Recently in Computers Category

I was recently having a conversation with a friend who makes his
living as an IT support person for Microsoft systems. I casually mentioned that I use Linux at home and acknowledged that there are some trade-offs. The response was that, well, maybe Linux is O.K. if all I have to do is a little word processing and web surfing. I did not pursue the discussion, but it did cause me to reflect a little bit, particularly since this was a response from a person who has forgotten more about computers than I will ever know.

Linux meets all my basic computing needs: email, web surfing, downloads, word processing, a little basic spreadsheet use. But it goes far beyond that, offering for free an array of powerful software that I could never afford to buy in commercial versions. It's not even a question of my being cheap (which maybe I am), it is a question of come software simply being out of reach. With Linux, I get an array of databases, a web server, an email server, an ftp server, image and video editing tools, and programming tools, to name a few, that would be both difficult and expensive for me to obtain for Windows. All of these are tightly integrated into a highly flexible and customizable operating system. One of the great blessings of my Linux system is that I can get to all of my data, all of the time, anywhere there is an Intenet connection, without being required to store all of my data on someone else's giant server. And with Linux, while I know a problem may be difficult to fix, I also know that it is almost always fixable.

I do run Windows occasionally in a virtual machine (which comes free with Linux). I need Internet Explorer to connect remotely to my server at work and I use WordPerfect for work-related word processing. I also do have good Free Software quivalents for TurboTax or iTunes (for my iPhone). Otherwise, my home computer time is usually strictly Linux.

My first step in writing this piece was to compile some of my Likes and Dislikes about Linux in tabular form, which as a final step, I have listed as follows:

Once again the time has come to upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type. As with most software upgrades, this one is more a matter of vanity than practicality. Version 4 was perfectly functional and more than satisfied my modest needs, but as with so much of human life, the restless desire for something new, the itch for the latest thing, invariably impels me toward an upgrade. (To be fair, the new interface is quite elegant and easy to use, although some have suggested that it is an unduly close imitation of rival WordPress.) Naturally, having insisted on upgrading, I fully expect my customizations to be lost, my feeds to break, and my plugins to be obsolete, so that I will be obliged to engage in a new round of creative destruction as I try to restore the meager design elements of my blog. So gentle reader, I ask that you bear with me patiently until we return to the predictable routine of ordinary blogging.

I wish I could remember who first observed that modern life has endowed with thousands of new ways to communicate and nothing more to say. At this moment, however, it seems particularly apropos. I finally decided to integrate my blog pages with the notes feed in my Facebook account. Some weeks ago, I displayed my twitter feed on my blog page. I have four private email accounts -- my own domain, gmail, yahoo, and hotmail -- plus a Google Wave account. I keep a list of public bookmarks on Del.icio.us. I am connected and integrated on my home computer, my laptop, my blog platform, and &mdash God help me — my iPhone, which I tote around from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, and not because I am making phone calls. I have word processors, CMS systems, text editors, version control systems, and email clients. True, I get a certain perverse pleasure out of setting all this up and keeping it running; it's a hobby. But to what end? Shakespeare was able to accomplish more with a quill pen in a day than the Internet in all its digital glory will in a lifetime.

I have been a big fan of Gretchen Rubin ever since reading her slim biography of Winston Churchill and her somewhat less slim biography of John F. Kennedy. At present, I am about half way through her latest book: The Happiness Project, in which she chronicles a year spent thinking and trying ways to live a happier life. One thing which brought Rubin more happiness was starting a blog, also called the Happiness Project. Given that one of Rubin's principles of happiness could be paraphrased as the journey is more important than the destination (though the destination counts!), it is not surprising that one of the ways she found greater happiness was through her blog.

Information Cards, also referred to by the moniker InfoCards or the Microsoft brand name Cardspace, have been a long-promised (and little implemented) addition to the identity and security landscape for some time now. The idea is essentially that they would work like a personal digital ID card that would securely sign you in to any site you to which you belong. Rather than memorizing dozens of usernames and passwords, you could just plug in your handy digital ID and 'Open Sesame." In general, Infocards are touted as being more secure than passwords because they are highly encrypted. To keep your card safe, you would only need to know one password, stored locally on your computer or thumb drive, so that your co-worker or other random person couldn't pirate your card. The piece of software used to store and deploy InfoCards is known as an Identity Selector; there is a new one available that works with Linux and Firefox 3.5 called openinfocard.

I have just read the first of Cory Doctorow's short stories in Overclocked, which are available for download under a Creative Commons license. It has the virtues, among others, of a) being short, b) illustrating an important point about a fundamental freedom, c) alluding to George Orwell, d) relying on the common programming concept of recursion, and e) availing itself of an innovative legal structure for marketing and distribution purposes. All in all, it's "Science Fiction" in the best senses of both terms.

