JoshCampoverde.com

Those New Year’s Things, Right?

campo — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:21:51 +0000

I just had this IM conversation. I’m the orange bubbles.

Poker, Jurisdictional Ambiguity, and The Digital Explosion

campo — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 02:31:22 +0000

In recent months I’ve been talking to my friends about technology policy, internet privacy, and the lack or inadequacy of laws regulating such things in the United States more than they care to hear. I missed this report, but as my brother frequents online poker rooms, he was able to point it out to me. CBS ran a 60 minutes report covering a cheating operation that stole over 20 million dollars from players on gaming sites AbsolutePoker and UltimateBet.

This is a great real world example of how the internet introduces legal problems that couldn’t hardly have been imagined years ago: it appears of number of the cheated players were playing from inside the United States (where online gaming is illegal), the gaming company is based in Costa Rica, and the computers running the gaming software operate out of a reservation in Canada. Which nation’s law’s apply in this case? Clearly there has been wrongdoing but where did it actually occur, and how are those responsible to be punished are very interesting questions.

No Way Gregg Gillis, I Won’t Sell You My Girl Talk Tickets

campo — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:51:50 +0000

My brother showed me this video we both found hilarious. It’s a video of Gregg Gillis trying to scalp tickets to one of his own sold out shows. Good to see he doesn’t take himself too seriously (not that I would have expected that) and can still have fun messin’ with people.

For Christmas, I Got a Degree

campo — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:42:32 +0000

It’s been a long time coming, but my last grade just posted, and my degree audit is officially complete. Up till now I’d been planning to hang around MIT until June to take some more classes I’m interested in. We’ll see how that pans out as I figure out my life plans for February onward.

Figuring out spring plans isn’t really a very taxing problem, and my second biggest problem in life right now is figuring out when I get to turn my brass rat around. Can I do that now, or do I have to wait until I officially get my diploma in February? Or should I be waiting until I actually walk in commencement in June?

Life is tough sometimes.

Athletes Love a Reason to Grow Facial Hair

campo — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:59:46 +0000

I don’t know why, but whether it’s the playoff beard, a competition with teammates, or a throwback game, athletes love a reason to grow facial hair. Regardless, I think it’s awesome.

India’s First Ball Players

campo — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:46:34 +0000

This is pretty amazing. I say just take the ten minutes and watch the video.

Even While Sleeping, Twitter Limits You to 140 Characters

campo — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:28:14 +0000

This is definitely not the first time I’ve fallen asleep and typed a long string of characters, but I thought this one was a bit ridiculous, and as a result worth sharing. I’m actually curious how long my hand had to be resting on the keyboard to input over 24,000 characters.

The Outdoors

campo — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:57:23 +0000

Here’s how it looks outside. There’s not really that much snow, and it’s pretty clear out since the blizzard over the weekend settled down. Today was actually relatively warm, it got up to -2 degrees Farenheit which is the warmest it’s been since I got home.

a couple photos:

and just because I can, the quick video:

Reliving the Glory Days

campo — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:23:41 +0000

I’ve been cleaning out the hard drive of the iMac G4 we have here at home, and came across some old news footage from my high school soccer days.

2002 - Red River vs. East Grand Forks

2003 - Red River vs. Central

2003 - East Grand Forks vs. Red River

2003 - Central vs. Red River

More on Ad Targeting

campo — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:44:32 +0000

Tara made a comment on my previous post about ad targeting. I had mentioned that I suddenly was getting Burberry ads on facebook. What Tara said is that a lot of the ad serving is done cross sites and is based on browsing history, something I had come across while doing research for a paper on an entirely different topic recently.

So how it works is, when you visit a site, whoever serves the advertisements on that site stores a cookie on your computer. It’s basically just a tiny text file that stores information. So what it does is tracks what sites you visit, and when you show up on another site that uses that company to serve ads, they use your browsing history to show you ads they’re algorithm determines you’ll have a high probability to click on.

In this case Tara was exactly right, and I came across the proof just now. I was reading digg, and there again appeared the Burberry ad. This worked out because the ad service run by my future employer, Microsoft, has the advertisement contracts for both of these sites, Digg and Facebook. So for whatever reason, my browsing history indicates that I’m likely to buy expensive clothing (or at least click through the ads). It’s pretty creepy, but also pretty clever/cool, and it’s definitely not as evil as Google reading your email. But that’s a conversation for a whole ‘nother day…