Monday - 7 February, 2000
It's Monday! So let's start things off with a few lawyer jokes:
What do you call a lawyer gone bad?
Senator.What do you get when you cross a bad politician with a crooked lawyer?
Chelsea.What's the difference between a mosquito and a lawyer?
One is a blood-sucking parasite, the other is an insect.What's the difference between God and a lawyer?
God doesn't think he's a lawyer.
Not My Type. No, your eyes aren't fooling you. I made some changes to the style sheet for this site. The changes have to do with font size. Rather than dictate the size to everyone, I'll let their browser set it for them. At least, that's the plan. Let me know if you have any problems.
Scoring. The Pro Bowl turned out to be a pretty good watch. Lots of scoring. Lots of fun. And some spectators actually saw the game (most seemed to be in the parking lot getting drunk). Still, the sun was shining, the bikinis were out, and a good time was had by all.
The NFL signed a contract with the state to extend the Bowl through 2005. The cost to Hawai'i? 20 million USD. And worth every penny. Orlando, Florida wanted to take the event away but the players and the fans want it here. Not Disney World. So here it will stay.
Prada vs. New Zealand. Speaking of sporting events over the weekend. The America's Cup yachting challenger series ended. Unfortunately, it was Italy's Prada beating San Francisco's AmericaOne. Paul Cayard, skipper of AmericaOne gave it the best that he had, but money talks. And Prada spent $60 million USD on the boat. And it shows in its speed. That, and no mistakes, tactical or otherwise, by the crew aboard Luna Rossa sunk the US 5 - 4 in the best of nine series in what is widely being described as the best, most competitive series in cup history. Also historical will be the fact that this is the first time the US will not be either the defender or challenger. Well done to both crews.
Losing Memory. It appears that the sky rocketing prices of RAM is returning to earth. Memory maker Kingston Technology cut prices by about 20% in December. Some generic chips have dropped by as much as 50%. I don't know if prices will return to the days of $90 USD for 128MB but one can hope.
Word for the Day. Anarchy. Medieval Latin from Greek anarkhia (as arkhe 'rule'). 1. disorder, esp. political or social. 2. lack of government in a society. Some people actually think this is a good idea. But then, some people think a hole in their head is a good idea.
New Daynoter. Wellcome to our newest member, Ben Rota (aka Ator) from ArsTechnica. You can check him out here. Aloha Ben!
New Name, Same Chateau. Dr. Keyboard's diary page is moving. For now it's at this URL. But it will then change to this at a later date. As Dr. Keyboard said; "Blimey." Pants. Piffle. Bother. Yikes! Sigh.
***** Noon Update *****
Kung Hee Fat Choy 4698! In all the excitement of the weekend I forgot to mention the most important thing of all. Happy New Year! Although, now is not too early to get ready for the Y5K thing.
The Eyes Have It. If you've taken the time to checkout our newest Daynoter Ben Rota (see above), you may have noticed his log is written in white letters on a black background (the opposite of what you see here). According to the Bilbrey School of Web Design Rule #126, para 19, sub-part 2, Mk 1.03.20.001, this is verboten. If you have problems reading his text, you can do what Brian suggests, go to Edit, and choose select all. This usually will highlight all of the text and give you an inverse image (i.e. dark letters on a light background). Thanks to RBT for the original tip sent to Brian.
Bursting Bubbles. If you think much of ecommerce is built on the premise that there is a free lunch, and you think they are wrong, then here is the story for you. The Los Angeles Times reports that this business model does not work in the long run (well, duh). Not interested in business models, well then skip on down to the next item. But then, don't blame me if someone like Amazon.com files for bankruptcy.
More lawyer jokes:
A group of terrorists hijacked a plane full of lawyers. They called down to ground control with their list of demands and added that if their demands weren't met, they would release one lawyer every hour. (If this looks familiar, it's because it's a very old joke.)
A small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two.
