G'Day Mate MkII

Moped va Ferrari

[Ed: This joke was sent by John Milbourn.]

A hip young man goes out and buys the best car available: A brand new Ferrari GTO. It is one of the most expensive cars in the world, and it costs him $500,000. He takes it out for a spin and stops for a red light. An old man on a moped, looking about 100 years old, pulls up next to him.
The old man looks over at the sleek, shiny car and asks, "What kind of car ya' got there sonny?"
The young man replies, "A Ferrari GTO. It cost half a million dollars!"
"That's a lot of money," says the old man." Why does it cost so much?"
"Because this car can do up to 320 miles an hour!" states the young dude proudly. The moped driver asks, "Mind if I take a look inside?"
"No problem," replies the owner.
So the old man pokes his head in the window and looks around. Then, sitting back on his moped, the old man says, "That's a pretty nice car, all right ... but I'll stick with my moped!"
Just then the light changes, so the guy decides to show the old man just what his car can do. He floors it, and within 30 seconds, the speedometer reads 160 mph!
Suddenly, he notices a dot in his rear view mirror. It seems to be getting closer! He slows down to see what it could be, and suddenly, WHHHOOOOOOSSSSSHHH! Something whips by him, going much faster.
"What on earth could be going faster than my Ferrari?" the young man asks himself.
He floors the accelerator and takes the Ferrari up to 250 mph. Then, up ahead of him, he sees that it's the old man on the moped! Amazed that moped could pass his Ferrari, he givesit more gas and passes the moped at 275 mph. WHOOOOOOOSHHHHH!
He's feeling pretty good until he looks in his mirror and sees the old man gaining on him AGAIN! Astounded by the speed of this old guy, he floors the gas pedal and takes the Ferrari all the way up to 320
mph. Not ten seconds later he sees the moped bearing down on him again!
The Ferrari is flat out, and there's nothing he can do! Suddenly, the moped plows into the back of his Ferrari, demolishing the rear end.
The young man stops and jumps out, and unbelievably, the old man is STILL ALIVE!!!!!
He runs up to the old man and says, "Oh My God! Is there anything I can do for you?"
The old man whispers ....
"Unhook....my.....suspenders......from......your....side-view mirror."

Blog Roundup

Phew, is it that time of the week already? I have been flat out this last week, switching ISPs and stuffing around with hardware and that means my blog visits have been a little lighter than usual. Never mind, there is still a lot of cool stuff happening out there and this is a brief tip of the hat to 10 sites that I have been visiting this week (in no particular order):

1. Jivha - the tongue is always good for a read. He started a pretty decent debate this last week with his "Broad Brush" series. I am tempted to follow suit because this looks like a neat way to cover some issues while warning the readers that it may (should) be Politically Incorrect. There is also an item on confronting a cobra which reminds me of when the Ladies Auxiliary had tea with grandpa. As they walked out they commented "What a lovely stuffed snake you have up there ...". Somewhere we have a picture of that (now dead but still not stuffed) red-belly black - my grandpa is standing with his arms outstretched holding the neck (just behind the head) in one hand. The body of the snake crosses his neck to the other hand and then hangs to the ground which would make it at least 9 ft long.

2. PD: You ... relax is a very interesting newcomer (well new for me anyway). He (?) has a great mixture of humour, helpful hints and the occasional rant (well deserved in this case).

3. Melodrama posted a neat story about learning to drive. I had forgotten about the problems of teenage embarrassment but I have to admit that it is not an Indian cultural thing because that story brings the memories flooding back. My father used the same method to get help ferrying people around and as we lived 15 minutes drive from civilisation, it was really convenient to have more drivers in the family. I often wondered if that was why my sister didn't want to learn to drive? There is also an entry on banks with the implications that banks open more than 5 days? Banks here open 10AM to 4 PM Monday to Friday to ensure that the office workers (8:30 to 5:30) cannot get to a bank except at lunchtime. That of course is when the banks close the teller windows so that the tellers can have lunch. Sounds like it might not be so bad in India :-)

4. Technically Speaking is another new blog for me. It has an amazing collection of tech items. I really like this motorbike. The idea that it can remain balanced suits me fine. Even better than the bike are some James Bond sunglasses. He also refers to some new blog word game that I obviously need to investigate in more detail.

5. Interested Participant had some comments on the impact of fashion trends on young people and their employment. There is also an interesting historical post on some artifacts older than the pyramids. There is also a < a href="http://interested-participant.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_interested-participant_archive.html#106380049942336211">prime candidate for one of those politically incorrect posts that Jivha is promoting :-)

6. jonandnic is a site I came across some time ago but forgot to follow up. Then one (or the other) posted a comment on the "friday 5" last week. This prompted another visit to a very friendly blog that contains such gems as this family outing which is extra interesting because one of the comments is from Victor Rehorst - one of the stalwarts of the Newton community. There is also a lovely piece on living in London but read carefully - it is not London, UK but London, Ontario.

7. Da Goddess has a lovely story to explain why the emu cannot fly. She also has a rant on insurance companies which is reminding me that I have to claim for those skylights we lost. There is also a memorial post about Johnny Cash and John Ritter.

8. Pete is back in action again (knew it wouldn't last long - this blogging thing is addictive). The blog is now called "The Aussie Courier" and it describes some of the fun of being a courier and of course, because it is Pete, lots of details about his van.

9. Kinglsey wants to differ with Jivha's Broad Brush attack on geeks. He argues quite persuasively for the use of the term nerds instead. There is also a followup entry as well. Apparently this weekend he is travelling so I'll stay tuned to find out more when he gets back.

10. Little Tiny Lies is written by a chilli-eating, parrot-owning lawyer and he has just recieved a dose of reality - conclusion XP Sucks.

Friday Five

1. Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?
Slim Dusty. Who else is there? :-)

2. What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?
Pretty much anyone who claims to be a singer/musician but they can't sing / compose / play for peanuts. They have no sense of harmony, melody, lyrics or decent living. Apart from the Beetles and Elvis, has there been any decent rock and roll? :-)

3. If your favorite singer wasn't in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?
Yup. Wouldn't mind him as a neighbour.

4. Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?
Best concert/show would have to be Victor Borge for sheer entertainment.

5. What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?
I have misplaced the reference but some dude was talking about buying the "right to listen". When you buy a tape, CD, vinyl, mp3, whatever; you are no buying the physical media but the right to listen to that bit of music as often as you like, in any format that you like. That aside, I do not download music BUT I would (and sometimes do) buy music direct from the musician which tends to make more money for the musician that they would get through a member of the RIAA.

Reader Question

If you have a question (about Macs or Unix or living Down Under) that has always puzzled you, why not ask the ozguru?

Reader Milos, asks: "Can u tell me why UNIX boxes r resistant to viruses?"

Answer:

Short answer: they don't run Microslosh software :-)

Longer answer: most of the viruses out there depend on things being in the right place - i.e. that file exist in a certain location, that memory is ordered in a certain way, that services will work in a particular manner. This is true for windows but is a lot less true for Unix.

1. There are many varients of Unix and they are all different so the target market for a virus is much smaller.

2. Unix dynamically allocates a lot of things (like inode and memory blocks) and so these may well vary between installations. For example, pid 1 is always init? Not on Solaris 9 or BSD 3....

3. Unix network services are often tuned using services like firewalls or tcp wrappers which are only just appearing on the windows side (and often not installed correctly). The average virus writer can't be bothered writing the extra code to get around these.

4. Unix has a long history of user involvement which means that bugs likely to be useful to virus writers are usually solved and sealed much more rapidly. The SSH hole (for example) was reported on a Friday. Monday there was a work around and by Wednesday Sun, HP, IBM and Linux all had patches (BSD was not affected). If the same thing happened in Windows:

Friday 13th: Bug announced
Monday 14th: US Homeland security puts out advisory
Monday 21st: Exploit and how-to published in PC Week
Monday 28th: Sample code published on hackers web page
Next month: Someone adds the code to the script-kiddies pack
Two months: First virus appears but fails for lack of interest
Three months: Better virus appears
Six months: Internet saturated with super virus
Nine months: MS release patch (very quietly)
Ten months: Another super virus
Ten months + 1 day: Billg appears on TV blaming inadequate system administration because the patch was issued "some time ago" and the fact that millions of customers haven't installed it is not MS fault!

Hope that helps.....

Deep Wisdom

[Ed: Another one from Pat - he has been busy lately! Thanks]

Love is grand; divorce is a hundred grand.
I am in shape. Round is a shape.
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly and for the same reason.
An optimist thinks that this is the best possible world. A pessimist fears that this is true.
There will always be death and taxes; however, death doesn't get worse every year.
In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.
I am a nutritional overachiever.
I plan on living forever. So far, so good.
If marriage were outlawed, only outlaws would have in-laws.
It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone.
Life not only begins at forty, it also begins to show.

The User Menace

[Quoted from The Register]

Based on experience, I don't think these people are kidding:

The results of a study released this week confirms what the world's BOFHs and sysadmins have known for ages: that users are a dangerous menace who should not be allowed near anything more advanced than a fridge.
A staggering one in seven technologically challenged employees needs help even switching their computers on and off, according to research commissioned by City & Guilds.
The UK vocational awarding body's study of 405 random UK financial directors revealed that, despite the fact that PCs have been around for over thirty years, getting to grips with the devices is totally beyond many British office workers. A fifth were found to struggle to save a document, more than one in five need assistance printing, while a quarter cannot understand a spreadsheet.

