Why Are My Photos Required To Beat Cancer?

I just ran across a Facebook app from Intel called “Progress through Processors”. It’s a new version of the distributed computing / grid computing apps we’ve had for a long time (I had lots of SETI@Home points), directed towards combating cancer, climate change, and malaria in Africa. That took about 10 seconds to decide, “Hell yeah I”ll do that!” (despite the economy hit – it isn’t free; when the processor is pegged it does use more juice). However…ahem…there’s the question of this little warning screen before you can install the app:

Allowing Progress Thru Processors access will let it pull your profile information, photos, your friends' info, and other content that it requires to work.

Excuse me?? Now I may not be the identity geek my friend Pam is, but I do know my way through Kim Cameron’s Seven Laws Of Identity. Law number 2 states:

The solution that discloses the least amount of identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable long-term solution.

In other words, assume a systems breach is always possible, and never ask for identity information you don’t directly and immediately need. Why on earth are my photos, my friend’s info, and “other content” required to use my spare processor cycles to combat cancer?

Equally scary, over 104,000 people are fans of this app. If they’ve all installed it, that’s a hell of a lot of identity gathering. I realize this is pretty standard procedure for Facebook apps (which is why I don’t use them), but I’d hoped that Intel would know better.

I posted a comment regarding this to my old home at the Intel blogs; we’ll see what comes of it.

Technorati Tags: Intel,Identity,Facebook

RichCopy

Just saw that my friend Joe has commented on an article by  another friend Joshua about a killer file copy utility called RichCopy. It certainly looks like the successor to the ubiquitous RoboCopy, and far more.

One of my great failings in life – besides not investing in Starbucks in the early 90’s when I did understand the value of a latte – is I never got around to writing a GUI for Robocopy, which is a command line utility. Derk Benisch of Microsoft finally did, and Josh mentions that his article on it has been viewed more than 220,000 times. <sigh> Fame and fortune continue to elude me :). So it’s a pleasure to see this integrated, GUI-based, multithreaded utility available to us all. Tell your admin friends!

North Korea

I recently heard a devastatingly accurate (and funny) description of North Korea from a British journalist:

“North Korea is like a slightly autistic child at a family gathering, throwing toys out of its pram to get attention.”

I suppose one could argue it’s throwing Molotov cocktails out of it’s pram.

Mobile Me

Ahh, the holidays and house projects. With the help of a step ladder and an improvised hook / hook installer made up of a broom handle with a deep saw cut in one end (also resulting in a shallow saw cut on me), I finally installed the Hotchkiss Tri-Lumen mobile I'd bought at the Art Institute of Chicago almost a year ago.

It had been sitting in my closet since last March, because I had to move our cheesy builder's foyer light out of the way and we have about an 18 foot ceiling there. The result is attached!

Dubya's New Digs

Oh good lord.

George is moving to town in January.

And not even in some isolated, walled-off enclave of homes. He's just off the Dallas North Tollway, west of a neighborhood we once (mistakenly) thought we'd be able to afford eventually.

On the one hand, I'm depressed.

On the other hand...it can't happen soon enough!

Technorati Tags: George W. Bush,dubya,home,Dallas

How Citibank World MasterCard Took Me For a Ride

Dear Citibank World MasterCard:

See that "World" in the title? You need to take this to heart, especially when it comes to your office hours.

I was in a teeny little village in rural Bali, in a family silversmith shop. Bali is well known for its craftwork, and silversmithing is  part of it. Trying to pay for my purchase with your CitiBank World MasterCard because it's more than I was carrying in cash, to my surprise the card was declined. When, with considerable trouble and help on the part of the shop owner, I was able to call the international collect number the operator told me that their customer systems were down for scheduled maintenance and nothing could be done for a couple of hours. It may have been late Saturday night for the States but hey! it was the middle of Sunday afternoon for me.

We'd wasted a considerable amount of time trying to connect, then being left on hold, and my last free day on Bali - very possibly for the rest of my life - was ticking away because of MasterCard service issues. Dewa Rai (my guide) and the shop people came up with the idea of getting me to a local ATM and maybe I could withdraw enough cash for it. Good idea - until I realized he wasn't going to drive me.

Instead it was the silversmith's son taking me on the back of his motorbike, one of probably 50,000 motorbikes on Bali. We're just starting to see more of these in the States with rising gas prices: less than a full-blown motorcycle, more than a moped, by all the major Asian manufacturers like Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, etc. And they all have a little handle on the back for tall foreigners to hang on to for dear life.

