Al Macintyre's Radio Weblog

Saturday, August 31, 2002

[Civil Liberties Notes] QUOTING [Privacy Digest and Slashdot] 49%: "First Amendment Goes Too Far". The annual State of the First Amendment survey, released on Thursday, had found that just under half of the Americans surveyed felt that the First Amendment guarantees too much freedom. The 49% figure, according to the center, is a ten percent jump since September 11. The survey found that between forty and fifty percent of Americans supported increased surveillance of religious groups, bar criticism of government actions, and monitor muslim citizens particularly closely. Forty percent also found the press too aggressive in questioning the government in the war on terror. More information at the Sacramento Bee. The report is available for download. [Privacy Digest and Slashdot] FROM [Civil Liberties Notes] From the report QUOTE 40% said they have too little access to information about the war on terrorism, 16% said there’s too much. 48% said there’s too little access to government records, 8% believe there’s too much. Many Americans are unable to name the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. The percentages of those responding who were able to identify individual freedoms: 58% — freedom of speech 18% — freedom of religion 14% — freedom of the press 10% — freedom of assembly/association   2% — freedom of petition UNQUOTE I would like to see a survey that breaks it down by Religion.  What percentage of Baptists think the government needs to be spying on the Catholic Church, what percent of Catholics think we should spy on Christian Fundamentalists, etc. and most importantly, what percentage of people think the government should spy more on their own denomination. Since in this survey, as published by the Sacramento California Bee, QUOTE Republican respondents were more likely than Democrats or Independents to see the news media as too aggressive in seeking war information from government officials. UNQUOTE I would like to see how this compares when it is Democrat in the White House.  Does that reverse their opinions, or do they feel the same way when it is the other political party getting most of the criticism. I agree that loose lips sink ships.  I think that people who publish information that puts lives of our military or allies at risk, or give aid and comfort to the enemy should be prosecuted, but it is a matter of abuse of freedom, which is a slippery slope to define.  There is stuff that is Ok to say one place but not another.  My friend John, I see him across on other side of a crowd, I shout Hi Jack to get his attention.  If this is in an airport, I get arrested. 5:36:21 PM

[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE Political candidates, your websites may soon be regulated -  It's being considered, according to this article. UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney] Reading the Washington Post article, that Ernie has shared with us, indicates to me that some day Bloggers will need a reminder calendar.  The general election is now X days away so STOP writing about the politicians until after the election.  Posting political commentary may become illegal on the eve of elections, whether it is by people inside or outside of politics. Who will be accountable when this law is violated?  There might be a discussion forum with many people talking about many topics, including people in other countries who are ignorant about our election laws.  An innocent comment about some stupid thing seen in the news media, by an e-friend from another nation, could mean a published post that is for or against a particular candidate, ending up on a web site within the X days window when that is banned. They debated, but backed away from, the notion of regulating hyper links to sites that give out information about political candidates.  They may return to this topic again, since deep linking is a hot topic with lots of law suits that will change the fabric of our e-society rules. 5:26:13 PM

See Banking Stories, collection of humorous and unfunny stories of personal experiences, and those of close contacts about things that can go wrong with our bank accounts. I have been getting e-mail bounces when I sent recent stuff to V of TYR, such as the funny story (I think it was funny) about visiting bank that is using those vaccum tube thingies that we see at many drive ins, also for walk ins, and sending the stuff (my stuff, like driver's license I loaned them for identification purposes) to the wrong customer (the guy in the bank booth NEXT to me).  So then V e-mails me to ask if I Ok, she not heard from me in a while (because most this week I had bad indigestion, and now that I almost well, her e-mail can send but not receive), so I voice telephone her to let her know about her e-mail down, perhaps until Tuesday, because of the holiday weekend. She reminds me (good reminder), now that I have more desk space around my PC, would be good idea to have a basket of fruits and veggies nearby, so when I need to munch on something, it is not chips but more healthy stuff.  I have not been exercising like I ought to, but I have been doing more sit down meals at quality places like Red Lobster and less food from drive through places.  My sister calls them outlets of The Greasy Spoon Chain, and V is not that kind.  Most meals at home are Microwaved Healthy Choice that come out of the green boxes. I still suspect that my indigestion this week was food related, but it could also have been nerves from worrying about the new furniture, and accumulated worries over some work-related stuff, that ought to stay confidential.  I don't think I can tell anyone about the UPS adventure without flapping my mouth inappropriately about someone or about several people.  One person in particular does such a great job that it is really cruel to go blabbing to a lot of people about one oops attributed to him. 3:49:31 PM

Al's new PC furniture has been installed and PC reassembled all systems checked out (cable modem, dial up backup modem, printer, mouse, keyboard, speakers).  A few things ended up with some mistakes but this is to be somewhat expected because after checking out many places in and around Evansville that are in the business, and each had some not nice aspects so it was which is the lesser of these various evils, Lesa checked with the place that does office furniture where she works, and they were happy to have my business.  So as some decision was made, it went between Al, Lesa, the Office Connection in Vincennes Indiana (officeconnection@charter.net), HON industries that makes the best office furniture, but originally I did not think I could afford that, but you know, when you carefully look at the catalog and say I not need this that frill, just go for lots of work space, sturdiness, dimensions that are an almost perfect fit in my apartment, we end up with great quality. Earlier this week Normandy Arms Apartments shampooed the carpet where we had cleared out furniture to make room for this.  I told them that getting this big space cleared out is once in a blue moon, and an excellent time to fit in this operation. Hey, it fits fantastic (no error measuring dimensions), all the wall plugs are in use, there is a nice space between corner unit and my old book case on the right, which is perfect size for halogen overhead lamp and waste basket, the computer is working fine.  There is some stuff on the floor, like the UPS but it is not sitting on the carpet but on little wooden things on wheels, and there are more waiting so when the PC tower goes down, it will not be sinking into the carpet.  Patricia found those for me.  They are just great. The Vincennes crew will have to do another visit later because: one of the shelves sticks out too far (what got packed is not what was ordered), and jabs my left side; some cables from back of PC to master control (which needs to be where I can push the buttons) won't reach from where we planned to put the PC so temporarily the PC is on top of the shelf that will have to be replaced ... longer cable coming; a higher chair was suggested but I like the chair I have, so we will be getting an under shelf keyboard tray and perhaps also mouse on it. Overall I feeling great.  The total price was less than I anticipated (because I not remembered exactly right from all the yes no pieces re-thinking).  They assembled it for me, which took longer than I thought it would, they disconnected all cables on my PC and reassembled connections when done, however there is one thing left over that we not know where it goes to.  Everything is working, so speculation is high as to what that for. Hmm, I see a box that we decided not to open because Hon sent the wrong kind of drawer, and Office Connections did not take it back with them.  There may be other follow up.  As I come across odd cables, I moving them all to be one location, so more easy to find spare when need one.  I am going to leave one of my Y2K flash lights stuck in the electric system under the new desk, so the next time I need a PC service call, the spare light is right there for under desk illumination. The back panel is the kind of stuff you can stick thumb tacks into.  Above monitor etc. there are shelves running 13" deep and 40" wide, and there is another just like it, a little wider, to the left above the shelf that will be replaced.  Those shelves are two layers so other stuff can go on the very top.  Basically it is a corner unit, and a left side unit, and I have an old but sturdy book case to the right.  Before ordering this, I visited approx 20 different places that sold furniture suitable for PC, and at some of them looked at several alternatives. I need to do a bit of adjustment to get essentials off the UPS not the surge protector power strips at the back center where wall plug got covered up, but this connection through first.  Then the piles of stuff that used to be on my old furniture, that did not have as much work space, will come back in pieces, as I figure out what will go where, and allow space for growth in various project piles.  I use box lids from computer paper quite heavily, but now if some are going to be on top shelf, I need a heavy marker so end of box lid can have word or two what it is all about. The old furniture was donated to the humane society of Lawrenceville Illinois, to be used or auctioned, at their discretion. Main reasons for this upheaval: The old furniture had done me OK when only use for my home PC was personal entertainment, but now as I am moving into part time work from home, the inefficiencies of a home office designed just personal use was getting in my way. The PC before the current one was not a tower, and it sat on table and ran Ok, then current one is tower on floor, because too heavy for my flimsy table, but I have wall to wall carpet and this is air cooled from bottom and air from bottom, and it sinks into carpet. I had several book cases that were Ok except not super sturdy, so I was like only 1/3 to 1/2 using the vertical space, so there's all this vertical space wasted, and it is all round my PC.  I needed to trade up to sturdiness, where I can use all my vertical space. Down the road when I get my next PC, I want the infrastructure in place so it can be hooked up without the inefficiencies of what came before. 2:17:30 PM

A [puzzle] here ... has someone defaced Radio Userland home pages to say something not nice about RU?  No, someone has created a category by that name to say something not nice.  I wonder how many people will look at this and think this is really published by RU?  I think this sort of thing at best is in bad taste, and should not be encouraged.  It is one thing to voice a negative opinion about some product or someone else opinion, that's freedom of e-speech.  But to make a site look like it is RU saying that RU products are no good, that is malicious mischef.  Doing it at start of a long weekend means RU might not see it right away.  I only saw it because I checked recent updates for interesting site names to visit. 2:06:36 PM

Check [City of Winona now taxes rain water] for full details and the role the Federal Government played in this, so you can figure how likely it will be that this measure will soon pass to other cities around the country.  The deal is that water that gets into storm sewer drains in front of people property can carry various contaminents like pet poo poo, and it has to go through some kind of city filtration to clean the water.  So the tax rate for each property is based on the total amount of water that drains into the city system, irrespective of how contaminated it is.  Water your lawn, clear snow and it melts, rain water, all of that will be taxed.  Now I think the cheap solution might be to put some barrier at edge of your property to invite the water to puddle and irrigate your front yard in the dry times. 1:57:16 PM

Friday, August 30, 2002

[dws software he uses and reccommends] shares this [Tip from John Robb] QUOTE If you are using Radio (and it is running right now) and you are interested in customizing your site's theme:  here is a list of handy macros you can use.  They are pretty powerful, particularly if you need specific things automated.  If you are a developer and have built macros that we can add to the list, please let me know so we can add them. They are really easy to use.  For example:  if I insert  <%navigatorLinks%> which is a macro that publishes the links I have in my menu on the right, in the editing box when it is in "source" view (the little toggle switch at the bottom of the editing box), I get this: Home My Bio Singularity Scripting News K-Logs Radio Docs UNQUOTE [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 11:58:10 PM

[Radio Free Blogistan] QUOTE The Web Credibility Project: Guidelines - Stanford University. Reading Spartaneity drew my attention back to Stanford'sWeb Credibility Project where you can read detailed explanations of and research behind these guidelines: Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. Show that there's a real organization behind your site. Showing that your web site is for a legitimate organization will boost the site's credibility. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. Make it easy to contact you. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). Make your site easy to use — and useful. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently). Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. Most of these seem to boil down to (a) showing the human beings behind the site, and (b) taking your site seriously and demonstrating your commitment to its quality. QUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan] Thanks - I am always in the market for suggestions how to improve what I do. 11:51:45 PM

Random blogs worth another look. Down left side of [follow me here] is definition of Weblogging with powerful links. Here's another photography enthusiast. http://www.staceygraham.com/ I like the icons here illustrating each of the topics. http://www.wanderlost.org/ramble/ Here is someone experimenting with Radio theme redesign and advising others on the topic.  http://mrp.peircecentral.com/lcweblog/  I like the mixed photo array across the top.  This individual has both learned how to import images, and layout around them in an eye-appealing way. I love [Pamela Joy] general layout and clicking on various windows of house.  She now has a tutorial on how to do this kind of ODP editing thing. Thursday topics: Artistic sites; Computer Security; Humor; Links; Politics.  I also updated some stories and categories (access my collection via Radio url number system).  The indigestion problem seems to have largely passed, and now I just feel a little dizzy. 12:22:24 AM

Thursday, August 29, 2002

[Brown Eyed Girl] seems to be collecting horror stories from real life.  QUOTES Danielle Kousoulis, 29, worked on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center's north tower as a vice president for Cantor Fitzgerald. She signed a lease on a $2,500-a-month loft apartment 10 days before a hijacked plane crashed into her workplace. In a letter this month, landlord Denise M. Lyman claimed she was an unpaid creditor and threatened to take Kousoulis' family in Haddon Township, N.J., to court. The New York Daily News reported that one of the complaints against the dead woman was that she failed to give three-months notice that she was leaving." UNQUOTE [Brown Eyed Girl]   11:59:25 PM

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE Jediology big in Australia. "More than 70,000 Australians identified their religion as Jedi, Jedi Knight or Jedi-related in last year's national census." Link Discuss (Thanks, Howard!) QUOTE [Boing Boing Blog] There's a lot of this around the western world, partly in protest to the notion that a person's private beliefs should be a matter of public record. 11:02:28 AM

[Blogfish] QUOTE Uncover the real WINNT killer. Last Friday I got to work and was greeted by mr. blue screen. After rebooting a couple of times only to see the message "kernelos32.exe is either missing or corrupt" I asked our sysadmin for help. "Your Winnt directory is missing" he told me. What? "It's not there. What were you doing that caused this to happen?" That last inquiry has propelled me into a virus hunt that will uncover the real WINNT killer. Just jotting down one possility I saw on FuzzyBlog: Microsoft said Thursday that "critical" security lapses in its Office software and Internet Explorer Web browser put tens of millions of users at risk of having their files read and altered by online attackers. The world's leading software maker said that an attacker, using e-mail or a Web page, could use Internet related parts of Office to run programs, alter data and wipe out a hard drive, as well as view file and clipboard contents on a user's system. I never thought viruses actually wiped out hard drives. I never even knew someone who knew someone who had an aunt whose entire hard drive was wiped out. Does this really happen? QUOTE [Blogfish] Alison You need to Check the anti-virus hoax pages to find out what your exact situation is.  There are viruses that say you have some problem other than what you really have.  There are virus hoaxes that say there is this file that the anti-viruses can't detect & if you find it on your system you need to delete it, but it is really a file you need to run your system, so you follow the hoax instructions, delete the file, and now your system really is crashed.  Even though you may be too wise to fall for this, some co-worker might not.  Millions of dollars have been ssiphoned from American Businesses because the Nigerian Scam is sent out very much the same way as computer viruses are distributed.  Anyone who can fall for a hoax, can fall for a financial con game.  I have a lot more faith in the anti-hoax anti-virus vendors than I do in the outfits that supply the software, or the people in charge of computer systems in corporate America.  http://www.vmyths.com/ Truth About Computer Virus Myths & Hoaxes Check my guide to the basics of personal computer security posted Aug 15.  I can send you by e-mail attachment the Word document I am referring to.  I just do not want to put into general circulation a working document that has tons of links where I have not asked permission to quote people, and do in fact quote without attribution, because I figured out netiquette after I started on the document.  Ask me to send you my Computer Security Myths document.  I try to avoid sending people as e-mail attachments something I think would be of interest to them, because of the high risk of a virus in any attachment you were not expecting. I have a few other Security documents I can share.  Mac Policy doc is a barely begun outline that spells out the philosophy of what I want to accomplish with my Computer Security Essays.  There are some risks that I must not detail because the cyber terrorists have not yet figured out how to do those things.  I want to communicate at a level that anyone can understand, non-technical or technical, not talk down to people, avoid bashing any vendor, and avoid getting in an arguement.  I will let someone else's documents bash vendor practices that put us at this kind of risk.  Getting this work to the web was one of the reasons I started my Radio Weblog.  I wanted to learn what could be done, get good at it, then select presentation method.  I leaning towards a separate category on a separate host with Instant Outlining. There is one that I downloaded from Europe that explains Banking practices and why Identity Theft is so prevalent.  Ask for my e-fraud document.  I did a series of messages (#s 3258 3261 3293 3314 3341) at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TYR basically spelling out that the situation with a lack of Internet Privacy has been permitted to deteriorate a lot worse than most people realize, but for each hazard there are things that people can do to mitigate the risks. I was planning to expand on these but then thought that my Computer Myths approach was a better way to hopefully contribute to customers of computer systems putting an end to this idiocy. I also plan to incorporate these TYR posts into my eventual FAQ on Computer Security Common Sense. An earlier effort was via http://www.TechRepublic.com/forumdiscuss/thread_detail.jhtml?thread_id=20600  go to the archives of http://www.year2000.com/ecommerce and search for the post I made called "Computer Myths" When you are past this crisis, go visit Internet Storm Watch http://www.incidents.org/isw/iswp.php  Basically they have software so that people's Firewalls can send copies of Intrusion Logs to this outfit.  They merge logs & sort by where the trouble is originating & notify the ISPs of the hackers & work with law enforcement to track the hackers down & put them out of business.  This is a beautiful concept & I betcha a lot of people are not aware that this is going on, such as the people making federal government pronouncements these days about computer security.  http://www.radium.ncsc.mil/tpep/epl/epl-by-vendor.html There is such a thing as a secure computer system. There is such a thing as a computer system that can be made secure. Various government agencies, such as the military, have some standards for security that computer systems that they buy & install need to meet.  Then a new bunch of people get elected and want nothing to do with the work that was done by their enemy in the political party that was in charge before, and they reinvent the wheel. Here is a directory of secure systems by vendor. Some vendors are conspicuous by their absense. Some vendors that are here, I would study the small print with great interest. There are technical documents here explaining ..if you get such & such a system that can be made secure ... how to go about doing so. If you reading this and you really in government, politics, law enforcement, and saying Oh Al, you too cynical, but this stuff is constructive, then prove to me you really are in a position to change policy or to go after the computer criminals (I not going to send some of my stuff to malware creators pretending to be cybercops), I could send you as an e-mail attachment collection of some posts I have made to Government sites soliciting Security Tips, such as what I think needs to be done about Terrorists and Airport Security.  My Air Security to FBI document is what I posted 10 days after 9/11 after I calmed down and checked phraseology and elegance of my writing. My Security Gov document has what I sent to the Gore commission back when there were all the arsons of Black Churches, the terrorist attack in Atlanta GA, and some suspicion that an American airliner had been brought down by a surface to air missile. My Cyber TV Word document has collection of places allegedly selling illegal consumer electronics, through spam, which I want to share with any law enforcement that really wants to crack down on such places.  When I see spam that seems obviously for some illegal enterprise and they stupid enough to give name of place to send money to, I think in terms of starting such a collection of places to share with law enforcement, if we can ever figure out how not to drown them in millions of spam forwards. Lobby inside your corporation to get a real computer security audit, or to have your annual financial auditors do a computer security audit.  It does not matter if you run your biz on Microsoft Operating System, one of IBM's, Unix, Linux, etc.  You can get a competent audit.  There are audits designed for major ERP packages.   Check out  http://www.pentasafe.com ... basically IS security management lets them load this thing that rattles your computer door knobs and gives a report on how many insecure entrances you have, and makes computer security policy reccommendations based on where your biz is most at risk.  It does not provide any info that would help the bad guys, and it communicates at a level understandable to non-technical management. Here is a place for computer security technical professionals http://groups.yahoo.com/group/e-com-sec/  http://www.ifccfbi.gov There is a depth to this computer fraud complaint operation that goes beyond what is apparent to most consumers.  Law enforcement individuals doing investigations can post here that they are interested in a particular business, web site, suspect, etc. then there are regular searches to see if two or more policepersons expressed an interest in the same suspect, within the last 24 hours & an e-mail is sent to introduce them to each other.   Computer crime is global.  The victims are global.  Law enforcement personnel could be working in duplicate investigations except for this cooperative venture.  http://www.icsa.net/html/labs/  I think I have the right link here.  I found this outfit when researching what firewall to get for my home PC.  They have firewalls from 40 some outfits on PCs connected to the internet & they continuously bombard them with every piece of nonsense the malware people come up with.  What they are doing is quality testing the fact that the firewalls really do what they are advertised to do.  Many popular brand names are conspicuous by their absence from the list of firewalls that do in fact do what they are advertised to do. One of my computer security e-mail contacts sent me his Computer Security Glossary that spells out his honey pot strategy for keeping an intruder distracted long enough to back trace him.  I personally feel people time better spent keeping the intruders out in the first place, but my view is a minority in the West today. Another contact sent me copy of Halcrow's draft policy on corporate Computer Security Policy. I am collecting goodies like these, and then can share some with other people making similar collections. 10:33:08 AM

