Save Our Dogs, a grassroots effort to save working dogs from CA AB 1634, mandatory spay/neuter
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Love your Pets? Read my files on Label Animal_Control.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Critical Thinking, Mandatory Spay/Neuter, & Computer Security

A little of everything in the above subject.

A few good articles that got my attention this week.
Thinking outside the box. Here's a read on that at Ishmael.org

After reading that; the concept of critical thinking and lucid comprehension of issues take focus again with the reader -- Yet, back to real life, we continue to witness the the most juvenile and fundamentalist/extreme thinking that is driving MSN proponents everywhere (mandatory spay & neuter). Including California's truly UNHealthy Pets Act. So focused on their own limited perception of reality that they do not see, for example, how this type of legislation adversely affects grassroots efforts at wildlife conservation, the production of food and natural fiber on the farm and issues of population genetics in our pets. Health issues in animals are simply written off as well with broad blanket assumptions, with these people blowing off the experts, as if they have degrees in veterinary science and realize the difference between long term prospective and short term retrospective data. Furthermore, these bills will NOT affect the popularly demonized, commercial mass pet producers, yet the MSN proponents continue to make disingenuous references in that direction. And the sheep continue to follow.

Somewhat related: Newsweek on PeTA and Euthanasia: http://www.newsweek.com/id/134549. Euthanization is actually the cop out of MSN proponents to address the shortcomings in their logic and both HSUS and PeTA encourage killing animals rather than rehoming them. Since they are so busy killing animals, analyzing the status of the problem as encouraged in the first link is simply beyond their acceptance. I highly recommend Nathan Winograd's book, Redemption - a good take on it is here. It does encourage facing the history and issues that have compounded the lack of progression on logical solutions.


Getting away from animals for a bit... and along the lines of perhaps encouraging a new way of thinking, see this article about some indigenous people of Mexico who "live forever", from which article I gained the idea that many of our modern foot and leg problems seen in our society could be benefited from taking some core ideas regarding letting our footwear be more natural, so that leg strength and flexibility are natural benefits.


And tonight, I just discovered a new blog which covers issues that affect everyone using the internet - see Spyware Sucks. I've found that many people continue ignore the serious implications of HTML in email - especially as malware gets more sophisticated and do not understand that surfing and reading web pages results in thousands of downloads to their computer. From another source, Scott Dunn writes about security, "Visitors to USAToday.com last Thursday got more than they bargained for. A hacked Flash advertisement meant that merely viewing a page in your browser was capable of triggering a malware attack on your PC. According to an alert on the security site Websense, the ad can take control of the browser without any user interaction at all."

I'm using Firefox as my principal browser with "NoScript" which stops scripts in their tracks and another extension "AdBlock" that blocks ads which can sometimes be malicious. The combination makes some busy pages download for reading quicker since I am not getting all that garbage and it makes pages look a little different too. For example, ubiquitous links such as 'google ads' just do not show up on my Firefox browsing. NoScript does allow me to choose which sites I trust as does AdBlock.

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 5/08/2008 01:23:00 AM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Friday, May 02, 2008

Ah, Stress Relief!

A Paint Shop Pro creation featuring two of my favorite games. (yeah, I did that PSP in a hurry and you can tell although I might just get around to fixing that)

Above, a Sims 2 family guy, playing Big Kahuna Reef 2 - Chain Reaction on his free gaming computer. (Sims 2 Free Time features new hobbies that Sims can have, including gaming! ...a sort of "infinite picture", game creations playing a game)

Recent days without much internet access, various stressy issues and an ailing family member have me turning to my very useful and portable laptop for communication aid (nextalk.net deaf relay), ways of keeping myself from going nuts or being utterly bored in quiet moments, and if I have a space of time with no interruptions, some momentary stress relief in the form of DVD movies or casual games. Beats TV to death, as I have never been one to just turn it on and veg.

