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[contact me] My Blogger Profile View my photo galleries. Listen to my radio station. LinkblogOLD Blinklist Linkblog OLD BlogMarks Linkblog Currently ReadingThis is an Ottawa blog (Ontario, Canada). Cool blogs: McWetlog wood s lot La Tribu du Verbe Wil Wheaton Darren Barefoot Lectio.ca Blogger profiles in Ottawa Hot links: delicious - popular - new Other good sites: Slashdot Wired News Mark Morford's Notes & Errata This page uses Extreme Tracker which is determining your referrer by running some JavaScript. 
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Saturday, September 28, 2002
This looks kind of neat: catchup.cnet.com. It scans your Windows computer and determines needed updates for all of your software, and also checks for needed security patches and identifies spyware. Macintouch reports the iSync Public Beta is available for download. Requires OS X 10.2.1 (and .Mac for various things). I don't like this: "Palm OS devices from Palm or Handspring" What's with Sony (Clie) and the Mac? Why no (Hot)Sync? There is a KB doc (#61747) with more info about iSync 1.0 Beta. Thanks to Macintouch, I found out that the Apple .Mac accounts are "conveniently" set to auto renew. To change this, go to .Mac - Account - Billing and Subscription and uncheck Auto Renew. Also, it is impossible to remove your credit card #. If you try to it says credit card number incorrect. Friday, September 27, 2002
Open Directory: Computers - Internet - On the Web - Weblogs Google Directory (Open Directory + Google rankings): Computers - Internet - On the Web - Weblogs The Eldritch Press is cool for two reasons: 1) They offer zillions of out-of-copyright books online for free 2) They are fighting the ridiculous US copyright extension law, whose formal title "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act" is so ridiculous that calling it the "Disney Revenue Extension Act" is hardly even worthwhile (it, amongst other things, prevented Mickey Mouse from "falling" into the public domain). I wonder if Eldritch knows their (e) logo looks just like the Eatons logo. Free the Mouse! Holy spam slam. I got like 50+ junk emails today. Fortunately with all of my layers of filtering they get caught and put into my junk folder but still, that amount of junk is ridiculous. For the 99.9% of email users who don't have good filtering, email must be almost unusable. I blame men. Based on the spam subjects, there are a bunch of sad men out there. For heaven's sake guys, go to a "professional companion". Based on the spams, you're underendowed, bald, addicted to hard c0re p0rn, and deeply in debt, desperate to save money and to get rich quick. The net is not going to fix any of those problems. The net will not get you chicks. Stop answering these spams! Wankers. Anyone know if those styrofoam takeaway containers you get in restaurants are microwave-safe? I'm guessing that they aren't at all, which makes it stupid for restaurants to use them, since most people are going to use the microwave to reheat. I seem to recall reading somewhere that toxic chemical gasses are trapped in the little tiny styrobubbles and the gas volatilizes into your food when you heat the styrofoam. Of course in my case this morning the styrofoam simply melted, mingling my food with melted plastic, which I'm guessing is not so good either. I'm glad we have a Canadian Privacy Commissioner. Privacy czar slams federal plan to track citizens. In IE I try to post sometimes and the posts just vanish. No error. Nothing. Poof. I can't use Moz to post, because instead of a text box, it only shows a single text line. Augh. Stupid technology. I am a reverse season pusher. Some Canadians are so anxious for summer that they're in shorts and tshirts as soon as it hits like +5. I'm so anxious to get into my comfy winter clothes that I'm in my fleece as soon as it hits +20. Thursday, September 26, 2002
IPv6 may or may not be coming. It's one of those things that has been "around the corner" for at least half a decade. Macintouch published my email about the Beige G3 and Jaguar in its latest Mac OS X 10.2 report. Unfortunately I got a little too helpful with the quoting, so it looks like the first (indented) section is from me, whereas it's actually me quoting a previous posting in a previous report. So just to make it clear: I am successfully running Jag on my Beige G3, and I find the performance on my G3/233 w/ 224 MB RAM acceptable enough that I use it now for my daily net activities. Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Bizarre things to do: Blogging over iCal. As seen on MacSlash. I'm trying out OmniWeb. What does everyone else use for Mac OS X web browsers? Ooh I just remembered Cyberdog. Arf. The good news is that there are new Ottawa blog meetup locations Pub Italia, 434-1/2 Preston, Ottawa, ON Bridgehead, 360 Richmond Rd, Ottawa, ON Agora Bookstore & Internet Cafe, 135-1/2 Besserer, Ottawa, ON The bad news is that I have no idea where any of these ones are, either. Downtown, I am thinking, they are not. augh latest version of MacOS X latest non-beta of Mozilla and I surf around and crash This is the most advanced technology we can get for the relatively simple task of web surfing? AUGH I wrote a long reply to a semi-coherent question on Slashdot about using FireWire to make a SAN. And then Mozilla crashed and ate it all. So I wrote my response again. Ah computers. Such time savers. My wireless thermometer wasn't displaying the temp from the external sensor. So I took the ext sensor and put new batteries in it. Still no temp display. So I took the internal sensor and replaced the batteries in that. Still nothing. So then I hit the internal display unit. Works fine now. So always remember: when solid-state electronic technology fails... hit it. Incidentally, Canada has been trying to promote an initiative on limiting Small Arms and Light Weapons proliferation. There is additional information at the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) and at PloughShares.ca Despite the fact that small arms have an enormous destabilizing influence worldwide, the US has expressed no interest in this initiative due to 1) domestic concerns about annoying the crazy NRA 2) financial concerns about "hurting" their international weapons sales industries Apparently hurting people is fine. So long as you don't hurt your domestic economy and politics. I have to agree with Mr. Gore that the US does seem to be developing a remarkably shorter attention span than ever before. They supported a war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then when that seemed sorted out, proceeded to ignore Afghanistan. For decades they fought a Cold War against the Soviet Union, and then when the USSR collapsed, they immediately... began to ignore Russia. They fight a war in Iraq, and once things are barely settled, they leave things to fall apart again. They return to fight a war in Afghanistan, and as soon as the dust has settled, now they're galloping off back to Iraq. Meanwhile, Russia turned into gangster paradise instead of becoming a stable capitalist country, and Afghanistan is more like WarLordistan. AlGore04.com Unfortunately, I'm of the opinion that any site that has to declare it is "grassroots" is maybe not so grassroots. Nevertheless, the full speech is conveniently there. Very positive review of UNIX features of MacOS X by Moshe Bar in Byte. I do miss Byte in print. Seems they haven't been able to make a go of bringing it back though. Top Five Open Source Packages for System Administrators. Currently only lists one tool, but supposedly more will be added as the weeks pass. Tuesday, September 24, 2002
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America Snuck in the middle, item 5... V. Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction and how will they attain this noble goal?
(emphasis mine) Hey, US, I have an idea. If you want to take pre-emptive, unilateral action... Why don't you... Unilaterally. Pre-emptively. Stop selling billions of dollars worth of weapons all over the world every single year. The MoJo Wire--Action Atlas, U.S. Arms Sales Hmm, that reminds me, isn't there a country that buys billions of dollars of US weapons every year? I guess the US would only sell that many weapons to a stable, democratic country though. Oh, I remember the name of the country. Saudi Arabia So let's see how this works sell US weapons to Iran Shah falls Iran uses US weapons against Iraq so logically, sell US weapons to Iraq oh wait, Iraq bad better protect the Saudis from Iraq by selling them US weapons hmm, isn't it about time for the House of Saud to fall? Seems to me the only ones making out like bandits are the Merchants of Death. I also think it's interesting how Mr. Hussein has become "Saddam". Funny I don't see the newspapers referring to el Prez as "George". Personally I write Saddam because it's easier to spell than Hussein. i-before-e-except... hmm, maybe that's why everyone else does too... When is the US going to ever learn that running around the world alternately propping up and toppling leaders is not the best foreign policy. Prop up Shah... get new Iran. Which, it must be said, will probably turn out mostly fine if they just get a chance for things to calm down. Prop up the House of Saud... probably get a disaster. Overthrow Commie Afghan leadership with fanatical Islamic soldiers... get a bunch of unemployed fanatical Islamic soldiers. Which, it must be pointed out, DIDN'T MATTER. Afghanistan maybe was a handy place to hang out. But the 11-09 plotters were... middle-class Saudis. Saudis Saudis Saudis. How often does that have to be said? Iraq is going to be a minor sideshow once the House of Saud implodes. How much news can you take? I mean Google News is groovy and I did want to find out more about what Gore said about Bush and Iraq but... 355 related stories? This is