A big win for free WiFi

FCC: Boston airport can't block airline's Wi-Fi | CNET News.com

Finally, Boston may get a chance to catch up with all of the other places that have free WiFi at the airport, with no thanks to AssPort.

There's nothing like plunking down $7.95 for maybe 30 minutes online while waiting for a flight. (Well, a while back I used to fly Continental out of Boston a lot and it was a lot more than 30 minutes, but anyway...)

In what is supposed to be a public place, it seems absurd to pay for wireless access, especially in a city that's supposed to be a high-tech leader.

Here's hoping this will start a trend.

Wikimania The three days of Wikimania are now done. I attended quite a few of the sessions and it was an eye-opener for me. There's an awful lot more to Wikipedia and family than a bunch of web pages. A lot of interesting people are doing a lot of fascinating things to organize data. The WiktionaryZ project and the Wikidata technology underneath it, for instance. The idea of a dictionary itself is impressive, but what they are trying to do is a combined reference for all languages, linked together by meaning and defining every word in every language in that language and in every other language. Even attempting to do this is impressive. I was not surprised to be impressed by the work of Martin Wattenberg whom I once had the pleasure to work with briefly on an art project (he took a barely useable Java applet I wrote and turned it into a marvel of user interface. But the presentation he gave with two other top researchers in visualization was stunning. Seeing words pictured in this way was unbelievable. Unfortunately some of what was shown is apparently not even captured anywhere on the web now, so I can't link to it. A lot more could be written about but frankly I'm too tired to do it right now. But I'll say that the intro to the closing talk by David Weinberger was, if you saw the excellent talk by Lawrence Lessig (video) on Friday, one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I can't explain it; maybe when the videos are both there you can see for yourself.

MacBook in the shop OK, I still like my new Mac but it finally had to go in for repair. It basically refused to run on battery, shutting down without warning after less than 5 minutes unplugged. From what I had read, I assumed this must be a bad battery (supposedly Apple has been issuing a "silent recall" of early MacBook Pro batteries). But the guy at the Genius Bar (man, I hate that name!) at the Apple Store said the battery looked OK, so it must be a bad logic board. So the laptop (oops, sorry, Apple doesn't like that word, something about heat ...) went away to wherever MacBooks go to heal. I'm curious to see if it runs cooler after it comes back. I didn't bring up the heat issue at the store, because it seemed hard to prove it was really a problem (it isn't really that much worse than the PowerBook it replaced). I really miss this machine -- nothing else I have is near as nice to use. But note to self in future -- don't buy any early production Mac laptops. There always seems to be something ... with the PowerBook it was the screen with odd white patterns. Unfortunately I had dropped it so they said they would not fix the screen under warranty. I can't complain too badly since these are really nice computers, when they work right.

Mac happiness

I've had my MacBookPro for about a month now, and I must say it is probably the best computer I've ever had. Besides being nice and fast, I am impressed with the quality of it especially since it's one of Apple's first Intel machines. My previous PowerBook G4 (the aluminum model) suffered from a bad screen that I unfortunately didn't get fixed under warranty, and an annoying power connector that eventually failed under stress (I am fairly rough on laptops).

I'm frankly surprised at the stability of the OS on Intel. Only once that I recall did it really crash (an odd problem where the mouse pointer got stuck on one side of the screen). I wonder how long Apple was working on this before they announced the switch?

Granted, this is an expensive machine, but you get a lot of quality here along with the Mac glamour factor.

A littler change One thing not commented on in the latest Apple announcements of the video iPod (not that thrilling to me) and a new iMac G5: This iMac is, I think, the first one without a built-in modem. (You can get an external USB one from Apple). I find this interesting because, even though broadband Internet is clearly taking over, a lot of people in this country still can't get it, at any price. (Well, OK, you can always get a T1 run to your house if you pay enough money, but ...). A lot of high-tech people like to live way out in the country, but they find themselves in dialup country. In case you haven't notice the U.S. isn't exactly a technical leader anymore. BTW I do want one of those iMacs, of course.

You really do have to see this This has already been linked a great deal but if you have not seen it, check out this Google Maps application that can track running/walking distance for a given course: Gmaps Pedometer. I get a little tired of folks going gaga over Google stuff but this is just plain impressive.

Spotlight saved my ass The Spotlight search in Mac OS X just quickly found some files that took me hours to prepare, and which I had somehow dragged into the Applications folder instead of the drive share where I meant to put them. Desktop search is fast moving from a feature to an essential, I think.

