ASXT 0.1 has been released.
"Roger Dodger" was OK.
In Catholic school, I was taught that blind faith is a virtue:
Scholars said the forgers were exploiting the deep emotional need of Jews and Christians to find physical evidence to reinforce their beliefs.
—Karin Laub, "Israel charges 4 in antiquities forgery," AP via Boston Globe, 30-Dec-2004
I had a broken Pentium 4 PC that had licenses for Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Pro, and I only run Linux, so I attempted to sell on eBay the licenses and the Certificate Of Authenticity stickers, along with some portion of the PC carcass. My understanding was that a PC retains its Windows software licenses despite repairs and upgrades — even replacement of the majority of the components — so long as the licenses stay with a single PC. Well, Microsoft might have been a little itchy with the trigger finger, since they had eBay summarily remove my auction listing. I considered the language of Microsoft's form letter to be a little arrogant, so I wrote eBay a note:
This is regarding my auction listing [[number deleted]], which eBay elected to remove after receiving a "VeRO" request from Microsoft Corp.
I believe the removal might have been in error, and (while I understand that in some cases Microsoft has legitimate objections to some eBay auctions) am troubled that eBay might inadvertently be permitting Microsoft undue ability to restrict legitimate transfer of used products.
The notification I received from eBay states that Microsoft notified eBay "under penalty of perjury, that [my] item infringes [Microsoft's] copyright, trademark, or other rights." Unfortunately, the "information" from Microsoft that was attached to eBay's email to me states only vaguely, "Microsoft believes that the software offered in this listing infringes its copyrights and/or its trademarks, because the software is not genuine or because the proposed transaction is otherwise unauthorized."
While Microsoft may indeed believe that my auction somehow infringed on some right of theirs, I have not seen them state what right they believe was violated, nor have I seen them state facts and rationale specific to my auction. Yet somehow Microsoft was able to cause the removal of my auction listing.
Could you please furnish to me whatever information Microsoft provided to eBay under penalty of perjury regarding my auction listing, so that I can determine whether or not their action was legitimate?
Information provided by Microsoft subsequent to the listing being removed would also be helpful. Any such information should be be marked clearly as having been provided subsequent.
Please note that I have no interest in pursuing this matter through Microsoft. My business relationship in this matter is with eBay, and I have been a happy eBay customer since 1998. I would like to be confident that eBay will require its VeRO program participants to make clear statements of what legal right is supposedly being infringed before eBay will remove an auction listing.
Thank you,
Neil Van Dyke
"Heaven," directed by Tom Tykwer and written by Krysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, was good. Tykwer channels Kieslowski.
The DVD includes some SpaceCam footage they couldn't use. In chapter 13 of the DVD, the daytime pan around the tree on the hill looks like CG on my small screen.
Harvest sandwich board yesterday heralded the end of the $5 tomatoes (see 6-Dec-2004). I love even the not-very-flavorful year-round supermarket tomatoes. If I ever again live in a more temperate climate, I'll grow my own.
François Ozon's "Swimming Pool" was good.
A little late, Mr. Moore. That might've done a lot of good on network TV in late October:
For the moment, [Michael] Moore continues to be involved in "Fahrenheit 9/11." In an earlier conversation, he said he was "still in the thick of making sure as many people see this film as possible."
—Nancy Ramsey, "Politically Inclined Filmmakers Say There Is Life After the Election," New York Times, 27-Dec-2004
"The Faithful" is a forthcoming film from Fish in the Hand Productions that I'm anxious to see. (Normally, I never link to pages that rely on the effectively proprietary Macromedia Flash format, but I'm granting special dispensation for Cambridge/Boston-based filmmakers.)
Did spammers take a holiday? Only 56 spams for the 24-hour period of December 25th, UTC, which is about 25% of usual.
Debian users who haven't already tried Synaptic should. It's been a truism that GUI and full-screen interfaces to
the Debian package manager suck, but Synaptic actually doesn't. One of the few
features I'm still waiting for is an analogue of
apt-listchanges, and I imagine that will come.
