RANT: The needless suffering at Pearl Harbor

Thursday, December 7, 2006

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061207/D8LS100G0.html

Pearl Harbor Survivors Meet for Last Time
Dec 7, 7:58 AM (ET)
By JAYMES SONG

*** begin quote ***

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) – With their number quickly dwindling, survivors of Pearl Harbor will gather Thursday one last time to honor those killed by the Japanese 65 years ago, and to mark a day that lives in infamy.

This will be their last visit to this watery grave to share stories, exchange smiles, find peace and salute their fallen friends. This, they say, will be their final farewell.

*** end quote ***

If one reads Robert Stinnett’s book on Pearl Harbor, “Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor”, you’ll come away with a real understanding of what caused all this dead, destruction, and suffering. It truly was a “day of Infamy”, but not as we thought it. As a cryptographer, I was stunned reading this. Further the fact that the truth was concealed for 60 years really lends credence to the quip “How do you know when a politician is lying? When his lips are moving.” There has to be, I hope, a special circle in hell for those politicians. Not that “ours” are any better. This should be required reading for voters and anyone considering entering the military.


RANT: I am SHOCKED a la Casablanca to find that politicians don’t act in accordance with their professed beliefs

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/
0,,1964075,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

http://tinyurl.com/ymjz6m

Hardliners turn on Ahmadinejad for watching women dancers
Robert Tait in Tehran
Tuesday December 5, 2006
The Guardian

*** begin quote ***

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who flaunts his ideological fervour, has been accused of undermining Iran’s Islamic revolution after television footage appeared to show him watching a female song and dance show.

*** end quote ***

Please, lying and two-face-ed-ness is a universal political meme or gene.

I am SHOCKED a la Casablanca to find that politicians don’t act in accordance with their professed beliefs. I believe the appropriate Bible verse is “by their fruits”. So, don’t be shocked when a politician, any politician, of any nationality, ilk, or gender, says X and does Y.

It’s amazing, and I am SHOCKED (see above reference) that people would be so naive!

And, I am shocked, shocked, SHOCKED to find there is gambling going on at Rick’s cafe. Now where are MY winnings. ;-)

I think the more newsworthy story would be when the man bites dog, or a politician is found to inadvertently conform to their stated beliefs. Isn’t in amusing that there are “no smoking” laws all over for the peasants, but all exempt Capitol Hill. Doesn’t that send you serfs a message?


TECHNOLOGY: Do you use the same password for different accounts? No!

Monday, December 4, 2006

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/passwords/
poll–do-you-use-the-same-password-for-
different-accounts-219219.php

Do you use the same password for different accounts?

***Begin Quote***

A UN agency reports that the explosion of usernames and passwords required for web sites puts users at risk – because folks use the same password for lots of different accounts.

***End Quote***

Do you?

I use the “generate password” function of RoboForm to get a nice long random string.

Then, when I setup the website, RoboForm steps in and saves it for me. Then when I revisit the site, it “suggests” my logon information.

http://www.roboform.com/

Now it’s NOT free. Unlike what you usually find me advising you, here’s the rare instance when I think you should actually buy something. Do you really want to trust your security to a free utility? To me, thirty buck is cheap insurance.

P.S.: If you wonder how I created those great email addresses, that I DARE an alpha spammer to find, like A9355A8E7B32583A58D8, F2F967D552AF5A8278AD, or D94BAE6E7FBDBCADC888, then you can guess that I generated them with RoboForm. Since most people reply to email or will click on your mailto:name@isp.nnet, no one cares what you call yourself.


TECHNOLOGY: Scan, copy and fax with your camera phone or digital camera

Monday, December 4, 2006

http://www.scanr.com/default.aspx

Scan, copy and fax with your camera phone or digital camera

***Begin Quote***

scanR is a service that helps you capture information contained in whiteboards, documents and business cards. scanR lets you use your mobile camera phone or digital camera to clean photos of whiteboards, documents and business cards, extract the printed information, and get a digital file in your email, contact manager, or fax.

