MemeMachineGo!

More good news.

The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.

The study contains what its authors call “a stark warning” for the entire world. The wetlands, forests, savannahs, estuaries, coastal fisheries and other habitats that recycle air, water and nutrients for all living creatures are being irretrievably damaged. In effect, one species is now a hazard to the other 10 million or so on the planet, and to itself.

“Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted,” it says. […]

A growing proportion of the world lives in cities, exploiting advanced technology. But nature, the scientists warn, is not something to be enjoyed at the weekend. Conservation of natural spaces is not just a luxury.

“These are dangerous illusions that ignore the vast benefits of nature to the lives of 6 billion people on the planet. We may have distanced ourselves from nature, but we rely completely on the services it delivers.”

Sure, but explain the stake through the heart.

Early tales of vampirism frequently coincided with reports of rabies outbreaks in and around the Balkans, stretching back to a particularly devastating epidemic of rabies in dogs, wolves and other animals in Hungary from 1721-28. […]

The vampire’s famous aversion to garlic and to mirrors could be ascribed to hypersensitivity, which comes with rabies infection, according to his theory.

“Men with rabies … react to stimuli such as water, light, odors or mirrors with spasms of the facial and vocal muscles that can cause hoarse sounds, bared teeth and frothing at the mouth of bloody fluid,” he said.

In the past, he contended, “a man was not considered rabid if he was able to stand the sight of his own image in a mirror.” […]

He said even the vampire’s fatal kiss, the bite itself, could be traced to rabies.

“Man has a tendency to bite, both in fighting and in sexual activities,” Gomez-Alonso says. “The intensification of such tendency by rabies increases the risk of transmission, as the virus is in saliva and other body secretions.”

After much effort I may write about later, I have a newly rebuilt computer, and a new 19” LCD monitor. And this monitor, it rotates.

Web pages and documents the way they’re supposed to be. More information on the screen at once, without so much space lost to margins.

It’s so beautiful, I could almost cry.

Vowels matter.

A House of Representatives committee report mentioned tests conducted in Sudan between 1962 and 1970. However, when alarmed Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail raised it with US officials in Khartoum, it turned out to be a typing error. The report should have said Sedan, a test site in the US state of Nevada.

Strange Horizons is having a fund drive. Check out some of their fine fiction, like The Great Old Pumpkin, Looking Back, Carol for Mixed Voices and hundreds of others, as well as their other fine features, then give till it hurts.

Sumana scored a syndicated column. Woo hoo!

Elsewhere, she pointed out that Salon subscribers can download hundreds of songs. I checked it out, but they don’t provide any easy method to download them all. It seemed too tedious to pursue… until I remembered the DownloadThemAll extension for Mozilla Firefox.

I set up an MP3 filter, and a couple of clicks later, it was doing all the tedious work. It’s good to run Firefox.

Unlearned something old today. Male pattern baldness genes are inherited from the mother? It’s a myth.

Genes that are located on the X or Y-chromosomes are call sex-linked. Genes on the other 22 pairs of chromosomes are called autosomal. It is felt that the genes governing common baldness are autosomal. This means that the baldness trait can be inherited from the mother’s side of the family or the father’s side. The commonly held notion that baldness comes only from the mother’s side of the family is incorrect, although for reasons not fully understood, the predisposition inherited from an affected mother is of slightly greater importance than that inherited from an affected father.

More:

Despite the universal interest in the genetics of MPB, there is a surprisingly small number of scientific studies in regards to the genetics of MPB and there is only one known extensive family study on MPB. This study of hair growth patterns in 22 families concluded that common pattern baldness was an autosomal dominant phenotype in men and an autosomal recessive phenotype in women. However, the validity of these results are controversial because of a lack of details regarding examination methods and sampling errors of this study, which was published in 1916.

While I’m talking about hair loss myths, can we please also squash the one about bald men having more testosterone?

With or without testosterone, the incidence of baldness in men ranges from about 23 percent to 87 percent, and baldness may develop any time after puberty. Castration after the onset of puberty halts the progression of human balding, indicating that hormones must play a significant role. Therapeutic injections of testosterone do not result in the loss of hair in adult males treated because of a deficiency in testosterone, and there is no noticeable change in the scalp hair of normal men who receive testosterone. Perhaps low testosterone is a greater risk factor for increased balding than high or increased testosterone. Male pattern baldness, with balding limited to the top of the head, also seems to be related more to hormone deficiencies than to excess testosterone.

