Spam's Getting Smart

I've been corresponding over one of my usual mailing lists, but one which I haven't been public on for a bit. Last night, though, I sent 2 or 3 messages out over this list.

The funniest thing happened today. I received a number of responses from an address which I think has only been seen on that list. It's from a guy in Boulder, CO, and his mail on that list has been scarse for a year or two. But that's not the funny part.

The funny part was that it was spam, and the subject of the mail was taken from my mail; it looked like a reply, with just the usual misnamed image attachments which are really virus-laden screensavers and stuff. The reason why it's funny is because it cannot be a coincidence that the first time I see mail from him is in response to mail seen on a mailing list which we both haven't frequented in a while, and with a subject which matches what I've just written after a long dry spell.

No; the funny part is that it looks like spammers are compiling lists of what addresses go where, and using them to make their spam look all that more tempting to people. "I wonder what Jim sent in all these pictures," we're supposed to say, and open them without wondering why Jim's sending mail from Mexico though a Malay relay.

72 Canadian Miners learn why we have Safety Standards

Rescuers bring up all 72 Canadian miners - Boston.com:

ESTERHAZY, Saskatchewan --Rescuers retrieved all 72 central Canadian potash miners who were trapped underground by a fire and survived until Monday by using oxygen, food and water stored in subterranean emergency chambers.

That's it: a pretty routine rescue. No heroes, no 24-hour coverage blanketing 25 news channels, no distraught wives wondering if maybe a bit more pray'r would have helped Johnny get out alive, no group hugs of obese people with a tooth apiece.

While no one plans an accident, this one seems to have - so far - been handled perfectly, right from the safety standards which gave them airtight chambers instead of just stupid rugs to hang over hallways. That and a bunch of prayer will certainly not help you.

I'm so very glad that - so far - all of the trapper miners got out, and so very angry that another one of Mr Bush's cronies dropped another ball when he by all rights should have had as happy endings as this one looks to be. Fucking well charge him with manslaughter-2 for his negligent homicide.

British court: 150 mph on a public road without insurance isn't 'dangerous driving' - Autoblog

It's apparent I need to live in a country whose laws are taken from the UK legal system.

British court: 150 mph on a public road without insurance isn't 'dangerous driving' - Autoblog:

British leadfoots, you've got a friend in Caroline Lister. The British Recorder in a Winchester court let 21-year-old Nicholas Whittle off the hook after he was clocked touching 150 mph in daddy's Porsche Boxster. 90 mph over the speed limit. Without insurance.

Lister threw the case out of court, arguing Whittle 'went fast for a short time only on a straight road with excellent visibility.' The potentate argued that excessive speed in-and-of-itself isn't enough to be ruled dangerous driving, particularly as road conditions that day were conducive to fast driving.

See? If I can somehow leverage that to my own benefit, it opens up a whole new range of hobbies.

Of course, bereaving the local constabulary of their cash-cow will not be seen as amusing.

Is Unix Dead? I Think I Hear It Laughing...

This was interesting to me. In Is Unix Dead? I Think I Hear It Laughing...(Information Week), they talk about the state of Unix and its potential future:

Fewer Unix systems are being shipped, but they're commanding a higher premium than ever. Unix still represents a $2 billion market, the largest operating-system market by far. Despite Windows Server recent gains, it still represents about $1.6 billion, when you're looking at operating system-only revenues. And Linux in terms of revenues represents one-tenth of what the good, gray Unixes combined represent. Granted the future belongs to Linux, but as a $2 billion market, is Unix dead?

The part which interested - and reassured - me was that the server market of MS Windows, the part which handles web services, mail services, etc, was only pulling in about US$1.6 billion dollars. That's not bad, considering, but it's still only a minority player on a server market where even Unix is killing it. In fact, taking just those two meta-brands ('Unix' encompassing all the vendors of compatible Unix OSes), we have windows at a paltry 44% of their combined market. 56% is more clear a victory than the current sitting US President had, by comparison.

