Month: February 2007

Well, not quite.

Utoobe has already pulled the video once because of copyright violation (it says–Utoobe is remarkably flexible and unreliable about claims like that), so I’ve just linked the video. As of now, there are scads of copies posted again, but who knows. See it while you can.

See the video (or not?) here.

h.t. Chaos Manor

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, The Random Yak, Allie Is Wired, The Uncooperative Blogger ®, Adam’s Blog, The Pink Flamingo, Phastidio.net, Leaning Straight Up, Right Voices, Sujet- Celebrities, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

For Windoze users who are just flat-out tired of all the hoops they have to jump through to clean all the junk Windoze and Windoze apps leave scattered around, you’d think the Cleanup manager, included in Windows since Win98 (I believe) would be pretty useful.

It isn’t. At least, not in its default config.

But for Win2K and above, there are some things you can do to make it useful, approaching the abilities of $40 standalone cleanup utilities. Easy things.

First, try this: START>RUN>cleanmgr /sageset:99

When you run Cleanup Manager with this switch, it’ll offer a bunch of useful additional options. Click whichever you want. Change your selections any time by simply running cleanmgr again with the same switch invoked.

Next, open a plain text editor (Notepad will do) and type in (or copy/paste from here):

cleanmgr /sagerun:99

Save the file as Cleanup.bat or some such name. The “bat” extension tells Windoze to run the plain text file as a batch file and makes it easy to invoke quickly w/o a chance for typing mistakes. Save the batch file in a folder you make just for such things. You can even place a shortcut to the thing on your desktop or in your start bar. Just click on it whenever you want it to run. Better yet, use Windoze built-in scheduler to run it periodically.

Now, this won’t clean up all the gunk left hanging around on your hard drive(s), but it’ll help a lot. More lil tips later, but this (and running a good registry cleaner every now and then) can help decruft your system pretty well.

After all, as long as you’re going to keep using Windows, you might as well make it run as well as reasonably possible, right?

A PSA for regular twc readers

A reader over at Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor in Review points out something I frequently gnash my teeth over here at twc. In reference to a posting of a long ago article Dr. Pournelle wrote for a now-defunct publication, the reader points out:

Your new [as in “newly-posted”–ed.] report begins, “In the 1980’s, I was [and] editor and columnist for SURVIVE Magazine.” The built-in Microsoft checker has no problem with that, even though VERB COORDINATOR NOUN makes no sense.

As I age, something happens ever more frequently. As my mind gets several words ahead, I unwittingly type a similar, but incorrect word, in place of the intended one. Spell checkers let those fall right through the cracks.

“As I age…” I experience much the same phenomenon. In addition to my already excreble typing “skills” (I type by the “biblical method”–“seek and ye shall find”) that result in all kindsa typos, I too frequently get ahead of myself or get lost in a train of thought waiting for my typing to catch up with my thoughts. Sure, a bare 35-40 wpm is pretty bad to begin with, but I tend to think at, oh, I dunno, about 300-500 wpm, so… *heh* (Yeh, I don’t talk nearly as fast as I think the words, either, although I’m sometimes accused of talking too fast for my listeners. Makes for some interesting conversations as I sometimes skip ahead several steps in an argument/conversation or wait for the conversation to roll around to where I already am… although folks don’t always bother to consult their script. *LOL*).

So it goes.

Words jump the queue. Whole thoughts are dropped or skipped. There are never enough words or sentences or paragraphs to fully express any given idea. Tough. The “holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absences, insipidies and the like” that plague my blogging along with queue-jumping words (or parts of words, sometimes!) are just what they are, and likely to stay that way. As Pournelle says of his blog, “It’s a daybook” and not all that intensively edited at that.

So, I’ll just continue slogging along at my herky-jerky pace and hope y’all read between the lines (or paragraphs, sometimes ;-)) and use those queue-jumping words, when possible, to aid the process.

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For more on the Julie Amero case, here’s an email I recieved with specific permission to reproduce.

The Julie Amero Tragedy

The tragic case of Julie Amero, a substitute teacher who was convicted of “impairing the morals of minor” because pornographic images were visible on a computer in her classroom has riveted the attention of many in the education and computer security community. A new report, written by Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D., Director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, has just been released. This report presents a comprehensive review of the materials related to the case. Among the findings:

* The situation described by Amero is consistent with what is called a “porn trap” or “mouse trap.” When this occurs, the browser is no longer under the control of the user and porn images will simply keep popping up until the computer is turned off.

