What Caused This Devastating Crash?

The investigation into this morning's fatal crash in a Hartford suburb (alternate link) has only just started. But emergency personnel speculate that a truck that was traveling down Avon Mountain had a brake failure. It lost control and crossed into oncoming traffic.

I can predict what the investigation's outcome will be. The blame will rest on some combination of excessive speed, mechanical failure or operator error.

I bet you no one will blame the road.

The road (and intersection) is designed to produce just this kind of accident. No rational-minded person would decide to place a large intersection at the bottom of a steep hill, just where vehicles would be at their highest speed, and then angle the road in such a way that those cars are aimed at opposing traffic.

In fact the road over Avon Mountain, like many roads in the Northeast, was established back in colonial days. Early settlers used it to get over the mountain. As more powerful vehicles came onto the scene, the road was widened and paved, but not substantially redesigned to accommodate the faster traffic flow.

The governor's response was laughable -- reduce and enforce the speed limit. I'm sorry Ms. Rell, but a truck that's lost its brakes isn't able to do swat about its speed. Someone needs to either move the intersection or flatten the road before the next killer truck descends the mountain.

Media's Portrayal of MGM vs Grokster

The media's soundbites on the Supreme Court's decision on MGM vs. Grokster would have you think that the movie industry "won." You get the impression that the next news item might be:

Emboldened by its victory over Grokster and StreamCast Networks, the music industry announced two new lawsuits. The first is directed at the Internet. "Grokster's illegal activity was made possible by the Internet," music industry spokesman Don Verrilli said. "It's totally without merit," responded the self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet, Al Gore.

The second lawsuit was filed against the Almighty Creator. "In creating the Universe, the Almighty established certain fundamental constructs, which enabled the phenomena upon which the Internet and Grokster are based. This cannot go unpunished." The Almighty had no response.

In fact, the Supreme Court merely overturned the decision by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled that the file sharing software was legal. The Appellate court's decision was based on the 1984 Sony Betamax case, which the Supreme Court said could not applied to the case.

The Supreme Court's decision doesn't mean that Grokster and StreamCast Networks's Morpheus are now illegal. Instead, it means that the case will need to be retried. MGM will have to demonstrate that Grokster and StreamCast Networks actively induced its customers to use the software for copyright infringement.

For more facts on MGM vs. Grokster and StreamCast Networks, please visit IEEE-USA's copyright infringement policy page.

Note: The articles at the following web pages were referenced for this blog post:

• IEEE-USA's News Release Supreme Court Adopts IEEE-USA’s Balanced Position in MGM vs. Grokster Electronic File-Sharing Case: Protects Innovation, While Limiting Illegal Activities


• Wired's Grokster Loss Sucks for Tech

Geek Code

The Geek Code is a succinct code that helps geeks identify themselves. In updating my geek code, I discovered that not much has changed since December of 2001.

This is what My Particular Geek Code looks like:

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

More Outlook VBA: Toggling Grouping

In Am I Lazy or What? I described code that I wrote to add one of four signatures to an email message.

On Tuesday, I got tired of navigating the bowels of Outlook's menu system just to briefly turn grouping off and on. Grouping is a new, nifty feature in Outlook 2003.

So I wrote the following code to toggle grouping, and I customized my toolbar to add a button that invokes it. The code uses the XML property of the View object. The XML property is very cool. It looks like I can do a lot with it.

Sub ToggleGrouping() ' (c) 2005 Luddite Geek
' http://ludditegeek.blogspot.com
' Provide a way to toggle item grouping.
' 06/28/05 Created.

    Dim myOlApp As New Outlook.Application
    Dim myOlExp As Outlook.Explorer
    Dim myOlView As View
    Dim strView As String
    Dim i As Integer, j As Integer, n As Integer
            
    Set myOlExp = myOlApp.ActiveExplorer
    Set myOlView = myOlExp.CurrentView
    strView = myOlView.XML
    i = InStr(1, strView, "<arrangement>")
    j = InStr(i, strView, "<autogroup>")
    i = j + Len("<autogroup>")
    n = CInt(Mid(strView, i, 1))
        
    If n = 0 Then
        Mid(strView, i, 1) = 1
    ElseIf n = 1 Then
        Mid(strView, i, 1) = 0
    End If
    
    myOlView.XML = strView
    
End Sub

The code on this page is provided free of charge. The author assumes no liability for any undesired effects it might have. Users may freely distribute the code only if this disclaimer is included. Users may not claim the work as their own.

