Surfing in Cupertino

I wanted to come up with a somewhat creative title for this blog entry about Apple Safari entering the Windows market.  

This blogger has much more authority than I do about Safari's market prospects, but my initial thought is that unless it offers something unique, it's going to have a hard time gaining widespread popularity among people other than techie-computer users.  The only thing Safari does is surf the web, and unless it has a "killer" feature, I'm not sure what its market prospects are.  Firefox came on the market and gained widespread popularity partially because Microsoft had so many security problems. Firefox has a reputation for being a "safe browser," and I don't think that Safari has that reputation (I don't mean to say Safari is unsafe, I just mean it doesn't have a reputation of being safe).  Unless something disastrous happens with Firefox, people who want a "safe" browser are probably going to install Firefox, not Safari.

I've installed Safari on my Mac, and am typing this blog entry using it.  I wish that Safari gave me the opportunity (Firefox does) to simultaneously have the beta and non-beta versions installed.  

I also wish that it had an option to add a new tab button to the toolbar.

I would install it on my PC, but my PC runs Windows 2000, which Apple apparently has chosen not to support.  It looks like Windows 2000 is beginning to fall by the wayside for Apple.  I don't entirely fault Apple for this.

Microsoft didn't develop IE 7 for Windows 2000 (although they'll continue to provide security updates until 2010).

Congestion Pricing in NY

In case you had not heard, Mayor Bloomberg is trying to institute congestion pricing similar to what they have in London (you'd get charged eight dollars for entering Manhattan, with a discount if you used a toll bridge to enter). I think this has potential to work well and will encourage people to take mass transit. I just hope that they are not overwhelmed with people who decide to take the subway instead of paying eight dollars. I'm surprised to see how quickly it is moving thus far, I expected it to stall out in the state legislature, but it looks like it may not.

Controversial Carousels

There is a controversy in my town about a proposed carousel in Oyster Bay (my town). There is a waterfront park which was donated by the Theodore Roosevelt Association to the town of Oyster Bay in 1942. As part of the deed, it was ordered that there be no carousels or other mechanical rides. The Association (which still exists) has agreed to waive that provision of the deed, but there are a number of people who are still opposed to it. I wonder if (cue scary music) there is a Rule Against Perpetuities concern here, although maybe the way New York implements the RAP will prevent a problem with that.
The park is a relatively small park, and a number of people think that the carousel would add a lot of noise to the park. I tend to agree with them, I also wonder how they are possibly going to get enough visitors to the park to cover the cost of running the carousel.
The Main Street Association also thinks it will draw visitors to the downtown. I disagree. Unfortunately for Oyster Bay, it's on the northern shore of Long Island, and that means it is far away from major east-west arteries like the Long Island Expressway. Even a less major east-west artery (Northern Boulevard/25A) is probably four or five miles from downtown. There are no major roads that go through downtown Oyster Bay, so the downtown has suffered. Two car dealerships have closed, and the downtown is not doing so well. The problem is that the park is not that close to the business district, it's two or three blocks, so I don't think people are going to go to the park and then go shopping.
We'll see what happens, it's before the town board right now.
Here is an article from Newsday.

Tilapia Recipe -- So easy, Douglas can do it

Lately I've been experimenting with cooking tilapia. To do it, I put an inch or so layer of water in a frying pan, bring it to a boil, and then put a filet of tilapia in the water. I then return the water to a simmer (not a boil), cover it, and poach it for five minutes. Then, I flip the tilapia piece over and poach it (covered) for another five minutes. It's then pretty much done, and I usually eat it with rice and some vegetable. It makes my meals more interesting. My grandmother has suggested adding lemon to the water, and I also use pepper on the fish.

Bottle Deposits

There was a posting on bottle deposits on a mailing list that I subscribe to. I think that bottle deposits are a good thing, I think that to encourage recycling it might be necessary to increase the deposit on the bottles from a nickel. It has been a nickel since I was a child, and I think longer than that. (By bottle deposit, I also mean the deposit on soda cans as well)
The problem, though, is, at least under New York State's law, if you show up at any store with a bottle of a drink that they sell, they have to give you a deposit back. You don't have to return it to the store where you bought it. This is a problem for mom and pop stores.
There was a New York grocery store that I used to go to that was on the Pennsylvania (no deposit) and New York border. Someone took bottles/cans that he got in Pennsylvania and brought them to New York, where he attempted to redeem them. The New York grocery store got tired of this and eventually stopped him, probably by noting that some of the cans he was redeeming were not stamped with a five cent refund, even though the barcode was the same as refundable cans. If they doubled it to ten cents (or even made the amount more meaningful, like a quarter) it might have a significant impact on a store's income. On the other hand, recycling has become bigger now, so maybe it is not necessary to have the deposit law at all.

Giving Apple Credit Where Credit is Due

Thomas' iPod displayed the "sad iPod" icon, and so (after I tried and failed to fix it) we took it to our local Apple Store on Long Island. Within about fifteen minutes, the Genius fixed his iPod, and it didn't cost us a penny. Apparently, the hard disk had frozen, and he forced it loose by applying extra current to force it to rotate faster. Although this does not redeem Apple from their previous fiasco (or, after Dorothy's experience, make me any more likely to purchase a Macintosh computer again), it's still nice that they were able to fix it. That's more than I would be able to say for Dell, which doesn't have Genius Bars.

A Jury of Your Peers in Newfoundland

I listen to a podcast entitled Newfoundland and Labrador This Week from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. There was a segment about how a judge declared a mistrial because the entire jury pool for St. John's, Newfoundland had not been updated for eight years. (For those not up on their Newfoundland geography, St. John's is the capital of Newfoundland and is also it's largest city.) Apparently the person responsible for updating the jury pool just didn't, and so no one born after 1980 was listed in the jury pool. The judge hearing the case held that this violated the Candian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and rescheduled the case for October. All criminal trials in St. John's will have to be put on hold while they fix this problem. Plus, even the Justice Minister has conceded that people within the appeal period might have viable appeals about this. I don't know what Canada's jurisprudence is about juries, but it seems to me that they might have some argument to make. I had tried to find the judge's opinion online at this site (useful if you need to do Canadian law research), but no dice.
The best I could find was this article from the CBC.

Another Funny Email from Flickr

Flickr sent me another unusual email the other day, although it wasn't nearly as good as the last one.
This one said:
"New photos from friends

[Rene's screenname] has uploaded 1 photo in the last 24.139444444444 hours.
..."

Funny that someone at Flickr took the time to program this email to make the number of hours a variable and also calculate it out.

Cheating or Not Cheating?

Thomas brought this to my attention, but I wanted to throw it out there. At Columbia, there is a course that all students are required to take -- Literature Humanities -- which is taught by different professors (there are 57 sections). It is a survey course and there is a course-wide exam given at the end (basically to the entire first year class). The exam asks students -- among other questions -- to identify quotations from the various works studied. One professor came up with a study guide which listed the quotations that were to be used on the exam. Students in this section redistributed the study guide to other sections of the class, which messed up the exam (to put it mildly) because students knew which quotations were to be used. The lead professor of the course found out about this "study guide," (initially she thought someone had stolen the exam) and has now decided to discard the exam results and allow students to either take the exam again in the fall or use their other grades to determine their grade. I think it's clear that the professor should be fired.
Was it cheating for the students to use this study guide? I don't think so, the provenance of the guide was legitimate, it wasn't as if some student was distributing it improperly. On the other hand, the students reading the study guide might have realized that the professor should not have been giving out this much information. Columbia does not require students to report academic misconduct. Comments?

A "Family Tree" of Firefox

There is a pretty good diagram of Firefox on a website which is done by Mozilla Japan (Mozilla is the company that makes Firefox) It's a PDF, but if you are not familiar with Firefox and how it is related to NCSA Mosaic (and Internet Explorer) it's worth looking at.

My Law School Could Have Decided to Move to Florida

Through RichardZ (which I found through Jerry and Tammy), I learned about how Ave Maria School of Law has decided to move to Florida from Ann Arbor, Michigan. After seeing what happened with DSL, it was interesting. Here is a link to a blog entry which sets forth the faculty view. In the interest of balance, I'm also including a link to Ave Maria School of Law's own page on the topic. I'm not taking a position on this, though.

