RCNevada

I received an email from ZDnet called “what’s new now,” it was an offer from Mercury Magazines for free subscriptions for up to three mainstream magazines. –Is it just me or does this already sound like those kids who come door to door selling magazines for a “good cause?”

At any rate I get all the free subscriptions I care to deal with from Amazon, so I clicked on the opt-out link. For two days now I’ve been getting a “server reset while loading error,” so I went to Mercury Magazines’ website and found no opt-out link, but I did get a chance to tell them things that are none of their business as long as I’m not using their services.

Not that that matters. I’m sure that ZD already told them everything they know. The company is an affiliate and therefore, under the terms of the ZDnet TOS/privacy statement, are entitled to any person data they want.

BTW: Mercury Magazines’ uses clear gifs to track you. As a general rule these little one pixel critters stay with you practically forever so their affiliates, or whoever, can track you too. –Especially if you allow cookies.

I also found this in their FAQ:

What’s required to qualify for the subscription?

Publishers have a variety of criteria they use to determine qualification for their publications, and are solely responsible for determining the specific requirements needed for qualification. Unfortunately, Mercury Magazines does not have any influence over this process.

How do I know if I’ve qualified for the subscription?
All completed survey forms are forwarded to the publisher for processing. It is the sole discretion of the publisher to determine if they will accept or deny subscriptions. Unfortunately publishers do not always have a procedure to notify subscribers if they are not accepted.

In other words they have nothing to do with the subscriptions. They are just data-mining.

Their privacy policy can be found here along with an opt-out email address.

I no longer receive “What’s new now.” I couldn’t opt-out of the offer, so I chose to opt-out of the source. –If there’s one thing I don’t need it’s more spam; especially if it’s fronted by what I used to think of as a fairly legitimate company like Ziff Davis.

An Australian man was justifiably sacked(fired) for repeated safety violations. But because of his lack of education and the unlikely prospect of his finding another job, the valid sacking was invalidated and the company was forced to rehire him with compensation.

www.theaustralian.com.au –The nation’s industrial umpire has ruled that a long-term employee who was legitimately sacked for repeated safety breaches must be reinstated and paid compensation because of his poor education and poor job prospects.

It would appear that in land down under being judged too dumb to find another job is the perfect form of job security.

I’m currently playing around with that little icon you see next to the url of a lot of websites.

To use this effect you need to create a favicon. This is generally a 16×16 pixel image must be saved as an ico not a jpg or png. The simplest -and free- solution is to use Windows paint.

Paint is set up to create an ico type image, but not from the drop down menu. Instead you have to choose “save as” and type in the entire file name including the ico extention and it will automatically be created. (just renaming a jpg or gif to ico doesn’t work.)

Also, if you run Wordpress and Google for information most of what you see will tell you to look under setting/general for place for a blog picture. –This is outdated because the blog picture option no longer exists.

Now you need to go to this link and follow the directions.

I already don’t like the one I made all that well, so I’ll stare at it for a while, and then probably make something else.

The Political Nevada blog is back online after more than a year sitting stagnant.

The author -who still publishes under the name “admin”- says he’s plans on publishing about once a week, and aspires to write like William F Buckley Jr. –Lot’s of luck with that.

The author’s latest, greatest, and only post, is in support of Harry Reid. –Not because of Harry’s politics, but because of his longevity and political savvy, which is how he got to be the highest ranking Dem in the senate while representing one of the country’s most sparsely populated states. The author rightly points out that while you may or may not agree with Sen. Reid’s politics he is in a position of major influence, which can help Nevada in ways that a brand shiny new baby senator couldn’t even imagine.

On a more critical note; after reading the author’s newest work, while I commend his attempt to write clearly, concisely and unambiguously, I have decided that unless he puts a bit more fire into his writing all anybody will use it for is as a digital substitute for counting sheep.

Still, he’s new at this whole blogging/internet thing and doesn’t really “get it,” but at least he’s trying. He just hasn’t figured out that talking quietly isn’t going to get anyone’s attention.

If you’re going to write about politics and you want your opinion to be heard, you need to get up on ol’ soapbox and shout.

On the recommendation of a friend I installed two free packages, Pure-ftpd and Pure-ftpd manager. –This combination gives you a point and click interface that makes managing your ftp server simple.

But before I go further you need to have installed Xcode tools. This gives you the gcc compiler you will need to compile the code.

If you installed the server without these tools just put the install dvd in your drive and open the other installs folder and install xcode tools.

Once you’ve got everything in place and you’ve downloaded Pure FTPD, open terminal and navigate to the downloads folder and enter the following.

tar xzf pure-ftps-1.0.21.tar.bz2

cd pure-ftpd-1.0.21

./configure –with-everything –with-virtualchroot –without-banner –without-humor
(This is what I did, but there are lots of config options so read the docs first.)

sudo make install-strip

Next make sure that ftp is turned off under services in the server admin section. Then download and install Pure-ftpd-manager. It downloads as a .dmg file so all you need to do is click on it, follow the simple install gui and you’re done.

