InterviewPalin.com: Computer Generated Satire

Computer algorithm parody sites have been all the rage this election cycle -- the '08 equivalent to You Forgot Poland and johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com. Sandy Levinson at Balkinization put me on to my fav so far -- a Sarah Palin interview generator. The site clicks you through a series of questions, answered by a program using a Markov chain. Here's a sample.

Q: Why should the US elect Senator McCain?

McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that contract that should be inherent in corporations who are spending, investing other people's money, the abuse of that closed door, good old boy network that has to be in, if we were to allow that to happen. We have got to get a more coordinated and a much more than smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we need to implement those. We cannot just concede that, oh, gee, maybe they're going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I think that I am so proud of his desire to control and to control and to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world is and how important it is the foundation of our best interests to fight against a regime, especially Iran, who would seek to protect the good guys in this, the leaders of Israel and her friends, her allies, including the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska.

Spot on.

Oh, and Hi again.

A New Knight Center and a New Freelance Piece.

My latest step in my slow ascent up the ladder of freelance respectability is here, a lead in the Knight Foundation newsletter about the Knight Center of Digital Excellence. Attentive readers may recall that when the Knight Foundation and OneCommunity announced plans for an Akron WiFi zone, they announced creation of this Center of Digital Excellence as part of the overall effort. They moved into their new offices in the United 1 building a couple of weeks ago and hired me to cover the event for their members.

If you aren't inclined to click through to review my work I'll say that the Knight Center (still getting used to saying that and meaning something other than the Convention Center) is a nationwide pro bono networking consulting service run in partnership by the Knight Foundation and OneCommunity. They work toward community internet access by playing what baseball teams call small ball -- small, focused connectivity projects here and there build out networks (mostly in what tech guys call the middle mile) and communities build on that to connect their populations.

It's no small thing for Akron to have gotten this. The effort is getting serious looks as a sort of next generation collection of connectivity models now that some high-profile muni wireless efforts have cratered. I was honored to have been present, if not at the creation, at least on moving day.

(Just so we're clear, my contract with the Foundation was fulfilled by the article; I'm writing this on my own because it's pretty cool and Pho-phriendly news regardless.)

Do You Know "Did You Know?"

The story I'm currently working on covers a meeting where we saw the viral Did You Know video. It was the first time I saw it. The story goes that after video-savvy teacher Colorado Karl Fisch produced it for his colleagues, a friend encouraged him to give it a broader distribution. He took out the Colo-specific info, added this and that and posted on the Yube. If you haven't seen it yet here's release 2.0:



ShiftHappens has spawned a wiki space and Fisch has an education-related blog.

And I'm working on some original content for tomorrow.

Electricity Deregulation and Net Neutrality

I took in the Press Club panel about electricity deregulation or re-regulation or whatever they end up doing. Depending on how the weekend plays out, I may or may not post comprehensive summary of the program. But one quick line from the day deserves close attention.

The essential issue is whether it is possible to create a genuinely competitive market for electricity. Everyone agrees that because of the particular qualities of the electricity market, creating a competitive market means more than just lifting regulations, it means ensuring that a number of conditions are met.

According to the panelist from First Energy, one of the sentinel qualities of a competitive market is open access to transmission. That is, each competing provider must be allowed access to the lines to the homes of electricity customers. And that makes sense. The market can't be competing grids, it must be competing providers on one grid, even if one of the competitors owns the grid. Remember, this is the industry

Which is exactly what net neutrality advocates argue for. A truly competitive market for internet content must allow free access to transmission. With cable and phone competing, we have a less ironclad monopoly of the end of transmission, but we have the same barrier to perfect competition -- companies seeking to compete can't simply put up a new transmission grid. If the market for internet services is to remain competitive, content providers must have open access to transmission.

Arguments against net neutrality tend to use "regulation" as a boogeyman and/or argue by metaphor. That's smart tactically because in fact net neutrality regulation seeks to preserve a status quo that has worked pretty well so far. Up until now, net neutrality was guaranteed mostly because the technology didn't exist to allow network owners to discriminate based on content.

Now the technology is coming on line and network owners appear increasingly inclined to use it. Recently the usually prostrate FCC bowed to pressure and is investigating allegations that Comcast is blocking peer-to-peer traffic. And AT&T is considering monitoring traffic, purportedly to block protected intellectual property. In fact the move makes little sense except as a pretense to dismantle net neutrality.

