I'm a member of the flyertalk community - one of the largest online forums, and -the- place to go if you want to find out about flight/hotel deals. Due to knowledge gained there, I've flown free to Asia the last two times, to europe last summer, to Guatemala next month, and to Morocco this xmas. It's unlikely i'll be paying for international travel anytime soon.
In any case, this morning, someone posted information about a priceline mistake. Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, for $20 per night. It seems to be a clear decimal point error (the weekend night price should be $200 per night).
With only a $25 cancellation fee, it seemed like a no brainer to go ahead, and book a 3 night stay in August 07 for Defcon.
Caesar's Palace, here I come!
(more info on the price mistake available here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=613722
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Boycott the Mozilla Corp.
[Editor's note - This post was written by Chris Soghoian, the PhD student, and in no way reflects the opinions, thoughts, or policy of any of my sponsors/employers]
Firefox is now distributed by the Mozilla Corp - a for profit corporation, who, while supporting the open source development of the browser, has recently been flexing a bit of muscle.
In particular, their lawyers want linux distributions to start submitting patches to them for approval before they can be rolled out to their customer base. For critical things like security updates, this is just not possible. Distros want to roll out patches as soon as possible, and waiting for the Firefox team to OK something is just not possible.
Note, that no other open source project has tried to implement such a requirement. The Mozilla/Firefox guys are unique in this.
And essentially, what they've done is told the Debian team to fall in line (as Redhat and Novell have done), or to stop using the Firefox name and logos.
More info on this is available here http://lwn.net/Articles/200857/
Now, one interesting thing is that the Mozilla Corp makes millions of dollars per year through the google search bar in the top right hand corner of the browser. In fact, so does Apple through its Safari browser.
If you go to www.google.com, and then enter in the search, Mozilla earns nothing at all. If you use their search bar, they make a couple cents (I have no direct knowledge of the actual numbers, but they get something - and it adds up to millions of dollars when spread across all those users). This fact is public knowledge, and has been mentioned in many places: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6048377.html
http://www.calacanis.com/2006/03/06/firefox-mozilla-corporation-mozilla-foundation-made-72m-last/
http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html
http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/181501750
Now, I'm far too lazy to start going to google's homepage when I search.
So, instead, I whipped up a custom search engine for Firefox.
Simply go to this webpage http://www.dubfire.net/ffirefox, and you'll be prompted to install a new search engine for your search bar. The only difference between this custom one and the one that ships with Firefox, is that it won't identify itself to Google as coming from the Firefox toolbar. It'll look like any other search going to Google. And thus the Mozilla corp will be denied my one or two cents per search.
Sure, I like firefox. It's a great product, and far better than IE. However, it's an open sourced product, and I don't approve of them taking advantage of free community resources, debugging and code-contributions only to point their evil lawyers at Debian.
So, suck it Mozilla Corp.
Firefox is now distributed by the Mozilla Corp - a for profit corporation, who, while supporting the open source development of the browser, has recently been flexing a bit of muscle.
In particular, their lawyers want linux distributions to start submitting patches to them for approval before they can be rolled out to their customer base. For critical things like security updates, this is just not possible. Distros want to roll out patches as soon as possible, and waiting for the Firefox team to OK something is just not possible.
Note, that no other open source project has tried to implement such a requirement. The Mozilla/Firefox guys are unique in this.
And essentially, what they've done is told the Debian team to fall in line (as Redhat and Novell have done), or to stop using the Firefox name and logos.
More info on this is available here http://lwn.net/Articles/200857/
Now, one interesting thing is that the Mozilla Corp makes millions of dollars per year through the google search bar in the top right hand corner of the browser. In fact, so does Apple through its Safari browser.
If you go to www.google.com, and then enter in the search, Mozilla earns nothing at all. If you use their search bar, they make a couple cents (I have no direct knowledge of the actual numbers, but they get something - and it adds up to millions of dollars when spread across all those users). This fact is public knowledge, and has been mentioned in many places: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6048377.html
http://www.calacanis.com/2006/03/06/firefox-mozilla-corporation-mozilla-foundation-made-72m-last/
http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html
http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/181501750
Now, I'm far too lazy to start going to google's homepage when I search.
