• Need your vote!

    By erbbysam | August 12, 2009

    Hello blog-readers, I just submitted my entry to the Bing/Gnomedex competition “Will code for Green” and I need your vote! 20% of my final score is going to be how many votes that I receive, and the grand prize is $10,000. I intend to donate a portion of that to charity in the event that I win.

    Instructions:
    1) Goto willcodeforgreen.gnomedex.com/
    2) enter your email address to “login”
    3) find the entry “LEED Supplier Search”
    4) vote for it
    5) Thank you!

    A little blurb about my entry:
    This tool allows contractors and people seeking building material to find LEED certified green building materials using the Bing search engine API.

    Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »

    AT&T vs. 4chan

    By erbbysam | July 27, 2009

    disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer: this post is simply to show what is going on(from my understanding of the situation) and what AT&T should have done to prevent this situation from getting out of hand.

    AT&T blocked 4chan last night without notice. I could not imagine a worse move by an ISP. However there may be some reasoning behind this ban, not censorship as has been discussed.

    4chan has been actively DDos’ed by a syn flood over the past few weeks causing a ton of unwanted traffic over the ISP’s networks. What this means is someone was angry at 4chan, and contracted or built a botnet(a bunch of infected computers) to send a ton of packets(internet traffic) that appears to be wanting to opening a connection to 4chan. However, because this is an attack, it doesn’t stop sending these packets and by internet protocol 4chan must respond to each one(with an ack back to the “bot”), which is an attempt to deliberately knock 4chan offline. By removing 4chan from their network, AT&T prevented 4chan from responding to these syn packets(with an ack) and at the same time could stop the syn packets heading for 4chan before they reached the core of the network. This may have saved them some bandwidth…but… you blocked 4chan. This may be one of the most successful DDos attacks ever.
    For further reading see: wikipedia DDos & wikipedia:Smurf attack

    This would be a bit more acceptable if AT&T had given notice, or even contacted 4chan. Someone at AT&T realized last night that the internet was about to explode around them because they gave no notice, so they put 4chan back online in their netwok…

    All that it would have taken for AT&T to not be in the doghouse right now is to simply post something to their newsroom saying they were having bandwidth trouble and had no other course of action but to block 4chan or even had contacted 4chan, but by silently discarding packets, they risk their common carrier status and put a pitchfork in the wheel of the net neutrality debate that is going on right now.

    This is going to be a fun day to watch the internet.

    Topics: !netneutrality, 4chan, AT&T, Tin Foil Hat | No Comments »

    Golly Zookz!

    By erbbysam | July 16, 2009

    If you haven’t heard about Zookz yet, here’s a short summary:

    Pretty much it a free mp3/movie download service that is hosted legally in Antigua. that allows users to download an unlimited number of mp3’s/movies. This started a few years back when the US repeatably said “BS”  and ignored the WTO over online gaming disputes. Antigua appealed and won, US did nothing. WTO told(indirectly) Antigua to sanction the US, a great way would be by ignoring there intellectual property.
    Zookz took up the challenge in an odd interpretation of the WTO’s ruling with a $10 a month unlimited download service for US movies/music.
    The RIAA/MPAA got dragged into the WTO / internationally online gaming disputes…

    Absolutly crazy… yes… the next Napster… no, well not yet. A few notes on this service:

    That being said, it does some good content. Also, this is definitely is the only thing I ever can think of that would make the RIAA and MPAA declare war on Antigua. All the while bringing forward the absurdness of the US stance toward internet gaming(see: not on my toilet!).

    Link: http://www.zookz.com/

    UPDATE 7/24/09: RIP Zooks. Site is still up, but they refunded me fully for my subscription because Antigua got word and didn’t like it, not suprised, but they may come back in the future, which leaves me with some hope.

    Topics: government, mafiAA, nextNapsterLawsuit | No Comments »

    FB’s like is, like, Inapproiate…..

    By erbbysam | March 30, 2009

    On a lighter note…
    With the recent Facebook update, you can now “like” your friend’s Facebook status.

    How to be horribly inappropriate on Facebook:
    Burned to a crisp

    for maximum inappropriateness ensure that you hardly know the person

    A few other real examples:

    disclaimer:no FB statuses were inappropriately liked in the making of the post :) !

    Topics: FB | No Comments »

    UMass Commonwealth College, what?

    By erbbysam | January 12, 2009

    Something recently posted in the Commonwealth College facebook group:
    http://www.umass.edu/loop/talkingpoints/articles/81959.php
    To sum it up,

    Under the new policy, “Latin honors” will be based on the student’s GPA and Commonwealth College honors graduates will be eligible for additional recognition.

    and

    Summa cum laude honors will be accorded to students whose GPA is among the top 5 percent in the graduating class of their school or college.

    If a student’s GPA is among the top 10 percent of their school or college class, but not in the top 5 percent, magna cum laude honors will be awarded.

    Students in the top 25 percent of their school or college class, but not in the upper 10 percent, will receive their degrees cum laude.

    In other words, Commonwealth College will no longer be required to graduate with high honors, reducing the already limited reasons to join.
    However:

    In addition, the Commonwealth College Curriculum Committee and dean, using criteria to be determined, may recommend students who have completed college requirements to be given one of the following designations: Commonwealth College Scholar with the greatest distinction; Commonwealth College Scholar with great distinction; Commonwealth College Scholar with distinction; and Commonwealth College Scholar.

    So ComCol students will graduate with another designation, which, right now, means nothing and has no set requirements? Where does that leave students who are currently taking the deans book courses(link to daily collegian editorial) or trying to figure out exactly how to graduate with high honors, only to find out that the only reason they were taking honors courses is no longer there? Or those students who have qualifying GPA’s previously as listed on the ComCol website which still displays the old ComCol rules? And when will the Registrar website be updated to show if we are in the correct percentile of GPA’s(which is in new ruling as part of this plan)?

    Wouldn’t this be something interesting to put in the ComCol spam(sorry, series of advertisements) that’s sent out once a week?(obviously you can tell my opinion on the ComCol mailing list :) ) But it never appeared there. Also, in an unrelated email sent out today for first and second year ComCol students,

    HONORS 291G merges the old 191D 1cr and 291D 1cr seminars which are being discontinued.

    This isn’t mentioned anywhere else? Where did this come from, anybody know what is going on, obviously behind mostly closed doors(I say mostly because I can’t find it online, but can’t be sure), at ComCol?

    I wrote this because I have no idea what’s going on in ComCol, if I should or even can stay in, and why are they trying to make it even more unappealing for students? And would it hurt to inform students who are affected about what is going on?

    For a bit more reading:
    Faculty Senate Press Release 12-11-08
    Umass Wiki ComCol Page

    update!
    so they pushed out all this confusing information over the course of the first month of school. They are now giving everyone the option for graduating with honors from both sides, with or without ComCol, still very confusing.

    Topics: college, umass | No Comments »

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