Sometimes progressives favor regulation because we believe a competitive market brings unwanted side effects. But this is a case where regulation is needed not to blunt the effects of competition, but to ensure that the market remains truly competitive.

The Revised Cable Franchising Centralization Bill (SB 117) Is Due Out Tomorrow

Just got an email from Local Voice Ohio, the coalition opposing S.B. 117. Note that the PEG in the email is short from Public/Education/Government cable channels. In other words, what we call public access. Also, the email came as one blob of a paragraph, but I've reformatted the bullet points into the list it surely was intended to be:

Dear Friend of PEG,

Time is short and we are at a critical juncture in supporting PEG interests in Ohio. Senator Jacobson has introduced a substitute bill that will go before the committee tomorrow (Tuesday the 8th) that does not go far enough in supporting PEG in Ohio. Among the problems with the bill.

* PEG funding is only grandfathered until your franchise ends or January 1, 2012, whichever COMES FIRST!
* While the number of PEG channels is grandfathered, only 3 remain on the basic tier if you are a community larger than 50,000, and only 2 if your population is less than 50,000. The rest get pushed onto the upper tiers.
* New PEG channels, if you can qualify for them, go up on the digital tiers.
* No funding for new PEGs!
That's just a few of the problems with this bill, but they are key ones related to PEG. We need you to take action now! We need you to e-mail the members of the E&PU committee and say the following. Dear Senator, The language in the substitute bill for SB 117, while a step in the right direction, does not go far enough in supporting PEG Access. I ask that you amend SB 117 with the language provided by Local Voice Ohio. Local Voice Ohio speaks for me on SB 117.

They would like people to send the email to members of the Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee. While they don't mention it in the email, LVO has a tool on it's website that allows people to fax their representatives. You should change the text of the message if you use that.

The members of the committee are Schuler, Bruerer, Coughlin, Jacobson, Niehaus and Spada on the Repub side and Ray Miller, Mason and Wilson on the Dems. You click through the link above to the Committee list and click through the name of the member you want to contact to get the info. Note from a previous post that all but Schuler, Coughlin and Wilson are co-sponsors. Also if you are new to S.B. 117, that post has good links to resources in other blogs.

Inventor's Hall of Fame Induction

Once a year, Akron's National Inventor's Hall of Fame reinvents itself for a night. Usually the ground floor is the Inventor’s Workshop, a hands-on science museum catering heavily to kids but suffering somewhat from the grey industrial basement feel of the place. But once a year the room goes glam, with formal table settings, stage lighting and drapes to warm up the unfinished concrete décor. This is the induction ceremony. Once again Prof. W scored tickets, I rented a tux and we attended the coolest Hall of Fame ceremony on the planet.

What follows is less a play-by-play than a survey of the random moments that most stood out in more or less the order they happened.

• I overheard a couple of conversations about the study showing that U Akron leads the state in universities transferring research to commercial applications. The theme was frustration that the Beacon didn’t cover the story.


• The music for this thing always starts out unbearable, then gets kind of cool. They bring in an elite teen singing group, but often – and such was the case here – a song is compose especially for the event. The theme for the evening was The Fire of Genius. I had kind of noticed two odd pipe contraptions hanging from the ceiling among the spotlights. One sappy pop song about invention later, nozzles on the pipes erupted in flame. OK, that was kind of cool. Then the student retire to a balcony where they do fill music as each inductee heads to the stage.


• The MC is Neil Conan from NPR. They get some media personality every year, and often it’s an NPR person so you spend the night fascinated that a familiar voice is now accompanied by a face.


• Conan gives an introductory speech about the march, or run, or screaming pelting race of technology. One of many factoids: in the next year people will generate 1.5 X 1018 bits of new information. Puts my impossibly long posts into perspective, doesn’t it?


• We are introduced to the representative of the Patent Office who will help give the awards. Usually it’s the head of the Patent Office who looks every inch a Bush political appointee. He’s busy so this year we get Margaret Peterline, his Deputy Director, who looks very much like Donna Moss, but no doubt has the politics of Ainsley Hayes.


• Reading from a teleprompter is a skill. The skill is in reading with out it looking like you are reading. I didn’t realize it before, but in observing contrast between the clearly practiced Neil Conan and the truly horrible Ms. Peterlin, it becomes clear this is a skill. Ms. Peterlin actually elicits titters and murmurs of sympathy.


• While the official theme is “Fire of Genius” the inductees return to three themes of their own: failure is inevitable, luck is indispensable, and you better be prepared for resistance.
  