* Amero had been specifically told not to turn off the computer and probably did not know how. So she turned the computer so that students could not see the images. She could not lock the door when she left the room to get help because she did not have a key.

* Amero went to get help at a break and described the pop-up situation. People who are intentionally accessing inappropriate material do not try to get help. She told the assistant principal after school and described the situation to the principal, Scott Fain, the following day. The school reported the incident to the police just over a week later. Fain did not tell the investigating officer what he knew of Amero¹s activities on that day or her report to him the following day. He withheld information that would have allowed the officer to determine that Amero¹s access was not intentional.

* The computer had inadequate security and the browser would not block pop-ups. The district¹s content filter license had lapsed due to lack of payment. The technology director, Hartz, did not evaluate whether any malware was on the computer or the pattern of sites that appeared in the history log to determine whether the access was intentional or accidental. Hartz also did not tell the investigating officer that the content filter license had lapsed.

* The police computer crimes expert also did not determine whether there was any malware on the computer. He also testified in court that Amero had to intentionally access the sites for them to appear on the logs. This is totally inaccurate.

* Amero¹s response to this situation was far from reckless. Of the approximately 60 students who were in the classroom only10 saw anything. Of those, 6 specifically stated that they tried to look at the computer after being told of the situation by another student. Many students reported that Amero took specific efforts to block their view when she became aware that they were trying to see.

* The situation did not impair the morals of the students. Eight students reported seeing mild erotica. The two students who reported seeing people engaged in sex also reported that there were a bunch of little pictures on the screen. One was a distance from the screen and the other reported that the teacher did not notice him, so he must not have been very close.

* A recent study found that 42% of young people between the ages of 10 and 17 have viewed online pornography, one-third intentionally, two-thirds accidentally. Nine percent of these incidents reportedly occurred at school. There is no research evidence regarding the impact of such viewing.

The full report is available on the Center for Responsible Internet Use web site at http://csriu.org. Also available on this site are Willard¹s recent presentation notes addressing cyber-secure schools and cyberbullying. These presentation notes outline the concerns associated with youth online activity and strategies recommended for schools to address such concerns.

Nancy E. Willard has degrees in special education and law. She taught “at risk” children, practiced computer law, and was an educational technology consultant before focusing her professional attention on issues of youth risk online and effective Internet use management in schools. Nancy frequently conducts workshops for educators. She is expanding her use of Internet technologies to deliver “virtual” presentations and classes. She is the author of two books: Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Aggression, Threats, and Distress (Research Press) and Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Use the Internet Safety and Responsibly (Jossey-Bass).

For more information contact: Nancy Willard at nwillard@csriu.org.

—
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
http://cyberbully.org
nwillard@csriu.org

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And folks wonder why good teachers leave teaching and why it’s hard to maintain a pool of substitutes…

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Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, basil’s blog, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, Stuck On Stupid, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, and Conservative Thoughts, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Go tell the Spartans, Passerby,
That here, obedient to their laws, We lie…
–Simonidas, Epitaph for the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae

While the politicians diddled In Athens, the Spartans who had come to join the Athenians in repulsing the Persian invasion, held the pass… and died.

Politicians *spit*: The same yesterday, today and tomorrow. See the definition for “Defeatocrat“.

Meanwhile, this is twc’s weekend linkfest. Hit me with yiour best shots.

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.

Below is an excerpt from an article in the current issue of Windows Secrets Newsletter about the substitute teacher who’s been railroaded as a scapegoat for school district incompetence. Let it serve as both a warning for your personal computer use and as an indication of anarcho-tyranny in pubschool bureaucracy and the so-called “justice” system. *sigh*

I am unsurprised by the school system’s behavior in this travesty of justice. Nor do I find the “justice” system’s actions surprising (think Duke faux “rape” case, Martha Stewart, etc.). But where, pray tell, was the ACLU? Surely such a *cough* high-minded group would at least file an amicus brief when this horrible travesty came to light, given the broad implications affecting Truth, Justice and The American Way of the school system, police and courts’ mishandling of this case. Surely.

Not.

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Pop-up ads can land you in jail

If you find yourself the victim of pop-up ads on a computer, with children in the vicinity, you could face decades in prison.

I wish that I was exaggerating or being sensationalistic, but for Julie Amero this is far too real.

Meet Julie Amero, substitute teacher

There’s a good chance that you’ve already heard something about Julie. She’s perhaps better known as the Connecticut substitute schoolteacher who’s been convicted of “child endangerment.” She now faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison because porn pop-ups appeared on a school computer.

