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Daynotes: Week of 1 - 7 May, MM

Daily notes and commentary -- Week 18

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Monday 1 May

Public holiday, "demonstration day"

As of today, the new Swedish "anti-spam" law comes into effect. What it does is specify that if an individual does not wish to receive (Swedish-origin) spam, then that individual must submit his or her email address to an open national opt-out registry. Duh... The intent seems to have been to make advertiser-email equivalent to normal direct-addressed advertiser mail, which has long had comparable opt-out registries associated with the providers (including the PO) of physical mail addresses for advertisers, but the concept is flawed in many ways quite apart from the dubious nature of unsolicited advertising in general. At least with physical mail, the sender has to pay postage or distribution on a per item basis, which alone cuts down on a lot of nuisance mail. No such cost considerations curb email spam.

In any case, the law bundles email spam with "other methods of distance communication" such as fax and automatic phone dialling, and says this is allowed for commercial purposes unless the recipient has "specifically and clearly" opted out. Hence the centralized registry. By trying to be specific, the law actually weakens the recipient's legal position -- two steps back and one step sideways...

Modern governments pass laws as if legislation is going out of style.

There is a significant threat on the horizon of per item charges for email, or actually Internet backbone traffic in general. The day that happens, we'll see ISP metering of mail to move that charge back to the senders, and the playing field for spam will change drastically. That's a development I'd rather not see, but unfortunately it's one that seems more likely than most other options. A Millicent-like infrastructure for micro- or mini-payments would be better, but sadly this RSN technology has proven Real Stalled Now.

News items:

And in the domestic news, it's noted that "thrashing", hitherto only seen on some commuter trains in Stockholm, has over the holidays spread to the city's subway system. For those who don't know, "thrashing" is when a gang of youths (it's assumed) vandalize by totally destroying a train coach -- smashing walls, ceiling, fittings, and windows, throwing out the seats, and finish the job by urinating/defecating on the remains. Apart from reflecting on this amazing display of misplaced primate energy, one sort of wonders why they don't go all the way and torch the remains with a molotov... (unless of course it's that fire is beyond their comprehension).

Clearly, all is not well in the nation's capital.

From the reincarnational point of view, this begs the question of what lost souls are among us today -- have the good ones been in such short supply due to overpopulation?

Tuesday 2 May

The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) has been in and out of the technical news the past few months. This US bill, gradually being signed into law on a state-by-state basis is going to have some profound implications for computer users around the world.

One aspect, as yet untested, is that UCITA gives software manufacturers the right to remotely disable their installed software if a customer breaks the licensing agreement. Quite apart from the unilateral aspect of the manufacturer determining that a customer is not abiding by the agreement, has anyone considered the security side of such remote control? I mean, think about it. Say some official within MS decides that a product with GUID xyz is being used in violation of license. A MS corrective-measures-bot goes out on the Net and locates the software when the user's system is online. A secret handshake occurs, and the user suddenly finds that his Windows Millennium dies in mid keystroke. This means backdoors, people! What if the GUID was wrong? What if hackers figure out the secret password? What if, indeed? So what constitutes minimum grounds for such extreme measures by the manufacturer? This is enough: a user violates a license by publicly criticizing the software! Really... that's ridiculous!

I may be turning into an old fuddyduddy, but it seems much legislation, while just as bad (or worse) as usual, is getting too empowered and leveraged by the computerized context it's being put into. Most of all, the consequences are more often being felt far outside the legislative scope of the original law, so that what once would have been a local inconvenience will increasingly have global effects.

UCITA, if it continues to spread, may be a significant nail in the coffin of closed source software. The term "slow stangulation" has been used. Anything "mission critical" will move to open source just to ensure freedom from this kind of backdoor. In passing, professional legal opinion had it that UCITA was "a flawed approach to basic issues of contract law" and a "delegation of regulatory power to licensors who draft form [non-negotiable] contracts". In a phrase, it legalizes abusive business practices.