• John Franz, inducted for RoundUp herbicide, is the first to hit on the themes. He had failed for nine years to find an herbicide that breaks down quickly and doesn’t poison animals. (That’s how RoundUp is advertised; I make no claims as to the accuracy of the claim.) The compound in RoundUp had been discovered twenty years earlier, but he was the first to discover in it the properties he was looking for.


• Next up is two guys whose independent work led to the development of the MRI – Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield. Sadly Lauterbur died in late March, so his son and daughter accept the award for him. Watching the man’s daughter eulogize her father while visibly struggling to keep her emotions in check was one of what Conen later called “Goosebump Moments.”


• In all the induction ceremonies I’ve seen, it’s consistently amazing how many of the inventers are genuinely humble and seem themselves awed by what they have done. They show an interview of Lauterbur in which he says “two things really gratify me. One is the respect of my peers for what I’ve done. The other is people spontaneously saying ‘Thank you for saving my daughter’s life.’ It’s hard to be blaze about that.”


• By the way, the medallion is new this year. Lincoln is on it because he is the only U.S. President to hold a patent. The medallion was created by a sculptor who just retired from the U.S. Mint.


• The Hall is gradually making its way through the people responsible for the internet. This year they induct the two men responsible for inventing digital packet, one of who – Paul Baran – is still alive. His best line: “Good technology disappears – you take it for granted.”


• Emmett Chappelle is inducted for discovering the chemical basis for bioluminescence and developing ways to harness it for medical applications. He was raised the son of African-American sharecroppers during the Depression. He fought and was wounded as a member of an all-black infantry regiment in World War II. He came home to a G.I. Bill college education which he parlayed into a graduate degree, and a career with NASA. In arguments with my conservative friends, the GI Bill and the space program are two of my favorite examples of government programs that were crucial to the American century.


• David Metcalf invented Ethernet when working for Xerox and went on to found 3Com. Again, the inductee talks about luck – in 1973 he and a colleague were, as he puts it, the first people on the planet given the task of networking personal computers.


• Metcalf is sold on the Hall as an institution. He recounts an hour conversation in which past inductee Rangaswamy Srinivasan recounted how he developed laser strategy. Says Metcalf, “That conversation was worth the trip.” I’m sure it was. While the Hall arranges for the returning inductees to do some outreach to schools, I wish there was more public access to Induction Weekend. Inventors aren’t the only ones who can be inspired by inventors.


• By the way, the Hall, the Patent Office and various partner organizations are putting together a public service ad campaign to encourage invention and study of science and engineering. Hopefully they will post some of the ads on the website as they are fairly clever, showing kids inventing impossible things like the cat magnet.


• My all time favorite inductee is Kary Mullis who discovered the polymerase chain reaction – a way to turn an immeasurably small sample of DNA into a sample large enough to analyze. We saw him inducted and he was certainly one of the funniest speakers ever at the event. He fidgets at the podium like a five-year-old kid and talks with something of a California surfer drawl. He’s back to introduce one of his heroes Leroy Wood who had invented a succession of DNA sequencers. DNA is another field where the Hall is putting the various inventors responsible in the Hall.


• Wood’s basic approach was looking at biology as an information science. As a result, he has more than once assembled multidisciplinary teams – biologists, engineers, computer guys, etc. He’s another one who had to overcome serious resistance, in his case from traditional biologists.
  

If you haven’t figured it out yet, HOF induction is one of my favorite nights of the year. I could go on – may be later I will. But this gives you a taste of what the night is like. And unlike Dyer, I do it without a Paris Hilton joke.

Note: I have some graphics to upload and links to add, but lots to do today, so this will do for now.

Nanotech News

Unsurprisingly, the Nanotech Summit has seeded a small flurry of nanonews.

The biggest is that a Texas firm, Zyvex Corp., is spinning off it's nanomaterials division into a separate firm to be located in Ohio. They are choosing Ohio because of the resident expertise in polymers. According to General Manager Thomas Hughes:

'Every year we try to recruit polymer engineers, and it seems like all the applications come from Ohio. Sometimes we weren't able to attract those people to Texas. Also, most our suppliers are in Ohio,' Hughes said.

As it happens, I was at Hughes' table for lunch yesterday and overheard him getting the interview request from event staff. I didn't realize what was happening at the time or I might have tried a question or two, despite the aura of general unfriendliness radiated by Team Zyvex.

