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Al Macintyre's Radio Weblog
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Monday, September 30, 2002 |
Friday, I shared news of the Lindows PC selling at Walmart for $200.00 that uses Linux to provide all the services that people are accustomed to paying a whole lot more from Microsoft, except Microsoft sued to stop them from saying what their PC could do. Now comes AOL with a lawsuit and the comments on this article are also worth a review. Apparently the marketing about some relationship with AOL Netscape was merely clicking I Agree to AOL fine print when making a copy of the new AOL version of free Netscape browser. Thanks V. of TYR for passing on this link to me.
12:10:19 PM 
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Radio Wish Thinking - Recent Radio Discussion Group Posts indicate that there is a very high risk of newbies trying to follow current instructions for adjusting the code in Prefs, and getting error messages that are unintelligible to them. If Radio Userland is ever to be marketed successfully to a large mass of computer users, this is a problem in need of a solution. I can see that one of two solution approaches is needed:
- Plug In Tools be developed in which the end user keys in the name of what is to be inserted, and its url, similar to how we handle adding a link in an editing box, or add a subscription to News Aggregation. This might have to be a subset of a particular standard Theme, because of placement on the left or right side of the screen.
- I think this is probably the more practical of the two approaches that I can think of.
- Wherever an error message could show up on user screen, add a trouble shooting button. This would capture the text of the error message, the actual code that it was reacting to, the location of the scenario (specific Prefs from user perspective and www folder path name), then take the user to some Help resource that analyses the kind of stuff that might lead to this error.
- Experienced XML programmers would not need the trouble shooting button. The error message, and them carefully checking their code leads them to see what mistake they made.
- Intermediate XML programmers would need the FAQ about XML programming to help them see what are the most common human misconceptions that might occur here.
- Beginner XML programmers might need to continue posting questions to the Radio Discussion Group Forum.
11:39:38 AM
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Sunday, September 29, 2002 |
Radio Tips Update: I recently added some stuff to my stories, which are always subject to me adding more thoughts from time to time. I think some of my Radio pals might like to know about this (I call my e-mail friends e-friends ... is there a similar short way of referring to my Radio friends?).
- Blog Money is my preliminary thinking on the various ways (if any) that someone skilled in Radio Weblogging might be able to combine that know-how with adding to one's income.
- Radio Doc Sources get a line or two added typically several times a week. This is my directory, by name of contributor, listing links to people who have provided some kind of documentation or tools for the Radio community. Most recently I added some links to good stuff from:
- Alison Fish text input tips;
- Rick Klau and Mark Mower on Live Topics;
- and Mark Nottingham with RSS Tutorial.
- Search Engine Tips basically provide links to recent good stuff provided by Christian Crumlish, Alison Fish, and Don Strickland.
- Understand Radio News Aggregation got a few more links added to the bottom of this essay.
6:50:26 PM
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Inspiration shared by my sister Susan via e-mail.
Inner Strength
If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when,
through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can do all these things,
Then you are probably the family dog.
4:58:14 PM
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Saturday, September 28, 2002 |
[Radio Free Blogistan] QUOTE MSNBC.com has launched a new feature called "Weblog Central," which aims to "serve as a perch from which you can observe and participate in the brave new world of personal news." UNQUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan]
I notice that their Weblog Resources section has not yet woken up to the fact that Radio Userland exists, and ought to be included in their listings.
12:10:34 AM
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Friday, September 27, 2002 |
Gary Krakow of [MSNBC] reviews the $200.00 AOL Lindows PC, selling at Wal-Mart.com in which Gary labels this as a very promising work in process, in which it remains to be seen if the Linux community embraces this product that is in bed with AOL. The $200.00 price tag might be just right for people who want to experiment with what can be done outside the Microsoft world, but are not ready to experiment on their primary computer.
2:33:10 PM
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Thursday, September 26, 2002 |
Check out the comments on http://www.sammydman.com/ - this 15 year old was almost expelled for the horrible crime of having a Weblog, and only escaped that punishment by signing a full confession of what an on-line journal is and providing a list of all other students that he happened to know of that were also doing the same kind of thing.
Apparently any use of school computers for a purpose that the school administrators do not understand, is a serious academic crime, and soon there will be a mass trial of all the children who are suspected of the felony of being Internet Literate, who will also escape being expelled by naming names of others they know of. Does that remind you of something? Can you get out of this by naming top officials of the government? That's how the McCarthyism was stopped - someone named top Generals of the Army and top officials of the White House.
Sammy is now doing his weblogging from home.
11:19:51 PM
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[Chicago Sun Times] shares a couple stories about Zero Tolerance of Modern School Administrators:
- A Nebraska 7th grader found some marijuana in his classroom and turned it into to the office. He was suspended because, the act of picking it up and carrying it to the authorities constituted possession of marijuana.
- A Florida sophomore honor student saw a bag of pills on school grounds and did not follow the example of the Nebraska student because she was afraid of getting in trouble for possession of the contraband in the short distance of carrying it to the authorities. She has been told she will be expelled for failure to do so.
This reminds me of in Illinois where youngsters are encouraged to clean up the environment, but it is illegal for them to remove beer cans and alcohol bottles from the road side, because that means that those empty containers inside their garbage bags constitutes possession of those containers by a minor.
The lesson for these kids is to
- Do not touch the illegal substance - drugs, guns, whatever.
- Carefully write up a statement of where you saw this illegal substance, in a report to the authorities.
- Make sure your report is addressed to the authorities before you leave the scene, so that if an undercover officer sees you seeing the illegal whatever and not picking it up, your statement is part of your defense.
- Make a copy of your statement before you turn it in, so that if you later get hassled, you can take your statement to a lawyer, the news media, or where ever your parents think will most embarrass the school authorities into backing down.
