Monday - 24 April 2000
Changin' Times. This is a technical note to those Daynoters who have mirror pages of the daynotes.com site. Please change my email address from dseto@itool.com to mail@seto.org. I hope Pair.com does not bounce relayed mail like my old provider 9netave.com did but I guess we'll soon find out. Sorry for the need for the change but things are fluid over at itool.com and it is unclear as to how much longer the old email address will be working. Thanks for your understanding in this matter and I hope all goes well for Matt.
Single-Floppy Linux. Thank you to everyone who sent links to sites with single-floppy versions of Linux that run as firewalls. I will try to put up a listing tomorrow (I forgot to forward my mail from home to work) of the links. As far as actually installing such a box I will probably wait until I get back from my vacation, which starts 1 May.
Speaking of Vacation. As mentioned above, I will be on vacation from 1 May through 12 May. I will actually be back on island before the 12th but will not be in the office until Monday the 15th. SWCNBD and I are going to Los Angeles, San Diego, and Las Vegas. Needless to say, I will not be doing updates while I am gone.
Speaking of Vacations II. Travel agents in California are up in arms over competition. Huh? Well, competition from a state sponsored tourism site that lists some travel agents, but not all. Well, duh. Of course they can't list all travel agents. And of course, those that are listed get the business and those that don't. Well, don't. So the have nots are saying either list everyone, or don't list anyone. See what happens when government gets involved with business. See the California site here.
Speaking of California. Gas prices here in Hawai'i have stabilized at about USD $1.77/gal. for unleaded regular from Chevron. On the mainland, the Lundberg Survey reports the average gallon of gasoline dropped about 4 cents to $1.532 a gallon. We haven't seen that decrease but at least its not going up. And from what I hear, parts of Northern California are even higher.
Aloha!
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Tuesday - 25 April 2000
Email, Bah! So just when I tell everyone to switch over to mail@seto.org (which is on a pair.com mail server) things go bonkers. Sometimes I can get to mail. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can telnet, sometimes I can't. No explanation from Pair.com. And of course, no number to call to ask them about it. VBS (Very Big Sigh).
Win2000 Tip of the Day. From InfoWorld's Brian Livingston comes this tip ( here) for those who have "always on" Internet connections (DSL or cable modem) and don't want it to be that way.
In Win2000's Explorer, right-click the My Network Places icon, then select Properties. Right-click Local Area Connection, then click Disable. To connect again, repeat these steps, but click Enable.
For those readers with cable TV in the San Francisco area, you can watch Livingston as part of a one-hour live show April 29 at 11:30 a.m. on channel 29. The program, hosted by Winifred Elam, is associated with New California Media. </commercial plug>
Is that a gun in your pocket? While I am no friend of stupid gun laws, neither am I a friend of stupid people. So, you're on an Alaska Airlines flight waiting on the ground for take-off. When all of a sudden a .357 magnum round comes ripping through the floor of the cabin lodging in a baby diaper bag. Thank God, no one was hurt. So where did the round come from? From some gang? From some terrorists? No. From the baggage of a female passenger who was illegally transporting two handguns (at least one of which was loaded and apparently cocked). How stupid can some people be? See the LA Times story here.
***** Noon Update *****
Anti-Spam. I know at least one Daynoter thinks using SpamCop is a waste of time as far as shutting Spam sites down. But as Dr. Keyboard noted in an earlier post, every once-in-awhile, taking action leads to the closure of a site. Now I fully realize that they can just use another site and be Spamming again in minutes. But that is possible only because some sites don't take Spam seriously. Or worse, actively seek out these kinds of activities.
In either case, I don't advocate sending every piece of Spam that comes your way to SpamCop. Although you could if you wanted to. But what I do is send the ones that try to use "human engineering" to get your attention. By that I mean the kind that have subjects like "FWD:Info Requested" or "HI! Long Time No See" or "Your Account Has Been Closed." You know, the kind that appears to be something it is not. The others that are obviously Spam, by their subject headings, are just deleted. But these engineered emails, I gladly send to SpamCop. YMMV.
From abuse@psi.com Tue Apr 25 06:48:09 2000
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 09:46:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Net Abuse Team [abuse@psi.com]
To: Dan Seto
Subject: Re: [SpamCop:38.28.97.92,id:5822921] Response to Inquiry ... (19500) #nab-2116263Hello,
Please be advised that the account used to violate our Net-Abuse Policy has been disabled. If you receive any further correspondence from this source, please let us know.
