Wednesday, 31 July, 2002. 01:11:02 PMBREAKING NEWS: Hewlett Packard computers are not safe for your business to use.
An HP vice-president, Kent Ferson, is threatening to use the DMCA to
silence a person who has found a security hole in their operating system.
By doing so, Hewlett Packard has effectively admitted that their servers
are insecure, they can't do anything about the insecurity, and if you say
anything about it they will shut you up.
What a marketing disaster. If I were the head of HP, I would fire Kent
Ferson immediately.
Monday, 29 July, 2002. 11:32:28 PMSlashdot just had an article about how iVillage is doing away with pop-up
ads. iVillage is a women's website that's been around a long time, and they
found out that 95% of their readership thinks that pop-up ads are the most
annoying form of advertizing. Anyway, I was checking around the site and
read the information that they have there about circumcision. It was for
the most part, correct. I remember just 5 years ago every health site on the
Internet defined foreskin as "the part that gets cut off in a circumcision".
Things have come a long way since then. Most people have now realized that
circumcision is an unnecessary and painful thing to do to a boy, and
because of the efforts of hundreds of activist groups, the myths surrounding
the surgery have been exploded. Every single reason for cutting parts off
of babies has been completely debunked, and new anatomical research has
outlined functions that were never known before. It's gratifying to see that
the days when anyone who opposed circumcision was accused of being a Nazi or
anti-Semitic are over. Insurance companies are starting to drop the practice
too. Even doctors are starting to understand that arguments. I remember
once arguing with a doctor on the Internet that he shouldn't use EMLA cream
as an anesthetic. I told him to go read the piece of paper that comes in
the package - the part that says not to use it on babies. Oh well, I'm
just glad that the century-long fad of chopping parts off of babies is
falling out of fashion.
Monday, 29 July, 2002. 06:21:27 PMI just won a Kodak Duaflex II camera on E-Bay. $4.25. This is an old twin
lens reflex type of box camera, made in the 50's.
Monday, 29 July, 2002. 02:03:02 PMI'm headed up to Kansas City for a couple days. Just a quickie project that
needs a little help to get through rough times.
Monday, 29 July, 2002. 01:31:21 AMMy Hawkeye has the letters YTRM printed inside on the code. The Kodak date
code is based on the word "CAMEROSITY" where C means 1, A means 2, etc. Y
means 0. So, translating this code into numbers produces 0953. The last two
numbers means that the camera was manufactured in 1953. The first two
numbers refer to the month of manufacture, but there's a complication. Kodak
didn't use calendar months to specify production, but used a fixed cycle
of 4 weeks instead. So, the 09 code refers to the 9th block of 4 weeks in
the year. Using ncal -w, I can see that the actual date range is from August
7th to September 3rd. My particular camera was therefore manufactured
between August 7th, 1953 and September 3rd, 1953, making it about 6 years
older than I thought it was. It's almost 49 years old.
Sunday, 28 July, 2002. 08:43:46 PMMy Hawkeye arrived today. The optics and body were a little dirty, probably
from being in storage for many years. This camera is at least 42 years old
now, and probably hasn't had a roll of film in it since 1968. So, I took
the thing apart and cleaned everything. All the optics are crystal clear,
and the mechanism works perfectly. I was a little surprised to see that the
shutter is in front of the lens. The glass in front of the shutter is just
a flat. The real lens is a single element meniscus just behind the shutter.
I got everything back together, and the camera looks pretty sharp. I'm
bidding on some 620 film spools, and when I win some, I'll get a roll of
120 film from the camera shop and respool it. Should be fun to see what
this old camera can do.
Thursday, 25 July, 2002. 10:50:26 PMThe Space Station pass was really nice too. -0.2 magnitude.
Thursday, 25 July, 2002. 10:41:03 PMI just watched an Iridium flare from my front yard. Iridium is the name of
the satellite telephone constellation that was launched a few years ago. One
of their big backers was Motorola, and it went bankrupt. The satellites are
still up there, operated by a different company. Each satellite has an array
of antennae, polished so that they reflect the sunlight. Soon after they were
launched, people realized that since the attitudes of the satellites are
carefully controlled, it would be possible to calculate in advance when any
particular satellite would reflect light directly towards an observer on the
ground. The bird that I just saw was Iridium 36, and I was just over 2
kilometers east of the track where the light was reflected, so the apparent
magnitude of the flare was -8. That's extremely bright, much brighter than
any of the planets. Now I'm back outside to see the ISS pass.
Monday, 22 July, 2002. 10:13:20 PMWhile I'm waiting for my Brownie Hawkeye to show up, I'm bidding on a Kodak
Duaflex II camera. This is about as old as the Hawkeye, but it's a twin
lens reflex camera. There's a lot of really nice cameras on E-bay, and I'm
going to pick up a few. I might get a couple of Olympus Pen F bodies so that
I will always have parts for mine. Turns out that it's one of the more
collectable cameras. The zoom lens, which I have, is a rarity. There's a
later model, the Pen FT, which is exactly like my F, but it has a shutter
timer. I also am thinking about getting an old Yashica TLR camera, to use as
a high quality medium format camera. There are some Russian built medium
format cameras that look like they might be really nice, and they are not
as expensive as the German or Japanese models.
