Twitter Updates for 2009-12-01
- @jtimothyking Love to be a beta reader. Congrats on finishing the novel, even if you didn't Win" in reply to jtimothyking #
Twitter Updates for 2009-11-29
- Experimenting with DropBox. Much easier to use than I thought it would be. my referral link: http://planetmike.com/x/drop #
Twitter Updates for 2009-11-28
- Imagine how you’d feel if you saw that a Twitter trending topic was #compassion. http://planetmike.com/x/dy #
- Upgraded my wordpress installation to 2.8.6, and fixed a silly bug that was causing people's comments to be blocked. Doh! I'm sorry! #
Twitter Updates for 2009-11-27
- I charted the 9/11 pager data: http://www.planetmike.com/x/911pdc #911txts #
- @mmaunder Thanks, working on charting this subset now. in reply to mmaunder #
- My charts of the 9/11 pager intercepts now show only the intercepts related to the attacks: http://www.planetmike.com/x/911pdc #911txts #
9/11 Pager Data Charted
WikiLeaks has released nearly “half a million US national text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.” More information, including the intercepts themselves, are available from the WikiLeaks web site.
I’ve gone through the intercepts and created this chart. For each ten minute block of time from 3am on Tuesday September 11th, 2001 though 2:59am on Wednesday, September 12th, 2001, I’ve plotted the number of intercepts, as well as labeled a few of the more important events of the 9/11 attacks.
This is the entire dataset as downloaded from WikiLeaks:
(Click the chart for a larger version.)
And this is a subset of the pager data, the lines only directing referring to the attacks (added to the post on Nov. 27, 2009 at 9:58am):
(Click the chart for a larger version.)
Twitter Updates for 2009-11-26
- I like BitTorrent, but it is very frustrating when no one is seeding the document. #
Twitter Updates for 2009-11-25
- riboflavin #
Venn Diagram of Prime Numbers
Just a touch of the light side: A Venn Diagram of Numbers:
More Venn Diagrams at the Venn Diagram Tumblog.
InfoAxe Spam
This morning I received three separate “invitations” (each to a different email address) from InfoAxe.com. Here is the text of one message (html formatting and links stripped out, my friend’s name removed):
“Friend’s Name” has added you as a friend
Is “Friend’s Name” your friend?
Click Yes if “Friend’s Name” is your friend, otherwise click No. But you have to click!
Please respond or “Friend’s Name” may think you said no 🙁
Click here to block all emails from Infoaxe Inc., Sunnyvale, CA. 94085. Privacy Policy
There is so much wrong with this email:
- The link on the “Yes” and the “No” responses to the question ‘Is “Friend’s Name” your friend?’ both go to the same page at InfoAxe.com.
- The message is not CAN-SPAM compliant, there is not a full mailing address in the message.
- The link in the footer labelled “Privacy Policy” is actually just a link to the site’s home page.
- The use of the word “friend” is deceptive. It isn’t a social networking site. This is simply an attempt at using my friend’s name as an endorsement of their service.
I wrote back to my friend:
It looks like you gave InfoAxe permission to email all of your contacts listed in your aol address book. It is really really dangerous to give any third party access to your account. Never give out your account’s password. You never know what some other company is going to do with the info they “borrow” from your account. The privacy policy for Infoaxe is extremely light on details. They don’t address the legal ramifications of giving them access to your entire browsing history for example. Their site is also a bit sketchy in that it looks to not have been updated since at least summer 2008. I’d have to recommend you not use their service. Mike
Looking through the InfoAxe web site, there really isn’t anything there that is encouraging. Their abouttheteam page is a joke. The site is copyright 2008, which is an eternity in web-time. Their job page says you need to be able to start by August 2008. Only five blog posts in a year. Taken as a whole, why would you allow this company’s software to track your web browsing, and to access your address book? Stay away.
Update: 11/20/2009 7:06am: I got a reply from my friend that used the InfoAxe service:
Mike…i didnt fill it out when i reealized what ir was….i cancelled mid way…but it must have spammed everyone….so sorry…
That really says it all. InfoAxe isn’t being very clear and/or up-front with their users about how they are going to treat your address book. Basically, the rule is: you should never give out your password to anyone! Facebook, AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, Twitter, etc… There is never a reason to give your password to any third party site.