Ordinary Nothing

I have a couple of domains, the main one is the one holding this blog, ordinarynothing.org . In the last few days all of them got an email message, sent to info@ of the domain. This is the one sent for this blog’s domain:

LISTING: ORDINARY NOTHING – Usually I use services like Dictionary.com, since they collect definitions from a large number of dictionaries, increasing the odds of finding the right word. http://www.ordinarynothing.org

Could you please update the ORDINARYNOTHING.ORG directory listing by Thursday so we can continue to list you, if you don’t mind? There is no charge to update your listing. Simply go to:

http://www-goto.com/update.cfm?[removed by me]

Thanks.

To unsubscribe: http://www-goto.com/cancel.cfm? [parameters removed by me]

Media LLC, 1158 26th St. #528, Santa Monica, CA 90403 USA

My first thought was that this is some very odd spam message. But the pattern, it being sent to several domains, to the same address, and that’s that, seemed odd. So I decided to check a bit more.

The sender, and the reply-to addresses, as the links in the message body, where to the www-goto.com domain. I went in to take a look. The first thing that happened, I get prompted to add them to my favourites/bookmarks. And that’s a big warning sign, people. The only sites that try to make you bookmark them without requesting, are usually questionable porn sites and the like. Well behaved sites don’t do that. Especially considering that in their case this was in a script that always loads with the main page, so even someone who actually wants to use their site, may grow too tired of this and leave.

The site itself is a search engine. There’s a big logo saying “World’s Biggest”, a click on which takes you to the exact same page, but on the websbiggest.com domain… And there are various links on it, all to the dirs.org domain, which’s home page gets you to… you guessed right, the same search engine page. And worldbiggest.com domain does the same.

But that’s alright. Serious companies do it all the time, holding several totally different domain names that all point to the exact same place. No, wait, they don’t… Hmm…

A bit more digging, and these fellows claim to have the world’s biggest search engine because they license the entire whois database (That’s the list of all registered domain names, and the contact information of the people registering them), and search all of the sites from there. Now, ignore for a moment the fact that this doesn’t by itself make them biggest, and certainly not best. No, what’s more important is that they used the whois information to spam me. It’s not allowed to use whois information for things other than contacting domain owners for technical problems, or for general verification of data. Certainly not to spam people. And here they were allowed to license the whole thing, and are sending everyone email messages encouraging them to list themselves in their directory. That’s called spamming.

And yes, I think I’ll find out who am I supposed to complain to, and do that. This is not a legitimate usage of the whois info.

And the funniest thing, they claim that one of their advantages is that their crawler bot can extract information from the site in order to figure out what the site is about, and keep the important data. Apparently, that bot software is so sophisticated that it decided the thing that best describes this blog, and the thing that need to be kept as a description of it, is that first paragraph they sent me on the mail, from an old post of mine. Because, hey, this blog is totally and completely all about how I use dictionary.com, of course. Not.

Which makes them sleazy, criminal, and totally incompetent. But apart from that I’m sure they provide a really nice service.

Another fine example of American law at it’s best, this guy is required to pay child support for a kid that DNA tests prove are not his.

They said Geoffrey Fisher owes about $11,000 in child support to cover the time from the child’s birth until paternity tests proved that Fisher was not the father.

So from the moment it was proven he’s not the father, he’s off the hook. But for all the time until then, he should still pay. Because… hmm… the test is inconclusive about the past duration, and it’s possible he was the kid’s father, and only stopped being so before the test?

Hat tip to Derek, who summed it up very succinctly – Stupid.

This is hilarious. If things of the sort were not becoming more and
more common in the US, it would have been very hard to believe it’s a
true story…

This is what happens when a stupid racist (Remember folks, it’s not
libel if it’s true) ex-WWF
champion gets his "Director of
Communications" to threaten a website that made a little fun of him.

Yes, I’m not sure what "Director of Communications" mean either. Probably
like barbers are called hair-stylists, and gardeners are called
landscape-engineers, so this is the guy who speaks for Ultimate
Warrior. Not because he’s any good at it, but (what a scary thought)
because the Warrior is even worse.

