So anyone here with an American Epress has probably gotten the MylifeMyCard advertisments and the information on their MyWishList contest (http://mywishlist.mylifemycard.com/). What I find interesting is every year the contest has been in Flash (not good for the blind to start), but this year they outdid themselves. They managed to add a captcha to the contest that has no audio alternative --wonderful.

You're probably thinking well why does this guy care? Mainly 1) my neighbor is blind and 2) I'm in law school and had to study the American with Disabilities Act. All in all I'd say anyone with standing could sue the living shit out of AMEX for a violation of their ADA rights --since this is a public contest. I mean AMEX might argue "Hey, we're a private group and the contest is private," but I doubt a court would buy it. They've got millions of card holders and the contest is open to every one of them. Either way, it's not very nice of American Express to forget their are blind card holders who they're straight screwing over.

Time to make a phone call,
Tyler

First off, finals are over and I'm back to being human for a few months (yay!). Second I still love RIFE and now I'll have time to use it. Thrid and the point of this post is can the old BBS days trick of Wardialing to find connections help in a war?

What I mean is there have been several articles posted on bombs being set off remotely by cell phones in Iraq and other places like Bangladesh. I was just wondering if it would be possible to have the phone company periodically just ring all the phones and set off the bombs before they're supposed to detonate. Obviously using simple triangulation, etc. the possible canidates for dialing could be lowered, but either way it's still the principle that's interesting.

Might be better than using cell phone jammers. If nothing else it would make the detonators more complex and harder to build instead of a simple 5V or whatever pulse off the phones speaker there would have to be some kind of tone reader to check for key presses or at least a counter for X rings.

Cheers,
Tyler

Once upon a time there was a beautiful thing born and it was known as Logic. Eventually, Logic gave birth to a beautiful baby Computers. Now, Computers gave birth to many things, but this story focuses on part of it's bastard step child --programming languages and it's cousin software development.

Now programming languages was very promiscuous and had many many bastard children of it's own. One was the demon seed known as Perl. However, evil can change it's stripes in this magical land and eventually from Perl arose a somewhat less evil descendant. This somewhat less evil descendant was named "Ruby."

Eventually, Ruby, the somewhat less evil descendant of the demon seed Perl, developed a kingdom and a large following (mostly from her vast rail network). Many wars were waged between Ruby's kingdom and those of the somewhat evil PHP, a bastard child of C++, who himself was a bastard child C, and so on. These wars lasted many years, but they're not the focus of this story. No, this story focuses on Ruby.

Now, Ruby, with her vast kingdom made many decrees. Some where simple such as "Types shall not be found in my kingdom!, unless they're for conversions?” Other degrees were to appease her kingdom and it's vast population of characters.

One example, was Ruby's degree: "No character shall not have a meaning in our kingdom!"
To which the people cried "Not even ! ?"
Ruby replied "No, ! shall be factorial AND not"
"What of @?" they said next.
"@ shall define class members" she replied
"And |, what of smelly old | ?" the pondered,
"Ah, a tough one, but | shall have a use in iterators"
... this went on for awhile as there were a lot of characters to be appointed.

Near the end one character spoke up, little ^, and asked Ruby for a meaning. Poor little ^ said to Ruby, "Your majesty, I've been known around the world to represent the exponential operation and I'd like have the same meaning in your kingdom."

Ruby, who had a brief affair with ** several years earlier; told poor little ^ to go to hell and appointed ** as the exponential operator. Poor little ^ was left with only being useful as a regular expression operator and eventually committed suicide. Poor little guy. Many in the kingdom were furious and confused about Ruby's decision to select ** over brave little carrot and swore off Ruby and her kingdom forever.

Eventually, an underground began to form in the kingdom. They tried for years to over throw ** as the exponential operator but failed. The operators of the underground were two nobles named If and Else. If and Else were lovers and were recently blessed with a child. If and Else, being subjects of a kingdom founded by a distant relative of Logic, name their child Elseif --a token of their undying love for each other and honor to the legend of Logic.

The wars fought between the underground and Ruby's armies were amazing, even more so then those waged between the Ruby's kingdom and PHP, but there is no time to describe them here. Eventually, the leaders of the movement If and Else were caught along with their two greatest generals, the twins { and }. Being slightly evil, really pissed off by the underground's attacks, and insulted by the fact that anyone in her kingdom would question her decision to appoint ** over ^, Ruby came up with a horrific plan to teach any dissenters a lesson.

First, she imprisoned If and Else's generals, { and }, to work with smelly old | for all eternity. Next, and the most dastardly of all, Ruby ordered Elseif’s e cut off in front of the whole kingdom. Yes! Poor newborn’s e was cut off Poor and waived around for all to see. Poor little Elseif, now forever more only Elsif was forever ruined by Queen Ruby and never could find meaning in life. Yes, it was a sad day for all. The entire kingdom wept, developers fled upon hearing the news and If and Else could not believe Ruby would commit such a horrific act and begged to be executed immediately. In a misguided attempt to honor Elsif, Interpreter, a good friend of the family, refused to throw an error or warning if Elseif’s name was ever used.