***End Quote***

trying it, but my first attempt didn’t work.


TECHNOLOGY: 30 Essential Pieces Of Free Open Software for Windows

Monday, December 4, 2006

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/12/01/30-essential-pieces-of-free-and-open-software-for-windows/

http://tinyurl.com/wtn8s

30 Essential Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows

***Begin Quote***

Recently, I received a fresh new laptop from Dell. Upon receiving it, I did the traditional “installation of Windows from scratch” on it to remove a lot of the garbage that is preinstalled on Dells. Then I got really busy installing tons of great software that takes care of pretty much every software need I have. Not only was all of the software free, every piece of it was open source, which means that the code is peer-reviewed; no spyware here!

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

***End Quote***

use five. But, I’m getting weaned from the Dark Side.


TECHNOLOGY: The newspapers should use rss to transform themselves

Sunday, December 3, 2006

http://www.blogmaverick.com/
2006/12/02/rss-the-newspapers-revenge/

http://tinyurl.com/y7zgc2

RSS – The Newspapers Revenge?
Mark Cuban
Dec 2nd 2006 5:11PM

***Begin Quote***

… how do you differentiate the paper from the net ? Its easy. For features, Online is where you put it up first to let people know you are working on it. Online may be where you intentionally overwhelm them with TOO many choices and too much information. Put up a complete 45 minute interview with Mark Cuban with a 400 word summary and you know how many people will listen to the entire interview ? None. People will read the 400 words and make a decision if they want more. Polished ? Absolutely not. And thats what differentiates it. Its your tease for the indepth article where you add context to the interview, write in depth about how wonderful, exciting and exceedingly handsome I am, get quotes from others confirming the same and create a story with such depth that maybe someone will believe it, but many will buy the paper expecting to find and read it.

***End Quote***

Now, I thought the fellow was a bozo. Between his reality show that made him look like an trivial idiot and his antics on the basketball court, I didn’t care for his whole act.

But, here, he seems to generate some strategies and tactics that could morph the moribund newspapers into web businesses.

Very interesting thinking.


TECHNOLOGY: Letters 2 My Child

Saturday, December 2, 2006

http://www.letters2mychild.com/

Letters 2 My Child

Letters to my child is my domain that I bought from GoDaddy for several years.

I then used “Google Apps for Your Domain” (free) to host the web site and handle the email.

If your interested, I can show you what I did for this site.

Seems like an easy way to seed your business.


TECHNOLOGY: Microsoft says “Don’t wait to buy a new PC”

Friday, December 1, 2006

FROM A MICROSOFT EMAIL RECEIVED TODAY

Don’t wait to buy a new PC

***Begin Quote***

There’s no need to wait to buy a new PC this holiday season. When you buy a Windows Vista Capable or Premium Ready PC, you can be confident that it will run Windows Vista. When you shop, just follow these tips:

Look for a PC with the “Windows Vista Capable PC” logo.

For an even better Windows Vista experience, including the breakthrough Windows Aero user experience, ask for a Windows Vista Capable PC that is also “Premium Ready.”

Be sure to ask your retailer about an Express Upgrade to Windows Vista.

***End Quote***

No need to wait indeed.

Nothing like a self-serving email from the evil empire.

I’m filing this under “ewe gotta be kidding”.

While I may be forced at work to move to Vista, and I’m not so sure that the penny pinchers there aren’t going to have sticker shock at the true TCO of Vista, I personally am not upgrading.

I have not yet identified an requirement that would induce me to move. If anything, the onslaught of the Web 2.0 services is challenging the whole paradigm.

Hmmm! What will you do?

 


TECHNOLOGY: Carbonite / PC Online Automatic Backup Service

Thursday, November 30, 2006

http://www.carbonite.com/

Carbonite
PC Backup Software and Online Automatic Backup Service

***Begin Quote***

# Unlimited storage capacity for your PC backups
# Automatically finds all your data files —
photos, documents, music, emails, everything
# Always on – just connect to the Internet
# Set and forget – just start Carbonite and relax
# Instantly detects and backs up changed files
# Never slows down your computer or Internet
# Exclude files you don’t want to back up
# Strong encryption for super security
# Backs up approximately 2GB per day
over DSL or Cable

***End Quote***

For 5 bucks a day?