Getting offended when you’re called racist, is legitimate. Asking
someone to remove a post saying that, is also legitimate. When it’s a
satire site, and when you really meant what you said that got you
labelled a racist, not so much legitimate. Getting into scare tactics,
telling the person that you know where they live, hinting on use of
physical violence, and harassing they website owner’s father on the
phone… Big nono.

And some more discussion on this, and on the Ultimate Warrior guy.

The US has perfectly valid, real,
and legit, 2$ bills. They’re just rare. So many people aren’t aware of
them. Especially low level salespersons, it would seem. Oh, and cops.

So what do you expect happened to a man who tried to pay in Best Buy with 2$ bills? Right, police was called, and he was arrested. Just like that.

Nice. In some places, you can’t even pay with money.

I just wonder if, this being America, he’ll sue over his bad experience…

I saw this little article in today’s paper announcing that the
department of tourism declared its intent to build an hippodrome in the
Negev, to be used for horse racing and bets. They expect it to be a centre of
tourism, and to cause other tourist attractions to be built in the same
area. The minister of tourism is quoted as saying that "The state would
benefit from the bets that will take place in the hippodrome, and the
Negev will enjoy the creation of many labour sources".

First, I’m really not so sure about the merit of the idea. Sure, there
are horses in Israel. But we’re pretty far from being well known as the
equestrian capitol of the world. So people who are seriously into
horse races won’t come, due to it being too amateurish. And are people
who are just enthusiasts, or want to experience a race for the first
time, really expected to come to Israel of all places? This makes very
little sense to me.

Unless we expect serious horse breeders and racers to bring their own
horses here. A lofty ambition. Too much so, I think, considering
freight for a race horse to Israel would probably cost a lot more than
inside Europe or the US. They won’t bring them until we get a good
reputation, and we won’t ever get that good reputation without people
bringing them.

All of which doesn’t matter much, because the way I see it, and the way
I can’t believe my esteemed minister of tourism doesn’t see it, the point
is to allow gambling. Yes, bets on horse races are gambling.

So how come this goes on so quietly? There were discussions once about
opening approved casinos in Israel. It suffered from many loud
objections, citing things like increased crime rate, or people losing
too much of their money. It reached such a state that on the last
election we had a potential party running that was only about making
gambling legal (which it now isn’t), and they didn’t get enough votes
to enter the Knesset.

So how come betting on card games is illegal and much contended, but
opening a hippodrome and betting on horse races doesn’t raise any
hackles? This is the exact same thing – gambling. Or am I missing something?

As probably anyone who ever listened to a weather forecast knows, they
are woefully inaccurate and inadequate. In recent years the quality is
improving, but it’s still not much better than taking a look out the
window, and tossing a coin.

And yet, since those are the official forecasts, people pay attention. It may not be good, but it’s all we’ve got.

Part of the reason is of course that it doesn’t cost anyone anything to give bad predictions. Heck, everyone expect it,

Well, no more. It seems that from now on weathermen in Moscow will be fined for providing bad forecasts. So far it’s only if a financial loss to the city could be traced directly to the forecast, but hey, it’s a start.

It seems like one more of those crazy legal things, but I don’t think
it is (Hey, it’s not from the US, for starters). That’s one habit that
I do hope everyone will adopt, and the sooner the better.

Hat tip to Overlawyered for the link.

Apparently the all civilized Connery is only so dignified when he get
assigned a dignified role to play in a movie. When it comes to taking
care of his house, and relation with his neighbours, Connery is quite different.

Shocking, just shocking. Who could have imagined that an actor would
have a different temperament than the characters he usually portrays ?!
How can it be?!

What strikes me most odd here is that he certainly have more than
enough money to take better care of his property. He doesn’t have to
live in a place which is rat infested, for crying out loud. So what gives?
Being obnoxious I can get, liking loud noise I can get, liking bad smells I can get, but liking rats for company??

Someone in the US ran a bogus contests. There was a lawsuit. The jury wanted to to award $1 million USD, and split it between the 1,800 contestants. So far so good.

Then someone made a mistake, and wrote the decision in a way that indicates each of the contestants is to receive $1 million USD,
not just their relative part. Well, mistakes happen, but luckily
everything has to be reviewed, so surely some clerk or the judge will
catch it, right?

