Misc. Ramblings

Why is there so much e-mail spam? The short answer is because there is money to be made. The bottom line is, first, because it's cheaper than sending snail mail. Second, because, according to this article here, 20 percent of the recipients actually buy through them.

The number seems much higher than numbers I've seen before but even if orders of magnitude wrong, it still answers the question of why so much spam. If you send out 100,000 e-mails, a number not out of line with figures I've seen before, and you get a one percent response rate, that's still 1,000 sales (Don Armstrong please double check my arithmetic). Making 1,000 sales on a cost of, probably, pennies per sale is one excellent way of making money. Hence, as long as it is profitable, people will continue to clog your e-mail box with stuff you may not want, but 20 percent of other people do.

As for me, I've modified how my e-mail is filtered. Recently, I've been using two layers of defense. The first is SpamAssasin that my host provider, pair.com uses. The second is what Mozilla Thunderbird has built in. But even with these two filters, much too much was getting through. So I re-installed a filter I've used in the past. It's called POPFile.

While I've only used the three together since yesterday, I'm already near 97 percent accuracy in identifying spam. However, I've found two POPFile bugs that weren't in the previous version I used. The latest version of POPFile (version 0.21.1) has a really nasty bug relating to the system tray icon. If you have it on, and you go to the "Buckets" tab of the POPFile user interface (UI), WindowsXP Pro will lockup so hard you will have to press the reset button. The temporary workaround is to disable the tray icon by using the UI (Configuration->Windows->Show POPFile icon in Windows system tray?->No). The second bug is not as big a deal. If you access the UI by going to the Windows Start menu -> All Programs -> POPFile and start the UI there, you may get an error message saying Windows cannot find 127.0.0.1:8080 (which is where the proxy runs). You can ignore the error as your browser will find the address just fine. The workaround for this is to access the UI directly by first starting your browser and then typing in the 127.0.0.1:8080 address yourself.

Posted by DanS at 10:12 AM | Permalink

According to this story from CNN here. The state of Utah and the US government are suing the Boy Scouts of America for almost $14 million USD to recover the costs of fighting a fire allegedly started by unattended camp fires built by a group of Boy Scouts.

Posted by DanS at 10:11 AM | Permalink

Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 09:30:55 -0700
From: Paul Hampson
Subject: Re: Wireless access problems

Dan-

My response? Wire works.

Re: de-regulation. There were some very good reasons for regulation in the first place, they haven't gone away. Unrestrained avarice does not belong in public services and utilities, including medical care. IMHO of course.

Paul

---

Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 00:39:46 +1000 (EST)
From: Don Armstrong
Subject: Uhmm - probably not quite

You said "802.11a runs at a higher frequency, 5 GHz, and has 12 independent channels (rather than 802.11a or g which has only three)".

I have the distinct impression that one of those 802.11a's needs to have a change of letter.

Regards, Don Armstrong
Nitpicker to the stars

but anyway it shows somebody's paying attention.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 10:11 AM | Permalink

You may remember I was looking at different content management systems (CMS). One that I looked at is called Blosxom (pronounced like blossom, as in flower). Unfortunately, it did not meet my needs because it was very minimalist. That is, there were very few features that would make it worthwhile switching from MovableType. But as oftentimes happens on the Internet, I followed one link that led me to another and I ended up at Blojsom.

As you may be able to tell from the name, it is based on Blosxom but adds many of the features I was looking for: RSS/Atom, comments, trackback, web-based administration, etc.

I guess this CMS looked so good Apple decided to bundle it with the coming Mac OS X codename "Tiger". Congratulations to the Blojsom (and Blosxom) team.

Posted by DanS at 09:15 AM | Permalink

Legislatures are frequently taken to task for creating stealth tax increases through the use of "fees." By upping fees, they can go back to their home states and trumpet how they held the line on taxes while at the same time increasing revenues to pay for more government programs.