just like the overwhelming early days of search engines when you would notice that you got 10,000 hits on a search. Man those Google people roxor. How I find things. So I was trying to find this URL with this woman who got herself into debt and then has asked people on the Internet to help her pay it off. And the thing is, apparently, they actually have given her like $11,000. US Dollars. So I remembered her name was Karen so I tried karen debt blog but that was no good. Just found me loads of people, some named Karen, blogging about debt. So then I tried people in debt asking for money in blog which honestly I didn't expect to work but the first hit was ScarBitten and the Google cache for that site had the right URL Save Karyn Karen with a why. So today I discovered I need quite a lot of my brain for my job. Recovering from illness, I went in to work. And I discovered my mental capacities had been reduced about 75% I felt like the dog in the Simpsons except instead of blah blah blah good dog blah blah Santa's Little Helper blah blah blah food blah It was something like network network Richard systems systems sytems important network network and I'm like, erm, could you just re-explain like that entire thing you just said again? I was like, wow, this job is a lot harder than I remember. I want my brain back. Monday, September 23, 2002
Annoying social engineering: someonelikesyou. A mysterious email. Someone likes me? So if you want to find out who it is, of course the more email addresses you enter into their system, the more likely you'll find the match with your secret admirer... Meanwhile, the email addys you enter go on their spam list... So sad. They harvested my website address. Wankers. Knock Knock Knocking on Heaven's Door... Update: Third "Door" Found in Great Pyramid. Story found on Google News. So the question on the minds of Egyptologists the world over is now... "What's behind door #3?" I didn't pay much attention when Slash mentioned Google News today, but I didn't realize they have changed the interface - instead of a long list of news stories, they have broken things out into a few different categories such as Sci/Tech. Cool. Anyone know of a good Buffy iCalendar (or set thereof)? I'm getting a few hits on that as well. I guess iCalShare would be a good place to start... "There were no matches for your search on buffy Please try again." :( I guess it's kind of lame to create content from search hits but... What are the top researchers at blue*.uk.ibm.com looking for? buffy screen captures Hey! IBM people. How about I as the shareholder do the TV watching, and you clever folk do the money making. On the other hand, based on the chart, maybe it would work better the other way around after all. I burn with envy for the Atlantic Canadians who get to Buff out tonight. No Buff for me until tomorrow :( For those of us in the rest of Canada, there is the Faster than Light SF show on CBC Radio Two tonight at 9 Eastern. Still not feeling well. Went to Savannah Cafe (correct name is Savana Cafe) for lunch which turned out to be a good idea. Had yummy chicken soup and very yummy Pad Thai. Full of healthful nutrition now. On the downside, I may have lost my credit card. Google Zeitgeist is fun. Here are the OS wars, summed up from a single pie chart... Operating Systems used to access Google (Aug. 2002) ![[OS pie]](http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/aug02_pie.gif)
That's right 45% Windows 98 4% Mac 1% Linux The world runs on a Microsoft operating system from four years ago. Most installations of which, I'm guessing, aren't patched. So there's Bill Gates with his desire to have people use incredibly complicated interlinked functions of his .Net operating system, and Steve Jobs who just wants you to look at his pretty OS X operating system, and meanwhile in reality, most home users are quite happily running Win98 on some Pentium-3 (?) class computer. Just reading email, surfing the net, and maybe writing a few documents. Sunday, September 22, 2002
I wasn't able to connect to the archive.org site using RealOne, probably it is very busy. It doesn't help that my IE is a bit fubared in the prefs and that RealOne for Mac displays "Stopped" when its status is actually "Connecting..." Downloaded the Divx and it played fine. So a previous generation had to learn to "duck and cover" from Bert, the Civil Defense turtle, because "Always remember, the flash of an atomic bomb can come at any time, no matter where you may be." Meanwhile, we have Dewie, the e-turtle, who helps us to deal with the dangers of... Internet shopping. I think I'll take shopping over nuclear incineration any day. Um... oh write this one yourself, ya perv http://www.rubyourself.com/ Via ifilm, where I was looking for free independant films online, I swear. Apparently Rub Yourself 2 is not the sequel to a work of ironic detachment about erasers. I really must start watching more television. Ok, so I still use