Upgraded and mostly happy Yesterday I installed Mac OS X "tiger" (insert millions of URLs about it here) and so far I think it is pretty impressive. Spotlight is exactly the kind of search tool I've wanted. On Windows I've tried Google Desktop Search -- it is good, but the integration of course is far less smooth. We'll see what Microsoft does in Longhorn. But for now Apple has clearly shown how it should be done. Safari's RSS abilities are also just as good as you've heard -- I have tried various RSS readers and never been totally happy. Safari's version appeals to the non-geek in me; it automatically finds the RSS feed for most Web sites when you browse there, and simply dragging that into the News folder is all you need to do. (EDIT: Actually, you have to switch to the RSS feed and then you can drag the "feed:" URL; why not do it it one step?) And I like the way you can go back and forth from Web pages to feeds. Firefox is good here too, and IE is looking really old now. After that I'm still exploring -- I've tried Automator a little but it seems a little sluggish to me and has hung a couple of times. Seems more work may be needed here, but it is too soon for me to tell. The Dashboard -- I am divided on it. It looks cool and a lot of the widgets are very handy, but I'm not sure I like the way it interacts with the rest of my desktop. I can't say exactly how it should work either. So far I think it is most useful if you only have a small number of widgets on it. The more there are, the slower it comes up and the more cluttered it seems. I think the killer use for it may be to have the one special tool you use a button click away. But others may differ on that. One thing is for sure: dropping a new widget in creates a cool ripple effect that's fun all by itself. Caution: Tiger does break some things, such as Cisco VPN and CodeTek Virtual Desktop Pro (which already didn't work with Firefox and Thunderbird, and the folks there don't seem to have posted anything about when they plan to fix it). Fortunately most other people seem to be fixing their apps pretty fast if needed. More later when I get more familiar with Tiger.

A nerdy day?? Today I fixed a computer (my PowerBook) but in the process spilled a glass of water and appear to have gronked my wife's computer (a Dell). I supposed this still saved us money because the 3-year-old Dell is probably cheaper to replace with a new one that the repair costs of a PowerBook. Apple wants lots of money for service. My Mac would not start up, and I tried all sorts of strange keyboard combos but nothing happened. Another suggestion on some forum or other was to disconnect the BIOS battery and reconnect. That worked like a charm. (This is still annoying since there are about 34,234 tiny screws that hold a PowerBook G4 (aluminum) together). The Dell was much easier to take apart, but a lot of drying with a hair dryer and compressed air didn't seem to get it working again. So it looks like we are headed out to get a new laptop for my wife, who really does need a lighter one than the Inspiron 8100 (a powerful machine for its time, but weighs about 34,234 pounds).

I think this is finally fixed The problem was an old copy of the mtblacklist plugin, which was overriding the new Movable Type code. So now if you have TypeKey, you should be able to post. Finding problems like this is a little too much like what I do for a living, actually.

It took me a while, but I finally got TypeKey working properly on this site -- apparently I didn't have the right form of my URL entered at TypeKey. From now on I am limiting comments to TypeKey users. For a while I had it set that anyone could comment, but I had to approve the comments before they appeared. But the deluge of emails from blogspammers was just getting to be too much. Granted, I write so little here that I'm not sure anyone is reading anymore, but I would like to be able to see some real comments from time to time, and could never keep up with the garbage in my mailbox. So if you use TypeKey drop me a comment! (PS: One problem with TypeKey registration (and with some similar systems) is that it requires the user to type in characters from a graphic. I'm aware this limits access by people with screen readers (and frankly I find these characters hard to read sometimes), but I have not been able to think of a good alternative yet. I do hope that a better system emerges).

Tiger talk I've been pretty bogged down in both things technical and not to be too excited recently about new operating systems and such, but OS X Tiger is looking very interesting. From this article for Apple developers it seems like there's really more to this new release than first meets the high. Apple has also linked to this O'Reilly article that has a little more to say. Building synchronization into the OS is an idea that's overdue, for one thing. Of course potentials of an OS are not very useful unless developers take advantage of them I remember the days of OS/2 when a lot of built-in power went untapped. But the (compared to today) snaillike speed of the CPU then made a lot of "cool" ideas too expensive to really use. When I bought my Mac it was intended mostly as a "fun" machine to edit photos and make moves, but it has now become my favorite place to write code as well -- especially since Visual Slick Edit runs on it now (Visual Slick Edit is an X windows app and as such is a little more awkward than editors like BBEdit, but one of the reasons I like VSE is that it works the same way on Windows, Mac or Linux. It's not the prettiest thing around, but one of the most powerful.

Emulate this Every once in a while I look at emulators of the Commodore 64. I really liked my C64 and have two in the attic, one of which runs (or at least it ran the last time I tried it. There is an amazing amount of activity here -- several projects that run on most major current OSes. But I also found one that runs on a Nokia cellphone. I got on this topic partly because I'm using emulated machines more and more at work; primarily VMWare so far but also MS Virtual Server. I have Virtual PC for my Mac. I was sort of slow to realize how cool this can be for software development and testing. I'm sure I could run a Windows or Linux version of the C64 emulator inside a VMWare machine. I wonder who holds the record for the most levels of emulation (on top of each other).

