Misc. Ramblings

Today is the day. I plan to turn in the paper during lunch today. It is the last paper to do to complete my Masters of Arts in Public Administration. Yes, we will probably have to re-write some of it before graduation in two weeks, but the bulk of it is done. By bulk I mean 143 pages.

Hail them Mr. Sulu. The Star Trek convention is coming to town on May 31st. Scheduled to appear are George "Mr. Sulu" Takei, and Web Master Will "I'm not a dork, I just played one on TV" Wheaton. Tickets on sale now.

Aloha!

Sorry, no post today. I'm trying to get some sleep to recover from finishing the first draft of our 143 page paper.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

I'm still very tired, and a little worse for wear (I'm getting too old to pull these all-nighters like a college freshman cramming for finals). But here I am.

Speak softly and carry a sawed-off shotgun. One of the interesting tid-bits that came out of the recent Russian Soyuz spacecraft landing is the news that the capsule is armed. It seems an earlier off-target capsule landed among a pack of hungry wolves, so, from that point forward, all Soyuz spacecraft came armed with a shotgun. What was that about the right to arm [Russian] bears? See the story, via Fark here.

"They took everything, even the silverware." Looting broke out in the city. Mobs of crazed, greedy people took anything that wasn't welded down. Nothing was safe. It was as if the thin veil of civilization was torn into shreds by the animalistic rampage. Iraq? Nope. Try the United Nations - in New York City. It seems the food workers went on strike, leaving thousands of the world's elite, peace-loving diplomats without food. So what did they do? They acted like the blood-thirsty sycophantic sybarites that they are and looted the restaurants taking everything with them. See the full story here.

Top 75 Network Security Tools For those of you who need to know such things, here's a list of security tools that you may, or may not, be aware of. Most of the well known ones are there but a few news ones are among the old. So take a quick look here for the list. Now if they would just write more tools for token-ring networks I would be extremely happy.

Aloha!

As is the case with many judicial decisions, there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is the the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed yesterday that fraud is not protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In ILLINOIS EX REL. MADIGAN, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ILLINOIS v.TELEMARKETING ASSOCIATES, INC., ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF ILLINOIS, No.01-1806, 538 U.S.____(2003) (see it here in a 346k pdf file)

The Illinois Attorney General filed a complaint in state court, alleging, inter alia, that Telemarketers represented to donors that a significant amount of each dollar donated would be paid over to VietNow for specifically identified charitable endeavors, and that such representations were knowingly deceptive and materially false, constituted a fraud, and were made for Telemarketers' private pecuniary benefit.

In this case, VietNow, a charitable nonprofit corporation contracted with a telemarketer to solicit donations. The contract provided, among other things, that 85 percent of the money received would go to the for profit telemarketer, leaving 15 cents, on every dollar, to VietNow. The fraud occurred when the Telemarketers intentionally misled prospective donors into believing the majority of the donation would be going to VietNow.

The bad news (other than 85 percent of the donations going to the telemarketer and not to help Vietnam veterans - ed)? That the court reaffirmed that charitable solicitations are protected speech. That is, commercial speech, in the form of a charitable solicitation, even if, theoretically, 99.99999999 percent of the donation went to the telemarketer, is protected under the First Amendment as long as the Telemarketers does not mislead anyone regarding the amount going to them. Of course, the potential donor must ask the telemarketer what the split is because the telemarketer is under no obligation to volunteer that information. And even if you ask, that doesn't mean the telemarketer has to divulge that information. But if they refuse to tell you, and you decide to give them money anyway, then shame on you.

I guess you can file this under "let the buyer (or in this case, donor) beware."

Aloha!

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS VIRTUE OF IT'S NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND TOP SECRET.

MY NAME IS SADDAM AND I AM A TOP OFFICIALS OF THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT [NOW IN TEMPORARY EXILE]. SOMEONE RECENTLY LEFT A BILLION U.S. DOLLARS (1,000,000,000) ON MY DOORSTEP DURING THE NIGHT HOURS AND WISH TO MOVE THE LOOT FULLY LEGAL FUNDS.

