The Hat Check Girl

Why
Are there
So few in the court
Of a perfect
Saint?

Because
Every time you are near Him
You have to leave pieces
Of your
Ego

With
The hatcheck
Girl

Who won't give them
Back --

O
O
O
U
C
H

:: Hafiz

Cookies, Security, and your Right to Privacy

First, a little bit about cookies. They are not bad or evil in and of themselves. They can be used for good or bad intentions, depending on how they are implemented.

What are cookies? (Viktor Mayer-Schönberger) When you visit a website a small file may be downloaded to your computer to keep track of data and events. It could be a login name and password, things you recently purchased, or certain preferences when you use that site. The site will inform you a cookie is being invoked. These types of cookies are usually fairly legitimate and unobtrusive.

Where cookies go bad is when they track your surfing habits - which sites you are visiting or things you are purchasing. And they do this without informing you. Perhaps they are sending it to a third party you don't know and would never authorize. These practices are not legitimate and invade your privacy.

The abuse of cookies has been on the rise in the last five years. So what can you do about it?

First of all, switch to Firefox. For some time it has carried a cookie manager. Set it to deny all cookies. Then add sites that you wish to enable with the exception list. This takes a little getting used to, and I still get stymied when I try to register with a site and it doesn't work. Then I remember to go in and add this site to the exception list of sites which will accept cookies. I believe Internet Explorer 7.0 also has a cookie manager.

This may seem like a lot of trouble to go through, just because of a few stupid cookies. However, I think this is the best security practice to keep your pc safe, at work or at home. I use the web a lot, and since I started this practice, the number of problems I encountered dropped dramatically.

As companies and organized crime find new ways to use cookies in a devious or malevolent fashion, it is more imperative than ever to be aware of the risks and have a strategy.

Bangkok at night

Here's an amazing picture of Bangkok at night. Check out the large version at flickr.

Deliberate often - decide once.:: Latin proverb

FreeDiff

From time to time it is very crucial to compare the differences in files that originally were the same, but have now changed. They may have changed over time, i.e., comparing your original software to an upgrade version. Or perhaps they have changed over location, i.e., a website was modified from different locations, or by different people at different times.

FreeDiff is one of many tools that will compare files and sort out the differences for you to aid in your comparisons. I haven't tried any others because I didn't need to. This one fit the bill and the price was right. You can compare files side-by-side and the differences are color-coded. You can print out the changes as well.

I recently completed an upgrade in very short order, as I was able to open the original and new pages up next to each other, then go through each set of changes until there were no differences. The software is by Salty Brine Software.

He was a bold man, that first ate an oyster. :: Jonathan Swift

Tao Teh Ching

The softest of all things
Override the hardest of all things.
Only Nothing can enter into no-space.
Hence I know the advantage of Non-Ado.
Few things under heaven are as instructive as the lessons of Silence,
Or as beneficial as the fruits of Non-Ado.
:: Tao Teh Ching

Organized crime taking over the Internet

Experts at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos expressed concerns about the future of the internet. An estimated 100 to 150 million of the 600 million computers on the internet are part of a massive botnet controlled by organized crime. I know what you're thinking, "Is mine one of them"? The odds are one out of four it is. This BBC article has more details.

Cold Mountain

Man, living in the dust. is like a bug trapped in a bowl. All day he scrabbles round and round, but never escapes from the bowl that holds him. The immortals are beyond his reach, his cravings have no end, while months and years flow by like a river until in an instant he has grown old. :: Han-Shan More poetry from Cold Mountain

When three people call you an ass, put on a bridle. :: Spanish Proverb

diy: Fix your lcd screen

Those dead spots on your laptop screen can be fixed. Actually, this should work for any LCD screen. Here's the easy solution from wikiHow.

When days of Beauty deck the earth

When days of Beauty deck the earth
Or stormy nights descend
How well my spirit knows the path
On which it ought to wend

It seeks the consecrated spot
Beloved in childhood's years
The space between is all forgot
Its suffering and its tears

Emily Brontë

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed. :: Friedrich Nietzsche

Open Pandora, Please

If you're into music you're sure to find something you like at Pandora. In fact, that's the point of this site. Aided by a technology called the "Music Genome Project", Pandora will find music based on your feedback as you listen.

