iPhone 3G Developing Cracks

Not only was there a problem with the overload of people trying to activate their iPhone 3Gs and the regular iPhone customers trying to upgrade their new firmware on launch day, there is a new problem. With a turn of events, it seems as though Apple’s latest iPhone, the 3G model is developing cracks on its backside. It seems as though this is an increasing problem among the 3G consumers and these cracks do not look pretty. Especially on the white models, they are much more visible than the cracks on the black models. Looks like Apple needs to look into the materials the phones are made from.

Chocolate Skittles

I heard from my friends that Mars has released a new type of Skittles: Chocolate Skittles, Brownie Skittles, and Fudge Skittles. Alright, I can’t remember the flavours, but chocolate is definitely one of them. This is crazy, I never would have thought Skittles would be like this. I’m gonna need pictures though, there’s gotta be proof somewhere around here. Oh wait, the internet that’s right!

Ah wow, the flavours are Vanilla, Chocolate Caramel, S’mores, Chocolate Pudding, and Brownie Batter. Dam, that is some crazy stuff Skittles has now. I don’t imagine them being very good, well they are out in the market so, I guess it passed the testing phase or maybe it is already in the testing phase. Skittles though has always been about the fruit: the original red package with all the common fruit we all eat: lemon, grape, lime, orange, and strawberry. Then there is the light blue tropical flavoured packaged Skittles:
I gotta go out and try some of these. I don’t think I will taste the rainbow though

IMDB Hacked? Dark Knight Worst Movie Ever

Word is spreading around that IMDB was hacked this weekend. This supposed hack has now put ‘The Dark Knight’ as the number 1 worst movie of all time as well as the top movie of all time.
I just quickly went onto IMDB and looked at the list, but ‘The Dark Knight’ isn’t the worst movie of all time, so dam, I missed it!! IMDB probably already fixed this up or maybe it was a glitch with pro accounts hmmm.

Getting Caught on the Ubuntu Forums

I was sifting through the Ubuntu forums trying to get some help for my Hardy Heron problems and I come upon this post. Someone, better known as bradcarr posts a message asking for help/confirmation of Linux questions he had. These twenty questions came from a questionnaire he got when he applied for a job. Reading those questions, I knew that was too advanced for me. I could only answer one question and that wasn’t even a Linux oriented question.

1. Give an example of set of shell commands that will give you the number of files in a directory
2. How do you tell what process has a TCP port open in Linux
3. On a Red Hat Linux Variant how do you control whether a service starts when the system boots
4. How do you tell the amount of free disk space left on a volume
5. Give an example of a set of shell commands to tell how many times “bob” has logged on to the system this month
6. Give an example of a recursively copying a directory from one location to another.
7. How do you modify the IP and Net mask of a system running a Red Hat Variant of Linux
8. Give an example of a set of shell commands that will give you the number of “httpd” processes running on a Linux box.
9. On CentOS or Fedora based system using the package management application, how do you tell what package provided the file “libnss_ldap.so”
10. What is the difference between VTP client, server, and transparent
11. What is the maximum length of CAT6
12. How does one set up a layer two link to share VLANs
13. How does one implement redundant links at Layer 2
14. What is the difference between a hub, switch, and a router
a. What are the security advantages of switch vs. hub
15. Show an example of using telnet to learn the headers of an http server.
16. In what OSI layer does PPP exist
17. What’s the difference between TCP and UDP
18. Given a DNS server that has just started (with an empty cache) and host contacting this DNS server (using it’s OS setting) to learn an address for google.com, list the steps the DNS server will take to learn it with IP addresses (each step will have multiple possible IP addresses – you need choose only one per step).
19. Why are layer 2 loops bad, and what protocol was designed to prevent them
20. Given a radius server at 10.0.0.2 and a shared key of ‘abc123’ show the IOS commands necessary to authenticate switch users against the radius server, while still allowing the use of local username / password pairs

Bradcarr asks for help on some of these questions and confirmation on his answers. Too bad he didn’t leave his answers in the post, ’cause no one helped him out. It turns out that he applied for a job as a network engineer and apparently these are very basic questions.

I go to the second page and well…what do we have here? A member, ptinsley, writes down,

“For those who have commented, it is indeed an entry level network administration position with some Linux skills required as most of our network management tools run on Linux. I would also like to say thank you for the very sensible comments you all have made about the call for answers. And “bradcarr” while you haven’t broken the rules of my questionnaire you have definitely broken the spirit of the exercise. I did indeed say you could use any resource available to you, but didn’t it cross your mind that this might be the wrong thing to do? I want to see the “real world” ability of a potential employee, not what they can recite in an interview but what they can come up with using their normal information sources to solve a problem or research a subject.

