False Positives: 01/01/2004

The Way of Nigella

This is for Elicia :The Morning News - The Way of Nigella

Russell Beattie discovers URL Rewrite Filter at Paul Tuckey's URL Rewrite Filter. Looks useful. Something to tuck away for a later time. Something like this seems like it should be a part of Struts (or whatever your framework of choice/joy/damage/pain is).

After 50 years, soldier reunited with his family in South Korea

This story After 50 years, soldier reunited with his family in South Korea brought tears to my eyes.

Mr. Jun was lost to his unit just days before the 1953 armistice that ended the fighting, and South Korean military records listed him as killed in action. But he was not dead, just taken prisoner.

Somehow, Mr. Jun managed to survive -- not only 50 years in a country ravaged by a bankrupt economy, a hard-line Communist regime and terrible famine, but also a remarkable escape from North Korea that came close to disaster at many turns.
...
When he was captured, Mr. Jun had parents, two sisters and a brother. They all assumed he was dead, and he had no idea what had happened to them.
...
Mr. Jun was finally reunited with his brother and sisters just after Christmas. Tears of joy and sadness flowed.

"My little sister, come here! I will hug and carry you on my back as I used to," Mr. Jun cried to 57-year-old Jun Boon-yi, as he saw her for the first time since she was a toddler.

"I am sorry that I was away so long and did not do my duty as a brother."

The woman, her face now creased and weathered and streaming with tears, buried her face in his chest.
...
Mr. Jun, the 34th escapee since 1994, then headed to his old hometown, where sister Yong-mok promised "to feed him well."

"This is a miracle he could come back home alive after all that hardship in North Korea," she said.

What horror the man must have gone though. The hardship of being separated from this family multiplied by the hell on earth that is North Korea. Every happiness to Mr Jun and this family.

I should note that the story was covered earlier (on Dec 24th (which is why I missed it?)) by The Marmot's (Final) Hole: Welcome Home and Seeing Eye blog : 53 YEARS LATER has a very emotional picture.

Disable Flash in Mozilla, kill ads dead.

Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog: Disable Flash in Mozilla/Thunderbird. I wanted Flash Click To View and now I found it (via Jeremy Zawodny). This will block Flash animations in Mozilla/Firebird. It's still possible to view them (if you click on them).

Another Firebird/mozilla trick: type about:config in the url box and you'll see all the configuration parameters.

The zombie that will not die.

As part of the runup to yet another LotusSphere at mickey's dolphin world :The Long Goodbye for Lotus Notes

Politically, Notes apps reside on the borders between business units. Notes HR apps are the J. Edgar Hoovers of the enterprise, capturing the sensitive details of where the corporate bodies are buried. Notes' seminal delivery of secure replication allowed sales force automation to establish interconnected mapping of complex relationships that could survive individual personnel changes and the loss of rainmakers to competitors....

But don't count Notes out. Being dead has been good for the architecture that inspired the Web. As long as IBM keeps the porting path open;from those original Notes apps to Domino to Lotus Workplace portlets to a DB2 alternate store in Domino 7 to an Eclipse assembly tool in 2006;it keeps Global Services busy and profitable.

Also Microsoft is trying to, skin the cat, at least give it a new home:

Microsoft Zeros In on LotusOver the next six to eight months, the Redmond, Wash., company plans to roll out a series of initiatives, including a tool kit, due this summer, that allows Domino developers to create Notes- and Domino-based Web services using Microsoft development tools such as Visual Studio .Net and Visual Basic....The as-yet-unnamed tool kit... creates the .Net Web services, they will be consumed by Microsoft applications such as the Office suite, SharePoint and Exchange.

All this in the bigger picture of what IBM/Lotus is planning : IBM Beefs Up Lotus Workplace Platform

A point release of Notes and Domino, 6.5.1, is planned for the first quarter of next year. Then in the second quarter, IBM plans to release Workplace 2.0 featuring a rich client built on the Eclipse framework, collaborative document management and Workplace Builder, an application development toolkit for Workplace.

