GLOBAL WARMING:

We know that in recent Geologic History the climate has changed to far greater degrees than we have measured in last 200 years. Witness 4 "Ice Ages" in the Pleistocene, and higher sea levels in the past as evidenced by Gravel Terraces throught the world.

So while current climate change is a concern, it is the height of human arrogance to assume that "man" has caused it all, when we KNOW of a greater range of climatic change before humankind was a factor. With 80 % of the Earth covered by Oceans, that water absorbs more Carbon Dioxide than we can ever calculate, and the Carbon Dioxide becomes part of Calcium Carbonate in skeletons of micro and macro creatures, settling to the ocean floor and forming beds of limestone, freeing the oceans to absorb ever more Carbon Dioxide as it has throughout Geologic History, i.e. Chalk of Dover

Geologists and Paleontologists have used the remains in such Limestone beds to track the evolution of life in the past Billion years, and such evidence provides part of the proof that gives the lie to "Creationism".

Watch what you print, the government is now watching you. Can one partially get around this by buying anonymously with cash, and not registering their printer with manufacturer?

Save on an HDTV Apparently incentives given to managers at BestBuy to move high margin accesories can distort the buying process, and an astute buyer can use that to their advantage. Read about it here.

Attracting Tourists Apparently most California political entities don't do a very good job. I'm about to visit my son in Los Angeles. So 2 weeks ago, I filled out web forms to receive "tourist" information. They ought to jump on such live prospects, and send out mail immediately. Not so. It two weeks to receive my first tiny brochure. It was from Redondo Beach. Of course the brochure points to a dead "url" www.visitredondo.com/passport, when apparently its been changed to here.

A DirecTv HDTV Receiver with Tivo (HR10-250) runs on Linux, and as such can have software added to it to increase its' capabilities, like controlling it over the web. It's by now a well documented process, here, here, and here. That's just the tip of the iceberg of what can quickly be found with Google.

Yale Law School and Audio CD copy Protection: What they have to say is here

City of Houston misplaced priorities: Come to find out today that the City has secretly cancelled it's recycling program so it can devote more people and trucks to picking up Hurricane Rita debris. Some points:

1. Shouldn't the city be getting money from FEMA to cover overtime for Rita ?
2. Since when does the needs of the few (Rita trash holders) outweigh the needs of the many (every resident should have recycling).
3. Shouldn't picking up nonbiodegradable plastic (which the city sells) be a higher priority than biodegradable tree branches?

OUCH ! Just got my 2005-2006 Flu shot today, first day they were available. Just in case there's any problems this year I'm covered. This years' flu shot protects against:

• A/New Caledonia/20/99-like (H1N1),
• A/California/7/2004-like (H3N2), and
• B/Shanghai/361/2002-like viruses.
  

Thus any other type of flu outbreak isn't covered.

========================

As the Jewish holy days now unfold, in this season of repentance, let me ask for your forgiveness for my (blogging) sins (both commission and omission).

Upgrading my Macintosh G5 - It originally came with an 8x DVD burner, a Pioneer DVR-107; I have upgraded it by using a Pioneer DVR-110D 16x burner obtained cheap from Shop4Tech

Apple has instructions here.

Followup The Drive came with version 1.08 of firmware installed, which I immediately
updated to 1.17, only to have version 1.22 released on Sept. 30, so I got to update again. If I recall correctly version 1.22 allows me to read DVDs created on Rigel 4.

More HD stations for me from DirecTv, XM too: Thanks to Congress and FCC rules, you need a waiver from your local station to receive a National Network feed if you live in an area that has local channels. Independent locals usually deny them for fear of losing local ad revenue. Network owned stations usually grant them for HD channels.

Such was the case for me in Houston, TX. ABC and Fox, both owned by their respective Network granted a Waiver, and so I now receive channels 86 and 88. CBS and NBC denied waivers, so I do not receive channels 80 or 82.

It took 5 weeks from first requesting (through DirecTv) waivers, and final word from the 4 networks.

No added cost as long as you're paying for either local channels or the HD package.

XM Satellite radio will be on DirecTv for no extra cost starting November 15. Woo Hoo.
More information at directv.com/xm or their channel 800. For a standard "Total Choice" package that means 50 of the 150 XM stations, instead of the current 30 Music Choice stations.

POWER OUTAGES FROM RITA in Houston Area: Centerpoint Energy seems to be reducing by half the number of folks without power each day. One can appreciate the task seeing their map of outages.

Unloaded my Xbox on eBay today.

Post Rita : MONDAY: Almost back to normal now (on the West side of Houston), except most businesses and schools closed till Wednesday. Gasoline is now readily available, and supermarkets are open, just lacking beans, bread, milk and eggs.

If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going : Airbus Industries proves it can't keep its' planes safe.

Rita went East : Our west side of Houston got about 2" of rain (zero flooding) and wind gusts to 50 mph, and by 6:30 AM the rain which started 11 hours earlier was over although it is still windy, with gusts to maybe 30 mph. We still have power, telephone and water, so all in all the effect was far less than Alicia for our corner of the world. Only two minor issues. One, we will apparently have to wait a day or three for gasoline (although we don't need any at the moment), and a slight reallignment of the HDTV OTA antenna is in order.
Guaranteed later today and tomorrow the highways will be a mess as folks try to return home. It seems like the exodus was in stages. 900 folks in buses on Wednesday, 2,000,000 in their own cars on Thursday. Hundreds (or thousands) ran out of gas in the 2 mph traffic jam. In a last ditch effort to prevent potential tragedy, late Friday the Houston Mayor had the Transit Authority send buses out the highways to pick up motorists and get them to safety, and 90% + refused to leave their cars, as the cars were laden with valuables. Haven't heard yet if anyone stuck on the side of highway 59 NE of town suffered as a result of being stranded on the side of the road. The area around Lufkin, TX is still getting pounded by wind and rain.

FOLLOWUP: 2:45 PM, the sun is out, I've been encouraged to shelter in place and there is no gasoline in Houston. Walked 5 blocks to the local Quickey Mart and was told it would be Monday before they got Newspaper deliveries. How many tens of thousands of people will go to the web, and discover they dont need the newsprint hardcopy version, I wonder.

