[Fwd: Important - Your Web Addresses have expired]

I'm getting expiration notices for my domain, when I have in fact transfered it to another domain registrar, GoDaddy.com. [Check WhoIs.net.]

This is either poor marketing on your part, or more likely a bug in your system.

Please pass this information on to your managers and automated mail system developers.

TTFN
    Tom Sayles


Note: Links below have been modified.
-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Important - Your Web Addresses have expired
Date:	Sun, 11 Jun 2006 14:03:02 -0400
From:	Renewals - Register.com <renewals@imail.register.com>
Reply-To:	Renewals - Register.com <renewals.L2SZW.151795@imail.register.com>
To:	tsayles@... .com

YOUR WEB ADDRESSES HAVE EXPIRED! If you do not renew the domain names below, you will lose them! You have received this email because you have not yet renewed your names, or Register.com could not process the credit card on file for your names. Your Web addresses expired: 06-JUN-06 Click here and renew with Invitation Code S#####7 THE LONGER YOU RENEW, THE MORE YOU SAVE! SOOT-N-SMOKE.COM 06-JUN-06 The more years you choose, the more you save with invitation code SYS547*   RENEW FOR     SPECIAL PRICE     YOU SAVE     1 Year     $35.00     -     2 Years     $49.95     28%     3 Years     $65.95     37%     5 Years     $92.95     46%     7 Years     $115.95     52%     *savings off year-by-year renewal at $35/year Don't forget to enter invitation code S####7 to receive these special prices. *You will not lose any time on your current term by renewing today* When you renew your addresses with Register.com, you'll continue to enjoy:        24/7 customer service    Web site forwarding - point your Web address to an existing site    1 page template-based Web page Please note that once your domain name expires, you will no longer have rights to that name and Register.com may make it available for sale or auction to third parties.** To avoid having your name auctioned, sold or deleted, please click here to renew. Thank you for using Register.com. Customer Support http://www.register.com Forget your password? Click here Questions? More information about renewing your domain names through Register.com Get online Customer Support Or call us toll free in the U.S. and Canada:    (877) 731-4440 Outside the U.S. and Canada:    +1 (902) 749-5917 *Please do not reply to this email. Replying to this email will not secure your domain names* **For more information on auctioning domain names, please click here Please be aware that if you do not renew your domain names, all products and services associated with them will be deactivated. All domain name registrations and renewals are subject to the terms and conditions of our Services Agreement. © 2006 Register.com, Inc. All rights reserved. 575 Eighth Avenue, 11th Floor New York, NY 10018

Bread Machine

I think my parents sent me a bread machine for my birthday. But I won't know for sure until I open it in a few days. Gotta love that Amazon wish list.

Re: Paypal Varification

Josh --

I have had a PayPal account for a couple of years now and I've probably spent around $500 or $600 though PayPal. Once I verified the test deposit to my account, it's been quick and easy. I generally maintain a $50 balance with PayPal for impulse buys and quick donations. So far I haven't had any problems with them or their affiliated merchants that I've dealt with. Nor have I gotten anyone to click on the donate button in my sidebar and actually send me money.

I haven't personally gone through their dispute resolution process, but I know people who have and they reported satisfactory results.

I do get the occasional phishing e-mail pretending to be PayPal, so I'm careful to make sure I'm connecting to the websites I think I am. And other then purchases, I always try to initiate my connection to PayPal rather then follow a hyperlink.

In the beginning I don't think that they actually wanted to require access to your bank account, but I suspect that it was the regulators that have driven the requirement as part of the "know your customer" initiatives. I also suspect that PayPal is subject to the same kind of (or at least very similar) auditing as most banks not to mention S.Ox. auditing.

I haven't seen any gaping holes in the security of their transaction model. And I suspect that if and when a security flaw is found, that it will get rapid and very public attention.

Overall I'm very happy with their service and would recommend that you go ahead and verify.

I'm happy to throw in my 2 cents.

TTFN
Tom

Date:	Mon, 08 May 2006 17:21:24 -0400
From:	"Joshua Engel"
Subject:	Paypal verification

Do you have a Paypal account?
They keep trying to get me to "verify".
I'm kinda reluctant to give  them any access to my bank account at all.
With a credit card they  don't have access to my money; they can charge
me a trillion dollars but  at least I still have my cash.  But they're
a semi-reputable organization.  Sort of.  Thoughts?

-- Joshua 

Quote:Visualize your success today.

I found the following in a horoscope feed.

"A great way to ensure your victory is to picture it. Visualize your success today."

http://astrology.yahoo.com/

NASA - Crew Experiences a Total Solar Eclipse

NASA - Crew Experiences a Total Solar Eclipse

Cool Pics.

New Favorite Song

I heard BrainsBodyBoth off George Hrab's Coelacanth CD on a podcast (can't remember which one, probably Accident Hash and/or Pacific Coast Hellway) and said that I've got to have that song. Since ordering my CD from CD Baby, I've heard it on several other podcasts including again on Accident Hash.