Silly planet Saturn is for certain an oddball planet. I mean, it looks like some kind of imaginary planet you'd see on a cartoon. And when you look at the pictures from the Cassini-Huygens probe, it looks like a fancy piece of computer-generated art. (I'm assuming here that the JPL and Nasa are not just computer generating this stuff!). The rings are too perfect to be real, but too bizarre for anyone to invent. To heck with Mars, this is a planet I'd really like to visit.

Upgraded (I think) I've just upgraded to Movable Type 3.0 -- so far so good. I do like the ability to restrict commenting;I'm getting very tired of comment spam. You can comment here immediately if you have a TypeKey account. Otherwise, the comments will be moderated by me. As to the controversy over the licensing of 3.0: I can't speak for everyone's experiences, but personally I don't have a problem. I donated $50 before and got $40 of that credited towards the $69 personal license. I guess I'm biased being a software developer, but I don't think that's a lot of money to spend for what I'm getting. I know lots of people say they've helped Six Apart in other ways, but developers can't survive on good will and coding help alone; computers to develop on are not free, for one thing. I applaud open source developers who can afford to work for free, but not everyone can. Anyway, let's see how things work!

Ultimate Tivo Gnome-Girl wants to "tivo my life please". Well, this is close: A friend at work recounted today that he and friends were not quite ready to toast the arrival of 2004, so he paused the broadcast of the ball dropping until they were ready. Who says time waits for no one.

More stupidity Not to beat a dead horse, but I guess a FedEx box might as well be a garbage can, if they lose your package. I would not be so upset if someone didn't threaten to give me negative feedback on eBay for not paying on time, as well as relisting the item I was trying to buy. In the past I've come to rely on FedEx. Now I am starting to wonder. Here's an exchange I had with them by email. I'd like to hear what you think. Didn't I explain that I knew the tracking number wasn't in their system. Am I being too harsh? From: trackingsupport@fedex.com Subject: Re: FedEx Express Domestic: Status of Shipment Date: January 5, 2004 11:17:51 AM EST To: markj@3cat.com We received your inquiry. Thank you for contacting FedEx. Unfortunately, the airbill number you provided is invalid or not found in our system. Please verify it, then make another attempt to track your shipment using our online tracking page: http://www.fedex.com/us/tracking. If you continue to have difficulties, call our Customer Service department at 1.800.Go.FedEx® 800.463.3339 for assistance. We hope this information is helpful. Again, thank you for contacting FedEx. [name omitted] On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 20:55:00 -0600 (CST) you wrote: Name: Mark H. James E-Mail: markj@3cat.com Nature of Request: Package Trace Support Question How would you like us to respond: Email Me Category: FedEx Express Domestic Subcategory: Status of Shipment Package Tracking #: XXXXXXX Account Number: XXXXXXXX Appx. Ship Date: 12/31/2003 Sender's Name: Mark H. James Recipient's Name: XXXXXXX Comments: This is my SECOND REQUEST for more information about this shipment. It was put in a drop box in Cambridge, MA, on 12/31/2003, but the tracking number has not appeared on your site and the recipient expected payment Friday. So far all I have gotten is a form autoresponse from you. I pay for overnight service and expect a quicker response. Thank you

I didn't know ... That livejournal is done with open source software. Sometimes we forget that lots of not-so-geeky Web sites are powered by open source. And open source plays a big role in lots of very commercial software, including what I write at work and the OS of the Mac I'm writing this on now. This is very old news, I know. Unless you listen to Microsoft. For some reason, lots of people do.

When customer service sucks Today's gripe is about FedEx. It is supposed to be an overnight delivery service. On Wednesday I dropped a FedEx envelope, complete with airbill, in a FedEx box in Cambridge, MA. So far, however, the tracking number has not shown up on FedEx website. I know everyone makes mistakes, but when I tried to contact them through the form on their website about 10:30 today, all I've gotten back is a automatic response that told me nothing. Do FedEx drop boxes not work? Is FedEx not responsible for what gets put there? It seems if you do overnight delivery, you need to respond to questions a little faster. My second complaint is about Western Union's auctionpayments.com site (formerly bidpay.com). I had two problems with them. First, a payment was returned as undeliverable, sent out again, and never received. Second, they refused to approve a payment, but did not tell me this for about a week and a half. Again, I used the form on their website to submit questions. With them, it took many days, and a second loud complaint, to get a confusing response. Even now, the first payment is still listed as being sent, even though they told me it had been canceled. Fair disclosure: I helped build one of the leading email response management software packages. I would love it if people used it, but when I'm the customer I just hope they use something. At least FedEx has a number I can call. Auction (non) payments doesn't list any phone numbers. You have to write to them, via snail mail. Very high-tech.