We went zipping down the street, no helmets or eyegear, diving into traffic, taking narrow scooter paths and side alleys, passing slower scooters laden with everything from cases of soft drinks to chickens in cages. Once I accepted the inevitable, and stopped thinking about what it would be like to be injured in a helmetless cycle crash in rural Indonesia, it was great fun! I still haven't surpassed the story of my very blond niece pushing her bicycle through mud roads in the dangerous Southern Phillippines - nor do I intend to - but it's the unexpected, off-the-schedule trips that make the travel worthwhile.

For all that, when we arrived at the ATM it wasn't on my network! So back we went to report no joy. By now the MasterCard systems were back up, but you left one last wrinkle for me. Turns out my credit card was frozen because of some real fraud on it - good for you for catching it! For me to complete my transaction I had to talk to the security office - which was closed! Bad for you! It may be late at night in the States, but it's a WORLD MasterCard, remember? It was 2:30 PM on a Sunday afternoon for me!

We gave up. I put down a deposit on the jewelry with what cash I had, and the silversmith scootered into Ubud the next morning with the goods where I paid the balance (also in cash). That morning I was able to put my four day's hotel bill on the MasterCard by talking to the security office just before they closed for Sunday night back home. If I hadn't learned the office hours from the previous day's adventures, I would probably have tried to pay, missed the office hours, and had to suddenly scrape up the cash for the bill before dashing off to the airport.

So...when I see those "anywhere in the world" Citibank commercials, I now know better. And seeing as how you just announced you're laying off 53,000 people, I don't expect that I'll be seeing any improvements in office hours soon.

Regards,

Sean

Technorati Tags: Citibank,mastercard,fraud,bali

Avast!

I just discovered we're already halfway through International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Where's my eyepatch...

 

Technorati Tags: Talk Like A Pirate Day

VWS is both stupid and smart at the same time

I use Virtual Weather Station to upload weather station data to the web. It's obviously a home-grown program that's had various features bolted on, one after another. (I'm running version 13 and 14 is out.) I've wasted too many hours of the last 24 trying to get the page  uploads to work correctly, and just about given up. Now mysteriously http://www.deuby.com/weather (the default home page) is updating correctly and showing the correct location information...I have no idea why. So use that if you're looking.

At the same time, VWS does a great job collecting both weather station and Weather Underground data, posting, and displaying them.

And don't get me started on the Oregon Scientific weather station's RS232 serial port to communicate with the PC. When's the last time anyone used an RS232 port?

Technorati Tags: Virtual Weather Station

Ike's a Coming

We're in the more or less direct path of Hurricane Ike, though several hundred miles inland. By the time it gets here we should see sustained winds of 40 - 60 MPH, from the north I expect, and 1 to 4 inches of rain in a 24 hours - a "good Texas thunderstorm" :). That's IF Ike passes to the east of us, which is apparently the weaker side, but there's no telling until it's closer. Most of them have so far.

Plus, it's massive. On the Weather Underground site, Dr. Jeff Masters argues that calling it a Category 1 or 2 hurricane is underselling it's potential for damage - most especially because of the storm surge, which is supposed to be GREATER than Katrina. He predicts the largest and longest power outage in Texas history, though he thinks Dallas will be on the fringes and not suffer major outages. (He's in Ann Arbor.) I highly recommend you read the posting.

If anyone's interested, I've got my weather station up and running, and it posts local data to http://www.deuby.com/weather/usa.htm every 5 minutes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go mow the back yard and put some construction adhesive under shingles on a section of the roof where they keep blowing off...

Technorati Tags: Ike,Hurricane Ike,Dallas weather,weather station,Dallas,hurricane weather

Local girl makes good

As you may have heard, Nastia Liukin won the women’s individual gymnastics final last night. You may have also heard she trains in Plano. We actually held a birthday party for our son years ago at her (and Carly Patterson, Athen’s gold medalist) gym, World Olympic Gymnastics. (As you can imagine, with two gold medalists it’s a growing business.)

I remember walking into the place and immediately noticing the smell. Not unpleasant (to me), it brought me right back to college because it smelled just like my karate dojo in Lansing: People working out hard, on carpet. Not that I’ve been into too many other gymnastics schools, but that’s the only place I’ve ever encountered it.

It also had a pit built into the floor filled with foam blocks. It was like quicksand! Amazingly hard to get out of; I'm sure it's easier for those lightweight gymnasts :).

