brett's logjam

Jim points out all those things they didn’t talk about:

Things that naturally didn’t come up: torture; the costs of interventionism; how much of a blank check to give Ariel Sharon’s Likud government; whether we truthfully want to democratize cooperative Muslim autocracies or should want to; our continuing involvement in the Andean Initiative; sanctions on Cuba; the difference between prudence and panic in anti-terror policy. What we had was vigorous disagreement on tactics with no serious debate on grand strategy. Both candidates agree that America must be the busiest busybody in the busy busy world. The rest is a question of application.

Happy day 11,000 to me!

I was going to shout Huzzah! again, because I’ve completed upgrading Arbonne to Fedora Core 2. The standard http downloads took too long and timed out frequently, so I ended up mounting the ISO images I got off Bittorrent (thank goodness for the torrent) and copying the RPMs into a yum repository as the base. Actually, that was pretty sweet. If nothing else, I’ve learned a lot about yum and package management this week. Last week it was networking - always something to learn when you’re running Linux.

So, I finally updated all the packages and was pretty sure that I was ready to try rebooting and launching into Fedora Core 2 and the 2.6.x kernel, especially since my screen went blank when I logged out this morning. I sshed into Arbonne from Tigana, did a quick shutdown -r now, and watched the screen come alive with the standard scrawling text.

Then when I got to the point where the X server starts up, I got a blank screen. Argh! C’mon, Charlie Brown, kick the football!

So there are some hopeful bug reports out there that may have some clues as how to fix this, and when I reboot into the 2.4 kernel it works fine. Also, I’ve had Fedora Core 2 working on Arbonne before, so it’s not a hardware issue. I’ve got everything kinda configured so that I can use Arbonne (webserver’s down, though, not sure why yet) but I have to ask myself, is it really worth it? I asked myself that earlier this week, but I dodged the question at the time. Now I’m writing this on a computer running Red Hat 7.2 that just works. End of story. (Okay, the T key is flaky, and I’d like to get the second mouse buton working again, but those are hardware issues.)

So then, once I finally get X running and log in, everything’s just slightly - off. The icons are all smaller. The font looks different, even though it probably isn’t. I am dismayed at all the little things I’ll need to change. And that doesn’t count all the big things! But oh look, the user icons are all cute! (Copy those to my home directory… ) Don’t I have other things to do?

Am I bored wth computers that aren’t broken? Do I somehow actually enjoy this?

What a horrifying thought.

Termites. In the front garden bed.

Ugh.

Very funny: Review: Juvenile felis catus:

Bear in mind that, against all evidence to the contrary, kittens are not able to transport themselves through solid objects by means of teleportation, osmosis or matter rephasing.

…

Herewith, a rundown of the relative merits of four options for the computer enthusiast - a kitten, a puppy, a baby, and (as a representative example of the more usual kind of home information technology purchase) a new video card.

After months of no progress, I can finally check off another room from my to-paint list. And it was a doozy - our bookroom. I did one wall last weekend to test out the color (“Candlebark”) so Merrystar and I could decide we actually liked it. My father-in-law came up this weekend and we polished off the remaining walls - unfortunately, those were the ones with all the bookcases against them. (Ow, my back, by the way.) Why couldn’t we collect feathers or something a little lighter?

Remaining on the list - master suite (cathedral ceiling, ick), two bathrooms, my office, and some closets. Oh, and optionally the garage. Not so long a list as we had a year ago, and a good thing too. Going to have to start making up the nursery soon enough…

Yahoo! News - Cheney Blunder Lauded Anti-Bush Web Site:

Vice President Dick Cheney probably did not intend to direct millions of television viewers to a Web site calling for President Bush’s defeat but that’s what a slip of the domain achieved.

Anyone who heeded Cheney’s advice and clicked on “factcheck.com” was greeted on Wednesday morning with a message from anti-Bush billionaire investor George Soros entitled “Why we must not reelect President Bush.”

My dearest Merrystar,

I love thee so much that I will spend my evenings trying to get your wireless card working under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, then trying to get the USB pen drive recognized under RHEL 3, and then trying to get an ethernet connection under RHEL 3.

And when that fails, I will direct thee to the following websites, to download drivers, and tarballs, and other assorted installation items, so that even though I could not aid thee in thy quest for wireless access under the great bloated behemoth that is really Red Hat Linux 9, but rebranded and patched for a $179 license that your employer would rather pay, I will present thee with divers instructions as to how I think you can install ndiswrappers around the included Windows drivers and activate your divinely sweet portable computing device’s intrinsic radio networking capabilities.

