Talk about closing the barn door after it’s already burned to the ground:
H/T to longtime Buzzblog reader Dan Wakeman.
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Whatever difficulties Donald Trump may be having with white college-educated women, African Americans, Latinos, hawkish conservatives and the co-hosts of “Morning Joe,” he’s far and away the favorite presidential candidate of at least one demographic group: spammers.
However, he seems to have lost significant support among that group as well.
These conclusions are drawn from a year’s worth of data assembled by Network World Test Alliance member Joel Snyder, a senior partner at Opus One in Tucson, Ariz. Opus One has been testing anti-spam products for more than a decade, and, as the following chart shows, Trump-related spam has dwarfed Clinton-related spam over the past year … only less so as the campaign has worn on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The answer is almost certainly no, but …If you’ve been following the political news today, one joyously mocked aspect of Donald Trump’s latest Twitter rant early this morning has been that one of the tweets was apparently sent at 3:20 a.m.
I say apparently – despite the clearly visible 3:20 a.m. time-stamp – because Twitter time-stamps have been known to go haywire in the past, sometimes causing problems, such as when the bug made it appear that Alec Baldwin’s wife Hilaria had tweeted idle pleasantries during the June 2013 funeral of Sopranos star James Gandolfini. Hilaria had done no such thing, but erroneous reports to the contrary sparked by the bug caused her husband to blow a gasket.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Just in time for the biggest election in the history of democracy, a three-judge federal appeals court has told the state of New Hampshire that it cannot prevent voters from taking a selfie with their completed ballot.News of the decision comes via a tweet from executive editor of the Manchester Union-Leader:
In August 2015, a different judge had overturned New Hampshire’s ban on ballot selfies, but the elected officials of the “Live Free or Die” state inexplicably decided to appeal that decision to a higher court. Their argument is that ballot selfies encourage vote buying by allowing the selfie-taker to provide evidence that he or she voted as the buyer instructed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The picture below was snapped in a mall – we don’t know which mall – by an eagle-eyed Reddit user who couldn’t help but notice that a kiosk set up to sell the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was being guarded by a pair of fire extinguishers.For obvious reasons. Imgur/via Reddit
Many are having a good giggle about the photo. None of them work for Samsung, of course.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Yesterday we reported on the reaction to a Cisco bug report that speculated “partial data traffic loss” on the company’s ASR 9000 Series routers was possibly triggered by “cosmic radiation causing SEU soft errors.”Reaction to that contention on a Reddit forum ranged from the obvious -- acknowledgment that cosmic radiation is an issue -- to sharp-tongued skepticism and tales of the cosmic radiation villain being used as a tongue-in-cheek place-holder meaning “we really don’t know what caused the problem yet.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Yesterday we reported on the reaction to a Cisco bug report that speculated “partial data traffic loss” on the company’s ASR 9000 Series routers was possibly triggered by “cosmic radiation causing SEU soft errors.”Reaction to that contention on a Reddit forum ranged from the obvious -- acknowledgment that cosmic radiation is an issue -- to sharp-tongued skepticism and tales of the cosmic radiation villain being used as a tongue-in-cheek place-holder meaning “we really don’t know what caused the problem yet.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Cisco bug report addressing “partial data traffic loss” on the company’s ASR 9000 Series routers contends that a “possible trigger is cosmic radiation causing SEU soft errors.”Cosmic radiation? While we all know that cosmic radiation can wreak havoc on electronic devices, there’s far less agreement as to the likelihood of it being the culprit in this case. Or that Cisco could know one way or the other.A reader of Reddit’s section devoted to networking asks the question: “Has anyone ever seen ‘cosmic radiation’ as a cause for software errors in a bug report before? The ‘fix’ is to reload the line card. This did resolve the issue in our case. Anybody else experience this?”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Cisco bug report addressing “partial data traffic loss” on the company’s ASR 9000 Series routers contends that a “possible trigger is cosmic radiation causing SEU soft errors.”Cosmic radiation? While we all know that cosmic radiation can wreak havoc on electronic devices, there’s far less agreement as to the likelihood of it being the culprit in this case. Or that Cisco could know one way or the other.A reader of Reddit’s section devoted to networking asks the question: “Has anyone ever seen ‘cosmic radiation’ as a cause for software errors in a bug report before? The ‘fix’ is to reload the line card. This did resolve the issue in our case. Anybody else experience this?”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sometimes you’re better off accepting that the phone is a goner … lest you become one yourself.A Rhode Island television station reports:
Narragansett firefighters and Environmental Police spent most of their afternoon trying to free a man who they say got himself stuck head first between two rocks on the jetty near the Camp Cronin fishing area.Firefighters say the man was here with one other person when he dropped his phone. When he bent down to pick it up he got himself stuck all the way up to his chest.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Imagine if US Airways Flight 1549 out of New York – operating without a pilot -- had hit the same flock of birds, landed itself on the Hudson River, and saved the lives of 153 passengers and flight attendants.Well, there would be no movie called “Sully” playing in theaters right now.Pilotless airliners? Far-fetched, you say. Not so, according to Tim Robinson, editor-in-chief of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s magazine Aerospace, who tells the BBC:
