Web Site of The Day (from RefDesk.com)

Today's (3/21/2007) Site Of The Day from RefDesk.com is just So Great I have to Put a Link to it Here:

GovStandard.com
Subtitled: (Your Legal Systems Resource)

Information on the legal system which includes legal history, systems, law practice, jurists, and advocates. Includes discussions of Roman, Greek, and Babylonian law.

Happy reading.

Refdesk.com (my PSP homepage) was one of my Baker's Dozen Picks for Best Of The WEB on my KOOLHUNTER2 blog. Yes, Koolhunter WEBSITE is Still being worked on.

Wingman out.

Dad's Birthday

That's Dad, reading a book from Robert. His birthday is today March 18th.
Glad I got to see and talk with him yesterday. Louie too!

Too much distance for a family that was so much closer before the "rock", Mom passed away.

As the saying goes: It's not the years it's the mileage.

I've been thinking of posting these special images online. Either Flickr or Google Album, two good online Photo Hosting sites.

Digital cameras, even cell-phone cameras (with resolutions constantly getting better) make it easy to catch a special shot like this one.

But still don't compare to having the full size photograph.

We snap more and develop less. Of course, most of my photographs are in a suitcase someplace.

The book (by the way) is about Superstition Mountain and the Lost Dutchman's mine and gold. I'll put a link to the backstory about that below. Everything has a backstory, spoken and unspoken.

Happy Birthday Dad. I love you.


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Apache Junction Public Library webpage.

Kool Hunting

One man's Kool is another man's Booor-ring!

Kinda Kool is Wesley Crusher's (Wil Wheaton, the Geek), reviews of STTNG which is funny and found Here.

These sites are also KOOL:

Leo Laporte of TechTV days, is Now Podcasting like cRaZy.

Check Out the TWITs (which is a weekly TECH podcast), where he's joined by John C. Dvorak, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose (Mr. DIGG, to you), and even Spin-Rite's Steve Gibson.

Korean Zombies with German Accents!!!

Last Tuesday, 3 of the Top 13 DNS (Domain Name Servers) were attacked by Korean Zombies (DoS) Denial of Service robots (unmanned--code devices, also known as: Zombies). The Zombies were traced back to Germany (but they probably came from somewhere else--maybe China. Who Knows?). One of the three DNS sites attacked was almost completely shut down, but as far as the WEB was concerned, nobody noticed.

That was the scary part.

No payoff. No notoriety. So what was the point?

My thinking is: Proof of Concept. Testing the delivery system.

The Real Site will be Elsewhere.

Call me paranoid, but when some experts tell us that 1/3 of the web is infested with robots/spiders or zombies following orders, it's time to worry...

Particularly when Other Experts tell us, That 1/3 number IS TOO LOW.

Pipes, ANS Network and Bernice

Yahoo Pipes:
Yahoo came out swinging a big "pipe" last week to snag back some respectability from Search Leader Rival: Google.

Yahoo Pipes is a Web-based RSS "mash-up" tool that lets you graphically connect Source Information (from one or many rss-feed places), and add a bit of logic or filters and create a "New View" of the RSS data.

They say it's a tip-of-the-hat to Unix Pipes Tools, which for anyone running any recent distro of Linux knows, is alive and well in the Linux OS.

Scripting languages can do pretty much what Yahoo Pipes does, but the Web based GUI is a pretty big deal. It was supposedly developed by Yahoo In-House, and beats Google to a pretty nice New Tool.

REAL Competition IS Good.

==========================================================================
The BOOBs at Network News:

When oh when did they become PEOPLE Magazine?

CNN is now the ANS Channel.

You know what the letters stand for.

One of the cool and needed things you can do with Yahoo Pipes is grab the News RSS feeds and Filter-Out any mention of ANS.

Hopefully the "NETWORKS GONE WILD!" mentality will be over real-soon-now, before any more attention-starved nymphets shave their heads in protest.
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Bernice and Hair Bobbing:

"Huh! she giggled wildly. "Scalp the selfish thing!"

Quoted from Bernice Bobs Her Hair from the book Flappers and Philosophers.
New York:Scribners.1922.

A title of a short story from high school was "Bernice Bobs Her Hair", and it was mentioned at work recently. And Not having heard that title before I decided to "Look it up".