Why? Because I love thee, my darling, my beloved, and nothing - not even the havoc that Red Hat hath wreaked upon our lives - will keep me from faithfully serving you, my angel, my evening star, my ashke. I will be thy Teleporno, thy Celeborn, grandson of Elmo the ticklish, for all the days of my life. Except without the dirty name.

And now, the promised instructions.

1. Download the NdisWrapper tarball.
2. Locate the windows drivers for the Intel Pro 2100 3B wireless card. These are either on the original source CDs that came with Tsiolkovsky, or you can get them from the web at ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/TravelMate_80x/driver/winxp/intel2100b.zip.
3. Follow the installation instructions.
4. Configure the wireless card according to some of the notes on the distros page. I would set wlan0 to eth1. You’ll need to specify both the WEP key (in /etc/syconfig/network-scripts/keys-eth1 and ifcfg-eth1) and ESSID, but I’ll send those to you under separate cover.
5. Ping rice.edu.
6. Do a little happy dance if it works.

Love,
Your Luke

Historical Fiction: How do medieval-themed restaurants get it wrong?:

Medieval food was many things — garish, over the top, unsubtle. But it wasn’t crude. And neither were medieval people. So, the real question is: Where does the familiar medieval stereotype come from? As with all questions of intellectual decline, Hollywood deserves some blame. (The studios had a thing for bringing the Middle Ages to the big screen in the ‘50s: Knights of the Round Table, Prince Valiant, The Black Shield of Falworth, The Black Knight.) Yet historical stereotyping, wherever you find it, is symptomatic of a deeper societal ill. Gustave Flaubert famously wrote, “Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times.” When it comes to slander caused by ignorance, history is sometimes on the receiving end, too.

Belatedly updated: email stats.

The inbox stats are still polluted because of spamd problems. I made some changes with the procmail recipies to start filtering possible spam (2-5 spam stars):

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Level: \*\*+
possible-spam

(This goes after the rule that directs everything that’s been tagged (5+) into the spam folder. We’ll see if it makes a difference.)

What a wonderfully odd little site: How old is old enough?

Interesting to see how different places define the age of consent.

jwz - John Stewart on Crossfire:

STEWART: In many ways, it’s funny. And I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad.

BEGALA: We have noticed.

STEWART: And I wanted to — I felt that that wasn’t fair and I should come here and tell you that I don’t — it’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America.

CARLSON: But in its defense…

STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say… Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.
Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.
…

STEWART: No, no, no, you’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

I learned my lesson from last time and accompanied Merrystar to the doctor today so as not to miss anything else. And aside from the poking and prodding of my wife (which I’ll get used to, really), I got to hear the coolest sound ever: the wooshing of my baby’s heartbeat.

Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh.

Wow. This is so cool.

New flotsam: whoosh.

A funny thing happened a few hours later; when talking to my boss, he made that exact noise over the phone. It’s like a secret handshake of fatherhood or something.

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Oh yeah, the kitten thing was just crass manipulation.

I finally watched the clip off the torrent, and wow! Here’s more from Salon.com on Jon Stewart’s Crossfire appearance:

It’s almost a cliche by now to talk about “The Daily Show” being more trusted than real newscasts, but Stewart showed why. He pointed out to Carlson that he had asked Kerry if he really were in Cambodia but “I don’t care,” and when Carlson asked him what he thought about the “Bill O’Reilly vibrator flap,” Stewart said, “I don’t.” It was as concise a demonstration of the triviality of the media as you could hope for.

“I thought you were going to be funny,” Carlson said toward the end of the interview. Stewart responded, “No, I’m not going to be your monkey.” And that was what was so bracing.

Stewart’s “Crossfire” appearance is going to generate talk about how prickly he was, how he wasn’t “nice” like he is on “The Daily Show.” But prickliness is just what was needed. If you’ve built your reputation as a satirist pointing out how the media falls down on the job, you’re not going to make yourself a part of their charade.

I’ve heard people talk about “The Daily Show” as an oasis of sanity, a public service. I couldn’t agree more. Stewart’s appearance on “Crossfire” was another public service. He went on and acted as if the show’s purpose really was to confront tough issues, instead of being the political equivalent of pro wrestling. Given a chance to say absolutely what he thought, Stewart took it. He accomplished what almost never happens on television anymore: He made the dots come alive.

komo 4 news | Small Town Library Takes On The Feds:

WHATCOM COUNTY - The FBI wants to know who checked out a book from a small library about Osama Bin Laden. But the library isn’t giving out names, saying the government has no business knowing what their patrons read. … At the center of the issue, a book titled “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America.”

