LA
We are in beautiful downtown Los Angeles. Yesterday the stock market crashed on the news that Mike and I missed our flight out of the country. Today, hopes that we would eventually depart the U.S.A. fueled the market to rebound a couple of the seven percent it lost yesterday. In other news, those lamps in La Quinta seem a little flimsy.
Bob’s Junkmail, 202
What I did on my Summer Vacation
I am sure you have been wondering (and singing, no doubt) “Where have all the Junkmails gone?” The last Junkmail is a couple months old. By coincidence, I’ve been on a sailboat for a couple months. We took off from Oahu on June 12, sailed to Midway Atoll, and stayed there about a week.
From Midway we went to Attu Island, at the west end of the Aleutians. We followed the Aleutians to the North American mainland, and on to Prince William Sound. Mike (Webster) and Mike (Fullerton) are now in Glacier Bay, wandering around lost.
Everybody else who started had left the boat by the time I got to Cold Bay. Something about my personal hygiene. Mike Fullerton got on at Dutch Harbor. Mike Webster returned and I headed home from Valdez, two months after we launched from Hawaii. The boat will continue on with whoever wants to go. Destination: Seattle, more or less.
You can read the Minnow Blog at
If you prefer to begin at the beginning, try this one:
http://hmsminnow.blogspot.com/2008/06/midway-midway-att…
(You can click “Newer Post” at the bottom after reading each post to progress forward in time.)
I took some photos of normal vacation stuff — sharks and butterflies and volcanic eruptions. Here are a few:
 This is what met us at Midway — a tiger shark after an albatross. The albatross got away. Melinda took this picture. 8/3/2008 |
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 Kaula Rock, Hawaii 6/15/2008 |
 Albatross at Midway Airport 6/22/2008 |
 A Fairy Tern at Midway. 6/23/2008 |
 Mike, Josh, and Melinda at Welles Harbor, Midway Atoll 6/25/2008 |
 Birds off Gillon Point, Agattu Island 7/9/2008 |
 This C-130 took off from Attu while we were there. Check out the spiral vapor trails behind the props. Melinda took this picture. 8/3/2008 |
 Gun with gunner, Kiska Island. This is a Japanese gun from World War II. 7/12/2008 |
 A chick on the beach at Semisopochnoi Island 7/14/2008 |
 Falls on Kanaga Island 7/16/2008 |
 Killer Whale! Also, Orca. Several of them were east of Bobrof. 7/17/2008 |
 The northeast rim, Kasatochi, three weeks before the eruption 7/19/2008 |
 A flower on Kasatochi Volcano. It was up on the rim. The volcano erupted big-time three weeks later. 7/19/2008 |
 Steller Sea Lion, Kasatochi, three weeks before the eruption 7/20/2008 |
 The birds would fly around in a flock like this and then dive into the water, underwater, either to eat something or because they like swimming. Kaniuji Island. 7/20/2008 |
 Mount Cleveland Eruption 7/21/2008 |
 A dark cloud was on the horizon… Ash from Okmok Volcano 7/23/2008 |
 Photographer, Unalaska Island 7/23/2008 |
 These caves at Battery Point, Akutan Island are big. We took the dinghy in the one on the right with the collapsed roof. One of them on the left has a tunnel opening to the rear that we went through. 7/25/2008 |
 Basalt Rock 7/26/2008 |
 Flying torpedo 7/26/2008 |
 Eagles, Middle Lagoon, Morzhovoi Bay 7/28/2008 |
 Frosty Volcano and the Minnow, Morzhovoi Bay 7/28/2008 |
 Horned Puffins, Amagat Island 7/30/2008 |
 Sea Otters, Simeonof Island 8/1/2008 |
 Birds on Lighthouse Rocks 8/2/2008 |
 Some sea creature at Stripe Rock, Kodiak 8/6/2008 |
 The Whale’s Tail, Afognak Island 8/8/2008 |
 Northwestern Fiord 8/9/2008 |
 Northwestern Fiord 8/9/2008 |
Here is a link to the big bunch:
You can expect a real Junkmail next time. Maybe I’ll even include some factual information. Naw…
The end.
Junkmail #198, March 10, 2008
Common Cents
A few days ago at Arby’s, I got a shiny new penny with my change. Then I noticed my shiny new penny was 46 years old. It’s worth almost 15 cents!
hi-res
Abe Lincoln was born in 1809. One hundred years later, the Lincoln Cent was released into circulation, replacing the Indian Head Cents.
I used to be a paperboy and always looked through the change for a 1909 S VDB penny (among other things), but I never found one.
In 1959 the wheat design on the back of the pennies was changed to the Lincoln Memorial.
Next year the pennies will be redesigned again. There will be four different one-cent coins. I don’t think the designs have been released, but they will have Lincoln on the face. In 2010, the Lincoln cent will have a new "permanent" design that includes Abe Lincoln, assuming that pennies are still being used then.
In 1982, the U.S. Mint changed from 95% copper pennies to copper plated zinc pennies. Currently, the metal used to make a penny is worth a little more than one cent. Congress considers this above average fiscal responsibility.
In 1999 the mint started minting state quarters. These still have Washington on the front, but the back has a design for each of the 50 states, 5 states per year, in order of joining the United States. Oklahoma’s quarter came out this year, number 46:
Next year there will be six more quarters minted. Actually, there will be hundreds of thousands of quarters minted in six designs, for the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa.
A new dollar coin came out this year, too. If you look at these photos, you might notice some things missing, notably, the date, "E Pluribus Unum," and "In God We Trust."
These are printed on the edge of the coin. It’s interesting that the edges are printed at different angles on different coins. For example, the date doesn’t always appear in the same place relative to Madison’s face.
E Pluribus Unum is Latin either for "from many, one," or "help, I’m caught in this eagle’s beak." It was approved for use on the Great Seal of the United States in 1782, and became the de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when Congress legislated the official U.S. motto "In God We Trust."
I vote to get rid of pennies and one-dollar bills, round to the nearest nickel, and use dollar coins in vending machines.
The Universe is Flat
Diophantus lived in Alexandria, Egypt in the third century AD. He wrote a math text called Arithmetica, a collection of 130 algebra problems and some solutions. Unfortunately, only six of the thirteen books of Arithmetica are known to have survived. A French mathematician named Bachet translated these books into Latin in 1621.
Another French mathematician named Fermat had a copy of Bachet’s Arithmetica. In 1637, he made a notation in the side of his book, about this conjecture:
Fermat said, "I have a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." This was the mysterious "Fermat’s Last Theorem." Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor eventually proved this in 1994. The proof was way over my head and used a lot of mathematics that were not developed until the 20th century. Probably Fermat didn’t have a proof valid for all values of n > 2.
One of Diophantus’s conjectures stated, without proof, that every positive integer can be expressed as the sum of four squares of integers. For example:
13 = 22 + 22 + 22 + 12
14 = 32 + 22 + 12 + 02
100 = 02 + 42 + 42 + 82
134 = 02 + 92 + 22 + 72
Fermat is supposed to have developed a proof for this, but he didn’t publish it. Yet another French mathematician named Lagrange proved this in 1770. It is now called Lagrange’s four-square theorem, or Bachet’s conjecture.
Lagrange is technically an Italian mathematician, born in Sardinia, but he moved to Prussia and then France. In 1772, two years after proving the four-square problem, Lagrange did a little calculus and came up with the Lagrangian Points. These are points in the sky used by science fiction writers.
Actually, the Lagrangian points are a little more general than that. They apply to three gravitational bodies. If you consider the earth orbiting the sun, you can find five points in the neighborhood of the earth’s orbit where a third object will find stable gravity and can "follow" the earth’s orbit around the sun. Four of the points are outside the earth’s orbit, and one is inside.
