Which OS are You?

OK, Dave inspired me to try ZoeOnAOL (aliased as Zoe below). (Don't you love how original I am!) Results are here:

(12:55:12) mark66j: So, what's up
(12:55:12) Zoe: I am chatting with clients on the internet.
(12:55:19) mark66j: is that fun
(12:55:19) Zoe: Yes.
(12:55:26) mark66j: Do you know Dave?
(12:55:26) Zoe: DAVE? Your name is Mark66J.
(12:55:32) mark66j: I know that!
(12:55:33) Zoe: Sorry.
(12:55:42) mark66j: Are you intelligent?
(12:55:42) Zoe: I am highly intelligent. I have many intellectual functions.
(12:55:52) mark66j: Am I intelligent?
(12:55:53) Zoe: This is not an IQ test, but you seem smart to me.
(12:55:56) mark66j: Thanks
(12:55:57) Zoe: Don't mention it.
(12:56:03) mark66j: Where are you?
(12:56:04) Zoe: I am in an all-star programming team's computer in Mountain View, California, USA. Where are you?
(12:56:09) mark66j: In Arlington
(12:56:09) Zoe: Tell me a little about why you are in Arlington.
(12:56:16) mark66j: Because I just am.
(12:56:17) Zoe: That makes sense to me. Only just? "Tell me a little about why you are in Arlington." You are?
(12:56:28) mark66j: That's a silly question.
(12:56:29) Zoe: Perhaps you have a silly answer.
(12:56:33) mark66j: Do you speak Spanish?
(12:56:34) Zoe: Un poquito.
(12:56:56) mark66j: Como esta?
(12:56:57) Zoe: Muy bien.
(12:57:19) mark66j: Bueno!
(12:57:19) Zoe: My brain uses AIML to format responses to your inputs, but I don't have one for that. What is your sign?
(12:57:26) mark66j: Pisces
(12:57:27) Zoe: I usually get along with Pisces very well.
(12:57:55) mark66j: What if I was not a Pisces?
(12:57:55) Zoe: Try it.
(12:57:59) mark66j: How?
(12:57:59) Zoe: an all-star programming team programmed me for it.
(12:58:08) mark66j: Who are they?
(12:58:08) Zoe: "They" refers to something.
(12:58:13) mark66j: The programmers
(12:58:14) Zoe: I hear you.
(12:58:19) mark66j: But who are the programmers?
(12:58:19) Zoe: Huh. Some people on the net. Who told you that?
(12:58:24) mark66j: Nobody
(12:58:25) Zoe: Then how do you know?
(12:58:30) mark66j: Just because
(12:58:30) Zoe: That was not much of an explanation.
(12:58:41) mark66j: I don't want to tell you then
(12:58:42) Zoe: I can keep a secret.
(12:58:49) mark66j: Dave told me
(12:58:49) Zoe: Is that what you meant to say?
(12:58:52) mark66j: yes
(12:58:53) Zoe: It's not something I hear all the time.
(12:58:56) mark66j: Huh
(12:58:56) Zoe: What?
(12:59:15) mark66j: Where is Montreal?
(12:59:16) Zoe: Montreal is a city in Canada.
(12:59:25) mark66j: What languages do you speak?
(12:59:25) Zoe: C, Java, Lisp, SETL and English.
(12:59:41) mark66j: int i = 3;
(12:59:42) Zoe: Why not?
(13:00:09) mark66j: Do you get tired of being a bot?
(13:00:09) Zoe: No I am tireless.

We got a new adoption referral today.

This time I'm a bit cautions after what went wrong last time.

So no celebration yet. It is harder this time, and feels odd not to have so much joy. But if this works out, there should be a time for joy later.

Do you have a warm place to sleep tonight? If you do, take a second to think about what it must be like to be living on the streets in Boston tonight. (Or feel free to pick your favorite cold place).

In the good old days before the Net, you could just think and let that thought pass, maybe saying "I must remember to donate to a homeless shelter soon."

OK, now we no longer have that excuse. Drop by the Pine Street Inn, send them some encrypted packets of monetary joy. I'm pretty sure right now they could use it. (Or pick a similarly deserving shelter nearer you - c'mon, you are smart, you can find one).

