Two Slashes

As a very select few of you might know, I’m a (very) casual user of Qik.  For the uninitiated, Qik is a popular (especially now, thanks to the iPhone 3GS) video streaming application similar to Ustream or Justin.tv, the difference being that Qik requires a cell phone instead of a webcam and a computer.

My experience with Qik has been hit-or-miss, but generally it’s been a positive one, which is why I continued to use the service in the first place.  However, the events of the past hour or so have made me reconsider that position, especially now that I have a netbook I could use instead with my Justin.tv account.  Let me additionally point out the fact that the previous version of the Qik client I had on my phone worked perfectly.  It was familiar, it functioned as advertised, and I didn’t have any complaints with the way it worked on my phone.

Anyway, I generally consider it a polite gesture when a service decides to let me know that there’s something on my end I need to do to continue my use of the service.  I think that makes things feel a little more personal when you let the customer know that the latest and greatest is out and that there’s a tangible benefit to upgrading.  Qik, on the other hand, sent me this rather sparse e-mail this evening with the air of making it sound like something was broken.  Alright, stuff breaks, and I can understand that, but the unclear meaning of this e-mail was my first clue that I shouldn’t have bothered.

Given that it’s Labor Day, I’m taking a break from some of my schoolwork for the moment, and updating Qik shouldn’t take more than a few seconds, I decided to oblige the e-mail’s request and update.  That was my mistake.  Oops.

In contrast to my previous experiences with Qik, this “update” seems more like a leap backward than it does a step forward.  If you’ll take a look at the picture I’ve included, there are two things I would like you to notice.  First, if you’ll examine the screen on my phone for a moment, you’ll notice that my Treo Pro appears to be capturing the episode of House I was watching as well as it possibly can…but that it’s doing so with the user interface rotated clockwise.  Unfortunately, something between the client and the website isn’t properly functioning, because, while I should be seeing Hugh Laurie’s face on my 22” LCD, instead I’m seeing severe artifacting and the vague suggestion that it might be the fifth season of Fox’s hit show I’m watching.  I’ve tested this multiple times (on both a cellular 3G connection and Wi-Fi), and I get the same results all the way around each time.  And, while I’m not going to point fingers, I think I know where the problem is because there are plenty of people still broadcasting as you read this.

There’s a huge difference between releasing a test version of your software with the expectation that these bugs are present and that they will be reported and sending e-mails trumpeting end-user updates to your legion of users, updates that should be devoid of functionality quirks like this.  What am I supposed to do with Qik now that I can’t actually use it for the one function it’s designed to perform?  I’m currently slogging back trying to find the CAB for the previous version of the client, the one that actually works, in hopes of moving forward and fixing this mess, but I’m not entirely concerned given that it’s not something I use on a daily basis anyway.

All the same, let this be a lesson to the rest of you, one that you can probably apply regardless of the industry you’re in and regardless of whether you’re technically inclined or not.  If you’re going to ask that your users (or customers, or whatever term you use for the people you deal with in your line of work) should take action in some form or another, make sure that they don’t get screwed for obliging you.  Do your homework, run your test cases, follow through on your research and quality assurance; in other words, make sure that you’re not asking people to make the jump from a Ferrari to a station wagon.

Edit (9/9/2009): Apparently Qik is now aware of the issue and suggests that users experiencing issues like this backpedal to an alternate version of the software that wasn’t designed for the phone.  Great job, guys!

I was shocked to sit down at my computer this morning only to find that AT&T had gone above and beyond the call of duty with their self-imposed 4chan ban.  Now, I’m not a fan or visitor of the site in any way, but I am still a little irked that they thought it was necessary to restrict access to (parts of) the site.  I’m not a fan of censorship, especially because anything “blocked” because it “could be used for ill intent” could also be used for good.  (Of course, the good uses of 4chan are up in the air, but I digress…)

However, having just heard about a new VPN service promising unlimited and unfiltered anonymized access to the Internet at the awesome price of free, I figured it might be good to get an account and look into the service before AT&T decided that there were any more sites they wanted to block access to.

ItsHidden may not be the most creative name I’ve heard for a VPN provider, and the website could use some retooling (and perhaps a proofreader), but they do function exactly as promised, and without requiring the installation of any software to get online.

Taking into account a comparison in performance between my raw DSL line, a tethered connection with my cell phone, and the VPN through both, there is a noticeable loss in the amount of available bandwidth.  Of course, this is expected when the traffic is going to the Netherlands and back (I ran all speed tests against the same server in Chicago), but it’s not unbearably slow.  Of course, this could change once the public gets its hands on it and the word spreads a little (not unlike ImageShack’s torrent downloader).

