🏷️ web

BETA Awards - i am supposed to go to the BETA awards with Roswell. It is this $80/plate gala to highlight the best technology in buffalo. I cannot believe these are the nominees for best web site

Does anyone else feel that the examples below are a bit underwhelming to be best in Buffalo/Niagara? I really need a PR person because we could win lots of stuff and get grants if we just applied for these type of awards. I have asked for about 3 years now for someone to help with PR. Maybe one of you new peeps are qualified or interested?

Amherst Soccer -



BERC -



Roswell Park - (There soon to be site is nice but this old one looks really old)



New York Health Quality Coalition -



Stand Advertising -



I've been working on my new content adminsitration system a lot. It will be ready soon and I will be incorporating many of the features into estrip.

Turns out that microsoft has known about this since 2002 and has done nothing about it. Why not disable javascript pasting in the internet zone by default seeing as 90% of epople are not going to even know to do that. They have had a multitide of patches since 2002, so there is no reason this could not have been changed.

I decided to write to the Buffalo News about this as my newest version of the IE clipabord security exploit is so sinister that it can constantly monitor your clipboard data in IE for windows and send it to my database, no matter what app you are in as long as you leave IE open.

Although, there is a solution for this which I posted in the computer journal, almost no one has it installed as I have collected thousands of clipboard for my news epoem entitiled "Microsoft Security" which I am reading that I am reading at the e-poetry symposium next week.

Here was my letter, let's see where it goes.

Hey Steve,
I think you will find this extremely interesting. This week I accidentally discovered a major security flaw that affects IE for PC which allows me to read the visitors clipboard contents from a website with just a few lines of code. Just think what is in your clipboard, sensitive data such as passwords, account numbers, contact data, copied emails, copied instant messenging conversations, private documents, etc. Also, there is essentially no limit to the size of the clipboard, so the amount of data can be pages long including entire documents.

While people may have already known about this clipboard security exploit, as far as I know, no one has combined this flaw with current AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) technology. With this technology combo I can create a web site that continuously monitors the contents of a user's clipboard and forwards it to a database any time the content has changed without any indication to the user. It doesn't even matter what windows application they are using when copying new data, as long as the web page is open somewhere in the background. This is the global system clipboard, not something specific to the browser.

You can see it for yourself. Copy some innocuous data to your clipboard and then visit with IE for windows. You should see your clipbaord data echoed into the page. Then for the extraordinary part, leave the site open but switch apps. Anything you copy into your clipboard gets copied onto the page and sent to my database.

I think this particular security flaw is newsworthy because people can see the results right in their browsers. What is most incredible is that unlike flaws where you could say search for data on a users computer, using this method, it's almost like the users brings you their most sensitive data to you.

There is a solution to this that involves disabling paste scripting in your internet options but by default it is enableed which leaves 90% of people wide open.

You cannot believe the data I have collected with this, remember that each bit of data can be associated with an IP addr. If a particular organization was targeted your could definately compromise security in a serious way.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Paul Visco

I put together some new content administration system to keep track of my content administration systems. I put one together for @twisted too

So my application is coming along great.



The most fun part is the user interface for adding and removing users from your group discussion or document creation. It is all using surebert to load in users dynamically and then it lets you free drag them in or out of the group. The ones in the group get the cute little face icon and their names change font. Those outside of the discussion group are bold black.



You can already visit it at

I am so tired from working on the site time issue till like 8am. You have no idea what it is like to read through 10,000 forums of crap to get to one obscure reference to something that might help but which inevitably does not.

Worst feeling: Remote rebooting a machien that you are barely on speaking terms with and hoping that the machine comes back to life after a remote reboot - even if it's not fixed - because it's locked in a basement far away from you and its the middle of the night.

[size=m]Forums[/size]
They are about 90% wasted whitespace, animated gifs , quotes of previously quoted quotes of previously quoted quotes, and personal quotes and song lyrics tacked onto a minimal amount of information.

I really hate those forums where the last post has every other post quoted and inside of it.

What should have happend is that 80% of responses should have simply been comments on the original post and there should be one central document. Much more liek a wiki.

Like when some asks a serious question and then the first four pages of responses on a forum are just one word repsonses saying, "no idea" or "word up" it is insane. Especiallys seeing as most forum/message software is so poorly deisgned that each one word response recieves a userpic, seventy five buttons of some nature, a userpic a date stamp, a location, an some sort of animated gif.

Here we have an example one response that says "bosssss" ironically in response to one post that said "word" and it takes up the whole screen. It is a perfect exmaple of when a forum is not needed. They could have just had some way to comment on the original data posted.



[size=m]Tangent: IE for Mac Dies[/size]
I was so satisfied when I found out that Microsoft has offically discontinued that piece of shit browser to the point where you can't even download it anymore. I got to put up a message for the rideforroswell site. It was the most satisfying moment of my web programming design career.

I am going to write a poem about what it feels like to search forums till 8am.

