Coding Monkey

Cleaning out private data from Google

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:32:00 +0000

About a year ago I landed what I thought was a good job in a very small web development company, the role wasn't what I expected, the people were total dicks and not surprisingly I left under a cloud. Every now and then, like most people, I type names into google to see what pops up, mostly for me it tends to be lots of random actors, muggers, sports people and random teenagers with myspace pages. So the last thing I wanted to find when I googled my own name and hit the link to 'results from my country only' was a big grinning photo of moi at number 1, sat under the name of my old nemesis.

Why? Because I did not want to put this company on my CV, because they fired me. Now I could have come clean and explained it to any future employer with ease but the fact is, the world isn't perfect and people are prejudiced - I fully expected to get to the interview stage if I left it in. So of course, I left it out. Now I know that a lot of employers will google peoples name to find out information about you before the interview. This very company I got fired from embarrassed a candidate applying for the secretary's role by talking about the erm... 'artistic photographs' of her on her facebook page (that gives you an idea of the kind of dicks they were). Privacy is dead and companies have no morals.

So what to do about sorting this mess out? Well, firstly I got the old boss to remove the content by emailing him and politely suggesting that it doesn't benefit either of us (tip: avoid being confrontational at this stage). He saw things my way and removed it. The next step was to remove google's cache of the image and search results that linked to my name by using this tool:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals

It's easy enough to remove if the content has already been removed and is 404-ed or the content has changed. It takes a couple of weeks or so sometimes. Once you've done google, I suggest checking yahoo and possibly MSN (but I didn't seem to have a problem with these).

However, this is only the start of the quest to regain your privacy. Sites like 123people.co.uk seem to cache google searches and not only that, they search a bewildering array of sites that you'd completely taken for granted. For instance, a search for my name hit my Amazon wishlist and told you were I lived and what my girlfriends name was, fairly harmless but still more than I want known by just anyone. Needless to say I changed my 'unique facts' to something short and simple that only family would understand. Even if you removed the content from google, some of the content on this search site can stick around for MONTHS! I hate sites like these, they're about as sleazy as you can get - only a stalker thinks that a site like this is cool.

You might also want to check the Wayback machine (which keeps old copies of websites) and make sure that this hasn't grabbed your offending page. It's a little more than most employers would do to search this but it doesn't hurt to be thorough.

So if information does leak out onto the net, it's not the end of the world but it can be very time consuming and difficult (but not impossible) to remove.

Why I allways build my own PCs

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:20:00 +0000

We recently bought a hand-full of DELL PCs for a development project at work that I'm managing and boy are they slow.

I know DELL gets bad press because they're pretty non-upgradable unless you buy the 'DELL-variety' of card you're looking for but that didn't bother me. What concerned me was the fact that my 1.5 Ghz PC was checking out code from the CVS server in seconds, whereas my colleagues took about half an hour on their 'super-fast' shiny new DELLs (2-3 Ghz I think).

Turns out, DELL install all these n00b-filters like McCrappy virus scanner and the Google processor-hog/search toolbar. That means that whenever you run a shell command it has to virus-scan the .exe file (even though it's the same damn one you ran several milliseconds ago) and each file you add or remove has to be (presumably) indexed by the Google desktop software. I never run anti-virus scanners in the background because most of them are pretty dumb and just kill performance.

Scanning through the program list looking for other stuff I could remove, there was all sorts of crap that nobody in their right mind would want installed on a laptop - why the hell does DELL think people want their 3Ghz PC to run like a 486?

This is why I buy the parts and install my own O/S and apps myself - I'm not paying for someone to 'dumb-down' my PC with stupid features that I don't need, save that crap for AOL users.

Damn... it's been a while

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:56:00 +0000

No, the monkey isn't dead. Just really, really bussy for the last year or so.

New job, new girl, new town...

...and I forgot my password(s) (damn, I'm such a n00b).

I don't have a whole lot of free time right now - so much is going on in my new job as a contractor, life has really changed (mostly for the better). I now make over twice as much money as I did in my last job - confirming my opinion that contractors are paid properly and full-time employees are just slaves to the system.

Anyway, I'll post again soon.