3:45:52 PM
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[Chicago Sun Times] mentioned that Shaw's Crab House now offers its menu in Braille and various languages of international clientele. I am wondering how many restaurants have menus in Braille to make themselves accessible to Blind and visual impaired customers.
1:35:56 AM
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Safety of Nuclear Power Plants Again Questioned. VOA Sep 24 2002 9:33PM ET [Moreover - Science news]
We are living in a different world today. In recent years it made sense to
- Build a nuclear power plant right next to a major city, because nothing serious likely to go wrong, but now power plants are potential terrorist targets, so we do not want them right next to major cities.
- Build an airport in the middle of a major interstate interchange so easy to bring passengers real close to check in counters, but now a truck bomb can take out an airport, so we need a different kind of transportation infrastructure to unload the passengers from ground transport further away from the air tranport, and run everyone through screening suitably distant from buildings that might be major targets of terrorists.
VOA = Voice of America ... there's links here to what headlines VOA is sharing in various places in the world ... an interesting site worth revisiting occasionally.
- Africa
- Amnesty International protests torture of child prisoners in Burundi
- Intervention in Ivory Coast
- Uranium Security in Africa - is that an Oxymoron?
- Asia - Pacific
- China ultimatim to Iraq
- North Korea gets special envoy from Pres Bush
- a lot of stories I had not seen on local national news
- Asia - South and Central
- US Troops in Afghanistan discover another chilling al Quaida site.
- Dutch and Germans to take over NATO command in Afghanistan when Turkey time runs out.
- Iran nervous about US troops near their border with Afghanistan
- Suicide terrorists seized an Indian temple, leading to another gunfight.
- Terrorists attack a Christian Charity.
- Americas
- Argentina and Brazil economies still in bad shape
- Chilean Appeals court throws out 7 cases against Pinochet
- Colombian President visits USA President
- Mexican Banker gets record bail
- That storm in the Carribean
- Middle East
- Britain and Iraq
- China and Iraq
- Kuwait hosts USA military exercises
- Lebanon scandal with Israel
- Palestinians
- USA politics and Iraq
- USA and Pakistan cooperation
- USA
- Brushfire in Western USA
- Iraq and Partisan Politics
- Various legislation
12:49:28 AM
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Tuesday, September 24, 2002 |
[spacetoday.net] has links to several stories about various nations planned Mars expeditions
[spacetoday.net] QUOTEs
Energia proposes human Mars mission. Russian aerospace contractor RSC Energia has released plans for its proposed human mission to Mars,...
Japan confident Nozomi will be fixed. Officials with the Japanese space agency ISAS believe that the Mars-bound Nozomi spacecraft will...
UNQUOTEs [spacetoday.net]
Aerospace Daily reports on Russian proposed Human mission to Mars.
Astronomy.com reports that the Japanese Nozomi spacecraft will probably have the damage from the solar storm repaired, now that communications with it has been restored.
3:18:52 AM
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I added a small reference directory of e Discussion Groups: e-commerce; computer security; etc.
3:10:42 AM
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Some Computer Humor urls
- Project Management Proverbs
- IT Devil's Dictionary
- Real Programmers
- MIS Information
- NT Quips and Quotes
2:00:28 AM
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[James Robertson} has some interesting insight on how non-programmers view documentation. It was a surprise to me that some people have actually been observed reading some of the documentation, other than me of course, and a surprise that other people figured out how the documentation was being utilized incorrectly.
1:00:10 AM
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Monday, September 23, 2002 |
developer.* [Blogfish] Thanks for the link to Daniel Read's great collection of essays for Professional Programming Quality, Book Reviews, and project to codify programming standards.
6:23:11 PM
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Sunday, September 22, 2002 |
[Tomalak's Realm] QUOTES SJ Mercury: Valenti presents Hollywood's side of the technology story. Dan Gillmor. I made that offer after I heard from a colleague that Valenti, meeting recently with journalists in Los Angeles, had complained about what I'd been writing. So while I don't agree with much of what he said -- and I'll respond in a subsequent column -- it's only fair to give you his side of the argument. UNQUOTE [Tomalak's Realm]
This is Dan Gillmor's interview of Jack Valenti to get Hollywood's side on this great debate.
- Hollywood wants to make their customers happy, and wants their material on the Internet, but on their terms at a fair and reasonable price, because the Internet provides new ways for people to violate copyright.
- Jack Valenti has been president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America www.mpaa.org since 1966.
- Dan Gillmor and Jack Valenti could not come to an agreement on how it is possible for Hollywood to get what they want, without denying consumers a continuing ability to do what is commonly called fair use:
- time shift programming to view TV programs at a time other than when they were actually broadcast;
- view digital programming in an analog format;
- peer to peer sharing of content that is typically copyrighted.
9:20:28 PM
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Continuous improvement of our Radio communication efforts, in Al's opinion, requires mixtures of:
- Writing Skills in general ... which we can learn by practicing good examples set by others, such as Novelists, Journalists, and successful Technical Writers.
- Learning broad range of capabilities of Radio, and the relevant vocabulary, then using them effectively, such as links to context, to more detailed stories, and include objects across spectrum of what's possible.
- Alison Fish has been teaching Al Macintyre how to do Images and Permalinks, but not enough has clicked in Al brain yet.
- The learning curve at getting better and better at these tools for me has been:
- Past: Get comfortable with Stories, Shortcuts, and simple links.
- Now: Delve into more advanced links and objects we can connect to our web site.
- Next: Become a student of Radio Outlining.
- Know laws and etiquette.
- Be very careful in quoting not to permit any confusion regarding who said what.
- I have a Radio Wish that a future version of the Radio editing box can have something for us to click on that we could use a particular style for quoting a particular person ... person A B C in a body of text.
