Jeremiah

LA Times: California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban

I was going to post a happy birthday poem for my mom yesterday, but couldn’t write. I was going to post a happy mother’s day remembrance today, but I couldn’t feel the loss that I know is sometimes still there.

So I simply present a link (via Adam): “On saying goodbye” by Wil Shipley

If you’re one of the many who suffer AT&T DSL, you already know that you cannot use your own outgoing (SMTP) mail server. You also know that SBC Global (before AT&T bought them) outsourced its email service through an awkward relationship with Yahoo!.

Recently, AT&T’s mandated outgoing mail servers stopped working. Macworld discovered that AT&T changed the name of its SMTP server and added the requirement of user authentication and SSL. If they had bothered to tell their customers, that would have been a nice gesture, but this is AT&T and the only thing they care about is allowing the Bush administration to spy on us illegally.

This change worked for a few days and then it stopped again with this error: Unable to send the message. Please verify the e-mail address in your account properties. The server responded: 553 From: address not verified.

Again, AT&T gave no warning and its technical support completely was unaware of this error message. It must be because you’re on a Mac. But then I received this atypical proactive notice a week later:

Dear AT&T Internet Services Member,

We have received questions regarding the following error message which is received by customers when they send e-mail using a non-verified e-mail address. […] You will continue to receive it for emails sent with a non-verified address until you verify your Yahoo! email address or any other non AT&T email addresses. Verification instructions are available on the AT&T Help site.

To recap: AT&T decided to block my port 24, force me to use its SMTP server, authenticate, connect using SSL, and then demand that I add my “non-verified” email addresses to a whitelist managed through a Yahoo! Mail account that I don’t use for anything.

I could have added my four “non-verified” email addresses and audaciously resumed sending email from a desktop application. But I paused for a moment. I have a Yahoo! account that I use exclusively for push email with other iPhone users as a replacement for text messages. I don’t use it for anything else and yet I receive a steady flow of spam to the account. I suspect that there is hole somewhere in Yahoo!’s setup where spambots can see my address publicly. It’s a rather unique email address, so the likelihood of spambots guess sending successfully is slim. Regardless, I don’t trust Yahoo! with my email. I decided to not add my “non-verified” accounts to the whitelist because I get very little spam to those accounts.

I was just about to setup my own SMTP server to run locally when I discovered that my new hosting company runs SMTP servers on several ports that typically are not blocked by overzealous ISPs. Sweet. Then all I had to do was blog about how AT&T made me feel as a customer.

I resisted for so long, but I’m starting to understand why Twitter is cool. Jeremiah on Twitter

Last night, a puddle formed in Sherman Oaks. ABC 7 Eyewitness News had team coverage with Live Mega Doppler 7000 HD Plus.

Leading, yes, leading the 11 o’clock newscast was a story about the 1/10 inch of rain that drenched Los Angeles. The in depth report featured some residents surprised by the “April showers” and “cold” 60°F weather. Highlights included:

People liking the rain.

People not liking the rain.

Someone should have explained to the little girl, who was interviewed as someone having something intelligent and enlightening to say, that humans need water to survive — especially in a desert city that imports all of its water.

Quad colored hair AMS certified meteorologist Dallas Raines had the night off, so Garth Kemp got to take praise for bringing the good weather tomorrow… because the weatherman actually controls the weather.

Arthur & I officially are number 1,717 in line to purchase an Aptera. The company announced it had entered the manufacturing stage this past week. Cars are rumored to start shipping to customers by the end of the year.

Arthur and I live in an apartment complex with no way to charge an electric car. We opted for the model that offers a moderate battery capacity and a gasoline electric generator to recharge the battery. The generator extends the range 130-300 miles per gallon. I call this a “smart hybrid”, as opposed to a “basic hybrid” that uses both an electric motor and combustion engine on the powertrain, like the Toyota Prius.

Pricing has not been finalized, but is expected to be around $30,000. We could certainly get a much larger, basic hybrid vehicle for the price. So why buy a funky, two (and a half) passenger, three wheeled, glorified motorcycle? It’s simple. We accept that the Aptera is not a mainstream car. It fits our personal transportation needs as a feature loaded everyday commuter car. Arthur and I will keep my Dodge Neon around for when we need to haul a crew of people or stuff.

