All three of you readers will be pleased to know I'm slowly recovering from my last period of nastiness, and so thought I'd do a little BOF post to mark it. Just a quote to pass on:

Any organization is like a tree full of monkeys, all on different limbs at different levels. Some monkeys are climbing up, some down. The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes.

This is a bit heavy for the usual post in this group, but it was sensible and timely -- especially about becoming infected after 30 minutes connection to the 'Net. The quote was clipped from one of my Techie blogs.

Perhaps you have a computer going off to college. Have you thought about the proper protection of that computer? The Internet Storm Center reported today that an un-patched, unprotected computer will become infected in under 30 minutes after connection to the internet (and probably faster on a college network).

Since Stacy (youngest daughter) is returning to collect the end of next week, I've spent some time protecting her computer (she has a desktop and a laptop). Before she leaves, both will get:

* Windows XP SP2 Update
* Windows Office Update
* Firewall enabled (Windows and ZoneAlarm)
* Automatic Updates (set for download and install)
* Anti-virus current with hourly update checks, configured to check all incoming files
* Anti-spyware/adware check
* Security cable lock
* A printout of my "Home Computer Checklist" at http://www.digitalchoke.com/daynotes/reports/home-checklist.php

And I will spend some time teaching her how to keep protected, along with email and phone reminders while she is gone. I suggest that you might consider the same protection for the computers in your life.

Grandma says ...

The other day I went up to a local Christian bookstore and saw a honk if you love Jesus bumper sticker. I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting, so I bought the sticker and put in on my bumper.

I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good He is and I didn't notice that the light had changed. It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn't honked, I'd never have noticed.

I found that LOTS of people love Jesus. Why, while I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and when he leaned out of his window and screamed, "for the love of God, GO! GO!" What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus.

Everyone started honking! I just leaned out of my window and started waving and smiling at all these loving people. I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love. There must have been a man from Florida back there because I heard him yelling something about a sunny beach...

I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air. When I asked my teenage grandson in the back seat what that meant, he said that it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something. Well, I've never met anyone from Hawaii, so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign back. My grandson burst out laughing, why even he was enjoying this religious experience.

A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me. I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed. So, I waved to all my sisters and brothers grinning, and drove on through the intersection.

I noticed I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again and I felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after all the love we had shared, so I slowed the car down, leaned out of the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away.

Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!

Clipped from a blog:

Now here is something truly terrifying. Until I read this article, I wasn't aware that life-support equipment in hospitals was running Windows. Apparently, the rules changed eight years ago. Instead of running a traditional embedded OS, heath-care equipment makers were permitted to start using commercial off-the-shelf operating systems. Incredibly, many, perhaps most, of them elected to use Windows. I can't think of a worse choice.

Consider the desiderata for an OS for a life-support device. Simplicity, because reliability goes hand-in-hand with simplicity. That implies a command-line interface or character-mode GUI, because graphics-mode GUIs are crash-prone. The last thing in the world you want is an everything-including-the-kitchen-sink OS like Windows. Five nines reliability goes without saying, if not six nines. The OS should never under any circumstances crash except as a result of a hardware failure. We're talking about equipment for which a failure may cost a life, after all. Immunity from viruses, Trojans, and worms should also go without saying. Otherwise, respirators and other life-sustaining equipment may fail the next time a worm rages through the world's networks.

As though choosing Windows wasn't bad enough, apparently the equipment makers refuse to allow hospitals to apply Microsoft patches. And who can blame them? If a Microsoft patch screws things up and someone dies, it's the equipment maker who's going to be sued, not Microsoft. In fact, the Microsoft license agreement specifically relieves them from liability. If I recall correctly, at least one Microsoft EULA that I actually took the time to read through specifically stated that the software wasn't to be used for life-support equipment.

Of course, eight years ago there were fewer choices available in commercial off-the-shelf OSs. Linux wasn't sufficiently developed to serve in such a role, and for all I know it isn't sufficiently developed today. But surely one of the Unix OSs available eight years ago would have been a better choice.

What I do know is that I wouldn't want to be on a respirator running Windows XP.

Talk about putting on the frighteners...

MY WAR - Fear And Loathing In Iraq
http://cbftw.blogspot.com/2004/08/men-in-black.html

This is a link I picked up from a blog I read regularly. First you get the CNN version of the attack, then you get what the soldier actually saw and did. OK- I know that these things can be faked or embroidered; but from what I read, it has a certain stamp of authenticity.

Someone said that War consists of long periods of intense boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer terror. That comes through in this story.

[from the New York Times]

What they were feeling was a blast of electromagnetic energy that causes a great deal of pain but does no lasting harm. That, in essence, is the point of a new generation of nonlethal weapons being developed by the military: to enforce and do battle without killing, or in the words of the Defense Department, "to incapacitate personnel or materiel, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel and undesired damage to property and the environment." Along with the Active Denial System, the military is testing bullets that disintegrate in mid-air, propelling their nonlethal payload to their targets, slimy goo that stops people in their tracks and, eventually, guns that shoot pulses of plasma energy that stun and disorient.

