Sunday, November 30, 2003
Googlism
Googlism.com will find out what Google.com thinks of you, your friends or anything. According to Googlism, I'm finding two hats a comfortable fit. Huh? Oh, I see now No, that doesn't even remotely sound (or look) like me.
What's Your Google Number?
According to this article, people are comparing "Google numbers" as a way of inflating their egos. It's the number of "total pages found" reported by Google from a search based on your name within double quotes. If you spell your name several ways you put each of them in double quotes separated by OR. My Google Number is over 2500. I guess I should be pleased but not all of those pages are about me and nearly all of the ones that are about me were written by me, not by others. So I guess I can generate an even larger Google number by just writing endlessly about me, myself and I. 
Firsts
The 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers first flight is approaching (December 17th). There was a good report on Weekend Edition today that had recollections by Wright family members and friends.
Another 100th anniversary occurred early this year: the first transatlantic communication by Marconi on January 18th, 1903. President Theodore Roosevelt's message was tapped out in Morse code from South Wellfleet, MA to King Edward VII who responded in kind. We were staying on Cape Cod on the anniversary and decided to visit the site of Marconi's original South Wellfleet wireless station. I was surprised at how large the original station had been.
We expect our gadgets to get smaller, faster, cheaper, etc. But revolutions in technology are rarer. It's hard to imagine the world before air travel and "instant" communications. And it was only 100 years ago, the span of one long life, when these didn't exist.
Another 100th anniversary occurred early this year: the first transatlantic communication by Marconi on January 18th, 1903. President Theodore Roosevelt's message was tapped out in Morse code from South Wellfleet, MA to King Edward VII who responded in kind. We were staying on Cape Cod on the anniversary and decided to visit the site of Marconi's original South Wellfleet wireless station. I was surprised at how large the original station had been.
We expect our gadgets to get smaller, faster, cheaper, etc. But revolutions in technology are rarer. It's hard to imagine the world before air travel and "instant" communications. And it was only 100 years ago, the span of one long life, when these didn't exist.
Friday, November 28, 2003
Just in time for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice gift giving...
Clearly this is going to be the hot toy of the Christmas season. It's the drinking, barking, walking and "pipi" making pup. It's Pipi-Max!. Next year, they can do a hair-ball barfing cat toy.
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Thanksgiving
Today is Thanksgiving, a holiday to commemorate a feast held in 1621 by English colonists (not Pilgrims)and Wampanoag Indians in Plimouth (now Plymouth); about 50 miles from our home. My understanding of people who lived 382 years ago is limited. But the concept of giving thanks is universal. I'm thankful for the wonderful people in my life and am grateful that the year just past has been a good one. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Lotusphere, again
I just found out that I'm going to be presenting at Lotusphere in January. Should be interesting. In years past I did talks on the Domino Web Server at Lotusphere and DevCon. This will be my first presentation on Lotus Workplace Messaging. The hard part, for me at least, is the next few weeks of preparation getting the content and slides together while doing my "day job" as well. Wish me luck.
Grape -- or black widow spider?
I don't suffer from arachnophobia but this story creeped me out. We live in Massachusetts, I guess we should start inspecting our produce a little more carefully.
A new HBO season is starting up in January
I watch very little television -- except with my kids. I don't say that in some high-minded way, I just don't have the time or inclination to watch. The only exception is Sunday night. I usually watch The Simpsons when I can. Also, HBO tends to show its series on Sunday nights. According to Zap2It, the final run of "Sex and the City" starts up on January 4th. The fourth season of Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" will also return on the same evening. (Larry David was the co-creator of Seinfeld). Both excellent shows. Also, the fifth season of "The Sopranos" begins on March 7th.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Don't spam your incompetence to the world
I've noticed that as the quantity of spam has been increasing, the "quality" seems to decreasing. Not just misspelled words and bad grammar; I'm getting spam that's generated by bad code as well. One spam message that I received yesterday had the following subject line:
Geez, don't spammers test their stuff before sending it out? Who do I report this bug to?opened_any_messages_in(messages_sent_since(adjust_date(today,-30,'days')))
Flying coffee
Yesterday I was exiting a parking lot and turning on to a main road. A car on the main road approached with a large coffee mug perched on the roof above the driver. The traffic flow slowed so the driver slowed as well causing the mug to tumble, spilling its contents on the roof. It fell to the ground beside the car. I motioned to the driver, and told her about the coffee. Her response was: "So that's what that noise was!" She had no idea that she'd left her mug on the roof.
