Lee.org

CA has this big ad in eWeek Magazine for their backup software. So I asked them

I am looking for a backup product capable of backing up from a Win XP computer to an untrusted Win XP or Linux machine on the internet. It should be possible to access the data on the untrusted machine in a random access manner.

We’ll see what I get for a response.

Ok, this is pretty cool.

http://www.digitalsundial.com/

Outlook 2000 had a tiny little feature whereby when your mouse hovered over a web link, the target would appear in the status bar down at the bottom of the window. Outlook 2002 eliminated this feature, making forged emails like this (at right. Click
to enlarge) possible.

The link on that email takes you to this web page (at left). Everything appears to be all on the up and up, right? Wrong. Look closely at that web page… at the top of the email. The address is “http://63.203.30.222/registration/Verify.htm” That isn’t a Paypal address. It’s a thief’s address.

If Outlook hadn’t gotten rid of that little feature, it would have been harder to pull the wool over people’s eyes on this kind of scam. Hmmm…. I’ve been hearing how Microsoft is pushing for an email postage/verification/something system lately. Am I just a wacky conspiracy theorist by suggesting that Microsoft is crippling their own program in order to make their new email verification system more necessary? No, that’s crazy.

PPG showed this to me. From :The New York Times

Gallery Show Seeks the Art in Spam, Seen Through the Eyes of the Future

January 26, 2004
By SAUL HANSELL

The discordant verse, in simple black letters on white paper, is in keeping with the basement alternative art gallery in which it hangs:
———————————————-
victorious tank tepid conservatism veldt

cerulean carl
frontal decry brennan
———————————————-
It may seem the work of a striving, if cryptic, poet. But it is an excerpt from the nonsense words found in a junk e-mail message, as captured in a Manhattan exhibit that tries to make art out of spam.

The exhibit, titled “Reimagining the Ordovician Gothic: Fossils From the Golden Age of Spam,” is at Spaceworks at the Tank, a gallery and performance space on West 42nd Street devoted to experimental works.

Jesse Jarnow, one of the curators, said the name was inspired by a display he saw at the American Museum of Natural History on the Ordovician period, an era that ended about 445 million years ago, when the earth was dominated by primitive sea creatures.

“They had all these brightly colored snails,” he said. “But they don’t really know what it was really like.”

Riffing on the idea of junk e-mail as a lowly commercial life form, Mr. Jarnow along with the other curators, Daniel Greenfeld and Mike Rosenthal, tried to depict how an archaeologist 450 million years in the future might present current culture, based only on relics of spam. Motifs include the random text typically added to the end of spam to avoid being discarded by spam-finding filter programs, which the exhibit presents as the work of the “great writers of the ‘Ordovician Gothic.’ ”

The accompanying text notes that “this school of writers emphasized playful literary juxtaposition, frequently casting aside the period’s typical syntax in order to achieve a more visceral form.”

Using the sort of displays common in natural history
museums, the exhibit examines other aspects of the world as captured in the amber of spam. Light-up dioramas, for example, show pictures of the actual deposed African leaders who are frequently the purported authors of e-mail proposing deals that typically involve wire transfers of many thousands of dollars. “It is not known whether or not their appeals were received by willing accomplices or not,” the exhibit commentary says. “If they were, most likely, those who responded were simply drawn into the deep unrest from which the requests sprang.”

The spam exhibition will be on display through Feb. 15 at Spaceworks at the Tank, 432 West 42nd Street. It is open Thursdays and Fridays, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m., and during performances.

I got a cell phone.

Sony Ericsson T610 with a T-mobile 300 minute plan & bluetooth headset….

I ordered it on Amazon.com… it should arrive late next week.

A month or so ago I did an upgrade installation from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. It sucked. Windows ran slow, there was this persistent hesitation problem where the machine would lock up for 5 seconds out of every 10 minutes… My computer wasn’t happy. So when I got the 200 gig hard drive, I decided to do an install from scratch. You know, ever since Windows 95, it’s been “a good idea” to reinstall Windows every 2 years or so. What’s with that??

The only problem I’ve had so far is that Maxtor insisted that I use their Maxblast3 formatting software and not the XP formatting tool. That’s kind of funny because I banged my head against a wall of “Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt | \system32\hal.dll | Please reinstall a copy of the above file” BECAUSE of the Maxblast3 software” for 4 hours because of that bad suggestion. To get around this problem, I booted to my old XP and formatted the 200 gig drive with Windows and Partition Magic 7. After that, I installed WinXP on the new drive just fine. Patting myself on the back, I figured that one out all by myself.

My Windows XP install is now snazzy-fast :-)

I wrote to a friend today the following:

We were talking before about what the heck we should each do for a living… I wanted to give you hopeful news and say that I’ve been being “The Computer Guy” with moderate success for the last couple months. I go to people’s homes and help them with their computer problems. Little things and large things alike. And gosh darn it, I think I’m good at it! There’s a big teaching component to it, showing people how to do things and helping them help themselves. I think this could really be something.

