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I'm at home today due to a cold. I've been having problems with an ear infection, sore throat, and now congested nose so I've decided to stay home today and get some rest. See you all back here on Monday (if the creek don't rise, etc...)
Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!
Lots of links today going back to last week. But I need to add one more that I forgot to add. This one is to fellow Daynoter Tom Syroid's mirrored site. Fellow Daynoter Brian Bilbrey has mirrored Tom's site so that the words of wisdom contained therein can still be accessed and found via Google.
The link to Tom's site is here.
The state of Florida has been hit with one hurricane after another this year. While I'm sure there's no connection between these ActsOfGod and the stealing of the 2000 presidential election, I think it would be a good idea for Florida Governor Jeb Bush to resign and offer to sacrifice a fatted calf to atone for his sins. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.
In the mean time, there are a lot of fellow Americans in need of help in hurricane ravaged Florida. If you have the time/resources to lend a hand, you may want to donate to the relief agency of your choice. If you don't have a particular agency in mind, consider the American Red Cross.
In a similar vein, fellow Daynoter Mike Barkman appreciated the work of the Salvation Army. If you would like to make a donation in his memory feel free to do so.
Aloha!
All hard drive makers occasionally have a bad batch of drives. But this site is saying they are getting a 40 percent failure rate on Seagate Cheetah Ultra-SCSI drives. I have no idea if this has been confirmed by anyone else but I would be cautious about getting one of these drives until you've done some due diligence.
File this one under website tools. Website download optimization seeks to minimize the wait users have when visiting your site. You can go to this site here, enter a URL, and it will calculate how long your page takes to load, depending on the speed of connection. So, for example, you can see how long it takes for poor soul using 28.8K modem versus a T1. In addition, it gives some recommendations on how to speed up downloading (if needed).
For those interested, below are the results for this page:
| Speed | Time |
|---|---|
| 14.4K | 37.33 seconds |
| 28.8K | 18.76 seconds |
| 33.6K | 16.11 seconds |
| 56K | 9.75 seconds |
| ISDN 128K | 3.12 seconds |
| T1 1.44Mbps | 0.45 seconds |
*Note that these download times are based on the full connection rate for ISDN and T1 connections. Modem connections (56Kbps or less) are corrected by a packet loss factor of 0.7. All download times include delays due to round-trip latency with an average of 0.2 seconds per object. With 6 total objects for this page, that computes to a total lag time due to latency of 1.2 seconds. Note also that this download time calculation does not take into account delays due to XHTML parsing and rendering.
The SANS Institute has scanner for the MS GDI vulnerability here. They created one because the MS update site is pretty much useless on this one. MS scans your PC and then gives you advice that doesn't help you to identify exactly where the vulnerable files are. The SANS scanner does. Thanks for the great work, SANS.
For local viewers (all two of you), you may want to check out Bytemarks. It's a tech. blog from a guy by the name of Burt Lum. While it is focused on the local tech industry there may be some tid bits of interest to others.
First there was Pimp My Ride, now there's Trick Anything. Personally, I kind of like the lawn mower. But then, I've always been a sucker for a big pair of, ahem, hood scoops.
I'm calling this a win for the good guys because, I think, it points out the fact that commercial "speech" can be regulated. As a sidebar, it's amazing to me how people can spin unwanted commercials into something called "speech". Corporations don't speak, buildings don't speak, people do.
In any case, I am extremely happy that the US Supreme Court has let stand a lower court ruling that the "Do Not Call" list does not run afoul of the US Constitution.
Aloha!
Even though the book and movie The Right Stuff focused a lot on pilot Chuck Yeager (which is not a condemnation of the book, just an observation), one of the stand out characters was Gordon "Gordo" Cooper.
His optimism, humor, supreme coolness under stress, and yes, perhaps cockyness (when asked who was the greatest fighter pilot he ever saw he always replied, with a smile "You're looking at him") shined like the sun blazing into his Mercury capsule's window. Cooper, age 77, died yesterday at his home in California.
There's a security update for the Firefox browser. Follow the link to read about it and then update your installation (you are using Firefox, right?).
In addition, be on the lookout for Release Candidate 1, soon.
It seems Karl Rove isn't the only one who tries to beat people by attacking their strengths with lies. This site here is saying Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is calling Apple iPod users thieves. Ballmer, currently Chief Executive Officer of MS, is quoted as saying "We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'."
Speaking of such things, this site here is saying that Senator Kerry may have brandished, now wait for it, a pen during the debate with President Bush. Heavens, a pen. Well, stop the presses and call me a Republican. Senator Kerry had a pen with him during the debate. Well, clearly that means Senator Kerry is flip flopping on pen holding and therefore is not of leadership quality.
All I can say about that site is he looses what little credibility he has every time he posts something like that. He might as well sell the URL to Rove now and be done with it.
The Truth (yes, I know, the Rovites have already started their whispering campaign against Soros) is indeed out there, folks. It's just often times very difficult to find, given all the untruth being splashed about.
And finally, for those
of you who need help pushing your shopping cart around the
market, there's this guy in the UK who built a pulse jet
engine to help speed things up. As in 50 mph (~80kph). The engine housing
glows with the heat of 600°C (~1,000°F) but hey, at least you don't need
help to get to your car...
Aloha!
Speaking of the obvious, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government until the hand over of political power on June 28, is now saying the US made two critical mistakes in Iraq (see the article here): "not deploying enough troops in Iraq and then not containing the violence and looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein."
Both errors are based on political decisions and both are rooted in the same problem. The Bush administration was warned that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to execute the mission ordered of it. This is on the record and the spin doctors cannot deny it (although, as usual, the Bush administration used a whispering campaign to impugn the integrity of the general that had the cajones to tell the truth. You can bet no other general, who wants to stay in the military, will now do so).
