Not too long ago, a wrote a post about chain e-mails.  Someone commented on it and mentioned snopes.com, which is a site that researches rumors including those posed by chain e-mails.  I recently got another chain e-mail warning of the danger of using cell phones while they're on the charger.  Apparently it can be fatal.  The e-mail began, however, with the following words:

"Snopes.com says this is true."

Hahaha!  I found the page on snopes.com about this rumor.  The only thing snopes confirms is that cell phone batteries can explode or start fires under certain circumstances, but there is no evidence to suggest the circumstances mentioned in the rumor increase the risk.  In fact, they could only find one confirmed case back in 2004--hardly 1 person every year dying from it as the e-mail claims.  So if an e-mail says "Snopes.com says this is true" but doesn't offer an actual link to snopes.com to back it up, it's probably false.  But that actually isn't nearly as bad as another e-mail I got:

"THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES.  http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp"

This one actually included a link!!  And here's the kicker, if you follow the link, it is actually a page on Snopes.com about this rumor, but it says it's false!  I was apparently the only one smart enough to click the link to make sure lol.  How gullible is that??  Everyone else is like "Oh, it says it's true, it even includes a link.  But instead of clicking the link to be sure, I'm not only going to just accept it myself, I'm going to forward it to everyone I know to openly profess my belief in it and recommend it to others."

People in general really are too gullible, though.  I get a kick out of tricking my friends sometimes.  Like the time I had one of my friends believing that Tomb Raider was based on a true story...  Lol.  Or anything you say using scientific jargon most people will usually accept.  I tell them right away (after I'm sure I had them fooled, of course) that I'm just messing with them, but seriously.  I don't get how people can be like that.  When someone tells me something or I read something somewhere, the first thing that happens in my brain is that the information is cross-referenced with all of my previously gathered knowledge on the subject and checked for consistency.  Not only does that protect me from being deceived, but it also helps me store it by associating it with related information for quick retrieval later.  To me, that's just how my brain works.  I don't understand how it could be any other way.  So when I read the e-mail about cell phones exploding while using them on the charger, a dozen red flags came up as it conflicted with some things I already knew, such as:

• Battery chargers are equipped with circuitry to detect when a battery is fully charged and automatically shut off.
• Even if this circuitry failed, using the cell phone would not increase the risk of an exploding battery, because it would increase the power being used which would draw power away from the battery.
  

But even if you don't know a lot about electronics, wouldn't these items also come to mind?:

• Cell phones have been around for decades.  If this was really a big risk, why haven't I heard of it before?
• Wouldn't such a story be on the news?
• How come no one I know has had this happen?
• Snopes.com is a site for debunking rumors.  Claiming that snopes.com confirms it kindof implies that it's a rumor.  Why not reference a reputable news source if it really is true?

I think this is exactly why there is such a controversy over Wikipedia and similar wiki sites that anyone can edit.  If anyone can edit it, people could just put whatever they want.  But come on, if you just think a little and not be so gullible, it's an invaluable resource.  But since so many people are so gullible, maybe they aren't ready for such a thing as free information.  Maybe they need someone to spoonfeed them from a limited supply of confirmed sources.  I say spoonfeeding is for children who haven't developed their powers of reason yet.  Besides, us grown-ups will never be able to shield people completely from the worthless information and propaganda out there.  They need to learn to think for themselves.  Anyways, enough ranting...