See What You Share is a shrill, over-the-top website on the P2P menace. If you use P2P software, your identity is going to be stolen! If you use P2P software, your children are going to be raped and killed! P2P provides safe haven for pedophiles!

From that last:

However, unlike the Internet, P2P is virtually unregulated. As a result, it becomes inherently easy to find digital information that cannot be found anywhere else.

With all the author’s interest in P2P networks, you’d think he might have noticed that every single public network is using the Internet. What you find on them, you’re finding on the Internet.

The first two articles raise an important point — you need to understand what you’re sharing. This is a matter of configuring your software. It’s an issue that doesn’t come up with BitTorrent. His scary warning scenarios are plausible for careless users; they are avoidable for careful users. He omits the latter point.

As for the last, P2P networks aren’t even a safe haven for copyright violators. In all the big P2P networks, your IP address is public. Your ISP can be subpoenaed for your identity. People sharing child porn on P2P networks can be found, arrested, and prosecuted with existing laws and processes.

Are those processes complicated and difficult in ways? Yes. But claiming “P2P provides safe haven for pedophiles,” or that “no one seems to care what is being shared […] as long as it is shared via P2P” is simply wrong.

Idaho passes totally sweet resolution. Don’t skip the “whereas“‘s.

StyleXP is commercial software to facilitate changing the appearance of Windows XP. They distribute two editions: Men and Ladies. The Ladies edition includes themes like gucci and pearl. The Men edition has more manly-sounding themes like panther and 521.

‘Cause you wouldn’t want to accidentally use a theme for the wrong sex. It would have cooties.

This page may make your head explode.

You’ll be shocked, shocked to learn that some computer hardware review sites are disintegrious. But what I really liked about that Slashdot thread was readers’ recommendations of sites that seem not to be selling good reviews to the highest bidder:

• Dan’s Data


• AnandTech


• [H]ardOCP


• Tech Report


• XBit Labs


• Ars Technica


• Storage Review

Tom’s Hardware and CNET were most often mentioned as sites to actively distrust.

Unfortunately, none of these are living up to Consumer Reports’ standard of buying all test products from retailers, anonymously, and refusing all advertising. (Consumer Reports’ computer reviews are of the Dell vs. Gateway variety, not for geeks building their own machines.)

Of those sites, I’ve looked at Storage Review extensively, and it looks good. I also spent a lot of time recently reading Silent PC Review, and trust them.

Of course, “a couple of Slashdot posters said so” isn’t the world’s most rigorous standard of authority. Better not trust me, either.

One theory regarding the Hindenburg explosion is that it caught fire because the Zeppelin company had, um, painted it with thermite.¹

Proponents of the “flammable fabric” theory point out that the coatings on the fabric contained both iron oxide and aluminium-impregnated cellulose acetate butyrate dope. Cellulose acetate butyrate dope is known to be flammable and iron oxide is well-known to react with aluminium powder. In fact, iron oxide and aluminium are sometimes used as components of solid rocket fuel or thermite. (However, the oft-cited claim that the ship was “coated in rocket fuel” is a significant overstatement.)

More Hindenburg facts: nearly two thirds of the people on board survived. And it had been meant to use helium; the Zeppelin company resorted to hydrogen due to the U.S.’ Helium Control Act.

¹ Significant overstatement.

The Federal Trade Commission sez:

How can I prevent identity theft from happening to me?

[…] Before you dispose of a computer, delete all the personal information it stored. Deleting files using the keyboard or mouse commands or reformatting your hard drive may not be enough because the files may stay on the computer’s hard drive, where they may be retrieved easily. Use a “wipe” utility program to overwrite the entire hard drive.

A couple of years ago, Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat bought up a bunch of used hard drives to see what they could see. What they could see were a lot of things the previous owners wouldn’t have wanted seen. Here’s Garfinkel’s PowerPoint presentation giving an overview of the issues and the data, including this disturbing example:

Disk #134

• Chicago bank
• Drive removed from an ATM machine.
• One year’s worth of transactions; 3000+ card numbers
• Bank had hired contractor to upgrade machines; contractor had hired a sub-contractor.
• Bank and contractor assumed disks would be properly sanitized, but procedures were not specified in the contract.

