Real Kato Blog

I could swear I saw promotional materials for CBS's new tech-y series "Scorpion" promising that the show would feature technically accurate hacking techniques based on real-life stories.

That went out the window in the show's first few minutes. If you plan on watching the show and you don't want spoilers, then stop reading here. But trust me, you probably don't want to watch this show... so read on for just a couple dozen of the hundreds of plot holes and implausible elements to this show.

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Posted by Ken in: television

College Football 2014: Week 4 Preview

Thursday, 2014 September 18 - 6:54 pm

Michigan will be tested by Utah; N.C. State plays Presbyterian Girl's Junior High School.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2014: Week 3 Recap

Thursday, 2014 September 18 - 6:35 pm

Michigan and N.C. State both win handily.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2014: Week 3 Preview

Thursday, 2014 September 11 - 10:15 am

Sorry, no time for an extended preview this week.

Michigan plays Miami (OH) at home; it's a soft opponent which will hopefully take some of the sting out of last week's loss. The game is on BTN at 3:30. Prediction: Michigan 58, Miami 3.

N.C. State plays at South Florida, which will be a stern test. It's also at 3:30, on CBSSN. Prediction: N.C. State 27, USF 33.

Your Game of the Week is Tennessee at #4 Georgia at 8:00 on ABC.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

Apple Watch: Um, Apple Watch

Wednesday, 2014 September 10 - 12:59 pm

I've always called my Apple posts "Apple Watch", but now there's an actual Apple Watch so maybe I should call them something else.

So the big Apple event was yesterday... here's a brief recap and my opinions.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

College Football 2014: Week 2 Recap

Sunday, 2014 September 7 - 11:23 am

The Big Ten collapses into a big heap; N.C. State manages another comeback.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2014: Week 2 Preview

Saturday, 2014 September 6 - 10:45 am

Michigan plays Notre Dame one more time before the series goes on hiatus; N.C. State plays Old Dominion.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2014: Week 1 Recap

Monday, 2014 September 1 - 1:05 pm

Michigan restores order to the universe; N.C. State squeaks out a win.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

Footbaww 2014

Sunday, 2014 August 24 - 7:06 pm

Football week is finally here, so it's time to fire up the old blog again.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

Apple Watch: Apple Acquires Beats for $3 Billion

Wednesday, 2014 May 28 - 5:36 pm

Apple today announced that they will acquire Beats Electronics and Beats Music for a total of $3 billion, confirming rumors that have been flying around for the past few weeks. Apple will spend $2.6 billion up front and another $400 million over time. This is slightly less than the original rumored amount of $3.2 billion.

There's been a lot of speculation about the reasons behind the acquisition, and why Apple was willing to spend so much money. Here's a roundup of some of the possible reasons.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Apple Watch: SmartHome Rumors Brewing

Tuesday, 2014 May 27 - 12:36 pm

A large number of Apple-related sites are buzzing about the possibility of a "smart home" (or "connected home") system to be announced at the upcoming WWDC in June. I had speculated about this back in 2011... it does seem to fit with Apple's philosophy of taking an existing technology with a terrible user experience and making it better.

Let's consider what an Apple-based system might look like.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Apple Watch: 2014 Predictions

Wednesday, 2014 January 1 - 3:57 pm

The annual ritual continues... here are my Apple predictions for the year.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

College Football 2013: Week 13 Recap and Week 14 Preview

Saturday, 2013 November 30 - 12:48 pm

This will probably be the last football post of the season. Go Blue.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 12 Recap

Friday, 2013 November 22 - 4:59 pm

Michigan wins in bizarre fashion; N.C. State loses again.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 12 Preview

Saturday, 2013 November 16 - 12:09 pm

I am having trouble getting enthused for these games.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 11 Recap

Sunday, 2013 November 10 - 12:23 pm

It's looking like a lost season for both Michigan and N.C. State at this point. Michigan loses to Nebraska; N.C. State loses to Duke.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 11 Preview

Thursday, 2013 November 7 - 7:29 pm

Michigan plays Nebraska; N.C. State plays Duke.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 10 Recap

