The Blog From Another Dimension

More About PodCasts

Well, I was successful (I think) in creating an RSS feed and the iTunes Music Store said they accepted my submission--but it's been more than a day and I still don't show up in a keyword search in iTunes. So the success is tentative. I only prepared one item, and that was a 3-minute reading of my last entry, with a bit of music slapped onto it. It was not so much an audio blog as it was a test. If I start doing audio blogs, they'll be a bit more original and hopefully more interesting (and better-read) than that one. If you happen to listen to it, keep in mind that it's a throw-away.

In trying to figure out how it's done, I came across my pet peeve: documentation. In this case, it's not a lack of documentation, it's a lack of complete documentation. For example, in order to produce my own RSS feed, I had to search for a few hours just to find someone who wrote down the simple fact that an RSS feed file had to have an ".xml" extension! A vital piece of information, one that most newcomers will not know, and yet most people trying to help beginners will not even mention it. What are people thinking? Enough information should be given so that, from start to finish, a newbie can complete the task and, hopefully, understand all the elements. Maybe this is just obvious to me since I teach beginners how to use computers, but it seems like something one should know if one wants to help others do stuff.

So here, I will try to tell you how to get a podcast feed going. Keep in mind, however, that I have just learned and I may have made an error or two, especially where I was forced to assume something, and then it seemed to work. If I find that I erred, I'll try to revise and update. Also keep in mind that I am working on a Mac (so recording solutions will concentrate on that) and you must have a web site with your own domain that you can upload to. But here's what I figured out so far.

First, I tried a plug-in to Movable Type, called MT-Enclosures. Couldn't get it to work. Usual reason, spotty documentation. Followed all the directions given, and nothing happened. Even tried leaving a comment on the page describing my problems, and no reply. So I abandoned the attempt to have MT auto-feed the podcast, and instead went for the manual approach, which I'll use until someone comes out with a podcast solution that works without your having to be a hacker to get it to do its job. Again, I fell into the pit of despair you find when everyone assumes you've had several months of training when they tell you how to do things. One commercial site even had a video of a guy telling you, the average Joe, the layman, how to do it. He told us to make our show, and then... promptly assumed we'd be able to follow labyrinthine steps simply because he told us a web site to go to, without even telling us what page we needed to visit or even the basics about what steps you should take. Another dead end.

But as I noted, in the end, I finally got something done. Let me go over a few things.

RECORDING YOUR PODCAST

I should note that I use a Mac and that's what my advice for recording will center on; you'll have to look for your own recording apps for Windows.

First of all, you need your MP3 file. To make one, I used two programs: SoundEdit (to record and edit) and QuickTime Pro (to convert to MP3). But don't expect to be able to download SoundEdit; while it is an excellent program for recording and editing sound, it is a Classic app, about a decade old. It's a great app, but you probably won't be able to find it anywhere; Macromedia stopped selling it last year. There's a freeware app for recording sound, Sound Recorder, which is an ultra-simple no-frills audio recorder, though when I tried it, it played back with an annoying reverb/echo. You'll need a converter to change the file to mp3.

Then there's shareware, probably SndSampler would work okay, but the interface is a bit less than intuitive, and the 15-day free trial version is marred by the constant (not to mention hostile!) "reminders" to pay for the product, which interrupt the program for ten seconds at a time every few minutes, making the program very unattractive to use in trial mode. You also cannot save as an MP3 file, unless your version of QuickTime supports that, so again, a converter is required. Fee is $30.

A much better shareware option is WireTap Pro ($19). It will record not only audio you input, but also any audio coming in on your Mac, such as streaming audio from Real, QuickTime, iTunes or any other source. Unfortunately, the trial version does not allow saving in MP3 format or recording via your built-in mic or audio-in line; if you try, your recording will have a "this is an unregistered version" recording dubbed over it. Also, it does not allow for editing or applying effects such as fade-ins and fade-outs. But twenty bucks for this kind of an app is not bad.

For the experience of a commercial sound recording/editing app like SoundEdit, the choice today seems to be Peak LE, a $99 app with a 15-day free trial. It also has reminders, but very quick ones, and only at program startup and when you save an app. This program has a bit more of a learning curve than SndSampler, but it's not so bad. It also does not come with built-in MP3 support, but you can add it relatively easily: go to http://homepage.mac.com/awk/lame/ and download the bundle, then install it as a plug-in via the app's "Get Info" window in order to save as an MP3. Peak is a good app, but the problem with the LE version is that all the features in the pro version are in the menus but always grayed out--as if to tease you constantly about what you could have if you only shelled out 500 bucks.

None of these, however, compares well at all with SoundEdit 16 in terms of convenience, power, and ease-of-use (at least in the manner I use the app). So as long as I have a Mac which can use SoundEdit, I'll continue using that app.

CREATING THE FEED

As I said, using one of the services available (either MT-Enclosures or one of the web sites that offer a solution) can be problematic at best. There may be a simple, workable solution I haven't found. There are services which say they will host your podcast, but I prefer to try to host my own, to avoid ads, spam and to be able to control my own media. If you want to get a domain, you might try GoDaddy, and then go to Surpass Hosting to get the domain hosted. You'll need to use an FTP program to upload the podcast and the RSS file to your web site. You could use Fetch, Captain FTP (Shareware), or FTP Thingy or PW FTP (both freeware; PW FTP is off-line at the current time).

The RSS feed file will be a simple text file containing some script. It can be given any filename, so long as the filename extension is .xml. Open a text editor and type the information, or copy and paste from an example.

The basics: the file should begin with <?xml version="1.0"?> to identify it as an XML file.

The file should begin and end with the RSS tag:

<rss version="2.0"> </rss>

However, if you want to upload to iTunes, you'll have to add an iTunes xml attribute:

<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/Podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0"> </rss>

Within the RSS, you have a "channel." This decribes your podcast in general. Within the channel tag, you'll have "item" tags, each one decribing a specific podcast. The podcast file is identified by the "enclosure" tag. The basic structure, without attributes, looks like this:

<rss>
     <channel>
          <item>
               <enclosure>
          </item>
          <item>
               <enclosure>
          </item>
     </channel>
</rss>

Within each channel and item, there will have to be tags to designate various information points about the podcast. The tags for the channel include:

<title> - The title of the podcast "show," the general name
<link> - A link to the web page for the podcast
<description> - A description of the show (preferably small, 256 characters or less)
<language> - Which language it is in (I'm guessing here)
<category> - What category you'd put your show in
<image> - What image you'd like associated with the podcast.
<pubDate> - The most recent date of publication for the show.
<lastBuildDate> - The most recent date the RSS file was rebuilt.
<copyright> - a copyright message
<webMaster> - your email address
<ttl> - how many minutes a subscriber should wait between refreshing the rss feed from your site

These are straight tags with no attributes; just put the information between these tags and their end tags (same tag, preceded by a slash).

Tags for the item include:

<title>
<description>
<guid> - uniquely identifies the location of each podcast (I don't pretend to understand this one at all)
<pubDate> - The date of publication for the podcast.
<enclosure> - the address of the podcast

The "enclosure" tag requires attributes:

url - address of the podcast
length - the length of the podcast in bytes. Do a get info on the file to find this out. Don't use commas.
type - identifies the type of file; for an mp3, it would be "audio/mpeg".

Therefore, an enclosure tag might look like:

<enclosure url="http://www.blogd.com/podcasts/blogdpod1.mp3" length="1807241" type="audio/mpeg" />

iTunes also asks you to add some special iTunes tags:

<itunes:category>
<itunes:explicit>
<itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary>
<itunes:author>
<itunes:keywords>
<itunes:duration>
<itunes:keywords>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>
<itunes:email>
<itunes:image>
<tunes:block>

These are explained in Apple's specification file [PDF]. Mostly they are stand-alone tags, with the target information between the start and end tags (such as <itunes:author>Luis</itunes:author>); others have the target information within an attribute, namely the <itunes:category> tag, which seems a bit complicated. The "itunes:owner" tag appears at the Channel level only; the "itunes:duration" and "itunes:keyword" tags appear at the item level only. All other tags can appear at the channel or item level.

If you want a quick and dirty, non-iTunes-optimized RSS feed, you could go here and type in the basic information to get a basic RSS feed text output. But you will probably want to tinker with the RSS code, especially for the iTunes store. Here is an example script (you may want to right-click the link and download the targeted file, otherwise your browser might read the RSS file as such) which I've tried to keep simple. The example script uses my own blog and podcast data, so if you use this, you'll want to change that.

When you're finished, save the rss file as plain text, and give it a name with the ".xml" extension (for example, "podcast.xml").

Later, after you've succeeded with the first one, you can add new podcasts to the feed simply by adding more "item" tag groups, one for each podcast.

PUBLISH AND VALIDATE

Now you have to upload the mp3 file and the rss feed. Open your FTP program, then upload the files into the directories you decide are best. At this point, I do not believe that any directory is better than any other. I have placed my RSS feed into my main directory, and my podcasts into a subdirectory. So long as all you URLs are given correctly, I don't think that should be a problem.

The next step is to validate the feed you have created. Go to the Feed Validator page, type in the address of your RSS feed file, and then validate it. If a problem is found, you will be told the line and the general problem, though not necessarily a solution. The validator will only correct one error at a time, so for each error, you will have to go back to the text editor, correct the error, re-save the file, and re-upload it, then you can go back to the validator and try to validate again. Once all your errors have been corrected (or the lines simply edited out), the validator will tell you that your feed is valid.

Once that's been accomplished, now you have to tell people about the existence of your feed. To do that at the iTunes Music Store, you must open iTunes, go to the Music Store. While no membership is required to get podcasts, but you do need membership to publish! Membership is free, and publishing doesn't cost anything, but you will need a credit card with a billing address in a country with an iTMS in order to get the account.

On the main page of the iTMS, click on the "Podcasts" link; then click the "Publish a Podcast" link. You will be taken through a process where you will give the URL of the feed file, log in to your iTMS account, and then you'll get a page to confirm your settings.

You can check if the feed works independent of your podcast listing at the iTMS by going into iTunes, choosing "Subscribe to Podcast..." in the "Advanced" menu, and typing in the URL of the feed directly. That won't tell you anything about whether or not the iTunes store has started publishing your podcast, but it will tell you if the feed and the podcast are working. Otherwise, you might try out iPodder, a podcast subscription client.

And that's it--so far as I now know. Let me know if you see an error in what I just wrote, and I will try to keep this page updated.

So, What Are Podcasts, Anyway

If you're like me, then sometimes you find that these new technological phenomena kind of sneak up on you until they break out and become highly popular. I didn't know much about CSS, for example, until I started doing this blog and had to use it to design the appearance you see now. I'd seen it in other sites without knowing what it was. Probably I'd heard it mentioned many times, but didn't bother to find about it.

Podcasting was the same thing. I'd heard about it, guessed it had to do with recordings you could listen to on your iPod, but hadn't really figured it out much beyond that. But today, Apple released iTunes v. 4.9, which includes podcasting just as it does Internet radio and its popular music store, as a source of media beyond your personal collection ripped from CDs.

So what is a Podcast, exactly? Well, as I suspected, it's an audio file you can download from the Internet and listen to on your iPod, or other iPod-like digital music player. But there are two features that make it different from a standard audio download: first, it's not just one audio file, it's a recurring "show" with new "episodes" posted as time goes by. And second, it uses RSS technology so that when a new episode is available, your podcasting program (such as iTunes) gets notified and either tells you something new is available, or just downloads it automatically if you have subscribed. When you connect your iPod to your computer, the episodes go onto your iPod and you can listen to them. Or you can listen to them on your computer via your music app.

What is notable here is that you don't have to be a professional to be a podcaster. Anyone can do it. You might even get listed in the searchable podcasting directories, such as the one that Apple now provides with iTunes. You could, in effect, start your own radio show, just like blogging made it possible to start your own publication of whatever you want to write about. You need the ability to record and translate that recording into an MP3 file, then upload it to the Internet. But you also need to know how to submit the file with an RSS feed, which is not always so simple. Expect shareware or freeware applications offering just this ability to start appearing in large numbers very soon.

And if I can figure out how to get podcasts going for this blog, I'll let you know how I did it, as best I can.

McCreary v. ACLU, Van Orden v. Perry

Okay, it's a bit later, and more detailed reports are out. However, a few things still seem unclear, and I'm trying to sort through them. What seems apparent is that the initial reports (should have known better than to take CNN's word) were incomplete, and apparently only reported on the Kentucky rulings, and not the Texas ruling (or were simply wrong).

First off, the court was very clearly split on the issue, with the swing votes of Breyer and O'Connor making the law here. The case where two Kentucky courtrooms had framed copies of the Ten Commandments hanging in the courtrooms were ruled clearly unconstitutional, because they "went too far" in promoting religion. How that is, is still unclear from news reports at this time.

On the other hand, a 6-foot granite monument of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas capitol was ruled constitutional, on the premise that it was a historical display and not a religious statement (this is what the press is conveying; I find differently below from reading the actual decisions). Again, the news reports were, at best, nebulous as to how this was determined. The reports referred to the frieze in the Supreme Court which represented Christian as well as other religious legal icons. However, to my knowledge, the Texas monument did not refer to other religions, nor was there any sign that the other monuments nearby represented other faiths--however, there was a hint that since nearby monuments were historical, albeit not religious, that somehow watered down the Ten Commandments display enough to make it acceptable.

One thing that is clear: the court ruled that these displays must be ruled on on a case-by-case basis. In other words, the infamous "I know it when I see it" standard.

This from the news reports, which I read first. The actual decisions, which I read afterward, are of course much more detailed. One thing that stands out, as I mentioned above, is that O'Connor and Breyer were the real movers and shakers in today's decisions.

First, the Kentucky courtroom cases [PDF file]. The majority decision clearly states that the intent of making the displays must be secular, but that knowing intent is very difficult. However, it is also noted that this nebulous gray area is not to be taken advantage of, and that claims of secularity which are obviously a "sham" cannot be accepted. Furthermore, the attempt to legitimize the TC displays by surrounding them with other historical documents did not work, at least in part because the other documents highlighted religious statements within historical decisions--in effect, they attempted to bolster the idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation. The written statement that the display was "in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics" and other statements of obvious religious endorsement, including an endorsement of former Judge Roy Moore--these probably helped clarify that these displays were more than just a little clearly intended as religious endorsement. (Not to mention the fact that Jesus and the Ten Commandments come from slightly disparate areas of the Bible.)

In the dissent, Scalia rather unprofessionally invoked the country's reaction in the wake of 9/11, when the president said "God Bless America" and someone from Europe wished his leader could invoke God as well. In other words, simply because political leaders invoke religion in a display that stands simply because it has not been challenged, that proves religion belongs in government. Oy. Scalia goes on to quote religious incursions into public matters which were not challenged and therefore persisted, using them as bludgeons to say that it was OK to do this sort of stuff. In other words, this is based less on the Constitution, legal precedent or court decisions than it is on what religious fundamentalists have gotten away with in the course of this nation's history. Swell. Glad it was the dissenting opinion.