In addition, the State Development Department hooked announcements of some new nano-oriented grants to the Summit.

Also, the ABJ published a pretty by-the-numbers Nano Summit preview and WKSU aired a story today on Your Way Home. The main takeaway is that Ohio is doing very well in nano. More on that later.

S.B. 117 to Be Rewired

First thing this morning I saw Jill's post celebrating an item on Openers saying that the Senate committee considering a state cable franchising bill is promising to rewrite some portions. I wasn't going to pop the cork until hearing from Bill.

Bill is underwhelmed, and listening to he and others talk about the issue on 90.3 this morning, it's easy understand why. The AT&T rep claims that the bill as proposed has perfectly fine and generous provisions regarding build-out and coverage. One of the cheif concerns about the bill is that it can be read to eliminate the current restrictions against red-lining. Nothing in the Openers piece indicates that those provisions are under discussion for rewrite.

Finally if you are wondering just how an identical law has been proposed in over twenty states, you can thank ALEC. No, not the host of Jeopardy, the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is a pro-corporate conservative advocacy group that, among other things, writes model legislation and takes a hand in pushing it, especially to ALEC members -- conservative state legislators. The organization are funded by a mix of right-wing foundations and corporations.

ALEC's Cable and Video Competition Act was the model for the Michigan law, which according to Bill is pretty much what Ohio is now considering. Learn more about ALEC from Common Cause and PFAW.

I Have Seen Heard About the Future and It Is Impossibly Small.

Let’s get this straight right off; nanotechnology is not about tiny robots. Currently it’s not about small machines at all. Even if, some decades hence, nano-machines come online, they will not be the tiny, vicious superintelligent nanobots of sci-fi/horror yarns.

I did indeed get press credentials to the Third Annual Nanotechnology Summit in town today and tomorrow. Fascinating. A conference like this is all rah-rah, of course. Tonight is the keynote speech which promises more rah-rah. Happily, the conference also offers answers to most of the questions I had about the field. As usual, I’ll try to get into more detail later on, but here are a few basics.

The morning featured a Nano 101 lecture by Dr. Alexis Abramson, a young professor at Case who is on a leave of absence to work as a Fellow in nanotechnology at NorTech. Giving the 101 lecture is a big part of her job and, as a borderline science illiterate, I can confidently say she does a good job.

Nanotechnology goes beyond simply making things smaller. The key principle in nanotech is that when materials are smaller in at least one dimension, they act differently. They may be more or less chemically reactive, they may react to light or electricity differently, or they may have different strength properties, to give a few examples.

Nanotechnology is about exploiting those differences. According to Dr. Abramson, practitioners bicker over the precise definition of nanotech, but essentially it involves the manipulation of materials that, in some dimension, are in a scale of 1-599 nanometers. Nanomaterials may include nanofilms (with a nano-dimension thickness), nanofilaments (nano-dimension diameter) and nanoparticles (just plain tiny all around.)

Nanotechnologies exist now, and commercial applications exist now. To take one mundane example, some of the super-stain resistant clothing on the market today is cloth treated with a nano-application. Indeed, much of the current focus is finding commercial application for the nanotechnologies that exist.

Much of the conference will be posted on the website. It’s all worth a look and worth keeping an eye on. There’s lots more information besides. This is just a small taste.

No Small Thing: Nanotech Summit Coming to Akron

Apparently, Ohio is doing nanotechnology fairly well. Well enough that Akron is hosting a Nanotechonology Summit for the second year, now. Looking over the program, it appears that the area is doing well in part because a component of nanotech is nanomaterials which meshes nicely with the materials science-based tech growth in our area. On the bill are presentations about nano and polymers (Akron's thing) and nano and liquid crystal (Kent's.)

Keynoting the event will be Jack Uldrich, President of Nanoveritas, blogger at NanoNovus and co-author of The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business.

The Summit is for practitioners, more than ordinary folk, so this isn't a Things to Do announcement. Rather, it's a heads-up about a potentially good news about the economic future of the region. BTW, I've asked for press credentials as a blogger. It's a long shot, but I'll let you know if anything comes of it.

Click Click Click

It's a sound that sends chills down the spine if you know what it is.

Click click click.

If it comes from your computer, you are in trouble.

Click click click.


It's the sound of a hard drive going bad. And it's the sound my laptop now makes. I'm on my clunky, creaky desktop until I get the laptop taken care of. Don't expect too much from me over the next couple of days.