A minor postscript to Outliers is that it is the first Amazon Kindle book I have read, although I read it not on a Kindle but on an iPhone. All in all, it is delightful to have a book always at hand. The book was quite readable, and really my only reservation is that charts did not always reproduce well on the iPhone. In addition to Amazon, I am heartened to see that high quality e-books continue to be published by ereader and others.

I have long thought Caterina Fake, author of Caterina.net and one of the participants in the development of flickr, to be one of the more literate and innovate minds on the 'net, so I am very interested in learning more about her new venture, Hunch.

Microsoft has a Password Checker and tips on generating passwords. However, it seems to me that a better, easier, simpler way to generate secure passwords is Diceware (but you need five dice).

Short of the unhealthy interest of a three letter government agency, in which case you probably have bigger problems than worrying about whether your data is encrypted, there are still good reasons to consider a few simple measures to ensure privacy in communications. Many of us are familiar with the by now somewhat shop-worn point that people who still use the postal service tend to prefer putting their personal letters and bill payments into envelopes rather than pasting them on a postcard for general review. Ironically, perhaps, the same people who would hesitate to have the postman reviewing their medical report are quite happy to leave their unencrypted email to reside on the servers of the Google or Yahoo corporations after it bounces halfway around the world from one server to the next. In addition, all this unencrypted data quietly residing on the Internet can become easy prey should the heirs of J. Edgar Hoover cast the same suspicious eye on you that he cast on David Halberstam and Martin Luther King, Jr. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software).

Aside from whether the jack-booted thugs are on their way to come a knocking at the door, imagine the boss at your fortune 500 company has sent out a global email trumpeting the latest way to make money off of sub-prime mortgages, and you decide to send a snarky comment to your best friend about the progression of your boss's Alzheimer's. Then you hit the "reply all" button and realize that it is time to polish up your resume. Alternatively, if snarky remark had been encrypted, only best friend could read it, no matter where it is was sent.

And who has not received an email from the ex Foreign Minister of Nigeria explaining that a small advance contribution can liberate millions of untraceable funds, eighty percent of which will be turned over to you? Laughable that anyone would fall for such a transparent scam, but wouldn't it be reassuring to be confident that emails from your friends really are from your friends and not from the ex Foreign Minister of Nigeria pretending to be your friend. By requiring each person to have a unique private key, encryption reliably identifies the sender of a a signed or encrypted email.

Public key encryption requires a public key and a private key. In sending a message, the sender uses his private key and the recipient's public key to encrypt the message. Upon receipt, the recipient decrypts the message with the private key corresponding to his public key. While the public key, as the name implies, is widely circulated, the private key is held only by the owner, kept secret, and generally protected by a password. Verifying the identity of a key owner generally depends initially upon personal verification between users, but ultimately upon a "web of trust" built up as users' sign each other's keys. It seems to be generally conceded that used carefully, public key encryption systems such as GPG are capable of withstanding all but the most determined of institutional attacks, but that special care is necessary to create strong passwords, guard private keys, and verify relationships in the web of trust. See http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=412 .

Although only in limited use by private individuals, high quality public key cryptography is widely available to the public for free, supplemented by low cost refinements that increase its convenience. Among these are PGP/GPG (supplemented as needed by the public hushmail implementation) and SSL certificates providing S/MIME encryption.

Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG)

My preferred standalone email client is Mozilla's Thunderbird, which provides for encrypting email using either GPG or S/MIME. Instructions on downloading and installing gnugpg.exe, creating and importing keys, and installing the Thunderbird Enigmail add-on in order to use GPG can be found at http://enigmail.mozdev.org/documentation/quickstart-ch1.php#id2532629 .

After downloading and installing gnupg.exe, you need to open a command window from Start>Run; type "cmd" in the "Run" window and hit return.

Use the "cd" command to change directories to c:\\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG, then

On the command line, type, as needed,

gpg --help to get help
gpg --gen-key to create your public and private keys
gpg --import to import previously generated keys

Although there are a host of other command line options for gpg, the most useful functions for sending email will all be available within Thunderbird once Enigmail is installed.

After downloading Enigmail, one may wish to take advantage of one of the other features of GPG, which is its ability to verify the authenticity of downloaded software. To do so, first download and import the Enigmail public key as follows:

C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\gpg --import enigmail-key.asc

Then, download the signature file from the website and the Enigmail file itself, and run

C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\gpg --verify enigmail-0.95.7-tb+sm.xpi.asc enigmail-0.95.7-tb+sm.xpi

Enigmail, which is simply a Thunderbird .xpi file, is easily installed by anyone familiar with Mozilla simply by opening the extension in Thunderbird from Tools>Add-on>Install, otherwise see the more detailed instructions referenced above. Once installed, the new buttons on the Thunderbird toolbar allow you to easily encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify signatures on your mail. (One note: mail signed with GPG should be sent in text format rather than HTML).

