July 2007 Archives

An intern who was blamed for one of the data security breaches at Ohio University has released a statement in which he says he's been scapegoated, and was merely following directions.

I'd be less sympathetic, but I've twice been told (ordered, directly) to say nothing in two similar situations, one a potential breach of confidential data, and the other definite data vandalism. The former was from an external intrusion, the latter from a (formerly) valued staff member.

It's not an easy situation in which to be; I resolved last time to ask for those directions on letterhead with a date and a single signature. Thankfully it hasn't happened again to me, although I know other breaches on campus here have been covered up.

Our industry is shameful, there's no other word for it, and we're all complicit: IT folks and management both.

kju: is a QEMU Cocoa port to MacOS. I haven't tried it yet - no Intel Mac yet - but I'll definitely give it a shot before I succumb to the probably inevitable purchase of VMware or Parallels. Built-in downloading of stuff from freeoszoo looks kind of nifty. Emulating a 500MHz PC won't win any speed awards for gaming, but may be a nice way to run all that old abandonware at least. (My own tastes there trend towards Commodore 64 emulation with VICE, which runs quite nicely on a 1GHz G4, but I do like pulling out X-Com every now and again.)

No, nothing about Dustin Penner or Brian Burke or Kevin Lowe. I was on vacation when it happened, although the lines Burke trotted out made me giggle like lolcats do.

Rather, I'm talking about something more insidious and terrifying that came up while I was playing EHM 2007. My Hawks had lost in 7 to the Blues in the 2012 Western Conference Finals (after my starting goalie had his wrist broken for him and I had to play my third-stringer in G7).

Warning: large image that is potentially disturbing, unless you're under fits of delusion like my poor boss.

As Neil tipped me in in the comments to my previous post on the subject, there's a Growl project to integrate it with Thunderbird and Firefox. I finally got a chance to poke at it today, and it seems to work better than my previous setup, in the sense that when it saw my spam folder I just got a small lineup of bubbles on the right hand side of my display - score. I still wish I could have it ignore everything but the actual Inbox altogether though. Not sure if it's an issue with Thunderbird or the plugin.

(Edit: I worked out last night that to get around disasters with the previous setup seeing tons of new messages, you can kill all processes that look like this: /Users/userid/Library/PreferencePanes/Growl.prefPane/Content. The popups will disappear.)

via Security Hacks from some time ago, I see that Core Security have a free Windows security package.

I haven't tried it out yet - not enough round tuits in the couple of months since I saw it - but I definitely intend to, particularly the port of pf.

Short one first... apparently Alexei Yashin and his agent aren't happy with the offers he's been getting. I can't imagine what they are, maybe 1-2m per year, but what does he expect? 50 points last season is good, but it's not Briere or Gomez good, he just isn't going to get those contracts with his reputation.

Edmonton signs Souray - guess it's a good thing Laraque's gone, he and Souray had a little thing going during the lockout season I think. No idea what the money is yet, but that blueline is so hurting any veteran player will help. They seem set for PP pointmen now - Tarnstrom, Pitkanen, and Souray, plus Stoll is a dandy there too. Now they just have that little problem of a #1 left winger and maybe some depth at all forward positions - especially RW, with Lupul and Sykora both gone.

One thing I've been doing off and on for the last year is google hacking my own organisation's website, looking for open weblogs and such that are allowing anonymous comments. I thought it might be useful to build a small database of useful keywords to use.

So, here it is.

It will undoubtedly gain a google rank of its own, and perhaps it will help point out to people what a scam these places are. Probably not though.

I use Thunderbird on all platforms, but mostly on Macs. Lately I've been trying to streamline my email workflow (who hasn't been?) and thought I'd give Growl a try. Growl came with my installation of Adium, and I'm kinda digging it. I assume you already have Thunderbird 2+ and Growl installed. I cribbed from a post on Neil's World for this post. Unfortunately, the Growl that ships with Adium doesn't seem to have the Extras folder, so you'll still need to get the installer package from their website. You can just open the DMG and copy its Extras folder into your home directory or something.

But! First thing you need is for something to have Thunderbird tell Growl that you have new mail. yamb (Yet Another Mail Biff) seems to be the way to go there. Installing it is as simple as downloading the XPI, then telling Thunderbird about it. In configuration settings, I disabled everything but IMAP (I don't use pop3 or local folders or anything like that), and told it just to notify on my inbox - if it hits one of my mailing list folders I don't care about it.

