Chaos Magnet

Tech Tatts

One day I'll get around to doing some kind of case mod, but until then I'll have to make do with Tech Tatts, tattoos for your gear.

Searching for the One True Thing

I'm not a Democrat.

Oh, it's not that I don't agree with a lot of the things the Democrats stand for, it's just that I see them as (mostly) just as corrupt as the Republicans, when you come right down to it.

Trouble is, I don't quite know WHAT I am. For a couple of years, I was a member of the Reformed Silly Party of Florida, but they seem to have disappeared, so I don't know what the story is there. (I'm told they're still out there.) My wife thought I was carrying nonconformity a little far there, but I explained that it was my way of protesting the domination of the two-party system.

But it's an election year, so I'm thinking about it more than I used to. What, really, DO I believe?

This past weekend Eric and I set up a table at a local gun show -- selling dog tags, not guns -- and not surprisingly, I suppose, there was a table for the Libertarian Party. Now, if all you know about the Libertarians is the whole "abolish drug laws" thing, you're probably as surprised as I am to find out that there's much, much more to this party.

The basic philosophy is that government should protect us "from force and from fraud" both at home and abroad, and that other than that, they should basically stay out of people's lives.

Now, that's a position I can respect, I suppose, but the more I thought about it, the more troubled I became. I mean, OK, I understand the idea -- note I said "understand," and not necessarily "agree with" -- that people should be able to medicate themselves as they like, own guns, do what they want, and generally be responsible for themselves. OK, this last part I do agree with.

But as I talked to the rep, we got into other areas of discussion, such as the Department of Education. Apparently the thinking here is that it's not in the US Constitution, and the Federal Government should stay out of education. Why do we need national educational standards? Why should my tax money be used for programs across the country?

The rep pointed out that he'd home-schooled his kids, and that he and his wife had had to make the decision for one of them to stay home to do that. Funny thing, though, when I asked what a single parent should do about it, he changed the subject.

He changed the subject a lot in that conversation, actually, and finally invited me to continue it via email, since we were apparently disturbing the surrounding vendors. (I can respect that.)

But here's the notion that I'm left with. It seems to me that the Libertarian Party is either a wimpy version of anarchy -- no government, except to keep the bad people from hurting us -- or the most selfish philosophy I've ever seen. The community should decide what it's going to support, but there's no notion, as far as I can see, that taking care of other people is in any way required, or even desirable.

I should note here that in the "political spectrum quiz" they were handing out, I was the one and only "liberal" at the show, but I'd like to make it clear that I think there's a line between helping people and crippling them. If you're capable of working, then you need to get up and work. Period.

But if you can't -- and I mean really can't -- then I think the rest of us who are fortunate enough to be able to earn a living have an obligation to help out. We're all in this together, and that seems to be missing from the Libertarian philosophy.

Or have I missed something here?

Vengeance is Mine, Penny Book Seller!

When we're amongst ourselves, a frequent topic among computer book authors -- and, I suspect, most other types of authors -- is the fact that Amazon canabalizes sales of new books (for which we receive royalties) with prominent links to used books (for which we do not). One author recently found a way to make himself feel just a little better about it. I'm reprinting this, with his permission, from a private mailing list. (Update: After I posted this, he also posted it to his blog.)

I try not to mope about Amazon.Com selling used books on new book pages, even though I suspect that it's eating our lunch in these penny-pinching times.

However, my ears steam a bit when I see one of my out of print books selling for pennies. At a price that nominal, some Amazon Marketplace seller is killing other sales, making the book appear worthless, and won't even earn $1.

I was preparing a book donation for a library and realized something: Amazon will ship books anywhere, so these penny sellers are the world's cheapest book shipment service.

Tonight, I bought one of my books for $0.23 plus $3.49 shipping and handling. The penny seller will receive $0.23 plus a standard shipping credit of $2.26, $1.84 of which will be spent on media mail's two-pound rate. Her profit will be 65 cents minus packaging costs and labor.

I hope they appreciate the book at the public library in Ketchikan, Alaska, as much as I enjoyed buying it.

Rogers Cadenhead

Today's Cowboy Wisdom

The early bird gets the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Your own shortlink service

Apparently Jason DeFillippo decided to see what it would take to code a shortlink services. This is a service, such as TinyURL that enables you to enter a long URL, then gives you back a short one you can pass around. The server forwards requests to the real URL, and you don't have to email those hideous multi-line URLS. Trouble was, spammers started using Jason's service, so he had to take it offline. The good news is that he's made it available for download so anybody can make their own. Hm.