What does TTFN mean?

TTFN = Ta ta for now.

Back when geeks could type faster than the Internet could transmit, it was important to condence as much meaning into as few key strokes as possible. Many of the abreviations that kids use on instant messaging systems today had their beginings in e-mail twenty years ago.

TTFN is also a quote of Tigger from Disney's Winnie the Pooh movies. I'm not sure which came first.

Personal News of Note

The toothbrush building business is not worth talking about other then to say I'd like to get out of it.

As many other head coaches can probably attest to, leading a vaulting club can suck up every spare hour and brain cell you're willing to give it. Which most of the time is a good thing. This winter has been a little hard on my club as we lost our longeur back in December and have just recently found a new parent that seems up to the task.

In other news of note that you might find interesting:

• I've given up on Microsoft products on my desktop(s) and have successfully made the switch to Ubuntu Linux, OpenOffice.org, etc.. I just am not willing to shell out the bucks to upgrade my Microsoft products when good free [both as in speech and beer] alternatives exist.
  
• Still haven't taken the plunge into either emacs or vi. I seem to be stuck on gedit (a tabbed word pad clone with nice syntax highlighting).
  
• Heavily using both Firefox and Thunderbird. Thunderbird in particular did a relatively good job moving from Win2k to Ubuntu. In Firefox I'm also running the Yahoo Toolbar. I tried the Google tool bar but it seemed a bit invasive.
  
• I'm currently subscribed to nearly 50 podcasts and on average listen to about eight hours a day (~500Mb). [One of the few upsides to the toothbrush factory is that I can listen to my ear buds as I keep the machines fed and running.] On my ToDo list is to post an edited list of what I'm listening to on my blog.
  
• I've been hacking together a customized set of bash scripts, initially based on BashPodder, to download podcasts and burn them to CDs. I want to put a multiuser PHP front end on the system and start a little podcasts on CD by snail mail service.
  
• I've put together a nice little podcasting setup (Behringer 802 mixer, MXL 990 mike w/ shock mount, cool home brew goose neck mike stand, iRiver recorder). However I don't seem to have time to record / produce the kind of programs I want.
  
• I've got a couple of different blogs going including "TomS Words of Wisdom" and "CascadeVaulters.org". And I try to keep them more or less up to date. One of my sources of materials is e-mail replys to friends and family, like this one.
  
• The Geek Jeep is coming up on 350k miles. Like most elderly jeeps it leaks, currently both power steering and engine oil, though neither at critical rates.
  

Let me know if you find this interesting or not by e-mailing or better yet by leaving a comment.

Implications of QoS

The roll out of QoS (quality of service) protocols could lead to multi-tier Internet services (WSJ.com - Consumers Could See New Web Rates: Use More, Pay More). Though the flat fee Internet isn't going away any time soon.  The only places where it will is where one company has a monopoly on broadband service. 

If and when these companies do exercise their monopoly powers to impose 'pay-as-you-go broadband" or start blocking competitors services, there will be backlash both by customers and by regulators.  [There's already backlash going against Comcast for blocking or slowing down Vonage.] Just look back at how we got to flat-fee Internet access in the first place.

Also as soon as one wireless carrier offers all you can eat service for under $50 a month per line, all the others will be forced to follow. 

Customers don't like paying for extra minutes and they won't like paying for extra GBytes. 

Is Windows Vista the new micro-channel architecture?

Hadn't seen the WSJ commentary "Software Hardball". But as a free software advocate, I'm well aware of the issues had have been using open formats for some time.

The whole system of closed proprietary software is on the way out [probably gradually over about five to ten years]. Sun, IBM, Yahoo and others in the open source software movement are doing to Microsoft software what MS, Compaq, Gateway, Dell and the open architecture movement did to IBM hardware back in the late eighties.

Is Windows Vista the new micro-channel architecture?

"Stop AOL's Email Tax!"

AOL says it will start charging senders for incoming
mails to AOL users. Read the letter and sign on if you want to save free
email! http://www.dearaol.com

Quote: Technology and Magic

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
--Arthur C. Clarke

Quote: Woman & Cats

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and
get used to the idea." - Robert A. Heinlein

Idea: Open Source Electronics

Following the pending upheaval in the software and media industries caused by open source tools and techniques, I think that one of the next sectors thus effected will be electronics.

I believe that one or more repositories for open designs of electronics will emerge. The designs in these repositories will probably be licensed with creative commons licenses (or something similar) that allows both the commercial production of products using the design and the creation of open derivative designs. Complicated designs will emerge by combining simpler ones. Designs will evolve over time in much the same way as open source software currently does.

Along with these repositories will emerge custom electronics manufacturers. Using processes much like inkjet and laser printing they will fabricate products that meet custom specifications on demand. The repositories will quickly start linking to these fabricators with real time price and delivery quotes.

