Tablet UML News http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/ News and commentary from Martin L. Shoemaker, author of Tablet UML en-us 2008-02-09T15:02+00:00 A new Phishing tactic http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1176784807.shtml Quick primer: phishing is email that pretends to be from some business or bank with which you might have an account, urging you to take some action to protect your account... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-04-17T04:04+00:00 JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? *D*O* *N*O*T* *C*L*I*C*K* *L*I*N*K*S* *I*N* *U*N*S*O*L*I*C*I*T*E*D* *E*M*A*I*L*!*!*!*!*!* — and it takes you to a fake site which looks like the real site for the business in question. And it says that to prove your identity and protect your account, you have to give it your bank account, credit card, Social Security number, etc. JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT! You'll lose your bank account, your credit, and worse.

Here's rule one: if they sent you the message out of the blue and it includes a link, it's a phishing message. Don't click the link. JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT!

OK, but now if you're curious, you can explore the phishing email. Hover the mouse over the link. If you've got a decent mail reader, you'll see the real address of the link. In the message, it might look like http://www.PayPal.com; but when you hover over it, you'll see something entirely different. That's proof positive that you're being phished. Don't click the link. JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT! Often it will just be an IP address; and if you try to trace it down, you'll likely find it's in a foreign country.

Well, today I got an interesting one, because the phishing link wasn't an IP address; it was Google! Here it is, in part:

http://www.google.com/pagead/[Whole bunch of junk omitted]&adurl=http://[IP address cleverly encoded]/departament/index.php

I didn't put the whole thing here, because I don't want some moron somehow copying it into the browser and visiting the phishing site. JUST DON'T DO THAT, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT!

But look at what they've done: they've highjacked the Google ads mechanism. Google ad images always include a link to redirect you to the advertiser. Well, instead they're making Google's servers do the work of forwarding you to their phishing site. So if you hover over the link, it looks semi-legit, because it is a legitimate Google link.

Except, of course, that the phishing email claimed to be from PayPal, not Google.

Still, someone gullible might believe the two companies were working together somehow. And so the "hover the mouse" technique might fail, since some readers will only show a short stretch of the total URL. The one with my Web mail, for example, only showed part of the address, not including the &adurl=http://[IP address cleverly encoded]/departament/index.php part. Microsoft Outlook 2007, on the other hand, shows all 209 characters of the URL.

So unless you're careful, the hover approach can still fail to alert you to a phishing address. There's really only one safe course: JUST DON'T CLICK THAT LINK, OK? DID YOU HEAR ME? JUST DON'T DO THAT!]]> Well, if you insist... http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1176389122.shtml When I'm traveling on my own dollar, I keep an eye out for Red Roof Inn. They're consistently at or near the lowest price of any national chain, and they're... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-04-12T14:04+00:00 Red Roof Inn. They're consistently at or near the lowest price of any national chain, and they're consistently clean and well-maintained, with courteous staff. Plus many of their locations are T-Mobile HotSpots, and I have a T-Mobile subscription, so I can get online there easily.

But there's Red Roof service, and then there's Red Roof service...

My new contract work is on a project with some pretty tight deadlines looming, so there are some long days lately. When the days are long enough or the weather nasty enough, I prefer to check into the local Red Roof than risk the trip home. A night there is $45, which is one-third the cost of a wrecker, so it's an easy decision.

Monday was a long day: 18 hours. So I decided to check in to Red Roof. I arrived around 5 a.m. (Tuesday, technically, but still Monday for me), got a room, slept, and checked out at noon.

Tuesday was a shorter day: only 14 hours. Still, that meant it was after 3 a.m., and I was tired. Another Red Roof night. I checked in around 3:30 a.m. (Wednesday, technically, but still Tuesday for me), got a room, and slept.

At just about noon, I got a call from the front desk. They told me they owed me some money, but I told them I was pretty sure we were square. Eventually I realized that they had recorded the Monday/Tuesday check-in as a Tuesday night stay with an early arrival. They said I had paid twice for one night; but I insisted that I had slept two nights and paid for two nights, and as far as I was concerned that was fair. I also said that if the unexpected blizzard continued, I would be back that night.