Hushmail

So far this solution works fine for desktops and laptops where one can install GPG, but increasingly people are using cellphones to send email to and fro over easily intercepted wireless connections. Although PGP Corporation (http://www.pgp.com) experimented briefly with a PGP client for the Palm Pilot, in general I have not found support for GPG on mobile mail clients. However, increasingly cellphones also have web browsing capability, and one method of addressing the problem of unencrypted email can be found at http://www.hushmail.com. Hushmail is essentially a web-based email server with GPG installed; it lets you create a free account and send encrypted email. For $50 (or more) a year, it will also let you integrate your hushmail account with your desktop or laptop GPG account, so you can access your hushmail account from the web on your cellphone, laptop, or desktop, and also from Thunderbird on your laptop or desktop.

S/MIME

An alternative to GPG is to create a personal SSL certificate, have it signed by a recognized certificate authority, and use it for encryption and signature of email. Depending on the purpose of the certificate, the process of creation can sometimes be a bit involved, and Certificate Authorities will sometimes charge a hefty fee to issue a signed certificate. (The signature from a trusted authority ensures a recipient of your email, for example, that you really are who you say you are. However, there is at least one good free Certificate Authority -- CACert.org.) CACert.org will issue a certificate suitable for email use for six months at no charge, and all that is required is registration at their site and the completion of a few web forms.

Go to www.cacert.org and click "Root Certificate" and then click Root Certificate (PEM Format) and Intermediate Certificate (PEM Format). This will set up your Certificate Authorities for use by your browser and for export to your mail client. Click each of the three boxes to indicate that you trust the certificate. In Firefox, go to Options>Advanced>Encryption>View Certificates and click on Cacert Class 3 Root under Root CA. Click View>Export and save as an X.509 Certificate with chain. Repeat for CA Cert Signing Authority. In Thunderbird, go to Tools>Options>Advanced>Certificates>View Certificates>Authorities>Import and Import each of your saved Certificate Authorities, again checking off the boxes to indicate that they are trusted.

Now sign up for a free account at www.cacert.org (although as a public service organization, they do accept donations). Once your email is confirmed and your account set up, go to Client Certificates and follow the directions to set one up for your email. Click on your certificate to install it in your browser. (You will now be able to sign into cacert.org using your certificate rather than your password if you wish). In Firefox, you can now go to Options>Advanced>Certificates>View Certificates>Your Certificates>Backup and save your personal certificate as a PKCS12 file (filename.p12), and then reverse the process to import your certificate into Thunderbird. You now have a personal SSL certificate in Thunderbird that can be used to create an S/MIME signature or encrypt your email. Of course, before you can send anyone encrypted mail, you will need to have them send you a copy of their certificate.

Responses? Questions? Suggestions? Send me encrypted mail at williamson [dot] day [at] hushmail [dot] com.