As these open designs start to get used in the manufacturing of chips, the product development cycle will accelerate. New products based on the open designs will be available on the market in a matter of weeks.

Similar open design repositories and fabricators will likely develop to supplant many if not most other mass market manufacturing. Early deployments will likely include: replacement car parts, clothing, plastics & furniture.

How Geeks Will Inherit the Earth

I've been listening to the Creating Prosperity podcast since late last year. It's a serialized audio book version of "Elegant Technology" by Jonathan Larson.

The first couple of chapters were interesting enough that I checked out the audio book version of Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class" from the local library. And I was able to finish Veblen's book just before Christmas, and had some interesting conversations about it with friends and family after Christmas dinner.

Just after New Year's when I listened to the podcast of Elegant Technology: Chapter Four "The Theory of the Industrial Class". The ideas in this chapter lead me to some very interesting insights into the driving forces behind the Open Source Software and related movements and their likely long term repercussions.

• The "producer class", a.k.a. the geeks, will steadily gain economic and political power by routing around anything or anyone that gets in the way using open source tools and techniques, rather then through direct conflict or political action.
  
• As more and more technologies become open source, the pace of innovation will increase. Probably geometrically.
• Companies that hold and try to monopolize technology patents will find that open source research develops multiple technologies that render their patents obsolete and valueless.
  
• Similar open culture processes will happen with content creators and copyrights, because given a choice buyers will choose open content that they can use when, where and how they want, and they're even willing to pay extra for that privilege.
  
• At some point open innovation and content development will occur faster then patents and copyrights can be enforced by the legal system. When this happens most patents and copyrights will become pointless.
  
• The current system of intellectual property as incentive to innovation will breakdown and the businesses that depend on it must adapt or die. (Most will go bankrupt trying to defend useless patents and copyrights.)
• Businesses and individuals that facilitate collaboration and the free exchange of information will prosper.
  
• Mass market industrial manufacturing will rapidly decline and be replaced by global systems of distributed custom manufacturing of openly designed products.
  

The podcast and an online version of Creating Prosperity are available on the Elegant Technology...online web site. Be warned that the podcast is very dry and will likely put you to sleep, unless you're really interested in the subject matter and know some history of economics.

The Sad State of American Religon

May God save us from the ignorance and hypocrisy of fundamentalism in all it's forms.  Especially when espoused by our family, friends, neighbors or national leaders. 

Carol Sayles wrote:

Date:	I did a cut 'n paste
Subject:	Subject: THIS IS REALLY A SAD SITUATION !!!!!!!
To:

 

My son Tom, (and E-Mail Friends)

   What do you think of this one? It came to me from old friends from Richwoods my high school.

Mom / Carol

 

 THIS IS REALLY A SAD SITUATION !!!!!!!

Some of you may be wondering what Judge Roy Moore has been doing since he was removed from the bench for refusing to remove the 10 Commandments from his courtroom wall.  Please read the poem he wrote below.  God bless, Alabama Judge Being Sued Good Poem from Alabama judge sued by ACLU    The following is a poem written by Judge Roy Moore from Alabama.  Judge Moore was sued by the ACLU for displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom foyer.  He has been stripped of his judgeship and now they are trying to strip his right to practice law in Alabama.  The judge's poem sums it up quite well.   America the Beautiful, or so you used to be. Land of the Pilgrims' pride; I'm glad they'll never see. Babies piled in dumpsters, Abortion on demand, Oh, sweet land of liberty; your house is on the sand. Our children wander aimlessly poisoned by cocaine, Choosing to indulge their lusts, when God has said abstain. From sea to shining sea, our Nation turns away From the teaching of God's love and a need to always pray. We've kept God in our temples, how callous we have grown. When earth is but His footstool, and Heaven is His throne. We've voted in a government that's rotting at the core, Appointing Godless Judges who throw reason out the door, Too soft to place a killer in a well deserved tomb, But brave enough to kill a baby before he leaves the womb. You think that God's not angry, that our land's a moral slum? How much longer will He wait before His judgment comes? How are we to face our God, from Whom we cannot hide? What then is left for us to do, but stem this evil tide? If we who are His children, will humbly turn and pray; Seek His holy face and mend our evil way: Then God will hear from Heaven and forgive us of our sins, He'll heal our sickly land and those who live within. But, America the Beautiful, if you don't - then you will see, A sad but Holy God withdraw His hand from Thee. ~Judge Roy Moore Pass this on and let's lift Judge Moore up in prayer. He has stood firm and needs our support. IN GOD WE TRUST!

