Misc. Ramblings

I read an article over the weekend that talked about the repair and maintenance problems of Seattle's Monorail. The monorail, completed for the 1962 World's Fair, connects downtown to what was the fair grounds.

The early sixties was an interesting time when it came to predicting the future. It was a world of possibilities. A world of high tech wonders like the monorail.

But reality was not kind to this vision of the future. To this day, monorails are more an oddity than a common mode of transportation. But one of the other devices of the future, the rocketbelt, may now be ready for liftoff.

A report of the First International Rocketbelt Convention held late last month indicates you can now buy an off-the-shelf rocketbelt. Whether this actually works I don't know but it sure would be nice to have one of these. Of course, since most so called rocketbelts had flying times of no more than 30 seconds, you won't be able to go very far. But still, what a way to fly. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

In order to communicate, we need to understand what is being said. If we don't understand,  confusion and chaos can result. One way of understanding is sometimes referred to as cultural sensitivity. That is, understanding the world view of others helps us to communicate. That said, we need to keep in mind that understanding these differences is not the same as saying all these views are necessarily equal nor appropriate.

Recently, Celebrity Cruises ran what appears to be an image of the King Kamehameha statute. The part that changed is the out-stretched hand which is now holding a champaign glass (photo on the right).

Some Hawaiian groups are shocked and outraged that the statue of the Hawaiian king would be used for commercial purposes. One person asks how would most US citizens feel if the Lincoln memorial where photo-shopped to include an image of a beer in the hand of the president as a way of advertising a product. Would this be considered appropriate?

Upon hearing of the uproar, the cruise line pulled the ad and apologized. However, some apparently wish for a more tangible punishment and may file a law suit.

May I gently suggest that the courts may not be the appropriate place for understanding, communication, or healing to occur. There are Hawaiian alternative dispute resolution avenues that can be explored. The Hawaiian groups and the cruise line could use these paths to discuss ways to make this right. Maybe the cruise line could make a donation to an appropriate local cultural organization. Maybe something else. But going to court to find a punishment, in my opinion, may not fit the crime and seems to be, in this case, culturally insensitive. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. But in ourselves..." - Act I, Scene II of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Some pundits are saying the breaking story regarding US Representative Mark Foley and his troubling views on what is appropriate behavior between adults and children was somehow orchestrated by certain unnamed "others" for political gain. Although some may agree, I point out an alternative explanation that frames the situation in terms of personal responsibility. Something the Republicans love to trumpet about unless, it seems, it applies to them.

Although others may have ultimately been involved, and be clear I have no evidence that this is true, the timing of the story was under the direct control of Representative Foley and his fellow traveling Republicans.

It seems the US House Clerk's Office was warning pages about Congressman Foley five years ago. If this is true, and if the warnings were related to Foley's alleged misconduct, then at least some in the House leadership knew of his deeds. If so, then the leadership could have controlled the story by forcing the issue with Foley. Instead, it appears the Republicans tried to cover up his reprehensible deeds.

In addition, Congressman Foley knew what he was doing was morally, ethically, and perhaps legally wrong and could have stopped at any time. He could have controlled the story himself by taking the initiative and disclosing his problems and what he planned to do to correct them. Instead, he too tried to cover up the story. Instead, he has tried to shift blame away from himself to (choose one): alcoholism, prior abuse, Democrats, and/or gays/lesbians.

As I said before about my own Democratic Party: in order to regain the public trust, the Party must reform itself. The Party must provide internal discipline. The Party must take responsibility for policing itself and showing to the people that it has its house in order.

Likewise, I think it disingenuous to say that the timing of this sad story is somehow blamable on others. It appears the Republican leadership and Representative Foley himself had ample opportunity to come clean at the time of their choosing years before now. Instead, they instituted a cover up. It was this decision that may have created the opportunity for others to take control (if that is what indeed happened).

