The Design and Implementation of laffer1

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/1629259

The Germans are in the process of making hacking tools illegal.  This will not improve security in any fashion. Why?  Network Administrators must use hacking and scanning tools to audit their own networks for security breaches.  By making these tools illegal, Germans will no longer be able to secure their networks legally.  Like most computer technologies, there are good uses as well as bad.  Its similar to the media targeting sites like MySpace and LiveJournal because 1 sexual predator was found on the site.  How many thousands of legit users are there?  Someone can use a laptop to do harm to a hospital, bank or something else.  Should all laptops be banned?  Why not ban the hardware that runs the hacker tools?  No need for computers right? 

This will halt the movement toward open source and alternative operating systems in Germany.  Most include basic "hacker tools".  MidnightBSD, Linux, and maybe even Mac OS X will be banned.  Why?  OS X has included nmap and tcpdump in the past.  We might be able to look at packets... oh no! 

LiveJournal decided to cave to pressure from an extreme christian group to delete all blogs related to incest or people talking about abuse they had as children!  Don't ask, don't tell?

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/0329200

I just finished my Zen flowerpot pages. I still need to write the essay and also do some peer review work for 328. That will be a job in the morning I suppose. I've got loads of wiki entries to write too.

I actually watched ocean's eleven while making those sites. I think they came out pretty well. Had a little photoshop and illustrator action. I might play with them some more and use them for jj themes later if i get time.

I'm starting a movie and I have to say this is great. The MPAA's "Buying pirated movies is stealing" statement is false. Its technially copyright infringement. Maybe even receiving stolen goods could be applied from a weird perspective. Its definetely not stealing. Its similar to downloading pirated music on P2P. Its copyright infringement and not stealing. Still against the law. Still bad. You'd hope the "experts" would not what law applies.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-clear-code/?ca=dgr-FClnxw01linuxcodetips

This is why they are the big consultants now.  Seriously, anyone taking beginning programming learns how to comment properly.  The only insightful thing on this page was the Knuth quote. 

Apple stock seems to be going up, up, up.  I never expected the iPhone to entice investors so much.  It isn't even out yet.  There must be some over-hype about potential sales figures.  I don't see it selling as well as some people expect because of the carrier lock-in.  Unless you like Cingular (AKA AT&T) wireless, the iPhone is not obtainable by a large percentage of the population.  On the flip side, going up nearly $3 a share today helped my bottom line. 

One thing that has always bothered me about Just Journal is the lack of a last login date stamp.  It is impossible to know if someone has broken into your account without some record of logins.  I can look at some logs and determine roughly where people login from but there is absolutely no login accounting.   I also don't know how many users are actually logging into the site after their accounts were created. 

Today I'm working on a new feature to display the last login information to the client.  The first iteration had a function called setLastLogin in the WebLogin class used to do all authentications.  The problem with this approach is that if I call setLastLogin in a login function then the last login was right then.  It serves my auditing purposes, but is useless for end users to detect stolen login sessions.  My second approach called the method inside of the LoginAccount class.  This class handles all current login activity except logins from the update or comment pages.  I still need to handle them separately.  I had to call the method in two different locations as to support the web client (this site) and the Windows .NET and Java clients.  A better solution would be to store the lastlogin in some sort of authenticated user class that I can serialize in the session.  Rewriting the entire login system isn't something I want to do right now. 

The feature isn't live yet, but I have a good share of the code and the database schema changes done.  There are much more interesting features, but many of them require a lot of time which I don't have while taking two spring classes.   I'm totally confused about implementing tagging.  At first I was certain I wanted global tags that everyone could see.  The advantage would be easy searches and a list of popular tags.  (i forget what they call that..)  Tagging is the most obvious Web 2.0 feature I'm missing.  Also due to design defects, I can't easily add search so tags would at least help sort entries.  I've got 4 years worth on here.  As far as searching is concerned, I do have one idea how to implement it.  It won't be good, but it will be something.

I'm just adding a technorati claim to my blog. LOL. Technorati Profile

I really wish I had slept better. I've got 12 hours of sleep over the last two days and very little of that is continuous.

I just bought a new monitor for $130 on bestbuy.com.  Its a 19 inch westinghouse widescreen with 700:1 contrast and only consumes 36 watts!  Its got a 5ms access time. 

I turned in my rough draft today online for English 328.  I'm so happy that's already up.  I'm a bit burned out from all the homework this weekend so I think I'll take the day off and plan on a busy day tomorrow. 

I only got 2 hours of sleep last night.  Going to class was rough.  It was challenging to stay awake and attentive.  There was another accident on 94 but luckily on the other side of the road.  Oddly I think I was five minutes late today and I left 10 minutes earlier than usual.  Ugh. 

I'm not sure if I should make coffee or not.  Part of me is totally for it and the other part wants to take a nap. 

This will be my last blog entry.  I have class in the morning.  I just couldn't get to sleep after writing that rough draft. 

I looked at the wayback machine for foolishgames.com tonight.  Its interesting what my old sites looked like so many years ago. 

http://web.archive.org/web/19990508064343/www.foolishgames.com/jewel.htm

Its rather funny that I was making professional sites like usol.com (sadly still looks the same) at the same time as this.  I don't think any of my work is online anymore other than archives or usol.com.  Considering I made my first site in 1996, I've come a long way.  Still I'm not in my prime anymore.  I don't have the patience that I had in my youth.  Like 28 is so old.  (WARNING THAT SITE CRASHES FIREFOX on my pc)  Even though there was a color clash, I just loved that site design.  The splash images are not there, but the index still is.  It was one of my last frames based sites.  I designed that in 1998.. i think february or so.  I was pretty depressed and you can tell by the use of blues.  That was the first time I went really into blue for a site.  It was also one of the first I did with 99% of my own graphics work.  I even made the background in photoshop.  It was just a few pixels. 