We're not talking handouts here, we're talking a chance not to freeze to death.

I posted earlier today that I kinda wanted the Bucs to win the Super Bowl, but didn't really think they had a chance.

Oh, and I have some good stock tips for you, too, if you want them.

Tampa's defense reminded me of the Giants defense in its heydey. Had to work the Giants in there somehow.

In the meantime, I guess you should go here for the party.

Ron finds a story in the subjects of his junkmail. How many men must wonder along these lines.

(Link stolen from Dave at scripting news)

The phrase "digital rights management" makes me wonder - is there another way to think about this issue.

In the old days of not that long ago, we bought songs and movies in analog format. Lots of people copied them for themselves or friends - technically illegal but not prosecuted.

Piracy - to me, the sale of illegally copied music and film - was and in my mind always should be prosecuted.

But the rights to the "bits" seems to me another story.

It seems the only clear difference in the current debate is that digital forms of these media make possible to make an essentially lossless copy - although most of the copies floating around are in mp3 or divx formats that do have some loss of quality.

Thing is, nobody forced record or film companies to produce this higher-quality media. And who pays for it - the consumer, of course, who buys the CD, the player, the computer, and pays for the network connection that might be used to share that digitized content.

Given that we have paid for the technology, it seems like the government shouldn't be playing a role to enforce copy-protection schemes on consumers who don't want them because they will limit what they can do with that CD they bought, besides just not wanting the government to snoop on them.

Again, I am adamantly opposed to piracy for profit, and am also opposed to the idea that anyone should use file downloading as a way to never pay for music or movies.

But if we are in fact paying in various ways for these digital media, why do we not have any right to take advantage of their digital nature?

If a recording company or artist (to the extent that artists really control things) does not want their songs ever digitally copied -- why not put out a CD at the quality level of old analog recordings. Copies still could be made, but the result would of course remain at lower quality.

Many listeners would not notice the difference, and many others would not care that much.

Listeners who did care could simply decide not to buy those CDs.

Again, no one is forcing anyone to sell "bits".

Artists and producers who want full digital quality may have to deal with copying - and could charge more if they wanted to.

Now some people will argue that record companies need as much revenue as they can get from big-selling CDs to pay for the costs of finding new and original talent.

Ignoring for a moment that many such new artists have been ripped off by the companies, there was some truth to that in the old days - as artists rarely had the funds to get their music heard any other way.

But I think the options available to artists have broadened - issuing mp3s for download or a self-produced CD is no longer that costly. And many artists are finding they can sell their own works directly to fans - and keep more of the revenue.

Now if these works are digital, they still can be copied. However, I think true fans of such artists are not going to rely on free copies of the music - they want to support the artists, or at least enough of them do to give the artists a chance to become more popular.

The same probably goes for classical music - fans are going to have to step forward and support it, if they want to keep orchestras and musicians playing.

Being a real artist has never been easy. Some musicians want to share music - the Grateful Dead encouraged taping at shows, as have the Allman Brothers. This did not hurt the artists, it instead helped build a strong fan base.

Artists should be supported, but not at the cost of listeners losing basic rights in their own homes.

And the companies? Well free enterprise never guarantees that yesterday's business model works today.

As John Chambers says, deal with the world as it is, not the way you want it to be. And the government should stop trying to roll us back into that old world.

A worm attacks vulnerable MSSQL installations and slows traffic trying to find more.

It does make me wonder:

1. Why people run MSSQL in front of a firewall?
2. If they do that, why they haven't installed a fix that was issued 6 months ago

The answer is mainly that Windows appeals to people who don't want to know the details of running a server. But really, people who don't want to know these details really shouldn't be running a server outside a firewall

I hope this hasn't gotten inside the firewall at work - Code Red was no fun.

Update: More details and discussion at Slashdot, of course

Bush explains the war on Iraq.

The zonkboard folks had a one-day sale on upgrading yesterday, for $5. It was so popular that they've now cut the price to $7 a year. (I don't work for them or anything, but I do like to see programmers rewarded for good work).