But the politicians in Washington, looking perhaps towards the coming election, decided it would be political suicide to send such a large force. Why? Because the present military is not designed for a large scale, long-term mission. It's a light reaction force meant to put out so called "brush fire" conflicts. In order to have hundreds of thousands of troops in the field, for years at a time, would require the re-institution of the draft.
Politics being what it is, re-instituting the draft, without the justification to do so nor the support of US citizens, would mean the end of the Bush administration. So, for the politicians, the path was clear. No draft and therefore no hundreds of thousands of troops. Once that decision was made, the fate of the war was sealed.
Oft quoted security maven and author Bruce Schneier has a nice essay entitled "Do Terror Alerts Work?" While most of the points are obvious, at least to people who have open minds, they need to be stated and discussed. Otherwise, the echo chamber that is the Internet will ring with lies.
A few examples:
When Attorney General John Ashcroft came to Minnesota recently, he said the fact that there had been no terrorist attacks in America in the three years since September 11th was proof that the Bush administration's anti-terrorist policies were working. I thought: There were no terrorist attacks in America in the three years before September 11th, and we didn't have any terror alerts. What does that prove?
Terror threat warnings are a publicity tool. They're a method of keeping terrorism in people's minds. Terrorist attacks on American soil are rare, and unless the topic stays in the news, people will move on to other concerns. There is, of course, a hierarchy to these things. Threats against U.S. soil are most important, threats against Americans abroad are next, and terrorist threats--even actual terrorist attacks--against foreigners in foreign countries are largely ignored.
Since the September 11th attacks, Republicans have made "tough on terror" the centerpiece of their re-election strategies. Study after study has shown that Americans who are worried about terrorism are more likely to vote Republican. In 2002, Karl Rove specifically told Republican legislators to run on that platform, and strength in the face of the terrorist threat is the basis of Bush's re-election campaign. For that strategy to work, people need to be reminded constantly about the terrorist threat and how the current government is keeping them safe.
I know that those who will not see will not believe the obvious truths presented by Mr. Schneier, but for those who can think critically, it's way past time to start the discussion on how to change things.
Elise Bauer and Arvind Satyanarayan have a short tutorial on using CGIWrap or suEXEC on *NIX/Apache MovableType installations. If you are using MT as your content management system and aren't already using CGIWrap or suEXEC you should read this article. This, of course, assumes that your host has CGIWrap or suEXEC installed (MT installs a utility called mt-check.cgi that, inter alia, tests for this so you can check before proceeding).
The article also recommends, if you aren't doing dynamic
publishing, to set permissions on mt.cfg and mt-db-pass.cgi to
600 (e.g., chmod 600 mt.cfg) to protect it from
intrusion. In addition, they suggest setting a .htaccess file
in the same directory as mt.cfg with parameters to restrict
access (see the article for the specific code).
Given the problems I've had with comment spammers, these are good recommendations. One thing they don't mention, but I recommend, is to close comments on individual articles after a period of time. I don't know why, but spammers love to hit posts that a older than a couple of weeks. If you routinely close comments after, say eight to 10 days, you can stop them in their tracks.
But remember, you have to make these changes. If you think no one would try to hack your site, think about this. Before the authors of the tutorial actually did the things they recommended, a spammer was able to access their index template and modify it to show a pop-up add to everyone who viewed their site. So, not only can it happen, it already has. And according to a follow-up at their site, the exploit involves not only MT sites but also WordPress and perhaps others. The bottom line for the exploit seems to be set your permissions to 600 on mt.cfg and mt-db-pass.cfg.
Some lessons I've learned on the Internet (or how to read Scoble and learn to love Microsoft).
On the Internet, everything and everyone is interconnected. What this means, contrary to popular belief, is everyone knows you're a dog (if, that is, you are a dog). Hence, you can't do just a few things right, you have to do everything right. Unfortunately, this is impossible. But people will give you some slack if you've built a good relationship with them.
So, companies that call their best customers thieves, and treat them that way, won't have many best customers.
Or in other words, make sure your business is in alignment with your customers. If your customer's needs would be best met by buying "widget A", but you only sell "whizbang B", perhaps the answer is to advise them to buy "widget A", rather than give them five false reasons to switch to "whizbang B". Then, start making a better, cheaper, faster "widget A", which you can then sell to your customers.
Which leads me to this. Building a bridge of trust takes a long, long time. Bringing it down can be done in less than an Internet second. Earn your customer's trust and they will stick with you, even when you make an occasional honest mistake. Burn them by lying to them, even "just" once, and they are gone forever.
Which logically leads to: take the long view. If you focus only on the immediate sale, as if it was life or death and nothing else mattered (as was the Business 101 mantra during the "Greed is Good" 1980s), you probably won't make the sale nor survive into the future. Sales are about relationships. Sometimes the introductions are made by you and sometimes the customer introduces themselves. But the introduction is just the beginning of what should be a long relationship. Like the Zen masters say, searching for happiness is a search left unfound. But, helping others to find their own happiness will lead to you finding yours.
So remember, everything and everyone is interconnected. Align yourself with your customers. Build that bridge of trust. Take the long view. Now, snatch the pebble from my hand.
The Internet has fostered at least two revolutions in communications. Both revolutions created pathways for conversations that can lead to better understanding among people.
But first, some background. Although the Internet is very wide, it is not very tall (although it may be very deep). By that I mean you don't have to go through layers of stuff to get to the top.
A couple of examples: If I link to something interesting from Doc Searls, he may see the link and maybe link back. If I write something interesting and then link to Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble, he may see it and maybe leaves a comment. Each, albeit small, conversation probably could never have occurred pre-Internet.