I have been trying out RandomFreshBlog from [Philringnalda] and if this stuff is truely representative of the broad spectrum of everyone who blogs, then I agree that the overall quality is rather high.  However, I think we need a variation on this software so that we can opt out of stuff that is in a foreign language, and stuff that the randomizer already hit in the last hour. 2:23:51 AM

[Bruce's Computing Category] passes on news of Radio's change to referrer visibility.  QUOTE A tiny change in Radio's aggregator makes referer logs more interesting. Please read this if you provide an RSS source for Radio users, and you watch your referer logs. Updated. [Scripting News] Well I don't watch my referer logs every day, but I do check them from time to time. UNQUOTE [Bruce's Computing Category] [Bruce's Place] shares a story QUOTE Dead Men Tell No Passwords The man in charge of some of Norway's most precious electronic documents died without divulging the way to access them. A plea to hackers to help crack the system is out. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] UNQUOTE [Bruce's Place] If the security works, why break it?  If the documents cannot be accessed, and the only person who knew how to access them died, then it is as if the data was in the man's head and he died.  There is something wrong with this picture.  Where I work, I have some computer security responsibilities, but they are not exclusively in my head.  With each new boss, I ask if I can give a briefing on what kind of computer security we have, and what to do if I get run over by the proverbial union truck.  One of my suggestions is to provide on paper, a list of the most secret passwords to get into such things as computer security itself, then that paper is to go in an envelope in the safe of our corporate lawyer or auditor or some outside firm that we have some confidentiality agreement with, then if anything happens to me or my boss, there is this backup of the most important corporate stuff that is in our brains.  When I change the master security access codes, I tell my boss that I did so, and why I did so. After a new boss has been on board a year or two, I ask if I can give a briefing on the strengths and weaknesses of our computer security.  We do get intruder alerts, and I notify the managers involved.  For example, executives are out to lunch, and some unknown person is in their office trying different password combinations, then the computer security kicks in and pulls the plug on that work station (you only get a certain number tries to forget your password, then computer security makes certain automatic assumptions), then a few minutes later history repeats at the next office down the hall.  Then a few hours later, I am reviewing the system message logs and discover the fact that this was happening.  I have made some changes to the system logging so that we discover this kind of stuff faster. 1:55:33 AM

Geek Beauty & everyone else's poetry and eye candy, except for the porno-lovers of course.  I just love this stuff.  How much disk space do pictures take up on servers?  The equivalent of 1 k words I suspect.  Here is a site with art collage inspired by the X-Files, and since this site identifies picture of self, it probably has a human helper, because where is a keyboard paws-friendly? That reminds me of some humor about our furry friends. Cat Physics Presented at the Institute of Theoretical & Applied Cat Physics, forwarded to Al by iVillager Graceanne and Gary.Holliday 1. Law of Cat Inertia A cat at rest will tend to remain at rest, unless acted upon by some outside force, such as the opening of cat food, or a nearby scurrying mouse. 2. Law of Cat Motion A cat will move in a straight line, unless there is a really good reason to change direction. 3. Law of Cat Magnetism All blue blazers and black sweaters attract cat hair in direct proportion to the darkness of the fabric. 4. Law of Cat Thermodynamics Heat flows from a warmer to a cooler body, except in the case of a cat, all heat flows to the cat. 5. Law of Cat Stretching A cat will stretch to a distance proportional to the length of the nap just taken.  6. Law of Cat Sleeping All cats must sleep with people whenever possible, in a position as uncomfortable for the people involved as is possible for the cat. 7. Law of Cat Elongation A cat can make her body long enough to reach just about any countertop that has anything remotely interesting on it. 8. Law of Cat Acceleration A cat will accelerate at a constant speed, until he gets good and ready to stop. 9. Law of Dinner Table Attendance Cats must attend all meals when anything good is served. 10. Law of Rug Configuration No rug may remain in its naturally flat state for very long. 11. Law of Obedience Resistance A cat's resistance varies in inverse proportion to a human's desire for her to do something. 12. First Law of Energy Conservation Cats know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed and will therefore use as little energy as possible. 13. Second Law of Energy Conservation Cats also know that energy can only be stored by a lot of napping. 14. Law of Refrigerator Observation If a cat watches a refrigerator long enough, someone will come along and take out something good to eat. 15. Law of Electric Blanket Attraction Turn on an electric blanket and a cat will jump into bed at the speed of light. 16. Law of Random Comfort Seeking A cat will always seek, and usually take over, the most comfortable spot in any given room. 17. Law of Bag / Box Occupancy All bags and boxes in a given room must contain a cat within the earliest possible nanosecond. 18. Law of Cat Embarrassment A cat's irritation rises in direct proportion to her embarrassment times the amount of human laughter.  19. Law of Milk Consumption A cat will drink his weight in milk, squared, just to show you he can. 20. Law of Furniture Replacement A cats desire to scratch furniture is directly proportional to the cost of the furniture. 21. Law of Cat Landing A cat will always land in the softest place possible. 22. Law of Fluid Displacement A cat immersed in milk will displace her own volume, minus the amount of milk consumed. 23. Law of Cat Disinterest A cat's interest level will vary in inverse proportion to the amount of effort a human expends in trying to interest him. 24. Law of Pill Rejection Any pill given to a cat has the potential energy to reach escape velocity. 25. Law of Cat Composition A cat is composed of Matter + Anti-Matter + It Doesn't Matter. 26. Law of Selective Listening Although a cat can hear a can of tuna being opened a mile away, she can't hear a simple command three feet away. 27. Law of Equidistant Separation All cats in a given room will locate at points equidistant from each other, and equidistant from the center of the room. 28. Law of Cat Invisibility Cats think that if they can't see you, then you can't see them. 29. Law of Space-Time Continuum Given enough time, a cat will land in just about any space. 30. Law of Concentration of Mass A cat's mass increases in direct proportion to the comfort of the lap she occupies. 31. Law of Cat Probability (Uncertainty Principle) It is not possible to predict where a cat actually is, only the probability of where she "might" be. 32. Law of Cat Obedience As yet undiscovered. 1:37:47 AM

[Delaware Law Office] tells us that the reasons the FDA is suing the RED CROSS include QUOTE the Red Cross: -- "Continues to accept donors who have not completed the health history questionnaire, including those who leave unanswered the question designed to detect those at high risk for HIV/AIDS." -- Accepts blood from donors with very low blood pressure and those who have given within the past eight weeks, putting them at risk of adverse reactions including anemia. -- Has "lax inventory control," including "losing blood products" and "distributing unsuitable blood products." I'm wondering that, if not for the press reporting about the lawsuit, would we have heard anything about these ongoing troubles between the FDA and the Red Cross. posted UNQUOTE [Delaware Law Office] This on top of all the coverage by Fox News and others about how the Red Cross apparently has a disconnect between who they are collecting donations to help, and whol actually gets their help. 1:30:08 AM

The Bush administration is calling for a centralized Network Operations Center (NOC) to coordinate cyber-security warnings, says this week's e-week.  Previously Computer Security has been voluntary and optional, but the feds want corporations to disclose what they are doing, if anything, towards that goal.  The feds do not know if there is any such thing as secure wireless technology, and if none, no federal agency is to buy any.  I wonder what the military will do to communicate with planes in the sky and ships at sea, if this ban goes into effect. Wednesday = no posts except updates to some stories and categories (access my collection via Radio url number system) because my health was temporarily impaired (I suspect a new food allergy ... as we get older, our body discovers new things to complain about). Tuesday topics:  Blog Education; Computer Illiteracy; Current Events; Politics; Quality; Tara Sue Grubb vs. Howard Coble; 12:44:55 AM

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

[Philringnalda] is looking at random blogs and drawing some interesting conclusions.  QUOTE Three ways to surf blogs at random: NextBlog! gives you a random recently updated Blogger-powered blog. random blog gives you a random blog from the blo.gs database (updated in the last seven days). RandomFreshBlog is my version of the weblogs.com version of NextBlog! that Dave wants - I'm using the blo.gs changes.xml file rather than the weblogs.com version, since blo.gs's file is a superset of weblogs.com's. To use any of those, either save the link as a bookmark or drag to your Links bar/Personal Toolbar, then give it a click whenever you get bored. My thoughts from a fair bit of random blog surfing the last couple of days: The overall quality of blogs has gone up quite a bit since the last time I did much random surfing. Dorothea's right, there are way too many people using unaltered default templates. Including me. It takes more than using Blogger's "Sports Cut" template to become InstaPundit. I need to get out more - there are a ton of people doing interesting stuff that I'm missing. I've been around - pick a random blog out of the last 500-900 to update, and it's amazing how high the odds are that I've read it at least once, or know/know of the author, or (my favorite by a mile) it's using one of my archive scripts or I've helped the author with some sort of problem. UNQUOTE [Philringnalda] I imagine that with the flood of new people getting into the Weblogging hobby, the number who have not yet figured out how to do things will outweigh the number who have learned enough that their site begins to look sophisticated.    However it is much easier to learn about content packaging from how other people are presenting information, than it is to learn how to change the appearance of your site, so the learning curve on quality content will go a lot faster for many people than the learning curve on changing the default rules. In talking about template changing, several people have mentioned that they have made so many changes to their template, they lost track, so changing the Theme is out of the question.  Well that reality is a stage in our learning.  At a later stage we will know how to find all our changes, place them in some file, change our Theme, re-apply our other changes. Can the Weblogger Search Engines, that I talked about Aug 22 (check the calendar), look for something other than content, such as template variants ... find me a site which does NOT have certain stuff?  Yes Weblog, exclude those that are just defaults.  Perhaps one of the random deals can do that as one of the options in the future. 3:04:53 PM

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE Doonesbury runs for Congress. Garry Trudeau's college roommate -- partial inspiration for Mike Doonesbury -- is running for Congress. Link Discuss (via Fark) UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog] Can the Ms Grubb supporters get the technology cartoonists to put in a word or two of support? Dilbert is an extremely popular character, subscribed to by both the kind of worker that those cartoons of Scott Adams represent, like geeks and engineers, and people whose work space is a cubicle, but also masses of people who can identify with the silly stories.  Ask Scott's secretary to answer a letter about Coble-Grubb, and it will reach millions of people, who will forward it to millions more. I had suggested that a link to that Scandal Map should go on Ms Grubb website.  Now that is something that children who understand the issues can communicate to their older family members.  Do you really want these people to remain in charge of our lives and retirement incomes?  The guy who originally created it, Mark Poyser, says it is soon coming out in the form of a wall poster.  Now I can imagine children, who are accustomed to selling candy to support their football band, selling the Scandal Poster to raise money for a candidate who is opposed to this sort of thing, who stands for accountability for people actions.  The Scandal Picture communicates on a level that reaches out to people who do not know how to program a VCR, and may have inadvertently forwarded e-mail with a computer virus attachment. 11:25:45 AM

My cloud status just went from 97 to 96 % of my 40 Meg being free. 3:11:49 AM

[NOSI - Naval Open Source Intelligence} provides this link to Robert Kaplan's article in [The Atlantic] on where Iran is headed. 2:42:16 AM

Tara Grubb is running in North Carolina against the sponsor of the bill to give Hollywood the right to hack into anyone's computer that they only suspect of violating copyright of music etc., use whatever technology like computer viruses they like to attack such suspected pirates, and if they damage anything else in the process, then tough.  This is like saying to retail stores that if you suspect a person who lives in a building of shoplifting, it is legal for you to set the whole building on fire, and ruin the lives and residences of everyone else who lives in the building.    It is like giving someone the right to do drunk driving, and too bad however many people get killed. It is like granting the right to someone to start forest fires. They will be authorized to do anything, to any computers, in the name of fighting people with no proof of them doing anything wrong. Here are some links to stories about her candidacy: http://grubbforcongress.manilasites.com/directory/12/press My suggestions to improve her site - I posted a bunch over the weekend then Radio ate them & I blamed Hollywood, since Tara's opponent is sponsoring a bill to let Hollywood do anything to anyone's computers (not even Congress computers exempted), so then I posted to some of Tara's comment areas with some of my suggestions.  Here are some more. Post a link to the Libertarian Party platform and indicate which of their positions Ms Grubb supports, has a somewhat different stance on. This will help educate those people who think she is a one issue candidate. Clarify is she for P2P copyright violation? A person can be for P2P but opposed to piracy. Post statement how much money the election laws allow an individual to contribute to a candidate. Does this apply to a family? Can husband wife and their children individually give up to the ceiling? Post links to how much money Hollywood is paying to buy votes. I think Al Gore was pro-Internet at one time, but Hollywood may have swayed some politicians. Post a rebuttal to specific statements Coble has made. Example, he says with reference to an untrue e-mail rumor QUOTE The internet will remain unregulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Postal Service. UNQUOTE The rebuttal should show specific places where the Internet is already regulated by the FCC, such as anti-spam and opposition to consumer fraud and other criminal activities conducted through the Internet. Possibly indicate those areas of FCC regulation that Ms Grubb approves of. The rebuttal should quote specific sections of the Coble bill in which the government will put control of the Internet into the hands of companies that will now be authorized to hack into anyone and to distribute computer viruses and etc.  Indicate other areas where the Coble bill, if passed and signed into law, could be disruptive. Millions of people all over the world get hurt by computer viruses, and authorities try to crack down on the creators. A perfect defense for those people can now be that they claim they were writing software for Hollywood. The anti virus companies may have to go out of business because they providing a service that is in opposition to this new law, legalizing computer virus creation by Hollywood. Web sites get hit by cyber terrorism. Today we suspect enemies of the USA, but now it can be oops, Hollywood made a mistake, but they are legally protected from criminal negligence.  Tomorrow al Quada can attack the USA such as the nuclear power plants computers, Air Traffic Control. Tomorrow Hollywood can attack the same stuff, if they suspect people who are using those computers of engaging in computer piracy, or if those computers are on the same networks as their suspects. Could Y2K have been solved had this been the law of the land a few years ago? Get some statistics on the benefit of e-commerce to the economy, and how much this will disrupt it. Has the office of budget made any kind of estimates of what this will do? Will this disrupt EDI? What will be the impact of legalized computer viruses on wireless computing? Will it be like electronic smog which killed several people in Japan? Example:  The doors on bullet trains opened when they passed certain high rise buildings, and the decompression sucked passengers out, like in an aircrft disaster. Cause: Lack of safety interlocks in the Bullet Train design, and poor shielding on the electronics of both the bullet train and consumer electronics - all those kids playing computer games in the apartment buildings generated electronic interference which the bullet trains interpreted as signals telling them to open the doors. Reach out to the average voter. Computer users who understand technology, are in a minority. Reach people by means in addition to the Internet. Reach out to youngsters, children, in her district. Children are more computer savvy than their parents. They understand the significance of legalized cyber terrorism. But can they explain this to family members? Children have more energy than adults. There's an army of enthusiasts there, waiting for marching orders from an inspiring leader. What you want, is for them to: download from their home computers, print some literature promoting Ms Grubb's candidacy; go door to door in their neighborhood, delivering to every household; do this in a way that does not put the children at risk. Think about that - the children should go in a group, an adult watching them. Do you want to invite them to talk to strangers? Look at halloween (younger children typically involved than those you inviting to help) safety tips. It is similar to kids collecting money for Unicef, a good cause. As a youth, I participated in this, and then I got cynical. We have very bad situations in those countries, there have to be other solutions. But Unicef got me started thinking about the reality of growing up in those other countries. Having a pen pal with someone in another country hits home how good we have it here. We live in a society where not everyone has a home computer. a lot of people not know how to program a VCR. very few people read the click through contracts that come with software. most people receive a scam in the e-mail, believe it, send it to all their friends. look at how computer viruses get spread. those people votes are needed for Ms Grubb. The kinds of Internet issues that might appeal to the person who struggles with home computer operational issues are oten the very same issues that are problematic to people who know a lot about computer innards. When will it be safe to vote from your home computer at the on-line ballot box? Does Motor Voter Registration really work? 2:22:32 AM

[The National Review] has a weblog. This weekend I posted something like this about The Wall Street Journal but Radio ate it. My working theory (Hollywood comment was intended in humor) is that Radio uses Cache to store our posts, and lacks (Radio Wish here) an easy way for the end user to copy from Cache to permanent storage, so if we have any kind of idiot PC problem, like Bill Gates Blue Screen of Death, Radio can lose the Cache which means it ate the work we done for the last 1/2 day or longer. Another thing Radio ate this weekend was my link to an MSNBC blog where someone asked If Firefighters fight fires, what do Freedom Fighters fight? 1:24:59 AM

Monday's Topics: Etiquette; Multi-Author; Navigation; e-Organization; e-Planning; Terminology. I need to move some of the longer posts to stories. I need to be nicer person when being critical of a behavior pattern and I see one person engaged in it. I need terminology coined for the phenomena of. Person A says X. Person B quotes it. Person C quotes it. Person D reads it but can't tell that it is Person A being quoted. When there are a whole string of people finding something interesting, who should be given credit and how? I believe that when a person's words are used, we must give credit to that person. I believe that if we found something interesting because of a post by someone, we must credit that person. But should we also try to credit all the people in between the original post, and the person we got it from? 1:18:42 AM

I visited [A QA Guy's Radio] because I am interested in the interrelationship between a company's ISO and its computer, because the ISO standards that I have seen seem to focus on the form of something on a computer, as opposed the the content, or how easily someone can manipulate it.  As far as ISO is concerned, the way to assure accuracy is to use the forms consistently, totally ignoring the computer security and corporate standards with respect to not spoofing data. Well, this guy is just like us computer geeks struggling to figure out how to effectively use technology, and along the way gain some insights. [A QA Guy's Radio]  QUOTE Are there some basic incompatibilities between testing and managing? As a tester, you go right for the weakest areas, trying to determine defects and faults. As a manager, you find out what each person is capable of, and build on strengths. You most certainly do not keep poking at the weak spots of your staff. How much of a problem is this dichotomy?   UNQUOTE [A QA Guy's Radio] [James Robertson], in Australia, has similar writings on general topic of software testing and design issues for Knowledge Management.  I ask what is the difference between Information Architects (IA) and Usability?  He asks why there are so few blogs on intranets, when there are an estimated 300,000 out there.  Well I think the reason is that weblogging and intranets have not really met each other yet in a big way, so there are tons of discussion groups about intranets, within the context of whatever software or Operating System is used to drive the intranet.  There is also the problem of finding another outfit to share how to with, that is not really in competition with your company.  The traditional way I have seen this done is through the local user groups associated with a particular type of computer system, so people get together from manufacturers, schools, banks, police, stores, public utility companies, and so forth, to discuss how to get the best value out of whatever computer system they all have in common, sometimes with tours of each other facilities to see the cool stuff they have implemented, and how it is done. 12:58:46 AM

