AOL, RIAA and Embroidery - Oh! My!

http://www.eff.org/news/

And, you know, it all boils down to one thing: greed. I could go on and on about how all the bad things that happen in this world can be traced back to greed. OK, except for those that can be traced to power...

Glad to see the EFF is out there, fighting the good fight.

Get ready for Microsoft, cable and phone companies, and quite a few other people to know a lot more about what you do on your computer...

http://tinyurl.com/pcrzq

"It's supposed to protect you from predators spying on your computer habits, but a bill Microsoft Corp. helped write for Oklahoma will open your personal information to warrantless searches, according to a computer privacy expert and a state representative."

Perhaps only immediately relevant to folks in Oklahoma, the rest of us need to stay aware of what is going on all over.

Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA

http://tinyurl.com/6ouey

"This document collects a number of reported cases where the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been invoked not against pirates, but against consumers, scientists, and legitimate competitors."

"Trek" Rediscovered by "Lost" Creator - Yahoo! News

http://tinyurl.com/krtsq

[Hey, it's not an anti-RIAA post ;-)]

Oh! Happy Day! Another Star Trek movie!!

Ever since the summer of 1974 I have been enamored of Star Trek. My first serious crush was on Mr. Spock (I can still recall the intense jealousy I felt against Nurse Christine...that b...well, you know :-D) The Next Generation or Voyager or Deep Space Nine crews didn't do much for me - give me my politically incorrect space cowboys!

In fact, I may have to go put Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on the DVD player now...

Texas Sues Sony Over Spyware

http://tinyurl.com/7etg3

"Texas is seeking civil penalties of $100,000 per violation of the state's Consumer Protection Against Computer Spyware Act, which was enacted earlier this year. ... "Sony has engaged in a technological version of cloak and dagger deceit against consumers by hiding secret files on their computers," Abbott said."

[barely suppressed snickering giggle]

WinMX No More

http://tinyurl.com/7cdnv

The RIAA has perhaps won a battle, but not the war.

Hollywood triumphs in piracy fight - Jun. 27, 2005

http://tinyurl.com/9pp6j

As if the US Supreme Court didn't already admit being bought and sold with the really misguided eminent domain ruling last week...

Better go get that iPod/DVD burner/TiVo/VHS Recorder/Fax Machine now before making them becomes illegal :-(

And never stop fighting against those who would stifle innovation just because said inventions mean the entertainment cartel cannot control our minds.

Music industry sues 83-year-old dead woman

http://tinyurl.com/5mrla

As the EFF put it, "RIAA Sues Dead People" (okay, so if you hadn't heard of the movie The Sixth Sense that might not be so funny...)

"More than a month after Walton was buried in Beckley, a group of record companies named her as the sole defendant in a federal lawsuit, claiming she made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name 'smittenedkitten.'"

Interesting Discovery Regarding the Link Header Element

One of those "lightbulb"ish moments...

<link rel="next" href="yourpage.html"> will actually load the "yourpage.html" into the browser cache and send "yourpage.html" as part of the Server Variables along with the script name of the container page. I knew this element used with rel="next" was supposed to speed up the browsing experience for the user and now I know why.

As the documentation states: "User agents may choose to preload the 'next' document, to reduce the perceived load time"

Firefox does recognize this element with the "next" attribute, but Internet Explorer 6 does not.

EFF: Press Room - Music Industry Must Respect Privacy of Filesharers

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_01.php#002178

A victory for the good guys!

CNN.com - Survey: Net file-sharing doesn't hurt most musicians - Dec 6, 2004

http://tinyurl.com/5bhdw

"Most musicians and artists say the Internet has helped them make more money from their work despite online file-trading services that allow users to copy songs and other material for free, according to a study released Sunday."

Wired News: A Kinder, Gentler Copyright Bill?

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65796,00.html

It's good to see that common sense is prevailing to at least some degree.

