Misc. Ramblings

As I've said before, all sexually transmitted diseases are, and rightly should be, public health issues - not moral ones. Let's treat the disease first and worry about the moral development of individuals secondarily. We do it for lung cancer, even though much of this cancer is caused by people choosing to smoke. We do it for heart disease, even though much of this disease is caused by our poor eating habits. We do it for a host of other so called lifestyle diseases because by moving forward from the Dark Ages model of disease to a more modern one based on rational science, we have improved the lives of all.

But some of you out there may have thought I was overstating things when I've said there are conservative Republicans that would rather have people die of cancer than making the mandatory the use of a vaccine that is almost 100 percent effective. But this article on cervical cancer describes exactly that. These people, who I would call extreme, but who are apparently mainstream Republicans, link morality with what should be a public health issue. The article quoted this statement:

Some people have raised the issue of whether this vaccine may be sending an overall message to teen-agers that, "We expect you to be sexually active,"

I'm not sure what century these people think they are in but I have news for them: their parents were sexually active. And their parents. And their parents before them. I have other news for them - many teenagers are sexually active.

Does abstinence prevent this type of cervical cancer, barring genetic mutation? I'm no doctor but, probably. However, as you can also prevent getting, for example, the measles by avoiding those with such an infection, it is easier and probably safer to be immunized because those that are infected may or may not display symptoms at the time they are infectious.

I believe this is a public health issue and I have to wonder if trying to link this to morality is itself immoral. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

Getting back to my post on displaying the file creation date and time, a couple of readers have sent in helpful suggestions. Before I get to one, let me briefly recap what I am trying to do.

Via a security webcam/server at home, I periodically ftp an image to my website, seto.org. A web page I've created then displays the image. Every once in awhile, I check the web page to see what's going on at home. But want I wanted was a way of time stamping the image so I would know when it was taken. I found that a Linux program called Stamp! would do that. Sort of. What Stamp! does is uses the current system time and overlays the image with that. This causes a problem for me in that Stamp! may be updating even if the webcam is turned off. This means the image that is sitting on seto.org could be several hours old, but by just viewing the web page, you would have very little, if any way of knowing this.

So I searched for a program that would overlay the test.jpg file with the file's creation date and time. I have been unsuccessful in finding such a program. So, I tried finding some Perl script that would at least read the creation date and time of test.jpg and then insert/output the result into the web page that also displays the image.

By searching the web, I found a code snippet that supposedly reads the file date and time but ran into problems. Which is where we left off.

A reader by the name of Peter, sorry I don't have is last name so I can't give him full credit but he knows who he is, suggested the following:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use File::stat;
use Time::localtime;
$file='/path/to/test.jpg';
$date_string = ctime(stat($file)->mtime);
print "file $file updated at $date_string\n";

Making this executable and running this from the command line displays the wanted date and time of the file. Now I could use some help in figuring out how to display this information in a web page that also displays the test.jpg file so that, using a web browser, I can see the test.jpg image and the date and time of the test.jpg file (If this information can be overlayed on the test.jpg itself like Stamp! does would be a bonus but I don't know of any programs that will do that. So, just displaying the date and time of the file in HTML would be better than what I have now.).

The present web page code itself is below:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Seto.org Upstairs</title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="60">
</head>
<body>
<img src="/path/to/test.jpg" width="640" height="480" alt="
Upstairs Web Cam."> 
<p>Refreshes automatically every 60 seconds.</p>
</body>
</html>

A big thank you to Peter and to fellow Daynoter John Dominik who suggested a different way of doing it.

Aloha!

I know I'm probably giving my 11 regular readers (as opposed to you irregular ones - ed.) whiplash by breaking one of the 10 rules of blogs by not focusing on only one topic. But hey, that's the way my mind works. I'm interested in all kinds of things (and he can't avoid talking about them - ed.).