Monday, August 26, 2002

I was just admiring Alison Fish's Glossary of Weblogging Jargon, and I sent her an e-mail defining some of the terms she planned to define some day, but had not yet posted there, and here comes someone else thinking about how to communicate these concepts. [Dixiblog] illustrates a problem with how some people fail to properly credit their sources. We see this a lot in humor forwarded by e-mail ... who was the original writer? [Ray Ozzie] wrote a great piece on how blogs are better than discussion forums. [High Context] commented on it. [Gurteen Knowledge-Log] commented on it thanks to [High Context] link. [Dixiblog] quoted this, but did not make clear which content was from [Ray Ozzie]  [High Context] [Gurteen Knowledge-Log] [Dixiblog] Part of the problem is a lack of weblog standards for how best to show that. Many people, such as myself, are experimenting with some, but we not really happy yet. Can we learn from the Journalists profession? Another problem is that most people are linking not to the actual quoted area, but to the home page of the person who posted something, so we have to scroll down a bunch of pages to see what they are referring to. In other words we have people who are struggling to figure out how to use this technology, and in the process are making it a struggle for other users, like people on the public highways who are highway illiterate - they do not know what the double yellow line in middle of highway on a curve means, they do not know what the speed limit signage means, they just do their own thing, and the result is anarch. [Dixiblog] QUOTE blogs vs. discussion forums UNQUOTE [Dixiblog] actually the following statement was from [Gurteen Knowledge-Log] QUOTE On the difference between blogs and discussion forums.  (Al insert clarification: this is hyperlink to [Ray Ozzie] article) Some people do not seem to be able to get their heads around the difference between blogs and discussion forums. To my mind, although at a surface level they have some similarities - at a deeper level they are fundamentally different. There are two dimensions to their differences - the first the psychological dimension and the second the technology dimension. One of the major psychological differences is that you own your weblog - it is YOURS - and it represents a history of YOUR thinking - so you take pride in its ownership - something that does not make a lot of sense in a discussion forum. UNQUOTE [Gurteen Knowledge-Log] [Dixiblog] says this is from [Architecture Matters: The Rebirth of Public Discussion by] by [Ray Ozzie] [Gurteen Knowledge-Log] [Dixiblog] QUOTE some interesting conversation on the blogging vs. discussing. but it doesn't seem to directly address the question of comments in blogs, although if you trace the source far back enough, maybe. UNQUOTE [Dixiblog] Well [Dixiblog] certainly illustrates how to cloud the topic of copyright by quoting someone and not crediting the fact of who is being quoted. As a person who has participated in Internet Forums, Discussion Groups, e-mail discussion, telephone tag, business meetings, team projects, and other attempts at a meeting of the minds, I see a progression of technology to help improve our ability to communicate effectively and in context.  Weblogging is to Discussion Groups what the Personal Auto is to The Horse and Buggy. Both the Personal Auto and The Horse and Buggy serve people as transportation. The horse has some sanitation problems, and it only goes so fast, but is inexpensive, and for those people who hate technology, totally natural. Both Weblogging and Discussion Groups serve people as communications. With discussion groups there are problems with context and agendas. We post something, and someone misconstrues what we said. We try to correct the misconception. Turns out that some people deliberately misunderstand everything you say because they want an arguement. You have to put up with those people as a cost of using the site. In both realities, if we make an honest mistake, someone can tell us and we can fix it. There is a concept of noise to signal ratio. Noise is these people who want arguements. Noise is when people ask a question that has been answered, so we answer it again. Noise is when person-A posts a bunch of stuff, then person-B is commenting on one element of person-A post, but instead of quoting just the context that they are commenting on, they quote the whole thing. Noise is today when I sent a post about the Scandal Map to a discussion group. It went to the discussion server which added a bunch of header info to the message. It went to one of the other people on the list, whose company has anti-virus software, which transcribed the message, adding a bunch of lines and replacing every one of my end of lines with its own characters. Then it went into the company's e-mail server, which added some stuff. Then it went into the e-mail client of this guy, which further messed it up. He forwarded the result to me which was absolutely garbage. For every line of text I had keyed, he got 5 lines of stuff. Noise is flames. Noise is when someone misquotes you by accident and then other people are on your case because they think you really said that bad stuff. Noise is when you have a discussion group for one purpose, and someone does not get it and we have a lot of off-topic posts. Signal is the good information that is new and interesting that you wanted to see. Most discussion groups have a high noise to signal ratio. Weblogging can also have a lot of noise getting in the way of signals, but it is much easier to tune out the noise with weblogging than with discussion groups. 11:28:49 PM

He's back [Russ Lipton Documents Radio] QUOTE I bought Eastgate's Tinderbox. This is a cool and extraordinarily powerful product. Mark Bernstein is another amateur. I want to use it. I want to master it. Honest. It could complement Radio/Frontier beautifully. But are there enough hours in the day? When it comes to those precious few hours, my real brainstorming returns to Radio and the notion of packaging a real book (online, natch) for ordinarily intelligent people getting into Radio for the first time - 180-200 pages? I will rework pages already done on this site and elsewhere and add another 100 pages ... with significantly more polish and care. UNQUOTE [Russ Lipton Documents Radio] 10:32:11 PM

[Radio Free Blogistan] QUOTE EPN World Reporter: Top Blogs. Here's someone's idea of some good blogs to check out. What interests me is this assertion: Further, the distinction between web diaries and web logs continues to become more blurred. Which, ultimately, makes for better reading. UNQUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan] How do we define top blogs?  Popularity, staying ahead of the crowd by dreaming up cute things to do, good writing? [EPN World Reporter] tackles some terminology.  QUOTES So long as the diary includes a healthy log of other sites and a log of events, it constitutes a blog. Writers’ web diaries could be described as the ultimate form of intellectual voyeurism. UNQUOTE Link to info about alleged time travelers. 10:29:36 PM

Radio Wishes: Pull on sides of Home Page Editing Box to make the size more harmonious, like I can do with many Windows Application boxes within boxes. When I have Posted something but not yet Published it, some icon flag color indication on my desk top editing area that tells me THAT post has not yet been published, or that it has been edited and posted, without the final version published yet.  Also put some counter near top of home editing area to remind me how many posts are in that condition. Top Command Menu include Categories.  Or perhaps make this a menu selection in the Cloud Links Status area down right side. When I click on it, would take me to something structured like Stories.  A chart of all my Categories, like the Categories Page. Calendar addition of a phrase to tell us which Category we navigating through. Use Calendar to navigate through posts to a particular Category post on a particular day, or that of the Home Page. When I learn how to have Navigator Links to my Categories, on right side below the Calendar, I would like an interconnection between Calendar and Categories. For example, suppose I am looking at Calendar for posts made to Home or a Category for Aug 20th.  I might want some icon to appear beside some other Categories to show that THEY also had some posts on THAT DAY. Or, suppose I am looking at Calendar for the month.  I might like some indication associated with individual days to show that there were posts those days for categories other than the home. Perhaps an expanded chart available that shows week horizontally and categories vertically and in the spread sheet intersections are links showing that for that day and that category there was one or more posts.  Click on the link to get to them. 12:34:22 PM

[Alison Fish of Blogfish] shared from [Seb's Open Research] Lessons learned from a large scale K-logging implementation. Most people don't like to write. We've had a difficult time designing interfaces that encourage adding information instead of just reading. There's no substitute for good, accessible writing. We have several people who write consistently for the system. The logs show that postings from one writer get far more attention and prompt far more linking than those from the other writers. " [Seb's Open Research] [Alison Fish of Blogfish] QUOTE I suspect that beginning bloggers and kloggers are often inhibited.. If we set up a k-logging community for our company intranet, I suspect there will be an initial _hump_ of hesitation among the employees. Maybe having a few designated posters at the beginning would ease the transition. Must think on this. UNQUOTE [Alison Fish of Blogfish] Al's suggestions Recruit co-workers who you think share your enthusiasm for the idea of having a KLOG on the company intranet, and would be good power users to serve as a kind of help desk and cheerleader squad when you launch it. With them, setup a system patterned on dws.Radio.FAQ model to discuss what needs resolution before implementing this, and inviting in the mass of users, so as to maximize odds of getting great value out of his project. Do so outside company intranet until you nailed down everything needed for implementation. That includes both technical know how and management approval. When management says Yes, they often expect results soon. So you use this outside discussion area to identify pre-requisites and get them resolved. Assuming you are the moderator Your team use a Category name like Radio Plot Twists which performs role like Radio Questions input to dws Your aggregation, like dws.Radio.FAQ, have name like The Plot Thickens Ask your co-workers if y"all want to invite into your discussion any non-employees from outside the firm Think Radio enthusiasts who have written relevant documentation Think other firms personnel trying to organize an company KLOG in which those people are not in competition with your company Just as dws has Topic headings like Radio Wishes Radio Tips Radio Questions Radio Alerts Your multi-author discussion would have its relevant Topic headings like Documentation and Tutorial Flow Chart of Learning Curve Topics that co-workers need to learn to be proficient in this. Will you want to host a seminar class to help people get up to speed Will you want to mirror some Radio documentation on your intranet Examples of KLOGS worth emulating Initially you just want anything that illustrates the concept Then you want some that are close to what you want for your company Implementation Challenges to Solve What OS does Radio Frontier etc. work on What OS are most heavily in use at your company People working from home PC and from work PC updating from either location Management Personnel Topics Distinct from documentation for users and Implementation issues This will eat some disk space and other resources There will be executives slow to accept some communication methods Everyone still needs to communicate with them by their preferred methods Paper, Fax, e-mail, whatever 12:15:47 PM

Sunday Topics: Copyright; Humor; Radio Education. Sunday Topics lost in Radio PC problems: Current Events, Deep Linking. Purpose of tracking this stuff is to Help navigate my overall site ... near each day break is directory of prior day topics. Help me work towards breaking up my stuff into categories. Help visitors see what I am into, before I learn better ways to communicate that. 11:06:29 AM

Sunday, August 25, 2002

I posted a piece Fri Aug 23 about improving how we present our weblog material, which Alison Fish commented further upon.  Steven Levy Has A Blog About Writing About Blogs. says [Ernie the Attorney] Steven suggests that we need to be more self displined about our categories, separating different kinds of writing: Sharing interesting links and insights. More or less original content. Pundit commentary on what we see in the news. UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney] from Steven Levy original source. For the moment, Al's focus is on separating stuff by type of subject content - computers, history, using this technology, etc. Another focus is trying to get away from habit of long essays that might have only limited interest to people. Aug 20 I showed what I am calling John Patrick's technique worth emulating, then I used it here and here. I need to get into the habit of using good techniques like this. [Alison Fish of Blogfish] QUOTE I love the three styles of weblog writing listed above. What would be really cool is to come up with a way of formatting the weblog posts that indicates which of the three types of posts it is (sharing link discoveries, original content, pundit commentary).  Oh, so much to do. Save this goal for a later date. UNQUOTE [Alison Fish of Blogfish] I like the original idea from Steven shared by Ernie, and I like Alison's suggestion also. Perhaps this is a template theme style topic. Elsewhere in Radio Wishes, I have noted that people can lose track of changes made to our Templates - a tweak here, a minor change there, then we are afraid to experiment with alternative Themes, or Radio upgrades, because of how they might conflict with our changes.  Well I want a net change tool.  Our Radio software knows what base theme we are using.  Radio Userland knows where that base theme is stored with the standard stuff that comes with it.  The net change tool would compare our template settings with the default settings for that theme, and place it in a special place as a form of backup.  We then try out alternative themes, against which we can apply all the changes that are sitting in our special place.  With this technique, we could then apply changes that are like themes and tools. Below our radio posting box there is a set of categories to check off WHERE this is to go. Above our ratio posting box there is a set of style control boxes. One place or the other, we need a new set of check off controls (I favor up top). This next text is a quote - please apply my style rules for quoted material. This next text is my original text - please apply my style rules for my original text. This next text is intended tongue in cheek - please adorn it with smiley faces. There would be a page in the preferences for us to select style rules from several suggested standards. 6:35:20 PM

V of TYR told me about Crop Circle Communications? 5:53:01 PM

I have a new theory for how come my Radio Weblog had a major melt down this weekend.  People have been inventorying which Congress Critters: Seem to be in favor of the Hollywood hacker virus legislation; Have accepted campaign contributions from Hollywood lobbyists; Are coming up for re-election; Have opposing candidates who are pro-Internet. Tara Grubb is getting support because of this. Her weblog is getting a lot of hits by pro-Internet people. I had link to her weblog on mine but that was one of the things lost in the melt down. Hmm, I wonder if Hollywood had anything to do with that. They probably did not like my remark about Horse and Buggy Entertainment Industry. From now on, when my PC has problems, Hollywood is added to the list of suspects. 5:49:20 PM

[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE By the way, his article is copyrighted.  That means you can read it, examine the ideas, and discuss them with your friends.  You can't reproduce his words in any significant part without permission from him.  That's the way copyright works.  Pretty much only he is allowed to make money off of his words, but you can examine them if you'd like. UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney] Do we need enhanced multi-author derivative copyrights?  Here are some cases to illustrate my meaning. A non-profit club newsletter is copyrighted.  After publication, copyrights revert to individual authors.  How is someone to know that is the situation if they want to reprint something?  Safety is to see permission from both individual article writer and editor publisher. Similar situation with Internet discussion group.  You want to reprint something, and keep it legal.  Is the copyright that of the individual person who posted what you want to reprint, or the owner moderator of the discussion.  Like the club newsletter, it appears shared.  This is obvious when there are multiple people writing into the discussion you want to reprint.  Copyright is shared by all the contributors. There are many analogies in other kinds of copyrighted material. Someone creates a copyrighted work. Second person adds to it. The addition is also copyrighted. You cannot use the second piece without also using the first piece. Examples Software Package or structure developed. Additional programmers add additional features to the core application. End users can't use the new features independently of the original art. They can run the original without the new features, but they want the enhancements. Original package can compete better in the market place, if it is enhancement-friendly. In other words, the original copyright holder makes things easy for people to improve the product. Music or Poetry May other people add verses beyond what the original artist composed? The original artist might think some parody demeans their work. Original artist may demand approval before add on person's stuff is published. Game Design purchased by many enthusiasts who meet to play and discuss. Some players add new rules, scenarios, variants to enhance their enjoyment. They publish their suggested improvements and try out other people's ideas. Part of the fun of the game is figuring out how to grow it from the basic original. Fact Essay Commentary, more opinions by other people. May in fact be hostile counter point to original author. Novel creates a set of characters in a universe or reality. Another author writes a sequel. I think the new author needs permission from whoever created the story universe. Not copyright law, but publishers seeking to avoid any lawsuits. Compare result of rules imposed by original copyright owner on people who would add to their software creation worlds. Microsoft is somewhat Open to anyone writing any software that will run on their Operating Systems, but it is Open Season on what will continue to work.  In any future MS upgrade, surprise, MS changed the standards, now something that worked on the old MS version does not work on the new, and it may be that only parts of an application got broke.  So for the end users, things are fragile, and we do not know why collisions are occurring between parts of our PC software.  For the developers in the MS world, it is like quicksand, the foundations, that you build your applications upon, are at risk of collapsing under you without warning. IBM is somewhat Open to anyone writing any software that will run on their Operating Systems, but IBM imposes rigid standards.  IBM guarantees to their customers that any software written by an approved vendor will not break their computer.  Everything will run fine, or we will fix it (IBM and the software vendor), guaranteed.  What is an approved vendor?  One that obeys IBM's standards. Now there are vendors out there that break IBM's standards.  IBM warns its customers.  If you install that vendor's stuff on your IBM computer, then your IBM contract is null and void.  If it breaks, we won't fix it, unless you agree to have that vendor's stuff removed from the computer. Do new upgrades of IBM operating systems drop support for stuff that was in earler versions.  Yes, but they announce in advance to their approved vendors what aspects are going away, so that the vendors know what to re-write, and the customers are given a list of what will no longer work, so they have choice of not doing the upgrade, or replacing the software. It is a different world, and it is governed by the behavior of the original copyright owner, within framework of what the government allows, to permit other developers to add to their worlds, and set rules for the additions. 2:03:03 PM

I have Re Published the whole site, and republished pieces.  My half dozen posts and additions are not coming back.  Radio Education lesson from this seems clear: If I key something in, and I see the post in the Desk Top editor, print a reference copy, so that if it subsequently disappears, I have ammunition to help me with later reconstruction if desired. 1:47:59 PM

Warning - this post is extremely geeky stuff related to something that went wrong that I am trying to figure out if it is fixable. Sigh, Microsoft IE lost connection to my Radio site, which is not unusual thanks to quality of PC software and Internet connection sometimes blips out and does not reconnect, so I ended IE session, exited Radio, rebooted PC, and now I find that I have also lost the last half dozen posts, including tons of links on humor, ASCII art, my revised home office info (what's there is a shell of what I had posted through rewrites), deep linking news, approx 3 pages worth in which I did not print a copy of all that I had done.  I wonder if it lost my updates to Radio documentation, since I had added half a dozen links wee hours of Sat Sun to additional sources.  Well that looks intact - I have 21 different places, including the latest additions: Alison Fish; Mark Pilgrim; Phil Wolff. Saturday Topics (before the big loss) included: Al (me), ASCII art and e-pictures in place of 1 k words, copyright, e-organization. The week's topics (before the big loss) that I had posted on multiple days of the week, included: copyright, current events, history, humor, great links, e-law, e-organization, radio education.  Sunday Topics lost included: Deep Linking news, English language grotesque humor, history, interesting sites that I had found through blog surfing, the latter was just Posted, not Published, since I though I might find some other entries before finalizing that post.  Of extreme annoyance is that I had e-mailed some people about the fact that I had posted reviews of their sites that I was waiting on them to upstream, and now that stuff is part of what is missing. I looked in Scott Johnson's http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/stories/2002/08/20/scottsRadioRadioExposedOrIDelveDeepUnderTheHoodOfRadio.html to try to figure out where the stuff might be that I could cut and paste what is missing before it is totally lost.  Well what I am seeing is not the way he is illustrating it.  But I do not know for sure if my problem is the same one he is describing.  I am finding a bunch of items in the root that it thinks were posted 8/25 except I am not seeing them on my site.  I need to Open Radio -> Radio -> Re Publish entire site and cross my fingers.  I suspect this will take a while to execute, since I am using 2% of my 40 Meg.  Since I have lost stuff and rekeyed it multiple times in the past, I wonder if the lost posts will now be duplicated here.  Sigh. Well I went through that process and it hasn't fixed anything.  I sure could have used some kind of progress indicator that was more meaningful than alternating time periods of hour glass vs. arrow for my mouse pointer.  Call that another Radio Wish.  Event log shows TCP/IP error code 10054, so it is possible it never finished the job. 2002-08-25 root shows Radio: 01 has 5 items; 02 has 21 items.  I wish I knew how to read this stuff.  I suspect there is some way to recover the missing posts.  I wonder if 01 is for 1 am, 2 for 2 am etc.  Window Weblog Data Root ... I looked through those and found several patterns, 136 was last one for 8/23, 137-140 were posts for 8/24, 141 is 8/25.  I had a Microsoft Blue Screen of Death while exploring this stuff.  Just my luck.  I'll try another reboot then Open Radio -> Radio Re Publish just this month. 2:05:16 AM

Saturday, August 24, 2002

Al's new hovel sweet hovel furniture for the PC corner is now scheduled for delivery Fri Aug 30, which means everything will get disconnected for at least a day.  The furniture guy is also a PC guru, who I connected with through what once upon a time might have been called the old guy network, but it was actually a couple of sweet ladies who told me about him. For my new e-friends who are unfamiliar with my hovel sweet hovel, I owe much of the arrangement to ideas suggested by one of those ladies, Patricia Thurman, who is one of those people gifted with things totally outside my world of literature and the Internet. I have a one bedroom apartment in which the living room has been renamed Al's library.  Down the middle, back to back are 4 sets of sturdy book cases (actually 8 sets), each with 5 shelves and more stuff on very top, with halogen lamps reflecting off the white ceiling. 9:35:16 PM

Friday's Topics were: Copyright; Integrity; e-Organization. 9:26:56 PM

Remember Aug 21 scandal map link?  Well in linking to Larry's other adjacent posts, it seems evident to me that he originally got this from Mark Poyser, and incidentally, Mark's site is also well worth exploring to see other great cartoons, with some guidance on how to print this stuff.  When it was originally copied, the copyright credit should also have been copied, or more clearly stated, a scenario which may need to be better spelled out in my e-Etiquette Guidelines.  In addition to the great cartoons on Mark's other pages, don't forget to check out  Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow's Blog, which I found out about thanks to an article by Steve Outing.  You know how a picture is worth a thousand words?  Well there are people who are gifted in communicating using the pictures rather than the 1 k words, and I want to find and rejoice in more such examples of how software can be used to better fulfill the promise of GUI, which Xerox invented and Apple Mac popularized and now is almost a PC standard.  Click on any door or window of Pam's house, then when you see what she has done, start mouse exploring the whole page for other links.  Be sure to return from time to time, because the picture changes with the time of day and seasons of year. I have a Radio Wish Dream of how computer software documentation could use Pam's model.  You see a picture of a Radio website populated with all the goodies.  Move mouse over individual ingredients and there are links that work differently based on right or left mouse click, that connect you to right terminology for this feature, documentation on conceptually how it might be used, and how to implement it on your site. 8:40:38 PM