IN ORDER TO COMMENCE THIS TRANSACTION I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE, KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERTISE TO ENABLE US RECEIVE THE SAID TRAPPED FUNDS ABROAD, FOR THE SUBSEQUENT PURCHASE AND INVENTORY OF THE GOODS TO BE IMPORTED AND THE INVESTMENT IN EUROPE (FRANCE AND GERMANY).

I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU SOONEST.

[SIGNED]SADDAM HUSSEIN al-MAJD al-TIKRITI

PS: I ALSO HAVE SOME WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION THAT YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN.

Aloha!

Living out in the middle of the Pacific has some downsides. One of those is getting things delivered on time. I've already chronicled the trials and tribulations I've had with overnight delivery services. The last installment was with FedEx and the time before that was UPS. Well, it's back to UPS again.

I paid $25 for overnight shipping from Colorado to here. $25. US. Hard currency. The product of the sweat of my brow (do brows sweat? - ed.).

So I start tracking the package. It's picked up on Tuesday, May 6th at about 4:50 p.m.. It then makes its way to the Ontario, California hub by 11:00 p.m. that night. Six hours later, at 5:00 a.m., it is on its way to Honolulu. Due to the wonders of time zones, it arrives in Honolulu 7:45 a.m. (a flight from California takes about 5 hours).

Up to this time, the scheduled delivery date was Wednesday, May 7th. This is as it should be when you pay for overnight delivery service. But. The delivery date has been pushed back to Thursday, May 8th.

What was that about one-day service? But lo, wait! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the package being delivered even as I write this! Oh well, never mind.

In a related vein, why does it cost more to air ship something from California to Hawai'i then it does to fly the same item from California to Florida? Let's take a look: San Francisco to Miami is about 2,600 miles (~4,200km) but San Francisco to Honolulu is only 2,400 (~3,900km)(follow this link here to get the distance between various cities). Now, let's look at the cost of sending a one-pound UPS Pak via next day air: SF to Miami: $29.58 and SF to Honolulu: $31.11 - shorter distance, higher price.

Yes, UPS might be able to use a cheaper, smaller jet between San Francisco and Miami, but the cost per pound per mile would probably still be higher if they did multiple stops along the way and had less capacity to carry cargo. I dunno, maybe jet fuel costs less to burn over land than water?

What, me worry? Aloha!

Follow the link here to a quick alpha 3 build 4015 preview of the next version of Microsoft's Windows, codename: "Longhorn." This is still pre-beta but is described as having "sweeping changes over its predecessors and be the most significant release of Microsoft's desktop operating system since Windows 95." I dunno. All I know is what I see on the site and it looks a lot like XP. To use a tired phrase, the changes appear to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But again, I don't have a copy of it and so I can only comment based on what I see in the review. YMMV. Thanks to the good Doc for the link.

I've been farting around with testing the new Phoenix/Firebird/Mozilla browser and am getting to like it. I'm not sure I will switch from Opera/IE but Firebird has some good points (mostly borrowed from Opera, me thinks).

Fir' example, tabbed windows. I can setup a folder and place links to all of the Daynoters in it. Then, in one click, I can have all of the links open into separate tabs - ready for me to read at my leisure, rather than waiting for slow connections. Kewl. Not original, because Opera can do that, but kewl nonetheless.

In addition, all of the tabs make use of the favorite icon function, if your website is so enabled. And like Opera, there is a small window for typing in queries that are sent to google for searching on. Unlike Opera, it doesn't have ads, at least, not yet. You have to reckon that their business model will require the transfer of money from you to them at some point, but I guess that is down the road a bit.