Tonight, I learned of a study documenting that computer games give stress relief ...and it even comes with a slide show. Check out the title, I love it! "Study: Casual Video Games Demonstrate Ability to Relieve Stress, Improve Mood: Potential Clinical Significance Highlighted. First-of-Its-Kind 6-month Research Project Establishes Effects of Puzzle and Word Games on the Human Body and Mind" :)
Methodology

The study was conducted between October 2007 and April 2008 and included a total of 134 subjects. Thirty-one subjects served as members of the control group, tasked with surfing the Internet looking for journal articles. The experimental groups consisted of 31 subjects who played Bejeweled 2, 29 subjects who played Bookworm Adventures, and 36 subjects who played Peggle. The study included the collection of physical data (based on Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measurements) and psychological data (based on POMS (a profile of mood states pre- and post-activity) and electroencephalography (EEG) measurements) during a 5-minute baseline period and 15 minutes of game playing or (in the case of the control group) Internet surfing.
I haven't played the three games featured in the study but anyone that is curious can get them as free downloads from any number of places including the creators site, Pop Cap games. Once you have them, you can play them offline. The trials are usually for an hour but if you like to play longer, offline and not buy the game, you can try the Wild Coins method of game trialing and playing. The way it seems to work is that Wild Games gives you any game you want as a freebie game which you can play for up to a 24 hour period with periodic 20 minute breaks. If your break gets too long, then if you want to resume the game, you will need to insert virtual coins, called Wild Coins. Depending on the complexity of the game, the number of coins varies and can be four to six coins for the fancier games. The coins can be bought in different plans or even acquired by purchasing other goods from magazines to coffee and fashions and other things. Some games are completely free however, and I get a kick out of Crickler which you must be online to play.

I didn't know anything about Wild Coins until I got my "new to me" refurb Gateway notebook which included a download for games, "Gateway Games". My nephew clicked on it (after asking of course) and I was so impressed with the graphics in the game of Fate he was playing and how quickly he learned the game, I had to learn about the game system that Fate was offered on. It's cute. The little guy battles bad guys and has a little dog that reminds me of a small spotted Terrier. I haven't played it yet but it might be the first game of its genre that I try.... eventually.

Had to stick this Sims 2 video on. I wish I could hear Natasha Bedingfield sing in "Simlish" but the video is beautiful (a nicer high res version is on youtube and you have to select it on the rating meter that has the stars).

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 5/02/2008 09:39:00 PM | Permanent link | (1) Comments

Anonymous Anonymous sent us a woof // May 03, 2008

That was fun! And the music in SIMlish was cute.

Mark   

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Software Telephone for the Deaf

My old copy of NexTalk has been getting a lot of use in the past few weeks and suddenly it kept crashing or just truncating my phone sessions - requiring a reboot to resume a call. Ugh! So I decided to uninstall and clean out the registry and file folders of the program and then reinstall an upgrade. I went to download the program again and was happy to find that the newest version is designed so that it also works on Vista now and has a FAX option. Interesting. Anyway, with Vista capability, now I can install it on my (new to me) Gateway notebook which has Vista installed. :)

The link for NexTalk is here. This is a free program that enables a deaf person (who wants to use the computer interface) to call a person who can hear. An operator types text messages back to the deaf person, typing out whatever is being said at the hearing end. It works a lot like using a real time instant messenger. Thanks to all those wonderful relay operators out there that make these services possible. :D

Now here's a wonderful video with text, showing a sweet dog named Cowboy learning something new. :)

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 4/06/2008 05:44:00 PM | Permanent link | (2) Comments

Anonymous Anonymous sent us a woof // April 07, 2008

Oh. So the deaf can call someone that hears. I thought it would help the deaf hear. ;)

(((Hugs)))

I am so glad that technology is at least helping you remain part of the world at large, kiddo!

Mark   

Blogger Semavi Lady sent us a woof // April 12, 2008

You're too funny, Mark! I wish it could help me hear tho. I'd probably want the person on the other end to play me music that I miss so much.

SHUDDUP, just play music for me!!! heehee ;)   

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

It's the Age of Discovery (or something)

. . . Because people who love you sometimes want to use your laptop computer to make use of real or imagined, undocumented but desirable features. Two videos below with the second one being loosely applied to laptop computer technology that doesn't exist (yet) -

Tech Support in the Middle Ages
(things haven't changed much!)
Video with English subtitles.
If you haven't seen this one before, be sure to watch it to the end. ;)


A Cell Phone that does everything!
(ewwwww...)
No captions on this one but it's pretty self-explanatory.

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 2/19/2008 04:46:00 PM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Friday, January 11, 2008

Success! Getting the Laptop Back Up To Speed

Eureka!!!

My goodness. Months of frustration since October 2007 -- finally I've resolved the problem.

Back in October, James was using my MX7118 Gateway notebook to do some computing tasks while his desktop machine was shot (crashing hard drive); getting rebuilt by moi. This Gateway's got a dual core processor (more up to date than our desktops at the time) and was adequately speedy even with the factory level of 512MB of RAM. At least more than adequate for the rare use it got for the previous two years. (It even did an admirable job introducing the resource intensive game The Sims 2 with a few expansion packs =with no custom content= for visiting friends. -the key was, no custom content!)

