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Al Macintyre's Radio Weblog
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Thursday, October 31, 2002 |
Al's Water Bed
I have enjoyed sleeping in this water bed now for over 30 years.
I am now in the midst of the 3rd incident of a leak. Each time I am somewhat in a mental fog how to cope.
This is intolerable and needs to be resolved, but I not sure what the heck to do.
I am not sure how long this situation has existed.
When I went to bed last nite, I imagined I had cold feet - I now suspect that I had wet feet and was too sleepy to realize that was the case.
When I answered the phone this morning (FOP asking for a donation to help them buy toys for underprivileged kids this Christmas season) I realized I was wet, and upon examination, determined that all around the OUTSIDE of the waterbed, was dirty water that had seeped into the bedclothes
My mind was a blank on how to get the flow started to drain from water bed to drain to bathtub.
I sucked on the air end of the hose and damn near vomited.
Fortunately maintenance was working on the door bell for apartment complex so I asked them for help but situation now is that seepage was removed between bed and liner, a trickle has come out of the bed, and there is seepage again between bed and liner, and I need to be thinking about
when leave apartment - do I leave it pretending to drain or what
I was planning to
pay rent etc.
heading into work whenever & leave it in what condition when I am gone from apartment
The leak seems to be very slow compared to past memories of dripping to carpet below ... I run my hand over carpet and not finding damp spots, but I run my hand under the water bed and it is damp there, so I am going to leave it doing its trickle out, try to sleep on it tonite very carefully which will increase the rate of trickle out I hope, and check around town for Waterbed places for what kind of service available and pricing on replacement.
I have no idea where the leak is.
I figure I will need to hit the water bed stores and educate myself as to what the cost is to replace this vs. whether any of them are able to help me find the leak and repair it.
Paperwork that I have tells me it is better to repair the leak without draining the bed, but I have no idea where the leak is.
I also figure there is the sheer age of the thing.
These water beds cannot last to infinity
The local yellowpages say Waterbed is all one word, and lists 4 dealers in town for me to visit to see if they can fix this, and what the pricing is on replacing, and also review what kinds of features now available that were not part of state-of-art the last time I needed something. The reason I not have a REGULAR bed is because I am a BIG obese person, who has demolished several regular beds in past times
- Bedland at 521 South Green River (the river at my house is greyish brown)
- Bernie Moll in Mount Vernon
- Big Sur Waterbeds 1335 North Green River (I vaguely remember this place - I think they swam to a new location)
- www.CrazyLarrys.com at 5310 e Morgan
3:39:24 PM 
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Sunday, October 27, 2002 |
Recent Radio Links Test review:
Often we draw conclusions based on a test with what is broke and what is working, then a day or so later, Radio is functioning correctly, as though there is some lag in the software recognizing that there is something out there that should be indexed using the double quote system. Some wtuff that looks Ok for the owner of the Radio, really only works because the stuff is pointing at what is on our hard disk and does not work for other PC users.
- Double quotes in sentences in stories referencing other stories or shortcuts do become links in Radio.
- This works for other PC users.
- Double quotes in sentences in short cuts referencing stories failed to become links in Radio.
- Double quotes in sentences on home page referencing stories or shortcuts do become links in Radio.
- This works for other PC users.
- Home page usage of double quoted links to stories or shortcuts work correctly in RSS news aggregation. However, as we have just seen, this does not matter if the shortcut connection is flawed. In other words, Radio stories work better than Radio shortcuts.
- This works for other PC users
- Double quotes in sentences on category pages referencing stories do become links in Radio.
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- This works for other PC users.
- Category page usage of double quoted links to stories fail to work correctly in RSS news aggregation. This means that if we want links to our stories to work in categories where quoted by other people, then the posting to the category page needs to use the actual url link and not the double quoted version.
- There are probably other variations on this worth trying from time to time, since Radio software is continuously improved, and as I learn more Link Types.
- Rule of thumb here (conclusions for now) is to
- forget about double quoting system on home page and categories, because sometimes I will want to make a post in a category, and I will not want a messed up RSS news aggregation.
- depend upon double quoting system inside stories.
4:09:03 PM
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This is a test of an idea ... no point populating the shortcut with more info if it aint gonna work.
Well what I just learned is that double quoted links to stories can fail inside a shortcut - I had thought that the problem might be the double quote itself being part of the emphasis ... back to the re-thinking. I noticed that editing a big thing in shortcuts is potentially cumbersome compared to stories, so perhaps this SA deal will become a story.
Al Macintyre's Radio Stories listed alphabetically, using SA Radio Shortcut.
Al's plan is to have
- links to each,
- a brief abstract statement of the function of each,
- its status,
- when last updated helps regular visitors to Al site, latter bold when significantly updated, date started helps Al navigate stories.
- some estimate of size, like if you print it out it is 8 pages.
- When it is a list, approx how many of the relevant thing is there.
- As new stories get added, and existing updated, redo this content.
- From time to time, after significant volume of updates, Al plans to post this again to some appropriate Radio category. We will see how this works out.
"Al Categories" directory of categories started by Al with a brief statement of the intended function of each, and structured for ease of access from Home Page, using Navigation Link. Sometimes additional links added to navigate to what Al thinks were the most constructive posts. About 1 1/2 pages started 2002-10-05.
"Al Introduction" about Al, whenever Al gets a round TUIT. A few links to relevant posts started 2002-10-06
"Al Mac Radio Doc Plans" page & 1/2 of thoughts on long range write-up plans started 2002-09-06
"Banking Stories" 2 pages of stories of things that happened to me or are 2nd hand information that I might label Urban Legend if anyone else told me this stuff. Started 2002-08-31
"Blog Books" 1 page directory of books that have been published on Blogging, since we sometimes need a better manual than what we can find on-line. Started 2002-10-07
"Blog Money" 3 pages of speculation on the notion of how on Earth can anyone make money based on what we have learned from blogging. Started 2002-09-26
"Chess Variants" summarizes how we play some of them. Started 2002-09-21
"Enhanced Radio Tools" 2 pages directory of enhancements available to Radio from sources other than Radio Userland. Started 2002-09
"Navigating Your Radio Site" step by step instructions for a newbie to copy my "Radio url number system" cheat sheet to a story on their site, and update it with their numbers. Started 2002-08-21
"Radio Doc Sources Introduction" one page statement of the intentions of "Radio Doc Sources" moved separately so as not to clutter "Radio Doc Sources" for regular visitors. Started 2002-09-06
"Search Engine Tips" collection of links to search engines, advanced searching techniques, get a search engine onto our Blog site, where there are directories of weblogs on the Internet, and related information. Started 2002-09-29
"Radio url number system" cheat sheet for newbies on figuring out how to navigate some of the fundamental ingredients of our Radio weblog. Started 2002-08-17
"Stop Phone Spam" info on how it is done in Indiana. Started 2002-10-01
3:47:19 PM
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Saturday, October 26, 2002 |
What I personally fear the most about embedded chips is that
- If having this chip makes it easier to find someone who has been kidnapped, then at the same time, having this chip makes it easy for would-be kidnappers to find their victims, chop out the chip from the body, and leave it with a ransom note, so that when the rescuers zoom in on the chip, they find what the kidnappers want them to find. Also kidnappers can browse info about people in a crowd, to match up someone easy to seize with someone who is worth seizing, on the basis of what the embedded chip tells them, when they look up the code number.
- Some institutions will begin to require that their employees or customers have this embedded chip as part of their security system.
- Potential crooks will think the embedded chip is the only thing they need for access to the facility.
- Humans will be assaulted for the purpose of chopping off whatever part of their anatomy is thought to contain the chip, so that the crook can then use a human arm with an embedded chip as the key to try to unlock access to whatever facility they want to break into.