It becomes clear to me why we in Hawai'i have so many problems with the "Lower 48." This story here says the town of Glassport, Pennsylvania did not recognize Alaska or Hawai'i as being part of the US. At least, as far as the flag they were flying was concerned. It seems no one got around to changing the flag hanging in the city counsel room since at least 1959. So, of course, the flag had only 48 stars.

Oh well, maybe sometime they'll get around to spelling the name of our state correctly. Hawai'i. That's an okina between the two "i"s in Hawai'i. Actually, I use the apostrophe because it's as close to the okina that I can find in the default character sets. If I could only figure out how to use the UTF characters there maybe something closer. Maybe someday when I have more time.

In any case, what's the fuss? No, this is not a case of being politically correct. The okina is a glottal stop used to show the proper pronunciation, and therefore the proper meaning of a word. You literally are misspelling a word if the punctuation marks are left out and if you misspell something (he says, while madly grabbing for the dictionary), you are not communicating effectively.

Will the world come to an end if you don't use an okina or apostrophe? No, but if you want to communicate well, you need to know how to spell.

Aloha!

[EFX - background sound of voices singing]

I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love,
Grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves.
I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,
I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.
[Repeat the last two lines, and in the background:]
It's the real thing, Coke is what the world wants today.

Yes, boys and girls. You can now watch 50 years of Coke commercials via the Library of Congress (LOC) site here. No, I'm not going to take any cheap shots about the waste of tax dollars [since when? - ed.] but the LOC has a retrospective collection of Coke commercials available in (hawk, spit) RealG2 format. From the Hilltop to Mean Joe Greene to the polar bears, they are all there (well, almost all). Drink up. Thanks to Fark for the link.

Computer stores must love people who don't know anything about computers. At least, they must love the money they can separate from technophobes. For example, think of the non-technical person looking for a flatbed scanner. Now-a-days, scanners are dirt cheap. The local CompUSA has several HPs for less than $100 USD (not that I'm advocating buying HP).

No, you aren't going to be doing super high quality work with any of the sub-$100 versions and no you aren't going to be doing it very quickly, but they do the job for most people. So salesmen must fall over themselves when a naive person comes walking in saying: "Sell me a scanner. No, I don't know anything about scanners. No, I don't know what kind of software I need. No, I don't know what kind of output file I need. Just sell me something because I know I need one."

So, of course they sell him or her the $450 model that can scan in TRILLIONS of colors. Surely, trillions of colors must be better than mere millions. Right? Surely 2,400 X 2,400 resolution must be better than lowly 1,400 X 1,400. Right? Surely one that can scan transparencies and film is better than one that can't right?

But what if all you will be scanning is a sheet of paper with a signature on it? What if all the receiver wants is confirmation that you got their document and have signed it?

In that case, who the *%^! cares whether it can scan in 48-bit color or at 2,400dpi? All of that is irrelevant BS to make people think they are getting value for their money. I don't know who to be more angry towards - the salesperson for taking advantage of people or the buyer for not knowing enough to ask the right questions.

Our graduate school group had another busy weekend. On Saturday, we met from 8:30 a.m. to midnight working on the the second draft of our final capstone project paper. We've tried to cut the number pages down by focusing the writing so that it reads better but, its been slow going.

If you ever have the opportunity to write a substantive report, with a group of diverse people, run away as fast as you can. I have yet to see, and I've been doing this for almost 20 years, a well-written report done by a committee. The only way it works is if one person takes on the responsibility and does it alone. Yes, you take the input of everyone on the committee, but it has to be one voice. Otherwise, things get very confusing, very quickly.

When I began this process I noted we would have problems because of this committee form of writing and, indeed, that is what has happened. But, as with everything else during the last three years, it has been a learning experience.

We have until next week Monday to get the paper in a form that is acceptable to our professor.

Aloha!

There are a lot of Linux command-line users who think its the best thing there is in operating systems (OS). And for what they use Linux for, they may be right. That is, they can run their web and mail servers for months without having to lift a finger and the total cost of doing so is low relative to other operating systems.