After that, go ahead and install the GrowlNotify stuff. Neil's world tells you to use "su -" and then run the installer script; I say to "sudo sh ./install.sh" instead. It will stuff things into /usr/local/bin. I grabbed the growlNotify.pl script that was listed in the comments in the Neil's World post, and stashed it into one of my bin dirs that's in my path, although having it in your path isn't necessary as yamb will take a full pathname. I configured yamb to use it as the external notifier executable. You will have to chmod +x it for it to work properly.

I didn't bother modifying the checking interval, as my mailserver actually tells Thunderbird when I have new email. After all that, it Just Worked, and now when I get new email I can see the subject line so I know whether or not it's worth switching to my "mail" virtual desktop.

(Edit: fixed a typo)

Now I kind of wish I'd posted this earlier, a few nights ago I was explaining RFAs and the Vanek offer sheet to my wife, and opined that the Penguins should be trying to lock Crosby up now, before the season even starts. I also offered the opinion that if I was his agent, I'd be suggesting something along the lines of 5 years, 9 million per year. I guess Crosby's agent agreed, although I must admit a 5m signing bonus is more than what I had in mind.

Good signing by the Penguins, Crosby's very unlikely to fade away, and even though the market will likely be very different in 5 years (who knows, 8.7mm might seem high by then, but I doubt it) nobody's going to say "that was stupid." Crosby may be leaving money on the table there, but a few million bucks over the course of a few years? I suspect he won't notice the difference, not a guy who still skates at his neighbourhood rinks on Christmas breaks. From the sounds of it, he's a great guy; great player, great signing.

This is the way teams are going to have to do it now; even if the gloves aren't totally off with RFA offer sheets, the threat is there that a GM in dire straits - and there's always at least one or two - will make an offer your young star can't refuse. For all of Lowe's mistakes in the last 12 months, signing Ales Hemsky to a long-term contract? Utter gold.

Do reporters not read the Collective Bargaining Agreement? Do they even listen to the answers to the questions they pose?

Larry Brooks apparently doesn't:

If Lowe truly was interested in winning and was willing to take the personal out of it in order to achieve that objective, the GM would have gone straight after Henrik Lundqvist . . .

OK, stop right there. Lundqvist has been taken to arbitration; he's not eligible for an RFA offer sheet. That's almost certainly part of the reason the Rangers filed. They want an arbitrator to come up with his salary, and they want to make sure he's in camp. Lowe could have made an offer between the 26th and whenever the Rangers told the NHL they wanted to take Lundqvist to arbitration, but it could also be that Lowe, being such a great friend of Sather's and all, gave him the same courtesy he gave the Sabres and called first, and was told "don't bother, we're taking him to arbitration." Besides, the Oilers don't really need a goalie right now, not without ditching Roloson anyway.

(tip to Lowetide, and I'm surprised mc79 didn't catch this. Off day for him, I guess.)

Terry Jones surely doesn't listen when his questions are answered: "Look out Jarret Stoll and Joni Pitkanen?" I heard the press conference with Kevin Lowe where Terry Jones of the Edmonton Sun asked Lowe, flat out, are you worried about the Sabres taking a run at Pitkanen? Lowe said no - for the same reason I just gave above, the young Finn filed for salary arbitration (before he even got traded by the Flyers, I believe). I'll give him Stoll, and while the Sabres are certainly in the market for a pivot and tendering him an offer would play into their apparent desire for revenge, I doubt it's going to happen. Maybe Jones wrote the article before the conference call? Nope, he quotes Lowe from another question taken from the same call later in the article.

Since I haven't said anything about it yet, I approve of the Vanek offer sheet. I think it was a smart hockey move, and Lowe couldn't really have lost. Yes, he'd have given up four first rounders, but he'd have gained the services of a young big sniper for 7 years. Vanek's a player. Chances aren't good that all four of those first rounders will become players; chances are, in fact, pretty good that at best one or two of them would be of Vanek's calibre, certainly not before 2011 or so - and I wouldn't care to lay money on that either.

Interesting times, in the "ancient Chinese curse" sense. As I keep telling my wife, watching this team the last year has been like a soap opera.