The L1 point is between the earth and the sun, and the L2 point is directly away from the sun, both a little over 900,000 miles from earth. (If you call 30,000 miles a little.) L3, L4, and L5 are a lot closer to earth’s orbital path.
If you fly a spacecraft to L1 or L2, you can keep it in orbit there. It doesn’t technically orbit L1 or L2, but it will make a funny-shaped closed path about the point that counts as an orbit if you’re not a purist. The SOHO spacecraft has been flying around L1 for about a dozen years. SOHO took this photo of the largest solar flare ever recorded:
Here is SOHO’s image of the sun on March 6:
L2 is on the dark side of the earth, 900,000 miles from the earth, away from the sun. On the last day of June, 2001, NASA launched the WMAP spacecraft on its journey to L2.
WMAP stands for Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. Dave Wilkinson was a physicist at Princeton University who was very involved in the project before his death. He gave freely of his time to teach local school kids about “hands on” physics. Anisotropy is the property of being directionally dependent, as opposed to isotropy. WMAP measures background microwave radiation coming from all different directions.
http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/facts.html
This is useful because the angular and frequency distribution of the background radiation can be used in mathematical models to improve our understanding of the big bang. And it doesn’t take a lot to improve my understanding.
Here’s where WMAP has been flying around for the past five years:
After five years of data collection from WMAP, NASA has released some really interesting information. The data shows that the big bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago from last Tuesday, plus or minus 120 million years. It also shows that the universe is flat, there is a lot of dark energy, and matter as we know it makes up less than five percent of the universe. A "flat universe" doesn’t mean we live in two-dimensional space. It means that light not bent by gravity goes in a straight line.
Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has an excellent explanation, in English, of the results published by NASA.
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/05/the-unive…
NASA’s news:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/wmap_five.html
This confirms (and then some) the results of the Boomerang experiment in Antarctica in 2000.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/727073.stm
Here are the technical 5-year WMAP papers:
http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/dr3/map_bibliog…
The big bang was not an explosion from a single point in space. It was a rapid expansion OF space. If all space is infinite today, then it was infinite at the time of the big bang. But all the space we can see would have been as small as a single point at the time of the big bang. The big bang model does not say what gave rise to the big bang.
All this gets pretty complicated, and I haven’t taken time to learn the math. But we can see that space and time are not constant. Space is bent by gravity. Einstein’s Theories of Relativity predicted that, and it has been observed consistently. For example, light bends around the sun. We can see that Mercury’s orbit follows the warped space of Einstein’s relativity rather than Newton’s laws of gravity.
Time isn’t constant either, and we can see that in GPS satellites. The cesium clocks on the satellites run 38 nanoseconds slow per day because in orbit their speed is faster (+7 nanoseconds, predicted by Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity) and earth’s gravity is less (-45 nanoseconds, predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity).
If you take this warpage of space-time to the extreme, you can model the big bang. It’s not quite that simple, of course, but that’s the generally idea. The big bang model fits what we observe today, and the data from WMAP refines model parameters and confirms the model itself.
Here is some information on the big bang model:
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_concepts.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
Communists
February 26, the New York Philharmonic played a concert in Pyongyang, North Korea. They opened with the North Korea national anthem, followed by the Star Spangled Banner. The audience stood at attention for both national anthems, except for some Americans in the press core.
They played Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s Lohengrin, Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and An American in Paris, followed by three encores: Bizet’s Farandole, Overture to Bernstein’s Candide, and the Korean folk song Arirang. You can listen to (and watch) the concert online.
http://nyphil.org/about/virtualTours/0708/korea/slidesh…
This concert won’t make any changes in government relations between the U.S. and North Korea, but in a few years it may be considered the historical event that signified the improvement in relations between North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S. When the people of countries have good relations, the governments generally follow suit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120401750068993375.html
(subscription may be necessary)
North Korea leader, Kim Jong-il, did not attend the concert. Some people tried to make a big deal out of this. But I can’t imagine George Bush attending a concert by the North Korean symphony, although I think he should. George bush did direct a 400 piece orchestra at Jamestown, Virginia last year.
http://hamptonroads.com/node/265681
It seems to me that most people in North Korea, South Korea, China, and the United States would like to see friendly relations between North Korea and other countries. The U.S. and Korean governments refuse to allow this because of minor disputes over things like blowing each other to nuclear smithereens. If the people were allowed to interact, maybe they would pressure the governments to get in line. I’m not a complete idealist, and I realize there’s not much internal pressuring that can be done with a government like North Korea, but public opinion does have an effect.
The same thing applies to Cuba. If we would inundate Havana with U.S. tourist dollars, the Cuban government would be a lot more friendly to the U.S. The Cuban people would pressure them into it. But the U.S. government won’t allow me to go to Cuba to spend my tourist dollars, even on my own boat or my own plane. The U.S. government even went so far as to cancel the domain of a British web site offering travel services for British people to go to Cuba. This site didn’t even concern the U.S., but the domain registrar happened to be eNom, a U.S. company. Maybe someone should break the news to Washington that Cuba is no longer a threat to the U.S.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html?ei=5088…
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080307-us-interf…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/05/us_kills_europe…
Coincidentally, ICANN, the internet naming authority, has suggested it become independent of U.S. Commerce Department next year when the current agreement expires.
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/03/07/icann-looks-…
It looks like the European Union may end diplomatic and economic sanctions against Cuba soon. Maybe the U.S. will follow suit.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN09392640
In 1989 there was a famous concert in Berlin. I was going to write about this, but I remembered my kids (and maybe a few other people) might not even know whether Berlin was in East or West Germany, or why that mattered. So I’ll offer a quick history lesson.
After World War II, Germany was occupied by the U.K., the U.S., France, and the Soviet Union. Each country had a piece of Germany.
The U.K., the U.S., French portions of Germany were combined into West Germany, and the Soviet part became East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic. The capital of Germany, Berlin, was located inside East Germany, but the city was divided and people were allowed to drive from West Germany to West Berlin. In this map, West Berlin is the yellow spot inside the red East Germany:
From Wikipedia:
The West responded with the Berlin Airlift and supplied West Berlin with food, coal, etc. by air for close to a year. This was an amazing accomplishment at the time. It really surprised the Soviets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Airlift#Berlin_airlift
The Soviets ended the blockade in 1949, and Berlin remained divided until November 9th, 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. It didn’t really come down on that day, but people were allowed to travel freely between East and West Berlin for the first time in more than 40 years.
The Brandenburg Gate is a historical gate that used to provide entry into Berlin. It was built in the late 1700’s, and ended up just inside East Berlin, next to the Berlin Wall. On December 22, 1989, the Brandenburg Gate re-opened when Helmut Kohl, the West German Chancellor, walked through to be greeted by Hans Modrow, the East German Prime Minister.
About six weeks after the Berlin Wall came down, on December 25, 1989, Leonard Bernstein led orchestras and choruses from Berlin, Dresden, New York, London, Paris, and Leningrad in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The concert was performed in the Schauspielhaus of East Berlin.
In the performance, they changed the word joy (Freude) to freedom (Freiheit):
Freiheit! Freiheit! Freiheit, schöner Götterfunken
(Freedom! Freedom! Freedom, beautiful spark of the gods)
Here are some fairly low-quality videos of the last movement:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imv2M64t_og
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K4635W4roY
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-GbesR5AEM
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIsXmOHo7EA
Less than a year later, Bernstein died from cancer.
Stupid Software Patents
In basic computer programming, there are sorts and there are linked lists. These are two of the fundamental data structures taught in first or second year computer science coursework. It is a trivial matter to combine the two. It has been done for more than 30 years.