At the same time, support for team workspaces and document management will be added to Notes and Domino.

By the fourth quarter, Workplace will get a disconnected client and mobile development support in its 2.5 version, while the 7.0 version of Notes and Domino gets integration with Workplace, enhanced portlets for WebSphere and support for DB2 as the data store.

The 8.0 version of Notes and Domino, likely for some time in 2005, will allow Notes users to access non-IBM applications, such as a Siebel Systems Inc. call center application for example, from within Notes.

By far the biggest problem is expecting IT managers and theibossesss to digest all this and plan out the next 2 or 3 years.

Yet Another Thing For Ian to Understand (YATFITU)

Hibernate Your Data by Davor Cengija. Hibernate can persist any kind of Java object, manipulate a hierarchy of objects, handle collections, and work with transactions. Davor Cengija shows you how.

Quite a good piece. A little SQL 101, show you some things that Can Go Wrong (CGW, happens to me a dozen times a day). I don't know why I didn't link this the first time I read it (Blogger fatigue?).

There is also this SQL 201 piece (allways good for reference) The Effective Use of Joins in Select Statements by Satya Komatineni -- A join construct helps you effectively use select statements to mine relational databases. This article examines syntax, surprises, and rules of thumb for the use of joins.

And in a related, all things DB theme Ten MySQL Best Practices : 1. Set a password for the "root" user and then rename the user, 2. Hide MySQL from the Internet, 3. Protect the MySQL installation directory from access by other users, 4. Don't store binary data in MySQL, 5. Stick to ANSI SQL, 6. Create your own sequence generation scheme, 7. Do not mix display code and database code, 8. Normalize with zeal, denormalize sparingly, 9. Use connection pooling in Web servers and application servers, 10. Tune your queries with EXPLAIN SELECT.

Thoughts on Blogging The Market

Via Blogging Roller: Newsfeed Syndication, E-mail to weblog gateway, Notification of comments, Full text search, Archive browser, Weblog aggregator, Wiki integration.

Troll XP

Behind the scenes at Microsoft.

Eric's Kitchen

Via Chanpon Eric's Kitchen, The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen, is a modernist/contemporary interpretation of Japanese food.

The Observer | Focus | Forget black, forget white. EA is what's hot

Mindblender or How to lose weigth via the internet

Via Wired 12.01: "Mindblender"

Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka presents more than 120 such optical illusions in his books .

Professor Tetris , unfolded

Canadian scientist Dr. Erik Demaine, about whom I blogged in November (2003) gets mentioned in January 2004's Wired

What does VOIP get you?

As part of my ongoing "Year of VOIP" rant, I submit Tim Bray's Telephony R.I.P.? or "Video conferencing for free"/"Videophone's for the Rest of us".

also extremetech has this on webcam's :The $40 Device You Didn't Know You Needed

And Wired has "Why Your Next Phone Call May Be Online, which means its mainstream geek. (Now only the PCweek article is missing)

Googling by the numbers

via InfoWorld: Google adds number search tool

Not every one is aware of this, and unfortunalty many of these tricks/Tips/Hacks only work for USA based information, but you can search for

A phone number like (530) 756-0236 and get a Name and a map.

UPS, FedEX or U.S. Postal Service tracking numbers (untested)

Patents numbers Like this for patent 5159513

(FAA) airline registration number , like this for Air Canada Flight 716

You can get Definitions (words and abbreviations) by typing : "What is Word" like this what is FBO

Bar codes (I have yet to test this)

check the weather at a particular airport by entering the airport's three-letter code and the word "airport". (USA only, this it links to the FAA like this for LGA, New York LaGuardia International Airport

USA zip codes link to maps, like this one Zip code 10242

Many of these have been there for some time, but where not well known. It also seems to have problems with some new/change zip codes and phone numbers.

