Roy Blunts SOPA response

Posted on January 10th, 2012 by craighope

Stop SOPA

I emailed my senator via congress.org to express my opposition to the SOPA legislation.  As it appears now, the SOPA is an overreach effort to stop piracy and could potentially effect the entire internet.  As understood in the legislation, a foreign website can be accused of piracy (copyright, counterfeiting, etc), the US then blocks the DNS (domain name service) to that site.

Problem:  1. that website could be falsely accused thus creating a huge mess with internet communication.  2. If the website is pirating goods, there are ways around DNS to get to those sites.

In the response below, I would like a deeper inspection to the claim of “$135 Billion lost revenue”.  How does one come up with that figure?

>>>

Dear Craig,

Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 968, the Protect IP Act.

Intellectual property industries employ more than 19 million people, making it an integral part of our economy.  Rogue websites dedicated to the sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and pirated content are a direct threat to these jobs and to entrepreneurs growing and building legitimate businesses online.

Businesses have lost $135 billion in revenue annually as a result of these rogue sites.  Customers have also been harmed by these sites; for example, online pharmacies that don’t adhere to U.S. regulations have been reported to cause a rapid increase in prescription drug abuse.

I am a cosponsor of the Protect IP Act which would cut off foreign websites dedicated to counterfeiting and piracy that steal American jobs, hurt the economy, and harm customers.  It would allow the Justice Department to file a civil action against those who have registered or own a domain name linked to an infringing website.  The bill does not allow the Justice Department to target domain names registered by a U.S. entity.

Innovation is a cornerstone of our nation’s economic growth.  Proper intellectual property protections and incentives ensure that inventors develop products that benefit consumers.  Without such incentives for innovators, we risk falling behind places like China and India.

Again, thank you for contacting me. I look forward to continuing our conversation on Facebook (www.facebook.com/SenatorBlunt) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/RoyBlunt) about the important issues facing Missouri and the country. I also encourage you to visit my website (blunt.senate.gov) to learn more about where I stand on the issues and sign-up for my e-newsletter.
Sincere regards,

Roy Blunt
United States Senator

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Site got hacked on 10/19/11

Posted on October 20th, 2011 by craighope

Getting hacked can suck.  Especially if you run a commerce site and you make $ online.

In my case, I am just a stupid blogger who posts rants about politics and tries to make a joke once in a while.  Not a huge loss if my site goes down.

On the other hand, I could be flattered.  Maybe I caught the attention of some disgruntled international nerd who decided to whack my ideas.

I thought I did everything right.  I kept my wordpress version updated.  I deleted any spam.  My PC is virus protected.

In the end, I was only offline for about 22 hours.  I want to thank JustHost.com for their quick response to restore my site.  I want to also give Kudos to the human that answered the phone when I called their tech support.  Frankly I was shocked I got a human so quickly.  They were helpful and got my issue working and resolved.

On the dark side, I read many reviews and posts that JustHost had a weak security scheme and susceptible to these hacks.  Maybe so, but I would argue that many web hosting providers will run into these issues.  I trust they are working to fix the holes they have.

I am staying with them for now.

How to effectively communicate…

Posted on March 14th, 2011 by craighope

Much of our interactions with others occurs via texts, Facebook, email, phone calls, and sometimes in person.  It can be very asynchronous.  I personally don’t mind it.  Some people prefer to engage in the communication and resolve the item immediately to some closure.

Either way, with this new pace there are some things we should consider before sending that text, email or Wall Post on Facebook.

By the way, a great book on communication (in general).  Crucial Conversations.

1. Stop forwarding emails with no context. We have all received the email with the long winded diatribe about why conservatives are smarter than liberals or why Bush lied.  Aside from the annoying political slant of the content, you need to at least forward with comment (“I found this funny… enjoy.”  or “what a crock… be appalled with me on this…”).  In a business setting, when you forward me something at least tell me what you want me to do with this.  It isn’t always obvious.

Even worse are those urban legend emails about winning a trip to Disney if you forward to 100 people.  This crap has been around since AOL was the king online service.  Stop it already.  Before you forward this crap, get some info on the topic from Snopes.com.

