Dakota Today

**Some additions to the Dakota Today Blog Chain

If you check the horizontal menu just under the masthead, you will see some links to the Parts is Parts blog and a subsidiary blog to Parts is Parts with Repair Log Pages by vehicle.  So far just one vehicle in the list, but we have more junk to fix and there are a few mechanics pro and amateur we hope to entice into scribbling a bit for us.

Maybe with a few good hints and aids in those vehicle related blogs and some businesses might even find it useful to appear on one of our ad pages.  More to come, but setting up a new blog is a bit of a pain and then getting links around the chain of blogs correct can easily be fouled up.

*** Stay tuned even if you never have to suffer the joy of driving and repairing clunkers --- Doug Wiken

**Saving the past kills the present.. well sort of

Dakota Today has been short of posts in the last week or so.  I have been occupied learning to use a newer version of a program TomeRaider which I found years ago when I thought that would be a good name for something and found out somebody else thought that ...a couple years earlier.

Anyway, TomeRaider makes it relatively easy to make e-books that are well indexed and with a search engine that is fast.  The main problem with it is that readers of any book you or I make also has to have the program to read the e-book.  The good part however is that the current version is only around $20 US for the PC version.  There is cross-compatibility with a bunch of portable e-book devices however...but probably not a Kindle or Kindle DX.

To finally get to something of a point, I used TypePad's export option and have that text file in first stages of working in TomeRaider.  I have not gotten all the blank lines out of the 1700 posts made in about 5 years nor have I gotten the photos inserted yet and I have a couple of other problems that aren't that serious.  That means I haven't been posting a lot here which is kind of the irony indicated in the title.  The exported file of Dakota Today for five years had about 800,000 "words" in it, but many are not actual text I wrote...lot of "stuff" anyway.

If you can export your blog, and can use a text processor to insert a " <new> " at the beginning of every title of a post, you can then compile, and compress the file and have an e-book with a fast table of contents and and also a fast search possiblity...which can be even faster and more versatile if I can figure out a bit more of the category definition system.  The progam works, but the documentation really, really sucks.

Well, that may be more than you wanted to know, but if this interests you, let me know.

***Stay tuned for something about something...maybe photos of new kittens...ah, isn't that just so sweet..and Happy Mothers Day to all you mothers out there--- Doug Wiken

*** Dakota Today at KELOLAND Guest Blogs

Some posts in Dakota Today are showing up at the KELOLAND Guest blogs. Not sure if Dakota Today is in the main index yet or not, but apparently I did not completely screw up everything messing with a new (to me at least) blog interface used by KELOLAND.

 So Dakota Today may get a few more readers and I guess that means I may have to work a bit harder at this. Frankly, I don't know how PP at Dakota War College blog or Cory at Madville Times blog gets so many posts into their blogs or how Todd Epp fills something like 300 blogs..well maybe not quite that many. Anyway, the link to the KELO Guest Blog Aggregation site posted here yesterday and again below will give you an opportunity to view the latest 50 or so posts at a spectrum of SD Blogland.
Or if you just can't wait to see, check the link below:
 Dakota Today at KELOLAND
or the whole big show:  KELOLAND Blog Aggregator for Guest Blogs
 *** Stay tuned for more changes in the world of modern media ---Doug Wiken

**Scramble those passwords or else

Lately, those of us with passwords not containing numbers and both upper and lower case text have been getting irritable e-mail and brochures from our ISP. They will apparently allow passwords as short as eight characters. Mine right now has about 15 characters which are not random, but also not obvious.

 My son did a little rough calculating on odds of breaking a password, and there is probably probably not much difference between an eight character password with both upper and lower case characters and also numbers and a twice as long password with only lowercase. But enough of that. I decided to make a grid of letters and also a set of letters with both upper and lower case and numbers on one inch square cardboard so they could be drawn randomly out of a dish. I suppose this could all be done easily with a spreadsheet or database program, but there is something to be said for plain old text that doesn't need to reside on a computer. One of the grids this approach produced is copied below. Click on image for a larger size that will print well on an 8 1/2 by 11 page. Black text is upper and lower case alphabet in order and beneath are paired random characters. Uppercase random characters are in red. Random numbers are in yellow, and lowercase characters are in green in the grid.

 The example provided shows what you can get from an easily remembered block of text by substituting the colored random text. If the above were used to send "secret" messages, it would not be useful after being published. But, if you use it to convert plain text into random text for passwords unknown to the the unscrupulous anyway, it may not make much difference. Play with it and see what gibberish can be generated from an easily remembered block of text kept with the scrambled grid for future use if the scrambled password is lost. Hope this bit of humbug might be useful if you are getting bugged to use new odd passwords.