Sometimes the law cuts the other way: "A federal appeals court in Ohio has ruled that encryption software code is protected by the First Amendment because such code is a means of communication between computer programmers." This is old news (a month ago), but worth mentioning in this context, although of course it only applies to the USA. Interestingly, Ohio is passing legislation to declare void any licensing agrement that tries to invoke UCITA. There will clearly be a prolonged fight about this.

Is MS preparing for not only world domination, but actually changing way the world works? In the Microsoft Explorapedia series: World of Nature for Windows, version 1.0, if you use the Exploratron to look at the Earth, it rotates in the wrong direction (!).

Apparently (MS-owned) Hotmail users must verify their "adult" status by submitting their credit card number. Weird. (But I suppose there is method in that madness.)

Wednesday 3 May

I think I've figured it out now. I can read daily bits of Dave Farquhar's Optimizing Windows while I wait for the system to boot, before getting down to the day's writing. This will of course only work until I apply Dave's tips, at which point reading time will drop towards zero.

The NEAR orbiter is now settled in a 50 km orbit around Eros for its long-term mapping. Returned images are now very detailedremote, and will until August be resolving objects to about 4 meters across. Interestingly, the current model of asteroids suggests that most are in fact "gravel heaps", only held together by their small gravity and surface adhesion. This model has been strengthened by NEAR's images, but is ultimately based on for example spin-size distributions and simulations of collisions between different kinds of "rocks".

Hmm, interesting. Therese has analyzed (accurately) the personalities in Friends and written it up. She has an excellent eye for character.

hah, i'm here... by popular demand -- i'm popular, and i demand it -- i am now head of the daynotes directorate, the core of a new behind-the-scenes power group -- me myself and i -- that will make illuminati seem like kindergarten and ensure world domi

Salem! Get your fat furry self off my computer!

Sorry, we interrupt this unscheduled interruption to return to our irregular and unscheduled programming...

A friend called me yesterday, somewhat distraught. His Office 2000 applications kept dying as soon as he brought them up. Sound familiar? Yup, he had just pulled down and finished installing the SR-1 Office "patch". Thanks to earlier daynoter experience sharing, e.g. Tom Syroid who ran across this when SR-1 was still steaming hot on the MS server, I could explain to him the situation. It turned out to be possible to reinstall the original version without destroying his settings or data. Interestingly, Access was not affected by the shut-out behavior of SR-1, but then Access has always been the odd one out of that package.

Today's culinary delight for lunch ended up being take-out pizza. (No, gang, no "Kraft" dinners around here, and I don't have any favorite spoon either.) Good enough. Pizza, like Chinese and most everything except Macdonalds burgers, tends to be different in different countries, so I'm sure you in your mind's eye.all see something rather different from what I actually ate. No matter, consider it shorthand for fast food -- good (if you know the right place), but not great.

Fast food has always been around, at least as long as humans have known how to cook. A living for some, it's a life-saver for others. Luckily, the places I've encountered have been decently clean and provided problem-free food. Other times one reads about, or sees "busted" style tv shows with hidden cameras that document places you wish you'd never heard about.

It is with interest I saw that Byte columnist Jon Udell gave a mentionremote to wiki discussion groups. He had numerous interesting things to say about how we deal with group messages. He was wrong about the fact that the free-for-all wikis lack change logs. Apart from Recent Changes, there can be several different backup and log mechanisms in place that don't have to be as publicly visible as a previous version and diff interface for the editing user.

Thursday 4 May

In the morning news, a story about a very unhappy former car owner. It was an older model, and he didn't need it very much, but it did need some repairs. He therefore went to a local garage, but the mechanics there told him that they had so much work that it would take some time before they could get around to his. Well, that was ok, he would just leave the car and they could fit it in whenever they could. Fine, everyone was happy with that. Later that week, the mechanics needed more space to shuffle around the cars currently under work, so they moved the man's car to a free parking space a few blocks away. Four weeks after leaving in the car, the man receives a letter from the town council saying that his abandoned car had been towed away and scrapped. I can sort of imagine the ensuing discussion between the owner and the garage staff.