[size=m]Disgruntled Forum Victim[/size]
google, yahoo
search, search, search,
read, next page
You suck, no you suck, no you suck
read, next page
(Your) a noobie. (know you're) a noobie, remember that simpsons episode,
read, next page
don't you know it is you are a noobie,
twelve more pages of grammer about not the topic

reboot, wait, reboot, wait
reboot, wait, reboot, wait

next, next, next. skip to last
tanget, way to many pretty colors of higlighted an quoted irrevlevent text
maybe I missed it on page 47
read, previous page,
animated gif, twelve page useless quote, animated gif
read, previous page,
fancy javascript that crashes the whole page to diplay a dancing banana
read, previous page
recap of the first three pages
back to where you started
animated gif
next forum

reboot, wait, reboot, wait
reboot, wait, reboot, wait

search, search, search
read, next page
My computer is the best, (know) my computer is the best, no my computer is the best
not again
read, next page
Animated gif
read, next page

reboot, wait, reboot, wait
reboot, wait, reboot, wait

Next forum, search but it's broken
quote in a quote in a quote in a quote, in a quote, in a quote to say it is in fact newbie
10,000 pages read,
the contents of one tiny pamplet distilled
maximized inefficiency
die forums, fucking die

So you may ask how I eventually solved it. Well I tried every possible boot option for dealing with time and power on linux and eventuall clock=pit worked.

Google has an extraordinary amount of information about its users. It logs all the searches made on it and stores this information indefinitely. Because every computer has a unique IP (internet protocol) address, every visit to every website can be traced back to the computer making it - a fact which is well known in geek circles but remarkably under-publicised outside them. (Shi Tao, the Chinese journalist, was given 10 years in jail last April for "leaking state secrets" after Yahoo! in Hong Kong handed over information linking his IP address and his e-mail to the Chinese authorities.) Users of Google's Gmail service, who are already having their e-mails scanned to place targeted ads, have given the company their identity, a full record of all their searches and copies of all their e-mails, stored indefinitely. Users of Google's Toolbar are inadvertently giving the company a list of not just all their searches but also of every single website they visit. And, as the lawsuit makes clear, all this information is potentially vulnerable to subpoena.
Quoted from: Big Google is watching you - Sunday Times - Times Online

I have said this for so long.

So, I finally spoke with Jamie Moses and I can make some time now that most everything else is out of the way. We are going to meet on Tuesday night to talk about the Geek Meet and some other stuff. Then on the 16th maybe I will move the server. It is mostly set up and whatever doesn't work atthat point can be set up remotely afterwards. I think we will gain a lot of improvement in what we can offer. Especially because we will go from having 6GB (around 4285.71 floppy disks) worth of space to around 400GB (around 285,714.29 floppy disk) worth of space. Then we can start having more video and audio features.

It's amazing how many views people get when they write journals. It looks like @kat got 98 views for the one entry she wrote. I remember back in 2003 that would have taken a month.

I was searching on the web to find stuff out about the site when I found the tempreal project. It was an offshoot of the estrip engine used to teach a 3D environments class about second life. Does anyone remember when the site looked like this?



I also learned that @jim hates the yellow color scheme. Believe it or not, it is one of the most popular. You have 12 others to choose from and using the API, you can make the site look however you want.

[size=m]not myspace[/size]
Okay this may read as rant like because I am really annoyed right now. I went to myspace to read their privacy policy after reading @alison's myspace excitement [inlink]alison,99[/inlink] and "Robby" some random guy's profile located in the "cool new people" section crashed my browser in the middle of this entry. It hung for about 30 minutes after which I gave me control back. But not before I had completely re-written this text. I don't know if I hate the Mac or the myspace of both.

[size=m]elmwoodstrip.org[/size]
So now how is this related? Finally, I will have the funds, what the hell should I do with the site. Part of me is pro-expansion. The side of me that wants to add more features (mobile especially) and get a lot more Buffalonians in here talking about life in Buffalo, to try and work with other groups like Artvoice and Buffalo Rising, and to generally advertise and reach out to a larger audience. The other side of me that asks at what point does it become something anonymous like friendster, and myspace. Basically a tool that is used to get a date or to shop around the sex circuit. Does it happen at 500 or 1500 or 3000?

I was speaking to @shawnr the other day and he helped me realize that the reason I am uninterested in those communities is because of the fact that they are all centered around hooking up and I am already taken -twice over. He has the same issue as he is married. Like how many people do you know that are dating seriously but are really into craig's list friends, myspace or friendster. It just loses it's draw.

Not to mention that it drives me crazy that all of those type of communities are like a front end for data mining and selling that data to marketers. How does everyone forget that. I mean it isn't like I am selling people's personal data to marketers and I am not looking for a date, so there is no advantage to the creation of that type of community.

Won't it be weird when we start having MyBabies (coined by Paul Visco 11/2005), children born out of a myspace hookups. The implications of all of this online social networking is overwhelming. Maybe I am just bitter because I lost my best online friend to craig's list and myspace. I can't wait until she gets a partner and settles down.

I guess I am just afraid (e:strip) will turn into the online old pink and that was never my intention. So where was I going with this. What should I do with the site? What is (e:strip) v4? Maybe it will just stay like this forever.

I was busy working on a new AJAX system when I tried to download the new iTunes. It is 33MB and downloaded in a couple seconds. At one point I get 4000k/second! Those speeds seem so crazy. Imagine if the whole internet was like that.