So I was surfing the 'net reading that preeminent business commentator Robert Scoble and came upon a link to the Dilbert Blog. From there, I followed a link to a cartoon called "Pearls Before Swine." The cartoonist uses the metaphor of animals and their stereotypical characteristics (e.g., rats are, well, ratty) to make social comments that are funny and insightful. For example, this panel with a crocodile made me laugh. Then think about how sometimes people end up in the jobs they have.

Getting back to Mr.Scoble, he may have hit on one of the major paradoxical truths of successful businesses in Robert Scoble's post on, among other things, Google. The truth? That if you focus only on making money, you won't make as much as if you focus on making stuff that people want to use and are therefore eventually willing to pay money for. In the case of Google Maps, the primary customer may not even be the average person. Perhaps the money is on the cool applications that can be built on top of Google's Maps. But there is no way even Google can predict which types of applications would work well. So, the genius of Google is in creating the infrastructure that developers then use to create their own applications which fill a need and by doing so, creates oodles of money for Google. It may sound like the same thing, but it's not. Deciphering the difference is the difference between being fabulously successful and wondering what happened to your job.

Thank you to everyone who has sent in suggestions on how to solve my problem of time stamping a jpeg or html file. I now have more suggestions than I could possibly test in a week. I will post solutions as I can find the time to do so.

So far, one suggestion that works is from Rick Hellewell:

<?php
// outputs e.g. somefile.txt was last modified: December 29 2002 22:16:23.
$filename = 'somefile.txt';
if (file_exists($filename))
{
echo "$filename was last modified: " . date ("F d Y H:i:s.", filemtime($filename));
}
?>

I believe it assumes that the 'somefile.txt' is in the current directory (the directory that the current PHP page is in). I got it from the PHP pages here: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.filemtime.php. And the extension of the web page needs to be PHP. ...Rick...

You insert the the above code into a web page anywhere between the <body> </body>tags, make sure the name of the web page has the .php extension and, assuming your web server is setup to use PHP, Bob's your Uncle, it works!

But for now, thank you to Peter Thomas, fellow Daynoters Rick Hellewell and John Domonik, and Frank Fitz for sending in suggestions/examples. I will get to each as soon as I can. If I missed anyone I apologize, it was purely unintentional.

Aloha!

The Wicked Cool Shell Scripts site has a listing of over 100, now wait for it, shell scripts. I didn't find anything on doing a time stamp but there may be something for you.

Sorry to hear that fellow Daynoter John Dominik is in need of employment. A few good thoughts/prayers/a good job couldn't hurt.

Other than that, I have some stuff to do before I leave early today so I've gotta go.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

On the other hand, you have the entertainment side. I would guess that these are the people who came up with what is being called the Sony rootkit debacle. This ongoing saga illustrates, in my opinion, the worst that Sony has been and, apparently, continues to be.

I will leave it to others to document the decline and fall of the once great Sony empire. All I can do is echo what is the the safest course of action when it comes to prudent computer security: DO NOT BUY ANY SONY MUSIC. If you do, DO NOT USE A WINDOWS BASED COMPUTER TO LISTEN TO IT. To do so appears to put your PC, and all the information on it, at substantial risk.

At this point, I believe Sony's entertainment division has truly lost its way and should be spun off as a separate company. Otherwise, it could drag the rest of Sony down with it as it dies a well deserved corporate death. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

The folks over at Tom's Hardware recently compared the Nikon D50 and Pentax istDL digital cameras. After putting both through their paces, the verdict was:

The Nikon D50 seemed to us to be the model with the best overall performance. It was also the easiest to use, since the photos it produced in automatic mode (with no corrections made) were usually directly usable.

That said, the reviewer also felt that the Pentax "still offers certain very attractive features, such as depth-of-field preview, and the ability to use all kinds of lenses, including older ones that are available at low prices." Hence, if money is a concern, then you may want to favor the Pentax. Otherwise, the Nikon is the better choice.

