Category Archives: soapbox


TSA and US Air: It’s a conspiracy!

US Air charges for drinks, which means you have to carry money on the plane.
The TSA and DHS can seize any paper you carry with you across the border.
You can only take drinks on the plane purchased after security screening.

So, everything you eat and drink is bought in the airport or on the plane with [...]

The road to hell….

Revision 3 servers go offline due to a DOS attack. Simple forensics points to a “anti-piracy” company. From there, it turns out that this company was using Rev3’s servers illegally and launched an illegal attack against Rev3. It makes for a great read. I hope MediaDefender has to pay Rev3 for damages.

On résumé theft and stupidity

A few years ago I had a co-worker take my résumé, slap his name on it, and shop it around. Unethical and brazen, but sometimes you have to just let things go. Well, I have been getting calls for a “Brian” on my cell phone recently about my résumé. Is this a case of a [...]

Yes, yes, yes, to rehab

Just say no to drugs.

Internet connection at last

After some gnashing of teeth I decided to go out and buy a new cable modem and have it provisioned as new service. Lo and behold! I have Internet access at home again. While I had the technician, I had him look through the systems. As I suspected, Comcast never provisioned my old cable modem [...]

Comcast: Day 3

No Internet access for 3 days now at home. The support personnel thought there were no issues, as she was able to ping my cable modem. I found that interesting as my cable modem was disconnected from power and cable at the time. Based on that “weird” issue, along with other neighbors not having access, [...]

Rip your CDs, get sued

Engadget is reporting on an Arizona man being sued by the RIAA.
Ira Schwartz, the industry’s lawyer in the case, is arguing that MP3 files created on his computer from legally purchased CDs are indeed “unauthorized copies”
which means the industry now wants you to buy the song 3 times - once on CD, once on [...]

Shop Best Buy, get tasered

The Inquirer reports on a woman getting tasered at Best Buy. I have not seen the video or know the details and so don’t have any thoughts about the incident. That said, this comment was worth posting:
Apparently you can now be tasered in America for talking loudly and waving your arms. If the same approach [...]

P-38 comes ashore

A P-38 Lightning - der Gabelschwanz-Teufel feared by the Luftwaffe during WWII - has been uncovered on a beach in Wales. “Unusual conditions” that caused sand covering the aircraft to shift this summer revealed the Forked-Tailed Devil. I haven’t read anything about the condition or restorability of the plane.

Yahoo! settles with families of jailed Chinese dissidents

From CNN:
(CNN) — Internet giant Yahoo has settled a lawsuit brought by the families of a Chinese dissident and a journalist, who claim they were jailed after the company cooperated with Chinese authorities, according to court documents.
However, Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, who serves as chairman of the House committee and has led the [...]