GPG Public Key:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

mIsESa9tNAMEALhjNmAm3UT7CD2S9o101AJNw2pZf49pjuV7LKG4gG7ewOEwc5Ym

ZutDxO2MOqaC3WrnO8JbS1vrX/X/trCnF6JRbOgOSKq8wzWFhylKZ1zrvJdOVcsj

D5XyvqcTXuRxOcUa2lyIFNBW8KdKDiF0p9/1aZiYVYVMowEBmVmUtjIpAAQLtDsi

d2lsbGlhbXNvbi5kYXlAaHVzaG1haWwuY29tIiA8d2lsbGlhbXNvbi5kYXlAaHVz

aG1haWwuY29tPoiqBBADAgAUBhUICQoDAgYLCQgHCgQFAkmvbTQACgkQcFwBLeix

UqYhIAP+M+5IrzTAmq1coLUZ4RJXSlVoBl6mdGy2shoOhcgyHxJROyKIR3/0pZCh

3uA+95bfvDssTXHU1EIYaYoGfvS9e6djnivoTZbHGS+kwKvg+fmIvqiSBtf1usyU

GYBxTTaagOVf6nsqz73Fv9qjOxn+dys4rmQYYMGqH5T/HBFGEvqIRgQQEQIABgUC

Sa9tPAAKCRB6AvnnJ0y2KRqJAKCV2lmIyHULUUhul810yXV6AE1hxwCfWpDBjrUP

swxOeQqlCY5+CoK7sCKItwQfAwIAIQIHARcMgBGKYGVvwmNLnNqipzx6AvnnJ0y2

KQUCSa9tNAAKCRBwXAEt6LFSphZRA/wKWbc8ACrnzDcjYNd6s2hguz4JExYGR7D1

+/3eaMURY7C5BlKvUmJYoo2HREOsgMIYAACPvXxPaNwJTN4qrMySvYKMHOb9WOpW

IgfkC09nNpqEsaldBdj091pj7KRdqJp3L8FXBTBQXWoG9mAN5SwZbB8TBeY8CyQo

At1WJpcaYLkBCwRJr200AggAoNR4a/kQg8XBecS3lIUDDRI654TP1jO4ZfEpwlr5

qrax2dEkXHQvsShTjYmgHBA+3tqChL192ftiL2IsvlMApz+XuK/g0zA6raI6NiNG

b/hqK9aW/JwdEXcoC2RIybRqgri/IDmHp2yaYogLxHyPKBjdRZdXK6oqcr1oYvOo

02RKUQhLEin96TjMP04Suzbp6vDjzMqL2I42Ug47JemwC9pS+/pDCCAPX3q//dQN

r4NqQB37E9AT1yuJPLlTMglzkp9mBmR4UEQHjJQlf87xsh/RZnOFNlXFcrC0srv7

tFLRQeMSh7J6ZSlskukIrN6zuu5xhnFVJuNbeg3zNuS7twAEC4icBBgDAgAGBQJJ

r207AAoJEHBcAS3osVKmVTkD/2aDPPCHHoB95XaBeOCpGrViphsu4sjKA4kH4T3t

5YfWPsXtJD/vitYnQeehv/TIhRvfy9IXjjNLqCDXP5GLucFTnXDasnYp5Y03GONY

lCw7jBP39BWR8Zrh7BUjYb7Tyv0+7555nDLcsiHLhf0YBGX/IKzyqcxfQjZs0hwh

E9eM

=a0/2

-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

UPDATE 3/16/09: It looks as though you can use the gpg4win package to install a plugin for Outlook 2003. (Outlook 2007 is apparently not supported yet.) Their site is located at http://www.gpg4win.org/. I have not had a chance to try it out yet, but a detailed instruction manual is available at http://www.gpg4win.de/handbuecher/novices.html. People who have a serious need for encryption can also buy a commercial implementation of PGP (the commercial version of GPG) such as PGP Home at http://na.store.pgp.com/desktop_home.html for $99. For web-based mail, you probably need something like hushmail as a practical matter, and hushmail also appears to offer Outlook integration in the paid version. Mostly, objections to GPG are not that it is insecure (although many people do not choose a strong enough password) but that 1) the learning curve is too steep, 2) it is too much of a hassle, 3) it may raise questions about what you have to hide if you are using encryption, or 4) anything you have to encrypt should not be sent from an insecure location like work, anyway. You pays your money, and you takes your choice.

Doc Searls has a fascinating article in Linux Journal on the evolution of Barack Obama's technological infrastructure. Searls explains how the Obama technological revolution had its genesis in the experience of Joe Trippi, who got his start working for Debian Linux developer Ian Murdock before he became Howard Dean's campaign manager and the midwife of the Democratic Internet machine. Since then, open source developers have played a key role in developing the Democratic communications infrastructure, while also-ran John McCain was tied to a clunky and inert Microsoft platform.

The New York Times makes the case for Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular. According to the Times, the biggest obstacle to wider deployment of Linux is that it does not come installed on the computer.

I finally got around to reading the first chapter of Learning Python.

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GJ/L d++ s+ a+ C+ UL>++++ P>+ L+>++ E W++ N o-- K- w !O M>+ V-- PS++>+++ PE Y+ PGP>+ t !5 !X !R tv+ b+>++ DI-- D- G e+++ h---- r+++ y++++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

(Decode)

A quick guide to everything you ever wanted to know about GNU Privacy Guard.

N.B. For my key, see http://www.williamsonday.com/pgp.html.

Conway's Game of Life is a simple computational game in which "cells" are either "alive" or "dead" based on their proximity to other cells — too few neighboring cells cause a cell to "die" from isolation and too many from overcrowding. The game is interesting on multiple levels. It was designed to show that an initial pattern could be self-replicating based on simple rules. As an analytical tool, it allows for analysis both at the cellular level and at the level of patterns, in much the same way that biological organisms can be analyzed. In another twist, Life is "Turing complete" and can function as a computer.

I recently applied Service Pack 2 to a Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 and received the following error message: "Setup could not verify the integrity of the file Update.inf. Make sure the Cryptographic service is running on this computer." The good news is that Microsoft has good documentation of the problem. The bad news is that it took 11 steps to fix it.

Firefox extension: Book Burro Saves money on Books >> Dumb Little Man

Normally, I am not too big on "make your toilet paper into precut squares to save money" kind of sites. Dumb Little Man, however, has at least one useful suggestion to offer: a Firefox extension that provides price comparisons among online booksellers. It is enough to make me want to see if there are more.

I have misspent a couple of hours today exploring MyBlogLog, a site devoted to providing statistics on blog traffic and allowing members to see when they have visited each others' blogs. For bloggers, it is well worth taking a look. While I was there, I discovered a savvy conservative commentator, a word maven, a specialist in brand development, and some of my favorite Moroccan sites: Refusenik and Murmures, which led me to MyBlogLog in the first place.