Cave people that we are in computer gadgetry, once we obtained a wireless router and networked all our machines, at last using the Gateway to access the network became practical because now it was easy to move files between the machines and go online without miles of cables. :)

How slow did the Gateway get in October?! I'm not talking about a five or ten minute boot up time start to finish, but it was taking 20 minutes from boot to the login window, and by December, after login, another 10 to 15 minutes for the few things on it to finish loading at Startup. CPU usage was 80 to 100% almost constantly. Frankly, if you need to wait half an hour just for a machine to boot up, there isn't much point in using it any more.

It had great security and was clean, no viruses or spyware. Using hibernate to speed up its readiness for use, still took about ten minutes in loading time. But no matter what, every time a new program was started (a browser window for example), it took three or four minutes before the window loaded on screen. Windows Media player kept crashing. Typing into form boxes like the location bar on a browser sometimes delayed more than 10 seconds between keystrokes. No duh, something was wrong! Since the machine was clean, I was convinced that some of the hardware was dying.

Tweaking and disabling some Windows Services and slogging through the Event Viewer was interesting but provided no joy and is how I ended up discovering Wiki-How and posting about it. ;)

Then insight finally arrived! A few days ago (yep, January 2008 already), I discovered something called Process Explorer, free, made by Microsoft, which showed me more detail on running processes than is usually seen on Windows Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del). I discovered that hardware interrupts on the machine were the source of bottlenecks. So something was indeed wrong with the hardware, but it turns out, easily fixable! Yay!

I found a forum which presented the solution. Apparently due to some glitch that occurred in October, the hard drive converted from DMA mode to PIO. Having some clues now, examining hardware configuration in Device Manager for the primary IDE revealed that even though "DMA if Available" was in the "Transfer Mode" settings for the hard drive, my laptop was actually in PIO mode for the drive and it was this that was creating all the bottlenecks. Apparently this is a known bug in some setups according to Microsoft.

So the solution was -- uninstall driver for the primary IDE, reboot (Windows then self reinstalls the driver in the correct configuration), reboot again, and voila, the notebook was booting up in less than five minutes again as of last night!

Whee, happy happy! Dancing Banana Dancing Banana

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 1/11/2008 02:56:00 AM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Thursday, December 20, 2007

How to Make a Yule Log, Become a Hobo and Other Trivia...

If you haven't discovered WikiHow, take a look at it sometime. You may find some of the most odd (!!) or useful How-to files over there. I found some useful tips on tuning up a Windows XP computer such as which Windows services I can disable to speed up my notebook.

Just so you don't get swept away on a tip that seems too good/weird to be true, check out the tab labeled discuss which goes with each topic. Remember Wikis are built by contributors (even pranksters) who may or may not have any expertise. Some are really useful and accurate, and others are... something else all together! :D ;)

To get you started, if you want to get into some degree of the Holiday Spirit (even if you never cook), check out the image that goes with making a Yule Log. I think I spent about five minutes laughing nonstop on that one. :) EDIT - Dec 21, 11AM: Just my luck, someone changed the image today, but you can see the image that I saw right here. Or how about making a necklace out of fish hooks, or how to become a Hobo.

Of course there are so many interesting files there that in order to find more time to browse, you might need some tips on calling in sick. :)

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 12/20/2007 10:27:00 AM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Friday, December 07, 2007

Heart of the Internet - Hungry Beast

I've sometimes thought about how dependent we are on electrical power. I am awed by the massive sizes of the server farms around the world which make possible our internet as we know it.

BldgBlog, a fascinating blog with focus on architecture and design, has had a recent post on this subject with impressive photos and thought provoking links.

When connections are hinky, when huge domains and internet businesses are down, sometimes there's just a really interesting story just waiting to be told. But then again, maybe not. ;)

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 12/07/2007 06:11:00 AM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

One Laptop Per Child -Revisited

Photo from OLPC - Laptop.org
I initially wrote about the "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) project over a year ago.