I do have a slight concern with the privacy you “gain” by using this service, and whether it might be worth looking into, though.  ItsHidden seems to meter your VPN usage.  I don’t know if this is the first hint at a freemium model they might be looking to pursue, or whether they simply think it’s a numbers game, but I question the meaning of its existence.  Furthermore, any user of the VPN should be worried about the decrypted traffic on ItsHidden’s end.  It would be trivial for them to sniff any data off the wire before they pass it along, and, even though they claim they don’t collect any information, I can’t help but wonder whether they’re actually doing so.

Realistically, I can’t say I trust a company that doesn’t run spell-check on their own site enough to think they would be a good idea for any mission critical data (and why you would be allowing yourself to tunnel through something you can’t verify the setup of anyway is beyond me), but if you need a VPN to get at anything unimportant or for your file downloading needs, this might be a reasonable solution for you to look into.  (Read:  This might be a good idea if you’re heading to DEFCON but don’t have any other means available to secure yourself.)

Update (7/29): According to a bunch of news outlets, AT&T was acting on behalf of customers they thought were being targeted by a denial-of-service attack.  While the thought of protecting your customers is a nice one, a heads-up might have made things a little happier and calmer for everyone.  Heck, maybe communicating through the proper channels could have picked up some help from moot and the 4chan crew.  So, AT&T, the gesture was nice, but you really can’t go around trying to pull stunts like that without letting people know.  One giant secret is enough.

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!

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.)

Lady Ada

It’s not well-known, but today is a day that most geek calendars include.  Today is Lady Ada Day, named after Ada Lovelace, recorded in history books as the first person to write a computer program.

There’s a giant roster of people who are supposed to be posting about a female figure in the tech industry today whom they admire as a “Modern Ada.”  Considering the long time it’s been since I managed to put in some posting time on here, I figured I would take this challenge up.

Me?  Well, I never was one for following memes (which I consider this to be), and I can’t think of a woman in the tech world I really admire.  Well, that, and I’m not one to play favorites.

Sure, I could talk about some of my fellow university students and the impressive work they’ve completed, but that would get boring to everyone who has no idea what school I attend.  (And I appreciate my privacy in that matter, thanks. )  And, to be honest, that would probably be creepy for anyone to read, most of all them.

I could always cheat and pull some random tech employee’s name out of a hat, but that wouldn’t work either.  Not only could I not name-drop any reasonably-well-known females in the tech industry, but there will probably be countless other blog posts drooling about how attractive/intelligent/rich/attractive said woman is, which makes picking anybody of note instantly a poor choice.

However, I think I have a solution.  Rather than write one more post about whatever useless tech journalist/CEO/evangelista the rest of the blogosphere is, what about taking a second to thank all of the female bloggers I know for doing their thing?  After all, in a loose definition, they’re pretty in-tune with technology themselves (even if their blogs let on otherwise).  Right?

So, with that said, I’m going to suggest you spend the rest of your Lady Ada day appreciating not just female software developers and company CEOs, but female bloggers too.  And you can start with those I have in my sidebar.  That’s right, tonight looks like a great night for you to check out Keri’s Curious Cloud, daigakudeki, Geekin’ Out, Rachelskirts, Snubs’ personal blog, Splendid Mishap, and maybe even mosey over to Brooke’s or Gretchen’s blogs if there’s time left.

(There are more, of course, but seeing as even I have not talked with everyone in the universe yet, it’ll have to do.  Also, I should probably do some housecleaning, because there are a few stale links in my sidebar.)

Flipping the memory card out of and back into my Treo the other day to swap some pictures and music in and out, I was reminded of the fact that there comes a point where things are just too small to be usable.  And, almost annoyingly, it’s the direction that everyone wants everything to be going in.  Phones, portable media players, computers…everything you can think of.

While it’s a novel thought to be able to cram in all my data into something the size of my fingernail, it’s also quite unwieldy when it comes time to transfer that data to something else by swapping cards around.  And this is considering my small hands.  Yes, I’m talking about MicroSD cards (for lack of anything else I feel like ranting about tonight).

The original SD card was reasonably-sized to begin with, at least where I’m concerned.  It wasn’t bulky, and I could hold it in my hand without worrying about either breaking or dropping and losing it.  MiniSD was alright too (for the same reasons), though it wasn’t widely adopted (or that much different in overall size) so there wasn’t much of a point.  But MiniSD annoys me like none other (hence this last-minute post?).  It’s not like we’re talking differences in thickness here, either, as the only real dimension changes (at least, the ones I’m concerned with at the moment) are the length and width of the card.