Click the link at the top for the rest of the article....

History of a Geek IV

Sidney J. Harris"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." [Quotes of the Day]

That is a pretty accurate summary of what I was thinking about. If you can drag your minds back to the last episode, I was working for a series of companies under one umbrella corporation. At the end of my time there, I had to make some hard decisions and I still suffer from the regret of the things I didn't dare.

Anyway, I figured it was worth outlining some rules about work that I had managed to deduce by this point in my career. I wrote myself a note at the time and it is interesting that most of these rules are probably still true.... [but I have added some editorial content to update them] ....

1. Anytime you start enjoying your work, there will be a reorganisation with a new boss, new collegues and new work. [Sometime you will get the reorganisation even if you hate your job - it will still be worse after the reorganisation than before].

2. Always start by assuming that the users are idiots who object to condescending instructions. [Also be aware that idiots today are much higher quality than they used to be - as systems get more complex, they get less intelligent].

3. You have to keep running to stay still. [This was in reference to staying current in your chosen area of expertise. If you don't keep the knowledge fresh, it will become too dated to be useful].

4. Management are not there to help. [This was primarily true from a workload perspective - they more work they get you to do, the cheaper you are per hour. Later it turned out to be a lot of other things too like pay rises, skills training].

5. Never volunteer. [You may find youself in the synagogue, fixing computers - as I did].

Being very cynical (even at a young age), I has assumed that there was some constant measure that included the level of complexity in any system and the level of intelligence of the user. Hence, the more complicated the system, the dumber the user. Now in hindsight I think the problem is on the other side. As we geeks master some form of technology, we reach the point of not remembering what ot was like to not understand. We take so much for granted and that shows when we speak to the non-geek stranger or user.

I remember, very vividly, learning to drive. I was probably 14 or 15 when my grandpa started to get me driving inside the yard (very slowly) and after I got my learners permit, I was hot to trot. My dad took me out in a Ford Transit van which was fitted out as a minibus (we were a big family). It was a big awkward vehicle with a high center of gravity. We lived out in the sticks on a "hobby farm" and I started down the road at about 20 km/hr. My dad, who was one of the bets drivers I have ever known, encouraged me to increase speed up to about 45 km/hr. Cool. We were approaching an intersection and dad asked me to turn left. I carefully put the indicator on (as instructed in the "Motor Vehicle Handbook") and turned the corner. Any driver instructors out there? What did I forget? My dad never even considered it because it was an "automatic behaviour" - like riding a bicycle. Once your body learns, you no longer need to be mentally and actively in control of the activity. In this case, turning a 90 degree corner without slowing down first almost tipped the van over.

Well we geeks are like my dad as a driver. We know something so well, we can do it automatically and we forget what we had to learn when we talk to the non-geek....

To be continued (if people still want to here more of this stuff) ....

Broad Brush?

More like a broom I think! Jivha the tongue is apparently starting a new series of "broad brush" series where he calls a spade a spade and generalises to his hearts content. Actually based on the first article I think he is planning to call a spade a bl**dy great big shovel and use to flatten targets all around :-) Before you get upset, check out the rational behind the series:

One of the most common arguments you see from people while ranting against something is, "But you are making such sweeping generalizations, painting everyone with a broad brush" And that is why this series is called the "Broad Brush Series" - we know we are making sweeping generalizations, we know we are painting everyone with a broad brush, we know - so don't tell us!

First entry in this series tackles the problems of being an "Indian Techie". I have only one argument with this - effectively the same article could be posted here about Australian Techies with the substitution of "American" (or Microslosh) as the target of any "kow-tow" behaviour. Seriously, go and read for a summary of everything (well almost everything) wrong with the high tech industry.

It can be sort of fun to teach some of this at TAFE. I talk about the evolution of IT from the high priests of the main-frame, to the protestant revolution of Unix and finally the horror of manic cults (Windows?). Then we move on to the degrees of geekhood for administrators (at least in the Unix religion) - starting with a WEBBY (Work Experience Boy), PFY (Pimply Faced Youth - from BOFH), BOFH (Operator), SAFH (System Administrator From Hell), Guru.

I think next time, I will have to modify the class to cover Jivha's list as well ...

Think about it!

[Ed: This one is from Pat in the UK! Thanks, Pat]

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal the neighbour's newspaper, that's the time to do it.
Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again; it was probably worth it.
Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Never ask a barber if he thinks you need a haircut.
"To the world you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world."
A coincidence is when God performs a miracle, and decides to remain anonymous."
Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side.
"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself."

ADSL vs Cable

As many of the regular readers know, I have been very annoyed with my regular ISP (and that is one of the reasons for moving to Typepad). Well I have finally had enough and I am in the process of switching to another ISP who provides ADSL instead of the current Cable connection. The ADSL people were very honest and upfront and pointed out that ADSL was not as fast as cable - at least in theory. So I tested it. I picked two mirror sites (both in the US) and downloaded 3 files from each (the 6 files were segments of a single CD). The ADSL connection sustained 53Kb/sec for all three files. The cable modem got one file at 92Kb/sec, one at 65 Kb/sec and one at 41 Kb/sec. According to the ADSL people, cable can theoretically handle 6 times the ADSL (512/128) bandwidth.....

Anyway, the next thing to do was start playing with the network configuration. The current network is based around an airport (snow) basestation which is connected to the cable modem and the main server plus supplying a wireless link to other computers. The wireless links use WEP128 and MAC address encoding to connect and the whole thing works OK. Now the ADSL "modem" is inside a Dlink bridge/router thing and so I have to set up all the magic stuff like port mapping. On the airport this is done via the airport admin tool and it is trivial, on the dlink it is all done through a web page. Grab the book, check out the DHCP - which stops at *.33. Cool, lets map port 22 through to the laptop which I am using for testing. Map 22 inbound - to 22 @ *.1. No worries, test over the cable network. Doesn't work. Permission denied.

Hmmm. Must be a firewall. Check, no firewall. Plug two laptops back to back, ssh works. Plug via ADSL and it doesn't work. Hmmm. Maybe there is some port blocking going on. Nope. Vendor says no port blocking. Try port 80. Create map. Test. Still doesn't work.

[Stop laughing at the back. I know you have spotted my mistake but I hadn't done so at this point in time so just be patient.]

Upgrade the firmware. That was exciting. Try deleting the port rules and recreating them. Can't delete the rules due to some wierd javascript problem. Might be Safari. Try OmniWeb. Nope. Try Camino. Nope. Try Internet Exploder. Works. Morons. Tell Safari to pretent to be Internet Exploder. Works. OK. The idiots have written IE specific code. Note to self: Write rant about morons and send to dlink.

Delete port maps. Recreate. Still doesn't work. It is 1 AM and nothing is working. AAARRRGGGHHH! How can I be a geek if I can't even cofigure a port forward in a router. I will have to hand in my geek badge, turn to the dark side and become a manager. Wait a minute, maybe I should actually read the instructions. After four hours of tearing my hair out, it couldn't hurt.

Read .... read .... read .... DHCP .... address range .... *.2 to *.33 .... Huh? Why does it start at *.2? Because the ADSL router is at *.1 (The airport is configured differently). So I was forwarding port 22 to port 22 on the same device. That won't work. Why didn't I check my IP address? Delete. Recreate. Works. Tired. Sleep.

Laptops vs Airplanes

I think this is a case for lateral thinking. There is an article in the SMH today, entitled: "The truth about your laptop and landing safely". The article meanders around the place, collecting isolated and unrelated tidbits of information and then attempts to spin a coherant point which concludes with:

Laurie Cox, a spokesman for the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, said more research was needed into the effect of electronic devices.
"You've got to ask, do you want to get there, or do you want to use your laptop?"

The article freely confuses the question of interference during takeoff and landing (which is currently not permitted) with the use of laptops during the flight. I for one could not survive a trip to the US without my laptop :-)

So what about the lateral thinking? Well, just maybe, instead of complaining about the interference they could shield against it? A faraday cage is not that heavy (nor is it that expensive). Why are airplane electronics so much more sensitive than other equipment? Either isolate the planes electrical systems OR provide an isolated area on the plane where electrical equipment can be used.

This version of the article is provided as a reference because the original has no permanent link and will vanish after a relatively short period of time. Please use the original link if it is still available.