But whichever the case, to try to blame others for Representative Foley's own actions appears to be a political act intended to spin the story, rather than to tell the truth. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

Sorry, pair.com, the host for this site, is having problems with the server. In the last two days, the server has crashed four or five times. During those times, access to this site is not available. In addition, mail access also seems to go away.

Aloha!

Being a kool kid, you probably already know that a team from Firefox journyed to Mordor Redmond to talk with various Vista teams. The purpose of the trip, at the invition of Microsoft (MS), was to get answers on how to integrate Firefox into MS's upcoming release of Windows.

Stop for a minute to digest that. Microsoft invited a competitor (well, in at least browsers) to come to learn how to work in the Vista environment. Then take that one step further. MS offered to provide OpenSource code to help them do it. Excuse me while I lay down for a minute to stop hyperventilating.

Okay. I'm back. A Firefox team member by the name of Vladmir Vukićević blogged about the experience of entering the belly of the beast and survived to tell about it. His first post is here and the others are here, here, here, and here.

As I've said before, MS seems to be of two minds. On one hand, you have the friendly, OpenSource loving side that is trying to be transparent and helpful. On the other hand, you have the side that is trying to be closed and controlling. Will the real MS please stand up?

In the mean time, I agree with others that Firefox was right to accept the invition and should continue to collaborate with MS when it is in Firefox's best interest to do so. But when they do, the team members need to realize that MS, in the long run, is trying to put them out of business. So, when you make a deal with a scorpian, be aware of its sting.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

During the mid to late 1970's, I attended college in southern California. As with most male college students, music was an important part of life. It seemed all the cool guys had a receiver, turntable, and a pair of speakers (the bigger the better).

If I remember correctly, I had a Marantz receiver, Technics direct drive turntable with Shure V-15 cartridge, and Altec Lansing speakers.

Back then, although there were several stores where music was sold (including the Licorice Pizza), the place to go to find that obscure copy of a record that nobody else had was Tower Records. I especially liked the one on Sunset Boulevard. It was set on a slight curve of one of the busier streets in Los Angeles but was the place to go. They even had a pretty good collection of contemporary Hawaiian music, which I bought on a regular basis to soothe my longing for home.

However, over the years, things changed. The music world especially. Receivers became part of a home entertainment system. Turntables gave way to CDs. Music became digital and down loadable.

But through it all, Tower remained the same. A brick and mortar building where cool music lived.

However, this past weekend, Tower Records began a liquidation sale. The once power house of music will be no more in great part because it did not change with the times. Perhaps its for the best, but I will miss the familiar yellow and red logo. Thanks for all the great memories.

Aloha!

Even here in Hawaii, we have what we call bad weather. Be clear, what we call bad and what other places call bad are not necessarily the same. Still, this week has been shrouded in what we call "Kona winds."

If you look at a map of the Hawaiian islands, you'll see that the Big Island of Hawaii is at the southern most end of the chain. On that island is the town of Kona. By tradition, when the winds come from that direction up the island chain, it is referred to as a Kona wind.

As the winds pass the Big Island, it picks up the gases and particulates spewing from Kilauea volcano. These gases, collectively called vog, are a toxic mix of sulfur dioxide and other chemicals. Those with respiratory diseases are especially hard hit when they breath this.

If you would like more information, the MorningPaper(tm) has an article on this week's vog here.

Aloha!

The research committee developed two recommendations: performance management and information technology deployment. Both are worthy of consideration.

That said, it should be remembered that public institutions are categorically different from private businesses. Public offices should be more transparent in operation, open to comment, and accountable to citizens. Private businesses are just that, private. Businesses, for the most part, are not required to let you know how they operate, why they make certain decisions, nor must they respond to the general public.

Sometimes people, both inside and out of government, forget these differences and try to force the either to behave more like the other. I don't consider a blind adherence to this a GoodThing. Although public institutions should operate as efficiently as possible, this does not mean efficiency should be the paramount priority. Yes, I know, there will be some who will vehemently disagree. But here's why I think reasonable people would not.