- It is bad enough now that crooks want to steal my wallet, or break into my home and steal property from me, or steal my identity, but with this technology, future crooks will want to chop off part of my body.
Wired Articles on Privacy:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy
The initial version of the VeriChipID is the size of a grain of rice. http://www.adsx.com/prodservpart/verichip.html It needs to be activated by a scanner. It gives a code number, that when looked up in a data base, gives whatever info the wearer has decided will be in that data base. However, much more advanced versions are in the pipeline, such as Digital Angel, which combines Global Positioning (GPS) system and monitoring service, to help keep track of people with certain medical conditions, school children, where the legal system needs to keep track of them, and potential kidnap victims. Sex Offenders are branded for life in some states, but not yet with this chip. Perhaps some Catholic Priests need to have the Mark of the Beast added to their anatomy, so parents can scan child care providers before entrusting their children to their care.
Remember Lojack? http://www.lojack.com/ This is a system used to help the police locate stolen vehicles, that have had Lojack installed in advance. Depending on how large Lojack is, and how obvious it is to thieves who might want to remove it during the theft, before the theft is discovered, some people might want this installed on other products of value ... would it interfere with the operation of a computer for example?
Well what we are talking about here is a similar concept embedded in human bodies.
A similar chip has been embedded into pets so animal shelters can identify the owners. Three different companies market these devices. There is some controversy over whether the technology works as advertised.
Several versions of this product, from several companies, are being marketed in Latin America with an GPS that keeps track of where the person is, who has the chip. This can help locate people who have been kidnapped, before the kidnappers remove the chip from their bodies, and it can also be used by kidnappers to help them find their kidnap victims. Kidnapping is big business in South America, and the US State Dept has a travel warning on Columbia due to this. A politician in Brazil has volunteered to be chipped, to demonstrate how safe it is to the people. The capital of Brazil is also the kidnapping capital of Brazil.
Wherify makes a bracelet that parents can lock onto children wrists, to allegedly track their physical movement, and their Internet travels, to allegedly keep the children safe, until a kidnapper removes the bracelet. http://www.wherifywireless.com/corp_home.htm If the child strays, does not report in when supposed to, the parents can use the internet to identify the child GPS signal on the map.
However, the technology exists such that the parents could have software continuously checking on where the child is in transit, to make a little map of all the places the children have been to, and the speed of transition (implying when in a vehicle in excess of speed limit).
I have a hard time believing that the Applied Digital Solutions chip was accurately depicted to FDA personnel who told Applied Digital Solutions that this chip did not need FDA approval, if the company proceeded in a certain way in their advertising claims and statements to the media, because Section 201 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, implants and other devices that "affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals" require government approval. http://www.fda.gov/opacom/laws/fdcact/fdctoc.htm Any foreign object inside human body, for any length of time, has the potential to impact that human's well being, and thus must have FDA approval. Many implants, that have no medical purpose, come under FDA regulation.
Perhaps we want to invest in Applied Digital Solutions, as there are sure to be lots of people who will want to buy the product, without taking the risks seriously, but suppose there is law suit thanks to major abuse? Be ready to sell the stock real fast. Applied Digital Solutions is also in the news because of conflicts with their auditors, which puts them at risk of being in violation of their restructured loan with IBM Global Credit.
- Hearing Aids, Contact Lenses, Tattoos, surely are less intrusive on our bodies than embedded chips, but they are in fact covered by FDA regulations. Something does not compute here.
- Anything we eat is covered by FDA regulations, with a large chunk of the food chain from agriculture also covered, and packaging of Halloween candy to give to kids
- Any medicine we take is covered by FDA regulations
- Vitamin Pills and alternative medicine covered by FDA regulations
- Medical tools in the home like thermometer or blood pressure measure or know if pregnant are covered by FDA
- Chemicals placed on our bodies, like cosmetics, ointments, anti-mosquito repellant, sun tan, you name it, is covered by FDA
- Products that emit radiation, are covered by FDA regulations, such as Cell Phones, Lasers, Microwave Ovens, Personal Computers ... but somehow this embedded chip in our bodies which is connected by radio to GPS to track who we are and where we are, is to be exempted from FDA regulations. I have a hard time believing this story.
- Safety of nation's blood supplies, from say West Nile or AIDS, is covered by FDA
- On-line medicine and imported treatments covered by FDA
- Bioterrorism information from FDA web site
FDA Investigator's Concern about potential health risks to humans from having this chip embedded in their bodies:
Apparently, during a press briefing of the implications of what had happened with the Jacobs family in Florida, Applied Digital Solutions representatives spoke of the chip being linked to FDA compliant medical data base. The FDA says it is illegal to use the FDA name in such a way that it sounds to be an endorsement of any product.
Any company, that is marketing products that might have government approval implications for some aspects of their products, ought to have its marketing department briefed by appropriate lawyers with respect to what you can say and what you ought not say. It sure sounds like Applied Digital Solutions is not following that safety protocol, which so far has resulted in a whole series of foot in mouth incidents that will probably eventually cost the company millions of dollars in fines, lawsuits, and lost business. I can only conclude that either Applied Digital Solutions management is extremely inexperienced, or deliberately taking serious chances because they think the publicity and scandals will help them much more than any damage.
I have not been following this story in detail, so it is not clear to me what the precise sequence of events are. The news media seems to be implying that of Applied Digital Solutions tried to put something over on the FDA, and the FDA either fell for some of it, or we are already seeing abuses.
Remember Lindows, where that company clicked I agree that everyone has to click to get a product, then in their advertising claimed a relationship that the I agree vendor felt was excessive and sued to have them stop saying that? Well the FDA has a similar gripe, and they are not the only place with gripes.
Allegedly Applied Digital Solutions asked the FDA what they had to do to avoid needing FDA approval, then after FDA told them, they both violated that understanding, and advertised that they had government approval to market the thing. Here is another example of where Applied Digital Solutions actions have triggered a storm of media controversy ... was it deliberate or by mistake? It sounds to me that if the FDA told them what they had to do to avoid needing FDA approval for the device, and if they complied with those conditions, then they did in fact have government approval from the FDA, and the only problem would be with how they phrased it.
This sounds to me to be very sloppy business practice, or outright attempt at fraud, another example of where Applied Digital Solutions actions triggered a storm of media controversy ... was it deliberate or by mistake?
FDA Spokesperson Claim that so long as no medical information is involved in this tracking of human beings, it is not subject to FDA regulation. It is Ok to have it connected to a medical data base, and it is Ok for people to use it to save them in medical emergencies, but so long as the device itself is not gathering medical information about the person it is embedded in, it is not subject to FDA approval.
The Executive Director of the New York ACLU says that this has enormous potential for benefits at the same time as enormous potential for abuse. I agree with both.
Potential benefit and abuse at the same time
Potential benefits
- Similar to medical alert bracelet ... you wheeled into hospital unconscious, and this thing tells medical professionals what you would have told them had you been conscious, about your medical allergies for example.
- Your child is kidnapped, and assuming the kidnappers don't have one of these scanners to locate and destroy the chip and injure your child in the process, the police use GPS to find your child.
- Alzheimer's patients who may get lost.
- Some felon is supposed to report to authorities regularly, out on bond, or on parole, but of course this only works for criminals who lack the desire to cut up their own bodies to remove the thing. http://www.ptm.com/
- Article listing benefits and claiming no risk to privacy. I do not believe the latter claim. http://www.techtv.com/siliconspin/features/story/0,23008,3375490,00.html The article claims that the data bases will be protected using the full state of art, but I know from past experience and education that the state of art is full of holes. Plus, there are various risks I talk about elsewhere in this post.
Potential abuses
- Many concerns stated above, such as the risk to having our arm chopped off if the chip is used for something really critical access, such as security key to get into a facility that terrorists or criminals desire to get into.