I recently fired XDrive. I’m now trialing Carbonite.

My first impressions are very positive.


FUN: Bumper cars .. for real!

Thursday, November 30, 2006

http://fuvoo.com/FuvooPermaLink.aspx?PostID=134

There is something very wrong with this tunnel
posted by DrunkDonkey – Wednesday, November 29, 2006 @ 8:06:59 AM

There is a river running over it, and water leaks at some points. When the temperature reaches -38 degrees, like it did this winter, the road freezes and the result is the attached video taken during a single day.


TECHNOLOGY: My “luddite” friend doesn’t understand …

Thursday, November 30, 2006

From his email about my blog post.

***Begin Quote***

Wow…a “luddite” solution to a tech problem…”long
quill pen”….hmmm. :-) You are beginning to see
the light, my brother!

***End Quote***

Now this is amusing from the fellow who can’t figure out how to comment on a blog.

But, I’m easy to do business with.

Now, I’m a belt and suspenders kindda IT guy. I like multiple diverse routes. Multiple diverse backups.

I KNOW they screwed with my data silently because I have EVERYTHING backed up and cross filed. And, off sited!

At least ever since that monumental screw up by the Merrill Lynch PC Support group. That’s where backups were running but nothing was being backed up. And, in those days, I backed up to to a different disk and a zip drive. A power surge nuked by primary and backup. When I went to restore my personal backup, the Zip disk was eaten by the drive. So I went to the corporate resource and they had swat! co my four levels of backup failed me.

That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on technology. It just means I am very protective of MY data. When I give it to Plaxo or LinkedIn, it’s still “MINE”. And they shouldn’t mess with it.


TECHNOLOGY: NOT RECOMMENDED scanschell2000n

Thursday, November 30, 2006

http://www.card-reader.com/hardware_scanshell2000n.htm

ScanShell 2000N / 2000NR

***Begin Quote***

Check our portable duplex scanner ScanShell 3000DN

The ScanShell 2000N is now the ScanShell 2000NR with a USB 2.0 HighSpeed interface.

It is a portable, 600 DPI high-resolution A4, Twain compliant color scanner, which offers high quality image capture. Supporting Windows operating system, the Scanshell 2000R works with any standard USB port and requires no external power supply.

***End Quote***

DON’T YOU DARE!

Don’t buy anything from these guys. Or if you do, don’t complain to me.

Once again this productivity tool frustrates me. What should be a neat little gadget doesn’t work reliably.

My expectation is that a useful tool should be like a hammer, screwdriver, or axe. Pick it up use it and don’t worry. When like my snow blower, it doesn’t. OR, requires me to have the strength of Arnold. OR, the genius of Einstein. OR, the attention to detail of a tax accountant. Well, I lose my patience.

This particular POS required a reinstall and, a fresh download of drivers, (Figure that out? I checked the checksums and file dates, identical!) Finally, XP installed it. Or, at least stopped whining about it.

But, it doesn’t scan the one lousy picture I want it to scan.

Arghhh!

So, don’t buy this “solution”.

(I did a web search on Google and Yahoo before I did. But didn’t find any gripes. Else I wouldn’t have either.)

So much for productivity thru technology. This is in my personal technology Hall of Shame just a notch below IBM’s ViaVoice and just above that Toro Snow Blower!


TECHNOLOGY: How to connect to your home or office computer remotely

Friday, November 24, 2006

http://www.pcmech.com/show/internet/1048/1/

http://tinyurl.com/ybsghv

Remote Connection Guide
how to connect to your home or office computer remotely under or running Windows, Linux and OS X.
Category: Internet & WWW – November 23, 2006.
Posted by Jason Faulkner.

