Vonage -- don't use it quite yet

evhead: Vonage is from hell

Abysmal customer service, poor quality. Voice over IP has a way to go still. Strictly for those with more time than money, and a yen to suffer.

Nic Wolff's site-specific password generator

Password generatorI blogged on this some months ago, but it's worth noting that Nic has updated his utility. Instead of using a disposable password on every single medium security web site, use your disposable password to create unique site specific passwords.

Focusing techniques for distractable folk

Concentrating while studying

This is part of a study guide site for students. Works for adult knowledge workers too. For me the iPod and noise cancelling headphones are quite helpful.

Germany and the tyranny of the banks - Gunter Grass

The Gravest Generation - New York Times, GÜNTER GRASS May 7, 2005

I hope this sounded better in the original German (emphases mine):

TOMORROW, it will be 60 years to the day since the German Reich's unconditional surrender. That is equivalent to a working life with a pension to look forward to. It goes so far back that memory, that wide-meshed sieve, is in danger of forgetting it.

Sixty years ago, after being wounded in the chaotic retreat in Lausitz, I lay in a hospital with a flesh wound in my right thigh and a bean-sized shell splinter in my right shoulder...

.... Now, I believe that our freely elected members of Parliament are no longer free to decide. The customary party pressures are not particularly present in Germany; it is, rather, the ring of lobbyists with their multifarious interests that constricts and influences the Federal Parliament and its democratically elected members, placing them under pressure and forcing them into disharmony, even when framing and deciding the content of laws. Consequently, Parliament is no longer sovereign in its decisions. It is steered by the banks and multinational corporations - which are not subject to any democratic control.

What's needed is a democratic desire to protect Parliament against the pressures of the lobbyists by making it inviolable. But are our parliamentarians still sufficiently free to make a decision that would bring radical democratic constraint? Or is our freedom now no more than a stock market profit?

... We can only hope we will be able to cope with today's risk of a new totalitarianism, backed as it is by the world's last remaining ideology. As conscious democrats, we should freely resist the power of capital, which sees mankind as nothing more than something which consumes and produces. Those who treat their donated freedom as a stock market profit have failed to understand what May 8 teaches us every year.

Günter Grass, the author of "The Tin Drum" and, most recently, "Crabwalk," won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. This article was translated from the German by UPS Translations.

So Germany is now enslaved by international capitalism and the banks? That seems strangely familiar.

I'd have preferred if he'd framed these problems in terms of political corruption and de facto bribery, a problem we face in the US, rather than invoking images of a mysterious conspiracy of international capitalism.

Update 5/8/05: I wasn't the only person to find Grass' writing disturbing. Brad DeLong is a bit more direct.

Stories from Mosul

Michael Yon : Online Magazine: The Battle For Mosul

LTC Kurilla ran to the burning Stryker, threw off his protective gear and helmet, leading a swarm of soldiers atop and over the burning hulk, in a determined push to get their buddies out. Kurilla dropped himself down a top hatch, to get into the burning Stryker, while men passed up fire extinguishers and even bottles of water.

The author also alleges that some US associated journalists ("stringers") are working with the insurgency; I interpreted his blog to say that the soldiers have killed persons videotaping destroyed army vehicles:

Just a few weeks earlier, when another of Kurilla's Strykers was hit by an SVBIED, a camera crew arrived on scene. As a man pumped an AK, an American sniper killed him, wounding the cameraman in the process. When it was later learned that the cameraman was a stringer for CBS who had close ties with the enemy, CBS apologized on the air.

Just as we pulled out, people arrived with cameras and began shooting footage of the scene. One of the men, whom we later learned was an Associated Press correspondent with known ties to the enemy, is dead now. The associate scavenging with him was seriously wounded.

This is an interesting voice, and a novel perspective. I've added it to my bloglines collection.

AP photo of the dying girl in the arms of Major Bieger

Michael Yon : Online Magazine: Little Girl

The Associated Press has featured a photo of an Iraqi girl being cradled in the arms of an American soldier. She died, a victim of a terrorist attack. (Attacks on US forces are insurgent attacks, attacks on Iraqi civilians are terrorist attacks. I think the distinction is fairly clear, but the media seems to stick with insurgent these days.)

The photographer has a blog. Here he displays the photo and the story of the soldier.

Major Mark Bieger found this little girl after the car bomb that attacked our guys while kids were crowding around. The soldiers here have been angry and sad for two days. They are angry because the terrorists could just as easily have waited a block or two and attacked the patrol away from the kids.

Instead, the suicide bomber drove his car and hit the Stryker when about twenty children were jumping up and down and waving at the soldiers. Major Bieger, I had seen him help rescue some of our guys a week earlier during another big attack, took some of our soldiers and rushed this little girl to our hospital. He wanted her to have American surgeons and not to go to the Iraqi hospital. She didn't make it. I snapped this picture when Major Bieger ran to take her away.