- You walking, minding your own business. Someone scans you, gets your code #s, looks up the data base, and pretty soon there is in your face advertising, tailored to the contents of your data base.
- Suppose you win the lottery. A kidnapper could use the chip to locate your child. Start off by searching the internet for info about you, to determine what kids you have and what the code numbers are of any chips in them, then use portable scanners to look at kids in your neighborhood to see which one has the chip for the parent that just got wealthy.
- Go through airport security - it sets off some kind of alarm - special legislation needed to say that people with this are allowed to use the nation's airlines. Ok now the homicide bombers seek to manufacture pieces of weapons that can masquerade as this stuff, then a terrorist team takes turns using the privacy of the airplane toilet to dig the pieces out of themselves to assemble their weapon. The initial version is about the size of a grain of rice and needs to be activated by a scanner. It does not have the GPS feature.
- Applied Digital Solutions CEO Richard Sullivan said, in an interview, that this could be used to track foreigners in the USA.
- You show up as a tourist, student, business person, or whatever, and have to have this injected into your body, as a condition of being in the country, then you would be treated as a suspected criminal until you leave. Those of us already here might have to show up to some government office to be injected. This way only the real criminals who smuggle themselves into the country and do not voluntarily go to the government offices would not have them.
- I also expect that some criminals would indulge in identity theft and have injected into themselves one of these gadgets with a forged code number that agrees with the person whose identity they are stealing. I wonder how difficult it would be to change the code number so that on different days the criminal will be masquerading as different people.
- Although the company is now downplaying their CEO's remarks, there has allegedly been an effort in the UN to mandate this for keeping track of refugees and other stateless persons.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation Attorney speaks out about Issues and Concerns with the VeriChip in http://www.techtv.com/siliconspin/features/story/0,23008,3375488,00.html
- Gary Wohlscheid, President of Last Days Ministries http://www.tldm.org/, is comparing this chip to the Biblical Mark of the Beast. http://www.tldm.org/News4/MarkoftheBeast.htm
Thanks to V. of TYR for bringing these links to Al attention. Discuss this at Tech TV also here and here and here. I may have lost track ... many of the Tech TV articles have at the very bottom, links to other articles that are related, then below that there is an area where people have been commenting on these stories. Some of the Wired articles also have space at the bottom for commenting on them.
12:04:52 PM
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Friday, October 25, 2002 |
Anyone stop to consider this guy might be a cop? [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
Well now that he has been arrested we know he really is ex-military, All American deadbeat family abuser. I thought he might be media. The trick was not in getting to the attack site, but in being non-suspicious after an attack. What profession can legitimately be in any community at any time, without anyone questioning them? A news media person.
Stick around, wait for the police to descend on the scene. Show up and try to interview them.
But now we know the sniper team was driving around in a personal attack vehicle disguised as an ordinary auto, so when stopped at a road block, the weapon hidden below the trap door.
1:56:30 AM
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Thursday, October 24, 2002 |
I took the multiple intelligences test and was told that of the six kinds, I scored highest on Personal Intelligence. The six kinds are:
- Linguistic
- I am definitely NOT a word smith able to get my point across with either precision or flair. So what should I do about that?
- Logical / Mathematical
- At one time this was my best subject, but it has deteriorated thanks to disuse. Math was no sweat for me in school. Some of the sciences were tough, some easy. Where I fell down was in memorization. When I had the leisure to figure things out, I did Ok. I could visualize multiple dimensions, but they tended to slow down my thinking geometrically.
- Visual / Spacial
- A phobia associated with heights and crowds probably impeded my exploration of this part of our world. I can function, but I just try to avoid certain combinations. I have met a few people with photographic memory and am glad I do not have it. What they all had in common was a lack of sympathy for people with impaired memories, an arrogant disdain for normal frailties.
- Physical
- I had never before considered athletic prowess as a form of intelligence, but you know, our world values that, and reading this section tells me that this includes craftsmen and artists, who are gifted in non-verbal expression.
- Social
- I figure I am probably lowest here, perhaps tied with physical. Both low compared to other people, and low compared to how well I do in the other intelligence areas.
- Personal
- Personal intelligence is all about the ability and willingness to reflect on life's big questions:
- I know that there is such a thing as stable secure powerful computers at affordable prices, so why does the crud drive them out of business?
- Why did 9/11 happen?
- Can the sniper get a fair trial and why does that matter?
- Why does our current enemy hate us so much, and is there a long term solution for the continuing recruitment of new enemies?
- What should I be doing differently, planning for my future?
When we are communicating with people we need to be sensitive to the fact that different people understand things best different ways, learn things best different ways. Good writing helps. Examples and Analogies help. Illustrations help. Numbers help.
Now one might argue that tests like these need to be similarly crafted with great wisdom. I saw some questions there that I had never before seen anything like it, and some familiar forms. It was a mixture of spacial, math, literary, and common sense questions.
Write your name using the hand you don't typically write with and look at the results. Which is true? I checked that the results looked like they were written by a four year old. Fortunately I was not asked about what my name looks like normally.
Chris is now 2/3 of Ted's age. In six years, Chris will be 4/5 of Ted's age. In 15 years, Chris will be 7/8 as old as Ted. If they are both under the age of ten, how old are they now?
I started with ((Ted now) x 2/3 = Chris now) + 6 years = (Ted then) x 4/5 therefore T x 10 = (T+6) x 12 solving for T now, with result of a negative number. I majored in math in college, but I really have not had this kind of arithmetic since grade school - I suspect I am misinterpreting 4/5 of Ted's age now or then?
3:53:54 PM
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Tuesday, October 22, 2002 |
Cyberspace is Not a Place After All!
Judge: Disabilities Act doesn't cover Web. A federal judge says Southwest Airlines doesn't have to make its site more accessible to the blind. The Americans with Disabilities Act, she says, doesn't apply to virtual space. [CNET News.com]
I'm sure glad this well-educated and articulate judge is here to teach all of us ignoramuses what cyberspace is and isn't. As more and more people rely to a greater extent on the Internet for news, connections to other humans, interaction, data storage, and a host of other things, it's nice to know that the U.S. government, at least, won't worry its pretty little empty head about those who have any disability. Let 'em cheat fate! [Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log]
I expect that someone will try to appeal this. But absent that, some employers may be able to cite this legal ruling as justification for denying access to computers on the job. If the internet is exempt from the disabled, then it is not much of a stretch to say that intranets are also exempt. If you are disabled, and want a job that involves using a computer terminal, which is probably a very large percentage of the jobs that exist today, then tough luck, the law does not apply to computer access. Discuss
1:00:14 PM
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Observations on Al's writing skills development.
I got feedback from more than one person on Friday's essay, about mismatches between our use of technology, our needs, how we learn how to use it effectively, and dreams of effective Knowledge Management. Basically my writing skills are at issue, and how I should focus practice to improve on my flaws.
While the indented bullets help me organize my thoughts, they do not always communicate well to other people. When I have a collection of related ideas, to communicate through my current level of understanding how I can utilize Radio, I should try to package each sub-thought as a separate page, using Radio Stories, then tie together a smaller piece on Home page or relevant category.
The article started as an outline in my head that was never put on paper. The end user needs that outline, or structure, spelled out using more obvious sub-titles.
On the content of my last essay.
With respect to the notion that lots of software comes with tons of features that no logical human can possibly use, and thus there will always be waste in what we get, I believe that so long as the excess capabilities do not impair performance of product usage, this is an economical way to deliver versatility using a standard package. I would hope that the Word Processing Software of The Future, come with features that do not occupy computer memory when they are not being used, so that current bloat demanding more hardware purchases just to keep same efficiency when upgrade to next software version, will become a design approach of The Past.