Well, legislatures aren't the only ones. Take a look at your cell phone bill and you'll see all kinds of add-on fees that you aren't told about when you sign up. This article from MSNBC (see it here) seems to be saying many of those fees are either mislabeled, vague, or downright lies. In other words, these private companies raise the cost of using their services by creating fees out of thin air (car dealers also do this by adding fees for "license processing" or just calling it ADM for Additional Dealer Markup - i.e., profit) and since all of them are doing it, you have no choice.

I can still remember certain people saying deregulation was supposed to bring lower prices and more choices. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it depends on whether there is competition or not. It may be too early for a good determination, but this grand experiment in reforming government doesn't seem to be meeting the stated objectives.

Posted by DanS at 09:15 AM | Permalink

Speaking of not meeting the objectives. I've learned a few things about setting-up and using a wireless network. The first thing nobody tells you is if you are using 802.11b or 802.11g (by far, the two most popular and both operating in the 2.4 GHz band), you have a maximum of three channels to use (1, 6 or 11 in the US). These channels are not supposed interfere with each other so you should be able to get a good connection if any one of the three is available.

But if you live in an area with access points already using those channels, which I do (there are four, including my own), you will not be able to use your network at all or at the most, intermittently. I don't want to point fingers at anyone but this seems to fall on the lack of planning on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) who developed the standards.

Surely it was obvious that three channels would not be enough. Surely it was obvious that a way of working around this would be needed. Surely Hawaii is not the most connected places in the world so I'm not alone in having so many hotspots near me. Surely the press needs to report these problems because they are doing a great disservice to the growing number of people who buy this hardware, only to find it doesn't work.

Indeed, with the coming of non-compliant "turbo" modes that bind two channels to get more bandwidth, it's getting even harder to get an open channel to use. Further, it will only get worse as more and more people buy these systems (turbo or not).

The temporary solution is to move to 802.11a. Strangely, as the numbering systems works, 802.11a runs at a higher frequency, 5 GHz, and has 12 independent channels (rather than 802.11b or g which has only three) to work with. The problem is very few companies are producing 802.11a compliant hardware. And those that do aren't exactly spending a lot of money keeping their chipsets up-to-date (Atheros, one of the big players in chipsets, introduced their third-generation in May of 2003. To date, according to a search on the Atheros site, only Sony is using it in their access points).

So, in the short run, if you live where interference is keeping you from using your wireless LAN, switch to 802.11a. But unless something better comes along, even 802.11a will become crowded. At that point, I don't know what else can be done.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:14 AM | Permalink

Tim O'Reilly has a longish essay on The Open Source Paradigm Shift. O'Reilly says the Open Source shift (assuming here that there is one) is a reflection of three long-term trends (see the list below) and uses the trends as lenses to examine the shift:

1. Software as Commodity (Software itself is no longer the primary locus of value in the computer industry. The commoditization of software drives value to services enabled by that software. New business models are required.)
2. Network-Enabled Collaboration (Open source is the "natural language" of a networked community. Given enough developers and a network to connect them, open-source-style development behavior inevitably emerges.)
3. Customizability: Software-as-a-Service (Software as a process.)

He concludes: "But a historical view tells us that the commoditization of older technologies and the crystallization of value in new technologies is part of a process that advances the industry and creates more value for all. What is essential is to find a balance, in which we as an industry create more value than we capture as individual participants, enriching the commons that allows for further development by others."

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:50 AM | Permalink

I'm here at work but I don't know if I'll make it through the day.

I had an interesting experience yesterday. It started with problems editing a PDF file and ended with hours of formatting a word processing document.

Many of you know that PDF files are not intended to be edited. That is, you create the original in another program such as a word processor and when done, and only when done, you convert the document into a PDF. Once in PDF form, you really don't want to be making substantial changes to the PDF. This is because, in essence, a PDF is a picture of a document just as a jpg file is a picture of something you photographed or created in a paint program. Hence, trying to edit a picture as if it were a word processing document is not going to get you very far.

Indeed, if you do need to make substantial changes, you go back to your original word processing document and make the changes there - then convert again to PDF.

