Knutson's Miscellany

2012-01-03T03:07:00.001-06:00

Test entry to test RapidBlog syncing. Disregard.

How to solve your spam problem

2011-10-23T02:31:00.016-05:00

Spam is like venereal disease. You don’t get VD from sitting on a toilet seat. You get it by doing something dumb.
It’s the same with spam email. If you get it, it’s because you engaged in unsafe computing behavior.

Maybe you posted your email “in the clear” on a website where spambots could find it. These are electronic web crawlers that copy every string of letters that have an @ in the middle of them and add them to the spammers’ email lists.
Or perhaps you got a spam email and naïvely clicked the “remove me from the list” link, which perversely merely tells the spammer that you’re a valid address, so you’ll get even more spam.
Once you’re on a spammer’s list, you will never, ever, ever get off.
Spammers sell their lists to each other and they combine them willy-nilly without doing the “merge/purge” or list-cleaning functions that any legitimate postal mass mailer will use.
Spam exists only because email is free. If spammers find only one pinhead out of 100,000 people who falls for their phony spiels and sends in ten dollars, they make a profit because those other 99,999 emails cost them nothing.
(I don’t want government interference in the web, but it’s worth noting that if every email cost just one penny, it would be an insignificant cost to individuals, but spam would disappear overnight.)
Spammers are clever criminals. When banished from one ISP (Internet Service Provider), they’ll jump to another — or pay bribery to a corrupt one.
And before you whine about “junk mail” in your real mailbox, you’d better understand that if direct mail, catalogs, and magazines weren’t subsidizing the Postal Service, you’d be paying through the nose to mail that occasional letter to Aunt Matilda. The U.S. Mail only works because of volume. (Have you sent an envelope by FedEx lately? That’s what your stamp would cost.)
In case you were wondering, the magic number for snail-mail direct mailers is 2%. If at least two out of every hundred people don’t respond to their solicitation, it’s stopped because it’s uneconomic. This guarantees that in addition to postal “junk” mail helping support the Postal Service, only mailings for products or services that fulfill a legitimate need will survive.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

THE GOOD news is that you can be spam-free. I get at most one or two spam emails a month, and it’s been that way for five years. I don’t even have my ISP’s spam filter turned on!
THE BAD news is that to get to this state, you will need to change your email address and start fresh. You can never make a tainted email address clean again.
THE UGLY “solution” is that some people clumsily force their correspondents to go through machinations to “register” their email addresses. This is like making all your friends get tested for AIDS because of behavior you engaged in. It is especially nettling because many web users have multiple email addresses that we send from, forcing us to jump through your hoops over and over again.
Yes, it’s a pain to let all your friends know you’ve changed your email. But if you do it right, you only need to do it once. (And most of you could use a shorter or more memorable address anyway. Take a few minutes to try some different ones, and don’t use whatever number-jumble your ISP throws at you as the default.)

The points below are common-sense explanations of why you get spam and what you should do to avoid it in the future.

The content is from http://gnwda.org/nospam.htm
I have deleted their point #18 because it’s a hustle for a paid spam-blocking service. Only a fool pays to block spam. All the tools you need are your ISP’s spam filters and your own common sense.

Note: Mac users can easily configure a “bounce” button on their Apple Mail toolbar. This will send it back to the sender as an invalid address. But it’s merely a more sophisticated option. Hitting the delete key works for any email application.

1. Be private. Do not give out your email address in the first place. In many instances if you are required to give your email address in order to receive something off a website, give an email address that you have set up specifically to receive junk. Some people then choose “nospam@----“ for their private address.
2. You can also set up a fake email address at such places as hotmail.com or yahoo.com; these email accounts are free.
3. Look for options to opt out of receiving promotional mailings when you have to give your address.
4. Preview all email by reading their subject lines before opening the mail. If you’re using an email program, such as Outlook, use the “View” menu to set the “Layout” to show only the subject lines, so you can select what you want to delete without opening the mail. Treat every email you preview as being of a suspicious nature. Many harmless-looking emails with attachments may contain viruses. Many people succumbed to the “I love you” email that contained a virus.
5. When you receive a forwarded email asking for help or money from someone, and in return you will have eternal good luck (or bad luck if you don’t forward it), do not forward it on. It is likely to be a hoax and is a great way for spammers to cultivate email addresses. Many virus warning emails are a hoax as well. You should research virus warnings before telling your friends about it so you don’t spread the hoax to them. (Research only takes a minute; see “Viruses, Legends & Lies”)
6. When forwarding emails to groups of people, send them via the BCC field; this shields their address from others. Ask others to send emails to you this way, too.
7. Use the filters function, if your email program or service provides them, to filter out unwanted emails that do or do not meet certain criteria.
8. Keep your name off mailing lists, chat rooms and newsgroups by not giving out your correct address in the first place.
9. If your email address is on a website, ask your web designer to transform it in to a picture or change the @ sign to # so that it’s not recognized by the ‘robots’ that come to steal email addresses for mailing lists.
10. Many spam messages have instructions at the bottom of the message asking you to reply to the message if you want to be removed from their mailing list. Don’t do this, as it will only confirm that your address is valid and active and you will most likely be hit with more spam.
11. Check the email address of the sender: Do you recognize it?
12. Watch out for fake headers. These are in the subject line and are commonly “Dear Friend.....” or “Here’s the information you requested.”
13. Never buy anything from a spammer’s email, even if it is something you want, as it is likely to be fraudulent.
14. You can complain to the spammer’s internet service provider by sending an email to abuse@ [the domain] or postmaster@ [the domain].
15. Don’t reply to contests in your email or offers of free websites, nor send money to anti-spam organizations, as they are most likely hoaxes.
16. Don’t submit your address to Opt-out or removal lists, as these are a hoax and you will end up getting more spam.
17. Be sure to have antivirus software installed on your computer. While you may be able to recognize an email with a strange attachment without opening it, a picture or Word document may harbor also a virus.