***Begin Quote***

Remote connection is one of those things, like high speed Internet, when, once you have it, you can never go back. Most people never bother to set it up either because they do not [think they] need it, think solutions cost too much or believe it is too hard to set up on their own. If you fall into the one of these groups, I am going to change your mind.

***End Quote***

While I use gotomypc, and have been for a while, I think that being able to “phone home” is always useful. Here’s how to do it for free, which makes it a “no brainer” fmpov.


TECHNOLOGY: Kodak’s software rudely grabbed jpeg hook

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Kodak’s software offered a faster way to upload pic to their site.

What it did was install a piece of BLOATWARE that seized all the picture associations like jpeg and waddles in every time one wants to look at a “picture”.

Arghhh!


XPfails – luggable – seems slow

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Will try a reboot.


TECHNOLOGY: XDRIVE just doesn’t work

Monday, November 20, 2006

I’d suggest that you avoid it completely!


TECHNOLOGY: Writeboard aka a one page wiki?

Sunday, November 19, 2006

http://writeboard.com/

Writeboard

***Begin Quote***

Writeboard is completely free. You can create as many writeboards as you’d like and invite as many people to collaborate on the writeboards. There are no limits. However, if you’d like to keep all your writeboards in one place so you don’t have to bookmark URLs and remember passwords, you should check out our Backpack organizer product. It lets you neatly organize to-do lists, notes, photos, files, and writeboards online. Backpack was recently named a “Best of the Web 2005” tool by BusinessWeek.

***End Quote***

Seems interesting to me.


LIBERTY: Conserve What?

Friday, November 17, 2006

http://www.lewrockwell.com/hein/hein146.html

Conserve What?
by Paul Hein

*** Begin Quote ***

Many of us find the “conservative” position on many issues more agreeable – or less disagreeable – than the “liberal.” But what is it that conservatives are conserving? I have never seen that question answered – or even asked – but isn’t it a good question?

read more | digg story

*** End Quote ***

As an ex-conservative, I wanted the liberty that the Dead Old White Guys promised. Unfortunately, I didn’t get what I was promised. Instead Gubamint has made me a slave!

I go around and around trying to see how I can free myself.

The critical issues of stuffing the genie back in the box are: ending the fiat currency, ending the government reeducation propaganda camps, and ending the dole! I have no silver bullet. Heck, I can’t even figure out where to begin.

Money! Skools! Dole!


JOBSEARCH: JIBBERJOBBER’s document section doesn’t permit cut’n’paste

Friday, November 17, 2006

http://www.jibberjobber.com/doc_manager.php

Ahh hah!

I stuffed some doc in JIBBERJOBBER and realized a flaw. It’s wants to upload all docs. Admirable. But what if you want to cut’n’paste something from a webpage.

It should allow you to do that. You are getting the space.


Technology: Found a neat trick to put your email on a webpage

Friday, November 17, 2006

Use any of the url shortening sites, like tiny url, and push mailto:myemail@bigisp.net into it a get a url back like http://tinyurl/abcde

Clicking on that link lets people send you an email.

It’s believed to be not harvest able by spyders and bots.

Hmmm?


TECHNOLOGY: Private and Encrypted document sharing

Friday, November 10, 2006

https://wideword.net/

Your documents are Private and Encrypted

***Begin Quote***

Write and share documents easily, quickly and privately!

With WideWord you can invite any amount of friends or partners to collaborate on a document with you. All you need to do is enter their email address and we send them an invitation straight away. WideWord ensures that the document remains secure.

***End Quote***

Interesting, but why should someone trust this, or any service provider?


TECHNOLOGY: Yet Another Skype

Friday, November 10, 2006

http://www.icall.com/

Make, and receive, calls for free

***Begin Quote***

iCall features sophisticated new technology which uses your existing Internet connection (cable, DSL, wireless, or dial-up) and your PC to plug you directly in to the regular telephone network. Stick it to the man – you already pay for your Internet connection, and the Internet is changing everything!

***End Quote***

Yet Another Skype.

Except it’ll be free after the first of the year.

It allows free dial in, that skype and yahoo charge for.

But it is as an extension. That may be hard for people to remember.

