Sorry, but I do. And no, I don’t mean Flash Gordon, or Flash Photography. Flash, for those of you who are not familiar with the name, is the technology by Macromedia that allows advanced animation with interactive/link properties to be displayed on web pages. True, Flash done right can be incredibly cool. The problem is, it is incredibly annoying most of the time, and sometimes can crash your browser–and more often than not it is completely unnecessary.

It reminds me of the early days of the World Wide Web, the days of the first Mosaic browser and the first versions of Netscape, when there was far less capability to browsers. There was one hypertext command, BLINK, which made the chosen text blink on and off. Many used it because it was new and fun, and “hey, I can make the text blink!!” However, it became maddeningly annoying very quickly, and it is rarely used any more. Animated GIFs became the new BLINK, and everyone started putting cute little animations everywhere–prompting the makers of browsers to include a browser option to stop them from doing their thing.

But now, the new BLINK is Flash. In 99% of all cases as I see it, Flash is utterly unnecessary, used solely in a vain attempt to make the web site look cool. Some web site are Flash-only, meaning if you don’t have Flash, then don’t bother visiting. Good web designers have Flash- and No-Flash versions of their pages. Better web designers know when not to use Flash at all.

Worst of all, many ads today are Flash-based. Meaning that if I visit a web site, I cannot read it because all those damned ads along the sides are constantly distracting me. And though a few browsers claim they can disable plug-ins (Flash is installed as a ‘plug-in’), Flash still persists. I’ve tried a couple of plug-ins that claim to be able to disable Flash easily, but so far, none actually work for me. So I’ve devised a kludge–I found the Mac OS X plug-in for Flash (“Shockwave Flash NP-PPC” in the Internet Plug-ins folder in the main Library), and removed it to another folder. Whenever I need Flash, I plop it into the needed folder, reload the web page and it works; when I’m finished, I get rid of the plug-in. Inelegant, but at least it works.

Still, Flash is a major annoyance, IMHO. Even with a less kludgy way of disabling it, it should be used sparingly by web page designers.

I just got invited to GMail (Google’s new free email service which offers 1 Gigabyte of storage space) by a family member, and am trying the service out. When you choose a user name, you are restricted to six letters or more–a bummer for me, I was hoping to get blogd@gmail.com, but no such luck–and I don’t like names followed by numbers, like blogd1. But I can understand their reasons: dictionary spam.

Sometimes spammers just flood services like Yahoo or Hotmail with spam addressed to every conceivable email address, starting with aaaa@yahoo.com and ending with zzzz@yahoo.com. Limiting the addresses to names and numbers, that’s 1,679,616 combinations with four-character email addresses, and 60,466,176 with five characters. That’s maybe doable for some spammers, especially if they limit five-character addresses to ones that follow certain spelling rules. But six-character email addresses present more than two billion possible combinations, far too many for dictionary spam to handle without severe restrictions. Which is likely why Google made the limitation.

The sign-up process was pretty easy (though there are several terms and policy pages to scan), and then you get your account. It’s highly functional, but also very spartan–makes Yahoo and Hotmail seem hopelessly cluttered. You get an address book which activates by typing the first letter(s) of a name in your contacts list–for example, just type in the letters “bl” and if “blogd@gmail.com” exists in my contacts list, it appears below the “To:” box; just hit “Enter” and the address types itself out. Nicely done. GMail also has a spell-checker.

Attaching files is no problem, either–a few simple clicks and you can browse your hard drive for files to attach. Photos attached in this way show up inline in the recipient’s email (at least it did when I emailed myself in an account I check with Eudora). And web site URLs automatically become links, though they do not appear that way when you compose the email. Each email is limited to 10 MB in size–more than enough even for sending a small batch of unedited digital camera photos. GMail also will refuse to send “executable” files (programs, ending with .exe) for understandable reasons (viruses).

GMail also gives you nine months of dormancy before they delete your account and recycle your address. Yahoo gives you four months before your account becomes dormant, and although their wording is not clear, it appears that you have another four months to ask for your account back before they delete it. Hotmail is far more strict–no access in 30 days and they wipe your account, deleting everything in it; you are given another 90 days to reclaim the address.