Update (jan 17th) : via boingboing to Google Blog
an example of UPC codes, e.g. 073333531084 or 036000250015, bring up some information about the product.
and Google does Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers, e.g. JH4NA1157MT001832, link to a CARFAX report on what kind of car and its status.

'UName' naming standard. Patent pending

"Pick a word. Now, imagine a potentially meaningful adjective or other nebbish modifier, select the first letter, and append this to either the beginning or the end of the noun you originally chose.

Slashdot | Why Such Unimaginative Nomenclature?

The Power of 3 plus a DB

Today's reading list :

Java(TM) Boutique - The Power of Three - Eclipse, Tomcat, and Struts

Advanced DAO programming

Databases and Tomcat

hopefully not DOA, with a lemon wrapped around a large brick.

Mastering MVC and Model 2 with Struts"

via A Sleepless Night in Tucson: "Mastering MVC and Model 2 with Struts"

SELECT @@IDENTITY

All Things: SELECT @@IDENTITY. works in MySQL 4 and Microsoft SQL Server', get you the last auto increment value (used to gett the primary key for a table after an insert )

Liberation spectrum

Liberation spectrum by By Cory Doctorow

A List Apart : Faux Columns & Elastic Design

A New A List Apart: ISSN: 1534-0295. 9 January 2004 – Issue No. 167

Anita Mui’s funeral

BWG does a splendid job commenting on Anita Mui's funeral.

Developing Multilingual Web Applications Using JavaServer Pages Technology

Developing Multilingual Web Applications Using JavaServer Pages Technology.

A useful reference paper with regards to using the JSTL "fmt" tags. I've just started using the setBundle and message actions for the tag set and although I known I have more learning to do (duh!), it's a good start. Soon I'll have a .properties file from all my text string messages. Which can be Spell Checked!!

UNC finance professor Junius Peake is an ASS

Via Techdirt:Make Fun Of A Professor, Lose Your Computer :
USATODAY.com - Student who spoofed prof online sues after cops threaten charges

here' the Colorado story the broke the news : Student squeals over seizure, College satirist suing Greeley police after computer confiscated

So Professor Peake, did the problem go away? Or are you just a rock and roll fascist? (Yes I've just passed the Godwin's Law line

A quick google search turned up : this UNC directory page, with his email and phone number, and a article that about a earlier issue Earlier this year, the coalition backed a student who filed a complaint with U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights against Professor Junius Peake, charging that he badgered her in his office. Last week, the Department of Education dismissed the complaint as groundless.

The web site can be found here : http://www.geocities.com/thehowlingpig/ and another newpaper article about the issue us here

The new enterprise portal:

InfoWorld: The new enterprise portal: January 09, 2004: By Eric Knorr: Applications: "The browser-based portal is fast becoming the enterprise UI and the nexus for a new breed of integration and app dev".

So have the technologies matured enough for this to happen? Can you mix and match (integrate) back-ends system? java and .net? I don't think the standards are there, just yet. which means you still have to standardize on a vendor. And pray your older back ends can be pasted in, at some limited level. And of course there are still huge organizational issues, as always the harder part.

Ian's World of clenched forehead

Eric Weisstein's World of Physics. Lots of yummy stuff.

VOIP Slap Down follow up

to follow up on this and this this

further Globe and Mails articles :
Primus service nips at telcos' heels gives more details and background.

Primus is the first to move but others, such as large cable television companies like Shaw Communications Inc., are poised to introduce their own service by next year....Numerous observers have said that local phone prices, set by the federal regulator, are already too low in Canada, discouraging competition. But Primus Canada has undercut those rates by at least 15 per cent, and as much as a third when options such as voice mail and call display are included....Until now, Sprint Canada Inc. was the only national competitor to the former monopolies in the local market.... the company resells traditional service rather than taking a new approach. It has had modest success at best, attracting about 200,000 customers -- a fraction of Telus's and Bell's almost 12 million connections.

and another background article Net phones just a small device away. Small hook-up box needed but some say they likely won't replace fixed lines

Cell phones--the next dinosaur : concerning Vonage's deal to ebed its software on chips from Texas Instruments.. allowing any broadband-connected device can hook into the Vonage network. more details here

The metaphysics of VoIP. regarding whether VoIP.. should be classified as an "information service" or a "telecommunications service" under existing federal or state regulatory policies. If VoIP falls under telecommunications, then it is subject to public-utility economic regulation. If it is an information service, then it is not." Wathout who wins this regulatory/political battle. the phone lobby is a big player, but they are NOT all on the same side.

