older log newer log reply about archive search home words site news talking place linkwatcher What's on your pizza?	Wednesday, December 18, 2002   So! My obscure and frustrating Windows problem from the other week has been solved, due to the valiant efforts of someone in our second-level (or possibly even higher) support group. Turns out that the amusingly named "NO LIABILITY ACCEPTED" key (isn't that a great name?) in the IE registry had somehow gotten zorched (perhaps by my fooling around with it), and that's the key that's used for verifying the timestamps on signatures, and so no signatures could ever be verified. Apparently the result of this is that Windows thinks that all signed things are not merely unsigned, but corrupted, and refuses to install them even if you have the "it's okay to install unsigned things" bit set. I imported NO LIABILITY ACCEPTED from a different machine, and then MDAC 2.7 was willing to install itself. Windows 2000 SP3 was also willing to install itself. Great! Fixed! Of course the next time I went to Windows Update it said that there were fifteen critical updates it wanted to install, and when I said "sure go ahead" it installed five of them and failed to install ten, and wouldn't tell me anything about the cause of the failures. I tried a couple of them by hand, and in both cases the installs gave marvelously helpful popups saying for instance Q324380 Setup could not backup registry key HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\System\dmboot to file C:\WINNT\$NtUninstallQ324280$\reg0003. 1314: A required privilege is not held by the client. A little Googling revealed that the way to fix that is to make sure that you're doing the install from an account that has the magical backup privilege. Unfortuantely I was doing the install from an account that has the magical backup privilege, so I'm back in the usual Windows Hell. But at least it's a different problem!
	At a team-building exercise the other day, we all had to answer Revealing Personal Questions like "if you could spend an hour in conversation with anyone currently living, transportation and language translation no barrier, who would you choose?". I put down Sharon Stone, but on deeper consideration since, I'm rather leaning toward Brian Eno. No offense, Sharon. Another question was "when will a human first set foot on Mars?". I said "two weeks". Bonehead Comment o' the Day: Senator Arlen Specter, for whom I think I usually have a certain amount of respect (unless I'm confusing him with someone else), apparently said "Trent Lott doesn't deserve the death penalty for what he said". Well, d'uh, Senator Specter. No one's actually suggesting that Lott should be executed, are they? People are just suggesting that he shouldn't be Senate Thingie Leader anymore. The suggestion that having to resign as Senate Thingie Leader is roughly the same as being killed by the administration of massive electrical shocks to your body is, while not quite as egregious as the Lott remarks that started the whole thing, a sign of exactly the kind of smug insularity that Lott displayed. "Heck, I can say something positive about a segregationist campaign, because no one I know has any strong feelings about that segregationist stuff anymore," on the one hand, and on the other hand "Heck, I can use capital punishment to make a rhetorical point here, because no one I know is sitting on death row." Idiots. Bug me to get around to posting more reader input. There are massive amounts of it queued up, and much of it deserves our attention. Tuesday, December 17, 2002   Fortunately, GNE was down at one-thirty or so this morning when I finally got around to trying it, so I did get a little sleep. In virus and other nastiness news, that Sircam infected system from the other day is still sending stuff out. Latest subject lines: Considering that the peoples of the United Nations have cover letter for ad paper #6 Essay #1 Essay #4 If you have documents with those names (or even if you don't), scan for viruses at once. Nasty PayPal scam: This e-mail is the notification of recent innovations taken by PayPal to detect inactive customers and non-functioning mailboxes. The inactive customers are subject to restriction and removal in the next 3 months. Please confirm your email address by logging in to your PayPal account using the form below: If you get mail with these paragraphs, by no means should you fill out that form! It looks very official and aboveboard (except for the slightly nonidiomatic English), and if you do submit the form you will find yourself on the genuine PayPal login screen, but on the way there your browser will have given your username and password to the scamsters. If you or anyone you know already submitted the form, you should instantly change your PayPal password, and probably even write PayPal and tell them what happened, so they can see if there's been any recent fraudulent activity on your account. Here are the top phrases searched:   - 2 for "yahoo"   - 2 for "yahoo webcam hack"   - 1 for "halle berry"   - 1 for "hardig"   - 1 for "harding"   - 1 for "hot chocolate"   - 1 for "hot