From a business perspective, compare this to many large organizations that have layer upon layer insulating and, perhaps, filtering what is going on outside their respective companies. It is seductively easy to believe only what your employees are telling you. But many times, what they are telling you and what your customers are saying are two very different things. We need to remember that what they are saying is but one lens into seeing the totality of reality.
Now, on to the revolution! The first revolution of the Internet was e-mail. E-mail not only allowed communication in all directions from all directions, it encouraged it. That is, it created a pipeline directly to the person you wanted to reach. For the first time, anyone could start a conversation with anyone else (at least until people started filtering e-mail). These conversations created opportunities for new ways of understanding our world.
The second revolution of the Internet is the web. The web takes conversations a step further in that it can be one-to-one and one-to-many. A different kind of conversation to be sure. But nonetheless a valuable one. For the first time, individuals had forums to reach wide audiences. With this greater reach came the opportunity for even more conversations and therefore more ways of understanding.
I don't know what the next Internet revolution will be, but I hope it will create new ways of starting conversations.
Aloha!
For those of you interested in reading what's the status of Windows XP Pro X64 Edition, follow this link to the WinSupersite for a preview of what's coming from Microsoft. Thurrott goes through the history of 64-bit Windows and brings you up-to-date as to where it stands. Included are a few screen shots of the latest beta build 1218. Other than the screen shots though, there isn't much as to what exactly is in X64, but at least you can get some background information until he posts an update.
Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!
Columnist Brian Livingston has a post on unsubscribing yourself from spam e-mails. The common advice is to not click on "unsubscribe" links in spam messages because, it is said, you are only confirming your e-mail address as active (which, as the say, leads to more spam, not less).
But is this advice correct? According to Livingston, the answer, for the most part is yes and no. Sort of. Maybe. He quotes a report that indicates just under 2 percent of spam appears to harvest e-mail addresses this way and about 10 percent don't appear to do anything. Hence, the chances are things will be okay if you click on the link. Unless, of course, you happen to click on one of those 2 percent.
So how can one tell the difference? Livingston links to this site here that lists sites that have made their deal with the Devil. There are page after page of these guys. Having said that, I'm sure there are more that haven't made the list yet.
The point of this seems, when you receive spam, is to do what you've probably been doing, just delete it and move on.
When is Hawaii and Alaska not part of the 50 United States of America? When it comes to contests at O'Reilly and Associates. O'Reilly is running a contest to promote a new book from former Daynoter Robert Bruce Thompson (see the contest here). I offer for your review what some of the rules are and intersperse them with my comments.
From the "Official Sweepstakes Rules":
This promotion is intended for play and participation in the United States only and shall be construed and evaluated according to the laws of the United States. Please do not participate if you are not a legal resident of the United States and located in the United States at the time of entry...
Okay, if I read this correctly, you have to be legal resident of the United States at the time of entering the contest. I am a legal resident of the state of Hawai'i. Hawai'i is part of the United States and has been so since about 1959-60. Ipso facto, I am a legal resident of the Unites States.
SWEEPSTAKES OPEN ONLY TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE 50 UNITED STATES...
Yup, same as above. I qualify to enter.
7. Eligibility: Sweepstakes open to legal residents of the continental United States...
Oh oh. Are residents of Hawai'i legal residents of the United States? Yup. But Hawai'i (nor usually Alaska) is considered to be part of the continental Unites States. Sigh.
So yet another contest is closed to me because I live in Hawai'i. I don't want to leave the impression that it's only O'Reilly & Associates that do this. I've seen other contests that say they are open to all US citizens but then say they are actually only for the lower 48. I wonder why they choose to disenfranchise millions of people and create bad will towards their products?
Yes, I know, the two major parcel shipping companies (FedEx and UPS) have changed their shipping rates such that both imply they don't want business to or from Hawai'i. But that doesn't mean there aren't other shippers. There are DHL and the US Postal Service (USPS). Personally, I like the USPS. They are just as fast, to Hawai'i anyway, as the other shippers, but deliver on Saturdays and charge about 50 percent less than the others. I really don't understand why more people don't use the USPS.
Oh well, I guess I won't be buying this or any more of O'Reilly's books.
I was offline over the weekend working on putting together the PC for SWMBO that I've mentioned before. I started gathering parts in June and finally bought the last two pieces (Seagate SATA 160GB hard drive and Sony floppy drive) this past weekend.
I had already installed the Intel 2.8GHz Pentium IV, Intel 865GBF-L motherboard, 1GB of Kingston RAM, Sony 700A Dual Layer DVD burner, and 380W Antec TruePower power supply into the Intel Thermally Advantaged Chassis compliant Antec 2650-BQE case.
In addition, I used an Antec Cobra round data cable for the floppy drive and Mad Dog ATA/IDE round data cable for the Sony DVD burner. Each cable makes things tidier in the case and allows better air flow than the standard flat ribbon cables.
When I first powered it up I got power to the motherboard, fans, and drives but it would not boot. After scratching my head and trying to flip around some of the front panel connectors (power and reset) I still couldn't get it going. So I went back to the manual and read the section on trouble shooting. The first item on the list was whether I had hooked up the 4 pin power to the motherboard. Hmmm. I had plugged in the 20-pin one but a four-pin? Doh! So I plugged in the four-pin power next to the CPU socket and all was well.
Since I like to partition the drive into two, so I can keep the operating system and applications separate from the data, I use an old Windows 98 boot disk to boot from. I them use fdisk to set the partitions and then boot off of the Windows CD to start the install. I don't know if the Windows install CD allows you to partition the disk so if you know of a way, please leave a comment below.