…

There are many points I could make about what’s wrong with her case. But I’ll stick with my core competency and just point out some of the technical flaws.

Flawed technology condemns an educator

The key issues were set in motion before Julie ever arrived to substitute-teach on the day in October 2004 that the pop-ups occurred. The school district had allowed its Web-filtering software support contract to expire, preventing the software from receiving updates. The computer in question was running Windows 98, and the browser in use was IE 6…

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Go. Read the whole thing (plus the linked background above).

IMO, the school system, its administrators and IT people, should be the ones facing the possible 40 years in jail, for it was their callous indifference to their responsibilities that appear to be the issue.

But the kind of problem Julie faced is yet another good reason I’ve had the popup protection Opera offers years before it became available in Firefox or (finally!) in IE7, and a reason I practice paranoia concerning spyware and viruses, trojans and worms, Oh! My! _I_ certainly don’t want any site I do not intend to visit–or even sites I DO intend to visit–take control of my computer…

Good UP TO DATE anti-virus software (yes, even in Linux–Clam AV is pretty good, and makes a nice set of “suspenders” to go with Linux’s already pretty good security “belt”) and MANUAL SCANNING of ALL file downloads, good UP TO DATE anti-spyware software (I use FIVE different anti-spyware products on my Windows machines), a good hardware firewall and a strong software firewall combined with responsible surfing/computing habits have kept our lil network free of problems, but some folks are just too lazy and irresponsible to develop habits like that… or–as in the example above–even know (or care) when an irresponsibly mismanaged network can endanger users.

Just a lil Thursday fun stuff… *heh*

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Linking back to Diane’s Wednesday OTA post at TTWA. Yeh, it’s a second link-in, Diane. What can I say? 😉

Trackposted to Right Pundits, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, A Blog For All, stikNstein… has no mercy, basil’s blog, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Compgeeky stuff. Just skip on down the page if such bores you.

Less than a day on this iteration of Xubuntu, and I’m pretty much sold on it. Oh, little things like, where the heck are some files/folders I know are there. For example, I expected to find a lot more in my /home/[username]/ folder after installing Wine and (just to see if I could–NOT to actually use the infernal thing!) Internet Exploder (vers 4, 5, AND 6). Internet Exploder works as well as Internet Exploder does, but where the heck are the dlls I wanted to inherit for other Windoze apps to use? I know they are there cos IE is working, but am so far having no joy finding them.

Hmmm, had no trouble finding the things under Puppy Linux or Ubuntu/Kbuntu, so what’s so different about Xubuntu? It’ll be fun solving that and other lil quirky things as time permits. Probably involve the very thing I really need to ease into more and more: more command line stuff in Linux. The GUI is powerful and mostly “intuitive” for an experienced Windoze user (with a lil flexible thinking)–ceetainly not really much of a learning curve over flipping between Win98/Win2KPro and WinXP Home/Pro.

In fact, I think I’ll just approach this pretty much that way. There are a lot of GUI and even file organization differences between the various flavors available in different Linux GUI-based distros–even among the relatively similar Ubuntu distros–and each one has different system utilities to handle system management tasks. It’s just a matter of getting a firm grip on those differences, I think.

For example, Freespire’s CNR (“Click and Run”–although it’s not quite that easy–close, but no cigar, as Bill Clinton might say) is a pretty slick way to find and install Linux apps, but it flubbed installing Wine. Puppy Linux’s PupGet installer is pretty slick, but has weaknesses of its own. Apt and Synaptics Package manager–the defaults for the different Ubuntu distros–are very powerful, easy to use and install most apps very smoothely (Wine was a snap to install with Apt, for example). But sometimes, the only way to install a package effectively it’s still necessary to drop into a Terminal session, and each of the different flavors have different tools available to access a terminal–command line–session from within the GUI.

“Aunt Tilly” friendly? Well, each of the three distros mentioned here pretty much are–dertainly as much OOB “friendliness” as any Windows version I’ve seen recently for folks who just want to browse the web, play media files, do email and various office app things. Heck, the wireless networking setup app in the tiny little 60-85MB Puppy Linux is easier to use than the various Windoze wireless setup apps that come installed with woreless-capable Windoze computers. But folks wanting to do more will have to dig a little and tweak here and there, learn to handle command line sessions, etc., at the very least.

It seems Linux distros have reached the point where it’s unlikely that a new user will have to learn how to compile his own kernel, write his own drivers, and all the other sorts of things that for years kept Linux the sole domain of propeller heads.

