Author: Steve

“Scary Web Error!”

 

Apparently on a few AT&T phones, a few Facebook users were dropped into accounts of other users.

After typing Facebook.com into her Nokia smart phone, she was taken into the site without being asked for her user name or password. She was in an account that didn’t look like hers.

… AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said its wireless customers have landed in the wrong Facebook pages in “a limited number of instances” and that a network problem behind those episodes is being fixed … Coe said an investigation points to a “misdirected cookie.” …  Coe said technicians couldn’t figure out how the cookie had been routed to the wrong phone…

Well that’s a new one. Sites could store the UA string in the server-side session on login and make sure it doesn’t change. This would prevent the auto-logged-in-as-other-user problem (except for users with identical phones), but, despite this being a sensible security option, I don’t think many sites do it. If these problems start becoming more common that may need to change.

Configuring Sendmail for UF’s SMTP

 

Our Ubuntu web host, hosted with OSG, was not able to send mail (using PHP mail) outside of UF. An OSG tech said our From: header should be a valid address at UF (check) and that the logs at smtp.ufl.edu showed those messages never made it there.

The solution was to configure sendmail to use smtp.ufl.edu as the “smart” relay host (as it’s described in the config file):

$ sudo nano /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

Ctrl+w and search for smart. On the line below, add smtp.ufl.edu directly after DS with no space. The result should be:

# "Smart" relay host (may be null)
DSsmtp.ufl.edu

Ctrl-x and save the buffer.

Restart sendmail: $ sudo /etc/init.d/sendmail restart

As soon as I did this, the queued messages were sent out. I still don’t know why messages to ufl.edu succeeded while others sat in the queue.

Tercy and the Insufferable Incline

 

Kathleen and I have been lucky enough to be able to carpool until now, leaving our neglected Tercel “Tercy” (see right) to the rats and other inhabitants. The Good: runs well, good mileage, heat works. Bad: cramped driver’s seat, smells kinda like feet, back doors don’t open from outside, battery leaks out in a few days if you don’t disconnected the terminals, A/C refrigerant leaks out in a few weeks, radio barely tunes in close stations and has to be cranked up to be heard, wipers are weak and finicky and occasionally creep across the window when you accidentally glance the stick, a thorough exterior filth, sometimes after it stops the electrical system refuses to operate until you dis/reconnect the battery, on occasion the headlights have been known to flicker out. That’s at least what I knew of before coming to work.

Kathleen needs the reliability of the van for her new school and I’m going to be biking to work most days, but for those rainy or, recently, 20 degree mornings (ugh) I grudgingly bought an orange UF decal for Tercy. This morning I got to the parking garage with only one stall—I rarely drive stick—and made my way up to the much dreaded Gate of Hate, in which it requires you to slide your Gator1 card.

Perhaps to offend the few still driving stick, they place these gates on a healthy grade. While rolling my window down I find it can’t be rolled down enough to get my arm out; I’ll have to open the door. I engage the parking brake and release the brake pedal—the car begins to roll backwards, of course. While keeping a foot on the brake, I open the door and manage to reach the slot.

Perhaps to offend me personally, my !@#$ Gator1 card won’t activate the gate, which repeatedly repudiates me with beeps of dissatisfaction. As I realize I’m going to have to abort mission, a car pulls up behind me. Door still opened, foot firmly on brake, torso stretched out the side, I somehow compel the woman to leave her warm luxury sedan to come slide her card. (This is how I got in yesterday after I’d just received my decal in another enraging series of events. I had assumed my card issue would be resolved by today. That I assume anything to do with Parking “Services” will Just Work Out is a sign of chronic delusions.)

The lady swipes her blessed card and retreats, giving me moments to act. As I release the brake to hit the gas, the car jets backward at a furious pace. I hammer the gas, the car peels out, and I careen around the corner at the top with my door flying half open, surely making me look a maniac. I quickly park and head down the stairs lest the lady is someone of influence within the college.

HOPE Turns Into a Bill

 

Sent to my House Representative Corrine Brown (links added here):

Ms. Brown,
I encourage you to support H.R. 4055, Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) Initiative Act of 2009. Hawaiian Judge Alm’s probation and parole reform program has shown we can significantly reduce both crime and imprisonment.