Running Again

I've been at a loss for things to blog about recently. However, I've taken up running again. I ran a lot last summer while I was studying for the bar exam, but kind of dropped it after that. I've started doing it again, and as I'm sitting in my office during the day, I kind of look forward to it. I've got a new route worked out, which goes around town, a lot of it is along quiet streets, so I don't have cars whizzing by me all the time. I'm debating joining a gym, but running is a good workout in and of itself.

Old Supermarkets

The other day I got a flyer from Weis Market in the mail saying they were celebrating their ninety-fifth anniversary. That means they're a really old supermarket, comparatively. According to this Wikipeida article, supermarkets started in 1915 with Piggly Wiggly. That makes Weis (if they started in 1912) older than Piggly Wiggly. The grocery stores in my town on Long Island have gone through several iterations. First, there was a Food Town in the downtown portion of the town. It then moved to the outskirts of town and has changed its name from Food Town to Finast to Edwards to its current name, Stop and Shop (which is part of the same gigantic corporation that owns Giant. Waldbaums and King Kullen continue to exist on Long Island, although I wonder how they are doing when they have to compete against big chains like Stop and Shop. Waldbaums in Hicksville seems to do a decent business, though. I wonder about the King Kullens though.

A Different (from usual) Single of the Week on iTunes

There is a different single on iTunes, it's called Philosophia by The Guggenheim Grotto. They remind me a little bit of Simon and Garfunkel in terms of the style of their music. It definitely sounds like something that could be older music. I don't guarantee you'll like it (it's not going to be one of my top songs), but it also isn't going to be removed from my playlist (which is what happens to a lot of other songs that I download free on iTunes) If you have iTunes, download it here. The price is right.

Astroturf in New York City Parks

On Gothamist, there was a blog entry explaining how New York City wants to put astro-turf in its parks for use as athletic fields. I don't think this is a good idea. I think that plastic grass (at least the type that I am picturing) is not really that comfortable to use, at least compared to regular grass. I think it would be easier to skin one's knee if one fell on artificial turf. This is also New York City we're talking about. What happens if someone spills something on the artificial turf. With dirt, it would soak right in (or the grass would grow out). But that won't happen with artificial turf. The gum, or whatever it is, will stay stuck in it. I wouldn't want to play on a field that looked like the bottom of a subway track.
Or, someone could spray-paint "D wuz here" on the turf. If one did that on grass, they would be pretty stupid, because it would grow right out. But on turf? It would be permanent.
I realize that grass has its own problems. If it rains, I realize that one football game can ruin the grass, but I still think that natural grass may be better.

Thomas has a Blog Too

Thomas (or Tom) co-authors a blog too -- he blogs about sports for Gothamist. The link is:
http://www.gothamist.com/sports/
There is a link to the feed too:
http://www.gothamist.com/sports/index.xml
He says that he does about half the posts. It looks like they are mostly about New York teams, so those of you reading the blog from out-of-town might not find it so interesting.
Oh, and I took the picture for his bio on the blog.

Animal Welfare Act in the UK

Last Friday, the Animal Welfare Act came into effect in the United Kingdom. Quoting from the Department For Environment Food and Rural Affairs' web page...
The five essential requirements that the owner of a pet will need to provide are:

• a suitable environment (where it lives)
• a suitable diet (what it eats and drinks).
• to be able to behave normally.
• to be housed with or apart from other animals, (whatever is best for that particular animal).
• to be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease

There must have been an anti-animal cruelty statute before in the UK, I'm sure, but this is interesting because it imposes duties on a person. Would it require someone to take their cat to a veterinarian if it got sick? (I'm not saying that a person shouldn't do this, of course, but it imposes a duty like a parent would have for a child.)
Speaking of children, you will now have to be sixteen to buy a pet in the UK (or receive it as a prize).
The full text of the Act is here. I love how it starts with language that probably has not been changed since, oh, say, 1600 or earlier:
"BE IT ENACTED by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:— "
My question, though, is who are these Lords Spiritual? Are they Lords from Parliaments past?
(Yes, I suppose it could be King's most Excellent Majesty as the case might be, but otherwise I imagine it has not changed much otherwise)

Smoking Ban in State College

I think that the smoking ban described here is a good idea. There has been a ban on smoking in bars in New York City for four years now, and I think it's really good. If every bar is forced to ban it, then I don't think that customers are going to go elsewhere, since they will have no choice. Second-hand smoke has been proven hazardous to one's health, and it would help the staff at restaurants if the ban was implemented. I know there are arguments for the other side, but smoking is already banned in a lot of other places, so maybe this is just the next logical step.
Besides everything else, it is refreshing to go out to a bar and come back without having my clothes smell like cigarette smoke. I don't mind my clothes smelling so much as I mind my jacket smelling, since that I have to wear again.
I realise I'm a non-smoker, so do other people have comments?

Recipes from Target

I got a Target ad in the mail that also had a recipe for a Shrimp Noodle Bowl. After reading the recipe and discovering that the most extensive cooking it involved was simmering and boiling, I decided to try it. I halved the recipe, since I like to use my medium saucepan for other things, and it came out pretty well. I tried the same recipe again tonight and modified it with a bit of onion. That worked well and made the soup a little bit less bland. Half the package of spaghetti is a lot of pasta, though, so you might want to use less if you would like your noodle bowl more soup-like. (I did)
With part of the rest of the onion I made some pickled cucumber. Maybe one day when I am feeling more ambitious, I'll try Caley's recipe.

Unrestricted iTunes Songs

I think it's great that Apple and EMI have agreed to allow people to download unrestricted music. I hope other record companies follow suit. One of the reasons I chose iTunes to download music (even before I had an iPod) was because, at the time, it was the only store (I think) to allow you to burn a song to a regular audio CD without any restrictions.
I've blogged before about how I feel about record companies. I still feel similarly. I think they are really greedy, but I suppose 30 cents may be a fair premium. Steve Jobs has claimed in the past, though, that the 99 cent price point was essential for consumers to buy music. Hopefully they won't raise prices for copy-protected songs.
There's an article that says that the idea of prices was EMI's, not Apple's.
What I would really like to see next is the record companies allowing people from other countries to download music. I like Canadian, British and Australian music, and it can sometimes be really difficult to download this music, because although Apple has licensed the music for the the other country's market, people outside of that market cannot download it. I can order a CD from Canada, Britain or Australia, but this sometimes takes a long time and also is pretty expensive (especially in Britain, where CDs cost 10 pounds which doesn't seem too bad until you realise how much 10 pounds is in dollars ($19.72, according to Google))

Microsoft and the Animated Cursor Vulnerability (A PSA)

There is a vulnerability where, if you get an email message (and use Outlook or one of its progeny), or visit a malicious website, you can catch a virus. It's sufficiently serious that Microsoft is planning to go outside their normal security update cycle to release it tomorrow, 3 April. (In order to be stable for businesses, they usually try to release security updates on the second Tuesday of every month). In the past, they have usually pushed the update by 10:00 a.m. prevailing time in the Pacific time zone. I'd imagine that by tomorrow evening, it should be posted and you should be able to download it from their website or using Windows Update.
This is one reason I use Firefox. That and it's an awesome browser.
I'll have a more exciting post tomorrow, probably. It's about EMI and Apple's deal, but I'd like to work on it a bit more.

What law school has done to me

I was reading Boston 1775 and saw a neat post on "dentrifice" which from the description sounds like toothpaste. In the description, he said the following:
"This Essence and Dentifrice is prepared by himself, and warranted perfectly free from the least corrosive Particle or Injurious Property whatever."
And I realised it was an express warranty. Sigh.

Need directions on Google Maps to London?

Tell Google maps that you want to go to London in the UK, and you will get this direction:

I saw this on another website, but thought it was funny
Obviously, someone at Google has a sense of humor (or is it humour?)