But now, in 2008, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a patent on a "system for sorting records having sorted strings each having a plurality of linked elements each element storing next record address." It’s a patent on a quicksort and linked list combined, each of which is covered thoroughly in hundreds of textbooks.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080228-patent-re…
Techdirt has a good series of articles on the patent system. It’s not working out quite like the writers of the constitution intended.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080220/020252302.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080228/003450379.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080306/003240458.shtml
Some people think we should rid the world of software patents altogether. I agree.
http://legalpad.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/02/28/ending…
In other riveting patent news, a federal judge named Richard recently overturned a jury’s $51 million verdict in a patent case, then ordered the lawyers who were originally awarded the $51 million to pay their opponents’ legal bills (a few million dollars.) Judge Richard’s ruling was upheld by the Circuit Court of Appeals.
http://www.denverpost.com/popular/ci_8354619
This is the same Judge Richard Matsch who heard the Oklahoma City bombing case of McVeigh and Nichols.
Within two weeks, judge named Edward fined some other patent lawyers from the same company $10 million and some additional legal fees for similar offensive behavior. This was a completely different trial in a completely different jurisdiction.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/02/29/attorney-sanctions-…
(may need a subscription)
Cable Cuts
Last month, in the span of a week, 3 or 4 or 5 undersea communications cables were cut in the Middle East. These were cut by anchored ships, a lost ship anchor, Al Qaeda, the NSA, a storm, or sharks.
That’s the best I could glean from the news. But the internet was really slow for a while in several countries. Maybe someone cut the cable intentionally so they could tap into the splices and eavesdrop. I don’t think the NSA was responsible, because they’ve got good equipment that doesn’t cut the cable when they eavesdrop. It doesn’t benefit the U.S. to have the cables cut. In fact, it doesn’t seem to benefit anybody. Why would anybody in the Middle East destroy something for no reason?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120177630094631777.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080207-repairs-u…
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/un-official-fe…
Pakistan, though not technically part of the Middle East, decided to get into the act. Pakistan issued an order to block YouTube after a trailer for a film by a Dutch lawmaker named Geert was deemed blasphemous, or at least not in the public interest.
The Pakistan Telecomm Authority did as they were told and blocked YouTube. They did this by routing traffic directed at YouTube’s IP addresses to a site more appropriate for Pakistanis. I’m not sure what that site is — probably http://sailinganarchy.com.
Somehow, the IP misdirection escaped Pakistan and started occurring all over Hong Kong-based provider PCCW’s territory, and eventually all over the world. This effectively cut off the internet in Pakistan, because people all over the world who tried to get to YouTube were sent to Pakistan. Pakistan had accidentally initiated a denial of service attack on the entire country.
After a couple of hours of this, YouTube was reinstated and Pakistan is now living happily ever after. I’m not sure what ever happened to the offending video.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080226/091748357.shtml
http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=548
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7262071.stm
How to Win the Presidential Race
It’s easy. All you have to do is promise to enforce anti-spam laws.
Being politicians, the presidential candidates will most likely, if anything, promise to enact new laws to "crack down on spam." There are three problems with this. First, Presidents don’t enact new laws. Second, they rarely fulfill campaign promises. Third, if they ever get new anti-spam laws passed, they won’t be enforced any better than our current anti-spam laws are. However, they will probably restrict the way the rest of us are allowed to use the internet.
If any of the three candidates convinced me that he, she, or it would rid my inbox of spam, that person would likely get my vote.
There are currently laws against phishing, but like the spam laws, they are rarely enforced. So the Senate has passed a new law against phishing. As with many new laws to fix unenforced old laws, this one has unintended side effects used to harass (formerly) law-abiding people.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080226/195527365.shtml
Nice Headline
From the U.K Telegraph: "News: 24-hour Drinking Fuels Rise in Crime"
Technically, this is a subhead rather than a headline, but it does seem very profound.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opin…
Terrorists are Virtual!
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, IARPA, has written and released a report explaining that massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG) with virtual worlds can be used by terrorists.
Now, understand that it is the object in many of these virtual worlds to blow up stuff, kill other characters, and otherwise wreak havoc, while accumulating money, experience, magic, and karma in general. It eludes me how a terrorist is going to make this any worse.
But the IARPA is worried. They say, "The virtual world is the next great frontier and in some respects is still very much a Wild West environment." Just think. A virtual world without government control.
IARPA says the virtual worlds provide opportunity "for religious/political extremists to recruit, rehearse, transfer money, and ultimately engage in information warfare or worse with impunity."
I have news for IARPA. Extremists and information warfare are standard fare in the virtual worlds. Gamers have been known to break any and every rule of civilized society, without fear of repercussions from the government, the police, or any other form of authority. It’s a VIRTUAL world, after all. The very worst that can happen is you get kicked off a server or lose your account.
IARPA says "Virtual environments provide many opportunities to exchange messages in the clear without drawing unnecessary attention. Additionally, there are many private channels that can be employed to exchange secret messages."
What? A private conversation is still possible on earth? We’d better put a stop to that NOW!
IARPA says "The challenge that we face is to be able to distinguish the fanatics from the average person looking for some simple enjoyment." I have been called a fanatic and worse. Will IARPA waterboard me for thought crimes? I thought it was perfectly legal to be a fanatic in the U.S. Haven’t those IARPA folks ever been to a football game? Where do they think the word "fan" comes from?
Who is IARPA, anyway, and why are spending my tax dollars on such a stupid report? The Director of National Intelligence came up with IARPA to be an Intelligence version of the DARPA Defense research agency. IARPA is suspect just from its name — they call the organization an "Activity" instead of an Agency or Organization or something meaningful.
Who runs such an organization? Lisa, a former NASA Administrator. What does the agency activity do? Their goal is to "conduct research that cuts across multiple IC [integrated circuit?] agencies, targets new opportunities that lie in the white spaces between agencies, provides innovations that agencies avoid because of current business models, and generates revolutionary capabilities that will surprise our adversaries and help us avoid being surprised."
Now the IARPA will have to hire gamers to spy on other gamers and turn in the fanatics to the government for waterboarding, the rack, and other aggressive interrogation techniques. There are a lot of MMORPGs to be patrolled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MMORPGs
More details:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/datamining.pdf
Join IARPA today and become a gamer informant! Sign up for Project Reynard and protect the Virtual Worlds of the World from fanatics. "It’s not a job. It’s a game!"
J. Drinkard
Phone: 703-482-9892
Email: darwinkr@ucia.gov
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
ODNI/HR, GA07 OHB
Washington, DC 20511
Broadband Speed
There are several web sites that test internet connection speed. One good site is
You might notice that your connection speeds don’t seem to live up to the speed tests. There are a several things that can cause this:
1. When you connect, the other end of the connection might be the limiting factor.
2. Some ISPs (such as Comcast) give you a fast connection initially and then throttle it back after a second or so. You can see this sometimes when you upload or download a file.
3. Some ISPs limit the connection speed based on the type of internet communications you are doing. They cut down the speed for P2P filesharing or other activities that can consume a lot of bandwidth. Comcast actually breaks filesharing connections by sending false data packets to the connected computers.
4. Someone may have cut an undersea cable.
I really don’t have anything against Comcast. I don’t even know whether they’re my cable company. But they do manage to get into embarrassing situations on a regular basis.
Comcast recently hired people off the street to come in early to an FCC public hearing, taking up seats so Comcast critics wouldn’t be admitted. I think that’s really funny. Comcast explained that they only hired people off the street to save seats for Comcast employees. Comcast didn’t explain why they wanted a whole bunch of their employees at an FCC hearing, or why all those employees forgot to show up.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/02/26/…
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2008/02/25/comcast-…
Shark Diving
A lot of companies offer shark diving trips, such as this one:
http://www.scuba-adventures.com/bahamas_itineraries.sht…
They go out where sharks are common, feed them with chum to attract them, and then go scuba diving among the sharks. I didn’t think I’d ever want to do this, until I read this article. Now I am completely sure I don’t want to do it.
http://www.miamiherald.com/459/story/432881.html
A guy named Markus went on a 6-day shark diving trip. A shark attacked him, and he died in the hospital.