My senator wrote back to me today (via email) about how he’s co-sponsoring federal anti-spam legislation:

Dear Mr. Sonko,

Thank you for contacting me about spam. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

The growth of the Internet and the increased use of e-mail have led to the emergence of “spam,” or electronic junk mail. Numerous marketers have begun to send unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) over the Internet. Because this marketing technique is easier and less costly than traditional direct marketing techniques such as direct mail solicitations, e-mail accounts worldwide have been deluged with this unsolicited correspondence.

Spam is not just a nuisance, but it can also bring consumers higher charges for the Internet as service providers are forced to continually upgrade their systems to handle the increased traffic. Spam filters built into MSN and Hotmail servers, for example, block 2.4 billion messages a day. While proponents of UCE insist it is a legitimate marketing technique that is protected by the First Amendment, Congress should enact reasonable restrictions.

Although 35 States have anti-spam laws, there is no federal law specifically concerning spam. Consequently, I have co-sponsored CAN-SPAM, the “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act” (S. 877), which would do the following: create criminal penalties for the transmission with knowledge and intent of spam messages with header information that is materially false or misleading; prohibit deceptive subject headings; require a functioning return address for the message recipient to submit a request that he or she not receive future messages; require clear identification that a message is an advertisement; and require that message recipients have an opportunity to opt-out, and for the sender to provide a valid physical mail address.

Please be assured that I will continue to support practical, sensible regulations that reduce unwanted spam while taking the concerns of legitimate, honest retailers into account.

Thanks again for contacting me.

Senator Frank Lautenberg
http://lautenberg.senate.gov/

The new spam filter is working out great. I couldn’t be happier. Well, I could be, but you know what I mean.

A couple months ago I saw Henry Rollins in concert. I took some notes about his show but never bothered to put them in my journal. Here you go:

“Ramones Fans can’t kill each other. Here’s what you do. Give the Israeli army the first two albums and let them groove to it for a while. Then give the Palestinians the second two albums and let ‘em enjoy it. Then one day, they’ll be on the front and one of the Israelis will hear something on the other side. He’ll say, “Hey do you hear that? It sounds like the Ramones but it’s not any album that I’ve ever heard! I’m gonna go check it out. Here, hold my gun.”"

[note: blowing a "P" into a microphone makes that cool "poof" noise that you hear in the Jack Flanders audiotapes. Jack Flanders and Ruby R000000000000L!!!]

He’s done 106 shows a year for the last 23 years. Wow.

[I've said this somewhere in my journal... it's nice that Henry agrees] “Bush isn’t connected with his material. That smile that bunches up in the corner of his mouth…. he’s pretending to be human.” [He then went into a thing about his awful pacing as well :-) ]

Garry, the guy that prompted that $3k bet showed his true colors when I tried upping the bet. Of course, he’s a kook. It turns out that one core aspect of his theory can be boiled down to, “As long as you drive your vehicle downhill, your engine can be greater than 100% efficient.” Well yea…… but then you’re stuck at the bottom of a hill. Why did I even put energy into having a discussion with him? A lot of other people had similar discussions with him, ending with Subject: lines like “Earth calling Garry . . . Re: Overunity, Back EMF, and Garry Stanley” dropping out several days after I did. To look at the bright side, my bullshit detector started beeping before anyone else’s on the list. You can find the discussion on the power-assist list, starting around message 10,651.

Trav mentioned The Personal Identity Game in his journal. It happily reminded me of college. What with my affinity for D&D’s psionics and such, it’s no surprise that I survived with my wily psychological reductionism.

I recently finished listening to The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I think I’d enjoy writing a doctoral thesis on this work. This is an important book. If I ever get around to it, I -will- write something about this on my Media page.

I’ve been flying the Zagi. I’ve been crashing the Zagi. Oo baby have I been crashing the Zagi. I already started oogling a more powerful motor. But to do it right is to get a $180 brushless motor and controller setup. Jeesh, I can get a whole other plane for that. And I don’t WANT a whole other plane. I just want to fly! I think I’ll just learn how to fly it as it is. Heck, with the dramatic crashes I’ve been having (some due to not having enough power.. hint hint. get the brushless motor!) I don’t know how long the plane will actually survive anyway. I still haven’t found my digital camera charger so no pictures yet.. It’s possible that Julia hid it but it’s been like 3 months so it’s time to buy a new charger.

Flying this thing is frenetic and fun. But I wish it were more stable. It’s got a huge wing, no weight, and only barely enough power so it tends to flitter about uncontrollably. I’d love to give the controls to a more experienced flying-wing pilot and have them tell me what keeps going wrong. But I haven’t found anyone at the club with such experience. So I’m going to teach myself to fly.

I’m 1/2 glad that the plane is so rugged and crashworthy. But at the same time, as Bob at the club put it, something like, “The more crashworthy a plane is, the less air-worthy it is.” He’s got a point.

No, I like crashing. It offers catharsis at this point in my life.

I’m subbing tomorrow: high school biology. Wish me luck.