Right now, the project is still a charity, and there are still many questions I have on the program and will it sink or swim, but I have a lot of faith in the kids. The use of the computers works something like homeschooling, where kids are naturally motivated because of the nature of the medium. The project has a December 2007 "Give one, Get one" incentive which provides machines at a discount and people are buying and donating both machines to the project. :)
OLPC has asked affluent American individuals and charitable groups to buy machines and donate them to children in poor countries. Participants in the Give One Get One program pay $400 for two of the machines - one for their own use and the other to be donated. Participants also receive a year of free wireless Internet access at hundreds of public hotspots operated by T-Mobile. A separate program, called Give Many, encourages charities to pay for hundreds or thousands of OLPC laptops. (source Boston.com)
The design of these little laptops has changed somewhat since the original pics I saw over a year ago, and the interest in the project as demonstrated by foreign governments has been a bit... reserved. Boston.com has a report on it, and mentions some of its problems (the Nigerian criminal that is trying to sue the charity project has a lot of #&^@^%!). Those who can, probably will if they are aware of the program, for the rest of us, if donating some machines is within the scope of a charity that we know, maybe suggest the charity to donate? According to OLPC, donors are able to designate where the machines they donate are to go.

And, of course, the homepage of the project is worth a visit!

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 12/07/2007 03:03:00 AM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

iTunes headache with iTunes.msi

iTunes has been trying to upgrade itself on both my laptop and main machine. Each time, there is a failure because iTunes.msi which comes with the upgrade installation, isn't recognized. Even if you find it (via Browse) ... no dice. grrr. I uninstalled it, thinking a clean install would fix it. ...but nooooooooo... bleah -- I'd rather not be wasting my time on iTunes! (I can't hear anyway) But hubby needs it, so that's that!

Anyway, here's the trick to fix that and it takes only a few minutes after you get the download.

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 11/27/2007 03:52:00 PM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Friday, November 02, 2007

"Get one step closer to being a master BBQ chef"

Today's big laugh!

Troubleshooting weird computer problems sometimes involves online searches for solutions. While I was looking for a solution, one message board suggested a Radio Shack product and gave a link to the item. Unfortunately the link was broken because the item is no longer offered, but I started to look around the Radio Shack offerings in the same category and found an item that had me laughing. It is a USB powered coffee mug warmer which acts as a useful hub, offering four additional USB ports.

"Keep your drink hot and your accessories connected."

accessories

While this wasn't what I was looking for, it still had me laughing, partially because of the frustration I had for the problem. But here's the real kicker for me... I noted there were tabs, one offering 'accessories' for the mugwarmer.


Okay, so, what sort of accessories does a USB mug warmer suggest?

I look at the accessories and find the first item offered is a Digital BBQ Thermometer.
accessories

fullsize screen capture

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 11/02/2007 02:13:00 PM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Convert your Kodak Camera MOV files to AVI for Free

As of tonight, converting MOV files from my Kodak cameras to a format that can be handled in Windows Movie Maker is no longer an issue.

I found a free program at SourceForge.net, called MP4Cam2AVI, and it does the conversion beautifully without increasing the file size and distorting the video output. There is a slight difference in full screen depth of color with the new output being a little darker in my clips, but the normal window size viewing is quite similar and crisp (given the camera and the user's shortcomings).

file comparison
Compare file sizes of original MOV and the new AVIs.

I don't know quite what all the bells are whistles are on this program but if you have a digital camera that shoots still pictures and can take movies in MOV format only, then you might be intereted in this free and small download. Get it here and see the info and screenshots.

Yeah... I know about Quicktime. I had purchased QuickTime Pro Version 6 a few years ago and found it very helpful for the few files from my Kodak digital cams that I had to convert (files ended up fuzzy and way big tho). I had only used it for a couple conversions which quality I didn't like aside from the hugeness of the new files. These could have been issues peculiar to that one camera tho. However, QuickTime movie editing and splicing is something which it did well. Unfortunately I used it only a couple times, not $30 worth of work IMO!

Back when, I was still on dial-up so the entire idea of putting movies online seemed crazy. Broadband is more common now although not everyone has it. Sometimes I have to connect at dial-up speeds when my cable connection goes nuts. That bites! Speed definitely spoils us when we get used to it!

Hubby wanted me to install iTunes on my machine and when I did that, I had to make the decision to overwrite my old QTPro version then with the freebie version 7 because iTunes refused to install unless QT was also upgraded. ...thus losing my MOV editing capabilities on this machine. I still have everything I need to reinstall my version 6 QuickTime Pro files -- as old as they are now. I installed the files on my laptop just in case I wanted to edit Kodak digital camera movies again, but that didn't last long! James needed iTunes on that machine too. Oh well!