I did the same thing several years ago. I got four blocks from home with my coffee mug traveling on the roof. An oncoming driver flashed his lights about the same time as I heard the mug roll down the roof, dumping its contents on the back window of my car. Too bad it was winter (the coffee froze on the window) and the coffee contained milk and sugar (cloudy and sticky ice!). Since then I'm more careful about using the roof as a temporary table while I'm getting into the car.
I did the same thing several years ago. I got four blocks from home with my coffee mug traveling on the roof. An oncoming driver flashed his lights about the same time as I heard the mug roll down the roof, dumping its contents on the back window of my car. Too bad it was winter (the coffee froze on the window) and the coffee contained milk and sugar (cloudy and sticky ice!). Since then I'm more careful about using the roof as a temporary table while I'm getting into the car.
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Intolerable Cruelty
I saw Intolerable Cruelty this evening. George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones were both very good. I think Clooney does pretty well in comedies, at least in the two that he's done that were written and directed by the Coens. Intolerable Cruelty isn't the Coen Brothers best work but it's worth watching. It's more mainstream and less quirky than most of their films. It's a romantic comedy; a throwback but not to the extent as The Hudsucker Proxy. The Coens next two projects are remakes: First is The Ladykillers with Tom Hanks, a remake of a 1955 comedy with Alec Guiness. After that is Fun with Dick and Jane with Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz -- a remake of the 1977 comedy with George Segal and Jane Fonda.
Try Not To Be A Cargo Cultist
Ned references a good article by Steve McConnell on Cargo Cult Software Engineering. The article includes a Richard Feynman quote about Cargo Cults (Feynman's entire speech can be found here).
The Cargo Cult is an extreme example of Post Hoc fallacy (A occurs before B, therefore A is the cause of B). It's easy to laugh at the Cargo Cultists since we know what they're trying to do is ridiculous and doomed to failure. But not so fast. It's easy to fall into the Post Hoc trap without realizing it: "I disabled this setting, the problem went away. Therefore the setting caused the problem" Software is incapable of magic but the complexity sometimes leads us to superstitions about cause and effect. For me, it's disturbing when a bug goes dormant. In some cases we may discover later on that a related bug fix solved the problem but often it's still there because we haven't developed a full understanding of its true cause.
The Cargo Cult is an extreme example of Post Hoc fallacy (A occurs before B, therefore A is the cause of B). It's easy to laugh at the Cargo Cultists since we know what they're trying to do is ridiculous and doomed to failure. But not so fast. It's easy to fall into the Post Hoc trap without realizing it: "I disabled this setting, the problem went away. Therefore the setting caused the problem" Software is incapable of magic but the complexity sometimes leads us to superstitions about cause and effect. For me, it's disturbing when a bug goes dormant. In some cases we may discover later on that a related bug fix solved the problem but often it's still there because we haven't developed a full understanding of its true cause.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Just in time for Thanksgiving
Jones Soda produces dozens of different flavors of soda. Just in time for Thanksgiving, their newest addition is Turkey and Gravy Flavor. Somehow I just can't picture carbonated turkey gravy flavor being a big hit. Then again, I thought Guinness Stout ice cream was a bizarre idea until I gave it a try at Toscanini's in Cambridge. Not my favorite, but it's better than it sounds. After the initial sweetness of the ice cream, there's that distinctive Guinness flavor. (Okay, that might sound gross, but I do love Guinness).
Ice cream seems to attract bizarre flavorings. The smooth creamy base works so well with a wide range of flavors. For example, there's avocado, tuna fish, garlic and broccoli. In Bar Harbor, Maine there's an shop that sells lobster ice cream. It's not great, the lobster is a bit frozen. But it's not quite as odd as it sounds. The Japanese have even more exotic tastes in ice cream: Shrimp, eel, octopus, rice, wasabi, etc.