Hurricane Rita - Report from Houston: Not living by the coast (50 miles inland) or in a low lying area (I'm at 62' elevation) it was not suggested I evacuate by public officials, and I didn't. Nearly 2 million others have, and major interstates, now literally have a 100 mile backup/gridlock. Meanwhile back in Houston, all major roads out of town are moving at 2 mph, 95 % of gas stations are out of gas and/or are closed, and if one can get to the airport, it takes hours to get through security as TSA personnel either evacuated or couldn't get to the airport.
Heres what happened when regular people tried to evacuate. This prediction of RITAs path was spot on 36 hours before NOAA figured out the storm would land East of Galveston Bay.

How to BLOG: The definitive textbook on blogging has now been published. Read about it here.

Yellow journalism in Hurricane warnings : The local media in Houston loves to scare it listeners about potential Hurricane strikes; anything so you watch the 10:00 news, or buy tomorrows paper. Me, I just go to the National Hurricane Center web site. They've done an excellent job of predicting 3 days out, and do better than they know for 5 days out. I just extrapolate the direction of migration of the 5 day out prediction which is updated every 6 hours, and do quite well.

It's against their rules, so they let people die: At the New Orleans airport FEMA refused to allow an out-of-state doctor attend to sick (and dying) Katrina victims, as he had not done all the paperwork to be in their database, and later when he had, they never used him. Read about it here.

No more Fords for me: I am very happy with my new Pontiac Vibe, good gas mileage, plenty of interior space, and a great price. It's made at a joint GM-Toyota factory in California, and as such statistically has far better reliability than anything Ford makes. Anyway on Sept 17, I receive a mailing trying to lure me to a Ford dealer 50 miles from where I live. Absurd!! Ford marketing must not cross check their files for all the complaints I filed with their HQ about being unable to get warranty satisfaction on a defective Ford Escape Tire.

Why keep it a secret? I was pleased to figure out that apparently Fox TV Network has approved my request for Waiver from the FCC rules, and I now received Fox 5 (NYC channel) in HD via a DirecTv satellite on my DirecTv HD TiVo unit on channel 88. Why I have to discern this on my own, and DirecTv would not want to call or email me with the good news, is beyond my comprehension. Apparently company owned local stations grant waivers, and independent members of the network do not, not wanting to potentially lose local advertising revenue. In Houston that's Fox and ABC I've read elsewhere.

Doesn't sound like accidental mixup to me: Would be low-paid humanitarian workers get shanghaied into cleaning up Casino in Mississippi and treated like slaves. Only called a mixup because they went public? Read about it here in their hometown newspaper.

New Orleans 2 weeks later: 20 years ago I lived in New Orleans, so I have been following events with interest. By now there is a vast difference in what is happening to those who were well-to-do (usually translates to Caucasian), and those that were poor (usually translates as Black). A telling store is here. Get a password here if you choose not to register, and you are asked to.

Microsoft Windows monthly patch pulled: So many bugs in Windows are reported to Microsoft, that they have gotten in a cycle of writing monthly patches. This month, they discovered the September patch would do more harm than good, and didn't release it despite having announced they would. Story here.

DirecTv billing error As part of the deal I negotiated with DirecTv I was to get some parts of my programming free for 6 months. Comes the first bill and it wasn't free, and reps didn't know how to scroll back to find the notes of August 23 on my account, and when they did Supervisors refused to honor those promises. After 3 calls in, I found a representative that exhibited some common sense and adjusted things.

Antenna guaranteed to fail ?: Try and buy the Zenith GEMDTV1 antenna from Buy.com, and be presented with this return policy, in the event the antenna fails to be fit for purpose:

"Due to manufacturers' policies, Buy.com cannot accept returns on this item for any reason. The manufacturer will handle all exchanges and replacements. Please contact the manufacturer directly and they will assist you with repair or replacements. NO REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE FOR THIS PRODUCT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. THIS PRODUCT CAN ONLY BE RETURNED FOR REPAIR OR EXCHANGE."

I think in some states/cities, such limitations are not allowed.

For some strange reason Zenith has convinced me not to buy their antenna.

HDTV impressions: 8 months ago I got an HDTV to replace a 10 year old geriatric big screen. With the DirecTv HD receiver with TiVo I can now really get a full suite of HD reception.

Showtime HD - Mostly a waste of time. Half their movies aren't in HD. One that was and is in Dolby 5.1 even though the DirecTv guide failed to indicate it was "Ground Hog Day". I TiVoed it last night and in HD and surround it's awesome.

Local HD - The local amateurs at CBS decided to join David Letterman in progress for his
HD broadcast last night, even though they figured out how to delay it SD TV. Many other
local broadcasts seem like they're merely upconverted for HD, and are in SD.

DirecTech games continue: I just got a phone call from an installer on his way
over for my DirecTv install. "We brought the wrong antenna last time, I have the correct Winegard"; Strange they had been insisting the indoor antenna they previously brought
was the right one. Meanwhile I have my RadioShack antenna, so this could get
interesting. Stay tuned.

Followup: Took just over an hour, the Winegard antenna (Model GS-1100) does barely better than an indoor antenna, and without a rotator won't get all channels. The installer had to be shamed into grounding the OTA Antenna. I'm now negotiating with DirecTv about getting my Radio Shack antenna installed. The tech did a good job of running another phone line drop for the HR10-250. So far the HR10-250 works wonderfully. I also finally found out why DirecTv won't say boo about the poor job this installer company does. The tech let slip that DirecTv recently bought DirecTech.

More DirecTv sloth: Received the following email, again doesn't exactly engender
confidence that anyone there cares.

Thank you for writing. I apologize for any frustration this may have caused. I have forwarded your comments to the Office of the President. They will be contacting you within the next seven to ten business days, during standard business hours. Thank you for your patience.

Thanks again for writing.

Sincerely,

Lance
DIRECTV Customer Service

More Installer Games: Another Directech installer showed up. Two problems.
First - he tried to pretend he was a DirecTv employee
Second - He brought the same indoor antenna that was agreed unacceptable.
The indoor multidirectional antenna they claim is supplied by DirecTv, but
do they have a choice? In Houston where from my zip code HD is broadcast at
185 and 188 degrees, unidirectional is appropriate.

Followup: DirecTv has agreed to credit my account for $60, and I will buy a
unidirectional HDTV outdoor antenna to be installed by DirecTech with no
additional charge.

Let's see if they mess that up on Thursday.