And you can't say I didn't see this coming; four months ago, I clearly stated that "these religious incursions, each one violating the principle of church and state, are used to justify the next step, the new religious incursion." And that's exactly what Scalia was trying to say in his dissent. Did I call it, or did I call it?

On this decision, the split was: SOUTER, STEVENS, O’CONNOR, GINSBURG, and BREYER in the majority; SCALIA, REHNQUIST, THOMAS and KENNEDY dissenting.

The second [PDF file], and less fortunate decision was about the Texas case. Breyer was the swing vote on this one.

The primary decision in the finding supported by the wingnut quartet was based upon the idea that the monument was provided by an organization and that "the State had a valid secular purpose in recognizing and commending the Eagles for their efforts to reduce juvenile delinquency." Furthermore, that a "reasonable observer, mindful of history, purpose, and context, would not conclude that this passive monument conveyed the message that the State endorsed religion."

Rehnquist unashamedly slipped in a quote which said, in part, that

"the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself."

Now, I haven't studied the Mayflower Compact, but I can say with a certain amount of confidence is that it is not a legal document which is currently binding. What I do know is that the Constitution does not in any way, shape or form express the devotion to the belief that there is a God and that our rights are rooted in that. The quote borrows language from the Declaration of Independence, not a legal document, and applies it to the Constitution, which not only does not support religion, but in fact negates its place in government, and that where religion is mentioned in the body of the Constitution it is only to point out that religion cannot be injected into governmental proceedings, to wit: Article VI, Clause 3, stating that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." A Constitutional provision which is blatantly violated, as any politician who chooses not to add the unofficial "So help me God" is pilloried in our "secular" government. And yet Rehnquist uses this very violation to uphold his decision, using it as a jumping board upon which he bases his decision. What a sham.

But Breyer was the swing vote that decided this in truth, and since his opinion was separate, it's going to be the gold standard for the future. Fortunately, it has been noted in the press that "Breyer didn't join the court's lead opinion, written by Chief Justice Rehnquist. That means Breyer's reasoning will set the controlling standard in future cases." I hope that news reporter's observation is true, because Rehnquist's writing was a piece of biased crap wandering far from the truth of the Establishment clause, whereas Breyer's decision is somewhat more reasonable.

Breyer's argument is not based on the bullshit idea that since one can trot out a one-sided, purposefully biased list of religious incursions, many of them indirect at best, into government territory, while carefully ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that this equals a legal basis for allowing further incursions violating the First Amendment. Breyer, instead, bases his decision closer to O'Connor's in the Kentucky case, wherein Breyer states that it's not always so easy to see what the intent was, and therefore we can't be certain that it's an attempt to proselytize. In effect, we're giving these people the benefit of the doubt, but maintaining securely that the Establishment clause truly forbids an endorsement of a religion.

He also backs up O'Connor in the context of the legal test of secularity vs. religious intent:

Neither can this Court’s other tests readily explain the Establishment Clause’s tolerance, for example, of the prayers that open legislative meetings... ; certain references to, and invocations of, the Deity in the public words of public officials; the public references to God on coins, decrees, and buildings; or the attention paid to the religious objectives of certain holidays, including Thanksgiving. ...

If the relation between government and religion is one of separation, but not of mutual hostility and suspicion, one will inevitably find difficult borderline cases. And in such cases, I see no test-related substitute for the exercise of legal judgment. ... That judgment is not a personal judgment. Rather, as in all constitutional cases, it must reflect and remain faithful to the underlying judgment purposes of the Clauses, and it must take account of context and consequences measured in light of those purposes. While the Court’s prior tests provide useful guideposts—and might well lead to the same result the Court reaches today ... --no exact formula can dictate a resolution to such fact-intensive cases.

This is the "I know it when I see it" ruling I mentioned above.

However, Breyer does allow a less-than-satisfying loophole that fundamentalists may swarm through in the future, saying that since the Texas monument imbues "proper standards of social conduct ... [and] a historical message (about a historic relation between those standards and the law)," the monument contains a secular message in addition to the religious one. That's cutting it pretty thin for my tastes, and I have the feeling that the fundies are looking at those words and drooling at the prospect of shamming their way right through those words into erecting countless more religious monuments on public land. "Oooo! Social conduct and history! We can fake that easy!"

Another disturbing element is Breyer's wording that since the Texas monument is not in a location which "suggests little or nothing of the sacred." I find that unsettling because again it could be used as a loophole: put a religious endorsement in a place where there's nothing else religious around, and you're golden.

Breyer ends with:

That kind of practice is what we have here. I recognize the danger of the slippery slope. Still, where the Establishment Clause is at issue, we must “distinguish between real threat and mere shadow.” ... Here, we have only the shadow.

In light of these considerations, I cannot agree with today’s plurality’s analysis. ... Nor can I agree with JUSTICE SCALIA’s dissent in McCreary County.... I do agree with JUSTICE O’CONNOR’s statement of principles in McCreary County..., though I disagree with her evaluation of the evidence as it bears on the application of those principles to this case.

REHNQUIST, SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, and BREYER were in the majority; STEVENS, GINSBURG, O’CONNOR and SOUTER dissented.

So, what are we left with?

As some have pointed out, a somewhat conflicted message. But the good news is that the Establishment clause has been firmly upheld, and though Breyer has introduced a few loopholes that you can be certain the fundies will try to take advantage of, the basic principle that a display must be secular and not an endorsement of religion stands pretty strongly in place.

More good news than bad, but it could have been a lot worse.

And the Decision Is In

News just out this moment: the Supreme Court, at the end of its term, decided (and quite rightly might I say) that displays of the Ten Commandments on public property are unconstitutional. The weasel claim that these monuments are of "historical" significance only didn't fly. Score one for the constitution. Bill of Rights: 1, Wingnut Fundies: 0.

More details later.

Cats & Birds

Went out looking for birds today, and though I found quite a few, they were all the same species: the Great Tit. So it wasn't the best of birdwatching days, but I did get some good shots, and when I visited the Tama Cemetery, found a few photogenic cats. Apparently, the cats like the area for the same reason the birdwatchers do, but obviously with different intentions!

The first cat was taking a nice, sprawling nap right smack atop a family grave marker. Cats don't much mind where they are when it comes to resting. I'm not sure if the Yoshida family would mind...

All four photos today, by the way, come with larger versions; just click on any of the images to get the 1000-pixel-wide enlargement.

This particular Tom was hanging about with a very pretty Calico, which was a lot more approachable.

As for the birds, it looks like this is the time for the immature chicks to break out and follow the folks around. Here's a pair of still-immature Greats in a tree off of the Tama River:

And here are three immature Greats enjoying the bath at Sengenyama Park:

While the 1000-pixel version is good, I like the non-reduced 1500-pixel version even better.

So as I said, not a good day for variety, but some very good shots came from it.

The Long War on Christianity

Haven't you heard about this war? Christians in America have been persecuted, put down, and kept from practicing their faith for a long, long time now. It's a wonder that any Christians are left in America, after having their beliefs quashed so thoroughly.

For Christ's sake.

This unbelievable canard was brought up yet again by conservative Representative John Hostettler, when Democrats protested against coercive proselytization at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Hostettler said:

"Mr Chairman, the long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives. It continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats."

Liberal Representative David Obey--a Catholic--demanded the words be struck from the record, withdrawn by the speaker.

But this illustrates something I have spoken about again and again: a group of people with unparalleled power and influence crying in outrage about how they have been so unfairly persecuted and marginalized. And its always the same groups: white males, Christian fundamentalists, and conservatives. White males crying that their well-deserved superiority in all things is slipping, bled away in the form of "special privileges" to minorities and women; Christians, mostly but not all fundamentalists, crying about how persecuted they are because their religion cannot permeate every corner of public life; and conservatives, weeping in rage that they only have the presidency, the Congress, the courts--but those nasty, selfish Democrats are denying them five percent of their court appointments! All three groups--though all too often they are the very same people--have unprecedented power and influence in the United Stated, and represent what might be called a privileged super-class. Crying persecution is incredible, and yet they somehow actually seem to believe it's true.

By the way, remember Dean's recent statement about the Republican party being the party of "White Christians"? It occurs to me that while the GOP might be a slightly bigger tent than that, the white Republican Christians are the cross-section that runs through these powerful, inveterate whiners. One thing you cannot deny, white Christians certainly dominate that party.

Maybe if we stopped persecuting them so badly they'd shut their yaps.

More Than One Way to Skin a Barometer

Want a good, funny, education-oriented story, complete with moral? Read this. Via Cosmic Buddha.

Revenge of the Sith

An interesting fold-out photo from Vanity Fair. Click on the image to see a larger version.

So today I saw the film, and felt like giving a review of it. I'll make a general, non-spoiler review here, above the fold, and give a more lengthy, spoiler-laden commentary hidden under a link at the bottom of this entry (as seen on the main page).

In short, it is a lot like I expected--a special effects festival with mythological themes and the trademark corny dialog so much in Lucas' style. There is a bigger story underlaying the usual Star Wars flash, the transformation of Anakin to the dark side, a dimension in excess of the past Star Wars films. And then there's the stitching-together of the trilogies, with Lucas working to make the end of this film match with the beginning of the original film.

As a Star Wars film in the usual sense, the SFX & mythology, this film was brilliant. The visuals are both extraordinary and at the same time hardly worth noting because that's what you'd expect from a Star Wars film, and no less. Special visual effects fill the movie, wall-to-wall, and it's a treat for the eyes, from the beautiful to the gruesome. As for the mythology, much is made of that in this film; talk about the light and dark sides of the force, the nature of life and death, the corruption of jealousy and greed, of selfishness and selflessness. Even so, several answers that I expected to see answered in this film about the Star Wars universe were not--and even a few new questions were introduced. But if you like the speculation and the ability to play with the universe with your imagination, there's nothing wrong with that.

In the sense of this film being about a man's descent into darkness, Anakin's transformation into the dark Lord Darth Vader, the film does well to begin and end the process, but falters at the key juncture right in the middle. All the elements, all the reasons are there for Anakin to make the leap--but this is not the kind of story that Lucas is adept at telling, and he falters here. Still, if you can get past that one critical point, perhaps filling in the blanks yourself, then the rest is very well executed.

And then as far as the film is intended to bring us up to the beginning of the original Star Wars film, everything is brought together very well. In fact, it may be brought together a little too well, as there are so many elements that had to be stitched together. It's hard to be surprised by this film, because you already know exactly what's going to happen. Still, many of these events are like a familiar echo, a nostalgia reaching back to the first time you went to see the Star Wars films, and are entertaining in that respect alone. When Padme names the twins, when you first see the Darth Vader helmet put on, when you see Obi-wan pick up Anakin's light saber, knowing it will go to Luke--all of these are elements you expect and have been waiting for, and they work. But too much of the rest seems almost too intentionally laid out, like Yoda dictating where the children will go and how they'll be raised--like Lucas needs to telegraph all the points, forcing them into their rightful places instead of being able to let the audience assume that things will happen naturally, as the logical thing to do. Again, if you're able to set that aside, it's great fun to watch it all come into place, even if some of the pieces are a bit forced.

So as a Star Wars film, it's great; but as a drama with a believable storyline, it's very good, but could have been better.

More below the fold...

*** *** WARNING -- SPOILERS BELOW *** ***

There are a lot of treats in this film, in terms of visuals and the story, many of them harkening back to the original trilogy. You can see the evolution of the ships, uniforms and machines so they closely match the first movies. You can see, for example, the hangar bay of a star destroyer with the exact same grapple arms in it as the star destroyer in the original Star Wars. We get introduced to the rebel blockade runner, the ship Princess Leia is chased down in from the first film, complete with the high-contrast white hallways we saw Darth Vader stride down before. We even get to see the Millennium Falcon, briefly and small, in the corner of the screen as Anakin, Obi-wan and the Chancellor return to the city after crashing down in the broken starship at the conclusion of the initial action sequence.

The other connections to other films in the series are numerous. We see the TIE fighter develop from the Jedi fighter; the Emperor's throne room from Return of the Jedi is re-created as Palpatine's prison on Grievous' ship; we see several mouse 'droids flee before Anakin, just like the ones from the Death Star; the usual assortment of oft-repeated Star Wars lines; and we even see Leia's cinnamon-bun hairstyle on Padme. We meet Chewbacca (which makes sense, as he was always referred to as a 200-year-old Wookie), and Bail Organa of "Princess Leia Organa" fame. We hear Yoda introduce Obi-wan to the paradigm of Vader "killing" Anakin, and hear Palpatine turn the Republic into the Empire with a single sentence. And seeing Vader and the Emperor on that familiar (hell, identical) star destroyer bridge as they witness the beginning of construction on the Death Star... and that double-sunset on Tatooine was perfectly done.

There are other Easter Eggs as well. Watch the hallway in the visual-opera hall (or whatever it is) just before Anakin walks in to see Palpatine. On the left you'll see a blue-skinned alien. That's George Lucas, in his only on-screen cameo. There's the "Wilhelm" scream that has been slipped into every Star Wars film, and most action films in general. And did you happen to see Grand Moff Tarkin at the end? These and other Easter Eggs are outlined here.

A few stitches seem forced or arbitrary, however. Palpatine's face transforms physically into the puffy/wrinkly-faced mask we see in the original films, almost instantaneously when his own dark-side-of-the-force lighting bolts are forced back upon him. Why didn't Luke's face undergo the same transformation in Return of the Jedi when he was subjected to a similar, or even more powerful dose? Some suggest that the effect is to reveal the person's true self, but that sounds a little too apologetic. Maybe if you assume that Sidious is able to shape-shift, and his human face reverted to his Sith face when weakened by the attack--but nothing was said to make us believe this. Another continuity stitch was thrown in almost as an afterthought when Organa orders C-3PO's memory wiped, for no apparent reason. It had to happen so as to explain Threepio's ignorance of matters in the original trilogy, but all the same, it's thrown in like a punch line without a joke to support it.

There are also some sequences which are pretty damned cool in and of themselves. The fight sequence between Obi-wan and General Grievous, with Grievous wielding four light-sabers with mechanical speed. The fight between Yoda and the Emperor. The tragic slaying of the Jedi, with Williams' score delivering the emotional impact. The entire sequence on the lava world between Anakin, Padme and Obi-wan. And I'd imagine few fans could fail to find extremely cool Yoda's move of throwing his light saber at the storm trooper, then climbing up his falling torso to retrieve it.

One action sequence did not live up to expectations, however: the fight between Mace Windu and Palpatine. I expected it to take a lot longer than it did. First, Palpatine does away with the three other Jedi masters who accompany Windu a bit too quickly and easily. Maybe this makes him seem a bit more scary, but I think the scariness could have been enhanced by some more wicked one-against-four fighting scenes (though Lucas has never been quite as good at portraying such scenes--as is often the case with similar scenes in Samurai films, too often it seems like the guys on the outnumbering side are holding back, each one waiting their turn). Certainly Palpatine's initial acrobatic leap-and-hideous-roar set the tone well. But then we see too little of the fight between Windu and Palpatine before it ends. Even more disappointing is Windu's death, by Palpatine's lightning bolts. I fully expected Anakin and Windu to have their own duel a la Luke and Vader; I think this would have enhanced the feeling of Anakin making an irrevocable turn. Instead, he makes one split-second decision to stop Windu, and it's even based on Jedi principles. That makes him seem less committed to turning to the dark side right away; a long fight with Windu, with dialog between him and Windu with Palpatine manipulating him from the sidelines would have been much more appropriate for this critical scene.