A classic, indeed For some reason I hadn't actually seen Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint presentation before now. This has been around for a while now, but is well worth seeing if you haven't. (Don't miss the intro on the Web site, it's great too). Although much fun has been made of it, PowerPoint's evils appear to go unchecked. A lot of otherwise sensible people spend meetings reading from slides of often confusing bullet points. Afterwards, few recall much about it but the pain to the eyeballs. Yes, I too have been guilty of committing Death by PowerPoint. Maybe we need a support group?

Word of the day If you don't know what BlueJacking is, and I didn't before today, you can read about it here. I first saw this word today on boingboing. Am I out of it? Probably.

I wonder ... It would be interesting to speculate on the effects of morale at a development shop when work you once did is now outsourced. It would be more interesting if the people who the work was outsourced to seem unable to do it, and the people who once did the work now have to do the work again because of that. Of course, I've never actually seen this happen. But it would be interesting to see ...

X etera Just loaded up Panther, aka OS X 10.3 (people at work were chiding me for waiting for several actual days before upgrading). It is very good. Apple touts the Finder as being improved. In fact, it is much better; so far I'd say it is the best file management tool I've used on any OS. In general the OS feels a lot more responsive, and seems to boot faster as well. The only problem I have had so far was with X11; the upgrade apparently does not automatically install the final X11 application if you had the beta. The fix is to delete the beta X11 application from Applications and install again from Disc 3 (or from the Apple site). You can tell because the new application is in the Utilities folder. The change didn't take effect for me until I restarted, to get rid of the old X11 that was still running (there may be a way to really kill it). The old one didn't properly start the quartz window manager, and all windows appeared with their tops overlapping the menu. But it works fine now. A very nice upgrade. There are apparently tons of new tricks to judge from macosxhints.

First impressions Of my new PowerBook -- very good. Getting it connected to my home wireless setup was trivial; just enter the WEP key and it was good to go. So was getting connected to Windows shares. Right after it came up it prompted me with an update to Java, and to the iPod software (I didn't do that because I don't have an iPod -- hey, one thing at a time here!) I'm trying out iMovie and iDVD right now, and they both seem exactly what I want for simple home video work. Importing video from my Sony camera was really easy; it isn't that hard on Linux with dvgrab, but this is nicer. The Windows software that came with the camera is really confusing, and I've basically not used it. I'm still a little confused by some things Mac. The Finder sometimes puzzles me (although I hear that's getting a big overhaul in the next OS X release). And I am a big right-mouse-button user on Linux and Windows, and also prefer eraserheads to trackpads, so an external mouse may be added soon (I might look at the Bluetooth ones, if they are not too expensive). More impressions as they come in...

Switching? Right now I'm awaiting arrival of a new PowerBook, which will be the first Apple I've ever owned. I'm not really switching from Windows -- I still use it, along with Linux. In the past I've used OS/2 as well. So why did I decide to go this way for a notebook? 1. I wanted to see for myself how good OS X is. I've heard good things, and I like the idea of a nice shell on top of a Unix base. 2. Although I'm fond of Linux (and use it on my work laptop, among other places), I've found that for some tasks, like movie editing, you have to do a little more work to get things set up than I'd like. 3. RedHat 9.0 makes a lot of improvements in things like fonts, the readability is still less than I'd like. And it still lacks in some areas running on a notebook (like being able to switch between using wireless and cabled Ethernet adapters, and between different WiFi setups). I could probably fix these problems if I had lots of time, but I don't. 4. I really ought to look at Web pages I do on a Mac as well as Windows and Linux. 5. The PowerBook looks very cool. 6. I've had problems with several of the major PC laptop brands, so I didn't have a clear choice there. 7. Having another Windows machine to keep security patching would be a pain (especially if it is going to connect to untrusted networks). You do need to patch Linux and Mac as well, but at least the threat volume is lower. Our Windows network in the labs at work is virus heaven. 8. There is no reason 8. 9. The PowerBook's SuperDrive will let me burn DVDs on the same machine that should make it easier to download from my camcorder, and deal with music files, etc. 10. iTunes Music Store. The last reason may seem silly -- I know it will be out on Windows sometime soon, but I really want it now. I love the idea of being able to get the music tracks I want, legally (and ethically). I've downloaded for free sometimes in the past, but I don't like the idea of making that a rule. Also, those services just don't work very well. And it would be hard to tell my kid not to do it if I do it. While the music industry is generally lame, and their lawsuits are a horrible mistake, we should try to support outposts of sanity. If this turns out to be more than an expensive toy, especially if it proves a good environment for developing Java (and other) software, you might see me owning more Macs (although I could never afford as many as I have PCs, most of which are cheap).