2nd Followup : I now have a Radio Shack model VU-90 XR antenna sitting in
its box waiting for the Installer.

DirecTv's amateur Installers: Two of the Three Stooges showed up for an HD/OTA install. They didn't have an HDTV OTA antenna, didn't have a separate stand-alone mast, and didn't know how to install the substandard antenna they were told to install, a generic no name brand. Further searching on the Internet revealed it to be what's called a "Two Bow Tie Indoor Antenna". When I called DirecTv to complain even the DirecTv supervisor couldn't get to anyone in authority on the phone at the Installer's out of state office. While I was waiting until DirecTv instructed me to return the receiver the installer had handed me, the installer falsely reported I had taken it off their truck. I wish DirecTv could have seen the way they tossed the HR10-250 back into the back of their pickup. The Installer's company apparently has a standard policy of not answering their phone, and if you do get through, they falsely promise a manager will call right back so as to get you off the phone. Internet reports of poor morale and mistreatment of contract "employees" at the Installer company were found.

DirecTv needs an alternate installer for Houston, TX, so it can have some leverage over these clowns. The install has now been rescheduled, but with conflicting reports as to which day it will be, and of course promised phone calls never happened.

FOLLOWUP: DirecTv snaps into inaction. Twenty hours after emailing a version of the above, the following boilerplate was received:

"Thank you for writing. I have forwarded your message on to a manager who will contact you within the next few business days. We appreciate your patience.

Sincerely,

Christina
DIRECTV Customer Service"

Anyone care to bet that it won't be a "manager" who "contacts" me???

I know the Password See what happens when everyone in a school gets a laptop computer and Administrators go overboard trying to control everything.

Waiting for my Lightspeed: SBC is planning on building out it's fiber network to put all residential customers within 5,000 feet of a Fibre terminal, allowing for Internet connectivity at 15 mbps. Just 18 more months?

HDTV via satellite DirecTv will soon be going "live" with the first 2 of its 4 new "designed for HD" satellites. These satellites will be using different orbital slots and newer technology (MPEG4) in large part, that existing receivers can't handle. They have been misleading customners by saying "We're seeing if we can do a software upgrade"; when they know full well existing receivers don't have the horsepower to do MPEG4 decoding in software. Golly, you don't launch billion dollar satellites and not have everything all figured out.

Their current HD DirecTv receiver with TiVo (the HR10-250) had been selling for $999.99 in the year since it came to market. Suddenly it's down to $600 and a $100 rebate at BestBuy, etc. Then I read on USENET that their retention department is offering them to good customers for $299.99. Why the price drop, unless these models are being cleared out for new models that WILL handle additional HD channels from new satellites? Meanwhile someone is selling the 800 # into DirecTv Retention for $5.95 on eBay so others can get the $299.99 deal.

As I've been with DirecTv for 8 years and never paid a bill later than 2 weeks earlier, I figure I'm a good customer. After complaining about phone support going to Phillipines, and Echostar currently having more HD stations available, and the HR10-250 not being able to handle the new satellite, they agreed to sell me one for $299.99, and credit my account for $200. So after the $100 rebate, it'll be free. At that price I don't mind if it's obsolete in 6 months; besides my 2 1/2 year old HDVR2 (a non HD DirecTv-TiVo) is now acting flakey, so a free replacement is good.

Not buying an Ipod I was all set to buy a Photo Ipod until I realized Apple has pulled a fast one and replaced the 60 Gig Photo ipod model M9586 with the M9830. The difference? It now doesn't come with a dock, or a firewire cable, or a case, or an AV Cable.

I used the same monies to replace my old Peugeot Orient Express bicycle (mine was red) with a Trek 7300 FX bicycle (mine is silver). Amazing how much better bicycles are these days.

OS X on any PC - More reports on running the Intel version of Macintosh OS X on any regular PC are here . In at least one case, Apple cajoled the Web Site owner to take down detailed how-to instructions, but Google has them cached, so they remained in cyberspace.

Slowly I turned: I'm off on vacation, and there may be no posts here for 2 weeks.

Mexican Salsa: Most all Mexican and "Tex/Mex" resaurants bring fried corn tortillas chips and red salsa to the table when you sit down. Lately I've run into an astounding variety (mostly unacceptable) of salsa at restaurants. You'd think they could follow a standard recipe. Fine, maybe add a dash of lime or vinegar, and choose your pepper based on how hot you want it. But I've run into:
1. An upscale restaurant with no salsa, just some wierd bean soup
2. Another where it was 99% coursely chopped tomato
3. One where it was mostly vinegar
4. One where it tasted like ketchup

Grand Theft Auto Lawsuit: It was bound to happen

Vent Visor Greatest low tech after market product for a car. These small Awning-like devices fit over a cars' window, allowing one to securely leave a windows open an inch while away from a car, allowing hot air to vent, so in the middle of the summer you car is 120 degrees inside when you return instead of 160 degrees. And with the awning effect, they keep out anything except hurricane rain.

Microsoft tries catch up. maps.google.com for a while now has been better than maps.yahoo.com, in part because of the excellent way Google has integrated Satellite imagery. Now Microsoft is getting into the act, blatantly copying the look and feel of Google. Then Microsoft accidently used 14 year old imagery for just that area of California covering where Apple's Headquarters is.

On my wish list: Motorola has been very successful with its Razr V3 cell phone, selling millions. To try to keep the buzz they introduced a Black model. No special features, just black. But hopefully later this year, a true successor, the V3x is due to appear. Seems like maybe V4 would make more sense, but regardless, I want one.

Followup. This Motorola puppy isn't so bad either.

a new Target store: I went to see a new Target store minutes after it first opened for the first time today (Meyerland, Houston, TX). I was underwhelmed. They took 6 months to remodel a former K-Mart location that had stood vacant for a year. They were still stocking shelves. They had done zero to announce the store. No ads in newspaper or weekly papers. No flyers or mail to neighborhood. No specials for the opening, no prizes for first 100 customers. Big surprize, the store was very empty, and will likely stay that way, as the upper middle class lily white neighborhood may not react well to a store where 90% of its staff is minority. Doesn't Jesse Jackson complain when a stores' diversity doesn't match the community it's located in?

Followup: 30 hours late, I receive a postcard announcing the opening of the new Target. I call their 800 number and after 5 minutes on hold am hung up on.