Justice is supposed to be evenly applied to everyone. For example, in a criminal case, if you are not able to afford representation, an attorney should be supplied to you. This costs money and is not the most efficient way of operating. But our society has decided that people should not be abandoned without assistance just because they don't have money.

In our system, the accused is assumed innocent until proved guilty. Obviously, the safeguards in place to ensure a fair trial cost more that if the accused is assumed guilty and must, therefore, prove his or her innocent. The cost burden in the second instance is squarely on the accused.

The point is, we love our freedom so much that we are willing to support an inefficient system so that the innocent are not deprived of their rights without due process of law. I am willing to support that system, even if some do not. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

Speaking of losing, I understand that Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 7.0 is due out soon. I further understand that it will be automatically pushed down as a critical update unless you take action now to stop it.

Why would you want to do that (i.e., prevent the install)? Well, usually it is not prudent to install dot zero version updates on production PCs because there are usually many unknown (and many known) bugs. These bugs tend to be nasty and may cause all kinds of very difficult to solve problems.

Secondly, even with beta testing, sometimes you have to wait for the gold code to test how well an update works with your other applications. Hence, in a large enterprise, you don't want to have a forced upgrade. For this very reason, our IT folks recently decided to prohibit the IE7 install until our mission critical web-based applications have been fully tested.

Whatever you decide, be clear that you WILL have to cooperate and install IE 7 at some point, the question is when. However, prudent people are saying perhaps you shouldn't be the first to do so. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

Rules are rules. Or at least, that's how the old saying goes. And I understand that if everyone doesn't play by the rules, sometimes things don't work.

It seems Debian GNU/Linux will no longer be distributing the popular Firefox browser. This long email thread lays out the problem(s) better than I can. But as far as I can see, Debian wants to be free and Firefox, it says, is not.

So, Debian will use Gnuzilla and IceWeasel instead. Sigh. I fear this may turn out to be an example of another lose-lose situation (see also problems with playing mp3 and certain other media files in Debian). Although I make no judgments as to who has the better argument, I do say it is the user who, in the end, may lose the most. Big Sigh.

That being said, unless both actively try to sabotage the other, I may simply download the Firefox tarball and install it on any Debian-based system I choose to use (I'm using Kubuntu and Xandros, and assuming that either chooses not to include Firefox). YYMV. Insert disclaimer here.

It seems there was a lot of anecdotal evidence that local counties increased the number of traffic citations as a form of revenue enhancement (i.e., tax increase). But if this article is true, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis did a landmark study of North Carolina data that confirmed that as county revenues decreased, the number of citations issued increased.

I guess here in Hawaii we are fortunate that all revenue from traffic citations, which are issued by county police, go directly to the state. It was done that way for two reasons. First, because the revenue is intended to fund the state courts that adjudicate the citations (From what I understand, this was central to the agreement when the county courts were transferred to the state). And secondly, because it removes the conflict of interest that is reflected in the Reserve Bank study.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

For those fashion forward folks who like bright colors, Apple has released a 4GB special edition nano in RED. The technical specifications appear to be similar, if not the same, to the other 4BG nanos but the difference is Apple will donate $10 of the purchase price to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. The special edition nano is associated with Bono, leader of the rock band U2 and his fight against the disease.

According to the press release:

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established in 2002, with the support of the world’s leaders and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, to dramatically increase resources to fight three of the world’s most devastating diseases, and to direct those resources to areas of greatest need by supporting locally-driven strategies. To date, the Global Fund has committed $5.2 billion (US) to more than 363 programs in 131 countries. For more information about (RED) please visit www.joinred.com.

Well, that was some Sunday. I was already up, had read the paper, had breakfast, and was getting ready to go to Longs Drug store when at 7:08 a.m., the house starting shaking. Having gone through these things before while an undergraduate in California, I knew immediately it was an earthquake.

