Who are the people who want to be my Facebok friend?

I mean, seriously, I'm all for Facebook. But you can't just click a button and expect to be my friend. Just like I will not connect with you on LinkedIn if you if I hate working with you (yes, I'm talking to you, guy-I-hate-working-with), I will not be your Facebook friend if I don't like you. 

Hint: I like people that send me Facebook messages. I'm not sure about the poke... it tickles.

On Tibet: If you're Chinese-Australian, Should You Protest?

On my tram ride home today, I noticed a few dozen young Chinese protesting. They were holding long banners that read "Tibet was, is, and always will be part of China." There were at least 3 such banners held up by aournd 8 people so everyone could read it several times on the their way up Swanston Street.

My first question is: what exactly were the people protesting? Were they taking issue with some of the comments by Kevin Rudd the other day? If so, I believe his statements were more about human rights than geopolitics; I don't think he was disputing the borders of China.

Perhaps these people were simply showing solidarity with the Chinese government. On first thought, this seems fairly innocuous. Certainly I believe that these people have the right, in Australia, to speak out in favour of any policy they want, whether of the Australian government, or of some foreign regime. 

Here's where the contradiction arises. You see, the Chinese government doesn't believe that foreigners should interfere with what is essentially (according the banner of the protesters, to be sure) an internal matter for China. How then does it make any sense for those on Australian soil to essentially intefere with an internal matter, even by showing their solidarity? It seems the Chinese goverment would be prefer -- whether you're for or against their behaviour -- to keep your mouth shut. These protesters are trying to have it both ways, but make sense in neither realm.

Worst. President. Ever.

And everyone knows who you mean. Interesting, no?

Mac Stuff: Using Mail to Run Scripts

Here's a good and simple post on getting your Mac to run commands based on e-mails it receives. Try doing that with Outlook Express.

I know that post is supposed to be simple, but wouldn't be even better if there was rule that just evaluated the message of your e-mail as if it was an Applescript file? I've never tried any Applescript-ing, but surely this must be possible.

Google App Engine Blog: Introducing Google App Engine + our new blog

Google recent released a new application engine which runs "in the cloud." I tried to sign up, but the 10,000 spaces were taken up faster than my tiny fingers could type.

This is a major step forward for making scalable application infrastructure something handled by the likes of Google and Amazon and not by Dell consultants or your IT folk: the so-called Red Shift that someone saw coming.

My advice is twofold:

• If you're investing heavily in virtualization for new projects or an attempt to scale existing one, seriously reconsider and explore these new options.


• Invest in Sun, Amazon, and Google. Not VMWare or Microsoft.

There's good potential here.

Signing Up for Microsoft's TechNet Forum

Trying to help a poor soul on the Microsoft forum, I decided I would create an account so I could do just that. I was presented the following screen:

Note the advice beneath "Display E-Mail" field. Microsoft is essentially saying that you shouldn't actually put your e-mail address there at all and offers a rather silly ways of preventing spam which I believe even a simple e-mail harvester would figure out (since the open bracket is a token which would end an e-mail address). It reads:

This will be visible to all forum members. If you enter your real e-mail address, you will likely receive unwanted messages (spam) because spammers regularly gather e-mail addresses from public communties. We highly recommend that you use a modified version of your e-mail address. For example, if an e-mail address were someone@example.com, we would recommend modifying it to someone@example.com.(donotspam).

How does Google solve this problem? Google parses every posting and obfuscates the e-mail address with the first few characters followed by some ellipses. To retrieve the full e-mail address, I would need to click the link, fill in a CAPCHA form and only then would I be able to see the full e-mail address. This seems like a very reasonable process, especially compared with Microsoft's "please don't actually put an e-mail address into the form" recommendation. To date, AFAIK, I have not received any spam to my GMail account from something I posted on Google Groups. (Actually, I don't think I ever received a single spam e-mail to my GMail account ever).

For those who wish to use a real e-mail address for the MSDN forums and who use GMail, you can try using a custom e-mail address with rules. It's a very simple and elegant solution which I am about to use.

The Geek Inside Me

Better that the geek outside you, but still...

The new X-Files movie is fast approaching and I'm quite excited. I haven't any posters, trailers, or mainstream media buzz so whether it's a good movie or not, I'm predicting a total financial failure and if we ever come across the X-Files again, it will have to be in a new TV series with a new or partially new cast.