Where to buy Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas now? With major chains no longer carrying this item (see July 20 post), one can turn to eBay. This $49.99 PC game goes for over $70 on eBay.

Web sites that don't want to communicate with you: PC World writes about web sites that hide their "Contact us" link, making it hard to do so. What they fail to mention is all too often anymore, any answer you get is worthless boilerplate sent from India at 3 AM U.S. time.

I've had issues with Banks violating their own "privacy" rules and sending me junk snail mail, and then :

- There's no one to complain to
- The droids at their 800 number will hang up on you
- You won't even get an apology, let alone compensation

GTA rating changed: As I expected.

Followup: Target, Walmart and BestBuy have announced they're discontinuing sales of the game. The NY Times reports on it all, a day later.

More on GTA: See my July 12 post, this is a followup. Hillary Clinton has complained about the now revealed x-rated Game Play. There is a difference between adult content, and adult content that treats women as sex objects. Some, perhaps too willing to criticise our next President have wondered how genuine her criticism is. While a change in game rating from Mature (over 17) to Adults Only (over 18) shouldn't affect sales too much, in reality it would as many outlets refuse to sell Adults Only games. Others (July 16) worry about law suits that may now be generated. Me, I'm more concerned about the misleading statement released by the game publisher, Rockstar making like the sexual content wasn't there before. It's effectively disputed by the author of the patch that reveals the additional game elements in question, apparently by merely flipping the "censor" switch.

This week's report of MAJOR security flaws in Microsoft Windows. Still new avenues of attack against Windows are being identified ==and== used. The story is here. Seems everyone needs to be a patchmaster to safely use a PC.

Gmail (Google email) humor: At 6:30 AM CDT today the following was returned when I attempted to check my Gmail:

Server Error

Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

X-rated Easter Egg in the news: "Easter Eggs" have been in software just about since the first commercial software. An Easter Egg might require a non obvious game play, or some secret key press to activate a hidden message or aspect of the game. They were in computer game software 25 years ago. Now it turns out a "blocked" and/or "Easter Egg" feature of the game Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas is made available by a patch, readily available on the internet. The patch, labeled "Hot Coffee (adult) Mod", changes game play so that if you ask a girlfriend to have coffee with you, she will then be intimate with the character. This is apparently not the first X-rated Easter Egg. Check here.
If this part of the game, here to fore unavailable, is available, it should make the game itself x-rated, and a change in rating for the game as a whole is in fact being considered.
Revealing already extant x-rated software is different from a third party adding features to a
game to make it x-rated (and this also has been going on for at least 8 years, and with little in the way of complaints). Although the end result may equally upset the parents of a young teenager.

Broadband via your power lines? Certainly possible and now being tested in Houston, Texas; it was considered by Enron Broadband ($550 for details). Only one question. What speed? DirecWay currently sells 500 kbps as Broadband, as do cellular carriers. Dsl broadband over phone lines is about to be at 6000 kbps, 12+ times faster.

Microsft Windows machines still vulnerable: Despite efforts by Microsoft to close some security holes in their operating systems, Windows PCs are still vulnerable. Do you have antivirus software on your PC? Is it updated to July 2005 definitions??? As always never open email or an attachment you are not expecting. Here is the latest trick to get you.

Prius for immediate delivery! I stopped by a Toyota dealer today to compare more carefully the Toyota Matrix with the Pontiac Vibe I had just purchased. I decided the Vibe was better, what with better tires, and other more customer friendly features. Then I noticed 2 Prius cars sitting on the lot, available for sale. The notion of a 6 month waiting list is not valid any longer. Checking on the Internet at Toyota.com, one can enter their zip code, pick a dealer, and search inventory, and find many new 2005 (60 mpg City rated) Toyota Prius sitting on dealers lots.

The next thing: TiVo results in time shifting. Slingbox results in place shifting! Think of it as a personal broadcaster. Take your Cable box, DVR or TiVo output, and watch it on a PC anywhere via the Internet. Read the review. It's now hit the mainstream news here.

SBC stupidity : I was taught "Never blame on malice that which can be blamed on stupidity" So the fact SBC still hasn't (as promised) corrected my dsl bills from a month ago, nor issued any of the promised credits, I guess demonstrates what a stupid outfit they are, so I won't be buying any SBC stock, despite a high dividend.
At least the broadband (dsl) is working reliabily and fast, something I could NEVER say for Time Warner and their cable broadband.
FOLLOWUP: The numbers appear correct over at the SBC website, but zero itemization.
The SBC/Yahoo site has differing information. Next week they need to get organized so as to not confuse their customers and generate unnecessary support calls. STUPID.

Your trade-in value may vary: Four trade-in stories.

One - I wanted to trade the Goodyear Eagle tires on my new car for Michelan MSV tires. $90 Goodyear tires would get me $20 each on trade.

Two - Car dealers don't want your 11 mpg Ford Epedition. You paid $40,000 three years ago,
good luck getting $8,000 in trade now.

Three - A 3 1/4 year old Nissan Xterra is worth 50% of what was paid for it when trading it for new car.

Four - A two year old Power Macintosh can fetch 45% of what was paid for it by selling it on eBay.

Something to do with law of supply and demand.

Low tech savings: My new Vibe lacks carpeting in the "luggage" area behind the back seat. One can go online to J.C. Whitney, and find a custom carpet piece for $129, or buy a OEM Pontiac carpet for even more, but I just went to Pep Boys, and bought a piece of carpet (3' x 6') for $9.99, and took a scissors and trimmed it to fit perfectly.

GM in distress: With General Motors having trouble selling cars, they are offering some good promotions currently, so I spring for a Pontiac Vibe (really a rebadged Toyota Matrix) for about $6325 off sticker when all is said and done, and then the Dealer effectively gave me 100% of Kelly Blue Book Trade in value, when in previous years it was a struggle to get a dealer close to such a figure.
The dealer also sells Hummer, and its not too big a stretch to think of the Vibe as a mini-Hummer. The Hummer is the H2 model, and they soon will have a newer slightly smaller Hummer model called the H3. So I'm putting an H5 logo on my Vibe.
The Vibe is rated 29 mpg city, so I will be contributing less in the future to Saudi sheiks.

