abused.  You see, Windows defaults to a setting where you don’t have to see those ugly file extensions because they take up screen space and confuse newbies.  And, in my book, it’s a reasonable expectation that most people don’t want to see them.  (For the record, I turn this functionality off, but that’s a whole different topic.)

With the advent of the Internet, people (even the newbies) have been blindly trained to start recognizing certain file extensions for what they are anyway, even if they aren’t technically inclined to do so.  For example, even if you aren’t a geek, I’m sure you know what a .jpg, .gif, .doc, or .zip at the end of a filename denotes.  It’s useful knowledge, even for someone who prefers things that Just Work™.

Expanding this same notion to the contents of a user’s local files, that user is just as unafraid and accepting of seeing .jpg as they are online to the point where they don’t even think twice.  After all, what’s the worst thing that could come out of an image?  Porn?  An old photograph of Aunt Millie?

If you answered in the affirmative to either of those two suggestions, most people would urge you to jump off of the nearest highway overpass, though I’ll accept either of those as correct answers.  This giant group of security researchers, some of whom work for the same companies that ultimately provide the software your favorite pimply-faced Geek Squad employee will be installing on your next PC, have nothing better to do with their time than to complain about a well-intentioned feature.

I cannot count (on one hand, at least) the number of articles I have seen recently (like this one) that cry “Wolf!” over a trivial morsel like hiding file extensions only to have a piece of malware call itself “AuntMillie.jpg.exe.”  And here’s where my post title comes into play.  Is it Microsoft’s fault for adding what amounts to a (in my opinion) useful feature?  Is it the Symantec and McAfee developers (to name the recognizable duo, though just about any security suite provider should be included here) who kindly will alert you that you installed Cain (and then promptly remove it) but refuse to sound an alarm or do anything about legitimate malware (I’ve had this issue)?  Is it the end user for not disabling the feature and being vigilant and knowing what they’re doing?

I suppose we’ve become too dependent on file extensions for me to suggest that Microsoft ditch the idea, join the Unix crowd, and start using the contents of the file to figure out what it is rather than its name.  For example, web servers will use the file extension to determine what type of file you’re requesting and whether anything needs to be done (like executing it) before it gets passed along to the end user.  Granted, file extension hackery can be fun (who knew), but it would be a small price to pay (and the files would still be accessible by other applications, so it really doesn’t even ruin the fun).

However, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to demand why these same security gurus are not busy including a feature of their own to warn of questionably-named files.  I can think of few legitimate reasons for someone to have two or more extensions appended to their filename, so warning of files that end in “.txt.exe” on creation or execution probably isn’t a bad idea.

And to think that I've done more work in thirty seconds with the Visual Studio form designer than the security gurus have in over a decade. (For the technical: Yes, I realize that user conventions would switch the position of these buttons. However, you don't want anyone going to the "Yes" button out of habit, do you?)

If I wasn’t starting my final exams tomorrow, I’d probably write a proof-of-concept that accomplished this simply because I don’t know of anything similar that already exists.  (On the other hand, it is something for me to work on rather than study… )

For a group of security-focused people, their intentions are in approximately the right place.  However, they seem to be forgetting that there’s more to computing (and life) than three or four extra characters on a screen and the bright intentions of a few developers in Redmond.

(Cripes, and to think I would be writing over one thousand words in defense of Microsoft…  I really must be off my rocker.)

I actually had another (much more interesting) post lined up for today.  I sent the post to two friends for opinions, but I haven’t heard back from one of them yet.  (And yes, you know who you are!)

I have a hunch...

A few weeks ago, I got wind of a new startup called Hunch.  Without even taking a glance, I dismissed the site as being only minimally useful. Crowd-sourcing only works so well, and it doesn’t take much to game the system (see Mechanical Turk) and get people to dismiss your site just as easily as 4chan.  I was also highly skeptical of the idea of leaving all of the suggestive power to the users.  (Yes, there’s a difference between having a company provide results that might have been sponsored or biased, as that’s identifiable, and having a spammer help push up results that are biased differently, potentially anonymously.)

After reading about some of the interesting correlations Hunch was making about its users, I decided that it might be worth a quick stop by.  (To be honest, I just wanted to see if they would share any more wacky associations that could be made between users. I’m lame like that.)  For someone who finds useless trivia mildly entertaining, it seemed like a good choice at the time, if only to kill some.

