Gecko Bloggle

I understand that EA is wanting to be pretty tight-lipped about what’s going on with EA_Spouse and the Class Action Suit in LA, but this just seems kinda empty in response to Kirschenbaum’s suit for unpaid overtime:

EA issued a statement in response to Kirschenbaum’s lawsuit, which was filed in San Mateo Superior Court. “We offer competitive salaries, bonuses, stock options, health care and a wide variety of other benefits and work environments that are second to none in our industry,” the company said. “EA remains committed to our customers and our employees and will continue to do all we can to ensure EA is a great place to work.’‘

Other portions of the piece from SiliconValley (click the quote above to link) seems to be on the “but they’re paid well” side of this issue.

I’m still not entirely sure where I stand. As I’ve said before, BC employees can’t have overtime because we’re high-tech workers. Essentially, in BC, if you’re a high tech worker, the assumption is that you make enough money to cover your overtime. When that’s the case, you end up making less and less per hour. I’d do the math myself, but it’s time to go to work.

A story being run by the TimesOnline in the UK is talking about HP latest camera and anti-camera toys.

One does this:

By wearing a specially designed electronic badge that jams electronic cameras, they will be able to prevent photographers from taking unwanted pictures.

and the other does this:

Alongside its privacy protection system, Hewlett-Packard is developing a camera activated by a brooch or a clipped-on earring which can take a picture of someone without their knowledge.

It really is kinda freaky what people can find out about you online. I mean, there’s all this “freak you out” stuff in the papers going back two or three years now, telling you that people can find a torn up business card and end up doing a better job of running your life than you can, and while I’m a bit of an information paranoia kinda guy, I don’t fall for everything that comes across my path pretending to be legit.

(Hear that, Nigeria? Buzz off!)

(Oh, and would the “legal cousil (sic) of Burton Render buzz off too?)

(Thanks).

Click here to read more.. »

Lifted from GameSpot’s post (found via the Klipfolio add-on, Google NewsFeed (with “Electronic Arts” as the keyword).

Open Letter from the IGDA (International Game Developers Association).
See Also
Quality of Life White Paper, also from the IGDA.

Thing is, I’m not a developer, so this doesn’t apply to me, but I am in British Columbia, and a high-tech worker.

So, at a stagette a few months back, Arwen won herself one of these (the url looks much scarier than the actual item, which is made by Waterpik), but this thing looks like it should have an equivalent Klingon name, or it’s a sex toy for scorpions or something. It’s not, and the idea is that you can hold this thing, and it’ll apply pressure to your back when you’re holding it in front of you.

I don’t know why I’m talking abou- oh yeah.

Click here to read more.. »

Okay, so these guys are a little ticked (click here to see the whole thing)

F*ck the South. F*ck ’em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they’d stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves – yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We’re the f*cking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Konfabulator is now available for Windows users.

In my great quest to make my Windows less user friendly, I’m the kinda guy that really enjoys messing up my system. I have often heard my co-workers comment with things like “What the hell are you running,” and “are you really running Os-X on your PC?”

I smile quietly to myself, and then curse and mutter my way through the registry trying to get rid of the dementation that I’ve unleashed on my poor poor computer.

Widgets away!

Safety Center dot Navy dot Mil

What up with that?

Well, I was going to make this a comment to Hugh’s rant about comment Spam, but his comments are… clo-… oh, right.

JamesOff.net has a WordPress Anti-Spam RBL checker that he’s working on:

I have written a WordPress plugin which checks the IP of the poster and deletes their comment immediately when it is added if it is listed in an RBL (like spamcop or spamhaus).

Unfortunately WP still generates the email saying the comment was added, I’m not sure if I can stop that. An alternative might be to prevent users with RBLed IPs from being able to access the comments form, but if they still try to hit the wp-comments.php file directly I’m not sure if I can hook it that early

[edit]
Actually, our friend JamesOff has finished the first working version of this plugin for WordPress. Looks like it can be capped and added here

After some stuff I was doing over the weekend here (largely due to the DNS for my web site and email aploding for some reason), I found two really great tools. One of them is totally free, and gives you a full report of everything you ever wanted to know about your DNS setup if you’re running a domain.

DNS Report.com is free here.

Browsercam has a service that will browse/crawl your site, and take screenshots as it goes. They can do six browsers, three OSes, with Flash or withou, and they’ve now added Remote Access (you take over one of their machines and test your mouse-overs and stuff). It costs money (they’ve got a free demo period, and they’ve got this weird $10 for an hour and $39/mo) thing.