Bush and Congress could so trivially solve our energy import woes. Just get Oil Shale production going in the U.S., (How does 60 trillion tons of reserves sound?) and it could cost zero to do that. Just have the government be a buyer of last resort for Oil; from Oil Shale. If you guaranteed a price of $44 / barrel, the industry would boom, and with Crude prices currently at $59 the government could just sit back and watch the Saudis squirm. Without a government guarantee, investors are not confident oil prices will stay at a high level, and will stand on the sidelines.

First word on an Intel based Macintosh: ThinkSecret.com has reports from developers receiving their $999 Developmental Intel based PowerMac, and its looking good.
Details here.

25th Anniversary of Pac-Man: Great computer game, first appeared in 1980. Atari (then owned by Warner Brothers) bought the home rights and proceeded to shoot themselves in the foot by too quickly bringing an inferior version (I called it "Flickerman" at the time) for the Atari 2600 game console to market in 1981. They produced 12 million copies, when only 10 million game consoles had been sold. They did even worse with their ET-Phone home game, 4 million of which ended up in a New Mexico landfill.

If Atari had first brought out the good version of Pacman that they later did for their 400/800 home computer, Atari could have captured that home computer market. There was a brief period where Atari outsold both Apple IIe and IBM PCs. You do know there was an Atari version of Visicalc?

Your Terablogger was President of Atari user groups in Houston and New Orleans during the 1980-85 time period, so may be somewhat biased about Atari.

ebay to the rescue: I have this tiny flat salt shaker that fits in my shirt pocket, and I use to carry my Sodium free salt with me. It's nice and tiny and portable (and easy to lose), and well made by Tupperware; but you can't buy the things, they're only party favors. A Tupperware kiosk in a mall had none, and regardless of price offered said they couldn't get them for me.
But I found them for sale on Ebay!

How to keep an organization secure: Sure there are infinite ways to steal data. But hire good people, treat them fairly, encourage them, allow them to grow professionally and reward them for doing so; and don't give them reasons to become disgruntled. One easy way: All salaries are posted. Stops an HR department from doing its usual good job of creating job security for itself by allienating employees and increasing turn over. i.e. "After all, you're exempt" or "this is an Employment at will State" or my favorite: "Let's save money, this year we'll give bonuses instead of raises". Sometimes I think HR departments main job is to look for excuses to not provide promised benefits. If an organization is relatively flat with few levels of management, less time is wasted forever redoing organization charts.

It's the email stupid. Don't distract yourself worrying about iPods. Outbound email is your corporations' biggest security hole. Read here. And with free email available at Google, Yahoo and Mail.com, etc., scanning your email server will miss most everything anyway, whether it be outgoing secure documents or incoming virii.

Pod Slurping : New term coined here, for the use of an iPod to surrepticiously suck data off a PC for nefarious purposes. The proposed methods of protection are not well thought out !

1. Ban iPods. All manner of USB devices with 1 Gig of memory are very small any more and are excellent for slurping. Right, ban them too?
Are you ready to quash productivity by banning PDAs which also can slurp data?

2. Turn off USB ports in BIOS. So your keyboard, mouse, scanner and printer won't work now? And your PDA can't synch the new meetings your secretary put on your calendar? And with CD-R and DVD-R devices in PCs, you have another convienent avenue for "slurping" gigabytes of data.

3. Enforce strong physical security. All too many (70% ?) security breaches are inside jobs,
which means numbers 3, 4 or 5 are no panacea.

4. Place data on a server rather than local workstation. Same problem as number 3 !

5. Encrypt data. See number 3 AGAIN !

=================

And then if a Computer has Bluetooth capability, one could "slurp" via their cell phone, as many new phones have megabytes of RAM on board. If the data theft is an inside job one doesn't need gigabytes of data, just the 8 Megs of the latest bid proposal, budget, patent application, proposed Partner selections, proposed new organizational chart or incriminating email. How about a Personnel Spreadsheet that could be used to prove the males are paid 20% more than the females in your organization?

===================
IMHO Biggest corporate security hole occurs when a hot new Job candidate comes in and is shown all the "new" stuff to impress him or her. They can go to work elsewhere, or remain at their current position, remembering what they were recently shown, or even given documentation on.

SBC/Yahoo violates their own Privacy Policy On day one of creating my sbcglobal.net email 5 weeks ago, I immediately went to "Marketing Preferences" and opted out of Everything. I just double checked and those settings remain intact. Despite that I received SPAM from SBC today for a pager to my SBC email address. Further that letter has no additional opt-out link within it. I am requesting compensation for this violation and will keep on their case over this.

Cingular sent me two copies of the same SPAM 3 days ago pushing some marketing promotion, and with them my account has been opted out of EVERYTHING for a full year. Cingular failed to include an opt-out link in their UCE. I have already requested compensation for that privacy violation.

Must be the time of year, with newly hired MBAs pushing marketing schemes, and not familiar with Privacy Law.

But then SBC is lax with privacy issues, as posted here.

Waiting on SBC billing correction. Allegedly I will receive a phone call from their "Executive Appeals" manager, so far that department has only been good at saying "Oh, I'm so sorry";
but apparently has zero authority or ability to fix their 20 year old billing system that once it makes a mistake, it lives on for months. One need only read the horror stories at dslreports.com

FOLLOWUP 4 PM : Gave up waiting for the "Executive Appeals" Manager to call me and finally got one of the folks to pass me through. Two plus hours on the phone to demonstrate chapter and verse how many times I was lied to by CSRs bent on meeting handle time limits, finally got personal assurance that an "order" is in process to correct my billing and issue the promised credits. She claimed no knowledge of residential 6.0 mbps dsl. Being the cynic I am, I have my doubts. I was particularly nonplussed when this manager who assured me she'd do what it took to solve my problem and promised to give me her phone number, wimped out and didn't give me her phone number. Hello Lily Tomlin.

SBC dsl Modem Info: Their dsl modem comes with zero documentation, and hardly any on the web on SBC/Yahoo sites. I quickly discovered it was so crippled as to be a nuisance and I went back to my Earthlink dsl modem. More recently I have found the sort of documentation and information for their modem that SBC should have provided. Typical of SBC's seemingly working to generate extra support calls. The good information is here. Nothing found there changes anything I figured out or decided to do by June 9.