Anyway, thanks to SourceForge, I now have a conversion solution that is practical for my use. After conversion from MOV to AVI, the clips can be edited in Windows Movie Maker. Now, to find the time to do THAT! I took some (not very good) movie clips of the dogs playing in the small corral. I discovered at the time that unfortunately, the camera I have cannot ZOOM while in video mode. Not great, since the Anatolians were playing, chasing and running around our 1/4 acre corral enclosure. Nevertheless, I will get them online when I can, now that I can edit the clips if needed.

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 9/30/2007 01:45:00 AM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Some Highlights from Symantec Internet Security Report

Some interesting highlights on current internet security issues. I bolded the point at the end of the list but much of the report has elements that may be of particular interest to others. I looked at the PDF version which is rather dry reading but there is a flash, video style presentation that others may prefer to review.

I think many people are aware of some potential risks that there may be online, but seem to feel reasonably sure that the problems only happen to other people because they feel their ISP, their browsing habits, and software are sufficient protective buffers against security threats.

Healthy paranoia can't be a bad thing in light of the increasing sophistication developing every day with internet related threats.

Symantec Internet Security Threat Report
Volume XII: September, 2007
Attack Trends Highlights
• The United States was the country targeted by the most denial of service (DoS) attacks, accounting for
61 percent of the worldwide total in the first half of 2007.
• The United States was the top country of attack origin in the first six months of 2007, accounting for
25 percent of the worldwide attack activity.
• During this period, the United States accounted for 30 percent of all malicious activity during the period,
more than any other country.
• Israel was the country with the most malicious activity per Internet user in the first six months of 2007,
followed by Canada and the United States.
• Four percent of all malicious activity detected during the first six months of 2007 originated from IP
space registered to Fortune 100 companies.
• The education sector accounted for 30 percent of data breaches that could lead to identity theft during
this period, more than any other sector.
• Theft or loss of computer or other data-storage medium made up 46 percent of all data breaches that
could lead to identity theft during this period.
• The United States was the top country for underground economy servers, accounting for 64 percent of
the total known to Symantec.
• Credit cards were the most common commodity advertised on underground economy servers known to
Symantec, accounting for 22 percent of all items.
• Eighty-five percent of credit cards advertised for sale on underground economy servers known to
Symantec were issued by banks in the United States.
• Symantec observed an average of 52,771 active bot-infected computers per day in the first half of 2007,
a 17 percent decrease from the previous period.
• China had 29 percent of the world’s bot-infected computers, more than any other country.
• The United States had the highest number of bot command-and-control servers, accounting for
43 percent of the worldwide total.
• Beijing was the city with the most bot-infected computers, accounting for seven percent of the
worldwide total.
• The average lifespan of a bot-infected computer during the first six months of 2007 was four days,
up from three days in the second half of 2006.
• Home users were the most highly targeted sector, accounting for 95 percent of all targeted attacks.

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 9/23/2007 10:35:00 PM | Permanent link | (0) Comments

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Crimeware Addendum TWO - Your System WILL Be Compromised

Although I've had it installed for a couple days now, I haven't started getting familiar with LinkScanner. This was recommended by Robert Vamosi in recent security alerts. I have two other postings on this matter, here and here. The latter link shows what happens when a recording is made of Internet Explorer visiting a banking site. These attacks can happen to anyone.

Since I wanted to see what a red alert would look like, so I did a few keyword searches that are most likely to hit some compromised pages. The image above shows the alert or clear icon (a green checkmark) on a sample search. Above is using Google search but you get similar results on a few other search engines such as Yahoo below. Linkscanner doesn't run with Altavista so be sure you use a search tool that LinkScanner works with.



If you mouseover the red x marks, below is sample of a warning you get when the site is positive for threats.


Keep in mind that you do not have to go to a risky site to be exposed to malware intended to be used in identity theft. :(


Please realize that Sponsored Links on search engines can be dangerous too! These guys pay to make their sites highly visible, so that they can infect more people. Steal more identities. People who just click to visit their sites will load the page, just like in the video of the banking site above! Then the malware starts to write to the person's hard drive.

If I did not have LinkScanner installed, I would not have seen the red X before I visited the site. (this was an experiment, grin)

I'm safe! Since I am using NOScript on Firefox, when I clicked on the page, NoScript informed me that scripts wanted to run on that site and did I want to give permission? Of course not! However, if I had not seen the Linkscanner warning, I might have assumed that maybe some little harmless tool wanted to run.

Practice safe Hex! :)


LinkScanner Links

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Semavi Lady woofed at @ 9/11/2007 04:22:00 PM | Permanent