Technorati Tags: Nastia Liukin,World Olympic Gymnastics,WOGA,Plano

Pilgrimage

A different kind of lobster claw

I'm in Broomfield, Colorado, doing customer work with Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Very interesting work, but more on this later.

I had dinner at a combo restaurant / brewpub, and though the

restaurant was pretty forgettable (as was the beer), they had a unique little device in the lobby: a lobster game. 

As you can see, it's setup like the kid's game where you attempt to pick up toys or candy with a big claw. Invariably you never get anything. Well, in this one the bin is full of salt water and lobster! If you can catch one, you can have it. It costs $2 per attempt, and I suspect the success percentage is about the same - but for a different reason: These "toys" are experienced and wily.

I watched one fellow pick up a lobster pretty easily, but once out of the water the lobster wiggled a little bit and got himself out of the claw and back into the tank. I suspect they make a decent profit on this game!

Technorati Tags: lobster,lobster game,broomfield

The Kindle: A Bookshelf In Your Hand

"I need to read something before I go to sleep. I don't care if it's the newspaper the fish came wrapped in; I have to read a little."  - Robert Heinlein, Glory Road (paraphrased as remembered)

I finally broke down a couple of weeks ago and purchased a Kindle, Amazon's electronic book reader. i'd been thinking about it for a while, then decided that despite the price and potential drawbacks I'd give it a try.

Why a Kindle, rather than simply reading books from my phone or computer like I've done many times in the past? The first reason is that I'm using an AT&T Tilt running Windows Mobile 6. Though the Tilt (aka HTC Kaiser) is arguably the most powerful and flexible phone platform out there, ebook reading requires the Microsoft Reader for pocket PC. This product is terrible, and what's worse has really awful support. I purchased several ebooks, and whenever it tries to open them, the reader on my phone gets a memory leak and eats up all available memory until it hangs or crashes. My attempts at getting this fixed have largely fallen on deaf ears. Plus there's the battery life consideration; phone power on a WM6 is always a concern and this is just another drain.

What drew me to the Kindle is the idea of doing book reading - just book reading - better than anything else electronic on the market. Replicating the book reading experience as closely as possible. Carrying ALL my books, not just the one that fits comfortably in my travel gear, with me.  I loved reading Bill Bryson's A Brief History Of Nearly Everything, but I never want to have to schlep it around with me again.

What do I love about it?

• Its electronic ink display is unlike any electronic reading surface you've ever seen. It's monochrome, which at first feels like a step backward. But compare it to the physical book reading experience: 99% of the books we read are monochrome anyway. The brighter the environment, the easier it is to read.
• It has a long battery life, longer still if you only turn the wireless on when you need it. Under normal circumstances I don't even turn it off, I just put it on standby. And it has a great screensaver with very nice monochrome graphics of famous writers or book illuminations, or tips.
• Its wireless communication with the world's biggest bookstore is an inseparable part of what it is. You don't need a computer. You can order a kindle-ized book (generally $10 or less) from either your device or the Amazon kindle store, and it'll download in the background. Voila! You have a new book! It's increased my book purchases (which Amazon of course loves) because it's so easy. Just like the itunes model, which I'm sure Amazon used to enlist publishers.
• I now carry a selection of books with me, and I can read whatever suits my mood. For example I have, David Sedaris' When You Are Engulfed In Flames, David McCullough's John Adams (a massive book to tote around), American Vertigo by Bernard-Henri Levy, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, and a Wall Street Journal subscription I'm trying out. (I started with print, moved to print+web, and am now just web edition. I think I still favor the web edition, especially with the wireless problems at my location.)
• It has a dedicated font button which allows me to easily adjust the font size. This is great, because I can easily switch the size depending on whether I have my reading glasses on or not, or how good the light is. Thank you Amazon for the design decision!
• It has essentially unlimited storage. It will hold 200 books, but you can add an SD card to increase local storage. Further, Amazon keeps the record of your purchase, and you can erase and re-download a book any time.
• The actual hand holding experience is okay. it's nice and thin, but had several relatively sharp images. I learned last week that Mark Russinovich has one too (that Bill Bryson experience might have turned him too, as I know he was reading it at the same time), and he complains about how the lower-right corner pokes your hand when you hold it in your right hand. I was using it in its paperback-like cover, but turns out it's most comfortable and natural to hold it in your left hand. Nonetheless, the ergonomics need some work; the Next Page button on the right is huge, and in general it's almost impossible to pick it up while on without accidentally turning the page. If you want to show it to someone, switch to a book you've already read or risk losing your place :-|
• There's the geek experience. This thing turns heads because it's not just a new device, it's a new type of device that's still extremely rare. I just got my luggage inspected and 20 (friendly) questions from the TSA guy searching my luggage! They thought I might have had a notebook computer in there.

