__ _____ _ ___ __
\ \/ / | | / / | / /
\ / /| | | /| / / |/ /
/ / ___ | |/ |/ / /| /
/_/_/ |_|__/|__/_/ |_/http://www.acronymchile.com/yawn.html
2003-02-02
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro..."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
############## EAT #################################(##)######
Open Source Cookbook,
Does exactly what it says on the label. Written in a manner designed not
to alienate computer geeks, and with quite a lot of useful detail about
general principles of cooking (as well as recipes, which are very much
Tex-Mex focused):
http://ibiblio.org/oscookbook/
free download (810k), in glorious Technicolour PDF:
http://ibiblio.org/oscookbook/downloads/OSCOOKBOOK.pdf
Also, interestingly (?), there is actually a unit for measuring the "heat"
of chili peppers. It is known as the scoville:
http://jfaser.tripod.com/facts.htm
############## EAT II ##############################(IB)######
German special agents have published a cookbook of secret recipes.Top
Secret - Schnitzel for Spies, is a new book by the Bundesnachrichtendienst
(BND) - the German equivalent of MI6.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_742414.html?menu=news.quirkies
############## MEAT ################################(##)######
Interesting article, on ideas that are as unoriginal as they are compelling
and unfamiliar:
http://www.monbiot.org/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=556
"At present, the world produces enough food for its people and its
livestock, though (largely because they are so poor) some 800 million
are permanently malnourished. But as the population rises, structural
global famine will be avoided only if the rich start to eat less meat.
The number of farm animals on earth has risen fivefold since 1950:
humans are now outnumbered three to one. Livestock already consume half
the world's grain, and their numbers are still growing almost
exponentially."
Unrelated, apart from in a culinary sense:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2882
I was sitting on the floor of an old concrete house in the suburbs of
Amman this week, stuffing into my mouth vast heaps of lamb and boiled
rice soaked in melted butter.
-- Robert Fisk
The rest of the article is very readable.
############## HEAT ################################(##)######
Dell laptop was involved in South African exploding laptop burns incident
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/28913.html
############## MS DELL #############################(##)######
Though Dell has drivers to allow NT4 to be used on its new servers, MS
regulations mean that they cannot supply them to customers. The aim is to
force upgrades to newer product (even though NT4 is still supported):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/29108.html
############## INFO ################################(##)######
Lots of info on old computer hardware, jumper settings and the like.
http://helpdesk.usu.edu:8080/Help/Total%20Hardware/index.htm
############## M$ ##################################(##)######
Microsoft times its first every payment of a dividend to shareholders to
coincide with the announcement of Bush plan to abolish tax on dividends.
Such a tax "reform" would only significantly benefit the wealthy, as most
low to mid income humans hold shares through mechanisms like pension funds
and already don't pay any tax on the dividends (though they will pay tax
when they draw down the payments some day, but that's not going to go
away).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/28914.html
Ashcroft had declined to excuse himself from the case: despite having
taken $20,000 in campaign contributions for his Senate campaign from
Microsoft and refused to disclose contacts with the company. That said,
the contribution hadn't done him much good: he still lost the race to a
dead man.
-- figures
Paul Street has also written about the Bush policy on dividends:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=2876
a measure that “could cost the government $300 billion over 10 years"
and will "create much bigger budget deficits for the future," according
to the New York Times. “More than half the benefit of eliminating
dividend taxes,” the Times reported, “would flow to the wealthiest 5
percent of taxpayers."
As has Mark Weisbrot:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=2884
############## M$ II ###############################(##)######
On The Register four MS alerts:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/28998.html
############## EIRE ################################(IB)######
I never heard about this one.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20021118/temple.html
Nov. 21 — An enormous temple that was once surrounded by 300 towering
oak posts lies directly underneath the Hill of Tara in County Meath,
Irish archaeologists recently announced.