In an era when the American military increasingly finds itself in situations where civilians and combatants can be difficult to distinguish between, and when the line between soldiering and policy has blurred, nonlethal weapons could prove useful. At the same time, such nonlethals might be abused, like any other weapon.

One of the classic SF crowd-control weapons was the 'tangle gun' -- this shot a stream of sticky strands that wrapped themselves around hands and feet, stuck together, than contracted to immobilise. The way things are going, as outlined above, I wonder whether this type of thing is already being tested in some secret lab somewhere.

Reading an article in the New York Times on the subject, I note that the US has recorded 50 deaths through the use of these weapons since 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/national/18TASER.html?hp

NAZARETH, Pa. — As the sun set on June 24, something snapped in Kris J. Lieberman, an unemployed landscaper who lived a few miles from this quiet town. For 45 minutes, he crawled deliriously around a pasture here, moaning and pounding his head against the weedy ground.

Eventually the police arrived, carrying a Taser M26, an electric gun increasingly popular with law enforcement officers nationwide. The gun fires electrified barbs up to 21 feet, hitting suspects with a disabling charge. The officers told Mr. Lieberman, 32, to calm down. He lunged at them instead. They fired their Taser twice. He fought briefly, collapsed and died.

Mr. Lieberman joined a growing number of people, now at least 50, including 6 in June alone, who have died since 2001 after being shocked. Taser International, which makes several versions of the guns, says its weapons are not lethal, even for people with heart conditions or pacemakers. The deaths resulted from drug overdoses or other factors and would have occurred anyway, the company says.

But Taser has scant evidence for that claim. The company's primary safety studies on the M26, which is far more powerful than other stun guns, consist of tests on a single pig in 1996 and on five dogs in 1999. Company-paid researchers, not independent scientists, conducted the studies, which were never published in a peer-reviewed journal. Taser has no full-time medical director and has never created computer models to simulate the effect of its shocks, which are difficult to test in human clinical trials for ethical reasons...

...The few independent studies that have examined the Taser have found that the weapon's safety is unproven at best. The most comprehensive report, by the British government in 2002, concluded "the high-power Tasers cannot be classed, in the vernacular, as `safe.' " Britain has not approved Tasers for general police use.

But realising that the US is a country where all "law enforcement officers" are armed and will draw their weapon at the slightest provocation, I wonder whether the Taser is the lesser evil; I would much rather be shocked than perforated. The article states that a lower power model is now being promoted.

I guess we should be thankful that NZ, like the UK, still won't routinely arm their police, and require a report when a baton is drawn or pepper spray used. But I do have sympathy for the police when they have to deal with whackos and drug-crazed people who have lost the capacity to understand the word "stop" -- especially when strictures on manning levels sends officers out into the urban jungle alone -- without even any backup.

The Observer has an interesting article: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,9950,1255851,00.html
Tim Adams repeated the American experiment of eating McDonalds food exclusively for a period.

Some comments from the article:

I'm reminded of the recent government obesity report that included anecdotal evidence of a family who had asked for a Big Mac and fries to be liquidised so they could feed it to their baby.

On recent visits to America, I have been surprised to see, sitting in hotels how many people order Coke with their breakfast. This morning, though, I can begin to see the point of it. It seems to clear my head, gets rid of some of the tiredness behind the eyes.

I find I have written only two things in my notebook. 'You are what you eat' and, underneath it, 'I feel like shite'.

Personally, I've always had the feeling that the desirability of drinking Coke while eating, is that's where they put the antidote to the burger.

[snip]
On an average weekday, we're seeing over 15,000 new weblogs created per day. That means that a new weblog is created somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds.

Of course, not all weblogs that are created are actively updated. Even though abandonment rates are high - our analyses show that about 45% of the weblogs we track have not had a post in over 3 months we are still tracking a significant population of people who are posting each day. The number of conversations are increasing. We're seeing over 275,000 individual posts every day. That means that on average, more than 3 blogs are updated every second.
[/snip]

Now THAT'S food for thought. If so many people are posting, how many viewers are reading their posts? How many are reading this one?? I must be casting pearls before a very limited universe of swine... In fact, some of this deathless prose I copy across to my Icarus Kronikle Daynotes to give it a wider audience (over 3000 unique URLS accessing per month)

The problem with the current trend of cellphone design is that they keep getting smaller -- and smaller -- and smaller... it's getting more difficult to find ear and mouth with one, let alone the old trick with steam-driven handsets of clamping it between the ear and shoulder as an instant hands-free ploy. [Although I must confess that, due to the configuration of my shoulders, the handset would slide inexorably off said shoulder, needing a frantic dive to catch it before it reached the end of its dive and smash into the desk/bench etc.]

So this geezer comes up with the idea of producing a handset that would plug into your mobile and let you have the best of both worlds (story: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/garden/08NOTE.html -- if you haven't visited the NY Times before, you'll have to register --free). Imagine pulling one of these out when you're sitting in the 9am train to Manchester and your mobile rings. Instant perplexity and envy from all those in visual range. Much more elegant than Captain James T. Kirk flipping open his communicator; or even further back when Dick Tracy the Ace Detective spoke into his watch...

Current Mood: cheerful