Also of interest is a review of 19-inch LCD monitors. Included in the comparison are the Philips 190B6CS, Iiyama E481S, LG L1950S, Hyundai B90A, Sony SDM-HS95P, Samsung 930BF, Eizo FlexScan L778, ViewSonic VP191b, and Soyo DYLMO19A. Although they are very impressed by the Eizo's fantastic colors and amazing 1075:1 contrast level, they are left wondering about the $750USD price and the relatively slow response times (between 18ms to 30ms). So the overall recommendation? The ViewSonic. Even though the ViewSonic wasn't the fastest panel in the market, it is right up there while, at the same time, providing "performance [that] is clearly above that of the competition." They go on to point out the ViewSonic's superb color reproduction at a reasonable (for them - ed.) price of $520. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

UPDATE: Follow this link to a site that has a Debian specific source code for the faad2 xmms plug-in. You still have to compile the stuff but the revised scripts do most everything for you. Just remember, when you do the configure, to type in ./configure --with-xmms --with-mp4v2. Note, the server is behind a dyndns proxy. Use at your own risk. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here. END OF UPDATE

DaveSource.com has a good page on installing faad2 and the xmms plug-ins in Debian. I've modified the instructions to work with Xandros Deluxe 3.01. Why would you need such things? Well, if you have a library of non-DRM m4a or AAC audio files, the only way, by default, to play them on Xandros Deluxe 3.01 is by using Xine or the evil RealPlayer 10. Although RealPlayer works okay, it and Xine are fine for video, for which they are designed, but they are not the best for listening to audio.

What is needed, as far as I am concerned, is something like the ubiquitous WinAmp for Windows. As it so happens, Xandros allows you to install an application called xmms, via Xandros Network, that is very similar to WinAmp. But, and here's the catch, you have to add support for m4a/AAC yourself. Whether you want to spend the time doing this only you can decide. If you are happy with Xine, RealAudio, or something else, fine. But if you want to use xmms under Xandros to listen to m4a/ACC files, then read on.

Getting this support installed on Xandros is a challenge because, it seems, you can't just install the software directly via Xandros Network. Before I get any further, please go to the DaveSource site and read the instructions there (keep your browser open on the site so that you can refer to the instructions and also download the required patch file). Once you understand the instructions, know that you need to modify these instructions to work with Xandros Deluxe 3.01. What I have below are changes to the instructions that by trial and error I found to work. YMMV. Use at your own risk. Insert disclaimer here. Note, this plug-in cannot play encrypted files so don't even ask.

1. If you have not yet installed, via Xandros Network, the C/C++ Development Tools and automake1.9 (or later) and any other development tools/libraries that may be needed, like GTK, do so now. Xandros does not install a development environment because they don't want you to compile your own applications. While it is not impossible to do so, I wish Xandros wouldn't make it so difficult. In any case, this is not a tutorial on creating a development environment in Xandros so you are on your own.

2. Install, via Xandros Network, something called libtool.

3. Install libid3-dev (I have no idea if this is needed but I installed it using the instructions).

4. Download the faad2 file from AudioCoding.com. Make sure you get the .tar file and not the .zip (which is intended for Windows users).

5. Create a faad2 directory by typing mkdir faad2

6. Unpack the faad2-2.0.tar file that you down loaded from AudioCoding.com by typing in tar -xvf faad2-2.0.tar (Or whichever version you down loaded. Again, do not download the zip file version as it is intended for Windows users and will not work in Linux. Note also that if you try using the Xandros File Manager, instead of unpacking the file via the command line, this may result in errors. So don't blame me if you use the File Manager and run into problems.

7. After unpacking the files, change into the faad2 directory by typing cd faad2

8. Once there, the instructions say to edit configure.in by adding AC_PREREQ(2.50). It didn't seem to matter in Xandros whether I did. I'll let you decide if you want to edit configure.in. Whichever works for you. I didn't.

9. Next, edit the Makefile.am file by deleting the lines referring to rpm: (see the DaveSource instructions). If you forget to do this, you will get a "Makefile:623 missing separator. Stop." error when you run make.

10. Another thing that didn't seem to matter is how you run the commands in the file named bootstrap. That is, manually, as the instructions say to do or by typing in autoreconf -vif. I used autoreconf -vif although you can do them whichever way that works. Note, you may need to change permissions on bootstrap to make it executable. Or not. It depends.