I was impressed with the music I found, considering there is so much of it out there. Pandora will help you sift through it. You create a playlist, then rate the songs Pandora selects. Based on songs that you rate, Pandora will learn and adapt to your musical tastes.

The quality of the music is good and the streaming is excellent. No skips, pops, or warbles, like some web-streaming sites.

I can see clearly now

One of the top five things you should do for your laptop is turn on cleartype. What is cleartype? It's a microsoft product that greatly enhances the clarity of fonts for liquid crystal displays (lcd's).

Here is some information and instructions for installing. I didn't have any success with Firefox, though, and had to do it on Windows Explorer 6.0. You will be prompted to download an Active X control as well.

The results are remarkable, and you will wonder, "How did they do this"?

It's the end of the world as we know it!

At least it is in this humorous rendition of how it all goes down in the final conflict. Some serious Flash from albinoblacksheep.com .

It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later. :: Lucimar Santos de Lima

Use Picasa for your imaging needs

Picasa is a very useful image finder and editing tool. From the folks at Google, their search-engine technology can be put to use to find and manage every image on your computer. Along with some basic image editing tools are some features you won't find in Photoshop:

• Make a movie
• Make a poster
• Make a collage
• Publish to Blogger
• Backup your images
• Geotag in Google Earth
• Upload to Google Video

If they are far down, it is because you are high up. :: Gurdjieff

This, too, shall pass.

A powerful king, ruler of many domains, was in a position of such magnificence that wise men were his mere employees. And yet one day he felt himself confused and called his sages to him. He said, "I do not know the cause, but something impels me to seek a certain ring, one that will enable me to stabilize my state. I must have such a ring, and this ring must be one which, when I am unhappy it will make me joyful, and at the same time, if I am happy and look upon it I must be sad." The wise men consulted one another, and threw themselves into deep contemplation. Finally they came to a decision as to the character of this ring which would suit their king. The ring which they devised was one upon which was inscribed the legend: "This, too, shall pass" :: Retold by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

God knows I'm no' the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be. :: Robert Burns

Empty Vessel

I met ayont the cairney A lass wi' tousie hair Singin' till a bairnie That was nae langer there.

Wunds wi' warlds to swing Dinna sing sae sweet. The licht that bends owre a' thing Is less ta'en up wi't.

:: Hugh MacDiarmid

ayont the cairney: beyond the little cairn

a bairnie: a baby

Dying is easy, comedy is hard. :: Edmund Gwenn

Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain is full of weird sights; people who try to climb it always get scared. When the moon shines, the water glints and sparkles; when the wind blows, the grasses rustle and sigh.

Snowflakes make blossoms for the bare plum, clouds in place of leaves for the naked trees. At a touch of rain, the whole mountain shimmers - but only in good weather can you make the climb. :: Han-shan

Lightweight pdf reader

I've never been a big fan of Adobe Acrobat Reader. It's big and clunky, takes forever to open, and oftentimes conflicts with other applications or breaks down. This has always been rather mystifying, because their other applications are rock-solid.

There's no need to suffer any longer. Foxit Software has Foxit Reader 2.0 to handle your pdf needs. If you need some compelling reasons to switch, here's a list:

• At 1.5 M it's much lighter than it's 20 M counterpart Adobe Acrobat
• Faster launch. No waiting for splash screens or behind-the-scenes internet access
• Annotation features allow you to make notes, add comments, insert graphics, etc.
• Convert pdf's to text files quickly and easily
• It's free!

No one throws stones at a barren tree. :: Ibn El-Arabi

Managing your Secret Identity

Having a hard time remembering your passwords? I know I do, I've got close to fifty to keep track of. From a security perspective you're not supposed to write them down anywhere, certainly not in your pda, like I have. But how else can you manage so many identities?

Try an application like KeePass. It stores an encrypted password that you can paste into your login form, instead of writing it down or storing it in clear text. The coolest thing about KeePass is it is sooo lightweight. And it's free. I guess that's two things. ;)

I put it on my usb drive and can open it anywhere. Of course it's password protected. There are some additional features to promote stronger passwording. Overall, a very useful tool.

Quote of the Day

History doesn't pass the dishes again. :: Louis-Ferdinand Céline