“So with pilots relying on autopilots for 95% of today's flights, the argument goes, why not make the final 5% – take-off and landing – automated?” says Robinson. “Computers fly ultra-precise, repeatable trajectories, do not fly drunk, do not get tired, do not get distracted and so the thinking goes could be safer than human pilots in the future.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Texas-born Christian Hascheck teaches computer science in Vienna, Austria when not working on his own projects, which include a novel grading system. In 2012, he won $500 worth of Apple gift cards for a funny sysadmin story about ferreting out a not terribly sophisticated rogue Wi-Fi operation.Then the move aboard. He tells the story on his blog:
Since then I have repeatedly tried to use or sell (the cards) but since I'm not currently living in the US it wasn't possible for me.My last attempt to sell them was via reddit. I know there are a lot of scammers out there, so I thought Bitcoin would be the right choice since the scammer can't just reclaim their money after I gave them the card codes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Texas-born Christian Hascheck teaches computer science in Vienna, Austria when not working on his own projects, which include a novel grading system. In 2012, he won $500 worth of Apple gift cards for a funny sysadmin story about ferreting out a not terribly sophisticated rogue Wi-Fi operation.Then the move aboard. He tells the story on his blog:
Since then I have repeatedly tried to use or sell (the cards) but since I'm not currently living in the US it wasn't possible for me.My last attempt to sell them was via reddit. I know there are a lot of scammers out there, so I thought Bitcoin would be the right choice since the scammer can't just reclaim their money after I gave them the card codes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple’s post-Steve Jobs leadership era began officially on Aug. 24, 2011 – five years ago tomorrow -- with the announcement of his resignation and the appointment of Tim Cook as new CEO.The news of his resignation, while not unexpected, was momentous.Jobs made the announcement in a letter addressed to “the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community” and posted to the company’s website:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Before we start the work week, here’s a tiny personal tale from the weekend that has me puzzled.I’m at the local liquor store buying wine and my tab is $21.98. I hand the clerk $22 cash and patiently wait for my two pennies change, as I always do, because I like putting them in the “leave a penny, take a penny” (LAPTAP) container that you’ll see at all of your finer booze stores.That’s what I did, left my two pennies.There had been zero pennies in the container before I donated my two. As I was walking out, my back to the check-out, I distinctly heard the clerk slide the two pennies out of the LAPTAP container, open the cash register, and drop them in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Maybe you, like me, did not even know that universities are selling patents secured by their employee researchers to patent trolls. Maybe you did.In either case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is looking to curb this unproductive practice by harnessing the persuasive powers alumni. The EFF explains:
When universities invent, those inventions should benefit everyone. Unfortunately, they sometimes end up in the hands of patent trolls, companies that serve no purpose but to amass patents and demand money from other innovators and inventors.Why are universities selling patents to trolls in the first place? Shouldn’t they sell their inventions to companies that will actually do something with them?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Life in a capitalist society means good people will lose their jobs, most often through no fault of their own. Rarely, however, is that outcome more unfair – unconscionably so – than when IT professionals are displaced by foreign contract workers holding H-1B visas.Computerworld’s Patrick Thibodeau, who understands this subject like few other journalists, explains the layoff process in this gripping five-minute video:
Every day our political class allows this practice to continue is a day of shame for this country.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Not me, at least not in this instance. The self-described doofus here is a contributor to Reddit’s section devoted to networking, who says he acquired his doofus bona fides while troubleshooting his company’s VoIP system. Mr. Doofus explains:
I've been struggling with nasty packet drops occurring on VoIP calls at our data center for a few weeks now and for the life of me I couldn't find the source of the issue. I thought at first that the servers I have running our custom VoIP applications were just overloaded, but the issue would show up on just a single active call. Restarting the VoIP servers didn't help, all of the QoS markings and switch/router prioritization were spot on, the ISP was returning a clean bill of health on the circuit, etc., nothing was making sense. I made a few internal VoIP calls that stayed on the LAN which were crystal clear, and made some calls that also traverse the router to another internal subnet which were also clear, so I now knew the ISP connection was where the trouble was beginning.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Not me, at least not in this instance. The self-described doofus here is a contributor to Reddit’s section devoted to networking, who says he acquired his doofus bona fides while troubleshooting his company’s VoIP system. Mr. Doofus explains:
I've been struggling with nasty packet drops occurring on VoIP calls at our data center for a few weeks now and for the life of me I couldn't find the source of the issue. I thought at first that the servers I have running our custom VoIP applications were just overloaded, but the issue would show up on just a single active call. Restarting the VoIP servers didn't help, all of the QoS markings and switch/router prioritization were spot on, the ISP was returning a clean bill of health on the circuit, etc., nothing was making sense. I made a few internal VoIP calls that stayed on the LAN which were crystal clear, and made some calls that also traverse the router to another internal subnet which were also clear, so I now knew the ISP connection was where the trouble was beginning.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The selfie as a political toolImage by ReutersHolding or running for a political office in 2016? You had better be able to take a decent selfie, or at the very least understand your need – responsibility may not be too strong of a word – to abide by the voting public’s thirst for that smartphone snap. It’s like knowing how to properly lift and eat a local delicacy, or name-drop the state university’s football coach. Politics 101. It’s a non-partisan, worldwide requirement, too. Here are recent examples via Reuters:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Paul McNamara