11. As root, follow the instructions about typing in ./configure --with-xmms --with-mp4v2

12. Then, type in make

13. And finally type in make install

14. faad2 is now, or should be, installed. If not, make clean, then delete everything in the faad2 directory and start over. Keep trying different variations until you get it installed without error.

15. Having done all that, you are now are ready to create the xmms plug-in by changing directories by typing cd plug-ins/xmms/src

16. I think you can ignore the instructions about downloading the makefile.manual file. I didn't need it and you probably won't either. In fact, trying to run the file may lead to problems. But, for now, I would just ignore them and only follow the instructions if you end up with other problems later

17. Continuing with the instructions, download the libmp4.c patch file from the davesource site.

18. Once the file is down loaded, type in patch < libmp4.c.patch I don't know if this step is still needed but I did it.

19. Finally, read and follow the instructions in the INSTALL file in the /faad2/plugins/xmms/src/ directory to complete the installation. If you get errors, start over and try different variations like manually doing the make and make install or doing the makefile.manual file.

If all went well, start xmms and check that the plug-in is listed and enabled. If so, you will now be able to play plain, unencrypted m4a/AAC files.

Thank you to the davesource site for creating the how-to and a big onion to Xandros for not including m4a/AAC support natively.

Aloha!

Just when I think Microsoft just doesn't get it (and never will - ed.) comes something that stops me in my tracks. Recently, Dave Winer posted two MS internal communications. Taken together, they write a road map for MS for maybe the next five years. It appears management has a clear idea of where they want to go. But can they get their organization to change directions quickly enough? That will be the multi-part challenge.

Multi-part because everyone, from the night janitor up to top management, must first understand the need for and accept the urgency/personal responsibility to implement forward looking change. To do this, management must answer the question: "What's in it for me?" In other words, management must make the case to employees that change will result in rewards for those who change.

Once people understand the need for change, they must then learn how to do something differently. Even if they have been doing it a certain way for many years. Even if what they have been during "worked" well in the past, each person must learn to do it differently. For many, this will not be easy.

In the end, in any organization, change is difficult - even when there is a clear case that the change is advantageous to everyone. Yet, MS has shown that it can effect major change. Do it rapidly. And lead the market to where it wants to go.

Do not bet that it can't do so now.

[One example of the direction MS seems to be headed is reflected in the MSDN Express Editions site that went live on Monday. Here, MS is providing free (as in beer) editions of Web Developer Express, SQL Server Express, Visual Basic Express, Visual C# Express, Visual C++ Express, and visual J# Express. However, as an example of how they still don't get it, you have to register to get a key to activate the software. Registration gives you the opportunity to receive email from MS and their partners (also known as spam, which MS says you can opt out of). Nobody said forward looking change would be easy.]

Aloha!

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The background story on the writing of this poem.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

WARNING: Adult content. It seems people find all kinds of new ways to use their iPods. In fact, those inventive folks in the UK are selling an iPod that is, ahem, sure to bring a smile to some women's faces.

Enter the iBuzz. An attachment for your iPod that vibrates in time with your music. Just plug one end into your iPod and the other, umm, into some place else and turn up the volume.

Also on some people's Christmas lists is the SP9004. What is that? It uses oxygen and propane, has a laser sight, bolt action, and is electrically controlled....No, it doesn't connect to your iPod. So what does it do? It fires potatoes. That's right, it's a spud launcher. Just what Johnny wants for Christmas. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

For the more adventurous out there, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2 is on the wire. Insert the usual disclaimer here as this is not gold code so don't blame me if you try it and Firefox eats your hard drive and the left fin of your gold fish. Or something. For everyone else, wait until 1.5 is ready before installing.

Aloha!

All is quiet at the Seto Shack. Except for the stray cat that decided that our screen door looked like a nice place to sharpen his/her claws. At 3:30 in the morning. While making the most awful noise known to human kind. Other than that, no problems here. Move along.