Content, free for the taking

I'm always on the lookout for content, and apparently I don't have to work nearly as hard as I do. (If you read this blog, you know that I'm unsuccessful carving out time for content more often than not.) Now I've found Freesticky: An index of free web site content, free content providers and self publishing resources. Of course, tonight I'm hot on the trail of some items for the InformIT XML Reference Guide, so I'll have to let you know how it goes.

Night of the Living Dead in the public domain

Talk about a mistake. Upon seeing that George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead was listed as being in the public domain on the Internet Movie Archive (where a full download is now available!) I did some checking around to see if someone wasn't playing a really bad joke. According to Boing Boing,

Travis, a member of the BoingBoing tribe on Tribe.net, says: " Before 1978, any copyrighted work had to have a copyright notice on every distribution, otherwise it wasn't considered copyrighted. George A. Romero mistakenly left out the copyright notice when he distributed his 1968 film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The copyright has not recently "lapsed," but was in fact never enforcable, which is why we have dozens of "pirate" distributions of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and innumerable knock-offs."

Ooooo, now this is cool.

3D animation builder and concepts

Martin Baker is a man after my own heart. Not only has he made his 3D World Simulation available, but also all of his notes on theory and concepts. The application works with Java3D and with .NET, and saves files as VRML, but the background information is fascinating. (OK, so you kind of have to be into this kind of thing to find it that fascinating, but that's just me. :) )

Seeds trust

If I ever get out to the farm, one of the things I want to do is start growing vegetables. My friend Molly just sent me a link to Seeds Trust, a company that preserves and sells heirloom seeds. (These are the seeds that actually germinate from year to year, rather than the sterile hybrid varieties most farmers use.)

From their catalog:

If we are going to sustain a genetically diverse agriculture, we need to redevelop a network of gardeners and farmers, each producing, saving and trading seeds adapted to their own unique conditions. Agriculture was developed and sustained in this manner for 10,000 years.

If we are going to redevelop a network of gardeners and farmers that produce, save and trade seeds, we need a new kind of seed company. We need companies that don't just sell gardeners and farmers all their seeds each year. Instead, the seed company of the future will search the world's remaining agricultural resources constantly to find new supplies of important, adapted, open-pollinated varieties. It will then teach its customers to save their own seeds from individual plants doing best in their own gardens and farms.

Seeds Trust was started for this reason. It is nothing more than a conservative, long-term plan to help support and increase the priceless diversity now being squandered.

Notes for animators

In my travels desperately searching for a 3-D to 2D converter, I ran across some helpful information for prospective 3D animators.

Bush family skeletons

It's interesting what you can find when you pay attention. I don't know how much of Bush Family Skeletons is accurate, but a lot of the later items I remember. What's interesting is that the page doesn't mention the alleged fact that George H. W. Bush is part owner of the Carlyle Group -- along with members of the Bin Laden family.

Watch TV on your computer

One of these days I'll get around to putting a TV tuner card in my computer, but there's a little voice inside my head that points out that if I do that I might as well have the monitor planted in my brain, because I'll never be away from the computer. Still, it's interesting that you can pretty easily (and inexpensively) Watch TV on your Linux computer. Apparently you don't even need a powerful machine. In this case the example is an old 133MHz Pentium.

What really killed the dinosaurs

OK, this is another "got it via email" item. As per usual, if this is yours, let me know. I'm especially interested because I'm sure that they've got other hilarious material I'd love to see.

What really killed the dinosaurs

Bush tv segments may have violated federal law

I'm tremendously heartened by the fact that people finally seem to be noticing -- and more importantly, pointing out -- unethical, or downright illegal actions by the Bush administration. Just received in tonight's update from ABC News and World News Tonight:

Federal officials are investigating television segments produced by the Bush administration in which people posing as journalists tout the benefits of the new Medicare law. Officials at the General Accounting Office say the Department of Health and Human Services may have violated a law that prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity purposes" without Congress' permission. Lisa Stark has more tonight on the investigation and the GAO's concern that the spots may mislead viewers.

Can't wait to see that one...

Case modding for beginners

Another case of "this won't be active until Friday" but if I leave it until then, I'll forget. Modding your case gives you the basics in doing some cool case mods for your computer or even your cell phone. One day I'll have time for this. Even includes info on etching acrylic.

