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Seen, Heard, Said

Things I’ve seen, heard, or was told by someone. Item in this category usually originate from the Internet.

Website as Graph

This is cool! It takes a URL’s HTML code and converts it into a tree view and then color codes it. Here’s a snapshot of my page just before this post:
Andrew Ferguson dot NET1149214619623
and here’s the HTML tree:
Web Site Graph

From www.aharef.info:

Everyday, we look at dozens of websites. The structure of these websites is defined in HTML, the lingua franca for publishing information on the web. Your browser’s job is to render the HTML according to the specs (most of the time, at least). You can look at the code behind any website by selecting the “View source” tab somewhere in your browser’s menu.

HTML consists of so-called tags, like the A tag for links, IMG tag for images and so on. Since tags are nested in other tags, they are arranged in a hierarchical manner, and that hierarchy can be represented as a graph. I’ve written a little app that visualizes such a graph, and here are some screenshots of websites that I often look at.

I’ve used some color to indicate the most used tags in the following way:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

via MAKE: Blog

You can see the original HTML after the break
Read More »Website as Graph

Marketting

I really hate to just copy and paste entire posts from others sites, but this was too funny:

From necromanc.blogspot.com:

Finally, a definition of Marketing that makes sense….

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say, I’m fantastic in bed.
That’s Direct Marketing.

You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, He’s fantastic in bed. That’s Advertising.

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and say, Hi, I’m fantastic in bed. That’s Telemarketing.

You’re at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink. You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her a ride, and then say, By the way, I’m fantastic in bed. That’s Public Relations.

You’re at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says, I hear you’re fantastic in bed. That’s Brand Recognition.

James Bond, Agent 007

You scored as James Bond, Agent 007. James Bond is MI6’s best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license’s to kill. He doesn’t care about rules or regulations and somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner.

James Bond, Agent 007
71%

William Wallace
67%

Maximus
63%

The Amazing Spider-Man
63%

Batman, the Dark Knight
63%

Captain Jack Sparrow
54%

Lara Croft
54%

Indiana Jones
50%

El Zorro
46%

Neo, the "One"
46%

The Terminator
42%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com
via Brian

Heads up on Revised Netflix Settlement

Since I am a NetFlix user, I thought I’d pass this along:

From www.betanews.com:

Netflix users will now receive a one-month service level upgrade free of charge. This means that Netflix users subscribed to the 3 DVDs at-a-time program will be upgraded to 4 DVDs at-a-time for one month. Former subscribers can also apply to receive one month of free service.

Lawyers for both sides had originally crafted the proposal to allow Netflix to automatically bill customers after the free month. That option has been stricken from the new settlement, and the two primary lawyers in the case, Adam Gutride and Seth Safier, will now only receive $1.3 million.

This deal is obviously much better and more of a settlement and less of “promotional vehicle for Netflix.”

[tags]netflix, settlement[/tags]

But No 30Boxes?

Julia over at 30Boxes writes:

From 30boxes.com:

There was an article today in the Wall Street Journal touting Google Calendar as “quick and easy” and although there is a mention of 30 Boxes, we think he is inaccurately portraying Google as the lead innovator in this space

…

We want anyone out there who really loves 30 Boxes to please set Walt straight. Let him know why you use our product.

mossberg AT wsj.com

Make some noise. Old media shouldn’t have this much power over new media.

So I wrote:

Dear Mr. Mossberg,

No doubt you have already received many emails asking why the lack of coverage for 30Boxes.com. I find disgusting that you choose to profile Google Calendars and simply glance over the rest, calling 30Boxes and others simply “decent offerings”, especially when Google was so late to the field. But just “decent offerings”? Surely you must be joking. I have been using 30Boxes since the end of February and have simply loved it. It has one of the simplest and intuitive interfaces I have ever seen. 30Boxes is also consistently adding new features to their service, features that users have requested. In fact, I would venture to say that 30Boxes is more innovative than Google Calendars because of this. Google has to serve the public at large and I feel they are getting too big for their own good. In short, Google can’t serve more than one master. 30Boxes, on the other hand, is small and nimble. They can afford to make a tweak, try it out, and if it doesn’t work, roll it back. In the end, I see 30Boxes winning. They have it all and they’re willing to risk it all.

In case it matters, I do have a GMail account and I still use 30Boxes.

Best Regards,

Andrew Ferguson

Don’t Ban, Shape!

Out of the AP (via Yahoo!):

From news.yahoo.com:

Del Mar College students now have to use computers outside the school’s system if they want to visit the popular Web site MySpace.com.

The community college has blocked the site in response to complaints about sluggish Internet speed on campus computers.

Why do they feel they need to complete ban the site and cause students to make a fit when the campus could just limit the amount of outbound traffic sent to MySpace?

[tags]myspace, packet shaping, QoS[/tags]

Puppies

Mom sent me this message from my cousin, Nick:

Hi all,
I have good news!!! muffin (my dog) had her puppies last night!!! She has four boys and one girl and they are all helthy at this time. Two of the boys are brown and the other two boys and the girl are black. They fit in the palm of your hand. Muffin is doing good as a mama dog ,she is taking care of the pups and she lets us hold them if we want to. They are sooooooooo cute!!!!!
Love you all,
Nick

No Fucking Way

I can never believe how people can do and say things so obviously ignorant of reality and yet still be put in positions of great power. The latest example, the one and only Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. From CNet.com:

From news.com.com:

During a speech in November, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endorsed the idea [Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006] and said at the time that he would send Congress draft legislation. Such changes are necessary because new technology is “encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft,” Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, “quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities.”

(Yes, the AG just linked IP theft to terrorism.)

Quite fucking frankly, you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. That’s a load of bullshit so deep you could use the methane gas generated by its decomposition to power the entire worlds energy needs for the next 100 years.

Here’s what else you might get to look forward if the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 passes:

  • “[Create] a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.”
  • “[New] language [that] says nobody may “make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess” such anticircumvention tools if they may be redistributed to someone else.”
  • “Amends existing law to permit criminal enforcement of copyright violations even if the work was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.”

Sorry for the language, it’s one of very very few issues I get really pissed about.

Really pissed.

A New Take on Security through Obscurity

I was talking with Matt over the weekend and we started talking about security through obscurity. It’s nothing new, it’s been used for decades. The idea is “a controversial principle in security engineering, which attempts to use secrecy (of design, implementation, etc.) to ensure security” (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity).

Slashdot linked to a Wired article about the Kryptos, a rather cool sculpture located on the grounds of the CIA. It turns out that there’s a typo that’s affected the current decryption efforts.

My thought is this: you have a message you want to encrypt. If you introduce small errors into the spelling of words, errors that still easily convey the message, are decryption efforts hindered? If so, is the hindrance significant?

For the record, I think StO is a bad idea in general. It relies on the ability to keep information sequestered as a means of security. Once the information is released, the entire security blanket is destroyed. The exception to this is when StO is used as a final layer of security, where there are actual strong cryptographic efforts established and StO is enabled as a final level of security designed to merely delay cracking attempts.

[tags]cia, wired, slashdot, kryptos, security through obscurity, security by obscurity, cryptography[/tags]