NSA-ruled UK dumps the rule of law

by Ricardo Goldbach

Meanwhile in a former western democracy, a time machine sends David Miranda back to 1984, as government officials issue an ad hoc regulation:

A hat tip goes to Glenn Greenwald:

If the goal of the UK in detaining my partner was - as it now claims - to protect the public from terrorism by taking documents they suspected he had (and why would they have suspected that?), that would have taken 9 minutes, not 9 hours. Identically, the UK knew full well that forcing the Guardian UK to destroy its hard drives would accomplish nothing in terms of stopping the reporting: as the Guardian told them, there are multiple other copies around the world. The sole purpose of all of that, manifestly, is to intimidate. As the ACLU of Massachusetts put it:

"The real vengeance we are seeing right now is not coming from Glenn Greenwald; it is coming from the state."

O rei morreu, viva o rei. Subtitle Workshop vs. VisualSubSync

Ricardo Goldbach

Como usuário do Subtitle Workshop há cerca de 7 anos, achava eu que todas as instabilidades do produto haviam sido sanadas com a liberação da versão 1.0.4.0 da SubtitleAPI.dll.

Não era o caso. Na última tradução que fiz ("Cartas de Iwo Jima", belíssima direção de Clint Eastwood, para o canal Fox), percebi que o SW havia corrompido mais de 1.500 tempos de entrada/saída, com a geração de frames inválidos, superiores a 29 (para um frame rate de 29.97).

Foi a gota d'água. Após um dia inteiro de retrabalho para liberar o produto, fiz uma varredura do cenário atual de aplicativos disponíveis. Dei de cara com uma joia chamada VisualSubSync. Dentre outras coisas, o VSS permite timear olhando-se a onda do áudio, e fazer a sintonia fina deslocando-se, com o mouse, as extremidades do intervalo de onda correspondente à legenda. Em cerca de 1s, crava-se entrada e saída, sendo possível a adoção de sugestão automática para a duração, em função do reading speed estipulado por parâmetro -- a produtividade sobe incrivelmente. Num dos campos de informação da interface é exibida, em tempo real, uma comparação entre o RS corrente e o ideal, à medida em que se estica ou se contrai a duração.

A gama de erros apontados e de suas características, quando se solicita um relatório, é superior tanto à do Subtitle Workshop quanto à do Horse.

Além de tudo isso, também é possível a customização das funcionalidades, pois os plugins são escritos em javascript. Por exemplo, alterei o plugin de verificação de timing para que aceite legendas coladas, e não somente as que tenham distância superior ao mínimo parametrizado. Agora meu VSS rejeita distâncias inferiores a 500ms, mas aceita as menores que 2ms (em termos práticos, zero frames), bastando eu ter alterado a linha 43 do script overlapping.js, localizado no subdiretório jsplugin do aplicativo:

de

      if ((OverlapInMs > 0) && (OverlapInMs >= VSSCore.MinimumBlank)) {

para

      if ((OverlapInMs < 2) || (OverlapInMs >= VSSCore.MinimumBlank)) {

O VSS é freeware e está disponível no Source Forge.

Beware, Zorpia scamming ahead - Cuidado, golpe do Zorpia à frente

by Ricardo Goldbach

Centuries have passed, Occam Razor still rules: Zorpia is definitely a spamming site. That' s the most simple and straightforward conclusion accounting for the spam spree fueled by Jeffrey Ng and his bad-famed, Hong-Kong based, so-called "social network", when one faces the evidences.

I've just received an e-mail from Zorpia as for some gorgeous babe having left me a message. Out of the blue, just as recommended on "Scamming 101". And, yes, I would have to go to the site address and login in order to read it. As a rule of thumb, I googled the scamming operation site's name and confirmed my first thoughts: either Zorpia is the like of another Badoo’s scamming engine or the 1.000th doomed Facebook wannabe.

C. Custer, at Tech In Asia Online Community, carried out a thorough investigative job,  comprising even personal e-mail exchange with Ng, who assured he was a good guy and unaware of  complaints. Faced with factual and solid evidences, Ng replied that "even if we assume there were 500 complaints, that represents a complaint to user ratio of only 0.0018%”. I say thousands of users and negative reviews (and still counting) dispute that claim.

One of the zillion samples out there

Wikipedia entry for the stenchy operation denounces this guy's evildoings: “Account deletion requests are not honoured and [people's] data is continuously used for outbound invitations”.

An eyebrow raise goes to the fact that Zorpia doesn’t seem to face ban issues in China. Huh? Facebook and Twitter do, but Zorpia doesn't?

Moral Decency in doing business Sheer greed Privacy concerns set aside, just figure out the mess a “friend invitation” — especially if attached to the profile picture of a smiling beauty — could bring to a jealous wife/fiancee/girlfriend’s paranoid mind. I don’t need to think about it, as I’ve been there and seen that. You really don’t need that pain in the ass; just go get yourself another wife/fiancee/girlfriend. Or not. Life goes on.

The bottom line is: “Spam stinks, Zorpia is spam, Zorpia stinks”, q.e.d.

Some fact checking can be done here:

Hong Kong’s Zorpia: Is This a Real Social Network or Just a Spammer? [UPDATE]

Block Zorpia Spam "This is pretty interesting/ I love this, how about you?" From Your Inbox

So, you’ve had a request to join Zorpia …

Forum Antiscam

Spamming Mail send by Zorpia

Is #Zorpia the reason I am getting Google “Your account is under attack” warnings? I think so…

Has Zorpia Taken Action To Protect Privacy?

I got this bullshit spam email promoting their website by using Haiti as a tool. I can't believe there are people out there this fucking shameless.

What the hell is Zorpia? Who signed me up for this? I do NOT want to be on some whacked up dating site!!