Moving Between Cars on the Subway

There was an article in the Times about how the new rule that prohibits moving between cars on the subway has resulted in the police catching people involved in crimes on the subway. Apparently there have been 1,995 summonses issued this year for walking between the cars. Personally, I liked the old rule. If I didn't like someone in my subway car, I could move to another subway car to avoid them. Now, you can't; at least not without risking a summons. I understand that they are doing it to stop crime (and also because it is dangerous), but I don't like it. I've walked through subway cars since I was very little -- my father and brother and I used to go into the city on Columbus Day and we would occasionally walk between the subway cars or between cars on the Long Island Railroad. I also liked walking between cars because I could walk up (or back) on the train so that I was in the right position for the staircase. Now, I'll have to pre-walk.
New York, incidentally, is the only place that allowed walking between cars. It's certainly not allowed in DC and I don't know of any other city that allowed it.
This new rule was part of a slew of other rules that they implemented, including one prohibiting you from jumping the turnstile even if you had a valid Metrocard (by which they mean unlimited ride)
This is a technical explanation explaining why people jumped the turnstile, but if you are going to ride the subway in New York City, it is worth reading:
When you have an unlimited ride Metrocard, once you successfully swipe it at the turnstile, it locks you out of the subway system for eight minutes. This is to prevent people from buying one unlimited ride Metrocard for four of their friends and using one Metrocard for all four people.
Under some circumstances, the card can be locked out, but the turnstile not released. Usually this results from people not obeying the "Swipe again at this turnstile message" That message really means just that. If the person doesn't swipe again at that turnstile, then the card will be locked out for eight minutes. The person, who being a New Yorker, is in a rush, decides to jump the turnstile. If the person was summonsed, he or she would just say that they had a valid Metrocard. The MTA got tired of this excuse.
(This problem also occurs if you have a regular farecard, only if you don't swipe again at that turnstile, you can lose the fare that you paid)

Easily add searches to your browser

I run searches a lot, and often they are not just on Google. However, Google has come up with a really easy way to configure their toolbar to run searches on practically any website. You just right click on the search box and select Generate Custom Search. You can then, by clicking on the "Manage" option from the search pulldown menu, choose to have this search appear either as a button on your toolbar, or if you don't want that, as an available search from a pull-down menu, as you can see from the screenshot on the right. There is no coding required. The only tricky thing is that it uses the web page's icon, so if you have a web page that doesn't have a custom icon, you are limited to which ones you can show as buttons on your toolbar since you won't be able to tell them apart. Penn State has this problem, the icon shown next to PennStateFullName is what would show up if I put that on my toolbar as a button.

Historical Myths

Most people know that one of the rights set forth in the Bill of Rights is the prohibition against quartering soldiers in people's homes. That, supposedly, is one of the reasons that the colonists fought against the British in the American Revolution. However, according to this blog, the statute permitting quartering of soldiers never permitted quartering soldiers in people's homes. It permitted quartering in outbuildings, but even then, other resources had to be exhausted. Maybe whoever was responsible for quartering the soldiers chose to ignore the statute and quartered soldiers in people's homes anyway.
I must take issue, however, with the blog's belief that breaking and entering is redundant. It's not. Burglary requires two elements:

• The defendant must break a lock, window, etc., or technically open a door, I think.
  
• The defendant must then go inside the building.

If the defendant breaks the lock but doesn't go any further, then it's probably vandalism, but I don't think it would be burglary.

As a side note, in California, it's burglary if you enter an outhouse (among other places).

This post does not constitute legal advice.

Found Boy Scout

There was a boy scout lost in the woods in North Carolina over the weekend, and they found him today. I'm glad they found him. I had been following the story somewhat, as I was once a boy scout (and a cub scout). I've read the book that he liked: Hatchet. It's a good book, I liked it when I was younger.
Boy Scouts was a really good experience growing up. We used to go to Wauwepex Scout Reservation which was a scout reservation owned by the local boy scout council in New York. It has since been named Schiff Scout Reservation, but it will always be Wauwepex to me. One time when I was in cub scouts, I remember playing hide and go seek or manhunt or something and running through the woods until I must have reached the edge of the property, and came out on a huge farm field. It was really neat, and a quintessentially American experience to come out of the woods to be standing on the edge of this vast farm field. I'll bet the farm field doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a subdivision. As I went to Wauwepex later in my scouting career, I noticed how many houses were going up nearby. It wasn't out in the country like it used to be (if being out in Suffolk County was ever out in the country)
When I was in the boy scouts in middle school, we went to Resica Falls Scout Reservation for a week in the summer. This was in the Poconos, near East Stroudsburg. Also a lot of fun, I got to learn how to shoot a gun, leatherworking, lifesaving, first aid including CPR, etc.
The boy scouts were pretty careful to avoid people getting lost. At summer camp, scouts were always supposed to go with another person, using the "buddy" system, so that if someone got hurt, the unhurt scout would be able to get help. I suppose the buddy system wouldn't protect against a scout wandering away so he could hitchhike home, though. The most dangerous things that we did was playing manhunt -- in the dark -- and that was without buddies. That was when we were furthest from the trail -- and yet no one, that I know of, ever got lost or seriously injured (at least from my troop)
The other cool thing about scouting was the skits (short humorous stories that usually involved corny jokes), but I'll have to blog about that some other night.

Why I Probably Won't Buy Another Macintosh Computer

I purchased a MacBook awhile ago, and it has had more than its fair share of problems and has had to be shipped for a repair three times. The last time I shipped it back (for what turned out to be a failed hard drive), there were smudges on the wrist rest, and I had asked them to replace the wrist rest while they were at it, as it really shouldn't have this problem. I got an email from them saying that my repair would not be covered my warranty and that I should call them. When I called them, I was informed that they believed the smudges were my fault and they would not replace the wrist rest for free. They wanted me to pay them $400+ for it. I explained to them that since the hard drive failure had nothing to do with the smudged wrist rest, could they just replace the hard drive? They told me that no, they could not, because a Mac leaving their repair shop had to be up to "specs" and the wrist rest was not up to specs. Since I was unwilling to part with $400+, I asked to speak with a supervisor, who overrode it and authorized the repair. I thought this was a fluke, but it looks like it is not.
See this blog post. To summarize: The person had a hardware problem, and because he was outside of the ninety day free technical support period, the telephone technician wanted him to purchase an extended (AppleCare) warranty (I don't know the prices off-hand, but I know it's over $100) so he could diagnose the problem to see if it was a software problem. The only other option was to go to an authorized repair center (like an Apple store) and get the repair that way.
Apple tried to extort money from me to get my computer repaired, and they also tried to extort money from this person as well.
Dell, on the other hand, does not extort money. Once they figure out what is wrong, they arrange for the repair. I have never once had a problem with Dell and a repair.

Update on Mining Safety.

Here is an update from a post I did nearly a year ago on mines. According to West Virginia Public Radio, and this press release (a pdf) on International Coal Group's website, International Coal Group is going to install mine shelters in all its mines in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Illinois. Illinois and West Virginia both require them, but Kentucky does not. International Coal Group is doing it voluntarily. I'm sure there could be more safety improvements, but I think it's good that International Coal Group is doing this voluntarily.

A funny email from Flickr

I emailed Flickr technical support and got this email back. They win points for a sense of humour.

My Flickr name,

Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that
we've successfully received your recent Help by Email query
and we hope to respond within 1 days.

We'd also like to take an opportunity to remind you that
one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the
same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.

[...]

The Flickreenos

[...]

No humans were involved in the creation of this email.
It is auto-generated, so please don't reply.

Old User IDs/Email Addresses

I was talking with someone online today and was thinking about the ID that I use for The New York Times and realized that it is probably the oldest logon ID that I still use. I've had it practically since I started using the Internet, before Mosaic and Netscape (and certainly before Internet Explorer), when you had to use a text-only browser called "Lynx". The link has a screenshot, but keep in mind that my Lynx was black and white. The second oldest ID that I use is probably my AOL Instant Messenger ID.
My cousins keep on switching their AOL Instant Messenger IDs, but I don't. In retrospect, I probably should have come up with a better ID, but occasionally old friends have used it to get in touch with me, after they haven't spoken to me in years.
As far as email addresses go, I have been less consistent with these. As I've moved around, I've switched email addresses a few times, but I still use my college one occasionally and plan to use my Gmail address for a long time.

More UK Mac Ads

Here is a link to more UK Mac ads. It's too bad PC's objection in the "Court" ad doesn't work in real life.
Update: Whoops. I suppose it would be helpful to include the link.