How to tell civilization is ending

2010-08-24T22:47:00.000-05:00

There's a commercial running for a Playstation game called "Mafia II."

A music track by Dean Martin plus game animation of people shooting each other with tommy guns, ending with a POV shot from a grave as dirt is being tossed in by mafia goons.

Coke is so phat, NOT

2010-08-17T03:41:00.000-05:00

This bus signage "Coke is so phat" appeared in NYC about twenty years ago, as I recall, done by some tactical marketing outfit in a vain attempt to make Coca-Cola relevant to the Gen-Xers, or whichever alphabetized and lobotomized group was presumed to dominate then.

"Phat" is a term from the 70's, which I naturally despised the first time I encountered it, combining as it did antiphrasis in its clumsiest form with the purposeful misspelling common to the hip-hop underclass.

But more to the point, could anything be less sexy, less cool, less "in" than Coca-Cola, the most lowbrow fizz-water of the twentieth century?

its presence is so ubiquitous, its very existence so mundane, one cannot imagine how it could suffuse society more thoroughly short of a mandatory intravenous drip in every citizen.

But so profound is the conceit of large marketers that once having bought every GRP, having saturated every commercial venue, they desperately seek to implant their lugubrious pretenses of importance into the most primitive reptilian segments of the brain.

And their ad agencies, palsied with fear of losing the business, partner with the latest purveyors of marketing flimflams — assuming, that is, that the client hasn't already beaten a path to these thimble-riggers.