SBC IS VERY PREDICTABLE: Note my June 7 post where I indicated a concern about billing. Despite my double checking with SBC on 6/8, and despite their records confirming what was told to me, I was instead charged:

1. For dsl service BEFORE my dsl was activated.
2. At a rate higher than was confirmed to me.

I called in today, and despite the web showing the incorrect billing, they claim to be unable to
issue the adjustment credits until the charges post to my bill, but claim credits will be issued. I insisted on an additional month's credit as partial compensation for the grief, and a supervisor agreed, we'll see how quickly they "discover" they can't do that.

Maybe I need to tell Ed Cholerton, chief executive officer of the SBC Media Solutions Group about how screwed up their dsl folks are.

Advice for those arrested: http://www.craigslist.com/about/best/sfo/70300494.html

Insecurity = Microsoft: Ten new security patches to be released today for Windows, likely
causing all manner of other problems, not the least of which is a computer restart will be required. Wasn't that a selling point of Windows XP, restarts wouldn't be required???

Pleasant SBC surprize: I got a phone call from the SBC "Customer Intervention Team" sort of a third tier customer support, relative to the Convergys survey I filled out. I've learned, rather than rate them 1 out of 10, I rate them 3, and a phone call is more likely generated. I gave them an earful.

1. SBC dsl is working great, is FAST as advertised, and reliable, and now - cheap.
2. Customer support can be a nitemare due to "handle time" restraints of reps,
which indirectly encourages false answers, guessed at answers, and lies.
Customer support reps have zero education on the dsl install process.
3. Documentation on the web is OK, but links may be non existant, or indexed
totally illogically. Google saves the day here. SBC/Yahoo has no
link I ever found to the free web hosting at Geocities.
4. Small steps SBC should take to drastically cut down on the number of support calls.
5. SBC's dsl modem is hard coded to the IP numbers it uses for your LAN,
so rather than reconfigure my whole Lan, I'm using my old Earthlink dsl modem,
the unconfigurable SBC modem also generates unneccessary support calls and grief.
(see June 16 posting)

SBC was kind enough to give me the "800" number back to
the "Customer Intervention Team" for future use (if necessary).

Faster Internet in the Home: I now nominally have 3.0 mbps speed connection to the internet at home thanks to SBC/Yahoo, Cable offers 5.0 mbps (but it comes with stereotypical Cable service). Now Bell South announces it will soon have 6.0 mbps download speeds for dsl available for its customers, and likely other telcos will follow suit. It doesn't show up yet on Bell South's web page.

Followup : SBC tells me they will soon offer "residential" 6.0 mbps dsl, currently available for business at $119.99/month. No word yet on date or pricing. SBC had promised PacBell residential users they'd have 6.0 in a few years back in 1999!

DSL Installation: June 7 is the "confirmed" date of my SBC dsl installation. So as of 8 AM, I'll be checking hourly: Concerns:
1. When will I be able to log onto dsl? before 11 AM
2. Will I be recapped at the 3 mbps I ordered, rather than the 1.5 mbps I have now? yes
3. Will all this get done TODAY? yes
4. Will SBC quash Earthlink's order to deprovision my phone line? apparently yes
5. Will SBC get the billing correct? Absolutely not.

FOLLOWUP 1 : 6 AM
Yesterday I got emailed a questionaire by Convergys regarding a support phone call of June 2. I hope Convergys doesn't manage CRM for SBC. If they do it would explain all its deficienies. Mandatory short handle times, tell the customer ==anything== to get them off the phone, don't identify yourself, and try to never escalate a call.
Tuesday June 7 proves I had been lied to at least twice by SBC personnel. As of 5 AM, I lost my dsl signal on my phone line. The green dsl light on the dsl modem went to blinking red, meaning the line had been deprovisioned. Well, SBC told me work started at 8 AM, and my dsl service was being switched over, not provisioned. Now both of those statements are proven lies, and they have generated an 8 AM support call.

FOLLOWUP 2: 10 AM
Apparently no one at Customer Service or Tech Support, level one or Tier Two knows anything about the install procedure, let alone the procedure for changing ISPs on a dsl line. In the midst of one call trying to check on the deprovisioned line, it became provisioned again (at about 9:30 AM), and at 3.008 mbps download instead of 1.548, and 512 kbps upload instead of 384. Those speeds are as advertised. Soon, I hope, they will configure their router so I can log in.

FOLLOWUP 3: 10:45 AM
It works! 2.341 mbps download, 417 Kbps upload speed it tested at dslreports.com/stest. Now to insert my Wireless Router.

FOLLOWUP 4: 11:30 AM Alls well that ends well. Now to see if the billing goes correctly.

Apple to use Pentium chips: Apple finally announces what had been rumored for weeks. It will give up trying to cajole IBM to keep up with Intel (in processor speed, and laptop processors), and start making all its Macintoshs with Intel inside. Apple's press release is here. Apple already has demo versions of it's OS X running on Intel chips, and has "kits" available for paid members of it's software devlopers to transition their software over. Apple confessed that it has had OS X running on Intel chips for 5 years (likely in case they wanted to have OS X for PCs). Then Apple in fine print lists all the cases where transitioning software will be far more than trivial.

• Applications built for Mac OS 8 or 9
• Code written specifically for AltiVec
• Code that inserts preferences in the System Preferences pane
• Applications that require a G4 or G5 processor
• Applications that depend on one or more kernel extensions
• Kernel extensions
• Bundled Java applications

That essentially means Apple will completely stop supporting OS 9 (effectively they have already) when the new Intel Macintoshs appear.

QUESTIONS:
Will this cause Apple as much grief as switching to Macintosh, or OS 7, or a 32 bit OS, or the switch to PowerPC 10 years ago, and then the switch to OS X? Apple never did get many developers to write software that fully used multiple processors or the 64 bit nature of the G5.
Apple wasn't able to produce a 3 GHz G5 by June of 2004 as Steve Jobs promised when he introduced G5 Macintosh computers. A year late 2.7 GHz is the fastest Macintosh and it requires a liquid cooling subsystem.

Will Intel based Macs be able to use AMD processors? If only as a threat to keep Intel cooperative.

Will the new Intel Macs be able to dual boot or be able to simultaneously run OS X and Windows?