That's where I'm at right now because when I got to the point where I'm supposed to register with MS, the product key I was given when I ordered XP Pro from Sales International didn't work. By that I mean the error back from MS is that the key had already been used more than 25 times. Hmmm. If this was a legitimate copy of Windows XP that should not have occurred. While I can't say for sure whether they are selling pirate copies I would be very careful about buying anything from them. Not recommended.
Another strange thing that happened is that the Intel motherboard monitoring software detected an overheating of the CPU. Yet, when I put my hand on the CPU fan housing, it was actually cool to the touch. I'm not sure why the overheat condition occurred or whether I should be concerned about this. In any case (pun not intended), I may add a second fan (the Antec case comes with a single 120mm fan in addition to the two in the power supply) and see if that helps. More as I know more.
Aloha!
This article says the probability of Murphy's Law (What can go wrong, will) being exhibited can be calculated by the formula above. The variables are:
U = urgency
C = complexity
I = importance
S= skill
F = frequency
A = aggravation
Use a number between one-to-nine for all of the variables except "A" (which is set constant at 0.7). The interesting part is the assertion that you can control some of the variables and therefore affect the probability. YMMV.
There's a new Windows XP PowerToy available ( here). It's called ClearType Tuner and it adjusts ClearType on LCD displays to optimize it to your preferences. This Control Panel applet appears to do the same thing a webpage Microsoft setup for this purpose (I don't have the URL handy) but I guess the applet is more convenient.
Feel free to give it a try if you have an LCD screen.
When I used to work for the Hawaii Department of Budget and Finance, lo those many years ago, one of my major job functions was drafting responses for the Governor's signature. At the time, and I'm not sure if this is still true, all letters from the public got a response.
As a practical matter, no Governor can read and respond to all correspondence sent to him or her. So, if the subject matter and draft response are not politically sensitive, the Governor may never even see the original letter nor the response back. Usually, the Governor's staff will make a determination whether the Governor needs to read the original letter and response. If not, such mail is usually parceled out to the appropriate agency for review and drafting of an appropriate response.
If the response is going out over the Governor's signature, most, if not all states, have machines that can write the Governor's signature using a pen attached to said machine. The resulting signature is, for most purposes, indistinguishable from a "real" one.
Sometimes, if the subject matter of a response is particularly thorny, and the Governor (or his or her staff) wants to be insulated from having to give bad news to the respondent, the letter will go out over the subject matter department's signature rather than the Governor's.
But the absolute worst kind of response to draft is when the original letter writer refuses to accept the government's response. This occurred especially when a member of the public felt wronged by the "system" and wanted some decision reversed or other action taken.
Rightly or wrongly, these kinds of follow-up letters tended to get canned memos called "Thank you for your letter, please drop dead" responses. The drop dead memos were intended to get the person to stop writing to the Governor (and most times it worked) while politely acknowledging the sender. But at least the person writing in always got a response.
In my post on Friday criticizing O'Reilly for disenfranchising millions of US citizens by disallowing contest submissions from states outside the continental US, two Daynoters commented I should put the burden on myself and ask O'Reilly why they did this. Bowing to the greater wisdom of my fellow Daynoters, I sent the following to O'Reilly yesterday:
I was all set to enter the contest tied in to Robert Bruce Thompson's new book "Building the Perfect PC." But as is the case when I enter these things, I carefully read the contest rules. Imagine my dismay when I realized O'Reilly had [apparently] decided to disenfranchise millions of US citizens by saying only people living in the "continental" US could enter.
I realize the number of O'Reilly books sold in Alaska and Hawai'i may not count for much, but why go out of your way to create ill will?
People like to say the Internet is about conversations. Well, one way of killing a conversation is to tell people they don't count. Indeed, tell them you don't even want to hear from them is a good way of ending things real quick.
I hope, in the future, that your company will honor the fact that there are 50 states in the United States of America and that opening lines for conversations are better than saving a few bucks for shipping.
Aloha,
Dan
As of this writing, I haven't received a reply. If I do, I will post it on my site (even if it's a thank you for your letter, please drop dead response). But I'm not holding my breath because, unlike public agencies, private businesses aren't accountable to the public.
Aloha!
This one was so obvious I'm embarrassed for the Bush administration to even link to this story on money for guns in Iraq. It seems a five-day program, as part of a truce agreement, paid hundreds of dollars to anyone who turned in weapons. Any weapons. Unfortunately, many if not most of the weapons weren't worth what they were paid for. Bad as that may seem, the obvious and very much more worrisome problem is the cash can then be turned around to buy more modern working weapons.
When the attack of 9/11 occurred, I posted we should follow the money trail. In that context, it is difficult to understand the reasoning behind a money for guns program that better arms the enemies of the US. Do we really want to give money to our enemies? Do the weapons taken in through this program actually work? Are these arms better than what our enemies can buy with the money they get? Are these arms from our enemies or from people who would not be using them against us in the first place? I don't know the answers to these questions and from the looks of things, neither does the Bush Administration.
The Release Candidate 1 of Firefox is scheduled for next week Monday. You may want to check it out when it hits the wires.
Perhaps there is some good news coming out of Iraq. As others have correctly said, the Iraq situation will not get better until the Iraqi people take responsibility for their own security. Outside forces, including the US, cannot force anything on anyone for very long so it is up to the Iraqi people to stand up to those who would kill and maim innocents to further their religious aims.
But while signs that the Iraqi people in Fallujah appear ready to take responsibility for their situation, we have not seen concrete action to backup their brave words. History has taught us that freedom is not free. It has to be paid for with the blood of brave Iraqi men and women. We hope such people will come forward and act. Soon.
