2020 Hindsight

Weird Accents

Short post day: I'm out n about, will take computer with me away from net connection (read: more productive).

Some random links: World War 2.5 , or, what we hope does NOT happen. (link courtesy of a friend, who's part of Take Back The Media)

Random SOTU link: The Raven parses the State of the Union, distilling it down to five specific actions.

Accents Random airline travelling accent note: After flying out of LAX for the first time since 9/11, I noticed that the public address persona who talked about security was a woman's voice, in BBC (British) English. Since when did BBC English become the lingua fraca of Los Angeles airport? Is there some deep trait within Californians that we respond to that accent as to more authority? A tone that's designed to break through our mental barriers?

More accent weirdness: On return flight (Southwest), the captain was oh-so-German. That, and a very southern Texas twang: "on behalf of your flight crew, I'd like to thank you f'r flyin' Southwest." What a juxtaposition.

29 January 2003

Recent shuttle launch Here are some fotos of the recent shuttle launch taken by someone who was at the Banana Creek viewing site.

Back around

another urban legend petition Today's email contains a petition attached to a news item, to wit:

Today 25 Congresswomen in the US House of

Representatives walked out - and refused to

participate in the vote to give Bush war powers --

they were led by Barbara Bell of California and they

took up residence on the White House lawn.....

My bullshit detector went off. Today? What's the date on this thing? (no date) And today happens to be the State of the Union speech day. So I looked on Google News for Barbara Bell and Google itself, and lo,

Snopes says no. And California congresswoman Barbara Lee has a page which debunks the scam. There is no such congresswoman as Barbara Bell.

Sigh. What is not spam is scam.

We the gullible of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense against thinking for ourselves, promote the general Welfare, secure the Blessings of liberty from attempts at skeptical inquiry for all Posterity, do ordain and establish email petitions, because we read it on the Internet.[note: I made this up; you won't find it here. ]

Out and outage Back in town after an outta town visit to learn more of this programming stuff. I missed Saturday morning's net outage.

Microsoft and its secure computing: Worm hits Microsoft, which ignored its own advice. (NY Times)

What I want to know is, that security backdoor with Security Certificates.., where it's possible to create a man-in-the-middle attack. Has Microsoft ever offered updates for its browsers?

List of SSL vulnerabilities, Microsoft's August 2002 bulletin addressing the issue sayign that they'll come up with a patch. So, is the patch still in the offing

Reach customers online is a weblog hosted by Tim Slavin. All manner of issues about, well, reaching customers online (web, email, mailing lists).

Birthday of Rabbie Burns

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, I kiss you! Way to go! And the vote was unanimous, too.

Burns Night Well, okay, his birthday is really tomorrow, January 25. But since I'm going to a Burns night tonight, I'm noting it today. Hmmm.I looked for an appropriate link, and from news.google.com on Robert Burns, I found this: Robert Burns was member of 'scandalous religious sect'

It is thought the 23-year-old Burns was attracted by a "young and beautiful" member of the sect, which was led by the charismatic Elspet Buchan. Buchan saw herself as an embodiment of the Holy Spirit and claimed she could pass the Godhead from person to person by mouth.

The Buchanites caused outrage and disgust in Irvine with their loose morals and what Burns referred to as the "great farce of pretended devotion in barns and woods, where they lodge and lye all together".

And I was gonna type a wee greet about haggis an' luve an' a' that.

23 January 2003

My web/mail hosting company is now offering spam assassin. I flipped the switch yesterday to turn it on (can't do anything to configure it or anything). Spam count today is much, much lower. I was regularly deleting 30+ pieces of spam 3 or more times per day. I guess that puts the count at 100/day.

These are busy, runaround times with light posting.

Peer pressure begins early. My brother tells me about how his family's adjusting to taking the baby (almost 2 years old) to daycare. The first day, after she comes home, she finds her nyeah-nyeah (pacifier, abandoned a while back) and starts sucking on it. One of the other kids there had one. This is only the beginning.

Saddam's bodyguard interview in Debkafile: Part one: Saddam's Shark Pool, Described by former bodyguard. Interview, part two: I know where the weapons [of mass destruction] are.

21 January 2003; The Return of Mitnick

Mitnick Returns I read yesterday that today Kevin Mitnick is allowed back on the computer and internet. (How long will it take to delete all his spam?) Slashdot is gonna interview him.