Short items...

That was a bit more than I thought to note down, but there's a fair bit going on this week.

I'm not at my best today. Last night I developed a severe sore throat. I can't decide if it's because of a bug, or because the caretakers fixed a smashed window in the downstairs entrance. What has that got to do with a sore throat? you might well ask. Well, it has to do with a particular kind of silicone glue they use which has a peristent, very strong, characteristic smell -- and our bedroom is right above the entrance door. I know from before that I can react adversely to those fumes.

I wrote rather late last night, which may also be a contributing factor. I decided that a chapter wasn't coming together as it ought, so recast it by adding a brief walk-through section at the beginning. Mmm, maybe. It should help by getting the reader "into" the functionality before doing the separate issues that each step raises.

BTW, I'm enjoying doing serious writing in Framemaker. About the only thing I miss from MS Word 2000 is the outline view (which IIRC was not written by MS, but bought-in code). On the other hand, generating a TOC (or other configurable lists) gives at least the same overview, more flexibly in fact -- if lacking the "move around the blocks" functionality. Fm is a no-nonsense book-oriented application, and it makes a significant difference. I'm relearning the keyboard shortcuts as I go. As a side effect, I can now also generate pdf files, which is a nice option for a few other projects I have in mind, later.

Right, I should be writing, not writing...

Lead a life, don't follow it around. -- Carrie Fisher (better known as Princess Leia).

Friday 5 May

Dave Farquhar's rules for safe email were so well written, I posted a copy on the wiki. The latest worm clearly caused great havoc in many places, and personally I think people should change their default setting of always sending out email immediately. If instead your outbox gets emptied only when you request it, you stand a chance of seeing that something might be wrong when outbound suddenly grows, before you inadvertently bless your contacts with a virus.

On the SF wiki, I started a page about electronic books, especially with a reference to the IBM Systems Journal article about "the last book". It's an interesting concept; a realization of the "magic book -- book of shadows" idea.

Remember when Microsoft said about OEM-installed Windows, that you should be sure to get an original CD with it? Otherwise, the dire warning was, you were probably dealing with pirated installations. Well, the CD is in the other tray as it were. MS has recently decreed that OEM retailers can at the most include a "recovery disk" or pre-installed recovery files with a pre-installed system -- not ever an original installation CD. Applies to all flavors of Windows, heard from several reputable sources. Rent-a-Windows can't be far off now...

Rest of morning wasted trying to reach people on the phone. Some places weren't even answering, others had lonely receptionists only. Fridays... bah.

Saturday 6 May

Last night ended up being far too late for my own good, cold and all, but I was ironing out a few code wrinkles in the revised and enhanced wiki script. One new feature that should interest my busy Daynote colleagues, and now deployed on all my running wikis, is the ability to subscribe to update notifications. Say for example you are interested in new postings on the DaynoteRecipes page. Instead of periodically navigating by the wiki and checking either the page or RecentChanges, you edit in a notification command anywhere on the page itself -- like this: "Notify!me@my.com". This ensure that you automatically receive an email notification any time that particular page is modified. Such a notification message could look like this: 

Date sent:      Fri, 5 May 2000 16:59:41 -0400
From:           wikiDaynotesMailForum@leuf.net
Subject:        wiki DaynotesMailForum change notification

The page DaynotesRecipes was changed on 
May 5, 2000 at 16:59 by (195.100.97.177 )
 -- signature: "BoLeuf"

I am still examining some variations to this, such as filtering out "insignificant" or "multiple" updates, but the enhancement should make it easier to keep up to date. For wikis that have very slow update frequencies, I am considering a notification option for any page changed.

News reflections...