 

God Bless America And God Bless Our Troops

---

Patriotic Action = Terrorist Support

I do not wish to sign this Pledge of Allegiance petition for the following reasons:

1. The petition seems to have been forwarded in a geometrically expanding progression and such use of the Internet is harmful. If this petition is forward by each successive signer to only two others that then sign and forward it, the White House will be swamped with more then 10 to the 600th power e-mail messages. If successful this would most certainly cripple the White House e-mail servers (and much of the Internet along with it). So it is quite possible that this petition was started by terrorists as a denial of service attack and that signing and forwarding it is helping the “evil doers”.
2. Unlike most tyrants, the President of the United States does not and should not have the power to compel school children and teachers to recite a pledge of allegiance to any icon, document or person. Thus the petition is addressed to the wrong branch of the Government, it should be addressed to Congress.
3. The current version of the Pledge of Allegiance containing the phrase "under God", the version most likely to be supported by our current president, is patently in violation of the First Amendment, which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...”
   Assuming that a Pledge of Allegiance is appropriate in a modern democracy, the petition should ask congress to repeal the illegal change it enacted at the bequest of a Catholic fraternal organization back in 1954.
4. The Pledge of Allegiance is a nationalistic oath written by socialists at the end of the 19th century. I am very wary of any combination of nationalism and socialism as this combination lead to very dangerous dictatorships in twenty century Europe.
5. Traditionally public school education in our country has been regulated by local governments, specifically local school boards.  Thus the federal government, to the greatest extent possible, should not interfere in local decisions, except when necessary to protect constitutional, civil and humanitarian rights.
6. Our current educational system is already overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge that we need to teach our children. So I believe that it is inappropriate for our public schools to dedicate scarce time out of the already lengthly school day to nationalistic and/or religious ceremony. (Such activities may be appropriate in private schools.
7. I think that it is inappropriate to ask children below the age of maturity to recite an oath to icons and/or institution that they may or may not wish to actively support later in their life.

I do believe that the recitation of a oath to uphold the Constitution is an appropriate opening for legislative and judicial sessions as well as during the instillation of officers of the executive branches of government.

I also believe that recitation of prayers and oaths of Allegiance by private organizations at their public events is also appropriate and the right to do so should be protected as one of the most sacred freedoms. Any government or official who seeks to unduly limit these sacred freedoms should be declared a tyrant and opposed, nonviolently if possible, and with force if necessary. Those who risk and lay down their lives to protect these freedoms deserve our utmost respect, unending gratitude and unwavering support.

Carol Sayles <teacher_carol@yahoo.com> wrote:

PLEASE SIGN         PETITION FOR PRES. BUSH PETITION TO REINSTATE PLEDGE TO THE FLAG IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS: 1. Frankie Dorsett 2. Marilyn Hampton 3. Tommy Hampton ... 1985 Carol Sayles - Glendale, CA   If  you don't forward the petition and just stop it, we will lose all these names. If you do not want to sign it, please forward it to everyone you know. Thank you!!! To add your name, click on "forward" or "Reply" and enter ADDs. You will be able to add your name at the bottom of the list and then forward it to your friends. THE 2,000TH PERSON SEND IT ON TO THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESS: President@WhiteHouse.gov

 

God Bless America And God Bless Our Troops

RSS Mirror Tags / Namespace

I've got most of a formal spec for a new namespace that implements the "mirror" tags for RSS enclosures. The document is currently posted here.

I'm still looking for suggestions on how to specify the "addMirror" tag. Unless someone steps up and says it should be like this, then I'll probably end up playing around with some experimental XML-RPC implementations to see what works.

Idea: Equestrian Training Pedometer

I don't know if this device exists or not, but I'd like an electronic gadget that clips to a horses bridle or halter and records a horse's activity levels. At the end of a week a trainer could download the data via a USB connection or memory card and track the amount of walk, trot, canter, etc.

Specifically I'd like to put one of these on Cali's bridle so I can track how much time she spends during lessons, practice and training sessions centering and trotting.

Such a device could also be used to gauge the activity level of horses during turnout periods, i.e. the amount of time spent grazing, sleeping and frolicking.

Slashdot | Women Now Outnumber Men Online

Interesting bit of news.

Slashdot | Women Now Outnumber Men Online

Made It Home

Got home about 10:00 pm and found that the internet
access is down. More later when its fixed.

Holidays with Family

I made it down to SoCal with out incident. I got from the ExtraCar lot through check-in and security in about 45 minutes. The flight from Sea-Tac to Burbank was full but uneventful.

I spent most of my first day down here shopping for gifts and fixing my parents computers. It took several hours but I finally gave up and had to recover (reinstall) windows and all the drivers (but not the programs) on my mother's laptop. I also installed firefox on her laptop and on my folks main desktop computer.

After going out to dinner with my parents and my grandmother this evening, I spent a couple of hours introducing my Dad to podcasts. The biggest difficulty he seemed to run into was the inconsistency in UI of the various directories and in the podcasters' site lay out. We downloaded several sample podcasts and burned them on to CD-Rs for him to listen to on his way back to San Jose next week.

Tomorrow we (my folks and I ) drive from Glendale out to my brother's place in Norco. There we'll have a big family dinner and open presents. Should be a good party and a fun time with my niece, nephews and their cousins.

