The Tracking of Memes

Earlier today I sent an IM to a friend of mine pointing to the Threadless t-shirt that spoofed the infamous goatse picture that is widely known to most people who live and breathe the Internet. I laughed. My friend did not get it. I pointed him to a Google Image search for "goatse" (warning: NSFW!) and he then understood. This led me to think about all of the various sites I visit on a regular basis to gather up-to-the-minute news and emerging memes. Below is a short list:

• Populicious
• Trendilicious
• Technorati Breaking News
• eBay Pulse
• Google News
• Google Zeitgeist
• BlogDex
• DayPop's Top 40
• Memepool
• MetaFilter

Feel free to add your own in the coments and I'll update this list.

Hacker Attack Post-Mortem

I've been pretty quiet about this for the past 6 weeks, but now that I've had time to recover almost everything that I lost I can now confirm that yes, my server did get hacked in early February. It appears that this group of hackers in Brazil who call themselves "SPYKIDS" used the now-commonly known exploit in older versions of awstats. It also appears that they got Russell Beattie and Jeremy Zawodny, both of who are far better sysadmins than I am so that makes me feel better. Looks like they also got Juju.org.

As Russell reports, this group apparently has an M.O. I discovered the mass defacement of every site on my server about 4 hours after it happened. Assuming it was just some mindless script kiddie I replaced each index page of each site with an Under Construction note, planning on restoring everything later in the day. It was terrible timing since that was the same day I was moving apartments from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Later that day I logged into the box and found that they had deleted the entire /log directory to cover their tracks and there was some weird telnet session open, likely a bot connected to an IRC server. Realizing that they had somehow acquired root access I knew the box was beyond repair and shut it down. The next day a friend and I went to the co-lo facility and rebuilt the OS, re-installed all the software and recreated the few accounts needed for the box.

I also learned that it's very important to run regular backups so that if your box gets compromised again it's easier to shutdown, rebuild and restore without losing any data. I guess I learned the hard way. I'm fortunate that I don't host any of my clients' web sites on my server, so all I have to lose is my development projects, some personal web sites, and a few sites I host for friends.

A Coder in Courierland & Other Links From My Bookmarks

There's a great article over at Kuro5hin called "A Coder in Courierland" about a programmer who quit his job to become a bike messenger. Good stuff.

If you're like me, you love fried dough. Whenever I go to an ethnic restaurant in Manhattan I cannot resist ordering the fried dough appetizer. I was pleased to find this Guide to Ethinic Fried Doughs Around the World. Great information!

DemonEater: wtf
DemonEater: ESPN is showing 2003 national jump rope championship
DemonEater: who the hell watches jump rope competiti--- ooh bouncy
- From Bash.org Top 100-200 Quotes

The L.A. Times recently published a 3-part expose called Families in Crisis that takes a look at how America's middle class is getting squeezed in a lot of ways that would have seemed impossible 10 years ago. I really fear that if America's housing market collapses and we enter another recession, a large majority of Americans are going to default on their mortgages and we'll be thrown into economic turmoil that may bring about another Great Depression like we had in the 1930s.

Over at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick sums up my feelings about the Terri Schiavo case down in Florida. I find it astounding that President Bush and Congress have tried to step into a situation where they do not belong. It appears that our Federal government is getting involved for purely superficial reasons. Grandstanding and political posturing are the last things Terri Schiavo needs. But then again, this is the Bush Administration we're talking about. Typical misguided leadership....

New Addiction

I sometimes get really bored with the beverages coming out of the American food manufacturing industry. I try to avoid the sugar-laden drinks like soda and juices from concentrate, because too much sugar is bad for you. Instead i drink a lot of water, a lot of low-fat milk with Chocolate Malt Ovaltine mix and lately two drinks I found stocked at my local imported-foods grocery store in Brooklyn, both apparently from Poland. The first is something made by Fortuna (a division of Agros Nova) and is an orange-milk mixture that tastes like one of those orange-flavored, ice-cream popsicles but in a liquid form. It's not too sweet and comes in a one-litre container. The second is a drink from a company called Tymbark and is a lemon/lime mixture with a splash of mint added. From this description you'd think those flavors do not go well together but I recently tried it and it's fantastic. Bitter, sweet and sour all at the same time. Lastly, Fortuna also makes a blood orange drink that I thought would be a lot like the ones I fell in love with when I vacationed in Malta a few years back, but sadly it's nowhere near as good as the freshly-squeezed blood orange juice available along most of the Mediterannean coast.

Podcasting vs. Blogging

Because of my history as one of the pioneers of blogging, I am often asked about the newest kid on the block: podcasting. Podcasting, if you don't know what it is already, is similar to blogging, but instead of writing your words down, you speak them into a microphone and publish them online as an MP3 for people to download and listen to on their MP3 players.

There are many advocates of podcasting, including some of the people who made blogging what it is today. To lump these two things into the same category is a mistake, as they are very different -- both in creation and in final product. Blogs are meant to be read. Podcasts are meant to be listened to. Reading a blog is an active engagement that requires a good deal of focus. It requires concentration and attentiveness to read the written word. This is why people do not read while driving (well, at least those who want to stay alive). Listening to a podcast, however, is a more passive activity. You can safely drive and listen to a podcast at the same time. This fundamental difference between blogging and podcasting is what sets them apart and they should not be confused with each other.

