Z Trek: The Alan Zeichick Weblog

, , , ,

Email messages without subject lines — grrrr!

Among the most peevish of my pet peeves are email messages that have no subject line. Why do people send them? I know, I know, it's generally accidental. Unfortunately, not all email applications warn users when they're sending a message…

If you see captchas on Facebook, link to your mobile phone

Several weeks ago, out of the blue, Facebook began using captcha codes when I would send messages to other Facebook users. They'd also appear if I put a link into my Facebook status message.In order to confirm my entry, I'd have to correctly…

A belated farewell to an old friend, Mert Nickerson

I worked with Mert in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the Univ. of Maine at Orono, shortly before he moved to the Univ. of Southern Maine.I just learned that he passed away nearly three years ago, in January 2006. That's what happens when…

How safe a safe is a Lego safe?

Purely by coincidence: A day after I posted about the Lego handguns, Bruce Schneier blogged about a Lego safe.I suppose you should store your Brickgun inside the Lego safe, to keep it out of the hands of children.Hmm. What?Z Trek Copyright (c)…

What sound does a firearm made of Lego make?

No, it's not a Zen thing. Brickgun claims that its models are "the coolest Lego weapons in the world," and going by the pictures on their site, I believe.The company makes very detailed models of five weapons: Beretta 92FS (pictured), Glock…

The phone company is a dinosaur

Get with it, AT&T!In the past few weeks, I've been getting a lot of "anonymous" telemarketing calls on my wireline phone. As a general rule, if someone calls me, and their phone number doesn't show up in Caller ID, it's not someone I want to…

If you live in the SF Bay Area, say goodbye to the cozy, romantic fireplace

Before you light up your San Francisco Bay Area fireplace, check the Internet, to see if it's a Spare the Air Day. If it is, and if you light up anyway, be prepared for a $2,000 fine.Regulation 6, Rule 3, passed on July 9, 2008, restricts people's…

I’m speechless: PC Magazine to cease publication

It's the end of an era — PC Magazine will cease publication in January, as Ziff Davis Media focuses on its Web site and a new "digital network."According to the company's press release,Ziff Davis Media, one of the leading integrated technology…

Star-studded speakers at FutureTest 2009

A press release we issued today. Note that the eXtreme Early Bird registration discount for FutureTest 2009 ends this Friday, Nov. 21.Star-Studded Speaker Lineup Announced for FutureTest 2009Conference attendees will lessons on Web software…

I love free money, even if it’s only $1.97

Wal-Mart sent me this email today, for my order of the new AC/DC Black Ice disc last month. Thanks for the refund, wish I knew why they're issuing it.Subj: A Refund for Your Walmart.com OrderDear Alan Zeichick,Thank you for your recent Walmart.com…

It’s the Quark we’ve been waiting for — Adam Quark!

Not the subatomic particle. Not the big-lobed bartender in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.Quark can only mean one thing: Captain Adam Quark, commander of a United Galaxies Sanitation Patrol Cruiser in the year 2222.Quark was a short-lived (eight…

Kristallnacht, the night of breaking glass

The night of November 9-10, 1938, must have been terrifying beyond comprehension. That’s when the Germans citizens launched Kristallnacht, the night of breaking glass, destroying buildings, property and religious treasures belonging to the…

Why is COBOL a ‘legacy’ language?

I am of the Structured Programming Era. The first languages I coded in were COBOL, FORTRAN (not Fortran, it was still an all-capital-letters language back then), PL/1, RPG, APL, Smalltalk and VM/SP Assembler. That was long, long before Bjarne…

Spam is on the rise — due to popular demand

According to last week's story in the New York Times, people want their canned meat."Through war and recession, Americans have turned to the glistening canned product from Hormel as a way to save money while still putting something that resembles…

How much for a page of editorial? £350

Design Buy Build is a British magazine whose editorial content is for sale to prospective advertisers. In January, in a post called "A different editorial standard," I wrote that the magazine's editors charge companies a £85 fee to print color…

One of the best-written 419 scams I’ve seen

Like you, I get so many advance-fee scam messages that they barely register on my consciousness. However, sometimes I read them (generally, to get a laugh). This one is so brazen that it stood out: "Honestly, it really baffles me that you took…

United loves to let someone else fly your luggage, and it shows!

Remember that airlines used to carry luggage for free? Now, they don't even want to carry it at all. United sent me an email today that said, "United is the first airline to offer baggage shipping via FedEx Express, helping you send bags overnight…

From EXEC to EXEC 2 to REXX to NetRexx

Andrew Binstock’s SD Times column last week, “The Return of NetRexx,” brought back some fond memories from my past associations with NetRexx and its big-predecessors.NetRexx’s great-grandfather was an IBM scripting language called EXEC,…

‘Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing’

This seems like a fascinating event down at Stanford, and I plan to attend.Tuesday, December 9, 2008 1:00 to 5:30 pm at Stanford University Memorial Auditorium They call it the "mother of all demos."On December 9, 1968, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart…

Canon image stabilizing binoculars rule!

My family is into casual astronomy. My weapon of choice is a Celestron 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain scope with a reducer (I like a big field of view), while my wife prefers binoculars.Binocs are my recommendation for all amateur astronomers, because…

Microsoft discovers the cloud

I missed the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference this year, and as part of that, missed the announcement of Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform.You can read SD Times reporter David Worthington's report on Azure, to catch up on…

E-mail signature ends up on Welsh road sign

The danger of working with languages that you don't understand is that you might do something silly. Like, for example, building a road sign that says, "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."That's what the Welsh…

Blogging about the perfect holiday gift

I discovered the "Despair, Inc." store in 2003, and have since purchased several of their demotivation products for myself and for friends. One of their newest products is pictured. Isn't it perfect?"Blogging" is only available at this time…

Faux messages pretending to be from MSN

I've received many of these clever phishing messages, as usual coming to addresses like webmaster@, info@, privacy@, and so-on. They pretend to be from Microsoft, giving you a chance to opt out of MSN commercial messages.However, the links go…

Advertising spending might increase in these difficult times

Recessions and other tough economic climates often hit marketing budgets pretty hard. That was certainly the case when the bubble popped in 2000/2001. However, according to the Association of National Advertisers, more than a quarter of marketers…

Want a used mobile medical van? Is there a scam?

This one's hard to figure out. The message originated from an ISP in India and came through to one of our info@ addresses.There was no response to my query when I wrote back to "Sarah." What do you think the deal is? My guess is that they're…

What a great couple of weeks!

While I've been on a short vacation from blogging, it's only because I've spent two weeks on the road, most recently at the EclipseWorld 2008 conference in Reston, Va.EclipseWorld 2008 truly is a great conference. The energy of the speakers…

Shawlands Academy goes green!

My wife is very, very proud of her old secondary school, Shawlands Academy, which was named the United Kingdom's greenest school.According to a story in the Evening Times,Shawlands Academy in the South Side of Glasgow is celebrating being named…

What stories are we working on?

Here's the "PR pitch of the day," which came to our newspaper's info@ e-mail address. Guess how much time, rounded up to the nearest nanosecond, we're going to spend compiling a list of "technology stories" that our reporters are working on,…

Disappointed by the new MacBook and MacBook Pro

Nobody does aluminum like Apple.Apple's new MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks, introduced a week ago, are drop-dead gorgeous. That's about all you can say about them, compared to the older models.The prices are the same as the previous generation.…