If anyone is still using GNU Emacs 20 with Quack, please either upgrade to GNU Emacs 21 or let me know that you refuse to budge. Emacs 20 is no longer in Debian testing, which
makes supporting Quack under 20 impractical for me. Also, I recommend using
real Emacs, not XEmacs.
I've not yet heard a favorable comment from anyone on the new Google Groups UI — just negative comments. I did note some clever design in the details, but thus far they seem to have missed the boat overall. (Nevermind that Web pages make for a poor Usenet UI in general, compared to the newsreaders of over a decade ago.)
As is usual for Christmas, Cambridge is almost deserted. Central Square had some crazy people arguing on the street, there were (Jewish?) people in Mary Chung, and a shopping cart lady had a Karen Carpenter song on her radio, but that was about it.
I was hoping that "Ninja Scroll" was better than the title suggested, but the title was a pretty good indicator. Even though there was no ninja scroll.
For the Eve, I painted the bathroom White Christmas Semigloss. Due to the old, highly-evolutionary construction, the majority had to be done by paintbrush and damp rag, rather than by roller, so the process took six hours. The result is relatively gorgeous. Another inspired hour to do the kitchen cabinets with the leftovers.
Chinese energy companies are on the verge of striking ambitious deals in Canada in efforts to win access to some of the most prized oil reserves in North America.
—Simon Romero, "China in Line as U.S. Rival for Canada Oil," New York Times, 23-Dec-2004
I think it's about time we "brought democracy to" our frigid friends of the north. Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans says the Canucks are on the brink of acquiring WMDs (Weapons of Moose Detritus). We don't want the smoking gun to be a maple syrup cloud, eh?
A federal judge has awarded a Clinton [Iowa] Internet service provider over $1 billion in a lawsuit against companies that used the service provider's equipment to send spam, the Quad-Cities Times reported Saturday.
—"Judge Awards $1 billion in Spam Lawsuit," AP via eWeek, 18-Dec-2004
Dowd is irreverent, but right on the button: Maureen Dowd, "A Not So Wonderful Life," New York Times, 19-Dec-2004
Quack 0.27 released. Minor changes.
One of the subscribers to one of my moderated email lists bounced my list posting:
From:
sys@secondbox.net
To:neil@neilvandyke.org
Subject: You don't have permissions to send to this user!
Date: 20 Dec 2004 04:45:41 -0000
You have sent a mail to [email] with "Quack 0.27" in the "Subject" line.
Unfortunately your mail has been stopped by the anti-SPAM system of SecondBox.net, because your e-mail address is not on the list of [full name]'s friends.
If you wish to have your mail received by [full name], you should deposit 100 cents by way of anti-SPAM guarantee. If [full name] decides that you have wasted his time, he may well retain this amount.
If you wish to send a message with an anti-SPAM deposit attached to it, then:
1. Open an e-mail box at Second Box (http://2-box.net).
2. Pay in 100 cents in your Second Box wallet.
3. Send your letter to [full name] from your Second Box address.
Your letter was received on 19.12.2004 at 23:45 EDT. Here is it's content:
[...]
So where's the 100 cents I can retain for reading this autoresponse?
The ACLU membership card mentioned yesterday. Snapshot was taken at the time to make a point to a redneck in an online discussion.
On Nov. 8, the privacy statement on the A.C.L.U. Web site was replaced with an "Online Privacy Policy." Until that time, the group had pledged to gather personal information only with the permission of members and donors. It also said it would not sell or transfer information to a third party or use it for marketing. Those explicit guarantees were eliminated from the Web site after Mr. Meyers raised his concerns about the new data-mining program at the Nov. 7 meeting.
—Stephanie Strom, "A.C.L.U.'s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears," New York Times, 18-Dec-2004
I tore up my ACLU membership card shortly after the 2000 US presidential election, due to their ineffectual handling of Florida irregularities. This privacy violation scandal further discourages me from sending them money. I think their board needs some housecleaning.
Off the record:
"Listen, this is pretty transparent, isn't it?" another top executive said, after he had just denied for publication that there were any ulterior motives in charitable promotion. Asked to explain, he said: "We have to think of our customer first and charity second. Anything to drive business in this challenging economy is good, and if it makes everybody feel good, so much the better."