############## MEDIA ###############################(IB)######
RSS and news
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/000752.shtml#000752
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/lasica/1043362624.php
http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/news.cfm?id=832
http://www.incunabula.org/blog/archive/2003_01_24_index.html#90229207
############## DRAFT ###############################(LR)######
Donald Rumsfeld says draftees who served and died in the Vietnam war "added
no value":
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/20/column.shields.opinion.rumsfeld/index.html
And although he claims there is currently no draft:
"Two days after these unequivocal words, the United States Marine Corps
-- which reports to the secretary of defence -- froze for the next 12
months every one of its 174,312 members currently on active duty.
Marines who had completed their voluntary enlistments or their 20 years
and had chosen to return to civilian life or retirement will instead
remain, involuntarily, in the service."
He backtracked rapidly later on:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2003/b01212003_bt029-03.html
There is a good analysis here:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/012403E.rumsf.vets.htm
There are 58,229 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington
D.C. Many of those names belong to men who were without the choices
afforded to Bush, Cheney, Perle, Card, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Ashcroft and
Rove. In all likelihood, there are names on that wall representing men
who went, served and died in Vietnam in place of these administration
officials. That the man immediately in charge of our armed services
stated that these lost soldiers added "no value, no advantage" to the
country they served is a profound insult not only to the honored dead,
but to those who died so Bush and the members of his administration
could hide from duty when it came calling. Indeed, Mr. Rumsfeld, these
men are gone, and never to return.
############## ROB #################################(OB)######
"Steal this book":
http://www.tenant.net/Community/steal/steal.html
and they did
############## WORM ################################(RW)######
Clever:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993273
By simply feeding roundworms genetically-modified bacteria, UK
scientists have conducted an extraordinary one-by-one analysis of the
function of nearly 86 per cent of the worms 20,000 genes.
############## MAD #################################(RW)######
John le Carré says:
The United States of America Has Gone Mad
"A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam
was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the
American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and
kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated
neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the
next election."
...
"What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power
to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little
North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at
home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad."
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0115-01.htm
These ideas are gaining more and more currency. People sniff at use of the
word "imperialism", but I believe it will be used by even "respectable"
folk in the future to describe what's going on at the moment.
############## MAD II ##############################(LR)######
INS (Immigration and Naturalisation Service) detainees are on hunger
strike, which is a common reaction to internment:
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000841.php#000841
############## DATA ################################(/.)######
Data Mining Used Hard Drives
Two MIT grad students bought used drives from eBay and secondhand
computer stores. Among the data found on the 158 drives were 5,000
credit-card numbers, porn, love-letters and medical information.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/15/2345217&mode=nested&tid=158
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/01/15/national1617EST0765.DTL
############## BANANA ##############################(/.)######
Banana to be Sequenced, and hopefully kept open source:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991037
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/16/028227&mode=nested&tid=134
'One rule of joining the consortium is that any invention developed
through the project and protected [by patent] will be made available to
smallholders through a royalty-free license,'
############## FLU #################################(??)######
flu costs more lives in US than AIDS:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,74884,00.html
"...and inspite of vaccination programs, deatrates have increased since
1970's"
############## LUCKY DUCKY #########################(##)######
A recent Wall Street Journal editorial has drawn attention to a group of
people in the US who have been fleecing the nation for years: those on
low incomes. These individuals pay less tax than their better paid
colleagues, which can't be fair. These "lucky duckies" may find their
luck is about to run out. Earning $12,000 or less will be no excuse not
to pay your way.
Two comics on the topic, first one is particularly good:
http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2002/12/19/boll/index.html
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2002/12/09/tomo/index.html
Plenty in the mainstream media too, just google search for "lucky duckies"
This Washington Post article highlights some of the broken thinking in the
original WSJ editorial. For example, it does not take sales taxes and FICA
(?) taxes into account
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A39211-2002Nov25¬Found=true
############## NARCO ###############################(##)######
New York Times Venezuela reporter, Francisco Toro, has resigned due to
conflicts of interest:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue27/article584.html
Also interesting is Canada's lean toward decriminalising (or at least
substantially reducing the criminality of) marijuana:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue27/article585.html
############## OZ ##################################(##)######
Australia's position gets little coverage on this side of the world so this
article by John Pilger may be of interest:
Asked if he thought it better that Muslim women made themselves "less
conspicuous at this time" by not wearing their traditional headdress,
Howard replied: "Obviously."