Ice cream seems to attract bizarre flavorings. The smooth creamy base works so well with a wide range of flavors. For example, there's avocado, tuna fish, garlic and broccoli. In Bar Harbor, Maine there's an shop that sells lobster ice cream. It's not great, the lobster is a bit frozen. But it's not quite as odd as it sounds. The Japanese have even more exotic tastes in ice cream: Shrimp, eel, octopus, rice, wasabi, etc.
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Everybody's Got Something To Hide 'Cept For Me And My Monkey
Inspired by an article on The Onion, Blogger has some advice on what to do when your Mom discovers your blog.
Monday, November 17, 2003
Nikon D2H digital camera has built-in WiFi support
The Nikon D2H is the start of a new trend: digital cameras with built-in wireless networking. The D2H includes built-in 802.11b wireless with 100 foot range (nearly 500 feet if you use an external antenna). The camera firmware supports FTP for uploading images. A photojournalist would probably want something more secure than FTP since anyone with with a sniffing tool would be able to grab your images as they fly by.
TinyURL
I loath long, unwieldy URLs as much as anyone else. And I'm partially responsible for some of the really long URLs out there. For dynamic content, short predictable URLs aren't really feasible. But by using redirection, URLs can be shortened. TinyURL can make the unwieldy be, er, um, wieldy.
The TinyURL for this blog is http://tinyurl.com/venf. Including letters and digits, TinyURL can support over 1,6 million URLs with only four characters.
The TinyURL for this blog is http://tinyurl.com/venf. Including letters and digits, TinyURL can support over 1,6 million URLs with only four characters.
Friday, November 14, 2003
Let them sing it for you
Send a singing message. This is pretty cool. (Via Metafilter)
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Security Certificates and Encryption Usability
Matthew Thomas has a good rant on the difficulties of using security certificates. A related paper that is worth reading is Why Johnny Can't Encrypt: A Usability Evaluation of PGP 5.0
The authors did a usability study with twelve test participants. Only one third of them were able to correctly sign and encrypt an email message when given 90 minutes in which to do so and a properly configured email client. One quarter of them accidentally sent email they thought they had encrypted but had not.User errors cause or contribute to most computer security failures, yet user interfaces for security still tend to be clumsy, confusing, or near-nonexistent. Is this simply due to a failure to apply standard user interface design techniques to security? We argue that, on the contrary, effective security requires a different usability standard, and that it will not be achieved through the user interface design techniques appropriate to other types of consumer software.
Dialog Spam
I was looking for some song lyrics on the web earlier today and was greeted by a JavaScript dialog trying to look like a Windows alert to trick me into clicking OK. In Internet Explorer it looked like this:
Visiting the same page with Mozilla fared a little better but not much. The dialog title in this case says what's going on here:
I know, I know. There are controls for disabling this type of stuff but by default, this is what a typical user will see. The word "Advertisement" appears on the dialogs but many of us won't notice it.
The average user is used to seeing these types of alerts on Windows and the automatic response is to click OK. Web pages can do just about anything they want visually. This type of alert isn't a "security" issue per se -- it's the web equivalent of junk mail, trying to fool you into opening it.
Why can't we prevent this type of browser abuse? Why are "untrusted" web applications allowed to pop up dialogs? Well, actually, over time, Microsoft has locked down features, such as launching programs inside of IFRAME tag when they found that they were being abused. But this is done after the fact. One alternative, the "sandbox" approach taken by Java, locks down everything that's potentially unsafe and has the user make explicit decisions about what to allow. But can users make these types of informed decisions? Not really. Have you seen the security UI in most applications? Also, components that want permissions tend to ask for everything, just in case they may need it later. This is not really much better than ActiveX controls that can do anything once you've installed them.
I don't have a simple answer on how to address these issues. Part of the answer is user education but hackers and spammers are very good at discovering holes to exploit; finding new ways to trick users or get past existing security measures. We need users to trust our software but we have to be upfront about the risks involved in using computers. Fraud and damage occur in all sorts of venues, but with computer networks, the ability to defraud users or damage their assets can come from afar. A hacker in another country may be just as dangerous to your finances as the store employee who made a personal copy of your credit card information.
