*heh* Lightweight libtard, Matt baby, needs someone to change his diapers after that mini-interview.
Michelle Malkin: stealth Ann Coulter with better manners and a killer smile.
M$–Gottalove’em…
…or not.
So, knowing full well that M$ had a BUNCH of “out of cycle” patches in the channel, I left the Win7 “side” of this computer on last night and… as expected, M$ rudely rebooted it after updating with a humongous number of patches, most designed to patch the on-cyle patches released earlier this month.
Oh. Well. I’m running the Win7 release candidate so I can be useful to early-adopters and new computer buyers this fall. It’s not bad, but since it is a test release, I’m allowing M$ to update it “at will” instead of taking a more conservative approach and choosing my own time to update, and which updates to allow.
So far, no updates have introduced unbearable problems, but M$’s record there isn’t all roses, as this out-of-cycle buncha updates demonstrate.
Common Sense on Research Funding
As always, Jerry Pournelle is worth paying attention to:
When most science is funded through taxes, then the peer review process takes over. Science administration is a bureaucracy, and that bureaucracy is as subject to the Iron Law of Bureaucracy as any other. The process weeds out silly grant applications and those based on truly unsound science, but it also weeds out bold challenges to the consensus, and the number of “peers” who adhere to the consensus grows. The result is concentration of resources on the popular hypotheses: often a good thing, but no formula for breakthroughs. How to fund contrarian ideas is the real challenge to government funding of science. We don’t really want to be handing grants off to the Flat Earth Society, but you know, I’d rather give them a million or so each century than beggar the country in order to enrich Al Gore.
Of course, any reasonable person would rather fund harmless kooks than fund deliberate liars (like Algore) who are out to enrich themselves by doing harm to enormous numbers of people.
New Hope
In nearly 40 years of cutting my own hair, I’ve discovered 2 things:
1. I’m no more or less likely to give myself a bad haircut than the barbers I went to before I divorced myself from the habit of letting someone else butcher my head and
2. haircuts are an expression of both new beginnings and… hope.
“It’ll grow out.”
Change You Can Believe In…
It’s nice to know that we have a First Lady who’s so very supportive of her husband’s committment to rein in spending. (I’m amazed I got that out without laughing my head off, gagging and puking, or an RCOB* descending over my eyes. Amazed, I say. On many levels.)
Mary Todd Lincoln was ridiculed for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. Mamie Eisenhower had to pay the salary for her personal secretary … herself. And, Laura Bush was criticized for her staff earning $561,325 in annual salaries. But Queen Michelle has set a new staff salary precedent for the First Lady … who performs absolutely no official duties … during the most severe economic turmoil of our lifetimes.
See Michelle Obama’s Staff Salary Totals $1.6 Million for more. Would the last hypocrite in the Mass MEdia Podpeople’s Army please just shut off the lights on the way out?
*RCOB=”red curtain of blood”–a certain sign of an impending berserker rage with a blood pressure measured in the explosive range…
Excessive Typos? I Plead Stupidity
I’ve never had a typing or “keyboarding” class. Back “in the olden days” guys just did NOT take typing classes, unless they wanted to be secretaries or some such (and most guys who had ambitions like that hid them pretty well *heh*), OR their girlfriend had ’em by the short and curlies and also had ’em enrolled in Home Ec.
OK, so that’s one: I type by the biblical method: seek and ye shall find. Over the last 20 years or so of computer use, I’ve managed to become pretty quick and accurate with that autodidact “methodology” although I do sometimes have to look at the keyboard.
Recently, that’s changed a bit because of my stupidity.
Almost twenty years using a keyboard but fifty or more using kitchen knives (and longer exposure to knives and other sharp implements–what boy didn’t carry a pocket knife in first grade? None I knew). But, still I got careless and am now–while my attempt to slice off my left index finger heals–I’m typing a finger short. Makes for a lot of edits, I can tell ya.
Now, I’m a pretty smart guy, as my IQ scores and grades (whenever i wasn’t bored to tears by teachers who were demonstrably less well-informed than I was–seriously. I was an arroganht lil snot as a student) and various accomplishments can testify. Not only that, but I can generally handle a chef’s knife about as well as Bobby Flay–after more than a few decades’ more experience with it than he. But smart, experienced people can do stupid things, and I certainly did.
So, while my left index finger heals, I’ll be using the middle finger on that hand for both middle and index finger tasks, but don’t think I’m giving y’all the finger just cos that’s the case, ‘K?
BTW, I’m just adding this to the total of “left side injuries”. *heh* The ONLY real injury I’ve suffered to any part of the right side of my body has been my right knee. All other major injuries (including the area of my brain most affected by a concussion from a skull fracture *heh*) have been left side injuries. If I could get a left side transplant, most of my aches and pains would disappear. 🙂
Tech Lust
N.B. Confession is said to be as good for the soul as it is bad for the reputation. Well, so be it. Here’s my confession of tech lust.
OK, I’m a technophile, but even at that I don’t often actually drool over a prospective techie toy. This hit my hot buttons, though:
“[T]he Eee PC Keyboard is a full-size input device that is likely based on the Atom chipset. Though it has a small 5-inch touch screen on the right, we suspect its role is more of a secondary display as this system is meant to be hooked up to external screens via the wireless HDMI or VGA port.”1
Well, that was last January. This is now:
“Engadget ‘has it on good authority’ that the world’s dominant Netbook purveyor will launch the product first shown in January at the trade show next month.