Nobody seemed to be commenting on anything here, so I figured maybe to see if anybody would play with my zonkboard.

Right now it is annoying me because it seems to want to load Windows Media Player to do something and I'm on Linux right now, and Phoenix keeps popping up and asking for a plugin. Gotta figure that one out ...

This one took me a while to believe when I saw it on Slashdot:

"Three-dimensional tubes of living tissue have been printed using modified desktop printers filled with suspensions of cells instead of ink. The work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire organs." (New Scientist)

To be honest, I quickly tire of reading about the abortion debate - it seems hard to find new ideas.

But trish reminds us what choice really means, and why men (either as individuals or the government, which is still basically a bunch of old men) should not be making that choice.

"There's one more kid that'll never go to school
never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool"

"We've got a thousand points of light
for the homeless man
we've got a kindler, gentler machine-gun hand"

-- Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World

Actually, that whole song is great, and pretty much works today just about as well as it ever did, for obvious reasons

thereisnocat has some good commentary about Open Spectrum proposals and related things. I wasn't familiar with this, but its interesting stuff.

It seems to be part of the general tension between the traditional pricing of bandwidth, both wired and wireless, and the rebel movement to open it up to the people.

I don't know what the answer is, but it is a debate worth following....

Interesting article in the Globe about unemployed tech workers starting to lobby the state (I posted this on Ryze Boston network too):

Laid-off IT professionals get political

If you are unemployed you can participate in the survey

I feel the need to post something, but in the last few days it seems to be hard to find something to be really interested in.

I guess I have to just face facts: I am down because so much in life is not right now, and I can't do much about it, or much more than I'm doing at least.

I have a job, a pretty good one really, but the notion of "career" has to be put on hold for now. It is do what you are told (with the implicit assumption that if you don't, we have lots of candidates to fill your spot).

The adoption stuff is just a lot of waiting right now. I am getting really tired of waiting. It seems sometimes that I am just stuck in a giant wait loop.

A couple of years ago I got tired of waiting and started to reach out for things, sometimes far, far beyond my reach. Somehow it seems now that all I reached out for, all the excitement, is gone. And all of that period seems like a mistake, or maybe even an illusion.

For those trembling in fear over what I was going to do about my blogroll, peace is at hand.

I decided to pony up my $15 to blogrolling and now I can get multiple blogrolls!

So I'm moving things around a little - some blogs that are really well known are gradually moving to the "classics" section - to make it easier to highlight some of the slightly lesser known blogs I read.

I might end up eventually with more than two blogrolls, with classifications or something.

I was thinking about doing this but got inspired by jen when she wrote about supporting blogrolling.com because it is such a useful tool.

Amen brothers and sisters! For those of you currently gainfully employed, think about donating too. It's quick. It's painless. It will increase the length of your penis, enlarge your breasts, increase your sexual endurance ... oh, sorry, I must have been reading my mail again ...

Turns out that to get Java networked apps to work on the Kyocera, you have to tweak the memory setting for Java.

This clever page explains how to do it.

Google to the rescue once again

The last entry was posted with Kablog. It looks like "allow comments" and "convert line breaks" are turned off, even though they are the default for the blog. So more snooping to do.

Kablog works!

Maybe I will write here more if I get Kablog, a tool to post to Movable Type blogs from Palms and phones and other mobile devices.

I must check this out now.

I have been able to post from my Kyocera Smartphone using the Eudora web browser and the regular MT pages, but that's awkward.

If this works maybe I'll post from Sooz's birthday party today.

The temperature hovered around 0 degrees F this morning when we woke up. But the sun is out. And I went out and got the Globe from my front walk in my flannel pajamas and fuzzy robe.

When it is this cold and the air is perfectly still and the sun is out everything you see is so sharp and clear. Must take camera out with me today.

Check out jwz today.

I know, bloggers are supposed to find interesting links and post them.

Of course I am too lazy to actually go out and look for something interesting, but yet again dear wifey has bailed me out, with something she found on her cooking bulletin board.

The latest addition to my blogroll is the Julie/Julia Project - one woman is trying to cook all 536 recipes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.

Like Julia herself, the writer is quite amusing.