—Tracie Rozhon, "Stores Are Hoping to Do Well by Urging Shoppers to Do Good," New York Times, 16-Dec-2004
This week's two DVDs were Shakespeare adaptations. The first, Michael Almereyda's "Hamlet" was tolerable, except for Bill Murray's attempt at Polonius. Each character's first appearance was attended by anticipation of an either brilliant or atrocious delivery of the lines. The funniest scene was when Julia Stiles' Ophelia and Liev Schreiber's Laertes were introduced: during Schreiber's monologue in a strong Shakespearean stage voice, the camera seemed to flirt with false alarms that Stiles was about to speak for the first time. The brand placements, such as when the ghost disappears into a Pepsi One vending machine, and Hamlet's "to be, or not to be" whilst strolling the aisles of Blockbuster Video, are tacky if they're not self-satirizing. I suspect this film is of more interest as criticism fodder for film students and Shakespeare buffs than it is as an entertaining performance in its own right.
The other DVD this week, Akira Kurosawa's 1985 "Ran," an adaptation of "King Lear," set in feudal Japan, was visually brilliant and a good story. Recommended for when you're willing to set aside three hours.
The ML in the news:
MIT Media Lab officials are engaged in sensitive talks with the Irish government this week over the future of the 4-year-old Media Lab Europe in Dublin, which is facing a funding crunch. Coming just over 18 months after MIT pulled out of Media Lab Asia in Bangalore, India, citing differences with the new Indian minister of information over its focus and organization, the negotiations in Dublin call into question the viability of MIT's ambitious plans to globalize its American-style research into digital technology and human potential -- a staple of the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge. At one point, MIT had been planning additional labs in Latin America and Australia.
—Robert Weisman, "Funding woes threaten MIT's Dublin media lab," Boston Globe, 16-Dec-2004
Some of us are ambivalent about the MIT Media Labs' slow-motion financial collapse — as collapse seems the only way to clean out some of the nastier elements in a place that is given carte blanche for any behavior so long as it can pull in funding. What's unfortunate is that the Lab has many good students, as well as some good faculty and staff, and those people are generally getting screwed by the greed, arrogance, and incompetence of the bad apples at the upper levels.
I had told Hoge privately, both in person and in writing, that if the debate over these questions was suppressed because of Kissinger's pressure on Foreign Affairs, this would inevitably in the course of time become a public matter damaging to the reputation of Foreign Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations, its publisher.
—Kenneth Maxwell, "The Case of the Missing Letter in Foreign Affairs: Kissinger, Pinochet and Operation Condor," Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Working Paper 04/05-3, December 2004
Scott Sherman, "Kissinger's Shadow Over the Council on Foreign Relations," The Nation, 6-Dec-2004
David Brooks actually has a good column today:
You're probably sitting by the phone today waiting for that last-minute invitation to the White House economic summit that's going to start tomorrow in Washington.
—David Brooks, "The Wonks' Loya Jirga," New York Times, 14-Dec-2004
Well, McCain, you campaigned for that administration, and quite recently:
US Senator John McCain said yesterday that he has "no confidence" in Donald H. Rumsfeld, citing the secretary of defense's handling of the war in Iraq and contending that he has failed to send enough troops.
—Beth DeFalco, "McCain says he has 'no confidence' in Rumsfeld," AP via Boston Globe, 14-Dec-2004
Medicare's toll-free telephone line, one of the main vehicles for disseminating information about new prescription drug benefits and drug discount cards, gives accurate answers less than two-thirds of the time, Congressional investigators say.
—Robert Pear, "Test Finds Inaccuracies in Help Line for Medicare," New York Times, 11-Dec-2004
In an ideal world, says Captain Bernard O'Rourke, the police could post an officer on every corner in [Boston's] Chinatown, [...] To supplement cops on the street, police plan to install 17 surveillance cameras over the next two months [...] The project will mark the first time Boston police will use their own cameras to routinely tape street activity, [...] No sound will be recorded, but otherwise, there's no expectation of privacy in public areas, O'Rourke said. "It's simply recording everyday activity, [...]