A problem occurs when you have to make substantial changes but don't have the original word processing file but you do have the PDF file. If the PDF came from a word processing document and you saved the font into the PDF, you may be able to make substantial changes to the PDF. But if the PDF came from a scan of the hard copy, you're pretty much toast because all you can do is rescan the document and run it through your Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.

This is where things get hairy. Said software is far from perfect even though it is getting better. You would think with systems available to recognize handwriting that software would be able to read printed documents. But you would be wrong because much of how we recognize written ideas is through the context.

For example, a numbered list gives order and is intended to be seen as a whole. To OCR software, the numbers are just characters and have no attachment to the words that follow. Hence, even if the OCR correctly reads the characters, your word processing software will not recognize the output as a numbered list. Hence, you spend much time formatting the document to create the context.

I don't know if anyone has done a study as to what point it becomes more efficient to type in a document versus trying to make corrections and format an OCR read document. But with the 33 page document (a memorandum of agreement) in question, all I can do is cut and paste parts of the OCR into a clean word processing document rather than waste time making corrections.

Posted by DanS at 09:49 AM | Permalink

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 21:36:32 -0700
From: JHR
Subject: Duck Story

Dan -

Since you're going in for a Cat scan tomorrow, thought you might appreciate this (from my #1 son in Seoul):

Regards,

JHR
--

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she lay her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest. After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm so sorry, your pet has passed away."

The distressed owner wailed, "Are you sure?" Yes, I'm sure. The duck is dead," he replied. "How can you be so sure", she protested. "I mean, you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room. He returned a few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog and took it out and returned a few moments later with a beautiful cat. The cat jumped up on the table and also sniffed the bird from its beak to its tail and back again. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly, jumped down and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck." Then the vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys, and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman. The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she cried. "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead?!!"

The vet shrugged. "I'm sorry. If you'd taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20. But what with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it all adds up."

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:42 AM | Permalink

I'm back at work today. But my back, if anything is a lot worse than it was yesterday. I don't know why, but it started getting worse last night. This morning, just sitting here for a few minutes and I'm in pain. I've even changed chairs trying to find something that will support my back and not hurt so much.

Oh well, I guess I'll take a couple of aspirin and wait until I leave at 11:00am for my CAT scan (see How It Works here).

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:56 AM | Permalink

I'm at home again today. If all goes well, I'll be back at work tomorrow.

Speaking of doctors. Acknowledging that they spend more care hitting golf balls then attending to their patients, surgeons in the US will begin new procedures to ensure that the foot they amputate is the one that is supposed to be cut off.

Beginning July 1st, surgeons are supposed to take a "time out" to confirm they are operating on the right patient, that they have correctly identified the body part to be worked on, and if there is more than one part, that they have the correct one. You would think surgeons would already be doing this but I guess in the factory like atmosphere that operating rooms have become it is not. See the full story here.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:55 AM | Permalink

If anything, my back is worse today than it was yesterday. Since sitting puts more pressure on my back than standing, and since I write this while sitting, there won't be much of a post. Sorry about that.

If you think Hawai'i has some big waves, check out this one that hit Japan recently. Where's Mothra when you need him/her/it?

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:57 AM | Permalink

I injured my back yesterday so I'm at home. I'll probably be at home tomorrow also but I'll try to have a post up.

As a short note, I see that the test flight of the first privately funded manned space plane was successful this morning (see the story here). The official Scaled Composites site has not been updated as of 7:00 a.m. HST but I assume they will do so as soon as they can.

Well done to all involved on this historic step into space.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:16 AM | Permalink

You IT professionals out there (you know who you are) probably already know this (because, you are like the mythical town of Lake Woebegon, Minnesota, where the women are strong, the men are good looking and all of the children above average intelligence(r)), but if you haven't started testing Microsoft's latest Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 2 (instructions for installation here or here), get it now. There are changes that will break applications. Many of these applications are network related and will fail because of the firewall that SP2 enables by default.

The Release Notes list some of the applications that will have to be updated or modified. Read the other information on the MS site to find others.

Also, be on the lookout for updates from your own PC manufacturers.