The mundane nature of a soft drink makes it impervious to becoming a social marker. It is fool's errand to fatuously attempt to transform it into something other than a sugary substance to swill down.

~~~
n.b.: It goes without saying that I loathe the very structure of this post's headline, tacking "not" on the end in a ham-handed attempt to connote sarcasm or irony.

"Ironic" itself is a term feebly appropriated by the young (most of whom would be hard pressed to properly define it) as their dominant weltschmerz. The more accurate descriptor would be cynical.

Obituary: MS dumps Kin phone after 2 months

2010-07-05T11:43:00.009-05:00

When I saw the first TV ads for the Kin, I was intrigued by its attempt at cloud computing, seamless syncing, and winning the Gen-X crowd.

Still, it always makes for painful watching when Microsoft tries to be "cool." One imagines Bill Gates in his plaid shirt trying to boogie.

The early reviews pointed out enormous gaps in the device, and (oops) the fact it only connects at 15-minute intervals:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/194262/the_curious_thing_about_microsoft_kin.html

After MS killed it after just two months, the Wall Street Journal's obituary noted confusion over its purpose and the high usage fees:

http://online.wsj.com/video/digits-mossberg-on-microsoft-kin-demise/44138782-3925-4F33-A15C-A7B6CA9BF860.html?KEYWORDS=Kin+mobile+phone

Now MS is trumpeting their upcoming "Windows Phone 7" and hoping all the people who got stuck with these orphan Kims will just go quietly into the night.

And paradoxically, after all their failures in this specialized market, their plan is to even be more rigid at trying to fob a "Windows" experience onto the user:

According to Microsoft, hardware partners will not be able to replace the Windows 7 UI. So if you're a fan of HTC's TouchFLO user interface, which runs over older versions of HTC Windows Mobile phones, you're out of luck.

Will they become competitive this time around? Consider words of wisdom from MS head Steve Ballmer in the past:

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."
Ballmer on the iPhone

""We wouldn't define our phone experience just by music. A phone is really a general purpose device," he summarized. "You want to make telephone calls, you want to get and receive messages, text, e-mail, whatever your preference is."
Ballmer on the iPhone

Old cartoonist techniques

2010-06-01T02:45:00.006-05:00

Opening boxes in the attic tonight, I found a cache of stuff from high school, when I was taking the Art Instruction ("draw the puppy") correspondence course.

BAesides assorted Strathmore and tracing pads, I found the now-extinct Craftint Doubletone illustration board. (Maybe there are even the chemicals for it in the bottom of the box.)

Somewhere I also have a supply of coquille board (for use with grease pencil for tone behind drawn or inked linework), a favorite of editorial cartoonists thirty to fifty years ago.

These are things nobody knows about nowadays, but in olden days were dark secret tricks of the trade for reproduction. Zip-a-tone hadn't event been invented, I don't think.

My attic is a virtual Smithsonian of graphic history.

If only I could charge admission.

http://huggy-lugnuts.deviantart.com/journal/28977327/

http://micomics.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Ink&action=display&thread=115

Also, on Roy Crane, the doubletone master:

http://books.google.com/books?id=sb374j7kI1sC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=craftint+illustration+board&source=bl&ots=kCvRNbDyvc&sig=1jnhmoIarBIuHJc6L8uhCXSWMaI&hl=en&ei=FLEETMT4EpO4NrTfzDs&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=craftint%20illustration%20board&f=false

Kudos to the new Hewlett-Packard commercials

2010-05-28T19:45:00.009-05:00

Some commercials are bulletproof. They work on some level, no matter how ham-handedly they're executed.

But others, often the most imaginative, are like soufflés. They have to be perfect, or they fail completely.

There's a charming new campaign for Hewlett-Packard wihere a Brit-accented fellow is questioning other characters, sometimes nonsensically, but always enough to engender a selling point.

The dialogue isn't haw-haw, just subtly humorous.

And it benefits from the most deft bit of casting I've seen recently, finding a guy who is the perfect equivalent of Eric Idle, the wink-wink-nudge-nudge guy in Monty Python, shown above.

The character is silly, bumptious, naïve, and ingratiating, all at the same time.

With the wrong —or even average— casting, the campaign would fall on its face. But it's executed perfectly. Which was the minimum requirement.

"Comments made in 1955" — silly errors

2010-05-03T00:38:00.070-05:00

Shown below is one of those allegedly humorous/ironic emails that get passed around endlessly.

Obviously, nobody ever made these comments. But artistic liberty aside, why not get the facts straight?

As someone who peddled newspapers, counted pennies, and actually remembers prices from that decade, I note these fatuous fallacies:

Stamps were still 3 cents in 1955. They only went up to 4 cents in 1958, and weren't increased to 7 cents for many more years.

Even in my hick town, haircuts cost at least fifty cents. (When I was in Germany in 1960, I considered 35-cent PX haircuts a marvelous bargain.)

Language in movies in 1955 was as pure as it was in 1939. There were no expletives or oaths. In 1953, you had to be 16 to see The Moon is Blue, which used the words "pregnant" and "virgin."

Nobody thought about putting a man on the moon except us science-fiction fans. There were no astronauts anywhere in 1955, let alone "peparing for it down in Texas." Sputnik didn't happen until 1957.

Electric typewriters were not a novelty. IBM produced the first commercially-successful one in 1935. Almost everything that could be electrified in a kitchen was done so in the thirties, though nobody could afford it until the postyear years.

And any moron knows that new cars didn't cost $1,000 at that time. A 1955 Ford cost at least $1600. (Actually, since there were no sticker prices in those days, it was a matter of what a dealer could get away with.)

Why do people insist on making stuff up instead of citing actual facts, which are often more vivid?

This is what I call the Retard Factor in the Internet (RFI).

The email as typically circulated:

Comments made in the year 1955! That's only 55 years ago!

"I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it's going to be impossible to buy a week's groceries for $10.00."

"Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long before $1,000.00 will only buy a used one..."

"If cigarettes keep going up in price, I'm going to quit. 20 cents a pack is ridiculous."

"Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging 7 cents just to mail a letter."

"If they raise the minimum wage to $1.00, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store."

"When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 25 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage."

"I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying '****' in GONE WITH THE WIND, it seems every new movie has either '****' or '****' in it."

"I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas."

"Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $50,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be making more than the President.."

"I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now."