(Edit at 0045 Eastern: ugh, sorry, fixed the markup.)

Without attacking anybody in particular, I'm starting to think hockey was a lot more fun before I started thinking about it. There's been an awful lot of teenage type angst going on (I have a 12 year old stepdaughter, believe me, I have immediate and personal experience with it), a lot of wailing and moaning, and a very great deal of "Kevin Lowe's so stupid I can hardly believe he remembers to breathe, if the Oilers would put me in charge they'd win the Cup next year, or at least before KLowe messed it all up."

Having said that, I proffer the following poorly-gimped picture:

for most of you all to nail yourselves to the respective crosses you appear to be bearing.

It's amazing when a bunch of normally (relatively) sane and (relatively) intelligent people go sideways. The "Oilogosphere" is starting to remind me of hfboards, and the reasons why I quit reading and posting there (and alt.sports.hockey.nhl.edm-oilers before it).

(Image courtesy Wikimedia.)

A rare political post. I used to get ranty on the subject of politics, and I still occasionally do in private - root knows my wife has been the recipient of more than a few - but, well, it's so charged that I mostly don't bother posting about it. Anyway, on to the post.

CTV has been reporting on the numerous accidents on the 400-series highways this year, particularly nearer to Toronto.

Well, as OPP commissioner Julian Fantino says:

It's a shared responsibility,'' he said. "People have to take more responsibility for what they do, and so many of these things are preventable. They're not accidents -- they're a caused occurrence.

I've been a fan of that sort of pedantry for quite some time now. Something that's easily preventable (say, by putting one's foot down a bit less) is not an accident. It's not deliberate - only the most anti-social set out to kill somebody deliberately - but it's not an accident either, when somebody gets killed because they, or somebody else, were doing 180km/h. The same article quotes a traffic sergeant as saying "Whether the police catch you or not, physics is enforced all the time, and there's a death penalty for speeding." Preach it, brother. Same article, same man:

When I joined the OPP 29 years ago, drinking and driving was somewhat socially unacceptable, and then the tide turned and people would no longer accept the preventable deaths and injuries from drunk drivers.

I think we're at the same point now that we were 30 years ago. Society acknowledges that there is a problem, but (currently) nobody is really willing to admit that they might be part of it. On the 401, you risk death if you don't go at least 110km/h - speaking from very personal experience, even that is too slow. You can do it in the far right hand lane, but you don't want to be there anywhere near an exit, since some schmuck doing 150km/h+ will cut you off as they fly across 3 lanes of traffic to take it. Also, that's where dumptrucks hauling gravel and such tend to sit, so you risk getting hit by flying gravel, or being rear-ended by the same schmuck doing 150 as he weaves around traffic. 20-30 years ago, I'm sure it was "those bastards shouldn't be driving drunk, we need to crack down on that, but I've only had 3 beer so I'm not drunk." Now I watch traffic on the 401, and I'm sure half those soccer moms and dads doing 140km/h in their Mercedeses and BMWs and Porsche SUVs are screaming at the people doing 160 saying "slow down!"

The Ontario government has passed legislation limiting commercial truckers to 105, which frankly surprises the hell out of me. It's a start, I guess - part of the reason less than 110 is death on the 401 is truckers like tailgating you if you're in one of their two lanes doing less than 120. But it's not the truckers that are doing 150+, it's the soccer moms and young men driving daddy's sports car - or the daddies themselves. It's especially fun on long weekends. I call those people the "hurry up and get the fuck out of my way so I can get to my cottage and RELAX!" types, and I'd laugh at them if they weren't endangering my life in their urgent need to get to their chalet on the Muskokas 15 minutes earlier.

