To moderate or not?

One other thing that I guess might annoy people is that I moderate comments, mostly to keep spam out. Akismet picks up tons of spam, but some comments still get through, and if anything this is increasing.

Justin uses a very simple Turing test to check if the respondent is human, and it seems unikely that the spammers are going to keep track of the required answer to that test for every blog, so I’d imagine it’s quite successful.

So, would I be better off switching moderation off and a Turing test on?

To target=”_blank” or not?

Quick thought while I’m here if anyone’s actually still reading my not-blog: is it de-rigeur to force people into a new window when they go to an external site, or abso not-done? I’ve been forcing the window, but that’s force of habit more than anything.

Sony Bravia paint advert online

I’ve been waiting for this for ages, available direct from Sony in 37MB 1280×720 widescreen goodness, and various other formats and sizes.

Why do we see the same old tat advertising every day, when people want to see stuff like this? Advertising execs still don’t get it. Big shocker that.

Biometric passports

Saw a piece on Irish biometric passports on Sky News this evening. “Concerns” are mentioned but in passing, and no mention is made of security precautions. I realise it’s Sky, but still. So, are security precautions included in these passports? What connectivity method do they use? Is encryptions used in storage, and transmission?

UPDATE: A press release on the Dept of Foreign Affairs website mentions a “key”, but it’s pretty sketchy. ENN describes them as “contactless”, which doesn’t bode well. Via Boards.

UPDATE 2: Justin links to the Dept of Foreign Affairs FAQ which confirms that these passports do in fact use RFID. See Justin’s post for a link to a group that have successfully attacked Dutch RFID passports.

UPDATE 3: Bernard has blogged about this issue with a quote from an article in the Irish Times. I hope Digital Rights Ireland will be taking a position on this issue.

An App A Day

Guy said he’s write an app a day for a thirty days, and he did. Some of them are a bit iffy, but I’ve actually downloaded a couple to try and a few others strike me as useful to other people, so still an impressive feat.

German Tells Court CIA Kidnapped Him

At this point nothing seems to be proven, but Khaled al-Masri is saying that he was abducted by some North Americans and a German at the Serbia-Macedonia border and imprisoned and tortured for three weeks, before being flown to Afghanistan and imprisoned and tortured there for five months. He says he was finally released in Albania in 2004 when they – the CIA, allegedly – found they had the wrong person. How many wrongly abducted people have travelled through Shannon with Bertie Ahern’s implicit approval I wonder?

Microsoft to automatically update to IE7

If you don’t want to upgrade to IE7, you should set Automatic Updates to download or notify, otherwise you’ll get it whether you like it or not. This could be as early as tomorrow, so get your skates on.