Right now, since GMail is in its beta period, you can’t just sign up for an account–you have to be invited by someone else who is already a member. You don’t get to invite someone right away, though. From what my sister told me, a link appears after a few days which allows you to invite three other people to join GMail. According to GMail’s help page on the topic, you are “periodically” allowed to invite people, but “once you have used all of those invitations, we will not be able to immediately issue more invitations.” The wording seems to indicate that you are not always given three invites.

Like Yahoo, GMail will eventually offer POP3 access (so you can check your GMail account using a program like Eudora or Outlook), but it will be fee-based. Reasonable, since the ads they show are what generate the revenue, and POP3 email would at least minimalize the impact of the ads.

Finally, there are the contextual ads–the real revenue driver for GMail. When you sign up for an account, you have to agree to GMail’s scanning your email–though it is software-only, real people won’t be rifling your email–in order to find out what you’re saying, so they can target you with ads specific to your writing. Apparently, they don’t let more obnoxious spam through–my sister said that for fun, she and her husband tried emailing each other about porn sites, sexual aids and mortgage payments, and none of that got reflected in the ads they saw.

There are some who fear the possible abuses of the contextual ads, like this story which supposes an anti-gay group buying GMail ads targeted at gay people; when people follow the links, their IP address is revealed and the group can perhaps find out who they are and add them to ‘hit lists.’ Frankly, I don’t see this as a problem–for one thing, I don’t think it would be quite that easy to identify many people just from IP addresses, but more to the point, the same result could be gained much more cheaply by simply creating faux-gay web sites and getting their search-engine listings high up. And as for GMail scanning my email content, I’m not too worried about that either in terms of privacy as all email is far less than private. You use any email service, you should treat it like a postcard, and expect that strangers will read it.

I have never been able to visit the official Republican web sites, specifically www.rnc.org, www.gop.com, and Bush’s campaign site, www.georgewbush.com. Every time I try, after about a minute of waiting, I get an error message, “Operation timed out when attempting to contact….” I have tried from work, at home, and using a variety of browsers, but each time, the attempt times out. I have been trying this over a period of many months–always the same result. In contrast, the DNC web site and the Kerry campaign site are both readily accessible.

I would like to ask the assistance of all of you visiting here to test this hypothesis–try to access those three Republican sites, and let me know if you can get through–and which country you reside in. Especially those living outside the U.S.–are the Republicans making a concerted effort to hide their web sites from those outside the United States?

In April, the Bush administration reported good news: terrorist attacks around the globe were at their lowest in 34 years, and gave itself an “A” grade, attributing this to “unprecedented U.S. collaboration with foreign partners.”

Great news! We’re winning the War on Terror™!

Except for the fact that it’s a lie!

Actually, they omitted a great deal of data that was pretty glaring–like all terrorist attacks in the last 50 days of the year (leaving out a major attack in Turkey and bombings at a bank and two synagogues), and all terrorist attacks in Russia carried out by the Chechens (13 attacks killing 244 people).

When asked why they failed to include any data after November 11, 2003 in the report–which was labeled as for the whole year of 2003–they claimed there was no time, as they had to submit the report by April 29, 2004. Essentially, that means that it takes them 170 days to get around to reading the damned newspaper.

The fact of the matter is, instead of terrorism falling to record lows, terrorism instead had risen more than 35% in the highest levels of terror activity in 20 years.

This is not just a “clerical error,” as the administration is so laughably trying to sell to the public, but an outright, deliberate lie to avoid admitting abject failure during an election year. Bush is not winning the War on Terror™, he is losing it badly. He ignited terrorist activity in the Middle East with his Iraq invasion and sent floods of eager volunteers to the doors of al Qaeda, while at home he devastated our freedoms while at the same time underfunded local security, improving not at all our ability to stop terrorism within our borders.

It is ironic that despite Reagan’s legacy, events surrounding him prompted people close to him to convert to liberal causes. The first, of course, was Jim and Sarah Brady becoming leaders in the gun control movement after Jim Brady was shot during the assassination attempt on Reagan.