The FBI confiscated the original book after a patron reported than some one hand wrote a bin Laden quote in the margin that read: “Let history be witness I am a criminal.”

The FBI demanded to know the names and addresses of everyone who ever checked out the book.

“Libraries are a haven where people should be able to seek whatever information they want to pursue without any threat of government intervention,” said Director of Whatcom County Library System, Joan Airoldi.

Because of privacy policies, the library does not give out circulation records without a court order. When the FBI got a grand jury subpoena, the library filed a motion to quash it — citing the rights of all people who use the library.

“Like the right to read and to read the material of one’s choice without fear that someone will come around with questions about why you chose that book,” said Garrett.

The FBI withdrew the subpoena, reserving the right to file it again.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office says they are not permitted to discuss anything that involves the grand jury.

If the feds had demanded the records under the Patriot Act, the library would have had to hand them over without question and without help from the courts.

The FBI still has the bin Laden book.

Librarians point out, it’s overdue.

Critical Section - The Tyranny of Email

Wow! Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars was fantastic! I didn’t watch the show when it was on - stupid me - but this really grabbed me and drew me in. (Tears were shed.) If only Star Trek could return to this level of storytelling!

This is an odd vulnerability, but sometimes they are. It seems pretty minor to me.

Secunia - Advisories - Mozilla / Mozilla Firefox / Camino Tabbed Browsing Vulnerabilities:

Secunia Research has discovered two vulnerabilities in Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, and Camino, which can be exploited by malicious web sites to obtain sensitive information and spoof dialog boxes.

1) Inactive tabs can launch dialog boxes so they appear to be displayed by a web site in another tab. This can be exploited by a malicious web site to show a dialog box, which seems to originate from a trusted web site.

Successful exploitation would normally require that a user is tricked into opening a link from a malicious web site to a trusted web site in a new tab.

A test is available here:
http://secunia.com/multiple_browsers_dialog_box_spoofing_test/

The vulnerability has been confirmed in the following versions:
* Mozilla 1.7.2 and 1.7.3
* Mozilla Firefox 0.10.1
* Camino 0.8

2) Inactive tabs can gain focus from form fields on web sites in another tab. This can potentially be exploited to collect sensitive data entered in form fields on other web sites.

Successful exploitation would normally require that a user is tricked into opening a link from a malicious web site to a trusted web site in a new tab.

A test is available here:
http://secunia.com/multiple_browsers_form_field_focus_test/

The vulnerability has been confirmed in the following versions:
* Mozilla 1.7.2 and 1.7.3
* Mozilla Firefox 0.10.1

Other versions may also be vulnerable.

Solution:
Don’t visit trusted web sites while visiting untrusted web sites or disable JavaScript.

Slashdot | Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor

I married a Red Sox fan just in time.

Cheers!

Wow! Enterprise was fantastic this week. I haven’t watched it regularly since season 2, and was completely non-interested in the Nazi Alien storyline, but Home blew me away. Very much like TNG’s Family, with excellent character development.

Finally, an Enterprise episode that approached the quality of Stargate SG-1 and Farscape — now if they can keep it going!

I’ve finally got everything mostly on Tigana the way I want it, thogh it would be nice to have USB support so I could use a mouse instead of the gimpy trackpad. Haivng GTK so I could run Firefox would be nice, too; even though I’m using KDE on Arbonne, I’ve gotten used to the really nice fonts. So perhpas I should see how Fedora 3 works and try some of the kernel boot parameters to see if it installs correctly.

Wait a minute. Whatsa meesa thinking?

jwz - TV-B-Gone:

Altman’s key-chain fob was a TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.

At a Laundromat and cafe down the street, a lone man sorted clothes in the glow of larger-than-life bikini babes on a 60-inch Sony HDTV. A punch of the button and the screen instantly went dark. He went on folding his T-shirts, seemingly unaware of the change.

“It’s always like that,” Altman said. “It’s so much part of the environment in the U.S. that people don’t even notice when it disappears.”

It is different in Hong Kong, Altman said. There, when he clicked off store TVs, everyone looked around to see who did it.

At Best Buy, neither customers nor staff responded as one set after another turned off — Sony TVs first, then a JVC and an Apex, all from a single click. The interview was easier without competition from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Slashdot | Challenging The ‘Unbeatable’ Polygraph

Kemplar :: Panasonic Let’s Note R3 :: Tech Specs:

Whenever Panasonic rises to the occasion and throws its hat into the ring of the sub-notebook world, we are always pleasantly surprised. The Panasonic Let’s Note R3 is yet another example of Panasonic going above and beyond our expectations. Not satisfied with simpy releasing one of the most durable subnotebooks ever, Panasonic has introduced their rather excellent new Circular Scrolling Touch Pad as well. The R3, the smallest unit of this new line, is ultra-portable ccomputing at its best. Light, durable, fast, and sleek: the R3 offers a powerful package with an outstanding battery life: up to 8 hours! A clever litttle product from an ingenious manufacturer, the R3 is sure to be one of the biggest hits in both Japan and the select subnotebook users of the U.S.