He kept stopping to talk with her and hug her.The soldiers went back to that neighborhood the next day to ask what they could do. The people were very warming and welcomed us into their homes, and many kids were actually running up to say hello and to ask soldiers to shake hands. Eventually, some insurgents must have realized we were back and started shooting at us. The American soldiers and Iraqi police started engaging the enemy and there was a running gun battle. I saw at least one IP who was shot, but he looked okay and actually smiled at me despite the big bullet hole in his leg. I smiled back. One thing seems certain; the people in that neighborhood share our feelings about the terrorists. We are going to go back there, and if any terrorists come out, the soldiers hope to find them. Everybody is still very angry that the insurgents attacked us when the kids were around. Their day will come.

Autism and the Corbett blood chemistry study

Be the Best You can Be: Autism and the Corbett blood chemistry study

Applying mass analysis to develop a statistic signature predictive of autism. A novel approach!

Awakenings - all too short

CNN.com - 'Miracle' firefighter received experimental drug treatment - May 5, 2005

Oliver Sacks wrote once of a miracle treatment for a group of persons with a post-encephalitis severe parkinsonian-like syndrome. The medications, normally used to treat parkinsonism, had a truly miraculous effect. Alas, it was transient. It reminds me of the odd scene in the greatly underestimated movie AI, where the child android has his mother restored -- but only for a day [1].

Whatever happened to this fireman, it feels like it's connected to Sack's tale. I hope this will get a medical article.

... Certain medications had shown promise in Dr. Jamil Ahmed's more recently brain-damaged patients, drugs normally used to treat Parkinson's disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. He gave them to Herbert.

Three months later, on Saturday, something clicked in Herbert's brain. He started talking. Not only talking, his doctor said, but talking sensibly. Even making people laugh.

For the next 14 to 16 hours, until he fell into a 30-hour sleep early Sunday morning, Herbert chatted with his wife, Linda, his four sons and other family and friends, catching up on what he'd missed...

... Since that breakthrough, Herbert, who will turn 44 Saturday, has had infrequent moments of clarity but has not matched Saturday's progress, his wife said.

... There have been a few other widely publicized examples of brain-damaged patients showing sudden improvement after a number of years, at least temporarily, but experts say they are so rare they don't have much to study.

In 2003, an Arkansas man, Terry Wallis, returned to consciousness 19 years after he was injured in a car accident, stunning his mother by saying "Mom" and then asking for a Pepsi. His brain function has remained limited, his family said months later.

Tennessee police officer Gary Dockery, whose brain was damaged in a 1988 shooting, began speaking to his family one day in 1996, telling jokes and recounting annual winter camping trips. But after 18 hours, he never repeated the unbridled conversation of that day, though he remained more alert than he had been. He died the following year of a blood clot on his lung.

I remember the latter two stories and I'd wondered how they turned out. I've read recently of a growing suspicion among researchers that many comatose individuals actually have a sort of wareness of their surroundings, a variety of the locked-in syndrome seen with brainstem stroke. (Note: I studiously avoided knowing much about the Schiavo case, just as I know very little about Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson, but I gather she did not fit into this clinical category.)

[1] I just noted that AI has 1216 Amazon reviews, ranging from 5 stars to 1 star with few in between. Any movie that can rouse such passions, years after its release, is a great movie.

The key moment in Graner mistrial

Judge Rejects Abuse Plea After Ringleader Testifies - New York Times

Then he turned to Private England. 'Maybe you think we forgot about you,' he said, trying to explain the ruling to her but realizing, he said, 'I'm not sure you'll understand.'

There are a lot of people in prison who have IQs in the 80s or less. I'm getting the impression Private Graner's understanding is very limited.

Tiger and Missing Sync for PalmOS

Brighthand %u2014 What Mac OS X Tiger Means for Handheld Users

The Missing Sync for Palm OS 4.0.4 is generally compatible with Tiger.

However, the Internet Sharing feature may not function properly under the new version of OS X. In addition, users may experience problems with the iPhoto export feature.

Mark/Space says these problems will be fixed by a free 4.0.5 update, which will be available soon. A beta version of this is already available from the company.

The PocketPC version for Tiger is a few weeks away.

The evitability of Stalin

Salon.com Books | The human monster

As he told numerous people after Nadya's death, Stalin had been a bad husband. Husband and wife were both volatile and unbalanced people -- she may have been schizophrenic, and he was, after all, Stalin.

Andrew O'Hehir, writing for Salon, reviews two biographies of Josef Stalin, and tells the tyrant's story himself. There seems nothing inevitable about the Monster of Russia; chance grew his bitter seeds, chance put power in his grasp.

Was Stalin the most evil of men? From this biography, I doubt it. If one in a million adult men is extremely evil, then in a world of 6.5 billion people there must today be at least a thousand men as evil as Stalin was. In all of human history we can probably double that number. Stalin would be lost in the crowd; but most of this group will harm only a few victims. (Imagine a town of them.)