After that you can start it from the applications folder and make changes to your settings, create and delete users and virtual hosts and start and stop the ftp server

I’ve been playing with my Mac mini server, but I haven’t had time to sit down and figure out where Apple hid everything in their fancy-schmancy gui. So I’ve invested a couple of reference books.

This book is by Peachpit publishing, part of their Apple Learning Series, and is well worth the $64.95 list – $52.96 on Amazon.

I’ve decided to put my newest toy to use, so I sometimes haul it to work with me. (I’m using it in the never ending, and always frustrating, attempt to adapt our Winblows based software to a ‘nix based server.) Therefore, I needed to find a convenient way to transport the box with it’s assorted peripherals.

I started with a fairly large metal case that they sell for cameras and laptops. It’s ok, but it’s too bulky and usually dictates that I go back out to my car a second time.

I was about to trash this small notebook case but hesitated long enough to give it a try.

It now holds the server, portable dvd, keyboard, power supplies, assorted network cables and a two inch thick server reference book.

As for running this critter: now that I’ve had a chance to play with it, I highly recommend the the Mac Mini-server for almost anything light. It makes a great web server or test bed. The only caveat is that it’s a bit underpowered to use it as a database server for a site with very much traffic.

If you’re thinking about buying one of these little beasties, something to keep in mind is that the Mini Server comes with nothing but the server, install/admin dvds, a mini hdmi to hdmi dongle and a power supply. This means you need to supply your own keyboard, mouse and monitor to directly access the device and buying any of these you need while you’re at the store will save you having to make another trip. Or worse yet. Having to wait until the next day to start playing with it.

I had a spare monitor and a full sized usb mouse. –The mouse may be old school, but it’s a hell of a lot less confusing than that bloody Apple mouse with it’s gestures and what not.

I went with the small Apple keyboard, which, after a bit of use, is much more comfortable than I imagined it would be, and the only other piece I needed was this VGA dongle -$19, so I could use my existing monitor.

An adapter like this is a necessity for those of us who spent all their money on the server and can’t afford to run out and buy a new monitor with HDMI inputs or who are forced to use whatever monitor they have access to at work.

I also highly recommend buying the book the dongle is sitting on. Snow Leopard Server (developers reference) by Daniel Eran Dilger. $31.49 on Amazon, $49.99 in the local Barnes & Noble.

Now for the actual setup.

I don’t care how things look in the ads, this is what it looks like in real life. –I move it around too much to tie the wires down, but even with the inevitable wires_everywhere problem, it takes up almost no room.

As far as the basic server software goes, I found that open directory is the way to go. With it you can create users, set up groups and rights and even set this server as your primary DNS. –The DNS setup is a snap, but unless I felt absolutely needed my own DNS, I think I’d let somebody else worry about things like that.

The only problems I’ve had so far come from the author of the reference describing something in a way that seems to assume that I know more about the interface than I do. (I probably just skimmed over something I should have read carefully.)

No matter, this little beast is quite forgiving and will let a newbie screw up without causing everything to melt down.

If you have some Linux experience and you’re comfortable with command line, you can take a couple of minutes to figure out Apple’s directory structure then everything will seem perfectly normal. –But since I’ve never had a Mac before I’m going to continue with the gui.

Now it’s back to learning to speak Apple.

David (wildwildeastdailies) is trying to recruit a partner/friend for his Infinite Wisdom Consulting business.

Here are the required “hard skills”:

Hard skills need to be meticulous and dependable analysis of financials for investment regarding Internet start-ups as well as diversified existing concerns, IPO introduction, marketing and consumer analysis for Global 500 Companies, emerging and frontier markets and Structural Support for globally directed firms of all natures.

They sound like some very tough and rather esoteric qualifications.

But, maybe in today’s economic downturn there will be enough qualified people looking for better opportunities to snag someone.

If you think that concerns over Google Buzz and privacy are over blown here are some excerpts from fugitivus via Gizmodo:

Fuck You, Google:
I can’t block these people, because I never made a Google profile or Buzz profile, due to privacy concerns (apparently and resoundingly founded!).

Fuck you, Google. My privacy concerns are not trite. They are linked to my actual physical safety, and I will now have to spend the next few days maintaining that safety by continually knocking down followers as they pop up. A few days is how long I expect it will take before you either knock this shit off, or I delete every Google account I have ever had and use Bing out of fucking spite.

Fuck you, Google. You have destroyed over ten years of my goodwill and adoration, just so you could try and out-MySpace MySpace.

Thanks to Google’s completely self absorbed, “fuck your privacy” attitude, fugitivus now requires a login to view.

WTF ever happened to “don’t be evil?” —Oh yeah, they dropped that. —How about a new one: Greed over good.

If you don’t use Buzz and want to make sure they don’t share your contacts anyway, log in to your gmail account and look at the very bottom of the email page, where in microscopic print you will find a link to “turn off Buzz.” —Click that, and hopefully, maybe, possibly, unless of course Google thinks they can profit from it, it will stop them from sharing your contacts. (Strange that I don’t recall them mentioning that opt-out.)