Misc. Ramblings

Not only do our thoughts and prayers go out to the people hit by the recent hurricane, but many Hawaii residents are heading their way to help. From medical doctors and nurses to civil engineers and utility workers, many are already on the ground doing their best to lend a hand.

For those of us who can't go, you may wish to consider donating some money to any of the worthy emergency organizations. I'm linking to the American Red Cross but feel free to choose the organization of your choice.

Aloha!

We are gathered here, representative of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the peoples of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice or hatred.

But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve, committing all our people unreservedly to faithful compliance with the understanding they are here formally to assume.

It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past - a world founded upon faith and understanding - a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish - for freedom, tolerance, and justice.

The terms and conditions upon which the surrender of the Japanese Imperial Forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the instrument of surrender now before you.

As supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, I announce it my firm purpose, in the tradition of the countries I represent, to proceed in the discharge of my responsibilities with justice and tolerance, while taking all necessary dispositions to ensure that the terms of surrender are fully, promptly, and faithfully complied with.

Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always. - U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur aboard the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay.

Monday is a holiday so probably no post.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

Be wary of those who blame others for their own mistakes. Think carefully about what the spin doctors are saying when they blow smoke in your face and tell you there was no way to anticipate the horror that is New Orleans and if so, it was the all the Democrats fault, anyway. Remember this is the standard tactict of the Rove Republicans. Deny, then attack. When you see that, know that they are covering up for their own bungling and do not believe them.

A day of reckoning is long past due for these people. Perhaps that day has come (even as they spin as fast as they can saying now is not the time to find out why they didn't do their jobs...). The spin doctors are saying "Sleep. Yes, sleep. All is okay. We are the Republican government and all is fine. Don't ask pesky questions. Don't ask why we didn't do our jobs. Sleeeep."

Aloha!

JHR left a comment on yesterday's post. I decided to respond. My comments are interleaved with his (JHR's are in italics).

How convenient to have a Republican Gummint to blame for all the ills of the world!

Yes, very. Just like the Republicans blamed Democrats for everything from flouridated water to the loose morals of women. All I can say is if the Republicans can't stand a little of their own medicine they shouldn't be in Washington.

1. It was not the Feddle Gummint who failed to mobilize the National Guard.

Perhaps. Although the Federal government has the power to do so (which is how the Federal government sends these very same troops to "guard" Iraq).

That said, the Federal government does control FEMA, Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard. How is it that the Coast Guard was up and rescuing people the *_day after_* the hurricane but the rest of the government was vacationing in Texas and campaigning in California?

2. It was not the Feddle Gummint who refused the offer of National Guard from nearby states.

Nope. But would that be Republican held Texas?

3. It was not the Feddle Gummint who refused the offers of EMR teams from nearby states because they were not licensed in New Orleans.

Don't know about this one but an EMS group of four from Hawaii who, I assume, are not licensed in New Orleans, were welcomed and put to good use providing emergency care the *_day after_* the hurricane hit. These EMS personnel are returning today as they have been working essentially 24-hours a day since then and are totally burned out.

You might find Bill Whittle's essay on Tribes enlightening: http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html

I'm not sure what his point is. Is he saying, because his tribe doesn't, supposedly, behave a certain way he doesn't have to provide any help?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, what we call civilization is a very thin veneer that can and is stripped away very easily. We know this. And yet we do not plan for it and seem to be completely surprised every time it happens. We saw it in Iraq when authority, albeit a very despotic one, was removed. We've seen it in the Sudan and many other places.

The point is, lawlessness will occur where authority is not established. We know this. We can prevent it by planning ahead and then executing the plan. The Federal government did neither. You cannot blame the local police for this because they were the ones doing their job, even as they were fired upon by gangs of thugs.

End of mail

[Insert disclaimer] As I said, if the Republicans can't stand the heat, then they shouldn't be in Washington. But I find it amusing when, and I'm not referring here to JHR, they sequel like the stuck, tax spending, pork barrel pigs they seem to be.

I think there may be an Apple Ipod Nano with my name on it. So far, I've resisted buying an Ipod but this looks like the one for me. Of course, there is still the problem with batteries (I think you have to send your Ipod to Apple to have them change the batteries. As you know, all batteries fail, eventually, so you will have to part with your Ipod when that happens. But I digress).