2.  Proper “Reply” vs “Reply to All”.  If you receive an email that was addressed to all parties and your response will benefit the group, reply to all.  If your response won’t be appreciated by the group or sensitive in some way, then by all means reply to the sender.  I don’t know how many times trying to figure out a date or time for the group when everyone starts replying to individuals and the conversation gets way off course.

3.  Facebook Wall Posts vs Messaging. I don’t know what people are thinking sometimes.  I often see a Facebook wall post with somewhat personal information/questions that are way better suited in a more private setting.  Everyone can see the wall post!  Send those private things through messaging.

4.  The Voicemail that says “hey its me, call me”. It makes more sense to actually leave a message about the subject you want to discuss.  Open ended “call me” is my signal to call back whenever.  I do this a lot.  I call back much later than the originator expected.  ”why didn’t you call me yesterday?”  …”cuz you didn’t say to…”

5.  Avoid all of the above while drinking. I think this is self explanatory.   We don’t want to put ourselves in any situation where the NFL has to investigate texted pictures or voicemail from a mistress.  Loose lips sink ships.

6. DO NOT BCC !!!!!. The dreaded Blind Carbon Copy.  If the BCC victim ever finds out, that person is pissed.  Or worse yet, someone forwards an email that was BCC’d and the victim eventually sees it.  Bad Times.

7.  Stop attaching funny videos. This is what YouTube is for.  Just put the link in the email.  For crying out loud, this is 2011.

8.  Proper use of “lose” vs. “loose”, “too, to, two”, and I see this one a ton.  ”with all intensive purposes.”  It is “intents and purpose”.

Tone:  It is important to convey your message properly.  Sometimes the tone gets misinterpreted.  Short and abrupt messages can come off as bitchy or rude.  I personally assume nobody is trying to be rude because putting rude comments into writing can be professionally limiting.  But I have witnessed occasion where people thought it was rude.

Android App development

Posted on March 8th, 2011 by craighope

Does anyone know how to write Android Applications?

Cisco Wireless WVC80N: security cam on the cheap

Posted on February 1st, 2011 by craighope

Quick review: The camera hardware is pretty good.  The image is good quality.  The software is not very good, but with a little work you can cobble something workable together.  This camera does not pan or tilt and requires a power source (duh).

I recently purchased a wireless webcam from BestBuy to setup at home for a security camera.  Something like this can be used for monitoring pets, or just watching something around the location.

Pre-requisites:
- Fairly technical understanding of home networking.
- A wireless router or another wireless home network.

1. Setup the Cisco WVC80N according to the install disk that comes with product.  This was pretty straight forward and will get it connected on your internal network and will have an internal IP addrss (192.168.x.x).  The camera has it’s own web server and you connect to the IP address and configure more settings.

2. Install the Linksys viewer software that comes with the product.  It is not the best software but it will allow you to view the camera broadcast.  My biggest complaint with the included software is how you have to switch screens or restart the application when the image freezes.

3. Dynamic DNS setup: Use a DDNS system to connect and external URL to your camera.  The product has a link into the TZO vendor but I used DynDNS.org and it works fine.  The URL points to the public IP of your router at home.  (note: if your router is locked down, you will need to allow the port number through the router to the camera)

That’s the basics for viewing the camera broadcast/feed.  If you want to record or view on your smart phone you can do a few more things.  These are not steps included with the product but I figured I would share since I figure most people would want this capability.

1. Droid App:   Go to the Adroid market and install “IP Cam View”.   The config is straight forward.  You can view your video feed from anywhere.  You point the feed to your external URL.  Pretty simple and the image looks pretty good on the phone.

2. Recording:  the built-in recording options that come with the camera are not very stable.  I didn’t have the patience to work with the settings so I set out to find an alternative.  You can download Cisco video monitoring software from their website.  SWVMS16 is a downloadable Video monitoring System.  It’s free for 1 camera.  For more cameras, you have to buy a license.  The installation is a fairly large footprint on the PC but it is a much better software tool that what came with the camera.

