June 2007

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iPhone And AT&T: It’s Not Kinda, Sorta The Internet. It’s The Just The Internet… Wiretapped.

June 29, 2007 by thomas | 1 comment

No I’m not getting an iPhone today. Nor will I be getting one tomorrow. Verizon has decided to punish me and every one of their existing customers for Apple’s innovation by making sure to enforce to their dying breath the 2-year contracts we signed. So, I won’t be getting an iPhone for about a year. But, I will be bad-mouthing Verizon in the interim.

Constantly. Whenever the chance comes up.

Now, that being said, I’m okay missing out on this Apple insanity. Mainly because, no matter how bad Verizon is (did I mention that they’re really, really bad?), AT&T, the exclusive wireless carrier for the iPhone, is worse. They’ve been documented installing equipment in their central offices to allow the NSA to snoop on their customers’ internet connections. Didn’t Verizon do this as well? Probably, but at least they are saying the right things, like how they’d never allow wiretapping of their customers without a warrant. AT&T just shrugged their shoulders and said that if you aren’t doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about.

Uh huh, heard that one before.

So, to my friends that are getting their iPhones tonight, please see my entry on FireGPG and think twice before sending me any e-mail from your shiny new device without encrypting it first.

Tags: cellphone, friends

So That’s Where We Learned How To Write “Enterprise” Software

June 14, 2007 by thomas | No comments

Found this amusing link showing how “the world’s worst car,” the Trabant Sputnik of East Germany is/was made. This video in particular, reminds me of several enterprise software jobs I’ve had. Sure, most of the projects started out with detailed plans and documentation, but in the end management almost always abandons quality in favor of deadlines.

“Just keep kicking the grill until the hood lines up,” could easily have come out almost any of my boss’ mouths (if our project had a “grill” and “hood” that is ). “We’ll formalize the workaround into a documented procedure later.” In fact, I think a couple of them even had the same exquisite mullet as the worker in the video.

That’s one of the big reasons I’m out on my own now and why I refuse to call any software I write, “enterprise quality.” I’d much rather build Porches than Trabants.

Tags: programming

New DJedna Deploy

June 12, 2007 by thomas | No comments

I deployed a new version of djedna today. Most of the new creamy goodness baked into the heart of this release was done by Mike (who someday will have a link so that you will know him as more than a name). Changes include a cleaned up interface and significant under-the-covers changes to the catalog model to prepare us for our three-pronged customer strategy.

However, this upgrade comes with a caveat. If you had a djedna account before, well, it’s gone. Sorry, progress requires sacrifice. The good news is that if you’d still like to enjoy the new-car-smell-alpha that is DJedna, just e-mail me (thomas, you know, at, like, gumption.com) and ask for an account.

All things djedna are coming along nicely. As you can see, Mike’s been cruising along while I’ve been dealing with code-block in trying to complete the pool/playlist/program (a.k.a. Flytrap) functionality, probably because I’ve been thinking about it for far too long (maybe 9 years or so). Now I’m presented with cool new ways to implement it, like using python’s simple generators. But I’ve at least got the blank-screen-blues out of the way now so hopefully it won’t be as hard as I’m making out to be in my head.

Tags: djedna, programming

I’m A Winner

June 10, 2007 by thomas | No comments

I just won Round 8 of Nomicron. W00t!

Nomicron is a long running internet-based game of Nomic run by my friend Jef. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, here’s how the inventor, Peter Suber, describes Nomic:

Nomic is a game I invented in 1982. It’s a game in which changing the rules is a move. The Initial Set of rules does little more than regulate the rule-changing process. While most of its initial rules are procedural in this sense, it does have one substantive rule (on how to earn points toward winning); but this rule is deliberately boring so that players will quickly amend it to please themselves.

Despite the fact that I’ve played all 8 rounds of Nomicron (Jef is the only other player to do so out of the dozens of people from around the world that have played with us), this is my first win. However, it’s a bit of a hollow victory as it came only because the rules for this round had gotten so convoluted and complicated that further play was essentially impossible. But hey, that’s part of the fun of Nomic.

If you’re interested in playing Nomciron, now’s a great time to check it out. We’ll be entering a “convention” phase during which we strip the rule set down to a minimum and begin Round 9. If for no other reason, getting to play around with Jef’s increasingly elaborate Nomic-management web-application is a real joy. And to think he’s doing it all in Java makes it all the more impressive.

Tags: nomicron

Being Sneaky

June 5, 2007 by thomas | No comments

So, I read out about FireGPG (and, thus, gnupg as well) on slashdot today. FireGPG is a firefox plugin that adds gnupg signing/encryption right into gmail. It’s pretty slick and I highly recommend it.