Well, the blizzard turned to rain, which made the slush nice and slick. And while my day was very short (only 9.5 hours), I was too tired to risk the roads. Back to Red Roof!

But when I got there, the night clerk had a note from the day clerk: if I showed up, my stay that night was already paid for. I explained why I thought I owed them money; but he insisted that their policies said I had paid for two nights and only used one so far. Finally, I decided that if they were going to insist on letting me sleep three nights for two payments, I wasn't going to argue with them. But I sure plan on telling people what good service they provide.

So if you find yourself stranded late at night in the Kalamazoo Portage area, I highly recommend Red Roof Inn West, conveniently close to Western Michigan University and other local attractions.]]> Seeing <font color="#FF0000">red</font> http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1169929421.shtml The color red is one that the cone cells in our eyes tend to be particularly sensitive to. This drawing is incredibly crude, and is drawn from fifteen-year-old memories,... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-27T20:01+00:00 red is one that the cone cells in our eyes tend to be particularly sensitive to. This drawing is incredibly crude, and is drawn from fifteen-year-old memories, but it conveys the basic idea:

Color Responses

The red cones in the eye tend to respond more strongly than the other cones; and the green and blue cones tend to respond weakly even to light we would call red. So red is an attention grabber.

Now this is hardly news. Stop signs and stop lights are red for a reason, after all. Yellow pages sellers have long used red accents as an attention grabber. I've long noticed that when I drive red cars (which seem to have been around half the cars I've ever owned), people don't pull out in front of me as often, like they notice me more easily in the red car. (Now the deer, on the other hand, seem to be color blind.) And the auto industry has settled on red as the color for tail lights, and bright red as the color for brake lights, so that other drivers will notice the cars ahead of them and not run into them.


]]> Sex sells http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1168803986.shtml Not that that's news; but it's rather shocking to see the magnitude of this effect.... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-14T19:01+00:00
On an average week day, this blog receives around 70 unique visits. On a weekend day, it's around 50. And among those visits, by far the most common topics that bring visitors are:



  • Insufficient system resources exist to complete the API. That post receives from five to ten visits every single day. This problem is affecting a lot of people. Microsoft, are you listening?

  • People searching for pictures of NASA spacecraft, particularly from the Apollo era.

  • People searching for information on Gateway Tablet PCs.

  • People searching for UML info.

  • People searching for .NET programming info.

  • People searching for pictures of actors. And boy, are they disappointed when they find that page! But that may be the single most common search item that brings people to my site.



So this is a low-traffic site. By contrast, Dean Esmay's site gets about 30,000 visitors per day. I'm definitely small potatoes compared to Dean.

On Wednesday, Dean linked to this post under the title "Little Mosque on the Prairie". Dean's World is a bit of a hot spot on the topic of Islam and how it's perceived vs. how it is. Opinions there differ pretty strongly. That should be a place where a link on this subject should draw some attention.

On Wednesday, my site had around 120 visitors, or around 50 more than usual; and on Thursday, my site had around 100 visitors, or around 30 more than usual. Some number of people have followed links from Dean's World since then. Let's call it around 100 visitors from the Dean's World link.

On Friday, Dean linked to this post under the title "Booth Babes".

And by 6:30 a.m. Friday, my site had received 55 visits for the day, most through Dean's link. By the end of the day, I had received 350 visitors, or 280 more than my average. By the end of Saturday, I had received 120 visits, or 70 more than my average for a weekend day. Midway through today, I've already received 50 visits (my usual Sunday average), and 22 of those were to that post. So that's around 370 visitors for that topic, vs. 100 for "Little Mosque on the Prairie".

So maybe Sharp had a point in using their Booth Babes. It still seems like a wrong approach to me, distracting from the incredibly large TV image. Some have suggested that the ladies are useful for framing the image in photographs, providing a sense of scale. That's true enough for the photos. Maybe the ladies were mostly there for that purpose. But that's for photographs. On the show floor itself, the TV should have sold itself.