Wrong. The judge apparently didn’t think a punishment of  $1.8 billion USD was anything extraordinary, the trial was concluded successfully, and the jury were released.

And since due process is… due, instead of saying oops and fixing it, there has to be an official motion and considerations.
I almost wish the judge would decide to let the jury decision stand, just to see how it will go…

In the long line of Only-In-America (TM) stories, a pupil sues his math
teacher and school for giving him too much homework for the summer.

Apparently the calculus homework really ruined all the fun the poor
kid had from his vacation… and it’s obvious the school should not be
able to assign homework for non-schooldays, no?

Stupid kid (Hey, it’s not libel if it’s true), and stupid legal system that could even entertain this notion… Just IMNSHO.

Hat tip to Overlawyered (which is one of the most aptly named websites out there, you’ll have to admit).

This story ran about 10 days ago on CNN with the title Attorney meets the ‘jury pool from hell’ .
At a first glance it looks like a funny (for an outside observer, at
least) story about a trial, where quite a few or the potential jurors
turned out to be grossly unfitting to serve as jury.

One admitted to being on drugs, one is certain that the specific
defence lawyer involved is always representing guilty parties, one was
a violent mental case, one was once arrested for soliciting sex…

But when I think of it, this is a complete non-story. Just a cheap publicity
stunt for the defence lawyer (His name is mentioned in the article a
few times). It’s rather well known that most Americans are not all that
keen on serving as Jury. So it’s only naturaly they’d come up with ways
to to be released, whether the reasons are true or not (or borderline,
but can be presented either way).
I hear and read about many cases where people try to squirm out of Jury
duty, but not on so many cases where people try to get in a Jury…

The article also doesn’t say how large was the initial pool. The four
people mentioned there might have even been well within the normal
probability distribution…

If this is what this defence lawyer really sees as a jury pool ‘from
hell’, maybe he’s too soft, kind, and naive to be in the
business…  ;-)

I actually still remember the outrage from locksmiths (well, what I remember is the reports and discussions about it in the computer security circles, but still) when a couple of years ago Matt Blaze published a paper about a security weakness in mechanical locks with master keys. Those people believe in the misguided notion of security by obscurity, so got understandably upset when someone removed some obscurity and showed actual problems that nobody bothered to address.

In any case, he recently published another paper, about security of physical safes this time. And unlike the previous paper, his attitude was pretty positive about many aspects.

Still, the paper includes some explanations and pictures, so the locksmiths are up in arms again. Sending many angry, and sometimes abusive, messages both to him and to the administration of his university. Not nice, but part of the deal.

What I found particularly amusing in his report is that some of them went to the direction of suggesting he is guilty of copyright violations, by publishing pictures of safes with the paper.

While Penn’s support for the basic principles
of academic freedom would protect me even if these officials agreed
that my paper was somehow inappropriate, some of the letter writers
seem to have unwittingly stumbled upon a weapon that could potentially
be very effective (in other contexts) at silencing Internet-based
debate.  They have accused me of copyright infringement.

My paper is heavily illustrated with photographs of safe locks and
their components.  Several letters have (accurately) pointed out that
these photographs are protected by copyright and that by distributing
my paper I’m also distributing copyrighted material.This, I must
admit, is entirely correct.

That’s not the amusing part, yet. The poor US has a very serious problems with their copyright legislation. They’re getting totally out of whack, and it often gives the impression that violating copyright in the states will be considered only a little bit worse than murdering someone. I do hope they’ll straighten themselves out soon, before the attitude will get exported too much…

What amused me was that in this specific case:

But I created every one of the images
myself, in my own studio, and with my own materials, cameras and
computers.  I arranged the subjects, lit them, and photographed them.
The results are copyrighted, to be sure, but I hold the copyrights.

And as he’s well aware, he was still lucky that his university bothered to speak to him before removing the material out of the fear of lawsuit. The common response this days by ISP’s and date hosts is to cover their asses be careful and remove anything that may make them liable, even if they didn’t spend the time to check the facts

Go read his whole story, it’s interesting.

There’s a new anti smoking law in Italy that recently went into effect.

