Leuf Daynotes MM week 11

Daynotes: Week of 13 - 19 Mar, MM

Daily notes and commentary -- Week 11

* Link to: last modified 20 March MM at 09:10 GMT+1.

The update-link (above) points to where I last added some text. There is now a current update redirector page (current.html), which you can bookmark instead of the weekly page or the index.

Associated links:

Write me at: bo@leuf.com -- if private, mark it as such!
Posted mail/discussion, see the WikiForum LeufNet
Occasional thematic articles, see "DisISay" LeufOrg

Earlier weeks, see the Daynotes index.

Monday 13 March

Some items in the news...

Member of town council porn star. Local section of avowed "feminist" communist party tries to get rid of one of it's elected members who is sitting on a town council because it was discovered he has been in a number of porn films, and still "stars" from time to time. He says he's done nothing illegal or unusual, and porn video actors are hard-working tax-paying citizens like everyone else.
Sweden gets to keep special import duty. In an about face to its previous stance, EU finance ministers now says the EU is prepared to allow an extension of the existing dispensation until the end of 2003.
Pupils recommended to stay home. Principal says school cannot guarantee the safety against members of a gang who terrorize pupils and steal their mobile phones.

I note several of the US daynoters start to complain about tax month coming up. Used to be we filed tax papers here 15 Feb, but then things were "harmonized" to 31 March. Thus I too need to finish punching in those numbers real soon. This has been complicated by other issues, and a number of fixes that had stacked up for my accounting program. So I'm programming with one hand, doing the books with another, writing with my nose (Salem taught me that trick), and in general multitasking like mad, because currently I'm running the household a lot too while my wife is studying full days.

Tuesday 14 March

I found that I had to rework a recursive procedure in my program. Argh. This has proven difficult to focus on given the many interruptions. Once it was a very simple recursive concept -- things change. Recursion can hide so many subtle bugs.

Local snippets...

Swedish authorities promote Scientology to "church" status. Yesterday, the movement was officially registered as a religious community in this country. It was (somehow) judged to fulfil the stipulated requirements concerning e.g. religious services held. The movement had already in November been granted tax-free status (i.e. classed as a public service non-profit organization). Thus Scientology is also exempt from income tax and Value Added Tax. This is remarkable, to say the least...
Acupuncture more effective than believed. In an unusual long-term Swedish clinical study of pain relief -- unusual because it used a "placebo" control group -- acupuncture was found to reduce chronic back pains even 6 months after completed treatment. Researchers say acupuncture should be used more often in primary health care, citing good results in reducing pain, improving sleep quality and curing incontinence.

I added earlier some material to the wiki about security issues, especially links concerning the Aureate Media Controversy, i.e. snooping software that "phones home" about user actions. This caused a stir lately, but is at once both less serious and more worrying than the initial reports suggested. Keep alert -- we who use dialup stand a slightly better chance of seeing this sort of thing happening than those on 24/7 cable, but the practice of installing stealth snoop code is spreading.

Wednesday 15 March

For what it's worth, I've added a redirector page, called current.html of course, which should shuffle you directly to the latest update. This gives you the option of bookmarking this instead of the week-list page (the same link is also given there) or each week as we go along here.

Everyone seems busy enough just now that saving a click or two may actually be worthwhile.

Took some time to go through some family photos-as-jpeg that have been gathering quantum dust for a month or so. The short moments became longer hours as I started to work them into a web page, correcting color cast as I went.

I'm going away with the kids for a long weekend. Although I expect to manage daily updates (more or less), my connectivity will be unpredictable during these days.

Thursday 16 March

Managing an early update before packing... That way you get something to read today while I'm out.

By request, I'm now placing the most-recent anchor on the date row. Small matter, but typical of an issue that can bother a reader -- scrolling up a row to check the date. Thanks for the tip, JHR.

In the news...

