Monthly Archives: September 2003

Experiences installing 802.11g wireless

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Today I did my first install of 802.11g wireless network gear. 802.11g is the new wireless networking standard that is 5x faster than 802.11b and significantly more secure.

I was using a wireless bridge and NICs from BuffaloTech — which have been generally well reviewed on the websites.

The good news is that on a fully-updated Windows XP system, the install went very smoothly, and the new WPA security was very easy to configure — much easier than the old WEP standard.

The bad news is that one had to not only make sure that all Windows XP patches were applied, but I also had to go in and apply a special non-critical Windows update in order to gain support for WPA security. This took a lot of time.

Worse, Windows 2000 doesn’t have built-in support for WPA, and the only way to add it apparently is to purchase an external third-party client. That’s lame.

So, my verdict on 802.11g — it’s good, as long as your equipment and software is really up-to-date.

Krugman on tax cuts

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Paul Krugman had a long, outstanding piece on why the “tax cut con” has endured for 25 years, and what its real costs are. Krugman asks, “How did we reach this point? What are the origins of the antitax crusade? And where is it taking us?”

Read on… Continue reading →

Use your spare computer time in a massive climate change experiment

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Climateprediction.net will harness the extra computing cycles of thousands of individual machines to run a massive climate modelling experiment that will help scienstists better understand global warming.

In short, you can download their screensaver, and it will run in the background when nothing else is hapening — the results will be automatically sent to the scientists running the experiment.

I’ve been a beta tester, and highly recommnend this as a simple and painless way to help contribute to our understanding of the environment.

Jury Duty

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I got called for Jury Duty this week. It was my first time serving as a cog in the machine of our justice system, and it’s been a pretty interesting experience. (We found the defendant Not Guilty of driving with a suspended license).

Some reflections:

  • I’m one of those not-so-cynical people who really believes in the fundamental rights of due process and trial-by-jury as essential parts of democracy. It was truly a thrill to directly participate in that process. It’s amazing that a concept so grand could be built out of pieces that are so small.

  • One of my fellow jurors emigrated to the US from Ethopia in 1990. She commented that she never really could have imagined herself sitting in an American jury box.

  • All of us thought the guy did it, but we all felt that the defense had raised “reasonable” doubts.

  • The two cops who testified were absolutely positive that their version of events was completely true and correct. In fact, there were subtle discrepancies between their stories that made me really feel that they have a habit of overstating how clearly they remember details.

  • I was really surprised at how many key questions were left unanswered by both prosecution and defense. I’m assuming that’s because both sides had very limited time to prepare.

  • Seattle’s new courthouse is really nice. The jury waiting room is literally the penthouse suite — a very nice symbolic gesture. They do their best to make the experience as pleasant as possible. Phones, internet-connected computers (but no WiFi — that would be nice!). They will even give you a pager and let you leave if you promise to stay within 15 minutes of the building.

Using MovableType as a Content Management System

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Beyond the Blog is an great article by Matt Haughey about how one can hack Movable Type into a more general web content management system.

I’m not convinced that this is really the preferred approach to low-end content management for non-HTML-savvy nonprofits. Nevertheless, this is an excellent article that shows some of the latent power of Movable Type and other blogging tools.

Quick thoughts on the Democratic Candidates Debate

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Watched the Democratic presidential contenders in their first debate last night. Following are some of my quick reactions.

Howard Dean: I love you. Now, please get some public speaking coaching, before you find yourself losing a debate to George W. (Just think how embarrasing that would be.) P.S. You did great on the domestic policy stuff, but your foreign policy answers were kinda muddled.

John Edwards: Seems like a cut-rate Bill Clinton. Smootht talker. Made a great transition from talking about immigration policy to talking about education.

Dennis Kucinich: Ross Perot of the Left. Great passion and fire, and he’s incredibly right on most of the issues. Too bad he has zero chance of getting the nomination.

Joe Lieberman: So fair and balanced that I nearly fell asleep.

John Kerry: Could probably guest star on Six Feet Under without makeup. (He looks like a cadaver.) I can’t remember anything he said.

Carol Mosley-Braun: Very refreshing to see a black woman up on the stage with the while males. Why isn’t she running for an office she has a chance of winning?

Richard Gephardt: Running hard. Even when he’s speaking at his most passionate, he still somehow looks flat. Handled domestic issues very smoothly, his long House experience shows.

Bob Graham: Very credible on foreign policy. Otherwise pretty unmemorable.

Al Sharpton: DNF.

Skype: p2p IP telephony

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Skype is a new p2p IP telphony application from the makers of Kazaa. Key benefits are: encryption of calls, allegedly high quality, and zero configuration even in complex network environments. Interesting.

Followup: Now that I’ve installed and read the license agreement, I’m less excited. Quoth the license agreement:

“You acknowledge that certain functions in the Skype Software are only available to paid subscribers after a free trial period of the Skype Software and Services (the “Free Trial Period”) ends. Namely, you acknowledge that the ability to make and receive calls to non-paying users of the Skype Software and Services is only available as a paid subscription service (the “Subscription Services”). After the Free Trial Period ends, you will be presented with the option to subscribe to the Subscription Services. If you do not wish to subscribe, you acknowledge that you can only make and receive calls with subscribers of the Subscription Services and not with non-paying users of the Skype Software and Services”

In other words: you will pay to talk to people who don’t pay us. Lame. Still, the continuing action in low-end P2P IP Telephony bodes will for the future of low-cost Internet-enabled voice communication.

UPDATE – August 2004: Skype has matured a great deal in the past few months. It’s still completely free for PC-to-PC calls, and they’ve just launched a inexpensive pay service that lets you make calls to regular phones. We’ve been using Skype a great deal for calls to our field offices, and it has been working really well for us. The big pluses are ease of setup, ease of use and sound quality. Downsides: not standards-based, unclear long-term financial viability, and no Mac support. So, a cautious thumbs up.

Open-source embeddable WYSIWG HTML editor

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While I was playing around with various content management systems (more on that soon, I promise), I stumbed across HTMLArea, which is an open-source, cross-platform WYSIWYG HTML editor that can be easily embedded into any web page that has a “textarea” form item.

This is really great stuff, and unlike most competing solutions, isn’t IE-only. And, unlike ColdFusion-based solutions I’ve used, it’s free. And customizable!

Very impressive. I am planning to stick this into our internal content management system. Anybody out there who’s developing content management tools (and there are too darn many of you!) should consider doing the same.