The other problem is I've switched to Linux and there isn't, as far as I know, a version of iTunes for Linux. There may be a way of running the Windows version under CodeWeavers but I haven't test that, yet.

In any case, I will wait awhile to see how the reviews come in and then decide whether to get one.

Aloha!

Sometimes people focus on the process rather than the goal.

For example, even as communities all over the United States welcome the survivors of Hurricane Katrina (including here in Hawaii), I guess I shouldn't be surprised that at least one area, Majestic Oaks, Ocala, Florida (what is it about Florida that attracts such people - ed.) is refusing to accept any survivors.

According to this Ocala Star-Banner article (be aware that the HTML for that page seems borked so you may need to Google for another source), the community of Majestic Oaks has a homeowners association with deed restrictions that prohibit their housing survivors of the storm.

That is, it seems the homes are considered single-family housing. Thus, housing more than one family is prohibited - even in times of emegency.

If that wasn't bad enough, a Navy helicopter pilot, hearing from the Coast Guard that immediate assistance was needed to rescue survivors from the rooftops of homes due to the flooding, diverted from his flight and, by doing so, saved 110 victims of the storm before returning to base.

His reward for using his iniative and acting like the kind of citizen we would like to think we are? He was pulled from flights and was assigned to administering a dog kennel. His commander says this is not a retaliation (wink, wink) for his not keeping to his mission of delivering supplies but medical authorities report the commander's nose grew three inches mmediately after he spoke (you can read more about this story here).

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Citizens have to take personal responsbility for doing what needs to be done in times of emergency. Sometimes, this means ignoring rules/regulations and relying on your individual common sense of what has to be done.

Loosing sight of the goal and focusing only on the process can sometimes lead to absurd results like the two examples above. But if we want to be a free people, rather than government controlled drones, we must act. Thank God for people like this Navy pilot who exhibited, by what he did, what I consider to be actions in the highest tradtions of our country.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

Sorry, no post today. Maybe tomorrow. Or Not.

I'm having problems "upgrading" to MT 3.2 so things may look a bit strange (or not at all, depending on whether I get this working).

I've also had to reformat my c:\ drive because of problems with an application our IT people are installing. More when I have time.

Aloha!

I am not a happy camper right now so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. [insert disclaimer here]

That said, for those who are tasked with managing a large, multi-location network, using any tool that will help you do your job is highly prized. Unfortunately, within this context, it is common to confuse what the goal is. That is, the overall goal should be to assist the organization in meeting its mission. For some, this is manufacturing and for others a service. For us, it is the administration of justice.

However, the confusion comes in where some Information Technology (hereinafter IT) managers begin to think of the network as their own and that employees are invaders that, at best, must be tolerated and, at worst, must be tracked/blocked/spied upon.

Recently, under the guise of implementing a large network-based application, our IT division began surreptitiously installing a very costly program called LANDesk. I say surreptitiously because other than notifying a committee that does not regularly report to employees, IT refuses to let anyone know about the installation. They refuse to put up a notice on the internal intraweb site (which is what the site is for). They refuse to send a memo to all division explaining what the software is for and why it is being forced down on all desktops, via the network, without their prior knowledge or consent. In other words, they seem to be very closed and are essentially telling everyone else to "bug off" because IT knows what they are doing and no one else does nor needs to know. Of course, I don't know what IT knows but I note, yet again, IT has apparently hired a consultant to do the installation and configuration for them. Perhaps I'm wrong, but this would tend to indicate IT doesn't have the in-house expertise to install and configure such an application. But I digress.

LANDesk has several modules intended for different situations. But for users, the modules that affect us are: one that secretly "inventories" the users PC, one that surreptitiously allows IT to watch whatever is on your screen (in real time), and the one that can take over control of the PC itself. I would not be surprised if IT already reads all the emails coming and going within our system. But, I guess, that may not be enough in the war against employees. IT now seems to want dominion over all desktops attached to the network.

There are many unfortunate problems with this situation. The most important, right now, is that LANDesk does not seem to be compatible with some types of security software such as anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities. And by incompatible, speaking just for myself, I mean LANDesk will corrupt data to a point in which the user must reformat the drive. Within one week, I got between five and 10 blue screens of death and various other Windows errors that locked up my PC. Any of these episodes may have been the one(s) that finally caused by PC to become inoperable, but I can't say which one in particular did the deed. Although it is possible the installing of LANDesk was coincidental to my problems, common sense tells me otherwise.

