Of the Sodaine and Lamentable Death of the Legendarie Woody Woodpecker

OF THE SODAINE AND LAMENTABLE DEATH OF THE LEGENDARIE WOODY WOODPECKER

It’s early evening, and I’m at the local bank’s automatic teller machine lobby, doing the necessary paperwork for depositing a check, when four other people enter. Two guys, two ladies, all clearly, from the animated conversation, one group. Since I’m ready to roll and they don’t seem urgent, I go ahead and slot in my card and jab my numbers, first choosing to check my balance, to make sure I have enough on hand to get some cash before the work check clears. In college, I learned from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world; as a freelance writer, I have learned that freelancers are the unacknowledged bankers of the world.
As the machine blurts out my requested receipt, one of the guys remarks how amazing it is that no matter how many times you use ATM’s, they never seem to make a mistake. Right away the three males are bonded and begin a discussion of ATM’s. How the Postal Service down in White River Junction has all sorts of high-tech handling equipment and still they deliver your neighbor’s mail to you, presumably your missing mail to some neighbor, and somehow manage to cough up stuff two months late. Why don’t they etc. etc. I volunteer that I’m a reporter, and I've fantasized for a long time about doing a story recounting (so to speak) exactly what steps a request for cash goes through so that the right amount, and only the right amount, gets transferred out.
“But what I’d REALLY like to know,” I say, as I redo the choices to withdraw some cash, “is how they got Woody Woodpecker in there. Maybe he’s doing the counting. Listen to this.”
Sure enough, as the money comes through, there’s the old familiar “Nyaa-nyaa-nayaa-NYAAAA-yuh! Nyi-nyi-nyi-nyi-nyi-nyi!” And once again, it’s the right amount.
“I think they should use ATM’s for VOTING,” says one of the guys. “Good idea!” seconds his friend. I’m in the midst of offering that Vermont towns have had good results with fill-in-the-oval ballots and counting machines when, in the background, a quiety female voice quietly remarks, “It’s not working.”
“What do you mean, not working?” asks the other lady. “I mean, it’s not working.”
We guys turn, and see emblazoned across the screen a message to the effect that our branch is not operational and its ATM is not available. No one imagines trying to hack through this. Monopoly told us there would be days like this: Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Woody Woodpecker has croaked.
“There’s an ATM at Usamah’s,” one guy says, and they head down Main Street toward the Middlebury Market & Café. Turns out they’re going to the movies, and the theater, also in that direction down Main Street, won’t take credit cards. Briefly I consider asking whether they were planning on seeing “There Will Be Blood, then think better of it.
As I turn along the sidewalk toward my car, one of the other guys yells, “You really DID take it all!” I turn, sigh, and reply, “I just don’t see how I’m going to fit it all into this Geo Metro.”