Considering, too, that Linux is the current darling of hobbyists and suits alike, the numbers get more foggy. Unix and Windows licenses are a great way to count revenue and figure the size of the installed user base. Linux, being a product which can, ultimately, be zero-cost for installation even in massive data centres, may be a bit more difficult to count. The installed base could dwarf that of Windows and Unix combined, potentially by a massive factor.

What we know is that Linux vendors and supporters like RedHat are doing well enough, thank you very much. What tickles us the most, though, is the thought of the 800-lb gorilla Oracle having to pander to the second-class citizens in Unix OS development again. After a few years of being on the wrong end of one or more of their broad decisions, it's good to see what went around coming around again.

Emoticons Suck

What the hell is it with newbie net people and emoticons? (For the record, if you never grabbed mail over a 300bps netlink, I consider you newbish) It seems that newbies love to use them all the time, and I'm just here to say, "Dude, no one loves your emoticons as much as you do."

You may say ':-/' or ':-<' or maybe :-&' about it, but really, boyo, just use the fuckin' words that your mom taught you how to say 13 years ago, okay? Hoodafuck is gonna remember all these combinations of characters which are supposed to accurately convey an emotion? Nobody with any kind of a fucking life, that's who!


And don't get me fuckin' started on the ^_^ japanemoticon bullshit that's swept the new-teen landscape. What the fuck is that; some kinda fuckin' cat? Yeah, so you're a cat. Pussy. Okay, I get it. Last time I checked, though, my cat wasn't all that expressive facially -- just dentally. So fuck you with your cool, new-wave japanemoticons.

Some guys in a game I play have labeled this bullshit as 'nubespeke', and I think it is a good label. It's more related to the complete fucking inability of anyone to fucking spell more than two goddamned words in a row without making an error my 2-year-old nephew would probably not even make, but I think that nubespeke can be extended to cover this kinda shit as well.

Now go make faces to my siamese, fuckwad, so she can fuckin' bite your nose off.

Thief nabs backup data on 365,000 patients - Computerworld

Thief nabs backup data on 365,000 patients - Computerworld:

JANUARY 26, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - About 365,000 hospice and home health care patients in Oregon and Washington are being notified about the theft of computer backup data disks and tapes late last month that included personal information and confidential medical records.

In an announcement yesterday, Providence Home Services, a division of Seattle-based Providence Health Systems, said the records and other data were on several disks and tapes stolen from the car of a Providence employee at his home. The incident was reported by the employee on Dec. 31, according to the health care system.

So it wasn't the records with my health data on it! Phew! Then again, are they required ot warn the out-of-country people, or just warn the people for whom they may eb contracting? Would we even find out?

and Yes, Joey, they have your canuck ass on file down there too, since MSP is not technically in violation of a law formed after it shipped all your data over the border. You like NSA people reading about your plantar's wart?

Phew, so that's a relief. I think I want to write my new MLA and ask why the hell my MSP records are being held on the premises of a company in the most war-mongering self-surveilling country known to man. Fuck, we could outsource them to fucking North Korea and I'd feel safer about my personal health info.

RIAA fights a Company it Purports to Protect

Canadian music giant funds battle against RIAA | The Register:

Canada's biggest record label, publisher and management company is helping out a family sued by the Recording Industry Ass. Of America for copyright infringement.

The privately-owned Nettwerk Music Group is intervening, it says, because the songs downloaded and identified by the RIAA by the Gruebel family include Avril Lavigne, a Nettwerk management client. Nettwerk will fund the Gruebel's defense.

"The current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists' best interests," said Nettwerk chief executive Terry McBride in a prepared statement.

"Litigation is not 'artist development'. Litigation is a deterrent to creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love".

That's Awesome. That's astounding. That's good entertainment.

If the RIAA can't get any friends, even among the big-name record labels, then just who are its friends, and just whom is it protecting?

Litigation is a Deterrent to Creativity, kids. Remember that. And go buy some stuff from the good guys .. even if it's not sung by Ms Lavigne.

