Entries for January 2010, Mike's blag

January 27, 2010

Newswipe

Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Newswipe

Charlie Brooker's back with another series of Newswipe. This week, amongst other things, why journalists not revealing their sources can be a bad thing.

Mike Willis : 27 Jan 2010 13:10 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

January 24, 2010

Flash Cookies

Flash as in the ubiquitous Flash Player from Adobe rather than someone who can save every one of us.

Cookies as in the things website use to keep track of you rather than delicious sugar and preferably chocolate based snacks which in this country we call biscuits.

The other day I learnt that Flash can use cookies. Not cookies that show up when you tell your web browser to show you a list of cookies it has stored, but cookies which it stores independently of the web browser. It's one of those things I read about and think 'how did I not know about this?'. I became aware of it from a from a comment on a Slashdot article (I forget which one) then looked for more info found this Wired article which helpfully tells you where the cookies are stored on various operating systems. So take a look, if you feel so inclined. I found loads of cookies. Which I then deleted.

I initially thought it was a little sneaky keeping the cookies in a directory called macromedia given that Flash is an Adobe product, but I guess it's a legacy thing left over from when the days before Macromedia was consumed by Adobe. So it's backwards compatibility rather than sneakiness. It is rather irritating, and just a bit odd, that they decided to call the directory #SharedObjects though. Yes, that's a filename that starts with a #. (*nix minded people know what I'm getting at.)

The comment on Slashdot recommended removing the write permission from the #SharedObjects as a way of preventing Flash from writing cookies. Out of curiosity I gave it a go. Unsurprisingly, it does indeed stop Flash writing cookies. However I quickly discovered a downside to doing this when I started watching something on iPlayer. About ten seconds in to the programme the picture froze and shortly after Flash popped up the message "A script in this movie is causing Adobe Flash Player 10 to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script?" I clicked yes and the programme continued to play but the timeline indicator didn't work. After I pressed stop it didn't know where to restart from when I hit play again. So remove the write permission clearly isn't a sensible thing to do unless one doesn't mind such breakage on some websites.

What's most interesting is that sites where you haven't consciously used Flash, such as iPlayer, are also setting cookies using Flash. After deleting all my Flash cookies and taking a look in the directory the next day to see what was there I found one from ia.media-imdb.com. I'd visited imdb since deleting the cookies, but nothing I interacted there used Flash. I might give Flashblock a go.

Mike Willis : 24 Jan 2010 17:08 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

January 22, 2010

A stick will not detect a bomb.

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm

N.B. Since this post was written, the linked BBC story has been updated to indicate that export of the device has been banned.

A BBC Newsnight investigation has found that a so-called "bomb detector", thousands of which have been sold to Iraq, cannot possibly work.

Basically it's a stick, some wires and some swappable cards that have those flat anti-theft tags you sometimes find attached to stuff in shops. Each card supposedly allows the device to detect a different substance. There's no power source of any kind. They're produced by a British company. They cost around £40k each. Which seems like rather a lot for something which is apparently as effective at bomb detecting as cornflakes packet with 'bomb detector' written on the side.

I like this paragraph from the story:

In 1999, the FBI put out another alert: "Warning. Do not use bogus explosives detection devices."

Presumably issued by the FBI's Bleeding Obvious Advice Unit.

See also article on Bad Science which links to an article the New York Times published on this more than two months ago. (Here - requires login which you can get from here. If you use Firefox, you might like to install the BugMeNot extension.)

Mike Willis : 22 Jan 2010 16:57 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

January 14, 2010

Why a guy in the Econmics department thinks he doesn't a girlfriend.

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/phd_students/backus/girlfriend

Discovered via Slashdot.

Mike Willis : 14 Jan 2010 13:18 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

January 13, 2010

The year we make contact?

Writing about web page http://2010book.tumblr.com/post/310745454/cover

Some guy has dug out an old book written in 1972 that posits what life will be like in the year 2010 and posted the contents online.

It reminds me of the books in the library at school about what life might be like in 'the future'. Full of colourful illustrations of futuristic houses with robots delivering parcels and filling up the freezer with the food it had automatically ordered for you via an outside hatch.

A woefully inaccurate prediction stuck in my mind is that by the year 2000 people will be living on the moon and speaking latin. It's possible it's only stuck in there because I made it up though.

I'm slowly coming to accept that we won't have flying cars by 2015 as depicted in Back to The Future II.

Mike Willis : 13 Jan 2010 19:34 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

Then the giraffe says, but I don't play the piano!

Writing about web page /jchronicle/entry/boring/

Writing about an entry you don't have permission to view

Julian has a point. So in half hearted attempt to address this, post in the comments the answer to the question "What sort of animal would you like to be and why?" Humorous (clean) answers only. Terrible puns are allowed.

My housemate is preparing for a job interview and mentioned that the above question is a favourite of HR managers. Apparently it's a trick of sorts. If your answer contains reference to characteristics of that animal then it means you aspire to posses those characteristics which in turn means you don't currently posses them. So if your answer is say, a Lion and you make reference to qualities such as strength and leadership it means you currently lack strength and leadership type qualities. Or something like that. Maybe.

Mike Willis : 13 Jan 2010 12:48 | Tags: Blogs | Comments (1) | Close comments | Report a problem