I don’t know of any cases of identity theft due to data from used hard drives, but if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s only a matter of time. If you get rid of a hard drive, wipe the whole disk. Just deleting files, reformatting the drive, or re-installing the OS (or installing a new one) are all ineffective against a more than casual search. An excellent free program is Darik’s Boot and Nuke, included in the free package Eraser. There’s also a raftload of commercial software for it, but I have absolutely no reason to think any of them would do any better.

Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory offers a lot of detail on why erasing data is a hard problem. It’s generally accepted that the only way to be really sure your data is irrecoverable is to thoroughly physically destroy the data medium. But unless you think the NSA has a keen interest in your data, drive-wiping with software is good enough.

Of course, all of this is for hard drives you’re parting with on purpose. It’s no use if your computer is stolen. But that scenario needn’t be a crisis if everything significant was encrypted. I’ll write more about that later.

Another reminder it’s the 21st century: computing with frozen light.

Scientists at Harvard University have shown how ultra-cold atoms can be used to freeze and control light to form the “core” – or central processing unit – of an optical computer. Optical computers would transport information ten times faster than traditional electronic devices, smashing the intrinsic speed limit of silicon technology.

1337 haX0R skills: chicks dig ‘em.

At the age of 100 most people would think about winding down rather than downloading - but not Sidney Platt. Mr Platt has embarked on his latest information technology course - at Havering College, east London - so he can better manage his finances. […]

“I have learnt lots of little tips and shortcuts on the computer that most people don’t know.

“I enjoy going to the centre because I always get a lovely smile from the ladies there and I can impress them with new computer tips.”

You go, dude!

(Via Circadian Shift)

Speaking of wiping hard drives, I came across Microsoft’s peculiar advice on the subject:

Don’t want a big hassle? Give the computer to a trusted employee, friend or family member.

This is sort of like protecting yourself from STD’s by only having sex with nice girls and/or boys. Your employee, friend, or family member could be wholly trustworthy, but unaware of the issues, and could later pass on the computer, still with your recoverable data, to someone else.

Reformatting a disk prepares it to accept a new operating system. It also wipes out everything on the hard drive. That’s your goal.

This is false. Reformatting does not wipe out everything. The author goes on to (correctly) contradict herself.

Reformatting will keep most people out of your old files. But specialized shareware exists to reclaim files after reformatting. If you do not know who will get the computer — or you do know and you don’t trust them — stronger measures are required.

The stronger measures:

Buy software and overwrite the disk, again and again and again. If you don’t know much about computers, this might be easier than [reformatting the drive.]

Despite leading with “buy software,” one of the programs she mentions is actually free!

You’re totally paranoid, so get out the acetylene torch.

No arguments here.

So, basically, we have two approaches that are extremely ineffective, and two that are extremely effective presented as being on a continuum of practical approaches. The article even allows as to how wiping the hard drive is easier than reformatting the hard drive and re-installing an OS. At the very bottom, the author personally recommends wiping the hard drive.

So why, why, why are the first two on the list? Why the language suggesting they could be adequate?

At least, that’s what kids these days think.

Student: I searched really hard for this topic and didn’t find much. Are you sure it even exists outside of class?
Me: Really, I’m sure the math library [right down the hall] has several books on the topic.
Student: Oh, I just used Google.

Totally unfair, but still hilarious: The Amazing Adventures of Lethem and Chabon.

(Via Electrolite)

Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman was appropriated from earlier sources.

So prolific were pre-Mad uses of the face, that when the magazine was sued for copyright infringement (twice, once based on a 1914 copyright and the other on a 1936 one), its major defense was to show the court that the plaintiffs had copied it from even earlier sources.

In Carl Djerassi’s memory, these earlier sources include Nazi propaganda in Austria in 1938.

And who would not?

I think the low point came when I caught her watching Colonial House, a reality show on PBS. […] “It’s a bunch of people dressed in itchy clothes and pretending like they live in ye olde olden tymes?” I asked, when The Queen explained the premise to me. “Good lord, you’re watching a televised LARP!” I continued to mock her for several more seconds, until it dawned on me that, of the two of us, only one was geeky enough to know what “LARP” stands for. (And, let’s me honest: when PBS holds Seattle auditions for Gamma World House, the guy at the front of the line in the mutated badger costume will be me.)