Today I decided to check my credit score.  Immediately, I thought of FreeCreditReport.com.  I went there and filled in all the appropriate information.  Then I was asked for my credit card number.  Credit card number?  I thought it was free?  Just to be sure that my idea of free is a correct one, I checked dictionary.com for the definition related to price/cost.  Here it is:

Yep, that's what I thought it meant.  Hmmm...  So the deal was, there was a 7 day trial period, after which they would automatically charge you the monthly fee for "Triple Advantage" membership.  Ok...  Maybe they meant "free" as in free to cancel before you're charged?  Anyways, after reviewing my credit report I tried to do just that.  I could not find anything on their website about how to cancel.  Finally, I clicked "Contact Us" where I found a "FAQ" with the question "How do I cancel my membership?".  Here's, in short, what it said:

What??  You mean I have to call to cancel?  Pssh.  Figures...  But I sent them a lovely e-mail instead:

What, seriously, has this world come to?  Free should mean free.  Free of cost, and free of obligation to cancel within 7 days to avoid being charged.  And if you can register online, you should be able to cancel online.  There should be a law to that effect...

You ever get those e-mails?  You know, the typical ones people get and forward on to all their friends.  They are usually reminding you to tell your friends how much you care (no doubt by forwarding that e-mail to them) or reminding you to stop and smell the roses, etc., etc.  Some even call for some kind of action on your part, which may seem harmless.  But they always end with an appeal to forward it to all your friends.  I've seen my share of superstitious ones, like "if you don't send this to X number of people, something bad will happen to you."  But today I saw an interesting one:

"FORWARDED E-MAILS ARE TRACKED TO OBTAIN THE TOTAL COUNT."

Tracked???  Hahaha, let me tell you as a software developer--one who is familiar with the protocols, etc. used for e-mail and how it is transmitted:  The former superstitious claim is actually more likely of being true! Lol!  E-mail technology does not permit a person to track if a sent message is forwarded.  Transmission is handled by the e-mail server responsible for the domain of the sending e-mail account, which would be different for each person forwarding the e-mail.  I hate to burst your bubble, but the only feasible way a person could do such tracking is to include a virus in the e-mail.  I checked, and there was no virus in the aforementioned e-mail, but wouldn't that be an effective means to distribute a virus?  Imagine that!  Hundreds of unsuspecting (not to mention gullible) people unknowingly e-mailing viruses to their friends!  All under the guise of showing them how much they care...  How ironic.

Besides, isn't the whole concept silly, really?  "Oh! You received a forwarded e-mail explaining someone else's feelings and took a few seconds of your time to pick my name out of a list in order to forward me this message that you didn't even write and thus add it to my junk mail.  I'm so touched."  It's one thing if it's something amusing that you decided out of your own want to forward to me because you thought I would personally appreciate it.  But here's a clue: If you want to show me how much you care, open up a new e-mail addressed to me and tell me!  Lol.  That's right, a spontaneous personal e-mail in your own words from you to me.  Now that's something I can appreciate, and I may even find it touching.

But what about the ones that guilt you into forwarding?  "Don't you care enough to forward this e-mail??"  For all you know, it could be a virus; don't you care enough not to?  Besides, is your friend really going to be upset that you didn't forward him an e-mail he never even knew about?  And is the original sender going to be upset that you didn't forward the e-mail when they don't even know you received the e-mail in the first place?  Much less whether or not you forwarded it?  I say take the hint and tell your friend how you feel, but in your own words and in your own way.

So in conclusion:  Forwarded chain e-mails cannot be tracked.  No one will ever know the extent of how widely it was distributed.  Furthermore, there is no chain-mail deity that rewards people for forwarding chain e-mails and punishes them for not doing so.  In fact, if you don't forward a chain e-mail, no one will ever know and nothing bad will happen.  It's all a ruse to get people to forward the e-mail.  The fact is, there's no way to verify the original source of the message; therefore, there's no reason to trust it.  In fact, if they're willing to lie to you to get you to forward the e-mail, how can you trust the rest of the e-mail?  For all you know, it could contain a virus.  Something to think about...

Now, the concept is certainly good.  Have a program automatically check for new versions so that people can keep up to date.  But the fundamental flaw I find is that this check always takes place when you first start the program.  At this point, you're trying to use the program immediately and don't want to wait for it to download and install an update first.  So I always cancel out and never get the needed updates.  So the notification turns into nothing more than a nuisance.