The second is now spearheaded by Nancy Reagan herself. After seeing her husband waste away for so many years due to Alzheimer’s, she is urging full-fledged support for, and an end of political interference to, stem-cell research.

There is good here, of course, but also perhaps some doubt that there may be a certain selfishness in the turning of conservatives to worthy causes–the call only comes when one of their own is suffering. A lack of outward sympathy, perhaps, until the cause hits home so hard that it can no longer be ignored. Or perhaps not even then–Laura Bush’s father died from the disease, but she still rebuffs Nancy Reagan’s own hard-earned sympathy for those with the disease.

It is now being reported: “An amendment proposed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist would change the name of the Pentagon to “The Ronald Reagan Defense Building.”

This is the Senate Majority Leader, for crying out loud.

What next? Rename the White House to the Reagan House? Capitol Hill to Reagan Hill? That’s not too far off from renaming the Pentagon.

Even Freepers, in their ultraconservative go-crazy discussion forums, are starting to say “Whoa, Nelly!“:

“OK, no, I’m sorry. Let’s not go nuts here, people.”

“I agree- the Republican Party is dangerously close to outdoing the Paul Wellstone crowd.”

“this is nuts. and it shows how shallow the ‘leaders’ of our party in the Senate are. somebody from the white house better call this idiot, fast.”

“Why not just rename the whole country. United States is uninspired and characterless for a name of a country. Name it Reagania.”

When the far-right-wingers start saying the GOP is going too far, it just might be time for them to call it quits.

There are currently several efforts underway by conservatives to put Reagan on the $10 bill (though they would be just as happy with the $20 or dime), one in Congress and another by appealing to the Bush administration. Already Reagan’s name has been plastered over the National Airport in Washington, D.C., and has been put on a mountain (Mount Reagan), a naval vessel (the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan), in addition to “54 highways, schools, post offices and other memorials to Reagan around the country.”

Thus begins the completely expected rush to slap Reagan’s name on just about everything in sight. Apotheosis indeed. Nancy Reagan, gratefully and gracefully, has opposed such movements, but conservatives, wishing to immortalize their political icon and make sure everyone reveres him, ignore the request (possibly figuring she’s just saying such things for the sake of image).

But fortunately there is more than just public opposition, Democrats in Congress are opposing as well. Normally cowed by Republican attempts to pass their agenda under unrelated popular and/or patriotic themes, Democrats have a way around that–by voicing their support for Alexander Hamilton and Franklin Roosevelt. Republicans want to overcome this by compromising as issuing half Reagan dimes and half Roosevelt dimes.

As an alternative, I might suggest putting Reagan’s face on infants’ bibs (in honor of his “trickle-down” economics), using his name in the title of the next Star Wars film (double purpose, for the ‘Star Wars’ program and for the use of the “evil empire,” which is portrayed as being created in the next Star Wars flick), or on food stamps, in recognition of how many people he forced into poverty and so have to use them–although I am certain he tried to cut the issuance of such ‘welfare’ to people who needed them. But then, Republicans have never really been bothered by contradictions such as these.

(Update: I just noted something: this is post number 666!!! I didn’t notice until after I’d posted, but I find it incredibly appropriate–especially considering that when the Reagans moved back to California after leaving the WHite House, their house number was 666–and Nancy insisted it be changed before they took residence. Funny how that number keeps popping up with him….)

Remember how the Republicans were shocked, horrified, and aghast that a few Democrats at the podium of Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial service suggested that his political legacy be fulfilled in the special election to replace him? How the Republicans used their alligator-tear “outrage” to beat the Democrats over the head and win that election?

In the past few days, Republicans have done what the Democrats did, but a hundred times over, not just by glorifying a whitewashed version of Reagan’s political legacy and using that to shower warm praise of Bush–not to mention make endless direct comparisons between Reagan and Bush–now Bush’s own re-election campaign site (often unavailable) has become a virtual shrine to Reagan. Republicans are draping themselves in the flag of Reagan, and while none are saying explicitly, “Reagan died, so vote for us,” the message could not be more loud and clear.