Stories added to Al's weblog, off the home page, include: Blind of NH Raw stuff about e-Accessibility and plain old Accessibility. Tons of links for folks interested in helping resolve Accessibility problems. Blogs worth revisiting Some day I will have links down the side of my web page like a lot of other Bloggers do. I need to learn how to adjust a lot of other things first. Etiquette On-Line I need to split this into smaller portions, more digestible, and easier to edit. Eventually I hope to work it into a competent essay. This material is appropriate to people who may be new to Internet publishing. Radio Doc Sources Tutorials for Radio, and nuance clarifications. A road map to Radio documentation destinations. My latest major addition & I expect I will be adding more here. I think there may be a need for this kind of topic using the dws.Radio.FAQ model, to grow a directory of all shareable Radio documentation that anyone knows about. Radio url number system A road map to Radio urls for the newbie that I am. When I get versatile in Navigation Links I might not need this any more. Understand Radio Categories Grok overall concepts, then step by step implement them. Lots of links to other people documentation. I think this documentation model worked out quite well. Understand Radio News Aggregation Grok overall concepts, then links to other people documentation for the actual implementation. I plan to do more later like this Understand Other Topics. I plan to repost a directory like this one, from time to time, as my collection gets significant updates. 9:25:31 AM

Friday, August 23, 2002

In my earlier piece on search engines and directories, I noted some specialities like http://www.cyberjournalist.net/cyberjournalists.html Directory of weblogs maintained by professional journalists http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html Directory of weblogs maintained by librarians How about sources of information on e-law which seems to be hot topic recently. [Ernie the Attorney] Law Blogs [Law Meme] [Staton Blog] fusion of law economics and technology http://portal.eatonweb.com/cat/Law People who SAY they are interested in Law are not neccessarily all professionals at explaining it. [Scripting News] QUOTE A list of law-related weblogs. UNQUOTE [Scripting News] 4:23:38 PM

[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE Copyright Law - what should it be? I agree with this statement. UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney] Here's what I believe / desire. Capitalism belongs to many shareholders: Employees with decent jobs and investments in 401k or other retirement plans; Stockholders; Management Executives; Creditors; Customers who expect Integrity with respect to product service promises, whether they are on the side of the box of purchase, in the documentation, contract, any advertising.  As new rules are imposed, we should have both notification of the rule changes, and able to opt out of whatever arrangement got us there.  If a company not like new SEC rules, they should be allowed to offer their shareholders more than the stock is worth, so they can quit being a public company. Industries should have special protection when they are new, such as Cable TV was protected against Broadcast TV, but this protection should not last forever.  As technology advances, the Horse and Buggy Entertainment Industry does not have a Constitutional right to permanent existance. Contracts need to be in plain English.  Incomprehensible Contracts should be automatically null and void until they get re-written.  People with disabilities ought to have the right to access to contracts and key documents in a form that they can read or hear.  See Blind of NH for what reality is instead. Artists and Writers and other creators of Intellectual Property need to get proper compensation for their labors so as to provide incentive to future quality.  Look at it this way, over 300 firemen died in the WTC, but they are not paid enough money to live in NYC without their families having a second job.  The people we value, be they teachers or parents, they need to have honest access to enough money for a quality life. Public Libraries available to everyone regardless of economic status, in which the public can take turns reading what is in the library, and the publishers do get financially compensated because their books are distributed to thousands of libraries all over the planet.  Ditto rent a movie at the video store.  We are not supposed to make our own personal copies of what we borrowed.  We can also have Private Exchanges, whether flea market or auction.  We show up with books videos whatever that we are done with, trade them with other people, go home with new selections. Schools have text books in which they may contract with the publishers for permission to make cheap copies, and pay a royalty for doing so, just like non-profit theatrical performances and churches are allowed to buy one copy of sheet music or a play, make photocopies for all performances, and pay a fee to the publisher based on size of audience and number of performances. Home Computer technology is still in its infancy with great potential.  I say infancy because it is so fragile.  How often do you have to reboot your Operating System?  When something goes wrong, how fast do you find out what it is and get it fixed with assurance that nothing else will go wrong for a while? I do not approve of high tech vigilanteism, just as I do not approve of real world vigilanteism. If it appears like someone is doing improper behavior, prove it in small claims computer court, or gather evidence for a computer crimes court where the suspect can face accuser with both sides access to competent technical witnesses.  The state of art of software to catch improper actions is pretty dismal.  How often do we have to update our anti-virus protection?  How many false positives does spam blocking filters generate? I do approve of the government attempting to protect the citizenry from future attacks by terrorists.  In a war it is sometimes neccessary to do things that would never happen in peacetime.  Individuals, who are dedicated to the other side and who will never surrender or stand down, they need to be locked up in perpetuity, but there also needs to be some proof that these people are in fact guilty of being the enemy.  It is an extremely slippery slope to allow government to lock people up, with no legal protections such as a defense attorney, based on mere suspicion, or to spy on the people without probable cause as defined by the court system. 3:12:50 PM

Al's Radio Doc Sources directory of people and places for finding documentation about Radio.  It duplicates what many other people have contributed, but for me it is better than Browser bookmarks, in organizing and mildly annotating in perspective. 3:01:11 PM

Steven Levy Has A Blog About Writing About Blogs. says [Ernie the Attorney] Steven suggests that we need to be more self displined about our categories, separating different kinds of writing: Sharing interesting links and insights. More or less original content. Pundit commentary on what we see in the news. For the moment, my focus is on separating my stuff by type of subject content - computers, history, using this technology, etc. Steven writes QUOTE Article in New York Times idea section says that there are now 500,000 Weblogs. Can this be? I always seem to see the same hundred or so, and they’re all linked to each other. Will have to check out the other 499,900 somehow. Who are these people? UNQUOTE Seems to me there are 50 some software vendors in competition with Radio Userland.  Many of them provide feeds similar to those we see on our Radio Cloud Links, some of which are available on the internet to people with competing vendor software, but these are just the customers whose Preferences say to notify of updates.  Some might want to keep what they are doing somewhat private.  Some vendors can tell the media how many customers they have, how many licenses renewed, how many demos, etc. but who audits the veracity?  In other software markets there is some creative accounting to try to inflate numbers to make it seem like one vendor or another has excess market share.  Many reasons for this, get customers to what appears to be successful company, get bank loans to them also. Can search engine robots, trolling the internet connections and what various ISPs host, tell when they find a site what type of site it is in terms of the software hosting it? 10:24:57 AM

Radio is Great Software - I made a mistake and expected a crash.  I double clicked my desk top radio launch icon, and for an instant, just one instant, it was on my systray twice, and then it corrected itself and was there just once. Thurs topics: Search Engines for Webloggers.  I also updated some of my categories and stories, which you can find via Radio url number system. 12:36:11 AM

Thursday, August 22, 2002

Question: Are there search engines that are good at finding Weblogs on a particular topic, or in our neighborhood? Where do we find advice on increasing traffic to our web site thanks to search engines finding our content? Answer: Check out Scott Johnson's Becoming Part of the Weblogging Community which outlines Community Resources, with brief introductions to their functions and how we can participate.  Also check out his Etiquette on pages 8-9.  Just as there is a word Netiquette for e-Etiquette, is there a word for Blogging Etiquette? Weblogs.com Recently updated - includes Radio and Manila sites. News is free.com The blogging world includes people writing new content, and commenting on what others have written.  News is free.com helps us find interesting stuff to comment on.  You can also add your Weblog to their input. Day Pop.com Search Engine of Weblogs.  Search for your own name and see who has commented on you.  This is not the same as referrers, limited to posts in the last 24 hours. MIT Blog dex This indexes the information to which Blogs are linking. Meerkat You can select types of news you want to follow. Garbox Show you all sites that have linked to a particular weblog entry or news item. Syndic8 Alternative to News is free Go to Scott's Info to get the actual urls of these places, reviews in more detail than my outline, and step by step how to participate in them.  Scott's [Fuzzy Blog] recently admired www.blogstreet.com which has 9,700 blogs there when I checked. Answer: Check out Al Macintyre's: July 10 post on top UK Weblogs thanks to specific services. July 12 post on BlogChalking, which I do not exactly figure out. Later, [Joseph the Poet] shares an alternate site. Aug 12 post on MSNBC and Eaton Web, both organizing Weblogs by subject. Later, I find and explore some other conceptually similar sites. http://www.jjg.net/portal/tpoowl.html some directories have useful info even if they no longer maintained http://www.cyberjournalist.net/cyberjournalists.html Directory of weblogs maintained by professional journalists http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html Directory of weblogs maintained by librarians http://portal.eatonweb.com/ appears to have approx 6,000 Weblogs on their search engine. http://www.bloghop.com/ and http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/ have twice as many http://blo.gs/ tracks 39,000 weblogs for 450 users Not all of them are Radio Userland of course. When we look at the various Cloud Status Link connections from our Radio Site, the numbers seem to be higher. Aug 14 I try to register my weblog at Eatonweb and relay my struggles getting that done. Al has often mentioned [Search Day] as a great source for information about Search Engines in general.  For example [Aug 22 Search Day] surveys why some perfectly good web sites fail to provide a search engine to improve user navigation.  In my case it is merely that there are many things I plan to do some day & this is one of those I have procrastinated with, and I want to use it for myself.  But I also want to learn what's involved in making a site Search Engine-Friendly.  QUOTE More than 1,600 webmasters responded to the survey, which covered the topics of why site managers have or have not installed search engines, correlations of the sizes of sites and the installation of search engines, frequency of updates, file formats served, languages, and number of languages used on sites.  Also see [Search Engine Ratings] of the 16 most popular search tools.   Key findings of the [Search Tools Survey]: Most sites with a search tool installed wanted to provide better navigation and a professional look for the site. Sites with more pages tend to have search engines installed.  Sites which are updated hourly or daily are much more likely to have search installed than those which update less frequently. Sites with non-English text are more likely to have search engines installed. Why haven't the majority of web managers surveyed installed search engines?  Time and [complexity] were the most frequently cited reasons. UNQUOTE.  [IT Analysis Com] reports that the US Gov FTC questions Search Engine integrity with respect to disclosing paid links.  From Search Day I have found out about some Directory based search engines, where we start with the general flavor of site we want then drill down from there, such as [1DO3.com] in the UK has a section just on Weblogs covering current events. [Speciality Search Engines] has links to [Invisible Web] where normal search engines cannot go [Web Rings] where a cluster of sites are interlinked on topics of mutual interest, such as a Science Fiction Fan Club.  I think there are a lot more out there than this outfit has indexed. Search Engines designed for usage through Wireless. [Miscelaneous Other] such as discussion groups, job postings, literature, museums and art works, transportation Search Day newsletter subscribe from http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/ Dig into Search Day archives.  July 11 they had a big article with connections to 131 different legitimate ways to improve traffic to your web site, by ensuring that search engines will include you properly.  There's also a bit here on the e-etiquette of linking to other sites, irrespective of whether they are weblogs. Remind Al ... 2 do includes getting into the gems = Al's notes on Traffic to Web Site ideas for increasing. I mentioned a Radio Wish to one of my Radio correspondents, who said that it sounded like I was talking about [Mind Mapping] which intriqued me, but I still have that Radio Dream: Many search engines give us the choice of searching the whole internet, just that one site, or just the sites run by a particular company.  I want a sub-category to be a group of people who have created Radio Userland documentation, in which we can adjust the list of sites involved, perhaps have new ones and url changes communicated to us via News Aggregation.  I also want a system of aliases, in which some feature might be known by different names to people familiar with different kinds of Weblogging software vendors, or may be commonly confused with some similarly appearing interface with other Computer software. So we search for topic X and we also get links to Y and Z because of aliases, and we get hits where they exist on any one of the group of sites where people have done documentation.  But I want more, a directory of Radio features, with who has documented that, so it becomes obvious on which features no one has yet documented. This concept could also be applied to other special interests ... we compile a directory of sites that are involved in a particular category of particular interest to us, then do a search vs. all of them at the same time. This post was originally written for Al's new category [e-Radio Ideas = Empower Freedom of e-Speech through dws.Radio.FAQ learning in Radio Userland: Questions; Wishes; Tips; Speculation] but then as it developed, Al thought also applied to the Home Page. 1:41:19 AM

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

Wednesday topics: Humor; Links; e-Organization; Radio Education. [New British law makes many British web sites illegal, unless we know how to comply.]  Watch out for broken links from here, when exploring related stories. The rules are now legally binding on everyone who advertises or sells goods via a website, mobile phone or through e-mail.  Everyone in UK, to UK, from UK ??? Does this NOT apply to services?  They are not going to enforce it against spammers, and no one will be held liable for illegal stuff that manages to flow through their networks, so basically legitimate businesses have regulations that should apply to any e-commerce enterprise, while the e-gangsters continue to overwhelm everyone. Let's assume for the moment that we are a business. I am not, but business is in the eyes of government agencies that want to tax and regulate us. If anyone places an order through my web site, I must promptly acknowlege it. I am not selling anything, but if someone wants to send me a check to buy the Brooklyn Bridge or the Eiffel Tower, I will happily cash your check and print up for you a certificate of sale. Whole bunch of other good rules for commercial sites. 10:42:53 PM

Battling Information Overload in general is the topic today Aug 21 from [Search Day] written by [Mary Ellen Bates].  [How Much Information] measures how much is generated in the world each year.  [Inc Data Data] figures how much time people waste looking for it. Battling Disk Space Overloaded on your home PC is today's Aug 21 topic from [Woody's Windows]. 10:20:25 PM

Thanks [Blogfish] Lance Knobel has an interesting scandal map on his weblog. from [John Robb's Radio Weblog] Tuftian version of the business section.  UNQUOTE [Blogfish] 1:34:09 PM

Here is a challenge that will come to all of us sooner or later, so perhaps we can learn from this how we can cope when it happens.  In the last 24 hours my Radio has gone from 98% to 97% of 40 Meg free.  I think it is probably due to my new stories, and I am now up to 22 News Aggregation Channel Subscriptions. [Christian Crumlish (xian): salonika] QUOTE Yes, the problem is I've maxed out my server space at Salon's host, so I suppose this means moving over to my FTP server again. Even then, though I'll need to replace the home page at blogs.salon.com/0001111/ with some sort of link or redirect to the new address, or it will look like a dead blog to anyone coming in from an old bookmark or link! But how do I do that when my allocation is full? How do I clear out the remote host without killing my site? UNQUOTE [Christian Crumlish (xian): salonika] Am I stating the obvious? Ask your ISP about buying a larger allocation. I added some more thoughts in Radio Discussion Thread. My most useful idea, in my opinion, is to search the Discussion Archives for the practicality of running two versions of Radio on same site at same time, for ease of moving stuff from old site to new site, and replacing old copy with pointers to new site. If you do that, first move to the new site, that on the old PC copy never got to the old site, so that does not get to the old site as you clean out enough disk space to make room for the pointers. URL not coming across so here it is http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/08/18/understandRadioCategories.html In my essay "Understand Radio Categories", note the very last section on What else good to know about Categories where I direct you to Radio documentation on how to publish a category to a different FTP server.  If you organize your stuff into Categories that are each hosted by different ISP, then it will be a longer time interval between incidents of having to deal with this. When you get your new url operational. carefully review if there is anything on your old archives that you could move to your replacement site.  Especially anything that is a reasonably large chunk of text. The reason for a large chunk of text is to clear space on your old allocation, with minimum effort on your part. After you know for sure the old archives stuff is on the new. See if the old archives will let you edit so as to replace that large chunk of text with a one liner that redirects people to the new location. The reason for that is courtesy for anyone who has linked to stuff in your old archives. Now see if the verbiage that exited your old archives was in sufficient volume to permit the addition of a post on top pointing people to your new site. In the future, create a dummy post that is large enough to accomodate this kind of information, linking people to another site. The game plan is that when the ceiling is hit, and you have the new site, replace the dummy post with the new link. Consult with your filled up ISP. They may be able to improve on these suggestions. 12:55:07 PM

Tuesday's Topics were: Current Events, History, Humor, e-law, e-organization, Radio Education.  Continuous Improvement is one of my Goals.  I applied John Patrick's technique yesterday, and it is looking good.  I am pleasantly surprised to see a recent addition to [Don's Documentation Directory] for Radio Weblog users ... I am planning others in my Understanding series, and have added a few Categories as I implement what I have learned. 11:32:33 AM

For those lamenting about how fast we use up our available disk space, my Weblog is now at 98% of 40.0 Meg unused (it was at 99% free for a long time). 12:12:03 AM

Timothy Leary. "Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." [Quotes of the Day] [dws.] I have seen variations on that before.  One of my favorite 'dumb men' jokes (that is not off-color): How many men does it take to change roll of toilet paper?  We not know, it has not happened yet. Or computer technician humor. How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?  None - that's a hardware problem. 12:04:11 AM

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

I got this from an e-mail contact, Martin Spencer in New Zealand   "Hello, and welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++   "If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly. "If you are codependent, please ask someone to press 2. "If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6. "If you are paranoid-schizophrenic, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call. "If you are psychotic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.  "If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.  "If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and about to bite off your ear.  "If you are suicidal, please hold for the next available operator. Your call will be answered in the order it was received. Please do not hang up and re-dial, as this will only delay the processing of your call. Currently, you are number 381; estimated wait time is three hours, twenty minutes. If you prefer to change your psychiatric affliction, press zero at any time to return to the main menu ..." 11:55:37 PM

If you are easily offended by humor, do not read this installment. This was passed along from [Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog] to [dws.] but I have previously seen variations of this in my e-mail.  If you like this kind of stuff (I love it), check out  http://www.wullamette.edu/~tjones/language-Page.html = Human Languages Page = an archive of Web sites about (and in) foreign languages - including dialects & fictional languages such as Klingon. http://www.mmania.com/ = humor in French ie. you need to be familiar with the language of France to digest this stuff http://www.best.com/~imagine/jokes/ = humor in very bad taste, in four different languages http://www.nine.org/notw/notw.html = news of the weird news stories from around the world Americonics = standard American English Chiconics = a language unique to Chicagoans, that Mike Royko used to  talk about in his column Ebonics = African-American language with its roots in tribal languages such as Ebu Ubu Abu Abadabado Hebonics = language of many of America's Jews.    I have shared this with several Jewish friends who have informed me that this is hilarious, and they wish they dreamed it up first.  If anyone is offended, that persion does not know and love Jews.  Here are some descriptions of the characteristics of the language, and samples of phrases in standard English and Hebonics.    Samples of Pronunciation Characteristics   Jewish English or "Hebonics" hardens consonants at the ends of words.      Thus, "hand"  becomes "handt."     The letter "W" is always pronounced as if it were a "V".      Thus "walking" becomes "valking."     "R" sounds are transformed to a guttural utterance that is virtually impossible to spell in English.  It is "ghraining" "algheady."    Samples of Idiomatic Characteristics     Questions are always answered with questions:      Question: "How do you feel?"      Hebonics response: "How should I feel?"     The subject is often placed at the end of a sentence after a pronoun has been used at the beginning:      "She dances beautifully, that girl."     The sarcastic repetition of words by adding "sh" to the front is used for emphasis:      mountains becomes "shmountains      turtle becomes "shmurtle."    Sample Usage Comparisons:      Standard English Phrase                 Hebonics Phrase   "He walks slow"                   "Like a fly in the ointment he walks" "Sorry, I do not know the time"   "What do I look like, a clock?" "I hope things turn out okay"     "You should BE so lucky" "You're sexy"                     (unknown concept) "Anything can happen"             "It is never so bad, it can't get worse" Good writing is the basis for weblogging. Good books about how to write are "On writing well" and "Style: toward clarity and grace". If you don't feel like reading books, this list might help as well: Avoid alliteration. Prepositions dangle awkwardly if you use them to end sentences with. Avoid clichés and colloquialisms like the plague, or you will seem old hat. Employ the vernacular, while eschewing arcane and obfuscatory verbiage. Avoid ampersands & abbreviations, etc. Take it easy with parenthetical remarks (however relevant), to avoid chopping up sentences (unnecessarily (we might add)). To ever, however artfully, split an infinitive, marks you as grammatically challenged. Skip the foreign words and phrases you know, n[base ']est-ce pas? Never generalize. [base "]I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.[per thou] [^]Ralph Waldo Emerson Comparisons can clog up writing as badly as alliterations and cliches. Avoid redundancy and verbosity, or readers will think you are repeating yourself and using too many words as well besides. We really get @*&%$**)!! when you use vulgarities. Clear, specific writing beats vagueness, we suppose. Whatever. Overstatement totally destroys any credibility you ever had forever. Understatement can, at times, perhaps shade a point to the point of its fading away. One word sentences? Eliminate. Analogies work about as well as fur on a flounder. [base "]Is[per thou] just sits there. Pick verbs that do something. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, you should derail it. Who needs rhetorical questions? Its distrakting too punctuat, an spel rong. Good writing is surprisingly hard. [Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog] [dws.] 11:41:18 PM