The truth about your laptop computer and landing safely
By David Higgins and Joel Gibson

Next time you're on a flight and the plane suddenly begins to climb or pitch to the left, don't panic. It's probably just the kid next to you conquering level 16 on his computer game.
Pilots have become accustomed to unexpected problems caused by passengers using mobile phones or other portable electronic devices.
Over the past decade there have been more than 100 incidents in Australia of navigation system failures, autopilot malfunctions, interference with radio transmissions, incorrect readings from flight management computers and false alerts from engine warning systems - all due to portable devices.
In one case last year, the ground proximity warning system in a 34-seater plane suddenly went berserk even though the plane - which was just 22 kilometres south-west of Sydney - had levelled off at 5000 feet.
The pilot noticed a mobile phone interference signal in his headphones, according to an incident report lodged with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. "The aircraft continued to its destination without further incident," the log entry says.
On another occasion in 1996, a Boeing 767 pitched and dropped 120 metres before pilots recovered control. A passenger using an electronic dictionary was asked to turn it off, and the plane's systems returned to normal.
On more than one occasion, laptop computers have been blamed for changing an aircraft's internal cabin pressure.
Pilots routinely ask for portable devices to be switched off during take-off and landing. because they are too busy to deal with problems with interference. But, once in the air, when passengers are allowed to switch devices on, pilots have had to contend with a range of bewildering malfunctions.
The incidents, logged in an Australian Transport Safety Bureau database, have been collated for the first time and detailed in the latest edition of Flight Safety Australia, published by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
Perhaps most worrying of all, the devices often cause autopilot malfunctions, which have resulted in planes climbing, oscillating, or disengaging from the autopilot system altogether.
CASA wants to ban the use of mobile phones on all flights and prohibit the use of laptop computers, video cameras and electronic games during take-offs and landings.
CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said the level of interference was manageable but any increase would require more serious consideration. "None of these [incidents] led to anything life-threatening . . . but we have this issue constantly under review," he said. "The thing we're relying on at the moment is the common sense of passengers not to use mobiles, transmitters and other devices when they're told not to, and the vigilance of the cabin crew."
Laurie Cox, a spokesman for the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, said more research was needed into the effect of electronic devices.
"You've got to ask, do you want to get there, or do you want to use your laptop?"

The age of a woman

[Ed: Annonymous Email - Thanks Mr(s) Annonymous]

Below the age of 14, she is like Antartica, Untouchable.
Between the ages of 14 and 17, she is like Africa, Virgin and Unexplored.
Between the ages of 18 and 30, she is like Asia, Hot and Exotic.
Between the ages of 30 and 45, she is like America, Fully Explored, Breathtakingly beautiful and free with her resources.
Between the ages of 46 and 56, she is like Europe, Exhausted but still has the point of interest.
After the age of 56, she is like Australia, Everybody knows it's down there and nobody gives a damn!

Nutrition & Health

[Ed: This one is from Pat in the UK! Thanks, Pat]

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
3. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans
4. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

CONCLUSION:
Speaking English is what kills you. Eat and drink what you like.

Standing Firm

I guess this post/topic is going to be controversial but I want to go ahead with it because an interesting juxtaposition of news articles triggered some interesting thoughts.

The first entry was in the most recent "Catholic Weekly" which was quoting the Archbishop when he spoke at the consecration of two new auxiliary bishops for the diocese of Sydney:

He [Archbishop Pell] was discussing coverage of their [the two new bishops] appointments by the general media.
"One account announced them as new archbishops," Dr. Pell said with a smile.
"Another spoke of shock, worst nightmares and an atmosphere of tyranny; then worked up to a crescendo, where, almost breathless with dismay, it was announced that one of the appointees was opposed to contraception, abortion and euthanasia.
"Actually the situation is much worse, because both bishop-elects hold these positions."

The media has been really pushing the Catholic Church on the matter of abortion and the SMH has been one of the ring leaders. Then suddenly, today, they ran this article, which at the very least suggests that maybe the bishops are actually standing on firmer ground than the pro-abortion media.

It is very easy to dismiss abortion as a 'woman's right to choose' but that argument fails if you believe that the foetus is truly alive (which is the position held by the church). I remember having a philosophy lecturer (Peter Singer - now exported elsewhere - thank goodness) who insisted that abortion was no different to infanticide and that disposing of "damaged" babies after birth was perfectly acceptable. His entire argument was based on the fact that the point of birth is an arbitrary point in the existence of the baby which is not truly human until about two years old. I had two arguments with him, the first was that if you reject abortion as an acceptable procedure then his argument for infanticide is equally unacceptable (i.e. has no foundation). The second argument was more along the lines that no woman who had given birth would ever agree that the act of giving birth was "an arbitrary point". I wonder if he ever tried telling his own mother about his opinion?

I wonder sometimes if the insistence on murdering foetuses is somehow balanced by the enormous amount of money poured into the birth industry. Once upon a time the "unwanted" children would have been adopted by those who now go to so much expense and trouble to conceive. For that matter, I wonder how many of those "unwanted" children may have had a change in status after birth. It can be really special to hold a new-born and know that you had some part in the process ...

Note: Because I cannot give a permanent link to the original article, it appears in the Extended Entry. At the time of writing, the link was here and you may want to try that before checking the extended entry.

Foetuses may express emotion in the womb
By James Meikle, London
September 14, 2003

Photo Caption:
As good as it gets...First smiles at 26 weeks in the comfort and security of the womb. Photo: Reuters

Article:
Images published for the first time seem to suggest that unborn babies can smile, blink and cry weeks before they leave the womb.
The pictures of foetuses about 26 weeks after conception have been captured by state-of-the-art scanning equipment being used at some clinics and teaching hospitals.
Experts can debate whether this apparent grin reflects an emotional response or is a simple physical reaction, helping prepare baby for the outside world.
The smile might appear at 26 weeks' development, but the new techniques clearly show limb movements at eight weeks, the foetus leaping, turning and "jumping" at 11-12 weeks, intricate movement of fingers at 15 weeks and yawning at 20 weeks.
Obstetrician Stuart Campbell, who has been using the Austrian-developed equipment at the private Create Health Clinic, London, for two years, said: "It is remarkable that a newborn baby does not smile for about six weeks after birth. But before birth, most babies smile frequently.
"This may indicate the baby's trouble-free existence in the womb and the relatively traumatic first few weeks after birth when the baby is reacting to a strange environment."
Professor Campbell, who is also head of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George's medical school, London, said: "With this new advance, there are many questions that can now be investigated. Do babies with genetic problems such as Down syndrome have the same pattern of activity as normal babies?
"Does the foetus smile because it is happy or cry because it has been disturbed by some event in the womb? Why does a baby blink when we assume it is dark inside the uterus?"
The $300,000 scanner that makes this possible costs two to three times more than conventional equipment. The machine develops ultrasound so that it can be transformed and shaded to produce detailed surface features from the foetus which move in real time.
It is already improving diagnosis of abnormalities such as cleft lip and palate. Professor Campbell said: "One woman I scanned, whose baby had a cleft palate, wanted to take the pictures to a surgeon to discuss the surgery after birth. Parents often don't know what such abnormalities look like so they have terrible mental images.
"The parents faced up to the reality of what the cleft palate looked like and bonded with the baby. It helped them come to terms with the problem long before the birth of the baby."
Professor Campbell said scanner techniques were improving. "Some mothers say: 'I feel I am almost cheating. I am enjoying my baby before it is born.'
"The bond between parents and baby is enormous. The reaction is overwhelming especially with fathers, who rarely get involved. Before they sat in the corner. Now they really show emotion. I enjoy scanning and looking at babies. It is so informative about babies and behaviour. Every scan is an adventure."

The Guardian

Sunday Bonus

Just because I am feeling generous :-), here is a bonus joke that fits with a number of recent entries. Click on the links to read If men were to get pregnant. Actually looks like a pretty cool site in general ...

License Plate

Thanks for the idea goes to Glenn.

Get yours here.

Quiz of the Week(end)

Does anyone still remember this movie now?

You are Cypher, from "The Matrix."
Selfish, disllusioned, you are misguided at
times. You deviate from the "right"
path.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Marriage Made in Heaven

[Another Jivha special!]

On their way to get married, a young couple are involved in a fatal car accident. The couple find themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St. Peter to process them into Heaven. While waiting, they begin to wonder: Could they possibly get married in Heaven? When St. Peter shows up, they asked him. St. Peter says, "I don't know. This is the first time anyone has asked. Let me go find out," and he leaves.
The couple sat and waited for an answer. . .
. . .for a couple of months.
While they waited, they discussed that IF they were allowed to get married in Heaven, SHOULD they get married, what with the eternal aspect of it all.
"What if it doesn't work?" they wondered, "Are we stuck together FOREVER?"
After yet another month, St. Peter finally returns, looking somewhat bedraggled. "Yes," he informs the couple, "you CAN get married in Heaven."
"Great!" said the couple, "But we were just wondering, what if things don't work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?"
St. Peter, red-faced with anger, slams his clipboard onto the ground.
"What's wrong?" asked the frightened couple.
"OH, COME ON!!" St. Peter shouts, "It took me three months to find a priest up here! Do you have ANY idea how long it'll take me to find a lawyer?

Competition

Ok. last time I posted some mystery animals, this time I am going to make the competition more formal. In this article there are four tartan squares - all of them are tartans whichI am able to wear. IF you can correctly identify all four tartans - OR - list them in the same order that I did when I approached the kiltmaker THEN you are entitled to a guest posting. This can either be a post you prepare and send to me (for editorial approval) or a topic that you select and I have to post about.

Here are the selected tartans, displayed in a random order:

Answers in the comments please. One entry per contestant.

Strine Animals - Cassowary

Time for another shot of an Australian animal. Note that this is a CASSOWARY - it is not an emu (which is another flightless Australian bird). When standing with head errect, this bird is taller than I am (6 foot).

Wisdom of Youth

[Ed: This one is from Pat in the UK! Thanks, Pat]

A little girl was diligently pounding away on her father's word processor. She told him she was writing a story. "What's it about?" he asked. "I don't know," she replied. "I can't read."

**************

A mother was telling her little girl what her own childhood was like "We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods."
The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this in. At last she said, "I sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner!"