So, instead, I whipped up a custom search engine for Firefox.
Simply go to this webpage http://www.dubfire.net/ffirefox, and you'll be prompted to install a new search engine for your search bar. The only difference between this custom one and the one that ships with Firefox, is that it won't identify itself to Google as coming from the Firefox toolbar. It'll look like any other search going to Google. And thus the Mozilla corp will be denied my one or two cents per search.
Sure, I like firefox. It's a great product, and far better than IE. However, it's an open sourced product, and I don't approve of them taking advantage of free community resources, debugging and code-contributions only to point their evil lawyers at Debian.
So, suck it Mozilla Corp.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Knives on a ********** plane
Last year, while travelling on Air Deccan, a low-cost airline in India, I carried a pocket knife onboard the airplane.... The story is far more interesting than that summary alone, and I highly recommend you read the full writeup here:
http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/2006/02/chennaiport-blair.html
The photographic evidence of the event is here:
A knife on the plane:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/csoghoian/120651089/
Sealing the locks to prove that they haven't been tampered with:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/csoghoian/120650920/
However, that was India - and this is America... land of the free, home of the brave - and more importantly, home of TSA - who is supposed to be protecting you from big bad terrorists.
It's common knowledge that a tiny fraction of the checked luggage (which is just a few feet below the passengers in the airplane's hold) is actually x-rayed.
On top of that, it's also common knowledge that the airlines only perform passenger matching on bags for one airplane trips: i.e. if you don't get on the airplane on a trip from Indy->DC, then they pull your bag off at the last minute. However, if you get on the airplane from Indy->DC, and then leave the airport instead of getting on your connecting flight from DC->San Francisco, they let the bag go on the next flight. A terrorist would simply put a timed bomb in their bag, and have it explode during the second flight.
However, lets ignore those facts for now.. and focus on what TSA is supposed to be good at... keeping liquids, nail clippers, and weapons out of the airplane cabin.
My girlfriend visited me this weekend, and accidentally left a sharp paring knife in her carry-on bag.. both ways (i.e. DC->Indy, and Indy->DC). It was only once she got back to DC this evening that she realized what happened.
And guess what... TSA didn't notice at all.
For the record, as much of a troublemaker as I am, my girlfriend wasn't trying to test TSA. She is a law-abiding citizen, and simply overlooked the knife in the rush to pack her (messy) bag for her flight....
The evidence is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katmandoo/264556078/
http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/2006/02/chennaiport-blair.html
The photographic evidence of the event is here:
A knife on the plane:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/csoghoian/120651089/
Sealing the locks to prove that they haven't been tampered with:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/csoghoian/120650920/
However, that was India - and this is America... land of the free, home of the brave - and more importantly, home of TSA - who is supposed to be protecting you from big bad terrorists.
It's common knowledge that a tiny fraction of the checked luggage (which is just a few feet below the passengers in the airplane's hold) is actually x-rayed.
On top of that, it's also common knowledge that the airlines only perform passenger matching on bags for one airplane trips: i.e. if you don't get on the airplane on a trip from Indy->DC, then they pull your bag off at the last minute. However, if you get on the airplane from Indy->DC, and then leave the airport instead of getting on your connecting flight from DC->San Francisco, they let the bag go on the next flight. A terrorist would simply put a timed bomb in their bag, and have it explode during the second flight.
However, lets ignore those facts for now.. and focus on what TSA is supposed to be good at... keeping liquids, nail clippers, and weapons out of the airplane cabin.
My girlfriend visited me this weekend, and accidentally left a sharp paring knife in her carry-on bag.. both ways (i.e. DC->Indy, and Indy->DC). It was only once she got back to DC this evening that she realized what happened.
And guess what... TSA didn't notice at all.
For the record, as much of a troublemaker as I am, my girlfriend wasn't trying to test TSA. She is a law-abiding citizen, and simply overlooked the knife in the rush to pack her (messy) bag for her flight....
The evidence is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katmandoo/264556078/
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