…and its enemies (to steal a phrase from Virginia Postrel). Why space settlement is important.
[Via Clark Lindsey and Trent Waddington, who made it]
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Thirtieth Anniversary Of The Emoticon
Will be a year from yesterday.
Is Neil Stephenson…
…becoming too conventional? A review of his latest book.
[Update a couple minutes later]
A new book about the high frontier, and an accompanying 3-D space colony app.
[Update a few minutes later]
An interview with Stephenson about the book.
Phone Harassment Bleg
I got an email from a friend:
I am fairly at my wits’ end (short trip, I know). Perhaps you have someone reading your blog who can help. The situation is this:
Since early July, my company has been getting about four or five calls a day from #209-382-7432. When the phone is answered, an ear-splitting howl comes out of the earpiece. Nothing else. If one calls that number, it’s a robot answering for free magazine subscriptions.
I called the phone company. The “harassing calls” department says you have to have a police incident number before they can trace the call, and they will not inform you of who is placing the call, only law enforcement. So I called the county sheriff, got an incident report, and called the phone company back. For a month we reported all harassing calls. The phone company then called us and said “Yes, you are being harassed and we have notified your local law enforcement.” (Note that they did not tell the harasser to stop.) But the sheriff can’t do anything because the 209 number is not in my county. I have not seen the incident report because it’s not my business. No I am not making that up.
The harassing calls department at AT&T is bloody useless. AT&T does not care if you are being harassed. It’s not their problem and they will hang up on you if you ask them why not. And they will not return phone calls asking for clarification.
So I called our attorney. He suggested I call the FBI. I did. The FBI said they do not deal with harassing phone calls, try calling the FCC. The FCC hasn’t a clue what I am talking about, and why don’t I complain to AT&T?
Do you sense my level of frustration here? My people are being harassed daily and I can’t get anyone to take me seriously. Can anyone who reads your blog help? Have any advice, or knows of another avenue to pursue? I’m lost.
I’ve no idea, but maybe some reader does.
More Useless Spam Than Usual
No, I have not had any problems with my v@ginal mesh implants.
[Late afternoon update]
And no, this is not a testimonial.
Fedora 15 Question
What awful problem with the Gnome desktop in F14 were they trying to fix with the completely screwed up revision in 15? What happened to the standard windows interface with its minimize, maximize and close buttons?
SSH Problems
OK, so I’ve upgraded my laptop to Fedora 15, and want to restore the backup, but I can’t ssh into it. Here’s what happens:
[simberg@linux-host ~]$ ping 192.168.0.105
PING 192.168.0.105 (192.168.0.105) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.105: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.250 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.105: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.243 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.105: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.225 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.105: icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=0.261 ms
^C
— 192.168.0.105 ping statistics —
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.225/0.244/0.261/0.023 ms
[simberg@linux-host ~]$ ssh 192.168.0.105
ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.105 port 22: No route to host
[simberg@linux-host ~]$
So I can ping it, but it won’t connect. I’ve installed opensshd on the laptop, I’ve enabled it, and the firewall has port 22 open. I can also ssh into it from a terminal on the machine (e.g., ssh localhost or ssh 192.168.0.105), but not from another computer on the network. Any ideas?
Ethernet Bleg
So I’m backing up my laptop in preparation for an upgrade from Fedora 13 to 15, and I notice that the data transfer speed is only about half a meg per second. Here is the output of ‘ethtool eth0’:
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Link partner advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Link partner advertised pause frame use: No
Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 0
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: pumbg
Wake-on: g
Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)
drv probe ifdown ifup
Link detected: yes
Any ideas what the problem is?
Homeland Insecurity
How do we transcend the post-911 mess? Some thoughts from my CEI colleague, Wayne Crews.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Tim Carney on the rise of the Homeland Security Industrial Complex.
Plumbing Mystery
The bathtub has two separate valves for hot and cold water, not a mixer. When I turn on the hot water valve, the cold one starts leaking from the stem.
Any ideas how that works? It’s not really a problem, because it only leaks when the water is running, and it leaks into the tub. So it’s not worth fixing in and of itself. I just think it’s very strange.