From Scuba Adventures: "We are in our 5th season and the shark action has never been better!"
From the Miami Herald: "Man dead in shark attack is Austrian"
There is a device called a Shark Shield that is supposed to repel sharks and make it safe to swim or surf in shark territory. It was tested off the coast of South Africa. Instead being repelled by the electronic emissions, a great white shark bit into the device. I probably won’t be buying on of those, either.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,2330…
Boating Photos
What do you do with old ships in Kamchatka, Russia?
Freeze-dry.
http://englishrussia.com/?p=1788
Captcha
A "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart," or Captcha, is a term for those funny forms on web sites that display some warped text like this…
…and ask you to type it in. If you get it wrong, it means you’re a computer.
Google’s and Microsoft’s Captcha systems have been cracked recently. That means bots can get onto gmail, for example, and make a few thousand accounts to be used for spam, phishing, political campaigning, and other nefarious activities. Your computer is a bot if it is running a trojan that allows another computer to take control and assign it various and sundry tasks like spamming and acquiring gmail accounts. This usually happens when you’re asleep.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080226-gotcha-ca…
I think it is interesting that as computers get faster and better, it’s harder for a program to distinguish computers from people.
Where Am I?
If I type an invalid address into my browser, I usually get an error message like this:
"Firefox can’t find the server at www.aassdsdsdfsdffasdfasdf.com."
However, sometimes I type in a common mistake or test, such as http://gmial.com or http://asdfasdfasdf.com. Then I get a web site with some links and sometimes popups — by someone who is trying to make internet money off my typing errors. I don’t like those web sites so I don’t click on their links.
TimeWarner’s RoadRunner ISP is getting into the act now. They are intercepting server-not-found errors (failed DNS requests) and displaying their own ads and links whenever that happens. I think that is downright discourteous.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/26/1741253
This happens if you misspell the domain name. If you ask for something on an existing site that isn’t there, you generally get a nice 404 message from the web server, like this:
Some U.K. ISPs are handing over web browsing records of their internet customers to a company that will use the data to target ads toward the customers. But don’t worry. The data will be anonymized so nobody can ever see what sites you browse. Never mind that several articles point out that the company receiving the data already has a shady past.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080227/114140370.shtml
The Attack of the Suspicious Packages
They’re everywhere!
http://www.krnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7926974&nav=8faO
http://www.kval.com/news/15818817.html
http://www.newsnet5.com/news/15371311/detail.html
http://www.whptv.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=9…
http://www.wtoctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7917455&na…
Orion
The Space Shuttle fleet is supposed to be retired in 2010. This might be a good idea. The three Space Shuttles are older than most cars on the highway today. It has been 16, 23, and 24 years since their first launches.
The Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle is planned to replace the Shuttles for manned space exploration. It will look a lot like the Apollo Command Module and splash down in the ocean. It will carry a crew of four to six people. The first manned flight of the Orion is currently scheduled for 2014.
Here’s the Orion heat shield, being built by Boeing:
http://boeingmedia.com/imageDetail.cfm?id=15034
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/orion/i…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29
Japan is getting into the space plane business. They plan to launch a bunch of paper airplanes from the Space Station. There won’t be any guidance, of course, but there will probably be messages written on them for anybody who happens to find one. It’s like a high-tech (and high altitude) message in a bottle.
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/01/origami-spaceplane-…
Pennsylvania Turnpike
The governor of Pennsylvania wants to privatize the Pennsylvania Turnpike. In response, the Pennsylvania Turnpike commission is spending $300,000 to advertise against privatization. In other words, they are spending $300,000 of turnpike money to try and keep their jobs. In addition, they spent close to $400,000 last year on lobbyists.
Why privatize? Things are a little strange in the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. The wife of Chairman Mitchell is under indictment with state senator Vince for theft and fraud. Mitchell is identified in the indictment as accepting $150,000 in contract work from Vince for little or no work, and the commission is accused of giving one of Vince’s cronies $250,000 under a bogus consultant contract.
Mitchell ran up $77,000 in expenses over a five-year period for trips to Europe and dining at four-star restaurants. Executive Director Joe, the highest paid employee of the state of Pennsylvania, recently went on a nine day trip to Vienna, Austria, at turnpike expense.
It sounds to me like they have a nice little empire there.
http://kdka.com/local/Turnpike.Commission.ads.2.662684.html
Free Light
Fluorescent light bulbs will glow under power lines from the ambient magnetic fields.
http://gizmodo.com/361390/1301-florescent-bulbs-lit-sol…
I thought this was really cool, so I grabbed a couple of fluorescent light bulbs and drove out to some high power lines. Nothing happened. I guess I need stronger power lines. Or maybe the universe is too flat in Oklahoma.
Speeding
People can calculate spacecraft velocity very accurately. When you know the location, speed, and direction of a spacecraft, you can determine where it’s going to end up, after being pulled this way and that by the various gravitational bodies in the solar system.
But there is a problem.
Spacecraft are routed by planets in order to accelerate cheaply, using the planet’s gravity instead of fuel. Since the days of Pioneer 10 in the early 1970’s, JPL has noticed that spacecraft end up about one millionth too fast after a planetary flyby. This anomaly has been consistent enough to earn the name "flyby effect," but there is no accepted explanation. Yet.
http://www.aip.org/pnu/2008/split/857-2.html
Virtual Fence
The Virtual Fence is broken. The U.S. government announced with great fanfare a high-tech virtual fence to be built along the U.S. border with Mexico. OK, maybe the fanfare wasn’t all that great. In fact, some people were poo-pooing the idea. But they awarded a big contract to Boeing to build a pilot section of the fence, complete with nine mobile towers, radar, cameras, and vehicles retrofitted with laptops and satellite phones or handheld devices.
Now the project is being scaled back, with almost no fanfare whatsoever. There are a lot of things that just didn’t work. They are going to take the things that did work, such as UAVs and "mobile ground surveillance units" (automobiles, I think) and use them elsewhere along the border.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
The Ice Prince Rescue
http://www.bymnews.com/news/newsDetails.php?id=23244%20
Mars Avalanche
A huge landslide slid down a 2300 foot 60° slope in the northern polar region of Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught the action in living (if false) color.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/mro200…
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/03mar_avalanche.htm
Pentagon Security
The Pentagon must have amazing computer security. It would be impossible for someone to install email trojans there. Or would it?
Last June, an "amazing amount" of data was copied from the Pentagon’s computer network. Someone sent the Pentagon spoof emails that appeared to be from Pentagon staffers. The emails, when opened, installed trojans that exploited some known Microsoft vulnerabilities and obtained usernames and passwords.
When the Pentagon found out, they took the email system offline, but not the entire network. That was a mistake, because the trojans were still able to encrypt and transmit lots of classified data to the internet, maybe to China. China apparently doesn’t realize that most of our government data is worthless.
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=39456
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151854-1.html
Binocular Telescope
There is a new binocular telescope at on Mount Graham, Arizona. It is large. Because of this, they call it the Large Binocular Telescope, or LBT. It is the most powerful telescope in the world. It has twin 27.6 foot mirrors.
January photos from the LBT camera team, false-color images of the spiral galaxy NGC 2770:
This image combines ultraviolet and green light, which enhances the clumpy regions of newly formed hot stars in the spiral arms:
This image combines deep red colors to highlight the smoother distribution of older, cooler stars:
This image is a composite of ultraviolet, green and deep red light and enhances the detailed structure of hot, moderate and cool stars in the galaxy:
Political Censorship
The U.S. Air Force recently used a DMCA takedown notice to get YouTube to remove a 30-second Air Force advertisement recruiting for its Cyber Command. There are a couple of things wrong with this. First, it’s an advertisement. The more people who see it, the better, right? Second, since the ad is owned by the U.S. Government, it is not copyrightable and does not fall under the DMCA’s wide reign. Third, if they’d get some good people into Cyber Command, maybe they could keep China out of the Pentagon computers.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/air-force-cybe…
Waterboarding
There is a lot of controversy over the CIA’s use of aggressive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.