Update: another link http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=28f6a01c-084c-4fc4-9594-a5d3dd1ff02e&k=13592

You and your Bated Breath both Suck

Look, numbnuts. You don't bait your breath ; you abate it. The phrase isn't "I wait with baited breath." You aren't fishing. The correct phrase used to be "I wait with abated breath." Now it's been shortened ever so much to "I wait with bated breath," all because some playwright (that's another one) decided to shorten the word to fit the metre of a line in a play.

Got it? You're a fucking idiot, and I'm sick of seeing half-literate people like you writing this shit on the internet. For fuck's sake, it's only a half-set up from "it's they'res" and "your a looser."

You suck.

Die.

Now.

Dear Staples.ca

Oh. Before we go any further, at all, you must tell me your postal code. No, really: write it on the wall before continuing.

What? Annoying? Unnecessary? You nailed it right on the head, fuckwad.

What the hell do I need to put in my postal code for, when all I wanna do is see what kinda USB Hubs your store carries? It's probably not the right one anyway, and if it's time for me to check stock or place an order, maybe then we can talk postal codes.

Besides, it's an annoying time-waster, fucking clicking on some stupid form to enter in more information - das papers! - before I can even see what the hell kinda crap you're going to try and sell to me for twice its value.

Amazingly, stunningly, Radio Shack gets it right. Riddled with problems in their site because of the changeover to a different name, their site still works a shitload better than yours. When it came time to purchase, I found that I could get what I wanted by clicking on towns.

My town has 4 items in 3 locations. One of those gets my money today. The laughingstock of the entire tech retail industry has just beaten you up and stolen your lunch money. Good fucking job, dumbass.

How to NOT run a Multi-site Database

So they have a database thingy to track people and their 'stuff', licensing and whatnot. That's cool.

What's not cool is that I think they've made every mistake in the book:

• It's hosted at one central location
• in Denver.
• Colorado. Yeah.
• and all branch offices hit this one server
• in Denver
• running MS SQL
• and crashing repeatedly

So

• when there's no network interruption between here and denver
• which is over 5 networks, 2 mountains and one international border
• and when the server doesn't crash
• for 10 minutes at a fucking time
• then they can view, save and update records
• which is the sole fashion in which all records are heretofore kept

Yeah, really. MS SQL, for fuck's sake. If I was gonna have 109 branch offices all surfing the same lonely stretch of 'net to get to the same server, I would at least have set up something a bit more reliable. Hell, I think I coulda done a better job with fucking MySQL.

Which is free. And far more versatile and reliable.


But whatever. I mean, if I was setting it up,

• I'd fire the first dumbshit who suggested having everyone back-haul their data over 2 mountains, 5 different networks and one international boundary to access some flailing overpriced piece of last-decade shit database server during the few minutes it's actually able to server fucking requests.
• I'd get a $800 box and set it at the Head Office. With linux and an auto-update script, I wouldn't need to come back but for the quarterly maintainance trip.
• I'd go back and kick the dumbass I fired, but when no one was looking. Fucktards tend to sue.
  
• I'd then get another $600 box (hello cheapo walmart boxes) for each site, to be used as their central data storage, their print server, fax server, login server, backup server, net-booting host, and, oh yeah, their database replication point.
• Then I'd had the 4-5 machines at each location hitting that box to do their data updates over the fucking LAN, and have the changes propagated back to Head Office and out to other sites on change. It's so fucking basic I already did this just for fun with my home-NAT and mail server box. A monkey could do it.
• Then I'd egg the house of the dumbass, just in case he forgot who kicked him.
  

The resulting set-up would

• be replicated, which helps to
  
• automatically back-up the data at the head office
• locate the data near the point of use so it'd feel like a fucking million times faster
  
• survive network outages of up to a few days
• automatically just plain work.

It's amazing the kinds of people paid far too much by clueless organizations for half-assed solutions, eh?

When it's so bad, the bad guys look okay

So the Human Rights Watch organization released its 2006 report. The U.S., incidentally, figures so prominently on so many HRW reports that it has earned its own place on the HRW web page apart from the rest of the Americas.

Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 (Human Rights Watch, 18-1-2006):

(Washington, D.C, January 18, 2006) – New evidence demonstrated in 2005 that torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism strategy, undermining the global defense of human rights, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2006

Nothing new there. Everyone's saying that, except 36% of the Americans who still live int he Wally World of American beneficence.

Canada sought to dilute a new treaty outlawing enforced disappearances.

What the fuck? The quaint canucks got their hands bloody? That's not really all that nice of them, now, especially when usually the worst that HRW can say about the beaver-lovers is that they're still okay with slapping the yardapes when they become unruly. (Good on them!) Time to write the Prime Minister and maybe not mind my Ps and Qs. Anyway, back to bashing the States.

The best part isn't in the executive summary, so you'll have to buck up and read part of that 532-page monstrosity yourself for it. I'm just quoting someone else (who quoted someone else at the AP), because I'm lazy:

In a separate report, the organization strongly criticized three insurgent groups in Iraq - al-Qaida, Ansar al-Sunna and the Islamic Army - for targeting civilians with car bombs and suicide bombers in mosques, markets, bus stations.

However, the group said the abuses "took place in the context of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the ensuing military occupation that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths and sparked the emergence of insurgent groups."

So. The U.S is so bad that, by comparison, fucking Terrorist Groups almost get a 'pass' on their conduct. What?!? What kinda crazy world do we live in, where the quiet, peaceful Americans are worse than the Terrorists they're protecting us against?

Oh. Right. These are the same guys who decided they really should own all of North American - it was their Manifest Destiny - and the ones who belligerently invaded a third-world country. More than a few, actually.

Bit of a hobby of theirs. That and the religious fundamentalism. Pilgrims and the Jevovahs and the Mor(m)ons and all that.

That and the torture of lesser humans not lucky enough to be American.

Why a paper ticket if an SMS will do? | InfoWorld | News | 2006-01-18 | By John Blau, IDG News Service

Why a paper ticket if an SMS will do? | InfoWorld | News | 2006-01-18 | By John Blau, IDG News Service:

Smartmachine and its technology partner Skidata have developed a mobile ticketing system that allows customers to have a ticket sent to their mobile phone via SMS (Short Message Service) in the form of a 2D (two-dimensional) bar code. At the gate, they slide their mobile phone display showing the bar code by a bar code reader.

My pleasure at a useful project is marred by the unfortunate fact of SMS: there is no reliability guaranteed! It may even be in the specification that, if a message cannot be reasonably delivered, that the message is dropped.

Am I the only one seeing a lot of potential problems when both I and my provider consider the word 'reasonable' with respect to the service they need to provide to me in exchange for my non-negotiable monthly fee? Yeah.

But hey, if you want to risk the loss of $20 movie tickets to a system that, some days, just plain sucks, then be my guest. I hope like hell that the least-worst carrier I use will be coerced to improve reliability in light of more uses for its SMS service.

Stupid in America: Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians

Reason: Stupid in America: Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians:

This started out being a report on how Belgian kids crushed American kids in an international comparison.

For 'Stupid in America,' a special report ABC will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and in Belgium. The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks. The Belgian kids called the American students 'stupid.'

Then it changes tack a bit:

In New York City, it's "just about impossible" to fire a bad teacher, says schools chancellor Joel Klein. The new union contract offers slight relief, but it's still about 200 pages of bureaucracy. "We tolerate mediocrity," said Klein, because "people get paid the same, whether they're outstanding, average, or way below average." One teacher sent sexually oriented emails to "Cutie 101," his sixteen year old student. Klein couldn't fire him for years, "He hasn't taught, but we have had to pay him, because that's what's required under the contract."

It doesn't move off the idea very quickly:

The U.S. Postal Service couldn't get it there overnight. But once others were allowed to compete, Federal Express, United Parcel, and others suddenly could get it there overnight. Now even the post office does it (sometimes). Competition inspires people to do what we didn't think we could do.