Sep 2, 2002 issue of [US News & World Report] has a highly entertaining collection of articles with major coverage of Hoaxes. 11:35:18 PM

A tree is known by its fruit, A meeting by its results. The key to success is a good Agenda. 11:17:07 PM

Sewage pouring into lakes, streams [USA Today : Front Page] Looks like [Bob Morris] does not yet know about this, because I do not yet see it in the Radio News Aggregation Feed from him. 11:04:52 PM

I like [John Patrick]'s technique.  He flourishes an abstract statement, much like that of a journalist or fiction writer, then has read more for the details.  Obviously, if we doing this in Radio, the read more would be a story in which for purposes of home page, we not see the actual title of the story. If I going to emulate this a lot, then as stories grow, and get added to the collection, there is the topic of how do we keep track of subjects we have posted? [John Patrick] QUOTE Power To The People Broadband service via either Cable or DSL is spreading around the world. However, there are many places where it is just not available. One of them is the Ruby Ranch neighborhood in Summit County, Colorado. Rather than wait until broadband service would be available -- which could be years -- the residents decided to take the matter into their own hands. (read more) UNQUOTE [John Patrick] 7:52:43 AM

To subscribe to this blog in Radio. Just click the orange "coffee cup" XML button on the left [Asia Business Intelligence] I thought I would repeat this how to for folks who are behind me on the Radio Education learning curve.  Al's Radio Weblog reflects the wide spectrum of Al interests, and is at only the early stages of figuring out how to use this technology. 4:36:05 AM

PARAPHRASING [Boing Boing Blog] I am rewriting the content to try to better understand the process of what happened, and how we are all at risk from misapplication of a system to try to fix a big problem.  Spam is an extremely serious pain in the butt.  Software to try to block it is flawed, generating false positives.  People dream up flawed systems and policies in which people are used like robots to enforce the flaws, and we end up having more problems instead of less. There is also a relevant story on this kind of problem from [Dan Gillmore] on the problems that faced writer Steve Outing. Ed Felten, spam-vigilante martyr. Ed "Tinkerer" Felten setup a new webblog at www.freedom-to-tinker.com containing his commentary on various issues.  News of Ed "Tinkerer" Felten's new blog was shared with a mailing-list, by an enthusiast, someone other than Ed sent the e-mail. A subscriber to that list made a mistake and reported the posting as spam to SpamCop. On that "evidence" SpamCop declared Ed guilty of spamming and decreed that Ed's site should be shut down. Never mind that Ed had never sent a single e-mail message from the site. Never mind that Ed's site was not selling anything.  Ed was not allowed to see the e-mail, mentioning his site, that did not come from him, that was used to label him as a spammer. Ed could not even to communicate with an actual human being at SpamCop. They're not interested in listening to complaints from spammers. But you know, that is how spammers operate. They have a website at ISP # 1. They send e-mail to millions of people from account 2 then shut it down and send from account 3 and so forth, shutting down the source of the e-mail is ineffective, so the anti-spammers go after the spammer website. Ed's ISP shut off Ed's account, because it had appeared on a list of "spammers" published by SpamCop, who blackballed his email address with no appeal. -- it was that or have their mail-relays on everyone's blacklist. Why did his ISP shut Ed down? According to the ISP, SpamCop's policy is to put all of the ISP's accounts on the block list if the ISP does not shut down the accused party's site. With help from his ISP, Ed eventually learned that the offending message was sent on a legitimate mailing list, and that the person who had complained was indeed subscribed to that list, and had erroneously reported the message as unsolicited. Ironically, the offending message was sent by someone who liked Ed's site and wanted to recommend it to others. Everybody involved (Ed, his ISP, the person who filed the complaint, and the author of the message) agreed that the report was an error, and they all told this to SpamCop. Naturally, SpamCop failed to respond and continued to block the site. Note the similarities to the worst type of Stalinist "justice" system: conviction is based on a single anonymous complaint; conviction is based not on anything the accused did but on favorable comments about him by the "wrong" people; the evidence is withheld from the accused; there is no procedure for challenging erroneous or malicious accusations; and others are punished based on mere proximity to the accused (leading to shunning of the accused, even if he is clearly innocent). Note also that the "evidence" against Ed consisted only of a single unsigned e-mail message which would have been trivial for anyone to forge. Thus SpamCop provides an easy denial of service attack against a web site. The only bright spot in this picture is that our real justice system allows lawsuits to be filed against guys like SpamCop for libel and/or defamation. My guess is that eventually somebody will do that and put SpamCop out of business. Link Discuss (Thanks, Bruce!) [Boing Boing Blog] Al's guess is that it will take several lawsuits, and bad publicity. Let's suppose they do this to a journalist with BBC or New York Times.  That institution fights back with a court injunction to shut down SpamCop, which makes an exception for the complainant with the clout, but continues behaving this way against all the little guys. The basic problem is that SpamCop has a good idea but incompetent implementation. Meanwhile [Dan Gillmore] relates that Steve Outing wrote an article on what NOT to include in e-newsletters if you want to avoid becoming a false positive from the anti-spam software, giving examples, which meant that his e-newsletter was bounced all over the place due to brain damaged filters, proving that he was right about the problem, but wrong path to communicate it. Dan talks about some spam fighting software that does a better job, and asks people to share what we do with spam, for him to share on [Dan's Weblog]. The good news is that Computer-Science Professor Ed Felten's weblog (www.freedom-to-tinker.com) is back up. 4:27:44 AM

[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] QUOTE I've been reading the History of the telephone, as written in 1910 by Herberst Casson. It has been very refreshing to read how hard it was for Bell to get anyone to notice, look ar listen to his new device. In fact, it wasn't until he sent a 'news story' at a distance of 16 miles, that he received the attention he needed: the press. Seems they only react when their own business affected. So much of this story is analogous to weblogs. Their invention, mis(understanding) and application all pretty much went through the same stages. Here's one you'll recognize: "There were hundreds of shrewd capitalists in American cities in 1876, looking with sharp eyes in all directions for business chances; but not one of them came to Bell with an offer to buy his patent. Not one came running for a State contract. And neither did any legislature, or city council, come forward to the task of giving the people a cheap and efficient telephone service." It gets better: " ......it was a most unpropitious time for the setting afloat of a new enterprise. It was a period of turmoil and suspicion. What with the Jay Cooke failure, the Hayes-Tilden deadlock, and the bursting of a hundred railroad bubbles, there was very little in the news of the day to encourage investors." UNQUOTE [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] [Blogfish] QUOTEs Adam Curry quoting Dave Winer Dave: "How do people make money with weblogs," asks the happy blogger who wonders out loud. "How do people make money with telephones and word processors," asks some random wise-ass. Beautiful! QUOTING [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] UNQUOTE [Blogfish] Money is made based on the content transmitted, such as newspapers, and jobs for people who can read a script on telephone spam. Money is made based on services to the people who struggle to use the technology effectively, such as the folks who do house calls to clean the dust out the inside of personal computers, and value added plug-ins that users are willing to pay money to get. The history of the telephone has had to have been rewritten since 1910 thanks to the controversy over who really invented it.  Check out this thread in an off-topic forum of www.AirDisaster.com http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&;f=2&t=001470 The exchange of information is as follows, between people with the same kind of wild identities as Bloggers use: [Sherlock]: Antonnio Meuci, an Italian Engineer, invented the telephone in 1850 and was unable to sell it.  It gathered dust on a shelf in a Long Island Laboratory for Bell to find and patent. There was some debate over whether or not it worked before Bell improved it, or whether Bell's patent was identical to Meuci's earlier published description. [Ed]: Part of the process of invention is telling the world about the invention, and in fact managing to sell it. [me]: misc. [Sherlock]: It is still stealing to take another man's work and claim it as your own. [me thought]: Only if you are caught doing that.  [Jim]: National Geographic Society on where the telephone was invented and Dual Citizenship Bell Family Tree.  The first publicized stunt as opposed to perfecting and researching the process in advance. [Adoucette]: US Congress House Resolution 269 on Antonio Meucci inventing the telephone in Cuba then moving to New York, demonstrated it, published description in newspaper, went bankrupt. [Fearless Freep]: Initial research on the Light Bulb in the mid 1800's.  First patent 1874 for a Canadian inventor, bought out by Edison's buddies to be replaced with Edison's invention. 3:21:58 AM

reorganizing my site. I created category SF (Science Fiction and Science Fact frontiers), tried to set it up like My Friends and Family, except not in Navigation Link yet, copied a couple posts to it, one from last 25 and one from Archives.  What got there was geeky for a while, but give it time to catch the updating.  It got Ok, I moving a bit more from the Archives, plus I reminded that I am setting them up correctly. This might lead me to further adjusting my reference story Understand Radio Categories.  I do not understand the significance of rendering in whatever.  I have a test category with one post from weeks ago that is not rendered, and it continues to be geeky. 2:50:54 AM

Monday's Topics: Current Events; Environment / Ecology; e-Organization; Radio Education. 2:31:10 AM

Monday, August 19, 2002

[Asia Business News] QUOTE China Boasts It Will Beat the U.S. to Mars China expects to put a man on Mars in early this century.  Or so it claims, but China hasn't even placed a man in Earth's orbit yet.  As if to convince the general population of its feasibility, the Chinese space program has built a model of a Chinese base on Mars now traveling the country in an exhibition.  Let's hope it doesn't look anything like Shanghai's Pearl of the Orient tower!  UNQUOTE [Asia Business News] China does have a space program, as does Japan, India, Australia, and a bunch of other nations.  Some of them have specialized in cheap delivery of satelites into orbit, thus effectively competing with NASA.   7:26:07 PM

The Greenpeace Blog has lots of interesting stuff, and also a few design bugs.  I did a post to their comments area, and it still says zero comments.  Gilla asks for people to e-mail suggestions to her (him?) but where the e-mail link invokes my old AOL archives (I am now using Eudora for my e-mail). I can't figure out how to Radio subscribe to [http://weblog.greenpeace.org/ powered by Moveable Type] QUOTE a comprehensive list of safer ways to avoid invasions of indoor pests. "Spiders: Under ideal conditions, do not kill spiders because they help to control pests." Every web developer should read this book, since more and more people with disabilites access websites and they simply cannot be left out. also check out their zip code nuclear reactor finder UNQUOTE [http://weblog.greenpeace.org/] Lots more good stuff in their archives. I saw on C-Span not so long ago that 100% of the US nuclear power plants were tested for terrorist threats. 50% of them failed the test for NORMAL terrorist attacks. NONE of them passed any test for protection against cyber attacks. The problem is that control systems, like Air Traffic Control, Water Treatment, etc. were built as stand alone units, with zero consideration for any security other than physical security.  Now corporate and government managers are linking those instruments to their computer networks because they want to know what's going on, but many networks are brain brain dead on security, because after all, the information in the networks are not that important to protect, but that is not the case for some of these control systems. This management philosophy gave us the Challenger disaster. I fear we are overdue for another disaster.   5:16:21 PM

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE ISP blocks routing from the RIAA's site, turnabout is fair play?. An ISP has decided to ban routing to the RIAA's IP block from its network, on the grounds that the RIAA will attempt to hack its customers' computers. [Boing Boing Blog] apparently quoted from [Information Wave ISP] Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA's previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulerabilities in a client's browser after the browser accesses its site, potentially allowing the RIAA to access and/or tamper with your data. Starting at midnight on August 19, 2002, Information Wave customers will no longer be able to reach the RIAA's web site. Information Wave will also actively seek out attempts by the RIAA to thwart this policy and apply additional filters to protect our customers' data. Information Wave will also deploy peer-to-peer clients on the Gnutella network from its security research and development network (honeynet) which will offer files with popular song titles derived from the Billboard Top 100 maintained by VNU eMedia. No copyright violations will take place, these files will merely have arbitrary sizes similar to the length of a 3 to 4 minute MP3 audio file encoded at 128kbps. Clients which connect to our peer-to-peer clients, and then afterwards attempt to illegally access the network will be immediately blacklisted from Information Wave's network. The data collected will be actively maintained and distributed from our network operations site. End of [Boing Boing Blog] quote from [Information Wave ISP] With the RIAA suing backbones to block MP3 distribution sites in China and ISPs blocking access to the RIAA's IP block, you gotta wonder, is this the end of the end-to-end principle? Maybe if everyone blocked the RIAA's IP block, just sent them away into bad netizen coventry, the rest of the net could get on with it. Link Discuss (via MeFi) UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog] [Boing Boing Blog]'s Link to [Information Wave ISP] gives us the whole story from them, and their e-mail address. while Discuss is for people to comment on this news.  Thanks also for the link to [MeFi] QUOTE The MetaFilter Network is a collection of sites built with user interaction in mind.  UNQUOTE [MeFi] This place might also be worth revisiting. There's a lot of places worth revisiting starting with miscelaneous links on my own site.   3:32:36 PM

Here I correlate multiple stories about the West Nile Virus problem, that apparently is worse thanks to Humans who think they know what they are doing when trying to manipulate the Environment.  I have commented at other times and places about how come I think the Fires out West are largely a problem of our own making.  We collectively need an education in how not to manipulate our environment. [Bob Morris: The Politics of Water] QUOTE Are retention ponds breeding West Nile mosquitoes? Yow, attempts to clean up the water may be providing breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Public officials across the country are inadvertently creating vast breeding grounds for mosquitoes -- including those that carry the West Nile virus -- by installing stormwater retention ponds near businesses and homes in an effort to reduce the contaminants that collect in water. As concern over the mosquito-borne virus heightens, the effort to create new ponds and to clean up old ones has pit two environmental causes against each other. UNQUOTE [Bob Morris: The Politics of Water] Bob Morris's source is the [Washington Post]. Warning: the intensity of Pop Up ads is so fierce that if your PC is hurting for resources, like mine often is, you are at grave risk of the Bill Gates advertisement for more money spent on PC resources, popularly known as the Blue Screen Of Death. It is apparent to me, from the Washington Post story, that these government mandated West Nile Breeding ponds are needed for many reasons, and the people who operate them do not consider the West Nile virus to be a serious problem.  I think the solution to this would be for the families of victims of the West Nile to do a class action suit against the polluters. Simple cause and effect. Don't put the pollutants into the environment in the first place. So we don't need these ponds that invite mosquito breeding grounds. It does not matter if you cannot trace back which mosquito, that killed your loved ones, bred at which pond, which was needed because of which pollution. What matters is you find polluters with deep pockets. This then sends a chilling message to other polluters. Pollutants are not the only problem. I think a bigger problem, especially near where I live, are poorly designed drainage systems.  A city near where I live was recently sued because in the same trench in the ground they ran storm drain overflow, and sewage disposal, and drinking water.  They did that to save money on construction costs.  Sorry I can't cite a url on this.  I got the info from the real world grapevine. But let's not panic over how long this will take to resolve. I am paraphrasing [CDC FAQ on West Nile] Even in an area where there are infected mosquitos most of them do not have it, and of the humans who get bitten by an infected mosquito, only 1% of them are at risk. end of info I got from [CDC FAQ on West Nile] so if you get bitten by a mosquito, there is no reason to have a panic attack. I saw an interesting tip on the wee hours TV. You are out camping, bothered by mosquitos, and other small flying critters.  Put some mint on the side of your food plate, such as chewing gum unwrapped but not consumed.  It will drive away the bugs. Hmm, does chewing mint flavored gum keep them away from your face? I just learned a new use for junk food. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] QUOTE Now we finally know what mosquitoes do in the grand scheme of life. UNQUOTE [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] Adam's link is to a story on USA states responding to Centers for Disease Control prediction that 1,000 people could be infected with this deadly miniature terrorist in the next year.  That AP story has additional links to more on this problem. Now combine Bob Morris story with [Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE Greenpeace blog. Greenpeace has a blog. It'd be great if NGOs around the world started doing this. In particular, it'd be great if some of the sustainable development NGOs like Youth Challenge International had blogging set up from their base-camps, so that project staff could make some notes about their projects while they're back at HQ. Geekhalla, the geek-house in Accra, Ghana, that the Geekcorps volunteers live in, has blog, but are there others? I'd love to read a blog maintained by the crews on Greenpeace's boats, too. Link Discuss (Thanks, Gillo!) UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog] If they are not already doing so, I think Greenpeace should be subscribing to Bob Morris on the Politics of Water. Incidentally, I found out about Bob Morris by randomly looking at recently updated Blogs, most of which were not of interest to me, but there are some gems out there that make the Blog Surfing worthwhile. What is the correct terminology for Blog Surfing? 3:24:43 PM

[Search Day Aug 19] has links to services that take those long urls and provide shorter substitutes.  They are all small companies that might not be around forever, so they might not be smart to use for permanent links. SnipURL http://snipurl.com/ TinyURL http://tinyurl.com/ MakeAShorterLink http://makeashorterlink.com/ 3:12:12 PM

[Civil Liberties Notes] QUOTE The Web-Annotated Constitution. An absolutely fantastic resource to the constitution. Pulls together hundreds of primary documents related to the constitution, as well as print listings. From Privacy Digest and lii.org Possible Resources Blog. UNQUOTE [Civil Liberties Notes] 4:45:24 AM

[Bob Morris: The Politics of Water] QUOTE Beware the crazed emu The drought in Australia has gotten so bad that emu, a large flightless bird, are grabbing food meant for sheep. I'd like a glass of radioactive water, please Water supplies in some New Jersey towns are contaminated with radium. The discovery in recent years of a new form of radium in underground water supplies is forcing towns throughout New Jersey to spend millions of dollars to remove the cancer-causing element from public drinking water. When radium is ingested, the body treats it like calcium and absorbs it into bones. It is known to cause bone and nasal cancers and is especially dangerous to children with developing bones. New Jersey DEP officials have told residents not to be overly alarmed by the findings. Um, why should they NOT be 'overly alarmed"??? Mercury in California water California gold miners used mercury to mine gold, millions of pounds of it.  It got into the water, and it's still there.  No one knows how to get rid of it.  It's very toxic. California’s effort to grapple with the problem is taking place against a background of increasing national and global mercury contamination, most of it linked to airborne emissions. Although there are many natural sources - volcanoes, evaporation from soil, weathering of rock - the largest single human-related source is coal combustion, which contains trace amounts of the element. California’s primary concern, however, is the millions of pounds of elemental mercury dumped directly on the ground or into streams. UNQUOTE [Bob Morris: The Politics of Water] 4:36:16 AM

I noticed on the bottom of one of my pages something odd about a date.  Incidentally I am currently on Radio version 8.0.7 © Copyright 2002 Al Macintyre. Last update: 11/13/2001; 7:04:00 PM. What I am wondering about is where the 2001 November comes from, since I originally downloaded this software in Spring of 2002. Sometimes my Win 98 clock gets stuck, because I am occasionally running applications from Win 3.1, Dos Games, and buggy state-of-art, but it has never been more than a few days off. 4:10:36 AM

Radio Wish for future enhancement of Post from Radio News Aggregation. It is really great that when we subscribe to changes on other Web sites that we can click on one area and have the whole thing for editing here and al link to the [source], but for many of us proper attribution is a learning curve.  We need to be better able to back track to where on that Web site did this or that material come from. What I would like to get is, link to the [source] home page (like we now get); link to the actual post anchor whatever; date (and time if available, which depends on the source software); subtitles (if they have been enabled ... this is another Radio topic I have yet to explore). I am wondering if Theme Templates offer some variation on how this stuff is handled. Another topic for me to explore, as my time permits. 3:44:47 AM