Here is more background: Broadband top issue in 2004, U.S. regulator says

Manageability - Open Source Web Crawlers Written in Java

Manageability - Open Source Web Crawlers Written in Java. Evil, pure Evil.

Apache Jakarta Tomcat 4 and 5: Configuration and Usage Tutorial

Apache Jakarta Tomcat 4 and 5: Configuration and Usage Tutorial. I'm thinknig this with be a great help. or not.

Toshiba Breed's Huge People

Via boingboing Via richinternetapps Via steal from the best

Toshiba today announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, the result of a successful project to breed huge humans. Industry insiders suspect that with Moore's Law starting to crumble, and physical limits on lithographic technology causing tremendous problems on the continued minituarisation of a range of devices, that the solution was to breed huge people, which in the words of a spokesman, "...obviously have huge hands...".

Results of this programme are demonstrated in the above photographs, showing large humans (TM) to scale against a traditional 40GB SCSI drive.

As can be seen from the above images, the technoloy has also been applied to children, in attempts to bring school bullying to a historic end. Rumours that Toshiba have in fact just announced a tiny hard drive, are being dismissed as ludicrous.

Full story carried over at BBC Technology News...

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

via Russell Beattie Flaming Lips album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"

And I like it too! But more to the point (as if), the Warner Brother Record site and link is amazing in that within a flash player you can actually listen to the tracks on the album. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to intercept the music on its way to me speaker and make a mp3, but WBR has not let that stop them from letting the average music fan from learning about their clients work. WBR = Not clueless! I believe you Yoshimi! Wicked Stuff. I think there may be FlammingLips CD (or DVD) in the near future.

Primus Canada launches national Internet phone service : Let the Fight begin!

Via the Globe and Mail : Primus Canada launches national Internet phone service. This happened a lot faster than I expected. And it looks like it's available now at $CAN 20 / month for the basic package. And I noticed this in Coverage :

Customers can get a new phone number or migrate their existing phone number to TalkBroadbandÂ™ service in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver. However, any High Speed Internet user in Canada can take advantage of TalkBroadbandÂ™ by selecting a new number from one of the markets above.

truly the "Death of Distance". So what does area code (or country code) mean now?

This is just the beginning of a turf war that's going to blur the boundaries between Local phone, Long Distance, Cell phone, ISP's, Cable, Satellite, and Wireless companies. They are all Communication Infrastructure Provides (CIP's ?), and with IP everywhere the differences that kept them from competing are gone (or going). Pick the one that suits you based on price, service or features.

followup here

Massive Change - Radio

BoingBoing put me on to UoT's Massive Change - Radio and their archive of "provocative thinkers across disciplines" including the Bruce Sterling December 2, 2003 interview which I'm currently listening to (the interview covers many things in his "Tomorrow Now" book). A lot of good stuff. I expect I'll be playing more of these interviews.

Cleaning Up Information Pollution

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox lists Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution .

All are fairly common sense. None of them are that hard to do. None of them would cost much, if anything, it practiced (and likely save money). Most of them should be standard policy for any non-Neolithic organization. Sadly few company teach good infomation habits.

My picks for the practices with the most bang (effect) for the buck (effort): Don't use "reply to all", Write informative subject lines, Don't circulate internal email to all employees.

Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox), just so you can make sure to do ALL ten! So many places make the Homepages (public and internal) hard to use, it is just easier to count how badly they are doing it.

VoIP in '04

Voxilla has A user's guide to the VoIP revolution, if it isn't being Slash'ed at the moment.