BIG BLUE COLLAR

BIG BLUE COLLAR

Manufacturing has taken hard hits in Vermont, and those concerned about the loss of well-paying jobs don’t expect the situation to be turned around by large companies locating major plants here. Encouraging homegrown enterprises is now the primary strategy.
I would like to do my small part in this effort by suggesting such a business, one I think would be well-suited to Vermont traditions. Perhaps some of those former IBM employees singing the Big Blues could get together to engineer the first working-class computer.
Statistics on home computers suggest that non-computer-users are becoming a smaller and smaller minority. But still there are millions who remain intimidated by the digital world--unnecessarily, in my opinion. Restructuring desktop computers to be more working-class-friendly would resolve some of these issues, and bring needed dollars to the Green Mountain State at the same time.
So--what would such a device look like?
To start with, don’t keep miniaturizing and flattening and making computers seem otherworldly. Let them look like TV’s, big and ample TV’s that a family would be proud to own. You could even rename the computer “the intellivision,” and avoid all the bad feelings conjured up by a name reminiscent of difficult days with third grade math teachers.
Next, demystify all this stuff about input and output ports. “Serial” sounds like a killer. “Parallel” could make someone think they should be seeing double. “USB” looks too much like some stock that tanked in the company 401K and postponed everyone’s retirement by five years. “Firewire”--heavens, who thought that one up? Even a kid would know that sounds unsafe.
Instead, put all these beasties in things like look like cigarette lighters and call them highlighters or something. Working people know how to live in their vehicles, and know that once the lighter is out, all sorts of things can be plugged in to inflate tires, take better nighttime pictures of wildlife, and so on. Heck, put in a real cigarette lighter as well.
Which brings us to the problem of that little tray that makes a weird noise and sucks in flat discs that at first don’t seem to do anything then go off like two-dimensional fireworks. The way to make all this seem natural and comfortable is actually pretty obvious: call it the cupholder. Put in a real cupholder, and explain in the manual that there’s one cupholder for you, and one for the computer, and both of you like snacks, and the computer particularly likes these flat cracker-y things, and the way the screen changes shows it’s happy. Which is true enough.
A modem--that sounds like something from a fashion magazine. Just shape it like a tin can with a string coming out the back and everyone will get the idea--as well as not being surprised when the blamed thing doesn’t do what you expected.
The hard drive--good name. Don’t change that one. In fact, you could explain that a more powerful hard drive is just harder, like hard cider is harder than cider. Software, on the other hand, sounds too much like the stuff men don’t know women wear under the things they think they do. “Instruction manuals” should do it for the programs.
But the worst problem may be getting real-life, down-to-earth, no-nonsense people to trust an operating system. That sounds too much like something a crooked poker player or sports bar betting pool might use. Or some sneaky billing practice used by one of those specialist professionals who are always charging working people three-figure sums for go-figure jobs.
Just call it the wife. You wonder where you put something in these heaps of data stuff? The wife knows, ask the wife. Need to get from one place to another? The wife already asked for directions. Something has to be put in order, so it looks good? The wife knows how to do such things. Be on good terms with the wife and everything else will be much, much easier.
So there you have it, tech mavens. May you make a million dollars, and employ a thousand people, and finally bring plain common sense to a world that has as many real mirages as virtual miracles.