So I thought of a solution, but it would be quite a feat to pull off, and it's not without problems.  What we need is an update agent that checks for updates behind the scenes and informs the user in a non-intrusive way based on how the user set it up.  A single program that will support checking for updates for multiple products.  That way the user would have a central place to view and optionally install these updates, or could configure them to automatically install when that program is not in use.  No more annoying pop-ups when you're trying to use the software.

But here's where the difficulty of such a solution comes in:  As far as I know, there is no standard for distributing updates.  To implement a standard, it would require the cooperation of the vendor for each piece of software.  The other option would be to make the program extensible so that anyone can write a plug-in for it to add support for a particular piece of software.  Now I could certainly write a framework to support this in my sleep and use duck typing for cross-version plug-in support, that would not be a challenge.  The problem is that I can't possibly write a plug-in for every piece of software in existence, or even most.  I'm not exactly good at promoting standards either.

But I'm wondering if I should make the solution for myself anyway, and implement plug-ins for the software that I use, and make it available for free and see what happens...

There was a lot of negative hype surrounding Vista during its development.  It seemed that I heard nothing but bad things about it.  So naturally, I wasn't very excited for its release.  But being impartial as I am, I was willing to give it a chance.  So I asked some people who have used Vista some simple questions:  What advantage does Vista have over XP?  What are the new features besides the spiffy graphics?  The fact is that no one could give me a straight answer.  So for me, it wasn't worth spending that much money for something that really didn't seem to have any benefit.

Well, being an IT professional, I managed to get my hands on a free copy of Vista Ultimate.  Now that cost was not a factor, I installed it on my laptop.  Just as with XP SP2, I had to make numerous tweaks to get the interface right, a new one for Vista being disabling the annoying and useless "User Account Control", of course.  Besides that, I had no problems with hardware compatibility or anything else.  In fact, I made quite a surprising discovery...

Vista is fast.  I thought the extra graphical effects would slow down the interface, but in fact, it's significantly more responsive.  Programs load and close much faster.  I've even experienced faster file transfer rates over my home network.

Microsoft just might have made a believer out of me.  And if you think about it, it makes sense.  XP has been around for over 6 years, and has since been hacked to pieces and bloated with thousands of updates.  Vista seems fresh and light-weight in comparison, with many of its sub-systems rewritten to work well with modern hardware.

So why all the fuss?  Do people not like change?  Are they afraid they won't be able to do as many illegal things anymore?  Are they upset that Vista won't work with their ancient hardware?  Welcome to the world of computers.  Things change.  Get with the program and upgrade your stone-age Pentium.

I used to agree with people who criticize Microsoft's business tactics.  What I realized, though, is that all of Microsoft's competitors are doing all the same things, and nobody points the finger at them and complains.  Microsoft gets picked on because they're the biggest.  I, for one, do not use Microsoft's products because I am somehow conned into it or because it is the most popular standard.  For instance, I used Java and IBM WebSphere and Eclipse for quite some time at one job I had.  Yet, the reason I prefer .NET, C#, and Visual Studio is because they are, in my opinion and for very specific reasons, better.  So yes, Microsoft is a formidable foe for competitors because they make really, really good software, and Vista is no exception.

So in conclusion, don't knock Vista until you've tried it.

Come on, people, seriously.  You'd think that since Windows became a stand-alone operating system starting with Windows 95 some 13 years ago, they would have figured this out by now.  Why haven't any of the Windows releases since then incorporated being able to reconfigure the operating system without ever restarting?

Now it used to be that the whole "You have to restart your computer for these changes to take effect" thing was just a mild nuisance.  Unless it involved drivers, you could just click "No, I'll restart my computer later" and what do you know?  You don't even have to restart your computer half the time.

Has this improved at all in recent years?  No, in fact, it has gotten worse!  There are now artificial measures intentionally put in place to force users to restart.  For instance, after installing Windows updates, you will be prompted every 10 minutes or so that you have to restart until you do.  Or when a program is installed, it will not let you install another program until your computer is restarted.