**************

When my grandson asked me how old I was, I teasingly replied, "I'm not sure." "Look in your underwear, Grandma," he advised. "Mine says I'm four."

Friday Five

1. Is the name you have now the same name that's on your birth certificate? If not, what's changed?
Almost. I abbreviate my first name because NO-ONE except my immediate family ever spells it correctly and I used to go bananas about the mis-spellings. The all time record was the primary school secretary who managed to get 3 mistakes after being told to use the 'biblical spelling'.

2. If you could change your name (first, middle and/or last), what would it be?
I'm sort of used to it as it is. I wonder if I should have started using my middle name when I became an adult as my father did (and his father). We all have the same middle name (so does my son) and it used to be fun when people would ring up and ask for 'Gil':
"Hello, is Gil there?"
"There are three Gils here, which one would you like?"
"The principal."
"Well that eliminated one, you have two left. Would you prefer religious or secular?"
[My dad was a TAFE college principal, my granddad was a theological college principal.]

3. Why were you named what you were? (Is there a story behind it? Who specifically was responsible for naming you?)
My parents picked the name. The middle name comes from my father, my first name was a new addition to the family BUT my next brother and I were supposed to be best friends (and hence named after the two greatest friends in the Old Testament).

4. Are there any names you really hate or love? What are they and why?
I can't stand "trendy" names. You know what I mean. You meet someone and discover their name is [insert trendy but now dated name] and you know how old they are. We picked out kids names very carefully as names that would age well without being trendy.

5. Is the analysis of your name at kabalarians.com accurate? How or how isn't it?
What? Where?

Results of full name:

Your name of DELETED has given you the ability to handle people. You are pleasant and diplomatic, and seem to sense how others feel. For this reason, you could do well in public relations work.

These guys should speak to my manager about that label of 'obstructionist' in my review.
Results of short name:

As DELETED, you have a natural interest in the welfare of your fellow man, and a desire to help and serve others in a humanitarian way. You are responsible and generous, although somewhat scattering and disorganized at times. Any jobs requiring systematic and conscientious effort, or involving any form of drudgery, dismay you.

That explains it better although my wife would argue irresponsible and disorganised would be more accurate.
Results of made-up-name:

The name of Hezakiah has given you good business ability and a high regard for proper standards of conduct. You have an appreciation for good music, literature, art, drama, and philosophy, and you could be creative in those fields. An outdoor life also appeals to you and you could find much enjoyment in the beauties of nature. In the business world, your reserve and outward placidity command respect for your authority. However, in your personal life, this reserve and reticence are often mistaken for coldness and lack of feeling, with the result that others find it difficult to understand you. While your name gives you a clever, deep mind, you feel and sense much that you do not fully understand. As it is not easy for you to share your deeper thoughts and ideals with others, you are inclined to choose the association of those few friends with whom you feel the most at ease and with whom you can enjoy companionship in a contemplative mood without feeling pressure for verbal communication.

That is me - absolutely. Pity that isn't my name though!

Blog Roundup

It's been a few weeks since the last one and I apologise for that. Unfortunately this one will probably be fairly brief too. Anyway, let's get stuck into it.

First we have Pete who appears to have retired. We wish him all the best as he prepares to get married and settles down into his new job (with very long hours). [Actually, I predict that he will be back - maybe in an alternate format - he was just too good at it.] Speaking of long hours, you need to check out Paul Jané, one of the most prolific bloggers I know - and all of it is interesting. Lately he seems to be trying to find an alternative to his favourite Zil - see this, this and this. I think the first two look like ways of dealing with WTO protestors.... By the way, you can see a photo of Paul here (not as good as the photo in a kilt but not bad).

Moving from cars to aeroplanes, we have this post by Jivha about aircraft-proof buildings. Jivha appears to have changed his byline as well - Jivha the Tongue is loos and forked! As always, his site is very informative, did you know that Barbie is Jewish? He is also apparently a font of wisdom on a myriad of other topics, just ask! Another blog full of amazing facts would have to be Jaboobie who lets loose with this and this. On a less serious note he discusses multicultural day, normally we would have celebrated this a couple of weeks ago but the parish has been busy and it has been delayed to the weekend of the 28th/29th. I am pondering about the possibility of wearing a kilt - that seems multicultural!

Of course, one of the most multicultural pairs you can find would have to be Glenn and Vicki. Glenn has published his theory on how blogs work. He also has a blogroll longer than my arm, packed with interesting sites - give it a browse and done't miss Glenn's number plate. SlickVick is still sorting out things from the move.

SATR was obviously not completely satisified because they have gone and purchased cute puppy - that would certainly make my daughter satisified - she has been asking for one since she learned to talk. SATR also appears to have some tickets to the footy.

In contrast, The FatGuy seems quite cheerful. He has a really heart warming birthday wish for his daughter (I hope I can say things like that when the time comes) and also a desciption in the impact American culture is having in Iraq.

While we are talking about good news, it looks like Bob's temporary job could lead to something more serious. He has managed to finish the bathroom and it looks good. Maybe I can send photos and floorplans and pay him to redesign mine - it needs it! On a more somber note, Bob's grandmother passed away and I am sure Bob would appreciate your prayers and condolences. Sometimes, even when it is expected, it can still be hard to deal with death - I still miss my dad after 3 years.

Jake over at Utterly Boring has a neat story about some dude passing off a $200 note . He also has lots of other wierd and wonderful stories like this one and this one. Finally, there is some advice about firing your CIO.

Meanwhile CynicalCyn raises an interesting question about which way to walk up and down stairs. Naturally, as we drive on the left, we walk on the left and stairs and escalators here have signs that say "Keep Left". When you have a pair of escalators (up and down), the up one is invariably left of the down one as you face them. That means I can solve the American problem by just making them drive on the correct (left) side :-) CynicalCyn also has some great news stories like the lost luggage and the escaping prisoner.

Talking about strange stories, Interested-Participant has this gem about a different prisoner. Another interesting question is the difference between match boxes and t-shirts. As I read it, I can't wear a t-shirt with a cigar advert on it? Why not? On a serious note, check this entry on Malaria.

Howard (a former guest author on this blog) is being hit by a new sort of inverted spam. The spam makes some sort of accusation and provides a long-distance telephone number in the email. Call it and you pay through the nose. Apparently a related scam has been aimed at families of servicemen and servicewomen who are currently overseas. Nasty, very nasty. Howard also has a legitimate complaint(scroll down) about the lousy documentation that come with most software. He wants all instruction written in proper English. The problem with that approach is that mosut programmers can't even spell 'colour' or 'centre' let alone write proper English (as opposed to American or Geek) :-)

Due to a lack of time, some sites this week will miss out on the full treatment but are still worth checking out:
Pixeldiva wants to dye her hair and is running a sort of survey about it.
Practical Penumbra starts out with a rant about the RIAA but gets a bit distracted.
Reflections in d minor has lots of September 11 links and a detailed discussion on real music triggered by a google search.
AMCGLTD has a really strange story that I may have commented on previously - it just has to be a fake - noone could be that stupid! Or could they? There is also a story about tax funded reaseach into the echo of a ducks quack.
Alphecca (I think I spelt it right this time), also covers September 11 elsewhere touches on the question of carrying concealed weapons. A fencer (as in the sport of fencing) we know was hassled by the police for carrying his foil and saber in a bag - that made them concealed weapons. It was OK to carry thme in his hand though!? Of course we are not allowed to have guns so there is no question about concealing them.
Jay Solo's Verbosity also has September 11 stories but I am having trouble reading the site - could be a browser/proxy problem or maybe he is in the middle of reorganising.
Alex(ei) has a different perspective (on September 11 of course) and actually dares to use a French quote (which ignoring the source is completely pertinant). If you are not sure what I am talking about, check this out.
Micah has an interesting story about scoring free DVDs. I like the insight into the way someone else thinks (especially the guy listening to Micah talking to himself) but I can't believe the cheap prices. Bugger the discriminatory zoning system.
Damien is looking for content blocking software on the Mac. I am interested as well so maybe you could less us both know :-) He also has a pointer to a new blog: tosh we (huh?). He is still linking to the old site, I need to send him a mail I think....

Bill Joy Revisited

Just remember, you read it here first!

The Register is running a story today about Bill Joy's greatest contribution to computing: vi.
They include some more of the history and some links but they overlooked my story :-)

Anyway, if you a Unix geek or a Unix wanabe-geek, check the story and the links (and track down a copy of 'Life with Unix' for all the other inside stories - like biff, Heidi's dog).

As an aside, when I was working in the environment that is descibed in the story (using an acoustic coupler and a pay phone to dial up), there was a story that EMACS stood for Eight Megs And Constantly Shifting, which made sense when the average system had less than 1Mb of real memory (remember 640K is enough for anyone).
Later when people no longer understood the joke, I used to tell my students that EMACS stood for Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift which are the keys you have to simultaneously hold down to get out of the editor.

The Mafia Don

[Via email from Jivha.]

An old Italian Mafia Don is dying and he called his grandson to his bed. Grandson I wanna you lisin to me. I want for you to take my chrome plated 38 revolver so you will always remember me."

"But grandpa I really don't like guns, how about you leaving me your Rolex watch instead."

"You lisina to me, soma day you goin a be runna da bussiness, you goina have a beautiful wife, lotsa money, a big home and maybe a couple of bambino.