Marketing + Technology = Featuritis

While I was desperately trying to find a way to avoid the heat on Sunday, Kathy Sierra was writing Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak, a great companion piece to my Technology as Marketing article. Of course, Kathy has never read my blog, but I'm glad she posted her work. She did a much better job of getting my point across than I could!

Book Review: "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

At 560 pages, Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is anything but short. That is, until you consider that it really is the history of Everything.[1] In fact, Bryson's gift for understating book titles, as employed for "A Walk in the Woods" (in which he chronicles his attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trail) is in full swing for this work.

It's a bit of a choppy book. But it's not easy to segue from the formation of, say, mountain ranges to the formation of Life, without sounding like a parody of Airplane.[2] Besides, we seem to lack quite a bit of hard evidence for most of Earth's history.

Otherwise I liked this history a lot. At times, I thought I was reading Douglas Adams, except that the scientists in an Adams novel wouldn't be as outlandish as the ones we owe our understanding of science to. The end, where Bryson discusses extinction, reminded me a great deal of Adams' "Last Chance to See."

But Adamseque examples appear even earlier on in the book. When Bryson discusses the 1918 flu epidemic, he describes an experiment in which 62 prison inmates are purposely exposed to people infected with the deadly strain. Not one even came down with the flu, yet the doctor who conducted the study became ill and died.

If you're the type who tends to worry about things that can go wrong, this book definitely will send you over the edge. Not only is our tiny planet the only place in the Universe we know of that can support our form of life, there are actually very few places on Earth that are hospitable. Even worse, though, is that the Earth is overdue for a spell of inhospitablility. And there'd be very little time to even prepare[3] and no escape. What are these things we're overdue for? A collision with a big asteroid, the blowing of a huge volcano in Yellowstone National Park, a magnetic reversal[4] are just a few of the things we have to look forward to. And it's not as if we can just run on over to Magrathea to pick up Earth Mark II if anything breaks.



[1] Everything scientific, that is. Imagine if he decided to include the history of religion, art and the Rolling Stones?

[2] Like when the guy says, "What happened? Tell me everything from the beginning." And the goofy guy says, "The Earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came...."

[3] You might ask, "How would you prepare for an asteroid strike? Put a paper bag over your head? You can't do anything about it." Well, you could max out your credit cards buying all kinds of crazy stuff. You might bump into me at Walmart buying out their line of lava lamps.

[4] "What's so bad about a magnetic reversal? You can just turn your compass around 180 degrees when hiking," you might say. Actually the magnetic field shields us from harmful solar winds. The reversal might be a slow process, with a gradual decline of Earth's magnetic field to zero, and then a gradual increase in the strength of the opposite sense field. We might have enough time to build up an entire industry around radiation-proof clothing.

Am I Lazy or What?

Sunday's Dilbert cartoon might strike a nerve in some engineers. But why? A good engineer is a lazy engineer. The computer was invented because Charles Babbage got tired of calculating logarithms by hand.

Having written that, I'm proud to announce that I spent the last three hours automating something that used to take about five seconds. Yes, I know, but I do it a lot. Those five seconds add up. And now it only takes one second.

Here's the deal. My employer upgraded Outlook from 2000 to 2003 yesterday. But it didn't upgrade the other Office applications. I had used Word as my Outlook message editor, and I used its AutoText feature to add signatures to my emails. Since Outlook 2003 doesn't use Word 2000, I was forced to investigate Outlook's signature facility.

Outlook was thoughtful enough to allow for multiple signatures, and I thank the developers for that. But they failed to allow a proper method for selecting them with a keystroke. I was able to use keys, but look at the sequence involved: Alt-I S M x ENTER (where x is the first letter of a signature name.)¹

So I wrote a macro that allows me to choose one of my four signatures from a listbox. So now it's either Alt-S ENTER (for the default signature) or Alt-S x ENTER, a savings of two or three keystrokes. And that means extra time for blogging. :-)

---

The code for this automation can be entered into two text files called module1.bas and userform1.frm. I recommend first adding the module and creating the user form in the VBA editor. Add a listbox and two command buttons to the form. Their names should be listbox1, commandbutton1 and commandbutton2, and the form should have the name userform1.