It seems that Mr Stossel wanted to talk about Education, and he does taste the problem again later, but the heart of the matter seems to be that Unionized Monopoly is the cause of the poor school system, and he latches onto that idea rather well.

And, of course, I completely agree. Unions exist to have as many of their members working for as much money as possible - be it payment in benefits, concessions or straight money - and Unions do not exist to encourage quality work.

Apparently the Belgian school system figured this out, but, considering they're smarter in Belgium anyway I'm not so surprised.

The sooner we figure this out for essential services - hospitals and transportation - the sooner we all benefit from improved products and services where it matters most.

Spin Spin

Today’s drivers suffer without high-tech systems:

Now try it without ABS, EBD, ESP, EBA ...

Many drivers are blithely unaware of the hi-tech safety devices fitted to modern cars that silently keep them from danger. We put four volunteers in a 1990 car to see what happens when you take them away. James Luckhurst and Emma Smith of The Sunday Times stood well back

So you take a guy out of his fancy ABS-brake and power-steering car, and you see how well he performs on a 1990 beemer which doesn't have any of that crap. What do you get? Apparently, nothing short of 360-degree spins. Excellent!

But as cars get better at keeping out of trouble some experts worry drivers are getting worse — cocooned from danger, unaware how fast they are going or how slippery the road is, and less aware of other vehicles. The Sunday Times decided to put four motorists to the test to see how they would cope in a car with no “active” safety features at all.

And that's entertainment you don't get to see every day. woo! And yes, I'd like to take that road test too: my years in a 1970s Beetle should be good for something, these days!

How You Should Vote

So I wandered off to this web survey: How I should vote, based on my opinions about the country. Apparently, here's how a Canadian with my opinions should vote:

According to your opinions on the issues, you will vote for...

The New Democratic Party.

God help us. And I thought my answers would totally have me in the Green camp, since the last time I heard them speak they seemed to make a frightening amount of sense.

The big problem, in my opinion, is that the NDP really hasn't publicized a platform. They have a lot of commercials which bash the Liberals and almost the same number bashing the Conservatives, but I haven't seen anything which fills me in on just what their real platform is (beyond the usual shiny crap like Listening to Immigrants and the First Conquerors and shots of kissing babies or something).

It appears I'll have to make good on my threat to call our local NDP office and find out just what this Mr Layton fellow does stand for.

Geek gets Free First Class Upgrade -- Legally!

The Post Money Value: The New Digital Life:

First, they put up the departure delay from 8:30 to 11:45p. Rule is they never go earlier once they commit to a time. Then it was endless, sorry no information, annoucements.

I have my Motion Tablet PC and I am watching TV on my sling box on my Verizon, all you can drink/one price, edge card. Almost full screen, watching HBO.

After some time, I’m thinking, this is stupid, I can go get some food outside the airport instead of sitting here.

Step one: http://www.flytecomm.com/cgi-bin/trackflight, type in my flight number and track it. Gee, still on ground in Jackson, heh, they ain’t making it here by 11 anything."

See, honey? It's not just a geek toy: it's an investment in travel. I can impress ticketroids with my awesome geek toys, be a little nice, and get myself bumped to first-class lickety-split.

Now buy me toys like this guy.

Switching to Windows: Not as easy as you think

Switching to Windows: Not as easy as you think:

Okay, so I was finally logged in. There were icons all over the desktop. Icons I certainly had never placed there. With a growing sense of trepidation, I opened 'My Documents', a folder which should have been empty. It wasn't. It was full of my boss's stuff. I double-checked the profile information in Active Directory to make sure I hadn't inadvertently typed in the wrong profile path. I hadn't. Windows had simply magnanimously decided to swap my own My Documents folder with that of another user in the system.

I love these posts. Totally biased, but also totally factual.

When I found I could, as a regular user on XP, muck with other peoples' files on the machine, I knew then that there was absolutely no security on windows XP.

Still.

After so many tries, so many bugs, so many viruses and so many years.