I'll admit it - I've done 190km/h driving a Mustang on a highway. It was stupid, and I could have easily killed myself (bad), or somebody else (much much worse). I did, in fact, get tagged for doing 90 in a 70 zone once, and another time for doing 75 in a 50 (that wasn't as bad as it sounds given the road there and the conditions, but still). The first time I had to do a defensive driving course, since I was 18 - else I'd have possibly had my license suspended. The course was eye-opening, not because of what we "learned" (I already knew the dangers of speeding, I just didn't care), but because of what I saw in my fellow enforced course takers. One fellow was a 50ish year old man, who got nabbed for his third offense, and was in the same situation I was - take the course or risk a suspension. He was pissed off because he'd been chosen from a line of traffic doing 130km/h on a 100km/h limit highway. He was annoyed because he wasn't the only one speeding, and had been chosen arbitrarily. "All those other guys were speeding too!" If you're caught speeding egregiously, pay your dues and shut up, I say. All these hints and tips ("contest the ticket, chances are the cop won't show up and you'll get off") make me sick. Yes, speeding tickets are a source of revenue for the province. So are taxes, and lots of people hate paying those but do so anyway. It's not "just a money grab", if you're doing 150km/h on roads designed for 100 - and everybody else is doing 120 or so - you're not just risking your life, you're risking the lives of a lot of other people too. Paying your $150 ticket is the least you can do for penance.

One of those many CTV articles talks about cameras designed to nab speeders, and says 2/3 of Canadians polled supports the cameras, so why doesn't the McGuinty government put them in? I'll say why, loud and clear, what Dalton McGuinty won't say because it would be political suicide: because the general public thinks the problem is everybody else, not them. It's the same reason why something like 60% of Canadians think of themselves as above average drivers (mathematically possible, but unlikely): the cameras won't work until people admit that *they* might be the problem, because those same people will take the generally accepted advice and fight the tickets - and win more often than not. Why? Because yes, the police really do have better things to do than to catch speeders, they'd dearly love to be catching murderers and thieves.

Our speeding and racing epidemic will not go away until people start looking in the mirror when they're looking for the source of the problem, and admitting that maybe, just maybe, they might be contributors.

(Image shamelessly stolen from NASCAR's website, in case you were wondering. Slightly edited and changed to a PNG.)

Scratch Nylander, he's a Capital. Probably just as well, but too bad for Kevin Lowe anyway - at least he could say he got *a* UFA. (I don't count Dick Tarnstrom.)

I thought hard before including him in my previous post, because I hate to talk about rumours, just facts, but it seemed solid enough.

Now I know better.

This is (probably) the first post in a series of at least two, wherein I try to make sense of the UFA season, particularly as pertains to the Oilers.

First, a recap (not because you, Dear Reader, don't know this already, more for when I re-read this in a week and say "but wait, didn't they...") - set the stage.

Out:
D Jason Smith: 32yo, team captain for the longest period in team history - trade
RW Joffrey Lupul: 24yo in September, once scored 28 goals and was a key return in the Chris Pronger trade, but now looking more like Scott Fraser than anybody else really - trade
RW/C Petr Sykora: 31yo, tied for first in team scoring last year, second in goals scored with 22, two Stanley Cup rings with New Jersey once upon a time - UFA

In:
D Joni Pitkanen: 24yo in September, former 4th overall pick, 39 assists last year gives him more points than Lupul got in total, need I say more) - trade
LW Geoff Sanderson: 36yo, "among active league leaders in games played" according to the press release pretty much says it all: "old dude who used to score a lot and doesn't now, but hey, we ditched Joffrey Lupul") - trade
C Michael Nylander: still a rumour, but probably reliable. Second in Rangers scoring last year, played with a guy named Jaromir Jagr, now no longer required since the Rangers shot the bolt for top-line Cs on Briere and Drury - UFA signing.

The Smith/Lupul for Pitkanen/Sanderson trade reminds me a lot of the trade that brought Janne Niinimaa to Edmonton. That trade was Dan McGillis and a second round pick for the Spazzer. An older, established, tough defenceman due to make more than he's really worth in return for a young, struggling blueliner with undoubted offensive capabilities and a questionable head. For Niinimaa, it was his decision making on the ice; I don't know what the questions surrounding Pitkanen, but they must be big if they're willing to take on Jason Smith (I love the guy, but he's not a top-pairing dman any more) and Joffrey Lupul in return for him.

There's more than one parallel here too, I think: when Edmonton traded for Niinimaa, they were struggling. They were trying to shed salary in return for unproven but talented players - forcing a rebuild. Now they've basically been forced to rebuild. As Lowetide said, Chris Pronger gave them 5 bullets. They got backed into a corner and had to trade him, so they tried an alternative approach - "We know the D sucks, so we'll try to make up for it with offense." Lacking any blueliners who could make a pass with confidence, we all know how that one went. So now, despite Kevin Lowe's words to the contrary, they're rebuilding again. These are the Oilers of about 1997, except with a weaker blueline and no scoring wingers. Oh, and the 1997 Oilers squeaked into the playoffs and knocked off heavily-favoured Dallas. The 2008 Oilers are unlikely to even come within sniffing distance of the playoffs. They play almost half their schedule within the North West Division, and none of those other teams have gotten any weaker this offseason.