In any case, I had to reformat my drive and re-install my applications. Needless to say, I am less than a happy camper because this occurred during the time I was working on the internal project I've mentioned before. This project started nine month ago and culminated in a 75 page report (30 pages of which are data tables) that I recently finished. Fortunately, I kept multiple copies of the report in different locations so when my PC went down, I still had access to the draft.

Did I mention I am not a happy camper?

Lastly, central control of all PCs on the network opens a door for a worm or virus to be spread, all at once, to every PC. Stunningly, IT seems to be blind to this possibility and has no procedures or policies, written or otherwise, for the physical security of the workstation that controls LANDesk nor any procedures or polices to cover the eventuality of an employee accidently, or on purpose, either spreading a virus/worm or the taking of confidential information from employee's PCs. This, even though it is common knowledge that the most common vector for spam has been internal IT employees stealing the information and selling it to spammers.

To me, the purpose of the network is to help employees do their job of meeting the mission of this department. However, it seems IT has decided users are a virus that must be stamped out, or at least controlled. This is, apparently, regardless of the consequences and without transparency or accountability.

More tomorrow when I will talk about the changes to MT 3.2 (and why this site is looking so strange).

Aloha!

Actually, this is a trick question. Almost no large corporation innovates. Although, perhaps, to become a large corporation one must be innovative. But once having achieved such status (i.e., large corporation), and usually a monopoly over a segment of the market, what large corporations typically do is crave the status quo (sometimes spun with the word "stability" or "predictability"). For, by definition, as long as the status quo exists, the large corporation is in monopolistic control.

Note that I am not making a value judgment here. Most businesses are in business to make money. One common way of doing so is becoming so large that you control the market. To do so, honestly, you have to produce a product or service that people want and are willing to pay for. Note also, that I'm not saying this is necessarily illegal.

But once you've either driven your competition out of business (or bought and closed all of them), you can control the price of your product without fear that someone else will under cut you and therefore take away your control. Again, this is not a value judgment. It's just business.

That said, it is a value judgment to say this is not usually a GoodThing(tm) for the buying public. First, the price of the product increases without any market-based counter balance. Second, the product stagnates. That is, no useful/innovative features are offered and existing problems are not fixed. Both, in my judgment, are not GoodThings.

This is one reason why many people ask government to step in when a monopoly exists. Leaving aside the question of whether government intervention makes the situation better, the realization that something must be done usually takes place.

However, this post is not about what should take place. It is, rather, about whether Microsoft, as a large monopolistic software corporation innovates. And as I said at the beginning, the answer, at least as it appears to me is -- not any longer.

For example, look at the price of the Windows XP Home edition operating system. At retail, it costs $199. Add to that MS Office Pro 2003 at $499. Add the two and you are paying at least as much if not more than the hardware cost of a new PC. Is this software cost worth what you pay? The answer for a growing number of people is no. There is very little that is innovate in either product and what there is, in my opinion,is very costly for what you get. Ask yourself this question: does either product help you to do what you want done better (and I don't mean faster or more of, that is more a function of the speed of the PC, not the software)? For many people, the answer is no.

So, what to do? For now, start exploring the alternatives. There are other operating systems. There's the Mac OS, Linux/Unix, and a bunch of lesser known platforms out there. Running on these platforms are some applications that are full of innovations. I urge you to take a look at them and examine whether they meet your needs. If not yet, stay with what you have. But I think you will find that these applications are improving by the day and if you come back and take a look in a year or two, you may be pleased with what you find. Or not. YMMV.

Aloha!

Soon after my problems with LANDesk, I decided to upgrade to MovableType 3.2 (yes, I know, just hit me on the head now and save me the trouble later). MT is the content management system that I use to run this part of my website. I used to just hand code everything but, over the years, I got tired of creating the links each week so I looked for something that would do that for me. At the time, and this was several years ago, MT looked like the best way to go even though it was akin to using a sledge hammer to swat a flea. But the worst part is that I still end up coding, although it's more CSS related then HTML. But I digress.

So I downloaded, configured, and installed the latest version and immediately got a 500 error when I tried to run it. Sigh.