Insult JC all you want, just don't mention Mohamed!

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 11:01:00 +0000

The other night, a South Park episode (cartoon wars II) was censored from showing Mohamed (even though they've done this before in the episode called 'super friends' - see above), just because of recent events surrounding the Danish cartoons. They gave in to terror, so I guess the terrorists have won this round.

I did a little looking around and read some of the far-right Muslim sites reaction to the cartoons and I have to say, I've never read such arrogant, self-righteous crap in all my life -and I've read Rush Limbaugh. Just who the FUCK do these people think they are to impose their religious beliefs and laws on the rest of the world? They threaten us with economic sanctions, violence and terrorism all over some stupid cartoons -and people wonder why the Muslim faith is getting a bad reputation?

I took a look at the cartoons and whilst I didn't find them funny, I didn't think they were actually that insulting, I wouldn't be linking to them if I wasn't doing so out of solidarity to all the people who've been harassed, imprisoned or killed over this issue. Clearly though, a lot of Muslims don't have any sense of humour. So, all because a minority of joy-less, pathetic little children got their delicate sensibilities hurt, the rest of the world gets told what they can and can't say. Well, fuck that.

Here you go.
You can also see some here
here's one from 1827. You see, there's nothing new about drawing offensive cartoons - funny how it's suddenly become such a big issue for them isn't it?

It's comming right for us!

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 09:58:00 +0000

Creepy...

Swimming snake robot - hack a day.

F***tard of the week

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:52:00 +0000

Boing Boing: UK anti-piracy officer assures Firefox she'll catch the pirates who copy it: "A Trading Standards officer in a town in the UK contacted the Mozilla foundation to assure it that she'd caught the icky pirates who were copying Firefox without permission."

God must love stupid people. He makes so many of them.

SONY's guerrilla graffiti ad campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 13:59:00 +0000

Secondary Screening: November 2005 Archives: "Not content with simply knowingly infecting its customers' computers with security-hole inducing spyware, Sony is now sponsoring a 'guerrilla' graffiti ad campaign to promote the PSP"

You're s***ing me, right?

It's like they're trying to be evil.

Sony's illegal DRM move

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 01:24:00 +0000

Mark, Sysinternals Blog: "At that point I knew conclusively that the rootkit and its associated files were related to the First 4 Internet DRM software Sony ships on its CDs. Not happy having underhanded and sloppily written software on my system I looked for a way to uninstall it. However, I didn’t find any reference to it in the Control Panel’s Add or Remove Programs list, nor did I find any uninstall utility or directions on the CD or on First 4 Internet’s site. I checked the EULA and saw no mention of the fact that I was agreeing to have software put on my system that I couldn't uninstall. Now I was mad."

Here's a list of the laws SONY are breaking, in my opinion:

The computer misuse Act 1990:
It an offence to make "unauthorised access to computer material"
It is an offence to make "unauthorised modification of computer material".

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy".
England signed up to the human right act in the EU parliament, recently.

SONY are facing legal action for this allready: bbc

Here's a link to what's been happening this month to SONY's share price: here.

See SONY, this is what happens when you spy on people and compromise their systems with your buggy, illegal, intrusive DRM spyware.

I want to see someone at SONY go to jail for this. They shouldn't be able to buy their way out of it, damn them. How many hackers have been sent to prison for far less than this?

Nuclear Missiles left on default!

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 09:13:00 +0000

"For seventeen years, during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War, the code remained all zeros, and was even printed in each silo’s launch checklist for all to see. The codes remained this way up until 1977" read more.

Makes you feel safe doesn't it?

Just goes to show how even the most sophisticated security in the world won't guard you against plain old human stupidity.

Robot Chicken on Google Video

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:31:00 +0000

Google video "offers viewers a way to see material from archived TV programs, educational videos, personal productions [and] will search the closed captioning and text descriptions of all the videos in our archive for relevant results."

In other news today, Voltron got served.

Daaaaaamn!

Some other good clips from 'Robot Chicken' (Seth Green's new show):
(1)
(2)

Update: compeltely unrelated, but too damn funny to leave out, it's the Halo 2 version of the a55h013 song! Enjoy.