Gizmodo : Letsnote Lineup To Include All Colors of the Rainbow:

Panasonic has announced their newest “Letsnote R3” notebook will be available in a total of 14 colors, online. Featuring your favorite shades such as “Glassy Black,” “Peach Blossom,” and even world-renowned “Cocoa Brown,” surely something here will suit your tastes.

On the inside, you’ll unfortunately find your standard notebook PC. But wait a minute - Panasonic is offering a service called “Romaji Neat Keyboard” which will omit Japanese characters from your keyboard (as these are only available in Japan). That’s right; you pay $30 and to have something removed from your computer. This makes perfect sense to me, because Japanese people rarely (never?) type Japanese using the Japanese character set as depicted on their keyboard. Most Japanese people simply type, for stereotypical example, “sushi” on their keyboard, and convert it to Japanese using software.

Cingular Merger Final (Phone Scoop):

Cingular today announced that its planned acquisition of AT&T Wireless was executed this morning, officially creating the new largest wireless carrier in the country, with 46 million customers. The deal has received all necessary government approval. As a first step for customers, Cingular will now start opening access to both GSM networks to all customers without roaming charges, and allow unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls to any Cingular or AT&T Wireless customer. Customers of both companies will be able to continue using their current phones, rate plans and features, without any interruption. Cingular will soon start communicating additional transition information to customers through advertising and direct communications channels.

The New Cingular Wireless

Total Lunar Eclipse: October 27-28, 2004

SECURITY UPDATE: PuTTY version 0.56 is released ----------------------------------------------- All the pre-built binaries, and the source code, are now available from the PuTTY website at

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

This is a SECURITY UPDATE. We recommend that _everybody_ upgrade, as soon as possible. This version fixes a security hole in previous versions of PuTTY, which can allow an SSH2 server to attack your client before host key verification. This means that you are not even safe if you trust the server you _think_ you’re connecting to, since it could be spoofed over the network and the host key check would not detect this before the attack could take place. The attack can allow the server to execute code of its choice on the client.

Wired 12.11: How I Learned to Love Larry

Wired News: Lost Tribe of Little People

Holy crap! The Economist is endorsing Kerry?

I suppose the Red Sox couldn’t win the World Series without bringing us a little closer to Ragnarok…

YOU might have thought that, three years after a devastating terrorist attack on American soil, a period which has featured two wars, radical political and economic legislation, and an adjustment to one of the biggest stockmarket crashes in history, the campaign for the presidency would be an especially elevated and notable affair. If so, you would be wrong. This year’s battle has been between two deeply flawed men: George Bush, who has been a radical, transforming president but who has never seemed truly up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it; and John Kerry, who often seems to have made up his mind conclusively about something only once, and that was 30 years ago. But on November 2nd, Americans must make their choice, as must The Economist. It is far from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent, dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather than continuity: Mr Kerry, not Mr Bush.

Whenever we express a view of that sort, some readers are bound to protest that we, as a publication based in London, should not be poking our noses in other people’s politics. Translated, this invariably means that protesters disagree with our choice. It may also, however, reflect a lack of awareness about our readership. The Economist’s weekly sales in the United States are about 450,000 copies, which is three times our British sale and roughly 45% of our worldwide total. All those American readers will now be pondering how to vote, or indeed whether to. Thus, as at every presidential election since 1980, we hope it may be useful for us to say how we would think about our vote--if we had one.

…

John Kerry says the war was a mistake, which is unfortunate if he is to be commander-in-chief of the soldiers charged with fighting it. But his plan for the next phase in Iraq is identical to Mr Bush’s, which speaks well of his judgment. He has been forthright about the need to win in Iraq, rather than simply to get out, and will stand a chance of making a fresh start in the Israel-Palestine conflict and (though with even greater difficulty) with Iran. After three necessarily tumultuous and transformative years, this is a time for consolidation, for discipline and for repairing America’s moral and practical authority. Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America’s great tasks.

washingtonpost.com: Household Survey Sees 100,000 Iraqi Deaths:

Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article’s timing was up to him.

“I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election,” Roberts told The Associated Press. “My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.

“I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives,” Roberts said. “As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this.”

So wrong, but so right: 2004’s Scariest Halloween Costumes.