Device drivers aside, as a developer for the past 10 years, I have never encountered a scenario where any installation step involved in installing a program could not possibly be done without restarting.  Why are users still being required to restart?  Is it because developers are too lazy to figure out how to enable the program to function without restarting?  Is it a "just in case" measure to reduce technical support calls?  Or maybe it has just become tradition.  In any case:

If your installation process requires restarting, your installation process was poorly designed and needs to be reworked.

This is, of course, unless restarting is necessitated by some external factor, in which case, said external factor (e.g. Windows) is a product of a poor design and I hope the designers (e.g. Microsoft) gets grilled for their gross negligence until they correct it.

Home users may simply find this annoying, but when you talk about servers, many of them must be kept up during certain hours, which means that some poor technician has to come in early, stay late, or spend part of his weekend performing updates to the servers, or else the company has to suffer a loss in productivity or even business during the time that the server is being restarted.  This is unacceptable when there is no reason why installing a program cannot be done without restarting.

For those who don't know what a CAPTCHA is, it's a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.  It's those images that web sites sometimes display that contain distored characters or words that you are required to enter as text in order to verify that you are, in fact, human and not a computer program.

I've always liked the idea behind CAPTCHA, being very anti-SPAM myself.  But what constantly bugs me are the dozens of different kinds of CAPTCHAs I encounter that seem so easily defeatable.  For one thing, they make the text a totally different color from the background so that it could easily be isolated from it.  Second, they usually barely distort the text.  You know, I haven't the slightest clue how OCR (optical character recognition) works, but I bet I could write from scratch a program that could defeat 90% of the CAPTCHAs I've seen on the web.  But instead of egotistically trying to prove my programming prowess, I decided to design my idea of what an undefeatable CAPTCHA would be.  So I just quickly wrote up a rough draft.

Basically, I would think that a program to defeat CAPTCHAs would try to find patterns in the image that resemble characters, right?  My idea is that a CAPTCHA should not have any patterns or follow any rules that could be programmed against.  It should be completely random.  But how could even a human recognize the image if it were completely random?  Probability. 

The idea is that every pixel in the image is a random color; however, the random number generator is designed such that there is a slightly higher probability of the random color being darker where the text is.  So any color can appear anywhere in the image, but where the text is, it's a little more likely to be a dark color, even though it could even still be white there.  Humans can easily pick up on this, because our advanced brains are infinitely more intelligent than any software ever could be.  In fact, the entire makeup of our brain is about making connections even between seemingly unrelated things, whereas computers have to deal with descrete values.

Ok, so I guess this algorithm technically creates a pattern.  But it's the most random, least pattern-like pattern I could come up with.  Anyways, I bet you're just dying to see an image of what my algorithm generated...  Here it is:

It can easily be fine-tuned.  Plus this is a draft.  I would definitely add some distortion of the text before applying the color distortion.  In any case, it may seem easy to read or even defeatable, but look at it extremely close.  No two pixels next to each other are the same color, there are equally dark pixels in the background as the foreground and equally light pixels in the foreground as the background.

Please, I encourage you to open this image in your favorite graphics program and try to isolate the text from the static.  Try using software to defeat this CAPTCHA.  I'm curious to see how easily this can be defeated.

Comments?  Criticism?

I have become aware that comments are not working on this site.  I was hoping to fix this quickly, but unfortunately, it may involve switching hosting providers.  In any case, I will post as soon as this is working.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Though I haven't posted in a while since I've been busy, I am still working on the duck typing project.  I have at least one bug fix and I'm working on support for generic methods.  You can expect another release soon.  So stay tuned...

My custom web site was short-lived, I guess.  It has been replaced with this blog.  This should help me keep things up to date.  Also, people can leave comments easier so I can actually get some feedback.  And, of course, developers can subscribe through RSS feed.