 

**Stay tuned even if your password is "Everythingisbeautifulinitsownway"--- Doug Wiken

**The poisoned DNS Well

Apparently a few weeks ago, almost all DNS servers were vulnerable to an attack which poisons the information our browsers use to convert a string of hard to remember numbers into something you can type easily and remember such as http://www.typepad.com  instead of a dozen or so nearly random looking numbers.  NPR discussed this today with the security expert that discovered the problem:

All Things Considered, July 26, 2008 · A few months ago, Internet security expert Dan Kaminsky discovered a major problem with the basic wiring of the Internet — one that could easily be exploited by hackers. It has to do with what's known as the domain name system, or DNS.

Kaminsky, who works for the Internet security company IO Active and is a consultant for Microsoft, tells NPR's Andrea Seabrook that he stumbled upon the flaw while tinkering with a way to make the Internet faster.

"You want to talk sinking feelings," he says. "This was a bug that was going to take months and month and months of work."

Essentially, the DNS contains a design flaw that could enable hackers to switch the Web site you're directed to when you type a URL into your Web browser. Without your knowledge, you could be transferred to a fake Web site that tries to steal your personal information.
NPR with more of DNS and Dan Kaminsky
http://snipurl.com/35m7b

At the NPR site are links to Kaminsky's blog and also to a site to test the DNS server you access sites with to determine if the vulnerability has been patched yet. Apparently 50% of the DNS servers have not yet been updated. If you find a problem, let your Internet Service Provider (ISP) now you have found a problem.

***Stay tuned, right now at least you are right here and not at a site in China or Singapore or Russia--- Doug Wiken

**Online anonymity prosecutable? Nails from China? An et cetera post

A recent prosecution of a woman who posed as a young male on a website and then allegedly got a young girl to commit suicide is being prosecuted in an apparently novel manner. The following is from a story in the Sunday Rapid City Journal May 18, 2008.

Beware: Anonymity may not protect you online Think twice beroe you sign up for an online service using a fake name or [fake] e-mail address. You could be committing a federal crime.

Federal prosecuters turned to novel interpretation of computer hacking law to indict a Missouri mother on charges connected to the suicide of a 13-year old MySpace user.

There is more in the paper story, but the case is raising questions since it gives a business contract the force of a law thus violations of a web site's user agreement could now lead to criminal sanctions.

In short, those anonymous posters who use that anonymity as a shield for their own outrageous, misleading, and insulting posts that most would not ever post under their own names with a real address may not feel quite so cocky if this prosecution leads to conviction and is not overturned as some kind of prosecutorial excess.

In a whole 'nother bag...how can China make common nails cheaper than US companies a few miles away from the actual steel sources? I can't believe there is even a dime's worth of human labor in a ton of nails. In the same vein, how can china plates be made cheaper there. They appear to be made by machine with I assume nearly zero human labor.

What has gone wrong? Why are our local stores importing so much stuff from China when the shipping would seem to eat up any labor costs compared to US made products?

I don't really know, but this all seems totally wrong unless it is entirely related to obscene executive salaries and unrealistic profit expectations of Wall Street and stockholders. Anybody out there actually know?

And, just to fill out this mixture of stuff, check the SD Magazine and see if you can identify the mystery photo apparently taken around 1914 by F. W. Byerly. Has google or anybody else put together building recognition software that can compare thousands of images for similarity?

SD Mag identify the "Mystery Building"

Maybe it is something for the "History Detectives" on Public TV.

**Stay tuned even if you just hate your vegetables and meats mixed together in a casserole which converts perfectly good food into an inedible meeting dish edible only with help of Pepto Bismol---Doug Wiken

**Cameras on SD Interstate highways showing weather conditions

This is a somewhat interesting site. It has links to still cameras along South Dakota
interstates. This is not a SD government site apparently. I have been unable to find
links to these cameras at a state government site. Anyway, might be useful if you
plan to travel or just want to get an idea of what the weather actually looks like around
the state.

New Window LINK toSD Interstate Cameras

Corrected link Dec 14, 2008

Below is a list of cameras at the site. "views" are hot links at the site above but not in list below.

Brookings North of town along I-29 & MP 135.9 view looking north view looking south Chamberlain East of town along I-90 & MP 268 looking west view West of town along I-90 & MP 258.8 looking east view Mitchell East of town along I-90 & MP 333.8 view looking east view looking west Murdo Murdo-West of town along I-90 & MP 189.5 view looking east view looking west North Sioux City North of town along I-29 & MP 1.5 looking north view North of town along I-29 @ MP 3.7 looking south view Rapid City East of town along I-90 & MP 63.1 looking east view West of town along I-90 & MP 54 looking west view Sioux Falls North of town along I-29 & MP 85.3 view looking north view looking south East of town along I-90 & MP 402 looking east view West of town along I-90 & MP 394.4 looking west view South of town along I-29 & MP 74.3 view looking north view looking south Sisseton North of town along I-29 & MP 234 view looking north view looking south Spearfish West of town along I-90 & MP 9.6 looking east view West of town along I-90 & MP 11 looking west view Sturgis East of town along I-90 & MP 35.6 view looking east view looking west West of town along I-90 & MP 28.6 view looking west Wall East of town along I-90 & MP 111.5 view looking west view looking east West of town along I-90 & MP 108.4 view looking west Watertown Watertown-North of town along I-29 & MP 179 view looking north view looking south

The wind blew around 35 miles per hour almost all night last night. Not good for sleeping from about 10PM until 7AM. It was from the south however and warmed up the area a bit however. I have had enough winter already. Days are starting to get longer. More time for the cameras listed above to actually work usefully.