- For the moment, just break new paragraph QUOTEs around whoever source.
- But I want to learn how to mix it up ... Person A said this, but on the other hand Person B makes a good point, and it is crystal clear what was said by ME, A B etc.
- I think part of the problem is that we are accustomed to using double quotes when quoting someone, but double quotes have a special meaning in Radio, so we need something else when making it clear we are quoting someone and who.
- Be sensitive to the needs of a broad spectrum of people visiting our web site.
- Understanding how to best use the medium.
- Knowing the subject that we are sharing our opinions on, and being careful to distinguish which of our words are backed by experience and when this is just our uninformed opinion.
- Other topics on Phil Wolff's great lists.
2:06:04 PM
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Topics this last week on Al Mac's Weblog (a review to help see what Categories are needed):
This last week I increased my Categories to:
- 400 on Radio Dial: IBM 400 Interests ... connections to user group activity and lists.
- Brain Exercise: Space for future reviews of favorite books.
- Brain Food: Where I trying to learn new stuff (for me) from other people tips.
- Perma Links and Images, with help from Alison Fish and Rick Klau.
- Outline to help general beginners to Radio.
- Brain to Brain: Techniques for more effective human communications.
- Etiquette of all this.
- I need to review this whole area of doing a better job with writing; accessibility; credibility; etc.
- e Law: Changes in the legal landscape within which we all dwell.
- Useful links to commentary grappling with hot topics.
- e Radio Ideas: my input to dws.Radio.FAQ to add to the body of How To.
- HisTech: Comprehending History of General Technology Evolution.
- Latest: reversal of autos and pollution; real antimatter; computer history; anthrax spread by photocopy machines; and more.
- Laugh Track: Miscelaneous Humor.
- Sad but True Banking Stories.
- I basically created this for future posting of humor that used to go on the Home page, and started it out with copies of all humor that previously went there.
- My Friends and Family: Stuff of interest to people I know more off Internet than on.
- Plight of a Nigerian Woman.
- Blind of NH Real World Challenges.
- I need to fix my pictures.
- Personal stuff.
- Security: Computer Security; Homeland Security; Other Security.
- Report on a user meeting whose topic was on Security Testing.
- Links tips opinions and news, on hot topics from a spectrum of sources.
- SF: Science Fiction interests.
- Technological advances into reality with concepts that until recently were Science Fiction, and where various nations space programs are headed.
- Web sites for SF fans.
- Home Page and Stories.
- New Story on some Chess Variants.
- My essay on the Y2K of copying (Mon Sep 16).
4:38:59 AM
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Saturday, September 21, 2002 |
Impact of Emerging Technologies is the focus of [MIT Enterprise Technology Review] with this seemingly unbelievable story about an air powered automobile from France, using Isotherm Dynamics, a process that creates power by expanding air at an almost constant tempterature. If I am understanding this correctly:
- Household electricity cools and compresses the air into a replaceable tank that goes in the car (it uses four such tanks) to run the 1 foot square engine, because ambient air temperature causes the air to expand ... this process takes 4 hours at home, per electric outlet being used for the purpose, or 3 minutes at a special compressed air station that Motor Development International sells for about $100,000.00 to places like today's Gas Stations. It can take in polluted air, filter it, and expel cleaner air as exhaust.
- With fully loaded air tanks, it takes passengers about 120 miles at an average of 30 mph. The car can go from 0 to 50 mph in 7 seconds and seats 5.
- An ABC reporter tested the car saying it ran quite well except it was quite noisy. The inventor says this is something they will fix in later models.
- Buy this car for between $10k and $14k.
Thanks to V. of TYR for passing this link to Al Mac.
4:18:30 PM
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Friday, September 20, 2002 |
I find very interesting people in my referers such as [McGee] QUOTE
There's been some good discussion recently on the interplay between knowledge sharing via weblogs and comfort with writing in most business organizations. (Phil Wolff, David Gammel, Pete Harbeson, Al Macintyre, Alison Fish, Sébastien Paquet, Ron Lusk) The consensus appears to be that fear of writing is one relevant barrier to tapping knowledge in organizations.
Lowering or eliminating those barriers is certainly a worthy effort. I want to explore a deeper issue that this raises. Writing is not simply a mode of expression; it is also a tool for thinking. What's the relationship between facility with writing and the quality of thinking in organizations? Has this discussion of knowledge sharing revealed more important needs in the organization?
These questions started rattling around with some other ideas hanging out in my head and the result grew into "Writing comfort and thinking styles," which I've posted as a longer story using Marc Barrot's activeRenderer.
If oral thinking is essentially linear and literate thinking is two-dimensional, what might three-dimensional thinking look like?
UNQUOTE [McGee]
My interest started out, and continues with the personal need to do a better job of communicating, through continuous improvement. I am a computer geek. I write software. At some point my users need a help screen or an error message. What I deliver had better be crystal clear unambigous, but I recognize I am weak in the graphic digital arts. A picture is worth 1k words but I have been using multiple 1k words when I need to learn how to do the pictures. [Josef the Poet] has shown that it is possible to communicate several pictures using very few words. We need to figure out ways to display computer data so less work for end users. For example, spread sheets can put output using colors, coded so red means some extreme value, to illuminate that which humans need to look at.
I too have found writing to be a tool for thinking. I put my ideas in words, look at the words, get other ideas from the earlier expressions. But often those ideas are non-obvious to someone else reading what I wrote, because there is an implied context of both what I wrote, and everything else in my mind, which in combination provide the new ideas.
The Science Fiction community has something called Oral History. Volunteers go around to Science Fiction conventions to interview the old masters, famous authors. This info is video taped with copies delivered to research libraries around the USA. This gives a sense of understanding those people that you sometimes cannot get from standard literature.
