Older blog entries for cmacd (starting at number 38)

jdybnis Might is suggest looking on your schools web site, and sending this fool a copy of the policy on Sharing work.

I am sure that your prof would like to know about this, I would sugest having an informal talk about it. The other person would likely get expelled at most schools if they actually submitted some elses work as their own, and you don't want to be seen as contributing to such an offence.

I am not sure what section you are in at UCLA, but I am sure that this section is typical:

Unless specifically authorized by a class instructor, all of the following uses of a computer are violations of the University's guidelines for academic honesty and are punishable as acts of plagiarism:

• copying a computer file that contains another student's assignment and submitting it as your own work
• copying a computer file that contains another student's assignment and using it as a model for your own assignment
• working together on an assignment, sharing computer files and programs involved, and subsequently submitting individual copies of the assignment as your own work
• knowingly allowing another student to copy or use one of your computer files and to submit that file, or a modification, as his or her individual work

I found that at http://www.seas.ucla.edu/userguide/chapter1/1.2.html

life

My mom in law passed away last week, and so my wife is out helping her father. Our poor dog is very confused as to why she only has me to take care of her.

It is amazing how much a sleep debit can start creeping up on you.

Bless alan Cox. According to the Register, he is making some noise Opposing the manufacture of copy-protected Disk Drives.

alan is also the one (by means of a brag in his current sig file) who managed to presuade me to check out Brain Bench. Unfortunatly, I managed to make a very high score in the field that I am very anxious to get out of.

All is not lost in that I did OK in the Tech Writing appitude test, as that is one place that I see I could posibly slip into. (Resume is at home.achilles.net/~cmacd/resume.html for any of you Ottawa/Kanata area high-tech types who would like to have a greybeard around.)

It is the time of the Yule, when surprisingly all the winter celibrations seem to have fallen almost at the same time this year. Hopefully that in itself will help reduce the amount of conflict in the world.

In any case, We have reached the wonderous time of the year when the days will now start to expand, and may you all enjoy the return of the light. I hope everyone here has a moment to pause and enjoy their family.

Skud and dyork welcome to the great white north.

Everyone who wants to see what real weather looks like can also use the webcam on the roof of Rebel.Com

Today is cloudy with light fluries.

I want to live in a world where software does not suck - ESR

That was the slogan on the back of the t-shirt from the 1999 OLS.

That t-shirt was in view in a special report on the CBC last Night.

Unfortunatly I missed the first half of the program, but what I saw was a better than average attempt to explain internet security to non-geeks. The reporters did inteview at least a couple of well known (in)-security experts. As you might expect the term hacker was misused, but at least the term Microsoft was several times associated with insecurity.

Joe Public was told that they need to get patches for their software to keep themselves safe.

Of course, in the interest in sensationalism, the program did use visuals to try and associate folks with embeded jewlery and cracking computers. I tend to associate embeded jewlery with folks under 30, who may or may not have anything to do with computers.

OCLUG

I will not be able to get to the OCLUG meeting tonight Thurs. Dec. 7th, 19:00-21:00 Algonquin Rideau Campus Room A111. The Rideau Campus site is ideal for folks who live downtown and use OC Trans-slo but is hard to get to for those of us who live in the suburbs.

It is too bad because I won't be able to go, because from the announcement it looks like ajh is well on the way to making OCLug a formal organization. Way to Go Andrew!

The Mega-City of Ottawa

A day after Skud anounced she had arrived, the cold weather came. Actually, today was a bit colder than yesterday, but it was still not cold enough for gloves. However it is cold enough to plug the car in overnight.

mbp :The info on the peters projection was interesting, but for some reason, the system at work blocks access to the site you gave. Good Old Google did find a version of the map at diversophy.com

The sample seems to totaly hide most of the northern islands, I wonder if it is an anti-santa conspiracy.

gnuchris :I believe that maddog hall is US born. Perhaps the 'merican linux movment should start now to getting him on a tciket for the next 'lection.

dria :You discovery of your name on kabalarians.com is interesting. even more interesting is that they have both male and female versions of many names. even names like WD-40(male) in fact although your name is only in a female version, is see when looking for other unusual names from advogato that their is both a male and female version of e-smith's. newest Perl expert.

jhermann : Not only do I remember, I just moved the one in the basement on the weekend. Someday I have to find out why the 0xD000 ROM is acting up. Mine is older than the one in the picture, it has a blue (not black) ring around the CRT. Hard to believe it sold for CDN$1200.00 New.

Skud : The Ottawa Citizen also has a site called Ottawa.COM which contains listing or businesses in the area. I belive the listing are paid for, as it is run by the advertising folks.

Anyway, looking for 'Resturants - Other' did turn up the "African Palace",376 Rideau St, Ottawa, (ON) K1N 5Y8, (613) 789-7397, Ethiopian Cuisine. As well as three that list their food as "African"

I don't know, I like Steak and Potatos myself....

dria and graydon : There are many ways to balance ones life. That is why Lee Valley does a booming business in recreating fine tools from the past. Why there are businesses like Antique Electronics Supply or even Berryhill Country Living

If you let your life be consumed by working flat out 23 hours a day, you will grow old and bitter. If you keep some fun in your life you will likely stay healthy into your 80's. My father-in-law is well over 80, was a spitfire pilot in the second world war, left his leg in Malta, and still can crack a joke.

As far as a comment on our culture, I would say that websurfing has at least some self-direction, as opposed to television which for the most part, (say maybe Red Green excepted), is a wasteland.

