This be midsummer week...
Nothing really to report. I don't seem to have accomplished much today, and
in fact took some hours off to watch some recorded stuff from the weekend.
Notably one of the Babylon 5 episodes. Luckily I checked that at
recording time, because it turned out that the channel had slipped about
20 minutes in the announced schedule.
The only real bit of productivity today has been web-setting the Doctor Bank
issue I translated a month ago. The photo files came in the email today,
so I decided to do at least some of the webpages right away.
Some reorganizing, or rather extending of my private wiki notebooks also
got done. One of the strengths of any PIM is linking and crosslinking between
different items and files. As explained at some length in the Outlook book,
links to files and "Categories" provide some of that functionality there.
In the wiki, it's a mix of page link, Internet URL and local file links.
After a while, you start to reap the benefits.
While simple enough in a wiki, I'm trying even shorter and simpler ways to
integrate stuff. One of the things I started was to link the VCR-wiki pages
refering to recorded episodes with my local copies of the analysis and synopsis
pages. Two pages in I saw a redundancy and added an entry to the
"InterMap" file, so the complete wiki hyperlink shortened to e.g.
B5s:093.html -- on serve that expands to the full path to that
particular file on my filesystem.
Interestingly, should I at some point move those files somewhere else --
or for that matter want to have all the links refer back to the original
Lurker website versions instead, I need only change a single look-up
entry in the InterMap file to make "B5s" expand differently.
The day started HOT. The balcony thermometer pegged 30 sometime
before 9 AM, and the air is like an oven, and about as stale... Some well-baked
air has moved in from the Continent.
UCITA update. Maybe Maryland will be the only state to try
to apply that much-debated law, which has stalled or been counter-legislated
in other states. Remains to be seen what tightened legislation of this kind
will come in the EU.
Reno wants companies to openly disclose how much they've
been hacked. Do you suppose she'll organize a special e-swat team to
hack into their systems to find out? :)
High-tech monitoring. Raytheon has a new system for monitoring
network usage that's supposed to be minimally intrusive. Instead of scanning
actual email or file content, it tracks usage patterns morphed into a 3D
pattern which can alert supervisors to anomolies that signal potentially
illeal or harmful activities.
US still lags in mobile market. The "top-of-the-line" mobiles
being offered on the US market are designs that in Europe were left by the
wayside 1-2 years ago. Travelers to the US, who take along their mobiles
(some work with the US version of GSM) invariably report disbelief expressed
by their US colleagues when they see what state-of-the-art really means.
(A friend told me how his current micro slimline had people's jaws dropping
when he whipped it out in the usual "look at my latest" discussions.)
European users do have the advantage of a ubiquitous GSM standard, which
has made mobile phones a must-have, despite the until recently obnoxiously
high rates. OTOH, the handsets themselves have often been "give-aways" --
units with nominal values of USD 100-200 being sold for symbolic sums (USD
1-10, or even free) if the users commits to a 12 or 24 month contract with
a given provider.
Thought for the day...
On the Internet, no one can see you hide.
Oh my God... Newsflash!
UK firm British Telecom is claiming ownership of the hyperlink
concept that essentially defines the WWW. BT says a patent filed
in the US in 1976 and granted in 1989 gives it ownership of hyperlink technology.
Now, it is asking US internet service providers to pay to use what it considers
to be its intellectual property. (BT filed hyperlink patents in other countries
as well, but all these claims have by now expired, unlike in the US where
it runs until 2006. BT rediscovered the "Hidden Page" patent three years
ago during a routine trawl of its 15,000 patents.) The usual attribution
of web hyperlinks is to Tim Berners-Lee, who in turn credits Ted Nelson for
much of his inspiration.
This patenting of concepts has become absolutely ridiculous!
I was up until past 3 AM -- when the words flow, go with the flow -- which
was ok since it was cooler at night. Today is slightly cooler (25-30) with
a bit of breeze and local thundershowers expected. I hope to write down some
of the further thoughts and insights that were circling in quasi-dreams after
3 AM.
Outsourcing. Customer Care or Customer Support is often
"covertly outsourced", which generally means "to the customer".
Midsummer Eve (things generally close the afternoon, call
it half-holiday, when Swedes flee the urban areas to find somewhere to drink
snaps, down copious amounts of state-approved beer, and eat raw
herring)
A lovely morning, summer-hot but breezy as I nipped out to buy the morning
paper and four cartons of strawberries for the family. Unfortunately, unpacking
the strawberries at home uncovered the fact that the last night or two of
rain is closing the season, because a fair number had started to mould.
Cultivated berries are very sensitive to that, largely because the berries
end up on the ground because of their size and weight. Oh well...
