I shouldn't complain about the very prompt delivery of a product ordered online, should I?  If you answered "no" you just haven't been a reader long enough to understand how my brain works functions malfunctions … never mind, it's just as well you don't.

I recently pre-ordered an upgrade to Windows 7 while it was specially priced at $99.99 (USD).  When I got to the checkout section, I was informed that if my purchase was over $100.00, shipping was free.  Otherwise, it was about $8.00.  Being the thrifty soul that I am, I immediately "returned to shopping" to find something inexpensive to buy that I had a remote chance of using.  I found such a thing, added it to my order, and completed my purchase. 

The 10" x 12" x 4" parcel arrived within 36 hours.  Pictures are said to be worth a thousand words, so those below should reveal … something.

Now we come to the total non-greenness of the situation.  I ordered a $0.99 lanyard for a USB drive to get the free shipping.  Not only was the delivery faster than I thought possible, but the eventual delivery of the software will also be free.  This seems to mean that by spending that $0.99 I saved about $17.00 in shipping costs and had a piece of string delivered to me as if it were needed as urgently as a pacemaker battery.  The only way I can reconcile this with my attempt to live green is to believe that it somehow helped the box manufacturing industry, the warehouse packaging people, and the delivery service in their respective businesses and propped up the sagging American economy.  I'll recycle everything except the piece of string.  I promise.  *sigh*

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2009, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

I believe that we are hearing and seeing enough about hacking and information theft from so many sources that I cannot succeed in conveying anything useful unless I limit my posts to small bits of the whole that are most likely to have an effect on the average person.  Today that topic will be the addition of the "convenience" of having a RFID microchip embedded in their credit card. 

When one of my credit card companies sent me a shiny new card out of sequence (that is, my old one was two years away from expiring) I did what I usually do in such situations.  I became suspicious.  Why did they do this?  I doubted that it was for my benefit or totally in my best interest.  OK, what was different?  There was a new word printed on the back and the note that I could now just wave my card near a store's card reader rather than sliding it through the reader itself.  How does this help me, I asked myself?  As far as I could tell, it didn't help at all.  Who did it help, then?  Must be "them".  Credit card companies use many safeguards including predictive analytics, identity theft countermeasures, data mining, encryption, and others to protect themselves (as well as the consumer) from theft or loss of data.  I looked at the card extremely closely and discovered a very slightly thicker square located above and between the word blink and the radio wave icon.  The photo is of the upper right quadrant of the card, below the magnetic strip.  If you can't see it in the picture below, try looking at your monitor screen at an angle so that the shadows make it clearer.

This is not a great macro photo and it has been enhanced to reveal the shadow of the chip, but if you see it, it serves its purpose.

So why is he at it again about this privacy craziness?  Because the the magnetic strip on a presently "normal" credit card is coded and cannot be read at a distance.  The information can be stolen in a number of other ways, but not read at a distance.

Now I want to scare you.  RFID hacking is not new (See this 2003 article from Wired) and is rather simple as this procedure, the Mifare Hack, as demonstrated by Engadget, left many cities' public transportation systems and other RFID users in peril.  Here is a Creative Commons interview via Boing Boing showing the basics of remote RFID hacking (be sure to read the comments.)  An excellent but easily read article RFID Credit Cards and Theft: Tech Clinic was published in 2007 by Popular Mechanics.  Presently, RFID experimentation kits are being sold as toys at Think Geek for just under $100 (USD) while companies such as DIFRwear offer radio shielded wallets and passport cases for sale.  If you read only one of these links, I would suggest this one as being the most general and inclusive of the good and bad uses of RFID. 

If you will excuse me now, I think I'm done for a while.  I must go line my wallet with copper screening to function as a Faraday Cage and make little tinfoil hats for my credit cards.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2009, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"The world of RFID is like the Internet in its early stages.  Nobody thought about building security features into the Internet in advance, and now we're paying for it in viruses and other attacks. We're likely to see the same thing with RFIDs." - Ari Juels, research manager at the high tech security firm RSA Labs.

For those I may have confused, befuddled, or simply made curious with the post The Bill Came, I have compiled a bibliography and/or list of recommended readings that will tend to explain the bill and related emotional topics when taken together as a whole.  Or, the attempt to clarify may further obscure your understanding.  I am cryptic when writing haiku, often to the point that I don't know what I meant when I started.  I have written about this topic in the past, but I strongly doubt that anyone has read enough of "my collected works" to connect any dots which may be there to suggest a common theme (other than the "I don't want to get old" parts, that is).

Let me first explain that several of the words used carry multiple meanings for me and may, in any given poem or bit of prose mean any or all of those.

Seneca:  Either of two philosophers; the land my grandfather donated to the town which become Seneca Park; memories of my grandfather; the same parkland upon which the high school from which I graduated was built; the name of the school yearbook, of which the girl I wrote and I were co-editors; high school memories in general.

Shade or Shades:  A pleasant place, as in the shade of a tree; a ghost or spirit; a memory; variation on a theme; things or people lost in physical time and space, but not gone.  Generally a friendly or relatively positive feeling is attached to it.

Pizza:  An informal date as in "Just going to Guido's for pizza."

Dream:  A bit harder to describe.  A literal, vivid, lifelike dream about the person; a waking wish or desire in memory carried forward; a fantasy or irrational hope that somehow I could be 18 once again and do a few things differently; a desire not supported by outside reality.