September 2007 List of the Month

SEPT. 2007 LIST OF THE MONTH

This month’s List of the Month is about gratitude, by the end. But it starts with computer programming, in particular the Internet browser Firefox.
Doubtless you have read in the newspapers about vulnerabilities discovered in Microsoft products, which had the potential to be hacked and to permit the unauthorized use of personal information. What you have read is, to use the perennial proverbial cliché, the tip of the iceberg.
What follows is a highly selected list of vulnerabilities discovered in Mozilla products (Mozilla originated Firefox). The introduction to the full list stated that “This is not meant as an exhaustive list of all security-related bugs. To find technical discussions of security-related bugs, visit Bugzilla. This page lists security vulnerabilities with direct impact on users. All of these vulnerabilities have been fixed prior to the most recent release.”
If you think you know English, prepare to learn otherwise now. Take a deep breath, start reading, and when you can’t stand it any more, skip to the end.
Some vulnerabilities:
--MFSA 2007-17 XUL Popup Spoofing.
Used to mean: kids trying to scare each other while trick-or-treating on Halloween.
--MFSA 2007-14 Path Abuse in Cookies.
Used to mean: getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar.
--FSA 2007-13 Persistent Autocomplete Denial of Service.
Used to mean: dialing the wrong number.
--MFSA 2007-12 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.0.12/1.8.1.4).
Used to mean: “I sure was drunk, wasn’t I?”
--MFSA 2007-11 FTP PASV port-scanning.
Used to mean: going to the dock to see someone off on a cruise.
--MFSA 2007-09 Privilege escalation by setting img.src to javascript: URI.
Used to mean: why the top executives got better coffee and the best parking spaces.
--MFSA 2007-07 Embedded nulls in location.hostname confuse same-domain checks.
Used to mean: the shop confused your check with one written by someone else with a similar name.
--MFSA 2007-03 Information disclosure through cache collisions.
Used to mean: when you get in an auto accident, you have go exchange addresses and phone numbers.
--MFSA 2007-02 Improvements to help protect against Cross-Site Scripting attacks.
Used to mean: the teacher caught on that other people in your class were passing nasty notes about you.
--MFSA 2006-76 XSS using outer window's Function object.
Used to mean: the guy next door is building an addition that will block your view.
--MFSA 2006-75 RSS Feed-preview referrer leak.
Used to mean: you forgot that your family would smell their surprise dinner and guess what it was.
--MFSA 2006-73 Mozilla SVG Processing Remote Code Execution.
Used to mean: in sandlot kid football, the play the pushy loudmouth quarterback called which nobody understood, but the defense forgot to cover one of the ends so it worked anyway.
--MFSA 2006-71 LiveConnect crash finalizing JS objects.
Used to mean: there are no atheists in foxholes.
--MFSA 2006-67 Running Script can be recompiled.
Used to mean: “Just put it on my tab.”
--MFSA 2006-59 Concurrency-related vulnerability.
Used to mean: if you don’t think your wife will guess that you’re cheating on her, think again.
--MFSA 2006-56 chrome: scheme loading remote content.
Used to mean: the way politicians always make it sound better than it is.
--MFSA 2006-39 "View Image" local resource linking.
Used to mean: kibbitzing.
--MFSA 2006-31 EvalInSandbox escape (Proxy Autoconfig, Greasemonkey).
Used to mean: blaming it on your little brother.
--MFSA 2006-01 JavaScript garbage-collection hazards.
Used to mean: “The trash collectors banged up our wastecan again this morning.”
--MFSA 2006-13 Downloading executables with "Save Image As..."
Used to mean: The President trying to make himself look better by firing subordinates.
--MFSA 2006-22 CSS Letter-Spacing Heap Overflow Vulnerability.
Used to mean: “You need to clean your desk.”
--MFSA 2006-05 Localstore.rdf XML injection through XULDocument.persist().
Used to mean: The rich out-of-state people who bought the general store don’t care how much money it loses.
--MFSA 2005-53 Standalone applications can run arbitrary code through the browser.
Used to mean: “You better repair that fence, because if the heifers get out they’re going to eat my flowers.”
--MFSA 2005-47 Code execution via "Set as Wallpaper."
Used to mean: “If you sign up for our credit card, we’ll put a scenic design of your choice on it.”
--MFSA 2005-43 "Wrapped" javascript: urls bypass security checks.
Used to mean: “While the cops were in the donut shop, burglars were robbing a store.”
--MFSA 2005-40 Missing Install object instance checks.
Used to mean: asking your wife where you put something.

And so on. Two general points here:
1. Aren’t you glad there are people who really know about these things, so your computer operates day and day and mostly does what it’s supposed to?
2. Aren’t you glad our school system has a fully funded program for the gifted and talented, so that the advanced computer work of the future will be done in this country rather than overseas?

Muggings, thuggings and buggings can be sent to outabout@sover.net.

