Reading this article made me absolutely sick to my stomach. Sure, there are some alarmist positions taken here, but, thats not exactly a bad position to take as every bit is also true. Apparently, we’re ingesting a lot of very, very toxic chemicals, and rather frequently. Worse though than what we’re doing to ourselves, is what we’re doing to the planet. Now, we’ve discovered how natural processes can aggregate all these waste materials. The really depressing thing: I can’t seem to make a change in my own life as far as not using plastic… its EVERYWHERE — the keys on this keyboard, the mouse, parts of this chair, the case of the PC and the monitor, the cup next to me, its lid, etc, etc.

If you haven’t noticed, you should. And to do so, you should really take some time out and have a look at Chris Jordan’s website. His art is our destruction, and it speaks very powerful messages. His pictures help expose these types of unseen, natural disasters. Chris Jordan’s site is right here, and has been linked on the blogroll for a while. Since looking at it, I’ve been researching more, and more cases along this line. I hope to find a way to change how I live my own life for the better, and maybe it could help inspire you to do that too.

In a long awaited move (at least, long awaited by me), Microsoft announced the upcoming Winter 2007 release of the Surface product line. To give you an idea, the User Interface for Microsoft Surface products is not so different from the User Interface the main character uses in Minority Report to track crimes. You can get the gist at the Microsoft Surface Website.

Matt That is a Microsoft shareholder.

So, for probably better than half my life, I’ve had to commute to get where I needed to be. When I went to High School, I had to take a bus, followed by an elevated train that became a subway, across Philadelphia, and then walk a ways. Later, at my first (real) job, I had to take an Amtrak regional rail line out to Ivyland, and again, walk. This time it was only a few miles. When I left there, for my next (read: higher paying) job, I was commuting from the Philadelphia/Bucks County border for four hours each way, out to and back from Allentown,PA. I commute two and a half hours now still. In my mind its “The Long Ride In…” and it always has been. And so, I’ve always needed some amount of companionship on my daily journey.

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For the longest time I’ve worked off my own sense of a Copywrong; a valid (valid to me anyhow) argument which could contend with the reasoning behind the devising of a value for various information; a proof that all information should be valued the same — a belief that while information has no flaws, the platform mankind has implemented to exchange information (sociality) may. I just never really saw the belief for what it was…

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#!/usr/bin/perl
use Mail::POP3Client;
use IO::File;

my $Hostname = $ARGV[0];
my $Username = $ARGV[1];
my $Password = $ARGV[2];
my $Location = $ARGV[3];

if ( defined($Hostname) &&
        length($Hostname) > 0 &&
        defined($Username) &&
        length($Username) > 0 &&
        defined($Password) )
{
        if ( ! -d $Location )
        {
                die(qq{$Location is not a valid directory path});
        }
        else
        {
                my $POP = new Mail::POP3Client(
                                USER     => $Username,
                                PASSWORD => $Password,
                                HOST     => $Hostname,
                                USESSL   => true,
                );

                $POP->Connect() >= 0 || die $POP->Message();
                for ($i = 1; $i < = $POP->Count(); $i++)
                {
                        my $Filename = $Location . ‘/’ . join(’_',$Hostname,$Username,$i) . ‘.eml’;
                        my $Filehandle = new IO::File;
                        open($Filehandle, “>$Filename”);
                        $POP->RetrieveToFile( $Filehandle, $i );
                        close($Filehandle);
                }
                $POP->Close();

        }
}

Its no problem to use…
shell$ mkdir /some/storage/location
shell$ ./pop2messbox.pl pop3.host.com username password /some/storage/location/

Requires…
Mail::POP3Client from CPAN

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Net::LDAP;
use XML::Simple;

my $XML = XML::Simple->new(NoAttr=>0,
                RootName=>'LDAPDump',
                ForceArray=>1 );

my $LDAP = Net::LDAP->new( $ARGV[0] );

my $Message = $LDAP->bind( $ARGV[1],
                password => $ARGV[2] );

if ( defined($Message) )
{

   $Message = $LDAP->search( base   => “”,
        filter => qq{($ARGV[3])});
        foreach my $Entry ($Message->entries)
        {
                if ( defined($Entry) &&
                        ref($Entry) eq ‘Net::LDAP::Entry’ )
                {
                        print $XML->XMLout($Entry->{asn});
                }
        }

        $Message = $LDAP->unbind;
}

Its no problem to use…
shell$ ./ldap2xml.pl ldap_host "uid=whoever,cn=whatever" password "filter_attribute=value"

Requires…
Net::LDAP from CPAN & XML::Simple from CPAN

Continuing my series of Watchmen-esque articles on the business dealings of Google, who show me genius on a regular basis, I shall now point out the next step Google is taking toward becoming your Internet. And isn’t this savvy: Google now wants to provide E-Mail (through GMail), and its precursory Online Desktop Services to the world of Internet Service Providers — and inherently all of you. Nice move, eh? Wait until they offer direct peering with GoogleNet, and an ability to access their content cache… Oh well.

So far, totaling the bill of areas of the Internet where Google is ultimately dominant:

1. Search: Web Text, News, & Images, (coming soon: Video & Audio)
2. Advertising
3. Content Storage

Remaining areas to be assumed in the near future:

1. Internet Service Providing (hardlined; software)
2. Internet Service Providing (wireless; hardware/software)
3. Construction of Internet TV infrastructure

As much as I respect Bruce Schneier, and regard his comments as expert in the field, this recent batch seems less than insightful. Its not that they are fantastic or pie in the sky — that I love about these ideas. Utopia is something worth striving toward especially in the technological sense. It is that these ideas do not acknowledge the nature of the IT security industry. They simply speak from the entrance of some dreamy state. The fact that someone of Bruce Schneier’s caliber made these statements at all, seems akin to something like Stephen Hawking saying, “Wouldn’t it be hot if we had warp drive, dawg!?”

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There are so many Mistakes of the Day here, I can find no easy place to begin. Hopefully, you know what Digg is, otherwise, there is a whole world of catching up for you to do in general.

I’ll summarize it for you quickly: 1) Digg is a large-scale, community-driven news website, 2) Some of the people who use Digg are more tech savvy than those people who created Digg, 3) Digg’s community posted trade secrets about HD-DVD decryption, 4) Digg co-founder Kevin Rose spoke out, agreeing with this posting of trade secrets, though, it was only after Digg staffers failed to censor their own community.

I guess sometimes people just say or do the wrong things…

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The entire planet was googled once, but thats old news. Isn’t it about time, Google (oops) did it again? Well, they are, and just as before, you probably won’t see it coming. But, it may mean a whole new definition for googling… this one is Googling with a capital ‘G’.

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