**Stay Tuned for weather changes and political weather vanes flopping in the breezes--Doug Wiken

**The History of What You are Reading

Dakota Today has been around now for several years. Prior to that I had a blogger blog or two or more and a blog through Salon using the Radio blog system. I have played with a couple other blog systems as well. Citizen Cites was my first attempt and kept that going until blogger became incompatible with W98. It is still there however.

But, more to the point of what is actually important compared to my modest efforts to get blogging going in South Dakota is the actual history of Web logs or web-blogs or simply blogs. This post is not just about South Dakota Blogging, but also about blogging as a content management system and the general history of blogging. According to NPR yesterday after the first two years of Weblogs existing, there were something like 23 blogs functioning. But, in the last 10 years, the number of blogs has grown into 10 million or so. But, many of them are started and then remain nearly inactive for years. Several links you may find interesting if you are at all interested in blogs as a new communications medium are listed below.

New Window LINK to Dave Winer comment on His Oldest Running Blog..Scripting News

New Window LINK to Guardian Technology on Blogging Anniversary

New Window LINK to WIRED's Optimism about blogs after 10 years

New Window LINK to Blogging as a System

E Week comment on Slashdot started by CmndrTaco

In the continuation is text from one of the links above listing some blogging "milestones"...an abbreviated history of blogs as a media system... There are better histories. Maybe someday in another post........

**Stay tuned, I may find the money to keep this going for another year or so even if John can't read all the way through the posts and Christy wants me to write nice things about George Bush or be exiled from the USA--- Doug Wiken

**Dakota Today and MS IE ...and a new blog

I received an email indicating that Dakota Today was not displaying properly in Internet Explorer version 6.0. I usually use Firefox and had noticed not problems. Loaded up Dakota Today in IE 6.0 and sure enough, problems. Everything in the blog shows up as stacked in col one piled on top of each other ..sidelists, posts, side list. The e-mail noted that problem started about a week ago. I have edited nearly everything I have posted or done in the last two weeks or so and deleted a few things which I suspected might be causing problems, but Dakota Today still does not display properly. If you have any hints, or recollection of the day the problem began, please let me know why Dakota Today might display properly in Firefox, but not in Microsoft IE.

On another front, my posting here has been a bit sporadic because I have been trying to put together a new listing of blogs in the South Dakota BlogLand or blogosphere. You may have noticed the SDBlogList in the right column. It is still up and contains blog owners own description of their blogs. Keeping that updated has been a bit of a pain and time consuming. I decided to put up a new blog that contains my own biased perspective on SD Blogs. That is faster and more consistent. Take a look at it, and if your blog is displayed and you want to make a comment about what I wrote, please do so. I have the comments set as moderated, so they may not appear instantly however.

LINK--SD Blogland.. A personal list of SD Blogs

If you have suggestions for blogs I have missed, let me know. I have a few more links and images for more posts saved already, but have spent about 2 hours trying to find problem here at Dakota Today and did not get around to adding a few more SD Blogs.

***Stay tuned even if you already know of more sites to check than you have time for checking--- Doug Wiken

**Word verification..where did I leave my magic glasses?

You've seen the word verification systems...you know you have to type in a string of letters or numbers or count cats and dogs, do arithmetic, etc. for the privilege of sharing your wisdom with the world at a blog or forum. All this because some SOB figured out how to get a robot to scan systems without some "human only" interface and fill blogs and forums with spam.

Now and then you might run into one that not only stops robots but stops you as well. I wonder how color blind people handle some of these systems. Below is an image captured from my screen just as it was with no manipulation of size or contrast, etc.

If I loaded that into Irfanview and changed gamma and contrast, the letters and numbers became somewhat visible. This does not seem to be a particularly good system especially since the image is rather small to start with. I understand why sites do this, but if systems like the one below work, why use one that is so much harder to read and use?

I assume there are dozens of these systems by now. I would hope that affordable, human readable systems are available and site administrators would hope to use them unless their intention is to actually discourage all comments without actually saying so.

You may find TypePads system better or worse if you make a comment here.

**Stay tuned even if you have your magic word verification glasses on your face already-- Doug Wiken