That leads me to my biggest problem with the storytelling, namely Anakin deciding to side with the Emperor. You just don't get the impact that you should, to believe that it's time for Anakin to make the decision. Yes, you see Anakin and Padme looking at each other across the city, and you get the fact that he doesn't want her to die, and he sees Palpatine as his only hope for that. But the impact isn't there. You just don't feel it. It's too sudden, from Anakin being the nice guy, humble before Obi-wan and dutiful to Mace Windu, and then suddenly he's willing to go off and slaughter children and wipe out the Jedi order. He doesn't appear to go through nearly enough agony to be consistent with how Lucas has drawn his character. Which is why I think the protracted light saber battle between him and Windu would have helped; it could have showcased his angst, and made his investment in stepping over the line to Sidious' side far more believable.

Moreover, why did Anakin continue to trust Sidious even after he discovered he was a Sith lord? Anakin only had Sidious' word that there was a way to keep people from dying by using the dark side. I know he was desperate to find some way to keep Padme alive, but shouldn't he have at least considered the possibility that he was being fooled? And after he learned of Padme's death, why didn't he turn on Sidious then? After all, he must have realized that Padme died as a result of his turning to the dark side, and Sidious was responsible for that.

Some other things in the film do not make sense, like Anakin getting pissed off that he's not been made a Jedi Master after being appointed to the council by Palpatine. One would naturally expect the title of Jedi Master to be assigned through a long series of difficult accomplishments, not to mention a heightened state of self-control and wisdom--not through a purely political appointment. It's as if Lucas felt he had to set Anakin off against the Jedi, and this was the best he could come up with. One of the other points in the film that makes it a bit clunky is how Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious/The Emperor manipulates the situation. He does it in a somewhat ham-handed way, buttering up Anakin, and playing his role over the top otherwise, with the Jedi constantly "sensing" something wrong but not quite figuring it out; you kind of get a bit tired of this.

But the biggest disconnect for me was when Obi-wan left Anakin to die. Yes, it had to happen that way in order for continuity to work. But if he cared about Anakin as much as he claimed--and didn't know Sidious was on his way to save Anakin--then it was intolerably cruel for Obi-wan to just leave Anakin sitting on the bank of lava, on fire, legs and arm cut off, to slowly die in agony. Sure, Obi-wan didn't want to kill Anakin. But leaving him there to suffer was gutless.

And then there's the politics, inserted as subtly as any of the other dialog: not very. Anakin's Bush-like "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy," answered by Obi-wan's "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." Oooo. Darth Dubya! Much less clunky, but still sticking out, was Padme's commentary on the transition to Empire: "So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause." Just as fitting, but more compellingly introduced commentary on present-day social issues.

And finally, the mythology of Star Wars. We were supposed to hear an explanation of why Obi-wan simply vanished (later followed by Yoda) when Vader cut him down in the first film. Okay, Yoda tells Obi-wan that Qui-gon Jinn has found a way back from "the nether-world of the Force," and we know how Obi-wan spends those years on Tatooine, communing with Qui-gon and learning how to survive after death. But not only is that a quick, off-camera cheat, it doesn't tell us why Obi-wan and Yoda disappeared when they died--or why Vader didn't, even though he also survived after death as a Jedi ghost--even without communing and training to do so. And would it have been so impossible to get Liam Neeson to do a cameo? That would have been much cooler, for him to actually appear and explain a thing or two.

Still, we are introduced, not to an answer, but to possible speculation on why and how Anakin was born in the first place. We learned in The Phantom Menace that Anakin had no father, and was conceived by the Midi-chlorians. Here, Lucas introduces the story of the Sith lord Darth Plagueis the Wise, who we learn was Sidious' master. Palpatine claims that Plagueis learned how to use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life (as he rather meaningfully looked over at Anakin). He also claimed that Plagueis' apprentice, in fact Palpatine/Sidious, learned "everything he knew," suggesting that Sidious also could create life and keep people from dying. Which both answers and opens up the question, how was Anakin conceived?

Lucas coyly keeps the answer open to interpretation, saying that he prefers to let fans come to their own conclusions. So did Plagueis or Sidious use the Force to conceive Anakin, and why? Others point to this power when you see Sidious touch Anakin's head after Sidious finds Anakin near death; but it is too similar to Obi-wan touching Padme's head in the same way: a Force trick to put someone to sleep, which we saw Qui-gon do to Jar-jar. But the whole angle of Anakin's conception will leave fans to imagine what they will--and may well open up the book and comic series to new story possibilities. Not to mention what Lucas himself has announced as a possible live-action Star Wars series, which could answer a lot of these questions, especially if the series is set either during or before the Clone Wars.

So in review, I seem to have had quite a few things to say. You may have noticed a lot of it is critical. However, that doesn't mean I disapprove of, or did not greatly enjoy the film. I did. It's a great film. I'll be seeing it again in a few weeks with my brother, and will certainly get the DVD, which Lucas has hinted will be ready by Christmas.

It's a Moral Imperative, Just Don't Ask Me to Fight

Why is there a troop shortage? With so many Republicans saying that there is a "moral imperative" to fight in Iraq, why Republicans of fighting age not signing up in droves?

The reasons given by Young Republicans at their convention in Los Angeles are stupid and self-serving. Among them (via DKos):

"Frankly, I want to be a politician. I'd like to survive to see that. ... [I would volunteer only if the United States faced a dire troop shortage or] if there's another Sept. 11."

If there's a dire troop shortage? With recruiting for the military falling to all-time lows, tens of thousands of soldiers based around the world taken from their duties to fill in the ever-increasing void, the national guard strained to its limits, soldiers torn from family and losing jobs to be sent in for two or sometimes even three tours of duty, the back-door draft... and this young right-wing twit thinks that there's no shortage? Either they're too stupid to see the obvious or are just giving a charade of an excuse to chicken out while demanding others go in their place. Which is better?

And what's this BS about "surviving to be a politician"? Is that why all the top Republicans are draft dodgers? They're too chicken? What happened to the warrior statesman? What happened to 'doing your part'? I guess they don't like their chances well enough to risk doing their duty for their country for what they claim is a moral imperative. I don't demand that someone has to have served in the military in order to be a politician, but I do demand that they remain consistent with their stated principles--and if they believe the war is necessary, if they consider it an imperative, and are of sound body and fighting age, then they are hypocrites not to go. And while hypocrisy sits well with hard-core right-wing Republicans, it doesn't with most Americans.

"If there was a need presented, I would go."

So I guess a dire troops shortage or a moral imperative is not a good enough "need." But more than that:

"I physically probably couldn't do a whole lot [in Iraq]. ... I think I could do more here. ... We don't have to be there physically to fight it."

And they call liberals elitists? "Oh, I am too good and talented to waste as cannon fodder. Let the underclass serve that purpose while I sit back at home and tell people what to do." Swell.

The closest anyone else got to saying they'd volunteer was to admit being "torn" over the idea, and they would "consider" the possibility.

There are your "patriots" for you. I guess the word 'sacrifice' is not mentioned in the Republican creed.

Back to the Birds

Well, I haven't done birds for a while, so let's get back to that a bit, eh? The weather should be good over the next week, and midterms have been graded, so I might have a bit of time to do more than just the incidental birdwatching.

I visited the Tama River a few times over the past few days, and I have to say that it's like a change in the cast of characters. The ducks are all gone (though you can still spot some garden-variety types in the now-water-filled rice paddies nearby), the egrets are rather scarce, and the cormorants have gone elsewhere. The sparrows and starlings have remained. But there are a few new species here as well. The first and most startling was the appearance of the Little Tern (Koajisashi • コアジサシ). Tokyo is pretty far north for this bird's range, but I saw a pair fishing by the side of the river. It was hard to catch them in flight because of movement and focus, but it was fun to watch. They would fly up and down a small stretch of the riverside, and when they spotted something, they'd go into hover mode, staying in one position for several seconds (see shot below) before diving down and snatching a fish from the water below.

Next, and not quite as clear in the photos is what I am fairly sure is a Long-billed Plover (Ikaru-chidori • イカルチドリ). I saw a few Little Ringed Plovers at the Wild Bird Park, and this one is similar, but the lack of a yellow rim around the eye and the specific white-and-black coloring above the bill seems to tag this one as a Long-billed Plover. Hard to catch, I only got a few blurry shots, as you can see. This bird camouflaged extremely well into the rocks along the beach, seeming to disappear most of the time.

And here's the definitive shot with the head coloring:

Also on hand was a Japanese Wagtail and its immature offspring.

Then there was this guy, which I'm pretty sure was an Oriental Goldfinch, but it seemed to have almost too much red for that. However, I can't guess what else it might have been:

This one I also couldn't identify. There are a bunch of them making an somewhat of a racket in the tall grass, but they almost never came out above it to pose for a photo. I thought it might be an immature starling (the long pointed beak and general shape of the head and body seem to match starlings), but the tail seems too long for that. I think it might be a Japanese Swamp Warbler (Oosekka • オオセッカ), as the general appearance is similar and the habitat is right--but the identification is far from certain.

This guy was a complete question mark for me; I only got the one photo. Maybe an immature wagtail? The coloring seems a bit strange for that...

I should really download the category page for my birdwatching blog entries and take my PowerBook into the Japan Wild Bird Society shop near Shinjuku. They could probably help me identify the ten or so species I haven't been able the get yet. For later.

And then there were the swallows. Everywhere. These things are out on the river en masse, and they're flying around all over the place. Hard to get images of them like that, too--but I found a spot where they were resting. A recently-bulldozed slope along the riverside, where the end of land suddenly slopes down maybe 30 degrees until it hits the water. The swallows were flying in there to rest, and I was able to catch a few shots.

All in all, a pretty productive few days, birdwatching-wise.

Oops, Missed It

Hey, a milestone passed and I didn't even notice. My 1300th post, four posts back (Blog Spam Solution). Yes, I know it's numbered 1326, but there were 26 posts that were tests over the past 2-years-plus and got erased, but the numbers weren't taken back.

Okay, 1300 is not a special number. But it's round. And another one to complement it: 700, the number of days I'll have blogged consecutively, one week from today.

Not a Donut

On June 8, 1977, my 13th birthday, my father announced that the whole family was going out to get donuts. This is something we did from time to time, going to the closest Winchell's Donut shop (they had great donuts, but have long since disappeared). After we'd been driving for a while, I noticed we weren't going to the usual shop, and my father said there was a much better store in San Jose. I wasn't too fast to pick up on the fact that he was spoofing me; in fact, when we came in sight of the Century theaters, I exclaimed that that was where "Star Wars" was playing, and it wasn't until we turned into the parking lot of the theater that I figured out what my birthday present was.

I was one of those kids who was dying to see the movie. At that time, exactly two weeks after its release, it was still only playing in very few theaters, such as the Century in San Jose and the Coronet in San Francisco. Naturally, I was ecstatic to find out I'd be seeing it that day.

After the film ended, we were walking out to the parking lot when my mother, who'd left the group, caught up with us and gave me something: the button you see pictured here. She had seen one of the theater ushers wearing it, and had asked if she could buy one. When the usher said they weren't for sale, my mother started to tell the story about how much her son loved that movie and would die to have a button like that, as only mothers can do. Defenseless, the usher gave up his own button, which my mother then presented to me.

Okay, call me geeky, call me a nerd (I fully expect someone to do that in the comments), but I still have the button and I'm going to quietly wear it tomorrow when I go see Revenge of the Sith. (Which is the first day it is showing in Japan, in a delayed release here.) I've actually never worn it before, not to any subsequent Star Wars movie screenings (though I probably did wear it to school a couple of times 28 years ago). But this being the last film, I figure, why not? (Actually, a search on Google showed several people with the identical pin had the same idea already. So I can't be the geekiest, so what?)

And just in case you were wondering, no, it's not really that valuable as a collectible. Someone on EBay is selling a similar one for $6, though this guy is asking $20 for the one identical to mine. Not that I'd ever part with it--its sentimental value is way too high.

That's Better

I've been using my new Powerbook with 512 MB of RAM, the pre-installed amount, awaiting the delivery of a new 1 GB RAM module. Just got it this morning, and installed it about an hour ago. Got 1.5 GB of RAM now.

Man, what a difference that makes!

My first test with it was to use Virtual PC, which I could now assign 512 MB of RAM all by itself. With the new 1.67 GHz CPU and max RAM for the app, using Windows XP is damn snappy! On my old TiBook (with half the CPU speed and half the RAM I've got now), I used to have to wait several seconds for the screen to redraw and for windows and apps to open. Now using that particular CPU- and RAM-intensive app is much smoother; I almost don't notice that I'm not using a PC.

Even outside of VPC, I could tell that the memory shortage was slowing me down, causing problems when I had several apps open at once. I knew the extra RAM would make a difference--but was still surprised at how much of a difference it made.

One thing I did notice: Dashboard is eating a lot more memory than it was before. Tiger's new Konfabulator-like widget module feature used to eat maybe anywhere from 2 MB to 13 MB per widget upon opening, maybe averaging at 3-4 MB each. (Though memory leaks in Dashboard would cause some widgets' memory allocation to bloat up to dozens of MB each if you left them on long enough.) But after installing the new RAM, tripling my memory, it more than tripled Dashboard's memory usage. One widget started out eating 30 MB of RAM, and the smallest eater was using 15 MB. Each widget was using maybe 20 MB average.

Not that I can't afford it now; even with Virtual PC eating up nearly 600 MB or RAM total, and with Dashboard, Safari, and Ecto operating, I still have almost 500 MB of RAM free, almost my total RAM amount before the upgrade. I could open up several more apps before memory started getting tight.

I always tell my students that they should, as a matter of course, buy more memory when they get a new computer, and I'd tell the same to you. Computer makers want to offer you a machine at the lowest price they can, and one of the easiest ways to make the unit seem cheaper is to give you the minimum RAM necessary. 512 MB is quickly becoming the new norm, since 256 MB can't really cut it so well anymore.

Of course, it's possible you may not need extra RAM. If you only use one app at a time, if you don't use RAM-intensive apps, and if you don't expect to upgrade the OS or apps on your machine for its foreseeable lifetime, then you will probably be happy with what you get at the outset.

Many people are not like that, though. You may play some games with 3-D graphics, you may do photo or movie editing, or you may use apps like VPC. You will probably be opening several applications at the same time. And you will very likely upgrade both apps and operating system at some time, meaning that in a few years, your computer will be eating more memory than it does now; in this respect, adding RAM will effectively extend the lifetime of your computer, allowing you to upgrade farther into the future.