I looked at this after reading Laura's blog, a student in my eng 444 class.  She was a bit down on her progress with site design.  I remember spending hours trying to FTP up pages on AOL back in the day.  That was dumbed down a bit and i still struggled.  Using a modern FTP client like cuteftp pro or wsftp would have been a nightmare for me.  As much as it became a chore later, I miss working on my Jewel website.  The legal ramifications of running a site like that are just too much these days.  The RIAA breathing down everyone's necks and now I'm married.  Litigation would also hurt my wife.  I don't think people consider the legal ramifications of running a website.  All of the sites I run or host could be targeted potentially.  The law has been shifting toward business and away from free speech for a long time on the web.  Perhaps it only caught up with the web. 

I liked the customweb.net design I did and I think the worst site was the Whaley Children's center site.  I did one for an auction they held and a coworker later took credit for it.  It wasn't bad for 2 hours notice.  Probably my best professional work ever was kards.com.  usol.com's gaming site that i once did was the most artistic, but kards.com had the most functionality.  I had that asp.net shopping cart tied in with UPS and some of the designs were good.  I particularly liked the last one.  I wish I could code like that these days.  I remember that hack job I did fixing golfrac's site.  Then there was the title companies site and that terrible insurance company.  award-1.com isn't my best design work but the customer loved it.  Its what he wanted. 

I find it amusing that I couldn't design the cs.emich.edu site because of the unions.  I still made it look better than all black text. 

Anti-war crusader Cindy Sheehan, best known for her stake out in Texas has called it quits.  It is quite sad that she lost her child and her husband over this oil grabbing exercise some think is liberating another country. I don't care about Iraqis as much as I do American lives lost for no apparent reason.  There were no WMDs found regardless if you believe Iraq had them.  I'm convinced the only WMDs they ever had were chemical weapons our country gave them years before.

Some have called her un-american.  Those people also praise people who stand up for their beliefs (only if they agree).  Isn't speaking out about something you believe freedom?  The first amendment protects our speech, and there is nothing more american that using that right.  I don't agree with everything she's said in the past, but that's her right to say it.

I just connected my HP printer to my Windows box.  I used to write all my papers on my iBook.  Since I'm migrating to the PowerMac, I need to use Windows for Office and printing right now.  I avoided hooking up the printer to XP because it had terrible printing support.  Vista auto detected my printer, installed the driver, and I was printing in less than 2 minutes from Word 2007.  I'm rather impressed.  Microsoft did something right. 

A recent article talks about the appeal of the Nintendo Wii over other game consoles.  Analysts are trying to kill the Wii with rediculous  accusations to help Microsoft and Sony stock.  These same analysts predicted the demise of the iPod to Microsoft's Zune and Creative's mp3 players.  I can walk into a game store and buy a xbox 360 or PS3 right now.  I cannot buy a Wii.  That tells me there is a big demand or a short supply of Wii units. 

The Wii is here to stay. 

I was reviewing the statistics gathered by Steam for Value.  According to the figures, 51% of gamers buy Intel processors.  Nvidia graphics cards are popular among Valve gamers.  The most interesting aspects are screen resolutions and types of displays.  A high percentage of gamers still run their monitors at 1024 x 768 with 32 bit color depth. Only 10% have widescreen (16:9) displays.  This is interesting for website design as well.  Most people actually have 1024 x 768 at 60hz with 32bit depth on a 4:3 aspect ratio.  1280 x 1024 is the second most popular resolution.

I find it difficult to determine which resolution to target for websites.  With this information, it seems clear that websites should work for 1024 x 768 users without scrolling.  We have 3 monitors all with different specs.  Caryn's old monitor is a 15 in lcd with 1024 x 768 that I use on her old Mac.  Her new display is a 19 in widescreen display.  I'm still using a 19in CRT at 1280 x 1024 on my PC. 

Back when I played snes games constantly, I had a friend who purchased a game called Earthbound.  It was one of the best games to play.  I never got a chance to beat it.  I remember the blue cult and other weird elements of the game.

http://www.gamespot.com/snes/rpg/mother2/player_review.html?id=443073

Matt used to sneak the game over since neither of us were supposed to have it.  Our parents overreacted to the "cult".  I see them going on ebay for $60 which is much more than i'm willing to spend on the game right now. 

I have trouble finding an open channel for my FM transmitter for use with my iPod.  I found this website which finds open channels for you.

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/vacant?select=city&city=48108&state=&x=23&y=2

http://myvag.net/pee/standing/

This site is a tutorial for women to learn to pee standing up.  Someone used this as a counter post to someone on slashdot who said that the "guy" in an article was a she and could not pee standing up.  Wow.  I think the iPod accessory tops this. 

I'm waiting to load the English 328 page right now.  This is very slow.  I realized I need to write a 500 word blog entry for the class on blogger.  It is interesting to compare features on blogger and JJ.  I've always tried to compete with Live Journal which is a community site.  Blogger focuses on individual blogging. 

Its still trying to load.  This is very frustrating.  I know there were questions to use as a basis for the blog post. 

I just noticed I have about 50,000 unread e-mail messages.  Ouch.  I cannot keep up with this mail. 

http://www.annsummers.com/single.asp?gid=7%20&cat=2&pid=4294&QSI=225bacfe-5776-4a1f-8de1-f54ff47df5bf

This iGasm connects to an iPod and causes vibration to the beat.  I don't think I need to explain proper use. Oh my.