The first shock got over pretty quickly and everything seemed okay. But a few minutes later, you could hear a low frequency rumble and the house began to really shake. Nothing fell off the wall or broke but this one ran for a good 20 or 30 seconds and shook things pretty good. Shortly after that, the electricity failed.

As we would soon see, it was the power failure that would cause the most problems. Without power, there was no way of knowing what was happening elsewhere. Even when we got our battery powered transistor radio going the only station still on the air was broadcasting a taped interview on one of the Constitutional amendments on the ballot in November.

For about 30 more minutes, the interview ran until someone finally broke in and went live with the first of what would be a long day of reports. At that point, if I remember right, basically they could only confirm that a magnitude six point something (it would change a couple of times during the coming hours) earthquake had occurred off of the Big Island of Hawaii. Power was out at least on O'ahu (later reports would state power was out on many, if not all, of the other islands).

Communications via land line and cell phones quickly became overloaded as everyone tried calling to let others know their condition or to find out how others where. Through much of the morning, phone service was difficult (if not impossible for some cell phone users and all digital voice over IP customers) but cleared by noon or so for land line customers.

I got our battery powered TV going and found two stations broadcasting. One was the Japanese language station so that was of no use (especially since they were broadcasting their normal Sunday morning shows). The other was broadcasting an re-run of the University of Hawaii football game held the day before. Except for an occasional and very brief cut in the station was of no use for emergency information and we had to wait for their five p.m. news to get anything of value.

Power did not return for us until about 11:11 p.m., almost exactly 16 hours after it failed. Due to the outage, all the food in out refrigerator had to be thrown out. But otherwise, we had no other losses.

It's times like these that reminds us that we need to be prepared. Whether the danger is an earthquake, hurricane, or other disaster, everyone should be prepared. Some items you may wish to have at the ready (in no particular order):

• Land line phone service with a phone that does not require external power (Other than that provided via the phone line itself. In other words, no cordless/wireless phones.).

• Cash, since the ATMs won't be working and you may need to purchase something.

• Portable, battery powered radio.

• Flashlights.

• Extra batteries sufficient to last three to five days of almost continuous use.

• Manual can opener.

• First aid kit and any medications you need.

• A three to five day supply of non-perishable food (especially the kind that doesn't require cooking) and water.

• Gas grill or camp stove with enough fuel for the same three to five days.

• Candles.

• Matches or lighter in a water proof container.

Needless to say, you need to learn how to safely use some of the above items because you don't want to injure yourself or burn down your home. So, a word to the wise - read, understand, and follow all safety precautions that may apply to the items. Secondly, do a dry run and see how things work and what else you may need. Each situation is different but if you have a general disaster kit ready before the disaster strikes you will be much better off than those people who rush to the store afterwards. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

Sometimes I get emails that I have to wonder what the sender was thinking. For example, I got something from someone who calls himself John. John says he is a student at the University of Michigan and wants some help on a project he is working on. What he wants from me is the following information:

1. What is your full name?
2. What is your email (I will keep this private)?
3. What is the name of your blog?
4. What is the URL of your blog?
5. What is your date of birth?
6. Are you Male or Female?
7. Would you characterize yourself politically as a Democrat
8. (Liberal), Republican (Conservative), Independent, or Other?
9. If Other, would you please provide details?
10. Are you the only author of your blog?
11. If not, are you the primary author? About what percent do you contribute? What is the makeup of your blog's other authors?

Now, maybe John is who he says he is and maybe he isn't. But if a stranger came up to me and started asking me these questions I would walk away at question number one.

But, for a minute, let's suspend reality and say he is who he says he is.

How did he get my email address? If he were for real, he probably would have come to my site and got it from the link I have on the right side of the page. If so, he would know my full name because it across the banner at the top of this page. Indeed, since he has already sent me an email, to ask me question number two (what is my email address) seems curious. In fact, if he has come to my site questions three and four are also strange. All of which leads me to disbelieve John.