When tools suck I've just spent a while wrestling with a new Web-based collaboration tool we have. This is supposed to help us "work smarter", but so far it is just causing me aggrevation. 1) It's not clear if this tool really works with any browser but IE. And the Java part of it doesn't work with JDK 1.4 on Linux 2) I don't seem to have access to add anything, such as the status report I'm supposed to add This may be wonderful eventually, but tools that are not set up right or don't work really suck, because they waste your time and not only haven't you become more productive, you've become less productive because you've wasted hours trying to get the tool to work. Now this was a tool produced by some company that is supposed to be a specialist in doing this. Now they can't be blamed for my account being set up wrong, but as for the browsers, what the heck?

The wireless Interstate Philip Greenspun writes on some of the things free wireless access for all Americans might yield. Interesting. He mentions all the benefits the lack of tolls and tariffs within the U.S. has brought. It made me think a little about the Interstate highway system. Launched in the Eisenhower days (those crazy wild liberal days of Joe McCarthy, etc) it is one of the biggest government projects ever. Though I'm a big fan of railroads and am not a fan of urban sprawl, there's no denying that the interstates were one of the engines of economic growth in the 1960s. Our taxes helped build them, but a great bulk of their maintenance does come from the gas taxes paid by truckers. Can't we do better for the Internet than the outrageous wireless access fees some folks are charging. Here in Arlington, Massachusetts, some folks are trying to get free Wi-Fi access up and down the main drag, Massachusetts Avenue. And they are making progress. There are two coffee hangouts near me -- Starbucks, where you pay for wireless access, and Panera, where it is free. If I'm out and about with my laptop, I know where I'm headed. (This link from Dave Winer)

Computer part recycling day They are having a day at work where you can rid of old, unwanted computers, electronics and parts. I decided to finally get rid of some of the junk in my attic, which pretty much contains a mini-history of PC boards starting in 1992, when we bought our first IBM clone (before that I had a Commodore 64, with which I will never part). Maybe some of this stuff will actually be useful somewhere, who knows. In some parts of the world, any computer is a find. Read on to see a partial list of what's getting tossed. Motorola Lifestyle 28.8 external modem, circa 1995. (I don't really miss the 28.8 lifestyle that much) 3com Office Connect 8 port hub, 10BaseT (very stylish box) US Robotics "Sportster" 33.6 Faxmodem (external), copyright 1995 (very good modem, also had nice flashing lights) ATI Mach 64 PCI graphics card, also circa 1995 (nice card, used for quite a while) 3com EtherLink III card with three connectors (bayonet, RJ45 and that odd AUI one with 15 pins), dated 1994 3com EtherLink III card with only bayonet and AUI connector, dated 1995 (one of the above cards died at some point, but I kept it anyway). Intel Ethernet Pro with both bayonet and RJ45 connectors (never worked with Linux, as I recall) PE Logic SCSI card, ISA bus (worked fine, but ISA stuff always causes me problems) Colorado 250MB tape backup (was never quite big enough) Zoom 14.4 Faxmodem (for my first PC, I think) random memory of various sizes, none of which works at all in any current machine Adaptec AVA-1502E SCSI adapter (only external, probably came with a scanner?) Linksys Ether16 LAN Card, both 10BaseT and bayonet ("yes, it runs with NetWare" in red on a chip). SoundBlaster Pro16/32PNP+ sound card with joystick port (PCI) Startech high-speed serial card with two 9 pin connectors, never really used much but just kind of cool some sort of modem/sound card, came with a computer I bought off the discount rack at CompUSA to run Linux (which it did just fine) Cirrus Logic GD5446BV graphics card, PCI (also from discount computer?) Chinon floppy drive Samsung floppy drive ISA SCSI card, with Adaptec AIC-3370P chip (I think this ran my SCSI 9GB Micropolis drive, bought cheap when the company was going under. A double-height drive, this thing ran so hot I had to leave the case open on the machine. It eventually died, probably toasted itself to death) SoundBlaster 16 SCSI (my first sound card!), ISA. I actually was using this in a Linux machine recently, but needed better sound there ISA SCSI adapter with Tolerant NCR chip, never used (must have come with ZIP drive or scanner?) 8x IDE CD-ROM (once very fast!) - I kept the sound cable, always paranoid about not having the correct type of that annoying cable I may keep a Buslogic/Mylex differential SCSI card (I got this by mistake, when I didn't understand SCSI very well (do I now?), never worked with any drive I ever owned, but I never got around to sending it back. Anybody got any differential SCSI drives?) I will not recycle old hard drives, too worried about data being read off them if they don't get properly erased (apparently this is common). Sizes include: 9GB (the torrid Micropolis) 1.6GB 1.2GB 40MB (The first drive in our computer, considered generous at the time) 540MB (The second drive, and the one that started me on the dangerous path of never really erasing data, just getting bigger hard drives) You can see why I am considered a pack rat.

