Nothing Is Perfect

"Nothing Is Perfect" Has Leapt

The blog is now on dolben.org. This is the last entry that will be on comcast.net.

There might be a few glitches with links, some of which had to be edited by hand. I'll fix 'em as I find 'em.

dolben.org Exists

The Internet domain name system (at least as far as my access) now has dolben.org. At the moment, there's only a PHP test page on its web site.

"Nothing Is Perfect" Will Be Moving

I'm planning to move this blog to dolben.org, hosted by PagesGarden, probably sometime in the next week.

One motivation to use a more capable web hosting service is to be able to have PHP generate genealogical web pages from a database via PhpGedView. I'm not very interested in deep ancestry, except to the extent that it personalizes history, but would like my children to be able to have a picture of the family tree beyond first cousins, at least including second cousins and their children. I'm hoping that having the information online will encourage some of my relatives to fill in details missing from my own sketchy knowledge.

Stay tuned.

Lance Armstrong Finishes Behind Teammate Floyd Landis in Season Premier

In his first race of the year, the Volta ao Algarve, Lance Armstrong finished fifth after winning the individual time trial on a new machine, while his USPS teammate Floyd Landis took the final stage and the overall victory.

Does Nader Want Bush for President?

Ralph Nader is doing it again, entering the presidential race and improving Bush's chances of reelection. Will the disaffected and undecided be pragmatic enough to refrain from casting a "protest" vote for Nader this time around? Or, since he's running as an independent, will they vote for the Green Party candidate? We'll just have to wait and see what has happened when the chads have settled.

Up to the Past - Mac OS 9.1

That's as opposed to "Back to the Future."

We got a new printer, one of those all-in-one deals, basically for two reasons: to have a copier, and to have a networked printer, which our old one wasn't. The Apple store's information claimed that the HP model we got is compatible with Mac OS 8.6 and above, even though HP's web site states that Mac OS 9.1 is required. We have an aged (around seven years old) Mac in our network that was running Mac OS 9.0, so there was some risk that the new printer wouldn't work with it. Of course, we didn't buy the printer from Apple, but from a retailer that had it on sale.

As you might expect, it turned out that HP was right. Their printer software installer refused to proceed once it found out that the Mac OS version wasn't at least 9.1. I searched the Apple support site and, to my amazement and relief, found a downloadable update from 9.0 to 9.1. Note that the update document was created 2001 Jan. 5, but was last modified 2003 Dec. 3. After installing the update, the printer software installation proceeded successfully. Printing works as much as I've tried so far, even background printing, once I used the "desktop" facilities.

My compliments and appreciation go to Apple for keeping available an update, over three years old, for an operating system they don't sell anymore.

Though there are further updates available, from 9.1 to 9.2.1, and from 9.2.1 to 9.2.2, I didn't push my luck.

The Price of Loyalty

Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty, an insider's view of the workings of the Bush White House, is first on The New York Times nonfiction hardcover bestseller list again. A review by Fritz Lanham, published by the Houston Chronicle Jan. 16, and others indicate that reading the book won't add much to reading a review.

Benjamin Franklin on Political Corruption

As quoted by Walter Isaacson in his biography Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Franklin had the following to say at the Constitutional Convention on the corrupting influence of money in government.

There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects ... And of what kind are the men that will strive for this profitable preeminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? It will not be the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits.

He was arguing for volunteer representatives, i.e., government service without pay, but sounds to my ear as though he is speaking of practically all politicians of our day.

IETF Approves XMPP IM as Proposed Standard

Instant Messaging doesn't have to be a space owned by disjoint protocols and megalithic servers. Now the open protocol efforts of Jabber have been approved by the Internet priests, freeing us, in principle, from AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. In practice, will the millions of users ever make the transition to standards based IM, or will the big IM service providers ever convert their servers to use standard protocols? Will ISPs routinely provide Jabber IM servers as they now provide email servers?

For now, users of multiple services are stuck with either an application that supports various protocols, or using Jabber and a cumbersome process of registering proxies for other services, in either case having to have accounts with all of the services used by the people with whom they wish to communicate.

The Word of the Day

The Oxford English Dictionary's word of the day is "blog". (Thanks, Dave.)

"Subscribe" Has the "Feed" Link

Reconsidering what I had done ten days ago, I decided to link in the conventional way to the XML, and link the word Subscribe in the sidebar to the feed, for which there is as yet no commonly accepted graphic.

My PMC Profile

I've constructed my PMC profile, in case someone is looking for me through the Pan-Mass Challenge web site.