The program is a clear winner all around: States save prison space, the public enjoys less crime from participants on probation/parole, and those participants significantly reduce their likelihood of heading back to prison.

You can read about this program here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10prisons-t.html

Thank you for your time.

Steve Clay,
Gainesville

Please write your representative in support of this bill. Here’s a video of Mark Kleiman discussing the H.O.P.E. program and other topics in his recent book, which I need to get around to writing about…

A Bad Precedent?

 

While Microsoft has certainly used unlawful practices in the past to build the Windows empire, I fail to see how Opera’s EU antitrust case was anything more than a thinly veiled (and successful) attempt by Opera—and later additional competitors—to strong-arm Microsoft into directly promoting their products.

Users of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system in Europe who have chosen its Internet Explorer as their default browser will receive in a software update an option to switch to a rival. [NYT]

I understand the chicken-or-the-egg problem in providing users with an unbiased choice of browser on a new system, I guess I’m just uneasy with the idea of governments getting in the business of mandating that a marketplace of software be presented to users of every device that comes with software.

If Windows must give new users a choice of browsers, who decides the options, and why shouldn’t every OS have this requirement? There are many commercial text editors, instant message apps, etc. Why shouldn’t those be presented as options? Apple routinely adds new applications to its standard distribution that greatly reduce the value of existing commercial apps. Should we not let them? Is it in the best interest of average users to have to choose from a continuously growing list of low-market share and potentially poorly-compatible, insecure, or abandon-ware browsers?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this would turn out to be great for the software industry and users (but mostly lawyers), but I think at some point we should sunset the argument that people don’t understand what web browsers are.

Reverse Glasses and Map Flopping

 

Update June 2013: These exist!

Years ago I had an idea for “reverse” glasses. All they would do is invert horizontally–or flop–the image your retinas receive as if you were viewing through a mirror. I suspect after a brief period of adjustment you’d be able to function fairly normally wearing them, but your common surroundings would appear oddly different, like the first day waking up in a house with a reversed floor plan.

Asymmetrical skateboarding spots limit your trick options because, as a skater–even if you’re great at skating switchstance–you’re either regular or goofy foot. If there’s only one obvious direction to hit something from, you kind of lose half the available tricks to try on it. Flopped glasses couldn’t switch your natural skating stance, but they would let you see every spot as having a flopped equivalent, which is where the game developers come in.

Every 2 or 3-dimensional game should have a “flop map” option, which would flop the player’s map (but not the controls). This would be fairly trivial for the developer, but would give players double the (perceived) number of unique maps to play on. Obviously this is only interesting on asymmetrical maps like a city or a famous golf course–flopping most sport courts/fields wouldn’t have any real effect.

Another feature of the glasses: They would “correct” what you see in mirrors to be exactly what the world sees–parted hair/crooked teeth/wristwatch on the opposite side. Weird and awesome.

Moyers Considers Similarities Between Afghanistan and Pre-War Vietnam

 

Bill Moyers treats us to LBJ’s telephone recordings, highlighting some of the similarities between today and the days before our escalation in Vietnam. I wish we could hear the conversations of all our presidents like this. Moyer’s concludes with this:

Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we’re fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he’s got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.

Latest 9/11 Victim: our Justice System

 

Greenwald makes a pretty convincing case that Bush/Obama’s “justice system” for accused terrorists is merely for display purposes only.

If you’re accused of being a Terrorist, there’s not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you based on ensuring that it will win. Even worse, Holder repeatedly assured Senators that the administration would continue to imprison 9/11 defendants even in the very unlikely case that they were acquitted, citing what they previously suggested was their Orwellian authority of so-called “post-acquittal detention powers.” Is there any better definition of a “show trial” than one in which the defendant has no chance of ever being released even if acquitted, because the Government will simply thereafter assert the power to hold him indefinitely without charges?

9/11 didn’t “change everything”; we let the Bush administration do that. Al-Qaeda had no ability to rewrite the rules of what happens to an arbitrary individual pulled off the street by the U.S. government. They couldn’t force us to torture captives, or to view detainment as its own justification or proof of wrongdoing. We tore down our own principles of justice and due process.

The cost of rebuilding them is to take the (real) risk of acquitting some individuals truly guilty of horrible crimes. While we won’t get that from Obama or any politician facing reelection, here’s to the hope that America’s willingness to sacrifice principles for revenge will die with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.