Here's what should go into module1.bas:

Option Explicit

' Supporting code for selecting message signatures.
' Copyright 2005 - 2006 by Luddite Geek, luddite.geek@sbcglobal.net

Sub SelectSig()
Load UserForm1
UserForm1.Show

End Sub

Function HTMLize(strBody As String) As String
' Replaces vbCrLf with <br />
HTMLize = Replace(strBody, vbCrLf, "<br />")

End Function

Here's what should go into userform1.frm:

Option Explicit

' Signature Chooser Code
' Copyright 2005 - 2006 by Luddite Geek, luddite.geek@sbcglobal.net

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
' Based on http://www.outlookcode.com/codedetail.aspx?id=141

    Dim objItem As Object
    Dim thisMail As Outlook.MailItem
    'On Error Resume Next
    
    Set objItem = Application.ActiveInspector
    If Not objItem Is Nothing Then
        If objItem.CurrentItem.Class = olMail Then
            Set thisMail = objItem.CurrentItem
            If thisMail.HTMLBody = "" Then
                thisMail.Body = thisMail.Body & ListBox1.Text
            Else
                thisMail.HTMLBody = thisMail.HTMLBody & HTMLize(ListBox1.Text)
            End If
        End If
    End If
    
    Set objItem = Nothing
    Set thisMail = Nothing
    
    UserForm1.Hide
    Unload UserForm1
    
End Sub


Private Sub CommandButton2_Click()
    UserForm1.Hide
    Unload UserForm1

End Sub


Private Sub UserForm_Initialize()
UserForm1.Caption = "Luddite Geek Signature Chooser"
CommandButton1.Caption = "OK"
CommandButton1.Default = True
CommandButton2.Caption = "Cancel"
CommandButton2.Cancel = True

ListBox1.ColumnCount = 2

ListBox1.AddItem "Work"
ListBox1.List(0, 1) = vbCrLf & _
                      "Work Signature Line 1" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Work Signature Line 2" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Work Signature Line 3" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Work Signature Line 4"

ListBox1.AddItem "Home"
ListBox1.List(1, 1) = vbCrLf & _
                      "Home Signature Line 1" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Home Signature Line 2" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Home Signature Line 3" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Home Signature Line 4"

ListBox1.AddItem "Blog"
ListBox1.List(2, 1) = vbCrLf & _
                      "Blog Signature Line 1" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Blog Signature Line 2" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Blog Signature Line 3" & vbCrLf & _
                      "Blog Signature Line 4"

ListBox1.TextColumn = 2
ListBox1.ColumnWidths = "60;0"
ListBox1.SetFocus
ListBox1.ListIndex = 0

End Sub

---

¹ The keystroke sequence in Outlook 2010 is worse. It's Alt-N AS S and then you need to use the arrow key to select from the list of signatures. Pressing the first letter of the signature name no longer selects it.

---

Edited on 2006-07-06 to add requested code samples.
Edited on 2013-08-05 to update link to Dilbert cartoon and footnote 1.

Movie Review: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I didn't have high expectations for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HG2G). When I finally saw it, I loved it immensely. It's so much more enjoyable than the other movies I saw in a theater recently: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (awesome, but too serious), The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (too long and far-fetched), Million Dollar Baby (too serious, too long and way too depressing), Whale Rider (too average). HG2G is the gold standard, AFAIC. Any movie that doesn't poke fun at something every ten minutes or so is too out-of-touch for me to relate to. If you're a screen writer and you can't find at least a dozen things to poke fun at, especially with Life The Way It Is, you can't consider yourself too clever or perceptive, can you?

One concern I had prior to seeing HG2G was that it would leave out important bits. Well, it did, of course, but it didn't seem to matter. One omission is the lovely quip about hyperspace that Ford makes to Arthur in previous versions of HG2G. They've just hitchhiked aboard the Vogon spaceship and are about to leap into hyperspace. Ford, trying to prepare Arhtur for the unpleasantness of hyperspace, says, "It's a bit like being drunk." Arthur asks, "What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Go ask a glass of water."