In today's environment of epidemic identity theft, question five is none of his business. If he wants to give ranges of ages (e.g., 20 to 29, 30 to 39, etc.), I might answer that. But my actual birth date? Shirley you jest.

I won't even discuss the other questions. The bottom line is, if this were a sanctioned study of the University of Michigan I would think John would need to get what is known as Informed Consent. In order to do that, you need to lay out, in detail, why you need the information, how you will  safeguard it, and specifically what you will do with it in perpetuity. He would also need my signature (digital or otherwise).

And finally, neither his email address nor his website is hosted by the University of Michigan.

As a former social sciences major, an interesting experiment would be to send out different emails to randomly chosen email addresses. The only difference in the emails would be the type of questions asked. For example, one type would be completely innocuous such as what is your favorite color or favorite type of desert. From there, the types would get progressively more personal. It would be interesting to see what type of questions would get the most responses (assuming here an equal number of each type were sent). But I digress.

In order for me to give this type of information I have to trust and believe John is who he says he is and will use the data for the purpose he states. But since I don't trust unsolicited emails, especially ones that ask these types of question, I will not be answering John. If you are out there John, sorry, but I decline to participate.

Aloha!

It's been said that being in a war takes the measure of a man. That is, the stress of killing or being killed tends to bring out either the best or worst in people. In the case of UK paratrooper Peter McKinley, age 21, it may have been the former.

According to the Manchester newspaper article, a U.S. supply convoy was ambushed in a region of Afghanistan called Sangin. One hundred British paratroopers were sent to rescue the convoy. During the engagement, two Americans were pinned down and wounded. Hearing their cries for help, Private McKinley, in the face of rocket propelled grenades and withering machine gun fire, selflessly ran across open ground to reach the location of the two men. Then, amid incoming rounds that continued to rain around him, and with complete disregard for his own safety, he provided first aide care to the seriously wounded sergeant.

If the newspaper account is accurate, and I have no reason to believe it is not, then it is not surprising that Private McKinley is being nominated for Britain's highest war time award - the Victoria Cross. The VC, as it is sometimes called, is awarded 'to those officers or men who have served us in the presence of the enemy and shall then have performed some signal act of valour or devotion to their country'. If the award is so bestowed, McKinley will apparently be only the second living individual in the last 40 years to be so honored.

This week's wallpaper comes from the unappreciated (at least by the political masters in Washington) Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows the after affects of two colliding galaxies.

The two spiral galaxies started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae galaxies one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink.

Aloha!

Sorry, no post today.

Aloha!

There are at least two lessons that still need to be learned from Earthquake Sunday.

The first is why was shutting down all the electrical generators is seen as the only way to prevent damage to the system (or as HECO, our local electric company, repeatedly put it: to prevent "further damage" to the system. Further damage? What damage was there to begin with?).

Yes, I know, at first HECO said the computers were programed to do the shutdown but that begs the question of who programs the computers? I guess that's why they are now saying it was the "heroic" efforts of its employees who shut down the system. Well, which is it?

In order to prevent this happening again, surely there must be other options short of building totally redundant systems (which is the straw man argument that the electric company trotted out this week). Heck, if I wanted to spend thousands of dollars to "guild" the system I could better use it to buy solar panels and batteries.

The second lesson relates to communications - or the lack there of. There is an old saying that the first casualty in war is the truth. One could say the same thing in a disaster.

In a communication vacuum where accurate and timely information is lacking, rumors will abound. And in a rumor rich environment, people may react in non-productive ways. People need information to make informed decisions. But if they can't get information, they will sometimes make it up.

I wasn't listening to the radio during the entire Sunday morning but from what I understand, the first government official on the air was a couple of hours into the blackout.

In the mean time, we had people from all over calling in to the one operating radio station and saying all kinds of things. Now, most of this was, I'm sure, accurate information, but who knows if all of it was.

