Of special note to UPenn alums who missed the debut of Apprentice #5 tonight:

Trump picked the project managers for the first task himself. One of them was a Harvard MBA, to which he said, "I have great respect for Harvard Business School. It's the second best school in the country, behind Wharton, which is where I went." I assure you, cheers went up around West Philadelphia when he said that.

Later in the show, the reward for winning the task was lunch with Donald Trump in (what he called) "The Wharton Club." Turns out, the "Wharton Club" is actually the Penn Club in midtown Manhattan. The slip probably would have cost him all the goodwill he built up on the Penn campus from the first remark, except for the fact that most students probably don't know the Penn Club exists (after all, it targets alumni, not students).

At any rate, for a guy that hardly ever talks about where he got his education (or, for that matter, his money), it was nice to see him recognize his roots for a change...

A major Hat Tip to Michael Weinmayr Starr, who correctly suggested a Plain Text
post from the Outlook client. The plain text eliminates all of the HTML
spaghetti code in the previous test, and uses the "mobile-post" class I had
originally identified. "MsoNormal" apparently not only refers to Microsoft
Outlook, but also to the "normal" HTML mode of posting.

Now, not only is the HTML cleaner, but the font settings are properly
applied and all is well. The only thing I'm noticing at this point is the
automatic line breaks that plain text defaults to in Outlook (every 76
characters or so). I'm sure this is something I can turn off in Outlook - I
just have to play with it. Other than that, though I think the mailing
problems are solved.

Well, the first test went pretty well.  It seems Blogger used to put the whole post in a class called “mobile-post,” but now it puts it in a class called “MsoNormal.”  Frankly, the other one made more sense to me, but what do I know.  In any case, I’ve added both to my style sheet now, so I should be good to go.

Other problems, for those who care about such things:  you have to change your settings to make Blogger publish the message to the blog, otherwise it just sits in “Draft” status, and you need to publish it manually.  Last night, I spent a half hour going back to my blog & refreshing, waiting for the mail servers to do their job.  Silly me.  Also, the HTML it generates is an absolute nightmare.  I need to single space between paragraphs in e-mail so they appear double spaced here, for instance.

Finally, for some reason, the e-mail posts are only picking up the spacing attributes from the style sheet, not the typeface.  For both regular text and the MsoNormal class, I’ve got “font-family: Book Antiqua, serif;” in there, but the e-mail posts are coming out in Arial (at least on my browser they are).  If there are any HTML geeks out there (and I know of at least one…) who care to look at the source & help me out, I’d appreciate it.

Excuse the interruption, folks.  I’m clearing out my To Do list from a long time ago, and I’m finally getting around to defining the e-mail posting style in my style sheet.  If this works, I should be able to e-mail posts to the blog without any of you being any the wiser.

We’ll see…

 

 

For those who enjoy my Ramblings, some new fodder...

 

According to the International Telecommunication Union (via InternetWeek), in 2000, the United States ranked third in the world in number of high-speed internet subscribers per capita. In 2004, we were 16th. The 2005 numbers are about to come out, and it looks like we might fall out of the top 20.

Some of these countries have obvious advantages in this space (close proximity of people, making it easier to get broadband access to a higher percentage of the population), but we're behind countries like Canada too. InternetWeek thinks that what's missing is a government regulated broadband network.

Interesting. Here's a space where market forces aren't satisfying the public good (it's not profitable to wire everyone for broadband, so no one does it) AND where the providers (cable & phone companies) are starting to make noises about distributing their costs to their users (the content providers).

Smells like a public utility, doesn't it?

Government run broadband access to the internet would allow us to determine what percentage of the country was online by manipulating government spending, rather than counting on the private sector's profit motive. On the other hand, there's been a lot of talk lately about how the feds react to content that travels over their wires. If the feds get involved here, look for the same kind of decency/censorship debates that we've had in radio and television in recent years. Of course, the Internet raises a few new issues: First, content on the Internet doesn't necessarily come from the United States, so even if access is a public utility (in this country), it would be exceedingly difficult for the government to completely regulate the providers.