Conservatives have been also taking shots at liberals about how they must be so glad that Reagan is dead–but if the truth be told, the GOP must be filled with glee at the timing of his demise. What better use for Reagan’s death than in the midst of a contested campaign season? Their only regret must be that he did not have the decency to hold on and then die a few days before election day.

In the meantime, it is gratifying to see that the Bush administration was not able to derail media attention to all their scandals; new attention is being focused on administration documents that justify the use of torture. These documents, which include legal views such as “authority to set aside the laws is ‘inherent in the president'” harken back to the good old days of Nixon’s “The president is above the law” mindset.

These legal findings make it a bit more difficult for the administration to claim that it was all the fault of the soldiers they have been blaming, a “few bad apples” doing the deeds while the administration is pristine-clean. Ashcroft is trying to defend all of this by saying that Bush never used the legal findings and it’s just coincidence that all that torture took place.

The image comes to mind of a child proclaiming in the morning, “I don’t care what mommy and daddy say, I can eat as many cookies as I want!”–then an hour later finding the cookie jar empty, and a brazen child with crumbs on his shirt claiming that it was all the dog’s fault, he had nothing to do with it.

Funny, I don’t feel any different. But then, I never did put much stock in age milestones. Transitions are far more gradual than that, and don’t usually fall in step with odometer changes.

The Hunting of the President, the spectacular novel by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons has been made into what looks like will be an incredible documentary–narrated by Morgan Freeman, no less–and will be released this coming weekend in the U.S. On the site I just linked to, you can watch a trailer for the movie; it looks fantastic. My main regret: it probably won’t get much play here in Japan.

Okay, this is mostly a personal rant, dissatisfaction over the poor service I’ve been getting from my web host. You may just want to skip down to the next entry, but if you like hearing people complain, then read on.

I have been sending people to a web host called Myacen.com, an Aussie web host. When recommending them, I have always cut them quite a bit of slack as I figure that every web host has their warts, and they have fair uptime. But I just got pushed over the edge.

I asked them last month about canceling one of my accounts, asking them specifically about how things would take place, with what timing. I mentioned that their billing site showed my account’s renewal date to be June 17th, and asked them to confirm this. Their answer was, “Cancellations apply immediately, once we receive the request you authorize us to remove the content.”

This brought up another problem I have always had with Myacen, one which I had put up with until now: their frustratingly vague answers via customer support (commonly called the “help desk” in the business). They did not answer many of my questions, particularly the one I asked them about when I would have to cancel in the billing cycle, and for them to confirm the date–just “cancellations apply immediately.” Since previous attempts to drag more specific information out of them usually failed, I simply took them at their most reasonably applied meaning–when I cancel the account, service will terminate immediately. Naturally, since they should not bill me for time I didn’t use, I presumed that I would be held accountable only for the services I did use; that I would be accountable for the time I had already paid for–as shown on their site–and not for anything more.

Well, I got kinda screwed on that one. It turns out that, according to them, because of billing problems–which were mostly Myacen’s fault–they had a discrepancy in what they showed and what they legally held me to. Their site informed me I was good until the 17th, but when I asked today, they said, “Because you had many overdue invoices in the first half of 2003 your renewal date varied on payments from the one when initally you started this account.” In other words, it’s all your fault, mate–we won’t be responsible for what we tell you. We just billed you for the 7th, despite our site saying you were good till the 17th.

As for the overdue invoices, this was due primarily to Myacen’s screwed-up billing system. When I signed up for them first in August 2002, they claimed that an automated billing system was coming up right away, meanwhile use our monthly billing system. Unfortunately, that was a messy, confusing jumble of different web pages that had to be navigated each month, and often gave conflicting information–for example, their system told me that my account had expired despite my having just paid; another time, there was an indication that I had been charged and that payment had been made when I hadn’t paid yet.

Not surprisingly, I started getting messages like this:

It has come to our attention that some customers have not been paying their bills. In an effort to make the task easier we have pro-rated all users accounts to the first of each month. Please remember you must pay manually on the first of each month.