Thursday, 2013 November 7 - 6:26 pm

Ugh. And Ugh.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 10 Preview

Saturday, 2013 November 2 - 9:33 am

It's rivalry week... Michigan plays at Michigan State, North Carolina plays at North Carolina State.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

Apple News

Monday, 2013 October 28 - 10:05 pm

I'm a bit behind on Apple news, so let's catch up.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

College Football 2013: Week 9 Recap

Monday, 2013 October 28 - 9:19 pm

Michigan was idle; N.C. State gets demolished.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 9 Preview

Saturday, 2013 October 26 - 9:16 am

Michigan is idle; N.C. State travels to Florida State.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

Apple Announcements Coming Tomorrow

Monday, 2013 October 21 - 11:26 pm

Some last minute predictions for Apple's media event tomorrow.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

College Football 2013: Week 8 Recap

Monday, 2013 October 21 - 10:53 pm

Michigan wins a wild shootout; N.C. State was idle. Also, four top ten teams lose.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 8 Preview

Saturday, 2013 October 19 - 8:49 am

Michigan plays Indiana; N.C. State has a bye.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 7 Recap

Thursday, 2013 October 17 - 8:39 pm

Ugh. And ugh.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

The Evolution of Blogging

Sunday, 2013 October 13 - 11:21 am

Well, I've finally had enough. As of today, there'll be no more comments on this blog.

There was a time when blogging was a community conversation. We found people with common beliefs and interests, we shared information and personal stories with each other, and we had a constructive dialog via our comment sections. I made several real-life friends through this blog, and I learned to open up about myself; I don't regret any of it.

But blogging has changed as a medium. Now, really, there are basically two types of blog commenters: rabid Obama-bashing trolls, and spammers. I didn't get so much of the former category on this blog, but I did get buckets and buckets of spam. Despite all my attempts to rein it in (CAPTCHA, keyword blocking, IP address blocking, country blocking), I still got a thousand spam comments for every useful one. I'm tired of trying to ban every possible spelling and usage of "Oakley", "Gucci", and "Nike". Handling email spam is easy compared to handling comment spam.

I'm really not sure where I want to go with this blog in general. I don't write as much overall, as I'm sure you can tell. For short-form stuff, I've pretty much switched to Facebook and Twitter. I still like having this blog for longer-form writing every now and then, because I like having it under my control, and I like that my posts won't get lost in all the noise of social media sites.

I predict that someday we'll come up with something new: some kind of decentralized social media organization, one where we can connect with real people and real friends, but cut out spammers, trolls, and advertisers. Ideally it'd be a place where each person has some control over their own layout and content. The technology exists; someone just has to put it together and find a way for it to gain widespread adoption.

Maybe we'll call it "Geocities".

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Posted by Ken in: bloggers, commentary, site-business

College Football 2013: Week 7 Preview

Saturday, 2013 October 12 - 10:50 am

Michigan plays at Penn State; N.C. State plays Syracuse.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 6 Recap

Friday, 2013 October 11 - 9:30 am

Michigan wins the Little Brown Jug; N.C. State gets an ugly loss.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 6 Preview

Wednesday, 2013 October 2 - 9:05 am

Michigan starts Big Ten play against Minnesota; N.C. State plays Wake Forest.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

Thoughts on Breaking Bad

Tuesday, 2013 October 1 - 9:32 am

I don't think it's hyperbole to say that "Breaking Bad" was the best TV show I've ever seen.

SPOILER ALERT:
If you haven't watched the show and don't want spoilers, stop reading now.

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Posted by Ken in: television

College Football 2013: Week 5 Recap

Tuesday, 2013 October 1 - 8:46 am

Michigan was on a bye; N.C. State easily defeats Central Michigan.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

U.S. Government Shuts Down

Tuesday, 2013 October 1 - 8:13 am

Here we go again.

Much like in 1995, Congress has shut down the federal government by refusing to pass a continuing resolution to fund its operations. In 1995 the conflict was largely over the Republicans' desire to cut Medicare. This time, it's all about a minority faction of the House, the Tea Party, and their continuing obsession with repealing the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare").