This has shown me that you won’t take the initiative to research a problem, even when it might land you a job. I “googled” most of these questions before making the list and most of them are very easily discovered. It didn’t seem to me that I was asking too much for people to use mailing lists, forums, IRC whatever to compile the answers themselves. I actually expected to see some questions show up on forums but I didn’t expect someone to paste the entire thing and expect the forum users to do all the work that would qualify you for an interview. I think at this point you could save us all some time and not turn the answers back in, I already have the information I need on your answers.

As far as the rest of you, if there are any of you reading this thread that live in the Nashville area that want a network administration job with some Linux work feel free to shoot me your resume at paul.tinsley@lightningsource.com. Oh, while you are at it, go ahead and send me the answers to the questions.”

Oooh dam, looks like ptinsley was bradcarr’s potential employer and he found out about his post. Looks like he fancies the Ubuntu forums on a regular basis or someone tipped him off.

Its pretty smart for bradcarr to come on the Ubuntu forums and ask for these questions. Maybe not in the manner he posted, but I would definitely come to these forums for help if I were in his position. I mean ptinsley did say to use any resources available to him. The way the excercise was supposed to be was to see how resourceful bradcarr is. But I guess the way Bradcarr asked on the forums was…a little across the line into cheating or using immoral methods? Then again, he was allowed to use any resource he could use. All I know is, bradcarr won’t be getting the job.

Dark Knight Fanboys vs. Godfather Fanboys

I went on to IMDB, the International Movie Database a week ago and I read a new thread from someone claiming that fans of the Godfather were trying to bury The Dark Knight and keep it’s rating low so it would not become the new number one movie on IMDB. I read the replies and everyone unanimously replied that they did not care about this fact and that they will rate the Godfather and The Dark Knight whatever rating they want to. No one replied saying that they will rate the Godfather a 1 to lower it’s score to help get The Dark Knight to number 1. This whole debacle stemmed from the fact that The Dark Knight got to number 1 with only 50 000 votes even BEFORE it was released. Many countered though with arguments stating that The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption both have more than twice the amount of votes than The Dark Knight and things will change after the movie has been released.

Things have certainly changed! So a week later, I check up on things and now The Dark Knight has surpassed The Godfather to be number 1 on IMDB’s list with about 150 000 votes. It seems as though Dark Knight fanboys have taken the Godfather threat very seriously and now the Godfather is number 3 on IMDB’s list. It is evident that the Dark Knight fanboys have done this as the Shawshank Redemption is still number 2. If it were not due to the fanboys, then The Godfather would be number 2, not 3.

Now there is a war between the Dark Knight and the Godfather to be number 1, and things will not be too pretty. They for sure will get ugly. I haven’t read the IMDB message boards as of yet but I am pretty sure that the Godfather fanboys are pissed and the Dark Knight fanboys are rejoicing. I can see it now!

IMDB will probably do nothing about it as interfering will no doubt cause a major backlash from both sides. Even if they do reset the votes, the same thing will happen again. There is no point trying to solve this debacle. The best thing to do is nothing at this point in time.

Jewish Activists Hack Facebook

So it seems that Facebook has a new problem on their hands now.  A group called the Jewish Internet Defence Force (JIDF) has been able to hack their way into a Facebook group titled, “Israel” is not a country! The activists managed to erase all the people affiliated with the group from the group’s page, and as well delist the group from Facebook.

This act is considered to be a last resort as apparently many have complained to Facebook about this group and Facebook has done nothing about it.

What will Facebook do now?

New Facebook Layout w/ Picture

It seems as though that Facebook will go live with a new design soon. It was supposed to be today but I guess the new redesigned layout is in only beta for now.

What it seems like is that the new layout is completely different. They completely changed the whole entire user interface and how one would look at it. The new layout offers users to see their accounts with tabs. Basically all the information boxes like personal information, education, business/school are all separated into tabs just like what you would see in Firefox

This is a new proposed layout that they have. It’s completely different than the current UI but we’ll have to see how well it does. There hasn’t been any major changes to Facebook as of yet leading me to believe that this could be fake, in beta, or they did some last minute things and decided not to release it today. Either way, if this proposed user interface becomes the new Facebook, this will take some time getting used to.

I personally don’t like it as it seems all cluttered and it makes the user click more to get to information that in the old user interface could have been right in front of them. Many will like it, many will not. I’m pretty sure there’s going to be about a couple hundred new groups petitioning to go back to the old Facebook and that this new design is shit just like when the current user interface was implemented about a year and a half ago. It’ll just take some time getting used to, and then everyone will forget what the old UI looked like.

Oh yeah, there’s probably going to be some new exploit that comes out with this UI creating havoc around those who have fallen victim to it.