Visiting the same page with Mozilla fared a little better but not much. The dialog title in this case says what's going on here:
I know, I know. There are controls for disabling this type of stuff but by default, this is what a typical user will see. The word "Advertisement" appears on the dialogs but many of us won't notice it.
The average user is used to seeing these types of alerts on Windows and the automatic response is to click OK. Web pages can do just about anything they want visually. This type of alert isn't a "security" issue per se -- it's the web equivalent of junk mail, trying to fool you into opening it.
Why can't we prevent this type of browser abuse? Why are "untrusted" web applications allowed to pop up dialogs? Well, actually, over time, Microsoft has locked down features, such as launching programs inside of IFRAME tag when they found that they were being abused. But this is done after the fact. One alternative, the "sandbox" approach taken by Java, locks down everything that's potentially unsafe and has the user make explicit decisions about what to allow. But can users make these types of informed decisions? Not really. Have you seen the security UI in most applications? Also, components that want permissions tend to ask for everything, just in case they may need it later. This is not really much better than ActiveX controls that can do anything once you've installed them.
I don't have a simple answer on how to address these issues. Part of the answer is user education but hackers and spammers are very good at discovering holes to exploit; finding new ways to trick users or get past existing security measures. We need users to trust our software but we have to be upfront about the risks involved in using computers. Fraud and damage occur in all sorts of venues, but with computer networks, the ability to defraud users or damage their assets can come from afar. A hacker in another country may be just as dangerous to your finances as the store employee who made a personal copy of your credit card information.
Conversation with a Bottom Feeder
Joseph Duemer submitted a bill to a company that was spamming his blog comments. He's included the email conversation with the spammer. Entertaining.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Authentication via Caller ID
SAINTlogin allows users to log-in to a web site by dialing a phone number. The system uses Caller ID to identify the caller. The system will hang up after the first ring so the caller doesn't incur any charges. Interesting. I wonder if there are unintended consequences to this form of authentication? Clearly you're using your phone number as a security token. What happens if you lose your cell phone? If you use this token for secure web access, are the consequences as bad as if you lost a credit card? How quickly can you disable your phone number? How secure is Caller ID? How easy is it to spoof this system?
CDs 'could be history in five years'
You knew this was coming: the CD 'could be history in five years', replaced by a new generation of fingertip-sized memory tabs with no moving parts. Actually, I think the CD-ROM is already being supplanted by recordable DVD-ROM. The 600 megabyte capacity of a CD-ROM is too limiting. Also, for content that doesn't need long-term permanent storage any of the plethora of flash media cards will suffice. Compact Flash cards are already available in the 4GB range.
Another reason not to be famous
I've done technical presentations in front of hundreds of people at Lotusphere and Lotus DevCon. I did a talk in front of a few thousand people at a conference at MIT. But despite moderate exposure in front of the "world at large" I've never been publicly recognized or had any sort of following. I'm not complaining; I don't seek notoriety and am easily embarrassed by public attention. Well, I can now add another reason to my "Why I don't want to be famous" list: Getting recognized in a public restroom. We all need to pee from time to time. Geez. (Via Pete)
Plan for UN to run internet 'will be shelved'
People love to complain about ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). So how about moving management of the Internet under the United Nations? ICANN has been characterized as arrogant, obnoxious, unresponsive, stubborn, etc. Would moving management of top-level domain names, address space allocations, etc. under the auspices of an even more bureaucratic organization be an improvement? Seems unlikely.
The Onion: Mom Finds Out About Blog
This is pretty funny. Careful what you blog about, your Mom might be reading.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Some amusing links
Make your very own church sign with the Church Sign Generator.
In a related vein, ACME Labs has the License Plate Maker, Label Maker and Candy Heart Maker.
The Museum of Conceptual Art has a list of Things Other People Accomplished
When They Were Your Age. If you enter different ages you'll find that some of the entries are a little strange:
In a related vein, ACME Labs has the License Plate Maker, Label Maker and Candy Heart Maker.
The Museum of Conceptual Art has a list of Things Other People Accomplished
When They Were Your Age. If you enter different ages you'll find that some of the entries are a little strange:
Age 9? Strange but trueAdmiral David "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" Farragut served as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy at age 9.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
The Meatrix
The Meatrix is a Matrix spoof about the evils of factory farming.