Wikipedia has become a very good place to start, and was so in this case too. I was surprised to find that it was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the same writer that gave us the "The Great Gatsby".

Sidenote: (also found on Wikipedia).

Louise Brooks of the film silent era became synoymous with the bobbed or flapper look of the twenties.

New MC2 BLOG: "Thursdays, we saved the World." Check it out.

Superbowl Sunday: On The SMALL Screen

Move over plasmas and LCD Big Screens, here comes PSP LIVE broadcast TV.

With the ubiquity of DSL cable and Wifi connectivity, higher bitrates can be streamed over the Internet with picture quality really close to HD. And what home appliance is capable of handling this Super Stream? Why Sony's PSP, of course...

The little screen Does Digital "live-casts" great. Even your PC, running VLC outperforms Most TV-tuner cards.

Go long....This Is A Touch Down!

Internet TV: This Changes Everything!

On Tuesday, January 23, The Revolution Began.

I got home a little after 6:30 in the evening, and my son was watching the President's "State of the Union" speech on his lap top. He was using Internet TV, over a wireless DSL connection.

This was what the futurists and pundits had been predicting would happen.

The final piece of the puzzle was collaboration of major TV network providers to join forces and make live internet TV available.

What you need to make it work, is a broadband internet connection and Windows Media Player 9. That's it.

Goodbye cable. Goodbye regular tv.

If you don't know what this means, let me tell you:

This IS a Very Big Deal.

This Changes EVERYTHING!

Sunday Politics and Defining Terms

As I began my morning breakfast, I pondered on the following:

Maybe it's time I gave a definition of terms, specifically: Media Circus.

Circus is pretty easy. At a circus, a lot of things are happening at the same time. Five rings, and a lot of clowns all over the place. You may not know it but there is nothing worse than a media clown.

It's a circus.

Thus, it's sometimes hard to take it all in. And even harder to focus on the total meaning. It becomes a form of gestalt, where the whole means a lot more than the sum of its parts.

MEDIA is very inclusive in my definition. To me it began with the mass media analyses by Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), and his book: The Medium is the Massage. [message fits too!].

That's a good start, but it also has to do with Media Transmission of the message which is becoming a Circus of it's own.

To paraphrase a popular AD, "More Taste, Less filling...". Less Text, more Tidbits.

We digest less information as we take in more sound-bites.

The Media IS (more important than) THE MESSAGE, not the substance.

***************************************************************************
OBAMA announces his running for President on the WEB, not a press conference.

FACE THE NATION had 3 of the reporters that quit their respective newspapers to form a New Political WEB SITE called POLITICO.COM which begins this tuesday.

Hilary announces she too is running for the Presidency, by Press Conference.

***************************************************************************

Announcing KoolHunter.com:

A New Lean and Clean HUNTER is coming to the WEB!

KOOLHUNTER.COM will be up shortly. An RSS and ATOM online aggregator that finds the IMPORTANT Sites.

Not the 60 billion that DON'T really Matter.

Wingman.

A Blog prototype is at: koolhunter2.blogspot.com.

Light Reading and CES Musings:

A common complaint about CES and MacWorld Shows is that they have a lot of stuff that is Not-Quite-Ready YET, or will never see the LIGHT-Of-Day. But that goes with MOST Shows anyway...It's a given.

The Sharp 108-inch LCD HDTV is real by the way. An unnamed basketball player has put in an order for one and the mechanical device to LOWER it from the ceiling..

This year, the Buzz from the keynotes came from Steve Jobs at MacWorld and the gaga over "iphone" (maybe I can't use that name?) IPHONE. I just listen to count how many times Steve uses the hackneed phrase: "Order of a magnatude..." to describe new stuff.

On the other, side of the coin...The Fatter part, CES, where Bill Gates gave his keynote address that most pundits tune-off. Bill still hasn't learn how to SELL hackneed phrases.

The big question was: "Will this be Bill's LAST-KEYNOTE before retiring?"

For those with a historical bent, most videos of the keynotes are available online. Even the classic Apple commercial called "1984" which introduced the First MAC is online.