Spammers Get Shut Down by the SEC

The stock scams that spammers use can actually raise the market price of the stocks, and the SEC has decided to do something about it. As a result of this, they have decided to freeze the trading of these stocks. I'm glad. I really hate spammers; I think that they should get substantial jail time. This is probably just a drop in the bucket, but I'm hopeful that the SEC will eventually put a stop to this stuff. From this link, there are some interesting (I think anyway) links to more information about regulations that have to be followed, etc. when a broker starts allowing people to trade on these stocks again.

Classical Music Online

There are free downloads of MP3s of classical music from Deutsche Velle (which looks to be Germany's version of the BBC) here. Click on the Classical Masterpieces Link.
For downloads that are tethered to your computer, there are more downloads here (from Cincinnati's Public Radio). You can find the William Tell Overture (the Lone Ranger theme song) or Aaaron Copland's Rodeo (that's the song that they played on the "Beef -- It's what's for dinner" commercials years ago, among other songs.

As Coroner, I Must Aver

Saw an article in the Times awhile ago about the Coroner of Munchkinland, who is still alive, along with a few other Munchkins. It's also online (for free) in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. When I was in first grade, I remember the teacher saying (after we finished watching a movie, not a video, mind you) that we shouldn't applaud at the end because all the people were dead. Looking back, I'll bet that since it was not a silent movie, some of the people were alive. The Wizard of Oz was a (relatively) early movie and some actors from it are still alive. A little bit before I was in first grade, Margaret Hamilton (the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West) was still alive.
I realize that the real reason that they didn't want us applauding is that they didn't want us to make noise. They shouldn't have told little kids this, though, they're impressionable, and you could make them think that everyone in a movie is dead. I don't think I was fooled for long.

Booting Windows from a Floppy

My father's computer displayed a blue screen of death on boot-up the other day, and when we tried to boot from the Windows Install CD to troubleshoot, we got another blue screen of death, as discussed on this page on Microsoft's support site. Essentially, despite the fact that you are booting from a CD, Windows Setup still tries to mount (start reading and writing data to) any hard drives that are available. Following Microsoft's instructions, we had to create a set of four floppy disks to boot the computer. Then, we had to tell Windows Setup not to mount the hard drive by editing a configuration file. After doing all of these steps and running chkdsk, we were able to get my father's computer booted again. Fortunately he bought this computer with a floppy drive. And I thought that in the age of compact disc install programs, I would never see this message again.

Lobsters and Deep Sea Netting

There was an article in the Times on Wednesday about fishermen that want Maine to allow them to use deep sea nets (essentially nets that run along the sea floor and pick up everything and anything in sight) to catch lobsters. The "normal" way one captures lobsters is with a trap. The lobster fisherman has to go from lobster trap to lobster trap pulling them up to see if they have any lobsters in them. If they are too small, then the lobster fisherman is -- on the honor system -- supposed to throw it away and back into the sea. Lobster fishermen notch female lobsters with eggs so that other lobster fishermen know not to catch them. The lobster industry is relatively stable because of this. Given that the ground trawlers already avoid the Maine law against "landing" lobsters by going to Massachusetts with their lobsters, I don't trust them to follow the rules. If you are interested in the nitty-gritty lobster regulations, Maine's Department of Marine Resources has a discussion of the rules for recreational fishers. I think the laws as to size are the same for commercial and recreational fishermen alike.
I went out on a lobster boat once (when I was younger my family used to stay at a place for a week or so that had a lobster fisherman that used the dock). It was a lot of fun; a beautiful summer day. I imagine that it is not so much fun in the middle of the winter, though. So, I may be biased for the lobster fishermen, but I still think that a net that catches everything would damage the lobster fishery, possibly permanently.

Bar Bri Proposed Settlement

For those of us who took Bar Bri, there is an article in Sunday's Times about a proposed settlement for the class action, which, according to the article, would be $125 for each member of the class. It also explains more details about how Bar Bri came to be so powerful, which I am not going to rehash here.

The Silence of the Priuses

Or is it Prii?
In any case, I heard a piece on NPR about how Priuses are very quiet, and this creates problems for blind people who try to cross the street by ear, because they cannot hear a Prius approaching.

Flickr Email Notifications

You can now tell Flickr to email you when your contacts post photos.
See Flickr's blog entry.

George Washington and Hanukkah

A children's book was published about George Washington, Hanukkah, and Valley Forge. Although it is a nice story, it looks like there is insufficient historical documentation to prove that the events portrayed actually happened. Boston 1775 has a lot more information on it. The link is to the first post, although there are many more immediately afterwards.

Cingular and AT&T

Cingular -- after switching from AT & T -- is now switching back to AT&T. It's interesting how much weight the AT & T brand name has, although, by now, I think Cingular has its own reputation and weight. At the same time though, when I think of historic telephone companies, I think about AT & T (even though AT&T is not really what it used to be)
For awhile, I used to have a calling card that I used from them. For twenty-five cents a minute, I could place a call to anywhere in the United States, which, at the time, was a decent deal. I did not have a mobile at the time, so it was convenient. Unlike prepaid phone cards which made you wait through advertisements, it was really quick to place a call using AT&T. I dialed the 800 number, dialed 1 and the number i was calling, and then -- without waiting -- my calling card number and pin. After being thanked (quickly) for using AT&T, my call was placed. With a prepaid card, you have to wait for ads for the store where you bought the card and also wait for the computer to figure out how many minutes you have left. They got rid of the service about two years after I got it.
For people that do not have mobile phones, AT&T could do quite well for themselves if they offered a service with competitive rates that was fast like the AT&T calling card.

Presidential Dollar Coins

As Jerry points out on Jerry and Tammy, the US Mint has just -- again -- come out with a new variety of dollar coins, this time featuring the US Presidents. I think that this experiment is going to fail, for the same reason most people don't use Susan B. Anthony dollar coins, and most people don't use the Sacajawea dollar coins. The dollar coins, whether they are gold or not, are too similar to the quarter in size and shape. They are not easily distinguishable, and that will make it difficult to catch on. Canadian dollar coins have caught on. First, they took the dollar bill out of circulation, second they are a different shape from other coins and don't look like a Canadian quarter (or any other Canadian coin for that matter)
The US coins are bad for another reason. Unless you are at the post office or traveling on the Long Island Railroad, most vending machines don't take them. I know someone, who will remain anonymous, who tells me he likes to watch people use the Long Island Railroad ticket vending machines with a twenty dollar bill buy an eight dollar ticket and receive twelve dollars worth of dollar coins back. That's why I always use a credit card with the Long Island Railroad and won't use a twenty dollar bill to buy stamps from a post office vending machine.
Update: My brother has de-anonymized himself. See the comments.
Ok, wow, I just put a bluebook style cite in a blog entry. Sigh.

Steve Jobs on Apple's Copy-Protection

Steve Jobs posted an explanation of Apple's copy-protection scheme and his feelings on music that doesn't have copy-protection. It's worth reading as it explains why Apple doesn't want to licence their copy-protection scheme to other companies that sell other music players. If you believe Steve Jobs, it is not simply because Apple wants to sell more iPods.

Funny Guardian Column on Macs

Here is a link to a funny Guardian column on Macs.

Testing AOL Instant Messenger Connectivity

If you want to test to see if you are really connected to AIM, just add the screen name AOL System Msg to your buddy list. If you add it, you can IM that screen name to test your connectivity. If you don't get a response back, then you don't have a connection to AIM. If you do, then you know that you are connected to both the Internet and AIM. You can also use it if you inadvertently leave yourself logged on, because, as you'll see, it gives you the option to sig nyourself off from your other AIM sessions.
I've sometimes found that it takes a little while for my instant messenger client to realize that it is disconnected.

Jurors Asking Questions

Here is a link to the Wall Street Journal's law blog about jurors asking witnesses questions during trial. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but there are interesting comments to the blog entry.