Motion Detection:  I tweaked the settings on the camera to the highest quality and got a pretty image feed.  I enabled motion detection to grab images and FTP them to my website.  This gives me an offsite storage of the images.  My cameras point at my front and back doors.  If someone were to break in to an empty house, they would do their damage but they would be caught with a series of images that are uploaded and viewable later.

Usage: (traffic cams)

Added note about IP Cam View Android Application:  If your town has traffic cameras around the city, you can add those to the droid app.  Manage cameras and choose “Add IP”.  Give it a name, I chose “open source” for the camera type and in the URL field I grabbed the URL from the camera image on the website (in my case, this was from KCScout.com).  The URL is very long and I had to email it to myself then cut/paste on the phone.  For my use, I entered a couple stretches of highway I would normally use for my commutes.  It’s like an on demand traffic report.

OMG This made me cry…

Posted on January 4th, 2011 by craighope

Zoom Zoom

Did that get your attention?  You probably should not have opened it.  It coulda been a virus.

Actually, my point is this…  We see the above subject line on Facebook (wall posts from friends) all the time.  It is an indication that the PC it came from probably has a virus or some sort of malware doing its nasty deeds.

I wanted to post a some quick fix things you can do to your PC to get it running satisfactorily again.

1. Restore the PC back to factory default.  This means plunking that original restore CD in the drive and restoring it to how it was the day you brought it home from the hospital… nerd store.   This is a bit drastic and could end up being a pain in the ass re-installing applications.  You could also lose things you long forgot about. First, Backup your data, know what you have installed, write down any serial numbers for software etc.  You should do this anyway for future reference.  Restoring is NOT my first choice but I figured I would list it first.

If you don’t restore, you can perform these steps below to help speed things up.

- BE SURE YOU HAVE anti-virus and spyware software installed, updated and working.  This is critical.  You need to defend your PC.  You don’t have to spend a ton of money either.  You can buy Norton, or McAfee if you want.  I prefer to stay away from these commercial versions because they install a large footprint on your PC and can be a resource hog themselves.  Checkout AVG or Microsoft for free versions.

-  Cleanup applications, utilities, etc that might be running in memory. Start by going through your Add/Remove programs and uninstall anything you no longer use or don’t recognize.  If you don’t fully know what it is, google it and educate yourself before uninstalling it.  You will find a bunch of apps and applets that install themselves either without you knowing or when you are online and click through weird web pages.  Yahoo Toolbars, Google Toolbars are the most common.  Unless you really love them, remove them.  Pop up windows are to blame for much of these unwanted apps.  You click the window, it installs a troublesome app.

- check the Run key in the registry (HKLM | Software | Microsoft | Windows | CurrentVersion | Run) and remove any keys you see unnecessary.  Be careful though.  Some of these items are necessary (mouse, anti virus, etc).  Again, google it and educate yourself.  This Run key is what executes when you boot your PC.  Often times a malware applet will stick itself here and with each boot up, the application runs in memory and slowing down the PC.  Might also check the Runonce key too.   As my friend James pointed out, you can also use MSCONFIG (in the Start |Run line type “msconfig”).  It is like using regedit for the items above with training wheels.  But I’m old school sometimes.

- The Startup folder. This is where applications will load upon boot (after the run key).  Click Start, All Programs, Startup.  If you see anything odd, remove it.  This is a bit easier since the GUI might show you the recognizable icon of the application.  HP likes to toss their piggy printer tools in this startup folder.

- Add more RAM (memory). This might be a higher ranked item, but unless you remove crap that runs in memory, adding RAM only masks the problem.  Memory is cheap.  You can buy it online.  Do your homework and find what your machine needs.  See Kingston’s website or the site for your PC manufacturer (more expensive).

- I will say this again.  BACKUP your Data. You don’t want to lose your pictures, music, or Kim Kardashian videos.  I started using carbonite.  Its in the cloud (thus off site and safe from fire).  Its off my potentially faulty hardware.  Here is my experience…

Good droid apps

Posted on December 30th, 2010 by craighope

As of this post, I have had my droid phone 2 months.  Love it!  It is as fun and usable as an iPod.  Take that Apple.  You are no longer the hottest chick on the block.

