Mike Cohen

Drowning in comment spam

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I just deleted 1192 comment spams from the Akismet queue on this blog. All of these spams arrived since I emptied the queue yesterday. I no longer bother checking the queue before I empty it due to the huge volume of spam since I’ve only seen one or two false positives. I’ve also had Akismet miss two spams in the last few weeks, but I was required to moderate them, so they never appeared on the site.

You can own an integer too

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Remember the fuss over a certain random 128-bit number last week? You too can own your personal 128-bit integer protected by the DMCA. Princeton prof Ed Felten has come up with a great way of giving out legally protected 128-bit numbers to anyone who wants them. If he gives out 2^128 of these, then all 128-bit numbers will be owned and no one will ever be able to use a 128-bit key without breaking the law. Just go here and let it generate one for you.

Here’s how we do it. First, we generate a fresh pseudorandom integer, just for you. Then we use your integer to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, thereby transforming your integer into a circumvention device capable of decrypting the haiku without your permission. We then give you all of our rights to decrypt the haiku using your integer. The DMCA does the rest.

The haiku is copyright 2007 by Edward W. Felten:

We own integers,
Says AACS LA.
You can own one too.

This is my personal DMCA protected integer. Nobody else can use it legally.
6D BD 18 FE 94 10 A4 CC 22 AB 72 E0 7C B3 04 FF

links for 2007-05-07

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Wrecked

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When I was leaving the supermarket today, an elderly women (who happens to live in the same condo community) plowed right into the front of my Prius. She claims she didn’t see me, even though I blew my horn at her. Since there was someone right behind me, I didn’t have any room to back up. For a fraction of a second, my first thought was “oh shit! she’s going to hit me”. As you can see, the damage is pretty bad. She was driving a large Mercury wagon that just got a few scratches.





Wrecked

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

No Campus Bash this year

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It looks like Apple won’t be having their usual Campus Bash at this year’s WWDC. Instead they’re having a “WWDC Bash in San Francisco” on Thursday night. I always looked forward to the Campus bash so I can pick up some Apple goodies at the company store. I guess it was getting too difficult & expensive to bus all of those people to Cupertino & back.

New Theme

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As you probably notice, I made a slight change to the theme for this site. I’ve been using the Barthelme theme, which I also use at XpressLinux.com, because I like the clean design. However I didn’t want this site to look exactly like XpressLinux.com so I made a slight change to the CSS.

Note the narrow band of colors at the top of the header. Those particular colors have a special significance; read about it here.

links for 2007-05-01

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