Getting to Talk to a Human Being Instead of Voicejail

I do not like how some companies have made it really difficult to get through to a human being and how sometimes, to get to where I want to be, I have to wend my way through three or four layers of voicemail just to get the information I want. I don't mind using a teleresponse system to get an account balance or something like that. I especially like the teleresponse system when I don't know the answers to questions the agents ask for verification, it can be faster to use the tele-response system. I'm very good at my social security number, but not so good at the other information they ask for.
But, I don't like it when companies do not tell you how to speak to a human being, so you are left to guess -- usually zero works in those instances. Or, if zero doesn't work, often pressing the "wrong" key multiple times eventually fails me out and I get to an agent.
The one teleresponse system I like is Julie on Amtrak. She's very good, understands me when I speak, and I can often make a reservation with her over the phone quite easily. Plus, if I need to talk to a human being, I say agent, and she puts me right through, passing whatever I told her along, so I don't have to explain my travel plans all over.
While I don't like ING direct's tele-response system, I do like the fact that when I call the line they have that is specially set up for requesting to talk to a human being, they realize that I called the line because I really, truly, want to talk to a human being and place my call through without any voicejail at all.
The number that Commerce Bank has on the back of my ATM card is direct to a human. I think that's cool of them.
And, speaking of that, this is a neat website that has the phone numbers for lots of major corporations and how to get a human being, whether that is saying certain things to the automated response system, pressing buttons, or simply calling a special number.

How many legislators does it take to change a lightbulb?

A member of the California Assembly, Leonard Levine is planning to introduce a bill which is called -- really -- how many the How Many Legislators Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb Act. Another bill (with a less interesting mame) is also being proposed. Apparently these Assembly members want to eventually require all light bulbs sold in California to be non-incandescent light-bulbs. I have not had much experience with non-incandescent bulbs, but from my family's experience, they do not last long enough to be worth buying instead of incandescent bulbs. In any case, here is a link to where I found this information.

Useful Firefox Plugin

I was looking at an entry in Yahoo! employee Jeremy Zawodny's blog and decided to try a plugin he uses -- Aardvark. What's useful about it is that you can use it to kill off ads in web pages on an individual basis. If you want to print from a website, you just activate Aardvark by a right click, mouse over the item that you want to remove, and then press r (for remove) It disappears. There are other hotkeys which you can use -- press h (for help) when Aardvark is activated. The homepage for the actual program is here.

Jolly Good Apple Ads

Apple has ads for the UK market which are pretty good. They are generally the same thing as the American ads, but with a British accent.

On Radio Stations Switching Format

Regarding Jerry's earlier post, I recently had a radio station change format on me too. The Washington, DC NPR station that served a repeater in Hagerstown that I could pick up changed formats so that it plays all classical with NPR news at the top of the hour. That's unfortunate, because I like other NPR programming as well.
So, now, I listen to West Virginia Public Radio out of Martinsburg (probably 45 miles south of here). If I travel north, I can pick up the Harrisburg NPR station.
While listening to West Virginia public radio, I learned that -- at least for school closings -- they control the school closings by county rather than by individual district (although I'm suspicious that since they did not mention school districts, that all of the schools may be controlled by the county in West Virginia)

A Good Tennessee Supreme Court Decision

The Tennessee Supreme Court recently published a good decision. In Re A.M.H. dicusses how two parents from China thought they were just temporarily placing their child in foster care while they got back on their financial feet. Instead, the foster family refused to give their daughter back, forcing them to go to court. The family still refused to give them back, and one person advised the trial court that because the parents intended to return with the child to China, it was not in the child's best interest to be returned to her natural parents. If you choose to click on the link (which has a summary of the opinion), unless you have WordPerfect, you should click on the "View" link on that page (which gives you a PDF of the opinion), because the link to the opinion is to a WordPerfect file. It's a sad opinion, but at least it ends happily.

Skill and Key Cutting

I went to Home Depot on Long Island to get a key copied yesterday. Only one of the keys (out of four) that they made worked properly in the lock. I think part of the problem is that the machines that they have require no skill to use. You stick the original in one slot and the blank in another, press a button, and it makes the copy. This means that the person operating it need not put sufficient care into it (although, in this case, I'll add that the clerk did put some care into it. The machine was just out of adjustment.) The older machines (that you actually had to manually line things up) were better, because then the person had to know what they were doing. I'm always afraid the person is going to put the original in the space for the blank and recut the original, damaging it.
I'm always glad when my apartment keys are Kwikset keys. Home Depot has no problem with those.

A Continuance Based on Football

According to this blog entry, the attorneys in a case in New Orleans requested -- and got -- a continuance based on the Saints' football game this weekend.

Spanish Music on iTunes

This week iTunes has a free Spanish song which is pretty decent. It's called Me Falta, I think it is about someone whose significant other has left him. The price is right, too.
You'll need iTunes to use the link.

Original Wording For A Bounce Message

I got this message when I tried to email someone on an AOL account. It's a change from the usual bounce messages.

Besides the usual stuff, it says:

Technical details of permanent failure:

PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550 We would love to have gotten this email to aolmember@aol.com But, your recipient never logged onto their free AIM Mail account. Please contact them and let them know that they're missing out on all the super features offered by AIM Mail. And by the way, they're also missing out on your email. Thanks.

Heroes and Heroes that get missed

I do not mean to minimize what Mr. Autrey did. His heroism -- and it is heroism -- has been all over the news; it even was discussed on a BBC newscast (as news that they told on the hour and half hour). There is even an article about him on on the BBC's website.
But, over the summer I heard about Alberto Medina, who jumped into a river to save a boy that he did not know. Mr. Medina died (the boy survived) -- he certainly was a hero for saving someone he did not know -- but the most I heard about it was on an NPR story. Perhaps the danger was not as obvious as diving in front of a subway train is, but I also think that Mr. Medina was a hero.

A hero

The man in this article is a hero. When someone fell down onto the subway tracks and a train was coming with no time for the man to be pulled up, Wesley Autrey jumped down to the tracks with the man and held him down while five cars of a train passed over both of them. The person who fell down on the tracks suffered bumps and bruises; Mr. Autrey had no injuries.

Old Maps

Boston 1775 has a post where the author discusses an old map of Boston from 1894 with a map from when Europeans first arrived superimposed on it. A large portion of Boston is built on landfill.
The area around Old North Church (the church that figured prominently in the midnight ride of Paul Revere) existed when the Europeans first arrived.
I think it's neat to look at old maps to see which streets existed 100 years ago. There are some streets like that in my hometown, because it predates the suburbanization of Long Island.

Closing A Library for Children's Misbehaviour

The Maplewood Library has decided to close between 2:45 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. because they are tired of dealing with middle school miscreants who come there after school. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I have never been a fan of punishing a group for the actions of a minority. At the same time, when I lived in New York City, I would avoid taking the subway just after school let out (if possible), because I did not want to contend with noisy/misbehaving schoolchildren. I'll add that the standards for behaviour on the subway are quite different from standards of behaviour in a public library. The subway children may not have been out of line.
However, the behaviour of the schoolchildren while they are at the library are reprehensible. Urinating on the bathroom floor and drawing graffiti is disgraceful. I can see why their parents do not want them to be home by themselves if they behave this way when there is limited adult supervision.
So, I sympathize with the library. A library is not a babysitting service. At the same time, I'm not sure if it is fair to the rest of the community who might want to use the library during those hours.

The Bigger Loser Competition Tips

I'm going to post my two cents on dieting for the Bigger Loser Competition. I agree with much of what Dorothy said on her blog.
With that being said, one good thing to do if you are dieting (or even just generally) is to watch the fat content of the food that you consume. Besides saving on fat (a good thing), you also save considerably on calories, without having to go crazy counting them. If you get low-fat varieties of items, you may not notice much of a taste difference, but the food will inherently have less calories.
For example:
Nabisco Chips Ahoy Regular Cookies have 160 calories and 8 grams of fat. Here is a link to the nutrition facts page at Nabisco.
However, Nabisco Chips Ahoy Low Fat Cookies have 140 calories and six grams of fat. Here is a link to the nutrition facts page at Nabisco.
Twenty calories may not seem like a lot, but if you eat other low-fat or non-fat items, it can add up to a significant amount of calories. If you ingest less calories, then you have to burn less calories.
Using low-fat or fat free salad dressing may save even more calories than low-fat chocolate chip cookies.
Some fat-free items don't taste very good; I won't buy fat free cream cheese because I think it tastes like paste. But, I don't mind low-fat or non-fat salad dressing.
Obviously, drinking water instead of soda is a good idea, but keep in mind that even though milk is healthy, it is also 110 calories per cup.