Second, the Internet provides more interactive options for policing content. If you think people are in a tizzy now over the government asking search engine companies for data, imagine if they controlled the servers themselves? They may not be able to stop the production of "offensive" material, but they could more easily control the distribution of it. Now, I'm not suggesting that the U.S. government would outwardly censor Internet content (see also: China) - that wouldn't pass muster with the public in this country. Distribution control in the U.S. more often takes the form of surcharges - charging a premium for access to adult sites (a la HBO or Cinemax on cable TV), for instance.

So the question is this: is more universal access worth giving the government a say over what gets seen and how much it costs? I say no, but then again, I live in a major metropolitan area where broadband access is readily available.

I wonder what Scalzi thinks out in Ohio...

Malware on a Mac.

So, here's the question: is this bad news of the "the OS isn't impervious to attack as many have tried to claim?" variety, or good news of the "market share and visibility have increased enough to warrant the hackers spending time on attacking OS X" variety?

Via InternetWeek:

Internet cafe computer mice are the second most bacteria-carrying item found in public facilities, surpassing toilet doorknobs and hand straps on busses, a study showed.

 

I had a doctor's appointment this morning, so I commuted into the city at an odd hour. On the uptown E train (World Trade Center line) at around 11:15, was a man wearing blue jeans, a windbreaker, and a winter cap.

He was carrying with him a hacksaw, a screwdriver, and a flashlight. He didn't have any kind of bag or case, he was just carrying them loose in his hands. I assume he was in a construction-related line of work, and was just bringing his tools to/from his job.

So, I ask again, exactly what are they checking for when they randomly inspect our bags on the subway? If an openly visible hacksaw is OK, what exactly is not OK?

Google's recent Desktop Search tool provides a feature that copies the search index across networked computers, so when you search on one machine, you can see documents stored on another. Sounds reasonably harmless, right?

Turns out the copy is done by temporarily uploading encrypted versions of the files to Google's servers and then downloading them to the other machines. Google says it deletes the files roughly every 30 days. It also says the user has complete control over which files/folders are included in the search, and that it automatically filters out password protected files and secure web pages.

But none of that matters to the EFF, who is recommending that no one use the feature.

Why? Because Google might one day turn that data over to the federal government if it is subpoenaed during that 30-day window.

Isn't this just amazing? Forget all the extra features they put in to protect the user. Forget the vanishingly small likelihood that a particular file is residing in a Google server's temporary cache at the precise moment a subpoena is issued, and forget the relative usefulness of the tool itself (Remember, Google doesn't build these tools to try and step through privacy minefields - they build them to be useful to their customers). The big news story from a couple of weeks ago has put Google in the bullseye with regard to privacy issues, and all because they refused to submit data after a government request.

Imagine what they'd be saying about the company if it had complied?!?

The northeast got hit with about two feet of snow this weekend, so I got to take my two boys out for a romp in it this afternoon. Before we went out, Avery drew the above picture (some work in oils, some in clay, Avery works in blue highlighter and pencil. You gotta start somewhere).

For those who don't read the ancient language of 5-year old spelling, the inscription reads (roughly) as follows:

"Fun in the snow. Signed by Avery Greenberg and Daddy Greenberg."

If there were any justice in the world, all the snow on our property should have melted right then & there...

Dick Cheney just shot a guy.

Seriously.

That's got to be a violation of his civil rights, no?

Geez, it feels like every third blog entry I make these days is about search engines. Maybe that says something?

Anyway, check out these two cool sites I found:

Twingine
Type in a search string, and it shows you Google & Yahoo's results side-by-side. Very useful if you plan on searching on both sites anyway (e.g., extensive research projects)

Google vs. Yahoo
Same idea, but this one's more graphical. Put in your search string, and you get two rows of dots, Google's results on top, Yahoo's on the bottom. Lines (literally) connect the dots for where the same pages are returned. Vertical lines near the left of the graph signify agreement between the search engines about what's most important. Severe diagonal lines signify disagreement. White dots (with no lines) signify sites that were returned in one engine, but not the other.

This from Google and Volkswagen of America look really interesting.