Re: Re: Idea: "mirror" Tags for RSS Enclosures

Thanks for the feedback. Though nobody has yet answered the questions I
posed.

> 1. How many podcatchers would this likely break? i.e. They would not
> ignore the new tags if they didn't support them?
> 2. Who else should I pitch this idea to and where else should this
> idea get discussed?

At this point the "mirror" tags are just an idea. If I still think it's
worth some time and effort after Christmas, I'll flesh out a full spec,
including a valid and commented XML Schema file. [I find schema files
easier to read and there are tools to convert them to DTDs.]

I had somewhat different purposes in mind for each of the three tags.

The main purpose for the "mirror:location" tag is to enable a simple
fall over and/or bandwidth improvement mechanism. This tag is simply a
discovery method that gives the podcatcher and/or user choices in where
to download from in much the same way that Source Forge uses mirrors.
The primary source, i.e. the one given in the enclosure tag itself, may
not be the most efficient for every user. Addressing this problem has
been the traditional function of mirrors since the early days of the
Internet. It's not meant to replace round-robin load balancing.

The "mirror:format" tag is intended to cut down on the number of
separate feeds that need to be maintained and processed. It came out of
some inefficiencies that the FeedMesh guys were complaining about
regarding the same content showing up in multiple feeds with different
UIDs. So the intent is to more closely connect the the content to the
UID. And yes to make use of "mirror:format" tags, the podcatchers have
to allow the user to prioritize format preferences.

Personally I want my podcatcher to download multiple formats and put
them in different places: low-res audio on my 256mb iRiver; high-res
audio on my desktop; low res-video on my video iPod; and HD video on my
DVR. Then when I've consumed the content in one of those locations, my
podcatcher should delete or archive the content from all those
locations. I think that having multiple formats associated with a
single UID in a single feed makes this easier.

Finally the intent of the "mirror:addMirror" tag if to allow mirroring
of content to be collaborative. For example, if I wanted to promote a
new video co-dec, I could offer to trans code a popular video cast and
provide a mirror in the new format without hijacking the main feed.
Another example might be a service that protects against the
slashdot/DSC effect by mirroring the media file as soon as it is
published expecting little or no traffic unless the primary source
becomes unavailable or too slow.

I've done almost no work with XML-RPC I and am still trying to get my
head around exactly how to spec the "mirror:addMirror" tag. Suggestions
welcome.

TTFN
Tom Sayles

> Please forgive the cross-posting and please don't flame me if this subject got hashed out months ago.
>
> I've been kicking around ideas for how to solve some of the bandwidth issues. What I've come up with is proposing yet another name space extension to RSS. Specifically to add /mirror:format, mirror:location/ and /mirror:addMirror/ tags as sub-elements of the enclosure tag. More info and a quick/dirty example are in my blog post at:
>
> http://www.soot-n-smoke.com/tsayles/2005/12/idea-mirror-tags-for-rss-enclosures.html
>
> So I have a couple of questions:
>
> 1. How many podcatchers would this likely break? i.e. They would not
> ignore the new tags if they didn't support them?
> 2. Who else should I pitch this idea to and where else should this
> idea get discussed?
>
> TTFN
> Tom Sayles
>
>

Idea: "mirror" Tags for RSS Enclosures

This idea proposes a new set of sub elements of the RSS Enclosure Tag to identify alternate locations and formats for an enclosed item. Since the RSS specification is basicly frozen the way to implement this would be through a new name space that defines these tags. I'm not an expert on writing XML specifications, so any suggestions or assistance would be appreciated.
esnecialy
The new tags are all sub elements of the RSS Enclosure tag and would include:

• mirror:format
• mirror:location
• mirror:addMirror

What I'm advocating would look something like the this.

If you have any comments please post or e-mail them.

Lincat coming along

I've made some really good progress with my Linux box in recent days.

I tripled the amount of RAM from 128MB to 384MB and it has made a big difference. I've got the Apache2 web server up and running with php5 and Pear. (This is probably the programming environment I want to be working with in my next job.) I've even gotten IPV6 and network printing up and running.

I'm still working on replicating my user data (My Documents, My Pictures, etc.) so that I have redundant auto-updating copies on both computers. I'm about 30% of the way there, as I can access the files from my Windows machine and work with them on my Linux box.

Snow

Snow
Originally uploaded by TSayles.

Had a couple of inches of snow last night in Woodinville. Had more up in Snoqualmie where I work, but didn't have my camera.

We've had the snow level creeping down the mountain sides for a couple of weeks now.

Guess it must be winter.

Meta Dreaming and Sleeping

Is meta dreaming and sleeping (dreams about dreaming and sleeping) a sign of deep intellectual self knowledge or just a sign that you need more sleep?