Blogging is not the only software where the computer gets out of the way, and the end user just does our thing to communicate ideas or transactions or whatever. Some other software is more helpful when it comes to access to integrated help, when we get stuck. Some other software is more helpful when we need to diagnose when something goes wrong.
I agree that with blogging, we can communicate effectively, without the software or other users reality constantly tripping us up, like in e-mail how we have to cope with the risk of viruses, con games, spam, flames, as an overhead baggage that comes with that territory. However, the fact that we CAN, does not mean that all users DO. In the article link that inspired my original writings, it is evident that a gigantic volume of potential users are blocked by the learning curve and common misconceptions.
However, my thinking in that essay, was aligned to the efficiency and comfort level of end user humans taking full advantage of the promise of Knowledge Management, and broad spectrum of users seeing the changing reality. This has marketing and training implications such as potential audiences not seeing the implications of how easy it is to implement new technologies.
My failure to communicate this more effectively is a testiment to both my writing skill inadequacies, and where I am in learning how to use Weblogging.
10:32:37 AM
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Friday, October 18, 2002 |
[Jim McGee] shares much insight on the mental challenges for end users learning Knowledge Management. QUOTE For most people, computers have more possibility, than they have real practical utility. UNQUOTE This then begs the question WHY and what can be done to fix this.
Our mental models evolve thanks to input such as the above links.
- Traditional education in computer literacy may be flawed.
- Users in the work place learn from other users, who may be good at what they do, but not good as instructors.
- This invariably leads to holes in what gets communicated.
- The new person learns how to do things under normal circumstances, with how to cope when things go wrong is often set aside for later, allowing time for them to get comfortable with the overall work flow. But invariably the new person is faced with something going wrong, long before the structure of their education addresses how we have learned to cope with some problems that do reoccur.
- Structure of Documentation, originally designed for Experts, in need of redesign for different audiences. Part of this is figuring out how best to utilize new tools for organizing information.
- Structure of Learning Environments failure to acknowledge and effectively deal with the notion that different people learn best different ways, and how do we identify what those ways are for potential students?
- The biggest mental bottleneck that I have seen when I have been trying to explain Weblogging to other people, is that most people tend to forget that computer technology is a moving target. We learn that as we move away from academia, the value of what we learned is eroded, but most of us forget that anything we have learned about computer know-how is eroded extremely rapidly, such that anything and everything we learn which was perfectly valid when we learned it, can become plain wrong a few years later.
- This begs the question of how best to structure continuing education to help people identify what is now wrongful data influencing their decision making.
- This is an extremely critical question when applied to Homeland Security, as I have previously alluded to, and plan to address in other essays.
- A few short years ago the World Wide Web did not exist. It is a relative newcomer on the Internet scene, but most everyone I know, who uses the Internet, takes it for granted. The PC was invented after the Internet had been around for a while, and the original inventors computer ingredients were almost 200 years ago (Babbage, Lovelace, Hollerith), but their equipment and tools would be unrecognizable to a computer user of today. It is quite possible that what we call computers today will be unrecognizable to the computer users of 50 years from now, unlike in transportation and most other technologies, where the basic form does not change much over time.
- An old friend, whom I have not seen for several years, was a teacher of nurses and medical students at a hospital. She would tell me that newcomers to medicine had no sense of history. They would learn about the latest medicines and treatments, then be studying a case from a couple of years ago, and ask why the treatment they learned yesterday was not used in that case. Well it had not been invented yet. A lot of this wonderful stuff that you are learning is also new to the old medical staff.
- Well there is the same kind of thing in computer technology. There is all this new stuff that did not exist as a possibility a few years ago, and many people who learned what could be done with computers are in need of regular refresher classes in what new stuff has come along most recently.
- The easiest way I know to pick up appreciation for computer possibilities is to go to the traveling shows organized by the major computer vendors, such as IBM, that shows business people here is what can be done RIGHT NOW with their hardware and software. These shows hit all the major cities, and come back around 3-6 months later, because that is how fast their reality changes, and there is whole new stuff to communicate.
- As more and more people want or need some computer feature, be it application integration, simple computer communications, your own web site, the larger customer base means more vendors offering products that make it extremely easy for someone with no technical background to do what used to require a high priced specialist. But when, in recent memory, something is very expensive, or needs heavy duty training to accomplish, many people are not ready to accept that we are crossing a thresh hold to a new reality, and that this is a continuing fact of life.
- This goes beyond Future Shock.
- The last time I had a major upgrade to my home PC, I was telling my supplier that I wanted to keep my old monitor because I liked it so much, and I need not buy a replacement keyboard ... further discussion led me to the discovery that between the previous time I had to buy a keyboard, and the latest aquisition, the price had dropped from like $250.00 to $10.00. All the more reason why I question a management decision to save a few bucks on each user's equipment by not giving them all the features available for rapid keyboarding. I believe the big cost in the work place is anything that impairs the people productivity, and trying to save $10.00 a person on the equipment on their desk top means a much larger loss per person in productivity in even one day of this, let alone years and years.
- However, as shown later in this essay, there is also an issue of teaching the people how to effectively use the keyboarding resources that are available and have been purchased.
- Of late there has been an interest in reviewing what software has been aquired, and how to use it more effectively. I think there is an even more basic thing that should be reviewed, and that is work flow at the interface of human and computer.
- Today anyone can afford a UPS, but I remember a couple decades ago trying to persuade my management to consider getting one, at a time when the cost was ONE HUNDRED TIMES more expensive than they are today. What made the difference was primarily growth in customer base, leading to economies of scale. I can say the same for many peripherals people take for granted today.
- But people remember how expensive this or that used to be the last time they considered getting something, without absorbing how dramatically the costs have shifted, and that memory is a bar today to even considering it.
- I think there is a need for a new kind of management document that evaluates the costs that weigh in on one possible approach vs. another, in which the costs of the ingredients can be depicted showing as of current reality, and at various points in past budget cycles, so that there is visibility of shifting weight in favor of a particular decision and trend lines as to whether this is getting cheaper or more expensive, so as to influence timing of applying some decision.
- I suspect academia is especially vulnerable to teaching what makes sense based on an understanding of price trade offs in the quicksand reality of computer pricing and possibilities evolving very rapidly.
- I think academia might be the logical place for researchers to explore the new kind of decision making document that I have proposed.
- Where I now work, there are over 1 million blue prints in file cabinets. These are the huge things that if you lay them on a conference table, the table is not big enough for the whole thing. Yet big as they are, somehow people occasionally manage to misfile them. Several years ago I suggested that we move the whole library to a CD Rom Juke Box
- (that's where you have a rack of CD Roms, and the software knows which Disk to insert into slot so as to access the data) to be attached to the network, so that any worker could access any blueprint at any time, and misfilings would be a thing of the past.
- Well when I first suggested this, it was too expensive, and there were issues of scanner unreliability when dealing with those large documents. The price has come crashing down, and the reliability skyrocketing up. However, disk space to access the software to access the various tools, is still a price bottleneck.
- I think there is room for rethinking client server resource allocation in a world where every desk top has unused resources and the whole enterprise is hurting for some resources.
- Some day my company will be ready to accept the merits of my proposal, but there are always the people who remember the reasons why we could not do this a few years ago, who are at risk of being blind to what has changed in the interim, just like I was blind to the drop in keyboard prices.
- We need to be able to analyse common error patterns, without the blame game distraction, then figure out corporate solutions.
- I am in a multi-user network with queues for user consumption of shared resources, whose access is optimized to maximize productivity by people currently connected to the system, such that there are delays for resources provided to work queues where processing does not need human interaction. For new users whose past experience was standalone systems, they have a significant learning curve to appreciate the fact that all these different kinds of queues exist (program execution, printer sequencing) both in system and in users (someone walks off with THEIR reports, but in between some pages is someone else's reports).