Remember, without encryption, your e-mails are like postcards in the real mail. That is, anyone along the way to its destination can easily read it. Encrypting your e-mail text with gnupg is like putting your postcard in an envelope. It’s not totally secure (especially from the NSA), but it makes it much harder for strangers to read your dirty little secrets.

So, in the interest of carrying on future e-mail conversations in private (when appropriate), here is the public key for my main e-mail address (thomas, you know, at gumption.com):

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin) mQGiBEZlpbsRBAC+OhEyLtvvXhtkququ9Xxk0A8pnwWQoEif3UyFoggncnKcDVZX or7JdrJBo1eNsOK6o5lTCZjqub/soqwI+6HF+oBq75/KPwW4a7u1kP6agmes7cbR MZe3/0eQGckpHQrV5EfD15/EeuXtQjUjqm+G39T431edfbQ+0BFUOeVLKwCgrlEN d0YvJkKjptTqBUngL1E9rc8D/0hmYOE725z5Fvm0dd3+FSUBfsKjxbyH3gT8XQZ/ he44bHe9MbYks6L25I8FcwO+nTSyw2Ytv+WGL1zNqyXfdCDtpP2YEm+YnEx6PaEI Vp9X+PlhLsxjJeaMfYOsBfpeUxhAJjkYRPwKteWGeYnUjFSKIhu0GbIPPgyR7kes DNnQA/9sKfEHVi0eQbLjtQaXxyEsH2GwRaGGGwSXStTQEyC1Z3eLBUrNulIFYvwC dcJwnVhY99WOmCStpsO9Np+4K857hgVVNHz3+FKwZXHF/aPGv1Sftqr6iUrY/7op K434jXzgVmNJCDanaid8Kp8PnBFY8w2aX6RT8hx2FCTYHARpCLQqVGhvbWFzIEJv aG1iYWNoLCBKci4gPHRob21hc0BndW1wdGlvbi5jb20+iGAEExECACAFAkZlpbsC GwMGCwkIBwMCBBUCCAMEFgIDAQIeAQIXgAAKCRBXPLnfG4DfjtZwAJ0TKGRwnQ3W jGBQ2ILM0ZRN7T1vUQCfaMex2trBD8Qtmy8Tfte/lXh+fsa5Ag0ERmWlwRAIAKPA foOBV2tW3RMFyo6NQGGlZBs6GD1ib2i2cI84meoEYiCpRKc4+y0fTZ+PcW/sMyZP eIluBZq7YmUD1v8qBNa3M/ldQnlWM1Tfe6WopAfwcUJ/Nmd9L6lQlf6tPpymoELR 48xqco0RwPR3bynZGvUuAaQLMljzvSo9qN/vow2bWFQ1bnOdHY8mVkD5UdXGh36r wwcJ3aHmIri+AqFpeKMMf01ggDSpJepfNIeTJc6sIGCoQwJIQO9NyyD3/jNSKbdW GVaZsP1rWqCMisYSWOELPmjM5bS2iGV+7TmEUxwIyJmBqMVy8HCLBqN0YieokANf o053SQCC5cqhhKA7orMAAwUH/RHj4H9ZlZQ6v1cbVGoEtTNDvtnZj1qa3QWQ5eur 0kdF/yAhLbZ/HREkKEaCKfdTF/ZJCSy0ZtUsoNvQtP/XhzL318UxsMKYOJy9GEaI TVqHda/VcMrelELfWtsvkK5uvrQFpo/UkBg9J0YQVvwVJd03e2flXiVHNLRUEplL BziUeeETuyRbw6MsDKUf22uRg28+vwOdUxgaZ7vqoRS/DoTCZ+hSMJTOeCZKM7R0 S0I6Ja6oIwPPVGHca+Rbxv51NYP4Qy20BX9gxms4SbQHMUoUa31+NVIkcsApE+bo h3zWbbpPpyInY6gcnzHLBnWtgK9gEk6ruigHLj6oFRrJoOGISQQYEQIACQUCRmWl wQIbDAAKCRBXPLnfG4DfjjgYAJ9GJo/apT5wwxLAK+EVq7xvuWzTZwCdGK0uoKo4 wiTlHXQP5/CTNioGrJk= =XXAk -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Of course, you shouldn’t actually sign (i.e. blindly trust) this public key as being mine. Someone could have hacked this post and changed the above key to their public key. That’s why you should always verify a public key through more secure means. Like calling the owner and having them read their public key fingerprint (a much shorter representation of the public key intended for humans) to you so you can verify that it matches the key you have. Then you can sign the public key which means that you have verified that the key is correct and actually belongs to who you think it belongs to.

So, now I’ll just wait patiently for someone to send me some ciphertext.

Tags: gumption, security