What I don't love so much about the Kindle:

• The display flashes completely black briefly when you "turn the page". The manual says this is because the page is refreshing itself with each turn, and it sounds reasonable. But it's disconcerting to be reading a sentence and having a big black flash in the middle of it.
• There's very little in the way of graphics at all beyond the screen saver. It's certainly capable of it, so the lack makes me wonder if it's just because it's new enough that no one has gotten the hang of it yet...or because the screen saver graphics were painstakingly rendered by hand.
• I have almost zero connectivity at my house with the Verizon network it uses. My workaround is to purchase a book on the computer, then carry the Kindle out for an errand or something and the book downloads.
• The ergonomics are still 1.0.
• Though the selection is enormous, I can't find all the books I'd like in Kindle format.

And finally - I still have to bring a magazine along for when I'm not allowed to have electronics running at takeoff and landing!

Technorati Tags: Kindle,Amazon Kindle,Kindle review,Robert Heinlein,Mark Russinovich,Bill Bryson,David Sedaris

I hate Mears shuttles

I'm in Orlando to speak at the spring Windows Connections conference. The conference has been here in the spring for several years, so you'd think I'd learn by now to never take the Mears hotel shuttle. Once again, thriftiness won over convenience. So, once again, I wait for an HOUR for a shuttle to the Grand Hyatt. And seven of us are crammed sideways in a shuttle with what seems like no functioning seatbelts. You'd think I'd learn.

Pb:J Ratio and Its Correlation To Age

As I was hurriedly making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, it occurred to me that there is a hitherto unexplored "golden ration" in our lives. In my statistical sampling of, well, one, I realized there's a direct correlation between one's age and how much peanut butter vs. jelly that goes into a PB&J.

When you're younger, it's all about the sweetness. The peanut butter mainly exists to glue the two pieces of bread together. So about a 1:3, even 1:4 ration? As you get older, you enjoy the flavor and texture of the peanut butter. Is this analogous to Stilton cheese and single malt scotch being adult's preferences? Plus, more PB makes for a sandwich that sticks with you longer (no pun intended).

Eventually you're up to the 3:1 or even 4:1 in favor of the peanut butter. Of course, it tapers off after that; you won't find many PB&Js with just a dash of jelly.

On whole wheat, mind you; I am an adult. But that doesn't extend to the PB - I'm still a Jif Chunky guy. I figure I can indulge myself in the little bit of added salt.

Technorati Tags: Peanut butter,PB&J

When will it sink home?

I'll know that expensive gas, and the impact of global warming, will have finally been accepted by the average North Texas suburban consumer when I no longer walk past at least one car sitting in a parking lot, windows up and engine idling, on a 70 degree sunny breezy day. I see this and think, "We're never going to turn it around in time."

Technorati Tags: Global warming,selfish idiots

Bellevue Denizen

Since joining Advaiya, I've been spending a fair amount of time in the Seattle area as I get ramped up with the company. Since they're based in Bellevue, I'm typically camped out somewhere nearby. This gives me a chance to check out how Bellevue has changed since I first came up here in 1989 to bicycle through North Cascades National Park.

Digression: Bellevue isn't in North Cascades National Park. It isn't anywhere near it; NCNP is about 4 1/2 hours north. Bellevue is an "east side" suburb, on the other side of Lake Washington. It's where my friend Craig lived when I first came up here. I introduced him and his friends to blue frozen margaritas. Oh, the stories...

Bellevue has become pretty hoighty-toighty since I was first here. This is synonymous with downtown and West Seattle-ites saying "<sniff> east side". The city bird, I think, has become the tower crane. There's no less than eight of them hovering over its small downtown as office building and (extremely expensive) condominiums are going up all over. Microsoft has a big presence here in a high-rise way; they have an office building whose cafe is on the top floor and commands a stunning view of Lake Washington and downtown.

I've been frequenting a restaurant here named the Tap House Grill, (tagline "Giving Beer The Respect It Deserves") a combination of good food and 150 beers on tap. Now there's a challenge I relish! It's nice to get back to the hotel from work and be able to walk wherever I want to go.

Technorati Tags: tap house grill,bellevue

DEC is a busy place

I get a great kick out of the fact that many of my fellow DEC attendees try to do a daily blog about the conference...and never get past the first day :). It's a really busy time, with sessions and events keeping you going from 7:45 to 11 or 12 or later. Much easier to just wait until the end!

