This one from the Washington Post. Unlike the one I mentioned from WQAD, WaPo's limits you by party, and to the top 5 in each.
I came up all Edwards again, mostly because of his positions on health care.
Via my dad, an interesting tool to help pick your primary-election candidate from the NBC affilliate in the Quad Cities.
Apparently I'm closest to Kucinich, though of the three front-runners in my party, I'm closest to Edwards. (Which I knew anyway.) Only 65 days until the Illinois primary...and only 414 days, 21 hours and 42 minutes remain in the worst presidency the Republic has ever known.
I've finally brought a new server online to take over from three old ones. By "old" I mean a Windows 2000 box with gerbils powering it and two salvaged desktops, one with a whopping 640 MB of RAM. Together all three have performed the tasks of one fully-functional server. And now, I have one fully-functional server.
A couple of problems have emerged.
First, which I knew would happen, the IDT Webcam that used to run on the old Windows 2000 server needed a new home. I've moved it to my spare laptop.
Second, apparently Symantec Endpoint Security does not run on 64-bit operating systems. Never mind that Windows 2003 x64 has been around since—wait for it—2003; Symantec apparently missed the memo. They're telling me I need to keep an old, 32-bit computer (they actually suggested a Windows XP machine) as the central antivirus server for the network. Um. No.
Finally, the rails that shipped with the new server don't fit my server rack. I am now looking for new rails.
Otherwise everything is hunky-dory, and as soon as I figure out the antivirus situation, I can decommission the old Windows 2000 box (along with the two old desktops.)
Ordinarily I think unexpected animation on a website is distracting and irritating. Jamie sent me a very cool counter-example from a Dutch housewares retailer. That's the way to do it.
Via Joel on Software, WalkScore.com. My current apt rates 85 out of 100; my new one gets an 89; Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters rates 97. Sadly, my dad lives in a walking-deprived part of the world, and gets a 29. On the other hand, he can walk to an altogether different kind of beach than I can.
Via Bruce Schneier, apparently the physical security of British nuclear weapons until around 1998 consisted of, essentially, a bicycle key:
To arm the weapons you just open a panel held by two captive screws - like a battery cover on a radio - using a thumbnail or a coin.
Inside are the arming switch and a series of dials which you can turn with an Allen key to select high yield or low yield, air burst or groundburst and other parameters.
The Bomb is actually armed by inserting a bicycle lock key into the arming switch and turning it through 90 degrees. There is no code which needs to be entered or dual key system to prevent a rogue individual from arming the Bomb.
Oh. Well. Of course. Why use a hard-to-forge sequence of letters and numbers like the U.S. or U.S.S.R. when a little key will do?
So what prevented an accidental (or deliberate) British detonation until Tony Blair fixed the problem? Why, tradition, of course, what what!
The Royal Navy argued that officers of the Royal Navy as the Senior Service could be trusted: "It would be invidious to suggest... that Senior Service officers may, in difficult circumstances, act in defiance of their clear orders."
(Insert nervous laughter here.)
Useless fact: Today was the first time since April 6th that my walk to work was below freezing.
Not useless fact: the Inner Drive Webcam was temporarily off-line overnight, as I'm making some infrastructure changes and the computer it's attached to is being decommissioned. (It's back up now.) Apparently people noticed:
I don't do business with you because I don't need to, however, I do look at your live camera every day to see the weather and get a look at Evanston, the town in which I was born and raised. My grandfather lived in the North Shore Hotel in the '50s and I visited there often. Your bottom line may not get any bigger if you continue with the camera but there may be people like myself that will miss getting a glimpse of a portion of the city. I hope that you will not let your new infrastructure cancel out the continuation of the camera.
—John in Craddockville, Va.
And:
Greetings:
I look out at Chicago Ave almost every morning that I am not home in Evanston—just to 'check in'. I think it is the only Webcam in the town. Please keep it up! I love it!
—Bernard, writing from Los Angeles
I had no idea.
The technical issue is simple. Right now the camera runs on an ancient (6-year-old) server running Windows 2000. It's essentially Inner Drive's backup server, sort of the Prince Charles of the office. All it does with its 200 watts is run the Webcam and wait for another server to die.
Here's a photo. The Webcam is hooked into the server on the bottom. (One wag called it "Paul McServer" and called the other one "Server Wonder," but in the office we call them McHenry and Bulle. Bulle is so old it reflects the obsolete naming scheme we haven't used in years.)
Well, server prices having fallen, and efficiencies having risen, and rack-mounting being generally preferable to floor-mounting, we're replacing it with a Dell 860. But the new server will have a Xeon processor, which means we'll be running the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003, which means (finally) our Webcam software won't run on the new server.
When we get the new server running (probably the first week of December), I may take an old, decrepit laptop and hook that into the Webcam. In any event, given the outpouring of support for it, I'll do what I can to keep it running.
The Daily Parker is two years old.
That is all.