As one commenter at Dean's said, the ladies should've been on the TV for maximum attention.
]]> Little Mosque on the Prairie http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1168396642.shtml It caught my eye with a commercial. I had been watching a CBC interview show that promised an interview with Alan Rickman. I've been a fan since Die... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-10T04:01+00:00 CBC interview show that promised an interview with Alan Rickman. I've been a fan since Die Hard; and just that day, I had watched the last half of the most excellent Something the Lord Made. So I watched Canadian TV, something I don't normally do.

And at the commercial break, I noticed curling, that curious sport that involves sliding a stone across the ice and sweeping a path to smooth it along. I've never understood the sport, but I always found it interesting to watch. So the commercial started with a quintessentially Canadian scene: a curling stone being swept down the ice. Then it cut to a Muslim man shouting coaching and encouragement to the sweepers. And then it cut to the sweepers: two head-scarved Muslim women feverishly sweeping the ice before the stone. And finally, it cut to some locals staring open-mouthed, trying to comprehend this juxtaposition. That commercial beautifully encapsulated the culture-clash premise of the show, and I had to learn more about this strange new show, Little Mosque on the Prairie.

So I went to the Web site to learn more. They have some character descriptions, some cast bios, and some clips. Ali Eteraz thought the one joke was cheesy, but I thought it was funnier than typical sitcom jokes, a nice bit of wordplay. And I thought the clips of Amaar Rashid (Zaib Shaikh) in the airport were quite good. So I was looking forward to tonight's premier.

But when all is said and done, all I can say so far is: it's a sitcom.

Some of the jokes were quite good. Some were average. Some were flat. In other words, a sitcom. I haven't decided if it's the writing or his delivery, but I got the most laughs out of Zaib Shaikh as brother Amaar. I dare say that he'll make the show, if anyone can. Unlike a typical American sitcom, there was no one who was an absolute idiot (save perhaps for one minor character), and I'm happy to say there was no wise wife/dolt husband couple, which has become the most boring cliche on American TV.

This is a show about culture clash, but not just Muslim/Canadian culture clash. Amaar has trouble adjusting to life in the small prairie town of Mercy, because he has spent his life in Toronto and other world capitols. He's a cosmopolitan dumped into a rural enclave, and he just expects too much. Meanwhile, the local Muslims are just as bad, looking down their noses at him because he's a City Mouse in the Country.

And of course, there's Muslim/Canadian clashing. I think it's a bit exaggerated when one local freaks out because he sees Muslims praying in the church community hall, but it's a necessary part of the situation of this sitcom. The local radio show host Fred Tupper (Neil Crone) is a rather broad parody of hate radio, but not nearly as broad as, say, Michael Savage. And there's bigotry on the other side as well: the former Imam Baber Siddiqui (Manoj Sood) assumes the worst from every non-Muslim he sees.

But there are decent, well-meaning characters as well. Besides Amaar, there's Reverend Duncan McGee (Derek McGrath), who tries to set an example of communication and understanding. There's Fatima Dinssa (Arlene Duncan), who runs the local diner and takes joy in deflating egos. There's Yasir Hamoudi (Carlo Rota), who's a bit of a schemer and a scoundrel; but he must have his lovable side, because his wife Sarah (Sheila McCarthy) finds something to love in him. And there's their daughter Rayyan (Sitara Hewitt), who's a devout Muslim and looks fated to be the voice of reason on the show.

It wasn't earth-shattering, but it was decent enough to watch again. Some of the jokes were hard for a non-Muslim to grasp: I sort of understand the difficulty of calculating the start of Ramadan, for example, but I'll bet Muslims appreciated the humor more. As Wikipedia explains, "Most Muslims insist on the local physical sighting of the moon to mark the beginning of Ramadan, but some insist on using the calculated time of the new moon or the Saudi Arabian declaration to determine the start of the month. As a result, Ramadan dates vary in different countries, but usually only by a day or two." The characters argue over the best approach, with one using a telescope, one wanting to check a Web site, one wanting to eyeball it, one wanting to call Saudi Arabia, and Yasir shouting, "Not with my cell minutes!"

But Amaar's Ramadan sermon crossed cultural lines, mixing humor and humility and warmth. At the same time, it told a little of what Ramadan means to Muslims. It was a good close for the show.