Boston During the American Revolution

Found an interesting blog about Boston just prior to the Revolution called Boston 1775. It seems like it is a pretty active blog; there are lots of postings. One thing I found out is that no one really knows who was involved in the Boston Tea Party.
While we're on the topic of colonial Boston, here is a web site about the Boston Massacre trial.

New Google Toolbar

Google released a new Toolbar for Firefox last week. Finally, you can access your Google bookmarks from it. Before, you could still access your Google bookmarks, but it was a webpage, so it was slightly unwieldy, because you had to leave whatever you were doing to get to the bookmark webpage. Now you can do it all directly from the toolbar. Plus, if you go to another computer, you can quickly access your bookmarks on that computer on a website. Or, of course, you can install the Google toolbar on that computer.

A Syracuse Photo

Syracuse City Hall
Originally uploaded by djboorstein.

This is City Hall in Syracuse around dusk.

Notary Publics Practicing Law?

In this week's Pennsylvania Bar Association email, there was a discussion of the PBA's feeelings on notary publics practicing law. Some notaries do other things besides just authenticating forms, and the PBA feels that this could constitute the unauthorized practice of law. Among other things, some notary publics use the Spanish term "notario publico." The use of that term is deceptive because in some Latin American countries, a "notario publico" is a person who is also an attorney. So, when someone says this, a person can be deceived.
This is a link to the PBA article.
Texas also has this problem. The Texas website actually has an interesting discussion of the history of notary public in Roman law and in English common law.
This statute shows how Texas handles the problem.

Disclaimer:
This post does not constitute legal advice. You do not form an attorney-client relationship with me by posting a comment on this blog, whether I respond to the comment or not. You should consult a lawyer if you have a legal question.

Syracuse and Back

I went to Syracuse this weekend to watch a cousin become a Bar Mitzvah. To go there and back, I took Interstate 81 straight up. It made it very difficult to get lost, because I just had to get on Interstate 81 and keep driving. And driving. I traversed nearly all of Pennsylvania. The drive between the intersection with I-78 and the New York border is pretty scenic. There were some wicked high cliffs along the way where the road had been blasted through rock. I felt like I was in the Lord of the Rings during the scene where they go on the boat through the Pillars of the Kings. The Bar Mitzvah itself was nice. Since I only see these family members once or twice a year, it was nice to see them.

Basketball Shot Clock

I'm in Syracuse for a cousin's Bar Mitzvah and during some off time, we went to a museum about the Erie Canal. They also have exhibits relating to exciting happenings in Syracuse. And they had an interesting trivia item.
Why is the basketball shot clock 24 seconds? See the comments for the answer.

Bar Admission Ceremony

Me
Originally uploaded by djboorstein.

Like Rene, Gregory, Danielle, and Andrew, I was formally sworn in as an attorney today at the Supreme Court in Harrisburg. It was nice to see people from Dickinson, since I had not seen many of them since July. At our ceremony, each of us got to say our names to a Chief Justice Emeritus. Did those of you who participated in ceremonies do something similar?

Happy Birthday Thomas!

Thomas talking
Originally uploaded by djboorstein.

On Saturday, 9 December, Thomas (not Tom) celebrated his birthday. I have posted some pictures on Flickr.

Delays in Television

Right now I am waiting for Amazing Race to be over so that I can watch Cold Case. CBS does football every Sunday night, and, nearly always, it runs over. This night the run-over was half an hour, which is probably about average. What happens because of this is that Sixty Minutes starts at 7:30 p.m. instead of 7:00 p.m. and then every other show gets pushed back. This really irritates me. I'd like to be able watch Cold Case at the time it is scheduled to be on, rather than have to wait for CBS to get around to showing it because they've crammed too much into their Sunday night schedule. I also cannot set my VCR to record it, because I don't know when it will start. I could, of course, set the VCR to record a two hour interval between 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., I know that, but that's annoying too, because I have to search through the tape to find out when Cold Case starts.
And I'm sorry to all the football fans out there. I know football is an important sport to some people, but I'm looking forward to February when football will no longer interfere with my television.

Sepaktakraw

There is an article in the Times about the company my brother works for. He is an editor for articles for sports like sepaktakraw.
Besides sepaktakraw his company also does Track and Field.

Mainstream Artists on Single of the Week

Normally I don't like the free Single of the Week on iTunes. I download it (usually) just to see what it is, but often it doesn't even get synced to my iPod. This week, Apple is offering a James Taylor Christmas song (Jingle Bells) as a download. I don't like it, but the price was right. If you have iTunes, try it and see if you like it. They are offering mainstream artists for the rest of the month each week, so maybe there actually will be a song I like. If there is, I will do my best to post about it.

Radio Stations

There is a country music station that plays old country music in Chambersburg, which is nice. The only problem is that they seem to be rather fond of playing the same selection of music over and over again. Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head seems to be a song they are especially fond of.
However, besides this, there is a neat website which I found that shows you the broadcast area for a given radio station based on FCC data. For example, here is a coverage map for WHRW 90.5 FM Binghamton (the State University of New York at Binghamton's student radio station) They base the map on the terrain around the radio station, which, for WHRW, makes the radio station's coverage area look (with some imagination) like a cat. The website is also useful if you want to find a radio station around you, although I'm not sure how up to date it is.

Patent Code in Verse

For a laugh, check out the Patent Code. In verse. It sounds like a rap. I don't think it would be anywhere as funny if it wasn't in verse. I credit the legal thing (a blog by Sun Microsystem's General Counsel) for the link.

Red Cross' Irresponsibility with Blood

The Red Cross is in trouble -- again -- with the Food and Drug Administration for not following proper safety procedures with regard to processing and screening blood. This time, the FDA caught the Red Cross with blood units that had failed testing that were mixed in with blood units that had passed testing.
According to the report, it was extremely unlikely that this blood would ever have made it into a person, because there are further checks along the way. The FDA fined them five million dollars for this offence. Although that seems like a lot of money, the reporter seemed to think it was a slap on the wrist, since blood donation is a multi-billion dollar industry. The Red Cross is responsible for 40% of the blood here.
The Canadian Red Cross has gotten into trouble too. In the 1980s, the Canadian Red Cross failed to screen people adequately for HIV. As a result, according to this article on the BBC's website, over 3,000 people died because they contracted AIDS from the tainted blood. The whole report (called the Krever Report) for this is published on a website set up by Health Canada. Although HIV was not as well known then, the Canadian Red Cross should have known about the risks at the time these tainted blood donations were accepted.
The Canadian Red Cross used to be responsible for blood donation and processing in Canada. Not anymore.
When I have donated blood, I have seen potential failures in the screening process too. For example, last year when I was donating blood at the law school, I sat down with a questioner who asked me the usual questions. However, the questioner was going through the questions really fast, so fast that I was just answering no to the question without thinking. Then I said no and realized that the proper answer to that question was yes and made him go back. My "yes" did not cause me to be ineligible to donate blood, but when the questioner is asking those questions so quickly, it encourages the person donating to quickly answer the questions without thinking. The questioner should go through the questions slowly and methodically.
The questioner also thought that a "Channel Island" (with reference to the United Kingdom) was the island of Britain. Not true. The Channel Islands are Guernsey and Jersey, according to Wikipedia. The questioner's knowledge (or lack thereof) in geography did not inspire any confidence in the Red Cross's screening procedures.
Another place that I have donated blood to -- the New York Blood Center -- also asks questions, but they switch the answers so that the "right" answer to the question is sometimes yes. This catches the people who just want to answer no to every single question. The other good thing that they do is that they allow the donating person to label their blood and indicate whether they want the New York Blood Center to use it or not. The questioner turns away while the donating person does this. If the person donating labels it and asks the New York Blood Center not to use it, the blood will still be tested for HIV, etc. If the person has engaged in risky behaviour and does not want their blood to be donated for some reason, then he or she can mark it accordingly and still appear to be donating blood if there are other people around who might be peer-pressuring them into donating blood. The New York Blood Center does this -- partially -- because blood tests won't always catch HIV in the early stages.
The Red Cross (and the Central Pennsylvania Blood Bank) don't do this. I think they should.
With all that being said, I think that blood donation is really important. If you can donate, you should. Although, of course, I cannot guarantee your safety, I have never heard any concerns about the safety of the donation process itself.
There's a Jewish saying "He who saves one life, it is as if he saved the world entire."
(Phew. Lots of links in this blog entry)
I heard the report about this on NPR.