In fact, some of what was said over the radio was from foreign speaking individuals supposedly telling non-English speaking people what was going on. Or was it? Who knows.

But as far as I know, at no time did anyone from any government agency speak to foreign language individuals (of which there are many since visitors from Asia and Europe make up a large percentage of the population at any one time).

Now, as to whether Civil Defense should have sounded the emergency sirens. In this case I agree with the Civil Defense folks that since no tsunami was generated it would have been inappropriate to sound the sirens. I mean, the sirens are I think intended to warn people of the high probability of an impending disaster. Clearly, in this case, nothing was impending once the earthquakes occurred.

However, I do think it would have been appropriate to use the TV and radio system emergency broadcast system, within minutes rather than hours of the earthquake, to let everyone know what was known at the time (e.g., the location of the epicenter, the magnitude, and whether a tsunami was generated).

I'm no expert on any of the above, but the explanations given so far just don't pass the BS test.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

We were first, but comes now an even stronger reaction by a North Carolina judge:

On Oct. 4, the first day of the latest trial, [Judge] Helms stopped [attorney] Marshall during the questioning of one of the witnesses.

Marshall said "Lord," reared back in his chair with outstretched arms, cast his eyes upward and turned to the audience, Helms said.

"How am I supposed to take that?" Helms said Thursday as he penalized the lawyer. "If the court does not get the respect from members of the bar, we can't have the respect from clients, and then we have anarchy."

The sentence for contempt of court? Two days in jail, 30-day suspension of his law license, a psychologist's examination, and performing 70 hours of community service.

Aloha!

I guess it had to happen but I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. What am I talking about? Paintball tanks. Yes, that's right. From its humble beginnings in the woods of New Hampshire, paintball has grown up to a point where the arms race now includes tanks that shoot paintballs.

As we come to the close of the political season, we enter into the most despicable, vile, and evil part. The last one to two weeks of the campaign season is where the puppet masters begin pulling their strings.

It is during this time that the innuendo, whispering campaigns, anonymous charges, and downright slander occur. Why? Because it leaves your opponent with insufficient time to respond. The opponent is kept on the defensive while he/she tries to prove the things being charged are not true or, even worse in my opinion, tries to ignore the charges in the hope that people will not believe them.

I especially fear the last two weeks this year because the Republicans are realizing that their time in power may be coming to a close. Over the last six or so years, the Republican Congress and Republican president have done more to rip the Constitution to shreds and eviscerate US democracy than any other group over the previous 200 years, combined. The Republicans have proved once again that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Knowing this, and knowing a Democrat controlled Congress could begin long over due investigations into who did what and when, the Republicans are highly motivated to use any and all dirty tricks that they can come up with.

Hence, I fully expect the Republicans will not go down without a fight and this may be the most destructive campaign season since, well, ever.

To read more about what the Republicans have done, follow this link to this Rolling Stone article.

Aloha!

Microsoft's "Windows Defender" has, apparently, also gone gold. You can download it, assuming you have a validated copy of Windows, here.

Windows Defender is designed to "protect against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software. It features Real-Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against spyware when it's detected and minimizes interruptions and helps you stay productive. Now with 2 free support incidents for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003."

According to this post at the mozillaZine site, Firefox 2.0 goes gold this afternoon at 5pm EST. Assuming this is correct, the new version adds, among other things, phishing detection, session saving, and spell checking (I'm not sure how helpful this will be).

Sorry, no post today.

Aloha!

Insert disclaimer here. I am not a lawyer nor am I giving legal advice. This post, as is the case for all my posts, is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the official position of my employer or anyone else. YMMV.

Many believe that to own property, and to be secure on said property, is basic to our way of life. But there is a difference between private property and public property. The latter is intended for the use of all, not just one land owner. But sometimes, the dividing line between abutting properties is in dispute.

For example, Hawaii shorelines are public property. Hence, all citizens may stroll the beachs and swim in the ocean beyond. But where does the shoreline end and private property begin?