As far as I can tell, nobody goes unskewered in this show: Muslim and Islamophobe, Christian and Christophobe, City Mouse and Country Mouse, men and women. And none of it seemed vicious; rather, it was good-natured jabs to remind people to laugh at themselves and each other. Because after all, "Muslims around the world are known for their sense of humor." "I did not know that."

I look forward to hearing some Muslim opinions on this show.]]> A lesson in marketing http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1168389601.shtml In a complete lack of political correctness, they're called "booth babes": women with model-quality looks, hired to stand in your trade show booth and draw attention to your products that might... Martin L. Shoemaker 2007-01-10T01:01+00:00

]]> Unlikelihood of Confusion http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1167188949.shtml One of my favorite blogs is Ron Coleman's Likelihood of Confusion, which (mostly) deals with his specialty: Intellectual Property (IP) law. Being in the IP business myself (with both... Martin L. Shoemaker 2006-12-27T03:12+00:00 Likelihood of Confusion, which (mostly) deals with his specialty: Intellectual Property (IP) law. Being in the IP business myself (with both software and books), I like to be better educated on that legal front. I learned a lot about the topic through time spent on the Open Gaming Foundation lists, but I've learned more from Ron. Tonight, I'm going to get a little hubristic, and actually step into Ron's specialty with something which has amused me on many a visit to my in-laws' house.

To lay the groundwork, I first have to explain the name of Ron's blog — excuse me, the award-winning name of Ron's blog. And to explain that, I have to delve into the ideas behind trademark. As I posted before (I told you this topic interests me):


Well, to understand what the big deal is, you have to understand the purpose of trademarks, a subject which is often misunderstood (even by people who should know better). If owner A has a trademark on the word "SKDLF", that means that manufacturer B is forbidden from calling his similar product "SKDLF". Now in a country which enshrines freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the Constitution, why should we countenance such a restriction on what manufacturer B can say? Why should we restrict manufacturer B's freedom of speech for the protection of owner A?

And there is where the misunderstanding comes in: trademark law is not about protecting the owners of the trademarks; it's about protecting the consumers from confusion. It's about ensuring that when consumer C buys a product labeled "SKDLF", he's buying a real "SKDLF". The relevant standard in determining whether a trademark has been infringed is called likelihood of confusion. (This is why Ron Coleman, a trademark lawyer whose writings I always find interesting, calls his blog Likelihood of Confusion.) A famous example of this principle was a case in which a floor mat manufacturer was found not to be infringing Ford's trademark by selling a floor mat with the Ford logo. Not just the name, the actual logo! In deciding the case, the court essentially said that "No consumer will ever confuse this floor mat with a Ford car." If trademark law were about protecting the trademark owner, Ford would have won this case; but instead, the court judged based on the rights of the consumer, and the floor mats were allowed.


Well, every time we go to Sandy's parents' house, I see an amusing example of unlikelihood of confusion at work.

I know some people find them hokey; but when I was a kid, I liked the interrelated CBS "rural" comedies: Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, and especially Green Acres. Green Acres was always my favorite, because it was so surreal: Arnold, the world's smartest pig; Lisa, the loopy Hungarian socialite; Eb, the clueless farm boy; Mr. Haney, the vaudevillian con artist; the Monroe twins, who never finished a construction job; Mr. Kimball, the bizarre county ag agent; and in the middle of all this loopiness was Oliver Wendell Douglas, played by the inimitable Eddie Albert. He was the sane, rational, but more than a bit pretentious "normal" person who looked down his nose at the bizarre things the other characters thought or said; but the more bizarre the idea, the more you could be sure that the odd thing would actually come to pass.

And I loved that opening, with the sweeping view across the farm to the barn, as Eddie Albert sings out, "Greeeeeeeeen Acres, it's the place to be! Faaaaaaarm living, it's the life for me. Land spreadin' out, so far and wide! Keep Manhattan, just gimme that countryside!" Man, that man could sing!

So when we drove through the town of Greenville and I first saw a new retirement living home called Green Acres, the first thing that immediately came to my mind was, "It's the place to be!"

And there, in a sub-head under the name, was the proud declaration: "It's the place to be!"