A 500 error is a general error that can be caused by multiple things. Since I got rid of Windows at home, I was using Linux-based utilities to download, unpack, edit, and then upload the files to my host server. Somewhere along the line, I must of done something wrong. So I checked the configuration file but, as far as I could see, all looked well. My next guess was that I somehow uploaded the files in binary rather than ASCII format. Now, you Windows folks out there are probably wondering about what I'm talking about. First, let me say I'm not a Linux/Unix expert, but from what I understand, Linux/Unix does not use file name extensions to determine whether a file is a binary executable application or an ASCII text file. Hence, among other things, when you transfer a file, you have to tell your FTP program which it is. If you don't, or if you get it wrong, your application won't run. So I uploaded everything again, making sure to use binary for the binary files, in this case the binaries are image files, and ASCII for everything else. But I still got the 500 error. Sigh.

At this point, I deleted everything in the MT directory, downloaded the tar file again, unpacked, configured, and uploaded everything again. This time it worked.

But that wasn't the end of things. Having triumphed, hubris took over and I decided to upgrade the templates that create the look and feel of this part of my site. Big mistake.

I chose to use a plugin that is supposed to automagically change the templates and CSS for me. But it didn't work. It copied the base CSS file into the wrong directly so the right column of this page ended up at the bottom. Once I figured that out, and moved the file to where it was supposed to be, most of the page looked fine. Unfortunately, while the main index page is okay, some of the archive pages have text that extend outside of the column. After scanning the MT support forums, I find that some of the CSS files have bugs. This does not instill trust in my heart knowing that they released an application with obvious bugs like this.

If that wasn't bad enough, even though this is only a point update, MT decided to change the User Interface. Although others are generally okay with this, I'm not. At least some of the changes, like removing the link to viewing the site, really don't make sense to me.

Perhaps after I cool down I may see the logic to the changes but I right now, I'm thinking of going back to how I used to do things. I realize that this reduces my visibility because I would not be pinging the aggregaters (sp?) nor would I have an RSS/XML feed. But I have to wonder if it's worth the trouble to continue to work with MT. We'll see.

Sorry, no post today. It seems my troubles with LANDesk continue. Apparently, and this is a guess on my part, the system is setup to check whether you have LANDesk installed. If not, it will continue to force it down on to the PC until it is. Hence, my hard drive is corrupted again. Sigh.

I will be be spending my time today reformatting my drive and re-installing Windows. However, I may no longer be logging into our Novell Netware network since as I soon as I do, my hard drive will be corrupted again by the forced installation of LANDesk.

The only long-term solution I see is to use Linux and log in to the Network from there. That way, when LANDesk tries to install, it will die a deserved death since it doesn't run on Linux and even if it did, it would require root-level access to install.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

So, for now, I am operating using Xandros Linux at work so that my PC won't become corrupted by the forced installation of LANDesk. In order to check my office email, I have to rely on CodeWeavers/Wine to run Lotus Notes in an emulation mode.

But, in order to have Notes access the Domino server (where the email is stored), I have to login into the Netware network. Since doing that under Windows will result in LANDesk being installed, I have to instead use the Linux ncpfs utility to get logged in. That said, I still can't figure out how to, when the time comes, update my Netware login password. Changing to the Netware default /sys/pub directory doesn't show the setpass utility (nor if it did, how to run it under Linux).

I've tried installing the NovelClient from SourceForge from both the .rpm and the source but find it incompatible with Xanrdos. It appears it is designed to work with SuSE 9.x, but not Xandros. I've also tried, before, to use the Novell Client for Linux (beta) but that doesn't work with Netware version 4.x, which is what we have.

Hence, I will have to login in using Windows at some point to change passwords (which expire every so often). Hopefully, before I need to do that, I will find another way to change passwords. Sigh

As an aside, SuSE has announced version 10 will be out next month so I'm glad I didn't buy version 9.3. If Novell is willing to send me a review copy of version 10 I will take a look at it but if it doesn't include CodeWeavers I'm not sure how well it will fit my needs.

Aloha!

I've taken Wal*Mart management to task for their virulent opposition to their workers organizing into unions. But I have to give them their due for their planning and implementation of their emergency response plan for hurricane Katrina. From what I understand, they pre-positioned trucks filled with the kinds of goods that the survivors would need and rolled those trucks within 48-hours of the storm passing through.

This is an outstanding example of what private enterprise can do when its goals coincide with the public good. Well done to Wal*Mart. If only governments (local, state, and federal - save for the Coast Guard) could plan and implement so well.