The bottom line, in a corporate environment anyway, is that SP2 may cause some problems. How many and what kind will depend on what you are running. Most of you should be okay, but not everyone will be so fortunate.

Posted by DanS at 09:06 AM | Permalink

My wallpaper for the week is from NASA and is an image of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972 by a member of the Apollo 17 crew. Apollo 17 was the last manned mission to the Moon. On December 14, 1972, at 22:54:37 GMT, man left the Moon and has not returned since.

You can follow the link above to the image page and download a higher resolution (2330 X 2527 17MB TIF file) if you like.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:02 AM | Permalink

The question comes up periodically as to why I switched to a content management system (CMS). I'll lay out some of the problems and how they are solved by a CMS (without evangelizing too much about which CMS I think is best) but I'll also highlight some of the costs that are involved in using one.

I chose a CMS (I presently use MovableType) because I was tired of having to update my templates the beginning of each week and felt that computers were meant to help make me more productive, not be forced to manually slave away at boring tasks.

For example, each week I would have to edit the main index page to update the dates for each day, the "last week" and "next week" links, the redirector page, and the calendar page that had links organized by month. This was a lot of detail work with attendant mistakes cropping up. Hence, much of my time was spent updating the templates instead of writing these insightful posts [g].

I understood, however, that switching to something to automate these tasks would come at a price.

Since I don't have the expertise or the time to write my own system, I would need to rely on someone else. By doing so, I give up control, to a certain extent, over how my site looks and operates. This is because most (all?) CMSs are based on a set of pre-written templates. While it is true that the templates can be modified, there are bits that should not be altered. Hence, to a great extent, websites using a CMS tend to look very similar, if not exactly alike.

But these templates, and the underlying PERL/Python scripts, are required to automate the very processes I didn't want to do by hand anymore.

Further, once going down this road, deciding to go back may be very difficult and time consuming. Some CMSs dynamically create the page as it is requested. But once served, it disappears into the ether. Lose the database where the posts are stored, or access to it as users of Dave Winer's service have found, and everything you have written is gone (even with the help of Google's cache or The WayBackMachine).

On the other hand, other CMSs (such as MT) use a static structure whereby pages are created and permanently archived (or as permanent as things can be on the Web) to the server. Nonetheless, if you want to switch to something else, you may still end up having to do much hand coding. In either case, you are essentially locked into the system you choose. Hence, you have to decide if the cost of having to switch, should you need or want to, is worth the benefits of any CMS.

In summary, using a CMS automates tasks that you would otherwise spend time doing. The downside is you loose a certain amount of control. In the end, only you can decide what the costs and benefits are of any system. Use whichever tool works best for you. But for now, I'm sticking with Ben and Mena Trott's MT.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:33 AM | Permalink

"I am learning," Yen Hui said.
"How?" the Master asked.
"I forgot the rules of Righteousness and the levels of Benevolence," he replied.
"Good, but could be better," the Master said.
A few days later, Yen Hui remarked, "I am making progress."
"How?" the Master asked.
"I forgot the Rituals and the Music," he answered.
"Better, but not perfect," the Master said.
Some time later, Yen Hui told the master, "Now I sit down and forgot everything."
The Master looked up, startled, "What do you mean, you forgot everything?" he quickly asked.
"I forgot my body and senses, and leave all appearance and information behind," answered Yen Hui. "In the middle of Nothing, I join the source of All Things."
The Master bowed. "You have transcended the limitations of time and knowledge. I am far behind you. You have found the Way!" [From a good tutorial on PERL debugging found here.]

With all the talk about how we have to do more with less, it is interesting that the Judiciary requested, and the Legislature approved a new position. They approved a "webmaster" for the Judiciary's intraweb site. Now, this is not a story about how politics works and how you almost never get what you want or need, but you do get what the politically connected want.

Rather, it's a story about being told to do something but not being given the access required to do it.
So sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip.
That started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship.

Part of our intraweb site runs on PERL. That is, the search engine and electronic voting booth runs via PERL scripts. I installed the scripts about two years ago and all was well.