The law,
which bans smoking in indoor spaces unless they have a separate area
with continuous floor-to-ceiling walls and a ventilation system, is one
of the toughest in Europe.

Smokers ignoring the ban face fines of up to $363, while owners of premises risk penalties as high as $2,904.

Sounds like they’re taking it seriously.

I especially appreciate the continuous floor-to-ceiling walls
bit. It has gone past silly and into absurd to see that the difference
between the smoking area and the non-smoking area at most places is an
arbitrary imaginary line inside the building.
I never quite figured how
the smoke is supposed to know that it’s not allowed to cross a one
meter distance between a smoker and me, just because we’re in those two
different areas. Apparently the smoke usually isn’t able to figure it
out either, and stumbles into the non-smoking areas quite freely.

Complaining against the smokers has no effect, since they’re in the
allowed area. Complaining about the smoke also has little effect, maybe
just because it’s a smoking-free area and not smoke-free area, though
possibly also because smoke isn’t a legal entity and cannot be sued.
Hmm…

It also appears that they not only have a law, but are actually paying attention to it and trying to enforce it:

Minutes
after the law went into effect after midnight, a young man was fined
for smoking in a bar in Naples, TV stations showed. The man’s plea that
a cigarette was only normal after a coffee won him no reprieve, and he
was fined the minimum penalty of $36.

Hopefully
it’s indicative, and not just police playing with a shiny new toy before they’ll get bored. Even more hopefully,
maybe more countries will pay attention and decide to make such a law of
their own.

Maybe even around here, sometime… Hey, one can hope…

The city of Tel-Aviv was forced to send notices to an exceedingly large number of people, letting them know that still outstanding traffic tickets, and the associated fines, on their name are canceled.

It’s not a new-year money wasting spree by the city, and not done out of kindness. It seems that there’s a regulation requiring to notify people at least once every three years about still unpaid fines.

Last time such notifications were sent on a large scale was in 2001, and the city offered major discounts to people that come with their old debts and pay them. About 75% of people did not take the opportunity.

And now, because someone forgot to mail all these people a notice, the debts are waived. A sort of an unplanned new-year’s gift for the crooked.

There are two things that strike me as particularly noteworthy about this:

1. If the law required notification every three years, then it means people are expected to avoid paying for so long. Is that the level of law enforcement that municipal authorities are capable (or more correctly, incapable) of? It’s so pathetic it’s almost ludicrous. If the city doesn’t have the force to compel anyone to pay for so long, it’s surprising anyone bother paying.
2. The city announced that it lost a prodigious amount of money on this. I’m sure the numbers they state add up, but… C’mon… If those people were avoiding payment for so bloody long, they would have likely never paid. So most of it is not money that the city could have counted on having, and was lost to begin with. The actual monetary loss is much much smaller. Future loss from people that now know paying is stupid… That could be more serious.

In many movies, after two people had sex, on the scene where they get our of bed, or talk to each other, or whatever, they are always shown to be fully clothed.

This isn’t a case or art imitating life, since people don’t have sex fully clothed. It’s extremely uncomfortable (This is not based on personal experiments, or personal reports, but on mere speculation. So the scientifically minded of you may want to hold to the possibility that I’m wrong here. But I’m not). It was done because studios felt that showing half-naked people on screen would not be moral.

These days the problem is going away. Most film studios not only do not have a problem with showing half-naked people, but prefer to show more naked people than the plot actually calls for.

And as is likely to happen, just once the problem is irrelevant, there comes a solution. Finally there exists a real and compelling reason for people to have sex in their cloths. And to take a bath or a shower in their cloths. And to replace their clothes from the workday garb to night cloths in several stages.

The reason it took so long is that of course, as everybody knows, Mexicans are terribly lazy and it took them until now to finally move their legislative butts and do something about it.
The fair city of Villahermosa had passed a law against nudity.
"So what?" you ask? After all, many places have anti nudity laws. That’s true. But what many places have are anti public nudity laws. This gem is a law against indoor nudity.

Yes, that’s right. In Villahermosa it is no longer legal to be naked even while in the privacy of your own home.

