Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I am not much of an HP fan, to say the least (see here and here). Given that, imagine how amused I was to receive this recently in the mail (yellow highlighting added by me): “It’s customers like you who make… Read More: HP: “It’s customers like you who make HP the company… »
As I previously wrote, I recently had to change my password on over 300 Web sites because my default “medium-security password” was compromised. The compromise was caused by a bug in the WordPress blogging platform which can result in inadvertent disclosure of information when content is pasted into the WYSIWYG text editor built into WordPress.… Read More: WordPress inadvertent disclosure bug »
I haven’t seen this posted anywhere else… I received in the mail today replacement Discover Cards for my wife and me. Our cards were not due to expire for quite a while. They were attached to a special-purpose mailing sleeve, not the generic sleeve they usually use when mailing out new cards. Some highlights of… Read More: Discover is replacing credit cards because of the Heartland data… »
As I wrote earlier today, I just changed my password on over 300 Web sites. In the process, I encountered a large number of sites which simply don’t know how to do password security properly. Some of these sites are operated by major corporations which are entrusted by their users with confidential and sensitive personal… Read More: Password security hall of shame »
In June, I wrote about Sam Yoon’s unfortunate habit of adding people without their consent to his campaign’s spam distribution lists. I’ve complained to Yoon’s office twice about the spamming — once in August 2006 and once in March 2009. Yoon did not have the courtesy to respond to either of my complaints. I thought… Read More: Spam Yoon, Round 2 »
“Hi, my name is jik, and I’m a password reuser.” “Hi, jik!” If there isn’t a “Password Reusers Anonymous”, there probably should be. By “password reuse,” I mean using the same password over and over on multiple Web sites. It’s a really bad idea, and I should know that better than most, since I’ve worked… Read More: Why I just spent three days changing my passwords on… »
My blog postings about the DMA (initial and followup) got picked up at The Consumerist and got over 5,200 views, which is a respectable take, but not nearly as good as when Continental lost my daughter :-). You will also find on The Consumerist a rebuttal from the DMA which doesn’t actually respond substantively to… Read More: More on the DMAchoice.org debacle »
(Simulblogged on universalhub.com.) Long-time readers of my blog know that I have been trying, for almost two years, to eliminate junk mail — the paper kind — from my mailbox. I’ve registered everyone in my family with the DMA’s MPS, tried out various Web sites that purport to help you stop junk mail, and most… Read More: Where all those Boston real-estate agents get your name and… »
For those of you who use Cygwin to make Windows slightly more bearable… Suppose you’re happily working in a Cygwin window, and you need to load one of the files you’re working on into a Windows app. You could select File > Open… in the app and then browse to the ten-levels-deep Cygwin folder to… Read More: Neat little Cygwin / Windows interoperability hack »
I’m responsible for coordinating weekly new-functionality demos for my company’s R&D organization. Each week, a developer or product manager presents a half-hour demo of some new functionality to a local audience in one of our offices, using a big 1920×1080 digital TV as the local display, with a GoToMeeting session set up so that people… Read More: Script for using ffmpeg to crop, pan and scale WMV… »