But when it comes to the desktop, things get a little more cloudy. Oh, these people still look down their noses at anyone who doesn't use Linux, but then, most of them probably don't earn a living by running a word processor or spreadsheet.

Those that do are the early adopters. These are the people that enjoy exploring new environments. To boldly go where no man has gone before. They seek out the challenge of getting the OS to do your bidding. To conquer it, to beat it into submission is sufficient justification to continue.

But for the rest of us, all we want our OS to do is run the applications that help us do our jobs. We don't care what OS it runs on as long as it runs.

The Linux adherents respond saying: There are thousands of applications that run on Linux. And they are right. But most of them are alphaware full of bugs. Of the few that are stable, many are not compatible in reading and writing file formats with what we use.

Still, even if Linux desktop applications were as stable, compatible, and usable as any other operating system - people still wouldn't switch to Linux, or any other OS, because they would have to learn a new way of doing things.

People do not like change that costs them something (e.g., time, money, or effort) but results in nothing more than a net of zero. Hence, if another OS is to catch on with the rest of the human race, it will have to much better than what people use now. Not as good. Not a little better. But much better.

It must be faster, more stable, backwards compatible, cheaper, and marketed better.

Otherwise, inertia alone will keep people from changing to it.

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Sorry for no post yesterday but I was down with a cold. I haven't been able to get much sleep because we were working on the second draft of our capstone thesis paper. We turned that in on Monday. This afternoon we will get feedback from our professor and probably do a third, and hopefully last, draft by this weekend. We have our work cut out for us.

Aloha!

Our graduate school group worked hard into the night trying to finish the third draft of our capstone thesis paper.

We hope to be done by tomorrow afternoon but I'm not confident the changes we made will be enough for our professor.

In either case, graduation is Sunday so all we can do is all we can do...

Aloha!

With the success of the re-make movie Charlies Angels, we should not be surprised that other 80's era TV shows are in development. For example: Starsky & Hutch, Magnum P.I., Hawaii Five-O, The A-Team, Knight Rider, MacGyver and The Six Million Dollar Man. See the story here. Thanks to Fark for the link.

Bear Bites Sub. Follow this link here to the story of the hungry polar bear that decided the tail fin of a nuclear sub looked like lunch. Thanks for Don Armstrong for the link.

Star Trek Bites. Or I should say this guy has issues with Star Trek and lists the top ten things he doesn't like about it. A sample of his list: Noisy doors (think WD-40). The holodeck being used for everything except what it probably would be used for (think latex). And the Prime Directive (think mutual suicide pact). See the list here.

Dog is caddy. No, I didn't say dog bites caddy. I said dog is caddy. See the story here abut the dog that pulls a special built cart that hauls his masters balls around. And club(s).

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I have the third, and I hope last, draft of our paper. There are a few more things to check before I turn it in after work today but it looks pretty good. Our professor says he is pleased with the quality of the paper so we are happy. Now we need to graduate on Sunday.

Next up is working on creating a presentation before the retirement system Board of Trustees. Once that is done, we will be done.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Graduation was yesterday. It started a little after 2:00 p.m. and went to almost 4:30. I'm told, although I have not checked this, that over 400 students got their Masters, Doctorates, JDs, and MDs yesterday. I was one of them.

The commencement speaker was Dick Parsons, CEO of AOL/Time Warner. Parsons attended the University of Hawai'i for four years but apparently did not graduate from here. I'm not sure having someone from AOL is a Good Thing given the reputation it has but I guess Parsons was as good as anyone. It's interesting that Parsons is not the only Hawai'i connection to AOL. Steve Case was born and raised here, but then, you knew that.

Although I did graduate, we still have more work to do on our project. We have a few loose ends to tie up on the paper and then we need to do a presentation to the Board of Trustees of the Hawai'i public Employees Retirement System. The presentation will probably take place in June so we have until then to work on that.

