Kris Carlson's Weblog

Lame Memorial Day Parade in Fenton, Michigan

Shame on you Fenton, Michigan for your half hearted tribute to the soldiers who have fallen and died for your freedom.

10 minute parade, and the marching band was in black shorts and orange T-shirts and sloppy tennis shoes. The only uplifting part of the parade was the VFW honor guard carrying the flag. Unfortunately, half the people viewing the parade didn't even bother to stand up when the flag went by. Congratulations to the boy scouts and the cub scouts for your participation in the parade. And lets not forget the 5 members of the City Council that participated in the parade, walking and waving. A sad and poorly organized parade. Where was the traditional riderless horse with the empty boots backwards in the stirrups?

Shame on you Fenton, Michigan for your half hearted tribute to the soldiers who have fallen and died for your freedom.

Asteroid 2004 MN4

How aware are you? If this asteroid hit earth would it cause total extinction? Everything except the cockroaches, ofcourse. The Near Earth Object Program has calculated the probabilities of the latest threat to mankind, an asteroid labeled 2004 MN4. They claim the probability is very small, 1 in 14,000 by 2036. Even so that is the highest ever: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html.

At Wired.com, in an article: Astronaut Wants Asteroid Mission, "A former Apollo astronaut, Russell Schweickart, is calling on Congress to authorize a space mission to monitor an asteroid that has a narrow chance of hitting Earth in 2035 or 2036." I agree with Russell, we cannot risk this thing getting too close to Earth. It's big enough to screw things up hear on Earth pretty bad, and maybe even bad enough to kill us all.

Technorati Tags: 2004 MN4, Near Earth Object Project, NASA, Asteroid

Blogvertising

Juan Cole has hit on something here. Check out his article at C|Net News about advertisers using blogs to promoe their products. Everything from TV Shows to..., well, you name it. I'm in! Blogs: The next big thing for advertisers? Ofcourse, being a University Of Michigan Professor doesn't hurt. Since I am UMich Alumni I am a little prejudice.

Blog On!

Deck Maintenance

Almost every year for the past 15 years I have cleaned and applied wood protector to the deck at my mothers house. I have skipped this process probably 3 times in the past 15 years. The first 2 times I cleaned the deck I used a scrub brush and a mixture of TSP and soap. I got most of it clean, but what a job. Then, on the 3rd year, I had heard about using a water power washer to clean it. I borrowed a friends washer and have never gone back to scrubbing. I noticed that the power washer took off a small amount of soft wood each time I washed it. After many years of washing it has the appearance of having been sand blasted. It actually looks pretty cool. About 6 years ago I started using a product called Behr Deck Prep to kill mold and mildew on the deck. Boy-oh-boy, the first time I sprayed this stuff on I thought my power washing days were over. But not so fast, the deck cleaner leaves behind a residue that does not come off easily and so power washing is by far the easiest way to remove this residue. But the cleaner works so well that the results a simply impressive. It takes me approximately 20 hours to complete the job. It can be done a lot quicker if you have a professional power washer. I have a Karcher 520M. It puts out 1300 psi (I think) and I have to hold the wand about 4 inches from the wood to get the proper effect. Consequently, I spend a lot of time power washing; but it's worth it. See the before and after photos in my Projects photo album. This year I used Olympic Deck Cleaner before power washing to kill mold and mildew; and the linseed oil based Olympic WaterGuard to protect and beautify the deck after cleaning.

Thanks for reading. Have A Great Day!

Many Voices Call To Apple

Keep up the chatter and Apple will do something to fix the security problem with Widgets in Dashboard. Even with an OS X update to 10.4.1 Apple still hasn't addressed a significant security vulnerabilty in Dashboard. Read my previous post: Dashboard: A Security Hole. This is a serious problem that Apple needs to address. So keep up the chatter.

Technorati Tags: Apple Mac OSX Tiger

Update: Thank You for reading. Please follow this link to read the original article at C|Net: Widget security worries dog Apple

Good Hackers

Cudos to the people at Netcraft in England for taking down Phisher sites. Keep up the good work. http://news.com.com/2061-10789_3-5715721.html?part=rss&tag=5715721&subj=news

The Nature of the Post

Currently, I am basing my blog posting on whether or not I have time to submit an entry. So what I do is go out on the web and look for some content that I might like to comment on and then create a post. What I am saying is that currently most of my posts are not necessarily the things that interest me most, but rather things that I find comment worthy in the moment. For me, unless a comment is just opinion or light fact based, I have to do research to get my facts straight so my post will have some credibility. Ofcourse, I am not always successful in that endeavor, but I try nontheless. Thus, my posting is of the light variety because I would be spending time I don't have right now creating posts I find truely interesting. Now, you might say, well if the topic interests you then you should have some solid knowledge and be able to create a post from that. This is true, and I will consider it for the future. My real problem is I have lots of little projects that don't include computers that I spend time on, and so I don't get to blog often. That reminds me, now that summer has arrived, look for fresh pics in my Projects photo album.

Have A Great Day!
Kris

Webtrends Prevents Cookie Blocking

The last time I checked it was illegal for someone to come into my home and setup surveillance cameras to monitor my activities. Planting cookies on my computer without my permission is no different in theory. Cookies are not like public cameras, i.e. surveillance cameras placed in public areas to monitor the publics activity. That would be similar to having server side software that tracks a user, i.e. web surfer, probably IP based, or even MAC address based. So it truly is an invasion of privacy when a website plants a cookie on you computer. The real problem is cookies can be used for more than just tracking a users activity at the planting site. They can be used, and have been used for years, to track a user wherever they go on the web and they don't even have to visit your site to get your cookie. This whole cookie thing is bad news for honest people; and they make up the majority.

How about the browser community build in a new feature that allows users to prevent the loading of sites that use versions of Webtrends software that prevent the user form preventing their site form planting cookies. Read C|Net acticle at Web visitors tossing cookies.

Technorati Tags:Browser Safari Firefox Mozilla Webtrends
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

Made In China

Another reason to boycott products "Made In China" is the current snubbing by the Chinese Government to adjust their currency valuation, as requested by the US Government. You like buying cheap products made in China? Keep it up and you will create a Communist economic superpower, which will in turn become a larger military power than they are now. Even possibly a military superpower. When that happens, our freedom and the American way of life will be in jeopardy. Read NY Times article. Also, reprinted in the Continuation below...

Technorati Tags:
Currency
China
Treasury

Firefox Under Attack

Holy Sh*t Batman! This morning I decided to try out Safari's new RSS capabilities. I am impressed, I have found some truly informative tidbits today. Another article at C|Net News about a Firefox web browser security concerns. This one is on the important side, and I hope the Firefix developers get it straightened out soon. I'll be watching now. It's almost as if the Internet is the new playground for malicios-hackers. I am hearing more and more about computer security these days. It's always been big, but lately, attacks are getting very serious with concerns of identity theft and such. Seems like a good field to get into if your thinking of getting into the computer profession.