All right, I'll post more. I was intrigued by this tidbit because the notion of being away from the net for years and years is an oddity for someone so technical. What's that like? Now I've done a bit more research on Kevin Mitnick, and offer a few things here:

• The Register: Kevin Mitnick's lost bio and Chapter 1 of the book including the portions that Mitnick's publisher wouldn't publish. Lots of information about how Markoff, who wrote about Mitnick for the NYTimes and wrote a couple of books about him, had lots to gain by distorting things, had undisclosed conflicts of interest, and merely days after the article that painted Mitnick as utterly dangerous, Markoff was offered $1 million for book advance/movie rights.
• NY Post: Mitnick off probation, back online
• Labmistress, the blog of Darci, girlfriend of Kevin Mitnick
• NY Times MagazineConnected Again: Interview with Kevin Mitnick

so there's this guy.... So there's this guy from Prague. He's a short guy, just under 5 feet, and is in the U.S. Some dustup happens with the INS, mebbe related to homeland security, and he wants to hide. He goes to a town where some relatives of his Prague neighbors live, and he asks one of them, "Will you cache a small Czech?"

How does it feel now, congresspeople? Archipeligo notes Aaron's note that "Congress gets a taste of its own medicine: the Blackberry (Crackberry) mobile email client, used by everyone in Congress, was found to be in violation of a dumb patent; now Congress is begging for them to be kept alive." My my! The statement says that this lawsuit "could jeopardize the public interest." Hrmmm. How many other similar jeopardize-the-public-interest statements could be said about other patent infringement lawsuits? Why are congresspeople more public than others?

20 January 2003

Rest in Peace, Al Hirschfeld Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, age 99, died today. CNN AP/WaPost Thanks for all those NINAs to hunt for. I first encountered his work on a theatre poster in a high school English classroom, and I've been hunting NINAs ever since.There's a web site with an online gallery, www.alhirschfeld.com, but it's getting hammered right now. Wait a while and then go.

Hurry Kids! 11 more days to name the Mars Rovers NASA's Name the Rovers Contest, which ends January 31, 2003, is open to all students in grades K - 12 in the U.S. and possessions and overseas US schools.

YOUR NAME HERE!!!!!

See more pictures of Mars Rovers being built on my JPL family day report

We aim to please... you aim too, please Fly UI. Brilliant. [via Instapundit] Then again, I don't have the necessary equipment to fully appreciate it, but it's a boy counterpart to my well-received What real women do with duct tape

of the fruit of the grape Drank one of the bottles of wine from the recent winery trip. I don't usually go in for whites, but the Santa Barbara Winery's Sauvignon Blanc (2000) is exceptional. Next trip north to Santa B, I wanna stop by and get some more.

Oh, and I never uploaded the third batch of pictures. Gotta rectify that right now!

We went on a bike ride up a scenic road. They told us that Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch is somewhere along this road. We didn't see it, or if we did, we didn't recognize it (no gorilla was out front to indicate which one)

These next pictures are taken at the Wine Emporium in Los Olivos. This is behind the Wine Emporium.

A local artist created this statue of local vintner Lane Tanner as a female Bacchus. It's shown here with a bottle of Lane Tanner wine.

I think that there is yet another batch of pictures from this trip. More to come!

[first and second batches of Santa Ynez Wine country fotos]

17 January 2003

Blue skies. Warm. So Cal Winter. What happened to El Niño storms?

Tucson eats Note to self: Two Sides of Tucson.

Beautiful Outrage How to be outraged about all this gubmint stuff and do something about it? I'm toying with hosting a letter-writing party, where, instead of bitching, or ignoring strident bitching about "things these days" we'll write letters to our representatives and urge them to represent US.

Upgrade Time My Dad's tired of the old computer (Something or other in the 601 Power PC range, 70 MHz. 500MB Hard drive). I'd already turned him onto Google; this time I told him to lookup Google for Used iMac. He's gettin' himself an iMac education. Now knows that "snow" is a color, not some kinda white-noise producing mystery. ; ) It's good to give advice and talk features when one's parent knows *some*thing about the computer other than "well, it's about time we got one." (which describes the learning curve position when the first slowpoke computer was purchased some years back.)

You know that Murphy's Law is at work when the 'puter that your Dad is gonna shell out ~$500 for is faster than your main computer purchased 3.5 years ago (a the time, the top of the line powerbook). But my "CFO" (ahem) is not authorizing any capital expenditures right now.