Free/Open software can be a way to do something that will help the world. So is offering your time to a project that you deem worthy, like creating some recreational facility, or some educational opportunity. One does not have to live like a monk to make a difference.

The power problems could be lessened if folks were to be realistic about using alternatives and diversion of resources. as well of taking advantage of the opportunites that improved communications will allow us to reduce our tendancy to migrate to large cites. The Bagel Effect is a very real trend.

Naturaly while we are devirting potential resources from the landfills, we must find ways to use outdated computers for nobler purposes than sending them to Noranda to extact the copper.

Sunir : Bright lights can hurt your eyes. Hope you have recovered.

dyork: Milk: They used to sell jugs, that were returnable, but the authorites were concerned that folks might put something other than milk in them, so then we had non-returnable jugs, but that is a waste of resources.

DuPont Canada came to the rescue with milk bags, originaly three imperial quarts in a package to replace the three quart jugs. When we switched to metric they rounded the 3.5 liters up to 4. (The bags got slightly longer) but kept the same diameter so folks would not have to change the pitchers.

The milk does keep well, as the opening is small. You put the bag in the pictcher, and tap the bottom to seat it in place, then cut off a corner.

If you are unconfortable with bags the The Becker Milk Company still sells one-use milk jugs. They have a 25 cent deposit, and returned jugs are used to make other plastic products. They also supply Mac's Milk, but I am not sure if every Mac's has jugs.

"coin management" I find that 35mm Film Cans hold "Two'nees" (I still say we should call them Doub-loons) and looneys quite well. The Fuji ones are clear so you can see what you have. Ask at a camera shop or a one-hour lab if you don't have a supply. These days they are recycled, but they will probaly still give you a couple if you ask nice.

agntdrake: I can recommend the skating FAQ that my wife wrote. Dont let the title fool you, it covers all sorts of recreational skating.

Those rental skates are generaly only worth about 50 bucks a pair new, so you should not expect very much out of them. (I have a coupple of the suppliers of them listed on the Skating Suppliers page near the bottom. Good skates, properly sharpened can do wonders. You will really have to read Karen's FAQ to decide if you want to get hockey or figure skates. in equivelent quality levels, one is as expensive as the other, although often department stores only stock hockey skates in men's sizes and figure skates in womens.

srl: The US tends to be rather conservative, the way to get this cleaned up may be to take an indirect approch. Lobby your represenatives to do a "housekeeping" project on the statutes to "bring them up-to-date". That way no politition is placed in the position of having to defend "indecency", they can instead create a new statute with more resonable provisions (selling things to minors and such)

schoen: Every country can have its own legal deposit requirements for material published in its borders.. The requirments can also change over time. The US used to require a paper copy of every movie in order to register a copyright. This has allowed copies of some of Thomas Edisons first movies to survive, even though the NITRATE film that he used has long since vanished or burned.

In the case of ISBNs some folks have built quite the business of gathering information about things like ISBN assignments and selling them to users like libraries and booksellers. This is info that Should (IMHO) be freely available, but instead is sold on a subscription basis. In fact it seems that it is the RW Bowker company who has been contracted to assign them in the US in the first place! I am sure that they maintain a compilation copyright on the entire list.

My weekend

I changed the oil in both cars. Last time was May, good job I used Synthetic. Rest of the weekend was taken up by small chores.

Books

There are a couple of comments about Books that come to mind.

raph, schoen and jdub in adition to the US LOC The National Library of Canada has a search for an ISBN server at http://amicus.nlc-bnc.ca/resanet/reslogine.htm Note that you have to use the log in page to set up a session ID that is carried in the URL, so scripting a solution is going to be slightly more complicated than using the amazon Server.

One sad fact is that book publishing is teritorial, so that book published in Canada, and and book with the same title published in the US may (particularly in the case of popular books like Harry Potter) have a different ISBN, and sometimes even title. The Book that AMAZON sells as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (Scholastic Paperbacks; ISBN: 059035342X) Indigo sells as "Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone" ( Raincoast Paperbacks ISBN 155192398X). I understand from news reports that the US edition was edited to remove some of the "Britishness", while the Canadian edition is closer to the book that was published in the UK.

I was asked to get a book for my wife this week, and discovered that !ndigo now has a service called "express ordering" that will allow you to order a book with a single click. I wonder if it is set to only work for users outside the USA. Indigo is fairly fast, the book I ordered on monday night arived yesterday, and they have a way to ship directly into the US. While their selection of tech books is not as great as amazon, they seem more user friendly.

Other news since I last posted

Little contact with software I am afraid. I bought myself a used Stainless Steel darkroom sink, and may have to wait for Karen to be away to get it down the stairs, as the level of effort required may include paint and drywall. I have been building what should eventualy become a darkroom in the basement so my weekends are booked for a while. Yes I know that even a good digital camera would be cheeper, but no where near as much fun.

Unix Users Group

I got to the OC Unix group meeting last night, but an amazingly small number of folks turned up. It was held at Nortel Meriline Court, which is a more accesible location than Algonquin Leeds Ave. where it was held previously. Nortel has a very nice building, but I heard that they are part of the Cubicles are tiny crowd. The meeting logistics were slightly complicated by the need to have an escort in the building.

I see that Skud is coming to Canada.

Hopefuly this is sign that the brain drain is subsided. We will have to get her into a Learn to Skate Class so she can tackle the Rideau Canal. I wonder the next OLS will have a Goth Contingent. Or perhaps their will be more folks from The Canton of Caldrithig (I have never followed the SCA myself, the costumes are attractive, but I don't want anything to do with Jousting).