The Broadcast Flag
Boing Boing has a link to an article by Arnold Kling concerning Jack Valenti and the Broadcast Flag. The broadcast flag is an anti-piracy mechanism that was recently approved by the FCC for use in digital broadcasts. Arnold's name and background sounded familiar. While reading his article I realized that he was an old roommate. We shared an apartment when I was a grad student at MIT. I knew that he took a job with the Federal Reserve but didn't know what happened to him after that. Turns out that he's an author and was an Internet entrepreneur.
(Via Boing Boing)
(Via Boing Boing)
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Matrix Revolutions
I saw Matrix Revolutions this evening. I got what I expected -- entertaining special effects and a "conclusion" to the trilogy. The plot moves along fine. Overall it was about as good as the second film, nowhere near as good as the first. I did expect to see more of Merovingian and Persephone here. Their scene in this film seemed tacked on; as if the Wachowski brothers couldn't think of any other way to use them.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Xbox to Switch to PowerPC
According to Wired News, Microsoft's next-generation Xbox will switch to PowerPC Further, Microsoft has licensed processor technology from IBM for the Xbox. First shift away from Intel for Microsoft? Not entirely. Windows NT used to run on non-Intel chips too (Alpha and PowerPC). Also the various incarnations of Windows Mobile run on non-Intel chips. But, given the large market potential for Xbox, this is a significant event. (Via Miguel)
Sony PlayStation Portable details
Gizmodo has some early details on the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). It will have a 4.5-inch, 480x272 pixel widescreen display, WiFi built-in, 7.1 channel Dolby surround sound, possibly cellphone capabilities, play video and MP3 files, and will use special 2.4-inch, 1.8GB "Universal Media Discs." Sounds like Sony is going after Apple, Nintendo and Nokia all at the same time. (Via Gizmodo)
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Simpsons Fan Creates Real Tomacco Plant
According to an article on Slashdot, Simpsons fan Rob Baur has created a Tomacco plant. He grafted a tomato plant to a tobacco plant and grew it. Tests showed that there was nicotine in the tomato leaves of the plant.
According to an article on The Simpsons Channel, Baur is examining his Simpsons DVD collection "to see if there is more Simpsons science available". (Via Andrew)Lisa: Tomacco? That's pretty clever, dad. I mean for a product that's evil and deadly.
Homer: Aw, thanks honey!
Ralph: Aw Daddy! This tastes like Grandma!
Chief Wiggum: Holy moses, this does taste like Grandma!
Ralph: I want more!
Chief Wiggum: Yeah, me too, just give it to me.
Dude, Where's My Spacecraft?
Another entertaining and informative article on Hacknot. This time Mr. Ed details the reasons behind the demise of the NASA Mars Polar Lander in 1999 (it crashed into the surface of the planet).
We study success but we learn from failure. Success can mislead us into thinking that we can't fail. The root causes of the failure in this case were mundane: changing requirements and the need to fully run through regression tests. The next time someone wants to tweak a requirement after coding has started or wants to skip through full regression testing because "this change is safe and can't cause any other problems", send 'em this link. (Via Hacknot)
We study success but we learn from failure. Success can mislead us into thinking that we can't fail. The root causes of the failure in this case were mundane: changing requirements and the need to fully run through regression tests. The next time someone wants to tweak a requirement after coding has started or wants to skip through full regression testing because "this change is safe and can't cause any other problems", send 'em this link. (Via Hacknot)
The Emperor's New Code
Ole Eichhorn attended Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles last week. Overall he's pretty unimpressed with Longhorn. His main criticisms are that Longhorn will hurt speed and doesn't contain much to enable new functionality. I haven't done a deep dive on Longhorn so I only know the little that I've read elsewhere. Some of the Longhorn technology such as WinFS seem like yet another attempt by Microsoft to do Cairo. Other Longhorn technology seems very close to what Apple has been doing with OS X.