Box of Gone:  An imaginary space containing any memory, reminder, loss, souvenir, relic, picture, or significant object connecting me to my past or to a time before that.

The haiku Perchance to Dream in the post Halloween Haiku – 31 Oct 2005

The post Future Haze - 26 Feb 2006

The post Sara Somewhere – 21 Feb 2007

The post When May I Love Again? – 22 Feb 2007

The post A Box Of Gone v 1.1 – 5 Jan 2008

The post Heart Of An Email - 14 April 2009

The post Happy Alban Heurin – 21 June 2009

The post Lost – Somewhere Between Nodes Of The Chronosynclastic Infundibulum – 5 May 2009

The post The Bill Came – 14 July 2009

These references are likely not enough to completely convey all that went into my thought processes as I skimmed the whole blog for direct or oblique references to the question which was asked several ways in the comments of The Bill Came.  Please also understand that, in my poetry especially, I have taken liberties with the exact statements and total truth to get to a line that accurately reflected the feelings which I was trying to express.  As one example, the first line of the haiku in the post Heart of an Email, "I wish you nothing", was actually "I wish you nothing but the best."  The feeling of rejection, and uncaring dismissal was just as strongly felt, however.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Peace, Doc,

Copyright © 2005-2009, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love." – Charlie Brown

Phone bill just arrived

Damn that number; killed the dream

Cost one ninety-five

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2009, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?" ~ George Carlin

IQ sixty two

Just enough to understand

Fitting in’s not yours

~

IQ one three nine

Not quite ready for prime time

Asks what might have been

Peace, Doc,

Copyright © 2009, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." - Will Durant

In the past, I have written an occasional rant about privacy (or really the lack thereof) in today's society.  The problem has clearly not gone away, and from everything I hear or read it seems likely only to become worse.  Many of us, and even though I am already a suspicious sort I include myself, have little or no idea how much information is collected about us every day.  I will try not subject my readers to overwhelmingly lengthy posts, but will do a series of articles that can each stand alone but will also contribute to an eventual general understanding of the subject.

I recently adopted the word phylactology (n. science of counter-espionage) from Save The Words.  It seems to be a perfect category name for this series, so you may expect to see it occasionally in the future.  Some of the posts may be humorous, some "interesting", and some should scare the bejesus out of us.  Obviously, I am not a professional counter-espionage agent, but I will support what I write with evidence and place what I can of it in the appropriate Sky Drive folder.

The first in the series is a brief photo-essay on a trip to my local grocery store, to my bank, and back to my apartment.  This was a total distance of about four miles.

This street light was watching to make certain nobody harmed me.

The ATM camera made sure nobody was looking over my shoulder to get my PIN.

The nice grocery store made sure I was not attacked in the parking lot.

I did not press my luck by taking pictures of the ceiling surveillance cameras in the store or even by taking a picture of the St. Charles Police car which was timing (and presumably photographing with a dash camera) my progress, to be of assistance to me in maintaining my speed within the posted limits.  I didn't want to be a nuisance, after all.

This detector, flash unit, and armored camera …

en$ured that that anyone photographed in the inter$ection, against the $top $ignal'$ warning, would be apprehended and puni$hed at a later date.

When I had returned to the apartment and had begun to unload the groceries, I thought that I would not be watched any further.  Other than a peek from behind a vertical blind from one unit, I was correct until I reached my own abode.  I had forgotten that two more sets of eyes awaited my reappearance.

Bittle and Stinky are well aware that absences of an hour or more often mean that there will be something in the bags I carried that would be of interest to them.  They were right, of course. 

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2009, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

Siemens Planet Forum Index -> Symbian Series 60 Software and Java Midlets

"I have found a nice program called Photo spy.  You can use your mobile to spy on an area. It is up to you to decide the resolution of the pictures and the time between each picture taken.  …  I just need to do more tests and try it out on my neighbors window to wach the daughter.

That's exactly what this app is for

Hi! Thank you guys for your's opinions. I m autor of photospy. And, Yes, photospy is free for use. I start writing it in the past year, but because of heigh work load dont finish it yet. I will upgrade it in the future. P.S. Sory for my Englih, i m Russian boy

wow, welcome man! I'm very glad to have you on this forum! " – from an online forum.

The title is not an exaggeration.  Today I received an email that had been forwarded at least 13 times and which had attached to it the active email addresses of everyone that had sent or received it in this chain.  This is simply unacceptable to me and has become a source of irritation, not friendship.

I am relatively certain that the people forwarding this material believe that they are being friendly or entertaining me.   When there is no individual message to me or even a consideration of my tastes, the mail is about you, not me.  It clutters my inboxes and inconveniences multitudes of electrons.  The particular email that pushed me over the edge was titled "FW: Let's see if you read your emails from me!" 

I am pleased to give and receive comments, individual emails and messages, but not this form of spam.  Rather than launching into an extended harangue on the subject, I will cite some sources about email dangers and etiquette and let the interested read the articles if they wish.

Email Spam from Wikipedia.

Email Security: The Dangers of Chain Emailing from Bright Hub.

The Dangers of Not Using BCC 

Email Forwards: Invasion of Privacy? From netmanners.com

How Do I Ask Them to Stop Forwarding All Those Silly Emails?  From netmanners.com

Please remove me from the list you use to forward mass emails.  I remain quite open to receiving individual messages from all.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2009, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"He who sends a message by the hand of a fool
Cuts off his own feet and drinks violence." - Proverbs 26:6