Aloha!

Well, maybe. I have my eye on a Mac Mini but I won't even think of buying until the Intel processors are folded in sometime next year. I mean, why buy now, before the Intel CPUs are out, if you know your Mac will become defunct in less than a year? But if/when I do eventually buy, I might want to check out this site that lists OpenSource software for Macs. OpenSource software wouldn't be the only reason to go the Macs, nor maybe even the main reason. But knowing that such software is available is a consideration.

By the way, I know there are rumors that some Intel CPU powered Macs will be coming out early next year, rather than the announced Q3/Q4 of 2006 timeframe. Perhaps. But I don't think MS has cornered the market on rumors designed to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Why would Apple spread similar, although slightly different rumors? Perhaps because if a customer were thinking about buying a computer within the next six to nine months and knew that Apple would not have anything available, he or she would probably buy somewhere else. But if rumors started going around that Apple would have such Intel PCs available within that timeframe, you might decide to wait. Now, be clear, I don't have any insider information and for all I know, come January 1st, Apple will debut a bunch of Intel powered Macs. Or not. Well, this is just idle speculation. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

The countdown to Firefox 1.5 continues. According to the latest in the support forums, there will be an RC3 Real Soon Now. In my limited experience, an RC3 is rather unusual. My reading of the tea leaves is there are a bunch of problems yet to be ironed out. I could be wrong, though. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

In any case, one of those problems appears to be with the very popular AdBlock plug-in (link goes to their support forum). The advice from the Firefox forum is to switch to AdBlock Plus. However, when I did that, AdBlock Plus exhibited a menu display error. I won't go into detail but this is a bug that the current version of Adblock had fixed earlier but is now reappearing in Adblock Plus. Sigh. No one said OpenSource software is perfect.

I'm also becoming discouraged by some of the forum chatter which seems to indicate what I would consider to be major problems (especially with print preview) within Firefox 1.5, will not be fixed any time soon.

So, even after 1.5 goes gold, there may be major problems to deal with. Although I still think Firefox is better/safer/standards compliant than IE, the folks over at Mozilla need to know that I won't continue to use software that is unreliable.

Although I had created my first website sometime around 1996 (almost 10 years ago!), I didn't start my more or less daily posting until October 20, 1999.

During that time, many changes have occurred. In 1999, among other things, Democrat Bill Clinton was President and Hawaii had a Democrat for Governor. A judge found Microsoft to be a monopoly. And COBOL programmers around the world worked feverishly to fix millennium bugs before the year 2000 dawned.

Now, we have a Republican President, a Republican Congress, and a Republican state Governor. Microsoft is still a monopoly and has learned to buy as many politicians as it needs. I guess this is supposed to be progress. In any case, a belated happy blogging anniversary to myself and all 11 regular (and irregular) readers. Mahalo for stopping by.

Speaking of posting, next week Thursday is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. I will also be taking the next day off so there probably won't be posts for either day.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

If you are a regular reader of Wired this may be old news but someone has finally begun to ask the right questions about the Sony Trojan Horse rootkit(tm) debacle. In an article by Bruce Schneier entitled the Real Story of the Rogue Rootkit, he asks the question as to why the dogs didn't bark. That is, the rootkit infections began last year and has now spread to, in one report, one-half million PCs. Yet, no anti-virus or anti-spyware company raised the alarm save for, according to the article, F-Secure. Why?

Was it because the rootkit was undetectable? Or is it because these companies are in bed with Sony/RIAA/MPAA and considered the rootkit not a security threat you needed to be notified of?

This kind of issue was brought up earlier in relation to Microsoft's Anti-Spyware (now re-named "Defender") program and how MS changed its detection of the Claria adware (nee Gator) such that it no longer advised you to remove it (i.e., the Claria adware).

This is a developing story and things are still unclear, but the trend appears to be that we can no longer implicitly trust the companies that are supposed to detect these security intrusions because, perhaps, their definition of adware/spyware is contrary to ours or they do not scan for rootkits.