There may be value in evaluating how people around us have stumbled in learning how best to utilize technology. The following are examples from my own career, some from current employer, and many from earlier work experiences.
- We have talked before, earlier in my Brain to Brain category about the fear of work place blame game. I have seen people who seem to prefer to do nothing, than risk being a target of the perceived blame game. I have seen people do serious analysis of things that go wrong, in which they personally are blameless, and when you combine the input from several such analyses, we have meaningful data to act upon, but some managers focus on the commonality of each analysis being that the analyst is blameless, without dealing with the specific problems that they found.
- Multi-user creation and use of shared queries, spread sheets, and so forth in the networked business world, where one person creates a tool for a specialized need, then other people, who are less cognizant of tool creation, end up using those tools for other purposes, with potentially flawed output.
- I find it disturbing that there is an almost total lack of estimating skills or support for the notion that everything should be tested - existing tools that we use in our daily work, and new tools that get added - to validate that the output we are getting from them is in fact correct output.
- I have found it extremely disturbing to find this mind set among software designers at major computer vendors, leading to systemic bug blindness.
- I think it is a well known fact within the Computer Science Profession that the biggest bottleneck to getting accurate information into corporate data bases is the end user interface, and user interaction with warning messages that the software delivers with respect to data inconsistencies.
- I have talked about this with many managers, and it seems to me that there is a conceptual problem, where I am being accused of calling people idiots, or some topics are taboo because of perceived blame game. Very few co-workers have got it, with respect to what I was trying to communicate.
- For example, we have redesigned some input screens so that the same amount of work can flow into the system with 1/3 as many keystrokes, and we have redesigned reports to review the veracity of input so that it can be checked in 1/10 the human time. It took me YEARS to get permission to develop these improvements, because of this conceptual misconception as to what I was seeking to accomplish by discussing the bottlenecks and what I thought could be done about them.
- Some people have a mental barrier with respect to AND OR Boolean Logic. In practical business terms, you want to put a translator between them and the computer, because otherwise we are just about guaranteed bad results.
- I have run into several managers, over several decades, in which I was unable to get across to them that they use AND OR logic one way, and this system they using use it a DIFFERENT WAY and the way to get the computer to tell you what you want, is to couch your requests within the structure of this computer software, which really is very simple to define. But they seem locked into continuing to ask what are flawed commands of the computer, in terms of how the software is designed to function.
- The scary thing about this is that I only found out about these problems because these individuals asked me to figure out what was wrong with their output, and my conclusion was that is was flawed input by them. How many people are in this boat and not asking for help?
- Occasionally I have taken the time to just watch what the users of software that I have tinkered with are doing, to get some insight into how it can be further improved.
- In the process I have been horrified to witness some people with poor keyboarding skills. How long have they been doing this? Years perhaps. Who taught them this, and how many other people have been taught the same way? There are key combinations that can get the cursor to a specific location on an input screen, with at most 2-3 keystrokes, but here I see someone moving the cursor one position at a time, effectively doing 100 times as many keystrokes than are neccessary to get the job done.
There may also be value in evaluating what has led to us learning computers effectively. Can any of this insight be extended to other potential students?
- I watched other people perform some tasks, in which they explained stuff as they went along. I became eager to want to do that myself. The people, who were doing the showing, they had some teaching skills.
- Net Change documents are developed and distributed. These itemize what is different between our current system and something else that many users may have been familiar with in past work experiences.
- I have a document at work in which I can look up by subject, things that can go wrong, and how we have figured out is the best way to resolve that scenario. My challenge has been how to make that document available to my co-workers, while keeping the content structured so it is efficient for my use. Ultimately I believe this sort of thing belongs in a system that a search engine can hit.
- The first computer club that I was a member of - it developed a skills bank, a directory of members who had specific know how and experience in various nuances of various hardware and software. If any of us got into difficulty, we could look up the skills bank index to find fellow members with relevant know-how, then call them up and get rapid assistance.
- 2-3 years ago we were suffering thousands of misposted transactions a week, in which it took a few minutes to generate a thousand errors, but half a day to post the corrections. Now we are down to months between incidents of misposting. This is because of dual solutions. One technical, one management.
- The technical solution was to have the software intercept error conditions and apply generic actions instead of surprising users with geeky choices.
- The management solution was a combination of imposing some rules about how the queues were to be used, and recognizing that when people are faced with disruptions to their daily routine, we can have an epidemic of other people who get disturbed, as the initial victims seek to disassociate themselves with any risk of being targeted by the blame game, when the real game should be how to get the job done with zero tolerance for errors. Making a fuss about occasional errors can lead to a higher incidence of errors.
- Many companies have had the computer resources to support a test environment, that can be used for teaching end users. Ideally the test environment can be replicated regularly so that it is a sampling of say 5% of the production environment transactions replicating all combinations possible, so that users can be educated in everything, without replicating the same consumption of computer resources. While it is Ok for them to delete stuff in the test environment and make all sorts of mistakes, with no harm, there are dual problems of people knowing whether they in test or production (we have had people screw up in production when they thought they in test) and the notion that we not want to encourage behaviors in general through the education environment that are inappropriate in the real work place.
- I have suggested (not really implemented yet that I have seen, except in a few cases where it was helpful to me for testing new software modifications), that for every real criteria in a company (item, warehouse, facility, department, etc.) we create a TEST criteria, in which the General Ledger would be told to ignore any quantity or dollar value associated with transactions in those criteria. Then if someone wants to figure out how to do something, they can use the TEST item in the TEST department to see if their idea has merit.
1:58:51 PM
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Monday, October 14, 2002 |
Avoiding the Sniper
Dog News lives in the target zone so I been sending her various thoughts. Here below are some of what I think were my brighter ideas. Some of my ideas may be a bit dumb, but I hope on balance I have shared ideas that Y"all will find worthwhile thinking about. I have updated this mini-essay several times, most recently mid-day Thursday Oct 17. If you want to print it out, figure 5 pages.
She told me about a friend seeing a vehicle that looked exactly what the police were watching the public to be on the look out for, but all the police phone lines were busy, so I suggested calling that into the news media. Have them tail the suspect vehicles until the police clear them. The friend was not able to leave her job, at the time of the witnessing. Another thought is to have standard forms, downloadable from police web site, for witnesses to fill out when something fresh in their mind but access to the police not practical. At the time of the anthrax scare, and at times of bomb threats, we have had similar forms from the police that spell out what should be done when an incident occurs.
Put in perspective that while the sniper has killed 11 people in 11 days, in the same time period there have been 14 unrelated homicides in 5 of the 6 communities where the sniper has been active, while even more people die in traffic accidents (68 a year in DC, 660 in Maryland, 935 in Virginia). This is not really as bad as people in other countries have to put up with all the time. Get a pen pal in another country to understand what it is like for them and see that we might be over-reacting to this latest crime spree.
Is this a good time of year to visit Disneyland? Get away from the daily worries and have a good time somewhere else? Your auto club can probably print out maps of driving routes that take you to interesting places that are not on the sniper past visitations or even close.
If you want to get away for a while, consider that while you have a good job, there are hundreds of thousands of people around the country who are out of work. Perhaps you can organize a trade. You get away and live in someone else community for a while, and someone else take over your job and income until you ready to come home. In academia this is called taking a sabattical. Some Professor and family trade homes and jobs with some other Professor and family in some other city. The University has teacher all the time. Professor and family have nice place to live. Basically they trust each other, something like exchange students.
Say, how about exchange students your kids go live in some other city until DC is safer place again? Travel broadens the mind, so it is educational also.