A few days ago, Congress passed a bill to ban waterboarding, and President Bush promptly vetoed the bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html
It would go a long way to make waterboarding acceptable if we could get the Attorney General and maybe a couple of Supreme Court Justices to volunteer to be the victims of a waterboarding session. They can prove to the world that it’s a harmless and humane method of interrogation.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/sub…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
Vista Feedback
It seems that some Microsoft executives have not been too excited about using Vista either.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.htm…
Nautical Charts
I got irritated the other day because I couldn’t find any common, printable formats of the NOAA Nautical Charts. So I made some. Help yourself:
http://xpda.com/nauticalcharts
Pictures of Today!
Seven of us climbed Skylight Mountain in the Adirondacks the weekend before last.
It looks pretty peaceful, until you see the video (Michael Weil took it). I would guess it was 10-15 degrees with 50-70 mph wind on top.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpnZvW0xvLY
I saw this ship between Oahu and Kauai a few weeks ago. It looks pretty strange — white, lots of antennas, no navy numbers. I think it’s a Navy "Navigation Research/Missile Range Instrumentation Ship," the USNS Waters.
Ships go pretty fast.
Green Marker 3:
Typical tree damage around NE Oklahoma, from last December’s ice storm.
My baby daughter took this picture in the Pacific last year. I think she was on some kind of motor boat.
The End
Important Stuff. Junkmail #197
Iceland Attacks!
A 16-year-old guy named Vífill from Akranes, Iceland decided to call up President Bush and invite him over to Iceland. Vífill didn’t think Bush would talk to a 16-year-old high school student, so he said he was Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the President of Iceland. He also called on a private phone line into the White House.
He eventually got through to the President’s Secretary. But the White House apparently figured out that Vífill was not really Ólafur Grímsson. The Iceland police took him to the local police station and questioned him for a few hours. They wanted to know where he got that phone number.
Vífill said he didn’t remember where he got the private phone number. The White House said it wasn’t really a private phone number, that Vífill really called the White House switchboard. Everybody got a laugh out of that.
So Vífill was not charged with any crimes. The police told him he is on the no-fly list to the U.S. until he comes clean about where he got the private White House phone number, or until Bush leaves office. Well, maybe they didn’t really mention that last bit, but it’s just as plausible as Vífill having called the public White House phone number.
I think it’s pretty funny. I may call up Vífill and invite him to Pryor. Maybe I can get him on the private line to his high school.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3973925&page=1
Windmills
I took this picture in Kansas last month. Which is better?
Question: Should I power a pump using a relatively inefficient windmill fan to drive the pump mechanically, or should I generate electricity efficiently in a big windmill, run it for miles along power lines and through several transformers, then run an electric motor to drive my pump?
Answer: Wait on global warming to bring more rain and fill up the pond.
What about coal vs. wind? It’s hard to find un-bent facts, but it looks to me like a new coal power plant generates electricity for about 5 cents per kWh, and a new wind farm is around 7 cents. But the U.S. government pays about a 2-cent subsidy for wind farms, so they’re in the ballpark with coal power plants. Smaller wind farms are more expensive. Cost of electricity from new nuclear power plants is in the neighborhood of wind power, but without the subsidies.
I also took this picture in Kansas:
I don’t complain about oil wells because I have a car. Well, not much anyway. I complain about most anything when the mood hits me.
Enercon has built the biggest windmill in the world, near Emden, Germany. It’s over 600 feet tall. Each blade is close to 200 feet long.
http://www.enercon.de/www/en/windblatt.nsf/vwAnzeige/…
It will take around 100 of these to match the output of the GRDA coal power plant at Chouteau, Oklahoma, and about 250 of them to produce as much electricity as the nuclear power plant in Russellville, Arkansas.
Micro Air Vehicle
This 14 lb Honeywell autonomous “Micro Air Vehicle” received FAA certification to fly in U.S. Airspace. It can go 50 mph and over 10,000 feet high.
International GPS
GPS is a satnav (satellite navigation) system launched and operated by the U.S. The positioning signals are available free, worldwide to anybody.
Europe is planning its own satnav system, called Galileo. Their plans got a pretty big boost when President Bush made known his plans to shut down the GPS system to everyone but the U.S. military in the event of an emergency.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7120041.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7244553.stm
Some people (airline pilots, for example) may be concerned that Bush’s idea of an emergency may not be the same as their own, and would prefer that he not shut down the GPS system.
Russia has its own satnav system, called Glonass. It was working the 1990’s, but lost some satellites. It’s sort of working again, and should be fully functional in a year or two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS
China has a satnav system in the works that is based on geostationary satellites. It will require fewer satellites, but will be limited to about 10 meters accuracy and will be limited to 70°E to 140°E, and from 5°N to 55°N.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beidou_navigation_system
The GPS, Galileo, and Glonass systems use satellites in orbits much lower than those of geostationary satellites.
So far, the U.S. GPS system is the only one complete, fully functional, and with high accuracy.
Eliza
I have read quite a few stories about people having intimate internet chat conversations with attractive members of the opposite sex, only to find out they were tricked. That pretty 23-year-old girl may in fact be a 50-year-old man with a dirty t-shirt and a beer gut.
Now, that young lady you’re talking to might not even be human. She could be a collection of zeros and ones — a program designed to collect your personal information.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071214-hot-sexy-…
It’s just like Eliza.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
Open Government
The Open Government Act of 2007, among other things, makes it possible for internet “publishers” to get “freedom of information” documents from the government without paying or suing, at least most of the time.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071220-foia-refo…
Although the Bush administration is not known for cooperating with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), he signed the bill. However, in the budget he submitted to Congress a few days ago, he moved the office responsible for the FOIA requests from the National Archives to the Justice Department.
When someone requests information under the Freedom of Information Act, and the government refuses to comply, they can sue to get the information. The Justice Department represents the government in these suits. This happens a lot.
So some people think it’s a bad idea for the Justice Department to be responsible for the FOIA requests, and that it effectively kills the new Open Government Act.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
It seems to me that the law should be enforced whether it’s by the National Archives or the Justice Department.
Science Breakthroughs
Here are Science Magazine’s top 10 scientific breakthroughs for 2007:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071220-science-m…
And in case you were asleep the year before, here are the top ten from 2006:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061227-8508.html
Who Needs Fingerprints?
The FBI is spending a billion dollars or so on a new biometric database containing records of U.S. and foreign citizens. They should be able to positively identify people using cameras from some distance, using iris and facial identification. Old fashioned fingerprints and palm patterns will be also be used. I expect that DNA records will be in the database.
Some privacy fans don’t like the idea of a giant biometrics database. But the FBI used the word “terrorism” in their justification, so the funding and implementation is a done deal.
When asked of the privacy aspects of the new database, Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, replied “We don’t need any stinking privacy!” Or maybe I just made that up.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
A Tale of Three Stores
CompUSA has essentially gone out of business. Last February they started closing stores, and Over the past month or two they have closed most of their remaining stores and sold the remains of their business to Tiger Direct, or Systemax. The CompUSA name is now owned by Tiger Direct.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stori…
CompUSA started business in 1984 as Soft Warehouse. In 1991 they changed their name to CompUSA and went public. By 1998 CompUSA was the largest computer retailer in the world, with sales of $5.8 billion. In 1999, sales grew to $6.2 billion, but the company lost $53 million.
In 2000, CompUSA was bought by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú for $800 million. (He had already purchased 14 percent of the company.) In 2008, Tiger Direct bought the CompUSA brand, web site, and 16 stores for $30 million.