chocolate midi"   - 1 for "naked helen pictures"   - 1 for "naked pic of helen"   - 1 for "naked pictures gallary" In political news, Contrite Lott Interviewed on BET: Saying "I believe I have changed," Lott indicated that he now supports a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, as well as affirmative action programs, gays in the military, a national health care system, the triumph of international communism, the adoption of Latvian as the official language of the U.S., and the establishment of diplomatic ties with the Tooth Fairy. Oh, and while we're being political, I will what the heck reproduce this in its entirety. I got it on Metababy, and while bits and pieces of it are all over the Web, I didn't find a URL for the whole thing (the Metababy copy has probably been deleted, or replaced by anal sex pictures, by now). To the tune of "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands": If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq. If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq. If the terrorists are Saudi, And your alibi is shoddy, And your tastes remain quite gaudy, Bomb Iraq. If you never were elected, bomb Iraq. If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq. If you think that SUVs, Are the best thing since sliced cheese, And your father you must please, Bomb Iraq. If the globe is quickly warming, bomb Iraq. If the poor will soon be storming, bomb Iraq. We assert that might makes right, Burning oil is a delight, For the empire we will fight, Bomb Iraq. If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq. If we think that someone's dissed us, bomb Iraq. So to hell with the inspections, Let's look tough for the elections, Close your mind and take directions, Bomb Iraq. If corporate fraud is growin', bomb Iraq. If your ties to it are showin', bomb Iraq. If your politics are sleazy, And hiding that ain't easy, And your manhood's getting queasy, Bomb Iraq. Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq. For our might now knows no borders, bomb Iraq. Disagree? We'll call it treason, It's the make war not love season, Even if we have no reason, Bomb Iraq. Not that I'm a knee-jerk anti-Republican or anything. *8) I'm more a knee-jerk anti-politician. (Although I admit I'm sort of hoping that Lott stays around long enough for me to casually use the phrase "the Segregationist Party" once or twice.) Hm, I wonder if GNE is up... Monday, December 16, 2002   Well, like the Plurpster, we have been playing GNE quite a bit lately, including one night where we tossed and turned a lot, dreaming about chat windows. Unlike Plurp, we have been letting this prevent us from posting to our Weblog. This is, I hope, what caused one reader to write that You should give up on the weblog thing. I don't particular intend to give up. The question is which is to be master -- that's all. From Dirk Hine, the rather beguiling Alphabet Synthesis Machine, an interactive explorer of a certain space of imaginary alphabets. Extemely cool in concept; in execution all the examples on the site (including mine; I'm "Orbst") look rather similar, and it's clear that only a small part of the possible space is actually being explored. Also I notice that a few of the letters in my alphabet Fallen Threads are identical (the replacements for "a" and "A" and "l" and "L" all seem the same), and a few others are virtually identical; this would presumably cause the Threadians some problems. The idea of providing the result as a TrueType font is cool; unfortunately it's not readable at under about 70 point. From Drew Bell: Ecch! Know that clove oil the dentist swabs on your gums before sticking in the hypodermic needle? And the flash of pain immediately afterwards? This manages to achieve a flavor similar to a clove-turpentine-banana smoothie with a twist of agony from both the awful flavor and the idea that liquid bugs are now circulating to every cell of my body. Noted in various places, including Ananova: they're going to do a movie of Pullman's Dark Materials novels. Oooooh! We read them awhile back and liked them alot. Infinitely richer than Harry Potter. Might even get picketed by the Fundies. Spammer greeting o' the day: Null, We want to send you to the BIG GAME! So Google is branching out wildly; I hope they can stay pure. Note the subtle difference between Froogle, which lets you search for things available in online stores (amusingly the first hit when I searched for just "books" was a copy of Learning QuickTime 5 Pro; what does that portend?) and Google Catalog Search, which lets you search actual paper catalogs that the Googlers digitize and upload. Wild stuff. The 2002 Google Zeitgeist is also out; Natalie Portman is in, "all your base are belong to us" is out. That infected person we mentioned the other day still seems to be infected. As well as the titles I mentioned then, it's also sending itself as Education in Cass County If that's you, get your system deloused at once! Hm, it's after midnight, and it's cold, and I'm sleepy. So I won't play more than, say, an hour of GNE. Right? *8)
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