Why the Movie ‘I am Legend’ Sucked Update

Times have been hectic as of now, and I have not written my explanation to why I thought the movie sucked. Don’t worry, I should be able to do that after this weekend or in early August. I just have too much to do right now as my explanation will take up a lot of time that I dearly need as of right now so yeaaaa…I shall write about this later.

Careful of What You Post on Facebook

No doubt that the latest online trend in today’s society is social networking.  MySpace paved the way for the new dominating trend that has taken many teens and preteens by storm.  Its successor, Facebook is growing rapidly throughout North America and is bound to have more users registered than the original social network, MySpace.  It has caught on in Europe and is the most popular social networking site in the UK, and it is slowly creeping towards the rest of the world and even in Asia and South America.

The reason why Facebook became such a dominating force in the web world is because it has seen the flaws of MySpace and has improved on them.  MySpace was the latest trend and if you did not have a MySpace page, you were considered to be uncool.  No one wants to be uncool, everyone wants to be cool, stay with the cool crowd, know what everyone is up to, and especially no parents knew about it. MySpace was, ‘the shit’ unfortunately online predators caught on with the network and started luring young innocent children, boys and girls into arranging dates to meet up with each other.  Once the stories of the children being kidnapped and raped and such appeared on mainstream television, parents, well everyone just went ballistic.  Due to the controversies of how easy it is for a pedophile to arrange a date with someone on MySpace, the social networking site just plummeted and no one uses it anymore.

Then comes along Facebook, created by Mark Zuckerberg (yes it is Wikipedia).  The reason why it became so popular is because it was just like MySpace, and A LOT more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.  MySpace is really cluttered and it is a miracle for someone to navigate their way through comments, postings, and pictures.  Facebook became very, very popular with the teens due to its enhanced security features that MySpace did not have.  For MySpace, anyone can add you as a friend and anyone can see your profile, if you don’t click on that privacy option.  With Facebook, only your friends and people in the same geographical or school network can view your account.  What a great way to deter pedophiles.  Commenting or posting on someone’s wall is much more easier in Facebook.  All one does is write their comment and cick on the post button.  Using some very elegant PHP and MYSQL coding, the comment is posted up on the page in a second or so.  With MySpace, well that is a whole other story.  First you write the comment, then you click post, then it redirects to a page to confirm that what you wrote is what you want on the page, AND then it makes you type in a CAPTCHA (to prevent spam bots) to confirm the post.  It can take up to a minute to write a post; what a waste of time. So Facebook has become the new kid on the block in which everyone is talking about.  Teenagers love it, website designers love it, and even parents prefer it over MySpace (prefer instead of love, because there are some parents who do not trust the website after the whole MySpace controversy).  So what’s not to like about it?  It has become ‘the shit’, the place for all the cool kids to to meet up at figuratively speaking that is. Unfortunately, the non tech savvy users do not know that Facebook is as dangerous and can be more dangerous than MySpace.

First off, a story about a college student who seriously injured a person in a car crash while under the influence of alcohol.  Joshua Lipton was at a party in halloween wearing a Jail suit and holding a can of redbull.  Picture of him were taken and not surprisingly, they were posted on Facebook.  During his trial, the prosecutor with the help of the victim’s friend was able to obtain the crazy party photos of Joshua as he partied all night long that Halloween night.  Using these pictures that were readily available, the prosecutor was able to depict Joshua as an “unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital”.  The judge also agreed with the prosecutor and instead of maybe probation and some community service, the judge sentenced Joshua to two years in jail.  It is not looking good for Joshua, and it goes to show you that pictures on Facebook can bite you in the ass.

Pictures can be very, very embarrassing to people especially pictures of them drunk.  In Joshua Lipton’s case though, it got him two years in jail (he will probably appeal the decision though, maybe he’ll get out with a lighter sentence but who knows).  The photos can actually even make people famous over night, but not in a good way; for example the people who dressed up as the victims of the Virginia Tech Masacre. Even in poor taste someone will still do it, but this one, wow not good.

Facebook can also destroy your future.  There has been a big huge storm surrounding Facebook when employers revealed that they tried to go on the web to search for prospective applicants’ facebook pages and see their pictures to see what they are like in real life which evidentally can take a candidate out of the running.  Employers have even went through the trouble of contacting Facebook employees and asking them to go inside the accounts of prospective employees and give them access to their personal information and as well as ‘embarrassing’ photos.