"It's too bad things are so tough nowadays... I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet." "It won't be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work."

"I'm afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business."

"Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the Government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to government."

"The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on."

"There is no sense going on short trips anymore for a weekend, it costs nearly $2.00 a night to stay in a hotel."

"No one can afford to be sick anymore, at $15.00 a day in the hospital, it's too rich for my blood."

"If they think I'll pay 30 cents for a hair cut, forget it."

Top Ten Ways to Spot Hoaxes, Urban Legends, and Bogus Emails

2010-04-29T03:14:00.004-05:00

If you saw a man walking down the street with polka-dotted purple pants and wearing a fried egg on his head, you’d immediately suspect he was not to be taken seriously.

Similarly, a handful of warning markers define emails to ignore.

Any message with:

1) Lots of ALL CAPS or multi-colored text.

2) Multiple exclamation marks!!!!!!!

3) “This has never been reported in the media.”

4) “Pass this on to everyone you know!”

5) “We are collecting signatures."

6) “Warning!” “Virus alert!”

7) “This is a true story!” “This really happened!” “A friend told me...”

8) “This is not a hoax!” “This is not an urban legend!”

9) “This has been checked with Snopes.com, and is authentic.”

10) Any message without provenance; that is, one that does not cite a specific date and source, preferably in the form of an URL that can be clicked to verify its authenticity.

Here’s where I go to check bogus stuff:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/

Snopes.com

Truthorfiction.com

Scambusters.com

In my experience, only the first two have enough staffing to be as comprehensive as they should be. Unfortunately, there’s so much silly stuff flying around the net that it’s almost impossible for any one site to keep track of it.

Even so, the Urban Legends site will often reproduce the bogus items you've just gotten word-for-word.

But be aware that a few perpetrators will embroider a bogus items or jumble it together with another one.

What everyone needs most is horse sense, as elaborated in these references:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/urbanlegends/ht/urbanlegends.htm

http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/nethoaxes/ht/emailhoax.htm

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/spotting-email-hoaxes.html

this last one also has specific advice categories about
avoiding spam,
Nigerian scams, and much more:

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

In my opinion, everyone should always check out the Urban Legends or Snopes websites before forwarding emails. Otherwise, we're just wasting people's time and contributing to ignorance.

I’m kind of a bear about this stuff. It dates back to the time when my company first got connected to the Internet, and immediately secretaries began filling our mailboxes with newbie-bait. (Chain letters, virus warnings, pleas for the mythical boy dying of cancer who was collecting business cards so he could get into the Guinness Book of Records, etc.)

This wasted our limited bandwidth (not to mention employees’ time), and as co-owner of the joint, I stomped on it real hard.

I'm also a real bear about plagiarism, but that's a subject for another post.

My iPad has landed

2010-04-03T13:33:00.005-06:00

UPS delivered it at 12:13 p.m.

It immediately located my Airport WiFi network (along with one from a neighbor) and I set it to use mine. Perfect. No futzing around.

Setup was quite straightforward, although it led me into the woods for a while, trying to sync data from my MobileMe account (which I rarely use).

Once I stepped back and selected "restore from iPhone" data, it went busily to work. It downloaded videos, selected photos, music, apps et al plus all iCal info and 128 of my last Mail messages. (Why that number of messages? I've got to do some digging.) It automatically asked permission to access from other mail accounts,just like my iPhone did. Cool.

My main pain in the neck is that it's asking for passwords for a lot of apps. I'll get to that in a bit.

Right now I want to go through the built-in tutorial.

I'm a happy camper!

Waiting for Godot — and the iPad

2010-04-03T00:57:00.014-06:00

My wife and I ordered a new car the week before last. But it's the iPad whose arrival I'm all a-quiver over.

And I'm not alone. There are thousands of blog and forum posts feverishly reporting on this "most anticipated tablet since Moses."

Does Steve Jobs know how to create a market, or what?

Bill Gates is crying softly into his pillow at this very moment.

To add to the freneticism, Jobs insists on making these product launches on a Saturday, even though they have to spiff the local carriers to work on a day they don't normally deliver.

Undoubtedly this is so Apple can get great video coverage of lines around the block, something they wouldn't get on a Friday when most people have to work.

But these Saturday launches can also be a pain in the wazoo. When Leopard shipped in October 2007, Apple demanded a signature for delivery. (Despite the fact I have standing instructions with UPS and FedEx to deliver without signatures.)

Some mutt doing the deliveries rang the bell once and then ran away with the package before I could even get down the stairs. This for a stinkin' $129 product! I had to raise holy hell to get the carrier to make a re-delivery that afternoon.

Paradoxically, some years earlier when I was commuting back and forth from Raleigh and arranged to have a new built-to-order G5 tower (a $5,000 item) delivered, it was unceremoniously dumped on my back porch and sat there for days until my neighbor lady, who had a key, moved it into my kitchen.

Apple must have got a lot of complaints, because this time when you get an email alert that the product has shipped, you get an option to pre-sign for delivery.

Now I only have to worry that a moron substitute driver can't find our Fawlty Towers.

So I guess I love Apple, even when I'm hating it.

Only the last half of that sentence ever applies to Microsoft.

How an iPad gets shipped

2010-04-02T20:21:00.007-06:00

UPS tracking is cool. Here's the progress of my iPad, from China (where it was obviously assembled, if not wholly manufactured) to Anchorage to Louisville to Chicago to here in Minneapolis.

If I check this after 6 a.m., I should be shown as "on the truck" for delivery.

I pre-signed for delivery, and have enough signs at the front and back doors that only a moron would fail to deliver it properly.

Of course, I don't want to sell UPS short.

Location Date Local Time DescriptionWhat's This?
MINNEAPOLIS, MN, US 04/02/2010 10:12 P.M. DESTINATION SCAN
04/02/2010 10:01 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
CHICAGO, IL, US 04/02/2010 8:44 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
04/02/2010 7:53 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
LOUISVILLE, KY, US 04/02/2010 7:40 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
04/02/2010 5:31 P.M. IMPORT SCAN
04/02/2010 2:07 P.M. IMPORT SCAN
LOUISVILLE, KY, US 03/31/2010 2:25 A.M. SHIPMENT IS HELD TO VERIFY COMMODITY DESCRIPTION WITH THE CUSTOMER FOR CORRECT CLASSIFICATION / BROKERAGE RELEASED SHIPMENT. SHIPMENT IS SUBMITTED TO CLEARING AGENCY FOR FURTHER CLEARANCE
03/31/2010 1:36 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