The other day, I was reflecting over the fact that more and more food and candy packaging comes in "zip-lock" resealable bags. We have several at home, for example vanilla sugar and baking soda. These examples are particularly interesting, because the packages are virtually identical, with the same image on the front. Only the text, none too visible on that background, and color of the back gives a clue to which white powder is which. Reminds me of the umpteen variants of shampoo and conditioner that only differ by label color nuance and small text. The point, however, such as it is, is that these bags do not work very well. First you cut away the top, and vainly try to open, usually spilling when ultimately but unexpectedly the zip-lock snap un-locks as your pulling force exceeds a threshold resistance. Then you spill some more as you get out the amount you want. Finally, you vainly try to reseal the pack, which doesn't work now that there is powder in the zip that you can't get out.

--

Evening. The one dialup still has severe connectivity problems. A tracert indicates one reason why. I'm relying on the backup ISP these days. 

Tracing route to ...

  1    40 ms    40 ms    50 ms  t2o68.telia.com [62.20.138.248]
  2    40 ms    51 ms    50 ms  m-d2-feth1-0-0-dist.malmoe.telia.net [62.20.138.254]
  3    40 ms    50 ms    50 ms  m-c1-fddi0-0-core.malmoe.telia.net [194.236.186.253]
  4    50 ms    60 ms    50 ms  ov-b1-pos1-2.telia.net [194.22.191.73]
  5    50 ms    60 ms    60 ms  sto-b1-atm2-0-1.telia.net [194.17.1.161]
  6    50 ms    60 ms    60 ms  ov-i8-atm1-0-1.telia.net [194.17.1.106]
  7    50 ms    60 ms    60 ms  sto-b2-atm3-0-7.telia.net [194.17.1.149]
  8    50 ms    60 ms    60 ms  ov-i8-atm1-0-2.telia.net [194.17.1.150]
  9    50 ms    60 ms    60 ms  sto-b2-atm3-0-7.telia.net [194.17.1.149]
 10    60 ms    60 ms    60 ms  ov-i8-atm1-0-2.telia.net [194.17.1.150]
... and so on, round and round.

Sunday 7 May *

Duh? "According to recent research by Gartner Group, the battle to dominate the general-purpose mid-range server market is over and Windows has won. ... Gartner calculated that during the coming five years all the Linux and Unix flavors combined, (and that includes Solaris, HP-UX and AIX), are going to find themselves with about the same market share of the general-purpose server market as Windows." Well, I for one don't put a lot of credence to GG's brand of projections Especially when they formulate it that way -- first the definitive "has won" but in the next breath predicting equal market shares.

This sounds like a lot waving the certified holy CDs in the air to ward of imminent visitations of the heathen hordes. Of course, given the fact that it will take a number n Windows servers to equal the capacity of one Linux server, and allowing for the 51 IP number bug, then maybe if you count only actual numbers of servers you can project that kind of "market share"...

On the other hand, they may have a point when they say "One of the results of the survey was the conclusion that companies currently cozying up to Linux (like IBM) are speaking Linux out of the corner of their mouth but are really trying to sell their existing Unix OS'es like AIX."

Anyway, enough of that. I decided to call up the ISP tech desk last night, around midnight (24/7 service it has, two seconds delay and I was talking to a human), and was soon discussing the server bounce I detected in the tracert log. They checked it out and clearly something had fouled up parts of the routing information somewhere -- perhaps related to the ILY worm induced peak of emails. This morning, access is normal, so the problem got fixed during the wee hours. The former state telco gets a gold star for that effort.

Speaking of the worm, I note, like most of the daynote gang and numerous other contacts, that I've seen no trace of the bug or its kin. I think this says something about the company we keep, and the responsible way these people handle email and basic security. Most people however run with the MS default security settings and think nothing of opening attachments. So it goes. Because of the destructive nature of the ILY code, costs for this latest outbreak are expected to vastly outreach the costs due to Melissa.

All rights reserved. Copyright MM Bo Leuf.
Comments and discussion welcome (email or wiki).

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