Some Comments on Comments

A couple of weeks ago Freakonomics posted a couple of pieces about why people comment on blogs. This created some ripples in the blogosphere as other people commented on it and it got me thinking about comments. maybe it only seems that way to me because I was thinking hard about comments and started mapping out this post last week. Anyway, here are a few thoughts:

In General

Comments have been up lately, which is great. Keep ‘em coming. Positive or negative, comments let a blogger know he’s not just talking to himself.

I’ve been trying to respond to comments better than I have in the past. Two classes of comments continue to flummox me. Comments saying “Great post, thanks for writing this,” are wonderful to get and give me a healthy pink glow around the ears, but seldom can I think of anything to say in response. Thanks, of course and I do drop that on occasion. But I don’t tend to take praise gracefully and without embarrassment. Mostly just understand that your comments are appreciated and, more than that, keep me going.

I also lamely have trouble with some truly heart wrenching comments. For instance, this one during the HPV vaccine debate really got to me, but I couldn’t come up with any response that didn’t sound facile and trite. Next time, I’ll ignore the inner critic and say something like “I really appreciate you sharing something so personal a painful to help us understand the issue.” Come to think of it, that would have worked

Some Specific Shout-Outs

The best comments are those that tell me something new or otherwise make me think. Daniel Jack Williamson has been one of my consistently best commenters on that score. Also, Tom Blumer from BizzyBlog wrote a great comment about the PD story on bloggers and journalists which offered some insight into how the article came together.

Finally, and not apropos of any of the above but nonetheless quite cool, Sgt. Brandon White, blogger of the Afghanistan-based GWOT dot US tracked back some click-throughs and left a very nice comment on the post about him. He mentioned that they are setting off on a major mission, so keep him and his fellow soldiers in you thoughts and prayers.

Anonymice

Are getting on my nerves again. Even if you aren’t going to set up a blogger ID, how hard is it to drop some sort of identifying information in a comment? Instead I have to muddle through with “Anon1, you said, but then Anon2, you noted that. . .”

Up the annoyance scale are people who cop harsh attitudes from behind the Anonymous wall. I know it may seem inconsistent to complain about this, given my nom de blog, but I haven’t made it all that difficult to track down Pho’s Secret Identity.

What’s more, there is a level of ownership to a comment attached even to an online persona that isn’t there. When a comment comes from someone who bothers to append a name it feels more like that person is engaging the discussion. When someone comments anonymously, it feels like an entirely gratuitous drive-by flaming. And maybe it’s my imagination, but people seem far more likely to adopt a snotty or abusive tone when the comment anonymously.

I won’t turn off anonymous commenting, but it would be nice to be able to make that veil of anonymity fit less comfortably. I would love someone in the Blogger hack writing community to allow bloggers to change how anonymous comments are announced. Right now they post with “anonymous says:.” I’d like to be able to change that to something like “I’m a Big Pussy says:.”

Some Ground Rules.
I’ve never really set out any, but here’s the basic contours of how things go in the comments section. The only reason I’ve ever deleted comments was when a commenter used the blog to attack someone else. That person is also the only commenter not allowed to post here (which is to say I delete him whenever he posts.) Generally speaking, I have less patience for incivility toward other guests of the Pages than incivility toward me. I don’t have that many friends, so I’m quick to defend those I have.

It’s conceivable that at some point someone could post something so sexist, racist or otherwise bigoted that I would be unwilling to leave it up. I wouldn’t leave up anything I know to be slanderous even though I’m apparently immune from action. Happily, I haven’t had any such problems so far.

So it’s fairly easy to get a comment up that will stay up. Nonetheless, a few aspirational guidelines are in order. I think I maintain a fairly respectful and respectable tone around here, even when in high dudgeon, and it would be nice if commenters could post in the same vein. I like when smart people who disagree with me challenge me to argue well. I don’t like comments that drag the discussion down.

The only action I take toward nasty comments is return volleys of nasty. If you disagree respectfully, we’ll be fine. If you want to come in on the attack, you’d best come in strong because I can and will bring it.

The Return of Comment Spam?

I've had a couple of instances of comment spam -- comments that serve only to steer readers to a website. It looks like there probably went up as a result of an actual human's work as opposed to a webcrawler, but I'm nervous. It's probably only a matter of time until the spam industry find away around Bloggers word verification and my blog will again be a playground for the world's penis enlargers.