Tuesday Morning TWITs

Tuesday, in the a.m., listening to my PSP RSS feed of Leo Laporte's TWIT (This Week In Tech) podcast review of CES 2007. The TWIT Website describes the proceedings thus:
======================================================================
January 15th, 2007 TWiT 84: Hahn, I'm Home! Hosts: Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, Robert Heron, Hahn Choi, and Cory Doctorow Our CES post-mortem
======================================================================
HD TV's was the main focus of the CES recap and that included the Sharp 108-inch LCD HDTV.

Holy Hannah!!!

Picture from ENGADGET website on top.

The Code Searchers:

According to LJ (Linux Journal): "In Journalism, three examples create a TREND and in Business Schools, professors teach that three competitors create a market category. These two tropes now apply to CODE SEARCH..."

Google, the number 1 search engine has spun off a searcher just for Coders (Hackers), called Code Search.

But Google isn't the first search to Kater to Koders (yeah, I'm going to replace a lot of C's for K's here...:).

THIS market category was started three years ago by Koders.com .

Sometime later, Krugle joined in with their Code Searcher, called Krugle.com (don't ask me why).

The big deal about Google jumping on the bandwagon is that it draws attention to a category of search that we might not know about.

These wonderful programs we run by clicking a button or icon, don't come out of thin air.
Real hackers, sometimes working on their own in the wee hours, create this magic.

And I for one think, that helping them with these Code Search Engines, is a REAL GOOD IDEA.

wingman out.

2006 Christmas Photos (Part 1)

Jacob Pensive
Judy Cheers
Heffner Girls
Hacking The PSP
Jon The PSP Wizard

Melissa
Breaks

Lydia's Christmas Table

A Blogging We Have Gone (in 2006)

This YEAR'S (2006) POSTINGS:
MY BLOGS:(54 Postings, 1 short story fragment)
Media Circus 2 (http://mediacircus2.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: I AM "the Person of The Year..."
The GIG is UP (Again)
Brain Stretchers
WEBSITE Evolution and CMS Software
A Great Couple of Weeks For OPEN SOURCE!
It's A Game of Numbers
Starbuck's, Ipods and Marketing
The Circus Comes To a Town Near YOU
A Bad (rajump) Worm in Apple's Video IPODS
Getting Enlightenment: The Hard Way

===============================================================
Mass Media Course Correction (http://mycordiunnot.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: Counter-Culture And YouTube
The Replacement Killers
YUM, Yum, Yum!
PSP 2.6 and waiting for an Exploit...
UCLA: March Madness
Guilty by Association
What's It All About? Alfie
The Wonders of Wiki--A Work in Progress
The Rant That Rages
From Oxnard to Shangrila

===================================================================
Written by ELO (http://theletterselo.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: Wednesday, December 13, 2006
The Post Keep Coming. Ideas in the Works:
Tidbits and News Bits (November 17, 2006)
A Writers Blog not BLOCK!
Going Up the Country, Got to Get Away
Tools in the Toolbox
Going UP the Gibson
A Picture, Still Worth A Thousand Words?
Gibson, French Maids and IPOD wagging Apple
It's Only Words...
Blogging the Writer

====================================================================
Dos Possos (http://elosblog.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: Hitting The Gibson Brakes
Online Books
Feeling Disconnected: No Wires attached
One Step Forward, TWO Steps Back
Digital Memories are made of This...
The Light at the End of The Virtual Tunnel
I Hate the Word PROJ
First On the Block Syndrome
Two Steps

=======================================================================
PSP On Steroids (http://psphardwired.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: The Homebrew Game
PSP Podcasts and Other Links
Waiting for Exploit 2.6

=======================================================================
THE PAINT BUCKET (Ontario) BLOG
=======================================================================
The Painting on The Wall (http://paintbucketontario.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: The PC's are up and Running in Ontario
Paint Buckets and CAT 5

========================================================================
MY Media Circus 2 WEBPAGE (Drupal Driven)
(http://mediacircus2.com)

Posted Pages(blog-like) It IS a BLOG Life!
Test For Google Maps API
Topics And Details (T.A.D.)
Old is NEW Again
IDORU Done
Tapping "Drift" Technology
Adding URL/Filter Modules
Adding Content BLOCKS for New Modules
Drupal's Modules
November 9, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------
Posted Short Stories: Pocket Change
(Part of a Short Story Collection called: Subject To Change)
========================================================================

I AM "the Person of The Year..."