The sniper is not neccessarily someone with police or military training, because so far all the victims have been people who were easy targets for someone who is a good shot, and desires to continue killing random victims. Ask someone who does have relevant training to suggest to you how to avoid being an easy target.
I think that right now, many people in the communities, that the sniper is preying on, could use a police briefing, not on the kind of stuff that the media is demanding, regarding progress or lack of progress finding this serial killer, because past criminals of this nature have gone on killing sprees that have lasted months or years before they got caught. Rather, what I think the people need is community policing meetings briefing the people on how to minimize risk of becoming a next target, and which of these various ideas are most constructive.
I have in the past suggested that Homeland Security Professionals could benefit from a seminar series put on by professionals from other walks of life - health and computer auditors for example. For other posts by me on security topics see my security category, or ask for copies of one of my Word documents on security issues.
- Your pooch pals need to be able to run outside while you remain indoors. I can send you attached to e-mail, some of my joke collections that will have you ROFL so much that you won't care about the real world until this is over.
- If you not have much in the way of a back yard for the dog, where you could have a long cable with the leash to it so dog can run back and forth, find a wooded area where you can walk out of sight of the highways.
- When you have to be outside, in the role of a pedestrian, do not remain stationary. Walk briskly, not in a straight line, but zig zag. Wear dark clothing, stay in dark shadowed areas, so that you are not an easy target.
- This is directly opposite to the kind of advice I would ordinarily give a bicyclist. Living in Evansville Indiana, where the crime rate is almost zero, so that we have the privilege of laws like it being illegal to play radio so loud in auto that it is annoying to adjacent cars in traffic, a lot of young people seem to be extremely careless about personal safety. I find pre-schoolers in middle of side streets with no look outs for traffic, wearing dark clothing at night. I see college age kids on bicycles, with no lights, just tiny reflectors, no safety helmet, dark clothing, on limited access highways at night, where the speed of the motorists like 50 mph. These kids are accidents looking for an auto to hit them.
- But when a sniper is around, a person needs to emulate these kids.
- Perhaps people going about their business in groups, so you guarantee that if a member of the group gets struck, survivors will have some clues to share. Think group of friends, neighbors, co-workers traveling together like a military expedition, with multiple lookouts in all directions, so if you fired upon, there's someone else looking in every direction. Have the group carry a camera to capture clues to share with the police.
- So far the sniper has shot at people outdoors, loading car in parking lot of strip mall retail outlets, waiting at a bus stop, mowing yard, at a gas station. So, you need to patronize establishments that have parking garages attached to where ever it is you want to go. Doesn't downtown have an underground garage? Don't some shopping centers have attached parking garages, where you can walk between car and shopping, and be hidden from sniper view at all times? Is there a safe subway system where you can go from indoors to indoors?
- The 10th incident, Monday nite, sounded like it was in the bottom level of an open air split level parking structure, not a real enclosed garage. When I say to park in a garage, I mean one that when you get out of your car, you are not visible outside the garage to some sniper. For the sniper to get you, also have to be inside the garage.
- In answer to one of my questions, dog news has informed me that several shoppers, inside the split level partially covered parking garage, witnessed a man standing behind his Astro Van, quickly taking the shot, and then getting into the van and leaving.
- The 4 gas stations were MOBILE SHELL SUNOCO EXXON
You want to patronize one of those brand names on the assumption the next gas station will be a 5th brand name.
- MICHAELS CRAFT STORE was location of FOUR of the shootings, either right there, or in a shopping area that had one.
Look up in Yellow pages where they all located.
Mark on a map.
Do not go anywhere close to any other such store.
- After the sniper is apprehended, use that map to assist in deliberately shopping near Michaels Craft Stores so as to undermine whatever economic purpose was why the sniper was frequenting those areas.
- You can hope that the police have all the Michaels Craft Store shopping areas staked out, and are running simulations what to do if this one is the next place the sniper raids.
- If you have a vehicle anything close to the description the police looking for, ask them to move it to police impound lot or other place of their choosing, so as to get similar vehicles off the streets and make it easier to find the one and only one left.
Suppose you are a retail commercial store and you want to protect shoppers visiting your establishment. Did you see the police putting a sheet like on a clothes line to protect the crime scene and victim? A shopping center could put something like that up to protect their parking lot patrons from visibility from the highways. Not a permanent structure, but temporary curtains on a split level parking lot. Put stuff in windows of stores like you batten down the hatches to protect against a storm or a riot, so the customers can be inside, not seen through the windows, and thus safe from sniper, while inside.
Shoppers need to be able to have their cars loaded in an enclosed area as they leave the store. It could be like a tent up against the building. Car drives into the tent, gets loaded, drives out. Someone to move the cars who should be wearing bullet proof vest and heavy plastic helmet like riot police, so that they can see where they going, but their head protected from bullet.
Customers arrive. Stop in tent covered area, give car keys to person in the plastic helmet, at which point there is a receipt that identifies car description and who drove it here, helmeted person moves it to parking area, turns in copy of receipt and the keys to person near cashier desk, with identification of parking space added. Customers ready to leave. Identify selves. One of the helmeted workers gets corresponding car keys, with paper saying which parking space that car located, goes to get it, drives it into tent covered area. It gets loaded. Customer leaves.
Customer is never exposed to sniper, except through windows of car, in the scenario that I have described. The only people exposed to sniper are helmeted people who are wearing bullet proof clothing. The cost for this would be minimal. What do curtains, or tent cost, or block up the windows of a store? The cost is the labor for the people wearing the bullet proof clothing. Hey, the economy could use some more people with jobs. Would shoppers be willing to make a donation to a fund for this kind of protection, so they have places they can go with this added peace of mind?
Do you have a drive in garage at your home that is large enough to accomodate a visiting vehicle? If so, use the Internet to order groceries, alternatives to Pizza, other stuff. Each neighborhood could have a weblog category that announces new businesses that have setup e-business services for their community, then webloggers can subscribe to that announcement category, and use it to link to the new announcements. (See Al's Understand Radio News Aggregation if you unfamiliar with this concept.) Sign up as a customer, specify wants, give directions to get to your home - store phones you before making a delivery to make sure someone ready to accept delivery and make payment. Then when this is all over, e-business has had a boost in your area. If sniper not caught any time soon, you have now setup infrastructure that can be used for Christmas shopping.
Business district organizations need to study how to get people from enclosed parking areas to retail establishments, without becoming exposed to the sniper.
Transit systems like buses and taxis need to review where their people wait for them, and find ways for the people to be enclosed, while at same time the drivers able to see when someone is waiting for them.
Do we need an Amber for Cops? ... someone calls in some alert, and a signal is sent to all police, irrespective of which agency, informing them of where some event occurred, then they react according to their stations relative to that location and type of event.
Employers need to think about this also. Do your employees drive to work and have their cars in a parking lot visible from the street? Do your people arrive and leave at predictable times? What can you do to make your employees less at risk?
Has Halloween been canceled? What does this do for the kids fun, and the economy of the stores that cater to their business?
Think gift certificates, substitute events, e-halloween, and contests in safe areas with top prize being like trip to Disneyland (something kids want, and also get you out of town for a great trip).
Ask Amtrak for a special evening or weekend trip. Kids from the neighborhood are driven to an enclosed railway station and board a train that will go on a special trip out of town, perhaps with a different return route. Many of the cars will be like neighborhood block parties for groups of people who cannot do outdoor stuff while this scare is going on. Kids visit with the various neighborhoods on the Amtrak trip. Can older kids be connected to the Internet from this?
Stores with web sites combine visitor # onto their web site with a program to print e-gift certificates that can be cashed in after the sniper is caught, in one of several special kids party weekends.
