Thursday, October 31, 2013

The Giraffe Riddle, A Spoiler, and a Hoax

I will put the spoiler at the bottom in case you're curious...


We have all seen it by now, or at least those of us who have Facebook up and running.   The riddle is asked, you answer, and if you get it wrong you're supposed to change your picture to a giraffe for three days.

Ok, all in good fun, but No, even if I HAD gotten it wrong, I wouldn't do the picture thing.   I'm tall enough as it is, and a little better looking than a giraffe.

Just a little.

Now, the hoax that is going around is some misinformation.  There used to be bugs in Windows that would allow a picture file (.JPG) to hold a virus in it.  Not any more, that's been fixed.  You can pass messages stuffed in pictures in the background labels in the picture, you can pass the location of the place the picture was taken, and other random information.   That is part of the "EXIF" Header, and perfectly safe.  In fact there are programs that take advantage of it.  The process is called "Steganography" and sounds like a tyrannosaurus mated with a Polaroid camera and had a picture as a baby.  

You can read the whole story about the hoax on this link to a handy security blog site.

Now, the spoiler.

I read the riddle and immediately thought of the answer.  Followed by the typical "Oh gees how could they miss it?".   Yeah and I was good at Trivial Pursuit too.  Everyone who was got a little smug collecting those plastic cheese wedges but hey, it's all in good fun.


The answer?   Follow this link to CNN.   Gotcha!

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