I do not understand the hype around podcasting. To think that millions of people would rather dictate their thoughts and ideas into a microphone instead of writing them down seems a little strange, at least to me. Most people I know have a hard time forming a coherent message while speaking. This is why the majority of the people in this world ar terrible at public speaking. It takes a lot of planning, forethought and practice to be able to speak with enough conviction and power to make your words be as powerful as they are when written. My instinct and experience tells me that most people do not have the skills to do a high-quality podcast. If podcasting takes off, I imagine it will be like most of the rest of the Internet: a small percentage of great content and mountains of complete crap. However, the added barriers of entry into the podcasting world make it even harder for an beginner to get recognized and therefore become successful.

The Tools

Let's compare podcasting to blogging again, but this time let's take a look at the tools used. I started blogging in 1997 and way back then there were no blog-specific tools at all. We had to know HTML and how web servers worked. It's no surprise that most of the early bloggers were Internet geeks who knew how to publish on the web and were doing it as a day job at the same time. Since then, many self-publishing tools have been released and it's become very easy to publish a blog online. Someone who is a good writer can now publish a fantastic blog without needing to understand the technology behind it. It's as simple as writing an email and pushing a few buttons on a web page. Podcasting, however, takes much more effort and planning. Not only do you have to spend time writing down what you're going to say, you have to practice it, play it back, and re-record anything you've messed up. You need to know basic audio production skills and have the correct software to edit, cut and splice your recorded audio together. It's safe to assume most people do not have these skills unless they take the time to learn them or are taught. Simply recording a rambling thought into a microphone and ripping it out to MP3 is a very bad way to do a podcast. Unless you have years of experience fine-tuning your thought processes, you will fail and your podcast will end up sounding a lot like what it actually is: a long, rambling thought that fails to inform, influence and educate. I simply do not see podcasting becoming an important part of the self-publishing world. Sure, I think there will be some successes for those who master the art, but the numbers will be nowhere near those of successful bloggers.

The Barriers to Entry

Podcasting is hard. Not only do you have to have the skills, tools and expertise to put together a production-quality podcast, you also have to have the voice for it. Anyone who has studied radio broadcasting knows this. If you have a weird voice or a strong accent, you will likely not succeed beyond a small audience that can overlook it. People not accustomed to your voice will be forced to stop, rewind and re-listen to what you're saying. This goes for podcasting while you are sick as well. The last thing your audience wants to listen to is a mediocre rambling thought from someone with a deep southern accent who has a cold.

One of the reasons blogging has become so popular is that today's search engines favor regularly-updated, opinionated sites that link to source materials. The written nature of blogging leads to increased awareness through search engines. The technology behind blogging allows for deep-linking, easy cut-and-paste quoting of materials. Such search engines do not yet exist for podcasting, though there are some startup companies attempting to index podcasts for this reason. Blogging follows a standard draft/publish process that allows for unlimited editing prior to publication. The same process for podcasting is much more complex, and once again requires that the podcaster have a base set of audio production skills and the software to accomplish it.

Bandwidth. We hear stories all the time about sites being shut down by hosting providers who have hard-limit bandwidth caps. Even a text-based site with a few images can exceed a bandwidth limit if it gets Slashdotted or a couple of the right-wing conservative bloggers start paying attention to it. Podcasting, by its nature, is bandwidth-intensive. A podcast of a short post just a few minutes long is at least several megabytes in size. Even a mere hundred people downloading it adds up very quickly and suddenly podcasting starts to look like a pretty expensive way to get your voice on the web (literally). While bandwidth is becoming increasingly less expensive, I do not anticipate it being as abundant as is needed for podcasting to become as popular and ubiquitous as blogging. Even with companies that provide the tools and bandwidth for hosted podcasting, there are still all of the other issues I mentioned above to overcome.

As exciting as podcasting seems, there are still far too many barriers to entry for it become as big as its loudest advocates anticipate. Still, I wish the podcasting advocates the best of luck. It's a neat idea, but I have no expectations that it will become a widespread or accepted medium for self-publishers.

See Ya Later Verizon

Last month I moved into a new apartment in Brooklyn. The building is brand new and made up of mostly condominiums. The day after moving in, my girlfriend called Verizon to schedule an appointment. She was told that we'd have to pay for a jack installation for each room we wanted service, something like $65 for each jack, plus activation charges. She wanted a land-line phone because she feels more secure in having a way to contact her family on Long Island should NYC experience another event like September 11 or the Great Blackout of 2003, so she was willing to pay the fees. A week later, Verizon failed to show up, so she called them again and scheduled another appointment. The following week, they showed up on the wrong day when nobody was home to gve them access to the building. By this point, she was sick and tired of Verizon's scheduling problems so she called AT&T to schedule service through them, only to find out that they wanted us to pay the $300+ to install a network interface for the entire building. After nearly an hour on the phone with their customer service, she got them to waive the costs of installing a phone interface for the building and scheduled an appointment. The customer representative let it slip that Verizon would be doing the installation. That was the last straw, so we cancelled the service and in less than 5 minutes I had us subscribed to Vonage, one of the largest VOIP-based phone services. I submitted the order last Friday and yesterday the equipment arrived in the mail. In short order I had it installed and working on the LAN (using broadband Internet service from Time-Warner's Roadrunner). For $24.99/month, we get unlimited local and long-distance calls, something that would cost nearly twice as much through Verizon or AT&T. The service so far has been flawless and very easy to set up. So, goodbye Verizon you bloated, bureacratic, piece-of-shit monopoly. When customers have a choice, they will go elsewhere and avoid your overpriced, inept, shitty service. Serves you right.

P.S. If you want to susbcribe to Vonage, drop me an email and I'll put you through their neat referral system which gives you the first month of service for free.