Clearly I was not the only one being messed with. And then this:

As many of you know we have had quite a drama this month with client’s payments. With Worldpay out of action due to our billing script problems we asked users to pay via 2checkout for the time being. In 50% of cases this worked great however a large number of clients could not pay due to their cards being denied by 2checkout.

Then I would get frequent notices like this:

Due to a billing problem this month next months invoices have been generated today. If you are already on recurring payments you are not required to make any payments. However if you are yet to pay this month and your invoice is usally generated around the 1st of each month you will need to pay using the futurepay recurring feature.

And then I got emails which read, “This email is to notify you that you currently have outstanding balance with us,” but then below that it would read, “Outstanding Balance: none.” Naturally, I had problems paying my bills.

And now they’re telling me I missed the cancellation because the dates they display in my billing account are wrong because I had overdue invoices a year and a half ago?? When I asked them to tell me the correct information and they failed to do so, and gave me misleading information to boot?

Not only that, but I was also made to believe that I had to pay for my site through July even if I made the cancellation immediately. They told me belatedly that the fine print says I have to give 15 day’s notice before the billing date to cancel an account. The billing date turned out to be on the 7th of the month, even though their site said the 17th (“your invoices were late in early 2003! Your fault!). So I was led to believe that I would cancel immediately–and my files would be erased immediately–but I would have to pay for an additional 25 days (15 days’ notice plus 10 days’ discrepancy) that I did not receive service for.

Time for another revision; they informed me that I could specify my files to be deleted when the last paid day was reached, after I had cancelled. That went exactly against what they told me, that cancellations apply immediately, and that they would “remove the content” as soon as I gave the cancellation notice.

Not the first time recently they got things wrong; I had asked about changing a different web site–this blog site, specifically–from a base account to a higher-priced account with more bandwidth (I’ve been scraping the ceiling recently). They gave me wrong information about how that would work–they said my prior yearly payment would be pro-rated and applied as credit to a new monthly account charge–and then reversed themselves only after billing had been made. They suddenly and without explanation charged me $20, said they would hold me to the yearly account after having previously told me they absolutely would never do such a thing–then blamed it on “newly hired reps”. Another problem I’ll have to make sure gets untangled.

There have been other problems–the uncooperatively vague tech support, a several-month server switch that caused major interruptions in service, and the disabling of cgi scripts without any alternative solution offered–but as I said, I always cut them slack as I figured these are the vagaries of trying to keep a complicated service going. And I will say here and now that I have had far worse experiences–but their current attitude and unwillingness to be flexible in light of their clearly misleading communications, I’m getting out of here. In addition to canceling the account I had planned to cancel, I am taking this blog off their servers first chance I get–though I am paid up through September. And I will be going to all the people I sent their way, and will do what I can to persuade them to instead go to the new host I’ve found (Surpass) or any other host they feel is wise.

Needless to say, I do not recommend them any more.

Update: I just tried to cancel the account in question. Of course, their cancellation form doesn’t work and returns an error. It also leads you to cancel an account that has been prepaid for as much as a month in advance, and leaves no way to indicate you want access for the entire time you paid. Charming.

It’s hard to watch CNN recently due to their constant Reagan-o-Rama Love Fest, and I imagine it must be insufferable in the U.S. His legacy, already badly distorted by conservatives, is getting a complete whitewash due to sympathy. (Reality check here.)

In addition, one can just picture the PR team in the White House now, gleefully relieved to be free of the media attention to everything from Abu Ghraib to Valerie Plame, and busily working on how to get back control over the news cycle, putting the press on the track they want instead of focusing on all these felonies and disgraces.

British theaters (excuse me, “theatres”) are being issued night-vision goggles so the ushers can monitor the crowd during the film and catch anyone with a video camera.

I have some experience with movie theaters, and quite frankly, I think this is ridiculous. First, they only seem to be doing this in England, which is meaningless as the “World Wide Web” is, naturally, “world-wide” and a taping made anywhere could be posted on file-sharing services and made universally available.