Soma day you goina coma home and maybe finda your wife in bed with another man. What you gonna do then? Point to your watch and say TIMES UP?"

Sue-Mania

No I am not talking about a morbid fascination with women named Susan but rather with this idea of suing people when you don't get what you want. Just because life is not going your way doesn't really entitle you to sue the pants of someone.
Jivha the Tongue (loose, and forked) has a rant on this topic and he is compiling a list of possible targets for trigger happy lawyers in the wake of the 11/9* attack.
Pop over and add any suggestions to the comments. A few of the entries at present include (check the post for the reasons):
* Visa/Mastercard
* US Immigration
* Microsoft (gotta love that one)
* The Pentagon
* The Saudi government

[Ed: Note for Americans, the international date standard is YYYY/MM/DD or DD/MM, there ain't no standard that uses MM/DD for obvious reasons - like it confuses the hell out of everyone. In this case I am talking about the 11th of September not the 9th of November.]

More Strine Animals

Time for another shot of an Australian animal. Note that this is a wallaby - it is not a roo. They are not really the same (they just look similar) and a wallaby is smaller. This adult female is about 4 foot high. Note the baby in the pouch ...

Scrabble Words?

[Ed: Although Theepan lost his position in the great contractor shake down of 2003 (1st Edition), he still has some good jokes. If you need an Oracle DBA in Sydney with a great sense of humour, Send me an email (or leave a comment) and I can put him in touch with you.]

This has got to be one of the cleverest E-mails that I have ever seen. ......

Someone out there either has too much spare time or is deadly at scrabble.......

When you re-arrange the letters:

GEORGE BUSH = HE BUGS GORE
DORMITORY = DIRTY ROOM
EVANGELIST = EVIL'S AGENT
PRESBYTERIAN = BEST IN PRAYER
DESPERATION = A ROPE ENDS IT
THE MORSE CODE = HERE COME DOTS
SLOT MACHINES = CASH LOST IN ME
MOTHER-IN-LAW = WOMAN HITLER
SNOOZE ALARMS = ALAS! NO MORE Z ' S
A DECIMAL POINT = I ' M A DOT IN PLACE
THE EARTHQUAKES = THAT QUEER SHAKE
ELEVEN PLUS TWO = TWELVE PLUS ONE

No More Joy

Looks like Sun is going to be in some trouble in the future. Apparently Bill Joy has left the company. Bill has been around since the company was founded and there are many classic stories about his contributions. According to "Life With Unix", Bill is credited with (page 32):

Bill ("wnj") Joy: Wrote much of original Berkeley release including virtual memory support, networking, Pascal, vi, csh and termcap. Co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Designed NFS. Received 1986 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for work on Berkeley UNIX.

As part of Sun he was always ready to speak up for the company. In a 1988 interview (page 45), he was asked about why SunOS was so much larger than System V9. Quick as a flash, Billy responded that it was becasuse Sun had more customers than V9 :-)

Another story is about vi (the one true editor as opposed to EMACS which would make a great operating system if only it had a decent text editor in it) development. The intent was to including windowing (ala vim) but the tape drive broke. Bill kept working without backups until his disk failed. Then he rolled back to the last backup launched the code and went onto the next project (page 189). Much later, Bill is reputed to have said that if he had known how popular vi would become then he would not have written it (page 265)!

Good luck with whatever you do Bill and thanks for all the fish code.

Are you hit-obsessed?

YOUR SCORE: 20.0%
AVG SCORE: 32.6% 

2419 people have taken this silly test so far.
1694 people have scored higher than you.
438 people have scored lower than you.
287 people made the same grade as you.

What does this mean? *

20 points is in the 20 through 39 precent
TYPE C (HIT-CURIOUS). You do the weblog thing for yourself instead of for an audience, but you are aware that you do have an audience, small as it might be. You are often curious as to what other people find so interesting about your weblog. You check your weblog referrers every now and then just to satisfy your curiosity.

* These results are just for fun. Do not sue me. Have a sense of humour.

Quiz from: Wannabegirl.

The Register vs Microslosh

If you want somethign interesting to read, try this discussion of the war Microslash is waging against Linux (not the SCO one, the other one). To tantalise you, here is a lovely quote:

Microsoft thinks the problem is getting the message across. Microsoft thinks Windows "wins against Linux every time" (although it appears unwilling to share that particular case study outside its reseller community), whereas large swathes of customers think Windows is expensive and Linux much cheaper. Microsoft is therefore convinced that if it continues to place "the facts" in front of these sad, deluded people they will ultimately accept that Microsoft is right, and Windows will triumph. But this is advanced stupidity.
The people installing Linux systems are not dunces, and (particularly if they're installing them on what Microsoft regards as it's own turf) they'll have gone into the costings pretty damn thoroughly. They're not going ahead with Linux because they don't know any better, they've got their own "facts", based on their own research and experience. If Microsoft products really are, or become, more cost-effective then customers' experiences and perceptions will change in Microsoft's favour. As politicians all know, really, when you say it's a matter of getting the message across you really mean that the customers have figured out the product stinks. So once they've kicked you out you stop whining about the message and get down to fixing the product.

Whinging

Over at Lynn has an article entitled Who Is Beyond Reproach? It reminds me of an exercise I did many years ago in a General Studies subject at university (all Science/Engineering students had to do so make-work General Studies / Arts subjects - even people with minors in Geography). This particular subject was 'Oral History' and involved learning how to effectively tape your grandparents as a way of recording history. In the class there was another student who had the whining down to a fine art.

Now someone is going to come out with the racist label so let me make my personal philosophy very, very clear. Firstly we are all human (at least that is the default assumption until shown otherwise) as Shylock suggested: "If you prick me, do I not bleed?". Next, everyone in the class was Australian. They are also fairly intelligent (to have got this far) and finally some had different socio-economic-religious-cultural backgrounds. I try to treat people as people first and as a partciular race or religion second. I may not always be sucessful but at least I think I am aiming in the right direction.

This student used to moan and groan about "her people" and the "oral traditions" which had been "mindlessly destroyed" by the "white oppressors". My attitude is that such things are history and people today are doing their best to build on what we have rather than dwelling on the distant past. She would not, and could not accept any criticism but was happy to dish it out. After about 6 weeks of this I prepared a piece (now lost in the mists of time) along these lines:

I come from a dispossed race. My people were forced off their lands. Some tortured and punished for their religious beliefs, others for their race. There was no opportunity for betterment. They were forbidden to wear traditional dress, or carry a weapon. Their livelihood was taken away as the oppressors fenced the land and stole the areas held in common by the tribe. All schooling was done in a foreign tongue and the use of native dialects was discouraged at the point of a sword. Women losts their rights and foreigners forced themselves upon them. There was no recourse to the law and the invaders firmly believed that we were no better than animals and certainly less valuable than cattle or sheep.

The class was stunned that I would make these claims which so closely mirrored this other students complaints. How dare I? I was not aboriginal? After a moments silence, she stood up and pointed her finger at me and accused me of mocking her. I responded:

Rather than mocking you, I wanted to explore those themes we have in common. The difference is that I make the best of things the way they are and you are not prepared to do so.

She repeated her claim and pointed out that I was not aboriginal in any way shape or form.

And she was right ....

I am not Australian aboriginal ....

I am, however, of Scottish (Jacobbite) descent ....

Music and the RIAA

Let me start by saying one thing - I do not have any pirated music and I do not condone piracy.

Now that is over and done with, lets look at the real world. There have been a couple of interesting comments around related to the most recent set of lawsuites. Check out MacCentral and The Register as starting points.

I also need to point out IANAL but I do like to argue about things I know nothing about (and if you really want a lawyer, try Steve).

In Australia you can get in trouble for "Aiding and Abetting" a criminal - that is being involved in a crime without actually being the one commiting the crime. So if you hand the murderer the gun or you help clena the knife, you are aiding and abetting. In this case I reckon the RIAA and the member companies come pretty close to aiding and abetting.

Lets do the maths. What does in cost to burn a CD? Well I burn CDs all the time and I pay less than $AU1 per CD. At the scale a recording studio uses, the prices should be measured in cents (US - pennies) but the quality is (presumably) better so lets use $AU1 as the cost. How much does the artist get? $0.50, $1, $2? As far as I can determine the amount appears to be sub $1 but lets be generous and give the artist $AU2. So total cost is $AU3 plus marketing and markup. There is the studio who produced the music (probably fixed cost not % of sales), the company that "owns the star" (who presumably take their cut from the artists fee - say 20 - 35% = $0.40 - $0.70 per CD), and the retailer. Being generous and allowing a fixed cost for the studio and 100% markup, I would expect to but the CD's for less than $AU10.

So why are they usually $AU25+?

Turn the question around the other way. How many songs are there on a CD? 10, 12, 15? Say 10 songs that are worth listening to. Now buy the tracks at the iTunes Music Store - cost = $US9.90. Buy the CD for $US15.00 - $US20? Still sounds like a lot of markup on both sides. There is no longer any distribution issue, or hardware involved, and only one layer of retailing. $5 for the physical media seems expensive and 99c per song isn't all that cheap either.

Besides as one of The Register readers mention (link above), what you are really buying is a licence to listen to the music - not a CD. So, if high prices are artificially inflated, does that encourage piracy? Is the RIAA (and it's members) effectively handing the weapon and encouraging assult?