Under Hawaii Revised Statutes 205A-1(2001) Definitions, shoreline "means the upper reaches of the wash of the waves, other than storm and seismic waves, at high tide during the season of the year in which the highest wash of the waves occurs, usually evidenced by the edge of vegetation growth, or the upper limit of debris left by the wash of the waves."

Over the years, land owners began to plant and artificially irrigate vegetation along the shoreline. In some cases, it appeared the plants were cultivated with the intent of extending the private owners claim to additional property. In other words, the private owners were trying to expand their property by taking what was public property. But regardless of the intent, the plants spread and thus, according to the understanding of some, changed the shoreline property lines.

This interpretation seemed to have been adopted by some land surveyors who would choose between the edge of vegetation or upper limit of debris left by the wash of waves based on which was more "stable." In time, the vegetation line, rather than the wash of the waves, became the de facto standard for many.

As a practical matter, stability is usually a good thing. But in this case, the statute appears silent as to requiring stability. In fact, an alternative interpretation of the statute could be that stability was not the most important factor to consider. Rather, the statute seems to embody an intent to keep public lands as expansive as possible, even if it may vary from time to time due to variables such as wave action.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the statute refers to the "upper reaches of the wash of the waves" as the defining criteria. Although it goes on to give guidance as to two ways to help determine the line, the plain meaning of the words and therefore the controlling factor still appears to be the upper wash of the waves.

On Tuesday, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled on a just such a dispute over where the shoreline ends and private property begins. In general, the court finds that the legislature's intent and "public policy...favors extending to public use and ownership as much of Hawaii's shoreline as is reasonably possible." Hence, in choosing between the vegetation line or the debris line, the one that favors as much shoreline as is reasonably possible is the deciding issue, not which is more stable. In addition, the court specifically rejected "attempts by landowners to evade this policy by artificial extensions of the vegetation lines on their properties."

Aloha!

Okay, in a fit of temporary mental illness fearlessness, I decided to do an upgrade of Kubuntu 6.06 LTS to 6.10. Usually, what I do when "upgrading" a Linux installation is to backup my home directory and then reformat the entire drive to do a clean install. But since I didn't have any critical data on the PC, I reckoned it didn't matter which type of install I did.

By the way, I put the word upgrade in quotes because, in my experience, which admittedly is only over the past couple of years, there's no such thing as a Linux upgrade. At least not in the sense of Windows upgrades. This is especially the case if you have installed any software that you had to compile. Why? Because having compiled the software, based on your old installation, said software may not work under your new installation. Although there may be ways to get around that, most people won't know about them. And if you don't run into that problem, you may run into any number of other issues. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything negative about Kubuntu itself as I have had this problem with just about every Linux installation I've ever used.

But this time, I had confidence in Kubuntu, since its been rock solid reliable. So, I decided to do an upgrade. I followed the instructions that are at the bottom of the page linked to above. For my installation, it required about 500MB of downloads. Via Hawaiian Telcom DSL, it took about 27 minutes to pull all the files. The problem was after the upgrade script began to unpack and install the various downloaded files. All seemed to be going well until the install stopped while installing some KDE components and hung the system. After giving it 30 minutes with nothing apparently going on, I had to do a hardware reset. Of course, since some but not all of the install had already occurred, the system was unable to fully boot. Sigh.

So, this weekend I plan to download the 6.1 ISO and start from that point. Fortunately, as mentioned earlier, I did not have any critical data on the PC so it doesn't matter that I will have to reformat the drive. But let this be a lesson to you - never do an upgrade. But if you do, remember to backup your data first. Better yet, never do an upgrade. And if I forgot to mention it, never do an upgrade. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

Okay, so I downloaded the almost 700MB ISO of Kubuntu 6.10 this past weekend. It took about 35 minutes to download the file, after which I burned it to CD and began the installation.

I haven't done a time comparison between 6.1 and 6.06 but 6.1 seems to take a little longer to install. Otherwise, all went well and I an now using 6.10 without any problems.