Until our new webmaster came along, that is. Our new webmaster is good at creating fancy HTML. However, he doesn't seem to be as experienced in running and maintaining a web server. For example, he doesn't know what PERL/PYTHON is. He doesn't know about setting permissions. He doesn't know about a lot of things a webmaster needs to know to do his or her job.

So, all of sudden the scripts stopped running and I was told to fix them (perhaps not coincidentally after he deleted and re-created the directories the scripts are in). The problem is I no longer have read/write access to the PERL scripts. In fact, I can't even run PERL on the command line. These are BIG problems if I'm supposed to fix the scripts. I reckon these are also artifacts of his deleting the directories and then re-creating them that I talked about earlier.

Looking at the PERL error messages I'm now getting, I've narrowed it down to two possibilities: 1. The permissions are set wrong for the sub-directory and/or the files in the directory. 2. The path has changed and the PERL scripts need to be updated to point to the correct directory.

But since I can't copy, edit, read, write, fold or staple any of the scripts, I can't check to see if I'm correct. So, I emailed the webmaster asking for permissions to be set so I could do so (either through my login or by actually changing things on the files themselves).

Our webmaster replied saying the error message indicates PERL is running so he has nothing to do. It's up to me to fix things. [sound:fx sound of steam being released and someone slowly counting one...two...three...four...] Sigh. Don't get me wrong, he is a very nice guy and trying to do the best he can. But perhaps he needs some training in how to do the things he needs to do.

So, that's where we stand right now. Our webmaster thinks I can fix things without having to change permissions. So I'm going to clear my mind and forget this problem as life is too short to make a big deal out of this.

Posted by DanS at 08:40 AM | Permalink

Speaking of more important things, congratulations to the new US National Basketball Association champions, the Detroit Pistons. They thoroughly beat the Los Angeles Lakers in yesterday's championship game. Not only did Detroit play better defense, they played better offense. Los Angeles was completely befuddled, disorganized, and ineffective. Oh well, there's always next year.

Posted by DanS at 08:39 AM | Permalink

Speaking of even more important stuff, I would appreciate it if you could send a few good thoughts to Fellow Daynoter John Dominik's family as his elderly mother apparently fell down the stairs and his not doing well. Also, if you have the time and are so inclined, send Fellow Daynoter Mike Barkman a few good thoughts as he continues his fight with his own health problems.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:38 AM | Permalink

Microsoft may do a lot things right but getting software out the door on time is not one of them. So MS rightly takes a lot of heat when it delays releases multiple times. In the case of Windows updates, the delays can be measured in years.

But is the same standard applied to non-MS offerings? Not always. For example, Mozilla Firefox 0.9 has finally been released. If I remember correctly, it was due in March. Then it was delayed to April. Then May. So, on June 15, it finally went out the door.

But, it was supposed to be "feature complete." Only, it doesn't appear to be. For example, you can't do an upgrade update. You have to either uninstall your earlier installation and then install the new or install the new in a different directory. No, this is not hard to do but it confirms that 0.9 is not "feature complete." Or at least, in my opinion it's not if you consider in place upgrades a "feature".

So, while I am no MS evangelist, I think we need to remember that MS is not the only one to miss deadlines so maybe we should cut them some slack.

Posted by DanS at 09:20 AM | Permalink

Speaking of missing things. The Los Angeles Lakers are "guaranteeing" that they will win tonight in their US National Basketball Association game against the Detroit Pistons. This is a bold statement given Los Angels is down 1-3 in the championship series and they are playing in Detroit. Don't get me wrong, I love LA. But you don't go into your opponents home court and say to everyone you will guarantee you will win. If there is a better way of energizing your opponent and their fans I can't think of it. Sigh.

However, if they do lose, Detroit clinches the championship. So, one hopes LA will be able to win at least one more game before losing again (no team has ever come back from a 1-3 record because it requires the team to win three straight games and if they could do that, they wouldn't be down 1-3 in the first place).