But there were also new things, such as the Point of View Gun.* In one of the best of Trillian's scenes, she wordlessly fires the gun repeatedly at Zaphod. With each blast, he tells her how she feels about dragged throughout the galaxy with the idiot who was responsible for blowing up her planet. But her face conveys her despair more eloquently.

As well, Arthur's daring rescue of Trillian on Vogosphere brought to mind the stark scenes in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, right down to a battle with a beaurocratic behemoth.

Little gems are sprinkled throughout, in some cases literally. The jeweled crabs that Vogons love to smash to bits are wonderfully portrayed as tiny, emotive, sentient critters. When the Heart of Gold pod lands, one delightedly scrambles over to greet (or perhaps be rescued by) whomever might emerge, only to be crushed by the hatch that swings down on top of it.

Compared with the BBC series, the new Trillian and Zaphod characters are far better. NPR's review cleverly compared the half-brained Zaphod, President of the Galaxy, with George W. Bush. It's a great, topical device. And the BBC's Trillian was never developed properly. So the new Trillian is a welcome relief.

The new Arthur has more depth, too. When Tricia tells him she wants Arthur to go with her to Madagascar, you really squirm as you sense Arthur's fear of giving up his comfortable (but banal) existence for the girl of his dreams.

The reviews I've come across praise Alan Rickman's role as Marvin as the real star of the movie. Well, the new Marvin was fine, but I think the BBC Marvin was very well done. And if you don't blink too much, you might get a glimpse of him on the shop floor in Magrathea. Likewise, I didn't see much improvement in the new Ford Prefect.

So go see HG2G if you haven't already. And if you have, see it again!


* The Point of View Gun might have been featured in the HG2G Radio Series.

Universe 1 - Me 0, or How Not to Upgrade a Hard Drive

Back in the good old days of DOS, upgrading to a larger hard drive was a breeze. All you had to do was this:

1. Physically install the new drive as a slave.
2. Do FDISK to create one or more partitions.
3. FORMAT /SYS the primary partition.
4. FORMAT the extended partitions (if any).
5. Copy all the files from the old drive to the new.
6. Physically swap the drives, setting the new one as master.

The word "reinstall" was not in the vernacular. There was no such thing as a registry.

Windows 95 changed all this for the worse. The upgrade procedure became:

1. Perform a full backup of the hard drive.
2. Physically install the new drive as a master.
3. Insert Windows Setup CD and run it.
4. Install a minimal OS.
5. Install backup/restore software.
6. Perform a restore.

Well, okay the number of steps is the same. But the equipment list grew to include backup software and media, and a Windows Setup CD.

Back in the early days, backup software wasn't robust enough to handle the registry. And the backup / restore process can be as much as one hundred times slower than directly copying from one hard drive to another. So folks just started over from scratch, reinstalling all the applications and then copying data files from the old hard drive.

I suspect this inconvenience is by design. It prevents casual software piracy.

Since Windows 95, Microsoft has released Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows 2000, which is what I'm using at work. Microsoft has pointedly ignored all these opportunities of making things right.

By now you've guessed that I'm about to rant about my attempt to upgrade my computer's hard drive. You guessed correctly. I was at zero bytes on C:.

I know a little bit about the administrative tools that come with Windows 2000. Disk Manager has some nice features. It allows you to remove, create and extend partitions. You can reformat drives and change drive letters. You can even mirror drives. With all its capabilities, I was sure I'd be able to upgrade the hard drive without agonizing over a backup / restore procedure.

So I wrote a thirteen step procedure that would safely and quickly move three partitions (including the boot partition) from the current disk to a new disk. It looked great. The IT guy nodded enthusiastically. And it worked flawlessly, up until the very last step.

That's the thing that bothers me about the Universe. When it plays tricks on you, it waits until the last possible moment to steal the cheese from the end of your maze. In my case, everything went exceedingly well until it came time for me to create the mirror. You see, Disk Manager will mirror disks or partitions only for the Server version of Windows 2000. Users of Windows 2000 Professional (of which I am one) who wish to create a mirrored set will instead wail and gnash their teeth.

And the thing is is that practically each step in my procedure required a restart of the computer. In two cases, there's even a complete shutdown and power down to reconfigure the disks. Just imagine the time it took for me to get to step thirteen!

But not all is lost, I convinced myself. (Or maybe the Universe convinced me.) A fall-back plan presented itself. Having successfully moved everything over from the other two partitions, I could delete those partitions and extend the boot partition.