Upgraded to Ubuntu

After several weeks / months of hacking around with Debian GNU/Linux trying to get my sound card working, I finally gave up and tried a Debian derivative called Ubuntu. I first downloaded a "live CD" version that allowed me to try Ubuntu without installing it. When Ubuntu booted off the "live CD" it recognized the sound card and correctly configured the network connection. So I downloaded the install CD, wiped out my previous Debian GNU/Linux and installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu version 5.10 "Breezy Badger".
It took longer that the 25 minutes they claimed, but it was still much faster then a full reinstall of Windows, especially since OpenOffice and Firefox are included in the Ubuntu dirtro.

Roast Turkey

Roast Turkey
Originally uploaded by TSayles.

Cooked roast turkey for myself and my housemates. Also made Tom safe cranberry sauce, peas & pearl onions, mashed potatoes and fresh pineapple. Tried gravy, but the consistency wasn't quite right. Guess I still need more practice with gravy. More photos on my Flicker page.

Idea: Potlucks4Progress, Social Networking to Solve Social Problems

Today I got around to listening to the November 20th edition of the Chris Pirillo show where Ponzi was interviewing Andru Edwards, about the recent inaugural Mind Camp. Near the end of the interview it occurred to me that many of the participants at this and similar events, like Gnomedex and the Portable Media Expo, would probably enjoy getting together more frequently even if it was on a smaller scale.
Thinking of my own geeky friends, one thing many of them have in common is that the like to cook and/or eat gourmet food, so we occasionally gather for potlucks. This lead me into thoughts about combining regular gatherings of intellectuals for shared food with some collaborative problem solving around particular topics.
The resulting fusion is an idea I call Potlucks4Progress, Social Networking to Solve Social Problems. What I have in mind is a website, probably Potlucks4Progress.com, where registered users can:

• Suggest problems that social networks of smart folks might solve that would include
• Limited length problem statement
• Links to supporting documents, optional
• Closing date for judged awards, optional
• Offer prize(s) for judged awards, optional
• invitation(s) to judge solutions, optional
• organize a potluck, by
  
• inviting a just few or whole bunch of friends
• mapping location(s) of potluck(s)
• RSVP to an invitation
• Suggest / assign dish(es) to be brought
• Announce what dish is being / was brought
  
• Submit solution / potluck reports, including
• limited length summary of solution(s) proposed
• links to supporting documentation, optional
  
• links to pictures from potluck, optional
• list of guests attending, optional
• list of dishes served, optional
• Nominate proposed solutions for various awards including:
• best solution
• most practical solution
• most humorous solution
• most creative solution
• most tantalizing menu
  
• most humorous menu
• best photo
• most humorous photo
• most diverse guest list
  
• other user defined awards
  
• Sponsor prizes to be associated with various awards
• Vote to confer unjudged awards to specific proposed solutions

At this site anonymous users could:

• Browse problem statements and solution summary reports
• Subscribe to RSS feeds of newly suggested problems
• Subscribe to RSS feeds of proposed solutions
  
• Browse information about Potlucks4Progress.com

I'd like this to be a self supporting website taking in revenue from ads for gourmet food, cooking and hospitality supplies. Perhaps with a major sponsorship or two from a recipe sites or cooking supply chain, it might even be able to support me, as I'd love to quite my day job.
As always if you're interested in working on this or otherwise supporting the effort, please drop me an e-mail.

Emergency Water Supply for People and Horses

Ed & Laura --

The amount of water a horse needs depends on the horse, what they're eating and how hard they're working. But five to fifteen gallons a day is typical. You can probably measure what your horses drink by checking the water meter just before you leave and just after you get back from a weekend away.

Assuming 20 gal/day for the two horses and other animals, and 2 gal/day/person, you're looking at a minimum of 420 gal or about 1600 liters or a little over 2 cubic yards of water to last two weeks.

A third or more of your 140 gallons for five people are probably in your hot water heater. You just have to remember to protect it in the event of a major earthquake. There's also water in your toilet tanks, again if you protect it after a quake.

If any of your neighbors' pools survive you can use that water for both humans and livestock, but you'll probably want to remove the chlorine first. Easiest way is to pass the water through a carbon filter, though you can also use aeration or chemical precipitation or boiling. Again this is a supply that may need to be protected in the immediate aftermath of a major quake. Fast action with a big sheet of plastic might save several hundred gallons of water for later use.

In a disaster situation you can make carbon filters with rinsed charcoal, probably from wood you burn rather than out of a bag. The effectiveness of carbon filters is dependent on chemical reactions so it's proportional to surface area and contact time. Depending on the source of water, carbon filters should generally be used in conjunction with particulate filtration and disinfection. Household bleach, without any laundry additives, is a very good water disinfectant so you want to have plenty in your earthquake supplies.

