t 'n t luoma

My Opera has been updated (read the My Opera Press Release).

Some cool additions, including:

An all-new section named setup allows Opera toolbars, configurations for mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts and menus to be downloaded or uploaded for exchanging with other users around the world. These features are not only for the technologically advanced, installing setups is automatic upon downloading.

You can also start your own Opera Journal. Hrm...

Posted by TjL at 11:16 AM | Permalink

David asked about the Opera UI icons. I assume you mean the icons on the various toolbars.

The easiest way to find out what they are is to right click on the toolbar and select either Images and text below or Images and Text on Right as shown in this image.

If you use Windows XP, you may also find the the icons on the Main Bar only show the text label when you hover them. This feature can be disabled by right clicking on the Main Bar, then choosing the Skin sub-menu, and then the UN-check the option for Special Effects.

Posted by TjL at 08:20 AM | Permalink

Diana Krall married Elvis Costello.

Seems like a strange pairing, but who asked me... Well, I wish them both the best.

Posted by TjL at 11:59 PM | Permalink

Another Internet Explorer exploit has been discovered.

Here's the kicker: I warned you about this already (sorta). On Day 16 of the 30 days to becoming an Opera7 Lover series, I talked about this functionality.

The trick is simple, you create a website that looks like this: www.microsoft.com@example.com which makes the casual observer think that it is actually Microsoft. If you are very clever you can hide the URL through a variety of methods.

That's the bad news. The good news is that none of these methods fool Opera. And if you do happen to click on such a link, Opera will warn you with a panel like this:

This exploit takes advantage of two things: 1) Internet Explorer gives you no such warning (neither does Mozilla/Phoenix) and 2) a bug in Internet Explorer which encodes a hex character in the URL which prevents the rest of the URL from being shown in the addressbar.

As I have said before, if you use Internet Explorer, you are playing Russian roulette with your computer security. While Mozilla/Phoenix will show you the entire URL, it will give you no warning about the construction of the URL which may be deceptive.

Posted by TjL at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Tracey brought Ethan to her MOMS group today, and Ethan was terrified of Santa Claus.

He's a curious child.

He's totally thrilled with his ability to walk. The new thing is to walk (toddle) backwards.

At his 18 month checkup he had finally broken the 20 pound mark.

Posted by TjL at 09:24 PM | Permalink

Happy Blizzard to our readers in New England... and here is the world famous New England Temperature Guide

60° F: Southern Californians shiver uncontrollably. People in New England sunbathe.

50° F: New Yorkers try to turn on the heat. People in New England plant gardens.

40° F: Italian & English cars won't start. People in New England drive with the windows down.

32° F: Distilled water freezes. Maine's Moose head Lake's water gets thicker.

20° F: Floridians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, wool hats. People in New England throw on a flannel shirt.

15° F: New York landlords finally turn up the heat. People in New England have the last cookout before it gets cold.

0° F: All the people in Miami die. New Englanders close the windows.

10° below zero: Californians fly away to Mexico. The Girl Scouts in New England are selling cookies door to door.

25° below zero: Hollywood disintegrates. People in New England get out their winter coats.

40° below zero: Washington DC runs out of hot air. People in New England let the dogs sleep indoors.

100° below zero: Santa Claus abandons the North Pole. New Englanders get frustrated because they can't start their "kahs."

460° below zero: All atomic motion stops (absolute zero on the Kelvin scale). People in New England start saying, "cold 'nuff for ya?"

500° below zero: Hell freezes over. The Red Sox win the World Series.

Posted by TjL at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

About a year ago I wrote about MemTurbo requiring me to accept spam if I want product updates. If you read the whole piece you’ll also see the lousy way that they responded when I questioned them about the policy.

Well, a year has passed and all I have gotten is more junk. In fact I am no longer even using MemTurbo. After I moved away from Windows 98 I no longer felt that it was needed.

Tonight I got another message, claiming to be from MemTurbo Customer Updates with a Subject: line Important Information for MemTurbo Owners. It had nothing to do with MemTurbo. It was just a ploy to try to get me to buy more software (they were offering a discount to MemTurbo owners, I’ll grant them that much).

I can’t remember the last time I actually received an update from them that was about MemTurbo, so I went to their MemTurbo download page and saw that the current version was released on September 2nd, 2000. So I have to ask myself, Is it worth it to keep myself on their so-called MemTurbo update list when all I get is junk about other programs that I don’t need? And the answer is no.

When I complained about this last year, the support person asked me, So you’d like continuing ongoing support and updates for free, forever, without any chance that we can obtain more business from you? Ok, I’ll make a note of that. I responded by saying that I never asked for continuing support or updates for free, what I asked for was a notice of updates. That is what they told me I was signing up for. Instead I get spam, but no updates on the actual program.

Oh, and just in case anyone wants to debate whether it was spam, here is what SpamAssassin thought of the message

X-Spam-Score: 8 (********) BANG_GUARANTEE, BANG_MORE, GUARANTEE, HTML_30_40, HTML_FONT_BIG, HTML_FONT_COLOR_BLUE, HTML_FONT_COLOR_GREEN, HTML_FONT_COLOR_RED, HTML_FONT_COLOR_UNSAFE, HTML_MESSAGE, HTML_SHOUTING3, LIMITED_TIME_ONLY, NO_QS_ASKED

Note that anything which scores a 4 or greater in SpamAssassin has always been spam, 100% of the time since I have used it, and you will see this is not a borderline case.

