I fixed the computer that would not remember passwords. It turns out to be something inside Firefox, at least Firefox 3.10. Just this once, Windows is not guilty. Here's how to fix passwords.
On the Firefox Menu Bar click Tools->Options. Click the Privacy tab. Make sure cookies are enabled and "clear private data on exit" is UNCHECKED. Remove any cookie EXCEPTIONS that might block sites you care about. Do Show Cookies and then delete all of them. Sometimes cookies get corrupted which confuses Firefox. Wiping them all out will force the websites to create new, clean cookies next time you visit.
Next click the Security tab. Check "Remember Passwords". Then click on Password EXCEPTIONS. Remove any Exceptions blocking sites you care about. In my case an Exception was blocking Facebook. I have no idea how that Exception got planted, but there it was.
Clearing it allowed me to click right into my facebook page without having to hand type my password each time.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
A tale of two computers.
One computer shows a clever parchment texture behind website text and gets me into websites withOUT demanding I type in a password. Those are good things. It chokes up on YouTube video, and it doesn't change the color of web links when I visit them. Those are bad things.
The other computer shows plain white behind the website text, and demands I type my password to get to my Facebook page or log me into other websites. Those are minor annoyances. But it plays YouTube and turns weblinks into a reminder color after I visit them. Those are good things.
Both machines run XP service pack 3, patched right up to yesterday. Both browse with Firefox 3.10. Both show no malware using AdAware, Spybot, AVG, ZoneAlarm, and Malicious Software Removal Tool. Both have better than half the disk free, Both have 750 Megs of RAM and the same set of speed up tweaks. Both internet using the same router & cable modem.
Beats me. I'm sure the reason is buried somewhere inside Windows, but where? I don't feel like re installing Windows just to satisfy my curiosity.
The other computer shows plain white behind the website text, and demands I type my password to get to my Facebook page or log me into other websites. Those are minor annoyances. But it plays YouTube and turns weblinks into a reminder color after I visit them. Those are good things.
Both machines run XP service pack 3, patched right up to yesterday. Both browse with Firefox 3.10. Both show no malware using AdAware, Spybot, AVG, ZoneAlarm, and Malicious Software Removal Tool. Both have better than half the disk free, Both have 750 Megs of RAM and the same set of speed up tweaks. Both internet using the same router & cable modem.
Beats me. I'm sure the reason is buried somewhere inside Windows, but where? I don't feel like re installing Windows just to satisfy my curiosity.
Arlen Spector turning Democrat
Despite all the hot air and venting about Arlen Spector switching parties, no one has commented upon the real meaning of Spector's switch. Namely, Pennsylvania is turning democratic, or at least Spector thinks it is, and he has a lot of experience in PA politics. More than I do for sure.
Republicans should be asking themselves "why are we loosing Pennsylvania?" rather than "Why did Spector abandon the GOP?"
So why is Pennsylvania (and a lot of other places) going Democratic? Certainly the GOP's poor record on spending ($750 billion TARP was a Bush bill), pork, and earmarks, association with, and bungling of, the Iraq war hurt. Great Depression II happened on Bush's watch and is blamed upon the party in power. A Democratic media, and a Democratic education establishment are doing their best to raise the new generation as Democrats. GOP support of the record companies against the downloaders of music alienates the young but doesn't bring any voters into the party. The record companies don't vote. Republican concentration upon hot-button wedge issues looses more votes among the new generation than it gains among the older generation.
What should the GOP do? Certainly it needs to pull up its socks on spending, pork, earmarks, campaign finance/bribery, and corruption. It needs programs to reduce the scandulous amounts of money (16% of GNP) spent on "health care". It needs to advocate Wall Street reforms to prevent Great Depression III from occuring. Outlawing credit default swaps, outlawing the secondary mortgage market, requiring stock holder approval of bonuses, and cleaning up the accounting "profession" would be a good start.
Republicans should be asking themselves "why are we loosing Pennsylvania?" rather than "Why did Spector abandon the GOP?"
So why is Pennsylvania (and a lot of other places) going Democratic? Certainly the GOP's poor record on spending ($750 billion TARP was a Bush bill), pork, and earmarks, association with, and bungling of, the Iraq war hurt. Great Depression II happened on Bush's watch and is blamed upon the party in power. A Democratic media, and a Democratic education establishment are doing their best to raise the new generation as Democrats. GOP support of the record companies against the downloaders of music alienates the young but doesn't bring any voters into the party. The record companies don't vote. Republican concentration upon hot-button wedge issues looses more votes among the new generation than it gains among the older generation.
