Thursday, 30 December, 2004. 01:08:26 PMWe're getting ready to leave my parent's house for Windsor. Tomorrow we
fly out of Detroit at about 6 AM.
Tuesday, 28 December, 2004. 09:55:53 PMRemember to add the chkrootkit package to my other machine.
Tuesday, 28 December, 2004. 09:07:42 PMI'm reading Dune: Machine Crusade right now. I have the next one reserved at
the library too.
Thursday, 23 December, 2004. 11:48:28 AMI deleted the mx record to 'pdrap.org' to see if that fixes my e-mail
forwarding.
Monday, 20 December, 2004. 12:13:22 AMIn a democratic society some are guilty, but all are responsible. -Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Sunday, 19 December, 2004. 11:42:48 PMRead on DailyKOS, attributed to Lakoff: "They [Strict Father Republicans] see themselves in all out war of good versus evil and you can use the devils own tricks against him, so that there is a no-holds-barred situation. Anything goes in confronting evil. The Democrats have assumed that the election process is not war, that it replaces war. That's why you hold elections instead of having war."
Saturday, 18 December, 2004. 10:39:20 PMMy site seems to be down, but I don't know what's wrong. The network
seems to be up, and if there was a problem with the Linksys, it would have
automatically been reset by the server. That leaves some kind of problem
with my server. Since I can't diagnose it until I return home at the end
of the month, I'm just going to redirect all e-mail sent to my domain to
my gmail account. The web site can stay down for the rest of the month,
I don't care. All my updates can be synchronized with the server at a later
date. If this was a server crash, then it would be the very first one I
have ever had with the Linux operating system since I started running it
in June of 1993.
Saturday, 18 December, 2004. 12:01:52 AM44% of Americans think
that civil rights of American Muslims should be restricted. If that
doesn't shock and anger you, then you haven't been paying attention.
People who watched TV news are more likely to favor this than others. I've
spent a fair amount of time ranting about the absolute stupidity of TV
news, but this seems to indicate that not only is TV news stupid, TV news
will make YOU stupid. The other major correlation here was with religion.
I guess the meaning of "love thy neighbor" is being interpreted as
"love only people in your zip code."
Friday, 17 December, 2004. 11:40:22 PMRight now I'm reading "Dune House Corrino" by Brian Herbert and Kevin J.
Anderson. It's set in the Dune universe invented by Brian's father Frank
Herbert.
Wednesday, 15 December, 2004. 11:35:37 PMThe road to hell is paved with NAND gates.
Monday, 13 December, 2004. 09:26:39 PMClint Curtis testified today in front of members of the Judiciary
Committe in Ohio. I'm really quite surprised that the major news media
hasn't been running this story. OK, I'm being silly, I'm not surprised.
I've been following it for a couple weeks, since he made a sworn affidavit
that his employer, Yang Enterprises, and Congressman Tom Feeney directed
him to write a computer program that could be used to change the totals
on voting machines without detection. Curtis wrote in the affidavit that
Feeney stated the program was needed to make the vote totals in Florida
come out right.
The account of the testimony today is that it was very credible, and
witnesses gasped audibly as he testified.
And CNN is running right now with the Peterson story. No wonder people are so
ignorant of what is happening in our government.
Friday, 10 December, 2004. 05:12:11 PMAny time I write the word 'conservative' I will spell it 'cheap labor
conservative'. That's the moniker that most accurately sums up conservatives.
The entire conservative position can be described and defined as a way
for the wealthy ruling elite classes to keep labor cheap, by breaking
unions, and keeping ordinary people on the debt and rent treadmill. I'm
going to start a database which holds references to the term 'cheap labor
conservative' in Google, so that the growth of the term can be recorded
and charted.
Thursday, 09 December, 2004. 01:27:54 PMAt some point,
the cost of the war against Iraq will become too great to bear. For every
soldier killed, there have been 9 wounded, a great many very seriously.
The New England Journal of Medicine has a photo essay on caring for
the wounded and maimed soldiers. If you've never cracked open a medical
textbook on gunshot wound care, you need to see these photos. Everyone
should know exactly who is paying for the war, and exactly how much
it is costing them.
Tuesday, 07 December, 2004. 12:06:33 PMFor some amusement, do a Google search on the terms "Trinity Southern University" and "resume" to see what comes up. Trinity Southern University has been
fingered many times as a diploma mill granting degrees based on life
experience. Recently in the news, a cat was granted a Master's degree.
These people with their fake degrees can use them to go all sorts of places.
For example, the governor of Georgia appointed someone with a fake degree from Trinity Southern to the State Board of Dispensign Opticians.
Monday, 06 December, 2004. 01:39:02 PMToday's my birthday, and tomorow is Kristiana's first birthday. We had a
party yesterday for friends and neighbors, which was a lot of fun.
Saturday, 04 December, 2004. 01:25:10 PMBad MySQL behavior:
* NULL inserted into a NOT NULL column silently alters the data to fit.
* VARCHAR values have trailing whitespace silently removed without asking.
* Dividing by zero is not an error.
* Inserting a value into a column that violates its constraints doesn't result in an error; MySQL guesses at the "correct" value instead. For example, limiting an integer column to 4 digits, and attempting to insert 99999 will result in 9999 being inserted without any error.
* If MySQL finds that it can't create certain table types, it simply ignores referential integrity.
I like to use PostgreSQL instead.
Friday, 03 December, 2004. 04:11:28 PMI'm going to be working on a project in St. Louis for a financial company,
and it looks like I may be there for 4 months, starting in January.
Friday, 03 December, 2004. 12:56:55 PMOur Honda Civic odometer hit 100,000 miles today on my way to work.
Friday, 03 December, 2004. 12:23:34 PMI posted this on DailyKOS:
--------------------------
Free Software is something that we should all know about, because it's a model of socialism that is working today. The cost of reproduction of software is nearly zero. If I have a program, I can give it away to any number of people without diminishing my own ability to use that program. This applies to the source code as well, and in fact makes free software that much more powerful. Giving someone the ability to use a program is much less than the Free Software right to give someone the ability to change a program.
And now today we have very high quality software that is available for free (in both the cost and the liberty sense of the word).
Right now we have two possible ways that other goods could have their cost of production fall through the floor: nanotechnology, and robotics. Both of these technologies have the potential to change the balance of power in such a way that the regular guy can have access to more manufacturing power than a factory owner has today. With that would come a decentralization on corporate power, but only if the technology is spread widely.
Everyone should have an awareness of terms of the software licence (the GPL) that underlies Free Software like the Linux kernel, and also how that differs from a typical shrink-wrap license that Microsoft provides with their software. In the future I can see the big battles being about that exact distinction as the oligarchy tries to keep control of their 'intellectual property' in the face of millions of people manufacturing all manner of goods, in their garages, and nearly zero cost.
Thursday, 02 December, 2004. 02:51:52 PMRadiation portals cost $88,000 apiece. They could be used to screen all
cargo coming through ports for radioactive isotopes used in dirty bombs
or nuclear devices. To cover the entire country would cost just under
$300 million dollars.
Instead, the Bush administration invaded Iraq, without any indication
whatsoever that there was any terrorist linkage, or weapons of mass
destruction. This has been shown to be true more than once. The cost
of less than a day of war in Iraq would buy the devices needed to protect
ourselves from terrorist nuclear attack.