ANCHORAGE, AK, US 03/30/2010 6:50 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
03/30/2010 1:01 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
GUANGZHOU, CN 03/30/2010 7:10 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
03/30/2010 12:43 P.M. EXPORT SCAN
SHENZHEN, CN 03/29/2010 5:54 A.M. ORIGIN SCAN
CN 04/02/2010 10:54 P.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
Tracking results provided by UPS: 04/03/2010 1:31 A.M. ET

Location	Date	Local Time	DescriptionWhat's This?
MINNEAPOLIS, MN, US	04/02/2010	10:12 P.M.	DESTINATION SCAN
	04/02/2010	10:01 P.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
CHICAGO, IL, US	04/02/2010	8:44 P.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	04/02/2010	7:53 P.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
LOUISVILLE, KY, US	04/02/2010	7:40 P.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	04/02/2010	5:31 P.M.	IMPORT SCAN
	04/02/2010	2:07 P.M.	IMPORT SCAN
LOUISVILLE, KY, US	03/31/2010	2:25 A.M.	SHIPMENT IS HELD TO VERIFY COMMODITY DESCRIPTION WITH THE CUSTOMER FOR CORRECT CLASSIFICATION / BROKERAGE RELEASED SHIPMENT. SHIPMENT IS SUBMITTED TO CLEARING AGENCY FOR FURTHER CLEARANCE
	03/31/2010	1:36 A.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
ANCHORAGE, AK, US	03/30/2010	6:50 P.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	03/30/2010	1:01 P.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
GUANGZHOU, CN	03/30/2010	7:10 P.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	03/30/2010	12:43 P.M.	EXPORT SCAN
SHENZHEN, CN	03/29/2010	5:54 A.M.	ORIGIN SCAN
CN	04/02/2010	10:54 P.M.	BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

The real iPad breakthrough: as a spoke, not a hub

2010-04-02T02:40:00.017-06:00

And it's a spoke of genius, pardon the pun.

My iPad is due to arrive in about 30 hours. Apple's embargo on reviews ended the evening of March 31st, most of them are favorable.

But there are still whiney blogs out there. "What? No USB?" "What? It won't shine my shoes?"

These people just don't get it.

Here's the real deal: as the NYT's David Pogue has pointed out, the iPad is going to be a profound game-changer in consuming content. It's not so much about creating content.

Though I'll have the iPad keyboard dock, that'll be mostly for light iWork and email. Primarily, the iPad will be the web browser I've always wanted to have with me everywhere in the house at all times when I'm away from our other three Macs.

And its magnificent screen is so liberating that it'll really make me dip into electronic books and periodicals.

But for major work and heavy-duty applications, that's why my G5 tower, 30-inch screen, and extended color-coded keyboard exist. With a terabyte of storage and another TB of backup, that's where all my writing, photos, videos, and web content will be managed and manipulated. Afterwards, syncing what I want onto the iPad swill be as painless as my iPhone.

The device's only serious lack is Flash. If HTML5 can't fill that void, you can be sure a subsequent OS update will take care of the problem.

I'll post my first review within 48 hours. It'll be floating out there with about 10,000 others.

The genius of Buster Keaton

2010-03-28T22:44:00.016-06:00

Tonight TCM played "Sherlock Jr." starring and directed by Buster Keaton.

It is one of my favorite silents, marked by his technical wizardry (with lots of in-camera effects), wit, acrobatic ability, unbelievably nervy stunts,* and flawless timing.

In one segment, he even does exceedingly difficult bank shots that would be the envy of most pool sharks.

IMHO this 42-minute gem is superior to most of the revered Chaplin films.

Only Harold Lloyd was in his class. Lloyd fortunately made a lot of money, though not as much as Chaplin, and re-emerged from retirement to make some successful sound films.

Keaton's career was ruined by a disastrous MGM studio deal that took away his creative control. Aside from what is essentially a cameo appearance in "Sunset Boulevard," about the only time the postwar public got to see him was in Ford van commercials from the early sixties. (See Youtube video link below.)

His masterpiece is "The General," which I first saw in Paris, of all places. (The French's devotion to Jerry Lewis notwithstanding, they do appreciate great cinematic art.)

* In one of the incredible stunts, he actually fractured his neck — although it wasn't diagnosed until years later.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000036/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhMmqdiEt10

Apple Safari team, take note!

2009-12-12T16:59:00.006-06:00

Safari is a fine browser, but has one irksome failing: When you quit and relaunch Safari, none of the previously-open pages relaunch. (Unlike Apple Mail, for example.)

Yes, you can go to History and "open all previous windows." But this is an unnecessarily irritating step.

And if you should relaunch Safari and subsequently open a few new windows, and then have to quit for some reason, only those last few windows will be re-open using that command.

To get all your previous windows open, you will have to ploddingly go and re-open every one of them individually through the History window.

I know it's not good practice, but since I have tons of RAM, I often have two dozen or more windows open. Sort of having lots of papers on my desk.

What I'm asking for is not rocket science. Omniweb, for example, does this automatically.

Apple, are you listening?

Probably not.

EPA Decision 'Obligates' Action on Greenhouse Gases

2009-12-08T02:33:00.000-06:00

A note sent to a meat-loving friend:

Obama doesn't need legislation now. His EPA enforcers will be free to run amok.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2009/12/epa-decision-obligates-action-on-greenhouse-gases.html

And wait till they start dealing with all those flatulent cows!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/05/tech/main4651448.shtml

Either the taxes will be passed on, raising your meat prices, or frustrated farmers will kill them off, so you might profit from a bumper crop of steaks.

I'd suggest you install a big walk-in freezer in your house either way. I'm sure Al Gore has one.

Obama's transparency

2009-12-07T17:46:00.000-06:00

You can't make this stuff up:

Today the Obama administration had a meeting on openness, which was closed to the public.

If you wrote this in a book, it would be judged as bizarre comedy and a rip-off of Catch-22. But such flagrant flouting of steely campaign promises is quite routine in this administration, as this AP article notes:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5joOOsTVD57lFwm_InpZY_nRbg4KQD9CE3SEG0

One can't help but be reminded of Clinton's promise to "be the most ethical administration ever."

If someday a candidate promised to do business as usual and be duplicitous whenever it was convenient, maybe we'd actually get a President that we could have faith in.

Type expander utilities compared.

2009-12-06T01:46:00.000-06:00

I spent a lot of time evaluating type expander applications. I meticulously went through six or eight, most of which were marginal. Here's my shootout result, in case you don't want to reinvent the wheel.

It finally came down to Typinator and TextExpander. I paid for both, and would recommend only the latter if I’d researched even more. (One major squawk: Typinator wants you to pay a separate fee for every single household Mac you have.)

I find the interface of TextExpander much more pleasing, and its capabilities superior. Here’s a feature comparison:

http://www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander/compare.html

But since I paid for both of them, I have them both active. So how do I keep them from conflicting with each other? (This is a problem if you’re not careful.)

Basically, I let Typinator do auto-corrections of spelling, using their libraries.

But I use TextExpander for critical, graphical, and most of my custom expansions.

Apple has a system-wide spell checker, but less comprehensive and transparent than Microsoft’s. (A countervailing benefit is that it works almost everywhere, including web page forms, not just in MS apps.)

Not surprisingly, I like it better when these words can be auto-corrected. Unfortunately, Typinator auto-corrects only when you misspell a word in one of the ways it expects. (If this sounds somewhat irrational, it is; and it limits its usability.)

As my separation of powers, besides using TextExpander for most of my custom expansions, I was absolutely blown away when they added libraries for diacritical marks.

(I’m one of those purists who want words like naïve or bête noire marked correctly. I can never remember keyboard commands to insert diacriticals, even when I remember what they’re supposed to be.

I assign different sounds to each of the applications so I know where the correction is coming from. But that’s probably far more anal-retentive than most people would be.

One of these utilities will become a "must-have" once you get used to it.

Assignment for the Apple Mail team.

2009-12-05T22:59:00.000-06:00

After many years of devoted use, I dumped Microsoft Entourage after it managed to lose months’ worth of emails.

And I switched to Apple Mail. It’s a great time saver in the way it tightly integrates address book, iCal, and allows painless downloading attachments to iPhoto.

(Entourage integrates with other Office products, but only in their little walled garden of Microsoft monopoly.)

However:

1) We desperately need a way to color-code a recipient without jumping through the hoops of adding it to a "rule." Entourage has made this absurdly simple for years. It's one of the most important things I miss, and consider it a major drawback of Apple Mail.

For example, when I get un-categorized emails, I usually want to add the sender to my various color lists for friends, work, politics, technology, or whatever. This way, one can scan subsequent incoming messages and separate the wheat from the chaff. (Especially important if you get five dozen new messages a day, as I do.)

To do this with Apple Mail using Rules is an irritating, confusing two-minute job — so most of the time, you don't do it.

With Entourage, it’s a matter of just clicking the “categories” pane at the top.

2) Though Apple emails that you've forwarded have an arrow next to them in the message pane, if these or other messages are sitting open on the desktop (and I often have dozens of like this), there's nothing on them to show their status.

Look at the illustration to see how Entourage elegantly handles these needs.

Apple, is there some reason your programmers can’t manage to adopt these crucial features?

How to cope with rising college costs: send your kid somewhere else.

2009-10-22T02:25:00.000-05:00

For sixty years, blue-collar Americans have beavered away with the assumption that “my kid’s gonna go to college.”

And for all too many, the punishment has been a dream achieved.

As a result, we have more home-equity loans and college-educated waiters than any other country on the planet.

This is not like the WW2 vets who flooded the universities under the GI bill, a social revolution that ensured that college would no longer be the refuge of rudderless twits with wealthy parents. (Luckily, many of those vets would become teachers to accommodate the flooding of baby boomers into the elementary schools.)

Today’s notion of college as a passageway to a higher class is as much a chimera as an exclusive club that anyone can join.

Pundits endlessly debate whether colleges should be glorified trade schools or monasterial institutes where pure knowledge can be pursued for its own sake.

Too often they are neither, serving as remedial camps for high school graduates who are largely illiterate, innumerate, and crashingly ignorant of elementary geography, let alone skills in reasoning and rhetoric that were once learned from McGuffey’s Readers by eighth-grade students.

When I was in business, I had a procession of highly-educated secretaries, from Yale English majors to holders of master’s degrees. But what I really needed was a Katherine Gibbs graduate.

Of course, nobody aspires to be “just a secretary” anymore. But even as the position has been gussied up to administrative assistant, it has been dumbed down. Try finding someone who can properly format a letter to a senator, or consult a secretary’s book of letters so a boss doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel in writing a condolence letter.

It may offend our democratic yearnings to emulate Japan or Germany, separating secondary students onto different tracks to produce better trade-school graduates and fewer mal-educated college grads.

But do we want a better, more adaptable workforce? Or more purchased vanity?

As to those non-college graduates who fret about their lack of academic knowledge, my advice is simple: sell your television and buy an old set of Britannica, which can be had for a peppercorn.

You’ll be more educated than the average college graduate before you get out of the B’s.

Bob Hope and Jimmy Cagney

2009-04-25T23:40:00.000-05:00

From one of my Far Flung Correspondents:

We tend to forget how talented these guys were.

—Gibson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOoNOs8Ql28

You must watch this to see what performers could do in bygone Hollywood, before one-shot wonders complained that "my trailer [Winnebago] isn't bigger than X's."

I read that Cagney endured a lot of physical pain in doing this scene. This film ("Seven Little Foys") was done 13 years after his rousing "Yankee Doodle Dandy," which showed him at his best stiff-legged dance style.

Although only four years older than Hope, who here is at his absolute best in dancing, the years had taken more of a toll on Cagney. Probably because he worked at this so long in vaudeville, whereas Hope went into comedy much sooner.

A tragedy is that Hope stayed in the limelight* too long. He outlived Jimmy (100 vs.. 87), but he should have retired more gracefully.

An even less flattering depiction of Hope is in the biography by Arthur Marx (yes, Groucho's son) of Hope and Crosby.

Mister K

* and BTW, if you ask me , as a former cinematographer I can tell you the derivation of "Limelight."

I wish my memory was filled with more important things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWpU8sX10_4&NR=1

The real hard times

2009-02-10T00:55:00.000-06:00

"Bound for Glory" ran last night. I hadn't seen it for years.

A film buff can't help but admire Hal Ashby's direction, Haskell Wexler's cinematography, and David Carradine as star — the latter having beat out many high-profile actors for the role, including Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, and even Robert Dylan.

It's a work that shows what Depression times really were like —at least for Okies— as opposed to today's proclaimed woes, where not getting enough cheese on your pizza is viewed as penury.

But as is often the case, it's a Hollywood Version of actuality, making Guthrie seem irritatingly noble, albeit self-destructive in his behavior.