One juror overheard saying to another...”You’ll notice that neither the prosecutor or defense attorney swore to tell the truth!”
Aloha!
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Tuesday - 8 February, 2000
Episode II: The Film That Could Be. Spotted on arstechnica.com, a link to the Star Wars Episode II trailer! Well, OK. Maybe NOT. The link here, takes you to a fan page with various mock-ups of what could be. In this case, it's a compilation of scenes from various movies edited together to make a trailer. Note that the download is 4MB (in QuickTime .mov format which does not play nicely with MS media player so you may have to use Nestscape and a QuickTime plug-in) so don't bother unless you have a pretty fast connection. May the Force be with you. Always (or at least until 22 or 24 May 2002 when the real version is rumored for release).
Numbers Don't Lie. The site stats are in for last month. And even I am astounded by the final numbers. Remember that this site has been around only since October of last year. And remember, I'm doing absolutely nothing to promote this site. And remember what I write about is not exactly news for geeks. So having said that, 11,948 hits for my little corner of the world is pretty darned good. If I do say so myself. Yee Haw! I doubt that I can sustain that level without doing some major promoting (which I can't do even if I wanted to) so I will assume that the count will decrease this month. But still. Thank you very much. It is much appreciated.
No Yahoo! The morning TV stations are reporting that one of Yahoo.com's routers was hit with a denial of service attack yesterday. It appears to have been coordinated from multiple points on the net with spoofed addresses. If it sounds familiar, it's because it probably is. It took Yahoo three hours to figure out what was happening and to set filters to reject the multiple addresses. See the original CERT alert here.
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Hump Day Wednesday - 9 February, 2000
In Denial. The Denial of Service attacks seem to be spreading. First it was Yahoo. Now it's eBay, Amazon, buy.com, and heck, even cnn.com. So if things seem the running like molasses on the 'net, perhaps this is why.
Gambling Legislation Update. So far, it look like at least one of the gambling bills is coming up craps. A shipboard gambling bill drew about 30 people to testify against it. The morning paper is also saying the House and Senate leadership oppose this bill. However, the House member who introduced the bill is still trying to get it passed by amending it. The measure comes up for its first vote on Friday.
Speaking of legislation. I need to work on some testimony on a bill for merit pay for judges. So this is about it for now. If I can, I'll try to do more at the lunch break.
***** Noon Update *****
Rotten Pairs. I guess this must be a unique point in time but trying to switch over to pair.com as the host for this site is not going that smoothly. The site itself is now setup. But access to it is spotty. And when I do get in, transfers have been very slow. As is the email. Also, my request to support regarding the domain transfer problem below has yet to be answered.
Then there are the "normal" problems working with NSI (hawk, spit) to transfer the registration and to re-write some of the perl scripts to work in the Unix environment (the old site used NT servers).
Pair sent to me a DNS change template via email which I then sent to NSI (per pair.com's instructions). NSI then sent it back and said that the email address it was sent from was incorrect (NSI, as a default, uses email addresses to authenticate requested changes). As Pournelle's 1st Law states; "Error messages are what the programmer thought might be happening, and do not always have any relationship to what is happening." The problem in my case was not that the change template was being sent from the wrong email address; but rather that the authentication method was wrong. That is, even though the default is address authentication, there are other ways (password or PGP key) of authenticating. Once that was cleared-up, the request was accepted for processing. I assume they will input the changes within 24 hours. After that, NSI does a zone update twice-a-day. At 5:00 in the morning and at 5:00 in the afternoon (EST). From there, figure on a day or two before the change propagates out to where you live.
You gentle reader, don't have to do anything as long as you continue to type in something like http://seto.org/current.html. However, if for some crazy reason you are using the IP address, you will have to change your evil ways <g>. In any case, the only difference you will see once you get to the new site will be that the "search" function does not work yet (see below) and the word "Pair.com" in small letters at the bottom of the http://seto.org/index.html page.