With more storms coming, it is worth repeating that for the first three days after such an event, you are on your own. Individuals must take responsibility for their own safety and welfare. You must have your own emergency kit that includes food, water, clothing, medications, bedding, and whatever else you need during that period immediately after an event. Do not expect help from anyone except yourself so prepare now.

As for us, with two or three hurricanes in our area right now, you better believe we've checked our emergency kit to make sure we are prepared. Although hurricanes may not be a problem in your neck of the woods, there are tornadoes, earth quakes, avalanches, mud slides, and other disasters. So, be prepared.

Aloha!

I have two problems to report in using Linux.

The first involved printing an Adobe Acrobat file. The file began as a WordPerfect file emailed to me from another worker. The file was then forwarded to another person who, I believe, inserted an image of their signature into the file, converted it into an Acrobat file and emailed that back to me.

Although the file displays fine, printing it results in a series of boxes, rather than text. I've tried various printer drivers but the problem may be in the Adobe Acrobat fonts. If so, as far as I know, there's not a whole lot I can do. So I booted into Windows and printed the file there. Otherwise, other Acrobat files seem to print fine.

As an aside, when installing the printer, Xandros indicated the "hpoj" driver would be a better fit than the HP 2200 that was the default for my HP LaserJet 2200d. However, nowhere did it say how to install this driver. In order to do so, you have to use Xandros Network to search for the hpoj driver. Once found, install it. Once installed, you have to run, at the command line, the following:

/etc/init.d/hpoj setup

The command line install will then ask you a bunch of questions, the answers of which depends on how your system is configured. Once done with the command line setup, you then have to go to Launch -> Control Center -> Peripheral Devices -> Printers -> Add -> Local Printer. The wizard continues but what you need to do is add the hpoj driver. Unfortunately, it didn't solve the problem with the Acrobat file but at least I have the hpoj loaded. But I digress.

The second problem is using my scanner. I have a Visioneer OneTouch 9120 USB scanner. However, there does not appear to be a Linux driver for this scanner. I checked out the SANE scanner site and found Visioneer is not supported. I checking other sites and it appears that it comes down to I am out of luck and should instead buy an Epson, almost any Epson. The moral of this story is check the SANE project site first before buying a scanner for Linux.

As another aside, I am using HTML-Kit, an HTML editor running under CodeWeavers/Wine. Unfortunately, HTML-Kit is not a supported application and routinely blows up. That said, it appears better suited for how I create my daily posts than any other HTML editor I've tried. All I need is something to create the post and then check for HTML syntax errors. That it does well. The spell checker also works, but that is a bonus because all I want is something to check my short posts, not something to create a multi-page site or something that gets in the way by creating crufty, non-standards compliant HTML.

In any case, I'm still here and still using Xandros Linux. But I have to switch over to Windows every once in awhile when I find problems like the two above.

Aloha!

One of nature's wonders is "The Flying Mobulas of the Sea of Cortez".

Although I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I've never seen these manta ray like animals. But it must be amazing to see these sea creatures coming up out of the water flying through the air and splashing back down into their watery home.

Aloha!

Having won the wars against terrorism, organized crime, and drugs, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is creating a unit for fighting materials targeted to consenting adults. Yes, that's right, a new war on adult images. The FBI will be jurisdiction shopping to find backwards areas that find pictures of consenting adults doing what they want illegal. I'm sure they'll find a few such areas but I think this effort will go the way of all earlier ones. That is, it will sputter and go limp.

I guess I shouldn't take the FBI to task since it was the, hawk spit, Republican Congress that required the FBI to do so. But you have to wonder about a Congress concerned more about what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes than hunting down terrorists. In any case, see the story here.

I think I've been interested in photography since I was in elementary school and had a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. Later, when I worked at the family printing business, I used the darkroom to process film, slides, and prints. There was something almost magical to see the image appearing out of a white piece of paper, made yellow by the safe lights. To see the rich tones, from pure white to pure black, never failed to fascinate me. To this day, I appreciate black and white images more than color.

That said, every once in awhile I run across a site that intoxicates the senses with the pleasure of form and, in the case of the Liquid Sculpture site, movement.

This site displays images, taken with a high speed flash, of water droplets (note, you need to fully enable javascript for the images to display). You've probably seen photos of milk droplets or such but photographer Martin Waugh plays with colors and substances to create, yes, liquid sculptures. All the content is copyrighted so I won't be showing you any examples but feel free to go to his site to take a look.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

In an announcement released on Tuesday, the Opera web browser is now banner and licensing fee free. Up to now, if you didn't purchase a license you could still use Opera but they would display banner ads along the upper portion of the browser. Version 8.5 no longer includes the banners nor requires payment for a license.