I think the most daming comment was the RIAA official who stated that the funds from sucessful prosecution would not go to the artist (who missed out on their royalty cheque) but to the RIAA's enforcement fund. Talk about standover tactics!

Some of the nicest music I have in my collection comes from listening to the artists and buying a CD direct from them. Cheap ($AU5) but no middle-man to get involved in jacking up the price.....

The Family Tree

[Via email from Jivha.]

The Smith's were proud of their family tradition. Their ancestors had come to America on the Mayflower. More recent ancestors had included Senators and Wall Street wizards.

They decided to compile a family history, a legacy for their children and grandchildren. They hired a fine author. Only one problem arose: how to handle that great-uncle who was executed in the electric chair. The author said he could handle that chapter of their history tactfully.

Two years later, the book was published. It said: "Great-uncle George occupied a chair of applied electronics at an important government institution, was attached to his position by the strongest of ties and his death came as a real shock."

More Bugs

Let's imagine you run a big company. Let's imagine that you produce software. Let's imagine, and this is the hard bit, that some doofus in your organisation has produced software with a bug in it. Your company has been hammered in the media about the bug (again). So what do you do?
1. Release a bug patch that will crash your client's systems (because you didn't test it).
2. Release a bug patch that no longer crashes your client's systems but doesn't solve the original problem.
3. Release a patch that fixes the problem and works.

According to News.com it looks like Microslosh is working it's way down this list. Any day now they will reach step 3 and that will protect all the customers that (a) have not switched to Linux because of steps 1 & 2; and (b) install the patch.

Wierd Solaris Bugs

Recently we patched everything. I mean really patched it. We ran those explorer dumps, analysed the systems within an inch of their lives and then patched them to kingdom come. It's not often you get a window big enough to do a full patch run and so if you get the chance, take it. There were a few problems with other groups who joined the gold-rush and updated their apps but that was cool and resolved. Everything settled down. I mean it was all over by this time last month. Everyone has moved onto more interesting projects.

User: Umm. Excuse me. What does "bad user" mean?
BOFH: Huh?
User: I keep getting this message in cron about being a "bad user".
BOFH: Truth in Advertising.
User: And my jobs don't work.
BOFH: (Remembering recent appraisals and discussions about being obstructionist.) Is this something new?
User: Oh no. It's been happening since August 4th.
BOFH: (Checks calendar, August 3rd was mega-patch day for the server concerned.) Why didn't you say anything earlier?
User: I figured you guys would fix it eventually.....

Ignoring the assumption of mental telepathy, I started to investigate the problem. User account exists - CHECK. User has home directory - CHECK. User is not in cron.deny - CHECK. User actually has cron jobs - CHECK. User is actually reporting correct error message - CHECK.
< userx 15131 c Tue Sep 9 17:04:00 2003
! bad user (userx) Tue Sep 9 17:04:00 2003
> userx 15131 c Tue Sep 9 17:04:00 2003 rc=1

OK. Lets bring out the big guns. Google for "cron" and "bad user" ignoring references to the real BOFH. Interesting, a number of hits on sunmanagers mailing lists. Check 'em out. Looks like the same diagnostics and a note about expired passwords. Hang on, does this account have an expired password? No, this account doesn't have a real password - it is a *LK* account - which can only be accessed by sudo.

Test this theory. Create a cronjob for /bin/true. Give user a password in NIS and make sure map is pushed out. Everything works. Now *LK* the account, push the NIS maps and try again. It fails.

WTF? Does this mean I have to add a password to all my *LK* accounts just so they can run cronjobs? There are more than 200 of these suckers .... AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

Oh well, at least it's not windblows :-) Then again, I could have fixed it with a reboot and a reinstall!

Does your weblog own you?

Thanks to Kung-Fu Tales of an Exotic Oriental Chick we have a midweek quiz:

Unix Geek - History Continues

It was around this time that I used to play a lot with PC hardware. True, I mainly used it to run various forms of Unix but it was still PC hardware. The 386 was coming out, DR-DOS was all the rage especially if you added memory management software. People were arguing about which way to manage extra memory - should you use Expanded Memory or Extended Memory. There was all these fun things like DMA and interrupts to worry about and "smart" cards to compensate for inadequate hardware (smart disk cards with lots of RAM, smart serial cards that supported 422, smart video cards that could get more than 640x480). The best bit about the whole process was that nothing was supposed to work together so when it did you felt really great. The downside to the "plug and play" revolution was that things were supposed to work (in reality the probability that it would had not changed) and so you feel cheated when it doesn't. The whole thing comes down to an expectation. I used to have a few friends in the PC assembly business and I was forever trading or testing gear to get the "ultimate" PC. I played a few games but the real game was getting things to work.

Now things weren't so good at the lab. There were layoffs and reorganisations. The migration project was delayed (again) and the cobble-together solutions were getting less interesting. I started to look for a new opportunity and eventually found a really cool job. There used to be a businessman who would travel to the US a couple of times a year with some of his staff to select possible products for the Australian market. He would pick a company/product, set up an Australian subsidiary with a related name, build the business and then sell it back to the parent at a great profit. He had a real nose for the best IT products and had previously created Wicat Australia, Prime Australia and more recently Sun Australia. He had just sold Sun Australia back to Sun Microsystems and was now investing in (amoung other things) Pyramid (high end Unix), and NCD Xterminals. There was a small problem that some former customers still had support agreements with his company that had not transferred to Sun but all the Sun staff had of course been part of the sale to Sun. I came on board to support the remaining Sun customers and to help with the Xterminal and X-windows software markets. Some parts of the job were cool - I got to play with the brand new Sun Sparc boxes (the Sun 4) as well as lots of older hardware (Sun 3/60, Sun 3/80, Sun 4/110) and really cool X software. Other parts of the job were not so good, I had a new boss and a new business card every three months or so and there was almost too much to learn.

I was technically a pre-sales engineer with some support work and I have some great customer stories about this period. There was the customer who decided to make Unix more friendly and so he renamed things so that /bin became /commands, /usr became /user and /etc became /other-stuff. Problem was this SunOS 4.0.3 system refused to boot after the changes. Funny that. Another customer was panicing because of a shortage of space in the root filesystem. After checking, (s)he identified /vmunix as the largest file and compressed it. Once again, no boot! I guess non-unix people won't appreciate these but I can still remember the pain of fixing them. The OS was on tape, usually two of them. The first one created a mini-unix in memory and the second (and later third) did the install. You could boot off the first tape and from the mini-unix mount and repair such errors BUT if you wanted to add your favourite diagnostic tools, you would have to cut a new boot tape which was (a) complex and (b) error-prone. Once an engineer had a good boot tape with utilities, he would never let it go (I think I still have mine somewhere) :-)

Another customer had this tendency to ring up and ask strange questions without really providing any context. This invariably led to trouble, as an example there was a call about handling arguments in a shell script. The next thing I knew was a call from my manager about bad advice.... turns out the customer was writing a 'del' script to replace the Unix unfriendly 'rm' command. The shell script was parsing the arguments but instead of using "$*" as recommended, was using "*" and in fact had ended up being effectively: rm -rf * which forecfully and recursively removes everything. Customer had test this script while logged in as an administrator in the root directory. Fortunately, my co-workers (or is that cow-orkers) had explained this to the boss by the time I got back to the office (a few days later).

I tried to institute an award system, the "Richard Cranium" award for customers but after a bit of fanfare, someone worked out what it really meant. Maybe it was the list of possible awardees posted on the notice board. Anyway, management decided that it was not a very "customer focused" attitude. It was around this time that I came across the BOFH and he has been my role-model ever since :-)

That is all the time I have for this article because (checks BOFH excuse):

Communist revolutionaries taking over the server room and demanding all the computers in the building or they shoot the sysadmin. Poor misguided fools.

To be continued ...

Patrick's Rules?

Thanks for this entry goes to Pat. I have also seen this called Dilbert's rules....

Patrick's Rules of Order, replaces Roberts Rules of Order
1. I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow is not looking good either.
2. I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
3. Tell me what you need, & I'll tell you how to get along without it.
4. Accept that some days you are the pigeon & some days the statue.
5. Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If he /she isn't there the first time, chances are you won't be needing him /her again.
6. I don't have an attitude problem; you have a perception problem.
7. Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky, & I thought to myself, where the heck is the ceiling?
8. My reality check bounced.
9. On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.
10. I don't suffer from stress. I am a carrier.
11. You are slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.
12. Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy & taste good with ketchup.
13. Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
14. Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
15. A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.
16. Don't be irreplaceable-if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
17. After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
18. The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
19. You can go anywhere you want if you look serious & carry a clipboard.
20. Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning & nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
21. If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
22. When you don't know what to do, walk fast & look worried.
23. Following the rules will not get the job done.
24. When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

Telstra

Over at G'day Cobbers, Alan has story about Telstra:

Why am I smiling?

Telstra, Australia's largest technology company, has nailed its colours firmly to the mast of open source software, creating a potential nightmare for Microsoft and sending shivers through a range of traditional platform providers.
Under Project Firefly, Telstra switched on a desktop trial in March using two flavours of Linux and a Citrix-based Windows system, aimed at shifting up to 85 per cent of its computing desktops to thin-client technology.
Telstra chief information officer Jeff Smith said he was determined to end a history of internal duplication and technology incompatibility by deploying open-source software right across the telecoms giant, which spends $1.5 billion each year on information technology. He aims to slice this cost in half within three years.