What I didn’t see in the article is the public corruption angle. This is Mexico, it can’t just be stupidity, there has to be public corruption. So here goes: Where are the references to air conditioning cartels operation in the area?! If people go naked at home a lot due to the very high heat, and now they have to stay dressed always, that’s a lot of AC units that will be bought!
Just my little bit of investigative journalism. I leave the followup to someone that actually wants to go to Mexico, and waive in advance all rights for the resulting Pulitzer. Just be careful not to get iced while looking for evidence.

Hat tip to Foreign Dispatches.

This is making the rounds in a very big way during the last several days. A Marine with a Yahoo! Mail account has died, and the family requested Yahoo! to give them access to the account in order to read the deceased emails. Yahoo! refuses since this violates their privacy policy.

Most news coverage, and direct blog coverage, seems to agree that the family should be given access. But on reports which are open for comments, most comments seems to agree that Yahoo! are right (This statistic is based on my own private observation, after seeing this on about 5-6 official news sources, and 7-8 blogs).

Personally, I totally and completely agree with Yahoo! here.

It’s not that I can’t see the family’s side. The parents lost a son, and see this as one of the few links left to them, and a way to have some more memories. That’s understandable.

It does not, however, give them the right to read his private emails. The fact that he died doesn’t mean that he no longer deserves his privacy (most major legal systems in the modern world probably agree on this point). Anything in those messages that he wanted his family to know about, he could have told his family about already of his own accord. Why should private letters that he didn’t explicitly want the family to have should go to the family just because he can no longer refuse?

I know for a fact that I would very much prefer my family not to read my private emails.

There’s nothing really bad or secret in most people’s private emails. The stuff goes over the Internet, and in Yahoo’s case as clear text, so obviously someone that really wanted to could have intercepted and read those message. So it’s not those kind of secrets.
But there is a certain sense of privacy. You don’t send anything that would kill you (pardon the pun) if it were to be made public, but you also don’t expect what you send to actually go and become public.

In many cases the family will have little to gain from emails. It’s about relationships they don’t know know well enough, or from the right directions, to understand. Or commercial stuff which is no longer relevant and shouldn’t bother them. But even if they do, the mailbox owner did not want the family to have access to those emails, so they shouldn’t have it.

I know people that don’t mind other specific people, maybe family
members, reading their email (sometimes only on some of their
mailboxes, of course). In all those cases they already gave the trusted persons their
passwords, under an understanding of what are the right and wrong
causes to use them.
If one of those people were to die, it would have been alright for
those that were trusted with the password to read the emails. But in
this case the guy did not give his password to his family. This is a
clear statement of intent. He did not want them to read his emails.

Again, what changed wasn’t that once he didn’t want them to have access and now he does. What changed was that once he didn’t want them to have access, and now he can’t be asked again. Surely the last expressed clear intent should hold, no?

In addition, while I’m not sure about the legal hold this would have specifically on Yahoo!’s privacy policy on this case, there is also the matter of the other people. Most email messages are sent between at least two persons. Not by a person to itself.

And the other person didn’t die. Probably none of them did. Those that were known friends know that he is dead by now. Those that the family knows are also aware that he is dead. If they want the family to have their joint correspondences, they can send the past messages to the family.

Well, they didn’t. Because they don’t want the family to have this. Not that I’m representative, but if one of my friends were to die, I’m pretty sure I would not want their family to read emails between us. The private common jokes, and language used after years of familiarity, often results in messages that can be pretty… bizarre… for someone who isn’t in the loop. And the families aren’t.  I can also clearly state that I’m not that unique in this regard, since I can already vouch that all of my friends are like that, and many of their friends that I got to hear about.

Also, email accounts have other uses. He may have used it to back up various purchases, or accounts at various Internet services. Whatever those were, the family should not get this backdoor to go there as well.

Or to conclude: No! Yahoo! should not give the family access to the messages. The family shouldn’t even dare to ask. And if they are forced to provide access, they should perhaps first erase the calendar and notepad data, and send automatic messages to all the people who’s addresses are in the address book and on stored messages, letting them know that private communications are about to be disclosed to someone else… By sending messages they implicitly consented to the recipient passing them onward, but not for Yahoo! to pass them onward to the family.