ErrorBase - Slashdot User

Submission + - Hotel WiFi Tracks You as You Surf

Submitted by

saccade.com

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @03:50AM

saccade.com writes: "During my last hotel stay, I thought it was a pretty strange that it took two browser re-directs before the hotel's Wi-Fi would show me the web page I browsed to. Picasa developer Michael Herf noticed the same the thing and dug a little deeper. He discovered: "...their page does some tracking of each new page you visit in your browser, outside what a normal proxy (which would have access to all your cookies and other information it shouldn't have, anyway) would do. This "adlog" hit appears to also track a "hotel ID" and some other data that identifies you more directly. Notably, I've observed these guys tracking HTTPS URLs, and of course you can't track those through a proxy.". Herf notes the WiFi service provider, SuperClick, advertises that it "allows hoteliers and conference center managers to leverage the investment they have made in their IP infrastructure to create advertising revenue, deliver targeted marketing and brand messages to guests and users on their network...""

Submission + - What's not standard, and in your geek tool kit?

Submitted by Kwiik on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @11:13PM

Kwiik writes: Aside from the standard screw drivers, multi tools, flash lights, collapsible chopsticks, bootable usb drives with linux, spyware software/hijackthis etc. what do you have in your tool kit? What do you have for repairing software, versus repairing hardware? Do you have a separate tool kit for Windows, Linux and OS-X? What do you recommend for a hardware tech/contracter getting started on his own and stepping away from the world of IT powerhouses? I'm trying to find "one of those things" that will make a client go "wow", and he'll know he found the right tech.

Submission + - How can we convert the US to the metric system?

Submitted by

thesolo

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:43PM

thesolo writes: "Despite past efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States remains one of only three countries (others are Liberia and Myanmar) that does not use the metric system. Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. Attempts to get Americans using the Celsius scale or putting up speed limits in kilometers per hour have been squashed dead. Not only that, but some Americans actually see metrication efforts as an assault on "our way" of measuring.

I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating. Are we so entrenched with imperial units that we cannot get our fellow citizens to simply learn something new? What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do? Are there any organizations that we may back, or any pro-metric legislators who we can support?"

Submission + - Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook

Submitted by sochdot on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @06:40PM

sochdot writes: It seems Microsoft has decided to use Word as the HTML engine in their upcoming Outlook 2007 email client. From the piece [sitepoint.com]: "At the risk of turning this newsletter into a biweekly Microsoft bash, Redmond has done it again. While the IE team was soothing the tortured souls of web developers everywhere with the new, more compliant Internet Explorer 7, the Office team pulled a fast one, ripping out the IE-based rendering engine that Outlook has always used for email, and replacing it with ... drum roll please ... Microsoft Word."

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