Multiple Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6

Two vulnerabilities have been discovered in IE that can be used to bypass a security feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and trick users into downloading malicious files. These two vulnerabilities are:

* Windows XP SP2 has a security feature that warns users when they open downloaded files of certain types. The problem is that, in some situations, users won't receive the security warning if the downloaded file was sent with a specially crafted Content-Location HTTP header.

* An error when saving some documents using the Javascript execCommand() function can be exploited to spoof the file extension in the Save HTML Document dialog box.

Successful exploitation requires that the option "Hide extension for known file types" is enabled (default setting). A malicious Web site can combine these two vulnerabilites to trick a user into downloading a malicious executable file masquerading as a HTML document.

VENDOR RESPONSE
Microsoft has not released a fix or bulletin that addresses this vulnerability.

CREDIT
Discovered by cyber flash.

Betamax, Democracy and Calling Senators

On September 14 I got to be a participant in the democratic process! I signed up with http://www.savebetamax.org to call Senators Hatch, Leahy and Hollings, as well as the two Senators from my home state of Nebraska, Hagel and Nelson. The purpose of the calls was to state my position (and reasons for such) against Hatch's "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004" or S. 2560, commonly known as INDUCE Act.

I have to say it was scary dialing the phone and waiting for someone to answer. Not that I thought a Senator himself would answer, but I didn't know how the staffers would respond (over 5000 folks signed up to call all day). To my surprise and relief, staffers were very cordial and noted my [lengthy] concerns (such as that it's not fair to blame technology for any misuse of such - after all, a car could be used in the commission of a bank robbery - are we going to outlaw cars and sue GM now?) The staffer from Hatch's office, in particular, said she had learned a lot that day. Now, I suppose it's a matter of "hide and watch" - and being prepared to fight this monstrosity if it's brought up again.

If any of you all own any of the following: VCR, CD-burner, DVD-burner, TiVo, iPod or tape recorder, this potential legislation is very pertinent, really. Links to some informative and amusing reading:

http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/005003.php

http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/004563.php

Dreamweaver Bug/"Feature" #2 or "Score Another One for Notepad"...

Dreamweaver's XHTML Validation feature will complain if it finds an ASCII character higher than 127 - most of the foreign letters, such as ê,ö,ä,ü, etc. fall into this category. "OK, fine", one thinks and proceeds to escape them with the appropriate ampersand-code-semicolon set (such as &uuml; for ü - there's an Insert menu for Special Characters).

Oh, one would think...

But, Nooooo! Save the file, close the file, re-open the file...Hello ASCII characters higher than 127!

Yes, folks, they come back, on their own. Those carefully encoded ampersand-code-semicolon sets are gone. Bye bye.

Grrrr.

Never fear; there is a solution: Notepad.

And actually partly Dreamweaver - remember that Dreamweaver is known for not rewriting code it gets from someplace else. You use Notepad as your "someplace else" and put those ampersand-code-semicolon sets back in using Notepad and when you re-open in Dreamweaver they will be preserved.

Yay!

Tech Training Tax Credit Bill Introduced

Representative Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) introduced a bill into the U.S. House of Representatives last week that, if passed, would make technical training tax deductible.

The "Technology Retraining And Investment Now Act of 2004" ("TRAIN ACT," HR 4392) would allow individuals and companies to receive a tax credit for up to 50 percent of technical training costs up to $10,000. Expenses can include training classes (private or public), certification exams and other expenses "essential to assessing skill acquisition."

[See the official version (pdf format) here.]

A fond farewell to background music...

Back in 1997 when I first decided to stake out my claim on Geocities (hey, it was free! I needed it! ;-), the world was a different place: nearly all Web pages were terribly boring, or terribly tacky. I have to reluctantly admit that for my personal pages I erred on the side of tackiness: animated gifs, shockwave files and background sounds merrily caroused about my sites - I believe there was even a marquee or two...

When I redid Alrak's Parallel Universe earlier this year, I jettisoned the animated gifs on the intro page (well, they went to their own parallel universe, the indexb.html page...). With a pang of reluctance, I've come to the conclusion that background sounds are, well, scary. So, I'll be removing the Star Trek: First Contact background sound from Alrak's Blog.