Vancouver has a pair of young players ascending in the Sedins, they still have Luongo and Ohlund (and lest we forget, Rory Fitzpatrick). Minnesota's a young team with another year of experience on their strong year last year, and they've finally sorted their goaltending situation; for those who think it's important, they have one of the best enforcers in the West now that Laraque is gone too. Calgary has at least one bullet left in their gun, since Iginla and Kipprusoff are around. They'll lose Stuart and Hamrlik, so they're hoping Aucoin can regain his form, but their blueline's still in decent shape anyway - Phaneuf and Regehr haven't seen a guy yet they won't hit (although neither seems to have seen a guy yet they'll fight afterwards). I think Rhett Warrener's underrated, and the rest don't have to be great anyway. Cory Sarich won't hurt either. Colorado didn't lose anybody major, and they added Ryan Smyth - they won't be contending for the Cup, but they're a decent team. Joe Sakic's getting old but 100 points is still 22 better than Smytty, and both those guys are proven to make anybody they play with better - they ought to be dynamite together, Colorado's answer to Adam Oates and Cam Neely. With Paul Stastny, Wojtek Wolski, and Milan Hejduk all proven, the future is incredibly bright in Denver.

As for Edmonton, there's more question marks than answers on this team. Can Shawn Horcoff regain his form from 2006-07? Is Raffi Torres going to be Todd Bertuzzi of 1995, or will he be Brad Isbister? Can their blueline make a first pass that doesn't wind up in somebody's skates? Is Jarret Stoll's head really back together again, or is he one more hit away from joining Brett Lindros? How well will Fernando Pisani adapt to suddenly being the team's second best RW? Can Robert Nilsson check his hat, or will he and Hemsky combine for more giveaways and a bald coach? Will Ryan O'Marra overcome his injuries, or will he be another player with undeniable talent done in by injuries and an inability to transition to the bigs? Will Patrick Thoreson live up to his nickname, or is he another Scott Fraser without the big payday? With a first line power play unit of Nylander and Hemsky, with Pitkanen anchoring the point, will the Oilers ever get a shot on goal with the man advantage, or will we be wishing again for the days of Spacek and Bergeron missing the net (but at least they shot it)?

Finally and most importantly, where does all this leave the Oilers? Probably finishing last in the Northwest, out of the playoffs by January, and "wait til next year, boys." I'm not going to call for Kevin Lowe's head. He made a poor decision last year, but I'm not sure what he could have done differently. This year, you can say he's not done enough, but at least he's done *something*, and he's standing by his decisions. In the Canadian Forces as a young noncom (or officer), you might be faulted for a wrong decision, but the biggest sin is not making any decision at all. Leadership is making a decision, then looking back only for lessons learned. Kevin Lowe, for all his faults, is a true leader. His decisions over the next year will tell us if he's good, poor, or just the poor schmuck in charge of a sinking ship. Like his picture, is he leading or following? Hard to tell right now. Either way, he's definitely made a decision and he's going to try.

(Photo from Oilers Heritage.)

is reading a screed which says, among many other things, that the fact that lots and lots of sites ask for logins and personal information makes it easier (and this fact is bad) for all sites to ask for the same thing... and then looking over at the sidebar and seeing a "Login / Password" box.

In all fairness, there's some good points there, and I'm sure the login/passwd box is just for registration for comments, but damn. Good going, Brad.

No, I don't have it, I can't even buy one up here (and I wouldn't spend CDN$750+ on a phone anyway, I hate cellphones). But skimming through some of the news on it - it's hard to avoid - I saw something interesting in one of Boing Boing's writeups:

This cafe where we are right now has an open WiFi network, so data speed as we're testing this for the first time is fantastically fast. Automatically connects if the network is open.

My guess is the first vulnerability exploited in the phone will use that as a vector. I wonder if it's possible to turn off that "feature"?