Archive for 2005

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del.icio.us/dossy links since November 28, 2005 at 09:05 AM

Monday, December 5th, 2005

del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since November 28, 2005 at 09:05 AM:

Posted by Dossy Shiobara in Links | No Comments »

Ensign Crusher, set phasers to “All In”!

Friday, December 2nd, 2005

(Alternate title: OMG, Wil Wheaton blogs and plays poker online!)

Wil Wheaton, who most people know as either Gordie in Stand By Me (IMDb) or Wesley Crusher on Star Trek, has long since left those roles behind. These days, he’s got his own blog (which, after experiencing technical difficulties, has been moved here, to TypePad). He’s also written two books (Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot), and actively plays online poker at PokerStars.com. He’s even started a podcast recently called Radio Free Burrito Episode Zero (MP3 [27.3MB]) where he answers some questions asked by his blog readers.

Why am I blogging about him? Mostly out of awe and admiration, I guess. I mean, he’s a father like me, he finds the inspiration to write, he finds the time for his geeky interests and to play poker online. On top of it all, he seems like a really nice person, someone I wish I could be friends with in meatspace. (If you knew me, you’d know why that’s a compliment, considering I’m patently misanthropic in nature.) Alas, he lives out on the West Coast and I’m all the way on the East Coast.

Anyway, I say he’s cool and if you’re curious as to what he’s been up to since he disappeared from the Hollywood limelight, you should go check him out. He’s been busy and it all looks like good stuff.

Posted by Dossy Shiobara in Blogosphere | No Comments »

del.icio.us/dossy links since November 17, 2005 at 09:05 AM

Monday, November 28th, 2005

del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since November 17, 2005 at 09:05 AM:

Posted by Dossy Shiobara in Links | No Comments »

Is it wrong to poison candy? Is it more wrong than stealing?

Sunday, November 27th, 2005

With the proliferation of wireless computing technology (aka “wi-fi ethernet”) and people freely using other people’s open wireless networks — I have a hard time calling it “stealing” but it is — I started asking myself: is it morally wrong to set up a transparent HTTP proxy that injected malicious scripts into the HTTP response to exploit people’s computers who are using your wi-fi? My gut says that knowingly destroying other people’s computers is wrong, always wrong, even if they’re illegally trespassing on your wireless network and stealing your bandwidth without your permission. But, then I wonder if it’s a framing or context problem. Is it so obviously wrong because it’s happening in an intangible space and all highly theoretical? So, I tried to redescribe the problem in more mundane terms.

What if you were a candy store, and you had a serious shoplifting problem: where people would randomly walk into your store and help themselves to some of your candy without paying for it? Would it be wrong to poison a subset of candy and mark the poisoned goods in such a way that only you could identify them? If a real customer came along and wanted to purchase the candy, you’d recognize it as being poisoned and replace it with a clean version. But, if someone just came along and grabbed it and walked off with it, if they proceeded to eat it, then they got what they deserved? If they didn’t get permission to take your candy, you have no obligation or responsibility as to what happens to them if they steal it, right?

Are the two situations (unauthorized use of wi-fi vs. owning a candy store) really different? Is the aggressive defense mechanism acceptable in one situation but not the other? Are both unacceptable? Should the entire burden of securing a wireless network rest on the shoulders of the owner of the network, or should there be some responsibility and etiquette for people not to just assume that because a wi-fi network is unrestricted that it doesn’t make it open for public use? If I set up open wi-fi and want to signal that it’s open for public use, I’ll include “public” in the SSID to signal it as such.

What do you do with your wi-fi networks? Do you secure yours, or leave it wide open, or what? If you leave yours open, do you have a problem with people jumping onto it and using it? Have you ever had someone use your wireless network and send spam using it, or anything else you’d not want them to do, but you still want to leave it open so that other good people can use it when they need to?

Posted by Dossy Shiobara in Geeking out | No Comments »

A question to people reading my blog at Blogger: why?

Friday, November 25th, 2005

For the past ten months, I’ve been reposting entries from my blog at dossy.org to this blog here at Blogger. I did this to see if it would encourage folks to post comments if they already had Blogger accounts, since due to a large volume of blog comment spam I decided to require sign-in in order to comment. However, there’s been hardly any comments being posted to the Blogger blog, so I wonder how useful it is for me to keep reposting the entries.

Unfortunately, Blogger doesn’t give me any stats about who’s subscribed to my blog’s feeds, so I really have no idea who’s even reading it over there. If you’re reading this over at my Blogger blog, please let me know by either emailing me or leaving a comment either here or in my own blog. I’d like to know why you’re reading it, if you are. If you’re subscribing to its feeds, I’d like to ask you to instead subscribe to my blog’s feeds: RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, RSS 2.0 comments feed.

If it seems that nobody’s reading the Blogger blog or its feeds, I’ll likely stop reposting stuff there just to save me a bit of time, so if there’s a reason you read it instead of my blog at dossy.org, please let me know.

Posted by Dossy Shiobara in Geeking out | No Comments »

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