Sunday, August 18, 2002

Sunday's Topics: Current Events; Great Links; Internet News; Military History; Murphy's Laws. I am 35% Geek according to the [Thud Factor]. 6:53:35 AM

Prospective future categories for my Weblog content based on my initial interests.  I will need short labels for each so as to save space on directory list columns and width of urls. Computing PC Al = Al home PC adventures & periodic melt downs PC = World of Micro Computers (PC and Apple) Com Big = Bigger than a Micro (e.g. IBM) Com Sec = Security Also review random stuff I try out or explore Documentation and Education BPCS = My day job's ERP PC Ed = Basics (Browser, e-mail, Norton, Microsoft love hate relationship) RU Ed = Al generally figuring out Radio Userland FAQ (dws connection) e-Organization (careful - Radio url drops dash of e- anything from Story linkage) and Internet Navigation topics E all (users) = Accessibility E good = Better Writing E law E link = Deep Linking Al 2 do = Personal to do reminders E what = Topics Indexing E nice = Web Design E stuck = Quicksand and miscelaneous other Friends and Family Humor I will probably populate the Gems, after I figure out how to navigate them News Junkie that I am Book Reviews HisTech = History of Technology Military History and current trends Politics World News Today SF = Science Fiction and Science Fact Frontiers SF TT = My Time Travel Simulation Game 6:23:12 AM

Dresden floodwaters crest and US Aid to flooded Czech Republic [USA Today : Front Page] What does it take for our civilization to invest in R&D towards weather control? Europe could use less input to their rivers.  This is being called the worst flooding in 175 years for Central Europe. My pen pal in Poland informs me that this year is not the only such nasty incident. Two apartment buildings collapsed in Prague. It will cost billions to repair the damage to Germany.  A rail bridge collapsed.  More cities downstream are threatened. US Western states could use more precipitation over forests often on fire. 4:45:44 AM

Hippocrates. "Walking is man's best medicine." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] This is one thing I should be doing, or taking a swim, not relaxing by playing with my Radio, or my Microprose Transport Tycoon.  Sunday afternoon I pledge to walk to Bob Evans (about 5 city blocks to the North West of where I live) for a decent meal, then walk home again. 4:43:14 AM

Arrested for needing to go to the bathroom at the airport.  Another reason why I don't fly no more, I need to go too often. 4:16:15 AM

I was impressed with the effort of family members of 9/11 victims to go after the financiers of terrorism. Here is CNN link to summary of the story. If you want to watch it on C-Span, here is link to 2 hours worth. 4:13:53 AM

[Paul Graham]'s Plan for Spam on the challenging art of filtering software and the heartache of false positives. 3:53:24 AM

[Dave Madsen]'s picks for the worst five military disasters of the 20th century. Hitler declares war on the USA 1941 4 days after Pearl Harbor, the USA had made no military moves against Germany.  Despite US support for the Allies, the war was going good for Germany.  Had Hitler kept silent, the Pacific first crowd in US politics might have won, leaving Britain and Russia to be defeated by Germany. Verdun 1916 In WW I, the Germans came up with a plan to bleed the French army at a point close to Paris where the French honor would not permit retreat.  The result was that the Germans and French bled each other equally, leading to combined casualities of 800,000 men, costing Germany her last chance of victory in WW I. Singapore 1942 100,000 British troops, guarding supposedly the world's most impregnable bastion, surrendered to a Japanese force of 62,200.  The legendary Singapore 15" guns faced out to sea, with no defense against attack from the supposedly impenetrable Malaya jungle. Tsushima 1905 Japanese expansion meets Tsarist Russia, knocks out 7 Russian battleships at Port Arthur at a cost of 2 Japanese, so the Tsar sends a totally inadequate fleet to reinforce that front.  In the North Sea, the Russians encounter some British fishing ships and mistake them for the enemy.  In consequence British coaling stations all along the Russian route are denied them.  The Japanese twice crossed the T of the Russian column  The battle was the most complete naval defeat in history, and its news provoked the 1905 Revolution, opening the door to Lenin. Yalu River Advance 1950 The North Koreans almost defeated the South Koreans, then the UN force led by US General Douglas MacArthur reversed the Korean fortunes.  Despite Indian intelligence warning that an advance to the border with China would provoke them into entering the conflict, MacArthur persuaded President Truman to let him do this.  The Chinese damn near wiped out the US led force, and this catapulted the People's Republic of China into being a world power. A few hundred people at www.kuro5hin.org comment on this collection, suggesting a few alternate picks for the worst military blunders of the 20th century. The alliance system that ensured that one Serbian Student could start a World War. The battle of Tannenberg The Russian commanders hated each other and failed to communicate properly. The Germans intercepted everything. WW I tactics of trying to break a hole in lines for the cavalry to exploit. Commanders failed to realize effectiveness of artillery and massed machine guns. Had USA backed Germany in WW I, both would have won. Hitler would never have come to power. There would have been no communist revolution in Russia. China would not be communist today. Atomic weapons would never have been developed. Crushing retribution of the Treaty of Versailles laying groundwork for the next World War. How could Japan think they could win in China? Chamberlain surrenders Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Operation Market Garden (A Bridge Too Far). Operation Barbarossa. Many Axis blunders would not have been blunders were the Allied codebreakers not been reading their mail. The belief that their codes could not be broken. Japanese failure to finish off Pearl Harbor when they had the chance. Bay of Pigs. Vietnam strategic thinking. Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Six Day War in the Middle East. Gulf War with Iraq 1991 not removing Saddam Hussein from power. It is important to define what is a blunder.  Some things go with the territory. Most every war, including present day Homeland Security, if strategized the same way most people invest in the stock market, by looking in the rear view mirror to see what has happened in the past. US Civil War casualities were so high because the Generals were fighting historical tactics using rifles that had much greater accuracy.  Some things are just an accident. Confederate soldiers dropped battle plans for Gettysburg on the road to be found by Union soldiers. The Maginot Line should have been obvious in advance. Built with no rotating turrets for the guns. Perhaps a different time period when no one could question top commanders.   2:59:41 AM

[Because I Say So] reminds us of the importance of timely backups.  She was doing a search and replace and accidentally replaced all instances of gym on her site with a blank space, and now has a few choice words to say about this oops. Radio Wish: I would like to have a button close to my Radio application, which I periodically push to backup selected portions of my Weblog.  I would push it when I think something is broken, before I take measures to try to fix what might not be broken. I would push it before I tinker with my template, links, other behind the covers stuff. I would push it before I delete a major chunk of stuff that I thought I copied to a story. Beside this hypothetical button would be some indicator of how many backups I have, and how much disk space they eating. 2:34:45 AM

Lots of interesting news from [NOSI - Naval Open Source Intelligence] about: US Coast Guard upgrading Port security; US Military wargames; US Nuclear Powered Carrier Abraham Lincoln makes a port call in Japan; US Submarine Dolphin troubles; US Sealift arms to Middle East (target Iraq?); UK military concerns about attacking Iraq; UK troops in Afghanistan; UK tanker hijacked off Somalia; UK Nottingham which ran aground off Australia; Current operations of the Indian Navy; Pakistan to export Submarines; 50% of Taiwan's military budget goes to upgrading its Navy; Background briefing on Iran; 2:18:26 AM

[A blog doesn't need a clever name] passes on the interesting statistic that 10% of the world's population now has Internet access, according to [Europe Media.Net] from Nua. com's 2002 Global Internet Trends report.   Europe now has more Internet users (185.83 million or 32 %) than USA and Canada combined (182.83 million). Asia / Pacific has 167.86 million people with access to the Internet. Latin America has 6 % of the world's Internet users. The Middle East has 1 %. Africa has 1 %. Nua forecasts 1 billion Internet users by the end of 2005. 2:07:15 AM

Where do sites like [missing matter] find all this cool information?  How can we stay current with understanding it all? 1:49:45 AM

Aug 15 [Rick Klau] has a comparison of KM Knowledge Management in Britain vs. the USA. Saturday's Topics: Accuracy; eyes-friendly; e-organization; e-writing style; great cool links; Radio education. 1:40:42 AM

Saturday, August 17, 2002

[dws.] MY SOURCE ... dws quoted in Green, rest of the stuff are my notes from the A List Apart site.  This is what we call in the real technology business world a White Paper, because it clearly explains something, the need for it, and has some good links for people who are interested in using this for real. The A List Apart site has an interesting article for people who write on the Web: 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web. Write for a reason, and know why you write. Write passionately about what you care about. Tell us why other people should care about this. Write honestly. Write often, and consistently. Disappearing with no explanation, is rude to people interested in what you write. Say why we away for a while. Store stuff for the times when we have nothing else to write about. Use good tools, to write well, and learn how to use them. Write tight. Proof Read what was written. Does it flow clearly and concisely? Omit unnecessary words Avoid cliches. This is one of Al's big failings. I need to work on continuous improvement of focusing better. Make good friends. Give credit to where I get ideas, or who I quote, from the Internet, or from outside of it. It should be totally unambigous who contributed the original material. Be generous. Find good enemies. Readers love controversy and learn from debate. Seek adversaries who can make the case for a viewpoint other than yours. Someone who we can communicate with on an equal playing field. A debate that is on the merits of the subject. Ignore people who live for controversy and disagreement. Plan closure in advance. Seek a neutral third party to summarize the outstanding issues. Let the story unfold. Understand the storyteller's art. Use narrative. Write about people with care, feeling, precision. When we are writing about an organization, be sure to have permission from the players. People have lost their jobs because of something they wrote on their web site. Not just inappropriate criticism. There are competitive advantages that management might not want advertised. Stand up, speak out. Do your homework so that you can be sure of your facts. State your opinion clearly. If seeking information or guidance, say so, clearly. If you discover someone else is mistaken, be diplomatic. It may be your turn to be mistaken tomorrow. Be Sexy. If writing a personal honest journal, then it has to include things you might not what to share with strangers. Use your archives. Always provide permanent links to our writing. Radio comes with this ... notice the little # symbol at bottom of individual post; notice funny square to left of beginning of each day; this allows you to copy short cut to that link. However, we may later need to move to a different ISP. Radio has software to move OUR LINKS to the new ISP. But this might be a problem for people on other sites that linked to our OLD LINKS. This is a topic for further discussion at another time and place. Default Radio provides links based on Calendar - when something was posted. We need to organize our materials based on Subject matter. This is an area where I am still learning. Plug-In Tools are available to help make this task easier. Google Six Degrees Eastgate’s Tinderbox Relax! Don't worry too much about getting everything perfect. Write clearly, simply, with energy and wit about what matters. Don't take yourself too seriously. Establish a rhythm. But if it is no longer fun, switch topics, schedule, voice, or tone. Discuss this with the folks at A List Apart. It is a good primer for anyone interested in writing a Weblog.  [Mac Net Journal] END [dws.] 9:47:49 PM

Writing Resources at www.dictionary.com for those of us with bad habits and the ability to fix them. 9:30:04 PM

Language Translation Copy text from some place, Go here, Paste it, Select which language combination, (limited to those on the site, I don't think you can translate Klingon to Cardassian.) and you get the same text in another language. Not as good as a human translator, but a good start. 9:26:49 PM

Free Software Tools that work with www.dictionary.com and www.thesaurus.com ... I do not consider this to be an advertisement because I need a spell checker for my browser based editing, I just have not yet decided which one to get, so I am staying alert to what is out there. From any program (presumably on a PC connected to the Internet), spell check any word, look up antonyms and synonyms. Dictionary and Thesaurus buttons to plug into your Browser. Apple Mac users have some additional downloads. 9:19:36 PM

procrastination: Dictionary.com Word of the Day. This is also Al's middle name, unfortunately. 9:11:59 PM

Good Weblog Writing Ideas [Blogfish] QUOTE Remember that your old pages will often be read by visitors from search engines; Introduce yourself on every page, and be sure that every page, however obscure, has links to tell people: who you are, what you want, and why you’re writing your email address where to find your latest writing Link to work you’ve already written — especially to good work that you wrote long ago. Don’t be shy about linking to yourself: Linking to your own work is a service, not self-promotion. UNQUOTE [Blogfish] 9:08:40 PM

Al struggles to learn Radio url number system. 8:24:44 PM

I see several people using Instant Outlining to manage their Weblogs. Here is an explanation of how it works. Here is an illustration of someone using it. My initial impressions find this to appear to be a little ugly. Thus, initial use needs to give thought to how best to label first line in the collapsed format. 5:02:12 PM

Stories added to my web site, off the home page, include: Blind of NH This is some pretty raw stuff that came up when I was looking at e-Accessibility and plain old Accessibility. Blog Software MT and RU There's a lot to absorb in this very specialized interest area. I moved it off the home page, intending to add more comments later. Blogs worth revisiting I have not updated this much since I discovered how to do stuff in News Aggregation.  Some day I will have links down the side of my web page like a lot of other Bloggers do. But I think I need to learn how to adjust a lot of other things first. B2B International e-contracts Europe contact. Etiquette On-Line I think I need to split this into smaller portions, more digestible, and easier to edit. Understand Radio News Aggregation I plan to do more later like this to Understand Other Topics. 1:00:58 PM

When I was first told about Radio Userland technology, early in 2002, I had a hard time grasping what it was all about.  Now that I know how to work some pieces of it, and I tell various friends, who themselves are not yet Bloggers, they too have a hard time accepting what I am saying.  So I think there is a need for a series of explanations that describe our phenomena for the person who today is still on traditional pre-blogging e-technologies.  My first installment is Understand Radio News Aggregation. In case of clogged upstream, like I been seeing recently, the hard url link to that effort is http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/08/17/understandRadioNewsAggregation.html I plan to next do Understand Radio Categories. 12:29:48 PM

Friday, August 16, 2002

Friday's Topics: e-discussion; e-law; Radio Education. A cool aspect of Radio News Aggregation is that we can Post someone else info to our Home work area, cut paste the whole thing to a Story, then edit it there, like I just did with my Etiquette essay which really needs to be in Radio Outlining or some other format because it is getting too long to be editing the bottom at the same time as seeing the top click on editing formats.  3:37:15 PM

On the topic of alleged government legalization of copyright owner vigilantism, [QUOTE from Scripting News]  Jim Zellmer got a letter from his congresswoman about computers, music and copy protection. [UNQUOTE Scripting News] 3:00:38 PM

I was reminded of the book The Mythical Man Month, which I consider to be one of the classics on software engineering, when reading Jon Udell on What's Wrong with e-mail for group discussions, in the context of using Radio Userland Outlining, which I found thanks to a link from Scott Johnson's Radio FAQ on News Aggregation (web site change notification). If I correctly understand Radio Outlining, which I have not yet tried out, this may be the Silver Bullet that Fred Brooks of the Mythical Man Month has been seeking.  Thanks to Jon Udell for reminding me what the problem is that is in search of this solution.  The classic problem, that I have seen most of my career, is that the complexity of a project is related to the permutations of different people who need to cross-communicate on different sub-threads that can go on for a while, and this leads to management problems and productivity losses. Learning Radio, and what all can be done with it, is an iterative process, with a lot to absorb. I read documentation from Userland, Russ Lipton, Skip Dodson, and others. Many of these have links to other sources of Radio documentation. Lots of threads to pursue. I try stuff out Some works, some not. Either my PC settings are broke, I doing something wrong, I got misconceptions, or probably combination of all of these, and something else. I find stuff that I had not read the documentation on. I have no idea what the correct terminology is for what I have found. I, and others, dither verbally, on the discussion groups, seeking clarification. I read documentation some more, and sometimes get new insight because of what I had tried out and been exposed to, that was clear as mud the first time around, and I suspect my brain's understanding is still very foggy. There is some frustration navigating the documentation. We need a search engine connection that looks at all the sites where all these people have done any kind of documentation, so I can look up what they have to say on topic X, at one time, and see all there is on topic X. It also needs a system of recognizing aliases - the wrong terminology that beginners often use to describe what we find. 2:33:23 PM

Thursday, August 15, 2002

Thursday's Topics: Computer Security; Future e-computing; Etiquette On-Line; e-law; e-library research; e-SF; weblog software comparisons. I was getting a bit long winded, so I moved my comments on the debate between Movable Type and Radio Userland to a story Blog Software MT and RU abbreviated in anticipation of more stimulating debates between other pairs of software alternatives. 11:48:59 PM

Computer Security need not be Rocket Science.  I have a bunch of links, some of which I have not recently visited, so some might be broken.  All of this stuff is excerpted from Al Mac's Computer Security Myths project, not yet ready for prime time sharing.  But I thought I would mention a few things in the wake of some contrary views recently published by other voices. Send an e-mail with any subject heading to mailto:subscribe@talkbiz.com  Within a few minutes you will get back a long e-mail article Data Security 101 For Small Businesses From Paul Myers When we install software on our PCs, sometimes the software vendor thinks they know more about us about what is best for us, so it pays occasionally to do a personal computer security audit.  You don't need to be an expert to do this.  Just visit http://grc.com/default.htm Shields Up then Test - do both tests, then check FAQ on site.  There are many other web sites with similar services. This story in the Boston Globe examines the reasons why today’s teachers are using computers & the Internet quite heavily everywhere except in the classrooms for their students.  http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/329/focus/System_crash+.shtml  Some software vendors sell security software they do not use themselves http://securityportal.com/closet/closet20000705.html A business enterprise can organize an audit of all computers on their network using products from companies like  http://www.pentasafe.com and in fact ordinary auditors who know nothing about computers can include security in a standard audit.  Basically they install software from pentasafe on the client's computer system, it runs a bunch of tests, and generates a report, on such things as passwords too easily guessable, passwords not changed in eons, and other topics that are related to the particular operating system used ... most Microsoft, IBM, and others such as UNIX are supported.  The reports do not identify the actual passwords that are not secure, just report card on the degree to which the system is not very secure. From time to time the government gets interested in computer security and tries to figure out standards that are going to work.  In a previous iteration than what is going on right now, the standards were also tested to make sure the security ideas really worked.  This led to a system of measuring which computer systems measured up to the security standards.  Take a look at  http://www.radium.ncsc.mil/tpep/epl/epl-by-vendor.html and see which computer systems are conspicuous by their absense. The FBI has published a list of the most common computer security errors that everyone, all businesses, tend to repeat.  http://www.sans.org/top20.htm There is also a searchable index of known computer security risks at http://cve.mitre.org/cve/  Here's a collection of Security Recommendation Guides from the National Security Agency of the US Government http://nsa1.www.conxion.com/ One of the IBM platforms has a data base system in which business rules can be specified at the file level, such that it does not matter what software tool is used by any user or intruder, the rules cannot be broken.  One vendor has taken this to an extreme and offers a system in which the only thing on the system are the business rules, run a business with no commercial software whatsoever.  This http://www.erros.co.uk/ can be a bit difficult to wrap your mind around, so check out the review at http://www.400times.co.uk/Documents/ERROS1.htm 8:27:53 PM

[Search Day] QUOTE: The Library of Congress: Ask a Librarian http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ Email your research questions or chat online with a Library of Congress reference librarian. :UNQUOTE [Search Day] Not everything is on the Internet, or always easily findable.  The Library of Congress ASKA service is organized by general topics, so drill down and select your interest area, then there is a form to ask your question.  Expect a reply in 5 business days.  This service uses QuestionPoint, a global collaborative reference service that interconnects hundreds of participating libraries, so be sure to give permission to forward your question, in case The Library of Congress does not know the answer. Many other libraries also have ASKA service, check them out at [Search Day] QUOTE: AskA+ Locator http://www.vrd.org/locator/subject.shtml A list of AskA sites organized by their subject matter, from the Virtual Reference Desk. LoC Virtual Reference Shelf http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html Before you ask your question, check out these links to selected web resources on a variety of popular topics, compiled by the Library of Congress. :UNQUOTE [Search Day]     11:44:12 AM