Never fear, though: I'm learning Flash! ;-)

(And I've still got colored scrollbars :-)

Perhaps one more time...

As if there wasn't already enough to do, I need to think of a decent
navigation scheme for the site. Perhaps one of those drop-down list
boxes...or maybe at least a way to get "Home" (the course resources
page) from anywhere in the site. I'll have to give it some thought.

Here's another thought: when will I ever stop spacing twice after
sentences? I don't need the extra non-breaking space in my code. I
wonder if when they teach typing these days they space twice? Google
probably knows. I think Google knows everything...

I think I need to go to sleep now.

ok, I had to test it one more time

Why would it be that it's easier to blog via email than in the blog window? Must be one of life's great mysteries, up there with why a day can drag on endlessly but time accelerates rapidly as a deadline approaches.

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

So, we'll see how this one formats...

Blogging through email and more about Dreamweaver

Now, this should be interesting. Supposedly I'm posting to my blog via email. Hmmm....

Another interesting Dreamweaver, well, not really even a Dreamweaver observation. It's more an XHTML/IE6 observation. Apparently IE6 has a "feature" (bug) that sends it into a Quirks mode if the XHTML doctype is incorrect. Why should this Quirks mode matter?

I'm going to tell you.

It's the IE 5.5 and above colored scrollbars. If the XHTML doctype is set, IE6 won't display colored scrollbars, unless the doctype is incorrect. If the doctype is incorrect, the XHTML won't validate, but you'll have your scrollbars.

However, I have found a way to trick IE and this is where Dreamweaver gets involved.

Dreamweaver has a "Clean up XHTML" command which will insert the XML prolog into the Web page. Somehow, with this XML prolog (which still validates as XHTML), IE6 will display the colored scrollbars. Yay.

Now let's hit the Send button and see if this thing actually posts...

[Note: it posted - it just pre-formatted the text like the email - that's why it's all snuggled up against the left]

Ampersand Bug found in Dreamweaver MX

I nearly flung my computer out the window last Wednesday night when my carefully XHTML-compliant encoded ampersands (in anchor tags) kept reverting on their own back to single ampersands. I had set my preferences to not allow Dreamweaver to do any cleaning up it thought necessary so I was, needless to say, perplexed. (OK, I was pretty livid, and about ready to fire up FrontPage again...).

I Googled the problem and found a helpful newsgroup thread that reports this is bug within Dreamweaver and that if I change the single "&" to the encoded variety (the & and then word "amp" and then the semicolon) in the Property window it will stay. But not if I do it in the code window. I tested it myself, and, by golly, if I change my offending "&" in the Property window, sure enough, it will persist and I can validate as XHTML.

[This is better, I suppose, than FrontPage which will arbitrarily change my encoded ampersands back to single &s.]

Resistance perhaps not so futile...

"Since I have Dreamweaver MX, I might as well use it..."

Thus began the migration of Alrak's Parallel Universe from FrontPage 2002/XP to Dreamweaver MX. Since I wasn't using any FrontPage specific code in the site, the migration wasn't terribly painful. Learning how to make Dreamweaver MX easily do the things I'm used to doing in FrontPage, however...not painful, exactly, but at times I've found myself scurrying back to FrontPage just to get something accomplished quickly.

Other than expanding my knowledge base, I had no compelling reason for switching to Dreamweaver, so it's not that I found FrontPage lacking. And I can't say right now that I would recommend all folks immediately switch if they can. I think some folks are drawn to Dreamweaver merely because of the "cool" factor - it's not Microsoft (but, hey, nothing is "cooler" than using, say, Notepad - oh, wait, that's Microsoft, too...;-). Don't get me wrong, Dreamweaver seems to be an excellent product and capable of everything (if not more) that FrontPage can do. I would say it all depends on what you want your WYSIWYG Web editor to do for you. My demands are simple: don't change my freakin' code unless I run some clean-up command. Both FrontPage and Dreamweaver have been sworn at many times now for not meeting that demand. (Notepad, on the other hand, has never let me down in that department...)