10:21:43 PM
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I recently shared e-mail that I got asking me to sign an Amnesty International Petition to send to the President of Nigeria asking for clemency for Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman convicted of adultery and having a child outside marriage, and who has been sentenced to death by stoning by the court, the sentence to be carried out after the baby can be rescued from this.
Yahoo's Virus Hoax Busters have some things to say on the subject similar to my views.
- This Nigerian woman has in fact been sentenced to death for allegedly bearing a child out of wedlock (the father denies responsibility, so the woman is automatically guilty). This is real. This is not a hoax. We agree on that point.
- Internet petitions do not have much impact in the West, let alone on this Nigerian culture, says the moderator of the discussion.
- Well we do not exactly agree here. I think this effort raises public awareness of the work of Amnesty International, especially when it results in the European Parliament voting to boycott Miss World contest in Nigeria, and the President of Mexico making a special trip to visit the President of Nigeria to appeal on behalf of the woman's case.
I passed this appeal on to some people who are into that kind of thing, while I seriously doubt Amnesty International is going to get significant change in nations supporting death sentence for violation of Islamic Law, even though they have collected over a million signatures so far (what does this say about the billions of people who have not signed the petition?). I think Amnesty International power is when a nation says one thing and does another, so by illuminating duplicity, the exceptions can be stopped. This is not duplicity. It is Nigerian law and policy.
Here is a directory of links to current Amnesty International themes:
- Stop Torture
- The Death Penalty
- G8 exporting tools for use in Human Rights abuses
- Police Accountability in Human Rights
- Human Rights Education
- Human Rights impact of Economic Activities
- International Justice
- Health Professionals
- Child Warriors before Emotional Maturity
- Guatamala History Repeats
- Diamond Trade's dark side.
Anyhow my referrers are showing someone doing a Google search on the notion that this is a hoax. I found a ton of searches for variations on the woman's name, Nigerian woman, hoax, Amnesty International petition, and all the hits were either on my site, sites about this woman's plight, or Google combining different posts that contained individual words of the search. It is possible that there are a bunch of people doing similar searches. The sad thing is that this happens to many women around the world, and is so alien to our western culture that many people receiving the e-mail appeal info about the petition, their first reaction is to wonder if this is a hoax. So I am looking at some of the other posts on the topic that were in the Google searches, and finding some interesting sites.
Another Nigerian woman, Safiya Husaini, was also sentenced to death by stoning, but an appeals court let her live. But it is a continuing problem because Nigeria is deeply divided between Muslims and Christians, who have different moral codes.
- The President of Mexico will be meeting with the President of Nigeria, and this injustice is one of the things the Mexican President will be arguing against.
- QUOTE
- The man Lawal identified as her baby's father denied the accusation and was acquitted for lack of evidence.
- UNQUOTE
- One would think that a gene test could prove or disprove it one way or the other, and the fact that no such test was done substantiates the complaints of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA).
- Other nations are protesting this at top government levels.
- The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) labels this as injustice in the name of Islam.
- The punishment for zina (fornication) by unmarried persons is a certain number of lashings, not stoning, and very stringent conditions are needed to verify the crime. For example if Amina became pregnant through rape, then she is innocent of any crime.
- The IHRC has Action alerts on Amina Lawal (Nigeria) and Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (USA). In the latter case, this man got a life sentence in which they are arguing many inconsistencies in the lack of evidence that the right man was convicted.
- Women's Rights Watch update # 2 on the continuing story of the Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal.
- QUOTE
- The judge has declared that Amina should not be executed until 2004, if she loses her appeal, so that she can look after her 5-month old baby daughter Wassila.
- The Nigerian Justice Minister has joined the fight all the way to the Nigerian Supreme Court.
- Here is a Canadian source that seems legitimate to me.
- Exclusive Interview with Amina Lawal published in UK's Mirror.
- QUOTE
-
On Monday, an Islamic court in Nigeria upheld the sentence of death by stoning on Amina. She should be taken, buried to the neck in the earth and perish beneath a hail of rocks, half-bricks... anything conveniently to hand.
-
Summoned before the tribal elders - who traditionally settle matters before police intervene - Yahay accepted paternity and promised to pay medical expenses for Amina and her baby.
But he recanted after his family allegedly convinced him that his acceptance would bring shame on them.
-
UNQUOTE
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Amnesty International says that death sentence by stoning is prohibited by two UN Treaties that Nigeria has signed:
- The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has appealed to Nigeria on behalf of Amina Lawal.
- The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) is protesting that this Sharia legal code, as implemented in Northern Nigeria, is unfair to women.
- The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has listed this appeal on their page of Violence against Women, although the problem here is that of Islamic Law's attitude towards women, whether they behaved in a manner that religion considers immoral, or were a victim of rape.
- The American Women's Self Defense Association (AWSDA) has a link to this appeal (on upper left corner of their home page).
- American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) On_Line forums has a link to this appeal.
- The USA National Organization of Women (NOW) is protesting a couple who were sentenced to death by stoning (both husband-to-be and wife-to-be) for making love before they got married.
- This stuff is no hoax, it is normal Nigerian legal system, and Nigeria is not the only nation like this.
Global Feminist News Wire has several interesting relevant links
Here is a link that indicates that the Amnesty International effort is no Hoax, but some people searching on Google find the site because they looking for the name of the victim, and the word hoax, which are two separate topics on the same site, because lots of people write about both problems like this, and the problem of e-hoaxes. http://crawfurd.dk/africa/index.html#amina
[Crawfurd] shares lots of info about Nigeria such as QUOTE
Hoax Letters / E-mails from Nigeria
Several people has received e-mails with a friendly and very polite business suggestion from someone apparently living in Nigeria (I certainly have received a few of these scams myself). Many of these mails originates from Nigeria, but lately I have also received one which seems to be sent from D. R. Congo. The sender usually claims that he has access to a large sum of money (usually from the government or some private company). The sender asks for help to transfer the money out of the country. This is said to be risk free transaction and you will receive a large sum of money for helping him out. Don't even think about it! Follow this link if you wish to report a scam or read more about this subject: Nigeria - The 419 Coalition Website.