However, reaching deeper into her well of evil, Ruby declared one final punishment. Ruby stayed If and Else's executions and ordered them to live with end --the most annoying of all Ruby's kingdom for all eternity.

And all wept again.

So about 2 weeks ago I get a package on my door. Not 100% sure what it was, figured it’s something from my family (usually is). I guessed it was a care package, since finals were about to start here at law school. Anyway, I toss it to the side and head to class. Get back that night and decide to open it up. I’m thinking I could use some cookies.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I opened it, but 2 days later I was happy with what I received. Turns out it was an advanced copy of Tesla Testament a novel by Eugene Ciurana. I normally wouldn’t start reading a book right before finals, but it wasn’t a case book and had Tesla in the title. That sparked my interest. I may be a law student now, but in my former life I was definitely a computer geek and a man-of-science.

So I flip the book over and read the description to make sure it’s not just a catchy title. Turns out Tesla Testament is a spy thriller based around Tesla’s works and a spy named Francis Montagnet. Ok, I think, maybe I’ll read a few pages. I was quite surprised to find out the book changes the back story to the Tunguska event, one of my favorite mysterious happenings, by the end of chapter one. That definitely grabbed my attention and as I said earlier it was done by the next night.

I don’t want to give away too much about the plot, but the book definitely held my attention through the whole read. The book follows Francis Montagnet’s quest to stop the Rebirth Alliance, a terrorist organization, from using Tesla’s works to create a new super weapon. Montagnet travels the globe in his quest to stop the Alliance, traversing numerous cities and countries. Of course, there’s a girl. A beautiful Russian girl no less.

I always figured a spy novel wouldn’t have much in the way of character development, but was presently surprised that Tesla Testament actually developed its characters. I really felt like I understood the characters by the end of the book. The descriptions of the numerous landscapes brought back memories of my trips through the Europe (ah, for pre-law school days again). The action scenes are well described, with a lot of kick boxing references. I have to admit, I liked the kick boxing, they reminded me of the Bloodsport movies. The only real issue I had with the book was the use of Islamic extremists as the villains. I’ve spent time in Islamic countries and as a result I have a lot of Muslim friends. I think they’ve been getting a bad rap, in the media, lately and would liked to have seen a different group being utilized. Otherwise, no complaints.

All in all, Tesla Testament is well written and has the right balance of science, technology, sex and action to make a believable plot. Some parts might be a little technical, but Mr. Ciurana provides explanations and I think that most readers should get by without issue. If you like Tesla and I hope you do, then you should check the book out.

In conclusion, it may not have been cookies, but it was still tasty. I’ve never read a spy novel, but I’ll definitely read another one. Now that finals are over.

Cheers,
Tyler

After some recent events, I've been wondering: "Should we contribute to OSS, but make these contributions voidable?" What I mean is should we write code for a project, donate it to that project, but make sure it can be taken out / stop use, if that project goes sour? Here's an extreme example:

Project X is formed and it's a great idea. You join up with Project X and make a few modifications and add some cool new features. Project X continues to grow and becomes really popular with millions of users, so you start listing yourself as connected with Project X. Finally, Project X's administrator, who you trusted to handle the project correctly, decides that the logo should be switched from a Teddy Bear to Ted Bundy and display a message about killing your family. There was no fork, there was only a modification to the project, a project that you've tied yourself to. So you of course cut your ties and do your best to explain you had nothing to do with that project, but what if you could say "stop promoting your project until you remove my ties / contributions to it?"

Unlike most OSS project where there is was a fork to the project before it went sour, here this is not the case. Here, we've got a project administrator who just decided to up and change course out of the blue and you're caught in the crossfire. The best you can do is drop all connections with the project and play clean up with your reputation, but is that right? You can fork the project, hoping that the users offended by the changes are willing to try your new product, but you've still been negatively impacted (reputation, lose of users, etc.). What if they jump to another alternative, because the "Project X" name has been tainted forever and when they see your application load, they're just waiting for Ted Bundy to pop up and tell them to kill their families so they just shut it down and uninstall it?

I know as OSS developers we allow our code to be used freely by others, but we assume that major changes will result in a fork. What happens when there is no fork and the administrator of the project just decides to switch coarse taking us with them? What can we do? I like to think most OSS developers have faith that people who start/maintain OSS projects are going to keep to their words and keep software free and/or at least follow the path. Should we take out insurance on our contributions, make contracts with the administrators ("you can use this until you sell us out") or should we just have blind faith that OSS will manage itself?

Right now, I'm at a loss. Do I plan to keep my faith in people to do what they promise or do I make sure I can stop them from adversely affecting me? Is open source going to get to the point where we need contracts with Administrators to keep their words and keep projects on track? Or should we stick to the old Fork and Rebuild ontology and hope that we can "cover" all the damage to our reputations without much hassle?

I just don't know,
Tyler