But more importantly, I will bet you that many if not most pirate videos are made by people working at the theaters themselves. theaters are not always well-policed, and all it takes is one projectionist to run the film during non-business hours and make a videotape of it. Projectionists always test-run new films to scan for problems in the print, and while some of these are attended by theater staff, I am certain a projectionist could get away with doing it after midnight when the manager and staff have left.

People are being warned not to look at the sun directly during the transit of Venus against the sun tomorrow, and I can tell you from personal experience how this is excellent advice. When I was in my early teens, and an avid astronomy buff, I wanted to watch a partial solar eclipse. I had my telescope and had applied a solar filter to the eyepiece, making it safe to view the sun through the scope (a 2.4″ refractor, BTW–I got an 8″ reflector later on). My father had even removed the sighting scope so that I would not accidentally look into it. And then, as the stupid young kid I was, I used the rings that held the sighting scope as a target finder and looked through them, at the sun, with my right eye, in order to align the scope. And that’s how I got a blind spot just off the center of my vision in my right eye.

Fortunately, the spot is only in one eye, and when using both eyes, the left eye compensates and I don’t see the spot–but if eye floaters get in the way in my left eye, or if I close my left eye, then the blind spot becomes apparent and interferes with my vision.

So I would heartily endorse the advice not to look at the sun directly, never do that; if you want to view the transit of Venus, you would need a scope for that anyway–I’m pretty sure that even using a dark plastic filter for naked-eye viewing (as some people do at eclipses), the transit would not be visible as Venus would likely be too small to see anyway. If you have binoculars, put them away–way too dangerous! And if you have a telescope, only a solar filter–specially made, not improvised–would be acceptable, and at that, learn from my example and don’t look at the sun to target the scope.

Better yet, just wait for TV and web sites to publish the pretty photos.

Got a heads-up from Kevin Drum’s column (his media link is subscription only) that the Texas GOP approved its 2004 party platform, and it’s a doozy. Among the highlights:

–Support for “the traditional definition of marriage as a God-ordained, legal and moral commitment only between a natural man and a natural woman.”

–Support for state legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for a same-sex couple.

–Opposition to government action to restrict, prohibit or remove from public display the Ten Commandments or other religious symbols.

–Denouncement of “any unconstitutional act of judicial tyranny that would demand removal of the words ‘One Nation Under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance.”

And according to Drum’s read of an Austin paper article:

A plank in a section titled “Promoting Individual Freedom and Personal Safety” proclaims the United States a “Christian nation.”

….Also new this year is a section declaring that the Ten Commandments “are the basis of our basic freedoms and the cornerstone of our Western legal tradition.”

“We therefore oppose any governmental action to restrict, prohibit or remove public display of the Decalogue or other religious symbols.”

….As delegates prayed and sang, oversized religious images, including Jesus on the cross, were displayed on the hall’s giant video screens. Christian clergymen took turns leading the prayers, some with political overtones.

Add to that the Texas GOP’s vow to do away with separation of church and state, repeal the minimum wage, make it illegal for a gay person to raise a child, do away with the IRS, get the U.S. to leave the U.N., and take back the Panama Canal–but I think this stuff has been on their docket for some time.

Yes, the Texas GOP–the Party of Scary People.

Well, I don’t have to host the non-streaming version of the Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer any more–Apple has a full-sized, non-streaming QuickTime version up. It’s a good trailer–who’s music is that at the start, by the way? Phillip Glass? (The film’s original music was composed by Jeff Gibbs, who also did the music for Moore’s Columbine flick, by the way.)

This paper reports on how the new Fahrenheit 9/11 web site melted down due to a blizzard of requests for the trailer–they had to take it down for a while. The QuickTime version of the trailer on that site is now hosted by Apple, meaning that it also is the non-streaming size. Apple to the rescue….

Pictured at right is a chart I made of the number of visitors to this blog (yes, I am vain). But what surprises me here is the sudden spike in visitors. From May to October last year, I was looking at a hopeful upswing–and then from last October to February of this year, that seemed to stop and even started to fall. All good and well–but then in March something happened–the numbers took off at a strangely linear angle, adding approximately 1,300 more visitors each month.