Fiscally, the Aptera would require several years and gas prices to double (again…) before becoming economically cheaper than a Toyota Yaris at $14,000 and 32 MPG. This is where Arthur and I feeling morally compelled to put our money where our convictions lie. The Aptera’s carbon footprint is significantly lower than basic hybrids today and the climate crisis requires action now. Fortunately, Arthur and I live in the first state to benefit from the Aptera and we are in a financial position to take action in this manner.

Finally, the car is effin’ awesome. It looks gorgeous and is made in the USA with recycled materials. Expect a video blog sometime in the next few months from our tour of the manufacturing facility. Until then, let this wet your whistle.

Just a week after being called “a little hottie” (albeit indirectly) by Ben Harvey¹, The Ben and Dave Show on HERE! Networks² seems to have been cancelled.

I checked the podcast this afternoon to get the latest episode, only to be greeted by a 404.³ I searched Facebook and could no longer find the show’s fan page. I went to YouTube and was told that all of the show’s videos had been removed by the user. I ventured onto (the sleazy) MySpace and saw that the their account had either been cancelled or deleted.

Dave Rubin told me that this, “was just the beginning,” and yet all evidence the show ever existed has been deleted.

Update: 2008/03/30, 6:56 PM: I was able to reach Dave. He told me that the show is “down but not out” and hopefully will be back shortly.

1 See Episode 19 and my wall.
2 I’ve never understood the use of exclamation points in company names. It implies that they are really excited about themselves.
3 Ironically, the error icon in iTunes resembles the HERE! logo.

I couldn’t agree with Google News more.

Barack Obama delivered a speech about racial equality in America today that will be considered historic by history books. (Watch here if you missed it.)

Words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

He captured a snapshot of our culture. We are divided as a nation. We feel differently and strongly. However, inclusiveness and equality are the correct answers in this cultural debate. While some may disagree, we cannot “close our ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced.”

This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

Barack spoke about race today, but he has spoken similarly about the gay community in the past.

His timing is poignant in my life. I was told today that my “lifestyle” might harm my youngest brother by a close family member. This came just a day after learning that another family member surprisingly discounted me vehemently because of my sexuality.

As far as I push people who choose to reject me instead of their own prejudices, I still get hurt. And I still get angry. Days like today make me want to retreat to a “gay ghetto”, as my friend Mark puts it — a cultural bubble of tolerance. Retreat can protect today, but it doesn’t bring reality closer to the ideal.

I’ve fought with the issue of “gay pride” for many years. My sexuality does not define my identity, but it is part of my identity. I don’t want to be proud of myself just for being comfortable with myself as a gay man. However, comments made by family members recently have inspired me to place myself “out there” more for discussion purposes. I want my family to talk about me, my sexuality, and my love for Arthur to confront the issue. Perhaps then they’ll see me as theirs again instead of an object of judgement.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. [. . .]

We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option.

Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”

In an interview with Macworld, PayPal asserted that Safari was not secure enough to be included on its recommended browser list. PayPal currently recommends Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 2+, or Opera to its users.

Michael Barrett, PayPal’s chief information security officer, said, “Safari has got nothing in terms of security support, only SSL (Secure Sockets Layer encryption), that’s it.” Indeed, Safari lacks anti-phishing blacklisting and support for extended validation (EV) certificates. Unfortunately for Mr Barrett, SSL is the only method mentioned for securing online transactions. Blacklists and EV certificates provide information to the visitor that the site is more likely to be what it claims. They don’t actually make the browser connection to the web server any more secure.

Mr Barrett made no mention of a flaw in Safari’s SSL implementation or other vulnerability.

Phishing sites impersonate real sites in order to trick visitors into giving legitimate information. Attackers can then use this information to defraud the visitor. Phishing attacks are attacks on visitors, not technology. The solutions aren’t likely technical.

Users must learn to verify the address of any site asking for a password. Good ideas, like Bank of America’s SiteKey, have not been effective because users don’t pay attention to the security features. Another study observed extended validation certificates failing for the same reason. At some point, users need to be responsible for themselves.

As for anti-phishing blacklists, I don’t use them. Blacklists are a privacy invasion.* I don’t want every site I visit being sent to a centralized service for “verification”, unless it’s voluntary and part of my DNS.

Edit: *Unless you use Firefox, as its blacklist is localized and refreshed often. Thanks Asa for the comment. IE 7’s phishing filter, however, does phone home to verify addresses.