Nata's Corner

A few days before we came home from the Midwest a couple of weeks ago, a young woman's car crossed the double yellow line and ran head-on into a family of four, killing three. I've been following the news on it, because it didn't take long before "everyone in town" new that she had been texting while she was driving. Unfortunately, that state's laws about "distracted driving" are among the least stringent in the country. The highway patrol's investigation hasn't been completed -- but the deaths include the parents and sibling of a 2-day old baby on the way home from the hospital for the first time.

Missouri's legislature is working on a bill that would require cell phone companies to help law enforcement track phones in emergencies, but a lot of people in the law enforcement business say that technology doesn't help as much as you would think if you watch all those cop shows. It doesn't matter to me much, though -- I still like NCIS.

Everyone knows all about not using words like "password" for your password -- or at least I hope you do -- and now, Sophos has come out with a list of the ten most common passcodes for the iPhone. Who wants to bet that people are using the same four-digit numbers for their bank card PINs? Here's the thing: a Symantec study shows that it's almost a sure bet that if you lose your phone, you're also going to lose your privacy too. A couple of numbers that were, surprisingly, not on the list: 3142 (pi) and 1701 (the starship Enterprise). Maybe people aren't as dumb as I thought.

Another thing most everyone knows about is the fact that cell phones and computers can tell where you are, and that a lot of those devices keep track of where you've been and even send the information back to the manufacturers -- and even some places you might not want to send it. I just saw something the other day about Internet Explorer 9, which also has the ability to let sites track you; to turn it off, click the little cog wheel in the upper right corner and select Internet Options. Under location, check the box that says "Never allow websites to request your physical location", and you'll be protected from the ones that do.

My First Million

In Brief

So much for Tim being a supply chain guy: If you were planning on hitting up one of the online sources for that new iPad 3 in order to avoid the lines everywhere else, plan on waiting at least three weeks.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: We came across a blog post by Paul Graham, one of the founders of Y Combinator in which he listed some "frighteninly ambitious startup ideas", the first of which is a new search engine. In his post, he has the following:

He left out Google's (and Microsoft's) attempts to become Apple as well, with its entries into the hardware business and its emulation of iTunes' payment systems.

No stones: This week, newspapers are moving the comic strip Doonesbury to the op-ed pages, or not running it at all, or are moving it to their websites. And then there's the Ohio legislator who has her own take.

Cutting off your nose: Anonymous says it's going to turn off the Internet -- or at least a good part of it -- in a couple of weeks. That means you shouldn't plan on streaming the NCAA tournament for the semifinals. In a related matter, a self-proclaimed "homeless hacker" who apparently thinks attacking Santa Cruz, CA's website on behalf of Anonymous skipped town leaving a local attorney on the hook for his bail, and a hacker in New York squealed on his buddies as soon as the feds showed up at his home; five were arrested, and the snitch is almost a hero.

The end of email overload.

The Machines will know: No more rooms with steel tables and one-way glass. No more rubber hoses. They'll just put you in front of a web cam and ask you "when did you stop beating your wife?". Of course, if someone gets your Facebook password, they might not need to ask you any questions.

You can't complain about the service because there isn't any: It costs someone about $10 (or less) to steal your domain name, which in my case is one I've owned and used as my email address for 17 (!) years now. It will cost you a heck of a lot more to get it back, and you'll wait quite a while while those search engine companies -- you know, the ones who try so hard to make sure you get "relavant results" and "great web experiences" and all that? -- to start showing the right one again.

Happy birthday: Nata, JP, and the Japanese tsunami.

Good day, sunshine: Except for the wife's cell phone dropping calls (which could just be us living out in the boondocks), we didn't really notice much from last week's solar flares, not that it has anything to do with either this year's eclipse on May 20-21 (depending on where you are), or any other event, otherworldly or otherwise. And speaking of the heavens, Jupiter and Venus are in the western sky (if you're in the western US) for the rest of the week.

Not so shiny any more: Google's Chrome browser isn't quite as invulnerable as everyone -- especially Google -- thought. Not to worry, though: IE9 failed too. Also, Twitter's future when it runs out of cash.

And they wonder why everyone hates them so much: It's because they keep making lousy movies. I mean, really... who would want to pirate that?.

Signs of the Apocalypse: A woman who won $1 million in a state lottery continued to get state assistance.

Milestones

New Geniuses: leakim971 has become the twelfth member of Experts Exchange to earn five Genius certificates; his most recent came in HTML. chris_bottomley has earned his fourth, in VP Script. Earning his first was duncan_roe in Linux. Very nice work, folks!

Milestones: With this issue, we are including both answer and articles points here.

• TheLearnedOne has earned 16,000,000 points since joining Experts Exchange in August 1999.
• Idle_Mind has earned at least 2,000,000 points in each of three topic areas: VB.NET, Visual Basic and .NET. KCTS has also reached the 2,000,000 point level in three TAs: Windows 2003 Server, Active Directory and Windows XP.
• demazter reached the 9,000,000 point level for his EE careeer.
• sdstuber has reached the 4,000,000 point level in Oracle.
• hanccocka has earned 6,000,000 points since joining Experts Exchange.