Thank you.
Net-Abuse Team
PSINet, Inc.
abuse@psi.com
http://www.psinet.com/legalinfo/netabusepolicy.html
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Hump Day Wednesday - 26 April 2000
Kona Gold. So, the medical marijuana bill has in fact passed both state houses and will be going to the Governor for his disposition. He has said in the past that he would sign it. If he does, Hawai'i will join Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine, Nevada, and Oregon which passed such a law through voter initiative. As one esteemed Republican Senator said; "sometimes we have to do what's right. And what's right is to provide an option and alternative."
The morning paper reports that the bill allows patients to use marijuana if they have been diagnosed by a licensed physician as suffering from a debilitating medical condition and have a written certification from the physician that the potential benefits (whatever they are) outweigh the health risks.
Medical Bankruptcy. The Washington Post is reporting that nearly half of the more than 1 million Americans who filed for bankruptcy last year did , at least in part, because they couldn't deal with medical bills or other financial consequences of illness or injury.
The Harvard study indicates those affected the most are women, families headed by women, and the elderly. It further indicates that lack of medical insurance is not the leading factor in the filings. Rather, being under-insured appears to be the problem. That is, the insurance is insufficient to cover catastrophic medical cost, or it doesn't cover all the financial implications such as lost income. Harvard Law professor E. Warren commented that this problem affects middle class families who are "just one serious illness away from financial collapse. What a scary way to think about America."
Broken Windows. Well, I guess it had to happen. What with the sharp drop in Microsoft's stock prices. But Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the US (as measured by stock prices alone). And who is now first? Arch rival, Oracle's Larry Ellison. If that isn't enough for Gates to decide to settle with the DOJ, nothing will.
ANZAC Day. A belated thank you to the Australians and New Zealanders who had their lives taken away from them during the two World Wars. 25 April, in Australia, is a day of solemn rememberence. The date is the anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. See the ANZAC story here.
They shall grow not old....as we that are left grow old, Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn, At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.
***** Noon Update *****
Thank you to Marcia Bilbrey for the link to the Boogie Jack Web Depot homepage for the border seen to the left. Right now, I'm just playing around with it and am not sure I will make it a part of my pages (and thanks to Bo Leuf for the bits of CSS I needed). If anyone has any strong feelings about it one way or another, let me know. Oh, by the way, Netscape seems to have problems displaying the background. Opera and IE do OK. But not Netscape. I'm still looking at it to see what could be wrong but the W3C.org validator does not find any problems. Any ideas?
Aloha!
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Thursday - 27 April 2000
Windows Tip of the Day. If you want to analyze the Cascading Style Sheet (W3C REC-CSS2-19980512) for a page, one way you can do so is by using Microsoft Internet Explorer. Go to the page you want to look at. Then, from the IE File menu, choose Save As (web page, complete). This will save the html file into your default directory (you can change the directory if you want) and create a sub-directory under it. The sub-directory will have the CSS file. It's a plain text file so you can look at it in any editor.
Almost Here. Vacation time, that is. I usually pack for trips the day before I leave (if not that day). My wife, on the other hand, starts getting things together two weeks before leaving. She even gets duplicates of things that you would normally pack last (that is, whatever toiletries you need) so that she can pack them before hand and not have to wait.
And of course, she has clothes folding down to a science. Roll your clothes into cylinders. That way, they can be packed tightly while not wrinkling.
So anyway, we leave Monday for Los Angeles. Hence, no updates until we return. I guess I should start choosing what I'm going to pack. Nah. I'll wait until Sunday. Evening. <g>
***** Noon Update *****
Cascading Simpleton. OK. The Netscape problem with displaying the border and background is solved. I'll just quote my email to Dan Bowman below and slink off into that dark night with my tail between my legs.
From: Dan Seto
To: Dan Bowman
Subject: Re: daynotes background
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 10:43:46 -1000Dan,
Sometimes things are so simple it's complicated. The CSS code I was using (body { background: url(/images/lbj153.jpg); font-family: "times new roman", serif; color: black; margin-left: 120px} referenced the body tag in the html to set the background image.