Weather Underground

WEATHER UNDERGROUND

Ed Barna

This being the Fourth of July, a time to consider what it means to be an American, I want to share a way that anyone online can be part of a worldwide community. I do care about this country, but the idea of a nation is indivisible from the existence of other nations, and the better we know and the more we appreciate other countries, the more we will appreciate and the better we will know our own.
“Everyone talks about the weather,” goes an old saying, “but no one does anything about it.” Today, we know the last part isn’t true. All our actions influence climate change, and the worldwide community I will momentarily describe shares an in-depth knowledge of this.
In Vermont, though, talking about the weather is still the most common way for strangers to get from grim to grin. Maybe the information exchanged is banal, but as Winston Churchill famously said about negotiations, “Jaw jaw is better than war war.” This northland eye-on-the-sky-speak isn’t just heritage from our predominantly agricultural past, when an old-timer with a deeply intuitive weather sense might indeed have a better understanding of when it was safe to put in seed or to cut hay or go to market. We divide up the land, making our homes our castles, but we share the air--as one contemporary poet puts it in a piece about the seeming humanity of the moaning and crying of a strong night wind, “we go all the way to the wind/ and the wind goes everywhere else.”
Which brings us to Weather Underground. The name of this online gathering, accessible by all at www.wundergound.com, comes ultimately from a Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in which he raps (he was a pioneer rap innovator, in case you hadn’t noticed) “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” The political thrust of that line did not go unnoticed by a faction of the leftist Yippies who, frustrated by the failure of peaceful methods to end the Vietnam War, decided to try violent upheaval—under the name The Weather Underground.
Today’s Weather Underground is a peaceable lot, exception for the violence implied in some of the storm pictures that people from all around the world sometimes post on the site. Under the categories of Very Important Pictures (weather disasters like the recent flooding in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas), Approver’s Choice (subtitled “a bit of inspiration”—good shots, of anything outdoors), Weather, and Outdoors, both amateurs and pros contribute. Aside from some people putting their names on the shots, the participants don’t let copyright considerations block them from letting people make personal use of the medium-resolution photos.
People can email back and forth via the site, or blog, so it has truly become a community. An expert in bird identification will help someone put a name on a rarer species for that area; a pro fotog will give tips to someone who says they’re just beginning and would welcome critiques; and the captions, sometimes quite extensive, give the homebound an opportunity to ride a virtual tour bus. When a regular poster goes silent, there is general concern; right now, for instance, a lot of people are waiting for Lampy, a railroad enthusiast, to post another of his fabulous train-in-operation shots.
“What a unique way to see the world through others’ eyes!” writes kathydee in Ohio, who had sent in 331 pictures—all of which can be viewed, 50 at a time, by clicking on her online handle—of which 11 were Approver’s Choices. One of the latest was a heartbreaking picture of an old coal miner’s two-room disability retirement homestead—a friend of kathydee’s who will no longer bring her blackberries despite his ailments because he just succumbed to them. This site has heart.
Last night I started listing the countries from which pictures had arrived on Weather Underground. With only 12 hours gone, the following have taken part: Montenegro, Latvia, Belize, Croatia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Slovakia (maybe should count as two because Lena from Slovenia is vacationing there), Greece, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, Thailand, and the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. I know, the last isn’t a country by legal definition, but for true it is one of the ends of the earth. Russian, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, India, Japan, Mongolia, and many more have chimed in at other times.
Ends of the earth: there are people who climb mountains and send back their peak experiences; seashore dwellers document the infinite moods of the seascape; veteran wildlife photographers add closeups that no casual picturetaker could ever equal; and stormchasers, that death-defying breed who go after tornadoes and travel TOWARD hurricanes, send images that can be genuinely terrifying. Vermont, be glad you’re in a geographical location where the big storm systems arrive exhausted and panting: there are clouds in the middle states of this country that are enough to make you shake, never mind the storms themselves. Look up superstormchaser Mike Theiss’s glimpses of supercells that look like they arrive with instructions to 1. Open chuck; 2. Insert drill; 3. Tighten chuck; 4. Send pieces flying everywhere and leave a big hole behind.
Spend a year looking at Weather Underground and it’s hard not to believe in climate change. Not “global warming” exactly, because the extra energy that the warming puts into the system drives it to all kinds of extremes. Kansas soaks while Florida burns. London gets hail on July 3 so deep it looks like the sidewalks and streets are deep with snow, while elsewhere you get to see what it’s like driving into a dust storm. At one point earlier this year, a location reported flowers opening two months early, with snow on top of them. Lightning bolts so powerful that the photographer was scared even while in his car. Coldest on record, warmest on record, hurricane winds without a hurricane—meteorologically, it’s a world gone mad.
So, as I implied earlier, there is a serious side to all this weather talk. As quietly as the fog that sometimes swallows half of the Golden Gate Bridge, so that it appears to emerge from a tunnel, the necessary consensus is building.

comments, criticisms and suggestions are welcome at outabout@sover.net