An interesting blog by a former Foreign Service Officer who spent much of his career posted to the Middle East.

Halley's Comment points to Microsoft's tarted up search engine.

The BBC Climate Change Project uses idle time on thousands of PCs around the world to create a virtual supercomputer that runs climate change experiments. Basically, once you sign up and download the software, if you are not using your computer, the BBC Climate Change Project is. A variety of similar projects, powered by BOINC technology, are available through GridRepublic; GridRepublic lets you run several different projects on your computer.

Anyone who cares to join one of my teams (the Hong Kong Kavaliers! after the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) can sign up for any of the following projects at the following sites or through GridRepublic:

Hong Kong Kavaliers:

• BBC Climate Change Project


• Similarity Matrix of Proteins


• Einstein@Home


• SZTAKI Desktop Grid


• Quantum Monte Carlo at Home (QMC@Home)

Playin' with technorati.

I have just gotten around to trying out del.icio.us. The site allows you to "tag" web pages so that they can be organized into bookmarks on your del.icio.us account. The site lets you search for similarly tagged items, and it tells you who else has tagged the web page you have tagged. Very cool.

Keith Ferrazzi announces a new way to donate your home computer's unused computing power to advance scientific and medical research through the power of BOINC. Building on the success of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in harnessing idle computers across the Internet to donate spare processing power, GridRepublic now offers the chance to donate idle computing power on your home computer to a variety of scientific projects.

A recent story in the Guardian confirms once again that there is no such thing as anonymity on the Internet. This is a shame, because the Web is much richer for the candid commentary that sometimes only exists under a nom de plume. In this case, blogger Abby Lee was a major figure in the blogosphere, and not only because she wrote mostly about sex. The Guardian comments:

The blog tootled along for about six months, and then suddenly went crazy. People were Googling for it at a rate that was measurable by the minute. Girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com has had more than 2 million visitors, gets 100,000 readers a month, won Best British or Irish Blog at the 2006 Bloggies, and was published as a book last week (for which she got "six figures"). The book is already in the bestseller lists. So far, so successful, but so still anonymous; all anybody knew about Abby Lee was that she worked in the film industry, lived in London and got laid a hell of a lot. Oh, and we knew that she had size eight feet - much has been made of this, in the press, as if she were deliberately trying to out herself, whereas, in fact, I can personally vouch for the fact that big feet are not all that rare.

In her candid depiction of an active woman's sex life, Lee counted on anonymity to protect her job and her relationships — with co-workers, friends, family, and lovers. After being "outed" by the Sunday Times, Lee recounts on her blog that she has lost her job and faced the humiliation of having her friends and family know the intimate details of her sex life. The Guardian, meanwhile, recounts that she has been hit with a wave of sexual prudery that would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago. But it is not necessary to approve of frequent sex with more than one partner to believe that a culture that will not tolerate anonymous writing will be poorer for it. (For example, perhaps the most famous anonymous author was Sir Walter Scott, who did not wish to reveal that he had abandoned poetry for a less reputable art form — the novel.)

While I try not to put anything on the web to which I am not willing to sign my name and which I am not willing to have my mother read, I do not pretend that my writing is necessarily richer for it.

WP: Parents embarrassed by kids' blogs - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com

One more way for kids to embarrass their parents, and themselves.

By making sure that my "obsolete" glibc libraries were installed. I managed to get Corel WordPerfect 8.1 working on SUSE Linux 10.1. Hoorah!

Caterina.net: 9 reasons why people will *love* your web site

Caterina on what makes a website succeed.

My computer is back on line after a major overhaul. For some reason, I was suddenly flooded with the "blue screen of death," and my machine has been inoperable for over a week. So far, knock on wood, my rebuilt machine is a joy to use, but the process of reinstalling software is always a bit tedious.

Analysis from PC Magazine: Palm's Dangerous Path

Mobile Open Source | Basic Info

PalmSource has announced that the next generation of the PalmOS will be based on Linux in order to better adapt the operating system to mobile phone technology. The announcement comes at a time when Palm, which makes Palm hardware, has announced that it is going to offer a Windows-based version of its Treo smartphone.

Srijith has a question about whether OpenPGP Comment still works in Movable Type 3.2. Let's try a test.

Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster - New York Times

On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker's Dell desktop computer was overrun by spyware and adware - stealth software that delivers intrusive advertising messages and even gathers data from the user's machine - he did not simply get rid of the offending programs. He threw out the whole computer.

Puh-leeze. The ultimate in waste in the SUV society. And why was a Ph.D. in computer science using a computer without an antivirus program?

Workplace Fairness: today's workplace: it's everyone's job

Workplace Fairness explains how your Blog can get you fired, and there's nothing you can do about it.