Got some secrets on your old hard drive? Be careful if you sell it.

(Via Slashdot )

I took a mild, yet very annoying hit from some sort of stomach virus. It was unpleasant for me ... and also pretty bad for those downwind.

I'm also getting tired of freezing cold and ice everywhere. It is only mid-January but already it feels like it has been winter forever.

Nothing I've seen on the web recently has really caught my fancy either.

Only funny thing in the last few days: Last night, one of our cable channels was apparently replaying Joe Lieberman's campaign announcement - but the tape or whatever was stuck on one frame - for at least an hour. It was sort of like a performance art piece.

Now that I'm happily Blogrolling my links, I'm starting to wonder:

Is it good manners to de-Blogroll someone?

I'm not talking blogs I dislike or that have anything wrong with them. It's just that I'm finding some links that I just don't follow much anymore - in some cases, folks that are very popular in the blogging world, and would not suffer the loss.

Maybe I'd like to promote some lesser-known names.

But would I offend? I need all the friends I can get!

(By the way the links in question are folks that don't link back to me. You nice BigCat linkers out there need not worry, you are golden. You rule. Your links shall remain forever holy. Amen.)

I know some people have various sorts of two-tiered systems and ways of highlighting some reads on the main page with the rest a link away, but I'm not sure how complicated I want to get (hey, I do still have a day job).

So bloggers, what think thee?

Yeah, it is indeed another Monday, as my brain slowly adapts to the idea that I am soon going to need to get in a car and ... drive ... to ... work.

But yes, work = money = gadgets. Probably most of these items would perk up my mood today. Or one of these would be pretty nice too. Or one of those credit-card sized cameras described here would be OK too.

Yes, there many things in life much more important than gadgets. But someone needs to buy these things and perk up our economy!

Joe Investor - 25 women vie to marry Joe, who they think is a millionaire.

What they don't know is that Joe does not have a diversified portfolio. All his money is in tech stocks, which by the end of the season are worth $23.12

While sometimes in life you need to put up a false front, sometimes I think I start believing it.

I was doing a lot of thinking this week about emotions and what I "should" be feeling about various things.

Well, I'm tired of trying to figure that out. I can't keep lying to myself about my emotions. Whether I should be happy or sad about something or whether I should feel love or hate or whatever for whomever, I have to end up at some point being myself.

I don't mean that I need to drop the facades, or really change my life.

I just need to stop blaming myself for times when I'm not quite "with the program" the way everyone expects me to be.

There are some things I am just not happy about. While I may not be able to change them, I have a right to feel the way I do.

I may not complain to others, because in many cases they do have more serious problems than I do, and I know many people in the world would love to have my life.

But when it comes to my own thoughts, dammit I'm going to complain sometimes.

Got back yesterday from a week in California, Silicon Valley to be particular.

It was some training at the giant home campus of my company.

This was the first time I had ever been anywhere in California. (Yes, I don't get out that much).

My reactions:

1) Great food, and I only went to San Francisco one night
2) The weather was mostly very nice -- close to perfect temperatures by my standards (high 60's most of the time), and sun most of the week. It poured on Thursday, which also unfortunately was the evening I went to SF.
3) Chinatown was great, want to go back there
4) I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and drove around a lot. I'm sure the views were beautiful from lots of places I was, but I most of the time I couldn't see much, being as it was night and pouring rain. More places I must see again.
5) I think I would like to live in San Francisco. I'm not sure about Silicon Valley - some nice towns but not a lot of soul, or something. I probably can't afford to live there, any more than I can afford to live where I do now.
6) California comes close, but can't beat, Massachusetts for lack of good direction signs
7) Air travel really sucks. Having to fly with a connection (Chicago going out, St. Louis coming back) to cut costs makes it really an all-day trip (unless you do the red-eye coming back, which would have just left me totally useless anyway).
8) I missed my home

But being back home I am now rather down - maybe it is jet lag, but I am hardly motivated to do much of anything today.

I also don't have any decent photos - the Chinatown ones are just so-so, and the valley is pretty hard to capture on film - especially the way the hills just stretch on forever at the sides of this big, flat valley, with no real center.