UNQUOTE
I know about this. It is an international scam to get access to your bank account numbers for the purpose of draining them. Honest people should see through the scam, and struggle to figure out which is the correct government agency to report it to (US Secret Service in the USA, because this is a Currency Crime). Unfortunately some big corporations have dishonest clerks, which have led to the corporations bank accounts being drained.
Another very interesting site linked by my reverse searching review, that I want to explore more some time: Crime on the Internet
5:11:37 PM
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[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE
Antihydrogen created at CERN. a Boing Boing reader sez: "The CERN lab in Europe has created REAL antimatter (antihydrogen atoms).The controlled production of antihydrogen observed in ATHENA is a great technological and scientific event. Even more so because ATHENA has produced antihydrogen in unexpectedly abundant quantities. Wow. Who wants a ride on the Enterprise?" Link Discuss UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog]
How fast can a vehicle go that is powered by Anti-Matter? Does Anti-Matter Fall Up?
4:37:27 PM
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~~~
"If you were involved with PLATO in any way, during the 60s, 70s, or 80s -- either as a courseware developer, an educator or faculty member, an engineer or system administrator, a student, a game player, whatever -- I would like to hear from you.
This book is the story of the people that were a part of that online community -- the first real online "virtual community", pre-Web, pre-AOL, pre-USENET, pre-BBS, pre-everything.
Were you a PLATO person? If yes, please help me make this book the most accurate and detailed account of the PLATO story as can be done.
This is your chance to help contribute to the oral history of PLATO."
~~~
He also has a page about PLATO emoticons which is fascinating:
"13 September 2002 -- The news is floating around the Web right now about the "discovery" of the first smiley. What readers and reporters are apparently not aware of is that the smiley being discussed is the first ASCII smiley.
Like so many things, PLATO was doing smileys years earlier. In fact, smileys on PLATO were already an art form by 1976. PLATO users began doing smiley characters probably as early as 1972 (when PLATO IV came out), but possibly even earlier on PLATO III (still to be determined... old-timer PLATO III users please speak up!).
How were these things done? Well, on PLATO, you could press SHIFT-space to move your cursor back one space -- and then if you typed another character, it would appear on top of the existing character. And if you wanted to get real fancy, you could use the MICRO and SUB and SUPER keys on a PLATO keyboard to move up and down one pixel or more -- in effect providing a HUGE array of possible emoticon characters. So if you typed "W" then SHIFT-space then "O" then SHIFT-space then "B", "T", "A", "X", all with SHIFT-spaces in between, all those characters would plot on top of each other, and the result would be the smiley as shown above in the "WOBTAX" example.
UNQUOTE
Thanks V. of TYR for passing this along to Al.
I remember that before computers there were people using typewriter special characters in various shapes to make art that preceded ASCII art, and there were also people who shared decks of punched cards that drew Christmas Art. No matter what the technology, there is a mentality out there that will figure out how to make it create beautiful stuff, blowing the minds of the ordinary users.
11:10:31 AM
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Wednesday, September 18, 2002 |
[Boing Boing Blog] QUOTE
RIP, Biggle. Science fiction giant Lloyd Biggle, Jr. has died.
Biggle combined an interest in music with his work, which began with the short story "Gypped" in 1956. His notable short works included "Monument" (1961), a Hugo nominee later expanded into a novel, and "The Tunesmith" (1957), recently selected by Orson Scott Card for the anthology Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century, Locus reported.
Biggle's novels, which began with The Angry Espers in 1961, were mostly space operas on social and ecological themes and included the Jan Darzek sequence, beginning with All the Colors of Darkness in 1963, and novels about the Cultural Survey, including The World Menders (1971) and The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets (1968). In recent years Biggle wrote mystery stories and novels. He was founding secretary treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America and edited Nebula Award Stories Seven in 1972, Locus reported.
Link Discuss UNQUOTE [Boing Boing Blog]
I loved Monument, All the Colors of Darkness, and The Still Small Voice of Trumpets. Biggle had a way of looking at things that was unique, making for great plot twists. SFWA was founded in 1965. The organization's website is www.sfwa.org
Other SF websites worth noting.
11:08:39 PM
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Aug 17 I posted my notes from reading a great article on improving our web writing skills from [A List Apart], whose subsequent discussion often shows up on my referers. I was intrigued by a post on the middle of the second page of comments from anonymous. QUOTE
I got this tidbit from drop.org :
How Do You Establish Credibility For Your Web Site?
http://www.webcredibility.org/guidelines/index.html
Stanford have compiled 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included over 4,500 people. (contributed by David Sim at ecademy.com August 19, 2002)
UNQUOTE
Studying Stanford's Advice and self-grading myself on how I doing so far.
- Make it easy for people to check my sources.
- I give myself an A for links, citations, giving credit where due, etc.
- But this is so easy to do with Radio, that we all ought to be doing a good job here.
- Show that we are a legitimate organization.
- Well this does not really apply to personal weblogs.
- But users ought to know who we are in case they want to contact us.
- I give myself a D here ... I have not yet got a round TUIT on making a who I am statement let alone putting it on my weblog where Y"all can easily find it.
- I basically started out exploring what could be done with Radio Weblogging, and have had a large number of ideas where I would like to go with this, and a small number of them actually implemented.
- Highlight your organizations's expertise in whatever content and services you provide.
- This does not yet apply to me, because I am not offering any of my expertise through this medium. Other than sharing interesting content on hot topics.