I have a friend who has a 1 GHz Athlon PC running XP. She called me up at one point and told me that she was experiencing a big problem. If she had MS Word only up and running, the computer was fine; but if she opened up another app, like Internet Explorer, suddenly her computer slowed waaay down. I asked her to go to her "My Computer" window, right-click on the icon at the left side of the title bar, select "Properties" from the pop-up menu, and report how much RAM her computer had. Turns out she only had 128 MB of RAM, and that, of course, was her problem.

Extra RAM may add a few hundred dollars to the cost of your computer, but you should see that as a part of the whole price of buying one.

Yet Another Mac-Windows Comparison

One contrast between the two operating systems was one that surprised me at first. At work, there were some Windows machines in the main teacher area (it was a teacher office at a building I usually didn't work at). I wanted to install a specific application on one of the machines to do a task requested of me by the office staff. But when one of the teachers based in that office found out I was installing an app on one of their machines, he nearly exploded, and told me never to install apps on the machines without asking first. At the time, I didn't understand why he was so upset; after all, you can just uninstall later, right? But he insisted that one stray app could screw up other stuff--and he was right. I was just too used to the Mac way of doing things.

Recently I was trying to cut down on some of the bloat on my Windows box, so I went to the Install/Uninstall control panel, looked through the list, found several apps that I never used any more, and uninstalled them. The uninstall program obligingly did away with them, occasionally asking me if I wanted to delete shared resources; each time I said "no," not wanting to screw up anything else on the machine. But of course, it did. Though none of the apps I deleted had anything to do with browsing or even the Internet, my copy of Mozilla promptly developed an incredibly annoying bug: every time I opened up a web page, an error message appeared, telling me that a .dll file could not be accessed. Despite this, the pages I went to all loaded fully, so as far as I could tell, the missing file probably wouldn't affect my browsing. But the error messages persisted, and if I tried to close them, they would continue popping up immediately after I closed the last one, and would continue to do so as long as any page was loading.

As the error message suggested re-installing Mozilla, that's what I did. I uninstalled, and then re-installed the app. No luck--the error dialog boxes kept on coming. As far as I can tell, I'll have to wipe the hard drive clean and re-install everything before I can use Mozilla again. Fortunately, Firefox still works, so I can use that in the meantime. But what a pain.

What's worse, the Windows uninstall app doesn't always do the job. Sometimes it just doesn't work when you try it. Other times it will say it worked, but when you go to the Program Files folder, you'll still see a folder for the app with some files remaining. And, as I described above, sometimes it will remove resources and files used by or affecting other applications, even when you specify not to disturb shared resources. A damned ugly system, inconvenient and annoying.

On the Mac, it's pretty simple: to uninstall a program, just drag the app or its enclosing folder into the trash, and empty the trash. Bam, you're done. But doesn't that leave files behind? Yes, but they're usually so small that they don't take up much disk space, and they don't interfere with other apps. Furthermore, if you ever decide to reinstall the app you removed, all your preferences and registration info are still in place. And if you really want to get rid of the whole thing, just go to the Library folders and remove any specific files or folders in the Preference or Application Support folders; no big deal. And you never have to worry about one app's removal screwing up something else.

Blog Spam Solution

I should provide a wrap-up on how the blog spam is being handled, in case this could help others with an onerous amount of spam on their sites. I seem to have found a solution that allows for most spam to be blocked or moderated. So far, despite thousands of attempts, not one spam comment or trackback has gotten through the defenses on this site since they were erected. It's still early in the game, but I have a feeling that this solution will work. I should note that this applies only to people using Movable Type to administer their blogs.

First, a word about the different kinds of spam: first, there is blog comment spam. This is usually generated by marketers who have automated scripts that search out the comment-generating scripts used by blogs, and then use them to generate hundreds or even thousands of spam-laden comments on the blog. The spam is in the form of links either in the comment body or in the URL link allowed under the visitor's name at the bottom of the comment. The links are not just to bring people from the blog to their advertising site, but just as much if not more to generate "Google Juice," as more external links to their site will boost its all-important ranking in search engine result lists.

Second, there is TrackBack spam. A "TrackBack" is when someone refers to someone else's blog post in a posting on their own site; their blog software will send a 'ping' to the other person's site, informing them that their post was referenced in another blog. Often blog software will create lists of TrackBacks with a link back to the source. Spammers, again trying to get Google Juice wherever they can, send out fake pings so they can get free links again.

And finally, there is referral spam (also called "referrer spam," often spelled "referer spam"). People who keep blogs like to know what attention they're getting. Their web hosts usually provide statistical data, showing how many people visit their site, which pages they go to, and which sites are sending people to theirs via links. For example, if macsurfer.com creates a link on their page to one of my blog posts, people will follow that link to my site. Their arrival brings with them a string a data about them, including which site they came from via a link. This is a referral, which is counted by the stats on my site. I can see how many people followed the link from MacSurfer. Some people, happy to receive links, will obligingly set up top-referrer lists on their web pages, with links back to the nice people who sent visitors their way, as a way of saying 'thanks.' Spammers again take advantage of this by generating bogus automated 'visits' that carry falsified link data, making it look like hundreds of visitors came to the blog from the spam site, when in reality, no link and no visitors actually exist. But this faked referral spam will get them on the referrer's list, and give them even more Google Juice.

Referral spam is loathed by site owners because it goes a long way to making site statistics useless. After all, if you want to know who is really visiting your site and you see thousands of hits from texas-holdem, porn, pharmaceutical and other commercial sites, you know the stats aren't telling you the true story. With all that spam, it's next to impossible to know exactly how much traffic is legitimate. Fortunately, a lot of referral spam originates from the same IP Address, and so even hundreds of spams will likely count as only a few "visitors" in the main part of your stats, making them a bit more reliable, though still altered and uncertain. But the list of referrers, the list of sites with links to yours, is utterly trashed.

Often times these tricks will not even get the spammers what they want; bloggers have more or less stopped posting top-referrer and trackback listings. But the ability to spam in massive quantities is so cheap that spammers don't care if the return is minimal; it's still worth their few bucks because it will likely get them enough to pay for the spamming and then some. And for the spammers, turning up the volume doesn't cost much more, if anything at all, and so the volume of spam being sent is increasing more and more. As bloggers try to block the spam, spammers think of new ways around the defenses.

The current programs to block and filter spam usually work from blacklists. However, the blacklists only know what you've banned in the past, they can't know what a new spammer looks like until you tell them unless the spammer is really obnoxious. So the new spammer, or the ever-changing new face of the spammer, is allowed through the defenses at first before the blog admin catches him and puts him on the blacklist. Once on the blacklist, future attempts to spam are automatically blocked. There are a few tricks that the new apps use to detect spam, and so the new solutions mean that very little, if indeed any, spam gets through to appear on the blog at all, even for a short time.

So, what are the solutions?

First: MT-Blacklist. This is a long-standing spam filter that I've used for more than a year now. MT-Blacklist maintains a list of text strings (either words, strings with wild cards, or URLs) that the user has designated as spamworthy. Every new comment and trackback ping that comes in to the blog gets checked against this list, and is blocked if a match is found. Furthermore--and this is what wowed me the first time I used it--it has the ability to "de-spam," which means that even if new spam has gotten past the filters, if you add a text string from the offending spam messages, MT-Blacklist could access all the archived comments and purge all the spam from there as well. These two combined features--blocking and de-spamming--made controlling spam completely possible.

Unfortunately, the de-spamming feature is missing in the new version. Movable Type itself has a comment filter in version 3, which allows you to single out comments by a common email, name, or IP address, after which you can auto-check all of them and de-spam. This will be useful, but only if the email, name or IP in a huge chunk of first-time spam that gets through is identical in multiple comment spams. However, that is all too often not the case. If Movable Type could add a filter for strings inside the comment text itself, that would plug that hole and bring back full de-spamming power.

However, as the author of MT-Blacklist pointed out here himself in a recent comment, MT-Blacklist, especially when used in conjunction with SpamLookup, blocks so much of the spam that de-spamming may not ever be a problem task. Still, it would be nice to have around just in case.

The new MT-B has some handy new features which makes catching that spam possible. One of them is the ability to filter comments with too many URLs; a common practice among spammers is to leave a comment with dozens of links. Since no real commenters do this, it's an excellent way to filter out the spammers. MT-B will also now block comments or trackbacks which are duplicates of prior entries, another good filter against spam. MT-B will also automatically update the blacklist from the master blacklist for the app, meaning you get protection even before the spam reaches your site.

The second element to block spam, as I mentioned above, is SpamLookup. A new MT plug-in, it does something similar to MT-Blacklist, using IP addresses of spammers from a master list to help block spam. This method is called DNSBL. This plug-in also uses a good number of other defenses, including multiple-URL blocks, domain blacklist checks, and your own blacklist of text strings to force-moderate or block a comment or trackback ping, similar to MT-Blacklist.

I have both MT-Blacklist and SpamLookup installed. I am not sure which one filters before the other, but I suspect MT-Blacklist does. It catches pretty much all the comment spam. SpamLookup then gets all the trackback spam. Together, they make it extremely unlikely that much spam will get through. And what does get through--maybe one out of every thousand or so spams--gets moderated, where I can give it the boot manually, adding it to the blacklist--which brings us to:

Third, the blog software itself, Movable Type 3.1. The upgrade from version 2 to 3 brought with it very important blog spam safeguards: moderated posts and comment registration. Before, even with MT-Blacklist doing the efficient job it did, the first-time spams I mentioned before would get through, and sometimes stay up on my site for hours before I could spot them and take them down, especially if they hit during the night time here in Japan. Post moderation means that no spam gets through to the blog at all; I might have to moderate it if it doesn't get filtered, but at least it never gets posted publicly, which is a big thing if you want to de-incentivize spammers. In addition, the Typekey registration allows commenters to post comments without having to wait for moderation, putting the onus of spam control partially on that side of the equation, and allowing legitimate commenters to bypass the moderation in a way spammers can't.

So these tools combined make it possible to block pretty much all of the comment and trackback spam. What remains is the referral spam. As yet, there is no fix-all for this problem, but it appears that a patch for the statistics program "AwStats" (my favorite) is doing a fairly good job at keeping most of the junk out. This patch will not de-spam your stats, but it will block any incoming referrer spam by using the MT-B blacklist file as a filter. The spammers may hit your site, but the hits don't get counted in AwStats.

After having used it for a few weeks now, it seems to be doing its job. In May, before I got the patch, the top 25 spammers left more than 10,000 referral spams in my logs. In the first five days of June, the top 26 referrers were all spammers, and had hit me a total of 867 times between those top spammers, averaging out to about 175 new top-26 spams each day. Since the patch was installed, only 21 of the top 26 are spammers (5 legitimate referrers got back on the list!), and those spammers have a total of only 1434 hits--a total of 567 new hits over the course of 16 days, or just 35 new top-26 spams each day, meaning the major referral spam has been cut by about 80%. Some referral spam is getting through, but mostly it's just the first-time stuff, before it gets added to the blacklist. Next month, with the patch in place from the beginning, I will be interested to see how little spam gets through at all.

The down side to the AwStats patch (aside from the fact that you need AwStats in the first place) is that it has very little documentation. Because of this, it was unclear to me how the patch would be applied. AwStats itself is a server-level app, meaning that I can't patch the Perl script that makes AwStats run. However, it seems that only the ".conf" file for AwStats needs to be changed. Again, the project site is unclear, but seems to indicate that a tool called "GNU Patch" is needed to install it. How that works, I have no idea. All I know is that the patch must be worked into the AwStats .conf file, and that the pathway to the MT-B blacklist.txt file must also be added... somewhere.

Fortunately, my web host (might as well give Surpass Hosting a plug, seeing as how they did me a favor) support technician helpfully volunteered to install the patch, and apparently did the job right, as it seems to be working. Unless you know how to use the GNU patch tool and stuff like that, you might want to ask your web host for the same favor. The file that needs to be patched is titled "awstats.domain.com.conf" (replace "domain.com" with your domain name and extension), located in "tmp/awstats" on your home directory. The pathway to the MT-Blacklist file is probably "/home/youraccountname/public_html/blacklist.txt", though you should check that first. MT-B v. 1.6 allowed you to see the pathway, but I can't seem to find the pathway listing in version 2.

So, to sum up: using Movable Type 3.1, MT-Blacklist 2, SpamLookup, and a patch for AwStats, I've been able to solve--finally!--most of my spam headaches.

Now to wonder about what the spamming scumbags will come up with next...

Bush Still Neglecting the Troops

In case anyone has forgotten, the Bush administration doesn't give a rat's ass about the troops fighting their wars. Once the photo op is over, Bush couldn't care less about whether they live or die. Beyond cutting their benefits and their combat pay, beyond backdoor drafts and forcing troops to serve far longer than any reasonable expectations would allow, beyond forcing them to pay for hospital food when they get maimed and cutting VA support when wounded soldiers get back home, the Bush administration is simply not giving them the equipment they need to stay alive. The same administration which has no trouble giving hundreds of billions of dollars in new, additional tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires every year can't even be bothered to spend $600 per soldier on stuff like personal armor to keep them from getting killed:

Marine Pfc. Jeremy Tod called home with news that his superiors were urging him and fellow Marines to buy special military equipment, including flak jackets with armor plating, to enhance the prospects of their survival. ...

Besides the essential flak jacket with steel "trauma" plates, the shopping list for the young Marine included a Camelbak (water pouch) special ballistic goggles, knee and elbow pads, a "drop pouch" to hold ammunition magazines and a load-bearing vest. [story via DKos]

Soldiers are being told that they have to buy their own equipment, or "when they get to Iraq they will wish they had."

This is so typical of this administration--oozing endlessly about how they care about a constituency and then quietly savaging them when the cameras have turned away. Even with all the other crap the Bush administration is doing, this has got to be among the worst. Not that it's new, of course--if you recall, troops had to (still have to?) use "hillbilly armor" to protect their vehicles from roadside bomb attacks and other assaults because the Bush administration failed to provide them with the armored vehicles they needed, and then lied about the availability of the armor. They only started providing it when one soldier had the guts to press Rumsfeld on it personally.

And when soldiers do fall in battle, don't expect any respect then. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld--none of them bother to contact the bereaved families or even sign the letters sent to them, and their flag-draped coffins are carefully hidden from public view, firing the people who dared release such images. And when Bush did attend the funeral of one Australian soldier, the widow was purposefully not invited to the photo op.

This is a truly sickening, though not wholly unexpected, aspect of the Bush administration.

Tidal Wave

It seems as though I reinforced my spam barriers just in time. Although I wouldn't notice it because my filters keep all but a few bits of debris out of my sight, I can look at the logs and peek at what's going on behind the dam I've erected. And it's horrific. The spammers are now unleashing huge floods of spam upon this blog, and probably to the blogging world in general. In just over the past one day, more than 2000 attempted spam comments were shot in my direction. And trackback spam, once just a sometimes thing, has similarly exploded: more than 200 in the last day. Incredible. God help the poor wretch with a blog who doesn't know how to install a spam filter. Think about it: in one month, you could find your blog choked with 60,000 comment spams and 6000 trackback spams. Good lord.