Has anyone else running a blog understood what makes these numbers change like this? Frankly, I don’t think I did anything different in March than I did in February–no new search engine submissions or significant new links that I know of. A closer look at the numbers showed that visitors coming from search engines, direct submission (RSS or bookmark) and external links all rose about the same. Random fluctuations or trends wouldn’t bother me, but both together seem kinda weird.

Well, regardless of all that, it doesn’t seem like I’m doing anything wrong, so I can’t complain much. So far this month, an average of 650 visitors a day have come, a new high, so it looks like I’ll break 10,000 visitors this month–without outside influence, that is–a MacSurfer link put me over the line last September (I smoothed that part of the chart to erase its effects). And as I’ve said before, even the readership I was getting a year ago startled me–I never expected to get more than a dozen or two regular visitors. Such are the vagaries of the blogosphere.

I won’t comment much on the passing of Ronald Reagan, except to say that I feel less strongly about his passing than I do about the strong survival of his political legacy and the effect it has had on the nation. When I look in on conservative forums and see them speaking in absolute seriousness about putting Reagan’s face on Mount Rushmore and other such superlative forms of memorialization, I cannot help but note the cult of the personality that has surrounded the former president.

Reagan all but invented the modern Republican party–more about politics, image, and above all else, winning, rather than on responsible governance. Not that these elements did not exist before, but Reagan made them the core of the party, he brought them alive. And it pains me to see people all but deifying this man, however sweet, dedicated, loyal and personable he may have been as an individual, who nonetheless started a political revolution that has torn so much of what we value in this country to shreds, whilst always maintaining that it was in the name of those same principles that were, and are, being steadily dismantled and destroyed.

Everyone please visit a new blogger, Masa, as he begins his blog Journal from Tokyo. He is just starting out, but feels there is a need for more Japanese to be commenting on issues in English. I’ll be adding his site to the link board the next chance I get, but I wanted to alert you that it’s starting. Keep an eye on the site as it evolves.

A student in England is suing his university… because they did not catch him at plagiarism early enough.

No, I’m not making that up. Apparently, he did it quite often, and was never caught. But Kent University started using new software to catch plagiarists, and finally detected it. “I hold my hands up,” the student, Michael Gunn, said. “I did plagiarise. I never dreamt it was a problem.”

But, he adds, they never caught him before now. He paid tuition all that time–and they never nabbed him until just before the end of his studies. “If they had pulled me up with my first essay at the beginning and warned me of the problems and consequences, it would be fair enough. But all my essays were handed back with good marks and no one spotted it.”

As a university professor, I have to give this student an “A+” for brazen gall, and an “F” for honesty and taking responsibility. What does this young man think will happen for the rest of his life? “Yes, I embezzled millions of pounds from the company for many years,” I imagine him telling the police decades on. “But they never caught me until just before my retirement, so I’m suing them. Someone should have warned me that embezzling was illegal.”

This rates right up there with Steve Martin’s classic “I forgot” defense.

As Surpass hosting has started their 2-for-1 sale, I’ve signed up and am getting my account in order, for one of my less-used domains (to test the waters, before putting BlogD and The Expat in their hands). As advertised, once you sign up, setup is immediate–I got my setup email from them in a few minutes, and was able to log on to my cpanel and get into FTP right away. Just have to wait for the DNS to resolve, and I should be on my way.

One thing that hit me right away when I started fooling around with things was that they allow you to update AwStats at any time you want. For those of you who run web sites and use AwStats, you may understand why this is a bit of a thing. AwStats is the statistics engine that tells you all about who is visiting your site. Most web hosts will restrict AwStats from compiling your stats except for once every 24 hours, so you never see who’s visiting until a day later sometimes. Worse, the web host’s servers will not do it exactly every 24 hours, they usually lag by anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours–which means that you never know when yours stats will be updated. This is especially difficult whenever I have a visitor surge–like when MacSurfer linked to my site and I got 8,000 visitors in two days, and was unable to see it until some time after it happened, and was never sure if I was about to go over my bandwidth limits.

So being able to click an “Update Now” link and have the latest numbers when I want, as opposed to when the host lets me, is a very nice feature indeed.