In any case, GO LAKERS!

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:04 AM | Permalink

You know, sometimes I read this stuff and wonder if these people are for real. I mean, there is enough strange things in the world without having to make things up. And yet, people do.

Whether this item is one of them I'll let you decide. TheRegister is reporting that the British Ministry of Defense has developed an anti-grenade vaporizing force field. I kid you not. According to the article here:

The new electric armour is based on a highly charged capacitor connected to two separate metal plates on the tank's exterior. The outer (armour-plated) plate is earthed while the insulated inner plate is live.

Posted by DanS at 09:14 AM | Permalink

Also out of the UK is this BBC report that says the Swedish Navy will be the first to deploy a so-called stealth ship. The new class of ship has a hull made of carbon fiber and above water surfaces angled so as to deflect radar waves rather than reflecting them back to the sender. The sum total of the changes reportedly reduces the radar "signature" by 99 percent.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:13 AM | Permalink

I guess I've been in a reflective mood lately remembering the past Los Angeles Lakers greats. And a big part of my time in Los Angeles (1976-1980) was associated with listening to music. I had a Marantz AM/FM receiver (see a picture of, I think, the model I had then here) with Altec Lansing speakers.

Most of the stations I listened to have long since either gone under or changed formats so many times no one can remember what they started with.

But along with the music were the DJs who spun those platters. I can remember the authoritative voices of Jim Ladd, Pat "Paraquat" Kelley, Mary "The Burner" Turner, Jeff Gonzer, Ace "The Space" Young, and B. Mitchell Reed of KMET and I think Brother Bob Cole from KKGO Jazz (I could be wrong on the last one, its been a long time).

This was a time in which "free-form" album oriented rock still had a chance. In fact, for awhile, KMET was number one in LA based on their focus on playing good, but not necessarily commercial music. So instead of the three minute song followed by commercials, they might play a Led Zeppelin opus like "Kashmir" or "Stair Way to Heaven" while other stations played "Mandy" by Barry Manilow.

It was that kind of era. But as in all things, its time came and went.

Posted by DanS at 08:51 AM | Permalink

Sometimes it's nice to know that even Linux computer gurus have problems that drive them nuts. Not that I enjoy their pain, but at least it shows that not everything is as easy as reading the How-To.

For instance, Jamie Zawinski (see the comments back and forth here) is trying to install something called Catweasel. This is a disk controller that apparently can read PC, Amiga, Atari, Mac, Commodore, and Nintendo (Nintendo?) diskettes.

But I guess the site correctly warns you that, at least for the ISA version, "The drivers are not designed to be easy-to-use. Instead, they are tools "for-freaks-only"."

Now, I don't know which version he is using but with that kind of there be dragons here warning, you shouldn't be surprised if you can't get it to work out-of-the-box. Still, if you've had any experience actually getting one of these things to work in Linux, give him a hand because he's a good guy and could use the help.

Posted by DanS at 08:49 AM | Permalink

I forgot to mention that tomorrow is a state holiday (King Kamehameha Day), not to mention a federal holiday in memory of President Reagan, so I'll be off and no post for tomorrow.

Have a Great, Long Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:01 AM | Permalink

For whatever reason, I've had all kinds of problems trying to use GnuPg and have ended up generating a new set of keys. So, as before, delete any public keys from me that you may have and use the one linked to on the right. Sorry for any problems this may cause. Thanks.

Posted by DanS at 08:43 AM | Permalink

SWMBO is getting tired of using the Sony Vaio 600MHz Celeron desktop that she's been using for the last couple of years. So I'm putting together a white box PC using an Intel 2.8GHz P4 Prescott, Intel D865GBF-L motherboard, Seagate 120GB SATA hard drive, and 512MB of Kingston RAM. It will be some time until I get all the parts in but once built, it should should be adequate (for awhile) for what she needs to use it for.

Posted by DanS at 08:43 AM | Permalink

As long as I can remember, I've liked the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. Maybe it's because I went to college in southern California or maybe it's just because I like the purple and gold team colors.