Math you will probably never need

One day, after we finally move, I'm going to go back to college for my Ph.D. Before I do that, I'm going to have to take the GRE, and with my grades in college -- hey, I was supporting a family, cut me some slack -- I am going to have to really ace it. Thing is, my subject of choice is Physics, and my math is really, really rusty. Right now we're working on a tutorial that has a 3D graph in SVG, and I'm struggling to figure out how to represent it in a 2D space that adapts to the user's viewpoint. So I was very happy to find Miscellaneous Mathematical Utilities. These Javascript routines also have explanations of how the math actually works, so they're interesting to read.

Thought for the day

The quote of the day:

Stress is when you wake up screaming -- and realize you weren't asleep.

How not to help your child

I understand honoring your father, but when you're Mel Gibson and you know that your father "follows a tiny wing of traditionalist Catholicism that views the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council as a conspiracy between Jews and Masons to take over the church" maybe it'd be a good idea if you tell him not to talk to the media while you're fighting charges that your film is anti-Semitic. That way he won't tell the Associated Press that the Holocaust is "all — maybe not all fiction — but most of it is."

Why does he say that? Well, "They claimed that there were 6.2 million (Jews) in Poland before the war and after the war there were 200,000, therefore he (Hitler) must have killed 6 million of them. They simply got up and left. They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney and Los Angeles."

Um ... riiiiiiiight.

Maybe growing up with this man is why Gibson can't understand why his film might spark controversy.

According to TV Guide, Steven Speilberg managed to sidestep the controversy, though, "declaring himself 'too smart to answer a question like that.' At a press conference Wednesday to promote the DVD release of Schindler's List, the Oscar-winning filmmaker said he had yet to see the film, which has been accused of promoting anti-Semitism. 'When I do see [it],' he added, 'the first person who will hear from me will be Mel Gibson and no one else.'"

Retrieving DTDs

John wrote:

> Hi Nicolas,
> I wonder if you could answer a problem I am having
> processing an XML file with a Java application. The
> XML file is ejb-jar.xml. There is a line referencing a
> DTD e.g. > Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Enterprise JavaBeans 2.0//EN"
> "http://java.sun.com/dtd/ejb-jar_2_1.dtd">.
> However, when my internet connection or java.sun.com
> is down, I am unable to retrieve the dtd and thus get
> a FileNotFoundException. I have tried saving the dtd
> in the java classpath with no success. The error
> occurs when I call: builder.parse(new
> File("ejb-jar.xml"));
>
> Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.
> thanks.../john

Hi, John!

The trouble is that the parser is trying to retrieve the file
from http://java.sun.com/dtd/ejb-jar_2_1.dtd. You can solve
this problem by saving a local copy to the same directory as
the XML file and changing the DOCTYPE declaration to read

"-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Enterprise JavaBeans 2.0//EN"
"ejb-jar_2_1.dtd">

I hope that helps!

---- Nick

It's scary to think this really happens

What's frightening to me is the idea that Belgian child sex rings are real. We'd all like to think that this is the stuff porno for psychopaths, but unfortunately, it's not. Even more disturbing is that while this very sad story took place in Belgium, reporter Peter Landesman told Fresh Air "that tens of thousands of women, girls and boys are smuggled into the United States from Eastern Europe and held captive as sex slaves in American cities like New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. Landesman reports that the U.S. government has done little to pursue the traffickers."

And it's not just Landesman. Check out the Polaris Project, trying to stop human trafficking.

Auction management

OK, I've started down the eBay road. I've decided to go ahead and use SpareDollar, even though I'm perfectly capable of hosting my own images, creating my own templates, and so on, but really, this is much, much easier. I've started simple, with just Sarah's vintage mermaid lamp and the Jeff Gordon official racing shirt.

Tomorrow I'll get the Dale Earnhardt Sr. shirt up there and start on the signed English art prints.

Here's hoping.

What's selling on eBay

Everybody always wonders what's selling on eBay. It's hidden pretty well, but apparently eBay maintains a list of hot categories, in which the numbers of bidders is growing faster than the number of new listings.

Finding physical auctions

I'm getting started selling on eBay, so I've been thinking a lot about physical auctions. Apparently you can get some good deals there to turn around and sell electronically. We'll see. The National Auctioneers Association has a good list of upcoming auctions, and I can't wait until after I move to start going to them.

In the meantime, I've got that Giant Tinkertoys to list. (So far there's only one on eBay and it's going for $76.) Here's hoping...