And now it's no longer the porn or pharmaceutical industries that are leading the charge--the overwhelming offenders are the gambling sites, both poker and casinos. They're making the porn and pill people look like jaywalkers.

Anyone out there with an independently-run blog (not Blogspot) with comments activated? How are you holding up?

Comments Resolved

Okay, I've fixed the error in the comments that kept giving people a "comment-pending template missing" message. It should now give you a message telling you that your comment is waiting for moderation. The comment system should be working fine now.

The new blog setup is also working fine. MT-Blacklist is blocking most of the comment spam coming in (about 500 spams daily!) and SpamLookup is blocking the Trackback spam (another couple hundred every day), while the blacklist patch to AwStats actually seems to be successful in blocking most of the referral spam, though it doesn't stop the initial flood from beginning before I can add the keywords to the spam blacklist. So my spam moderation has dropped to just a few per day, and my statistics, while still flooded with spam, aren't nearly as choked as they used to be. That's livable. I shudder to think what it would be like if none of these spam filters were available--comments would have to be shut down completely.

Still, comment moderation, while it works and keeps spam out, is less than perfect due to the wait involved for the comment to appear. Using Typekey would solve that problem, but many don't want to suffer the hassle needed to set up the account, which I can fully understand. So, if you post here even semi-frequently, feel free to ask me to set up a Typekey account for you--just leave a comment asking that. I'll hand it over to you via email (I'll give you an address to contact me at if I don't know yours), giving you the username and password. Then you just click the "sign in" link next time you leave a comment, insert the username/password, have your browser remember the info, and from then on in it's automatic. That should make commenting easier than before, and the same Typekey account can be used to comment in any other blog using Movable Type 3.1.

Any comments, suggestions or observations about the site?

Eye for an Eye

Is it my imagination, or have we adopted the relativist philosophy that says we are good so long as we are not worse than the bad guy?

Take Iraq, as an example. When the fact is brought up that we have killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the counter-argument always seems to be that more would have died under Saddam Hussein. When the Abu Ghraib prison torture, abuse, and killings by the U.S. came to light, the argument was that Saddam's torture, abuse and killings were worse than what we were doing.

This is not exactly a new justification for unacceptable behavior, it seems ingrained in our culture. It's okay for us to do almost anything, so long as we can point to someone associated with the target of our behavior who did something worse, or who did it first (although with Bush, the bad guy didn't even have to strike first, we just have to think he will). You hit me, so I hit you back; your violence justifies mine. The death penalty is this principle writ large: we can kill this person because he killed someone else. How very Old Testament.

Which brings up another observation: where are the Christians when it comes to the real world? You hear a lot about Jesus Christ from Christians when it comes to the abstract, to belief and prayer and Who's Your Savior and all that. Who's your most respected philosopher? Jesus Christ. Whose teachings do you follow? Jesus Christ. Peaceful teachings, teachings of love and restraint. Jesus is the emblem and icon of the faith, the face for the world to see.

But when it comes to actually applying one's faith to the real world, suddenly Jesus isn't around so much and Christians tend to go straight for the Old Testament. Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth, and Smite the Bastards.

Okay, I know this doesn't describe all Christians, and maybe not even most Christians. If you're more about forgiveness than vengeance, my apologies and wonderful on ya mate. But from looking at how said application influences our society, it's certainly the Christians who speak out and do things that affect all of us who seem to fall into this particular category I'm talking about. It's as if Christianity has a multiple-personality disorder, and when any stress is applied, the God-of-Moses personality suddenly appears. Or even New Testament, but not the parts that came from Jesus Christ.

It just seems to me that if you call yourself a "Christian," then you should follow what Christ said first and last, especially when it comes to what actions you take in life; everything else in the scripture and dogma should come second, and not at all when it contradicts what Christ said and did, the philosophy and way of living that he personified.

Or do I have it wrong?

Quake

A fairly strong quake just hit. Not so much as to make anything fall, but it shook pretty strongly here, in the higher range of strong earthquakes as they tend to go in this region. Enough to make me worry about bolting for a few seconds, at least.

Preliminary reports have it as a 5.1 on the Richter scale, centered on the coastline of Chiba, about 70-100 km east of where I live. On the Japanese scale, it's a 4 in Chiba, and a 3 in Tokyo and Kanagawa. NHK is talking about it--it was strong enough for them to interrupt broadcasting and show maps and pictures of building-top cameras swaying.

Always interesting when the world shakes.

Update: the quake has been upgraded to a 5.6 on the Richter scale.

And So It Continues

I never got an answer to my question from three days ago. I invited any of the many visitors to this site who claimed that Terri Schiavo was clearly conscious and able to talk and swallow, and that her husband clearly abused and strangled her, to come forward and admit they were wrong, pointing out how this is what I do when I'm proven wrong. This after a right-wing visitor accused me of being the obstinate one. So were there any takers?

Silence.

They're silent in the media, too, none of them admitting to being wrong. In fact, not only are they dismissing the autopsy (often calling it a conspiracy to cover up for Michael Schiavo), but now good ol' Jeb Bush is demanding an investigation into Terri's collapse 15 years ago. In other words, he's been badly embarrassed and burned by his stupid political posturing in the matter, and so wants to divert blame to someone else.

Think about it: the autopsy refutes pro-life claims that Michael Schiavo beat, strangled and poisoned his wife. The results don't just say it's inconclusive, they say that it didn't happen.

After compelling evidence suggests the husband did not attempt to kill his wife, one would think that the matter would be over. If legal challenges were to be brought forth now, one would imagine they would be libel and slander lawsuits brought on by the defamed husband against all those who made such false claims against him over the years. Is that what happened?

Of course not. Instead, Governor Bush, against all standing evidence to the contrary, is effectively setting the law enforcement agencies of the state of Florida to find some way to blame Michael Schiavo for his wife's heart failure 15 years ago.

Now, can we absolutely rule out the possibility of Schiavo causing his wife's condition that morning in February 1990? No. We know he didn't beat her. We know he didn't strangle her. That doesn't mean he didn't actually do anything to her, but it certainly doesn't support such an allegation, either. There simply is no evidence to suggest he's lying, and in this country, a man is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. It's 15 years after the fact. The only existing evidence clears Michael Schiavo of wrongdoing. Is there really a chance of proving anything?

No. This is little more than a cheap politician abusing a man already horrendously abused by the system, so the politician can look even the smallest bit justified for being an idiot.

I've been looking around on the Internet for information on what happened the evening of Terri Schiavo's heart failure, but unfortunately, there is little available. There are mountains of pro-life or anti-Michael-Schiavo sites which claim to tell the story, but such sites are universally so biased and contorted that anything they report is, to say the least, questionable. I did find this report from the New York Review of Books which gave some information, and this St. Petersburg Times article gives even more. They at least lay out a timeline:

Schiavo called 911 at 5:40 am. 12 minutes later, at 5:52 am, the paramedics arrive, finding Terri "not breathing and in ventricular fibrillation." The paramedics shocked Terri seven times with a defibrillator. It was not until 6:32 am that a pulse was reestablished, and 6:46 for Terri to register "measurable systolic blood pressure ."

What does this prove? Well, those accusing Schiavo claim that he has variously stated that Terri collapsed at 4:30 and 5:00, and this discrepancy makes him look guilty. Why? How could getting the time wrong be a sign of guilt? If he had claimed one time as being iron-clad, and then later changed his story with equal confidence, that might be a sign of guilt. But that's not what he did. He simply wasn't sure of the time. You think he was looking at clocks when his wife went into cardiac arrest? After all, if he were lying, wouldn't it be more likely he would be consistent about the time? And if he's honest, why would he be any more consistent about a time he probably was unsure of? Besides, doctors have stated that if Terri had collapsed at 4:30 or 5:00, she could not possibly have been revived. Most likely, Michael Schiavo simply didn't think about the time when Terri collapsed, and didn't consider it important; had there truly been a delay of forty minutes to one hour and ten minutes, Terri would have expired. That didn't happen, which means that Mr. Schiavo must have called 911 immediately.

Furthermore, the source of the time claims is flimsy as far as evidence is concerned. The pro-lifers have been acting as if his reports of the time were definite and iron-clad, but they were anything but. When he mentioned 5:00 am in his 1992 trial, he did not state it as an exact time, nor did he say he was sure. He said, "I believe it was almost five a.m." and he was not pressed to state he was certain. The 4:30 time statement was on a TV interview, even less formal; Schiavo placed the time as "I'd say, about 4:30 in the morning." These are not certain statements of facts, the man's being asked to recall something he's not sure of, and he's not sure for good reason.

And yet, Bush is citing this "time gap" as his "evidence" that Schiavo is guilty of killing his wife. Bush said this discrepancy was "a significant question that during this ordeal was never brought up," which is a joke because the pro-lifers have been harping on this endlessly for years.

Schiavo has been consistent in saying that he called 911 immediately. That he didn't stop to record the time and etch it into his memory at the time is not a sign of guilt.

There are further claims about what happened that morning, but all of them are made by heavily biased sites, and their accuracy is highly questionable. They allege that Schiavo called both Terri's father, and then brother (who lived in the same apartment complex) before dialing 911. They claim that Terri's father told him to call 911, but that also Schiavo called Terri's brother, Bobby Schindler, before he called 911. Schindler also claims Terri was face-down when he arrived. But these articles also claim that the paramedics found Terri face-down, as well. The "face down" testimony is supposed to prove that Michael Schiavo didn't turn his wife over when she collapsed, as he claimed, or that he shoved her back on her face--either way, signifying cruelty, not care. But if they are true, and Schiavo did call Terri's brother before the paramedics, that introduces a bizarre scenario: The paramedics took 12 minutes to arrive. Schindler should have arrived at least 10 minutes before they did. So are we to believe that Schindler and Schiavo stood around chatting for ten minutes while Terri lay face-down on the floor? Not to mention that Schindler did not contradict Schiavo on Terri's position until years afterward, only after the disagreement between Schiavo and the Schindlers erupted. It seems more apparent that these articles are throwing in any and every claim possible to make Michael Schiavo look guilty, without regard to consistency.

If one thing is clear about this case, it is that the conservative politicians aren't through pandering to their religious-right base yet.

No Documentation

What is it with non-commercial programmers/scripters and documentation? This is something I have noticed for years: people who write small scripts or programs that are not self-executing rarely write more than a few lines of vague instructions on how to use them, even if that much. These people apparently feel that telling other people how to use their creations is unnecessary. "Here's a great script," they tell you, "which will do all these great things." But they don't tell you where to put it, how to modify it, or anything else that's necessary for using it. Sometimes these people don't even make clear what their script even does beyond general descriptions.

Are they just yanking our chains, or do people who acquire the skill to script suddenly lose sight of the fact that most people don't know how to script or use a command line interface, and can't figure out what the hell they're supposed to do with these cryptic files? Better not to publish on the Internet claiming you've just created something useful, for all the headaches you cause so many people trying to follow up on your promise of a cool product with needed features. I'm not trying to be ungrateful, these people put a lot of work into some good ideas to make a useful product. But if you spend that much time making the script and then bail on the documentation, then what's the point?

And I'm not talking about full tech support here. I'm talking about sitting down for two friggin' minutes and writing down the most basic of instructions. If the file is self-executing, and simply works when you double-click it, then fine, minimal documentation is OK (ironically, those programs usually have good documentation), but the stuff that needs to be changed and placed just so--these are the ones the developers seem to completely abandon once they finish coding.

Were this only a sometimes thing, it wouldn't be so bad--but it seems that it's the case nine times out of ten. Is it just me, or what?

Tweak

Are you using Safari? If so, look at the search box on this page. Notice anything about it? Rounded corners, gray placeholder text, the circle-x 'clear' button once text has been inserted?

It turns out that Apple created a few new tag features just for Safari, intended for Dashboard widgets, which are based in Safari. The ones I'm using are for the <input> command, namely type="search" and placeholder="Go fish!". The type="search" attribute is the key one, though--that's the one that rounds the corner and gives you the circle-x button. And it is invisible to other browsers, so they still see the regular search box--which means 91% of my visitors. So no loss, but a little cool tweak gained with the extra code. Heard about it on Ars Technica (though they don't seem to like it), and more in detail from Bartelme Design. The "placeholder" attribute, by the way, adds the gray text inside the search box which disappears when you click to type.

So far I've applied it to the main page, the individual archive pages, and the search page. What I haven't figured out yet is how to make the little magnifying-glass icon appear on the left so you can review recent searches...

Update: a helpful member at Ars Technica filled out the answer: in order to get the "recent searches" menu, you have to add both "autosave" and "results" attributes. For example: <input type="search" autosave="anyname" results="5" placeholder="Search this site..."> and that would give you all you need for the full search box in Safari, recent-search magnifying glass icon and all. Cool! Now, everybody just switch to Safari, now that you have a reason.

Site Upgrade Continues

Okay, I've figured out the comment system and have revamped things a bit with this whole Movable Type 3 upgrade.

I'll continue with comment moderation, but there's an easy way around it: register with TypeKey. It's explained on this page, but essentially it's a free registration system which will allow you to place comments here and any other Weblog using Movable Type 3 without moderation, meaning your comments appear immediately.

If you log into TypeKey and allow the cookie to stay, it works seamlessly. If you log out of TypeKey or if the cookie expires, then it's a click-new page-click-and-back exercise, and probably takes less time than typing in your name and email anyway.

Without registration, comments are of course still open and I'll usually be quick about approving them (my computer is usually on and the comments are emailed to me, causing Eudora to beep at me). Except, of course, when I'm asleep....

As a result of all this, the site should (knock on wood) be completely free of spam.

Additionally, the comments are now back to their normal appearance, and the search template has been rewritten so as not to look completely spazzy.

One note about the upgrade: MT-Blacklist apparently becomes far less functional, which is a pain in the neck. Under MT v. 2, MT-Blacklist will not only block new spam in comments and trackback which match blacklist criteria, but can also "de-spam," which means that if a spammer got 500 spams into your blog before you could add him to the blacklist, the de-spamming ability would allow you to flush all that out of your blog with a few clicks of the mouse.

For some unexplained reason, MT-Blacklist 2 lacks the de-spamming ability, which is a major annoyance to me. It essentially makes the program half as strong as it used to be and makes it far less appealing. While MT v. 3 does allow for possible de-spamming of moderated comments and trackbacks in the control panel, it doesn't work as easily as MT-Blacklist used to. I would have thought that an upgrade would enhance or add features, not chop them in half.

However, there might be a new plug-in that works as well: SpamLookup. I'll let you know how it works. If it does, then maybe I'll be freed from constant spam moderation. One can only hope.

The Blame Game, Act CCXXXIV

From the Washington Post:

On Social Security in particular, Bush has called on Democrats to offer their own proposals instead of simply attacking his, but the tactic has largely not worked.

The tactic has been a common one, but also always an empty one: the Republicans are the ones with more or less complete power in Congress, and every time Democrats come up with a proposal, it is shot down immediately by Republicans. So the call for Democrats to come up with something is obviously not a call for compromise or a desire to flesh out the possibilities, but rather simply a desire for Republicans to be able to criticize the Democrats for something. And why should the Democrats comply? They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. No plan of theirs will make it through the Republican Congress, and they'll just be opening themselves up for attack.