Here are some apps I use and enjoy…

1.  WordPress.  I am using it now for this post whilst walking on my treadmill.   It offers quick and easy posts.   You can take pics while posting.

2.  Evernote.  Great note taking.  Lists etc.  Syncs with pc or ipod devices.  Integrates with voice record too.

3.  JuiceDefender.  Helps save battery.  Many apps of this kind.  If you know of any better, please share.

4.  Tweetdeck.  There are tons of twitter client apps.  This one is easy and integrates with facebook, Buzz etc.

5.  Keyring.  Input all of your discount plastic dongle things so you don’t have to lug them around.  Note:  my screen protector sheet inhibits the store scanners.

6.  Mint.com.  this is an extension of the free online service.  Centralize the reporting of all your banking and investments.

7.  GroceryIQ.  Great for listing out your household grocery items.  Share your list with others.  My wife and keep this updated and whomever is at the store can grab the items.

Tags: droid apps

Unsubscribe…

Posted on November 9th, 2010 by craighope

Unsubscribe

I get junkmail all the time.  We all do right?

We buy something online or even at a store and they grab your email address.  Yes, I recognize we volunteer the info and it is partly my fault.  I am simply too lazy to give them a fake email address.  I have thought about giving a fake email address but chicken out thinking that they see right through my act as I stammer out “craig dot smi… sampsonite! at compuserve dot com”.

Anyway, I digress.  I clicked that “unsubscribe” link from an Aeropostle email and it tossed up a message that it would “…take 5 business days to take effect.”

What!?  5 business days for an automated software driven method of information collection?  Does my request get emailed to some intern at Aeropostle who then has to update the mainframe by retyping my email address?  This should be immediate.  My regional bank offers online banking and my debit transactions are posted almost immediately.

It makes no sense.

My Carbonite Experience

Posted on October 26th, 2010 by craighope

Lost my data, get Carbonite

December Update: I am very satisfied with Carbonite thus far.  The backup was a bit slow but I attribute that to me being cheap with regard to my Internet service (next to lowest bandwidth option through Time Warner).

The interface for managing the backup of files is simple and easy.  Your Windows explorer will display a small dot on the folder and file icons.  Green meaning backed up.  Orange indicating not yet backed up.  The “InfoCenter” is not complicated and displays a progress bar indicating the overall status/progress.  I scheduled my backups to run overnight.

The Holidays mean more pictures and videos and I find myself transferring my photos to the hard drive and then checking Carbonite to be sure they get backed up.

THIS IS A NO BRAINER!!!! Sign up and get your data backed up in the cloud.

(Previous Post) October: I finally decided to signup for an online backup solution.  Until now, I have kept all my data scattered about on a couple home computers and mostly on an external hard drive.

Well… the hard drive crashed.  Stopped spinning.  Disaster strikes.  The good news is that I can pull together the data from the various sources and collect on my drive.

Once that is done, I going to start backing the data up with Carbonite.

My Experience:  The signup and install is easy.  Out of the box, Carbonite only backs up your c: drive.  It does NOT backup any external drives.  However, you can perform steps to mount a drive and then select the folder you want to backup.  For example, I put my files on f:\mydata, then I opened disk management and “added a mounted drive” to my newly created c:\myexternaldata folder.  See this Microsoft article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889).

Don’t be stingy on your coffee experience…

Posted on September 11th, 2010 by craighope

Start the day right

One aspect of life is our to achieve levels of luxury.  One small way is to get yourself a good coffee maker.

Cheap coffee makers WILL break down over time.

A good one will last longer.  Treat it like any other major appliance.  You use it every day.

I would suggest to home builders to stub in water hookups for commercial style coffee makers much like they do for fridge ice makers or any other appliance.   But I digress.

What is in a good one?  A timer is priceless.  The timer allows you to make it in the evening and then have to start brewing and finish for your wakeup time.  Filterless (gold mesh baskets).  We all hate fumbling with the paper filters right?  The travel mug styles are pretty nice, but don’t really have weekender staying power when you want a normal morning mug.

Enjoy!

Click below to buy from Amazon…