Some facts about the shutdown:

Among the affected will be active duty military personnel, who will see delays in getting paychecks.
This will do nothing to reduce the deficit; in fact, the act of shutting down and restarting government operations will cost billions of dollars.
This will do nothing to halt Obamacare.

So a shutdown accomplishes no Republican political priorities, it hurts Republican as well as Democratic constituents, and a large number of Republicans are against the idea. It is fifty or so Tea Party Republicans in the house that are holding the other 485 members of the House and Senate hostage until we appease their tantrums over Obamacare. (I don't think "tantrum" is an overstatement.) This is an outrageous upending of the democratic political process.

Why do John Boehner and mainstream Republicans go along with this? Because in the gerrymandered House districts in their states, they are terrified of Tea Party opposition in their re-election primaries, and they can't beat Democratic opponents without Tea Party support.

I predict that the mainstream GOP will cave on the issue and pass a funding bill without ties to Obamacare. If Boehner is smart, he will try to negotiate on some other point, like tax and spending reductions, but he will leave Obamacare off the table. He will infuriate some Tea Party Republicans and may in fact lose his chair as Speaker of the House, but at some point Republicans will surely come to understand that their job is to provide a functioning government for the people.

My sincere hope is that this event will end up fracturing the Tea Party from the Republican party as a whole; and that either the Tea Party will wither away and die, or that the Tea Party will be the new conservative opposition party and that mainstream Republicans en masse will defect to the Democratic party instead.

Please write to your Congressional representatives to tell them to stop acting like children.

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Posted by Ken in: politics

College Football 2013: Week 5 Preview

Saturday, 2013 September 28 - 8:43 am

Michigan has a bye; N.C. State plays Central Michigan.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 4 Recap

Friday, 2013 September 27 - 10:38 pm

Michigan squeaks by UConn; N.C. State loses to Clemson.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 4 Preview

Wednesday, 2013 September 18 - 10:32 pm

Michigan plays at UConn Saturday night; N.C. State plays at home against Clemson Thursday night on national TV.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 3 Recap

Sunday, 2013 September 15 - 3:15 pm

Michigan narrowly avoids an embarrassing defeat.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 3 Preview

Thursday, 2013 September 12 - 8:15 pm

Michigan plays Akron; N.C. State has a bye before a Thursday game in Week 4.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 2 Recap

Thursday, 2013 September 12 - 8:02 pm

Michigan scores a big win against Notre Dame; N.C. State struggles to put away I-AA Richmond.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 2 Preview

Saturday, 2013 September 7 - 11:40 am

Sorry, I don't have time for a proper preview today. Here's a mini version.

Predictions:
Michigan 29, Notre Dame 21.
N.C. State 54, Richmond 6.

Games to Watch on TV
Florida at Miami, noon on ESPN.
South Carolina at Georgia, 4:30 on ESPN.
Notre Dame at Michigan, 8:00 on ESPN.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

Samsung Galaxy Gear

Thursday, 2013 September 5 - 7:14 am

Samsung announced several new and updated products; the one that's garnering the most attention is the Galaxy Gear wrist device.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Microsoft Buys Nokia's Phone Unit

Tuesday, 2013 September 3 - 10:56 am

Microsoft announced today that it is purchasing Nokia's devices and services unit, which most notably includes the mobile phone business, Nokia's Lumia series that runs the Windows Phone 8 operating system. Nokia was really the only successful Windows Phone vendor; HTC, Huawei, and Samsung were far behind.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

College Football 2013: Week 1 Recap

Monday, 2013 September 2 - 10:59 am

Michigan and N.C. State both win their openers handily.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

College Football 2013: Week 1 Preview

Wednesday, 2013 August 28 - 10:51 pm

FOOTBAWWWWW. Michigan hosts Central Michigan and NCSU plays Louisiana Tech in the season openers this weekend.

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Posted by Ken in: sports

This Week in SCOTUS

Saturday, 2013 June 29 - 7:53 pm

It's been a big week at the Supreme Court this week. Here's a round-up for those of you who aren't SCOTUS-watchers.