Basically, it's the in-car navigation system we've all seen, but with photographs instead of those line drawings we're used to. So rather than driving to that hotel or restaurant's block & then looking around, you could see the building on the screen.

The proof is, of course, always in the usage, but given the existence of Google Earth, GPS, and high wireless bandwidth, it sounds promising...

Looks like maybe smaller devices with less functionality aren't the big hit Apple thought they might be. Suddenly, there's a 1GB Nano for $149, as compared to the 1GB Shuffle for $99. So for fifty extra dollars, you get a screen that can show (very, very small) photos and, you know, let you choose what song you want to hear.

Check out the comparison chart, about halfway down the page (direct link not available).

Oh, and while I'm at it, this is only slightly less crazy: The 4GB Nano is $249. For fifty dollars more than that, you get a much larger screen and 7.5 times the memory.

According to this, the IRS has a separate computer to track his taxes, because their normal computers can't handle numbers that big. Says Gates, "My tax return in the United States has to be kept on a special computer because their normal computers can't deal with the numbers."

OK, two things: 1) I realize the guy has a ton of money ($47 billion, according to Forbes), but if the IRS can't handle that, it's a problem with the software, not the computer. And the fix they'd install wouldn't disable the software for the rest of us, so why would they need a separate computer? And 2) Shouldn't the head of Microsoft know this? And if they are using a separate computer for his taxes (for whatever reason), shouldn't he be able to explain it better?

Apparently, when the House of Representatives voted on the new house leadership, they cast more votes than there were members present. (Hat tip: Jeff Porten)

I'm reminded of something I was told during the whole "hanging chad" thing in 2000: on an average weekday, the New York Stock Exchange processes more than two billion stock trades. And they count each & every one of them correctly every day.

This just shouldn't be this hard...

Some quick thoughts on the State of the Union:

Content-wise, I think the President knows that Congress has degraded to a simple numbers game, so it doesn't really matter what he proposes in his speech. He either has the numbers to get something through or he doesn't. So, I'm glad to hear he thinks we're addicted to oil, I'm glad to hear he wants to study the entitlement programs, I'm glad to hear he wants to keep my taxes lower, etc. Still, each of these things is either all-but-done right now, or it's never going to happen.

Regarding the tone, I was glad to see him get a little ticked off at Congress a couple of times during the speech. First, when he scolded them for substituting angry, ad-hominem attacks where rational debate should be:

Even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of good will and respect for one another, and I will do my part

And then later, while discussing social security, he said "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security." A bunch of Democrats lept to their feet in mocking applause. Hillary Clinton was caught on camera with a giant grin on her face, and others were talking to each other and laughing over their success in defeating the President's agenda. All that was missing were high-fives and head butts. They looked like a bunch of high school kids disrespecting a substitute teacher.

Bush became visibly annoyed and continued on with "Yet the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away. And every year we fail to act, the situation gets worse." Then, the Republicans lept to their feet in an equally classless display of counter-applause. I don't think they even realized they were applauding the fact that our entitlements problems are getting worse. I mean, if you think about it, it doesn't even make sense.

This morning, I also learned that members of Congress weren't the only ones misbehaving last night. Cindy Sheehan got herself a ticket to the speech, and showed up wearing a T-Shirt that said "2,245 and how many more?" Capitol police asked her to leave (there's a House rule against demonstrating in the Capitol Building) and when she refused, they handcuffed her and arrested her. This was obviously an attempt at making a political statement (getting arrested, that is, not the T-shirt), and it worked like a charm. So much for "spirit of good will and respect for one another."

(Oh, and before anyone takes the bait and decries the Bushies for stomping on the civil rights of their enemies, note that the wife of a Republican representative was also ejected for wearing a pro-Bush t-shirt.)

To sum up, what was supposed to be a night of communication - proposals and counter-proposals on where the country is going - turned into nothing more than multiple opportunities to shout slogans and mock the opposition, both from the people and their elected representatives.

Nice job, folks. Nice job.

UPDATE: Instapundit reached the same conclusion, as did several others that he links to.

(Links courtesy of John Scalzi)