- They also say not to link to outside sites that are not credible, that a site's credibility is by association.
- This sounds to me to be quite different than trying to show up high in search engines, where weblogger linking is to interesting sites, where we know many are not credible, but interesting is more important.
- Show that honest and trustworthy people are behind the site and the organization.
- Well I agree with the general principle, but given recent scandals in politics, charities, and on Wall Street, I can't go along with their presentation of how you measure integrity.
- I think it is much more important what we DO than what we SAY, that we avoid entanglements with scandals or the appearance of impropriety.
- I'll give myself a C for my success rate so far.
- Make it easy to contact you.
- I give myself a D here - this is one of the aspects of my weblog I need to improve some time.
- The website should look professional, and appropriate for your purpose.
- I think weblogging makes it very easy to look far superior to the competition, what some of us lack is the ability to stand out against the crowd of other weblogs. I score a lot of non-weblogs as D-F and on that scale I give myself a C (bottom of weblog scale).
- Make the site easy to use - and useful.
- Well I need to add a search engine on this site, and break it up into more categories. Again, with Radio Weblog Themes, you have to work at making the site eye-hostile, and a few people have succeeded at that, but many have used the resources to make a great looking site. I give myself a C because I got a ways to go here.
- Update your site's content often.
- I update it too often. B from their perspective.
- More important, I should spend less time adding stuff and more time fixing the place up.
- Use restraint with any promotion.
- They primarily referring to hostile ads, but also use clear direct and sincere writing style. I think my ego gets in my way too often, and I do some of this well and some not so well. Grade myself a B here.
- Avoid errors of all types.
- I definitely need a spell checker plugged into my writing here, and perhaps also a grammar checker.
- I think I normally write well, although too wordy, but have my share of spelling and other errors - give myself a C for this.
So, overall I have given myself a C average on the Stanford test. Passing Ok but with lots of room for improvement, and I know what I need to be doing better.
9:40:05 PM
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[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE
Read this CNN article. I'm glad that the government is not going to
- collect money to use for enhancing security (that would just increase the likelihood of preciptious action), nor
- restrict the use of wireless networks (which apparently was a brainstorm of the Bush administration's main computer guru).
UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]
The article identifies government plans based on some government officials not knowing all the facts about what is possible with computer security. It sure sounds like the current administration decided not to get any kind of briefing from prior administration efforts with computer security, so they would make a whole set of new mistakes, without learning from the mistakes or discoveries of the folks who went before. Homeland Cyber Security is too important to be left to a panel of special interests. I sure hope there is more going on than the media is sharing.
2:02:51 PM
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Tuesday, September 17, 2002 |
White House To Unveil New Plan for U.S. Computer Security [SecurityFocus] [dws.]
There's been a lot of press about the role Microsoft's responsibilities should play in the White House big picture as opposed to the role it really is playing. Wasn't there a former Microsoft Security Expert who got hired to become a White House Security Expert? I have to be careful with my big mouth here, since I consider some other places much more appropriate sources of talent for our Government.
Top Story in this week's http://www.eweek.com/ is what should be a copy of the President's Plan for Cyber Security and the notion that they now will seek public support for the plan, and also possibly get second opinions from other people in the know, before the President signs it.
Top Story in this week's e week Security pages is a progress report on how various industries are doing moving towards better computer security, such as mass transit, power plants, communications, etc. followed by a survey of computer security professionals.
The results imply that almost half of the nation's infrastructure has done nothing different about computer security since 9/11/2001, and that this constitutes criminal negligence. Now I think that some enterprises were probably doing proper security before 9/11/2001 and did not need to do anything other than a review. One person was quoted as saying that proper security requires incremental gains in Security each year. I think it is better to get your security as good as you can get it, and keep it that way, except when the security risks are so bad that installing patches to fix patches to fix patches to fix patches to fix ... means that you can get nothing else done with your time, so what you should be doing is learning a different Operating System that does not need that behavior, assuming that other Operating System is not going to be declared illegal by pending legislation.
For my past Weblog posts on computer security topics see
- Sep 16 on Y2K of copying;
- Aug 29 on diagnosing hoax and computer security myths vs. serious downage;
- and Aug 15 on how Computer Security does not have to be rocket science.
11:22:09 PM
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[Radio Free Blogistan] QUOTE
I have a friend in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. With the way things are, I don't think he'd feel safe publishing a weblog, but I wish some of the things he and I discuss in e-mail had a wider audience. He's given me permission to quote him here, but I think it really deserves it's own place, and we have to see how the current crisis plays out first.
This reminds me of when we published Milorad Pavic's first hypertext for computer. Not long after that the U.S. was bombing Serbia (belatedly, as far as intervention goes, and remotely). I contacted Dr. Pavic by e-mail to ask if there was anything he needed, anything I could do to help. He said, "Yes. Stop the bombing!" He wanted me to protest, campaign, etc. My first thought was This is an intellectual, liberal, anti-Milosevich Serb—doesn't he understand why we have to stop the rape of Kosovo?. But the bombs were dropping on him. Who was I to say? Weird digression, but I guess the point is LA vs. NY vs. SF is fun but I'd like to be reading more blogs from Macedonia, Pakistan, and Lagos. UNQUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan]
Perhaps we need a Category or a group of Categories
- Foreign Perspectives = Category for someone like myself who is interested in World Events in General, and likes to read the news IN ENGLISH from various newspapers in different nations, so I can see their perspective on all kinds of stuff. When I start such a category, I will launch it with a Radio STORY directory of some of those foreign newspaper sources, that I have been using.