Have some quality time parents and children at home on grand tour of kids friendly web sites. Familes vote which is best in several categories (different, wild, fun, educational) and send them (the kids friendly website organizers) e-gift certificates from the local stores, that can be cashed in at national chains that have outlets in your community.
Result - local commercial economy does not get hurt, parents and kids have quality time, internet innovation is stimulated.
Assuming there is a shopping mall where people can drive into an enclosed garage, and there is some security like I been talking about, a shopping mall could have a Halloween weekend, in which extra security is put on for the weekend. Down the middle of the mall have little shoppes selling halloween related stuff, and each of the main stores provide gift certificate discount coupons, in which the kids have something to cash in when the sniper is no longer an impediment to going shopping. Stores know what to do - buy one get one free coupons.
Have a treasure hunt in the mall ... each store may contribute a clue that is related to the stuff they sell. The first 25 kids per hour to come in with the right answer receive a gift certificate discount coupon or something even better.
Are you annoyed by the Gun control people trying to take advantage of the big scare? The pro-2nd amendment crowd can fight back with a Neighborhood NRA watch ... people who have gun permits, and have had appropriate weapons training, could escort their neighbors on errands, prepared to shoot back at the sniper. Have a web site where people can sign up to have the Neighborhood NRA watch provide them with an armed escort. The police would be asked to swear in these people as temporary deputies with special badges showing that they have been checked out and are trusted to be traveling the city with weapons ready to fight the sniper.
[dws.] Asks QUOTE To: Anyone who publishes material related to the sniper in DC, Please do not give the idiot (sniper) in Washington a title that feeds his/her ego. "The Beltway Sniper" is too glamorous. Refer to him/her with a title that is more fitting, and less likely to be bragged about in prison, such as "The Murdering Coward". UNQUOTE [dws.]
2:50:57 AM
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Sunday, October 13, 2002 |
What we have here are some links inspired by me visiting places that are visited by people who also visit my site, showing some interests that we have in common.
- Christian stories that never happened.
- I'd like to see something similar on other Religions, because those of us who are not believers can sometimes have a hard time distinguishing truth vs. distortion.
- Computer Virus Myths - how to spot them.
- Warning - that site disables the back button.
- Darwin Awards for people who have found incredible ways to remove themselves from the gene pool. These are true stories, that someone could easily think were made up.
- Discuss Urban Legends.
- Electronic tour of artistic renditions of Urban Legends.
- I was not impressed with what I sampled, but different strokes for different folks.
- Hoax Identification Education
- Hoax Kill Service
- Once you find out if a message is a hoax you can send it to a designated email address and their software will then extract the addresses of all previous recipients from the message and inform them all that the message is a hoax.
- Humor about Hoaxes.
- Latest Urban Legends.
- Net Lore and Urban Legends.
- Norton Symantec Security Response Directory of e-mail Hoaxes.
- Researching Urban Legends.
- This might be where my sister got the idea that the volume of visitors to a website, translated into extra charges for bandwidth. Oh! that Is a true story for this site.
- Scam Busters list e-mail chain nonsense and other scams, tips on fighting spam, lots of good links, also including links to info on real computer viruses.
- Scope of Urban Legends.
- Many people think something is a hoax when it is not. See my Sep 20 post about the plight of a Nigerian woman, sentenced to be stoned to death for the crime of being jilted by the husband of her child, in which I got a flood of referers due to people searching Gooble and other engines for information on the hoax details on this story, so their only hits were on sites that both talked about this real life situation, and some unrelated hoaxes.
3:07:23 PM
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Friday, October 11, 2002 |
I took the color test. My Results QUOTE
You're brown, a credible, stable color that's reminiscent of fine wood, rich leather, and wistful melancholy. Most likely, you're a logical, practical person ruled more by your head than your heart. With your inquisitive mind and insatiable curiosity, you're probably a great problem solver.
UNQUOTE
3:23:24 PM
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Radio Wishes
Preference settings to help with our PC performance tweaking, and crash avoidance.
If our PC resources drop below some threshholds that we would set in the new preferences, Eadio is to censor the start of, or conclude the current running of, some scheduled actions, and perhaps within our editing window show us an icon alert that we have dropped to the specified danger threshholds. Events log state threshhold reached as stated in prefs and what action(s) impacted (not run on schedule, or taken to a conclusion before completion).
Link to PC Doctor site that is sensitive to Radio preference settings and what they mean.
Just like I can link to some inspection supplied by the anti-virus and other places, that checks out my PC security and tells me I have the latest anti-virus definitions but not the most advanced anti-virus software available for my PC, that I am protected against this or that, but I missed a spot in my defenses, and here is how to patch it.
I am dreaming of a future web site that I would link my PC to, and it would check my Radio preferences, and other general PC health, internet connection speed and so forth, then give me a PC Radio Medical Report, reccommending changes in my preferences to improve performance, stability, and other criteria. It would also note that I have Categories and RSS active but not Outlining and various other things. There would be links provided to documentation on the various things I not yet using, just in case I am ready to advance there.
2:03:04 PM
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I have been adding to my stories since my last update here.
- Blog Books directory of approx nine now.
- Blog Software directory now over one hundred different names there.
- Printed out, it comes to about 7 1/2 pages. Now until recently, my goals in building this thing were:
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- List actual names of the software outfits, so that people can use search engines to locate them.
- Give links for ease of checking out their latest offerings.
- Give some info about what this outfit has to offer.
- Add any links to relevant documentation I may have seen any place else.
- I now have a 5th goal - I think I will split off the introductory material (first 2 1/2 pages) into a separate story, like I did with Radio Doc Sources, so that regular visitors can focus in on the actual one hundred or whatever listed.
- Blog Software MT and RU
- Radio Doc Sources
- About 55 listed, in which I periodically adding a few more links. Printed out, this comes to 8 pages with approx 175 links to documentation and other aids to understanding Radio.
- Radio url number system
- Search Engine Tips
- Understand series
1:16:16 AM
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Thursday, October 10, 2002 |
[Chicago Sun Times] reports insider identity theft of 5,000 employees of the state of Illinois in which crooks in Indiana, and other states, opened credit card accounts in the names of the victims, then stuck them with the bills for what was purchased on those accounts.
2:20:23 PM
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Wednesday, October 09, 2002 |
W-O-O-D-Y-S--O-F-F-I-C-E--W-A-T-C-H Volume 7 Issue 47 is really annoyed with Microsoft.
W-O-O-D-Y-S--O-F-F-I-C-E--W-A-T-C-H describes QUOTE security holes in Word so big they defy description. UNQUOTE Subscribe to W-O-O-D-Y-S--O-F-F-I-C-E--W-A-T-C-H for the low down on understanding that Microsoft Security is an Oxymoron. There is a wealth of information in this regular e-newsletter.
Scenario:
- Bob has access to a file.
- Alice wants it.
- Alice sends Bob a document, innocently asking Bob to edit it and return it to her.
- When it comes back, it contains the file that Alice wanted, and Bob is none the wiser. Bob cannot block this with anti-virus or any of the usual PC security because this is the way Microsoft Word is supposed to work.
- or, Word can "phone home" to Alice web site, delivering what she wants. Bob does not need to send the document back to Alice and she can still get copy of the file she wants.
- Woody showed Microsoft step by step exactly how that could be done, Sep 17, and the latest Microsoft press release is still pretending that this capability is not in their software.
- Oct 5 Woody sent Microsoft a demonstration Word document that when opened, sends Woody the first 230 characters of any file on your PC that he cares to name, to anywhere he cares to send it.
- Contrary to Microsoft public statement, Alice does not need to know the absolute path to Bob's file. The person doing the pilfering can use just the name of the file without knowing what directory it is in.
- You can go after just about any file, such as the passwords file, so long as you know how Windows organizes these things.