USA Today points out that employers are desperate to control blogs. They are torn between fear that out-of-control bloggers will alienate customers or spill trade secrets and greed over the prospect that they can manipulate bloggers to promote their products.

Blogger David Kennedy has published an article in the American Bar Association's Law Practice Today that outlines the most common mistakes of new legal bloggers.

From a career standpoint, Kennedy does not think that blogging "helps you" if you blog anonymously, but he understands why lawyers might be reluctant to attach their names to their blogs: "On the one hand, I am very disturbed by the current legal culture in which associates in law firms live in such a state of terror that they will not blog unless they are anonymous. On the other hand, I don't understand how blogging anonymously helps you."

Where I think I disagree with Kennedy is over his view of a blog as a tool to enhance one's career or law practice. I write a blog because it offers me a chance for personal expression and in the hope that it may open up new conversations with interesting people. I only hope that it does not become a professional liability.

Srijith has announced that he has managed to get his Palm Pilot to sync on his Linux box by resetting the permissions on the device with which the Palm syncs (usually /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyUSB1).

Srijith's post illustrates both what is right and what is wrong with Linux. On the one hand, Linux supports the Palm and it gives the user full access to the software so that it can be tweaked when there is a problem. On the other, all too often the software requires tweaking, rather than working right out of the box, and the support for the Palm is, at the moment, rather limited. (This is in no way disparagement of the excellent work of David Desrosiers and J.P. Rosevear).

I love to play with Linux, even though I am not fundamentally a very technical person. I love the fact that it is fast and clean: what it does, it does very well. I love the philosophy behind open source software, even if my contribution has been very small (documentation for GNOME System Monitor).

However, for the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that Linux will be anything more than a toy for me. Case in point is the fact that I rely on my Palm Pilot for essential tasks in my work and my life; it is far more important to me than my Linux box. My life as a lawyer is structured around calendars, deadlines, and to do lists. My Palm keeps track of my money, my diet, and my weight and syncs all this information with my Windows box. I keep a number of books on my Palm for emergency reading or reference; it includes a portable dictionary. The fact that Palm support on Linux requires painstaking configuration and supports only the most basic Palm applications is a reason why I am unlikely to move exclusively to Linux in the near future.

A second reason is that althought Linux does provide word processing and spreadsheets, it does not at present support the kind of third-party software for chess or languages that I am interested in using. Until it does, it looks as though I will grudgingly put up with Windows' slow, crusty, virus-ridden, unstable interface.

The New York Times > Technology> Review> Chess Players Give 'Check' a New Meaning

The New York Times highlights the ways in which computer technology has made chess more competitive, while at the same time limiting the play of some of the top players. The fact that players can obtain more information about their opponents in advance is apparently a great equalizer in opening play, and computers make it easier to play and develop one's skills. At this point, most of my games take place on the computer because I do not have time to play live. The following paragraph pretty well sums up the article:

Jaan Ehlvest, 42, an Estonian grandmaster, said that better players are more able to take advantage of the abundant information provided by computers and databases because they have the expertise to identify the ideas that are worth pursuing. For lesser players, he said, computers can actually slow development because they cannot separate the good ideas from the bad.

Mr. Ehlvest added that in any case he did not believe that computers made people better than they otherwise would be. Instead, they can help them reach their potential sooner.

Dead Electronics Going to Waste (washingtonpost.com)

RetroBox -- headed by a cheerful Harvard Business School graduate named Stampp Corbin, who sees America's high-tech rejects as a healthy revenue stream -- assures its customers that it will recycle their old electronics and then give them 70 percent of his profits, while simultaneously wiping any confidential business or personal data out of old hard drives.

The moral dimension of the problem of high tech waste is that currently the United States is simply exporting its waste — including heavy metals and other toxic waste — to China and other poorer countries, where it is poisoning their citizens and low wage workers.

Keyboard Shortcuts for special characters

A quick search led me to this great reference for typing special characters.

Tech Republic reports that employers are now installing software to monitor employees' keystrokes on their computers, so that the employers can monitor the employees' use of email and instant messaging. What the legal limits under the wiretap laws are on employer monitoring of messages is apparently still not clearly defined.

Burningbird — This is Wrong on Oh So Many Levels

Shelley Powers (a.k.a burningbird) has a thoughtful commentary on sincere — and less than sincere — interactions between bloggers:

I value every comment left, and every link given — they are gifts. And I value those who take the time to read me, as time is precious and there are so many good writers who have weblogs.

She adds, however, that she would never change what she had to say simply to keep a reader.

Wanna test your box? Check out Hacker Watch. Stop hackers before they stop you!

I have upgraded the site to Movable Type 3.11. I already like the new user interface, I am looking forward to the performance improvements, and I hope that the new anti-spam features work!