One of the downsides to having complete power in Washington is that you have no one to blame but yourself--not that this fact will stop the GOP from trying. This tired, self-serving call for Democratic proposals is simply a vain attempt by Republicans to try to have their cake and eat it, too. But the GOP is working hard to try to turn this against Democrats, and no one should take GOP PR drives lightly; they have succeeded at making the ludicrous popular many times before.

The ludicrous part? That Bush and the GOP are trying to set up the Democrats as being "obstructionist." Um, obstructionist how? What exactly are they blocking? Bush says they're obstructing Social Security, but if Bush had all the GOP on his side, then there would be little the Dems could do aside from filibuster, and there has been no filibuster of any Social Security bill. In fact, there hasn't even been a Social Security bill in Congress, that I know of. So how can the Democrats be obstructing it? By not coming up with their own plan which Bush would immediately reject and then bash Democrats with? Um, yeah, right.

It's Here!

Got the new PowerBook. And as advertised, it's very, very nice. Transferred all my data and settings from the old TiBook, it was very seamless. So far, it's working brilliantly. It plays the Hi-res Apple Movie trailers quite well, ones which would not play well at all on my old 'Book. And though the unit gets hot, it doesn't get nearly as hot as my older computer would get. And though it's supposed to be .2 pounds heavier, somehow it feels lighter, even when holding both computers at the same time, one in each hand. I haven't had the chance to take it for a real spin yet, and won't see its full effect until the 1GB RAM upgrade gets here next week.

One problem: a dead pixel. Yargh. At least, it's partly dead. As far as I can tell, only the green element to the pixel is dead. But in most circumstances, it makes the pixel look dead, next to the other pixels around it. Anything that's not pure red, blue or purple, anything that's lighter than that, and it shows up. And there seems to be another pixel stuck on blue as well. The good news, somewhat: both are on the right side of the screen, less than an inch from the edge, so they won't be so noticeable. But you always really hope for the screen to be perfect. And Apple's policy is to accept anywhere up to five or perhaps seven dead or stuck pixels on a screen. Won't stop me from taking it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in Ginza and seeing what they say and do about it. I doubt I'll get anywhere, but best to try all options.

Laid to Rest

I was just recently lectured at by a posturing right-wing commenter who claimed that I would never concede an opponent's point "no matter how strong the evidence." A completely false claim: to state a few examples off the top of my head, I conceded to a conservative commentator on a Schiavo post where I had not fully made clear the nature of certain witnesses, to a conservative visitor who pointed out a Clinton quote I had overlooked, and, not to put too sharp a point on it, a concession to the very person who claimed I never would make concessions, in the form of agreeing to Rodney Peairs' grievous error in judgment the night Yoshi Hattori was killed. A concession made to this person, a few weeks before this person complained I never conceded anything. Rather typical of the right-wing visitors to this site.

So now let's see how well it works the other way. I have been writing on the Terri Schiavo case since October 2003, and have received a good many vitriolic comments from people on the other side of the fence. Many claiming that Michael Schiavo was a wife abuser and murderer and denied Terri therapy, others stating that Terri Schiavo was fully capable of not only recovery but could swallow on her own and would make a substantial recovery with treatment. I argued against those points, making references to a great deal of evidence and court proceedings, to be rebutted by people who vilified the judges for not agreeing with them, and regurgitating pap from pro-life spin sites.

These people were certain that Terri Schiavo was not in a persistent vegetative state (she was, they claimed, in a "minimally conscious state" and could "wake up" any time); that she could recover with therapy; that she could swallow on her own and could sometimes even talk; that dehydration would be incredibly painful for her, as she could still feel; and that we could see from the video tape on TV that she could follow movement and react to people talking to her and looking at her. They touted a "world-renowned" doctor "nominated for a Nobel Prize" who supported their case.

The argument back: doctors, including court-appointed physicians, presented evidence that most of Terri's cerebral cortex was gone and that she was indeed in a persistent vegetative state and beyond any recovery; that repeated tests showed she had been incapable of swallowing for years; that dehydration would not be painful because she no longer possessed the capacity to feel pain; and that the video shown endlessly on TV was heavily edited and represented only random, reflexive movements and not consciousness. And the "renowned" doctor was a charlatan (see comment section), who was never officially nominated for a Nobel Prize.

Had I posted this yesterday, I would likely have gotten a sheaf of vicious and venomous arguments from the "Terri Was Conscious" crowd. But now the results of her autopsy are in:

Terri Schiavo was indeed in a persistent vegetative state.

She was incapable of swallowing. (Remember those protesters who tried to get to Terri to pour water down her throat?)

Her brain damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy would have helped.

The autopsy results showed that fully half her brain had wasted away, and just as all the doctors (except for the quacks hired by the pro-lifers) had stated, her cerebral cortex was gone. In fact, even the visual centers of her brain were dead. Remember the videotape? Remember how convincing they made it look with editing, as if she were following the balloon movements? Remember how the pro-lifers argued that this "proved" she could follow movement? Well, the autopsy proved that she couldn't even see movement.

But what about the nurses who came forward and said that they saw Terri swallowing and talking? After all, two nurses came forth, and they would never lie, would they?

Well, obviously they were lying. And not just a little.

And then there were the endless allegations that Michael Schiavo caused her injuries, that he abused her, strangled her, tried to inject her with poisons. The autopsy results vindicate Schiavo's claims of innocence, showing no evidence whatsoever of strangulation, abuse, or poisoning. Interestingly, they do not support the theory that she collapsed due to bulimia, either. So no explanation is forthcoming--but the baseless accusations of the pro-life crowd against Michael Schiavo are now laid bare as false. Not that this will stop them from believing any of this; already the pro-lifers are slinging an amazing amount of complete fiction in a vain attempt to deny the autopsy findings, and her parents are apparently just beginning to plan legal battles for God-knows-what.

And of course, the re-posturing has already begun, with pro-lifers just beginning to claim that the PVS, the alleged abuse, the lack of a cerebral cortex, and so on were never really at the center of their argument at all, that it was all really about "starving the disabled." Just like Bush claiming that Iraq was never about WMD, but rather about Democracy in Iraq. And doubtless that the pro-life crowds will eat it up.

Amazing what people will believe, how easily they are willingly fooled. The evidence was all there for people to see, but the personal and political bias of the pro-life crowd made them blind to what was plain.

So I come back to my original theme: I've been willing to admit I was wrong when conclusive evidence was presented.

To all the pro-lifers who came here before, raged on in certainty and heaped verbal abuse, using names such as "fool," "moron," "intellectual nazi" and "scumbag," saying the "lies" and "exaggeration" were "reprehensible"... but even more so to those who more politely and yet vehemently argued that Terri was provably conscious, capable of recovery, swallowing and talking, and that the video proved she was so: how about you? Can you admit when you're wrong?

In the meantime, what we have left here is a tragic story of a lovely young person who died for unknown reasons, whose husband cared for her for years until he accepted the evidence the doctors gave him, who battled for years and withstood vicious smears so that he could honor his wife's wishes--though it would have been simple, and eventually highly profitable for him to simply stand aside and give Terri to her parents against her wishes. And finally, fifteen years after her death, her body was allowed to follow her spirit.

Rest in peace, Terri, and I hope you didn't have to watch all this from wherever you are.

Upgrading

Okay, the site itself has been upgraded to Movable Type 3.17. However, I'm still trying to get used to all the new stuff, so please be patient in the meantime. One point is that the comments are now being moderated, which means that when you leave a comment, it will not be posted immediately. Instead, it will be sent to me for approval, and will appear when I get to it. I'll try to make that as soon as possible, but it might take several hours (especially if I'm sleeping!). Anyone out there know, for example, how to create registered commenters? I'll learn how, but I gotta do some reading and experimenting, and I did sort of start this project late at night on the eve of a workday. So there'll be a bit of a lag before stuff gets smoothed out.

Hopefully, the upgrade (along with MT-Blacklist 2 once I get around to installing it) will come along quickly. Anyone out there with experience with version three and you know some possible kinks in the system and things to look out for, let me know!

While We're Redecorating...

I'm finally getting off my duff and upgrading to Movable Type 3, but in the process there may be a few quirks. If the blog does not display or accept actions as it usually does, please be patient.

Thanks!

Confirmation

I received an email from Apple telling me that the PowerBook G4 I ordered last week will be arriving late this week, earlier than they first predicted. They told me it would get here on the 22nd, but now the correspondence says it'll get here no later than this Friday, the 17th.

But that's not the confirmation I'm referring to in the title of this entry. Rather, it's a review of the exact same PowerBook model on a website called "Notebook Review." The article is written by Gabe Lipson, a long-time Windows user who intended to buy another PC, but heard of issues with the model he wanted and quickly was sold on the PowerBook when he visited an Apple Store.

Many parts of the review are comforting especially in light of the possibility of Mactel Powerbooks as early as a year from now. Lipson points out that using a very simple benchmark (calculating pi to 2 million digits), the PowerBook outperforms a range of Pentium-M Wintel laptops running from 1.6 to 1.9 GHz; so despite the lack of a G5, the PowerBook G4 is still fast enough to rank up there in the laptop market. I know that more complex benchmarks will rank things differently, but still we're talking about an equivalent class of computers.

Lipson also compared the PowerBook screen favorably compared to the highly-touted BrightView reflective screen. I've seen these on PCs and they look very nice, but as Lipson points out, the reflective part seems like it could be an annoyance. The PowerBook's screen, he reports, does just as good a job without that down point.

Otherwise, Lipson praises though does not gush about the PowerBook: the size of the computer, the keyboard and the screen is just about right, not too big or small; the speakers do well, the processor performs well, the ports, WiFi and battery all perform as well as can be expected. Lipson likes the backlit keyboard, and admires OS X 10.4.

All of this not bad at all for a notebook computer which has received no significant processor upgrades for the past three years!

Lipson also mirrors my worries and complaints: the possibility of dead pixels (crossing my fingers big-time) and the fact that you never know when a huge upgrade may or may not be just around the corner.

This is what I've become used to hearing from long-time Wintel users who make the switch: pleasantly surprised. It also confirms many of the reasons why I like the Mac.

One more point, while I'm here: there has been a lot of talk in the past week about how Mac users are reacting to the switch to Intel, as if we're all supposed to feel betrayed or something. My reaction has been, "why?" The Mac switched over to RISC and IBM years back, and it didn't hurt me at all then. Apple will likely make this change just as transparent. So what? A new chip is a new chip.

Many Windows enthusiasts have been crowing about this, gloating about how Mac fans have been touting the PPC, and now have to eat crow over the switch to Intel. I don't get that, either. I had great hopes for what IBM was supposed to deliver, and if it towered over what Windows PCs were getting, all the better. But what happened was IBM's failure, not Apple's, so Apple just went with someone else who could do a better job. Maybe if I'd been going on about how crappy Intel chips were and IBM was so superior and that's the way it would be forever and ever and I'm so sure I would bet the farm, then I'd have to eat crow. But even at that, for the present at least, IBM's existing chips are still superior to most of what's out there in the Windows market. This is evidenced by what I mentioned above, that the laptop G4 still compares well to the latest Wintel chip offerings. The problem is that IBM has stalled and had no future promise--and apparently, no interest, either.

The only way that I see the Mactel news as being of any importance is that it seems to signal strong possibilities for the Mac OS to encroach on the Windows market. And even many Windows enthusiasts I see on the web seem to be more biased towards PC hardware, and would be fine with the Mac OS, so long as it could work transparently with Windows software--which is what will very likely happen.

How to Make a Web Page

Here's both an offer and a request for those of you who want to learn how to code web pages. I teach an introductory computer class, and part of it is to learn how to code HTML. The basics, of course, not advanced stuff.

I like to create my own materials (finding books to teach it in just the way you want is usually more trouble than just doing it yourself!), and I just finished a huge chunk of it. My students will be using it soon, but I wanted to put a copy of it up here to see if anyone here could find a use for it, and if you do, then let me know what you think of it, and how it rates as a primer for beginners.

If you already know basic HTML coding, then this will likely be boring for you. But if you know nothing at all about how to write a web page using HTML, this guide should (knock on wood) teach you how.

I'd appreciate any and all comments, kibitzing, critiques and corrections to make this better for my students. Keep in mind that the formatting is simple (white backgrounds, not much garnishing) because this is a first draft; future drafts may include more formatting so it is easier to read. Although it is intended to accompany several regular classes in which I'll be walking them through all of this, it'd be nice if it could be self-contained as well. And yes, I know the last two chapters and the project outline are missing--those have yet to be written.

Also note that this is aimed at Windows users. If you use a Mac, the pages will still work, except you should use a simple text editor like iText to write the pages, instead of Windows' Notepad. I avoid TextEdit because after saving and re-opening web pages, it tries to display them like web pages instead of showing the code, and I don't like trying to reset it to do what I want. I hate simple programs that try to "help" you too much!

Here's the link to the HTML Primer.

Thanks in advance!

This Is Where It Gets Creepy

See the pretty girl giving the demonstration at the World Expo in Aichi? At first, seeing what looked like a little camera behind her, I thought she was wearing gloves as part of some motion-sensor demonstration. It was only when I read the small print that I found out what I never would have guessed: that's not a girl. It's an android. Specifically, it's the Repliee Q1, developed by Osaka University. As the unit's co-creator points out, when androids get to looking that human, it gets a little creepy.

When you visit the project's home page, the photos there are higher-definition and the android no longer looks as perfectly human as it does in the Expo photo. But well worth watching are the three MPG videos of the android talking, moving, and reacting to someone touching it. Here it's a mixture of the thing looking less human than you thought but at the same time also looking more human than you might have expected.

One thing it suggests: androids indistinguishable from humans are a little less far off in the future than you may have thought. They're not coming soon, but we're farther along the road than I'd have thought.

Meiji Shrine Pic

Just a little pic here. I know that I've been low on photos as of late (as one commenter gently hinted), but rainy season is here and there have been a lot more rainy weekends than not. Right now we're in the midst of Typhoon #4, and there are a lot of numbers left. So hang tight, and here's a sliver shot of Meiji Shrine taken in recent better weather, with a 1280-pixel-wide version available on click.

What the Heck?

For a few months now, I have been somewhat mystified about how some particular people have been finding my blog via search engine. My blog's search engine stats reveal how many people find my blog through Google, Yahoo and others, and they reveal what search terms led to my site. And far too many have been of a rather pornographic nature.

They include "seven of nine nude," "nude harry potter," "nude widget," "busty american soldier," "katherine harris nude" (yecchh), "nude taiko drumming," "seven of nine sex porn nude," "harry potter porn," "kung fu porn," "porn widgets," "surprise porn," "nasal porn" (wha??), "walter cronkite nude photo" (almost but not quite as much 'yecchh' as for Katherine Harris), "porn with popcorn," "hurricane george and porn," "japanese rice patties sex slavery," and "sex on the 26th floor of goldman sachs.".