Thinking Better of A Book Title

My brother has an older edition of Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. It is entitled Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual.
Where before their book would teach you how to libel, now it teaches you about media law. That's an improvement in the title.

The Plunkett is Gone

As Lou points out on his AOL Instant Messenger profile, the Plunkett is gone. The new bar doesn't allow smoking, which I think is pretty cool. Here is a link.

Email salutations and closings

There was an article in the Times today about email salutations and closings. I usually use Hi and Best if I am talking with friends, or Dear and Love if I am emailing family.
I disagree with the article, I think Best is very nice and warm, and isn't cold at all. If I am emailing a professor (not so much anymore) or someone I don't want to use Best on for some reason, I just use my email signature, and if I am emailing a potential employer, I use Dear so-and-so: and Sincerely, since I don't think you can go wrong with that.
I used to sign emails with a slash -- /Douglas -- but someone I knew did not like that, so I changed to Best.
I'd never use xoxo as this article says some people do. I think it could convey the wrong impression.
As a side note, I don't like the use of Very Truly Yours in legal correspondence. Yours implies that I belong to someone, and I don't. Sincerely serves its purpose as a closing just as well.
I guess maybe this all goes to show that one should not read too much into closings.

Amaze your friends and scare your enemies

The quote is from Microsoft's System Internals Team.
Microsoft's System Internals team came out with a really neat screensaver. It simulates a Blue Screen of Death on Windows. I'll just copy and paste the sections on Windows XP and Windows 2000/98 functions (the exclamation points are Microsoft's, not mine).

•
•	On Win2K and Windows 9x it presents the Win2K startup splash screen, complete with rotating progress band and progress control updates!
•	On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 it present the XP/Server 2003 startup splash screen with progress bar!

Here is a link.
Someone at the System Internals Team had too much time on their hands.
If you have Windows XP, then you should have no problem dealing with the zip file, but if you have Windows 2000 or Windows 98, you'll have to download a program to deal with the zip file.

Check Out Gmail's Page

A reminder to check out Gmail's page on Thanksgiving Day, they usually post some cute things on it.

Google Maps Will Call Businesses For You

Google Maps now has a neat new feature. You can now call a business using Google Maps. You find the business on Google Maps and then enter your phone number.
Google then calls your phone and then connects you to the business. I was expecting the call to appear on my display as a call from a phone number in Mountain View (where Google's headquarters is).
That was not the case though. The phone number came up as the business I was calling. Strange, because the business wasn't calling me at that point, it was Google, who was going to connect me to the business. After I picked up, it said "connecting" and rang the business. Having the number appear on my phone is useful because I would be able to capture the number of the business if I wanted to. I just thought that the caller id was set by who was calling you, so this was surprising. If I had a landline and paid for long distance, it would be more useful because it would save me on long distance bills.

Free Backups of Your Contacts on Vz Wireless

I was logged on to Verizon Wireless recently and noticed that they have -- free -- if you use their online service called My Account, an address book backup system. You download a little application to your phone and you can use it to send your phone numbers. It is useful if my phone ever dies or I lose my phone, because I use my cell phone for nearly all of my numbers. The link for the backup service is here, although I was able to link to it from my My Account home page.
Update: What's especially neat about it is that you can do it automatically, so that in the middle of the night it will talk to Verizon Wireless and send your contacts without any intervention on your part.
As a side note, I never memorize people's phone numbers anymore. When I was in high school and college (and did not own a cell phone) I dialed nearly all of my friends' numbers, so through repetition, I memorized them. I even remember some of them to this day. But now that I have a cell phone, I just have to find the person I want to call in my contacts list and hit the send key, so I never remember the person's phone number.
As a second side note, over the summer (I think), Verizon Wireless started allowing you to see who you had spent money text messaging. That's useful if you wonder why your text messaging bill is so high.

Updated MySpace

I updated my MySpace profile with a song by The Duhks. They are this really cool Canadian group that I heard on the Mike Harding Show on the BBC. The song is described by them as Zydeco, but they have an impressive mix on their CD. The repertoire ranges from Irish music to spirituals from the Georgia Sea Islands. I'm debating getting another CD from them. I'm intentionally not linking to my MySpace profile here. If you know me, look me up and add me as your friend to view my profile.
I know some people don't like my profile picture, but since that is one of the few things on my profile that comes up without my adding the person as my friend, I want to make sure that the picture is ok for potential employers.

Microsoft Blogs

One blog that I am subscribed to is a blog published by the Mac Office team called Mac Mojo. Blogs that are published by teams at Google tend to read like press releases and are usually not that interesting (with the possible exception of Blogger Buzz, whose team does not seem to be so censored). While I'm sure Microsoft has policies in place for blog posts by its teams, the blogs there seem freer. This post on Mac Mojo, for example, talks about their testing program for Microsoft Excel. Essentially, they have a giant spreadsheet on which they run calculations to make sure that the calculations that Excel returns are the ones that they expect it to return. They run these tests on both older Macs (with PowerPC processors) and newer Macs (with Intel processors). It wouldn't do if all of the PowerPC Macs said that two plus two equaled five. Sometimes the posts on the Mac Mojo blog are technically over my head, but it is much more interesting to read about how they test their products rather than read some blog entry that reads like a press release.
The Microsoft Security Response Center's blog is also pretty interesting.

Cell Phones in New York City Schools

There has been a debate for a number of months about the ban on cell phones in New York City's schools. Parents talk about how it is important to contact their children or for their children to contact them. I agree with Jerry's earlier comment on this post. Because of cell phones, people do not plan things in advance.
When I was in school (before cell phones were really popular), I would use a payphone to call my parents when I needed to be picked up from school. If I got sick, the nurse would call a parent at work or home. Cell phones are not absolutely necessary for children in school. With that being said...
I'd hope that if someone at the school decided I needed a cornea transplant (as apparently happened according to this article), the school would at least try to talk to me about getting in touch with my parents, rather than leave me to try to contact them surreptitiously with my cell phone.
I also do not understand how a mother whose daughter broke her arm in a fight would not be able to get through to the school.
As far as the child who was unable to call for help when he was arrested for disorderly conduct, my bet is that one of the things that gets taken away from you when you are arrested is your cell phone. So I don't think the cell phone ban hurt that young man.
If the school does not answer the phone, does not have adequate track of its students, or sends them to hospitals for corneal transplants without consulting a parent or making a reasonable effort to contact the parent, then that is a serious problem which must be fixed. I think cellphones can be useful to students and convenient for them. If they are in lockers throughout the school day, I don't really see a problem.
However, students can use payphones to inform parents of their whereabouts, just as students did for years before cell phones became widespread, so I'm not sure if cell phones are absolutely necessary. Maybe an absolute ban is a good idea.
Comments?

New York State Pavillion

There was an article in the Times about the New York State Pavillion. These are structures that were built for the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. They might have been a nice tourist attraction (but for the fact that they are in Queens, pretty far from Manhatttan) but the city allowed them to become dilapidated. They're in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, near LaGuardia Airport and Shea Stadium. I usually see them when I get off the Long Island Expressway onto the Grand Central Parkway. It's too bad, because they sound like they would have been really neat to go the top of, and I think that you might have had a clear view to Manhattan (and certainly out to Long Island) from there, but I'm not positive, since I have never been up there.
As a side note, if you have been to Disney World, you may have seen a part of the 1964 World's Fair. In Tomorrowland, there is something called Carousel of Progress (that's the ride where you go into a theatre and then it rotates around in a circle through various scenes of American life) This is its page on Wikipedia; and this is a link to Disney's official page for it. I noticed from its Wikipedia page that Disney only opens it in season. That's unfortunate, I think it is a neat ride for its historical perspective.