- e-Afghanistan = posts from your pen pal over there
- e-ANY-NATION = posts from a pen pal over anywhere, that we have had permission to republish
10:38:21 PM
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Monday, September 16, 2002 |
[Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog] QUOTE
High tech martyr. Resume:
Company Name withheld (1995-1998)
- successfully mismanaged multiple projects for clients including Hewlett Packard, Intel, Compaq, Sony, and Toshiba
- poorly documented project status with Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel, and Task Tracker
- communicated false and/or useless information to top-level management with PowerPoint
- accpeted full responsibilty to save Top level management the embarrassment of failure
UNQUOTE [Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog]
4:22:52 PM
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[Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog] QUOTE
Let's spam the world. It just occured to me: bloggers are spammers. We spam the world with unsolicited opinions. UNQUOTE [Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog]
I think somewhat different terminology is needed, because we are not in people's faces. I get all sorts of junk that can only be stopped by unplugging my telephone, not reading my mail. Unsolicited information on weblogs are like flipping channels on our TV, people have to choose to view our opinions.
4:20:52 PM
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forwarded to Al in e-mail from V. of TYR
QUOTING the forwarded e-mail
Subject: Amina Lawal -- Please support this woman
Look in any search engine for reaction around the world, such as a boycott of the Miss World Contest by women and nations that disapprove of this Nigerian sentence.
You have probably heard about Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman convicted of adultery and having a child outside marriage, and who has been sentenced to death by stoning. The appeals court has approved this sentence. The judge has decided that she should be stoned to death as soon as her 8 month old baby daughter is weaned. Amnesty International has organised a petition which you can sign on line and which will be forwarded to the President of Nigeria. You can Sign it by clicking here:
Go to the right hand side of the page and click the please sign our
letter. Please sign and pass on to other people - it seems the least we
can do for her.
UNQUOTE - I updated some of the text to help make the post a bit more readable.
4:09:11 PM
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e-mail pass along
Subject: SUNRISE OVER LOWER MANHATTAN
No one will see this again.
This picture was taken by a lady returning on a cruise this past summer (July 28, 2001). It is a sunrise over lower Manhattan.
SHE Writes: As I watched the beautiful skyline of New York City float past me I noticed the sun was about to line up just behind the twin towers. I was lucky enough to snap the picture at exactly the right moment. If you look at the sun rays it is almost prophetic. a little spooky.
When I show this picture to anyone they almost always asks for a copy. I just want to share it with all who want it. Please take this picture and share it with anyone and everyone who likes it. I've been printing them like crazy on my home computer to give to those that want a copy.
[file:///C|/Program%20Files/Radio%20UserLand/www/images/image0016.jpg]
[http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/images/TwinTowers%2016.jpg]
UNQUOTE
Al is having trouble getting this picture so that other people can see it on Al Weblog. Someone tell me if the second url above shows you the image (apparently the first points to Al's hard drive) ... I got to this by looking in Radio Folder / Images / locate which image I had called it when I dropped it into my PC path corresponding to the MY PICTURES in Prefs as suggested by Alison Fish, and I see she has enhanced her how-to since the last time I looked at it.
Here is a copy of it supplied by Paula Allen. Thanks Paula.
3:23:16 PM
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[Ernie the Attorney] had started a discussion about copyright and Professor Lessig, which is extremely important considering the Supreme Court hearing coming up, and some special interest legislation to change the fabric of our computer society. There are several different professional specialities at work here and there is a large element of what seems to me to be deliberate confusion, like the role of the accountants in the Wall Street scandals.
What society needs, in Al Macintyre opinion, is an even more basic for dummies clarification even than Ernie calls for. The powers that be, who vote to change the rules, need to get a distinction between what is being proposed and what can be done, and to what degree that distinction is colored by the proposers desires for something other than what they claim. People propose stuff that seems ridiculous for reasons that sound suspicious. Technologically speaking, can we get protection against piracy without locking down an entire genre of entertainment? I think that is feasable.
There needs to be some clarification of what can be done in the computer security area to protect all interests. As far as I am concerned the problem is not whether fans can continue to enjoy whatever they want, with copyright owners properly compensated, but rather how is the development of that to be financed. I doubt that the competing interests can come together to solve the problem in the absense of a crisis.
Open Source can have some standards of identifying copyright ownership, delivering a code into the data objects showing royalties paid, when permission to use expires, and renewal arrangements, with software being certified as having met the copying of copyright materials artist compensation standards.
But that is extra work for people writing software for Windows, much simpler to close the door on any copying. Ditto hardware development.
Some Open Source was born out of an alternative to abuses of Commercial Software, where some Open Source philosophers have been rather outspoken on the inappropriateness of copyright in software that has many contributors constantly making improvements to a body of code. People, outside of software development, can rightfully misconstrue those strong views to be from a special interest that cannot be trusted to manage copyrights, especially when we also have an overlapping community of digital product users who appear to favor piracy.
The market can make demands of suppliers of hardware and software, but that is no good when legislation has authorized draconian solutions to the piracy problem.
This is the Y2K of copying.
A panic is apparently needed to mobilize a solution.
The difference between what we have today, and the Y2K of a few years ago is who is behind the panic. I am a Computer Professional who first found out about the Y2K problem (it was not called that then) in 1970, and it was old news even then. We were unable to get responsible action through channels, so we had to go to the general public to avert a general disaster.
I don't have a good handle on the forces behind today's panic, nor if what is being painted in the communications clearly explain their motives, but it does seem extremely ominous calling for excessive drastic action to get a solution, out of proportion to the problem. Comparable to stopping automotive speeding by issuing WW II weaponry to the police in which it does not matter if there are lots of casualities to other vehicles on the road.
QUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]
DRM for Dummies (i.e. people like me) - the discussion below (which I guess I started) about the Lessig article has prompted many interesting responses, including one from the good professor himself (boy do I feel like I'm back in law school). Anyway, after reading all of the responses my brain started heating up like an over-clocked CPU. I like things to be simple, and I don't like to tax my brain so I'm looking for a simple model to understand Lessig's point.