Not so high tech: The horn on my 2002 Xterra stopped working today. The fuse I figured out its on also controls the 4 way flashers, and they still work, so I located the horn (behind the grill), saw no loose wires, and I unscrewed it (with a 14mm hex wrench), ran over to Auto Shack and for $15.95 (great on a Sunday at 7 PM) bought a new horn; wired it on, screwed it into the bracket, and Voila. I have a working horn. A point of interest. Horns all seem to be made in Italy.

dsl waiting game. My phone line is still "provisioned", that is it has a dsl signal on it, but for now Earthlink no longer allows me to connect, and SBC/Yahoo hasn't yet configured the router for me to log on at a better capped speed. I have my fingers crossed.

progress on dsl? Today, two days after the order, my dsl modem arrived, a Speedstream 5100.
I have to reconfigure my D-Link Wireless router because it was using the IP# hard coded into the Speedstream (192.168.0.1). It helps to live under 200 miles from the shipping depot, so UPS ground arrives in 1 day.

Apparently I still have to wait till the appointed "Service Activation Date" of June 7, 2005, and it will be activated sometime between 8 AM and 6 PM, coincidently the time of 800 phone support; and hope you get Amarillo which for unknown reasons (perhaps a less strictly enforced "handle time"?) seems to be the best place to get SBC/Yahoo support from, based on my empirical results.

More on dsl: Today SBC dropped its' prices on dsl. $14.95 for 1.5 mbps, and $24.99 for the
3.0 mbps download speed I had agreed to. So I called in, was told it was a 2 minute wait to speak to a representative of SBC, and 12 minutes later a representative answered the phone. But she had not been told about the price drop, and had to get a supervisors approval to give me the new lower price on my pending order. And then the rep. had to be chided to check on whether the dsl modem had shipped yet. SBC isn't set up to email one a tracking number. All in all makes one conclude Lily Tomlin is alive and well, although it's still better than dealing with Pradeep at an Indian call center. If an "Offshore" call center refuses to tell you where they are, just say "You're in Bangladesh !", to which they always will say with pride, "No, we're in India".

dsl saga, continued: Earthlink writes me (step 2 below):

> Please be informed that, once a DSL service is cancelled, it takes
> about 7 to 10 business days for the telephone line to be released
> from the DSL service.

Despite that, SBC took my order for dsl and now tells me they can
switch over an active dsl line, and transferred my call to a "Third Party Verification"
service in Arizona who had me agree that I wanted to switch.

SBC now says they're UPSing a DSL modem, and I should have service on
June 7. Possibly short cutting some of the steps I listed.

dsl provider switching, NOW THE FUN BEGINS : I love our capitalist system. Competition. If I get bad service, I vote with my feet! Since the FCC hasn't mandated anything, switching dsl providers is byzantine, while with a mandate switching Cell Carriers (and keeping the same phone number is supposed to take 3 hours - it took 3 days for me to leave SprintPCS however) is relatively quick and easy.
So I quit Earthlink 3 weeks ago. They must keep my account active till the end of the billing period they say. I signed up for SBC/Yahoo dialup cause I saw the coming grief, and my personal website is long since safely moved off Earthlink and parked at Geocities. Two days early Earthlink turns off my email. Right on time, I can no longer log into the dsl modem with PPOE. The switch will run like this:

1. Earthlink turns off my account.
2. Earthlink releases the dsl line.
3. Earthlink tells SBC it released the dsl line.
4. SBC/Yahoo updates its database so its knows my line doesn't have dsl on it.
5. I call SBC/Yahoo and request to upgrade my dial-in account to dsl.
6. SBC/Yahoo ships me a dsl modem.
7. SBC/Yahoo reprovisions my phone line for dsl.
8. I connect to dsl again. Hopefully at the faster speed I contract for.

cc: FCC

What should take minutes will take weeks. Three more weeks, best case, I guess.

Dell's Time Warp: Here it is on May 29, 2005 and I want to learn a little about the new Pentium-D, so I go to Dell.com, and configure a Dell 9100 with a 3 Ghz Pentium-D, 1 Gig of 533 Mhz Ram, a 250 Gig HD, only a 1 year warranty, an Audigy sound card, and no other bells and whistles. It prices out to under $1500, you'd save only $20 by taking no monitor instead of the 17" CRT monitor. Then to check on how backordered they are. The expected shipping date listed: May 27, 2005

Wireless Networking at tomorrow's Indianapolis 500: WiFi will be used to talk to the drivers while driving. Read about it here and here.

More Bad Tiger News I had earlier posted how I'm underwhelmed by Apple's new release of its OS X 10.4 Tiger. Safari now crashes twice a day. Seems that by adding file attributes so its "Spotlight" Search function will work, Apple has broken every extant AntiVirus program, and upgrades are non existent or not working. Apple didn't do its homework working with software publishers. Apple has stopped carrying Virex on its .Mac web site, as Virex 7.5 won't work with Tiger. An orphan web page is left behind here. Symantec's AntiVirus 9 for Macintosh doesn't work with Tiger, and they have now come out with a version 10. Heaven forfend they provide a low cost upgrade or patch for 9. And now I read reports of grief installing version 10 of the Symantec product. If you wanted to buy Norton AntiVirus for Macintosh 10.0 is 2 weeks backordered at Amazon. Seems like its time to go back to 10.3.9

Maybe it's time to ask for a refund on 10.4

cc:sjobs@pixar.com

Followup: So I'm chatting online with a teacher from North Louisiana (exact location witheld to protect the guilty), and am told "We're installing 16 new eMacs next week", and I enquired if they had 10.4 on them cause of the grief it causes for antivirus software, and was told it didn't matter because they didnt buy antivirus software for their Macs.

Lack of Network Security: I've been seeing this for three years. Why is our Government only now discovering it has WiFi Networks all over Washington D.C. that are not secure, and in some cases, wide open? Read one story about it here:

David Pogue may regain some credibility in my eyes. Anything new, software, hardware, whatever from Apple, Pogue is there with a lauditory review. Got so I started to think of him as a shill. Now he interveiews a new phone from SprintPCS. And he doesn't exactly love it.

There are 10 types of people that can understand Binary. Those who can, and those who can't.

50 Million Firefox downloads!: Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox, it's my browser of choice. But the boast that they have past 50 million downloads must be taken in context. I personally was responsible for at least 12. Three platforms each for version 1.0, 1.01, 1.02, 1.03.

And today we have version 1.04

Switching dsl providers : I've turned in my CANCELation notice to Earthlink, and already signed up for SBC/Yahoo dialup service (free the first month). When Earthlink ever gets around to disconnecting my dsl line, I can then upgrade to SBC/Yahoo dsl. Why the change -? cheaper, faster, better about covers it.