If you want to be self sufficient and prepared for the worst, you should probably look into getting one of those shipping pallet tanks. They typically have a nice steel cage that protects the tank. You might also look into lighting it with a mercury vapor lamp so the UV will keep stuff from growing in it. If you plumb it in right, you can probably flush the tank a couple of times a year with water you're now putting on your lawn. You also want to make sure that tank's valves are closed most of the time, as you don't want to loose the water if the tank breaks loose from it's plumbing.

Another option would be to plan on evacuating the kids and/or horses to some place with more water after a few days. It's much easier to reopen one or two lanes of a road then it is to repair major water systems.

TTFN
Tom

Edward wrote:

How much water do horses need a day? I need 140 Gallons for people, plus all the animals. That’s a lot of water. That’s 265 two liter bottles just for the people for two weeks

---

From: Tom
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 9:30 AM
Subject: Re: Why God will Destroy Los Angeles and San Francisco
Mom --

The recommendations I recall for SoCal are two gallons per person per day for at least two days and preferably until the water systems are fixed.

Some of this can be from sources like your hot water heater and toilet tanks, but some of it should be stored in a place you can get to if your home in condemned and you can't go back inside.

If the aqueducts break, the estimates I recall are two weeks to fix. I think most of Glendale's water is from wells, so assuming that the water tables don't shift too much they shouldn't be down more then a day or two. You might have to go a few blocks to get water in Glendale and will probably have to wait in line, but it should be available.

The recommendations are a bit less here in Seattle as much of the year we can collect rain water. Still I keep emergency food, water and shelter in my Jeep.

TTFN
Tom

Carol wrote:

now that's not humorous at all is Jim right do I need gallons of water

Tom wrote:

Mom & Others --

Call me a profit if you must, but God will also destroy much of the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco by earthquakes for pretty much the same reasons.

TTFN
Tom

Idea: Home Shopping Scanner

This is an idea I've been kicking around in various forms for almost 15 years now.

Basically I want a device with a bar code scanner that mounts near my kitchen garbage & recycling containers. As I use up a product and throw away the package, I would scan the UPC code and it would be added to an online shopping list. In up-scale markets this could be linked directly to an on-line grocery delivery service. But in most market areas (including mine), users should be able scan their preferred customer / club / reward card at a kiosk and have a shopping list print out of a receipt printer. A clever independent service provider could even perform price comparison and list display / update through mobile phones.

There are several way that such a Home Shopping Scanner could be designed. The easiest for consumers to install would probably be a stand alone wireless Ethernet device. Cheaper to build, but harder to install include, connecting via USB to a fridge mounted or under cabinet PC.

More quotes

While I'm ticked off at the "Bible Thumpers" and feeling prophetic, I'll throw out a few more choice original quotes.

The Bible is a history book that hasn't been adequately revised in almost 2000 years.

God's truest testament is his creation, the universe. Its laws of physics are his commandments and evolution is one of his most basic tools.

In the KJV, Matthew 5:5 has a typo and should read, "Blessed are the Geek: for they shall inherit the earth." Supporting evidence can be seen in by fixing the same typo in Psalms 25 & 37. Think about it. Persecution. Celibacy. Bill Gates. It makes sense.

Why God will Distroy Los Angeles and San Francisco

Mom & Others --

Call me a prophit if you must, but God will also destroy much of the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco by earthquakes for pretty much the same reasons.

TTFN
Tom

Why God Destroyed New Orleans

Mom --

Self serving BS and misinformation like the Anne Graham quote you forwarded to me [and to many others] is why I don't watch mainstream media any more. 

Katrina devastating New Orleans and the associated loss of life had absolutely no link what so ever with the issues around the separation of Church and State.

The more likely answer is that God was simply punishing the idiots who live in New Orleans for building a city in a stupid place.  The present location of the city should have been abandoned after the 1909 & 1915 hurricanes.  Assuming that the city keeps getting rebuilt in the same stupid location, God will keep destroying it by hurricanes about once every hundred years.

The blessing and protection that God gives us is that the universe obeys the laws of physics.  Those who ignore them/him suffer. Ce la vie, ce la mort. 

No amount of prayer in schools or government sanctioning of a specific religion will over time save the present location of New Orleans from hurricane flooding.  However, prayer in schools and/or government sanctioning of a specific religion will over time lead to repression of basic human freedoms. 

TTFN
    Tom

BTW -- This is going up on my 'blog at http://www.soot-n-smoke/tsayles

Carol wrote:

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her

"How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina)

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.She said,

 

"I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are,

but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. 

And being the gentleman He is, 

I believe  He has calmly backed out.

 

How can we expect God to give us His blessing

and His protection if we demand

He leave us alone?"

Idea Preview: GUSoHuC, Dealing with Diametrically opposed Values/Belief Systems

One of the primary goals of the GUSoHuC would be to showcase those areas where there is a strong consensus.