In actuality, Guthrie was a pedictable liberal/radical/collectivist and naif who followed the Party Line and wrote weekly columns for The Daily Worker.

Initially Guthrie helped write and sing what the Almanacs Singers termed "peace" songs; while the Nazi-Soviet Pact was in effect, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist line was that WWII was a capitalist fraud. After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union the topics of their songs became anti-fascist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie

Anyhow, it's a fine film, so long as you don't confuse it with reality.

Bombshells sometimes have long fuses

2008-10-28T00:32:00.000-06:00

A correspondent wonders why I didn't spark to an email and link about a 2001 radio-interview potential bombshell of Obama talking unabashedly —and even admiringly— about "redistributive change."

I responded:

I didn’t read it because it was three screens deep of unformatted tiny type on my large-acreage 30” Apple LCD screen. (And just as tedious to read on Glenn Beck’s website.)

This is why God invented art directors. And editors.

If the content is a bombshell, I don’t need it obscured by Beck hogging the stage.

Drudge links sent me to vastly more accessible versions of the same content via Breitbart.com and YouTube.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081027191640.ak3b09o7&show_article=1

Is it powerful? Yeah, sort of. If you have enough time and GRPs to really seat the charge in the public's mind.

With respect to "October surprises," the revelation of Bush's DWI was a simple, undeniable fact, impervious to spin by W’s handlers.

Obama's comments on “redistributive change” are more amorphous and need to be inextricably linked through repetition and elaboration to the precepts of welfare and socialism.

At this late date, they've already been spun by Obama apologists into yet another Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Accuracy doesn't even come into play when the other side has at its disposal millions of dollars and a pliant media.

Last chance at McCain gulch

2008-10-27T18:20:00.000-06:00

In an email today, I forwarded Dick Morris's column for the day:

http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2008/10/26/the-truman-show/

And in which forward I noted that

Dick Morris is the smartest strategist out there, but (a) McCain’s people would have to turn on a dime, and (b) the media swoon may be unassailable.

Note the red-highlighted section. This moronic act of omission by Bush led directly to the Florida recount debacle, which in turn led to the left’s “he’s not really President” paranoia that poisoned the following eight years, even after a thumping 2004 reelection.

The "red-highlighted" section I referenced was this:

In 2000, Bush's three-to-four point lead in the polls was erased over the final weekend when reports surfaced that he had been cited for DWI 20 years before and had not revealed the fact to the public. Bush still won the election, of course, but Gore won the popular vote by half a point.

This was a colossal, imbecilic move on W's part. Or non-move, since it was incumbent on the candidate to totally inoculate himself to the issue early on in the campaign.

At this point, I’m not sure what equivalently-imbecilic stunt Obama could do to squander his lead. Perhaps prancing around in a dress?

Oh, wait, that would probably solidify it, since there’s a part of the population who would say, “Yes! It’s time we had not just a minority but a transvestite Negro as President!”

Acorn: Not just corrupt, but incompetent

2008-10-25T14:21:00.000-05:00

A Western correspondent chides this blog's author's limpid response to a NYT article on Acorn fraud:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/donor-patrol-obamas-online-site-accepts-more-fakes/?pagemode=print
"You sound so blase. This is illegal .... It is a violation of campaign finance laws. Why isn't this being investigated?"

I reply thus:

Acorn is being investigated in many states, but it’ll simply come down to “justice delayed is justice denied.” And any successful prosecutions will raise cries of "racism" and “voter suppression.”

Perversely, it turns out that Acorn’s claims of the number of new voters it’s registered are wildly inflated.

As noted last evening,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,443990,00.html

Get Out the Vote?

Despite claims by various media outlets that new voter registration is up from previous years, a new Gallup survey says that is not the case.

The poll indicates just 13 percent of registered voters will cast ballots for the first time. That is the same number found in Gallup's 2004 pre-election poll. And the number of registered voters who say they do not plan to vote has actually risen two percentage points.

These findings come as The New York Times reports a claim by the voter registration group ACORN that it had signed up 1.3 million new voters is vastly exaggerated. The executive director of ACORN affiliate Project Vote says the actual figure is closer to 450,000. He says about 400,000 registrations were rejected because they were duplicates, incomplete or fraudulent.

So Obama has been taken for a ride by the organization he’s pumped zillions into.

Meaning a better questions for the electorate would be:

"Would you trust this man to negotiate foreign treaties when he dosn't even have the skills of a Chicago politician to get delivery of the votes he's paid for?"

ObamaGötterdämmerung

2008-10-16T01:32:00.000-05:00

Well, the final Obama/McCain debate is over. And I'm afraid it's over.

All Barry had to do was stick to his talking points and not yawn. He's succeeding in running out the clock.

McCain had already blown the second debate by not confronting Obama on his well-worn canards, like "95% of people making less than $200,000 a year* will get a tax rebate."

Well, no. As any bright 16-year-old could have riposted,

40% of Americans don't pay any income tax. If Mr. Obama sends them a check, it's not a rebate. It's opening the vault door of the Treasury and shoveling money out with a grain scoop. If you work hard and pay taxes, do you want those dollars (and those of your children and grandchildren) spent to mail checks to people who never pay taxes?

This time around, to capture the mood of the American people, McCain should have recalled the movie Network, in which Peter Finch as Howard Beale famously shouted, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Not that this is a unique idea. O'Reilly and Dick Morris have preached this for several weeks. Surely someone among McCain's advisors must have a television set.

But too many of his handlers want to keep John tamped down and docile, so as to pander to independents, who are perceived as people having been born without a spine.

I submit McCain could reverse the poll numbers overnight if he'd have said

If I'm elected, the first thing I'm going to do is appoint a Special Prosecutor to bring to justice the people who made this financial mess. This was partly through government interference that forced lenders to give mortgages to people who couldn't afford them.

That includes Democrats and Republicans, but especially Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd. And there'll be special attention for those who got huge political contributions from corrupted lending organizations.