Now if only they can speed up my ADSL account.

Regular readers will remember that this blog exists on typepad primarily because of the shocking performance of my ISP (Telstra). The good news is that I have given up on them and will be shifting my home account to a new ISP. Expect faster links (some of the graphics for this blog is still stored there) and a better backup arrangement :-)

Teacherish

In the absence of a Blog Roundup for two weeks I have all these little bits and pieces collected and I need to clear out the list. One of the blogs that has recently caught more of my reading time is Teacherish (or should that be Waiterish?). The byline on the blog tells it all:

Well, I don't know if there is another chicken raising, gun owning, left-leaning hacker with a freezer full of deermeat out there, but if there is, I am pretty sure that he doesn't have a blog.

One recent sample would have to be this entry:

Gates to Windows Users: "It's your fault."
Look, it's not our fault that you got hosed. Don't you have a sys admin living in your closet to keep all of your computers up to date?
Why are people still using Windows? (That's a rhetorical questions- Why are people still using heroin? They don't know how to stop....)
Email me, Windows users- we'll find a way to get you off the junk. The first step is admitting that you're powerless over the OS, and that your computer has become unmanageable.

Why not pop over and have a read - well worth your effort!

What Men Know About Women

TEN THINGS MEN KNOW FOR SURE ABOUT WOMEN.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. They have breasts.

I'm back!

I am back at work :-( and catching up. I noticed that the Humour Blog seems to have fallen over with no posting since the 2nd. While I look into fixing it, you might like to pop over here. While I might not agree with all the sentiments, it was still funny - make sure you read the comments as well. I like this one:

Unfortunately, my hands are tied as our esteemed colleagues from the Land of Cheese a Plenty and the Reich have stated in no uncertain terms that, since they no longer have the affluence and/or economic ties with the "real" government of the aforementioned Sand Hole, they have no interest in it anymore.

Quiz of the Week(end)

This is news to me:

Neutral:
Harmony and balance is key. You don't look at the
world in a negative or positive way and you'll
never judge or assume a situation- you just
look at the facts. People like you are peaceful
and accepting.

Made by
Sara


What color do you see the world in?
brought to you by Quizilla

Male Advantages IV

Mr Roughley (via Theepan) sent this lovely collection of reasons why it is better to be a man:

31. You are unable to see wrinkles in clothes.
32. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
33. Your belly usually hides your big hips.
34. One wallet and one pair of shoes, one color, all seasons.
35. You can "do" your nails with a pocketknife.
36. Christmas shopping can be accomplished for 25 relatives, on December 24th, in minutes.
37. The world is your urinal.
38. Sex is never a question.
39. Haircuts are optional (and cheap).
40. Clothes are optional round the house (who needs yet another outfit?)

Unix Geek - History Continues

Well here was my first full time job as a pure Unix specialist - I had worked with Unix, programmed in Unix, slept with Unix (well, what else do you call an all-nighter in the lab?) but now someone actually wanted those Unix skills. The deal was pretty good, I had to learn operations tasks on the existing system (ICL System 25) plus provide Unix skills to a new migration project (moving a system from the ICL 25 to some as-yet-undecided-version of Unix). The migration project was too big for one lab so a number of labs had pooled resources - we had the Unix guy, someone else had a C programmer and so on. In the meantime, I wrote small apps "to keep things going until the new system arrives" on SCO (yes that SCO) Xenix and later SCO Unix. We knew the support people at BlueSky pretty well and in fact became SCO resellers.

This idea of cobbling things together was quite common but being naive, I actually fell for the "only be needed for a couple of weeks" story. Perl was not an option (didn't exist) so things were written in shell, awk, sed, grep - all the standard UNIX tools. Databases? What were they? You made do with files in directories with links if necessary. Lookup meant navigating to the right directory and a record (thanks to links) was a file that appeared to be in multiple places (like under Surname/Smith/record and Firstname/John/record and Diagnosis/pregnant/record). Front ends for "dumb users" were done in curses (and it is called that for a very good reason) because that worked on VT100 terminals. Note that the "dumb users" were in this case specialists with many years of study and expertise but they knew nothing about computers. One of my greatest achievements of this job was a cobbled mess for histo-pathology. It was used to not only process patient records but to generate statistics. Given the likely short nature of the project it was the normal curses/files setup. Some years later (long after I switched jobs) I had a panic call from the lab. My two-or-three month system had been running for almost five years and it had failed. Why? They ran out of disk space. I learned a really valuable lesson here: never write any code on the assumption that it will be short-lived. Assume that your code will still be in use in 20 years and you will have to go back and fix it. That ought to make you comment things better!

Another story from this period of my career is a classic - but true - story of the absolute dumb user. Back in that era, SCO was distributed on floppy disks - and I mean floppy disks, not these little 3.5" things we call floppy but the earlier 5.25" ones (I also used 8" ones on TRS systems). There was, from memory a B1 disk, and N1 through to N3 and S1 through to S8 or something similar. We had a customer who wanted to buy a copy of SCO without installation. In such cases we made almost no profit but it helped with the requirements of being a reseller (so many licences per year). If they bought installation, we would do the whole thing in about 4 hours, bill for a days work and everyone was happy. If the customer did not buy installation we just shipped the boxes and manuals, invariably the customer would then get stuck and call us up - good for anywhere up to a weeks consulting and on-site callout fees.

Well this particular customer called up and said "I can't get disk N2 into the drive". Now, I had heard all the usual ones - like typing the disk labels and putting them through fax machines but I had never had a customer fail to insert a floppy before. After lots of putzing around, I got an on-site visit. Unfortunately for good customer relations, I split my sides laughing when I got there. The customer advised that they had also had problems with N1 and lots of funny "disk error" messages as well. You see the instructions read something like this (my memory is vague about the exact wording):
1. Insert B1 and reboot you machine
2. Type boot-install when the messages stop scrolling up the screen
3. Insert N1 when asked
3. Insert N2 when asked
...
What the instructions failed to explain was that B1 (and N1 for that matter) should have been removed before inserting the next disk :-) It was possible to jamb 2 disks into the old full height 5.25" drives but not three (the gate would not close).

To be continued....

Male Advantages III

Mr Roughley (via Theepan) sent this lovely collection of reasons why it is better to be a man:

21. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
22. Your underwear is $10 for a three-pack.
23. If you are 34 and single, nobody notices. (Except your Mum!)
24. You can quietly enjoy a car ride from the passenger's seat.
25. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
26. You can quietly watch a game with your buddy for hours without ever thinking "He must be mad at me."
27. No maxi-pads.
28. If another guy shows up at the party in the same outfit, you just might become lifelong friends.
29. You are not expected to know the names of more than five colours.
30. You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut or a bolt.

Friday Five

1. What housekeeping chore(s) do you hate doing the most?
Folding up the clothes after they are washed.

2. Are there any that you like or don't mind doing?
Doing the washing (i.e. laundry), gardening, lawns.

3. Do you have a routine throughout the week or just clean as it's needed?
My better half organises it (inside) and I do the outside + some of the laundry.

4. Do you have any odd cleaning/housekeeping quirks or rules?
Yeah. The kids have to do some of it.

5. What was the last thing you cleaned?
My computer screen.

Male Advantages II

Mr Roughley (via Theepan) sent this lovely collection of reasons why it is better to be a man:

11. Wrinkles-add character.
12. You don't have to leave the room to make emergency crotch adjustments.
13. Wedding Dress $2000; Tux rental $100.
14. If you retain water, it's in a canteen.
15. People never glance at your chest when you're talking to them.
16. New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.
17. One mood, ALL the damn time.
18. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds.
19. A five-day vacation requires only 1 suitcase.
20. You can open all your own jars.

End to End Computing

Just finished a fantastic presentation by Phil Karn who spoke on end-to-end computing and the risks that it faces. One of the key points he was making was that the users need to retain control (rather than the carrier) and he also noted that the single biggest threat to the end-to-end model was security (and therefore Microslash).

There is an article on his web site that covers the problems caused by recent viral attacks and he makes the following statement at the start of the rant:

People sometimes ask me why I loathe and detest Microsoft with such a visceral passion. A major reason is the never-ending stream of viruses and worms infesting their abysmally insecure software.

My wife is a registered nurse. If one of her patients developed a staph infection because she neglected to follow proper sanitary procedures, would she be able to blame it all on the staph bacteria? Of course not! But when Microsoft fails to practice proper software engineering hygiene, they just shrug off the resulting flood of worms and viruses as the fault of the lower life-forms who write them. And they get away with it!

Go read the rest of the article which includes some graphs and the number of virus emails he received (close to a million).

He also has a link to this letter written by the CCIA about the Home Security purchase of Windows as a platform.

This is not just a windows rant, this is a real problem than requires a solution and that solution is going to hurt someone. Either the users will end up being hurt (banned from participating in the internet?) or Microslosh is going to have to spend real money to change the way they do business.

Unix Geek - A History

A couple of items (about AUUG and the last Friday Five) have inspired some readers to send emails about my age (confidential) and career. I figured I could outline how it happened and show that really it was a pure accident.