Circuit City lost over $200 million in the quarter ending last November. Last March they fired their best sales people, replacing them with cheaper new-hires. When that didn’t work out so well, they paid all their executive vice presidents a million dollar bonus. Their senior vice presidents get a measly $600,000 bonus. These bonuses are to keep the vice presidents from quitting. I suspect they’d be better off putting those unemployed top sales people into the VP spots.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_arc…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
Best Buy is making more than a billion dollars a year, after-tax profit. They must be doing something different.
Fake Steve
A guy from Forbes writes a really funny blog pretending to be Steve Jobs. Here’s one of his latest:
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/02/andrea-jung-is-ma…
Apple, or maybe the real Steve (Jobs, not Webster), doesn’t seem to like this blog. They offered the author $250,000 to stop writing it. The author told them that that would go against his ethics, violate free speech, destroy civilization as we know it, and that sort of thing. Then they offered him $300,000. Then $400,000. Then $500,000. He turned them down. Maybe I should make fun of Steve Jobs.
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/breakfast-with-ap…
A guy in Morocco named Fouad tried something similar. He set up a Facebook account claiming to be the brother of the King of Morocco. Instead of offering him half a million dollars, a Moroccan court charged Fouad 10,000 dirhams and sent him to jail for three years. And I never even knew there was a King of Morocco.
http://www.eitb24.com/new/en/B24_87778/life/ON-FACEBOOK…
4 Gig Memory
A lot of new laptops and desktops come with 4 gigabytes of memory now. I recently increased the memory on my computer from 2 gigabytes to 4. But Windows thinks I only have 3.25 megabytes. That turns out to be true for most 4gb 32-bit XP and Vista machines. Here’s why:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dcook/archive/2007/03/25/who-ate-…
Cluster Ballooning
In 1982, a guy named Larry took off with a lawn chair and a bunch of weather balloons, flying around southern California. He launched from San Pedro with a large bottle of pop, milk jugs full of water for ballast, a pellet gun, a portable CB radio, an altimeter, and a camera. He ended up caught in some power lines in Long Beach. The story is true, and has been flying around the internet for years with various embellishments.
http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/walters.asp
Now “cluster ballooning” is a semi-legitimate sport!
http://www.clusterballoon.org/intro/intro.html
Terrorists are Everywhere!
Last month the TSA narrowly avoided disaster when they stopped a 5-year-old boy from blowing up an airliner in Seattle.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/09/tsa-searches-detai…
Messenger
The Messenger spacecraft made one of its flybys of Mercury last month. The 2441 lb spacecraft was launched on August 3, 2004. On January 14, Messenger passed to within 125 miles of the Mercury. It will make passes by Mercury in October 2008 and September 2009 before it enters Mercury orbit March, 2011.
http://www.planetary.org/news/2008/0110_MESSENGER_Set…
Smartphone Patent
Minerva Industries is a company in California. As far as I can tell, they don’t produce anything, sell anything, or invent anything. They acquire patents and sue people for a living.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark office, in its infinite wisdom, has issued a patent to Minerva Industries for “a mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files.” Never mind that this applies to most of the cell phones already on the market today.
Minerva immediately sued Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, AT&T, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, Samsung, and a bunch of others. Actually, they filed the lawsuit the day before the patent was awarded. They had to refile it at 12:01 a.m. the next morning.
Patents are intended to protect people who invent things. They are intended to promote creativity and technological development. Issuing a patent like this for existing technology to a company like Minerva doesn’t quite accomplish this. I think Thomas Jefferson had something a bit different in mind when he came up with the patent system.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080124/16382062.shtml
In an unrelated European case, Nokia was sued for 12 billion euros for patent infringement, again by a company that doesn’t make anything.
http://www.informationweek.com/software/showArticle.j…
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080205-hunting-t…
In other patent brilliance, IBM has applied for a patent for offering restaurant customers rewards for waiting for their tables. It doesn’t require a computer. It’s really nothing novel. It just suggests that a restaurant record the waiting time for its customers and then give them a free meal or something after they’ve accumulated so many minutes. This is simple, trivial, obvious to see for anybody outside the U.S. Patent Office! I can’t believe IBM stoops this low.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1…
NSA and U.S. Networks
It used to be against the law for the NSA and the CIA to spy on U.S. citizens in the U.S. I’m not sure whether that law is still a law, but it is now socially acceptable for the CIA and NSA to spy inside the U.S. This is to stop terrorism, drug dealing, and music file sharing (which, according to the RIAA,are all the same…).
Last month the President ordered the NSA and “other intelligence agencies” to monitor all computer networks of all federal agencies. I would agree that at least some of the networks should be monitored. But I would prefer that the FBI handle domestic spying since they are not encouraged to use the ever-popular “aggressive interrogation” techniques.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
Fun in New York
A lady from England named Yvonne decided to take a Christmas vacation to New York with her two daughters, Gemma (15) and Katie (13). After they arrived, Yvonne caught a case of pneumonia and went to the hospital. The daughters were hauled off to an orphanage and were not allowed to leave, even to visit their mother.
When Yvonne found out, she left the hospital despite her pneumonia, and retrieved her daughters. Gemma and Katie did not enjoy their 30 hours in the orphanage.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7206570.stm
After her ordeal, the New York Administration for Children’s Services was nice enough to send Yvonne a letter saying that she is under investigation for child neglect. A lady from the Administration for Children’s Services said that the letter was just a form letter.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/01/25/2008-01-25_b…
Alfred E. Neuman for President
When I started this Junkmail, I decided not discuss the presidential candidates. I told my eldest toddler that the one sure thing is one year from now, I’ll be complaining about the President. But, I bet you can tell there’s a “but” coming.
I took a look at the candidates’ web sites. It’s against my better judgement to donate money to a politician. It’s a little like giving whiskey to a drunk. But nevertheless, I did try to donate $1. They wouldn’t take my money. Whew!
When you go to the web sites for Obama and Clinton, you are greeted with a form for your email address and zip code (and name for Clinton’s.) McCain’s site comes up with the home page immediately.
McCain’s site seems a little noisy and cluttered, but that’s just my impression. Clinton’s site has some fundamental technical problems, such as not handling large fonts, using a large “Submit” button instead of something that looks better, etc. Obama’s site has a good color scheme rather than a mess of unrelated colors and contrasts.
The Obama and Clinton sites both have “Terms of Service,” which seems pretty odd on a political campaign site. Obama’s TOS seems pretty straightforward, but Clinton’s are really funny. And long! It looks like it was written by a Washington bureaucrat.
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/blog/terms/
I don’t even have to register in order to be bound by the TOS, according them. It’s hard to believe that they paid some lawyer to write this four-page contract and expect people to read it. Or maybe nobody at the campaign read it. Then they might have used a little common sense.
Here is a list of taboos in the TOS. “The Service” refers to the web site and online tools. These restrictions are pretty obvious, although I personally take exception to the prohibition against Junkmail in number 11.
1. Upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content or otherwise use the Service in a manner that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, pornographic, obscene, or libelous;
2. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content or otherwise use the Service in a manner that is hateful or discriminatory against any individual or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or disability, or promotes physical harm or injury against any individual or group;
3. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content or otherwise use the Service in a manner that is harmful to minors in any way;
4. impersonate any person or entity, or falsely states or otherwise misrepresents your identity or affiliation with another person or entity;
5. stalk or harass another person or entity;
6. employ misleading email addresses, forged headers, or other manipulated identifiers;
7. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships
8. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content or otherwise use the Service in a manner that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any party;
9. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content or otherwise use the Service in a manner that is invasive to another’s privacy or includes personal or identifying information about another person, without that person’s explicit consent;
10. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content or otherwise use the Service in a manner that violates, intentionally or unintentionally, the rules of the Federal Election Commission or any other applicable federal, state, or local laws, or to promote or provide instructional materials about illegal activities;
11. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes,” or any other form of commercial solicitation;
12. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that contains software viruses or any other computer codes, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment;
13. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content or use the Service to interfere with or disrupt the Service, or servers or networks connected to the Service;
14. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content or use the Service to collect or store personal data about other users for commercial purposes or engage in commercial activities, without the Committee’s prior approval.