- The ability to do this stuff is what Microsoft calls a feature, so obviously, to Microsoft, this is not something they have any commitment to fixing.
W-O-O-D-Y-S--O-F-F-I-C-E--W-A-T-C-H QUOTE
LIES, DAMN LIES, AND MICROSOFT
Man, am I ticked off.
On October 8 - yesterday - I received a copy of Microsoft's
Inside Office Newsletter. Under the headline "Answers to
Concerns About Security in Word" there's a link to
, where you'll find the same press release Microsoft posted
a month ago about the "confusion and speculation"
surrounding the huge security holes in all versions of
Word. This is the first time Microsoft has notified its
customers about Alex's Document Collaboration Spy problem,
as far as I can tell, and instead of telling something
resembling the truth, all we get is more obfuscation.
Recycled obfuscation at that.
Only Microsoft would have the unmitigated gall to lie so
blatantly, at this late date, and expect their customers to
swallow it. I use the term lie quite deliberately,
Microsoft is still making statements that it knew then and
knows now are totally false.
YODA tore the press release apart in Woody's Windows Watch
a couple of weeks ago
But YODA only knew part of the story: he didn't know
about the security holes I've been feeding to Microsoft,
and he hasn't seen the gaping exposures other folks have
encountered. The truth is far more devastating than
anything YODA could imagine.
In this issue of Woody's Office Watch, I'm going to show
you specifically how Microsoft is lying to you.
UNQUOTE
and Woody does so, with ample examples.
BACKGROUND
On August 26th Alex Gantman released to a small community of fellow anti-virus analysts details of a new type of security breach in Word, which has many variations and consequences. He didn’t misuse his discovery but told other computer security specialists through an avenue that Microsoft closely watches. Therefore Alex did notify Microsoft, at the same time as others. Microsoft objects to anyone else being told about security problems with Microsoft products, preferring to be the sole clearing house for information and arbiter of what their customers should know. It was only after Woody published some details in Woody’s OFFICE Watch on September 6th that the mainstream press got a hold of the story.
If you like the no-nonsense straight scoop of W-O-O-D-Y-S--O-F-F-I-C-E--W-A-T-C-H, assuming I have done an adequate job of translating / reviewing the latest news on this Microsoft Security is an Oxymoron front, here are some books to look out for from Woody (Al advertisement for Woody here in appreciation for the great education Al gets from Woddy). Windows XP All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies", Hungry Minds http://www.woodyswatch.com/l.asp?0764515489
"Special Edition Using Microsoft Office XP" with Ed Bott, Que
"Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2000" with Ed Bott, Que http://www.woodyswatch.com/l.asp?0789718421
"Woody Leonhard Teaches Office 2000", Que
4:13:49 PM
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Haven't we often had a dream that we could take over Microsoft and fix many things there? Well here is a chance for someone to become the new Bill Gates and re-design M$ policies.
- Accept this new latest deal.
- Insist on a contract in which they guarantee their promises.
- We know from past experience that they are incapable of providing security that works.
- When Microsoft history repeats, as we are sure that it will, class action law suit of all the victims ends up with new ownership of the company - take them to the cleaners.
[Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log] QUOTE
Microsoft security for pay.
This is perhaps Microsoft's most outrageous conductAnyone who knows me at all knows that I'm no fan of Microsoft. Their recent admission that Word:X isn't compatible with Jaguar and won't be for some unspecified future time has me seeing red. But that's a minor pimple on the ass of computing compared to this admission.
Microsoft: Does it pay to be safe?. An executive says the software maker is considering charging for extra security options and admits that the company didn't move on security until customers were ready to pay for it. [CNET News.com] This is the functional equivalent of telling a car buyer, "Oh, if you want a car that you can lock so nobody can steal it, that's going to cost you extra." I can't believe that even MS has this much audacity. And it's just further evidence that Microsoft needs to be dealt with much more harshly than it has been by the government and by the marketplace. Every IT manager in the United States who has locked his company into MS should be up in arms. Maybe we need a new policy in corporate America: IT managers who can't find a way to get their companies out of the MS fatal embrace should be fired and replaced with those who can think past the end of their Redmonds. UNQUOTE [Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log]
2:29:08 PM
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Thanks [Radio Free Blogistan] for a Great Link, and thanks Seb for a great article, with an immense volume of heavy duty links for us to explore. It would be great if I could have a printer-friendly version of this (some stuff tends to scroll off right side of my screen and paper). QUOTE
Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research. Sébastien Paquet has written an article about the rise of personal knowledge publishing. UNQUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan]
I added links to this in my Radio Start, which is an outline of what I think a beginner needs to know to avoid significant misconceptions when starting Weblogging with Radio.
P.S. What is the legal significance (if any) of Copy Left (very bottom of Seb's page)?
2:17:04 PM
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[At New York.com] Overview of what's at stake in the Eldred v.s. Ashcroft Copyright Case.
1:26:53 PM
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The Problems With Word on OS X Are Worse Than I ImaginedWord has become, for me at least, almost unusable since my upgrade to Jaguar. Here's what Microsoft's MVP support team has to say on the subject:
Unfortunately, Word is not going to work properly under Jaguar unless Microsoft releases a patch for Microsoft Office. The problems have now been analyzed, and the experts have found that Word v.X is not fully compatible with Jaguar, and there is nothing you can do to make it so.
What incredible garbage. Now what am I supposed to do? I have a publisher waiting for a book. They use Word. Their feedback to me is in Word comments, which are frigging broken in Word on Jaguar. Arrogance screws the little guy once again.
UNQUOTE [Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log]
Well here is a candidate for a souped up Lindows, since Word works on that Linux package. Do your word processing on Star Office for Linux and output the document as RTF standard which Word will accept. Just use Lindows to make the file acceptable to your publishers, and to get at their comments, while you do your real work on the computer of your choice.
12:15:09 AM
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Monday, October 07, 2002 |
Rick Bruner links to Wired article that thinks the love affair between Google and Weblogs is coming to an end. Rick says that if you install the Google Search Bar on your web site, it comes with a PageRank icon which shows a 10 point scale of how important Google ranks each page. His guru on these matters is Kevin, who thinks that the volume of quality links to your site is what raises your rank, not the overall volume. What is a quality link? Others that have a high PageRank. Kind of circular reasoning, which favors web sites that have been around the longest.
4:16:30 PM
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I just added another bunch of stuff to my story on Search Engine Tips. If you print it out, it now runs to about 4 1/2 pages with almost 50 significant links on such topics as:
- Links to other people evaluating Search Engine Choices.
- How to get your weblog listed on tons of Search Engines.
- How to get a Search Engine on your Radio Weblog.
- Navigating other Weblogs by a variety of criteria.
- Locating directories of Weblogs.
- Locate someone e-mail address, or phone #.
- Search non-public websites.
- Subscribe to alerts notifying us when a popular search query changes.
As I add additional stuff here, the volume of loose ends that I want to untangle continues to grow.
3:43:32 PM
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While adding some more updates to my Blog Software directory, it occurred to me that I might later have a mangement challenge keeping track of stuff that does not belong here, which reminds me of a funny story from yesteryear. In the 1970's I was active in the Cincinnati Computer Club, at a time when a lot of home computer users identified interesting Internet sites such as BBSs based on the phone number that went into your modem.
We'd circulate directories of phone numbers by category, published in newsletters, passed around on diskette, and some of those sites had directories of other sites that people tried to mine. Now at that point in time, the ability of end users to do cut and paste correctly was in its infancy, because the software just was not that good. So we would get strings of digits that were supposedly a phone number that someone had typed in wrong, or they dropped a leading or ending digit in a string, with a zero inserted by mistake that made the right number of digits.
Our club had a directory of several thousand numbers passed out to the officers and volunteers to check them out before we published them to the general membership. Quite a | | |