Many years ago, when I was in High School, there was an Apple IIc (later an Apple IIe) which "lived" on a table in the vice principal's office. It was a small school and I was easily hooked. I borrowed manuals, taught myself Apple Basic and Integer Basic and started drawing bit-blip elements (effectively 8502 machine code). I wrote programs and flogged a few via email to apple games suppliers. When I looked at university, I was planning on getting a cadetship or sponsor to help with the costs. Given my interest in computers, I contacted the only computer company that I knew anything about - IBM. Unfortunately, IBM at that time had a policy of not employing computer graduates - they did have cadetships for law and arts and they would then train them in computing directly. There was some fear that the things to be learned at university would somehow be problematic for a career at IBM.

In the end I decided to find work and then do uni plus a part time job (or part time uni and a full time job). Australia was in a bit of a recession so work was not easy to find. Given where i lived (out in the sticks), I headed to the nearest "city" and walked the streets asking for work at every retail outlet. I would drop in, ask for a job, and leave a resumé behind. I would do 50+ places a day and when I had been to every retail outlet in the city, I started again. I got three nibbles - one was at the Post Office who wanted me to do an aptitude test, one was a coffee shop, and the last was the local Tandy (Radio Shack in the US?) store. This Tandy store made lots of money from HiFi gear and also had a computer section and a classroom (full of TRS-80 Model IIs). I pestered all three and the one that offered me a job was Tandy. The fifth (or sixth) visit, I met the manager. It was a Friday afternoon. He said: "Can you read?", I said (indignantly) that I had a HSC, he ignored that and asked: "Can you read fast?". It turned out that the instructor had quit, they had a class starting on Monday and he wanted me to "teach" it. When I arrived on the Monday (having read the course notes - without any access to a computer) a new teacher also arrived and so I started unpacking stock boxes. After two weeks, they decided to pay me :-) Tandy were good to me and I continued to work with them (full time over Christmas - two months) and part time the rest of the year) for the entire time I was completing my undergraduate degree. It was here that I met OS-9 (a mini Unix) and later Xenix.

When I finished my BSc, my first employer was InterTan (the computer sales arm of Tandy) in the same store that I had first worked in. I was officially a CMR (Computer Marketing Representative) and I survived in this role for 3 months. In my first month, I managed to outsell the big "York Street Center" (the flagship computer store with 4 or 5 full time CMR's). My commission cheque was greater than my pay. I received two letters from head office. The first congratulated me for my effort and the second announced that the commission rate would be effectively halved (unless you worked in a flagship store). That was like a red rag to a bull and I repeated the performance and reached the same level of commission (i.e. doubled the sales). The boxes we were selling included the T-2000 (an DOS-clone - not a PC-clone because the legality of cloning was still not established), the Coco (Coco 3 ran OS-9) and of course, real business systems (TRS-80 Model IV) and laptops (T100). Again I got two letters, one thanking me and one announcing a new commission plan with the effective rate halved again. I pulled out all the stops and sold systems directly into a number of schools. I was pumping computers out the door as fast as we could get them in but I could not match the previous months commission and so I resigned and took a Unix job instead.

When I had started university, I was really interested in Unix (having found OS-9 and read lots of technical manuals) and I desperately wanted to study computer science. The problem was that Computer Science was an elite course with an entry requirement on 460/500 (HSC Score) while I had a mere 360/500 (top marks for 3U Maths and good marks in 3U Geography and stuff all else). Also it was not clear that there was any form of career available in IT (remember the IBM comments above). I decided to be a teacher but do a science degree so that I could do computer science subjects. The rules were that you had to have two teaching subjects and so I took a minor in Geography and three years of maths which met the requirements to teach those subjects (the requirements differed depending on the subject you wanted to qualify for). This left lots of space for computer science subjects and the rules (more rules) were quite clear. Pretty much anyone could do the first year subjects (from memory these were: one in computer science- 6.001, one in maths - 10.081 and one in physics - 1.041). There were about 60 places for CompSc students plus 600 additional places for other students (300 for science in semester 1 and 300 for engineering in semester 2). At the end of the year some students dropped out of the CompSc stream (the attrition rate was deliberately kept at a high level) and those who survived the general subjects could apply to transfer. This was done by adding up the marks for all subjects and dividing by the standard workload (8 units). Ah ha! I did nine units and got a transfer and became a real CompSc student :-)

Note that my plans had not changed, I was still working towards becoming a teacher. The IBM PC had been announced (and presumably the first Mac too but I knew nothing about it) but it wasn't a "real" computer and there was no indication that there would be any potential to get work from studying computers - after all we were not learning about mainframes at university :-( What had happened while I was studying is that Unix had gone mainstream. Students coming out of university and working for computer companies could not help comparing what they had now with what they had seen while studying. There was this progression to using Unix servers on "mini" computers. So while I was selling computers, there were companies actively looking for people with Unix skills to help in system design or coding or administration. I took one of these jobs (in a pathology laboratory) and I have been doing Unix admin, design or administration ever since.

To be continued....

Male Advantages I

Mr Roughley (via Theepan) sent this lovely collection of reasons why it is better to be a man:

1. Your ass is never a factor in a job interview.
2. Your orgasms are real. Always.
3. Your last name stays put.
4. The garage is all yours.
5. Wedding plans take care of themselves.
6. You never feel compelled to stop a friend from getting laid.
7. Car mechanics tell you the truth.
8. You don't give a rat's ass if someone notices your new haircut.
9. Hot wax never comes near your pubic area.
10. Same work...more pay.

Photo of the Day

This photo is taken (near dusk) from inside a bus (through the window) of the Sydney Cricket Ground. The effect I was trying to capture was the reflection in the window of the trees from the other side of the bus roadway. The juxtaposition of the the trees (in the reflection) with the light poles (around the cricket ground) appealed to a sense of past history ...

More AUUG links

It turns out that the president of AUUG has a web diary and some more photos from the hotel (top two photos on the page).

I attended the tutorial he gave on Monday the 1st (all about kernel debugging).

From the SCO stoush, I just have a few links (I may rant about this later): SCO's opinion (we were shown a few slides from this presentation), Bruce Peren's comments (Bruce was not presented but got a few mentions), Greg Lehey's notes. I don't have any links yet for the third speaker (Con Zamaris).

My key contention was not addressed in the meeting: As a Unix geek (> 20 years) I have used Unix servers with source code (V6) while at university. I wrote code at university on theses boxes - in fact that is where I learned to program in C. Fragments of that original code have reappeared time and time again over my career, either because I did not want to rewrite things or because the problem/solution space matched a previous programming task. According to SCO, although they do not "own" my code, everything I have ever written is subject to a SCO licence. In other words, you cannot use my code without purchasing a multi-thousand dollar ($US) licence from SCO - in addition. of course. to anything you may have paid me to write the code in the first place. Obviously this is a nonsense stance on the part of SCO but it is (at least in the short term) a fairly disruptive claim for me and my clients. SCO also claim that this means that I have no rights to give away my code ...

Milson's Point

This picture really can't do justice to the strange feeling that the station is sort of suspended in space at the northern end of the harbour bridge.

New Words

This came via Mr Roughley:

The Washington Post's Style Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's (2003) winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray painted very, very high.
7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:
18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an ass hole

Where are you?

Or rather, where am I?

I am afraid that the quality and number of posts this week will be inversly proportional to the quality of the speakers :-) The better they are, the less chance I'll get to post! Yesterday was a humdinger about NIS migration to OpenLDAP - but I figure youse (Australia for "all of you") couldn't care less so I won't bore you about it...

Conference is at Milsons Point (at one wnd of the harbour bridge) and the view should be spectacular (I have a photo from the train station to show you later). Tonight is an Apple-sponsored p*ss-up cocktail evening and it will be wall to wall geeks (free beer tends to do that) so I am going to wear my MacGeek t-shirt and see what happens (best dressed prize?) ...

Magic 8 Ball

The internet is full of the most absolutely amazing crap. Some people just have too much time on their hands. This article is a prime example BUT it fulfills that inner need to know how things really work.

Have you ever owned a Magic 8 Ball? Asked it questions and been disturbed by how often it answered correctly? Wondered just what it was that went on inside? Well, for those of you too timid (or is it intelligent?) to have ever looked for answers to these questions, this is where to find them. ... There are 20 possible answers that the Magic Eight Ball can give. Of these, nine are full positive, two are full negative, one is mostly positive, three are mostly negative, and five are abstentions. ... WARNING! - Your Magic Eight ball cannot be reassembled after this procedure is completed. Do not whine or complain in general if your Magic Eight Ball is no longer functional after following these directions. Also, power tools can be dangerous, follow appropriate safety procedures and always wear safety glasses. We are not responsible for personal injury or property damage resulting from following these directions. ... WARNING! - The magic blue fluid in the cylinder is of unknown origin and makeup. It will definitely dye skin, fabric, plastic, and probably even porcelin. You will definately not want to get this stuff on you, it took a week to wear off my hands. Again, we are in no way responsible for destruction of property resulting from following these procedures. ... You have now completely dismantled the Magic Eight ball. Why, I'm not sure, but there's nothing you can do about it now. Should you ever feel the need to do something like this again, I suggest you seek therapy from a professional.

Go read the full article for the rest of this amazing saga (and watch out for the evil blue liquid).

Visual Acuity

[Found via AMCGTLD]

There is a visual acuity test over here. What did you score? (I got it right - but I have seen these tests before and so I remember trick involved).