[Ernie the Attorney]QUOTE: Michael Alex Wasylik - you're a blogger.  And a lawyer.  And you've been apprehended.  Mike practices Intellectual Property, Civil Litigtion (including Franchising) and other stuff. His office is in McLean, VA. :UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney] Lawyers are skilled at fighting back. 11:07:12 AM

DWS.Radio.FAQs is providing a great service for Radio users.  We can create a Radio category called Radio FAQs, where we can post Questions, Tips, Wishes.  DWS and other Radio enthusiasts Subscribe to this and post Answers and comments.  It builds a FAQ like an on-line discussion group, except there is no e-mail involved (beyond notification of urls), through the Radio feature that lets us subscribe to see changes to other web sites. DWS.Radio.FAQ has clearly demonstrated a great capability of Radio web site subscription service. A group of people with a common interest, be it Humor, Science Fiction, Accessibility, anything, could select a standard name for their interest, all create a category with the same name, all subscribe to each other's that category, then any time any of us post to that category, the rest see what it is, the next time we take our Radio application onto the Internet. Think family, social clubs, volunteer teams, friends from school, co-workers. No e-mail, no spam, no viruses, no intruders, no hecklers, no flames, and any misunderstandings quickly cleared up, great intercommunication.   11:00:07 AM

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE: Periodic Table of Science Fiction for your PDA. Scifi.com's Scifiction section has a regular feature by brilliant sf writer Michael Swanwick called the Periodic Table of Science Fiction. For each installment, Swanwick writes a 300-word short-short-story about an element from the Periodic Table. Now, scifi.com is syndicating those stories with AvantGo, so you can get regular updates to read on your Palm or PocketPC device while you're on the road. Link Discuss (Thanks, Ellen!) :UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog] 10:44:05 AM

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Wednesday Topics: ADVENT game reborn ";->"; history perspectives; microsoft alternatives; search engine vs. weblogs. [Scripting News] QUOTE: The Eatonweb Edit Your Weblog Listing Drive. :UNQUOTE [Scripting News] Eatonweb is a search engine for content on weblogs, but one big problem is that 99% of the weblogs are not categorized as to what they are all about or want to be about.  They are trying to encourage us to help them fix that.  I think part of what's needed are easily cut and paste codes, that are software independent (irrespective of HTML Radio or their competition) that we would include on our sites to tell the search engines what our keywords are. Figuring this out is like another game of ADVENT which I saw at the New York Times then commented about on Anthony's Air Disaster thread.  Before we can edit our weblog input to the Eatonweb search engine, We have to submit our weblog to their site. The form for submission needs a password. The form to get a password needs a weblog-id. What is that? Is it something we make up like our identity at the New York Times? We are told that we can locate it by using their search engine. Well there are no hits for me. I need to submit my weblog. What am I missing in this loop? Internet etiquette, or Netiquette, dictates that when we mention someone on our site, we make an effort to let them know about our posting. Eatonweb improved the clarity of their forms to clear up my confusion, right after I did this heads up. Additional improvements now being suggested by me. When we are selecting what category or topic our site is about, the screen says to use Ctl C to select multiple categories.  I used the scroll bar to point at a dozen categories, then while each one was highlighted, I did a Ctl C there. The only category that ended up for my site was the one the scroll bar was sitting on when I submitted the form. Weblog 7229 info does correctly show when the site was born as opposed to when the author was born, but there are multiple points of possible confusion. I suggest a word go in front of the word born, so it is immediately obvious this does not mean author date of birth, meaning site birth. Since the USA uses date format MM / DD / YY but Europe uses DD / MM / YY, and there are many other formats out and about in the world, and sooner or later we will have a 100+ year old person with a weblog, I suggest that dates be printed not in the format of 2 digits 2 digits 2 digits, but here is my personal birthday in the suggested format:  Feb 8, 1944. I am now registered (weblog id 7229 if anyone wants to post a review about me) on Eatonweb. 12:28:57 PM

[from dws.] Difference between Windows 2000 and Mandrake 8.1 [dws. got it from Living Without Microsoft] [dws.] My interest is that I am on Win 98 right now and want to upgrade to the last version of Windoz before XP, because my Win 98 instability is growing and because I not like Microsoft decisions about what I think of as my stuff, and I do not feel as comfortable with Microsoft competence as I do with IBM's and some other firms.  I did not yet feel ready to learn Linux for my PC OS, but I leaning in that direction as a future project, so Living Without Microsoft seems like one place to start that education. 12:22:29 PM

Social Conscience Reflections. I believe there may be a cure for Computer Abuse by thinking outside the box as has been done with some human physical diseases caused by bad attitudes. Once upon a time there was an epidemic of people killed in traffic accidents caused by drunk drivers.  Society looked on this as too bad, accidents happen, there is nothing we can do about this.  Then there was a campaign to paint the drunk drivers as irresponsible people, and we should all help our friends, who get drunk, to not get behind the wheel of a vehicle when they are in that condition.  The accident rate, from drunk drivers, diminished.  People no longer looked upon deaths from drunk driving accidents as unavoidable, do nothing about the drunk driver responsible.  There are similar campaigns going on with second hand smoke, and obesity.  It is too soon to tell whether they will be successful or how long they will take.  Improving our personal health is not as simple as making a decision over what our destination will be. In my neck of the woods many commercial enterprises don't get it.  Restaurants place smoking areas up wind of non-smoking areas, and adjust what is the smoking area based on the volume of people who want to be in either.  I was at a hotel desk behind a party checking in that needed to smoke but the hotel was all out of smoking rooms.  The clerk explanation included supplying the smokers with ash trays to take into a non-smoking room with the apologies of the hotel to the smokers, for not having enough smoking rooms.  I am a non-smoker who silently added that hotel chain to my list of which not to patronize in the future. Several generations ago there was an epidemic of horrible diseases like Tuberculosis.  People used to spit on the sidewalk.  It was considered normal, nothing wrong with doing that.  The stuff dried up, became airborne dust particles, got breathed in by other people.  This was a way that disease was spread.  Today we all consider this notion to be disgusting, unacceptable behavior.  We got that way through a public health campaign.  It successfully put an end to the epidemic. Today we have an epidemic of computer viruses, computer intruders into our private areas, unwanted advertisements, discussion groups marred by hecklers, misquoting, fights.  Perhaps all of that some day can become forgotten history thanks to a computer public mental health campaign like the one that ended spitting on sidewalks. 11:21:22 AM

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Tuesday's Topics: Deep Linking; Etiquette; Great Links; Historical Perspective; e-Organization; Privacy; (In) Security. Thanks to Anthony on Air Disaster Discussion Group, I got this Link to Emily Eakin's New York Times article.  It is about the Weblogging Phenomena and has a quite different take on what it is all about than my perception.  My reaction to the article posted to Anthony's thread. 11:29:14 PM

Jim Martindale's Reference Desk is the e-Organization to emulate (thanks to Search Day for finding this link), with more than 25,000 pages and I have no trouble whatsoever navigating them.  Is this guy an e-librarian?  Does Jenny Levine know about this?  This is almost better than a Search Engine. 10:24:00 PM

[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE: Email turns twenty today!. Twenty years ago today, the IETF approved RFC 822, standardizing ARPANet email. Link Discuss (Thanks, Richard!) UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog] Al's earlier post on the history of e-mail, linked to Datamation interview with Ray Tomlinson who invented e-mail in 1971.  This does not compute 2002-1971 = 31 years, not 20.  Time to check out the Search Day Internet Calculator.  Calculators On-Line Center http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html More than 15,000 calculators covering virtually every specialized type of calculation imaginable. Was ARPANet (invented 1969?) the first Internet, but wasn't it based on previous technology?  I remember using computer networking in the 1970's but it wasn't e-mail.  It was BBS forums, where we would use typewriters connected to phone lines (GUI not yet invented, and computer data NOT on TV sets yet - I not remember when that started) to dial up to rent time on big computers, and connect to the relevant group, print out other people posts, and key in our posts.  It wasn't e-mail, but we were talking to people thousands of miles away, by computer.  I typically had a series of sessions, printing out stuff, then signing off to figure out my replies, because we were paying $60.00 a minute connect time, not counting the long distance phone bill. My suspicion is that Boing Boing is identifying an e-mail standard that was approved 20 years ago, but we know from the standards movement today that things happen for decades before any agreement is reached on a standard. I have been corrected by Master Communications History.  It was not 1971 but 1972, so e-mail is thirty years old this year.  9:34:47 PM

More here on the Deep Linking Controversy. Links to my earlier comments on this legal quagmire, or use the Calendar to jump to Aug 4th, July 16 or 10. The Link Controversy Page provides an overview of the legal problems of using hyperlinks, inline images and frames on the WWW, covering problems in the area of copyright, trademark, trespass law as well as unfair competition law.   The links are grouped using the national flag of the nation whose language is being used.  The organizer of this wants to be informed of any articles missing from his directory. [Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE Another article on deep linking, another heavy sigh.  Somebody call a timeout.  And motion for Congress to send some eager beaver who likes to create new laws.  Say, Berman, get over here.  You want to introduce some Internet legislation?  Okay, here's what you do.  Introduce a bill that says the law doesn't recognize any cause of action based on someone linking to another person's site (after all that's what the Web was created to allow).  But this law isn't there to protect people from their own stupidity, so if people want to use technical means to frustrate deep linking then they're allowed to do that.  Now that would be a law that makes sense.  So what are the odds of that getting passed? UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney] Ernie's first link, to British Register, lets us know that Europe has lots of law suits by News Media against search engines and news aggregators for linking to them.  Apparently these media do not want people finding out about their stories thanks to search engines and links based on the content of what they are doing, and they claim that deep links constitute violation of copyright.  I could understand the copyright complaint if someone reprinted their material and made it look like the reprinting person was the writer. News Club offers a search engine by news category, in which hits go directly to the articles of 100 different news sources.  The user receives the page directly from the publisher's server, with everything that is on the publisher's site, including contents, links, advertising.  But one of the publishers is suing News Club for copyright infringement.  They do not want search engines like this giving consumers access to their news paper.  Under German copyright law, the owners of content do have the right to block access by other people.  What I do not understand is why the publishers put their stuff on the Internet if they do not want people looking at it. Germany Legislators are seeking to adjust their copyright law to legalize the kind of access that is provided by Search Engines, but it is not clear whether other kinds of deep linking could be argued is something German sites may argue is a copyright that other people are violating.  German copyright law is also murky on the legality of someone viewing something on the Internet.  The act of copying it from the web site to our browser you see is something that the German Legislature never considered before.  There are meta tags on the publisher's web site declaring that they want to be found by search engines, so it sounds like the newspaper is using software in which they have no idea what their software is doing. In 2000, News Club took measures to remove this publisher from their software, so no one using their search engine would find them through News Club, after they got a cease and desist order, but the law suit for copyright infringement is still going forwards. 8:53:48 PM

e-Privacy assurances in our climate of anti-terrorism legislation is the topic of this e-week column by John Taschek.  Ernie the Attorney offers this link to Charles C. Mann Atlantic Homeland Insecurity article on security systemic problems in general, and here is Ernie's earlier post on Security in general.  Here are some examples of our general state of Insecurity thinking. The US government has several networks never connected to the Internet, accessible only withing physically secure buildings.  But they've been infected by computer viruses because humans with lap tops connect to both the Internet and the secure networks, and bypass the security.  The weakest link are the government users. Kerkhoff's Principle:  A good crypto system QUOTE should be able to fall into the enemy's hands without disadvantage.  UNQUOTE Encrypting Internet transactions, says Purdue computer scientist Eugene Spafford, QUOTE is the equivalent of arranging an armored car to deliver credit-card info from someone living in a cardboard box to someone living on a park bench.  UNQUOTE Airport Security thinks that protection against car bombings is practical by having cars park 300 feet away from the terminal, but at the same time passengers can be dropped off right in front of the terminal.  That does not compute. Airports have to be evacuated all the time because of security breaches.  There is no way to shut down just the portion of the people movement where the problem occurred. Carjacking is on the rise partly because Automobile Manufacturers have made it more difficult to hot wire an unattended vehicle. QUOTE Bank Vaults are secure because to break in takes real skill. Computers are not, because to break in takes practically no skill. Millions of credit card numbers have been stolen from computer networks.  UNQUOTE German reporters tested a face recognition system, and iris scanner, and nine fingerprint readers.  All of them could be spoofed using output from a lap top screen.  They photographed an authorized user, blew up the face, cut out the pupils, help the image before their faces like a mask, and the iris scanner was spoofed. An authorized user's fingerprints were lifted from a drinking glass, on a tape pressed against the fingerprint reader, which accepted the data as valid. A corporation replaced paper ballots with electronic shareholder voting, which was hacked into.  Now they cannot reconstruct original votes. Since 9/11, at least 40 government networks have been cracked by vandals. People have trouble with passwords so an easy way to do industrial espionage is to offer pornographic web sites to business people in which they need a password.  Odds are they would use the same password there as for everywhere else. 8:00:52 PM

I'm starting to package my thoughts on "Etiquette On-Line".  Well that link does not seem to be working, so here is the actual url http://127.0.0.1:5335/stories/2002/08/12/etiquetteOnline Aha, Radio cannot properly handle hyphen when it is in title of a story, and I may also have a problem with capitalization.  Let's see if "Etiquette Online" works. 4:06:34 PM

A Murphy's Law I recently been experiencing - there is always something that will go wrong. As soon as we get that totally resolved, something else, totally unrelated, goes wrong. 3:46:44 PM

Monday, August 12, 2002

Monday's Topics: e-Accessibility; Computer Architecture; e-Tools; Great Links; Personal To Dos; Radio Education; Science Fiction Speculation; Tidal Wave of News to absorb; UPS. Thanks to Don Strickland's Radio FAQ for this connection to A Klog Apart's collection of directories of glossaries of weblogging terminology. Burningbird's Blogicon Corante's Weblog Glossary Tim's Glossary Figure Blogging 9:59:29 PM

Researching Charities. Look before you give! [The Motley Fool] 3:38:02 PM

I just had to see if I could cut and paste a story with an image. 2:20:01 PM

WiFi Estonia Utopia. Estonia has amazing national WiFi coverage and they don't need warchalkers -- the gubbmint puts up these nifty signs to tell you where you can hop online. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 2:19:25 PM

e-Accessibility news thanks to [CNET News.com] QUOTE Wanted: Web geeks for the disabled. Computer programmers and designers are needed to build Web sites that are useful to people with disabilities and to finish in an eight-hour rally. UNQUOTE [CNET News.com] 2:17:09 PM

Thanks to Dave Winer [Scripting News]  QUOTE Thanks to genehack for the link to The Time Travel Fund. Well worth a read, if not a deposit. Give them $10 now, and in 500 years, they pay to transport you to the future from your deathbed. Think about it. UNQUOTE [Scripting News] No guarantees. Time Travel might not be invented. Once Time Travel is generally known to have been invented, the government will have to regulate how it is used. The religions of the world will not want non-believers going back to the times of their saviors and miracle workers to contaminate anything. Evolutionists will not want non-believers going back to rescue the Dinosaurs and undo the evolution of mankind. The political systems of the world will not want non-believers going back and undoing the invention of Democracy, and other forms of government. The list of reasons to hire a lawyer to sue the inventor of Time Travel are endless. The temptation to keep it secret and use the money for other purposes seems overwhelming. 2:07:18 PM

I have recently rediscovered some stuff we can do with Radio News Aggregation (subscribing to other web sites whose traffic particularly interests us).  Oh yes, I had read the documentation and struggled to understand what it all means.  But sometimes the DOING is educational. Thanks to Dave Winer [Scripting News] link to Ray Ozzie on why weblogs are good for discourse. Yes. Flames don't attract. New ideas do. Weblogs can have a high signal-to-noise ratio. Powerful statements are possible in this medium, where powerlessness rules in discussion fora. In this medium everyone can have the last word.  UNQUOTE [Scripting News] I agree with Ray that architecture can be critical.  We see in the Computer Security debate that people are trying the impossible.  We have software out there that did not have security considered in the original design, so it is like putting a padlock on a tent, or a house of cards, to make the results secure after the fact, when it is discovered that security should have been there all along. The power of a network are the number of people connected to it.  The value of a fax machine is the fact that millions of other businesses are networked to that technology.  With many architectures we have unwanted participants: flames; spam; intruders; other dysfunctional human behavior, that we label as noise getting in the way of useful signal content.  Ray is absolutely correct that the signal to noise ratio is extremely high with Blogging.  Plus, he does a great job of explaining how the architecture of Blogging makes that a reality. One downside of this is the risk that Blogging will eat excessive amounts of our time that could be more constructively expended.  Just as earlier generations of technological enthusiasts became TV couch potatoes, or in my case I used to spend hours every day dealing with e-mail, because there were hundreds of interesting posts I wanted to read, but I had to wade through a high ratio of spam and virus forwardings to get at the good stuff. By moving from AOL to Eudora, my e-mail is automatically categorized into that which I can look at any old time, and the more urgent categories.  I can always go to the directory of mailboxes and highlighted are which boxes contain e-mail not yet opened. News Aggregation of Web Site subscriptions has something similar.  It comes in, but I do not need to look at it right away, and even if archives from weeks ago get lost, there is a continual stream of new fascinating material for my perusal. Personal 2 do list ... the last time I backed up my Radio was beginning of July, and since then I have increased my Web Subscriptions to 15, and made some alterations to my Template, let alone the posts here.  My desk top dynamics also have changed.  My Screen Saver's unused CPU seconds are now working on finding a cure for cancer http://members.ud.com/about/ 1:03:49 PM

Thanks to Patrick with http://www.sysmod.com for forwarding to me some random links to help accessibility for the blind and visually impaired users. The Royal National Institute for the Blind video on how to produce accessible web sites and why they are important for blind and visually impaired Internet users. The video is free, can be ordered from Julie Howell, telephone: 0044 171 391 2191 http://www.rnib.org.uk/technology/factsheets/videomagnifiers.htm http://www.rnib.org.uk/technology/factsheets/readingaids.htm you might try the RNIB accessible web design pages on for a quick overview of the issues: http://www.rnib.org.uk/digital/hints.htm In addition to their own publications the RNIB recommends use of WAI's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. http://www.w3.org/WAI/ For a technical view of what the US government is demanding look at: Section 508 requires that Federal agencies' electronic and information technology is accessible to people with disabilities http://www.section508.gov/index.html Sun runs a site for Java developers that looks at accessiblity issues http://www.javasoft.com/products/jfc/index.html and http://www.javasoft.com/products/jfc/accessibility.html 12:29:55 PM

Sometimes when I share links, I also tell the place that I am linking to that I am doing it.  This is both common courtesy and an opportunity to be corrected on any misconceptions before they are more widely shared.  In one of my notifications I said that I had not yet learned how to do the little Icons that show that some name is trademarked etc.  My respondent tried to guide me to how to do it in HTML, but I am using WYSIWYG to edit this site, and not yet hardly delved into the underlying software that makes it all work.  I want to figure out what is doable by ordinary non-technical home computer users, so we can help spread the joy of this to a larger audience. So here Patrick is the results of me cutting and pasting your suggestions into my web site. Symbol font: Ô HTML:  ™ Graphic:  It is apparent that your Graphic did not translate.  Now that might not be a problem with Radio.  It might be because I have not yet explored the Image capabilities of this software, and some aspects of what it can do might still be turned off for me. 12:26:23 PM

QUOTING from National Journal and Jenny Levine Creatures From the Web Lagoon: The Blogs "MSNBC.com, consistently ranked among the top news destinations on the Web, is about to invest a chunk of important virtual real estate into the blog concept. MSNBC.com has killed its discussion boards, with their 18 million posts per month, and instead plans to establish by the end of August what it will call "Weblog Central," a portal of regularly updated lists of blogs from throughout the Web, arranged by subject. It will include links to MSNBC.com's own blogs as well." [National Journal] Wow - portal of regularly updated blogs arranged by subject. I sure hope they brought in some librarians and information architects to help build it. [The Shifted Librarian] Unquote While many bloggers and other e-friends seem to swear by Google, I like Tecoma's search engine with drill down assistance.  But of course there is already Eaton Web search engine for weblog topics.  The vast number of people here whose blogs have not been indexed shows that we all could stand to learn how to adjust our sites so the search engines connect with good perceptions of what we are about. 3:23:33 AM