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Posted by Ken in: politics

Viacom Signs Deal with Amazon Prime

Tuesday, 2013 June 4 - 12:38 pm

I've always told my friends that if Comedy Central and ESPN were available over the Internet instead of exclusively on cable, that would be enough for me to ditch my cable subscription and "cut the cord".

I think we're getting there.

Viacom and Amazon today announced that a number of shows from Comedy Central (and Nickelodeon) will now be available on Amazon Prime. It strikes me that Amazon and Netflix have become the pioneer "networks" on a new broadcast medium: the Internet. Existing content providers will have to evolve to compete, just as the broadcast networks had to become cable networks in order to survive thirty years ago.

My prediction is that some time in the next couple of years, the ABC/Disney/ESPN empire will either partner with one of these outlets or create their own paid streaming service. CBS will follow next; NBC (owned by Comcast) and all the Time Warner-owned stations will come around last. Then we'll finally have an open television market where the cable companies don't have a stranglehold on the terms of distribution, and content providers can negotiate subscription prices directly with consumers. This is how a free market is supposed to work; what we have now is effectively a monopoly.

The rub, of course, is that cable companies are also Internet service providers, and may respond to this threat by jacking up Internet rates or metering the bandwidth available for competing video services. So the other part of the equation is that we need a more competitive Internet market, or municipal Internet providers.

Of course, stupid states like my own (North Carolina) have legislation to prohibit municipal Internet providers... in order to protect the anti-competitive market that exists today. Sigh. Can you imagine if Time Warner were your electricity provider? If they could, they'd charge you extra for electricity being used for your computer, if they knew you were using it to watch YouTube.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch, television

Site Updates

Saturday, 2013 May 4 - 2:29 pm

Hey, yeah, this blog is still alive... barely.

Lately I've been fending off comment spam like crazy. I have a giant list of banned keywords, URLs, and IP addresses, but it always seems like I'm a step behind the spammers. My latest step is to ban all comments from certain countries, especially China... I think 90% of my comment spam comes from China.

Frankly I'm not sure what's going to become of this blog in the long term. Every now and then I feel like I have a long-form essay to post, but that seems like it happens less and less often. Meanwhile all my short-form stuff goes onto Facebook, or less frequently, Twitter. Is blogging dead? Very few of my friends do it any more.

I have a sentimental attachment to this site so I doubt it'll go away any time in the near future. Maybe what I need is a new project, like the frozen lunches thing I did a while back. Hmm.

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Posted by Ken in: site-business

Newtown

Tuesday, 2013 January 22 - 2:09 am

It's been a month since the Newtown shooting and I've stayed quiet about the issue of gun control until now. But I think I need to say something.

Being a civil libertarian, there's a part of me that believes that responsible gun ownership is part of living in a free society. But that doesn't mean it can't be regulated and controlled in a sane manner.

I would hope that we would all agree on a couple of things. First, we should not tolerate living in a society where it is relatively easy for a teenager with mental health issues to walk into a school and murder first graders, using a weapon that has no practical use in either self-defense or hunting. So doing nothing is not the answer. The status quo is unacceptable.

Second, not everyone should be allowed to own nuclear weapons, nerve gas, or fighter jets... so regardless of where you stand on handguns and assault rifles, surely you agree that there's a line that should be drawn somewhere, and the right to bear "arms" is not an absolute license to own any kind of weapon imaginable. We should be able to have a discussion on where that line should be drawn, without accusing each other of being anti-American or part of a socialist conspiracy.

As for me, I will probably never own a gun. Not to be critical of my gun-owning friends, but if I ever reach a point where I think it's necessary to have a gun to keep me or my family safe, then it means that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with my life. I'll change my tune when the zombie apocalypse comes, but as of today I'm much more likely to die from alcohol poisoning than an armed assailant, and I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much.

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Posted by Ken in: commentary, politics

Apple Watch: 2013 Predictions

Tuesday, 2013 January 1 - 7:22 pm

Time for my annual Apple predictions.

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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

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