IT Legends – Tech in Connecticut

So I have this great 32″ LCD HD TV from Vizio in my office at work.  So my partner and I decide to buy a mini computer and turn it into a streaming video machine.  I thought I’d try hulu.com on it. Burn Notice doesn’t look so good – very choppy even at full buffering.  Just to check to make sure the PC can handle the 1920 x 1080 resolution on the TV, I decided to try and watch some Daily Show clips off Comedy Central.  They are not choppy at all – the resolution leaves something to be desired, but the playback experience as a whole on the Daily Show was a lot better than on hulu.com.  I’ll update to see if different shows on hulu.com from different producers looks any better, but I am beginning to think that hulu.com just won’t be what I want it to be because the content makers are hampering it (it’s not a hulu.com technical difficulty – its just that the content providers still don’t get it).

OK, so I use a nice VPN solution that works through every public WiFi I’ve ever encountered.  Great – no problem (which one you ask?  My Astaro Security Gateway…  but its implementing OpenVPN which is open source so anyone could set their own up withour the UTM).  So I’m not too concerned about running my Virtual Desktop (Windows XP Pro, virtualized onto VMware Server 2.0) because the connection from my laptop to the Virtual Desktop is encrypted.  So when using non-encrypted public WiFi, the traffic that others can see freely is encrypted.

Enter the All Ways On Wireless at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in Washington, DC.  Its a pay-for public WiFi, I’m not against paying for it.  Its actually running quite nicely and the regular, non-VPN enabled all-day pass works just fine with my VPN (another reason I like OpenVPN).  However, when I went to purchase my day of access, it led me to a non-encrypted web page to type in my credit card details.  Seeing as the radio frequency traffic between my laptop and the wireless access point is not encrypted and completely open to anyone that knows how to look, I essentially broadcast my credit card details out for that potential someone to steal.

Be wary of public wifi access spots that make you enter credit card details without leading you to a secure web page (that’s when you see https:// in the address bar, or that little padlock in the status bar of your browser).  I don’t think my details are now in the hands of some nefarious identity theif, but its a lot more possible now that I’ve given them out over unencrypted radio transfer.  Someone taking this information wouldn’t even be recorded as a data breach in the All Ways On Wireless financial system – since essentially they didn’t hack into their database they just listened to the freely broadcast, unencrypted traffic.

When will companies start taking security of information more seriously?  I tried to go to their website (www.allwayson.net) but strangely enough, you can’t even get to their website from their own public wifi gateway.  I wonder if its even up anymore, or if it changed and noone set up any forwarding address.

A client of mine received a letter (conveniently organized just like a bill) to renew their domain with a company called the Domain Registry of America.  I only found this out when I mentioned to them that their domain registration was up for renewal in February 2009 and I wanted to make sure we transferred the registration to them instead of having it registered to my company.  Well, that is when they let me know that they already sent a check to this DRoA company.  I’m thinking – what!?  No way!  Your registrar is Dynamic Network Services.  How did you stumble upon this?

Well, they are just one of many people that have been targeted by this company.  What they do is scan the registrar records of known domains and send letters to all the contacts that are listed with the domain.  These letters look a lot like bills, even though there is a small place where they state “This notice is not a bill”.  Take a look at what this guy, who registers a lot of domains in his online marketing company, went through with this company.  He also recorded his conversations!  Conveniently available for you to listen in MP3 format.  Also, check out the Google search for “Domain Registry of America scam”.

In my opinion, DRoA = dirty rats!  Also, please read everything on a “bill” before sending them money.  Especially if you have to create a new vendor for them in your payment system.

So I have been using a coffee press at the office because I wanted some flavored coffee (cinnamon from dunkin’ donuts) and don’t want to weird anyone out with my peculiar taste. I think my obsession with cinnamon probably extends back to when I first saw Dune as a child. The closest thing in the house to the spice was cinnamon! mmmm!

Actually, that’s not the topic of the post. I was curious about what happens to coffee grounds when you flush them down the toilet. I know you’re not supposed to put them down the drain or even in the disposal unit in your sink (I’m guilty) but at the office I’ve been flushing the grounds left over from my press. So with a little google-fu, I ended up finding this very misconceived article on “To Flush or Not To Flush“. It starts off very well with some valid points about poisoning aquatic life with chemicals down the toilet. It makes sense. However, their proposed solutions aren’t so great:

1. They mention that landfills are the best place to put chemicals and medical waste products because of the plastic liners in all modern landfills. This seemed dubious to me. First I doubt that all landfills actually have this geomembrane (that’s what they call the plastic liners). Secondly, while plastics can be pretty amazing materials, they aren’t immune or inert. This means that plastics will eventually break down, they can be pierced by heavy machinery, they can leak. A little more google-fu shows some details on this from a trash presentation at a university.
2. The one that really gets me is:
   

   Placing kitty litter in empty milk container and pour liquid cleaners, or liquid medicines into it that way it will be absorbed, with no worry of contaminating the environment.

   Sounds good from the outside, but think about this a little more. Kitty litter? Have you ever smelled well-used kitty litter? Smells like kitty pee, doesn’t it? Have you ever picked it up with your bare hands?  No, because its wet with kitty pee and who knows what else!?  This is a solution for no worry of contaminating the environment?

So what has me so riled up?  Its misconceptions like these that lead to lazy environmentalism. Lazy work can often get things really messed up, maybe not at first glance, but over time I’ve come to know that lazy work just fails. What’s the point of giving someone a false sense of saving the environment?  If it ends up in the landfill, and the landfill leaks into the water tables, then the aquatic environment is still threatened.  These are ultimately empty measures.

(note about coffee presses: I like the idea of using a press because I use less materials (no coffee filters) and don’t waste coffee (only 1 cup at a time) or water. It also makes a pretty nice cup of coffee. The water cooler also has hot water in it in the office, and I’d hate to see all that energy expended if noone used it.)

I’d say the Sci-Fi channel was killing me, since they’ve made some cancellations that didn’t please me in the past (Firefly and Farscape), but I think this one is purely a result of NBC’s acquisition of the Sci-Fi channel. No, it’s not another cancellation. First, I’m annoyed that I cannot continue to buy Battlestar Galactica (the new series) on iTunes anymore (more…)