December 6, 2003 Archives

I just took a look at my Google page rank. My home page now shows up at 6 of 10. I was astounded when I went from 3 to 5; this is ridiculous.

Here's how Google explains what page rank means:

The TV station's site, wtnh.com, is also a 6... and they have two full time staffers plus part time help when needed.

My guess is, links earned by posting on Slashdot boosted me. I know a few bloggers have me as a permanent link, and I'm appreciative because that helps too.

I have been looking at the computer models as they come and, and watching the radar in between. I'm wondering if this storm is losing some of its potential to produce snow?

A bad forecast will keep me housebound for a while. There is no upside to being wrong.

My friend John Matthews forecasts in West Palm Beach, FL. At this moment, I am incredibly jealous.

We're in the midst of the storm now. There had been a lull for much of the morning, but now the snow is back in earnest. The latest computer models say we'll get enough snow by tonight that my forecast will come true.

The official meteorological term for this is 'verify,' as in "the forecast verified."

I've attached a visible satellite image on the left. It's very impressive and very unusual. There is an 'eye' to this storm, almost like a hurricane or tropical storm. There are structural differences in this storm, it's not a tropical system. Still the picture is very impressive.

The lead story on Extreme Tech is all about building a computer. Build It: A Speedy PC For $800

I'm certainly not adverse to building a computer. The PC this is being typed on was assembled right here on my office floor from parts I specified. It does everything I designed it to do (though it has incredibly noisy fans to remove its internal heat, and I wish I would have designed that out). And, as a bonus, it actually worked when I plugged it in!

The question is why build... and even if you want to, how much longer will that be possible?

My computer was built to edit video. To that end, I threw in the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV video card (on which the DV "Firewire" connection never did work) and a Soyo motherboard with built-in RAID (two disk drives act as one for the faster service necessary for video). The on-board audio conflicts with the video card, meaning I then had to go get another audio card.

It was a great learning experience, but today you can buy machines off the shelf that do the same thing. And, increases in processor speed cover a variety of sins. So a machine not totally optimized for video will still do fine because everything else is so much faster and the disk drives are so much larger.

As I was passing by Home Shopping Network earlier today, they were selling a Gateway PC (I am not a fan of any particular brand. All major computer manufactures are just putting together other people's parts.) with 17" monitor and printer for under $1200. The CPU on their machine is better than twice as fast as mine! If you're interested, here are the specs.

It's tough to build when a speedy machine, pre-assembled, sells for a price like that.

For hobbyists, like me, there will always be the allure of building the 'perfect' screaming machine. But, I suspect within the next few years that won't be possible either.

I remember in high school, a friend of mine bough a Model "A" Ford and restored it to running condition by hand. What he couldn't get, he modified. Now, there's hardly anything on a car you can fix or modify on your own.

Computers are going in that same direction. There are a number of reasons, but the most significant seems to be intellectual property rights. My computer is capable of copying DVDs... even copy protected DVDs. I can do all sorts of other things that upsets other rights holders too!

Just as printer manufacturers have added chips to try and thwart aftermarket ink cartridge manufacturers, PCs will be 'smarter' (really more restrictive) in what they let you do. The quaint concept of 'fair use' will go out the window, because manufacturers now understand how easily their hard work is ripped off.

Will future versions of Windows be built so it only works with 'trusted' hardware and software that can be more closely controlled? My opinion is, yes. Sure, a computer could be run on Linux or some yet-to-be-designed operating system, but that would deprive you of much of what's available today.

I'm not sure where the 'sweet spot' is, balancing the rights of those who produce with the rights of those who use. I suspect that PC's wouldn't be where they are today... capable of doing what they do... if the restrictions to come had existed earlier.

I have noticed a new trend recently. Some of my spam is non-English!

Xenophobic? Not exactly... well, sort of. The web runs mostly in English, and since this is where the "money * people" equation gives the highest result, it is where commercial email is aimed.

Over the past few days I've received email with Chinese characters (which my Linux machine does a better job with than my Windows machine) and today Russian. Granted, because I'm using popfile, and because I seldom see anything but the subject of my spam mail, this might have been going on for a while without my noticing.

The Russian mail looked interesting, with a photo of a man and well formatted Cyrillic text. I ran it through Babelfish to get the general idea.

Here's the Babelfish translation (it's tough to follow):

It seems to be something political, something about 'apple', something about governance in Russia. It's not a happy note. There are probably too many idiomatic phrases to be translated this way and get a reasonable understanding.

So, I sent the spam to Alex Moskalyuk. Alex is a tech guy with a blog. We ran into each other on the net after he linked to one of my stories and then added my blog as a permanent link on his website... which is partially in Russian. He wrote a review about "Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++", which is linked on the front page of Slashdot. Very impressive.

Here's Alex's read on the message:

So, now you know about my Russian spam, and a little bit about what's going on in Russia. Thanks Alex.