Now, supposedly, perl is platform independent. And for the most part, that is correct. But. There are some gotchas. Fir'instance. In some environments, when a perl script outputs something as an HTML page, the line after the
print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";
must be a blank space. If it's not, you will get a Server 500 Error. And. Even if you have a blank space, it may not be the right kind of blank space. I was not taking good notes at the time, but when I was debugging one script that worked just fine on the NT server, but not on the Pair.com Unix server, I decided to delete the blank line, then insert a new line. Once I did that, it worked fine. No. Don't ask me why. I assume there's a difference in carriage return and line feed between the two environments but I really don't care at this point. Sigh.
Then, paths are of course different. Especially given the change between NT and Unix. So anything that is path dependent may or may not work. Depending on how different the two systems were set-up. In my case, it's not that bad and in fact could have been much worse.
And then finally, permissions. NT doesn't need no stink'in permissions (well, actually it does but not as much as Unix). So now I have to remember, chmod 755. Chmod 707. Etc. Etc. Etc.
But. As I said, it could have been worse. And things are progressing. Hopefully, I'll be able to work on the search engine perl script and get that running within a couple of days (he said crossing his fingers and toes).
I do these things...
Aloha!
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Thursday - 10 February, 2000
Want some grass? No. Not that kind. Although Hawai'i is, ahem, rather known for that. What I'm talking about is the kind they have on football fields. The way God and Earl L. (Curly) Lambeau intended it. Well, Aloha stadium, site of the recent National (American) Football League Pro Bowl has artificial turf. And the NFL, wants Hawai'i to change to real grass by 2002. The cost? $1 million USD.
Book'em Danno. The USA (cable) Network's highest rated show, "Pacific Blue", may be moving across the left pond to our neck of the woods. Talks begin soon on bringing the cops on bikes show here with its near $1 million USD per show budget. Perhaps we can use the money to pay for the stadium upgrade.
Hawk, spit. Still no follow-up from pair.com support on my problem with transferring my domain. Not that I need to have a response at this point. But it would be nice if they at least read the mail and let you know they've read it. And I still haven't heard back from NSI as to when they will do the update. Big sigh.
***** Noon Update *****
Word for the Day. Daemon. 5. An inner or attendant spirit. Or in computer circles: Pronounced demon or damon, a process that runs in the background and performs a specified operation at predefined times or in response to certain events. Stakes anyone?
This in from fellow Daynoter Brian Bilbrey regarding my waiting for Godot, I mean NSI:
From: Brian Bilbrey
To: Dan Seto
Subject: Not hearing from NSI is a good thing...
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 09:34:11 +0000When the forms are broken, you generally hear back within 4 hours or so. No news is good news, when it comes to NSI. Trust me.
Brian is of course right (as always <g>). Thanks for reminding me. And thank you to your lovely and charming wife Marcia for the link to yet even more lawyer jokes here.
As to NSI. YIPEE! I just checked the networksolutions.com whois and find that they have at least updated that. It is now showing pair.com as the technical contact and the domain servers have the correct IP addresses. But. When I type in http://seto.org I get the old site. On the other hand, when I type in http://www.seto.org, I get the new. How *interesting*. I am hopeful that typing either will get the new site. See what happens when you type in the URL http://www.seto.org. If you see "Pair.com" in very small type at the bottom of the page then you have made it to the new site. If you see "9netave.com" then you are still at the old. Let me know what happens. Thanks. [Never mind. The problem was that the old IP address was hard coded in his HOSTS file. Forgive him, for he knows not what he does. - Ed.]
Search Me. I think I have the perl scripts fixed that run the search engine on the new site. The two final problems were related to setting the paths correctly. The first is easy, all perl scripts running on Unix systems, require as a first line, the path to where the perl executables are found. It is usually in the form of #!/usr/local/bin/perl. Perl, running on NT, uses an environmental variable to find perl and so does not require that line in its scripts.