SiteMill 2 to manage my websites. It is multi-years out-of-date. I tried all of the rest - I bought them all. DreamWeaver, GoLive, PageMill, the lot. None of them did what I want, which is: - don't change any of my bril HTML - show me the relationships between the files - make it easy for me to check and correct remote links (of which I have thousands) - make it easy for me to edit files That's all I want. No fancy graphic table CSS stuff. Just the most basic web link, page and site management possible. None of them did what I wanted. So I stuck with SiteMill 2, which is pretty good, except now so old that it incorrectly reports many working links as not working, for whatever reasons. Anyone have any good suggestions for solutions that meet the requirements I listed above? When starting up, Mac OS X 10.2.1 reports something like "Starting Network Time Syncronizing". While certainly a laudable goal, I must note that the correct spelling is "synchronizing". From the Saturday Globe: Bush is nuts, Americans proceed triumphantly to world domination. Um ok it actually says Bush plans first strike against any foreign foe. Same difference. It seems some people just really really like war. Washington's new (old) 'war party'. I also liked this article about SUVs: Incredible hulks. The part about "the market will fix it" amused me. The market only works when things are properly priced, and if SUVs and the cost of driving them were properly priced, even Dennis Kozlowski would balk at buying one. Does anyone know what they are doing with the building on the corner of Bank and Gilmour? Judging by the scaffolding, it looks like a big reno. I did some work on my home broadband security page, in particular adding a section on the draft (erm, make sure not to misspell that "daft", it's actually not too bad) US Cybersecurity Plan. (NOTE for US citizens: the deadline to comment on the draft is November 18, 2002.) I have added a section to my page specifically about the plan and some of the resources it links to. My page tries to provide some of the technical detail that the "plan" ignores. It's all fine and good, and indeed quite correct to say "you should patch your system", "you should have a firewall". But the plan doesn't say anything about useful things like: what is a patch? why do you need it? what are the pros and cons of patching? where do you go to get patches? what is a firewall? where can you get one? etc. They really should have at least mandated that ISPs offer a supported firewall and AV service. To an experienced user, the Bell and Telus offerings look expensive, kind of too expensive. But most people, believe it or not, are not computer and network engineers. There you are, with only the vaguest idea of how your computer and network work, and you install a firewall and bang, Application X doesn't work any more. With no support, that's it for the firewall, click to uninstall. While I am often amazed at how much some people actually DO learn about their computer and home networking and the Internet, for most people computer security should just be a matter of paying a bit extra and having someone to call to say "just make this work". The other, HUGE problem with patches is that they're, well, huge. Most people in the US don't have a high-speed connection. Even if you are @n@1 enough to want to keep your patches up-to-date, how many people are going to tie up their dial-up for hours to get some Microsoft Update Q456984756, "fixes the flayrod when it goes all askew on treadle"? Hollywood is very busy trying to create an HDTV fiasco of blockbuster proportions. I hope that this Digital (no)Rights Management TV idea will go the way of Divx (the ridiculous limited play DVD format, not the MPEG video software :) At some point even the most clueless of consumers are going to try to do something they're used to doing, and it won't work... of course, the main problem is that most US consumers don't tape TV shows anyway, they only use their VCR for watching videos. Something like ninety-plus percent of VCR owners have never taped a TV show, let alone attempted to program the VCR. That's why Tivo and its ilk were such a huge breakthrough. I thought "but you can do that with a VCR" but then I realized "but no one ever actually did, because it was too 'hard'". Anyway hopefully the moderately technically clueful (Tivo-empowered?) will get annoyed. Erm, maybe not. Oh dear. Of course, here in Merrie Olde Canada we get screwed because we'll get stuck with Hollywood standards for our Canadian televisions :( Explain to me why my TV in Canada should enforce US law? I have updated my page on Downloading Music in Canada. It has a big chunk about online (streaming) radio in Canada as well. IE on Jag doesn't seem to remember what cookies I have allowed. Perhaps because of the jiggery-pokery I did with the Microsoft User Data in order to get OE to work. I am using Medium text smoothing on my LCD. Seems nice so far. HOME - |