Alas, Stalin had the power to inflict his nature on millions, personally directing more human suffering than perhaps any other of his evil kin.

So far.

The paradoxical gladness of suffering

Newsday.com: Doctor who treated herself at South Pole describes ordeal

The physician, now healty and a motivational speaker, concludes:

'Most people tell me they're glad they had breast cancer,' she told the luncheon Wednesday. 'It's because most people say they would rather take the chance and learn what they have learned, because it teaches you what's really important in life.'

I presume she's speaking of a subset of those who've had breast cancer and appear to be longterm survivors. I think few mortals would gratefully die for wisdom.

I've tended to think wisdom is overrated; and yet there are unhappy personal experiences I would not undo -- even if the devil were to offer that option. On the other hand, some wisdom I would surrender.

A gladness for the wisdom of suffering is worthy of more thought than this weak blog can manage.

The battle for Kansas has been lost

The evolution of a fight to the end - U.S. News - MSNBC.com

The battle for Kansas has been lost.

Defenders of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection are boycotting four days of hearings — beginning Thursday — over the science curriculum in Kansas, where the state Board of Education is made up of a majority of conservatives critical of what they see as errors in the standard theory.

Move on team, spend resources elsewhere -- Kansas has been lost.

This will be good news for Kansas private schools. Elsewhere, the battle for Minnesota is simmering; we are by no means safe ground.

Soon we'll learn if publishers will start putting christian creationism into public school science textbooks.

Google Web Accelerator for XP and Firefox (ok, for IE too)

Google Web Accelerator

Google's latest toy. Others have shipped similar bits of software, but this one uses Google's infrastructure as the page cache. Scary. I'll use it.

1. What is Google Web Accelerator?

Google Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google's global computer network to make web pages load faster. Google Web Accelerator is easy to use; all you have to do is download and install it, and from then on many web pages will automatically load faster than before.

Please note that Google Web Accelerator is currently in beta test mode. If you have any problems using it or have suggestions for how we can improve it, please see the Google Group devoted to it.

Also note that during the first part of our beta testing period, users outside of North America and Europe may not see much improvement in their web page loading speed.

2. How does Google Web Accelerator work?

Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:

* Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
* Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
* Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
* Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
* Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
* Compressing data before sending it to your computer.

7. Can I run Google Web Accelerator on a browser other than Internet Explorer or Firefox?

For other browsers running on Windows, you'll need to manually configure your proxy settings to 127.0.0.1:9100 for HTTP connections.

I have a minor claim to fame with regard to page compression. It's been built into browsers for eons, but many years ago I came up with one of the first applications in a commercial web application.

It's XP only for now. Given the proxy address mentioned above (127.0.0.1 is 'localhost') I gather it installs a small proxy server on one's local machine. Of course I'll try seeing if I can use that proxy from my Mac laptop, replacing localhost with the XP machine's IP address (turn of firewall first of course). I'm sure Mac geeks will be figuring out how to jam this thing into Tiger asap.

PS. My wife, who tolerates this sort of geeky enthusiasm, notes that a "Google Accelerator" is just the sort of thing Calvin would have.

Update:

1. This thing is astounding. It saved almost 50% of the time it takes the Apple page to load. It's like Firefox is on speed.

2. So now Google knows what we browse to (like it didn't before?) -- including the things we don't search for. Of course that data isn't useful for profiling, directed advertising, etc. Not that I care, I actually like getting ads that are interesting to me. The other day I got one for an S-video cable -- a great find really. And as for privacy -- well, you don't really think you have any, do you? You should have listened to me years ago ....

Professor Cronin is now famous

SLIS IUB > News > Dean's Notes: BLOG: see also Bathetically Ludicrous Online Gibberish

SLIS Dean and Rudy Professor of Information Science Blaise Cronin, reprinted from SLIS Network spring 2005:

... Lately, I’ve been wandering around Blogland, and I’m struck by the narcissism and banality of so many personal blogs, of which, if the statistics are to believed, there are millions. Here, private lives tumble into public view, with no respect for seemliness or established social norms. Here, as the philosopher Roger Scruton said of Reality TV, '[a]ll fig leaves, whether of language, thought or behavior, have now been removed.' What desperate craving for attention is indicated by this kind of mundane, online journaling? Surely, one writes a diary for one’s personal satisfaction; journaling is, after all, a deeply private act.

One wonders for whom these hapless souls blog. Why do they choose to expose their unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives to the potential gaze of total strangers? What prompts this particular kind of digital exhibitionism? The present generation of bloggers seems to imagine that such crassly egotistical behavior is socially acceptable and that time-honored editorial and filtering functions have no place in cyberspace. Undoubtedly, these are the same individuals who believe that the free-for-all, communitarian approach of Wikipedia is the way forward. Librarians, of course, know better.

I don't think this will rank with early predictions on airplanes and the necessity of home computers, but it's not bad. I really liked "sententious drivel"; I want to use that -- but how can sententious mean both "pithy" and "pompous"?