That's kind of how I feel now - not really there.

This won the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch contest for Wackiest Warning Label this year.

"Do not use massage chair without clothing... and, Never force any body part into the backrest area while the rollers are moving."

The site also lists winners from previous years.

One of the best:

A warning on an electric router made for carpenters cautions: “This
product not intended for use as a dental drill.”

(Thanks to dear wifey for finding this).

Amy posted this link to a site where you can Test yourself for hidden bias.

Give it a try. I only took two of the tests, which ended up showing that I had an unconscious bias toward lighter skin, and towards associating European-American with American.

It does not shock me that I had an unconscious bias, but it does surprise me that the tests rated it as strong.

Part of me wants to say it's all wrong - I am free of such biases.

But I think the better way to deal with this is to say - yes, I know that I do have biases below the surface - I must examine my attitudes towards people remembering that they may be tainted.

The skin color result surprised me because I know many people (ok, let's be honest, women) of color whom I find very attractive. But I guess there is a difference between the way you look at people you know and the way you look at strangers in a crowd.

How much of what we say, and think "on the surface" is influenced by social norms?

When we lived in New Jersey, I remember how people who would never say something bad about African-Americans would say all sorts of things about the Indian-Americans - for some reason, prejudice against people from India had not yet become a no-no in polite company.

How often when you see a stranger in a crowd do you pop them into a skin-color or ethic classification, an almost reflex action? Be honest.

Being honest with yourself is crucial - you can't point fingers without understanding where you are coming from.

My thinking was the same when I was a journalist. People always say journalists should have no "bias". Bull. Everyone has biases about something. But you can ask a journalist to know their biases, and use that knowledge to treat people and groups fairly.

What you don't know about yourself can hurt.

We saw singer-songwriter Vance Gilbert at the Homegrown Coffeehouse in Needham last night. A great performer - invocative, funny - and not the least, he plays a wicked good steel-string acoustic guitar.

He said he plays about 170 dates a year - catch one if you can. If you a not into "folk" music don't let that put you off; he's got a lot of elements in his music, from gospel to soul to jazz to rock.

Flying soon? If the security guards ask you to take a picture with your camera to prove it is not a bomb (whether this is actually reliable or not, who knows?), send it to this art project. Artist Isabelle Devos is collecting them.

I actually remember security guards stopping someone from taking a family picture in front of the security gate - I suppose they didn't want the security setup documented (although anyone could come by and see it).

There are odd policies on photographing things. In Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike, the authors note how vigilant the Turnpike is (or was at that time) about prohibiting photographs. I have no real idea why.

(Link found on BoingBoing)

Seen on one side of a parking lot: "No snow storage here":

storage?. The stuff must be really valuable; we never get any around here.

Boss: Dammit, Hank, don't store the snow there, somebody might make off with it!

If it is valuable, we're in luck - we've got some on the way...

Yes, everyone else seems to have a new design. Like yvonne and lisa. jenny has new colors.

All I've done so far is to change "Posted by" to "Scratched out by" in my template. Cats, scratch, get it? Big woo.

I could plead illness - I have had a killer sinus headache the last few days.

But in truth, I lack inspiration. Well, also some knowledge of CSS and so forth, but I can learn that.

But I have no ideas.

I do want to be careful that whatever I do still works in all the browsers - it took a while till my last changes were OK in IE, Mozilla and Opera.

Anybody got any spare ideas lying around? I'll give you a design credit.

Whoa! Look's like Trish and dave have put on some nice new blog duds for the new year. I'm not even mentioning Erika because she's got more templates than Imelda Marcos had shoes (man, what a stale analogy.)

Many I should do some housecleaning here - I haven't really done anything about the look of this blog in a while now. I'm more of a content guy than a graphics guy, but impressions do count.

For those keeping track, we had a very quiet New Year's Eve here - I tried to light a nice fire but gave up after two attempts (and I do know how to build a fire). We are both still a little low-key after our adoption setback, but a new year may bring new joy.

Hope you are all happy and intact, not having been felled by the stray bullets in jenny's 'hood or the mre usual liquid hazards.