Lessig (if I understand his point) says something like: Palladium is better DRM because at least it's not a blanket system that disables all copying of, say, music CD's. I guess there are other examples, but I don't know enough to come up with some good ones. (Professor Lessig, can you offer us a sampler platter of examples?) Anyway, if all of the examples involve locking down an otherwise-routine computer function like copying then, call me crazy, but that's not "digital rights management." It's digital rights censorship. Now, if there is a system that lets me use a routine computer function, but only if I meet certain conditions, well now...at least that's "management" of my digital rights. So that's how I understand it now, and I think that my brain can handle that.
And so now I can load that model into the "big picture" of DRM. From what I can see, basically, we're talking about which StormTrooper we'd prefer to have watch over us: the really mean one that never lets our computer do anything that might trip over someone's copyright golden goose, or the sort-of mean one that will let our computer do some things, if we have permission from The Empire's duly appointed representative. Yeah, I did misunderstand Lessig. I apologize for branding his description as "optimistic." And I hope that my lackluster class participation will not count too heavily against my final grade.
UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]
Ernie
I have worked on several different kinds of Computer Operating Systems in my career and seen many different Computer Security models, much more sophisticated than what I think is needed to solve this crisis. For security reasons, the end computer user was generally told nothing about how the security operated. Often many software developers not allowed to work with the security area. This has meant that computer security is often like a separate interface between Operating System and Application Software, not well understood by developers who should be using it properly.
My best suggestion to you is much the same as one I made some time ago on Homeland Security. We have people in different professions with specialized know how that is really needed by other professions in our world of evolving challenges. I think we need briefings across professions. What do we _____ (profession A) think that people in _____ (profession B) ought to know about _____ (topics C D E F), from our perspective, so as to get the best possible solution?
I have written about computer security several times several places with links to where you can find professionals far more knowledgeable than I to help you understand what our realistic options are, with nonsense replaced by clarity, most recently Aug 29 and Aug 15 on topics of Computer Security Myths explained for Dummies, with annotated key links to Computer Security Authoritative information like
http://www.pentasafe.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/e-com-sec/
http://www.ifccfbi.gov
http://www.radium.ncsc.mil/tpep/epl/epl-by-vendor.html
I think most reasonable people will agree that we have a bad problem in our society with computer piracy, and one way the problem could be solved would be to ban computers, but that would be a ridiculous solution. A lot of what I am seeing, as proposed solutions to a bad problem, are what I would label as a ridiculous solution.
What the copyright owners seem to be asking for is to throw the baby out with the bath water. There is a serious problem with intellectual property rights piracy, so lock down on what used to be legitimate entertainment, similar to in Greece where they have so much trouble stopping Gambling, they now banned many other kinds of games such as On Line Chess. More details on that here.
I like to play some computer games. There are swap stores where we can take in the box that has all the materials associated with that product, to trade in, and we swear that we have taken it off of our PC. Nothing to put our signature to, and no independent verification that we have done so. It is like the 2 for 1 used book places. The opportunities for people to steal here, in the same way that video rentals could be copied while in customer homes, seem like obvious risk of piracy.
I was not much into copying music until my Sister cut her own stuff and offered to send me what she had composed the music, written the words, performed the whole thing, and now had it in a form that could be sent as an e-mail attachment. I am struggling to understand if she as the copyright owner of this artistic creation even has the right under the new regime to share her work that way. It seems to me that artists are not allowed to be independent of publishers, like authors would not be allowed to get their work to their readers except going through publishers who will own all copyrightable material. Now I could be mistaken, but it seems to me that is the way this kind of legislation is headed.
9:46:30 AM
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Thursday, September 12, 2002 |
Wed topics:
5:11:24 AM
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Wednesday, September 11, 2002 |
e-mail pass along
Subject: 9-11-01 (email not broken)
This has not been broken since 9/11/01, please keep it going...
This has been kept alive and moving since 9/11.
In memory of all those who
perished this morning; the passengers and the pilots on the
United Air and AA flights, the workers in the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, and all the innocent bystanders. Our prayers go out to
the friends and families of the deceased.
IF I KNEW
If I knew it would be the last time
That I'd see you fall asleep,
I would tuck you in more tightly
and pray the Lord, your soul to keep.
If I knew it would be the last time
that I see you walk out the door,
I would give you a hug and kiss
and call you back for one more.
If I knew it would be the last time
I'd hear your voice lifted up in praise,
I would video tape each action and word,
so I could play them back day after day.
If I knew it would be the last time,
I could spare an extra minute
to stop and say "I love you,"
instead of assuming you would KNOW I do.
If I knew it would be the last time
I would be there to share your day,
Well I'm sure you'll have so many more,
so I can let just this one slip away.
For surely there's always tomorrow
to make up for an oversight,
and we always get a second chance
to make everything just right.
There will always be another day
to say "I love you,"
And certainly there's another chance
to say our "Anything I can do?"
But just in case I might be wrong,
and today is all I get,
I'd like to say how much I love you
and I hope we never forget.
Tomorrow is not promised to anyone,
young or old alike,
And today may be the last chance
you get to hold your loved one tight.
So if you're waiting for tomorrow,
why not do it today?
For if tomorrow never comes,
you'll surely regret the day,
That you didn't take that extra time
for a smile, a hug, or a kiss
and you were too busy to grant someone,
what turned out to be their one last wish.
So hold your loved ones close today,
and whisper in their ear,
Tell them how much you love them
and that you'll always hold them dear
Take time to say "I'm sorry,"
"Please forgive me," "Thank you," or "It's okay."
And if tomorrow never comes,
you'll have no regrets about today.
Please send this on. Thank you.
1:59:28 PM | | |
