So, ABC news polled 514 people by telephone to try to find out if people support the new backscatter x-ray machines. They are reporting now that people support them “2 to 1” over those opposing them. However, if you look at their sampling methodology (available on a PDF on their site), you can see that they actually skewed the question. Their whole focus was on determining support _in lieu of the privacy issues_. They did not, however, include any questions about the support if there were _risks due to radiation_ They asked questions about how informed users were about possible risks, but only generically and treated it as if it was relegated to just opinion.

Medical practice quackery has to be reported to the FTC, https://www.ftc.gov/ftc/contact.shtm as I just did to a chiropractor that claimed they could help with “ADHD”, “Bedwetting”, “PMS”, “Asthma”, “Ear infections”, “Colic”, and even “Allergies” The FTC “wizard” is a bit cumbersome, but you eventually get 3500 characters to describe your complaint after about 50 clicks.

I’ve been looking for QoS pointers for Google Voice Chat. I’ve found that it works great on my DSL until I also am attending a web conference over Webex at the same time. Then I can still hear fine, but upstream I’m told my voice cuts in and out.

Came across this quote today that is more cerebral than the quip about “We’re all atheists – I just go one god further than you”

I have been meaning to write up instructions on how I updated my ROM and kernel on my CDMA HTC Hero to fix some annoying performance issues and overcome the internal memory limitation to be able to install more apps by installing them to the SD card.  Since this phone will not officially get 2.2 Froyo, I needed to do something to keep the phone relevant.  I had already ran into the max size of apps installed so was forced into taking some action.

The Blue Angels were recently in town and I couldn’t believe the kinds of Facebook rants or other kinds of rants I heard from people complaining about The Blue Angels.  I’ve heard it every year since I was a kid, but I have noticed some different camps.

I can’t believe this hasn’t been fixed yet.  I was not about to reset back to factory defaults and I had been meaning to root my phone anyhow so went this route.  It was difficult to find a solution that did NOT require resetting to factory defaults.  Enjoy.

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FYI, SurveyMonkey is a great site, but they have really crappy security. They actually store your password in the clear, or in reversibly-encrypted format. If you request your forgotten login and/or password, they actually helpfully email you both your login _and_ your cleartext password. What year is it again? That is the kind of kindergarten mistake that there is no excuse for making. How to securely handle logons to systems and applications is fairly standardized and there are lots of simple options for supporting secure one-way hashes that are immune to a variety of attacks. No excuse for security this bad…