We know it will have a 5-inch touch screen embedded in the keyboard, an Atom processor, and, according to Engadget, a 32GB SSD, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and both wired and wireless HDMI.”
I’ve been toying with the idea of a Netbook (probably Asus, since I like so many of its products), but really only for use “being there” with my Wonder Woman while she’s on her notebook, which is almost always in the other room (well, especially since there’s so little room in here, largely because of my massive collection of “techie junk” *sigh*). This could easily displace a Netbook for such use as that, especially for some really fun applications using a good-sized LCD screen–maybe even one of these Asus (only in prototype, so far) wireless LCD screens!–the HDMI wireless linkup and this lil keyboard/mini-touch-screen… Or, of course, simply use it with the lil touch screen as a standalone for minor computing use. It’s at least several times larger than what some folks manage to use with their iPhones, and with a full-size keyboard, well, I’d be a happy camper.
Asus wireless LCD demo’ed in March, ’09:
Oh, I just realized the reason for all my excessive salivation may have been the pistachios…
Has Your Router Been Hijacked?
I blogged about this once before, and have emailed family, friends and clients about it as well, but perhaps it bears repeating.
Worm breeds botnet from home routers, modems
More than 100,000 hosts invaded
Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Well, it could be dangerous to your personal info, so taking steps to avert having your router infected is just good sense. You see, your router/firewall that’s connected to your cable or dsl “modem” is really just a limited, highly-specialized computer. Many of these devices, whether consumer router/firewalls or high-dollar Big Business router/firewalls for large networks, are run on linux versions that have a very minor, well-known vulnerability that this ‘bot exploits to gain control of a network. Most router/firewalls used by large networks in a business environment have long since been patched, but most consumer router/firewalls are run without ever being updated–and some may not even have updates to remove the vulnerability available from the manufacturer. Which are vulnerable? There’s not a well-documented list anywhere, so you have to be proactive.
1. Check to see if your router/firewall could be infected. “Ports 22, 23 and 80 are blocked as part of the infection process.”1 Use your router’s admin access to check this. Don’t know how? Read The Manual! If these ports are blocked or admin access is blocked when you Follow Your Manual’s Instructions,
2. “…perform a hard reset on your device, change the administrative passwords, and update to the latest firmware. These steps will remove the rootkit and ensure that your device is not reinfected.”ditto 😉
It’s an easy ‘bot to protect against, and just as easy to kill, so if your firewall/router is still vulnerable after reading this, it’s certainly not MY fault. 🙂
BTW, a strong password will be at least eight characters long and contain a mix of upper/lowercase letters, numerals and whatever “special characters” your firewall/router’s admin interface will accept. It will be memorablem to you (for whatever reason resonates with you) but will NOT contain any part of a real word, correctly spelled, that can be cracked with a dictionary attack, nor will it contain such immensely stupid content as the name of a relative or friend or a birthdate associated with you or anyone you could possibly know, etc.
In other words, don’t go out of your way to make it easy on password crackers.
Here’s an example of how I generate memorable passwords of medium security. I choose the technical name of a real geographical feature, or a lyric from an old, old hymn or the name of a long dead pet and an item associated with it, then I misspell it and then substitute characters and numbers for some of the letter, but NOT in standard “l33t” speak. It results in a password I can usually figure out if I forget it, but which will be relatively secure from dictionary attacks and from attacks by someone who may already have access to some personal info. I’ve been able to defeat 0phcrack–a password cracking utility for cracking Win2K/XP/Vista login passwords–with this technique, but it is still more vulnerable to brute force attacks than highly-randomized passwords of much longer (say 64 characters or more) length would be–the kinds of “passwords” I use for wireless access keys, for example.
Still, an eight-character password of medium strength is probably quite good enough to defeat psyb0t. Just do it.
BTW, I have lost count of firewall/routers I have dealt with in homes and small businesses that have the username and password for admin access STILL SET TO THE FACTORY DEFAULT!!! Folks, I’m not going to mince words. That is stupidity cubed.
Good Guitar
I keep seeing all kindsa folks posting videos and recordings of fav guitar performances who then rave about how great these–usually rock performers–are as guitarists.
*pfui*
Carlos Montoya left behind a huge (HUGE) body of guitar performances second to none, and certainly better than any rock performer I’ve ever heard, not that some of them aren’t fair git-fiddle pickers, for what they have to work with.
And don’t even tempt me to start posting Segovia performances (cos I can’t find any of his on imeem I want to post right now :-)) … but since Woody remarked about a different performer, here’s one from John Williams (the guitarist, not composer/conductor):
Romance for Guitar and String Orchestra – John Williams
Oh, and here’s one by the guy Woody mentioned, Stevan Pasero:
Krugman pwn3d on Healthcare “Reform”
h.t. Kishore
My Wonder Woman’s comment was, “I suppose one should never ask a question one doesn’t already know the answer to, eh?”
Well, Krugman asked a question his nomenklatura-insulated mindset thought he already knew the answer to. One doubts that he really listened to the answer he got, though, because nomenklatura just don’t listen to the proletariat.