soundstripe.net

This may not actually be new, but its the first time I've seen it. Usually I determine whether an e-mail is a scam by making sure that the links in the e-mail actually point to the places they claim (watch the status bar at the bottom of the screen when you hover your mouse). Even if I think it is legit, I always type the address in the address bar instead of clicking the link, in case the scammers think of a way to modify my browser. Today I received an e-mail addressed to a person with my first name and a different last name (though my last name is part of my e-mail address). Right away I knew it was a [phishing scam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing), but I checked the e-mail out anyway. I was very curious when I found that all of the links that said [www.chase.com](http://www.chase.com) actually did point to the correct locations. The link wasn't directly to a login screen or anything, just straight to Chase's homepage. The support phone number for Chase online (877-CHASEPC) was correct, as was the given numerical translation (877-242-7372). The only part that was incorrect was that it gave me an activation code for my (nonexistant) Chase card. Then I found the scam. The following instructions appeared at the bottom of the e-mail: > If you are currently at Chase Online and in the process of enrolling or logging on, then follow these steps: > > 1. Click "I Have My Code." 2. Enter your 8-digit Activation Code in the field provided. 3. Click "Next." > If you are not currently at Chase Online, then please follow the steps below: > > 1. Go to www.chase.com 2. Enter your user ID in the User ID field. 3. **Enter the 8-digit Activation Code in the Password field.** 4. Click Log On. 5. Follow the online instructions. I must say, this is ingenious! The first instructions (If you are currently logging on, etc) don't matter at all! The scammer simply sits back and waits for someone to follow his instructions, creating a *valid* user account at chase.com--linked to their credit card account(s). If they follow his instructions, they will have used his "activation code" for the password on their account! He comes back after a month or two and tries to log in (from a public computer) using every combination of e-mail address and "activation code" that he sent out, maxing out the credit card of every person who fell for the scam. There is no way to trace this attack, no public URL that can be somehow deactivated. The only possible defense would be for chase.com to implement a password policy that disallowed passwords with no alphabetic characters. They may have done this (I hope they have), but probably not before hundreds of people created accounts which were comprimised *before they were even opened*.

My wife and her string trio have been wanting to put this together for a long time, and it is finally here: follow the link to see the [guide to choosing your wedding music](http://www.adoniatrio.com/guide_to_wedding_music). Trio clients always want to know how to pick the music for their wedding, and generally ask for recommendations based on an overall theme or feel for the wedding. The girls have organized their repertoire and put together their [music picks for different wedding themes](http://www.adoniatrio.com/guide_to_wedding_music). Many of the recommendations have [audio clips](http://www.adoniatrio.com/audio_player) of the trio playing that piece. If you're a musician and have a lot of wedding clients, feel free to point them to the guide if you'd like to make similar recommendations. We want this to be useful to a wider audience than just our clients.

I started programming very young--probably when I was between eight and ten years old. We had a [C64](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64) and I would type (i.e. dictate to my mom) long programs from [various magazines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMPUTE!'s_Gazette) and books, then run them to see what happened. Sometimes I'd try to modify them to do what I wanted. I had a few simple books on BASIC and learned a bit from those. I didn't recognize [LOGO](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29) as programming, but I played with that a lot on the Apple II machines at school. I saw a [Wired how-to about teaching kids to program](http://howto.wired.com/wiredhowtos/index.cgi?page_name=teach_a_kid_to_program;action=display;category=Live) recently that struck me as not very creative. Most of the tools mentioned in it are quite neat, but the author takes a rather old school attitude approach to programming. [LOGO](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29), [Lego Mindstorms](http://mindstorms.lego.com/), [Alice](http://www.alicebot.org/)...all of these are fun and are great tools, but they are limiting and not new. Computers have changed. Kids know more about computers at early ages now...computers are far more advanced than these old tools now. Why not start children learning [Python](http://www.python.org), or [C#](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_sharp). Teach them languages that can be simple but actually *do* things! Even [BASIC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_programming_language) (still useful today) is more powerful than LOGO. Don't get me wrong--I love LOGO and its still a nice tool for children and learning, but it is aging; let's look for better! Programming isn't just fun...it didn't just perform tasks or make games...it is one of those fields that can become an art form. Kids who are serious about programming should treat it the same as learning to paint, dance, or play an instrument. Elegance and brevity in code matters. Kids need good resources--books, web sites, magazines--that are specifically geared toward teaching kids the beauty of code. I was glad to see the author of that article mention learning programming by scripting games--this is fun for kids and encourages them to learn quickly. I remember spending hours trying to create a Myst-like game with HyperCard on my (parents') Mac LC. Motivated kids learn faster. Kids can be highly productive programmers. Many of the developers that work on open-source programs are high school age. They have an abundance of time available that will never be available to them again. Investing time in teaching kids to program will pay off with the increase of clean, elegantly coded, superbly designed programs that everyone can use for free! Here is my short list of recommended resources for teaching kids to program: * [Kid's Domain](http://www.kidsdomain.com/down/program.html) -- great list of resources, much more comprehensive than this one * [SqueekLand](http://www.squeakland.org/) -- development tool and language geared toward children * [Python](http://www.python.org) and [PyGame](http://www.pygame.org/news.html) -- Great, powerful language with short learning curve