There is a high probability, given this history, that the Sony rootkit is not the only adware/spyware application that is not detected by the major anti-virus/anti-spyware companies. If this is true, you have to decide what to do about this (even if these companies belatedly now begin to mark the Sony rootkit).

I am unaware of any security strategy that you can use on Windows to prevent your PC from being owned by someone else if you rely entirely on anti-virus/anti-spyware programs. If there is, feel free to leave a comment. But as far as I can see, the only way to minimize, but not completely reduce the risk, is to switch to another operating system. Which you choose is up to you. But if you don't want to owned by Sony, or the RIAA/MPAA, or the Russian Mafia, you really need to decide. Now. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

It's a very rainy day here in paradise. The humidity is at 100 percent and the window panes are covered with condensation that glitters like icicles as the water drips down. I think you can guess that not much is happening here today. Although, I did have a little problem yesterday with the program I use to listen to music. It's called xmms. It stopped playing anything except MP3s. I don't know why. All the plug-ins where still there and enabled. So I uninstalled and reinstalled the program. No difference. So I tried re-compiling the faad2 xmms plug-in again but had no luck. Sigh. So, I uninstalled again, deleted the .xmms file in ~/home, reinstalled, and Bob's your slave, it's working again.

Speaking of recompiling the faad2 xmms plug-in, I found a new source (pun intended) of where to get the code. The xmixahlx site has the source code specifically setup for Debian installations. You still have to compile everything, but at least you don't have to go through any Debian specific incantations. Just follow the default instructions, including ./configure --with-xmms --with-mp4v2 and the scripts do everything for you, including copying the plug-in to the correct directory. Pretty slick.

Of course, the site is located behind a dyndns dynamic DNS service so who knows how reliable/secure a site this is. YMMV. Use at your own risk. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

So, just how hard is it to shoot a lock off? You know, like in the movies when the someone needs to get through a locked fence. The actor pulls out his/her pistol and shoots the lock. Well, the answer, according to The Tactical Solution is: Very hard. They tried a 9mm, .45ACP, .223 (5.56mm), .308 (7.62mm), and a 12 gauge Brennke slug. The only round that was able to do enough damage to blow the lock open was the slug. None of the pistol rounds even penetrated the outer casing of the lock and the rifle rounds either bored nice round holes or actually blew parts off the lock but the lock still held. Only the slug did enough damage to open the lock. Of course, as the site notes, there are different was of shooting the lock (rather than hitting it in the center) so your mileage may vary. Don't do this at home. Insert disclaimer here.

With that, tomorrow is the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. so I will be off. In addition, I will be taking Friday off to do my part in keeping the Hawaii economy robust and growing so no post on Friday either.

Have a Great Thanksgiving and Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

On a sad note, actor/comedian Noriyuki "Pat" Morita passed away last week. I have no doubt that his life story will be made into a movie, someday. It is an inspiring tale of overcoming both physical and soul draining obstacles. From spinal tuberculosis to being "intered" in an Arizona camp during World War II. From working in the computer industry to the early days of trying to break into an entertainment business that was/is mostly white skinned to being nominated for an Academy Award(tm). His life is an inspiration to all and reflects the best of the human spirit. May he rest in peace.

Aloha!

One of the problems in the wild world of computing is the lack of standards. But sometimes, the problem is there are too many standards. A reflection of this is the number of codecs you may need to install to view/hear the content that is out there. I came across the Free-Codecs.com site recently. It haven't tried to use any of what they have but if you need a codec, you may want to check this site out.

I happened upon a blogger who wrote about his experiences in switching from Linux to a Mac Mini. Although most people who buy Minis are probably Windows users, it is interesting to see the perspective of someone coming from the OpenSource world to the closed and very proprietary Apple Mac operating system.

You can read his review but the author's bottom line? Thumbs up on the Mac GUI but he hasn't given up on Linux.