Technorati Tags: DEC,DEC 2008

The First Annual Wook Lee IT Pro-Am Memorial Challenge

One of DEC's unique traditions, besides the ubiquitous rubber chickens*, is its annual Challenge.

Every year, Microsoft group program manager Stuart Kwan issues a challenge at the end of his keynote. This challenge was to Wook Lee of HP, who at the beginning of the challenge was HP's schema czar and directory architect. The challenge was typically to provide technical guidance of some aspect of Active Directory, but presented in an unusual manner...within 24 hours. Last year he presented secure authentication in the form of a Kermit the Frog karaoke sing-a-long, in Powerpoint, to the tune of The Rainbow Connection. And he did it remotely, by telephone.

This year, because Wook is in a different role at HP and HP IT won't let him attend, Stuart Kwan has altered the Challenge to be the "Wook Lee IT Pro-Am Memorial Challenge" ("Memorial" because Stuart declared humorously that Wook is just dead to him, because he couldn't attend either of two conferences). This evolution of the Challenge is now handled by volunteer committee, which I joined.

The Challenge is to talk about Active Directory forest recovery in the form of a movie poster. At least I think that's what it was, because we all only saw the Challenge once from Stuart's deck.

Our response was to create "Indiana Joe And the Forest Of Doom", a movie poster featuring:

• Joe Richards as Indiana Joe
• Dean Wells as Outa Ram
• Jorge de Almeida Pinto (aka Princess Jorge) as Willie Boot
• Stuart Kwan as Shortly Rounded
• Cameo appearances by Wook Lee and Guido Grillenmeier as the Phantoms

It was well received, hopefully setting a good standard for future Challenges.

 

*One of the speakers brought in 75 rubber chickens in his luggage from The Netherlands. Why Gil needed imported chickens I'll never know.

Technorati Tags: DEC,DEC2008,DEC 2008,rubber chicken,Wook Lee,Stuart Kwan,Dean Wells,Jorge de Almeida Pinto,Guido Grillenmeier,Pamela Dingle,DEC Challenge

San Antonio, with links to Seattle

I zipped down to San Antonio Friday afternoon to hear my son's middle school orchestra perform for the Texas Music Educator's Association annual conference. Apparently it's enormous. His orchestra was selected to perform as essentially the top middle school (in Texas that means grades 6,7, & 8) orchestra in Texas.

I had a meeting in the morning, so I dashed out right afterward. Though the flight was delayed, and of course there was the rental car / airport construction / directions / looking for parking downtown / finding remote parking at the Alamodome / throwing myself in front of a shuttle bus to keep things interesting, I amazingly trotted into the performance no more than two minutes before the first announcements! <whew>

On the flight down there, I sat next to a little old lady who was telling me about her niece, a flute player that had spent time in Ireland and managed to stay there a few months longer by busking on the streets of Dublin. (NO, busking is the perfectly honorable profession of playing the street for money given by passers-by. Downtown Dublin, especially on Grafton Street between Trinity College on the north end, and the lovely St. Stephen's park on the south.) "Very nice, very nice," I said as I tried to fall asleep.

"Then she went off to the west coast to perform, and met and married Dale Chihuly."

"Excuse me?? She married who???"

"Dale Chihuly."

"Not just a Dale Chihuly, the Dale Chihuly?"

She proceed to regale the now-fully-awake me with stories of the couple going to the Clinton White House for dinner with the Russian Ambassador, and Dale wearing sneakers. Not just any sneakers, apparently, but sneakers that he paints and customizes!

The kid's performance was terrific. I say that objectively; there were music teachers in the audience during the performance shaking their heads in wonder at the violin and cello solos in Capriccio Espagnol, and the violins (especially the firsts) had a very polished sound for the Faure' Pavane. Audience members were very enthusiastic in their praise of the students as they passed by on their way out.

I had enough time to walk a couple blocks over to the Alamo (there's an NPR StoryCorp trailer there), and have a Lone Star beer at the history Menger Hotel bar literally next door. A quick dinner at a pricey restaurant on the Riverwalk, and I was off back to the airport!

I did have one other interesting episode. P.S. - I did a little research, and it wasn't the Russian ambassador, it was Boris Yeltsin himself, in 1994. Apparently Leslie can speak Russian, so she was in heaven. And yes, the New York Times specifically mentioned his sneakers.

Technorati Tags: Chihuly,Dale Chihuly,San Antonio,Rice Middle School,TMEA