I was also successful in transferring the AwStats records compiled over the past 2 years, so it is nice I won’t be losing those.

As another test, let me post the new Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer there (Windows Media file), and see if the site responds to everyone’s requests. Since the domain hasn’t resolved to the new IP address yet, that’s a direct IP link. Please try it out (if you’d like to watch the trailer–and if you have broadband, it’s 26MB!) so I can see if everything works OK.

Update: It turns out that the stats don’t kick in until the domain name resolves (successfully is pointed to the new web host). As I check right now–some 12 hours after changing the DNS–the domain is still associated with my old host. So any access to the site won’t be metered. The DNS change usually resolves in less than a day, but the standard disclaimer is that it can take up to 72 hours.

Just as it was in Spain, the political opposition to PM Howard in Oz wants to bring their nation’s troops back by Christmas, and likely will if the can win a majority in the next election. Except this time if the opposition wins, it might not be due to the majority party’s scandalous abuse of a terror attack.

Bush might have handed them the win they need.

After meeting with Howard the other day, Bush said, “It would be a disastrous decision for the leader of a great country like Australia to say that ‘we’re pulling out’. It would embolden the enemy. It would dispirit those who love freedom in Iraq. It would say that the Australian Government doesn’t see the hope of a free and democratic society leading to a peaceful world.”

That constitutes direct interference with an election in a foreign state. That has always been somewhat of a no-no (think about how the American right wing would react if foreign leaders started endorsing Kerry), particularly unhelpful to Howard since a majority of Australian voters now think it was a mistake to go into Iraq.

It may also be giving vital ammunition to the opposition Labor party, not to mention severely ticking off the Australian Greens and Democrats. “Australia is a sovereign nation, not some second-rate state in Bush’s dream of an American empire,” said Greens Senator Brown. “[Bush] talks about and freedom and democracy, but he doesn’t understand the concept of equality. … [Howard] should have made it clear that he wouldn’t want the president interfering in a domestic political debate in Australia, particularly in the run to an election.”

Democrat leader Andrew Bartlet said that the issue “should be something that Australians should sort out for ourselves.” The Labor leader declined to comment, but reiterated the party stance of withdrawing troops from Iraq.

At this rate, we’ll be lucky if even the Brits stay around. It all brings to mind an old “Get Smart” routine:

Bush: OK, you guys in Iraq, you better give up! Would you believe that this country has been surrounded by 1,400 Spanish troops?

Iraqis: Somehow I don’t believe that.

Bush: Um, well, okay, how about if I told you that 850 Australian troops are out there, ready to charge in at a moment’s notice?

Iraqis: I don’t think I’d buy that, either.

Bush: Would you believe Two German Shepherds and a Polish truck driver?

Just thought I’d let you know how my spam research is going. As I mentioned previously, I wanted to see how much spam I could generate if I (a) placed an email address on a web page, and (b) responded to the “opt-out” messages that are supposed to stop spam. In both cases, I used virgin accounts which had never been used elsewhere, therefore eliminating any outside source of spam.

The results, after six weeks:

For the email address posted on the web page (invisibly, by the way; no casual viewer would ever spot it, ergo bots must have found it), 293 spam emails have been received. That number consists of:

21 emails notifying me that I had won a European lottery;
24 viruses or virus-related emails;
63 emails from Nigerian 419 scammers (+ from other countries);
184 standard spam advertisements; and
1 political plea for Falun Gong support.

The opt-out account I entered into web pages that advertise that they will strike you from their lists–which by U.S. law must never be sent email; I entered the email address into 26 opt-out pages, and used it nowhere else.

After a few weeks of inaction, it sparked to life and now has generated 84 spam emails in one month. The frequency is growing rapidly: at first it was just one every few days, but recently it has been 4 or 5 per day and just today 10 have come in so far. After a slow start, the email from the opt-outs now exceeds that of the posted email.

However, 100% of the spam from this test is advertising, which suggests that the scam artists rely primarily on bots that search for posted email addresses, while the regular advertisers use many methods to generate their lists.