Sixteenth o January

Shuttle launched today. This is the mission that was originally due to lift off in July, but those damn little leaks stopped things for a while. I'm looking at the Yahoo news fotos slideshow. Here are a couple of thumbs:

One of the advantages of having seen a launch and posted launch photos, is that, thanks to Google, people find them then email me with questions. I've been correpsonding with someone who attended today's launch from the Banana Creek viewing site.

What photo tips could I offer, or information about the lenses that I used? My advice: Don't shoot. Get a pair of binoculars and watch. That bird flies far too fast to waste your time shooting. (Especially if there's any cloud cover, else the shuttle will fly behind it at the best times). Other people shoot the liftoff. Get pictures from them. Silly silly silly. I heard several people say that in the few days before the launch. Did I pay attention? Sort of. I gave myself permission to stop shooting and watch. By that time, though, that cloud had shown up. I am curious to hear how it went for my correspondent.

And the band played on.... silently

Breathe deep the gathering gloom.

Lots of follow up on the Supremes and the Sonny Bono act. Don't know if I can get it all.

(oh, how I wanted to make up a joke about Sonny Bono suffering mightily in purgatory, and the tortures will last as long as copyright extension remains in effect. But my attempts were lousy and maudlin. You get the idea. Repentance beyond the grave. They extended copyright again? aiyeeeeee! oucccch! oh noooooooo.)

• Good background reading: Lessig's blog in the eldred.cc category
• Glenn Reynolds, law professor and Instapundit, discusses it in his new MSNBC space
• Wired News: Court Deaf to Public Domain Pleas
• Washington Post Jonathan Zittraine online chat transcript Zittrain was co-counsel with Larry Lessig for Eldred.
• Others have noted the NY Times editorial The coming of copyright perpetuity "the beginning of the end of the public domain"
• LATimes covers it as a Hollywood ending.
  

  The first two-thirds are devoted to how this is a win for the industry and what a financial blow it would be, etc. if the other guys won. Not till the last third do we even get a treatment of what the other side thinks. A spokesperson says that all these outfits are pleased as punch: Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Musicians and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

• Salon Technology: After the Copyright Meltdown, What Next?
• Backgrounder (11/22/02): John Bloom on Copyright Infringement Analysis written after oral arguments but before the decision came down. A "What's it all about?" piece.
• Great comments in Lessig's blog. Of many thought-provoking posts, this one by Alexy Mertz in particular stuck out (I'd've linked to it, but Lessig's comments do not have individual permalinks and there are close to 150 comments as of now:

  Well, you did the right things, Larry, but seven of nine did not. What a ghastly ruling.

  As an early-career scientist I have been watching Eldredge v. A. closely. Each time I publish a paper I must sign a form that turns my copyright interest over to the publisher. When the publisher is a professional society - particularly one of which I am a member - this is not a severe problem because I have a reasonable expectation that my work will be handled responsibly over the long run, even if the work does not pass into the public domain. More often I must donate (or spend grant money to transfer) the copyright to Blackwell (Molecular Microbiology) or Elsevier (Current Biology, Cell) or Macmillan (Nature). Given the nature of consolidation in the publishing industry over the last few years I do not have any assurance that my work will be well-treated by its new, for-profit, beholden-solely-to-shareholders owners.

  Until today I had as consolation some reasonable expectation that my work would ulitmately pass into the public domain, even if it is mishandled in intervening years. This is no loger true: as of today I have no assurance that my or my colleagues’ scientific work will EVER pass into the public domain where it belongs and where the public has every right to expect it to reside. (Added irony is provided by the fact that a huge proportion of said science is paid for by tax dollars.) The SCOTUS decision has violated the founders’ explicit mandate that copyright exists to promote science (and the useful arts).

  Now as scientists we MUST build alternative structures (e.g., the Public Library of Science) which will allow us to communicate our work AND ensure that it will pass into the commons.

Someone's suing, lord, kumbaya.... It's old news, but telling: 8-23-96: Wall Street Journal: ASCAP extorts money (well, okay, it's technically legal) from Girl Scouts so they can sing around the campfire.

"They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts -- they can pay for the music, too," says John Lo Frumento, Ascap's chief operating officer. If offenders keep singing without paying, he says, "we will sue them if necessary."

No more "Edelweiss" free of charge. No more "This Land Is Your Land." An Ascap spokesman says "Kumbaya" isn't on its list, but "God Bless America" is.