In any case, I can remember the poetry in motion that was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar going up for his jump hook. Or the way Earvin "Magic" Johnson could fake out his defenders so badly he would be past them with a layup before they had the time to figure out which way he went. Or the way Jamaal "Silk" Wilkes would slice the defense up for breakfast, chew it up for lunch, and spit it out for dinner with his soft shooting touch.

So you better believe I was watching the Lakers play in the National Basketball Association championship series yesterday. After being stunned with a game one loss, the Lakers were expected to come back strong in game two. But the Detroit Pistons had other plans and almost handed my team their shorts on a stick. Win the Lakers did, but ugly was the game.

I don't like close games. I want the door closed, the lights out, the eggs cooling, the butter getting hard, and the jello jiggling (sorry, old Chick Hearn quote - ed.) by the end of the third quarter. But while I hope the Lakers will eventually win the series, the old saying about a good defense beats a good offense may again be proven true.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:41 AM | Permalink

Well, not exactly. But you may be hearing more about CableCard (see one article here that explains things better than the CableLabs site) in the near future.

Starting July 1st, if you have a CableCard ready TV (which you probably don't, but will be able to purchase in the near future), you can pop in one of these cards and get rid of your set-top decoder box. This means you can use your TV's tuner, rather than a separate box, to watch analog, digital, or HDTV (assuming your TV can display them). Of course, you must be a subscriber of these services but you would no longer need the extra box to watch them via cable.

Note that the CableCard is unidirectional, meaning that such services as Video-on-Demand or various bi-directional TV guides would no longer work. Further, while CableCard ready DVRs will have a slot, it appears you would need to have two CableCards to use them to watch one scrambled channel on your CableCard enabled TV (or using features such as picture-in-picture) while recording another on the CableCard ready DVR.

In addition, I'm not sure where you would get the cards other than from your cable provider. Said provider would probably have a monthly rental charge for the cards. What that cost will be I don't know but when its available, you will need to determine whether it's worth your while to switch or just stay with what you have (which would continue to operate as before).

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 07:59 AM | Permalink

I've been using the Linksys WRT54GS wireless router/access point for a little over a month now and find that I can't get much use out it. I don't know why, but as more of my neighbors fire up their own access points (there are now at least two others within range of the Seto Shack), the Linksys signal strength goes down until the connection is lost.

At first, I thought I had configured things wrong but after trying everything I could think of or find on the Internet, I noticed that as the number of other access points went up, my signal strength went down. Note, some sites talk about RF interference from cordless phones or even microwave ovens. But I don't think that's the source of my problem.

Here's why. When no one else has their access point powered, I get what the Linksys software says is "good" to "excellent" signal strength. But when one neighbor goes online, signal strength immediately drops to "poor". When the second access point comes on, signal strength goes to zero and my connection is lost.

The big question is why is this happening. Some people said to change channels or to use specific channels like 1, 6, or 11. So I did, even though none of the access points were on the same channel. So, of course, changing that did nothing. Others have said to change various other settings but none made a difference.

There have been reports (here, and here) that, in fact, having more than one access point within range does cause interference. But they also say to change channels.

Surely, the 802.11 standards committee would have anticipated environments with more than one access point. Surely, they would not have created a standard that allows the presence of other access points to negatively affect the performance of others even when on different channels. This is such a basic problem that surely it would have been solved by now by using, for example, spread-spectrum technology, long in use in the cordless phone world. Right?

Perhaps. Maybe I should switch to another brand of access point? I've heard good things about the Microsoft offering but, of course, they've since stopped making them. What I need to know is if anyone lives in a similar environment to mine in which at least two other access points are nearby, all on different channels, and whereby they all get good access.

So, if you live in a such an environment and are getting good reception, let me know what brand of access point/laptop card you are using. Thanks.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:16 AM | Permalink

Somewhere someone is winning one for the Gipper. Happy trails to you. Optimist. Full of humor. American.