Followup 5/12 : I'm good to go now. I have my News Readers set for SBC News Server(s), and my web site now redirects to GeoCities (provided free as part of SBC/Yahoo), and with Firefox treating the advertising as popups, it doesn't show up, took just a few minutes using the GeoCities FileManager tool, only mildly more difficult than using ftp, which is only allowed on the paid version. A polite goodbye was left behind on the Earthlink webpage.

REVIEW OS X - Tiger - I've been using OS X 10.4 for almost a week now, and frankly, I'm underwhelmed. I don't see where it's so different from 10.3; I do see my Firefox and Safari crashing about once a day now. Dashboard is very nice, but hardly rates a new version number for the OS. Spotlight again is also a nice add-on. Maybe from now on, I need to just buy every 2nd or 3rd update to OS X.

I came across a Web Site with some important Life Lessons. And for those who are more visually oriented, this lesson.

Combine Websites?: Should I combine billf.net with this Blog, and only have one website to mess with? It might look like this: click here

Google vs Yahoo: Google has long since become my favorite for web searches, and with Yahoo's change in it's news page, I now greatly prefer news.google.com to Yahoo's new news page. Google's news page has no ads, and links you to the web source rather than a Yahoo page that will expire in 30 days, and so is not suitable as a link in a blog.

Even worse is Yahoo's new "My Yahoo" promotion for browsers. It's an abomination, with it's large ugly animated ads at the top of the page. Then Yahoo hides the uninstaller. Took me all of 5 minutes to decide I didnt need animated ads giving me headaches.

New Coke : Today is the 20th Anniversary of New Coke. Doesn't everyone remember where they were on April 23, 1985?

2005 Version of "Let them (not) eat cake": So the Government (Dept of Agriculture) has a new food pyramid. Too bad nearly no one can see it today (April 19,2005), the web site
mypyramid.gov is overloaded, and no one can get on. Our Government can secretly give commentators $200,000 but they can'y pay Akamai to give them enough bandwidth. The Agriculture Department's regular website has multimegabytes of PDFs separately available for download. Hours of downloads if you have dialup. Let them use Broadband.

FOLLOWUP: At 4 PM I can get to the new web page, but if I try to enter my data to see which of the 12 new pyramids it pulls up as appropriate for me, it pulls up a page with only a header; regardless which of 4 browsers I use. Seems like PPP to me.

Firefox is great, but: Firefox is a great Browser, that I recommend to everyone. Due to getting the bugs out, and removing security holes, they're already at their fourth version, 1.03 (as of April 18, 2005), and there is no inline updating procedure. One needs to find out there's been a new version released, go to their website, download the new version, quit Firefox, and install (same for all platforms). Luckily the Install cleanly installs version over version, leaving shortcuts and bookmarks in place.

AOL is not safe for your child: News this weekend of an AOL monitor person being caught trying to lure a 15 year old girl for sex. Guaranteed something like that is not an isolated occurance. No more than a problem priest pedophile is an isolated occurance.

Service Level Agreements - Cheating is common: Read this and this. Why put the fox in charge of the henhouse?

Followup April 15: Suppose you've got an SLA to fix the water treatment facilities in an office park within 5 hours of any breakdown 90% of the time. How do you game your system for tracking that, while cutting corners with parts on hand and techs available, so you can underbid competition and still be profittable? Many easy ways. We won't even discuss claiming to use only certified technicians, when maybe only one of four is. Just keep shuffling technician assignments so you can fudge the paperwork. Tricks used to keep solution time within specs include:

1. Train clients to call technician rather than Help Desk, so trouble tickets don't get entered and the clock doesn't start until after problem is solved, even if it's 2 days later. System shows problem solved in 1 hour, rather than actual 2 days. This is done by dumbing down Help Desk, and providing cell numbers of technicians, so clients think they are being smart to call techs directly.

2. Technicians call clients at 12:20 or 4:30 PM, ensuring they'll be out to lunch or gone already, so "clock can be stopped, as "client not reachable" meanwhile tech orders parts for next day delivery. System shows problem solved in 3 hours, rather than the actual 26 hours.

3. If a problem is solved, can it be made into more than 1 ticket, so the duplicate tickets are all solved "in one hour"?

4. The technician creates tickets for trivial matters (that no one called in) that also get solved "in one hour": Preventive Maintainence, Firmware upgrades, etc; further skewing statistics.

Of course these methods are easily transferable to any area of endeavor that may have an SLA for service. This could be NASA or a Refinery or your Plumbing or Internet Connection. In the 21st century American Corporations mistakenly think they are saving by outsourcing such work, not knowing how they are being used, and how the contractors have zero loyalty to them. And then we have shuttle disasters, refinery explosions, network outages, email gone astray or other grief.

Did I mention the contractor saving by providing two technicians/engineers for installing new filtration system, when manufacturer specifies system is so heavy and bulky that four are needed for safe installation? Then there's the old standard of repairing things with refurbished parts or third party parts rather than the new OEM parts the SLA may specify. Or better yet, just dusting things off and charging (T&M) for a out of spec nonwarranty repair when none was made. Any good auto mechanic can charge for at least 10 hours of work in an 8 hour day.

TIGER ! - AKA OS X 10.4 is officially released by Apple on April 29 at 6 PM. My son ordered me a copy as a birthday present. Thank you ! Will report back after install.

Hurray for Philadelphia: Philadelphia is establishing free wireless internet connectivity (wifi) Citywide. If you live elsewhere, check here!

Whither SONY : Sony has not been doing as well as it should the last few years. About to lose its Playstation lead to Xbox, never sold PCs or laptops in numbers it would like to, and totally lost out to Apple's iPod.

I thought I had a good deal with a (relatively) low priced Sony 19" LCD monitor, the SDM-S94, but inside of a month it wierded out, and the dealer offered a full refund, and return shipping at the dealer's expense. They agreed so quickly that I concluded it must be a common problem, under a secret recall. Sony tech support was even quicker agreeing to providing an advance replacement, but said it would take 10 days, and didn't/wouldn't specify if the replacement was new or refurbished. So back for a refund the SDM-S94 goes.

Followup 4/9: A 100% credit was quickly issued by ClubMac.