Global Toad News

While not computer related, I just wanted to comment about the proposal to reinstate the draft (article here) where the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is proposing that we need a draft (something that John Kerry supported).

In my opinion a draft lessens the value of human life.  It’s incompatible with the 13th amendment of the United States Constitution, and it puts the people in the military at risk from people that shouldn’t be given automatic weapons.

Heck, it puts everyone at risk.  It’s insane to tell someone that they are going to be forced to carry weapons and kill people and then think that they will just do whatever they are told without resentment.

But then, being sane isn’t a requirement for a politician.

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There is a report about global warming on other planets throughout the solar system.  This has some good news and some bad news, if true.  First it means that  people aren’t the only cause of global warming (good news), bad news is that there isn’t much that we can do to prevent it (bad news). So maybe we spending so much on militarization and more on space exploration (with more benefits to mankind, etc.).

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Clarion Magazine has a series of articles on how to sign your applications from the article Summary:

Increasingly Windows security makes it advisable to be able to sign not just your installer but your actual EXEs and DLLs. Jane Fleming concludes her two-part series on signing applications with two approaches to signing: wizard based and batch file based.

I think that this is something that will have to implemented soon for most Clarion applications, and that this article is a definite must read.

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Recently it was mentioned to me that you could use Remote Desktop to connect to a terminal server via a VPN using a Windows XP SP2 machine, if you change a registry setting.

The registry key you must edit is located at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Terminal ServerWinStationsRDP-Tcp/PortNumber

You can change it to any number other than 3389, (1339 works well).

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When Microsoft acquired Systernals in the Summer of 2006, I thought that was the end of systernals and the free tools.  Well, apparently I was wrong about that, as Microsoft has just released Process Monitor, which is:

an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of enhancements including rich and non-destructive filtering, comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names, reliable process information, full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. Its uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in your system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.

Sounds like something that would be good for most developers/administrators toolkit to me.  And if you didn’t like tools that weren’t from Microsoft, this is now solved as well.

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In IT Week there is an article about Sun releasing a version of Java under the GPL.  I believe that this is a step forward, as anyone can now “improve” on Java, and move it to different systems, but with the proviso that if you do distribute your own java, you have to give the source code as well.

All in all, a step forward.

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While there are other programs besides Total Commander for doing similar things, I tend to use it, because Christian Ghisler is really great at supporting his program and adding new features, and frankly the cost is minimal if it’s something you can benefit from (the nag part of his software is much less than W*nZ*p).  In any case he just released a new version to public Beta (available here) that looks really good, and has some nice features.

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Microsoft has apparently reversed itself on the “you can only transfer Vista once” idiocy.  Initially Microsoft had severely limited the rights of Vista users to recover their systems.  This move is a step in the right direction, but remember, when you use Vista, Microsoft will be watching you.

More at Computerworld.

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In what seems to be an amazing development Computerworld says:

The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones & Co. reported today that Microsoft will offer sales support for SUSE Linux and co-develop technologies with Novell to make it easier for users to run both SUSE Linux and Microsoft Windows on their computers.

Personally I think that this has to do with Microsoft trying to make up for the whole supposed gaff with Microsoft’s involvement in finding funding for SCO and by extension, SCO’s attack on Linux.

By making nice to Novell, Microsoft is reducing it’s risk of being sued by Novell for it’s actions (whatever they may or may not have been) with regard to SCO getting $50 Million dollars from Baystar. Of course there is still is the question of what IBM may or may not do, but Microsoft might be able to work something out with IBM as well (though there are still many people at Big Blue that are upset about OS/2 and the way they feel Microsoft betrayed them on that project).

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Some people have questioned me about:

1. What does the US ranking on privacy has to do with computing
2. Why should they care

Over at The Register there is an article about the head of a hi-tech company that was using his workers personal information to obtain credit, buy things and what-not.  Fortunately he was caught by the FBI.

The sad truth of the matter is that in the United States, there is no real protection of your personal information (some people might argue otherwise, but based on my personal knowledge and experience, they would be mistaken).   The people who are least protected are those that are forced into the U.S. social security system, which then provides a convenient way to get even more information about a person.  Because of the wide spread use of the Social Security Number in the United States as a “Universal Identifier” it has become trivial to assume another’s identity, rendering the whole idea of “watch lists” a joke.  With at least 11 million workers in the United States of so called “undocumented” status and the federal government turning a blind eye to these infractions (even going so far as to get convictions of border patrol agents for doing their jobs) there is a thriving market in selling personal details of people.

With companies such as HP farming out security services to third parties (who then appeared to farm it out to even other parties) it’s hard to keep your private information, well private.

But with moves to have RFID enabled  ids, passports and the government tuning out concerns about security of the new RFID enabled passports and id cards that are being mandated, it will be easy to sit in the airport and swipe identities without having to have access some connected database (though that would help).

I really don’t know how having a “single signon” or a common identifier improves the security of ANYONE, which is why I have a program that generates 10 character passwords using special characters that are different for each login. Unfortunately you still have to store that information somewhere, and keeping it in synch for the different operating systems that I use is still a little bit of a challenge.

In closing, even if you aren’t concerned with the lack of privacy, you should be aware that the presumption of guilt exists in the U.S. legal system for most civil cases (don’t believe what you see on television, go and sit in a court, not on a jury, but as a spectator for week or so and you will have a good idea of the dismissive attitude that judges show towards people who claim that their car wasn’t parked there, or some other rational reason why they are not liable for some civil cost).  Even worse is that if someone were to gain access to your computer (using your “single sign on”) they could put electronic evidence on your computer (that you don’t even know about) and you could be convicted and sent to jail for having that information (or agree to some plea agreement because of the presumption of guilt that exists in computer cases).

But keep giving your social security number out to every phone company, gas company and credit card company, while those who don’t have social security numbers are able to get the same services, even without a social security number.

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At PrisonPlanet there is an AP article that details how the United States is ranked at 30 in a survey of 37 countries for protecting privacy of it’s citizens.

It’s nice that the US was able to beat China at something for once.

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After Nasa admitted that they lost the moon tapes there has been a quiet effort by some people who had seen what they thought were moon tapes to find them.  Now there is an article at Cosmos that says:

For years ‘lost’ tapes recording data from the Apollo 11 Moon landing have been stored underneath the seats of Australian physics students. A recent search has uncovered them.

So now the whole “a funny thing happened on the way to the moon” story can be put to rest, because these tapes can prove (and these are high quality tapes) the issue.

Thanks to the Australians for preserving the records that NASA doesn’t care about.

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In Comp.lang.clarion there is an announcement about a source code add on for clarion that is (quote):

ProImage is a programmers image editor.

With it you can add advanced image processing to your applications in a
matter of minutes.

ProImage is also a very adaptive product in that the user interface will
adapt itself depending on how you call it from your app.

You can call it to simply allow the user to obtain and process a image -
passing it back to you when finished, or as a stand alone image editor, or
as a page editor for other controls (such as ProScan).

Sounds like a good thing to me, you might want to take advantage of his offer:

ProImage sells for $249.95 (yes this is slightly higher than we planned,
but the product is MUCH more than it was originally designed to be and we
still have a long list of features to add on our drawing board).

However since we were so long releasing it, we are offing a special ONE
WEEK DISCOUNT price of $199.95 (offer expires November 8, 2006).

Which you can get by going to http://www.clarionproseries.com.

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