Internet software billionaire Michael Saylor plans to donate $100 million to launch a free online university that could reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide, his company MicroStrategy Inc said on Wednesday. "It's fairly hazy at the moment as to how this will work and the university is in its infancy stage," he added, saying the idea to have an online university came to him over the New Year's holiday when he was sailing a yacht off St. Bart's in the Caribbean.
Iridium, a U.S. satellite telephone company operating under bankruptcy protection, is on the verge of one of the most spectacular business flameouts ever -- set to literally burn up billions of dollars' worth of Earth-orbiting assets. Barring the last-minute arrival of a qualified buyer, the company plans to begin de-orbiting the 66 satellites that make up the world's first low-orbit system for wireless telephone service. The network, costing some 5-7 billion US dollars, would be vaporized. A satellite communications analyst at JP Morgan said of the company's prospects to find a buyer simply: "It's toast."
IBM brings in two high-capacity drives: 75 Gb (7200 RPM) and 40 Gb (5400 RPM). The products are the first IBM desktop drives to use glass disk platters instead of aluminum. The smoother and more rigid glass disks allow the recording head to read smaller bits of information that are packed more closely together. Glass disks are also more stable at higher speeds, IBM said. (And have a distinctive sound when they crash...)
Virginia Gov. James Gilmore signs into law the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act.
Wireless is MS-less? IBM has entered deals with Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Intel, and Cisco to develop an open, scalable platform based on the EPOC operating system for wireless data services. Notably absent from the consortium is Microsoft.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit handed down a ruling late last month that upheld the government's right to search and seize the workplace computer files of its employees. "Not unconstitutional." Hmm, where elephants tread, can others be far behind?
Computer security experts contend that the development of crime on the Internet that mirrors real-life crime will be much more devastating. One of the growing crime issues is "identity theft", which can become so much more dramatic and fast to accomplish given the online databases everyone relies on.

(Expect late updates because of travel day.)

Friday 17 March

Hmm, Winston Churchill was a druid? I believe I've heard that implied before. I ran across an article about an international order of Druids (maybe OBOD -- The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids, the article didn't really specify this very well) whose current president is a Swede from Lund. They're having a World Congress in Australia soon. As for OBOD, it was established 1717... but as usual for many such arcane organizations "refounded" again in recent times. Anyway, I found this link.

Sorry about the missing current.html, BTW -- I just forgot to upload it and the modified index page. I only noticed this today from the sudden slew of entries in the error log. I guess the option was in demand... It's fixed now.

A lot was happening Wednesday and Thursday before we left, so it's not surprising if I forgot a few files. In the midst of the confusion of getting ready yesterday, UPS showed up with a contact that needed my initals to authorize a minor change. I knew this was coming, but had been a bit worried that I wouldn't be home for it (one of those laws of timing you know). Happy for the break, I grabbed the packet, and the courier, and said "Stay!". Five minutes later, the packet was re-sealed and on its way. Given my trip, this just saved a week's delay.

So, I'm "on the road" for a few days and back to ordinary modem for my connectivity. The notebook has a 3Com combo LAN/33.6 card, so that's ok. Interestingly, the recent change to single rate for domestic telephony now means Swedish users on the move no longer need to redefine their dial-up numbers to the nearest access. It's all the same cost now, "long-distance" or not. While never an issue for ISPs with a toll-free number, it does make life easier for a lot of users. I'm in both camps, since I have one toll-free ISP (my main one) and one local-number ISP.

The Malmö-Gothenburg trip by coach went well, despite a few oddities. First, we ended up waiting for over half an hour at the Lund stop, only 20 km into the journey. Driver never explained why, but once we were moving again he said we would skip the next city stop entirely to gain time (another bus would take the north-bound passengers from there). Later, as the bus took a tight turn onto an access ramp after another stop, the driver had to stop again right there on the ramp. Seems he either forgot to close a luggage door, or it was improperly fastened, because a collection of suitcases and bags had gone flying out into the field. Somehow it seemed to be one of those days for the poor driver.

We left with bright sunshine (if chilly) and arrived in snow storm (short duration), but today is sunny at least. Still cold though. Kids are stuck on computers as usual, but I'm going to get us all out for lunch, so this is all the update for today. I think.

Some local news...