...
Howard's is the only government in the world willing and eager to join
the Bush/Blair assault on Iraq
...
Some years ago, I interviewed an Australian warrant officer who had
served on a CIA-run assassination team in Vietnam, and ruefully
recalled to me the words of his American commander. "We really like
using you guys," said the American. "It's like this: the British have
the Gurkhas; we've got the Australians."
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=2879
I generally enjoy John Pilger's writing on Australia. It is clear he has a
deep attachment to his home country, and an understanding of it that is
quite uncommon in the media in US and Europe.
############## OZ II ###############################(##)######
Problems with playing CDs in Australia (and rest of southern hemisphere).
The suggestions here should be helpful though:
http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_AussieCD.html
############## YOYO ################################(##)######
The Register are now selling yo-yo's, complete with instructional book and
"leather holster". STG£15.00 inc VAT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/31/28830.html
############## FAR #################################(##)######
little business-card guide you can print out to help in estimating
distances and angles:
http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/dir3/anglecard/
############## SPAM ################################(##)######
I have been using spam filtering for a while. Originally I used
spamassassin, which uses a rules-based system to classify mail as spam or
non-spam. What it does is look for things that typically appear in spam
(like lines of ALL CAPS), and assign points. If the mail scores over a
certain threshold, it gets flagged as spam, and you can automatically
filter it into a special folder.
Problem with systems like that is they need to be kept up to date, and it
takes a lot of effort to formulate the patterns. Also, it is quite slow if
you put a large volume of mail through it. Lately, I've been impressed
with Bayesian spam filtering, which is a more automatic solution.
http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
One program implementing this system is bogofilter.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/bogofilter/
Assuming you have a large stock of spam (you can find spam on the net too,
but it is better to have the exact kind of spam YOU get), you pipe this
into bogofilter, which builds up a database of words that tend to appear in
such mails. Then you take a folder of non-spam mails, and pipe that into
bogofilter so that it can catalogue what words tend to appear in legitimate
emails. Then later on, when bogofilter is asked to classify an email, it
looks at the contents of the mail and classifies the mail as spam or
non-spam based on statistical analysis. The beauty of the system, is that
if the spam evolves over time, and some messages start to slip through, you
just pipe them into bogofilter later on, and they get added to the
database. This can be automated from some mail clients. Equally, you can
arrange so that every mail you save into another folder gets classified as
non-spam (on the principle that if you wanted to save it, it must be worth
keeping).
A particularly elegant solution I came across was implemented with iFile
http://www.nongnu.org/ifile/
(another statistics-based email filtering program). iFile can be used to
classify mails into many different categories.
http://www.jbertram.net/projects/ifile/ifile.html
The author of the above article set up his system so that iFile would add a
header to each mail indicating the folder it thought the mail should be
saved to. Then procmail (a mail processor) would save the mail into
various folders according to this header. When the user reads his mail, he
will come across mails which have been mis-filed. These can be saved to
the correct folder without much difficulty. The nicest part of the set up,
though, is that a periodic program is run each night, which looks through
the mail folders and finds mails whose headers do not tally with the
folders they have been stored in. These mails were obviously misfiled
originally, and then corrected by the user, so the script runs iFile to add
the misfiled mails to the appropriate databases. This way, the system
essentially keeps itself up to date, with only occasional input from the
user.
I am currently only using bogofilter in a very basic way, but it is still
very useful and correctly identifies the vast majority of spam. The longer
it is used, the better it should get. I would very much recommend anybody
who receives more spam than they like to investigate similar programs.
############## NO IDEA #############################(##)######
Don't have a clue what this is:
http://www.00.gs/
############## STOP ################################(##)######