Jenny Levine had a PC outage (I am catching up with some sites I have not looked at in over a week, then when I went back again looks like she deleted the details so it must have been fixed), which I can identify with.  The Battery on the UPS at work went bad, after having run perfectly since we bought it May 1996, and by some fluke the error messages did not volunteer that the problem was due to the UPS battery being dead.  My home PC in a work area long overdue for tidying, had the UPS hidden behind piles of containers of papers, so I was not seeing the warning lights when it was dying.  My new UPS is like the one at work, there is a software side to it.  The icon on my PC for my UPS right now is green, and it should let me know when and if it has problem.  I do not yet have the guts to try the test we did at work, of pulling the plug between the UPS and the wall, to verify that the UPS is working properly to support the computer in an outage. By the acronym UPS, in this context, I do not mean United Parcel Service, but Universal Power Supply, which is a gadget between our computer and the public utility electrical supply.  Think of it like a surge protector on steroids.  While a surge protector is good for spikes in the power supply, the UPS is great for the brownouts.  Don't expect it to protect you if your house is hit by lightning.  The price on this is coming way down.  I paid less than $200.00 for my latest.  I can remember when they cost thousands of dollars. 2:59:43 AM

It is too easy for me to get carried away by an infinity of topics that are interesting to me. I need to periodically review the guide to sane blogging. "Is this important?" In the eyes of the beholder. "Why Is This Important?" I guess when I get fully going on Categories I should have an ABOUT statement. "Who Cares?" "What Does It Mean?" "Is it worth explaining?" 2:49:29 AM

Security News Blog = another interesting site. 2:32:48 AM

Thanks to Amy Wohl for link to Information Week  Blogging story of the impact on business, that starts off a bit thumbs down on understanding its appeal, then talks about different kinds of Blogs.  I might have seen another link to this earlier and forgot where.  I don't think this article is anything like as good as Steve Outing's Taxonomy of Blogging. But then I am more interested in what can be done, and how to do it.  Other readers might be closer to wanting an introduction to the subject. Compendium of Weblog Tools, Education, Definitions, and other good stuff. 2:27:17 AM

Radio will not let me subscribe to http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/ by a Professor of Computer Science, so this goes into my collection of Blogs worth visiting by more direct links.  I found out about this great site at Boing Boing, which Radio did let me subscribe to, even though neither of these sites has the Radio coffee cup.  I don't care why some things work sometimes and not others, just that I figure out how to navigate. 1:27:43 AM

Radio is not letting me go back a month to add Today's Topics on top of past posts.  I was trying to identify Categories that I might later use for better Knowledge Management.  Perhaps I need to adjust some Preferenence settings. 1:11:30 AM

I learned something else about Radio.  The way to delete a post is not to blank it out.  Rather do the click box and scroll to the Delete button.  Can't post to weblog because the text of the post is empty. 1:01:08 AM

exegete: Dictionary.com Word of the Day. exegete [Dictionary.com Word of the Day] A person who explains or interprets difficult parts of written works.  A distinction needs to be made between the person who gets it right, and those who lead us astray. :) 12:56:29 AM

Categorized Links, Aha!. The Shifted Librarian: How to Add Navigator Links in Radio [Bag o' Knowledge Klog] 12:21:47 AM

Well I just learned something else that we can do with Radio.  Clicking on the Coffee Cup Icon gets the neccessary links so that one Radio site can subscribe to another Radio site, and read the interesting stuff that it broadcasts, then clicking on Post at side of what we see let's us share selected info with other people.  I guess Adam Brand was the first to share these Instructions, then I got them from my Bag o'Knowledge subscription.  Using a spell checker here has been on my to-do list. Cool Internet-Explorer Spell Checker. This tool is free and lets you spell-check any text entered in text boxes in Internet Explorer (i.e., the Post box in Radio and Manila). [Adam Brand: Radio Instructions] [Bag o' Knowledge Klog] 12:19:03 AM

Sunday, August 11, 2002

Today's Topics: e-Academia; e-Accessibility; e-Law and real world Law; e-Privacy; e-Speech Freedoms; Great Links if you share my interests; Ideas for my Personal to do list; Ideas for Radio Manila software enhancements;  Web Site Design Inspiration. There are a number of disturbing Internet and computer trends.  On other days here I have shared my struggle to understand the Deep Linking controversy. If we buy computer hardware and software, is it ours to do with as we please?  No.  There is some kind of a license and intellectual property rights associated with this.  Just like when we buy a book or magazine, we not have the right to photocopy all the content, or when we buy an automobile, we need to drive it in accordance with state laws, and have proper insurance.  But what rights do other people have to the content on OUR computers?  What rights do other people have to content we might want to access?  This is ever changing. The Chilling Effects Clearing House tries to help us understand our Freedom of e-Speech Rights, and what some people, who don't get it about what the Internet is all about, have been doing to undermine Freedom of e-Speech, and what we can do about it if one of those people hassles us.  Lots of good links here. The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School explores evolving issues of cyber law.  Lots of good links here also. Directory of Objectionable Words we should refrain from using when discussing controversial topics. 11:09:44 PM

Radio Manila Wish List ... you know how you can click on the calendar to get to a posting earlier this month, or click to get to the previous or next month calendar, one month at a time.  I want a system of archives where I see the full range of years available, then months used in each, like a little chart of years vs. months, then I click on an intersection & get the relevant calendar archive of posts that month and year.  That would be much faster to navigate than click click click to drill down to something I know I posted 5 months ago. Of course if I ever get around to figuring out how to put a search engine here, this might not be so neccessary. 10:56:34 PM

Guide to Real World (as opposed to Internet Virtual Reality) Legal Topics. We got these Terrorists in custody and we want to throw away the key, but how do the precedents compare to 50 years ago when America feared Loyal Japanese Citizens and wanted them locked up and throw away the key?  We think we are justified in locking up Terrorists without any trial, or access to a lawyer, or protections of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, and that the people 50 years ago were just racists. Domestic Issues (Husband Wife as opposed to Homeland Security). What should we do about these people who kidnap and abuse small children? Catholic Priests scandal. Computer Criminals. Various controversial law suits. These are hot topics, that Law Scope helps put in perspective for us. I hate it when a site disables the back button.  I want an icon that warns of that also.   10:52:28 PM

CDT's Guide to On Line Privacy. 10:43:27 PM

Business Search Engine created by a CEO for his peers.  There's links here to different kinds of news media by their type of content, and different kinds of Business Research.  You want to Bookmark this site if you not already familiar with CEO Express.  You do not have to be a CEO to get value from this place. 10:42:22 PM

Cyber Links to what's going on in the US Government, compiled by Senator Wyden who is in the thick of our evolving technological topics and legislation surrounding them. 10:39:01 PM

Tech Law Journal has news, records, and analysis of legislation, litigation, and regulation affecting the computer and Internet industry.  This is another place that I could spend all of several days reading interesting stuff and getting nothing else done.  I could use a fancy icon that means what I just said in the last sentence, that I would put beside some links as a warning to anyone about to step in.  Perhaps make it a category when I get around to learning how to do different kinds of Navigation Links. 10:36:10 PM

Who is this Doctor e-Commerce Jeffrey Baumgartner?  Well here is an essay introducing us to him, and archives of the eThesis discussion group that he moderates.  eThesis is an open forum for students doing theses on e-business, information and communication technologies and related subjects. Several people who wrote eTheses with the help of this group have made them available for us to see.  Lots of links on each of these places worth further exploration. 10:32:48 PM

Gadwall has a ton of fascinating essays on his site.  I could spend weeks enjoying them and getting nothing else accomplished.  However, it looks like he wrote most of them in 1999 2000 2001. Here's Jim Frazier's minimum requirements for good web design.  They have to do with speed of access by people with legacy PC standards; knowing about some stuff behind the scenes where so far I am but an infant; good links to everything on our site; eye friendly; no obvious spelling or grammar errors (I have not yet downloaded the spell checker for this thing so doubtless I have quite a few). I do not pass the 5 second test = the point of the web site should be obvious in under 5 seconds of looking at it.  I am a neophyte here exploring what is doable & using some of the topics that I am interested in for my content, and also sometimes I get some neat interesting info and wonder where to put it where I can find it again.  I have literally thousands of jokes organized into word documents by category, after I loved how I saw how someone else had organized only hundreds of jokes.  I would make them downloadable from here, except I wonder how fast I would use up the 40 Meg available. White Papers available; Internet Recommendations; Tips and Quotes; Essays on Using e-mail professionally and efficiently; Internet and Search Engine Marketing; Technology Procurement; Web Design. All these links are to resources at the Gadwall Group.     10:22:22 PM

Saturday, August 10, 2002

Topics Today: e-Accessibility and Reality Accessibility and folks seeking various kinds of help. B2B International e-contracts is information on a research project by one of my contacts in Britain, in which Joseph is looking for constructive suggestions how the law should do a better job of resolving practical/technical issues. 6:41:20 PM

More links of interest to e-Accessibility at http://www.useit.com/ 6:11:31 PM

While researching e-Accessibility topic, I got some information from Ed Meskys, President of the US National Federation of the Blind of New Hampshire, and I asked if I could quote what I got from him.  He very kindly encouraged me, and shared copy of a recent issue of their newsletter, which he publishes in a form that is easy for the Blind.  I cut and pasted it to Blind of NH so as not to eat a huge chunk of space on my Home Page with something that is not in a sighted-friendly format.  I find this to be utterly fascinating, and I hope Y"all also.  Here is the url link in case my shortcut fails http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/08/10/blindOfNh.html (I have been having intermittent nuisances with stuff not seeming to work correctly). It is a picture of what the current reality is for the Blind and visually-impaired in America.  We sighted have done a lot to help those with various disabilities be a part of our civilization, but a lot more needs to be done.  Blind persons have been denied rental housing, admission to theaters and amusement parks, public transportation, restaurants, retail stores, adult education classes in local school systems and colleges, even special education, access to government records such as tax bills (I should think that if the government cannot send tax bills in a form that are readable by a disabled person, then that person should not have to pay that bill), divorce papers or high school graduation (proof of) in a form readable by the blind.  Those allowed in have been blocked from full participation by artificial barriers and personnel who apparently could care less about the needs of the disabled.  For details, check out Blind of NH.  If you know someone who is blind or visually impaired, there is a wealth of contacts and resources here. There is a relevant discussion list at Send an e-mail to:    listserv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu  The only thing in the message area should be:  Subscribe NHBlind-talk Fleet has banking services for the Blind ... check out www.fleet.com ... one wonders how many Banks in the world are structured so that Disabled people cannot do business with them.  Sighted people might want to open an account with Fleet, to support this worthy effort. 6:03:53 PM

Friday, August 09, 2002

Today's Topics: fixing broken links; e-Accessibility; other miscelaneous interests. There are a lot of broken links on the Internet.  Some sites close down.  Some move to another ISP.  Other people had seen those sites when they were at the old location and thought WOW COOL LINK.  Sometimes the link ended up in our Browser bookmarks, e-mail, or a web site, but the place we linked to is no longer there.  We need tools to review our inventory of urls to identify those that are no longer any good. Xenu(tm) finds broken links on web sites.  You download the software to your PC and follow the instructions on how to use it.  It is very fast because of  preemptive multithreading in which the link checking software retrieves several web pages at the same time.  The upper limit on how much you can do is that of the memory on your PC.  This is free.  Satisfied customers may select one of the projects that the software author loves, and make a suitable donation. 1:10:42 PM

http://www.sysmod.com/ is a Great Looking site in terms of color contrasts, has guidance on how to make your site show up better in search engines; improve quality of computer products in general; cope with human error in using popular computer tools; and other interesting topics worth periodic review.  Be sure to check out their free monthly newsletter, archived at http://www.sysmod.com/praxis/index.htm Sysmod's Top Ten Mistakes of Web Sites: 1.      No consistent message 2.      Not respecting user's concerns 3.      Lack of promotion 4.      No closure and followup 5.      Not providing a feedback method 6.      Visual fatigue 7.      Being too demanding 8.      Making navigation confusing and unclear. 9.      Being static and boring 10.     Not learning the culture I am guilty of some of these faults, but not all of them. 12:52:29 PM

Making a website more e-accessible involves aesthetic issues, content issues, marketing issues and, most importantly, technical issues. That's where Doctor HTML can help with a virtual house call to your e-site. You can't fix the technical issues if you don't know what they are.  We want to learn from the examples of http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/ without becoming one of them.  But looking at bad examples of web design is only part of the challenge of learning good stuff to do, just like learning how to write computer viruses does not make such a person into a programmer, it makes such a person into a criminal. 12:32:37 PM

e-Accessibility is a topic that interests me, and Mark Pilgrim has done a great job of painting the big picture of people with various different kinds of handicaps who might have trouble accessing your web site.  Are our sites structured to be needlessly hostile to people with older PCs, lack of high speed Internet connection, human frailties?  We could Ask Alice (tm) for a free report on whether our site is accessible to the millions of Internet users who have disabilities, and if not, what needs to be fixed.  However, they are not setup to check personal efforts such as weblogs ... when we fill out the form your e-mail address must match the URL you wish to diagnose.  For example, john@company.com should be paired with www.company.com.  But in my case my e-mail is with one ISP and my weblog is with another, so I do not qualify for Alice's help.  Is that a deliberate choice by them to exclude the service from the smaller personal webloggers, because their resources are limited, or the same form of ignorance, in which most web sites are hostile to large segments of the Internet, that they are trying to help fix, but at the same time exhibiting themselves?  I clicked on the Contact Us icon of their web site to ask about this, but that also has some bugs.  In my opinion there needs to be a way to contact people without invoking e-mail client.  I have dabbled with several different browsers and e-mail clients, and decided that there are some I do not want to use, because they have certain problems, but I am not ready to uninstall because I have content there I not yet figured out how to transfer, or have figured out but it will be rather time consuming to get done.  Sometimes when I click on a web site's e-mail us icon it invokes an e-mail client other than one I want to be using.  I consider this to be an e-Accessibility problem. Answer from the organizers of Ask Alice: they do not want someone from ONE COMPANY to be getting an accessibility report on some COMPETITOR, then using the information to market advantage.  I did make several suggestions about future improvements for their service, apparently timely because they now working on a soon future upgrade. 1 in 10 men have some kind of color blindness, most seniors have trouble with color contrast, and a lot of web designers have poor understanding of the reality of how their site color combinations LOOK DIFFERENT through the eyes of different types of PC OS Browser etc. Check out http://www.vischeck.com/examples/ to view the world through the eyes of people with different kinds of color blindnesses. I do not consider this topic to be Politically Correct run amuck.  Rather the topic is whether we want to share our world with the whole world, or if we want to unnecessarily block categories of people from our web sites, and to what degree we want to limit our audience.  A commercial site logically should want to open itself to the maximum range of customers, including businesses that employ handicapped workers, and including businesses in other parts of the world with other languages than English.  I suspect that most web sites are hostile to large segments of the Internet population more out of site owner ignorance than deliberately exclusion. My Weblog is still rather random topics because I have not yet learned how to work Categories, Directories, Navigation Links, insert the Spell Checker, and many other features.  I periodically try out different things.  Improving e-Accessibility is one of the things I want to try to figure out.   12:00:36 PM

Thursday, August 08, 2002

Today's Topic focus = Appreciating History Perspectives. Forwarded to Al by an e-mail e-friend - original source unknown to Al - veracity also unknown. 130 Years Ago Rules For Teachers -  1872 - these were the actual rules Teachers each day shall fill lamps, trim the wicks and clean chimneys. Each morning teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day's session. Make your pens carefully.  You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.  Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.  After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the bible or any other good books. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.  Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.  Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intentions, integrity and honesty.  The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves. 11:55:53 PM

Forwarded to Al by an e-mail e-friend - original source unknown to Al - veracity also unknown. Al does know that Canada inside US statistics means original compiler not know much Geography, 100 Years Ago Subject: 1902 The year is 1902, one hundred years ago ... what a difference a century makes.  Here are the U.S. statistics for 1902.   1.     The average life expectancy in the US was forty-seven (47). 2.     Only 14 Percent of the homes in the US had a bathtub. 3.     Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars. 4.     There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved roads. 5.     The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. 6.     Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union. 7.     The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower. 8.     The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour. 9.     The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year. 10.    A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year,  and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. 11.    More than 95 percent of all births in the US took place at home. 12.    Ninety percent of all US physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard." 13.    Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.  Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound. 14.    Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo. 15.    Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason. 16.    The five leading causes of death in the US were:                 1.   Pneumonia and influenza                 2.   Tuberculosis                 3.   Diarrhea                 4.   Heart disease                 5.   Stroke 17.    The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet. 18.    The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30. 19.    Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented. 20.    There were no Mother's Day or Father's Day. 21.    One in ten US adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. 22.    Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores.   According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health." 23.    Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic. 24.    There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire US 9:05:10 PM

Sunday, August 04, 2002

July 10 I first commented on the deep linking controversy.  More July 16.  Thanks to Dave Winer for finding Don't Link to Us!, a directory of web sites that claim to not want other sites to link to them or impose significant restrictions for doing so.  Be sure to visit the archives in addition to the home page. Several people have asked me if it was a spoof, because it sounds too silly to be true.  No, there are people out there with conflicting ideas about intellectual property rights, and what the Internet is all about.  When they witness other people with other e-belief systems trampling what they think are their e-rights, some of them take it to court.  The ability of the courts to rule e-wisely depends on the testimony brought from both sides. Sometimes court rules are misconstrued when reported by the media, particularly when journalists can have an e-world view that is contrary to the players in the court battle.  When a lot of people hold e-world views contrary to what they think is being portrayed, it triggers a storm of protest. In the USA there is a storm over the 9th court (out west) allegedly ruling that the under God portion of the US Pledge of Allegiance is Unconstitutional, in violation of the separation of church and state. Likewise in Denmark there is a storm over the ruling about deep linking.  As the news media reports on what the protestors are saying, it becomes more difficult to extract what exactly the court had to say in the first place, especially when the original ruling is not in the language many of us communicate in, and anyone, interpreting the facts for us, may be a player in the disagreement.     12:45:17 PM

Saturday, August 03, 2002

Today's topic = Learning Categories, or how to structure different interests. Radio Userland has instructions how to get a link to choice of my Home Weblog or to my Categories.  I followed those instructions and now have a nice link in upper left corner of my Home Weblog.  The link works, but it is to the same geeky page, not to the text I keyed to my Category about the link to my sister's web page. 5:23:24 PM

I am trying to get the url of my categories.  I may have broken My Friends by changing the title to My Friends and Family.  Trying to follow the instructions found in the documentation, I get to a geeky page, but not to the text I posted to the category. 5:10:06 PM

Perhaps I should have reviewed Russ Lipton Documents Radio, 3:59:44 PM

A lot of Radio Documentation assumes the reader already knows the A B C's of working with this software, answers questions how to do H K Q on the learning curve and has flawed links directing people back to the neccessary A B C's.  Today I learned how to enable categories.  I am sure thousands of other users already know how to do this and think it is so obvious that it need not be documented, but it can be a bit of a struggle to deduce.  Here is a mini-tutorial of what I learned today, that did not seem to be explicitly spelled out in documentation I recently encountered. We all need to know the A B C's of a lot of Basic Radio topics.  I have not yet listed what all falls into the Basics, since I still struggling with many myself. Make sure your Radio Application is running because some links on Radio Userland Documentation, to tell you how to do stuff, are broken if all you are using is your Browser to study the material, and your Radio application is currently inactive. Using your Radio Desktop (the window with Home / News / Stories / etc.) drill down to Prefs -> Weblogs -> Categories. Check the Box to Enable Categories then push the Submit button. Return to your Radio Desktop (if you had another window open there, do F5 refresh screen). Notice that we now have check boxes to select where to post our notes. Re-read the documentation that assumed we knew the A B C's because now I can appreciate the answers to my D E F's. 3:26:44 PM

Last update: 09/22/2002; 7:08:16 PM.