Did you know that you could [overdose on espresso [BBC]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wear/6944026.stm)? > "My nerves were all over the place. > I was drenched. I was burning up and hyperventilating. > I was having palpitations, my heart was beating so fast and I thought I was going into shock. > I did not realise this could happen to you and I only hope other people learn from my mistake." Of course, she did have seven double shots of espresso in the space of a few hours...I try to stick to two doubles a day, max. Really. I don't have a problem. I can stop any time. I was reassured by a link from the overdose article to an article touting the [health benefits of coffee](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/breakfast/3155622.stm): > Research also shows that drinking three cups of coffee a day can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease by as much as 60%. > The Faculty of Medicine in Lisbon, Portugal found that healthy elderly people, with no signs of the brain disease, had consumed an average of three to four cups of coffee a day since the age of 25. > However, those with the illness--which affects one in ten Britain's over the age of 85--drank just one coffee a day. I love coffee.

Its a story you hear every day as a network administrator (or even as the friendly neighborhood "computer guy"): "My computer won't boot up and I hear a clicking sound coming out of it. What do I do?" Gritting your teeth at the calamity of the bad news you're about to give, you think to yourself, "you start making backups, yesterday!" Everyone knows you're supposed to have backups, but almost no one makes them. Even "geeks" with souped-up, high speed computer setups often put off dealing with a backup scheme until it is too late and all of their photos, music, and work, is gone. Data recovery is not an option for most users; you'll may a minimum of $1,000 most places, and trust your hard drive to shipping companies to get it there. So what are the options? In the past few years, a number of online services have begun offering online backups for a small monthly fee. If you have a broadband internet connection, you may be able to use these services to back up at least your critical files. Some of the more well-known offerings are listed below: * [IDrive-E](http://www.idrive.com/) -- Offers 2GB free, unlimited storage for $4.95/mo, automated Windows backups * [Mozy](http://mozy.com/) -- 2GB free, unlimited storage for $4.95/mo, more advanced backup software * [OmniDrive](http://www.omnidrive.com/products/) -- 1GB free, plans up to 50GB, acts like a mapped network drive, integrated with other web services like [Zoho Office Suite](http://www.zoho.com) and [SnipShot Photo Editor](http://www.snipshot.com/) for online editing * [Streamload](http://www.streamload.com/) -- 25GB free, plans up to 1TB, most free storage but no windows client (must upload through web browser), well-integrated with services for sharing files * [Strongspace](http://www.strongspace.com/) and [BingoDisk](http://joyent.com/connector/bingodisk/) -- No free offering, plans up to 100GB, a little expensive, but the redundancy, uptime, and reliability of this offering makes it suitable for professional level backups. These guys will not lose your data.

UPDATE: Ah, I have found [SixApart's Twitter](http://twitter.com/sixapart/), [this post about power outages](http://laughingsquid.com/massive-power-outages-hit-san-franciscos-soma-district/), and [this post about it being the fault of an inebriated employee](http://valleywag.com/tech/breakdowns/a-drunk-employee-kills-all-of-the-websites-you-care-about-282021.php). DNS for sixapart is down. Seems like they've been the target of at least one [DNS DDOS attack](http://appnel.com/2006/05/six-apart-ddos) in the past--is this another one, or did the network admin not show up today?

Whoa! I have been wanting this feature since the beginning of online mapping! Google has (just?) added a feature that allows you to modify your route on the fly by dragging the blue line representing your route. The route acts like a rubber band, snapping to the best roads that go through your new point *on they fly*! I knew the wait would be worth, it, but you have got to try this feature. Other mapping services have let you add midpoints before, but I haven't seen one that lets you drag the route and update it on the fly like this--please point me in the right direction if I'm mistaken. It's worth trying out immediately. Go to [Google Maps](http://maps.google.com) and get directions then start dragging that line around. Compare different routes, find out why Google always tells you one way when you want to go another.

I recently ran across the [Monty Hall Problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem "Wikipedia entry for Monty Hall Problem"), which is really quite old but still very interesting. The question is: > Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice? Almost everyone will initially guess that once there are only two doors left, you simply have a 50/50 chance of picking the right door, so there is no benefit to switching doors. The actual solution is that by sticking with the initial choice, your chances of winning are still 1/3, and if you switch your odds increase to 2/3! Even after reading the [excellent Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem "Wikipedia entry for Monty Hall Problem"), I still did not believe this, so I wrote a little code to test it out. Turns out Wikipedia (and all the smart people who put actual research into this) is of course, absolutely correct. There you have it, 66.79% of the trials were wins when the initial choice is switched.

My three year old can sit down at my computer, close all of my running applications (happily clicking no when asked if she wants to save), launch any one of her three favorite games from the desktop, play them, minimize them, adjust the speaker volume, browse our family photo gallery online, and even practice typing words that she knows how to spell. She could do most of this when she was two.

I'm a network administrator, and believe I'm going to have to do more research to keep up with her than I am to keep with my job. *sigh*

I thought that growing up with the "age of computers" in full swing, there would not be such a generation gap. I can only imagine what she will be able to do at 5 years old, or 10, or 20! I don't know if she will choose to work in the field of computing, as I have, but I am beginning to realize that even if she doesn't, this field changes so rapidly that she may surpass my skill and knowledge in the area even if she doesn't. It's rather unsettling, and quite amazing.