It was a bad weekend for computers. I managed to fry both my processor and my floppy drive. The computer was shutting down intermittently for no apparent reason, so I suspected that the processor was overheating. (I had had problems previously with the heat sink that came with my AMD Athlon 2000.) I upgraded the heat sink, but I managed to install the it incorrectly (it was asymmetrical) and fried the chip. Arrrrrrrgh! Fortunately, I was able to buy a relatively inexpensive AMD Athlon 2400 as a replacement without having to upgrade the motherboard. I got everything hooked up, and it appeared to be working fine. Fine, that is, until smoke started pouring out of my floppy drive and the power cables began to melt. I cut the power before any more damage was done. The computer (minus floppy drive) is working fine for the moment. (Otherwise you would probably not be reading this. I guess I should look on the bright side; at least it was cheaper to repair than my car, I was able to do it myself, and everyone survived.

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > For Some, the Blogging Never Stops

The New York Times reviews reasons people blog — with conclusions that are not uniformly flattering. For many of us, it appears to be an escape, one that can become unhealthy if taken too far.

The baby managed to kick my coffee onto my keyboard today. The baby, thank heavens, was unscathed, but the keyboard perished. I bought a new Memorex USB keyboard, model MX2710, and was somewhat surprised to find that the cord to the keyboard had a warning stating that the cord contained lead: "Handling the cord on this product will expose you to lead, a chemical known to the state of California to cause [cancer, and] birth defects or other reprodctive harm. Wash hands after handling."

A quick investigation on Google suggests that this is a California legal excess, and that Memorex cords are no more lethal than anyone else's. However, the warning is disconcerting to say the least, particularly to those of us with small children. (And no, I do not intend to let the baby get that close to the coffee again.)

Despite the recent brouhaha over Movable Type's licensing terms, and the terms' subsequent revision, I think I will stick with Movable Type, at least for the moment. Since I run a one-author, two weblog site, I am not really going to get bitten by the new licensing terms. I have too much invested, and Movable Type meets too many of my needs, for me to really want to move.

With some trepidation, I have downloaded and installed GNU Emacs for Windows. I have started working my way through Learning Perl by Tom Christiansen, and I want and editor in which to write perl scripts. Emacs is my editor of choice (at the moment) on Linux, and while it may not be the perfect choice for Windows, I think there is something to be gained by using a consistent cross-platform tool.

unbillable hours

I have just learned that TPB has shut down comments on his site, after Ernie the Attorney did the same. TPB states

You know, I hate to do this, but I was just comment spammed over thirty times in the past ten minutes. It fills up my inbox, it distracts me, and it forces me to go post-to-post, deleting comments and blocking IP addresses. Ernie the Attorney responded to this by blocking comments on his site, and I think I may have to do the same.

I agree that this is a real shame, since one of the prime attractions of a weblog is the interaction between readers and writers. I hope that TPB and Ernie have called this situation to the the attention of Six Apart, the makers of both TypePad and Movable Type. As an interim measure, Movable Type users can install a copy of the MT Blacklist plugin, and I would have thought there might be something similar for TypePad. The next iteration of Movable Type (3.0) is supposed to include a somewhat controversial comment registration system designed to deal with spam. From the note of desperation in TPB's post, it sounds as though he might well be willing to trade off the potential inconvenience and loss of anonymity of a comment registration system in order to retain the comment feature without subjecting himself to a flood of spam.

Note: A quick check suggests that Ernie the Attorney, like TPB, is still allowing comments for some posts.

New sites from the PC Magazine Top 100 that I want to look at:

• FilmAffinity
• Musicplasma
• Turner Classic Movies
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
• FlipDog.com
• RealEstateABC.com
• DailyCandy
• Capitol Hill Blue
• Arts & Letters Daily
• Google Alert
• Paul Thurott's Internet Nexus

Unbillable Hours has a lengthy and thoughtful essay on the mutations of the Blog form into journalism, criticism, scholarship, and literature. What his essay suggests to me is that Blogs are subject to a kind of natural selection. Out of the thousands, perhaps millions of Blogs, many are little read and quickly abandoned. Of the smaller number that persist and survive, many qualify as journalism. A few devote themselves to serious criticism or scholarship. The handful that will endure as literature represent the evolutionary apex of the form. As with life or literature in print, it is almost impossible to tell in advance which these will be. I share TPB, Esq.'s confidence that there willl be some, however.

One more thing for which Srijith is responsible. Eight years after they were hip, I've finally got a geek code:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version 3.12
GJ$/L d++ s: a C+ UL P+ L+(++) E W++ N o-- K- w !O M(+) !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP>+ t 5 X-- R- tv-- b++ DI D- G e+++ h r+++ y++++
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-------

To decode, see Decoded Geek Code.