Using wikipedia as a technical referance guide

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:26:00 +0000

Wikipedia is probably one of the most popular and accurate wikis about anything and everything out there - sort of like the 'hitchhikers guide to the galaxy' but it's also got some good technical definitions in there, often including links to other sites where you can get related software and tools. For example, here's a page on internet proxies. Quite a nice summary of all the different types/uses of internet proxies, I thought.

This included a link to this handy page which tells you what proxy you're behind. This is useful if you're at work and you want to know your external IP address and whether your proxy is an anonymous proxy or not.

The reason I went there, is I'm thinking of setting up my own anonmyous proxy at home, that I can connect to to hide my browsing traffic because I'm not sure I trust the squares at work and I disslike the idea of them being able to see my personal stuff going over their network (so what if it's your network? It's my data!). If I get my backside in gear and get it done, I'll do a quick how-to post about it later.

Radio shows about hacking

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 07:36:00 +0000

DDP HackRadio

Lots of shows about hacking and hacking-related topics. Well worth a look!

F***ing with telemarketers

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 21:13:00 +0000

For a while now, I've been mulling over the idea of using my spare old 56k modem for somthing -maybe a voicemail or recorded message to anoy telemarketers on my lan-line- but then I found the mother of all telemarketer-anoying projects...

The telecrapper 2000!

Share and enjoy!

found via hack a day

Webcams on default

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 22:12:00 +0000

This is so cool:

The register: web cams open to all

hackaday article

Read, try, have fun but please, don't be an a$$-hat with this.

Sadly my searches for nudist beaches have come up empty handed :(

Scientology is as evil as it is stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 16:38:00 +0000

Saun Kenedy often goes off on a rant on rant radio about this but here's another good summary I found:

YAFM!

The Time article here: "Ruined lives. Lost fortunes. Federal crimes. Scientology poses as a religion but really is a ruthless global scam -- and aiming for the mainstream"

So... why is this still legal, exactly?

Yet, speaking out against it might soon be illegal in Britain. The new act they're working on would make it an offence to 'incite religious hatred' (interpret that how you will). So for instance, when I saw one of these idiots on the street giving out 'free personality tests' and I yelled over 'killed anyone recently?', that probably counted. So sue me. I think people should hate scientology - it's an EVIL CULT.

In this day and age we're just too damn PC to fight back. Pathetic really.

The Zotob worm

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 07:37:00 +0000

Scary stuff....

InformationWeek : "...rather than attack as a network worm that requires no user interaction, it's a mass-mailed piece of malware posing as an image file attached to an e-mail message. Zotob.c uses such subject headings as 'Warning!' or 'Important' to get the naive to view the message and open the file attachment."

I wasn't too impressed with Microsoft's page about the worm, they just said it installs 'malicious software' and spreads (see here. Just what is malicious? Pop-up messages asking me to buy pills, changing my windows background to the weight-lifter picture or formatting my hard-disc? A little more information would be nice.

CNN just says 'Symptoms include the repeated shutdown and rebooting of a computer.'

I wonder how long it will be before some idiot make a virus like this which is deadly to PCs running windows -that really does format your disc or flash your BIOS with garbage after infecting as many PCs as possible.

A patch isn't much consolation after you've lost all the files on your HD or had your BIOS flashed. How about a little prevention rather than retro-active patching eh, Bill?

(found via Slashdot).

Would recoding email have stopped 9/11?

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 14:10:00 +0000

No.

Terrorists wouldn't be stupid enough to use these communication mediums without some sort of protection like encryption which would be cracked after the attacks (if at all). No, the only thing this would be good for is spying on your own, looking for 'the trouble makers', figuring out when protests are going to occur and blocking them, etc. The next big step to an Orwellian state.

Just what are we fighting for anyway if we have to give up all our freedoms and rights until we win a war on terror (that will never end)?

"The attacks on London are an attack on human rights. The protection of those human rights matters most when governments and societies face times of crisis. The worst possible response would be to jeopardise those carefully wrought rights by a panic-inspired response. A mass surveillance response to terror would result in a resounding success for the perpetrators of these attacks: a fundamental undermining of our most fundamental values."