My previous PDA, a Tungsten|T2, had a full-size SD card slot.  It didn’t add anything to the thickness of the device, and it wasn’t annoying to use, as you could actually grasp the cards when you were inserting or removing them.  Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the MicroSD-based devices I’ve had the misfortune to use.  And, even more unfortunately, it’s not going to change in a way that makes me any happier, either.

Expandability, especially in terms of storage, is a concern for most people (*cough* except iPhone users *cough*), but considering your cell phone doesn’t have the size constraint of a fingernail, there isn’t a reason why you have to pretend the extra storage you use for it has to follow such a constraint.  Why, then, do phone manufacturers think they need to blindly obey?

Forgive me for being boring and ranting about something nobody in their right mind would care about, then forgetting to schedule the post.  You can run along, now.

Since ancient times, seven has been the number of choice for everything.  After all, there are exactly seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  There are (obviously) seven days in the week.  James Bond’s agent number is 007.  (And what list of numbers would be complete without a blogger throwback to Brooke (more commonly known as Oh My Seven)?  Alright, that was corny…)

But while I’m either pleased with or indifferent to the aforementioned items, there’s one thing tarnishing the number for me.  And (to what I assume is Justin’s eternal glee), of all things, it’s a Microsoft product.

If you’re waiting on me to rant about Windows Mobile 6.5 and my Treo Pro, you would be half-right.  Literally.  Just one-half away from the appropriate version of Windows.  (Well, and a gigantic platform jump over, but who’s counting other than me?)  If you thought I willingly put myself into a position beta-testing the Next Big Thing™ to come out of Washington (other than the Mariners), you’d be right.  Seven points to you.

You might ask why I did it.  Back in October, I posted about how I have no problem whatsoever using in-development software.  (In fact, I’m writing this post using one of the latest nightly builds of Firefox, but I digress…)  Of course, that was before I willingly installed this pile of dung, and in the future I’m going to be putting more consideration into that policy.

Before you ask, it’s not the computer’s fault.  I’ve lived on Pentium 4s for the past several years, and finally decided in December to build a new Core 2 Quad desktop for school.  Of course, what would be better than loading up the test build of the operating system that it will most likely be seeing for most of its useful life, right?  That’s what I thought…

I’ve been using dealing with Windows 7 for about a month, and while I’ve taken to some of the “new” features, on the whole, I still feel like the experience is missing something.  A big something.

Performance-wise, everything seems to run at a very pleasing rate.  Even in beta, the operating system is quick to respond, and I’ve gotten used to some of the “enhancements” (read: mind-numbing changes for the worse) Microsoft made.  Things I’d also installed out of humor, like my old TV tuner, installed without any trouble.  Granted, the workflow in things like the Control Panel could be improved, but I’m going to let that one slide because it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen.

My biggest gripe is that Windows somehow seems to have lost control of user processes.  The same build of Thunderbird, for example, works fine on other operating systems (like my Windows XP-based laptop), but hangs in 7 to the point where it cannot be killed using the Windows Task Manager or even the appropriate command-line commands, and ultimately requires me to restart the machine from the front panel.  (As I write this, there is an unresponsive Thunderbird window where my desktop normally goes.)  This is on top of very annoying bugs I’ve already managed to encounter on more than one occasion.  I’ve also tried several applications that hang immediately, such as the NX remote desktop client, and plenty of applications you would expect to work (like Picasa) blow up without administrative permissions.

My next complaint is with data transfers.  For some reason, I have issues transferring files to and from removable media, though network transfers are fine, as is the removable media when used in conjunction with my laptop.  According to other people running the beta, they haven’t had any such problems, so this might be something I need to look into at a personal level, but it gets annoying that I need to transfer everything over in small chunks.

Win7’s inability to sync properly at all with my Treo is another showstopper, as far as I’m concerned.  And I would complain about power management, but I can’t say I’ve noticed any issues – my computer is kept on all the time, except when it’s being rebooted to ward off evil spirits and afflicted processes.

I’ll keep my hopes up (slightly – I wouldn’t want them dashed, as this is a Microsoft product we’re talking about) that the problems I’ve found get fixed before release.  I don’t know if I would be placing monetary bets on all of these issues being resolved before the final release, however.

What are your thoughts about the beta?

I was going to write about something else, but this is more time-relevant.  Therefore, that other post will get put on a back burner (and probably end up not seeing the light of day).

Today marks a monumental day in the history of the Internet.