So I will give up on the MemTurbo mailing list. As I said, in my experience I have not needed it since I left Windows 98

Posted by TjL at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

ConsumerFreedom reports that that the AMA has censured the so-called “Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine” (PCRM). Important points include:

• “This misnamed ‘physicians committee’ represents a tiny fraction of America’s doctors who place animal-rights ideology above their patients’ health
• PCRM has asserted itself as a home for anti-meat, pro-vegan nutritionists who are committed to removing beef, dairy, poultry, and other animal products from the American diet for good.
• The established medical community has soundly rejected PCRM’s dietary advice in the past.
• The American Medical Association has written that it finds the recommendations of PCRM irresponsible and potentially dangerous to the health and welfare of Americans.
• In a separate public censure, the AMA marveled at how effectively a fringe organization of questionable repute continues to hoodwink the media with a series of questionable research that fails to enhance public health.
• PCRM has long-standing ties with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which has funneled over $850,000 to its medical front group.
• Most Americans are too smart to knowingly take dietary advice from PETA. But when animal rights activists put on the sheep’s clothing of the medical profession, it becomes harder to know who’s credible. Force-feeding animal rights propaganda to Americans doesn’t sound very ‘responsible’ to me.

Personally I’m amazed at the FUD that surrounds the entire low-carb way of eating, but to have it cloaked behind a political agenda (and PETA is nothing but a political action committee) at the utter disregard of people’s health is disgusting.

Fortunately my doctor was well-informed about it. After having been on Atkins since the end of August I went from this picture in May to this picture in mid-October.

Note: Yes I know that the Consumer Freedom group also has an agenda, but I wasn’t suggesting anyone take their advice either. My reference to them had was simply because they were the source material for the AMA’s censure. The American Council on Science and Health has also had concerns about the mis-representation of the PCRM and also had questions about low carb as well.

Of course the ACSH also refuses to believe that a calorie is not a calorie as was shown in a recent study. Dr. Atkins and others said this for a long time and were consistenly scoffed at. They all complained that Atkins hadn’t done enough scientific research. Now there is a study that showed exactly what he said. It will be fun to see how folks respond.

Update (2004-02-11): PCRM illegally obtained Dr. Atkins medical records and falsely accused him of being obese at the time of his death. Read The Truth about Dr. Atkins' Weight.... Not that his weight has anything to do with the validity of his claims about low carb eating, which have been demonstrated for 30+ years ....

Posted by TjL at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well after a long night and some time today rebuilding, I think most of the site is now working. Please let me know the URL (Address) of any problems, and what browser you are using (Opera 7, Mozilla, or Internet Explorer 6 should work.)

Posted by TjL at 06:39 PM | Permalink

Folks, I made an ill-conceived choice to redesign both the CSS and some of the templates that I use on the same night behind a slow modem connection.

A lot of stuff is broken / doesn't look right. My apologies. I've been working on it, but it's time to sleep now.

Posted by TjL at 05:24 AM | Permalink

So I was going about my day just working on the sermon for next Sunday. The Gospel text is from Luke 3:1-6, which quotes Isaiah 40 (A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God...). I pulled a commentary off my shelf on Isaiah that I’ve had since seminary. The following inner dialog ensued:

This is a really good commentary. I wonder if the whole series is available. I should check their website... wow, I didn’t know Bruce Metzger was the editor of the series. Hrm... $32 a volume... (here the dialog paused while I tried to multiply $32 by 66 books in the Bible.... then the pause in the dialog paused while I launched the windows calculator and came up with $2,112... <insert long slow Wow that’s expensive whistle...>) Hey, it’s on CD-ROM too.

At this point the internal dialog got muddied as I realized that there were two copies of the commentary series on CD-ROM, one for $650 and one for $999. Huh? Well, what’s the difference? Can’t tell. Several minutes worth of investigating later, still can’t tell the difference. This is not helped by the fact that they both link to the same description of what is included in the package.

I asked someone else to look at them and he wondered if it was their own version of the stupidity tax. Now I’ve seen differences in the same product at the same site. If you go to the site one way (such as by using their search option) you can get a different result than if you go in another way (such as by entering a product number from a catalog). But I have never seen two items apparently identical which were cross referenced to each other, where one was several hundred dollars less than the other.

Clicking the links to Buy Now at Amazon.com gave two slightly different names to the programs: The Word Biblical Commentary On Cd-rom : 54 Volume Edition [$999.99] and The Electronic Word Biblical Commentary [$454.98]. The latter also included a link to the former as Other editions: Audio CD (CD-ROM). Of course neither of them really is an audio CD (which would be either spoken word or song). By looking at the covers of both volumes (compare $454 cover [GIF] to the $1000 cover [jpg]... hey, maybe that’s the difference? For an extra $546 you get a JPG instead of a GIF?) reveal that the covers are identical.

Except that the version that sells for $454.98 has a sticker on the box which reads: Publisher’s List Price $1,499 NOW $999.97.

I kid you not, follow the link above for the $454.98 version and then click the link for see larger photo and it will lead you to the GIF image I have linked above, and the sticker is clearly visible on the left hand side of the box.

Hrm... $999.97? The website said $999.99! Well, at least one of them did, although I no longer remember which one.

Finally tonight I went back to the original website site and looked at the printer friendly pages (1, 2) which lists the $999 as being discounted to $650, meaning (apparently, but who can tell) that they are selling either version for the same price on their website. It was nice to see them agree on something at least... But there was one other thing... Both pages also agree on one other detail as well:

Both versions of out of stock. (I hope the $999 version didn’t sell out before the $650 version.)

So I went back to the Amazon.com site and added the $454.98 version to my Amazon.com Wishlist. Do whatever you like with the $545.01 that you will save off the list price, or the $1044.02 off the original list price!

Posted by TjL at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)