The second problem relates to what tree path the engine searches. As I have it setup, it searches only the directory with my daynotes in it. But to get to that directly involves the use of a symbolic link. And for whatever reason, the script did not seem to be able to resolve the link. Hence, I had to hardwire the path that I wanted it to search. There is probably a better way of doing it but I am by no means a perl master [open up your shell I say! Right now you slimey sea creature!].
Aloha!
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Aloha Friday - 11 February, 2000
It's Friday! The change to my domain registration seems to have propagated around the world. So, sometime next week I will pull the plug on the old site. Before I do that, I will put up a redirector page there so that anyone who is accessing it via IP address will know of the change. If you find any broken links or anything that doesn't work [other than his brain - Ed.] please let me know.
Healthy Babies. The morning paper is reporting a study in the current issue of Science that says:
"...ethanol, acting by a dual mechanism [blockade of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptors and excessive activation of GABAA receptors], triggers widespread apoptotic neurodegeneration in the developing rat forebrain. Vulnerability coincides with the period of synaptogenesis, which in humans extends from the sixth month of gestation to several years after birth. During this period, transient ethanol exposure can delete millions of neurons from the developing brain. This can explain the reduced brain mass and neurobehavioral disturbances associated with human fetal alcohol syndrome."
So, for those out there, other than Dr. Jim, who don't have a clue what the above means, what it's saying is that expecting mothers should be especially careful about their alcohol intake. Because even just one period of drinking, over a four hour period which leads to a blood alcohol level of 0.20, at the wrong time in the development of the brain, may cause the brain cells to "...die by the millions and millions."
***** Noon Update *****
I haven't had the time until now to put up a story that was told on the TV show "The West Wing." I've talked about the show before but I continue to believe it to be one of the better written and acted shows on US television right now. Anyway, the most recent episode centered around the question of the death penalty. The President, since the case in question involved federal statutes, was at this point in the story the only person who could stay the execution (pursuant to Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution).
As is probably the case in real life, all during the show, he and his staff receive unsolicited advice from various sources about what he should do. One is from a campaign manger for a candidate in California running for Congress. The manager happens to be a Quaker and is therefore opposed to the death penalty. Another is the rabbi of one of the President's staff and during shul, teaches that vengeance is not Jewish. That instead God says "...vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord." And a third is an old friend, who is a Catholic priest who is also opposed to the death penalty.
And having made his decision to let the execution proceed, notwithstanding the advice of the people above, he seeks council from that old friend.
And so the President is in the Oval Office talking quietly with the priest, as the seconds count down to the 12:01 am time of the execution, and the President says he has asked God for the wisdom as to what to do. But that He has not given him any kind of answer. And that the President is angry because of this. And the priest replies:
Let me tell you a story about a man. This man lived in a nice house near a river. And one day, the man heard on the radio that the river was rising and that everyone should move to higher ground. But the man, being a Christian, said; "I have faith that God loves me and He will save me." So he stays where he is.And the river begins to rise and soon floods his front yard. Then, along comes a man in a row boat calling out to him saying; "The river is rising and you need to get to higher ground!" But the man shouts back over the sound of the now raging river, that he has faith that God loves him and will save him.
And the river rises more and floods his house. So he is now clinging to the roof of his house as the structure moans under the force of the waters. Then, along comes a helicopter and a voice shouts out over the sound of surging flood; "Grab on to the rope and we will lift you to safety!" But the man shouts back that he has faith that God loves him and will save him.
And finally the river washes over him causing him to drown. The next thing he knows he is in heaven and he sees the Lord. He runs up to Him and asks Him; "Lord, I have faith that You love me. Why didn't You save me?" And the Lord replies; "What are you doing here? I loved you so much I sent to you a message on the radio, a man in a boat, and finally a helicopter! Why didn't you listen to Me?"
© 2000 Daniel K. Seto. All rights reserved.