Another upgrade Just upgraded to "Movable Type":http://www.movabletype.org/ 2.6, and added the "MT-Textile":http://www.bradchoate.com/past/mttextile.php and "Smarty Pants":http://www.daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ plugins. # Now I have # Automatic # Numbering bq. and * bullets * like * this and all sorts of other nice things, like codes for automatic URL generation and "smart quotes" These are fun toys!

Another chick lookin' good

Lucy announces her new new design and it's pretty spiffy.

There are some elements here I really like that might make it into my design sometime soon, so if so thanks in advance to Pixelsphinx too. Don't worry, it won't be a ripoff, just a tribute!

Not almost famous

Clay Shirkey's article about weblog popularity fascinated me. (I found it, as usual, via Boing Boing.) He points out that the popularity of blogs follows a power-law distribution - the top 20 percent pf blogs is getting roughly 80 percent of inbound links.

One interesting - and not intuitive, at least to me - thing is that as the number of blogs increases, it makes the distribution of popularity even more uneven.

This is certainly true of my linking patterns - a good share of the blogs I link to were found from links on other blogs, not from random browsing.

Another interesting thing is that Live Journal - whose residents are often looked down upon by the snobs of the blog world - has one of the best ideas: Making it easy for its users to set up a list of friends, creating little mini-communities. Non-blog sites like Ryze also focus on community, by having friends lists and subnetworks you can join.

That's really most of the reason why I blog - as a former journalist part of me craves more readers, for sure, but the community of regular readers, those people I read all the time too, are much more important to me.

For people like myself who have long ago moved away from either their small-town homes or the old neighborhoods in cities, the Internet does provide the wonderful feature of being able to live in, or even create, your own small town.

In the newspaper world long ago, most large cities and even a lot of smaller ones had multiple papers, sometimes representing varying political views. Now most places have just one paper that generally ries to head somewhere down the middle of popular opinion, usually annoying people on both sides of the spectrum.

The saving grace of the Internet is that even if clicks get concentrated on larger sites, this should not drive the small guys out of business, since the cost of entry is so much smaller.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out ... and by the above principle, if you are reading this you are in a small (but one hopes happy) minority.

Another blogger bummer

Apparently, someone is not being very original. Read this.

Not much to add except to note I got this link from dave.

That's the odd thing - why steal when you can just steal links like I do -:). It saves typing.

Silly quiz time

Which OS are You?

Fun with Bots

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.

A "short" story?

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)

What are "digital" rights?

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.

MSSQL attack slows Net

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

Uber Zonk now cheaper

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).

It was getting a little lonely

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 ...

Did my new kidney print yet?

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)

Spectrum stuff

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....

I can't vote here, at least yet

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

Link a dinka dink

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 ...

But a trick with Kyocera

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.

Blog on the run?

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.

Bits of your life

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

(Via Slashdot )

A delicate question

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, I still look the same

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.

Lookin' sharp for 2003

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.

Web rambling

If the word "pastime" comes from "pass time" then the Web has no equal.

I started out noticing that someone found this blog while searching for Christmas music sung by cats. I felt bad about this - this site really should have such a thing. So I followed the link to the search, but did not immediately find a free .wav file I can put up here.

But somehow I stumbled across mention of John Ashcroft's alleged fear of calico cats. I am not sure if this is true but I wish to believe it is true. The mention was in a set of parody songs which, much as I dislike Ashcroft, I won't link to because they were not nearly as clever as they should be.

This chain of links came soon after this entry led me to this blog written from Iraq, and a link there took me to someplace I've now lost track of which brought me to an account of Jews being killed in Iraq by Nazis during World War II which then led to various things on 8-minute dating for Jewish singles (followed for no practical reason as I am neither single nor Jewish).

The point of all this? None, absolutely none.

Store of the Stars

Friday, I bought a new motherboard and processor at the Micro Center in Cambridge.

(Side Note: P4 2.53GHz, 533Mhz front-side bus, takes DDR233 RAM which they didn't have in the store so I had to go to CompUSA to get 512MB worth (didn't have any bigger ones!)).

Christmas Eve, who but Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were seen shopping there. (The actual paper Globe has a security camera shot of J-Lo (or was it J-Mo?) but it does not seem to have made it online).

So I am down with the stars or what?

Quality control

Just stumbled across this note about the Challenger disaster and the engineer's warning about the O-rings that management decided to ignore.

It just got me thinking - is the corporate culture really enought different now to prevent something like from happening again?