I knew All-my-blogging would lead to something, I (okay, WE) made it to the cover of Time magazine as the "Person Of The Year".

Yeah, right. According to John C. Dvorak (on Leo Laporte's TWIT Podcast), it WAS a cop-out.

I agree. YouTube would have been a better choice.

I beat Time-Mag to the punch with my Post on Media Circus2 webpage: I Blog, therefore I AM. (the real importance of having an online identity.

I also came up with music videos back in the sixties, but that is another story.

More will be coming on the significance of the TIME piece.

The TWIT's also related the release of IPHONE.

Picture at right.

It's been released, BUT Not by Apple. It from Linksys. Legal battle, anyone???

The Gig is UP (Again!)

Let's UP the Ante..
New Sony/SanDisk DUO leapfrogs to 64 gig.
Yes, I know, everyone was waiting for the 8 gig chip and wondering why it was taking soooo long to come out. Well, folks, It Was Sure Worth The Wait.
Bang!
Move over 8 gig, Here Comes the 64 gig chip.

Sweet!

Brain Stretchers

NEWS Notes:
DAS-3 Project (Netherlands):
---------------------------------------------------------------------
A recent article on a project called DAS3 in a Dutch Graduate School that may be on the verge of creating a Super-GRID. Capable of turning the Web into a Linux Cluster. The Article called: "The Wide Area Cluster" appeared in the November issue of Linux Magazine.
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Real Dangers in Virtualization:
Steve Gibson (Spinrite) recently warned on Leo Laporte's podcast, that hackers have introduced a virus into the code of the new Intel Processor that was created with built-in virtualization hooks. The virus stays dormant until an OS is installed on it and then it becomes a pre-installed Root-kit that can take over the system.
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WEBSITE Evolution and CMS Software

Webpages are evolving into modifiable BLOGS, and with the Trend, the Content Management Software (CMS) is poised to deliver us from the evil of HTML coding. Sure, you can hack away with HypeText Markup Language, but why bother? The Content is the important part. The means of getting it on the page is: Whatever works Best For You.

I usually juust use a simple Linux Text Editor (qedit) and just paste it into my Blogger page. Like THIS:

Blogs are short, clean, and work well with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which give websites a very professional look.

The next step is, of course, audio and video streaming content.

Remember the hoopla about cable being the great democratization of MEDIA, it appears that the WEB is the form that will deliver on the Promise.

You ain't seen nothing yet...

Stay tuned.

A Great Couple of Weeks For OPEN SOURCE!

Last week Microsoft entered into a unique agreement with Novell. It paid Novell XXX Million dollars for the Windows to work (communicate), with SUSE Linux.

This Week Sun Microsystems let their JAVA out of the proprietary bag and released it under GPL licensing.

The General Press was busy paying attention to the Release of Game Consoles from Sony and Nintendo, but the real long-term impact event was these two giant steps toward Open Source.

This is HUGE!

It's A Game of Numbers

The World Series just ended this last weekend. The team with the lowest number of wins in the regular season, Won IT All. Baseball, they say is a game of Numbers. Lately, my digital centric world has been telling me the same thing. So let me throw a few Numbers at you.

Many, many years ago, Bill Gates tried to sell us on an idea that seemed blatantly unrealistic at the time.

A (meaning 1), computer in every home.

He was wrong, and by the way, he's retiring soon.

I won't mention Vista.

But you can't keep missing the ball and keep playing.

Seems, nowadays, most homes have two and more computers. There are a least 10 in my house, 5 being used most of the time. And only 3 with Windows. The rest are Linux boxes, mainly FC (Fedora Core).

I am teasing Bill, after all the Cell-phone pundits made the same mistake in the 1990's. They said it would take 10 years for cell phone to reach x-million units. It happened in 3 years.

However, the restrictive licensing agreements that Bill began ranting about in the early computer clubs, is still in force, should suggest making his headstone read: EULA, Rest In Peace.

Germany and Finland aren't buying it. Britain and the US Should Be Next.

I have an Idea.

Why don't we have the OS (say Knoppix Linux), online. The Network IS the computer, with no licensing restrictions on copies and use.

Think about it.

Google, are you listening?

The Game isn't Over.