Please take time to sign the petition above, against the new proposal to 'keep all telephone and internet traffic data of all 450 million Europeans'.

Fighting the 419-ers

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 11:26:00 +0000

Advance fee fraud, often also known as the Nigerian money transfer fraud, Nigerian scam or 419 scam

Ah Nigerian scammers, how they make me laugh....

'Dear Sir, I have a huge sum of money to invest... blah...blah...blah... [implausible situation]....blah...[ridiculous request]....blah....give you lots of money if you agree to [insert bait here].... yours in Jesus, [made up English-sounding name]".

What cracks me up more is the folks who decide to play with them.....

Artists against 419 presents: The Lad Vampire

419 eater

Classic.

Classic mistakes software companies make

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:14:00 +0000

1. Contracting out all 'green-field' development to 'off-shore' companies because they're cheap and then using in-house staff to support and maintain the systems, resulting in the end product costing twice as much in the long run because 'cheap' doesn't mean 'quality'.

2. Not giving out at least inflationary-level pay rises or bonuses to reward hard work

3. Promoting staff to the level of incompetence.

4. Having sales and marketing people have any say in technical decisions of any kind, like for instance delivery dates.

5. Having programmers answer the phones, do technical support, deal with customers, etc. Think: cost efficiency. Every time you distract a programmer, you're loosing money.

6. Thinking that an annual performance review should be an opportunity to real off a list of anonymous criticisms and complaints against a staff member instead of dealing with the issues as and when they occur.

7. Starting work without a specification.

8. Arguing with technical staff about how long something will take.

9. Getting angry about when people turn up to work late, after they've been working all hours of the night to fix your crappy systems. Never piss off a coding monkey before they've had their coffee, they might just rip your arms off.

10. Not training your staff, keeping them doing 'what they're good at'. Stagnation results in boredom and apathy.

My company has done pretty much all of the above. I know I'm not alone.

Interface crimes against humanity

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 10:17:00 +0000

Anyone who makes a web site consisting of the following interface atrocities needs to be shot:

1. Tonnes of flash 3d graphics that grind most PCs to a screaming holt and make the interfaces virtually unusable due to processor lag. Flash: just say no.
2. Obnoxious, vomit-inducing flashing red on green poker adverts, which i always block or nuke.
3. Pop-ups. Ahhhhg the devil, the devil!
4. Spy-ware or other anti-privacy features. If you need to know you need to ask.
5. Sites that try to dissable all the features of your keyboard and browser (such as the context menu, refresh, back, etc). So dumb and so pointless!
6. Terrible spelling.
7. Terrible grammar.
8. Ringtones adverts! Ahhg! The devil (again)!
9. Fonts so small an ant would struggle to read them.
10. My favorite: 'I.E. 5.0'-only sites. Over 75 million people have downloaded firefox. Isn't it about time you catered for them rather than the lowest common denominator?

Web designers: read a book on usability before you design a public service, or else me and my posse of hard-pipe-hitting monkey usability vigilanties will come knocking on your door and get medieval on your ass. (*)

(*) May not actually be true but you should do it anyway.

Foot-printing tool

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 10:01:00 +0000

Netcraft: "What's that site running?" (top left of page).

Neat little tool I found via BinRev. Tells you what software a web server is using and has lots of other interesting links in there, IP addresses, addresses, server versions (!) and such.

Check it out, I could be wrong but it looks like NTL.com is using a vulnerable version of MS IIS (5.0). If so, it just goes to show what massive n00bs they are (and anyone that's had the pleasure of dealing with NTL customer services knows that allready).

My toaster looks sexier than the XBox 360

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 11:37:00 +0000

What a naf colour and a crappy design. Also, I'm not impressed with Microsoft's attitude when it comes to it's existing customers:

(Wikipedia): "J Allard stated, 'Xbox 360 will be backward-compatible with top-selling Xbox games'. The ambiguous statement has many media outlets believing that Microsoft may pick and choose certain games. Steve Ballmer in an interview with Engadget has stated that they will concentrate on making sure the best selling titles, such as Halo and Halo 2, are compatible, and by engineering. Michael Brundage, a Microsoft software engineer, says on his site about the current challenge to develop an emulator, granting more reliable and solid compatibility."