And that was OK. There was no problem with the CSS part. The problem was in my page (j20000428.html). Specifically, I wasn't using the <body> tag anywhere in the html (it's an optional tag). So Netscape never used any of the info in the CSS file because it never got called from the html file. At least, that's my assumption. Somehow Opera and IE figured out what to do...
So I added the <body> tag to my web page and now all is well. Thanks also to Bo Leuf for having a page that I could dissect and find out why his worked and why mine didn't.
Aloha - Dan "The Simpleton"
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Bowman
To: Dan Seto
Subject: RE: daynotes background
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 14:07:56 -0700Well, I'd noticed that lack of <head> and <body> tags (and in fact commented on it and then deleted the comment). When I'd looked at Bo's source this morning <g> before I replied to you, I'd noticed his background was inside the <head> brackets (as I recall). I backed off from that route since your minimalist approached worked. IE is renowned for allowing sloppy HTML, but I admit surprise at Opera.
congratulations,
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Seto
To: Dan Bowman
Subject: Re: daynotes background
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 11:20:31 -1000Actually, to defend Opera, the ability to display a page without an explicit ("Live Nude Girls!") <body> tag is acceptable because the W3C REC-html40-19980424 does not require such. In fact, as you noticed, HTML documents do not require the <head> tag either. They are simply optional.
And in fact, the use of the <body> tag appears to be entirely deprecated in HTML 4.0. So if you want to be compliant with 4.0, theoretically, you shouldn't be using it at all. Or at least, any of the attributes assigned to it. So in a sense, Netscape is "wrong" to require the use of the tag and Opera is "right" to be able to display the background without it. And yet, it kind of makes sense, in this case, to do so. Oh well. Back to work.
Aloha!
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Aloha Friday - 28 April 2000
It's FRIDAY!
Low Beer Prices Causes VD. Huh? A Los Angeles Times article (see it HERE) quotes the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia as saying that among states that increased taxes on beer, two-thirds posted a decrease in gonorhea rates for teens and three-fourths showed a decrease for young adults. I couldn't find the study itself at the CDC so YMMV. But it seems clear that beer drinkers are price sensitive. And as they drink more, their judgement becomes impaired. Thus leading to behaviour which puts them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. So, it could be that if you raise prices, consumption goes down. And as consumption goes down, risky behaviour does also. Kind of a long way to their conclusion but I guess it could happen.
Broken Trust. I know most people will be watching Regis on Sunday night but for those 12 people who don't, give "60 Minutes" a watch. One of the stories scheduled to run is about the Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate controversy. The estate is said to be the wealthiest estate in the nation. But this story is about greed, politics, and power. And while there are many things that brought down this once mighty trust, the beginning of the end was an article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. A newpaper that is now fighting for its financial life. If you have the time, and you'll need lots of it, the Star-Bulletin has a page with what looks like over 200 links to articles or letters regarding the trust (see it HERE). If you don't have the time, than watch the 12-minute segment on "60 Minutes."
Finding Your Roots. Bo Leuf sends in this email on the problem with Netscape Navigator and Cascading Style Sheets. This appears to be the problem so I don't need to use my workaround of adding the <body> tag. I just need to move things around in the directories.
From: Bo Leuf [bo@leuf.com]
To: Dan Seto
Subject: CSS and NS
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 11:00:25 +0200Dan,
> Netscape seems to have problems displaying the background
Yup. NS was seriously broken in one respect with CSS as I learned a couple of years ago, but I've never determined if they fixed it. Comes under the category of "rules interpretation". As I recall it, if the html page and the CSS file are in different directories, and perhaps you refer to an image in yet another directory -- or something like that -- you get trouble.
The "fix" is to ensure that the CSS file and the html page are in the *same* directory! Then references to e.g. background images work the same in NS as in the other browsers.
NS has (had?) the unfortunate rule to resolve file-references in the CSS file relative to the location of the html file: see http://www.leuf.org/articles/19981115.htm for a more detailed explanation of this.
/ Bo
-- "Bo Leuf" [bo@leuf.com] Leuf fc3 Consultancy http://www.leuf.com/
Have a Great Weekend and I will see you back here in about two weeks (Lord willing, and the creek don't rise). Aloha!
© 2000 Daniel K. Seto. All rights reserved.