And in case this doesn’t cover it, “In addition, you shall be subject to any posted guidelines or rules applicable to such Service, which may be posted from time to time.”
Oops. I missed this: “You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, exploit, or otherwise use any Content, in full or part, or any use or access to the Service, without the express written consent of the Committee.”
Pretend you didn’t read this stuff.
Dead Domains
What happens when you let an internet domain name expire? It seems that it would just go away, but that’s not what happens.
Old domains get snatched up. Almost all the dot-coms, and the majority of the .nets are immediately re-registered by people. There are a few companies doing this in a big way with lots of servers trying to snatch up every expired domain name. These companies are called Drop Catchers.
Most of these people put a bunch of Google ads on their newly acquired domains, then see if they make money for five days. That’s because there is a five day grace period before you have to pay for a new domain name. This is called Domain Tasting. Also, during the 5-day grace period, the new domain owners may email the old owner and ask if they’d like to purchase their domain name back.
If the domains make money, or if the old owner expresses an interest, the new owners pay for the registration. If not, they are cancelled.
I let a domain I wasn’t using expire, and I was surprised to see that someone had registered it. A few days later, I got an email asking if I’d like to buy it. I didn’t. A few weeks later I looked again, and that domain was available.
Google is planning to put the brakes on Domain Tasting by not allowing Adsense ads for the first five days after a domain is registered.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?a…
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-…
Cell Phones and Polls
Political pollsters generally call people on land lines because it’s easier to get the phone numbers, and because cell phones cost money to talk on. This means their polls do not include the opinions of cell phone users who don’t have landlines.
They say this is not a problem, and back it up with data. “Analysis of two separate nationwide studies shows that including interviews conducted by cell phone does not substantially change any key survey findings.”
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=391
I disagree. This data shows some pretty distinct demographic differences between those with and without landlines, age being the biggest. And, it benefits the polling organizations to persuade us that they don’t need to survey cell phone users.
However, I am happy for them not to call cell phones for surveys. I might get kind of irritated if I was driving along and had to put down my drink or sandwich or shaver or something just to answer a survey.
Privacy Board
What Privacy Board?
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/02…
Saudi Flirting
If you find yourself in Saudi Arabia, you should refrain from flirting. This week 57 young men were arrest for wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, at the request of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7260314.stm
It could have been worse. There could have been a man and a woman caught sitting next to one another.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east…
Sea-Based X-Band Radar
What do you get if you put a giant radar system on top of a semi-submersible oil platform? The Sea-Base X-Band Radar system (SBX-1).
It’s used to detect ballistic missiles headed for the U.S., and probably does a little satellite tracking on the side. They built it in Houston, drove it around in the Gulf for a month or two, made some improvements, and put it on a giant transport ship (the Blue Marlin) headed for Pearl Harbor.
From Pearl Harbor, the SBX-1 went to Adak, Alaska under its own power. Last summer, it came back to Pearl Harbor for repairs and upgrades. From Pearl Harbor it will go (or has gone) back to Adak. There is a crew of about 85 people on board.
Here it is anchored near Adak.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/sbx-program.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-based_X-band_Radar
Vista Fix
Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. It fixes some of the incompatibilities of other applications — it prevents them from starting!
These programs are prevented from running under Vista SP1:
BitDefender AV or Internet Security 10
Fujitsu Shock Sensor 2.1.0.0
Jiangmin KV Antivirus 10
Jiangmin KV Antivirus 2008
Trend Micro Internet Security 2008
Zone Alarm Security Suite 7.1.078
Some others just have limited functionality.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935796
A lot of people don’t want to move to Windows Vista, for a variety of reasons. More than 75,000 of them (including me) have signed a petition asking Microsoft to allow XP to be continued to be sold on new computers.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1294412345
http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/
Microsoft responded with this pearl of non-information: “We’re aware of it, but are listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs.”
Filtering File Sharing
RIAA boss Cary said that internet filtering to prevent illegal file sharing may have to be done on end-user PCs. In other words, he is suggesting that everybody’s computer (except mine) be required to install software so the RIAA can determine what files can be uploaded and downloaded.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080207-riaa-boss…
Later on Cary said he wasn’t really serious about the proposal.
Border Protection
Does U.S. Customs have the authority to browse files on your computer and check your cell phone for recent calls when you come into the U.S.? That sort of thing used to require a search warrant, or at least probably cause.
Now Customs has invoked the triple whammy, saying they have to browse laptop hard drives and cell phones for “terrorism, drugs, child pornography, and other criminal activities.” They could have just said “criminal activity,” which includes the other three, but that doesn’t scare people nearly as much.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
In other news, U.S. intelligence officials have decided that massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as Second Life are being used by terrorists and criminals to move money, organize, and conduct corporate espionage. This sounds more than a little far-fetched to me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
Cocaine Town
The town of Bluefields, Nicaragua, population 45,000, is located in southeastern Nicaragua. One of the most important sources of income for the town is cocaine. They don’t produce it. The pick up abandoned cocaine shipments floating in the ocean.
When the Coast Guard or other law enforcement is closing in on a boat full of cocaine, one of the first things the drug smugglers do is throw out the drugs. The currents tend to float the bags of cocaine toward Bluefields, and fishermen occasionally bring in a catch of la langosta blanca, the white lobster, worth several years’ income and a new boat.
This is an interesting story about the town:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=272&…
Public Access Academia
Harvard University’s College of Arts and Science has gone Open Access. Not in software, but in the publishing of academic papers. The Harvard School of Medicine may follow suit.
I think it would be nice if we could all read academic papers without paying for the privilege, particularly when they are partially funded by our tax money. I get a little annoyed when Google shows me an abstract but some company wants money before I can read the paper.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080213-harvards-…
Swatting Houses
Police and SWAT teams around the country are so jumpy and anxious to nail a terrorist or file sharer, it was inevitable that people would start exploiting it.
For fun and games, some people are calling SWAT teams onto the residences of friends, acquaintances, and enemies, as pranks. I guess it’s pretty funny to see a dozen loaded guns pointed at someone who called you an unwashed bytehead, but if you get caught you’re likely to go to jail.
One 19-year-old guy named Randal got caught. He could be sentenced to a maximum of 18 years in prison. Hopefully they won’t go that far.
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_8291447
Pictures of Today!
It’s been a while since I sent out Junkmail, so I’ve accumulated a lot of photos. In December I drove across Australia. If you’re interested, you can see photos from that trip here:
The descent of Cradle Mountain, Tasmania, December 10:
Tasmanian Flowers:
A golf ball on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean:
The anchor chain of The Minnow:
Some Hawaiian fish:
These dolphins were at the cove on the Big Island of Hawaii where Captain Cook was killed.
The Minnow, from the top:
A turtle off Oahu:
Road Train, Australia:
Australian birds:
Australian railroad:
Australian grasshopper:
Australian ant:
Tasman Sea:
Classic signage:
Oahu waves:
The End
More Junkmail from Bob, #196
Check Facts
Do politicians lie?
Umm….
Is the mass media news accurate?
Umm….
http://www.mediamatters.org/items/200710300011
Cellular GPS
In 1996, the U.S. government required cell phone manufacturers to add GPS tracking capability to new cell phones. This saves lives. When you call 911 in Mayes County, Oklahoma, for example, they can see exactly where you are. A lot of areas don’t have the coverage yet, but they will.
Some privacy fans don’t like this, because the government can keep track of people’s movements. When the rule was enacted, the government promised they would never use this to catch lawbreakers. Now they changed their mind. (Does the government have a mind?)