[Another list from The Curmudgeon’s Corner *heh*]

Rant: ON

Yeh, yeh, I know: “tick me off” is just a bowdlerized version of what I really mean, and that’s the first item on my list:

#1: Dulling down expressions for po’ widdew babies’ neo-victorian sensibilities. “Shit,” as one dear old saint in my church once told me, “isn’t a dirty word. What it refers to is dirty.” And calling things by names that are less than accurate is an insult to genuine attempts to convey meaning. Some things really are vulgar, and they ought to have their nature reflected in properly vulgar terms. (Unfortunately, there are no terms vulgar enough, even scatological enough, to express the nature of politicians *spit*.)

#2: “Feb-YOU-ary” Come on! It’s Feb-RU-ary, folks! Read the word! 😉 Learn to say it; it’s not that hard to GET IT RIGHT! Worst offenders: people who talk for a living, “news” readers, politicians *spit* and Academia Nut Fruitcakes, etc.

#3: Using a singular verb with a plural subject. Dumbass Mass Media Podpeople lead the way here, followed closely by politicians *spit*, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and just about anyone else with influence in the public arena. “There’s problems” is simply the way an illiterate non-English speaker might attempt to grunt a sentence. There ARE problems (“There’re problems”) that may be more serious than this, but few are more irksome… or more indicative of complete, dunderheaded lack of logic or in fact any reasoning going on.

#4: “Gay” to refer to sad sack, often angry and beligerant homosexuals. Nothing gay (happy, carefree) about the class. While I’d grant that there may be some gay homosexuals, there are plenty of gay heterosexuals as well. Ceding the word to people who angrily, stridently and beligerantly claim it as their own is an offense against the English language, common sense and against genuinely gay people.

#5: And take Maccultists. Please. I have nothing against folks using Macs. I’ve used more than one myself, in times past. But the Macrophile religion is just too much for me. Maccultists are worse than Scientologists or Mormons (though not–yet–as bad as Muslims) when it comes to attacking anyone or anything that casts aspersions upon their religion or religious icons and when it comes to lying about their own superior system and the failings of other systems. Give it a rest, folks! It’s just another OS option, now–you no longer even have a unique hardware platform, now that Apple is selling Intel PCs. But… by the same token, people who are Windoze cultists or Linux cultists are almost as bad. Just not usually as rabid.

#6: As always, politicians *spit* What Mark Twain said of Congress, that America is without a distinct criminal class, “with the possible exception of Congress,” can pretty well be said of politicians as a class, nowadays. *sigh*

#7: “Educators” Hey! Whatever happened to teachers? I’ll tell you what has happened to teachers: they’ve become an endangered species as more and more NEA-protected petty bureaucraps take up station in America’s classrooms and participate in the progressive enstupiation of the American citizens of the future. (Yes, I know there are still some teachers left, in fact many, who are condemned for their sins [of attempting to teach] to play Sisyphus, striving against the fall of night… Blessings upon their heads!)

#8: Neighbors who think their vehicle runs better if they sabotage their muffler, so that they sound louder than a C-130 doing touch-and-gos out side my bedroom window… at 3:00 a.m. Would like to book a trip to the Seventh Circle of Hell for them…

#9: May I mention politicians *spit* again? No? Well then, how about liars? No, I don’t mean someone who fibs and regrets it and attempts to make things right and avoid lying again. Sure, we have all failed to be really honest from time to time. But there are those whose whole existence is bound up in lies. They’re the lind of people who would see nothing wrong with cheating at solitaire (or any other game), who apparently believe that they excrete vanilla ice cream. You know some of them, I’m sure. *sigh*

#10: That tiny lil piece of popcorn that just will NOT come outa hiding, no matter how much I brush or floss… until it decides to emerge juuuust at the “right” moment to be inhaled… prompting oneof those monumental coughing jags. I hate that.

#11: Products that come with instructions in Spanish, French and Japanese. *sheesh* The things were manufactured for export to the U.S. Spanish, French and Japanese instructions should go somewhere else. For that matter, as for immigrants (legal, see #12) shoud heed these words. Or go home.

#12: Illegal aliens and darned near any other pet fake victim of people with more time on their hands than they have the IQ to know what to do with. What part of entering the country illegally, stealing IDs and using forged documents to steal jobs from citizens and legal immigrants shows any respect whatsoever for the country they have invaded?