I am soooo clever.

Now to use Disk Manager to extend a partition, you first need to convert the partition from a Basic partition to a Dynamic partition. That's because only Dynamic partitions can be extended. The thing is, though, that once you convert a disk / partition to Dynamic, you can't go back.

But why would I need to go back? I proceeded to convert the disk, clicking OK to a rather ominous message about having to live with whatever consequences might arise from doing the conversion because it can't be undone, and "are you really completely sure you want to convert, because it really can't be undone? I really mean it this time, too." And so on. "Oh give me a break," I retorted, rolling my eyes. I am not a wimp.

Still, I was a bit unnerved by that message. There has to be a reason for the grave tone of the warning. I thought about this while waiting for what I thought would be the final restart. I mean, people get paid a lot of money over at Microsoft. They're not going to waste it by writing a grave warnings unless they're really, really warranted, right?

With the restart complete, I logged back on and breathed a sigh of relief. "There, everything's working," I consoled myself. Now to fire up Disk Manager, extend the partition, and bask in the glow of a larger boot partition. Sigh, life is good. I love being clever. I get such a sense of satisfaction knowing that I can work around every conceivable obsta....

What's this? "Extend Partition" is still grayed out. There must be some mistake! It's a Dynamic partition. It says so. Determined not to let the Universe get the better of me, I opened Disk Manager's help file (for the first time) and felt my neck and spine contort as I read the following paragraph from the section titled "To extend a simple or spanned volume":

• You can extend a volume only if it contains no file system or it is formatted using NTFS. You cannot extend volumes formatted using FAT or FAT32.
• You can extend a simple or extended volume only if the volume was created as a dynamic volume. You cannot extend a simple or extended volume that was upgraded from basic to dynamic.
• You cannot extend a system volume or boot volume.

Arrrrrgh! Are they serious? I cannot extend a boot volume?!? What's the point of providing an option to Extend a Partition if it won't work on a boot volume? That's the only kind of partition you'd need to be able to extend!! Arrrrrgh!

I compose myself before heading over to the IT guy, the guy who assured me that I'd be able to extend the partition. After all, if I strangle him, there won't be anyone to backup / restore my hard drive.

"Um, Andy? It says I can't extend boot partitions." "Uh huh. Well, you could use Partition Magic, as long as it's a Basic disk. Partition Magic doesn't work on Dynamic disks."

I was silent. Silent in the manner of someone who's busy containing an exploding mind.

"Um, Andy?" I was surprised at how calm I sounded. "You told me to convert the disk to Dynamic so I could extend it."

I don't remember his response. I wasn't able to hear anything with all that exploding going on in my head.

So I went back into Disk Manager and asked whether it was even remotely possible to undo that little conversion to a Dynamic partition. It would be okay, right? I did only a few hours ago. The paint isn't even dry yet.

That's the Universe you hear laughing.

Then I confirmed that Partition Magic indeed does not work on Dynamic partitions. Actually, I thought it was nice of the Universe to let me confirm that so quickly. I guess It felt sorry for me and decided against letting Partition Magic start up, offer an "Extend Partition" option, and proceed to wipe out the hard drive. Although it would have been hilarious, I'm sure.

To describe in detail how I finally got more space on the boot partition would be disappointingly anti-climatic. And I don't want to appear too smug, lest the Universe find a bit of cheese that it forgot to steal from my maze. I'll just briefly mention that I was able to move everything over to a new drive with nearly ten times the capacity of the old. I used Norton Ghost to avoid the tedium of backup / restore. The fact that Norton Ghost needed to be installed on C:, which was already filled to capacity, was a nice touch, don't you think?

Well, everything seems to work just fine. Nearly everything. I just can't seem to run the defragment utility. But I'm sure I can work that out some how. After all I'm clever, and I'm not a wimp.

The Hitchhiker's Guide Personality Test Results

Zaphod Beeblebrox DON'T PANIC

You are perfect and nothing bad ever happens to you! You dirty, rotten liar. Your brain is obviously only there to keep you from recognizing the boring realities the rest of us call life. Hopefully you have installed a second head; someone has to be your friend.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 11% on dentity

Link: The Hitchhiker's Guide Personality Test written by donquixotic on Ok Cupid

Free Computer Security -- FireFox

I have a lot of ranting to catch up on. But I just read John Moran's FireFox recommendation, and I had to concur. We'll somehow manage to work it into this Free Computer Security series.