I would be remiss not to thank the people who made my graduation possible. First, my mother and late father who instilled in me an appreciation for education. To my wife, who supported me through the difficult times. And to my professors who accepted nothing less than academic excellence. Thank you to one and all. I could not have done it without you. Mahalo.

PS. I was indeed remiss and forgot our group members. If it wasn't for their hard work, there wouldn't be a paper to turn in.

(Thanks to The Pompous Git for the reminder).

Aloha!

Hollywood celebrities don't have the best of reputations. From drug abuse to sex scandals to actors who use their status to publicize their wayward views it is difficult to find stories about the good that can be done.

This is one of those stories.

Little Jonny is like any other young boy. He loves to play basketball and hang out with his friends in Arizona. Some would even say he's a lucky kid because, during the summers, he gets to go to the Big Island of Hawai'i to spend time with his grandparents.

Five years ago, when he turned nine, he found out he had rare disease called adrenoleukodystrophy. Some of you may recognize the disease as the one portrayed in the 1993 movie "Lorenzo's Oil." The disease is characterized by a degeneration of the myelin sheath on nerve fibers in the brain which leads to progressive neurological disability.

Jonny knew he did not have a lot of time left on this earth but before his time was up, he wanted to do one thing. Meet a Hollywood star. Not just any star, but one that seemed to like kids because he seemed so much to be one himself. So his parents contacted the "Make a Wish Foundation." The Foundation's mission is to "grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength, and joy."

But this disease acts so quickly that time was rapidly running out on Jonny and it didn't look like the Foundation would be able to make this little guy's wish come true. However, they were able to arrange for Jonny's second wish of seeing an Arizona Cardinals - Dallas Cowboys National Football League game.

But news of the boy's first wish somehow made it to the star. He was so moved by the story that he paid for all the expenses of flying Jonny and his mother to Culver City, California where he was filming a movie. When Jonny arrived on set, the star shut down production for the day and spent time playing basketball and doing other stuff Jonny wanted to do.

By this time, the disease had progressed to a point where Jonny couldn't hear, but the star used a pad of paper and wrote down everything he wanted to say to Jonny. Needless to say, that one day meant more to Jonny than almost any other day in his too short life.

This actor didn't need to do what he did and he certainly didn't do it for the publicity because he made sure there wasn't any. If it wasn't for the boy's grandfather telling the story, no one outside of the family would have known.

The day ended all to quickly and Jonny had to return home. But the star kept in touch with the family via letters over the next few months. And then the day came that all knew would be coming. The disease that had already taken Jonny's hearing, and then his eye sight, also took his life.

Upon getting the news of this, the star wrote one last heartfelt two-page letter to Jonny's grieving parents. We don't know for sure what the letter says but one could guess he tried to give them support and peace. This, from a man who touched a boy's life but for one day.

The actor's name? Adam Sandler. Whatever his faults and whatever his skills as an actor may be, the world could use a few more heroes like him.

Aloha!

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with being rich. There are good people who are rich and evil people who are poor (and vice versa). Even the Bible talks only about how the love of money is a sin and how that love makes it more difficult to go to Heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

So it should not come as a surprise when billionaire Warren Buffet comes out against a tax cut that would directly benefit him and others of his economic stratum (see the story here from the Washington Post. Note: requires free registration). Below are a few snippets of his column:

The annual Forbes 400 lists prove that -- with occasional blips -- the rich do indeed get richer. Nonetheless, the Senate voted last week to supply major aid to the rich in their pursuit of even greater wealth.

Administration officials say that the $310 million suddenly added to my wallet would stimulate the economy because I would invest it and thereby create jobs. But they conveniently forget that if Berkshire kept the money, it would invest that same amount, creating jobs as well.

Overall, it's hard to conceive of anything sillier than the schedule the Senate has laid out. Indeed, the first President Bush had a name for such activities: "voodoo economics." The manipulation of enactment and sunset dates of tax changes is Enron-style accounting, and a Congress that has recently demanded honest corporate numbers should now look hard at its own practices.