Minor Bugzilla Bug - But Enough is Clearly Enough

What the hell is with Bugzilla's stupid reverse-dependency diagram? In what drunken fantasy do humans ever demonstrate a progression of idea from right to left instead of left to right?

Apparently, the people at bugzilla think backward, but I sure as hell do not. But I've taken it for a few years now, actually, and tonight I have no idea what charged me with the goal of fucking fixing the problem.

It was remarkably easy:

diff -uBb /var/www/html/bugzilla/showdependencygraph.cgi\~ /var/www/html/bugzilla/showdependencygraph.cgi
--- /var/www/html/bugzilla/showdependencygraph.cgi~     2003-04-24 14:15:48.000000000 -0700
+++ /var/www/html/bugzilla/showdependencygraph.cgi      2006-01-09 01:58:03.000000000 -0800
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@
my $key = "$blocked,$dependson";
if (!exists $edgesdone{$key}) {
$edgesdone{$key} = 1;
-        print $fh "$blocked -> $dependson\n";
+        print $fh "$dependson -> $blocked\n";
$seen{$blocked} = 1;
$seen{$dependson} = 1;
}

Diff finished at Mon Jan  9 01:58:08

Yeah. That was kinda It. It now turns stupid graphs into sensible graphs:
Not a really big difference, in the grand scheme of things? Okay, tough guy, then check this shit out:

That's where it starts to get annoying: working left-to-right, bottom-to-top with that kind of a large layout, when everything else in your existence is top-down and left-to-right, really fucks with your head.

I'm glad, and a little embarrassed, that it was merely a one-line fix. Why the hell can't the BZ people have done this? Too busy working on shiny logos and fucking theme work, I guess.

US Homeland Security opening private mail

Homeland Security opening private mail - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com:

WASHINGTON - In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary.

But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.

In the days when I think the country cannot sink any lower, it proves me wrong yet again. Not content with shooting civilians randomly during this belligerent and illegal invasion, I guess it must treat all its own citizens like criminals too.

America: Love it or Leave it.

Good idea. All you gun-toting war-mongers may now either act like responsible members of a global, civil society, or you may leave.

A novel method for the removal of ear cerumen -- or, People don't clear Eardrums; Guns clear Eardrums

A novel method for the removal of ear cerumen -- Keegan and Bannister 173 (12): 1496 -- Canadian Medical Association Journal: "A novel method for the removal of ear cerumen"

We describe the off-label use of a recreational device (the Super Soaker Max-D 5000) in the alleviation of a socially emergent ear condition.

A 45-year-old male complained of a profound reduction in his left ear acuity while staying at an island cottage in rural Ontario. His hearing loss was reducing his ability to hear his newborn son cry in the middle of the night, requiring his wife to carry out all late-night child care. As a result, correction of the problem was considered urgent.

The patient had been swimming multiple times a day for 6 days. He had had several ear infections as a child but was otherwise well. He admitted having used a Q-tip in his ear 'once or twice' recently in the affected ear.

An otoscope being available, examination of the external ears was conducted. The nature of his problem was revealed as bilaterally impacted cement-like ear cerumen.

Neither a formal ear syringe, nor a syringe of any kind was available on the island. The day was very hot, and no one was particularly in the mood to boat to Honey Harbour and then drive 45 minutes to Midland, just on account of ear wax. One of the owners of the property was consulted in his capacity as a professional engineer and the owner of a superbly stocked tool shed (rivalling a mid-sized Canadian Tire). He was not able to offer any substitute contraption of his own but suggested we approach his 4-year-old grandson to see if we could use his pressured water cannon.

Well, if you can't afford the right equipment or don't have it at hand, then the next best thing can be pretty darned useful. It's all about keeping an open mind, and I like to think the quaint Canucks do have a bit more of an open mind than their warlike neighbours.

And that's a pretty kickass story, too.

TiVo outside of the US?

Apparently, TiVo is now available outside the US. Anyone got a testimonial on that yet? I was certain they'd never leave the States.