Actually, that would include you, Senator Obama, since you got the second-highest Freddie Mac wad of hush money. You didn't quite catch up to Chris Dodd this time, and I'm promising there won't be a next time.

And as for those snot-nosed Wall Street shysters who packaged and peddled these sub-prime instruments that stank like Gorgonzola cheese, you can expect some perp-walks. That's where miscreants are led into courtrooms wearing manacles and leg irons, which is my idea of humane treatment.

Afterwards, I want them wearing orange jumpsuits, being led off to prison. And none of those white-collar prisons with maid service. I want them to serve hard time, where they get a 250-pound weightlifter for a cellmate who takes one look and says, "You got a purty mouth."

Thank you and good night.

*Sometimes expressed by Obama as "$250,000 a year," sometimes as "middle class." The specifics change with the barometric pressure, as near as I can tell.

Götterdämmerung being a translation into German of the Old Norse phrase Ragnarök, which in Norse mythology refers to a prophesied war of the gods which brings about the end of the world.

Vegan politicians need pork too!

2008-10-03T19:34:00.000-05:00

If money is the mother's milk of politics, surely pork is its first solid food.

All congressional members tout how they bring home the bacon to their districts. This is one of the things they define as constituent service. It is true that high-priced call girls also describe what they do as a service, but let's not dwell on that for now.

What else is a politician to say? That he's gotten rather fond of those fine restaurants that Washington abounds in, much superior to those in Gooseberry Falls that he once called home? "And that I still call home!" he will hasten to add.

So in the present bailout —to distinguish it from those to come— pork became the ideal lubricant to help recalcitrant congressmen ease their consciences.

Much of the pork was especially tainted. And it is small comfort to know that most of it would likely have been slipped into future bills, if not this one. The two parties clearly indulged in a slop-trough mano a mano: "Okay, you can have this odious provision if we can have this putrid one."

It is fortunate that after the voice vote to pass the bill, Congressman Barney Frank verified the ayes and nays by asking the members to rise. It would have been difficult for them to raise their hands while holding their noses.

But the bill is passed by congress and the president quickly signed it, the former now having sense enough to leave town, although surely regretting they once again must return to their beloved Gooseberry Falls locales across America.

The bailout is rescued

2008-10-03T18:47:00.000-05:00

Today congress passed the bailout bill, which by the way, is a term I find no more a pejorative than rescue, which some felt would be less offensive and presumably have led to more speedy passage.

If one envisions bailing out a boat to save its contents and passengers, how would that be less noble and no less a rescue?

But I digress. Let us jump backwards to that time long, long ago, Monday.

The bill went down to a thumping defeat, done in largely by GOP congressmen. Much was made of their philosophical opposition to this magnitude of government meddling or nascent socialism. But it was clear also that the normal fear of the electorate was galvanized to a new level by phone lines tied up by furious constituents.

(Note that I never heard about "thousands of emails." Telephone calls are probably the most effective way of registering your complaints, unless you can join a mob with pitchforks and torches.)

Alas, I submit that these callers were largely wrongheaded. All of humankind will be offended by the vision of Wall Street whiz-kids golden-parachuting their way out of the mess they profited from. And I further submit that the best way to prevent future excesses would be CEOs being perp-walked in manacles to court.

But the complaining callers comprehended neither the depth of the problem nor the domino effect that would ensue. It took a few days before the credit crisis became the disagreeable but needed medicine.

Oh, yes, we almost forgot. A generous swallow of pork helped the medicine go down. More about that in the next post.

The insidious radicals

2008-10-03T17:55:00.000-05:00

A correspondent wrote today about former members of the Weather Underground endorsing an "independent grassroots effort" for Obama. (Clearly a front group for whom the word "independent" constitutes merely the first canard.)

Per WorldNetDaily (2 Oct 08),

The petition was initiated by Progressives for Obama, an independent organization acting to ensure the Illinois senator's election.

Progressives includes among its ranks many former members of the 1960s radical organization Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, from which the Weathermen splintered, as well as current and former members of other radical organizations, such as the Communist Party USA and the Black Radical Congress.

As vomitorious as these people are (along with Obama's deranged buddy Bill Ayers), I’m almost more frightened of the insidiousness of allegedly mainstream organizations like the NEA, which was planning to have teachers “wear blue for Obama” next week.

I’m of an age that remembers when the NEA was an innocent bucolic organization that had a meeting once a year. (So one or two more days off for us kids! Yay!) Then years later, the American Federation of Teachers burgeoned via its agressive agenda.

Before long , the NEA decided to out-militant them, and paradoxically Albert Shanker* of the AFT was actually writing sensible articles in his "Where we stand" column during his later years. I actually considered writing him a fan letter.

Incidentally, in J-school, I took classes with some members of the SDS. Their most noteworthy impact seemed to be a rebellion against soap and barbers.

* In one of Woody Allen's movies, perhaps Sleeper, he makes reference to that earlier period: "And then a man named Albert Shanker got hold of an atom bomb." This probably sailed over the heads of even his sophisticated audience.

For a fine summary of the movie, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_(film)

College for everyone?

2008-10-03T17:37:00.000-05:00

I will gag if I hear another politician or pundit engage in sycophantic prattle about "Helping parents pay for their kids' college." Just once, I'd like to see a one of these media darlings say "Not every kid needs to go to college. And if they do, it's not the government's job to make it happpen." Haven't we got enough college-trained waiters already? How about "Every kid needs a decent primary education?"

Which would happen if we:

1) Abolish the teacher's unions.

2) Bring back the McGuffey's Readers.

Knit neckties

2008-10-01T02:30:00.000-05:00

I just got a catalog from an outfit that shows silk knit ties in a variety of colors for $65 each. Jeez!

You'd have to be a schlemiel to pay that much.

You can buy these for about forty bucks from mail-order places like Land's End and Paul Fredrick. Plus you'll be able to get them in a long size for about three bucks more.

This is perfect for someone with a large neck, long torso, or who wants to tie a half-Windsor knot, as I do.

So how do some shops get away with charging 50% more for the same goods? Well, this shop is located in tony cities in Florida where their clientele clearly has more money than horse sense.

I'm all for capitalism. Heck, I'd charge what the traffic would bear, too.

But that doesn't mean you should bear it.