And, the call in numbers may cause a caller to incur a toll charge.

So, it’s a maybe.

Good for outbound free calls after the first of the year, and forget all the rest.


XPfails – luggable – WDSYNC mucks up

Friday, November 10, 2006

In doing my weekly backup to my WDPASSPORT (Sams Club 44$ a while ago), it partially locked up the box. Hmmm. Reboot clears it. Argh!


XPfails – luggable – general slowdown

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Last night, rather early this morning, luggable came down with a case of the blahs. It seemed like everything went at a crawl. I had tapped on a link in an email (LOOKOUT?) and the FOX took forever to get to it. So, being the bright IT Guru I am, I nuke everything in sight that I thought was expendable. No improvement. So I hit the big red easy button (ALT-CNT-DEL) and SHUTDOWN. For some reason there is a difference between SHUTDOWN and RESTART. SHUTDOWN, I guess, does a real start from scratch AOT a quick restart, no scratch. Back up and running.


LIBERTY: Have we lost the republic?

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Libertarians are always alert for “everything but the one thing”. It’s those “one things” that kill liberty. Cause everyone has their own one pet thing. Libertarians say “liberty for everyone, everytime, everywhere, no exceptions”. ;-) The big L libertarian political party has only one criteria. Everyone agrees “Never to initiate force to achieve political or social goals”. A pretty powerful principle.

The dead old white guys gave were Classical Liberals. Individual Freedom over the Conservative supporting King and Country. The DofI, Constitution, and BoR are all right out of the Classical Liberal playbook. We drift or “improve” at our peril.

We have lost the republic!

(A Republic is a representative system of government where there are strict limits on the government and everyone has their rights recognized.)

There have been failings. The DOWG themselves failed to “solve” slavery. The Civil War was a “tariff” war in disguise in which we lost the United STATES of America, and became the USA. The Socialists of the 20’s brought us “gubamint skools”, to import the German “cannon fodder and willing workers” philosophy to America, and made us stupid. FDR brought us socialism as a relief to the Great Depression which was cause by the Congress’ Smoot Hawley tariff. We lost the gold standard under FDR when he uncoupled government spending from taxes (i.e., unleashed the printing press fiat currency). We have an series of “presidents”, that have acted more like idiot kings: committing troops to stupid undeclared wars; meddled in the affairs of other sovereign countries, and pushed forth the democratic “advance auction of stolen goods” and “two wolves and a lamb” deciding what’s for dinner. Recently, the Military Commissions Act (The end of Habeas Corpus) and the Warner 2006 Defense Budget Act (President designates enemy combatants) have fundamentally changed the USA into AMRIKA. The next step is the North America Union of Canada, Mexico, and everything in between.

Remember Ben Franklin!

http://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”


TECHNOLOGY: IE doesn’t rend the blog correctly

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

I use the FOX as part of my get ready for LINUX. I was shown the blog to someone today and was stunned to find it didn’t rend correctly. Argh! FOX, OPERA, and NETSCAPE all work. But IE doesn’t!

I pinged WORDPRESS feedback and they came back lickty split. (See below)

I fixed that one. And several others. And, IE still doesn’t like it.

I’ll keep looking for the long links. Any idea what the right number of characters in a link is?

It displays correctly in FOX and OPERA! Darn MSFT.

—–Reply Message—–
From: M @ WordPress.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 1:12 PM
Subject: Re: WordPress.com Feedback – reinkefj.wordpress.com

reinkefj wrote:
> I was showing my blog … our blog … after all I appreciate that you
> host it for free … to someone and he uses ie6. There was nothing on
> the side column. No seach. No most active. No nothing. Help?

Hi,
It was this post:
https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/10/22/
jobsearch-how-well-does-your-unique-value-equation-sell/

There is a link it it:
http://www.nichegeek.com/
why_youll_never_get_rich_studying
_african_feminism_in_the_19th_century

It sticks out the side in IE6

If you shorten that link the sidebar will zoom back up.
IE7 would behave normally ;)