Now there's one very clear reason why this can't easily be a trademark infringement: CBS (who aired the program) and Filmways (who produced it) don't seem to have ever registered the name as a trademark. (In fact, a number of other companies have, in various fields of business.)

But even if they had registered the mark, I doubt they could claim infringement based on likelihood of confusion in this case. I doubt that anyone passing through the tiny town of Greenville and seeing that sign is going to think, "Hey! That's that 40-year-old TV show!" Even with the famous tag line, there's just not much chance of confusing a retirement living home with a TV show (much like the Ford floormats would never be confused with a Ford truck). So this strikes me as a pretty clever way to target people with an allusion to a show from their youth. Literary and cultural allusions are part of our shared heritage and form a sort of second-order common language. The folks at Green Acres are putting that language to good use.

There may be other hypothetical grounds for an infringement claim of a hypothetical Green Acres trademark. Ron tells me there's this relatively recent concept of infringing a trademark by trademark dilution:


Dilution differs from normal trademark infringement in that there is no need to prove a likelihood of confusion to protect a mark. Instead, all that is required is that use of a "famous" mark by a third party causes the dilution of the "distinctive quality" of the mark.


That might (hypothetically) be grounds for a trademark infringement claim. Look at the considerations for a "famous" mark (notes added):


Under the terms of the Act, courts may look at the following factors in determining whether a mark is famous:


  1. The duration and extent of use of the mark; Six seasons of prime time TV, plus decades of reruns, plus now episodes for sale on DVD.

  2. The duration and extent of advertising for the mark; Six seasons of prime time TV ads.

  3. The geographic area in which the mark has been used; World wide, I'm sure. The US, at a minimum.

  4. The degree of distinctiveness of the mark (either through the nature of the mark itself, or through acquired distinctiveness); OK, I don't think it's all that distinctive.

  5. The degree of recognition of the mark; Go ahead, say "Green Acres" to random people on the street, and see how many people remember it. I'll bet it's a lot.

  6. The method by which the product was distributed and marketed (the "channels of trade"); Broadcast TV.

  7. The use of the mark by third parties; OK, this weakens the case a lot, since there are many third party uses. and

  8. Whether the mark was federally registered. It never was, of course; but for our hypothetical, we're assuming it was.




So I could imagine a hypothetical dilution claim, but not a hypothetical confusion claim. Personally, I'm not sure I like this whole dilution concept. It shifts trademark law from protecting consumers to protecting trademark holders. I think that's a step in the wrong direction. But who am I? Just an average individual consumer. Apparently the trademark owners have more influence in Congress.]]> The Tick vs. the Legal System http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/1167185413.shtml So for Christmas, besides a super-cool Superman Returns lunch box with the two-disc Superman Returns DVD inside (and dang, I can't find a link for that lunch box online anywhere!),... Martin L. Shoemaker 2006-12-27T02:12+00:00 Superman Returns DVD inside (and dang, I can't find a link for that lunch box online anywhere!), Sandy got me The Tick vs. Season One, available on DVD at long last (and for sale by Disney, not Fox, where the shows originally aired — no idea how that happened). And I was reading the back, and saw a little asterisked notice: "Does not include episode 11".

Well, that made me curious, so I went to TV.com and found that episode 11 is The Tick vs. the Mole Men. I remembered that episode: it involved a beautiful supermodel named Mindy who was pursued by a bunch of subterranean Molemen, who were themselves pursued by the evil Lava King. It turns out that the lead Mole Man is in love with Mindy, who actually is a visitor from the mole lands herself. Once the Lava King is defeated, Mindy returns to be the Mole Queen.

So that left me wondering: why leave that episode out? And that led me to this discussion and a bit of unofficial speculation:


""The Tick vs. The Mole Men" features an unauthorized use of Cindy Crawford's likeness, that's why it will not be included


Officially, the episode is missing for "creative considerations", and "may appear in a later collection". But ya know, I've seen this episode maybe half a dozen times; and I just realized that Mindy Moleford does indeed have a prominent mole, just like some other supermodel.

On the other hand, Comics2Film insists that's not the reason, and that there's another reason that they do know but won't discuss because that would complicate legal negotiations between the parties. I can't imagine who else might have an opinion on this episode...]]>