What should the GOP do? Certainly it needs to pull up its socks on spending, pork, earmarks, campaign finance/bribery, and corruption. It needs programs to reduce the scandulous amounts of money (16% of GNP) spent on "health care". It needs to advocate Wall Street reforms to prevent Great Depression III from occuring. Outlawing credit default swaps, outlawing the secondary mortgage market, requiring stock holder approval of bonuses, and cleaning up the accounting "profession" would be a good start.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Portraits, on Facebook
Funny thing is, very few portraits posted on Facebook are any good. Or at least, I'd never recognize the person in the real world (as opposed to cyberspace). Lots of pictures taken from 50 feet away. In a 1 inch portrait, the face is about four pixels wide and just four fleshtone pixels don't give enough detail to recognize a face. Or, the person is wearing a funny hat , silly glasses, sunglasses, or something else that makes them unrecognizable. Bank robbers used to do that stuff to disguise themselves on the job. Or, somehow in this day and age of supergenius point and shoot cameras, they manage to overwelm the camera's microprocessor and post a picture that's over exposed, under exposed, out of focus, or blurry. They must be working at it, 'cause the cameras are very clever, and take flawless pictures under the most demanding situations. Or they take the portrait with an awful background.
The pro's post good portraits. For instance the executive counselor from this district for the last quarter century, posts a professionally shot portrait that's sharp as a tack, and I recognized him immediately.
The pro's post good portraits. For instance the executive counselor from this district for the last quarter century, posts a professionally shot portrait that's sharp as a tack, and I recognized him immediately.
Computer Resurrection
After adjusting to life on a laptop, I had to do something about the flaking desktop. As frequent followers of this blog remember, the Compaq Presario SR1750NX started doing sudden death incidents. It was sudden, no blue screen of death, no error messages, it just stopped, monitor blank. Fearing total loss of email, bookmarks, check book, letters, plans, software, and you know it all, I backed everything up to CDs and moved operations to a laptop.
But, the Presario was still cluttering up the desk, with monitor and wires and computery stuff hogging too much space. It was either fix it or scrap it.
A new motherboard ought to do the trick, since everything is on the motherboard. So, I took the ailing machine to the workshop and did a motherboarderectomy, looking for part numbers, model numbers, dimensions, hole patterns and anything that might help me find a new board cheap. The Presario had a slather of look alike cables going to lots of wierdo connectors all over the board. But with some handwritten cable labels made from masking tape, and a sketch, I figured it would all go back together.
While I had it apart, I took the shop vac and sucked humungous dustbunnies out of everywhere. I copied down every number I could see. The maker (Asus) didn't bother to put his name on the board (poor marketing) but did put his model number A8AE-LE on it. Two thoughts crossed my mind. The works (all the hi-tech) of this American desktop were designed and manufactured in Taiwan. Americans only do sheet metal work. Second thought was only another A8AE board was gonna fit the casework without a lot a sheet metal butchery. The motherboard carries connectors for VGA, USB, keyboard, mouse, mike, headset, LAN, and Firewire, and the connectors all fit neatly into matching holes in the case. Chances of finding another make of motherboard with the same connector arrangement are slim. From web surfing I knew the A8AE board was special to Compaq and not sold to anyone but Compaq. Getting a new one thru Compaq might be pricey. Very pricey.
So, I put it back together, while I still remembered how everything went. For grins I used a Pink Pearl pencil eraser to polish the gold fingers on the RAM sticks. With it all back together, I plugged it in, just to see. Sun of a gun. She powered right up, just like new.
Damn. Is this for real, or is the mystery crapout just biding its time? I left it running for two days, and it keep right on ticking.
This morning, I backed up last months work off the laptop and loaded it back onto the Presario. Everything looks good. It may be that a simple remove and replace has fixed it for good. Stay tuned for further developments.
But, the Presario was still cluttering up the desk, with monitor and wires and computery stuff hogging too much space. It was either fix it or scrap it.
A new motherboard ought to do the trick, since everything is on the motherboard. So, I took the ailing machine to the workshop and did a motherboarderectomy, looking for part numbers, model numbers, dimensions, hole patterns and anything that might help me find a new board cheap. The Presario had a slather of look alike cables going to lots of wierdo connectors all over the board. But with some handwritten cable labels made from masking tape, and a sketch, I figured it would all go back together.