My strongest impression viewing Longhorn from afar is that this is another "bet the company" move by Microsoft. Most of their eggs are placed in the Longhorn basket. And Longhorn is not coming out anytime soon -- 2006 at the earliest, probably later. I have to give them credit for taking large scale risks (Via Critical Section)
My strongest impression viewing Longhorn from afar is that this is another "bet the company" move by Microsoft. Most of their eggs are placed in the Longhorn basket. And Longhorn is not coming out anytime soon -- 2006 at the earliest, probably later. I have to give them credit for taking large scale risks (Via Critical Section)
Monday, November 03, 2003
Update: The Simpsons vs. Fox News
Looks like Matt Groening was "being satirical" when he said that Fox News threatened to sue over a parody on The Simpsons. Oh well. Still, it was a funny parody either way.
b2 evolution
I mentioned the PHP Blogware tool, b2 , a weeks ago as a tool that I'm looking at. I just discovered that there's an "evolution" of b2 called, naturally enough, b2evolution. Looks like it has an even nicer set of feature. Another possible candidate to use to redo this blog sans Blogger.
DateBk5 for Treo 600
Although the primary means of interacting with most Palm devices is the stylus and Graffiti, this is not really true on the Treo 600. Pulling out a stylus is a two-handed operation, not something that you want to do on a cell phone. You want to be able to do essential operations with one hand, if possible. The 600 has a tiny keyboard as well as a five-way navigator that make it easy to do many operations without the stylus. For this to work well, applications need to be updated to take advantage of the navigator. (Note: the Palm Tungstens have five-way navigators too).
DateBk5 is a replacement for the Palm OS Datebook application (called Calendar on the Treo 600). It has a number of nice features above and beyond Calendar. The only negative for me was that it didn't support the Treo 5-way navigator as Calendar does. No longer. The developer of DateBk5 has a Treo 600 and just added support for the 5-way navigator. Not perfect but a nice improvement.
The only Palm application that I use every day that doesn't completely support the navigator is Pocket Quicken. It mostly works but there are some part of the UI that you can't navigate without a stylus. (By the way, if you use a Palm device and Quicken, take a look at Pocket Quicken. I've been using it for years now and it's an excellent companion application to Quicken).
DateBk5 is a replacement for the Palm OS Datebook application (called Calendar on the Treo 600). It has a number of nice features above and beyond Calendar. The only negative for me was that it didn't support the Treo 5-way navigator as Calendar does. No longer. The developer of DateBk5 has a Treo 600 and just added support for the 5-way navigator. Not perfect but a nice improvement.
The only Palm application that I use every day that doesn't completely support the navigator is Pocket Quicken. It mostly works but there are some part of the UI that you can't navigate without a stylus. (By the way, if you use a Palm device and Quicken, take a look at Pocket Quicken. I've been using it for years now and it's an excellent companion application to Quicken).
Some useful Palm OS utilties
I use BackupMan, on my Treo to backup to an SD card. You can set it up to automatically do a backup on a scheduled basis, store multiple days of backups, etc. The UI is simple and easy to use. Now I hope that I never have the need to actually take advantage of the backups
Filez is a file manager for Palm OS that let's you look at the content of the file system on the device and external cards. Great for seeing what's under the covers and being able to move things around. It's still a little surprising that Palm OS doesn't come with some sort of file manager, if only for external cards.
VFS-FTP is an FTP client for Palm OS. It's useful for pushing files up to an FTP server. For example, I can take pictures with the built-in camera on my Treo and push them up to my web site for display.
Filez is a file manager for Palm OS that let's you look at the content of the file system on the device and external cards. Great for seeing what's under the covers and being able to move things around. It's still a little surprising that Palm OS doesn't come with some sort of file manager, if only for external cards.
VFS-FTP is an FTP client for Palm OS. It's useful for pushing files up to an FTP server. For example, I can take pictures with the built-in camera on my Treo and push them up to my web site for display.
FeedDemon
Pete showed FeedDemon to me the other day. It has a simple, clean UI and is enjoyable to use. I still prefer to read blogs in their "native" format but FeedDemon may be useful for a quick scan through the blogs I read to mark entries I want to do read in more detail.
Bluejacking
Bluejacking is the term for sending a phonebook contact to an unsuspecting third party via Bluetooth. Something like beaming a contact from a Palm device but it's a broadcast, not a point-to-point connection. The term is not meant in the same sense as hijacking, carjacking, etc. since you aren't taking control of something. It's like another form of spam.
RSS 0.92 Feed