A lot of Danes are disappointed, now a week before the Öresund Bridge
opens. The Danish tax laws have been examined, and the final ruling is that
Danes who want to live on the Swedish side and work in Denmark will
not be able to deduct the USD 400 monthly bridge fees. That pretty
much pulls the plug on the real estate agents' hopes of a revival of home
sales here.
More Bridge problems. Not only will rail traffic have difficulties due to
the delivery delays of the custom-built train sets, but road traffic will
too. Of the 11 or so tollgate lanes on the Swedish side, a third were intended
to be high-speed lanes with automatic pass-detection for busses, trucks and
others that contract for this special "bizz" pass. The pass allows frequent
passages to be invoiced and automatically paid from bank accounts. At least
a third of the 15,000 pass applications expected in during the next week
won't be processed in time, so these accounts won't be usable the first week
or two of traffic.
Returning to the rail link, the personnel "on the track" so to speak have
little understanding for the formal objections to the train sets from higher
up in the hierarchy -- according to the engineers, the trains tested so far
have been perfectly ok. They're counting on normal traffic from 2 July.
As we know from physics, any strong gradient induces flow whenever possible,
along paths of least resistance. So too in economics. A gang apparently made
a systematic effort to use the gradient in car prices in different countries.
They bought cars comparatively cheaply outside Sweden and brought them into
the country. Here they "staged" car accidents severe enough that they could
file insurance claims for the totaled cars and various simulated injuries.
The car value was of course based on the price in Sweden, not the actual
cost abroad. About 30 cases were uncovered recently, representing millions
of Crowns "profit".
Say what? department:
If the questioning glides from [the position] that I am directly involved
in the decision[,] to have created an environment where I indirectly influenced
the decision, then we are out in a quagmire. -- Swedish PM
Persson answering a constitutional inquiry about his role in the decision
not to pay out further funds to the PR firm in charge of the scandalous PR
trip to South Africa in 1999. (He denies the charge of undue influence in
the decision.)
The book Case History, by the Ukraine photographer Boris
Michailov, has gained a certain amount of notoriety here. He has just
received this year's Hasselblad prize (of about USD 60,000). In the book's
500 pages, Boris pseudo-documents the human decay and misery in the Ukraine
Republic a decade after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The pseudo
qualifier is because of the open admission that he pays each of his down-and-out
subjects a handful of rubles to pose for his pictures. Nevertheless,
despite the often extremely provocative posings, these people do convey something
of the desperate destitution that according to many other sources permeates
the former Soviet republic. Still suffering the residual aftermath of the
Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine economy is like most former republics split between
a very few, often "mafia" family new-rich hiding behind walls and elaborate
security precautions, and a vast population at (sub-)starvation level drifting
in a bankrupt society.
New Swedish tax break proposed for business, landlords and home-owners announced.
Up to USD 600 in tax reduction may be allowed, after application, for deploying
broadband Internet on the premises, figured as 50% of costs above just under
USD 1000. The reduction ceiling for apartment buildings is to apply on a
per apartment basis. Always nice to know where public funding goes, whether
existing or potential. This is rather similar to an earlier tax law that
promoted physical renovations up until some years ago.
Hmm, SkyTeams alliance formed out of Delta Air, Air Mexico, Korean
Air, and Air France.
Locally, another hair-brained scheme has had the lime-light the past week.
"Turning Torso", an "artistically designed" and very unsafe looking residential
tower -- 186 twisting meters of luxury apartments rising crookedly out of
a former shipyard site. (It is vaguely reminiscent of a fat twisted
reed with square clumps of frog eggs on it -- the main architect is
Japanese...) Prospective tenants must already now deposit about USD
3000 as a down payment on the required, roughly USD 25,000-130,000 stake,
depending on desired size and floor. In traditional Swedish manner, nobody
will "own" anything but a stake in the association that will rent out the
apartments.
The highest residential building in Malmö to date is only 80 meters
tall, which has for many years also been the highest in Sweden as a whole.
Since several of those who signed up early have expressed interest in having
entire top floors (250 sq.m., 2,250 sq.ft.), the contractor has adjusted
down the number of available apartments to 130 or so -- from the original
maximum of 180. The central building association, HSB, generally builds for
members who save for many years in their funds, but admits that few if any
of existing members will be able to afford anything in the proposed and now
officially approved tower.
On another subject, some people have been complaining about "abandoned" cars
in their area that seemingly only collect parking tickets and tow-away warnings.
The assumption is that these are stolen, because the locks are broken up,
but that nobody is doing anything about them. Not so, says the municipal
agency responsible for towing away tagged cars. Stolen cars are a matter
for the police, and "abandoned" cars are regularly checked against the police
files. It turns out that many cars are in fact "broken into" by their owners
when locks fail, and because of the high cost of changing locks, they never
bother having this fixed. That they also systematically don't pay parking
tickets is another matter.