Luxury car swindle. Police uncovered 40 cases of luxury (Mercedes) cars stolen on the continent, usually at gunpoint to get the keys. The cars had then been "import-laundered" through the automotive inspection in Gothenburg, then sold to dealers and individuals. Some new owners who later drove down to Denmark and Germany had their cars and sometimes themselves taken by local police. In Sweden, no checks were made to see if the car serial numbers had been forged. Swedish law allows a person who unwittingly buys a stolen car to keep it. In the rest of Europe, the car goes back to its original owner and the unwitting driver arrested.
Swedish authorities worried that e-commerce means Swedish business will easily evade tax, especially the high goods and services tax (VAT, moms, +25%). "There are no technical means in place to tax commerce over the Internet." That's nice.
Viagra black market. Several cases discovered of large amounts (400-600 doses) of Viagra (and other medicines) being purchased at state-subsidised prices on prescription. Suspicion is that this is being re-sold or exported. Authorities want better reporting from pharmacies.
The usual smattering of cases of people being prosecuted for "possession of illegal weapons" -- i.e. pepper spray, teargas spray, electric prongs, and other self-defence items favored by women -- legal in many/most other countries, but not here. One legal anti-rape item that is recommended by authorities is a stink-bomb device. This makes the victim (and with a good bit of luck the perp), well, stink something awful, but retailers say the item is not especially popular.

(Afternoon update) I happened to look through my harddisk files by date, making sure my software installation notes were updated and ran across a folder called WindowsUpdates with 300K of sundry junk. Hmm, on 1 March I wrote about the problems of finding particular MS files. Seems a lot of files got written to the harddisk to manage this automated update scanning.

(much later) The kids and I spent most of the day on foot, realworld as opposed to virtual, and by subtle misdirection I managed to keep them walking up hill and down for a full day's worth of exercise in sun and air. I was well pleased with that, given that most of this stay is otherwise for their part spent exploring the installed games on cousin's and uncle's computers.

Lunch was at an excellent Chinese restaurant, one which I used to go to regularly when I had a bookshop around the corner from it. The city has several such, a good number conveniently just around the corner from each of the bookshop locations I had over the years. A strange coincidence that many have remarked on. Another strange coincidence is perhaps that I took a year of Chinese at the University here once -- I've forgotten most of this, but can still manage a passable xièxiè-ní (thank you) when so inclined. Chinese is an interesting language, with a long enough written history that one can clearly see how a spoken language evolves by words merging due to clipped and abbreviated speech.

Saturday 18 March

Catching up on some of the quasi-recent postings by our distinguished Daygang member Dr (Chris) Keyboard, PhDCEE (Piled higher and Deeper Computing on the Eating Edge) I can only offer sympathy and remind Chris of the wisdom of the old adage to let sleeping trapdoors lie. Ah, life's unexpected adventures...

Thanks to Chris for posting the Dead Media link. I'd forgotten about that worthy effort, and am myself of the generation that belonged to the slide-rule carrying set. Just the other day in fact, my wife found my second calculator (a still functional relic): a small Sinclair Scientific (DIY kit) that was a late but useful complement to my FaberCastell super-advanced slipstick.

The Web is full of worthy and retro efforts these days -- one can spend far too much time following up entertaining and informative leads. Any way, that sort of led me in an unexpected way to updating my SF booklist with Bruce Sterling's titles and in general spending a hour or two noodling with various weblinks. So it goes, but I count these days as time off and with no particular discipline called for.

This afternoon and evening will be devoted to chatting with old friends over a taco dinner, so that's pretty much all for now. Now to get this (and yesterday's late notes) posted.

Sunday 19 March *

Not much to report.

Kids continue to have a busy time with various games, such as The Sims and Ultima Online: The Second Age. Except of course when I bundled them outdoors for a walk around town and some of the parks. Walking didn't last very long, however, because a high level cloud cover was pushing in and the increasing wind was a very cool NW variety.

My hosts had the video of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, so I finally got around to seeing that. I tend to have problems these days with anything that Bruce Willis is in, but on the whole tFE was well worth seeing, at least once, despite (or perhaps because of) all the clichés. Memoriable performances by Milla Jovovich (Leeloo) and Ian Holm (Cornelius).

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