So I wondered how on earth the search engines sent people my way for stuff like that? It bothered me for a while, until I figured out what was happening. At the bottom of each of my blog's individual entries (where one blog entry and all comments are listed on a single page), I explain about the blog's anti-spam software and how it blocks certain keywords--and then I list some of the words, which include "porn" and "nude."

Meaning, of course, that these words now appear on the same page as every single blog entry that I have made, about 1300 of them, on a huge variety of subjects. Aha.

Though now I am, admittedly, a little bit curious as to what exactly is happening on the twenty-sixth floor of the Goldman Sachs building.

A Diet Lite Beer

	Sapporo came out with a new lite beer recently, and it is superior over others not because it has fewer calories, and not because it has less calories, but rather...

I just hate the ones with fewer more calories.

And you'd think that a company like Sapporo could spend a few bucks to have a translator check out their newest slogan....

Air America Radio Widget

For those of you who both use Macs (with Tiger) and listen to Air America Radio, there is a nifty new Tiger Dashboard Widget that lets you tune into Air America Radio easily. Now, I've had the AAR audio stream link on my Linkboard for some time now and will continue to have it, but if you use Tiger, get this widget.

Taking the Plunge

So I just got off the phone with the Apple Store, having ordered the new Mac. Should arrive in about a week and a half. Got the 15" PowerBook G4 SuperDrive model running at 1.67 GHz, with optional U.S. keyboard (which causes the delivery delay).

Now to order an extra Gig of RAM.

I'm probably also going to order a Bluetooth mouse, though I don't see many out there that look too attractive. But MacAlly has a new model, called the BT-Mouse, which sells for $50 and looks like it's well-put-together. It's full size (most BT mice are minis, which I don't like at all), and has the third button just below the scroll wheel, also where I prefer it.

The mouse won't be available for a few more weeks, but I should be able to get the RAM at about the same time as the computer arrives, which will be nice.

Anyone want to buy a used 800 MHz DVI TiBook?

Easy for Him to Say, Now

Chris Seibold, in an article for Apple Matters, wrote:

Witness the people hauling around first generation TiBooks holding out for the (never to come) G5 laptop. People have been guessing that a G5 PowerBook was just around the corner for two or three years and have waited for it accordingly.  Wouldn’t their overall computing experience have been better if they had gone ahead and purchased a new PowerBook when they first felt the need?

Now, if he'd written that before the Mactel announcement, I would have given him more credit. Right now, it's unmistakably clear in hindsight. So thanks, Chris, for being paid to state the bleeding obvious after the fact.

Close to a Decision

For me, it's harder to say that the Mactel news will slow Mac sales, because that very news has drawn me to decide, or almost decide, to get a new PowerBook G4. Of course, I won't be in a typical place.

Right now I have an 800 MHz G4 PowerBook (the first DVI model) which just turned three years old a few months ago. I have been waiting for a significant upgrade before getting my next Mac 'Book, but the Mactel news has spurred me to move forward sooner than I'd planned.

The model I'd buy now is the 15" PowerBook G4 running at 1.67 GHz, the Superdrive model. I should be able to get academic pricing from Apple Japan on a model with the US keyboard layout, meaning not having to ship from the U.S. and not having to pay high California state sales taxes. The cost would be about ¥245,000 ($2300) including tax. Add another $200 for an extra 1 GB of RAM. It's not a quantum leap over my present computer, considering that it's been 3 years. The new 'Book would have double the CPU speed, but in the past, that's happened a lot faster. However, there are other considerations, including 512 KB of on-chip L2 cache as opposed to 1 MB L3 cache (the former is better than the latter, for those of you who don't know what cache is about), a (slightly) higher bus speed, better RAM, better graphics chip, and several other small points. The big differences would be a faster Superdrive instead of a slower Combo drive, double the size of the HDD (40 GB to 80 GB), built-in Bluetooth, USB 2, and AirPort Extreme to match my base station.

If I wait for the new Mactel Powerbook instead of buying now, I could be waiting as long as 2 years, and will have spent much of that time impatiently expectant of a new PowerBook "any day now," not to mention trying to get along with a much slower computer than I'd prefer.

In addition, most completely new models--not just upgrades, but new designs--have kinks in the system that need to be worked out, and the new Mactel PowerBooks are probably more likely to have such bugs than other models. These bugs get smoothed out, but only after one or two revisions. Which means that when the first Mactel PowerBook comes out, it'll be fast but with the risk of annoying problems.

Getting a Powerbook now means that it'll be three years old (my standard computer retirement time) when the first Mactel PowerBook free of problems rolls out.

The risks: there could be a significant G4 upgrade soon, such as dual-core, that could come out in 3-6 months. If that happened, I'd be kinda pissed. However, the chances of that are low, and by waiting for that much longer, I would be getting started later on the lifetime of my next computer. Also, there is the chance that the first Mactel PowerBook out of the gate could be killer and have no flaws. Again, chances are low, but possible. Were both these things to happen, I'd feel pretty stupid. But I'd also feel like an idiot if I waited till MacWorld SF in January to find the next PowerBook model to be a minor speed bump to 1.8 GHz and little else, followed by a Mactel release in June 2006, 6 moths after buying the speed-bumped G4.

If I buy a new computer this week, I'll even have a good excuse: today was my birthday. Taking time zones into account, it's 2:35 am Japan time on Thursday, June 9.

So I'm probably a day or two away from ordering. Anyone has good reasons to stop me, better chime in fast!

Finally... Maybe... Unofficially

Yet more Mac news, this time on the Eastern side of the Pacific: The Nihon Keizai Shimbun (a leading economic newspaper, kind of like the Wall Street Journal of Japan) is reporting that Apple will open an iTunes Music Store in Japan in August of this year. This would be encouraging, except that the same paper previously predicted that the iTMS Japan would open in Spring 2005. The Mainichi Shimbun, however, did predict that the store would open before the end of 2005.

What is encouraging about the new story beyond the possible August start date is the report that Apple may be charging as little as ¥150 ($1.40) per song, well under the $2+ prices offered by current download services in Japan (though the story did go further to say that the price could be "between 100 and 200 yen per song").

Still, good news for Japanese music fans, or those in Japan without a credit card with a billing address in a country where an iTMS is already located.

It's Official

The Steve has just announced at the WWDC that Apple is indeed switching to Intel, because IBM simply cannot deliver--can't give us 3 GHz in the PowerMac, can't put a G5 into a PowerBook (tell me about it). What he also said was that Apple has been compiling OS X on Intel chips for five years now, and the Tiger presentation he is giving the audience as he speaks is a Pentium 4. Even though they can work Apple software on Pentiums today, the transition will go as reported in the press, from June 2006 to June 2007. Nevertheless, both IBM and Intel processors will be supported for "a long time to come," undoubtedly making a lot of people happy that they will not be forced to switch.

As for how long developers will have to work to port their programs to Intel chips, Jobs is claiming that it just takes a few hours, using Mathematica as an example. The app apparently is very complex with millions of lines of code... but only 20 or so had to be changed for the app to work. The question is, will all apps be so easy to change?

Apple will add two points: first, an emulation mode called "Rosetta" that will allow all PPC software to work transparently on Intel Macs (Mactels?), and new software written in Fat Binary, able to run on both PPC and Intel chips. This is all very, very familiar to those of us who followed through the Motorola-to-IBM, 680x0-to-PPC transition some time back.

Even Microsoft is in: an Apple press release quotes a Microsoft exec as saying that they will develop a fat binary version of Microsoft Office for the Mac--a surprise to me, I had heard that they stopped developing that particular suite for the Mac platform.

interesting: no mention of .Mac despite the coincidental blackout; no mention of whether or not Intel will vary its chips specifically for Apple or if Apple will use off-the-shelf Pentiums; no mention of Transitive (probably they're just not using them); no mention of whether Windows would run on Macs; no mention of using Windows apps more easily in OS X/Intel.

Sounds to me like there's a lot of stuff going unsaid...

All of this, of course, leaves me in a tough spot. It seems rather apparent that I will not be getting a G5 PowerBook, or even a dual-core G4 or Freescale PowerBook. Probably nothing but minor-speed-bump G4s until the Big Switch is made. It is not even certain that a Pentium PowerBook will be released in 2006, it could take as long as two years for it to come around. And I'm stuck here with an 800 MHz PowerBook. Which means I can get a new PowerBook with a slow chip and be stuck with that for another 3 years... or I can suffer with a slow CPU for as long as 2 more years and get one of the new Pentium PowerBooks as soon as they come out.

It'll take a bit of thinking about, but I've already figured a few things out. First, I don't think I'll want to be using a 5-year-old PowerBook. And second, new computer designs often have bugs that don't get smoothed out until a few revisions down the line. If I get a PowerBook now, then it will probably be ready for a replacement model at just about the time when Pentium PowerBooks have gotten their kinks worked out.

I think I'll start taking a look at what's out there...

Another note: OS X version 10.5 will be called "Leopard," and will be out by late 2006 or early 2007--around the same time Longhorn is scheduled. That should be a challenge to Microsoft; Apple has gotten their releases out fairly regularly and on-time, while Longhorn has suffered serious delays (even though they cut out two of the biggest new features so they could release it earlier).

.Mac Changes Coming?

By the time most people read this, it will probably have been officially announced in the WWDC keynote, but...

An alert reader at Spymac noted that Apple's .Mac service is going off the air at the exact time as and for the exact duration of Steve Jobs' keynote at the WWDC. From reports, the service has almost never gone down before, and the timing is almost certainly not coincidental; there may be some significant .Mac service changes coming, and soon.

Maybe.

In any event, it's half an hour before the keynote right now, with probably any big announcements coming some time after the start.

Hopeful, but Wary

Last month marked the most excessive period of referral spam I've experienced so far for this site. (See here for an explanation of referrer spam.) The problem itself started a year and a half ago, in November 2003, with a grand total of 7 "hits" from a Paris Hilton site. It was #36 on my referrer list, with the referrers before it all legitimate, adding up to an aggregate 1167 hits from 35 referrers before the one spam showed up.

I didn't even notice it.

December's experience was almost identical: the Hilton spammer was #35, with another 7 hits, 1153 other hits coming from the prior, all-legit referrers.

But then Hilton advanced: in January 2004, one Hilton referral was at #18 with 13 hits, while another Hilton spammer was at #18 with 8 hits (interestingly, the RIAA seemed to spam my site just in front of the first Hilton site, coming in at #17 with 14 hits--certainly faked, I doubt the RIAA linked to me from their main page).

This went on for a few months, but the spammers stayed out of the top 10--until April 2004. Suddenly, the top three referrers were spammers with a total of 333 hits, with others beginning to litter the spots below. For a few months they died down, scattering several dozen hits in the lower rankings, until in July, someone mysteriously spammed me 1556 times. It was mysterious because the spammer made it look like the links were coming from the IAEA, and I know the International Atomic Energy Agency was not linking to me from their home page. The only thing I can figure is that it was a spammer testing out a new script before using it to get referrers to point to his site. I am assuming it was Burnham, but I may be wrong--there is a lot of scum out there.

Spam referrals continued to persist in the lower rankings, sometimes hitting as high as the #4 spot, but outrageous spam held off--until October, when the infamous Burnham Internet Sales Cockroaches hit full-force, dominating not only the top 5 spots, but also 25 of the top 27 (and probably more that I couldn't pin down as Burnham), their top 25 spam referrals totaling a record 3758 hits. This prompted me to blog about them, reporting on their scumminess, and I am happy to report that Google still ranks that post of mine as #1 in a search for "Burnham Internet Sales," with their own site ranking #2. Score one for the little guy! Try to spam me to get high Google rankings at my expense, you do so at your own risk!

Although Burnham stopped harassing me, other spammers started glomming on, and since late last year my stats have been clogged with the lowlifes. I tried everything I could to get around them. I tried IP Deny in my site's control panel, but it didn't work. I tried to create an .htaccess filter myself, and it worked, but only for about 24 hours, after which the spammers blew through it like tissue paper. I wasn't publishing a "top referrer" list which the spammers hope they will appear on, nor was my stats page open to public view (it's in a password-protected directory), so I wasn't encouraging them in any way. But this is a blog, and blogs are spam magnets. Spammers care little if one site which they're decimating isn't getting them any profit, it costs them next to nothing to do, and they probably enjoy defecating over sites that deny them a return. So I got more and more spam, and there was no way to block it.

Here's where I get to the "Hopeful, but Wary" part. Last month, as I mentioned at the top, was the most excessive month of referrer spam. 24 of the top 25 referrers were spammers, accounting for more than 10,000 fake hits. So I looked into it again, and found a possible solution. There is an AwStats (the program used to get statistics) patch on SourceForge which claims to "check comment spam blacklist for referer spam." The information on the patch is incredibly sketchy; I thank the author for making it, but I would think they could spend more than 50 seconds to type the instructions. There is no explanation beyond the title as to what it even does. But someone on a forum claimed it "scrubbed" the referrer logs of all spam, which sounded great to me.

What was clear was that the patch used the same blacklist that MT-Blacklist used to delete comment and trackback spam. All I would have to do was add the referral spammers to the blacklist (easy enough to do with MT-Blacklist's interface--and many of the spammers were already there).

It turns out that I had even seen this before and blogged on it, but had not used it because it required admin skills I frankly do not have. As I said, the instructions were sketchy at best, and I could not come close to deciphering them. But after May's spam numbers drove me to search some more, I found someone who suggested the web host's tech people install it instead of the site owner. Worth a shot, I thought, so I asked--and they did it.

At first, I was disappointed; I expected the existing spam to melt away, leaving nice, clean stats behind, but alas that was not to be. Before the patch was installed, the top 26 spots were filled by spammers who had hit me a total of 867 times, and that was just after 5 days. After the patch was installed, the spam was still there. Failure again, I thought. But half a day later I noticed something: the spammers I had added to the blacklist had not hit me in that time. Other spammers, not on my blacklist, had hit me again. So I added more spammers from the referral logs to the blacklist, and they stopped adding hits to the list as well.

If my understanding now is correct, the patch does not clean up old spam, but it stops new spam that you've blacklisted from getting in. And that will do quite nicely in the interim. I'll just have to keep an eye on the stats (which I usually do anyway) and blacklist spammers as soon as they hit me. With luck, the flood will return to the relative trickle that I was experiencing a year ago.

I'm also checking out ways that AwStats might be tinkered with to get rid of older spam, too. Perhaps by removing the AwStats log file for the month, a new one will be generated automatically, this time fully applying the blacklist filter. I'm almost afraid to try it, though, for fear of screwing things up.

Still, hopeful news. But I'm not counting my chickens yet--spammers have blown through defenses before. Time will tell. I'll keep you posted.

Now Your Dog Takes You for a Walk

An interesting invention here. Do you have a dog, but don't like having to exert so much energy walking the pooch every day, struggling to hold him back? This device takes care of that: strap Fido into the harness, and let him pull you along while you steer.

A movie showing the device in action is also available on the product's site.