However, I quickly realized that Hunch is an excellent aggregator of  personal information.  After all, the entire point of the service is that you voluntarily cough up details about yourself to a corporate entity.  It may not be things like your social security number or your mother’s maiden name, but it’s still personally-identifiable information all the same.  Furthermore, when you think about it, all that’s standing between any other company in the world and your information is a few bucks.  I haven’t heard anything about how Hunch plans to monetize the service, but I see selling information as the only really profitable option.  And I won’t even get into what the ads could be like if the company serving them knew that you were a sucker for brunettes…

The site is also only as useful as the information that gets submitted to it.  (That’s the point, of course.)  Most of the questions are supposed to be user-submitted and users can recommend responses to these questions, but I found that some questions were poorly answered or didn’t properly take all of the responses I had given into consideration.  One question regarding instant messaging clients, for example, suggested I use Adium after I blatantly told the website that I was using Windows.  The last time I checked Adium’s website, the only version of the client available (and it’s quite good, by the way, don’t get me wrong) was the OS X version almost every Mac user already has.  (Also, I should apparently try Botox even though the number of answers against it is greater than the number that support it.  Go figure.)

Really? You're going to tell me what video game I should play based upon a few simple questions and the fact that I like green eggs and ham?

The lack of feelings of legitimacy I get from the site gives me a rather creepy feeling that I’m still hanging out on MySpace, the social network just about everyone with a brain ditched years ago in hopes of avoiding survey after survey detailing how many movies you’ve seen.  Like I said, a lot of the quizzes are pointless or leave much to be desired, and it’s only a matter of time before Facebook and Hunch pair up to display people’s suggestion results in their timeline.  Social suggestion is nothing new (#followfriday, anyone?), but something tells me you’ll get better suggestions from people who actively know and interact with you than you ever will with a website that pairs people off by their love of vegetables.

Site content and utility aside, I know creativity is really hard to find these days (Hollywood, I’m talking to you), but it’s not difficult to avoid ripping off the design of another Web 2.0 startup. Anyone who’s been reading this blog since February has probably realized by now that Hunch seems to have taken a design cue from Plinky…by copying the navigation system.  (To the developers:  I realize that the organization scheme you’ve chosen is natural, but you barely bothered to change the order of anything and it just looks tacky.  In the future, you might want to do a little more research before you end up plagiarizing bits and pieces of other newly-released applications.)

Hunch may be backed by one of Flickr’s co-founders, but I get the feeling that Caterina Fake is more of a one-hit wonder than a repeat trendsetter.  Only time will tell, but this is one website I’m not expecting myself to come back to.  And I have a hunch that most of you won’t be bothering to head over, either.  (I have three invites to hand out if you REALLY want to check it out, though.)

 Loading ...

If it’s easy to pull the wool over your eyes, Wednesday was probably not your day.  If you’re Kathleen Danielson, for example, you avoided any links lest they end up Rickrolls.  I feel that April Fool’s Day is a pretty amusing (and dangerous) time to be an Internet…well, addict, I guess, and it’s a day I particularly enjoy.  (The danger is only compounded if you were spending your day in the fetal position worrying about Conficker, but I’ll get to that in a second.)

Compared to recent years, I think that this year’s bag of tricks was relatively tame.  DeviantArt (at least, as far as I know) wasn’t propogating 4chan memes (mudkips, anyone?) and the most YouTube did was flip videos upside-down.  Sure, ThinkGeek had bacon paste (but who doesn’t love bacon), and it sounds just believable enough that it might end up like their 8-bit tie from April Fools’ past.

I thought this picture only added credibility to my April Fool's joke, even though it was only by coincidence that Rose happened to tag me right after my status change. Apparently I was the only one to think so.

I myself decided to participate, though I didn’t really come up with my pranks until five minutes before midnight.  For starters, I was uncreative enough to be one of the dozens of people changing their relationship status on Facebook.  And, in a stroke of luck, a friend soon tagged me in a photo that made my status change almost believable.  Alas, I didn’t hear anything from my friends when I changed my status to claim that I was in a relationship, but a few friends started an uproar on the return trip.

The other trick started off on a new site of mine.  At the recommendation of Rachelskirts, I purchased the domain ShouldIUseComicSans.com to match a similar offering (thanks, @EricVictorino) only a few hours before, then decided that it changing what it said would be an excellent joke (but for one day only).  People fell for it, too.

I’m trying to come up with even better pranks for next year, though I’m coming up short.  I suppose it doesn’t really matter, as I have 363 more days to dwell on it.  (Suggestions are most welcome, though it might do better to e-mail them so there isn’t a public record to ruin the surprise.)

The corporate giants with the practical jokes weren’t the only people headlining on April 1, though.  Conficker, the latest worldwide scare, managed to slip through the day with very little fanfare.  Of course, there were isolated incidents, like my college campus blaming an outage on the worm, but on the whole I didn’t see too many news articles regarding the blasted thing.  Some people seem to think that this is exactly how it should be, though (and I agree).  However, you can’t deny that the Internet is still wholly intact.  (After all, you’re able to read this post, right?)

And, on a completely unrelated note, I decided to mess around with my dust-collecting Tumblr account.  There’s more information about that posted on the blasted thing, though, so I’ll let you visit if you’re interested in the matter.  (Hey, it could use the traffic anyway.)

Oh, and one more thing:  I’m in a relationship…alright, I don’t think you believed that for a second.  I don’t blame you, though.