You can follow this link to see what's new in 6.10. I haven't had the time to check everything out but I do like the new "System Settings" panel. It's similar to the Windows Control Panel and allows you to access many of the more important settings in one place. For example, the major headings on the panel are: Computer Administration, Network & Connectivity, and Look & Feel.

Konqueror is the default browser and file manager. Although it's okay, I like the extensions that Firefox has so I downloaded, using the included Adept Package Manager, Firefox 2.0. But I still use Konqueror as my file manager.

Obviously, I haven't had the time to try everything new, but so far, everything seems to be running fine. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

The people who visit and read my posts are, I hope, intelligent and know that not everything you read on the Internet is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I mean, a critical thinker will evaluate how trustworthy a site is before believing what is said there. In other words, consider the source.

One would think this is especially true of medical advice. But if this Reuters article is correct, three in four people "who search the Internet for health advice [do not] regularly check the source and date of the information they find to assess its quality." Now, taking my own advice, you need to consider the trustworthiness of the source and the methodology used to gather the information.

That said, I would think it is important to determine how much weight to give to a site (the date of the information doesn't seem as important to me although it could play a factor) based on the type of site. For example, if I'm looking for information on preventing the spread of communicable diseases, I may take a look at Google results and see a link to the Centers for Disease Control Prevention and another to a site that is trying to sell a product that it alleges will prevent any disease known to exist. Now, understanding that even the CDC doesn't know everything, I would think it more likely that the health advice found there is probably more reliable, and is based on the best scientific evidence currently available, than a site that is selling snake oil.

Yes, I know, there are conspiracy theorists who disbelieve everything science has to offer and would rather follow the rants of a drug addicted sociopath whose main goal in life is to try to fool as many people as possible. But I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about what may be the majority of people who, without thinking about the source of the information, accept it without question. This is not a GoodThing. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Sorry! I wrote this last night for scheduled publishing this morning but forgot to reset the drop down choice from "unpublished" to "scheduled." Sorry about that.

Insert disclaimer here. I work at the state Judiciary but these are my own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer. Further, this site is completely independent of my work and is in no way connected to it. YMMV.

The old saying is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And, in my opinion, when I see an opinion that I disagree with, I usually let it go. I mean, just because someone has a different opinion from me doesn't mean I have to respond to it (nor give it a wider audience by linking to it). But sometimes, some opinions are just so outrageous that I have to respond, regardless.

Such is the case regarding a local newspaper editorialist who described Chief Justice Ronald Moon's tenure thusly: "Ronald Moon has had a 13-year run as chief justice — 17 years by time he'd hit mandatory retirement — and the court's performance has not been particularly distinguished under his guidance."

Obviously, how you define "distinguished" is open to debate but this site gives a good synopsis of decisions that made a difference. Add to that the recent landmark case regarding public versus private beach property that I wrote about earlier and, in my opinion, you have a distinguished body of work to be proud. Can this court do better? Of course, all courts can. But to dismiss the impact that this court has made as a way of deciding a debate on mandatory judicial retirement does not, in my opinion, lead to more thoughtful debate.

In addition, I guess the writer makes the assumption that Chief Justice Moon is a Democrat. Maybe he made this assumption because the Chief Justice was appointed by a Democrat. In any case, having made the assumption, he seems to jump to the conclusion that our Democrat majority legislature wants to protect one of their own by assuming that our Republican governor will not be able to replace the Chief Justice.

The problem is, the Chief Justice is, now wait for it, a Republican. In fact, our Republican lt. governor was also a judge.So our Republican governor, Republican lt. governor, and her Republican attorney general (the party affiliation of the editorialist, if any, I do not know) are all trying to get rid of a member of their own Republican party. Oh the irony!

In one feel swoop, their argument goes flying out the window as so much hot air...Life is like that sometimes. In the words of another old saying: I'm glad its them and not me!

Aloha!