Sure, companies are focusing on quality. We are doing a better job where I work than we were a year ago, which is good.

But the question still is - in a high-profile situation, who is gutsy enough to say "no launch."

And this reminded me of Richard Feynman's last book, "What do you care what people think?", and his first-hand account of the hearings on the disaster.

Feynman always is a great read.

But that section in that book stands out. It is probably one of the best accounts of how the military-industrial complex can fail, and fail horribly - especially when voices of dissent are stifled.

Mood of the Blogosphere

I'm not sure if this is a rehash of an old idea, an improvement to it, or something totally useless, but here goes:

j-mo talks about wanting her blog to immediately express her mood. Lots of people have various icons on their entries on Live Journal and other places to show current mood.

It always seems that some days are bad mood days for lots of people. This time of year often has a lot of those days.

The idea of measuring this is a little like imood and their "mood of the Internet" - but that is a single service that you have to register for. I don't really think that scales very well. It seems like an open system that all could use for whoever they wanted to would be better.

What I'm thinking about is a standard XML tag that could be read by the various RSS aggregators and such (read Scripting News and the links there if you are interested in more about this).

This could also be worked into blogging software - set your mood and it sets the styles or whatever you want automatically.

Anyone could them compile a "mood" index for the part of the world that interested them - ranging from just their friends to everyone listed in one of the big indexes.

There is at least one use for this - it would be a good reminder on days when you are down to see that you are not the only one.

There is some stuff at imood.org that might be a step in this direction, but I'm not sure.

I just don't think it is likely that one company can get everyone to sign up.

I keep rethinking this entry so it may eventually go away, or something, but here it is.

Downs and ups

I've had some days recently where I've felt pretty blue, and I noticed an effect I've seen before -- sometimes I think I am a better code debugger when I'm down.

I've also solved a tough problem that has been bugging me for quite a while -- after a few hours of sitting and staring at it, and feeling like I was going to get nothing done today.

I think this is because I'm feeling better, I tend to think I'm a genius and the first thought that pops into my mind must be correct.

But when I'm feeling less self-esteem, sometimes the second or third - and much better - thoughts have a chance to bubble up.

Robert M. Pirsig describes something like this in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - he relates it to the Zen concept of "no mind".

I don't really know much about Zen but I think there is something to this - sometimes by feeling small you can think big.

High tech sucks

How's that for a jaunty title?

To beat a dead horse into a minute pulp ...

... a great deal of the people I know in the business fall into two groups:

1) People who are out of work

2) People who have a job, but don't really like what they are doing very much.

In general the people in group 1 are having a lot of trouble finding anything, and the people in group 2 have very little hope of moving anywhere they like better.

I have to say that this business seems like a fairly bad place to be these days.

I'm wondering if realistically we can excect this to change in the near future, or should many of us seriously consider another line of work.

I was originally attracted into this business by several factors:

1) The chance to innovate
2) The freedom to not feel chained to a given employer

I wanted to make money, good money, but I never really expected to get rich. I have made and still make pretty good money.

Along the line I got convinced by many people that stock options would make me rich. Yeah, I fell for that shit.

But I think almost everyone with a job feels like they are pretty much stuck with it -- good or bad.

And the chance to innovate is much reduced -- many companies are more focused on pulling themselves out of the current ruts -- or simply surviving -- that really, really new stuff is hard to do.

I get to work on more of that kind of thing that most people I know, so I don't have a right to complain.

But I still wonder if this line of work will really be what it was again, and whether it is worth waiting for that to happen.

Busy bee

Computer fixup day.

My Windows machine (yes, I do have one, shame shame) was getting cranky so I decided to get a new hard drive, a mere 80 GB to replace the 20 GB that was there (that drive and a new power supply are going to bring a second machine back from the dead, and that will be LInux).

And I for some reason decided to make the 3cat home page, which has very little on it, fully w3c compliant, and to update this site to Movable Type 2.51.

Read on if you are really bored:

So, first the computer:

I needed to move the boot drive from the old to new drive. To do this I got
Norton Ghost. I'm not in the business of plugging programs here but this one worked as advertised -- it can make a "virtual" boot partition, boot off that into DOS and do its stuff, meaning you don't even need a boot disk.

Trouble is, Ghost said it couldn't do its stuff because the C drive was too fragmented. So I went to defrag it with the Win2k tools, but it didn't have enough free space, so I had to move a lot of files.

Then defrag - on a 20 GB NTFS drive this takes forever, which probably ended up being about 2 hours or so, on a Pentium II 400mhz system. Maybe some other defraggers are faster.

After that, Ghost was pretty simple. After checked to see that the machine was OK, I moved the hard drive cable over to the new drive, making it the primary, and powered on. Hot damn, it works.