The press release is silent on what business model they will be using but one has to wonder how they will stay in business.

That aside, Opera is a very fast (much, much faster in Linux than Firefox), standards compliant browser available for many different operating systems. Some of it's features can be found here. Note to Xandros users, and perhaps others, you should install the Open Motif client (motif-clients) before installing Opera. Opera will still run without it, but apparently not everything will work.

Give it try some time and see if it meets your needs. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Speaking of service, or lack thereof, this article says Microsoft is doubling its product development and support staff next year. Usually, that would be a GoodThing(tm). But in this case, the staff is going to be in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India. I am guessing that part of the increase is in anticipation of the release of Windows Vista and the increased requirement for support it will result in. But whatever the reason, MS must feel that the economics of using offshore staff outweighs the inability of most people to understand a thing these people are saying.

Don't get me wrong, India has some of the most intelligent people around. India regularly produces some of the best engineers, doctors, and other types of professionals, anywhere. But heck if I can understand what many of them are saying.

Aloha!

Back in August of last year, I talked about the sale of Verizon Hawaii telecommunications to the Carlyle Group. I predicted that services would probably deteriorate due to the economics of the sale (taking on all kinds of debt while promising not to increase prices).

Well, its been a little over 12 months, but it's beginning to happen. Over the last two months Internet access has not only slowed from the 2mbps I used to get down to 500kbps but, in addition, the connection is going dead several times a week. Prior to these problems, I had had only two outages over a two year period and was getting a steady 2mbps.

It should be noted that although the Carlyle Group bought out Verizon Hawaii, Carlyle then turned around and contracted with Verizon to continue to provide, among other things, Internet service. The problem is, Verizon has no monetary incentive nor, apparently, any contractual requirement to upgrade the system as more users are added. And add new users they have. Hence, the network is over capacity and thus the slowing speeds and network outages.

It is my understanding that Carlyle is working on creating its own network Real Soon Now. But once completed, I have to wonder how reliable and how fast it will be. I guess time will tell but I predicted this problem more than a year ago and I can predict that Carlyle will not be able to provide either speed or reliability because of the high debt that was part of the structuring of the deal to buy out Verizon. I hope I am wrong but I fear that the economics of the deal simply doesn't allow for good service.

So, they're at it again. Those robot vehicles in search of Sarah Connor tasked with driving a course without human intervention. The last DARPA Grand Challenge wasn't exactly a ringing success but with the cash prize doubled to $2 million USD, things are heating up.

Starting tomorrow through October 5th, 43 teams are vying for 20 slots in the final challenge set for October 8th. In order to get to the finals in Nevada, the teams must compete in preliminary heats at the California Speedway in Fontana, California.

The finals will require the robotic vehicles to travel a 150-mile (about 240km) course within 10 hours (about 10 hours). The course route will not be announced until two hours prior to the start.

Aloha!

As I've noted before, my remaining problem with using Linux in a Novell Netware 4.x environment was changing my Netware password. You may remember that I'm using the NCPFS utilities to login to our Netware server and mount the volumes I am authorized to access. This mini how-to assumes you have successfully been able to get logged in and have mounted said volumes.

The NCPFS utilities (as of this writing I am using version 2.2.6) include, among other things, something called nwpasswd that provides a way to change your Netware password. However, partly due to a sketchy MAN page/example and partly due to my lack of understanding of how Netware logins work I have not been able to get nwpasswd to run error free. The error I keep getting refers to an unknown server error (0x89F0). I tried Googling for reasons why I would get this error and found one site that said nwpasswd doesn't work if the server is on a different sub-net from the client that is trying to login. I believe this is the situation on our network so this may be why I can't use this utility. If you can get it to work, great. If not, you may want to read on.

In searching for another utility, I found that NCPFS also includes, but does not install by default, a program called chgpwd. It is located in the /contrib/tcl-utils directory of the default NCPFS 2.2.6 install. I don't know why there would be two NCPFS utilities to change passwords but there you go.

