Month: December 2005

What’s with all the to do about the NSA leaving cookies? It was fun to watch the story grow from a small post on Google Watch all the way to the NY Times, but, really, is it a story? There are very few websites that don’t cookie their users. And let’s not forget who this story concerns — as R. A. Hettinga said on the Cypherpunks list: “Exactly what part of “spook” do people not understand at this stage?”

I wonder if this would have made it any further than Google Watch had the NSA not previously been in the news.

Please, folks, tell Firefox to ask you every time a website tries to cookie you, and deny it most every time. Particularly when you’re visiting government sites.

While it’s a little too 1980s sounding for my taste, Gary Numan’s Exile Extended isn’t a bad album. It’s a something of a industrial-goth-rock thing. Sort of Blade Runner, sort of The Cure, sort of Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk. Most of the songs would be at home on The Crow soundtrack.

It’s growing on me.

Where’d the photo go? Lost in the abyss!

Federal agents’ visit was a hoax

The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for “The Little Red Book” by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story. The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account. Had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved false. But on Thursday, when the student told his tale in the office of UMass Dartmouth professor Dr. Robert Pontbriand to Dr. Williams, Dr. Pontbriand, university spokesman John Hoey and The Standard-Times, the student added new details. The agents had returned, the student said, just last night. The two agents, the student, his parents and the student’s uncle all signed confidentiality agreements, he claimed, to put an end to the matter. But when Dr. Williams went to the student’s home yesterday and relayed that part of the story to his parents, it was the first time they had heard it. The story began to unravel, and the student, faced with the truth, broke down and cried.

…

Last week I placed an order with Eden Foods (more on what I ordered later). On the 19th, I received a notification from them that my order had shipped and a FedEx tracking number. Actually, the notification said that the order had shipped on the 15th (one day after I placed my order) — I don’t know why they waited so long to inform me. I went to FedEx’s website to track the package and, to my surprise, it was scheduled for delivery that same day. Despite the scheduled delivery, FedEx drove right past the house that day without delivering anything. At about 9PM that night, FedEx stopped saying that it was scheduled for delivery on the 19th. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that my package had actually been “On FedEx vehicle for delivery” since 6:31AM on Dec 17th. About this time I decided that they had probably lost the package and didn’t want to admit it. Why else would the package be sitting on the truck for delivery for over 3 days? The following day, the 20th, the package was still “On FedEx vehicle for delivery,” but there was no scheduled delivery. I saw FedEx drive past the house again. Today, the 21st, the package was finally delivered, but FedEx still says the package is “On FedEx vehicle for delivery” and has no scheduled delivery.

They really need to work on their tracking system.