And I would agree that 2004 is the year where VOIP enters mainstream awareness and practical use for business and the public. (and 2005 will be the year of VOW [Voice Over Wireless, trademark pending]).

The tipping point for me was this Globe and Mail article :: BCE wants to use VoIP to compete with itself and this one :: Bell, Microsoft team on broadband TV mentioning IPTV. BCE (Ma' Bell ) has to get serious about VOIP because it will allow Rogers to compete for LOCAL telephone service. BCE has to do this or find Rogers providing new services based on VOIP (like : each teenager with separate phones), plus figure out how to do IPTV to compete with Rogers on their field.

It will be interesting to see if all this can be done on the current infrastructure or will this lead to (finally) upgrading of the "Last Mile" and fiber (at least) to the curb if not into the house. In this case the "Last Mile" is for both the Telecoms POTs (Plain Old Telephone System) and the Cable system's Cable cable. At last local competition at the local level! The only worry would be regulators getting in and unduly ly slowing the process.

Add this to the tends afoot for wide screen HDTV (see This) :: ie 50' TV's <700USD by the end of 2005 and trends in PRV like Tivo, the converging of computers and home entertainment is well under way to changing the Home.

followup here and here

Power to the People, A New Year for Hong Kong

Via the The Globe and Mail, between 37,000 and 100,000 people marched on New Years Day demanding full democray for Hong Kong, as set out for in Hong Kong's mini-constitution.

This is the biggest rally since a mass protest in July that threw the government into crisis by denouncing a proposed anti-subversion bill.

Another step in the right direction, following district council elections in November (2003) which had increased turn-out and more seats for The Democratic Party (and setting the stage for elections to the more powerful Legislative Council next year, with could weaken government control of the legislature even though only half the seats are elected.)

Hong Kong star Anita Mui, 40, dies of cancer

HK star Anita Mui, 40, dies of cancer

HONG KONG : Canto-pop diva Anita Mui, who suffered from cancer of the womb, died early Tuesday morning. She was 40.

According to reports, Mui had earlier slipped into a coma and needed respiratory treatment to help her breathe. Her death was announced by her friends from the Hong Kong entertainment circle, who had rushed to the hospital upon hearing that her condition had worsened.

Earlier this month, there had been speculation that Mui had liver failure, but her manager denied the report.

The singer first confirmed that she was suffering from cancer of the womb at a news conference in September. But she said her condition was stable. She even held a concert in Hong Kong last month. However, earlier this month, she missed an appearance in Singapore, triggering reports that her condition has worsened.

via : channelnewsasia

Far too young....Anita was born Oct 10 1963, making her one day older than me. She started in 1987's Yin ji kau (a well known HK ghost story, know in english as "Rouge") with Leslie Cheung who died April 1st 2003. Her sister Ann Mui passed away in 2000 from cancer.

Updated : CNN is now reporting on the story. And in Tuesday mornings Toronto Star (they of the ugly long url's) reported on her death, above the fold!.

BWG and Flying Chair are now reporting on her passing.

I found on China Daily a photo series of Anita.

Here is here List of Films.

Anita Mui's funeral has been scheduled for January 12.

a Domino OPML directory.

Jake of codestore fame, has collaborated with Christopher Arras of news4notes.com to build a directory (which is the OPML part ) of Domino blogs with RSS feeds.

Get your red hot Domino OPML directory here :
http://news4notes.com/lotus-links/domino.opml

Many thanks Jake and Chris!

Lotus RSS Notes Reader, now for R6.x

I have had reports that the News Reader java code was failing under Lotus Notes R6.x, but had not spent the time to figure it out why. However, I've just finished a email exchange (two words that really shouldn't go together) with a fine fellow (Thank you Brian!) who reports that :

There is some new agent security setting in R6.x (not sure which release). In 6.0 everything works. In 6.0.1 and
6.0.2cf2 and 6.5, your stuff fails. But if you change the security settings to "Mode 3" everything works. fine.