Yes FireFox certainly is free. And it provides security in the same sense that a Volvo provides safety. Driving (or riding in) an automobile is not safe. But if you have to do it, do it in a Volvo. Similarly, browsing the World Wide Web is not safe. But if you have to browse the Web, FireFox is a good choice.

FireFox may not be completely invulnerable to exploits. Just read the FireFox 1.x bulletins at Secunia to see. But at least it's not tightly integrated into the Windows OS as Internet Explorer, the Yugo of browsers, is. That means Spyware is less likely to take root and germinate.

FireFox's ability to suppress unrequested popup windows means you don't need a separate popup blocker program.

Many exploits involve tricking users into thinking they're on a site other than the malicious site they're actually on. So the SpoofStick extension was created to address this. SpoofStick displays the domain name of the website at the top of the browser window in bold, green letters. (The font color and size are configurable.) This makes it easier to tell if you've been redirected.

But remember, the safest computer is one that's not connected to the Internet[1]. If your tolerance for risk is very low, you'll not have a modem or NIC in your box.

On the usability side of things, I happen to prefer FireFox's tabbed browser concept. If you've always used Internet Explorer, tabbed browsing might take some getting used to. Here's how it works. Instead of having one button on the TaskBar for each open web page, there's just one button on the TaskBar for the main browser window. If you have multiple web pages open, you select the one you want by clicking the appropriate tab or cycling through them with Ctrl-Tab. Microsoft Excel can be configured to work this way. Microsoft calls this Multiple Document Interface, or MDI. I call it cool. (Just one thing. To make Ctrl-Tab switch to the most-recently used tab rather than the next tab, install the LastTab extension.)

Give it a try!

[1] Actually, the safest computer is the one that's never turned on.

Book Review: "Better Off : Flipping the Switch on Technology"

A funny thing happened when I went to the local library to look for "Better Off : Flipping the Switch on Technology," by Eric Brende -- the computerized card catalog database was inaccessible. I guess the situation was more ironic than funny. Either way, it had me longing for those arrays of oak drawers filled with index cards.

Eventually the librarian was able to look it up and put it on hold for me, not without remarking on the irony of the situation.

I don't usually go to the library to look for books. Instead, I look for what I want online and go just to pick it up. But I was there with my daughter and decided to take a look-see.

I first read "Better Off" a few months ago. My wife had checked it out accidentally, thinking it was something else. Then she gave it to me to read.

The main idea behind the book is that technology places a barrier between a person and the outcome of his effort. When that barrier is removed, the person finds meaning and even euphoria in his labor. A minor point is that any time that's saved by using labor-saving devices is either wasted or is spent in maintaining (or paying for) the technology that saved you the time.

After absorbing numerous books that poke fun at technology, I enjoyed reading one that when so far as to do something about it. The author turns his back on it and lives for eighteen months in an "Amish-like" community. (I sometimes wonder if he thought about subtitling it "Flipping the Bird on Technology.") The fact that he wrote about his experience made me want to write about my experiences with technology. So reading the book partly inspired me to create this blog.

But this book left me puzzled, so I decided to re-read it. I hardly ever re-read a book after only a few months. But I can't help thinking that the author was suffering from burn-out from his graduate studies and thesis work. As well, just before completing his program, he was involved in an accident that was severe enough to leave him temporarily debilitated. This, too, I believe explains his romance with (and eventual marriage to) his live-in caretaker.

The other reason I wanted to re-read it because I came across a study[1] recently that seemed to suggest that such conditions as ADHD and autism were non-existent among the "native" Amish. But the only commentary on youth is that their courtship is scripted and predictable. And with the exception of one child who was born with a genetic disease, there seems to be no need for medical care.

He seems to suggest that people would be better off with the lifestyle he chose. But the people he lived with relied on products that were made with the help of modern technology. Such products include the metal in their gardening tools, for example. Watch steel-workers and miners leave for the farm and wave goodbye to your ability to work the soil.

So he flips the technology switch off, but keeps it within reach for when it's needed.