Well, another "Black Friday" came and went. I didn't get anything for myself but we did get a bunch of stuff for the grand kids. I won't say how much we spent but look for the Disney(tm) store earnings to go up this year :)

Whenever there is a push to "reform" the actions of Congress, they always interview a Congressman who guffaws at the mere mention of the possibility that he would sell his vote for money. "Why reform a system that isn't broken?"; says the Congressman. Surely, no one would take money in exchange for something only he can provide.

But time after time, there are examples of exactly this situation. The latest is a California Republican from San Diego. U.S. Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who pled guilty to accepting $2.4 million USD in bribes in exchange for help in securing defense contracts.

No, this isn't something related only to one party. But since the Republicans happen to be in power, it's the Republicans who will be the ones able to grant such exchanges. And some will. Since such exchanges are already illegal, but people do it anyway, one has to wonder what more can be done to deter such behavior. Comments are open.

Aloha!

For those looking to boost laptop performance, one area to upgrade is the hard drive. Due to battery power consumption and price considerations, laptops use relatively low capacity and relatively slow hard drives. Indeed, on the budget end of most laptop lines you will most likely find cheap 4,200 RPM disks with small 2MB buffers. Upgrading one of these drives can lead to substantial speed gains when working with a typical office suite of applications according to tests reported by Storage Solutions of several laptop hard drives. The downsides? Cost and shorter endurance times before you have to recharge the batteries of your laptop.

Only you can decide what tradeoff you are willing to live with but if you choose to upgrade your hard drive the Storage Solutions review seems to indicate it may be worthwhile. Although no test can be exhaustive of every type of drive available, I think the Storage Solutions test covers the major players: Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital.

As one would expect, for the most part, the faster the spindle speed, the higher the performance. Hence, it should come as no surprise that the Hitachi Travelstar model 7K100 7,200rpm disk comes out on top for most of the tests.

The problem is, the Hitachi costs about $200USD for 80GB of storage. As a comparison, in the desktop world you could get a 300GB drive for about the same price. So, although you can gain a speed increase by switching from a 4,200rpm drive up to a 7,200, the cost will also be relatively substantial. If that equation works for you, then the Hitachi is probably the way to go.

A barrier to more people in Hawaii shopping on-line is the problem of shipping. Up until a year or two ago, UPS provided Ground Shipping rates. However, they decided to stop such service and provide only one or two-day service. As you might guess, the cost of next day or second day air delivery is substantial. By substantial I mean more than $20 for even the lightest shipment.

So when I find a website like Amazon that provides reasonable shipping costs, I will order things from them. On the other hand, I recently tried to buy something from New Egg. When I went to the checkout page, I was surprised to see an option of UPS ground for shipping to Hawaii. I was over joyed! Ground shipping to Hawaii was back! So I picked that option and finished checking out. But a day later, much to my dismay, I got an email from New Egg saying they didn't really have UPS ground shipping and that I had to pay for first or second day air (which was almost double the cost of ground).

Now, I am not a lawyer but it seems to me New Egg made an offer to sell me an item at a certain price and then offered various shipping options. I accepted that offer and submitted payment in the form of a credit card. In a court of law, that is one definition of a contract. Break that contract, and I can sue. Although I don't actually plan to do so because it's just not worth my time and money, a class action suit might be workable.

In any case, one must wonder why the people who put the New Egg site together didn't program the shipping so that delivery addresses in states they don't serve are locked out. For example, Sears.com does that by making sure you can't enter the state of Hawaii in the address field. While I deplore Sears for ignoring my state, and Sears obviously by making such a decision will get zero business from 1.5 million potential customers, at least they are up front about it. New Egg, on the other hand, appears, in my opinion, to be pulling a bait and switch.

So, I will be ordering my Antec Aria case, AMD 64 3200+ CPU, ASUS A8N-VM CSM motherboard, Seagate SATA NCQ 160GB hard drive, and other assorted bits and pieces from someone else (I'm putting together a Windows Media Center PC. Yes, I know, it's Windows. But the Linux equivalents aren't. Equivalent, that is. You have to do too much compiling and hand tuning to get these things to work, if you can get them to work at all and hardware support, especially for HD, is rather sparse.).

Aloha!