Another, but less prominent goal would be, in cases where there are significant and diametrically opposed values/belief systems, provide a forum for discussion and consensus building. In these cases, GUSoHuC, will/should do the following. First, much like how Wikipedia handles controversial articles, acknowledge and tag that there are opposing points of view. Second narrow the scope of the dispute as much as possible using formal consensus techniques. And finally present concurring and dissenting points of view in a structured way that uses social networking techniques rank the arguments pro and con.

Idea Preview: the Grand Unified Scriptures of Human Culture

Call it divine inspiration or maybe just the logical conjunction of several disparate concepts, but last week I began formulating the following idea:

Humanity needs a living document in which to collect the combined wisdom from the various world religions and branches of sciences.

The Wikipedia is already doing this for human knowledge by applying open source technologies and techniques to the capture and documentation of facts in the form of encyclopedia articles. The time is right for us to begin similar work with human wisdom, probably in some form of scripture.

I'm still working on fleshing out many of the details and committing this idea, along with its associated ideas into words suitable for publication. Hopefully I'll find time to work on this among my many other activities.

Idea: Distributed Family / Home Backup Networks

With cheap used PCs running various flavors of Linux, inexpensive large hard drives and widely available broadband Internet connections, it ought to be relatively easy to set up Distributed Family / Home Backup Networks.

Basically I want to take a $75 used PC, throw a new $100 hard drive in it, plug it in to my home network and boot it off a Linux live CD. I'd like configure this system through a web interface, much like I configure other appliances on my home network. The main task of this system would be to automatically mirror data shared from my desktop and laptop computers.

I'd also like to install an identical node on my parent's home network to back up data from their computers and provide an off-site mirror of my data. (Okay maybe it needs two $100 hard drives.) Scale this up to a few more nodes, say a couple of friends and another relative or two, and we can start doing some RAID like economies by splitting remote mirrors across several nodes, with sufficient redundancy to recover the local node if a remote node or two is lost or off-line.

I think that the configuration parameters would need to include:

• Notification e-mail address and login password
  
• Unique host name (for use with dynamic DNS)
• List of local network share(s) to back-up
• Schedule for local network back-ups
  
• List of remote nodes to with which to peer
  including some sort of out of band encryption key exchange
• bandwidth throttling limits
  

Other interesting little details I've thought of include:

• Connections between nodes should be encrypted
• Provide optional encryption of mirror data on the remote node(s)
  i.e All data destined for remote storage would be encrypted before being sent. Only the local node would have the key necessary to decrypt. This should probably be turned on by default.
  
• Create small cross-platform applet to scan the local subnet and discover the newly installed back-up node(s) and launch configuration page in default browser
• Optional daily, weekly, & monthly statistics e-mail / web page.
• Optional merged mirroring for weekend commuters
  i.e. Two (or more) nodes could use a single list of shares to backup and a single two-way mirror set, ensuring that laptops that move from one local net to the other [/another] are protected.
• Nodes could optionally provide traditional file server functionality on their local networks
• Nodes could even provide file sharing services across multiple nodes. [Though this would likely get complicated as it would require a distributed real time locking system.]
  
• Node configuration data, including private keys, should be copied to a .zip file (or .tar ball) and burned onto CDs and stored securely (in say a home safe or safe deposit box). With any configuration changes the node should prompt the owner / admin to create a new configuration back-up file/CD.
  

I'd love to set something like this up on my own, but I'm still too much of a Linux newbie. So if there is anyone that would like to help me with this please let me know.

Once the software is up and running maybe someone like Linksys might be interested in selling a true appliance version off of retail shelves. Maybe a shoe box size device with power and Ethernet connections, hard disk, CD-RW drive, and a configuration CD.

linux poster

linux
Originally uploaded by xxmoexx.

Sex sells, even for open source.

Gnomedex and Woodstock

In a recent mailing list post about planning for Gnomedex 2006, J.D. Lasica exclaimed:

"Four-day conference?! What is this, Woodstock?"

My gut reaction and reply was:

Yes, this is our Woodstock. Announcer: "Don't upload big files." = Announcer: "Don't take the brown acid."

Upon digging a bit deeper, by Googling on "brown acid Woodstock" I found this page talking about the "new sense of community" seen demonstrated at Woodstock. It sounds very similar to what's going on at and around Gnomedex.

So if Gnomedex is the Woodstock of our times, does this imply any or all of the following?

• the hippie movement -- the open source movement
• drugs (medical and recreational) -- the Internet
  
• psychedelic drugs -- file sharing
• LSD -- Napster
• Timothy Leary -- Shawn Fanning
  
• Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Lawrence Lessig
• Civil Rights movement -- IP Reform movement
  
• "The Man" -- "Old Media"
• the Vietnam War -- the War in Iraq
• G. Gordon Liddy -- "“Scooter" Libby
• Richard Nixon -- George W. Bush
• Jimmy Carter -- ???
• ??? -- Chris Pirillo
• ??? -- Adam Curry
• ??? -- Dave Winer
  

I'm sure there are many more, but I'm tired and want to go to bed. So post them in the comments.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.
History repeats itself.