#13: President Bush with his “read my lips: no amnesty for illegal aliens” lie. I mean, what part of NOT having to leave the country and get in the back of the line BEHIND applicants who seek to enter the country legally is NOT an amnesty? “Significant penalty”? Pay up to two of seven years back taxes, work at a job (taken in the place of a citizen or legal resident) and behave themselves from that point on a “significant penalty”? Heck, I’d like to be “forgiven” a few years’ taxes. Can I apply to be an illegal alien if Bush and Friends get this amnesty put in place? And hey! Can I also get free health care, etc., just by applying for resident illegal alien status?

I guess I could go on, since I’m in a curmudgeonly mood, but I guess I’ll not… for now.

Rant: OFF

Noted at the Thursday Thirteen Hub. Unfortunately, this TT is apparently the last TT. So be it. Thanks for the (short for me) ride!

Well, lunchtime rolled around, made some phone calls, etc., cooked a bite and then…

Aw, heck, why not? Wiped a hard drive on a “play” machine, installed the xfc-enabled KDE-based Xubuntu 6.06.1 (cos I’d already determined that 6.1 didn’t like installing on that box), then used Synaptic Package manager to d/l and install the Edgy Eft (6.1)-based Ichthux Linux distro over the Xubuntu install.

And it took less time overall than an install onto bare metal of XP-Pro.

Continue reading “More OS fun”

[Another re-run, this time from last September. Why? Because I’m feeling lazy, and because it needs to be said again. ]

Woman Pays $14,000 to Lease Rotary Dial Phone

The part that gets to me is the comment by a family member:

Strogen’s family is outraged by AT&T’s actions. Strogen’s granddaughter, Barb Gordon said “It’s taking advantage of the elderly. People our age wouldn’t even consider leasing a telephone.” Gordon also expressed her anger and pointed out the obvious that “If my own grandmother was doing it, how many other people are?”

“Taking advantage of the elderly”? How long has it been since everyone who’s paid any attention at all (and has more than as many as two active brain cells) has known that leasing rotary phones (or ANY phones, for that matter) from Ma Bell is unnecesasary? Sure, the woman’s in her 80s now, but she was only in her 50s or 60s when such information became common knowledge. Anyone stupid enough to pay a $10/month rental/lease fee for a piece of throwaway technology really ought to be paying that money as a fine for stupidity. Heck, I have working landline phones that cost less than $10… ten twelveyears ago.

But no, our society wants to put bumper guards on life, now… and that’s making us ever more stupid and incompetent. In our economy of abundance and our society of cocooned ease, we are breeding whole generations of incompetent, lazy nincompoops and whimps (or over-reacting hyper jackasses). As a small example, the other day a young nephew of mine asked about some DOS commands so he could play around on an old computer his family had aquired. Almost stumped me. Windows (and Linux, for that matter) are so graphically-oriented, so easy, that I rarely use DOS commands any more, rarely write batch files, rarely even see the command line.

Enstupiating ease. That’s a critical danger to our society. That and cocooning, bumper-guarding children throughout childhood and adolescence to the extent that they never grow up to be really competent adults but sheeple who always need someone else to take care of them, instruct them in how to do things. Incompetent at learning or doing nearly anything on their own.

Filled with an always present undercurrent of fear.

Take a “discussion” I had elsewhere with a gal who prides herself on being a swimming inbstructor (for nine whole years! woo-hoo!). Her claim to expertise? She is the ONLY swimming instructor she knows or has even heard of who can teach someone the breast stroke in half an hour!

Gime a break! When I was eight, I saw someone doing a breast stroke in the public pool we frequented. I thought it was cool, so I did it too. (And yeh, if my lifesaving and WSI instructors years later are to be believed, I apparently did it right.) A few minutes later, I “taught” my six-year-old brother the breaststroke. How? “Hey! look what I can do!” “I can do that too!” “Show me.” So he did. Simply by copying me.

Big stinking deal.

But no, not today. Today, apparently it takes instruction by a professional for today’s incompetent whimpy kids to learn an idiot-proof breast stroke. And it takes (apparently) 30 whole minutes to do so. Gee, people really are getting stupider by the minute. Growing up, I never met anyone (who already knew how to keep their head in the water) who couldn’t pick up the breast stroke in under 5 minutes, “instructed” or not.

And so it goes. “Education professionals” (filling positions that formerly would have been filled by teachers) are talking (again) about how training wheel teaching methods (oh! That’s another experience! I never knew there were such things as “training wheels” as a kid. Just got put on a bike and pushed off… ) can cripple students’ intellectual development.

Yeh, it’s all talk.

*sigh*

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Right Pundits, Bumpshack: Where the News Always Bumps!, Perri Nelson’s Website, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Rightlinx, stikNstein… has no mercy, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.