Day 2, and still no reply from O'Reilly - Aloha!
This being the silly season, it's nice to see news that doesn't involve lies, damned lies, or statistics. This story here tells of the bravery many people can exhibit, given the right circumstances.
According to the article, a Long Island, New York car dealership exploded and erupted in flames. But instead of people running away, people in the area ran directly into the burning building and pulled survivors out of the rubble. This, even as the second story of the two-story building threatened to collapse around them.
If only the two major party candidates could demonstrate even half the courage these people showed.
This story about a MacOS emulator is beginning to break through to a wider audience, including the AfterNoon paper so I thought I'd link to it.
I'm the first to admit this is one strange story. What you supposedly have is an Albanian born guy, raised in Germany, living on Maui. And if you believe what he is saying, he, in his spare time, wrote software that allows the MacOS to run on Intel platforms with only a 20 percent speed hit.
If true, this would be a remarkable achievement because emulating in software what another platform does in hardware usually means you can go to the kitchen to grab yourself a cup of coffee between screen updates.
As of yet, all is vaporware so this is just so much speculation and guessing. But as the old saying goes: If it looks too good to be true...
Day 3, and still no reply from O'Reilly.
UPDATE: Within 10 minutes of posting this morning, I got this email from Valerie Dow of O'Reilly:
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:05:48 -0700
To: Dan Seto
From: Valerie Dow
Subject: O'Reilly sweepstakes: HawaiiDear Dan,
Ye gads, thanks for writing in. Please, please enter the sweepstakes. http://www.oreilly.com/promos/perfectpc/index.csp "Continental" should not have appeared in item 7. under eligibility for the online sweepstakes and we're very grateful that you spotted it (horrified and chagrined at the error would also apply). I've just asked our online producer to delete that word in the rules document so the correction should appear later today. We work with an outside counsel who's a specialist in sweepstakes regulations because, as you noted, the details matter a lot in these things. This one was particularly thorny since there's an online, US retail, Canadian retail, and Quebec retail iteration of the rules. Anyway, that fellow confirmed today that he blew it by letting that word stay in the online rules document.
I'd love to send you a copy of Building the Perfect PC in thanks for helping us get this right. Please send me an address and I'll get one to Hawaii! (note in the email below the affection for Hawaii here).
All best,
Valerie>I have no idea why my beloved Hawaiians were cut out of this promotion.
>(I'm rather fond of Alaska, too.) Guess I didn't read the fine print, either.
>>Bill/Val, any idea what this is about?
>
>Mark
>>At 09:12 PM 10/12/2004 -0700, Tim O'Reilly wrote:
>>Care to respond?
>>
>>Begin forwarded message:
>>>>>From: Dan Seto
>>>Date: October 12, 2004 1:48:14 PM PDT
>>>To: oreilly.com
>>>Subject: "Building the Perfect PC"
>>>
>>>Mr O'Reilly:
>>>
>>>I was all set to enter the contest tied in to Robert Bruce Thompson's
>>>new book "Building the Perfect PC." But as is the case when I enter
>>>these things, I carefully read the contest rules. Imagine my dismay
>>>when I realized O'Reilly had decided to disenfranchise millions of US
>>>citizens by saying only people living in the "continental" US could
>>>enter.
>>>
>>>I realize the number of O'Reilly books sold in Alaska and Hawai'i may
>>>not count for much, but why go out of your way to create ill will?
>>>
>>>People like to say the Internet is about conversations. Well, one way
>>>of killing a conversation is to tell people they don't count. Indeed,
>>>tell them you don't even want to hear from them is a good way of
>>>ending things real quick.
>>>
>>>I hope, in the future, that your company will honor the fact that
>>>there are 50 states in the United States of America and that opening
>>>lines for conversations are better than saving a few bucks for
>>>shipping.
>>>
>>>Aloha,
>>>
>>>Dan
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>-----------
>>Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly Media, Inc.
>>1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472
>>http://www.oreilly.com (company), http://tim.oreilly.com (personal)
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------
>Mark Brokering
>O'Reilly Media, Inc.
>1005 Gravenstein Highway North
>Sebastopol CA 95472
>
Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!
In reporting on my building of a new PC for SWMBO, I noted a problem with the Intel 2.80E "Prescott" setting off the overheating alarm (based on Intel's monitoring software).
For no particular reason, the temperature of the CPU would jump from about 59°C to 69°C in a matter of seconds. Sometimes, the temperature would then fall back to 59°C but a couple of times it just stayed there with the CPU fan spinning at high speed while making all kinds of noise.
As you may remember, the Antec case (model 2650-BQE) comes with a single 120mm fan with provisions for two more 80mm fans. Over the weekend, I went to CompUSA and bought a couple of Antec SmartCool fans. Each has built in temperature controls which regulate fan speed. Antec also makes something called a SmartCool Plus fan that has a temperature probe that can be placed where you want it. For now, I'll stick with the regular version because I'm trying to minimize the rat's nest of wires that infest the case.
When I got home I installed one of the fans in the side panel (the 2650 has a vent and "chassis air guide" (looks like an upside down funnel) built into the side panel) and found it helped keep the temperatures down. However, I still got an occasional spike where the alarm went off. So I added the second 80mm fan to the front of the case and so far, all is well.
I haven't exactly been running any processor intensive applications so I can't say for sure whether these fans have solved the overheating problem. If I do start to get overheating, I may order the SmartCool Plus fans and place the sensors along side the CPU or perhaps get a different brand of CPU cooler.
As you might guess, having three case fans, the CPU fan, and the power supply fans whirling away does create some noise. So I also installed the Antec Noise Killer Kit which consists of two 80mm fan gaskets, one power supply gasket, and a bunch of screws with washers. All of the gaskets and washers are made of silicone and are designed to reduce vibrations and therefore noise.