The whole stalking thing with people these days or ‘creepers’ all comes from the pictures that people put up.  If there is a hot girl that someone wants to see pictures of, you can’t just add that person as they probably won’t know you.  But the hack-savvy ‘creepers’ these days can URL hack their way into their targets’ photo albums which is very creepy and scary. Facebook has probably cleared this problem up and created a new form of random access, hexadecimal coding enclosure (I don’t know what I’m saying here) preventing these ‘creepers’ and potential pedophiles from seeing pictures of not so legal teenagers.  There is also PHP, MYSQL, AJAX, Javascript manipulation that the pro coders can exploit in order to hack their way into facebook accounts or do some crazy stuff like the i-frame hack, but not that many people can do it…yet!  Soon they will and Facebook will have this problem.  Although once they find a bug/exploit they will fix that problem immediately, but there will come a time when an exploit surfaces and they can’t fix it.

Another problem with Facebook is that once you ‘delete’ your account, you do not actually delete your account, all you do is make it innactive.  When one deactivats their account and reactivates it, they are shown their page without any changes.  Thus meaning, the person did not actually delete their account, they just made it dormant.  It is a good feature for those who reactivate their accounts and do not want to go through the process of adding their friends again and posting old/new pictures.  The problem is, Facebook does not actually delete your account.  Once you deactivate it and ‘think’ you have deleted your information, Facebook still keeps your private information on their servers which if hacked, can be devastating. Also as well as the fact that employers can go in and ask the employees to look at your ‘deleted’ account.  It is not a nice feeling knowing that your personal information is still stored in computers and servers wating to be hacked.  It used to be, the only way to actually delete your account is to call the company and harrass them daily until they actually go into the servers and delete your account.  Why would someone need to call a website to delete their own information off the servers?  It is very time consuming for the user and costly for the website. Not to mention and pain the ass to just harrass them daily. Now the company has made it simpler for one to completely delete their account; the user can actually go into their account and choose to delete it.  Unfortunately, this option is very, very hard to find in the account which will lead many to just give up on searching for it and just deactivate their account.

One great thing about Facebook is the applications platform that it has created.  The networking site has allowed third party developers to develop fun games and applications for users to play around with.  One of the most famous applications is the ‘Jetman’ application which has become very addictive to everyone on Facebook.  It is a complete rip-off of the Helicopter flash game that was published many years before MySpace was developed, but no one really cares as no one is gaining any money from it.  But is that true?  It turns out that the third party applications when added steal the information of the person’s Facebook account and adds it to a database of users for the third party developers’ own use.  Some applications even can as far as looking into your friends’ pages and copying down their information.  The BBC News wrote a story on this very controversial and quite possibly life ruining flaw in social network.  Even though probably less than ten percent of all the applications being developed are used by most of the Facebook population, many malicious developers can create applications with hidden directives, directives that tell the application to copy down the user’s identity and their friend’s identity. This flaw shows a major concern in the privacy of Facbeook users and as well as this type of flaw can lead to theft identity, which can put someone in financial debt.  Quite possibly put someone in the situation of what the new movie ‘Eagle Eye’; shows.

These stories and links are just a sample of the problems that Facebook has with its design and coding.  By the time this post has been published, maybe most of these flaws/bugs/exploits have been fixed as many of these flaws are old news, about two years old or three years maybe.  Still, Facebook is a great platform for social networking nad most likely will become the benchmark model for all social networking sites…except for twitter.  That network is completely different. Even though many of the good things that Mark and his team of coders have developed/developing, the bad will always outweigh the good as with every new feature that Facebook releases, someone will find a bug or a flaw and find a way to exploit the network to their own advantage.  Still, Facebook will be the number one social networking site for years to come.  No other site other than MySpace (but thats on the verge of collapsing) will ever come close to the status Facebook has attained in the eyes of today’s society.  It is considered to be the perfect way to communicate and keep in touch with everyone you know. Orkut might have a chance but Google has a LOOOOOOOONG way. Hey, if Orkut does manage to beat out Facebook, looks like Google will become the new Microsoft! But that’s a completely different story for now.

Dark Knight Breaks Three Records

The Dark Knight, probably the most anticipated movie of the summer has finally been released today, and it has already broken three box office records, in merely one day.  After so much hype about the movie from the first movie to the viral website to Heath Ledger’s death, the movie was bound to break a record, but instead of breaking one record, it broke three.

The movie was shown in 4366 movie screens across North America, breaking the previous record and with that many screens showing the movie, it broke the midnight opening record garnering $18.5 million beating out Revenge of the Sith’s midnight opening of a puny $16.9 million.  Within a day, the movie has broken its third record by earning a total of around $66 million (boxofficemojo.com) edging out rival Marvel super hero Spider-man’s third installment which just earned $59.8 million.  With a strong opening day, the Dark Knight will no doubt break many more records and will probably even beat Titanic ($600 million) in the total overall grossing. Although that is not taking inflation into account.  If The Dark Knight beats Gone with the Wind even with adjusted inflation…well, this will have to be the best movie of all time.  That is until Batman returns next summer to kick some terminator ass, errrr Christian Bale returns to kick some terminator ass.