[1] The Age of Autism: The Amish anomaly, by Dan Olmsted.

Technology - No Place for Wimps

My co-worker gave me this hat a few years ago. The hat is resting in front of my flat screen monitor at work, on top of a 120GB hard drive and a Sandisk Flash Card Reader. Below it lies a sticky note with an address and some part numbers and a neat American Wire Gauge slide rule reference of wire sizes.

That KDS monitor is nice and clear, BTW.

Free Computer Security -- Firewalls

Any computer that's connected to the Internet needs a firewall. It doesn't matter if you have only a dial-up connection. I'm on dial-up, and my computer sometimes is targeted for port scans. In fact, my first two computer calamities probably were caused by malicious Internet activity.

I was running Windows 98 back then and playing an online RPG. I'd leave the computer connected to the Internet several hours at a time while I played or downloaded updates. One day the computer failed to load Windows, and I discovered that the SYSTEM directory was empty.

I repaired the system and went back online. About six months later, the computer suddenly became very sluggish, and a program that I was unfamiliar with (probably a service) was maxing out the CPU.

Then I did two things. First, I set my hard drive up to dual boot Windows 98 and NT 4.0. NT would be my primary OS, while Win98 would be for my daughter's games. Second, I installed a firewall.

At the time, three free firewalls were popular: Sybergen Secure Desktop, Tiny Personal Firewall, and Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm seemed to be the most popular so I installed it. It was easy to use and hid my computer's ports from the Internet. And I haven't had an Internet-related problem since.

But the astute reader will notice that I referred to Zone Alarm in the past tense. I almost hate to mention this, because Zone Alarm is a very good program. But remember how I wrote that I was playing an online RPG and that I was on dialup? I discovered, through a lot of trial and error, that Zone Alarm interrupted the connection to the game every thirty to sixty seconds for about five seconds. And its "disabled" mode didn't change that. The interruptions went away only after I uninstalled Zone Alarm.

So that prompted me to try Sybergen Secure Desktop. That program was just about as easy to use, hid my computer’s ports just as effectively as did Zone Alarm, and it didn’t interrupt my gaming experience one bit. I recall running a port scan while playing. Everything worked fine, and I’ve kept it on my system.

Sybergen Secure Desktop now is called Sygate Personal Firewall. And it still runs on WinNT 4.0 (SP6).

Once you install Zone Alarm or Sygate Personal Firewall, you’ll need to configure it. Configuration is an ongoing process since these products will block a program’s access if that program has been changed. But I like to tweak things even further. I find that the default settings for "allowed" programs is too relaxed.

First, I like to restrict the remote port numbers that things connect to. For example, my web browsers are allowed to connect only to remote ports 80 and 443, which are standard ports for HTTP and HTTPS, respectively.

Second I like to set everything to client-only communication so that any remote-initiated attempts to communicate with these programs are rejected.

Third, I use FireFox as my default browser, but keep Internet Explorer for those ASP-type pages that are unreadable with anything else. (Internet Explorer was required to file my income tax claim at TaxFreedom.org.) When I need to use IE, I get the website’s IP address using Ping and then allow IE to access only that IP address. Otherwise, IE stays blocked. Ditto for Outlook, since email gets routed through a couple of proxies before arriving at Outlook. (These proxies will be the subject of another installment of Free Security Programs.)

I’ll post the URLs of my favorite sites that do port scanning in the comments section, below. But not right now – later, when I stand a good chance of keeping my eyes open.

(Psst: I never did try Tiny PF.)

Geek Test Result

I didn't score as high as Tirsden, but that's probably because I don't have time to be a gamer....

The Deviant Geek You answered 76% of the questions as a geek truly would.

You're a geek and you know it. You've got all sorts of fringe hobbies and socially unacceptable tendencies. Chances are, whenever possible, you hate to be grouped with other people and sometimes go out of your way just to be different. You're smart too. You're more willing to depend on your own brainpower to solve problems, instead of relying on others to pull you through life. You probably read a lot, and generally enjoy learning new things. So what's it all mean? You may be considered by some to be uncool, but you probably don't care either. In social situations you may be either slightly passive or slightly loud (geeks always fall into the extremes). In a nutshell, you answered enough questions correctly supporting a geek philosophy to be considered a more potent geek than 60% of the population.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 68% on geekness

Link: The True Geek Test written by ambientred on OkCupid Online Dating

Cool High-Tech Thing -- Free Computer Security

Securing your computer might be tedious, but it need not be expensive. In fact there are a number of excellent free security-related applications to make you and your computer feel at ease.