As an intellectual exercise, more than for any practical reason, I implemented OpenPGP Signing of Movable Type Comments on my weblog. As Krishnan Nair Srijith, the author of the Movable Type plugin, points out, "installing Crypt::OpenPGP's prerequisites is no easy work :)" So much so, that if I had know how much work it would be, I might not have attempted it. Nevertheless, I am glad that I did, if only because I learned a little bit about Perl in the process, perhaps enough to pique my curiosity to learn more.

My experience installing the prerequisite local Perl modules for Crypt::OpenPGP in my home directory can be summed up as follows:

Create the following directories in your home directory:

mkdir usr

mkdir usr/local

Set the environment variable (my shell is "/bin/bash")

export PERL5LIB="/home_directory/usr/local/lib/perl/5.6.1:\
/path_to_home_directory/usr/local/share/perl/5.6.1:" You may eventually want to add this line to your .bash_profile so that it will set the variables every time you log in.

You can see if you have properly set the environment variables by typing the command

perl -V

(Note that the flag is a capital "V"). Your library path (path_to_home_directory/usr/local/lib/perl/5.6.1) should be listed under @INC.

Download the required modules from http://www.cpan.org. The README in Crypt:OpenPGP lists the prerequisite modules, although some of these may also have prerequisites on your system.

Unpack the module with:

tar -xvzf module_name.tar.gz

cd module_directory

perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/path_to_home_directory/usr
make test
make
make install

Repeat until all the modules are installed without errors, and finally install Crypt::OpenPGP. You then need to edit your Movable Type templates to take advantage of the new plugin. Be sure that you have put an ASCII copy of your PGP Public Key (e.g. http://www.williamsonday.com/pgp.asc on your site so that you can test the key verification feature of the plugin.

I found that once I had properly set the environment variable (which took me some time to get right), most of compilation errors that I experienced resulted from my having not yet installed a prerequisite to the prerequisite module.

NOTE: Although installing the local modules manually rather that automatically through CPAN was somewhat tedious and time-consuming, I found that it was the only way that I was able to make the local installation work properly.

Also, Srijith suggests that it may be a good idea to edit OpenPGPComment.pl to set the variable called DEBUG to 0.

Morocco has a Linux Project.

Yahoo! News - Study: Blogging Still Infrequent

The impression out there is that a lot of the blog activity is very feverish," said Lee Rainie, the Pew project's director. "That's not the case. For most bloggers, it's not an all-consuming, all-the-time kind of experience."

:: net.law.blog - Internet Tools for Lawyers

"For most lawyers, blogs would be a fiasco, possibly even dangerous. On the other hand, for a few lawyers, they could be perfect."

SCO's SEC filings reflect an increasingly tenous position.

The quest for the universal computer address book continues. For years I have wanted to be able to have one address book for all my applications on my computer at home, all my applications on my computer at work, my Palm, and preferably my cell phone. For some reason, software designers seem determined to balkanize the address book market, so that address books in different applications and on different platforms will not work together. It seems so simple . . and yet so elusive. I think that I am making some progress with a combination of Intellisync and Outlook, from which I am importing addresses to WordPerfect. Some progress . . . but a long way to go.

Clay Shirky gives a short explanation of the Power Law and its application to the number of readers each weblog attracts. The Power Law basically posits that distribution in certain kinds of networks -- whether weblog or wealth -- is weighted in such a way that a disproportionate share of resources -- readers or dollars -- are allocated to the top performers in a group. In other words, the most popular weblogs get most of the readers, just as a few rich people control most of the wealth.

I came across the Power Law upon reading the unfortunate news that BlogShares has closed.

How do you spell RELIEF? Jay Allen has come out with a great blacklist plugin that helps address the recent wave of comment span that has besieged Movable Type users. For the moment, my weblog comments are certified Spam free!

BW Online | October 17, 2003 | What Price Online Music?

"However, there's one voice of wisdom in the digital wilderness: Apple's (AAPL ) iTunes Music Store, which launched its service for Windows-based computers on Oct. 16, offers album downloads for $9.99. "

Dave Winer is not happy about a rather clever parody of Don McLean's American Pie. I am not enough of an insider to catch all the references, but apparently the author touched a few nerves. Unlike Mr. Winer, I do not think that "paying your dues" is a prerequisite to writing a satire. Some authors, like Pope and Swift, basically wrote nothing but satires, and Byron lauched his career with "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." This little blogger doggerel is not in the same class, but the same principle applies: satire should be judged on its wit not its antecedents.

Wired News: Hackers Lose a Patron Saint

"If there is a heaven, the angels are in for a hell of a time when Jude Milhon, the Internet's real and very earthy patron saint of hacking, shows up."

Milhon was known not only for coining the term "CypherPunk" but also for her Internet book Hacking the Wetware: The NerdGirl's Pillow Book.

Wired has an interview.

Ernie the Attorney points to tips on managing your email.