Mobile Service Spikes in University Park During Football Games

Saw an article in the Daily Collegian about various mobile phone carriers and their efforts to remedy service spikes during football games. When I was there for the Youngstown State game, I had no problem contacting René/Richie to meet up before the game. That, I realize, was a minor game and I also was not trying to call during halftime.
I realize that it is difficult for providers to be able to provide service of this nature, especially when they only need it for a few days a year. On the other hand, I'm glad they're looking into it. I don't think text messaging is a valid solution, since it costs extra money.
As far as people complaining about meeting up, prior to the game, they could arrange a meeting place before the game. This is what people did before the invention of mobile phones.

For Grammarians

I discovered this site the other day on the web. I am linking to the site's homepage (as the site owner requests). If you click on the link to go to the list of errors, there are a ton of them, so don't be discouraged by the homepage. It's mostly text, and therefore is quite fast. The entry on apostrophes is especially interesting.

Rene's Blog Post on EZ Pass

René recently posted an entry on her blog about EZ Pass and the bar exam. I disagree with her on EZ Pass being just as neat as passing the bar exam, although I do think it's neat. My family has had it for a number of years -- at least five years, probably more. In any case, it really saves us time (and sometimes money) at toll plazas. When I was younger, we used to have to wait in long lines at the toll booth to go across the Throgs Neck Bridge. Now, it is very rare to have these long lines. We just go straight through the EZ Pass lanes, and it takes a minute or so. The neatest EZ Pass lanes are the ones on the New Jersey Turnpike, where you can go through them at fifty-five miles per hour. There are also some areas around New York City where they gauge how long it takes a person to go from point A to point B by capturing the EZ Pass information at both locations. They then post that information on a wizard sign. They could use that to catch speeders, of course.
For example: If Pierre travels from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Waterproof, Louisiana in 1 1/2 hours, and the cities are 118 miles apart, Pierre must have gone faster than sixty miles per hour at some point on his journey. Therefore, if the speed limit is fifty-five miles per hour, Pierre must have sped at some point on his journey. This journey is not apocryphal, there really is a Waterproof, Louisiana. Here is a link to Google maps so you can see this journey yourself. (And yes, I know that EZ-Pass does not exist in Louisiana, I just wanted to talk about Pierre and Waterproof)
EZ-Pass does not do this. However, if you exceed the speed limit going through the toll plaza, they can photograph your license plate and potentially mail you a ticket or take away your EZ-Pass privileges. I would not want my EZ-Pass privileges taken away; I've seen the lines for non-EZ-Pass lanes at the toll plazas and am glad I never have to wait on them.
And René, you still might want to make sure you are fully clothed while going through EZ-Pass lanes. Sometimes there are people in the booths. Particularly on the I-78 crossing over the Delaware into Pennsylvania, there are often people in the booths. I guess people crossing there have trouble understanding the signs that say "EZ-Pass Only" lanes, so they need people there so the people who don't have EZ-Pass can pay the toll.

Rabies and Bats

A public service announcement:
Some people that know me know how I feel about bats and rabies.
I heard a piece on NPR's This American Life show which told the story of a woman who was attacked by a rabid raccoon. In it, he mentioned the fact that bats can carry rabies and that if you sleep in the same room with a bat, you need to consult a doctor about getting a rabies shot. One thing I did not know is that you don't even have that long to get a rabies shot, only seventy-two hours. I did know that if you wait for rabies symptoms to occur, it's too late and you will likely die. The discussion of rabies in bats starts at 14:40. The discussion of the rabid raccoon starts at 6:10.
If you use iTunes, this is a link that will allow you to subscribe to the This American Life podcast.
If you just want to download the episode as an MP3 file, this is a link.

My Foolishness on a Halloween Past

So, I don't usually blog about personal stuff, but I figure that since this incident happened eleven years ago, it's ancient history.
The Halloween that I was in grade nine I went trick or treating with three of my friends from high school. We went around the neighbourhood and collected candy from the various different houses. One house had a box of candy out front that said "help yourself" Surprisingly, there was still candy left in this box, and we each took a snack bag of M & Ms. That's not the main part of the story.
After this, we continued to trick or treat in the neighbourhood until we eventually came to a house, knocked on a door and a man answered it. I do not think any of us knew him. He then told us that he had crystal figurines that he wanted to show us and that we should come in and look at them. Foolishly, the three of us went in. The crystal figurines were pretty neat, and he did have a lot of them. I don't remember that much of them because as soon as I went inside I realized that I probably should not be going inside. There were four of us and one of him, but he could have pulled a gun on us and held us for ransom if he had wanted to. Nothing happened, and perhaps this man just wanted to show us his crystal figurines.
Entering the house was probably an error in judgment on my part.

MySpace vs. Facebook

I've been using MySpace and Facebook for awhile now. As some people know, I have only been on MySpace for a little while.
I can say that, as of right now, I like Facebook much better. It doesn't have garish advertisements, and also works more reliably. I've had a number of instances where various parts of MySpace did not work properly. I also get spam on MySpace. The only thing I get on Facebook is requests to join groups, but these appear to be legitimate groups and not webcam groups. The webcam group emails are really annoying. Lately MySpace has been assassinating the accounts of people who have been sending out spam, so that's good.
The other thing that I don't like about Myspace is how people use it as a subsititute for email. It's hard for me to keep track of MySpace emails because they don't stare me in the face like emails do. Plus, I sometimes like to flag messages for follow-up, and Myspace doesn't let me do that.

Despite René's post...

(I obtained permission prior to posting this conversation)
A conversation that I just had with Thomas on AIM:
Me: just so you know, you're on rene's blog
Me: [Link to René's blog]
Thomas: haha.
Thomas: You don't call me Tom though.
Thomas: So tell her to give you a break.
Me: do you mind that i don't call you Tom?
Thomas: No.
Thomas: It would be weird if you did.

So there.

Finding contacts by phone number

One of the features that I liked on my Virgin Mobile phone was a feature that you could use to find a phone number's associated contact that you had called if you wondered why you spent half an hour on the phone with that number. My Verizon Wireless Nokia did not have that feature and I missed it. However, I just discovered that my new (Samsung) Verizon Wireless phone has it and thought I would post instructions on using it. These instructions should work on a lot of Verizon Wireless phones because Verizon uses the same operating system (if it can be called that) for a lot of its phones.
To do this:
From the main screen of your phone:

1. Type in phone number you are searching for.
2. Press the options soft-key.
3. Select search and press ok.
4. It will list the numbers that it found.
5. Press ok to view the contact information for the phone number.

You can also see all of your contacts in a given area code by typing in only the first three digits.

L.L. Bean in Hagerstown

I went to the L.L. Bean outlet in Hagerstown yesterday. It is hard to find clothes there that actually have the L.L. Bean logo on them. If I'm going to be buying clothes from L.L. Bean, I'd like to have my jacket/fleece/whatever actually have the logo on it, so that it is not some non-descript jacket. I did not buy anything because nearly nothing fit me, and as far as stuff that did, it did not have a logo on it.

I added (to the sidebar) a listing of blog posts that I think are interesting. I had done this before, but when I had to redo my template, I lost this. Now I have it set up again, though.

Puff the Magic Dragon and Pachelbel's Canon

Did you know what Puff the Magic Dragon (besides talking about marijuana) also is based on the same chord progression as Pachelbel's Canon? Neither did I. Up until I heard the story on NPR, I could not sing Pachelbel's Canon if you asked me too, even though I had heard it before (as you probably have too). It's neat how music is interconnected.

Googlers Use Flickr

I was surfing the Google Reader Blog today and discovered a picture of them launching the newest version of Google Reader. They used Flickr to post the picture. Flickr is a competitor to Picasa Web Albums. Flickr is much better than Picasa Web Albums, so I am glad to see that the Google Reader Team is willing to use a competitor's product. I also like how the phone has the Google primary colours on it.

More monarch butterflies

There was an article in Tuesday's Times about Monarch butterflies. They are pretty neat, because they migrate across the country, and are the only animal (other than humans) who can navigate by both longitude and latitude. Bees, incidentally, can navigate based on the sun, they do a dance when they return to the honeycomb to indicate where good flowers are. The butterflies are even neater, I think, because they are able to navigate across the country. If you move them (say, from Kansas to Washington, DC), they are still able to reorient themselves and figure out where they are and fly off in the right direction.