Let's start with Anti-Virus. Grisoft delivers a free anti-virus solution with its AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, which is free to home users. I had switched from Symantec's Norton AntiVirus (aka NAV) for these reasons:

1. The Annual Virus Definition Subscription Fee. Paying this entitled the user to download virus updates for one year. But if you ever reformat your hard drive within that year (which I did twice) you'd either have to pay the fee again or you'd have to contact customer service to receive a special unlocking code in order to download more updates.
2. Sluggish Performance. NAV slowed my system down quite a bit. It was so annoying, I wound up disabling its real time mode of operation and its email scanner. So I used it only for performing manual scans. Even those took a long time.
3. No More Support for Windows NT 4.0. The home edition of NAV fails to list NT on it list of system requirements. In fact, just before I switched to AVG Anti-Virus FE, I'd been using the Enterprise Edition of NAV, which apparently even supports DOS. (Sometimes it helps to have a friend in the IT department at work.)
4. "LiveUpdate" Blocked by Firewall. Every time I wanted to update the virus definitions, I had to download the entire 5+MB universal virus definitions file and install it manually. That's because the program's internal updater, called "LiveUpdate," failed to make it through my computer's firewall. If only they'd give me a range of IP addresses to open up (aside from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255). But they had too many different servers providing the updates.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition can be downloaded installed and registered for free. Users can easily get differential updates for free. It runs crisply on my Windows NT 4.0 OS. In fact, scans take so little time, I was at first skeptical that it was anything more than a program that popped up a message box to say the file has no viruses.

Coming next... free firewall discussion.

Deadly Body Odor

Yet another example of misuse of technology -- the Genetically Altered Scent project.

Researchers discovered a way to modify the DNA of a common bacterium so that the waste it produces has a pleasing scent. The idea was to introduce this strain of bacterium into the armpit regions of test subjects, who would be required to forgo deodorants, antiperspirants and anti-bacterial soap for a ten day period. At the end of the study, the subjects would don a cotton pad under each armpit and perform some light exercise. The pads (along with pads from a control group) would be sniffed by another group of participants who would designate each pad as either "pleasing" or "disagreeable."

If the study was successful, Genetically Altered Scent, or GAS, would usher in a new line of designer fragrances.

Unfortunately, the study had to be halted due to a complication. About thirty percent of the participants who hosted the modified bacteria developed a severe rash. A few of these actually had to be hospitalized and undergo intravenous antibiotic therapy. Apparently one of the modified genes turned the bacterium into an aggressive organism, similar to deadly flesh-eating varieties. Luckily no one died or suffered permanent damage.

Cool High-Tech Things

When I made the leap from MS-DOS to Windows NT in 1997, I continued using the DOS version of Norton Commander for a while. Norton Commander (NC) was a wonderful file manager for DOS, and even the clunky DOS version was more useful to me than Windows Explorer. NC would display the contents of two directories side-by-side and provide a command prompt. (Cygwin provides something similar called Midnight Commander.)

However, one big problem was that NC wasn't made for a multitasking environment. When other programs tinkered with files in a focused directory, NC blithely ignored those changes.

Symmantec no longer supported NC, so it was time to search for a Windows file manager to replace it.

I found one of the most awesome pieces of software -- Servant Salamander, by ALTAP, which is short for Alternate Applications.

I've been using some version of Servant Salamander daily for about seven years. It's stable, intuitive, feature-packed and useful. ALTAP continues to add features and just released Beta 8.0 of version 2.5 on Friday.

I have a lot of cool programs on my computer. Servant Salamander is one of the coolest.

Weather in New England

If I had to rank things in order of increasing slippery-ness, I'd put snow at number three, mud at number two, and ice at number one.

During yesterday's backyard Easter egg hunt, I had a chance to compare all three. Fortunately, no one fell, and the dog and house are still fairly clean.

Douglas Adams on Technology

Here's some brief, witty commentary on technology from Douglas Adams. These snippets can be found in The Salmon of Doubt, which I just finished reading.

1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

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We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.

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We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.