Entries in Life

This link is for my mother: Synesthesia:

When Matthew Blakeslee shapes hamburger patties with his hands, he experiences a vivid bitter taste in his mouth. Esmerelda Jones (a pseudonym) sees blue when she listens to the note C sharp played on the piano; other notes evoke different hues–so much so that the piano keys are actually color-coded, making it easier for her to remember and play musical scales. And when Jeff Coleman looks at printed black numbers, he sees them in color, each a different hue. Blakeslee, Jones and Coleman are among a handful of otherwise normal people who have synesthesia.

In this account of the first spam (and email spam’s illustrious history), the most interesting bit, to me, is rms‘s involvement.

[RMS] at first wondered why people were so upset about the message. He later said the mistaken placement of all the addresses into the body did bother him, but he gets the dubious honour of being perhaps the first spam defender. Of course like all of us he was 25 years younger and the problem was brand new.

RMS still comes down on the free-speech side of spam — and the Gnu mailing lists don’t block spam (as far as I know).

Brad Templeton make some interesting points: Spam pushes people who would proudly (and correctly) trumpet how we shouldn’t blame ISPs for offensive web sites, copyright violations and/or MP3 trading done by downstream customers to suddenly call for blacklisting of all the innocent users at an ISP if a spammer is to be found among them. Which is true. But from what I can tell, people have moved far beyond just blacklists. It was attractive at first — a solution that seemed simple to an annoying problem — but people quickly discovered the costs.

In all his history of spam and the different means to combat it is a good overview of current practices.

Two Solitudes is a short work of fiction delivered via email. Upon subscription to the service, readers receive, over the course of several weeks, carbon copies of messages exchanged between two persons familiar with each other, as they send them.

Right now, one of my good neighbors, a 30ish mother of a 4 year old, is struggling with brain cancer. Brain cancer (especially when preceded by other cancers as is her case) is fatal — very few people escape with their lives. So, I’ve been thinking along the same lines as another person who posted to one of the mailing lists that I’m on. His godfather is facing cancer and he is wondering “Why do we pray? It seems to do so little.”

A good friend of mine (the man behind the Fr. Men website) responded thus:

Prayer is a relationship.

Prayer is a relationship.

Prayer is a relationship.

Through relationships we can learn “wisdom, courage, purpose, and identity.” We can also learn that we are not in control of every event in life.

God is not a candy dispenser.

But prayer is a relationship.

Which puts a whole different twist on things. God is not a candy dispenser, but he is a loving father. And a father cares for his children. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? … how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

In a story about Florida spammers suing to continue their spamming, this nugget: [Steve] Linford [of the Spamhaus Project] believes 90 per cent of the world’s spam is down to 180 recidivist spammers.

U.S. admits to holding children prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

I finally got around to putting up some pictures from my 30th birthday when my family came to town.

I’ve stopped eating a lot of cookies.

Generally, Mozilla prompts me to accept a cookie and I decline. Sometimes, a website gets upset and sends me an angry message “You have to have cookies to use this site!”

But, there is another way. NetFlix wants you to eat the cookies, but instead of saying “Eat the cookie, goofball!” they give you an ad: “Look at what you can get by using NetFlix. Want it? Eat the cookie!”

The difference, of course, is that they are trying to persuade me to stay instead of scaring me off. Because there are times when I just decide I’m not that interested in what the website has, and I’ll leave without chowing down.

Take a lesson, webmasters! Persuade rather than coerce.

It looks like OpenBSD’s DARPA grant was cut after the founder of OpenBSD, Theo de Raadt, expressed discomfort about the source of funding, musing that “I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn’t get built.”

The funding didn’t go to OpenBSD directly — DARPA can’t fund non-U.S. projects and OpenBSD is based in Canada — but it seems the person who was “laundering” the money for DARPA wasn’t happy with Theo’s discomfort.

What does all this mean? Perhaps not quite so many drunken design sessions?

I’m ambivilent about my new short-haired, fresh-shaved look. Whilest a number of people have said that I look “better” and “younger” with the hair gone, I kind of like hiding out behind the beard. And, Anil Dash gives another reason I might want to grow my hair back: Airport Security.