Have a good midsummer!
Midsummer Day (public holiday)
Microsoft finally announced a flashy new name for NGWS: the "dot.net" services.
Duh? This will be the official cover to embrace the Net and XML,
and to move squarely into a "rent-an-app" strategy instead of just selling
or licensing software.
We may note in passing that the legacy mirror site (www.sfcentral.com/leuf/)
for my SF pages at "SF Central" vanished some time during the last few months.
This was not totally unexpected, because the original owner of SF Central
dropped off the map long ago and the site was subsequently sort-of overseen
by SF-Zine (interestingly also not responding). I suppose the domains lapsed
from non-payment... (Checking... hmmm, yes, sfcentral.com is in
fact available again to register, and sfzine.com may well have expired
in May 2000, even though it's not listed as free, yet.)
Sheesh... More on the Geocities spam-funneling account...
Dear GeoCities Member,
Last week, we inadvertently notified you that we would stop supporting
your geocities.com email address. Please disregard our prior email. Yahoo!
GeoCities will continue to forward your geocites.com email to the address
you've already provided us with.
We apologize for the confusion our earlier email may have caused -
our intent was to send that only to members that hadn't gone through the
re-registration process.
Thank you very much for your understanding,
The GeoCities Team
This came along with the usual stack of offensive and explicit junk that
routinely gets forwarded via the geocities server. My earlier reaction to
their "promise" to shut down their email server was evidently premature.
Yeah, right. Any attempt to reply/complain/etc. is, as always, autoresponded
to, like this:
Hi,
Thank you for joining Yahoo! GeoCities! As explained in the Welcome
Letter, we have many areas on our site where you can get help and information.
Please take a moment now to read the Welcome Letter again.
To send email directly to our Member Support team please goes to the
following address: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/geo/
Get your Web page up right away by using Yahoo! PageBuilder:
http://geocities.yahoo.com/members/pb.html
To officially "move into" your Yahoo! GeoCities site, you must upload
an index.html file or make a new index.html file with one of the tools provided
by Yahoo! GeoCities. To make a new index.html file, you can use any of our
easy to use page editors: Yahoo! PageWizards Yahoo! PageBuilder Basic
Editor
If you are more familiar with HTML you may want to try our Advanced
Editor. Users are also able to upload an index.html file they create on their
own machine using our EZ Upload utility or FTP. Information about these utilities
is available at: http://geocities.yahoo.com/members/ul.html
If you no longer wish to be a part of Yahoo! GeoCities you can delete
your member Profile here:
http://geocities.yahoo.com/members/cgi-bin/homestead/delete_homestead
Thank you for being a part of our community!
Moronic situation. I can't "delete my profile", because technically
I'm not a member, don't have a password to reach these pages or any feedback
forms, and basically cannot reach anyone behind the barrier of helpful
autoresponders. I should really have closed that site down a week earlier,
before Yahoo took over.
Read. My. Lithp. -- No. More. Thpam. (Some of the stuff coming via
Geocities lately is pretty disgusting...)
Interestingly,
feathers
may predate
dinosaurs
(BBC),
which puts yet another wrinkle into the usual evolutionary picture.
Yesterday it rained. I was going to mention that on Friday, during a clear
spell in the late afternoon, we all got out for a walk through town. Actually,
the thought had been to shop a few items for the weekend too, but the Midsummer
Eve was "worse" than ever -- most everything had closed at 2 PM or earlier.
That included most restaurants. Even the almost 24/7 McDonalds and BurgerKing
were locked up tight. City center saw only a few lost tourists drift about
wondering WTF? Traffic was essentially non-existent. Hehe, we could have
filmed a post-pandemic disaster movie that day...
Today... hmm, what about today? Really only a single point: make sure that
the weekly episode of Babylon 5 gets recorded properly. In other words keep
half an eye on the channel to see that they're following the published schedule
times.
For the rest, it might be a good day for reading. While not raining at the
moment, there are heavy clouds moving about, the air is cool, and moments
of sun are unpredictable. I need to document some wiki script changes --
I've spent a couple of days "cleaning up" the code, properly referencing
and dereferencing private variables instead of the initial undeclared global
and local stuff so typical of hacks and published examples. This of course
means that a number of the preliminary code blocks in the book need to be
updated. Another project is to propagate the drop&run solution into some
other perl scripts I have for the website, in particular the webstats modules.
The drop&run method has a few interesting and automatic consequences
for site security, in that it's easier to maintain strict scope on an otherwise
very general bit of code. No form parameters that the user can maliciously
tweak, no otpions that can be changed manually. (Yes, I am aware of various
spoofing tricks and other cracker tools to take over cgi scripts, but I'm
not coding for a top secret site -- heck, I wouldn't even have cgi then,
or open connectivity.)