I can't see how they're going to make Halo backwards compatible when the new controller doesn't seem to have the black and white buttons used for switching grenades and using the team communicator.

This looks like a poorly thought out marketing gimmick with very little in the way of technical innovation and rational design. Ok, so you've stuck a faster processor in the box and made it a little smaller - so what?

Typical microsoft: when a product works, release a new version at greater cost and stop supporting the older one.

To come: X-treme marketing shots of my toaster.

Caffeine withdrawal

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Thu, 19 May 2005 18:07:00 +0000

So I gave up tea and coffee - indefinitely - because I was getting the black shakes (amongst other things) and being knackered at home after work is no fun. The first thing I noticed was 4 days of headaches in the afternoons. So I did a little research on the effects of caffeine withdrawal:

Coffee and Caffeine's Frequently Asked Questions: "What are the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal? Regular caffeine consumption reduces sensitivity to caffeine. When caffeine intake is reduced, the body becomes oversensitive to adenosine. In response to this [oversensitivity], blood pressure drops dramatically, causing an excess of blood in the head (though not necessarily on the brain), leading to a headache. This headache, well known among coffee drinkers, usually lasts from one to five days, and can be alleviated with analgesics such as aspirin. It is also alleviated with caffeine intake (in fact several analgesics contain caffeine dosages). Often, people who are reducing caffeine intake report being irritable, unable to work, nervous, restless, and feeling sleepy, as well as having a headache. In extreme cases, nausea and vomiting has also been reported."

Holy crap, anyone would think you were giving up crack!

So what about decaf - is that safe? It depends... sort of. It still contains caffeine (in small doses) and unless it's water filtered rather than using methylene chloride (which is a suspected carcinogenic) then maybe it's not so safe.

Strange which drugs are legal isn't it?

Food that kills you

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Wed, 18 May 2005 13:16:00 +0000

The utter crap we put into the food chain these days....

Aspartame (Nutrasweet) Toxicity Information Center: "Toxicity Effects of Aspartame Use"

I'd heard that the artificial sweeteners in 'diet' drinks were bad for you... but holy crap! Check out some of the highlights from the side effects list:

weight gain
diarrhea
hypertension (high blood pressure)
brain cancer (Pre-approval studies in animals)
death!

Lovely. Right... that's it, no more diet coke for me. In fact, I think I'll quit caffeine too....

"[caffeine] abuse results in symptoms... which include agitation, disorientation and a syndrome which may be mistaken for anxiety/neurosis. It is a habit-forming drug"

"Caffeine particularly has a profound effect on the central nervous system, but it also affects, to a lesser degree the heart muscle, gastric secretion and diuresis."

"The post stimulation "let down" with caffeine results in fatigue and lethargy and the constant stimulation caused by chronic caffeine dosing could be disastrous" - Yeah, that's me baby!

SOURCE here

Also, if you haven't already seen it, go buy/rent/steal this film now: Supersize me! To summarise: junk food kills you slowly, don't eat that s***!

And people wonder why they look and feel like crap?

Labour, Episode III: return of the dictator!

noreply@blogger.com (Coding Monkey) — Fri, 06 May 2005 08:50:00 +0000

So that's it. The end of the UK elections, Labour won. The unwashed Sun 'newspaper'-reading masses have spoken. You wanted your dictator to stay, you got him.

It seems that the majority of UK voters are happy with pensioners paying taxes they can't afford, failing health and education systems, houses we can't afford and sending our soldiers off to die for the sake of making a quick buck for the oil industry in the name of 'national security'.

Looking on the bright side, the Lib Dems got the best result they've got in decades. Maybe one day they'll bring sense to the government.

Just 60% of the country actually exercised their right to vote. That's pitiful! Think of all the people that fought and died in World War II - that fought for our freedom, our right to decide how we're governed and who by - and you decide you can't even be bothered to get off your fat asses to post a vote? Maybe you should leave this country then and go live in North Korea.

We're watching you Tony, you grinning f***.