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a "break" requires -- now or down the line -- that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.

Supporters of making dividends tax-free like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my class.

While being rich is a Good Thing, being greedy is something else (contrary to Gordon Gecko's famous "Greed is good." movie speech). The US Senate tax plan would steal, and I don't think that is too harsh a word, hundreds of millions of dollars from the middle class and working poor and give it to the top few percent that are rich. To what public purpose would this be done? How is it that Buffet now pays about the same percentage of his income (30 percent) as does the receptionist at the front door? How would it make things better, under the tax plan, for his tax rate to then drop to three percent while the receptionist continues to pay 30 percent?

As Buffet notes, the money would be invested and jobs would be created whether it was transferred to the rich or not. Hence, it seems, the only plausible explanation is to reward the people who helped the Senators to be where they are. But not only is this wrong-headed, it is poor public policy.

Aloha!

Today is my semi-annual PC deep cleaning so I will be off-line for awhile. In addition, I will be taking the day off tomorrow to make it a long weekend. So, there probably won't be any post.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Even though I was supposed to relax and recover from the rigors of finishing our final paper, I ended up doing all kinds of stuff around the house that had been put off while doing other things.

On the other hand, I did get some much needed sleep so it wasn't all work.

As to computer related things, we got approval at work to purchase some new PCs. We have a bunch of Dell OptiPlex GX1s with Pentium II 350MHz CPUs and 64MB of RAM. Needless to say, they have served us well but need to be replaced. So we will be getting Dell GX260Ds with 2.66 GHz Pentium 4s, 512MB of RAM, DVD burners, and ATI Radeon video cards. In addition, we will get Dell 17-inch flat panel LCD monitors. The total cost per PC is about $1,800, including monitors, tax, and shipping. If all goes well (inset sound of person knocking on wood), we should get the PCs in a about a month.

Aloha!

The Register has a post here about another Microsoft Windows security update being pulled because it creates problems greater than it solves. The update cuts all access to the Internet because of an interaction with third-party anti-virus/firewall software.

This is similar to the last update, noted in my April 23rd post (see it here) where I made a brief mention about the problem because it seemed to be affecting one of my PCs. The problem could be resolved only after disabling the ZoneAlarm firewall that I was using. Essentially, the PC came to almost a complete halt while CPU utilization went to 100 percent.

The original 811493 patch I talked about has been reissued here. There is also a Knowledge Base 819634 article here.

I don't know when the latest problem will be fixed, but one must wonder about how much regression testing is done before these updates are released. I realize that there has to be a balance between rushing a fix to a security flaw versus testing the fix to ensure it does not create its own problem. But to modify the old saying; "If you can measure the number of errors you are creating, you are creating too many."

Aloha!

Sorry. No post today. I'm up to my ears in work, both from my day job and finishing the PowerPoint presentation for my Masters. The presentation is next week Wednesday so no time for the wicked.

Aloha!

Sorry for the slightly late posting this morning. I wanted to install the latest update to MoveableType before posting. Thanks to fellow Daynoter Phil Hough for the heads up. This also reminded me to resubscribe to the MT listserv. I'm not sure why I stopped getting their notices but this was as good an opportunity as any to get back on the list.

Speaking of updates, Opera is in version 7.11 if you haven't downloaded it yet. I tend to use Firebird (notwithstanding some of the misguided people who don't get out much) more often then not now-a-days but Opera is good to use if I think I might need the heavy armor to back me up.

Speaking of armor, there was a popular pro-war email that made the rounds that purported to be between pro and anti-war supporters and how the reason(s) for the war kept changing (I did a Goole search to try to find it but was not successful). Well, now comes the other side. See the "What a tangled web we weave" here. I've said it before, Gulf War II had two public objectives: Kill Sadam Hussein and recover the weapons of mass destruction. So far, it is not clear that either have been achieved.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!