They now use it to catch “drug traffickers, fugitives, and other criminal suspects.” They left out terrorists, child abusers, and file sharers. But it’s the “criminal suspects” part that worries some people. The government gets access to cell phone positions regularly without having to show probable cause, likelihood of a crime, etc.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…
Some people don’t like it, but I think it’s fine. However, I think if the government is tracking me, I should be able to call them up and say, “Where in the heck am I?!” or “How do I get to the nearest McDonalds?”When I rob a bank, I’ll just swap phones with one of my kids. It’s worth it to me to have the 911 capability.
The GPS in the phones only receives the time data from the GPS satellites. The software to convert that into location is not in most cell phones — yet.
Let me divert into a three sentence course on the Global Positioning System. The satellites keep time very accurately, to within a billionth of a second or so, and are even corrected for relativistic time distortions due to orbital speed and earth’s gravity. Each satellite’s position is known precisely. The GPS satellites broadcast their name and time. Even though the signals are going close to (or at?) the speed of light, it takes longer for the signal to go farther. By picking up the time from different known positions (the satellites), a GPS receiver can calculate your position by the difference in times received by the different GPS satellites. OK, five sentences.
The time data is forwarded to the cellular company’s computers where the position calculations are made. Nokia recently bought Navteq, a company that sells electronic mapping data. Maybe Nokia will have GPS maps in their phones soon.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2007/10/01/garmin-nokia-p…
Incidentally, if someone wants to track your phone, they can force your phone to transmit its location even after the power is turned off. You’ll have to pull the batteries or tie the phone to the tail of a bird if you want to sneak around.
You shouldn’t worry about the government losing the tracking information they gather on you. Governments are very good at keeping data secure.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071123-uk-govern…
A soon as better networking and software is available, cell phones won’t be necessary to track people driving. The multitude of traffic cameras will do just fine. A company in Texas recently caught a lot of flack for videoing people driving certain highways for market survey purposes. They captured the license tags with cameras, and then sent surveys to the drivers.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA10…
I don’t see a problem with this. They cameras are already there, and will presumably be used against me when I embark on my bank robbing career. If they were violating my privacy, personal space, and social harmony, I should have raised a ruckus some time ago.
Bad Science
It’s usually pretty obvious when a fake “scientific report” hits the news. Sometimes it is so bad you wonder how anybody let it into print.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071123-wifi-and-…
Tunguska
In 1908, a meteoroid (or part of a comet) was flying through space, minding its own business, when the planet Earth got in its way. This meteoroid was larger than normal, somewhere between 50 and 200 meters in diameter. The atmosphere put enough stress on the meteor that it exploded 15,000 to 30,000 feet above the ground, in Tunguska, north central Russia.
The resulting blast flattened trees over more than 800 square miles. The power of the blast was equivalent to a 10 to 20 megaton hydrogen bomb, sans radiation. Here’s a 10 megaton blast:
The people who lived in the area were largely illiterate peasants. People outside knew about the blast, but nobody from the Russian government, industry, or academia went to take a look. If they did, the records didn’t survive the Russian Revolution, the First World War, and the Russian Civil War.
In 1927 a mineralogist named Leonid led an expedition to the site. He thought he might be able to get some metals from the meteorite for industry. He circled the area of downed trees, whose bases were pointed to the center of the blast, and went to the center. There was no crater and no metal from a meteorite, because of the high altitude blast.
Leonid interviewed a lot of the locals. Here are some eyewitness reports. They’re pretty interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event#Selected_ey…
Here is an article about Leonid’s expedition:
http://www.unmuseum.org/kulik.htm
Leonid died from Typhus in a German prisoner of war camp in 1942. He didn’t find a crater in Tunguska, but there is now a crater on the moon named after him.
Harper County, Kansas
In 1873 a guy named Wiggins in Baxter Springs, Kansas met with two associates, Boyd and Homer, for a business discussion. They decided to organize a county.
At the time, a Kansas county needed 600 residents to be officially organized. Wiggins, Boyd, and Homer headed to Harper County, Kansas, and recruited trapper George Lutus on the way to be their guide. Harper County Kansas had no permanent residents at the time.
When they arrived, they built a town called Bluff City. It was not just any town, but a town with one building, 16×18 feet, and some buffalo bones representing the houses of the rest of the 641 “inhabitants” of the county. For names of the 637 fictitious people, they selected from the Cincinnati directory.
After their town was finished, they filed a petition with the governor of Kansas. He approved the census taker and other county officers, and organized the county as required by law. The new county received $40,000 in bonds, $25,000 for a courthouse and $15,000 for funding debt.
Eventually people realized that the Harper County was really empty, but by then Wiggins and his friends had cashed in the bonds in Missouri and disappeared.
In 1884, the Kansas State Legislature got around to an official investigation. They found out that the state had been, in fact, swindled. The state said, no, the county was swindled, and the county owed the $40,000. The Kansas Supreme Court agreed with the state.
Not surprisingly, some people in Harper County didn’t like that. When it came time to pay back the state, five hooded assailants kidnapped one of the county commissioners and locked him in a cave. They tried unsuccessfully to kidnap another commissioner, which would have kept the county from being able send off the debt payment. I wonder if most people in the county really knew who the hooded assailants were.
http://www.harpercounty.com/history.htm
Positron Beams
The antimatter equivalent of an electron is a positron. Positrons really do exist, along with other forms of antimatter — this is more than just Star Trek science. There is no parallel universe made up of antimatter, but antimatter does exist.
Last month North Carolina State University announced it has produced a low-energy positron beam that is more powerful (more positrons per second) than anybody has done before. This potentially has a lot of applications, depending on the economics.
NC State, the University of Michigan, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory were participated in the project with money from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
http://www.ncsu.edu/featured-stories/innovation-discove…
Obligatory Whining and Complaining
It wouldn’t be Junkmail without a little whining and complaining about copyright or patents, would it?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071119-overly-br…
I’m in New Zealand today. The copyright controversy is here too! Current New Zealand law makes it illegal to copy music from your own CDs to your iPod. But the alternative is to download music for your iPod from web sites not based in New Zealand.
The New Zealand legislature is considering change. The U.S. government and the U.S. recording industry are weighing in for more restrictive laws and stronger penalties for violators. To add fuel to the fire, the largest retail music seller in New Zealand went out of business last week. Music downloads are partially to blame, but it makes little difference whether they are legally purchased or not, since most legal music downloads are sold by companies outside New Zealand.
Internet – Tool for Terrorists
The U.S. government is looking at the internet as a tool for terrorists, in addition to light planes and music downloaders.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071128-congress-…
U.S. Homeland Security boss Michael said, “Terrorists can use the internet for communication. We are at war. The internet should be shut down. We are also looking into banning all telephone communications, since that will naturally be what terrorists fall back on when we pull the plug on the internet. Terrorists are everywhere.”
(Maybe I paraphrased that just a tad.)
Pictures of Today — New Zealand!
I’ve been in New Zealand for the past couple of weeks. Here are some pictures. If you are a glutton for punishment, you can find these and more at http://xpda.com/nz.
 Steam blowing out a mountain. |
 Pastorale |
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 Hobbit’s Hole |
 New Zealand Partly Black |
 New Zealand Yellowhead |
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 Flea Bay |
 Falls near Arthur Pass. |
 Pancake Rocks |
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 Ferns going to seed? |
 The old duck-on-the-roof photo |
 Kaka |
 A shell and a leaf. |
 A nosy weka. This guy bit me on the ear! |
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 Parakeet |
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 New Zealand Robin |
 Near Milford Sound |
 Near Milford Sound |
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 Mitre Peak |
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 A glacier bite |
 There are penguins in New Zealand. |
 There are sheep in New Zealand. |
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 Nugget Point |
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Fine
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