8/26/96: ASCAP backpeddles.

ASCAP has never sought, nor was it ever its intention, to license Girl Scouts singing around a campfire. ASCAP has never brought nor threatened to bring suit against the Girl Scouts. Any reports to the contrary are absolutely false. Yes, but wasn't that quote above from ASCAP's COO?

8/28/96 Wall Street Story about ASCAP's reversal:

In a contrite statement Monday, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers said it has "never sought, nor was it ever its intention, to license Girl Scouts singing around the campfire." The society also said it will reimburse 16 girl scout councils that did pay fees this summer ranging from $77 to $257 for the right to sing songs.

Welcome to the United States of Mauschwitz

wonderful derivative work: diaries of the fellowship Legolas: I'm still the prettiest. Aragorn: Still not king yet. [via Hal at Blivet]

Corporate Media Irony Charles Wiltgen at PlaybackTime, in response to the whole Eldred v. Ashcroft mess, notes the following:

CNN held a poll asking “Should we be concerned that a small number of companies own most media properties?”, 96% of respondents said, “yes”. According to Lou Dobbs, this is the most decisive poll that CNN has ever run. CNN is a property of Big Media behemoth AOL Time Warner

Gonna go hunt up the original link on CNN

Damn! Today the Mouse won in the Supreme Court, Eldred (and the people) lost.

We hold these truths to be self evident that all corporations are created better-than-equal, that they are endowed by the courts of this country with unassailable perpetual copyrights. Among them are the right to lie , to do perfidy, and the pursuit of greediness.

Hmmm. When the constitution says public good, I think that they mean for the good of publicly-traded companies.

Ya know, on this day, a dozen years ago, Daddy Bush had drawn a line in the sand before we began the Gulf War.

Son Bush says we were attacked because of our freedoms. Well, we just lost one of those freedoms today.

I think it's time to start a Disney boycott. No, not a family-values anti-gay thing. You don't like the corporate takeover of the country? You don't like the constitution being litigated in favor of the mouse and against the people? You don't like copyrights being extended each time that mickey mouse is due to enter the public domain? Then take the corporate out of your life.

Disney subsidiaries list

• ABC, Inc

TV Stations

• KABC Los Angeles
• KGO San Francisco
• KTRK Houston
• KFSN Fresno
• WLS Chicago
• WABC New York City
• WPVI Philadelphia
• WTVD Raleigh Durham
• WTVG Toledo

Radio Stations

• Atlanta: WKHX, WYAY, WDWD
• Chicago: WLS, WXCD
• Dallas: WBAP, KSCS
• Detroit: WDRQ, WJR, WPLT
• Los Angeles: KABC, KLOS, KTZN
• Minneapolis-St.Paul: KQRS, KXXR, KDIZ, KZNR, KZNT, KZNZ
• New York City: WABC, WPLJ
• San Francisco: KGP, KSFO
• Washington D.C.: WMAL, WJZW, WRQX

• Mighty Ducks of Anaheim
• Anaheim Angels
• Walt Disney Parks/Resorts
• Walt Disney Studios Entertainment

• 80% ownership of ESPN
• Walt Disney Pictures
• Miramax Films
• Dimension
• Touchstone Pictures
• Hollywood Pictures
• Buena Vista Online Entertainment
• Lyric Street Records
• Buena Vista Theatrical Group

• Hyperion Books

Other holdings lists for disney: list with specific TV/Radio stations

Man. so many things here. so many influences. Movies are what'll hurt the most for me.

Bush declares Sanctity of Life day What is this, one of those statements that shows that the rest of the time he thinks that sanctity of life can suck? Kinda like the people who talk and then say, "Well, to be honest with you..." which makes you wonder if all the foregoing were, in fact, lies. The news story.

Quotes from the news story:

"As we seek to improve quality of life, overcome illness and promote vital medical research, my administration will continue to honor our country's founding ideals of equal dignity and equal rights for every American," Bush said Tuesday in a document that enacts no change in policy or program.

What he really meant was:

"As we seek to improve quality of coporate life, overcome poverty for upper echelon executives and members of the board of directors who've gotten promoted and will now finally receive vital medical insurance compensation including lab tests and research, my administration will continue to honor our country's founding ideals of equal dignity and equal rights for every American corporation," Bush said Tuesday in a document that enacts no change in policy or program, but which was printed on many pieces of paper at great expense, a boon for the printing and paper industries.