Dreamweaver has forced me into a good habit, which is editing offline and then uploading to the live site. With FrontPage it was so easy to be bad and just edit live.

I'm sure I'll be posting more on my experiences with Dreamweaver. I'm taking a Level 1 class on it through Element K and I think I'm probably beyond the level of the class - I already [I think] know how to do a Web site - I just need to know where Dreamweaver buries its commands.

Goodness - I forgot to post that I'm now an MCSD.NET - as of October 29, actually. Big wheee. And I anteed up for another year of MCT. The economy is improving...we'll see...

Tonight's big question is "continually" or "continuously"? Here's what http://www.m-w.com has to say about it:

CONTINUAL often implies a close prolonged succession or recurrence "continual showers the whole weekend". CONTINUOUS usually implies an uninterrupted flow or spatial extension "football's oldest continuous rivalry".

When I made my way earlier to the home page of Alrak's Parallel Universe, after being mesmerized (as usual) by the twinkling starlight gifs (now only available on the alternate page, btw), I pondered whether my usage of "continually" was correct or not. After consulting the online dictionary, I'm going to hazard an opinion that, in fact, "continually" is the more correct adverb.

(If you took away my adverbs I would be rendered completely incapable of communication ;-)

As of 10:35am today, I'm a(n) MCAD! Wheee. I suppose I could give studying for that as the excuse for why I haven't blogged for over 6 weeks...ok, good as any ;-)

I have only (only?) two more tests to take to upgrade my MCSD to the MCSD.NET - and a whole two months in which to do so. I'm actually amazed that I'm so far ahead - usually I'd be taking all 5 tests the last week I could...

Fine blogger I am...it's been 9 days since my last entry. Oh, well...I'm a bad correspondent, too ;-)

Just realized it's Friday the 13th. How funny.

Thinking of new enhancements to the SMS program. Need to be able to send messages ad hoc to users not on the text file list. And convert this all to .NET. And convert it to COM. Probably should do the COM part first? Would make a good Challenge Lab for ActiveX III...mwahahahahahahahaha ;-)

I think it could be time for a long walk outside. Anything to avoid doing housework...

Later!

The Machine now has a gig of RAM! At present this seems to allow me to download mp3s from WinMX all the faster...yo ho ho; too bad I don't care for rum...

The firewall router is pretty cool, too: all I had to do was connect everything and turn it on. It automatically did the rest (of course, my machines were already set up for DHCP). I can't use the print server functionality, however - my printer (Lexmark Z45) is USB only and the print server needs a parallel hookup. No big.

I started teaching the .NET Framework Intro on Barnes & Noble University on Monday. It should be a fun class - looks like just "girls" so far, although I'm sure there are lurking guys. Next week the ActiveX Part 3 starts on Element K - I'm hoping that at least someone will show up and post. I'm quite surprised the class didn't cancel. I got an email reminding me that I could sign up for Desktop Part 2 - hmmmm...I wonder if that means they are having trouble filling it? I'll continue the SMS application saga anyhow - never know when I might get to teach Part 2, after all.

Well, time for me to go do something productive, like fill out my little boy's preschool paperwork...

Until whenever!

The Battery series has got to be the coolest of the Windows Media Player 9 Visualizations! It's especially good late at night/early in the morning....

I have a new machine! An incredibly fast Dell Dimension 4550, 2.66GHz. And, next week, it will have a GIG of RAM! Now I have no excuse not to do photo and video editing.

The machine came with Windows XP Home Edition, which I hadn't used before (had heard it had security issues). It's great! I believe I took care of the security issues (and the firewire router will be arriving next week, as well).

Well, I'm pretty boring, but it's not like folks will be waiting in line to read this blog, after all ;-)

I'm not saying I'm going to keep this template, but, hey, it works for now. I need to watch First Contact again so I can figure out how I might do some DHTML like the credits. Well, back to reality again...stay tuned!

Well, I guess I'm officially "cool" now because I, too, have a blog. Let the games begin!