Thursday, 18 July, 2002. 04:19:51 PM I think that for a one month period, sometime this year, all anti-spammers and ISP's around the globe should suspend any activities that they are currently undertaking to supress spam.
The judge in this case [the Dutch spam case regarding xs4all] said that spam is not much of a problem. I think that's his honest perception, because he doesn't see the full magnitude of the problem. By suspending all anti-spam activities, the full weight of the spam problem will become known by all.
I propose that the month of September be set aside for this purpose this year.
Wednesday, 17 July, 2002. 11:19:26 PMI won my Brownie Hawkeye auction. Maybe next week it'll arrive. Total cost
with shipping and handling was $9.45. Not too bad. Now I've got to get some
620 spools and some 120 roll film to wind onto them.
Wednesday, 17 July, 2002. 05:11:21 PMI just signed up for the TIPS program where citizens are supposed to watch
their neighbors for unusual terrorist behaviour, such as wearing a turban
or standing on your front porch after the street lights come on. I couldn't
restrain my enthusiasm however, so instead of putting my occupation in the
field that said "occupation" I wrote "Can't wait to turn in all my neighbors!
Thanks GW!" instead. I hope that doesn't keep me from being accepted into
the Gesta, er, I mean, the Citizen Corps.
Tuesday, 16 July, 2002. 12:00:20 AMThis morning I put my bid in on the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. It's at $1.99
right now. I'm also looking at a nice little Agfa Clack for $10.
Monday, 15 July, 2002. 01:18:34 AMOn Saturday Alex and I went to the city garage sale with two of our friends.
They were visiting us from Dallas, and celebrating their anniversary.
Usually we don't go to these things, but our friends love them, so we
went. I saw an old Kodak Brownie Hawkeye there for $22, but didn't buy it
because the lens wasn't clear. Good thing too, because they sell for half
that on E-bay. I think I'm going to find a little Brownie and buy it. They
take 620 film which hasn't been made in years. Luckily, 120 size film is
made for professional medium format cameras such as Hasselblads, and that 120
film is identical to the 620 film except for the spool it is would on. 120
film can be used in a Brownie if the spool is cut down, or if it is rewound
onto a 620 spool, a simple thing to do.
Thursday, 11 July, 2002. 11:33:48 PMFrom the BBC:
"Scientists have assembled the first synthetic virus.
The US researchers built the infectious agent from scratch using the genome sequence for polio."
"To construct the virus, the researchers say they followed a recipe they downloaded from the internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier.
Having constructed the virus, which appears to be identical to its natural counterpart, the researchers, from the University of New York at Stony Brook, injected it into mice to demonstrate that it was active.
The animals were paralysed and then died."
Thursday, 11 July, 2002. 12:23:25 PMMore useful AIX/Visual Age C++ stuff: truss does the same thing as the Linux
strace command. genkld shows the shared libraries that are loaded into the
kernel segment. The linker will not resolve dependencies if -G is used to
make a shared library, so the -bernotok flag will tell it to fail if
external dependencies need to be resolved.
Wednesday, 10 July, 2002. 03:47:36 PMI'm going to be staying here in Atlanta until Friday night.
Tuesday, 09 July, 2002. 04:47:47 PMIt's not clear right now if I will be leaving Home Depot in Atlanta tomorrow
or not. I successfully fixed the problems with their servers, but there are
still some problems with Broadvision, which I don't have experience with. I
have the feeling that IBM may want me to hang around for the rest of the
week anyway, since my time is already paid for, and they may need C++
experience. Alternatively, they may have me do the Broadvision work with the
help of resources on the telephone. Anyway, I'm happy that I've fixed the
problems here. This has been a difficult project because of Broadvision and
their stubborn refusal to help diagnose the problems, and also because the
people who ported the code before I got here screwed the makefiles up. I still
have to fix a lot of things for them before I am completely done, but at least
the hard part is done.
Tuesday, 09 July, 2002. 04:41:46 PMJust for future reference: The -G option on Visual Age C++ is only for building
shared libraries. Shared libraries that need to be linked are specified on
the command line, but not with the -l option.
Monday, 08 July, 2002. 01:39:20 PMJust about an hour ago I was outside here at Home Depot and 4 F-15s flew
over. I was told there's an ANG base very close by.
Monday, 01 July, 2002. 04:17:34 PMThere's a guy here at Home Depot that sounds just like Ron at Sector 7.
Monday, 01 July, 2002. 01:49:13 PMI'm staying at the Wyndham Garden hotel in Vinings, GA. They've broken some
very basic rules of hospitality. First is that the room must be clean and
in good repair. My room has mildew stains on the shower ceiling, and the room
is not in good repair. The baseboard is cheap plastic and crooked, and the
faucets on the sink are not attached properly. It is surprising how common
that problem is. But, the worst thing of all is that they charge for local
calls, a minimum of 75 cents, plus additional charges by the minute. They
have high speed internet access in the room, but that is 10 buck a day. All
of these things make this hotel completely unacceptable for me to recommend
to anyone. I give it a failing grade of 1 star out of 5.
Monday, 01 July, 2002. 11:51:26 AMI arrived at my hotel in Atlanta at 1:30 AM last night. I can't connect to
any servers either at home or at Sector 7 from the network here, so I
may not be reading any mail for a while.