While I don't have a sound meter, they do seem to work. But even so, I think I'll need to place the case under the desk to try to muffle the sound (truth be told, it's not all that bad but if you are particularly sensitive to noise you might want to think about another solution like a fanless heat pipe or water cooling).
Overall, I am happy with the new PC and hope it will serve SWMBO for a couple of years before I have to build another one. <G>
Aloha!
The first of three locally filmed TV shows went down the tubes yesterday. Hawaii, the one that I thought had the best understanding of the place its title names, fell, I think, to two problems.
The first is being against ABC's phenomenal show Lost (also filmed here). The second was story lines that were just not very believable nor interesting. That's not to say the acting (and the actors) were not good. They were. But the material they were given to work with just didn't cut it.
Aloha o'e to Hawaii, a noble effort that fell short of the mark.
Aloha!
From the way too much is better sector of digital cameras comes the Hasselblad H1D 22-megapixel camera. You read that right, 22MP. Each high resolution image takes up 132MB so Hasselblad includes a 40GB "Image Bank" external hard drive for image storage. Connection to a PC is via FireWire. The camera body accepts Hasselblad HC lens. Not that any of that matters since the price is so high ($21,995) you don't even need to ask.
There are different management styles. Each style is neither good nor bad in all situations. In fact, a manager that does extremely well in one situation may fail miserably in another.
The keys then, are three-fold. You have to be aware of who you are (what are your strong/weak points), what is the context of the situation (which management tools would work best), and most importantly, be flexible enough and knowledgeable enough to employ these tools with precision.
Today, I'm going to talk about one type of manager and how the context is critical in determining how successful he or she will be.
So, some managers learn how to be managers through on-the-job-training. There is much to said for this kind of manager. They tend to have a deep understanding of the job because they've had to live it. That is, they've had to make decisions without having a theoretical context with which to examine the situation from different perspectives and then make a decision based on the totality of views.
This type of manager can make quick decisions without being hamstrung by competing views.
Hence, the tool these managers have is the ability to make quick decisions. The downside is they are rarely reflective. That is, they do things, many times, by rote or by what has worked in the past or even by what some would call blind faith. This problem was crystallized by Mark Twains apt phrase; "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Don't get me wrong, the problem is not in using the hammer, rather the problem is in not realizing that it isn't the best tool to use in all situations. Sometimes this is because the manager is not aware of other tools. Sometimes the manager is aware of other tools but the manager is not adept at utilizing them.
Let me give you a real-life example. One manager I know of, I'll call him Brian, works in an environment in which managers don't take responsibility for decisions that don't work but always crow about how they are such superb managers when they do. When things don't work out, Brian always blame his staff. It was staff that made the error, not him. It was staff that gave him incorrect information. It was staff that didn't tell him what he needed to know. Brian's tool is to avoid personal responsibility.
Even if this is true (that staff is somehow at fault), which it isn't, it isn't a sign of a good manager to blame others for their decisions and not take personal responsibility for being the decision maker.
Which brings me to this 11 page New York Times article on President Bush entitle "Without a Doubt".
The article's main thesis is that President Bush operates on faith rather than facts. That he is a true believer and what he believes is that he is on a mission from God. Literally. Any facts to the contrary simply denote your lack of faith and will result in your being labeled an unbeliever and a dupe of Satan.
As I said at the beginning, there is no one way of management that is always right. And at times, President Bush's style of management may be effective. But at other times, this type of management can lead a country to its doom. In November, choose wisely.
I've talked about an article in the Atlantic about President Bush's Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President, Karl "Baghdad Bob" Rove before. But now that the Atlantic article is on the Internet, you can read it for yourself.
The article is a chilling indictment of a man who uses fear and/or anger to motivate people to vote. It doesn't matter if he makes charges up out of thin air, the thing is to win. The means to that end is always justified, at least in his mind.
The problem is that the democratic process is the loser. Freedom is lost. Truth is lost. Justice is lost. The very values that make this country strong are pushed aside in favor of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. We, as a nation, are weakened by these tactics.
And you know what? It's working. The few feeble minded voters that he needs to tip the balance are being swayed by his charges. He has whipped them up into a blind fury. Raised their anger levels to such a high state that they no longer think for themselves because the minds of such people are easily influenced.
This coming election, the voting for which has already started locally, could be the most important in our history. Think for yourself and then choose wisely.
Aloha!
Not that Mozilla has ever met any of their deadlines but, as of this writing, Firefox 1.0RC1 is three days late and counting. I'm not sure they will be able to meet any of their coming deadlines, including the official launch next month. But if you want to lend a hand, check out the campaign to get 2,500 people to donate $30 so that they can buy a full-page ad in the New York Times. Me? I'm number 2277. As of this morning, there are over 3,100 donations!
Act now, operators are standing by.
Maybe it's because I have only 11 regular readers (and untold irregular ones - ed.) but so far, I've not had any comment spam (since re-opening comments early last month). While I have no way of knowing for sure, I think it's because I run an MT utility that closes comments five days after something is posted.
Who knows. But if it is, and the spammers eventually figure it out, they will begin spamming as soon as I post (or as soon as their spam bots can find my posts).
Hmmm, maybe I should wait awhile longer before saying anything...
Are you the administrator of a network? Do you think part of your job description is to know the status of the network? If so, do you use network monitoring software? If not, why not?
It seems to me that if you don't monitor the network, you are being reactive and turning your customers into your monitors. It also means you're the last to know when something goes wrong.