The first thing on everyone’s mind (or mine, at least) is the trial of masterminds Anakata and Brokep (also known as Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, respectively), which starts tomorrow.  If you don’t know, they’re the two people most responsible for the day-to-day operations of The Pirate Bay, the Internet’s favorite public tracker and torrent search site.

According to TorrentFreak, a large press conference was held today in hopes of answering questions before the trial got underway.  Overall, the reported questions and answers were boring, but this response from Sunde caught my attention:

I do not believe The Pirate Bay will be a major player in five years. But I think BitTorrent technology will improve. File sharing will always exist. I think people will tire of the debate.

This statement has some interesting connotations, especially coming from one of the administrators of a site that just won’t stay down.  Sure, the existence (or lack thereof) of TPB is something that needs to be checked and double-checked on a daily basis, but there’s a certain truth that bigger and better things should be expected.  (You can look at the evolution of other sites like Suprnova, Mininova, and IsoHunt if you don’t believe me or if you find the topic interesting enough to continue pursuing.)

As a computer science major, I’m also intrigued by the suggestion that BitTorrent will be around.  It’s a novel technology at heart (err…pun unintentional?), but if you look at the road that we (as a civilization) followed to get to this point, a better wheel is bound to come along at some point, if only to satisfy the human desire for the distribution of information.  It’s just a matter of when.

Trials aside, on the other side of copyright law is a blackout movement in protest of New Zealand’s newly-adopted and overzealous copyright law.  If the vague definitions of an ISP (which just about anyone with a website falls under) don’t get you, surely you’ll find yourself accused by a neighbor anyway (and left without an Internet connection, to boot).  In my opinion, that’s even worse than the current police state of bandwidth caps and filtering we have going on here in the United States.

While I won’t be participating directly (you try changing your profile picture on a few dozen sites all at once only to change them back next week; it was bad enough trying to eliminate my birthday), feel free to black out any avatars you have and show some support (if you think it will do any good).

I suppose an alternative course would be to change your avatar to the Pirate Bay logo as an indicator of your support for the trial.  Of course, that’s still a lot of profile images to cycle out.

If you were born on New Year’s Day in 1970, congratulations and happy birthday.  Today (and this post) are probably making you feel old.  Sorry.

Today marks the day the Unix epoch time (the number of seconds since January 1, 1970, 12:00:00 AM UTC) reads 1,234,567,890. This event will occur at 11:31:30 PM UTC (which is when this post is scheduled to appear ).

Why might this matter?  The Unix epoch is used more than you think, including time management on that cushy MacBook you’re probably reading this post on.  That, and it makes for a more interesting clock than your standard 12/24-hour watch.  (This includes binary clocks.  Swatch Internet Time might still have it beat, though, simply for being obscure and having an at sign as a designator.)

In case you were interested, here are some other cool facts:

• A 32-bit computer will run into an issue (aptly dubbed the Year 2038 bug) when the epoch value becomes too big to store with 32-bits on January 19, 2038 at 3:14:08 AM UTC.  (Personally, I think it’s a shame that it’s only seven seconds from ending at 3.1415…but that’s just me.)
• Assuming your 32-bit computer makes it past the Year 2038 bug (not that hard to imagine from a software standpoint), the epoch time will reach 3,141,592,654 (approximately the first ten digits of pi) on July 21, 2069 at 12:37:34 AM UTC.  There will be pie to celebrate. (Since this value is larger than can be stored with 32-bits (2,147,483,647 is the maximum), a broken 32-bit computer will read June 14, 1933, 6:09:18 PM UTC.)
• Similarly, the time will read as the first ten digits of the mathematical constant e (2,718,281,828) on February 20, 2056 at 2:17:08 PM.  (Again, since this time flies right past the Year 2038 bug, a broken 32-bit system will interpret the time as January 15, 1920, 7:48:52 AM UTC.)
• Unix time reached a count of 1,000,000,000 (one billion) seconds since the epoch on September 9, 2001 at 1:46:00 AM UTC.
• According to the specification for Unix time, certain values can be ambiguous or point to times that never existed because of the lazy way each day is expected to be 86,400 seconds.  This miracle is brought to you by leap seconds and lazy developers (both known as order and chaos, respectively).
• This bullet exists for the sole reason of increasing the number of words.  Either that, or it’s just a ploy for me to poke fun at why I’m making a list in the first place.

Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, today is Friday, February 13, which makes for a truly “epoch” win. Except in those areas on east of UTC, where they’re already celebrating Valentine’s Day.  Geek love conquers all?