Posted by DanS at 09:14 AM | Permalink

I know all eleven of you have been anxiously waiting for my vacation pics so here they are. I have to say that they aren't my best work but I was more into relaxing then trying to do anything artistic. Still, you can't go too far wrong taking pictures of the sunset in Hawai'i ;).

As usual, clicking on an image will link you to a full-sized version. Note that some of the images are about one MB in size so let discretion rule your decision...

By the way, there is a lot of "pixelization" in most of the images due to the imaging software (Paint Shop Pro 8) that I used to correct some of the colors. I didn't notice the problem until I had worked on most of the images. I found that the automatic contrast enhancement function does bad things and needs to be used with care, if at all.

Left, looking towards the Hilton Hawaiian Village lagoon in the middle distance and the yacht harbor in the foreground (That big blue thing farther out is the Pacific Ocean. Just trying to be helpful - ed.).

Center, straight out to sea.

Right, towards Magic Island of Ala Moana Park.

In-room computer workstation with my Dell laptop connected via Fast Ethernet. You can also see the all-in-one fax/printer to the right. They even provided a ream of paper in the desk drawer.

These are some of the sailboats coming in from the usual Friday evening race held off of Waikiki and Ala Moana.

This is a shot pointing straight down towards the pool on the fifth floor deck.

A shot of the yacht harbor taken from the pool deck.

Obligatory sunset shot number one.

Obligatory sunset shot number two.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 10:16 AM | Permalink

The latest rage locally are these magnets shaped in the form of a yellow ribbon (available here for $5.25 USD). I see them on cars and trucks all over town and have apparently even become valuable to thieves. Get yours now before everyone else has one. YMMV.

Posted by DanS at 09:29 AM | Permalink

For you X Window manager fiends out there comes the latest update to Waimea (Hawaiian, noun, pronounced why-may-uh and meaning reddish-brown river in English, referring to the famous surfing spot on the island of O'ahu). Waimea uses the cairo graphics library to render a spiffy desktop. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot there at the website but I guess if you know what a X Windows manager is you can figure out how to use it. YMMV.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:27 AM | Permalink

A slow day here at the Seto Shack. I think I'll be able to have the vacation pictures (Run! Run for your lives - ed) up tomorrow. Until then, remember that "ignorance may be bliss, but it isn't a virtue." - Bob Lewis (1999)

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:09 AM | Permalink

As Spock would say, sometimes, fixing a computer requires illogical solutions.

On Friday, our IT people were able to get me access to the Intraweb server again. They did it the old fashion way: by facing in the right direction and incanting the correct magic syllables.

Actually, they did what smart IT people do: they applied logic and began to eliminate possible sources of the problem. First, they attached a laptop to our network drop and determined that the problem was not specific to my PC. By doing this, they refrained from wasting hours trying various changes on my PC that probably would not have made a positive difference.

Once they determined the problem was not specific to my PC, they focused on the server's configuration. This is where the chanting came in because they couldn't find anything wrong. Yet every time anyone would try to login they would end up in the wrong directory. They tried deleting my login and creating a new one but no joy.

So, they copied everything in the directory I needed to get to and temporarily stored it in a new directory. They then deleted the old directory and re-created the directory again. After which they copied the files back in and all was well.

No one knows why that worked but it did and so far it still does.

Posted by DanS at 09:10 AM | Permalink

This past weekend SWMBO and I went into Waikiki for an early anniversary vacation. We usually take off during the July 4th weekend but due to her job obligations, it doesn't look like we will be able to do that.

So we stayed at the Hawaii Prince Hotel Waikiki. The hotel is in Waikiki but is not on the beach as it fronts the yacht harbor. Nonetheless it is a very nice hotel. We had a room on the 29th of 33 floors with a view extending from the the Hilton Hawaiian Village (where we stayed last year) to the Magic Island end of Ala Moana Park.

The room was recently renovated and includes high speed Ethernet access to the Internet ($8.95 USD per day extra). We had a nice time playing tourist and laying out at the pool. So much so we'll probably come back some time.

I'll try to get some pictures up as soon as I can but it may be awhile.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 09:09 AM | Permalink