Doing services this way is like a mechanic saying he or she will wait until the airplane crashes and they get a telephone call from the fire department before they'll check whether there is oil in the engines.
In my opinion, waiting to get a call from someone telling you the network has crashed and burned is not an intelligent way of doing business. Especially since the tools to monitor networks are available for free:
The point is there are tons of software out there to monitor network status. Take a look and find one that meets your needs, install it, and know what is going on.
Aloha!
I know this story is going to sound like the bad plot from a 1950s TV show but I'm not making this up.
Michelle Trainor took her two dogs, Grubby and Murdoch, for a walk last week. Nothing remarkable about that. But read on.
As they were walking along, Murdoch playfully nudged Grubby over a 50 metre high embankment. As Trainor looked over the bank to check on Grubby, the edge gave way and down Trainor went. She continued rolling down the bank until she impaled her chest on a tree branch. She lay there stunned for several hours before awakening. When she awoke, the pain from the tree branch was so bad she decided to pull the branch out with her bare hands.
Then, still in much pain, she heard her cell phone ringing. Unfortunately, she had dropped it half way up the bank as she fell and she was in no condition to climb up and get it. So what did she do? She told Murdoch to go get the phone. And...he...did. The dog rescued from the dog pound helped to rescue his master.
But there's more. Trainor called her husband who came looking for her. But due, by then, to the darkness, he could not find her. So Trainor sent Murdoch up the hill and the dog led Trainor's husband back to her.
All is well now but I guess you could say dogs are women's best friends too. See the story from New Zealand here.
Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!
I don't usually hang out at the American Conservative web site but I went over there recently and read an article by Paul Schroeder entitled "The War Bin Laden Wanted: How the U.S. played into the terrorist's plan." I was startled to read, in his concluding paragraph:
This is a change only a new administration could make, though obviously not during the electoral campaign, when it would be suicidal. Once in office, however, it could claim that it had found things to be even worse than it knew and could make the kind of 180-degree turn Bush executed after his election. A gradual disengagement from Iraq and re-concentration on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the pursuit of al-Qaeda, a devolution of tasks onto the UN and NATO on the grounds that even the best meant efforts of the United States are frustrated by the fact that it is seen as the enemy by too many in the region, a willingness to admit past mistakes and agree to focus co-operatively on other problems as well-all this would become possible, though not easy, if only the current American war mentality and psyche gave way to a saner one. This still could happen-but of course not under Bush.
Please go and read the entire article because it lays out a compelling vision of why Osama bin Laden attacked the US and how the Bush administration fell directly into the trap set by bin Laden.
But more importantly, it makes the case that in order to correct our policy mistakes, a new administration will need to be elected. I will let that lay as it is and let you draw your own conclusions. But remember, this is coming from the American Conservative, not Kerry headquarters.
What is even more startling to me is that conservatives have, apparently, finally realized that the Bush administration may be a lot of things, but conservative it is not. Yes, President Bush pays lip service to conservative issues, but what the Bush administration actually does is as radical, in their own way, as anything coming out of Berkeley.
I've noted before how the Bush administration has expanded federal powers by taking it from states (e.g., elections, marriage, education reform, health care, etc.). I've noted before how this administration (and the Republican controlled Congress) have been on a spending spree the likes of which we have not seen since President Johnson during the Vietnam War. And I've noted how this administration has plowed full ahead into expansionist wars across the globe.
So I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see real conservatives finally disavowing themselves from the Bush presidency. Unfortunately, I think it's too little too late.
Not much going on in the Seto Shack this morning.
Over at Mozilla, Firefox is still missing in action and nowhere to be seen. The Mozites are working towards "Zarro Boogs" but, apparently, are not there yet. Of course, it is unlikely that a non-trivial program will ever reach zero bugs, but that hasn't stopped most folks from shipping product anyway. That said, when Firefox 1.0RC1 is ready, it will be released.
But, as I said last week, I have to wonder if they will make their 9 November official launch date. My guess is no. In fact, 9 December might be closer to the mark. But who cares? The point is, if you want a modern browser, choose Firefox.
Aloha!
With all the things going on in the world I forgot my Daynotes anniversary date had come and gone. It was 20 October 1999 when I started this journal. It's interesting to see the arc of my writing. Some things have changed, others are the same. For all eleven of you who have stuck with me from the beginning - thanks.
I hope you've learned as much as I have over these few years.
Aloha!
(Warning: 5.2MB mov file)
A republican for Kerry, and his reasons why he thinks this is the only rational choice. Fear vs. Freedom. You decide.
Speaking of late anniversaries yesterday, OpenOffice turned four on 13 October 2004. OpenOffice is now in version 1.1.3 with work progressing towards version 2.0 (According to the roadmap v2 will be released RealSoonNow. Just like Firefox... - ed.).
I hope OpenOffice is successful in becoming the "free productivity suite compatible with all major office suites." The problem is OO is not not compatible with WordPerfect, which is still used by many offices in the legal profession. Over the years, people have become expert in and comfortable with WP.
Hence, even if I were to switch to OpenOffice (or StarOffice for that matter), I would have problems opening, editing, and saving documents in WP format.
Let me list some examples:
OO can't open WP documents without the help of something called WriterPerfect.
OO can't save in the WP format regardless of installing WriterPerfect.
WP documents, opened in OO have at least the following problems:
These are not minor problems nor are these rarely used WP features. Particularly worrisome are the problems where text is not imported. If you didn't know what the original WP document looked like you would probably not know text was missing. To me, this is a show stopping incompatibility.
In any case, while OO has a long way to go if it wants to meet its goal of being compatible with all major office suites, I hope it gets there because I would love to switch to something else other than Word or WP.
Speaking of belated anniversaries, Happy Birthday to fellow Daynoter John Doucette!