While waiting for the file moves and defrag stuff, I started playing with this site. This was spurred by seeing one of those "validated" tags.

So I played with tags on the simple page a while, and actually got it to have a clean bill of health. Probably won't be visible in Netscape 4.0 any more, but it actually looks pretty much the same in IE, Mozilla and Opera using CSS. Maybe there is hope for standards after all.

The MT upgrade was pretty simple, once I read the instructions -- basically just uploading some new files and running one cgi script.

But it doesn't look like the MT page is going to validate for a while. I played with that a little - fixing some missing tags - but something about the basic XML structure of the page pissed off the validator.

Something for another cold winter day.

So my day was spent playing with computers, with one nice interlude sitting by the fire with my human and cat roomies. Never left the house. Not a bad deal at all.

Check it out, y'all

Ya lookin for a blog?
j-mo's got a hot one
but if you want borin'
that one is really not one

It's always been amusin'
but now it's lookin betta
cuz jenny did a re-do
on each an ev'ry letta

She's got an MT template
that's got an attitude
so get your ass on over,
c'mon now, don't be rude:

j-mo

Hello, bn.com???

Excuse me, Barnes and Noble, but you need to rent a clue. I just made up my "wish list" there -- my wife hates Amazon because they screwed up an order and I know if I made a list up there I'd get coal in my stocking.

BN has a "wish list" -- but to quote them:

Can other people see my Wish List?
Your Wish List is personal and is not intended to be a gift registry.

Well now, if we had a gift registry we might actually sell more stuff and we wouldn't want that now would we?!

So she has to sign on as me to get me stuff, which means she has to sign off as herself.

Also, the site kept giving me error pages instead of what I wanted.

Maybe if e-commerce businesses would think a little more about customer-friendly sites we'd have fewer dot-bombs.

Employee empowerment?

This is supposed to be one of the goals of my company. It probably is one of the goals of your company too.

But does anybody out there really feel empowered?

To me, it seems that empowerment should include the ability to raise complaints. But I find that:

1) If I complain to my manager, nothing happens
2) If I complain to the department that is screwing up, they ignore it
3) If I complain publically, I am reprimanded in some way, or it is just plain ignored, too.

Rather than feeling empowered, I think I feel emasculated (at work, that is).

Score!

Today's Dilbert is so good, you may not be able to get away with posting it at work, so as a public service I'm posting it here.

Of course, this strip is of purely academic interest to me because the managers where I work are nothing like that. You knew that, right?

Who invented the Internet?

GooglePeople can answer all sorts of "Who is" questions. It does pretty well much of the time with things like "Who is the president of MIT?" It's lots of fun, and probably useful.

Of course, we know who invented the Internet, but if you want to make sure you can try GooglePeople, or just cheat and see the response.

Phony baloney

Now you know I'm no stranger to tech toys and such, but we just got a new cordless phone. (It seems like we have to buy a new one about every year because either the old one dies or it just sucks so bad you can't hear anyone.)

And I was amazed at how many models were on display (this was at Target). You've got 900 Mhz and 2.4 GHz and 5.8? Ghz and analog vs. digital and with and without answering machines and with one or two handsets and with/without intercoms, etc. etc. (Not to mention cellphones and IP phones and, yes, phones with cords!)

I am old enough to remember when, when you wanted a phone, you got one from The Phone Company, aka Ma Bell, aka AT&T (but we're not talkin' about your current puny AT&T, we're talking your big monopoly bend over and enjoy it 'cuz we own you type company).

It was a big deal when you could get phones in different colors.

On the wall in the basement we actually have one of those phones - I bought it around 1982 when the phone company had to sell them off.

And get this, kiddies, it has a DIAL on it. Does anyone born in the last 20 years even know how to work that thing?

There's lots of nice features on some of these toys, but I confess that in terms of the progress of civilization, this is not one of the areas that you should write home about. Those old Western Electric clunkers always worked, and lasted forever (see above reference to antique dial phone, which still works).

Cellphones are another story - they are easy to hate when annoying people use them where they shouldn't, but easy to love when you hit a deer in the middle of you don't have a clue where and really don't feel like walking miles in the rain to find a house and hoping it's not like one of those in stupid horror movies, etc.

My wife really hated the breakup of AT&T. Myself, I don't love monopolies, but confess to some nostalgia for Ma Bell and the days when phones were just there... how's that for an old fart comment!

Hee hee

I've seen some of these before, but didn't realize how many they have:

demotivators

In an attempt to show my total lack of motivation, I stole this link from Living Reflections from a Dream. Thankee!

Roll on

For those of you who could not sleep worrying about the layout of this page -- and I know you are legion -- I think I've got the blogrolling stuff working better and looking better -- so I moved all the manual links over to it now.