—Kimberly W. Moy, "Police eye videotape, but where exactly?," Boston Globe, 5-Dec-2004
Spot the engineering corner-cutting: they're only running a single U, when double U has been standard for years.
[The Sharp Zaurus] SL-C3000 has an internal hard drive, a razor-sharp full VGA screen with zoom-in capabilities and a full QUERTY keyboard to go along with its swiveling touch screen.
—Jeff Yang, "The Gadget Gap: Why does all the cool stuff come out in Asia first?," SF Gate, 9-Dec-2004
This Micron PC is scheduled to be dashed to bits today, for a student film.
With tomato prices prohibitive anyway, now's a good time to sever that election-subverting banana republic, Florida.
We suspected as much:
In earlier experiments with rat brain cells, Aizenman's team found that direct exposure to MIT in concentrations like those found in hand cream was enough to kill neurons.
—Steven Reinberg, "Shampoo Ingredient Kills Rats' Brain Cells," Forbes, 6-Dec-2004
Due to PLT's new support of Microsoft .NET, and the rumored possible move of DrScheme to Microsoft .NET, I'll probably soon be moving to a non-PLT Scheme implementation. Fortunately, I took pains with most of my code to have few dependencies other than R5RS and popular SRFIs.
CNN.com 5-Dec-2004: atop developing news
I normally carry my ThinkPad X20 wrapped in a towel inside a small courier bag, but I wanted an Incase Nylon Sleeve 12" for when traveling — both to protect the laptop inside a larger carry-on bag, and for light-duty carrying. The main two drawbacks for me with the Incase design are that there's no room for my camera, and something that looks like a laptop bag attracts theft attempts, but it was still the best solution I could find. Anyway, after inspecting the $50 ones at the Apple Store, I did a price sanity-check via Google, and then frugally bought a 'new' one for $25 + S&H on eBay. When the item arrived, the inside had a strong odor of cigarette smoke, and made my eyes and nose burn. Various cleaners helped a lot, and the seller PayPal'd me back $10 for the trouble. Then I noticed that the top seam had a manufacturing defect, such that there was a 2-inch hole in the top of the bag, and one of the shoulder straps was already half torn out. This was repaired through an hour of sewing with a pliers. Another net loss from eBay — the bricks&mortar store would've won again.
IBM trying to sell off its PC business, including laptops? My ThinkPad X20 is easily one of my favorite tools. If they ruin the ThinkPad line, where will we get a high-quality laptop with a proper TrackPoint? (Running GNU/Linux on an Apple PowerBook would be silly, anyway.)
Disgraced former CIA head George Tenet, having helped compromise US security by bending over for the Bush administration on Iraq, now turns his eye to the Internet:
The way the Internet was built might be part of the problem, he said. Its open architecture allows Web surfing, but that openness makes the system vulnerable, Tenet said. Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said. Mr. Tenet called for industry to lead the way by "establishing and enforcing" security standards. Products need to be delivered to government and private-sector customers "with a new level of security and risk management already built in."
—Shaun Waterman, "Tenet calls for Internet security," UPI via Washington Times, 3-Dec-2004
Depending on who he's speaking for right now, the "security and risk management already built in" part could be bad.
We do need to make the Internet more resilient, and the solutions absolutely shouldn't involve "trust-me" 'security' from the US government.
The NYT gave op-ed space to Michael Powell:
Our rules do not ban indecent content entirely; they merely restrict its broadcast during times in which children are likely to be in the audience, namely from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
—Michael K. Powell, New York Times, 3-Dec-2004
CNET prescience: How gory is that game?
Frank Rich, "The Nascar Nightly News: Anchorman Get Your Gun," New York Times, dated 5-Dec-2004, viewed 2-Dec-2004
The Door Gym that I'd ordered arrived, but the molding on all my door frames is too big for Door Gym to mount properly. A shame, since I liked the one I tried at a friend's house, and most all other doorway chin-up bars require that screws be driven into the frame.
NYT editorial board is feeling scrappy:
Tom Ridge was the best secretary of homeland security this country has known.
—"Mr. Ridge's Red Alert Day," New York Times, 1-Dec-2004
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