However, under the default Xandros distribution, I couldn't find this utility nor even the directory it's supposed to be in (perhaps because NCPFS was installed using Xandros Network). So I downloaded the full NCPFS 2.2.6 package, untared it, changed into the NCPFS-2.2.6 directory that was automatically created, did a ./configure, make, make install-dev, changed into the /ncpfs-2.2.6/contrib/tcl-utils directory and then did a make chgpwd. Two notes: I did not do a make install in the /ncpfs-2.2.6 directory because I did not want to run the chance of installing a new version of NCPFS over the one already installed by Xandros Network since this could break something that wasn't broken. The second note is I did try to make install chgpwd, but got an error saying the default install directory for chgpwd existed but was not a directory (!?!?!). So, I just left the newly created binary in the /ncpfs-2.2.6/contrib/tcl-utils directory where it was.

At that point, I tried using the chgpwd utility and ran into problems because, now wait for it, the sketchy documentation. All I can say is you have to try the various options (taking care to observe upper and lower case) to see what works for your network. For mine, I needed the -S server name, -c context_name, -o object name, and of course, -P old password and -n new password. Note: if you use the -S server option, do not also use the -T tree option. One or the other, but not both.

For the record, using chgpwd would look something like this for our network:

./chgpwd -S DOWNING -o BOND -c AREA51.MI6.UK -P james -n moneypenny

Where DOWNING is the server name, BOND is the user name used to login to the Netware server, AREA51.MI6.UK is the context on the NDS tree for the object BOND, james is the current password and moneypenny is the new one.

Be aware that this utility does not give you any feedback unless something goes wrong. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Working in a large governmental agency, like working for a large private corporation can, over time, suck the soul out of your body like Coke out of a bottle. As a result, many people become sticklers about insignificant details but loose sight of what the agency or business is really trying to do. That is, serve their customers. But that doesn't mean it has to be that way.

Kathy Sierra created a User Focused Employee Guide. Some of the ideas in her guide are:

• Language matters. Frame everything in terms of the user's experience.

• Speak for real users... not fake abstract "profiles".

• Put pictures of real users on your walls. Act like they're as important to you as pictures of family members and pets.

• When product features are discussed without taking into account how it helps (or hinders) the user kicking ass, adopt a slightly confused, mildly annoyed look...

• Blog about it

There are other ideas in her guide but it's all good. The bottom line is the customer is not the enemy so do not treat him or her as if they were. Focus on making them more productive. Focus on helping them to do their job better. Focus on that, and everything else drops away as irrelevant.

Aloha!

I spoke too soon when I said I had solved the last problem I had in switching from Windows to Xandros Linux. There is a wee small problem involving UDF packet writing tools.

This is not the place or time to do a tutorial on UDF packet writing software so I won't. But In the Windows world, the Adaptec UDF packet writing driver is almost a standard. You can easily find and buy preformatted CDs with the driver already included. Using such disks, and the driver, you can easily copy, backup, and move data between PCs. It just works. Even if the disks don't come with the driver, you can download a version from any number of places and install the driver with no more trouble than clicking on the install file.

In Linux, things are a bit different. Or at least it is in the default Xandros 2.6.9-x1 kernel world it is. I have three choices. First, do nothing and therefore lose access to gigabytes of data I have stored on CDs and DVDs. Second, download over 30MBs of 2.6.9 kernel source and then patch and compile the kernel, hoping that nothing breaks as a result. Or lastly, download over 30MBs of 2.6.11 kernel source and compile, hoping that nothing breaks as a result.

There is an old phrase that says: damned if you do and damned if you don't. I need access to the data. I can't get the data unless I do either option two or three. After thinking it over, I've decided to use option four. That is, I'll access the data in Windows and copy to a partition, as needed, that can be accessed from within Linux. It's the best work around I can think of right now - which is a pretty sad state of affairs.

For those of you who want to recompile your kernels, and are using the Gentoo distribution, there is a How-To here. For other distributions, I guess you are on your own as I've not found an official How-To and most of the unofficial ones I've seen are written for their specific configuration, even though they don't usually specify what that configuration is. So, I guess, this is just one more thing that is not going to happen under Linux. At least, until Xandros updates the kernel to something above 2.6.9. If you have another way of accessing such data, drop me a line.

Aloha!

It looks like Fall has indeed sprung. Its been raining since yesterday and I don't know if this is significant but the animals are beginning to line up two by two.

In any case, I have an early morning meeting to prepare for so I gotta run. But before I go, thank you to fellow Daynoter John Doucette for renewing the daynotes.com domain for the Gang.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!