An Interesting Tool

I tracked a SiteMeter hit back to something call co.mments.com. I hadn’t seen it before and can’t find indication it has been around that long. It’s a bookmarking tool, kind of like del.icio.us (and this bit with breaking up perfectly fine words with random dots must end here and now, btw), but what it does is lets you bookmark a discussion in something like blog comments and it keeps track of the discussion for you. I haven’t tried using it yet, but there it is if you want to try it.

Moving to Three Columns

Since I lost all my widgets in the test run, I've decided to make the switch over to three columns. The continuing issue, of course, is that I now have to once again repopulate my blogrolls. Apologies to blogrollees and those who surf to use the sidebar(s).

Safe to say, this is the last time I futz about with Blogger templates. The next time I redesign something, it will be after a platform upgrade.

WTF?

I tried to move to a three-column template last night. Tried it on my test blog -- no problem. Tried it here and Blogger warned me that it would fry my widgets (i.e., all the fun stuff on the blogroll.) Well, I downloaded my old template, so let's give it a go. Maybe I can cut and paste the widgets back.

In a word, no. and now I've reverted to the old template and still no information on the sidebar. Seems Blogger emptied all the data from the widgets so the code refers to stuff that doesn't exists. Rrrgh. So I have to re-input everything. And now it's not letting me go back to three columns again.

I have to head out to Columbus for work. Now I know what I'll be doing when I get back.

One Blogger Issue Solved, Sort Of.

I figured out one part of the issues I'm having with Blogger. Apparently Firefox is not reading Blogger's Word Verification. I was commenting on WLST and discovered the same thing that had been described to me -- the screen tells you to enter the word you see but it doesn't appear.

A couple more clues. Mozilla recently put out an update after a number of bulletins went out about security holes in Firefox. Also, when I opened Jill's Haloscan comments window in IE, a security warning popped up saying the page included secure and unsecure information.

I am not willing to turn off Word Verification and subject this blog to another flood of offers to check out Male Enhancement Blog. My advice -- if you want to comment, open an IE window. I'll keep an eye out for when Mozilla, or Google, gets this fixed.

Experiencing Technical Difficulties

I'm having trouble with the blog. Not Storm Worm trouble, but trouble nonetheless. A friend tells me he can't comment because Word Verification is buggy. And I've noticed my feed is very slow to load. And I've noticed that my feed on LeftyBlogs is completely messed up. For whatever reason, LB only reads my headlines meaning that it's reader doesn't see any "Local content key words," meaning I automatically get shunted into the All Other category. And the LB widgets only give you feed from the Ohio category, meaning that if you are surfing around

All of this means a few things. First, I'm once again seriously considering a change to a new platform. Or at least a fresh url that maybe won't be so riddled with problems and at the same time would give me a chance to rebrand away from being just The Akron Guy which I stopped being a long time ago.

Second, some tips for using this blog until maybe things straighten themselves out. First, if you desperately want me to know something, feel free to drop a line: pho197[at]hotmail[dot]com. And if you are better with the technical stuff than I (which means you have at least one whole clue), feel free to hit me with some advice.

Finally, my schedule, to the extent I keep one, is as follows. I try to write a longer, essay-type piece at night, then either post at night or first thing in the morning. By "night" I mean after around 9:00 when Kid T finally gets to sleep and generally before Jon Stewart begins at 11:00. If Stewart is in reruns you can maybe expect a later post. Then I try to put up one or two quickies in the morning before getting on with my actual life. That usually happens by 11:00 or sooner. If you are having trouble getting reads on me, this should give you some idea when it's best to surf by.

Always about customer service, here at the House of Pho.

Storm Worm Attacking Through Blogs

From ZDNet:

The new Storm Worm variant attacks the machines of unsuspecting users when they open an e-mail attachment, click on a malicious e-mail link or visit a malicious site, said Dmitri Alperovitch, principal research scientist at Secure Computing.

But the twist comes when these people later post blogs or bulletin board notices. The software will insert into each of their postings a link to a malicious Web site, said Alperovitch, who rates the threat as "high."

"We haven't seen the Web channel used before," he said. "In the past, we've seen malicious links distributed to people in a user's address book and made to look like it's an instant message coming from them."

Sadly, neither ZD nor anything else I have found give any clue as to how to find out if your blog is infected or what to do if it is. And they don't tell whether certain platforms are more vulnerable than others.

Given that some local blogs appear to be acting strangely, this may already be happening to some of our friends.

On the other hand, I'm always looking for signs that people outside the 'sphere take us seriously. So now, add hackers to the list! Yay us!