This may not be in line with what most canine lovers may accept as doggie-friendly, but it's better than some ideas I've seen before, like one guy I saw "walking" his dog from his car, holding the leash out the window. The makers of this "urban mushing" device claim that it actually gives "identity and pride for your dog," though somehow I'm not fully sure that this is what the dogs are thinking.

If you want to spread the workload of dragging your fat ass around, there's a model of the Dog-Powered Scooter which allows for two dogs. Though frankly, I might not want to be on that scooter when Spot and Rover lay their eyes on Fluffy the Cat and decide to go for it.

Well, That's a Little Disturbing

If you've read this blog for a while, then you know that I got a Toshiba TiVo-like box late last year, one that not only records shows digitally, but then archives them on DVDs.

But in April, the DVD burner started producing multiple disk errors, just as the hard drive filled up. I got it repaired--but now, only a month and a half later, the drive sputtered out once more, again producing disk errors. So I called up, and again, they sent a techie out to replace the DVD drive.

Now, just the fact that the DVD burner craps out twice, once after four months and again after one and a half months, is bad enough. But then the tech guy doing the replacement was kind enough to be honest with me: the drives, he said, are built to last only for about 600 burns. Prior models, he said, could last for 1000, but this one does about 600. And he was giving me a refurbished unit--no way of telling how far along the odometer was. And I burn a lot of DVDs. I could easily run through 600 in less than two years. So that's the lifetime on the unit I bought?

Of course, I could always have the DVD unit swapped out, like I'm having now under warranty. But that costs about $300, adding 50% to the cost of each DVD I burn, from $1 a pop to a buck fifty. In addition to the original cost of the machine, which was over $1000.

Not exactly what I thought I was getting, and I'm none too happy about it. Is this considered the norm for DVD burners?

Wired on Macs on Intel

Wired has a story out which may explain Apple's willingness to make the platform jump: Transitive.

Transitive is a new product, introduced last year, which purportedly allows any software to run in emulation mode on any hardware without any perceptible speed cost:

In demonstrations to press and analysts, the company has shown a graphically demanding game -- a Linux version of Quake III -- running on an Apple PowerBook.

"One of the key breakthroughs is performance," [CEO] Wiederhold said. "You can't tell the difference between a translated application and a native application."

Presumably, Apple will use Transitive's technology to make the Intel switch painless for both themselves and for developers; this has actually been rumored for months now. If possible, it would explain why Apple would be willing to make a switch that normally would cost it more than it could afford.

Not only might it allow Apple to run OS X on an Intel chip more easily, but it might also allow Apple to run practically any Windows application under OS X as well--meaning that switching to the Mac OS could be completely painless--no need to buy new versions of software.

Wired is presently musing that Apple is not just looking at Intel's fast chips, but more so their DRM technology, as a platform to allow Apple to become a movie peddler in the same way they've started selling music so successfully.

Apple with Pentium Inside?

Everyone was wondering what big announcement Steve Jobs will be making at the WWDC scheduled to start on Monday. Will it be hardware, software, a new gadget, or nothing except a status report on existing product? Will the PowerBook line finally get a G5 or at least a multi-core G4? Will there be a new video iPod? A new home media center?

Well, C-Net now claims to know the big news, and everyone is reasonably shocked by it: Apple, they say, is abandoning IBM and is switching to Intel's chips for future Macs. While rumors of this nature were reported recently, no one gave them any credence. After all, we've been hearing Apple-Intel rumors for quite some time now, a few years at least, and no one took it seriously. But C-Net isn't your common rumor site; they have a reputation for good reporting. Even so, most people are still holding back belief until Stevo makes an official announcement at the World Wide Developer's Conference.

According to the report, Apple will switch its Mac Mini to Intel by mid-2006, and will have the PowerMac line on Intel chips by mid-2007. Concerns include the possible loss of software developer support and customer attrition that could come with a switch to a different chip architecture. However, Mac OS X runs on Unix BSD, which is not altogether incompatible with Intel's architecture. And Intel seems to have interest; note this interview by the IDG News Service with Intel VP Anand Chandrasekher:

IDGNS: The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Intel has been trying to get Apple to use its processors. Has Intel been talking with Apple?

Chandrasekher: We always talk to Apple. Apple is a design win that we've coveted for 20 years and we continue to covet them as a design win. We will never give up on Apple.

IDGNS: What would you be willing to do in order to win Apple's business?

Chandrasekher: Well, nothing unnatural that we wouldn't do for other design wins. It's got to make sense from a business standpoint. We would do what makes economic sense. If we can do that and still get the design win, we'd do it.

What people don't seem to be assuming much is how much Intel would customize chips to be used in Macs. Some people are talking as if the Mac will somehow use off-the-shelf Wintel chips, allowing for easy cloning by other hardware manufacturers. While this is an option, I hardly believe that Jobs will go that route; he has seen the hardware as proprietary for far too long, basing too much of Apple's business on that paradigm to simply open wide the doors to mass cloning of Macs. I am almost certain that if the Intel rumor is true, then the chipmaker will be producing a specific line of chips, probably including necessary changes to accommodate PPC and pre-PPC architectures, perhaps allowing for some emulation as when Apple switched over from Motorola's 680x0 line to the PPC.

An interesting effect of such a switch would be the relative equalization of CPU speed when comparing Macs and Windows PCs--we might even hear the term "Mactel" in comparison with "Wintel." It would certainly make for a more notable contrast between the two operating systems, even if Intel makes some modifications to suit Apple's needs. And it would bring Apple one step closer to the eventual possibility of making the hardware non-proprietery, opening the doors to direct competition with Microsoft, should it be possible that the Mac OS would run on any PC box, or even if AMD were left out in the cold. It will be interesting to see how much Intel will do for Apple.

Certainly, Apple has not had the greatest luck with chip manufacturers; both Motorola and now IBM have left Apple hanging in the wind when it comes to updating the product lines and delivering on promised goods. The PowerBook line, for example, has been languishing in the G4 backwaters for far too long--the main reason I have not bought a new 'Book despite the relatively slow performance of my 800 MHz machine. New PowerBooks at present only have double the processor speed, despite my current machine being 3 years old. I am holding out for a significant upgrade to the line before buying a new one, hoping for either a multi-core G4 or some form of G5, possibly liquid-cooled (even if it is thicker and heavier than the present line--I can live with that). This news about Intel, if true, might even be an indication that IBM has completely let Apple down and will not be able to supply them with and big new products at all--which could set back a big PowerBook upgrade for a few years, possibly.

But, as I said, it's not set in stone, not confirmed yet. We'll see what The Steve has to say. Maybe it's true, or maybe C-Net got snookered. Maybe even if it is true, there will still be a multi-core/G5 PowerBook anyway. Or maybe nothing at all will happen.

Stay tuned.

Lose Watergate, Win Vietnam?

Sometimes right-wingers can go ludicrously far in their claims. Wait, what am I talking about? "Sometimes"?

The latest example is a string of wingnuts reacting to the news that W. Mark Felt was "Deep Throat." Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Ben Stein and Peggy Noonan (and probably more I haven't found) are all claiming that Felt's betrayal of the White House felons resulted in the loss of the Vietnam War and the genocide in Cambodia. Felt, Woodward and Bernstein, apparently, are guilty of causing the murders of millions of people.

Let's set aside the fact that Nixon and his people were the criminals, that what they did was their own fault and responsibility; that Felt was telling the truth, that Woodward and Bernstein were doing their jobs, jobs that most Americans feel is vital (including most Republicans, so long as the president being exposed is a Democrat).

For now, let's just focus on the one claim: Watergate caused us to lose in Vietnam. Noonan wrote, in support of Stein:

What Mr. Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide.

Are they serious? We could have won in Vietnam, if only Nixon weren't distracted and disgraced for crimes he committed? The U.S. had already pulled out of Vietnam by the time that Watergate as a scandal was just getting started. The only argument that could be made is that by weakening Nixon, Watergate prevented him from re-entering Vietnam in full force. As if that was going to happen, Watergate or no Watergate. Vietnam continued to get economic aid from the U.S., but most of that disappeared because of corruption within South Vietnam.

The fact is, American troops left Vietnam by March 1973, two months after the Paris Peace Accords. The famous films we've all seen of Saigon in 1975, with the people streaming up to the helicopter on the roof of the U.S. embassy, was the evacuation of U.S. civilians and embassy staff and marine guards--it was not the military pullout. That had happened in early 1973.

Contrast that to the Watergate chronology: in November 1972, Nixon was re-elected in a landslide; it wasn't until January 30 that Liddy & McCord were convicted, only days after the Paris Peace Accords were signed. Haldeman and Ehrlichman didn't resign until a month after the last troops left Vietnam. And the televised Senate hearings didn't start until May.

So by the time Watergate really got going, we were already out of Vietnam. Our people had left. Are we really to believe that if Watergate had not happened, then Nixon, in late 1973 to early 1974 would have brought us back into Vietnam, sending tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops into yet another act of a massively unpopular war? Or that we would have poured troops into Cambodia to fight Pol Pot?

Riiiiiight.

Naturally, none of these wingnuts actually goes so far as to spell out specifically how Watergate remaining secret would have led to our victory in Vietnam and a strong U.S.-led peace in Cambodia. They remain remarkably nebulous in what is the very thesis of their claims.

Look, you can question Felt's motives, but you can in no way claim that he caused Vietnam and Cambodia to fall. Even for the wingnut crowd, these claims are way, way around the bend.

And that's saying something.

Worth the Trouble?

Yet another article from a disgruntled Wintel user. This one, in Fortune Magazine, about a maddening invasion of pop-up-generating spyware and the inability of the hardware and software sellers to eradicate it:

It started about a month ago. A blue window appeared on my screen. It was flashing, which is always a bad sign in Cyberville. The alert stated that my system was possibly invaded by spyware and that I should click on the ok button to scan for problems. I'm not a fool. I did not click. I am aware that viruses, like vampires, must be invited across the threshold to gain entry.

Over the next few days the blue window kept reappearing. I ignored it. But you can't wish this kind of thing away, any more than you can keep an upper-respiratory infection from striking you on a flight full of coughing travelers. ...

I went to Best Buy and purchased Norton Internet Security and something called Spy Sweeper, which promised to help eradicate cookies, sprites, wafers, and tidbits that gum up your system. The Norton was clunky and slow and inscrutable to me—it kept presenting windows that offered choices I did not understand. The Sweeper, on the other hand, was lean and nimble. It scanned my friend and pronounced that he was suffering from more than 250 viruses and some 2,000 traces of spyware seeping through my innards. I expunged them all, and felt much better.

Then up popped Mr. Window again. And then another. Hmm, I thought, and ran the fix-it program again. Whoops. It found 25 viruses and 350 or so footprints of associated dreck. Blew those off. Back they came. I had now spent the best part of a day cursing, yelling, damning the morons—wherever they were, whoever they were—who had caused this disaster. ...

There are lots of people I guess I could blame—Microsoft, for leaving a back door into Explorer that made this all possible; Best Buy, for giving me back a box that still had issues—but I don't. They, too, must be counted among the victims of the walnut brains who are out there wreaking havoc. If I could air out their skulls with a ball-peen hammer, I would. But I can't. All I can do is my little part to make this kind of thing less likely.

I'm getting a Mac.

Perhaps you see this writer as being uneducated about how to use a computer--but then, so are most users. And certainly, a regimen of prevention (which would include spyware and virus blockers from the beginning) in addition to wise usage to avoid viral email and spyware-ridden 'freeware' would make using a Wintel box much less hazardous. But the problem is, most users are not savvy enough to know how to do these things, so a Mac would certainly be a better choice for them in that respect.

And for those who do know how to do 'safe computing,' is it really worth all the trouble just to avoid using a Mac? Seriously, I'd like to know what makes a Mac so less attractive than a Wintel?

Oft-stated reasons include: the Mac costs too much. My answer to that would be, they used to, but not any more. Yes, the prices are maybe 10% higher for comparable systems, but then on the Mac you don't have to buy anti-virus software, and the machines tend to last longer than cheaper PCs. Another comment: Macs don't have software. Granted, if you like computer gaming, the Mac is definitely not for you. But for most everything else, while there may not be as many titles available as there are for Windows, there are enough for every category to satisfy most people.

Another gripe about Macs is that they are not compatible. That strikes me as strange, as I find Macs to be very compatible. Any removable storage device I can read on a PC, I can read on a Mac. Any major software format from the PC, I can open on the Mac. Any MS Office document is cross-platform, and many say that MS Office for the Mac is even better than MS Office for Windows. And connecting to PCs on a network is a snap--in fact, it's easier for me to connect to a Windows network on my Mac than it is to do the same on a PC! And for anything else, I can run Virtual PC on my Mac if I want to. Yep, it's slow, but it's much closer to having the best of both worlds.

However, most of the PCs-are-better-than-Macs arguments are not about why PCs are better; they tend to be pot-shots at the Mac, at either misconceptions about the Mac ("you can't use a 2-button mouse"), exceptions ("the design sucks--look at the flower-power iMac"), peripheral claims they disagree with ("Apple claims to be 'Your own digital entertainment center,' but Windows can do the same thing"), or PC-centric subjectivity ("after using a PC, the Mac is too hard for me to use"--generally, it's bad because it's not exactly like Windows).

So I'd like to ask, while you may prefer Windows, is the Mac really that bad as to make it a lesser choice?

Birth Slump

Japan's birth rate has been slow for some time, but now the rate has slowed below what was predicted. The national birthrate in Japan is down to 1.29 (just a shade below), marking its lowest point ever. The rate has been low for some time, but the fact that it is still going down is a worrying point for the country.

The immediate concern is for retirement pensions: supported by the present workforce, it buckles when the number of retirees swells and workers shrinks--and that's just what is happening. The post-war baby boom is close to retirement, and Japan has fewer young people working to support them.

Fixes have been in the works for years. As early as 1980, Japan required the minimum mandatory retirement age to be gradually raised from 55 to 60, the goal to be reached by 1998; in 2000 (and through to 2004), the youngest permissible mandatory retirement age was raised again to 65, to be reached by 2013. With the largest number of retirees reaching retirement age at present, it is unlikely that future boosts would do anything in time.

There is also an economic reason to avoid hikes in the mandatory retirement age. Japanese men often wish to work beyond that age, and companies take advantage of that, sometimes forcing them to retire, and then accepting them back afterwards at greatly reduced pay rates. Sometimes the retirees could not even achieve that; many switch over to what are effectively make-work jobs. Try parking a bike outside a train station before 10 am--you'll likely be approached and chided by retirees working as bike parking police.

The decrease in the birth rate also affects my own profession, colleges. The decrease in population will continue for another few years and will then level out, but the overall number of students is also at a record low. In a few years, the number of students of college age will, for the first time, fall to or even below the number of available openings in colleges and universities. Fortunately for my school, Japanese institutes of higher education are slow to change; they are still stuck in the same mode they were when applicants far outstripped available seats, and when what you studied was less important than what school you got into. They still focus less on delivering an actual education at a time when businesses no longer wish to spend money to train workers themselves, as they did during the boom years. As a result, colleges which aim to deliver marketable skills are still not so common in Japan, making foreign institutions such as my own more attractive to students who look forward and see what will work best for them.