Aloha!
As you may be able to see from the image, Google says:
In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results.
To confirm the message, go to Google and do a search on "Motorola razr v3". On or about the second page you will get the message.
I decided to Google "DMCA Google policy" and came up with this link to, now wait for it, Google's policy on DMCA. I have no opinion one way or another on this one but thought it was interesting to see how Google was responding to the problems generated by the DMCA.
By the way, I was doing a Google search on the Motorola Razr V3 phone because I understand it will be released in the US soon (perhaps within days, even). While I love how it looks, I hear the price will be set at around $600USD. At that price, I could get a Treo650. Or I could get neither because I don't have that much money to spend on a phone...
So Firefox 1.0RC1 is sorta, kinda, out (get it here). I say kind of because the main web pages for Firefox still point to the Preview Release. I don't know why. In any case, the RC1 fixes a couple of hundred bugs that were in the Preview Release but seems to have several regression errors (i.e., new fixes that break earlier fixes). Still, if you want the absolute latest version of Firefox, feel free to download the RC1.
Otherwise, if you can wait a month or so, the official gold code will be available. If you can wait even longer, you may want to wait for version 1.1, which will, hopefully, fix the worst of the bugs still left.
As usual, the thundering herds are at the trough so downloading may be slow, although, when I went in this morning, the file came down nice and fast.
Aloha!
Not all companies are evil. In fact, a case could be made that the majority aren't. Having said that, even good companies can act evil sometimes if they don't take care of the details.
I posted earlier about the contest rules for the O'Reilly give away linked to the recent publication of " Building the Perfect PC" (ISBN: 0596006632) authored by Daynoter Robert Bruce Thompson and his wife Barbara Fritchman Thompson.
My concern, at the time, with O'Reilly was how they were disenfranchising Alaska and Hawaii by specifically including only the continental US as being eligible to enter the contest.
Daynoters Brian Bilbrey and Sjon Svenson persuaded me to contact O'Reilly to ask them why they were doing this. As indicated in the email I received back, they decided to amend the rules to include all 50 states.
What I didn't mention at the time, and which perhaps affected a wider audience, the original contest rules included another not so nice clause.
Before I go on, I will say I should have copied the entire rule set at the time but I did not. So what I say here is based on my recollection. Be aware that my recollections are not always correct.
With that said, I seem to remember that the rules included an automatic and irrevocable opt-in to receiving commercial e-mails from O'Reilly. If this was true, and I think it was, O'Reilly has subsequently changed their minds on this also as they are now using a system where you have the choice as to whether you want to receive commercial emails from O'Reilly, such as their new magazine Make.
While I must applaud O'Reilly for amending their contest rules, one wonders how they got the original rules so wrong. Was it just following how all other contest rules are done? If so, didn't anyone from O'Reilly review the rules to determine if the draft rules were in line with the O'Reilly philosophy (assuming they had one)?
Speaking of philosophy, the Make site kinds of reminds me of the original Byte's Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" (later spun off as its own publication - see the CircuitCeller site here). I realize that putting together a Micromint SB180 is not exactly the same thing as flying a kite with a digital camera attached, but I think the spirit is the same: Make your own rather than buying something off-the-shelf.
But I digress. Based on O'Reilly's willingness to amend the contest rules I don't think they can accurately be described as evil. But whoever came up with the original set of rules might...
I'm modifying our intraweb pages to reflect a new design that all of the offices are using. When these kinds of changes occur, it is always a pull between having a similar look and feel among all of the web pages (so users don't have to learn a new interface for every office) versus designing pages specifically for a particular function (which makes it easier for a user to access a particular function but having to learn a new interface).
Right now, the "let's make all the pages look the same" option is winning. But I'm thinking about trying something in-between. I know frames (and tables) are kind of looked down upon by the CSS fashionistas but I think I am justified in using this tool.
I say this because, in this instance, it provides for a consistent user interface and allows me to add my own customizations while being an efficient way of maintaining menus.
Below is the first draft of the HTML I'm thinking of using. As you can see, it uses three frameset tags. The first frameset splits the screen horizontally by creating two rows (see the light blue section for the top half in the screen shot below). The second frameset splits the bottom half of the screen into two columns (see the green section for the left column). And the last frameset splits the right column into two rows (see the yellow and red sections).
The light blue frame will be used for the department-wide banner and navigation code. This will be the same across all offices so that users will have a consistent interface to work with. In addition, the green section will have a department-wide status indicator that lets users know which computer systems are operating normally.
In the yellow frame, I'll have our own office's navigation links. These will help the user to get to the various pages that we maintain. The red frame will be where the pages that we maintain will be displayed.
As noted earlier, using frames is a very efficient way of maintaining menus across multiple pages. Rather than having to change the menu on each and every page in our sub-web (about 30 pages) when something changes, all I have to do is change one page in one of the framesets and it will be reflected on all the other pages.
So, I hope, our page will have the same navigation links across the top and left side that all other offices will have but, at the same time, have space for our own navigation menus so people can move around our own part of cyberspace.
<?xml
version="1.0"
encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
<html
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Planning Test Frameset</title>
</head>
<frameset
rows="15%,*">
<frame
src="./planning2004/hbanner.html" />
<frameset
cols="15%,*">
<frame
src="./planning2004/status.html" />
<frameset
rows="10%,*">
<frame
src="./planning2004/navigation.html" />
<noframes> <body>
<p>This document can be viewed only with a
frames-capable browser.</p>
</body>
</noframes>
</frameset>
</frameset>
</frameset>
</html>
Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!
This page contains all entries posted to Misc. Ramblings in October 2004. They are listed from oldest to newest.
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