While I had it apart, I took the shop vac and sucked humungous dustbunnies out of everywhere. I copied down every number I could see. The maker (Asus) didn't bother to put his name on the board (poor marketing) but did put his model number A8AE-LE on it. Two thoughts crossed my mind. The works (all the hi-tech) of this American desktop were designed and manufactured in Taiwan. Americans only do sheet metal work. Second thought was only another A8AE board was gonna fit the casework without a lot a sheet metal butchery. The motherboard carries connectors for VGA, USB, keyboard, mouse, mike, headset, LAN, and Firewire, and the connectors all fit neatly into matching holes in the case. Chances of finding another make of motherboard with the same connector arrangement are slim. From web surfing I knew the A8AE board was special to Compaq and not sold to anyone but Compaq. Getting a new one thru Compaq might be pricey. Very pricey.
So, I put it back together, while I still remembered how everything went. For grins I used a Pink Pearl pencil eraser to polish the gold fingers on the RAM sticks. With it all back together, I plugged it in, just to see. Sun of a gun. She powered right up, just like new.
Damn. Is this for real, or is the mystery crapout just biding its time? I left it running for two days, and it keep right on ticking.
This morning, I backed up last months work off the laptop and loaded it back onto the Presario. Everything looks good. It may be that a simple remove and replace has fixed it for good. Stay tuned for further developments.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Follow on to Horror Story
Apparently the electronic medical records business is in as bad shape as I feared. Yesterday's WSJ had a story about the electronic medical record system used by the Veteran's Administration. The system is public domain open source and very-low-cost to free. VA has been using it for twenty years. One hitch, the VA merely offers the source code. The hospital has to employ some computer geeks to compile it and install it and do maintainance (bug fixes). The VA software is good except for one thing. No billing functions (VA doesn't bill veterans). The hospital computer geeks will have to find or write a billing module, but this has been done.
The article went on to say that competing commercial medical records programs cost heavily and are not compatible with each other. This means that electronic patient records created by system X cannot be read by system Y. So change hospitals or doctors or health plans and your medical record is in jeopardy.
You might have known.
Looks like a business opportunity for some computer geeks to set themselves up in business offering the VA program to hospitals.
The article went on to say that competing commercial medical records programs cost heavily and are not compatible with each other. This means that electronic patient records created by system X cannot be read by system Y. So change hospitals or doctors or health plans and your medical record is in jeopardy.
You might have known.
Looks like a business opportunity for some computer geeks to set themselves up in business offering the VA program to hospitals.
NYT presents a 1920's idea as new technology
Good old NYT, life would be boring without them. They ran a big spread on ocean thermal power, presenting it as the answer to the energy problem and a promising new technology. Of course the highly educated Times men didn't know that ocean thermal power was pioneered in the 1920's by Georges Claude, a wealthy French scientist. Claude built a test plant on the shore of Cuba in 1929 which worked but produced little power. He built a sea borne ship mounted unit in 1934 which didn't work much better. In the end Claude gave up and scuttled his ship in a place where the ocean was especially deep.
The concept of ocean thermal power is fairly simple. You build a steam engine that runs on a fluid that boils from the heat of the warm surface water, and condenses in the coolth of the deep bottom water. This requires a long pipe reaching down to the cold bottom water layers. This pipe has been the bane of ocean thermal power experiments. Either it breaks in a storm, or the feed water pump uses up most of the output of the plant. Heat engines work off a thermal difference. The greater the temperature difference the more power the engine will deliver. Old fashioned steam locomotives worked off a temperature difference of 300 degrees F.
Warm tropical ocean water might be 80 degrees F. The cold bottom water is never colder than 32 degrees F, yielding a temperature difference of only 50 degrees F at the most favorable locations, like the Carribbean. Off the New England coast, the ocean water never goes above 50 degrees F, reducing the temperature difference to a mere 20 degrees F.
Since Claude's experiments 70 years ago, other's have tried, but no one has been able to squeeze enough power out of a 50 degree temperature difference to make the effort worth while. We are talking steam engines here. Steam engines have been well understood for better than a hundred years. It is unlikely that some intrepid inventor will make a great breakthru in steam engine technology.
The concept of ocean thermal power is fairly simple. You build a steam engine that runs on a fluid that boils from the heat of the warm surface water, and condenses in the coolth of the deep bottom water. This requires a long pipe reaching down to the cold bottom water layers. This pipe has been the bane of ocean thermal power experiments. Either it breaks in a storm, or the feed water pump uses up most of the output of the plant. Heat engines work off a thermal difference. The greater the temperature difference the more power the engine will deliver. Old fashioned steam locomotives worked off a temperature difference of 300 degrees F.
Warm tropical ocean water might be 80 degrees F. The cold bottom water is never colder than 32 degrees F, yielding a temperature difference of only 50 degrees F at the most favorable locations, like the Carribbean. Off the New England coast, the ocean water never goes above 50 degrees F, reducing the temperature difference to a mere 20 degrees F.
Since Claude's experiments 70 years ago, other's have tried, but no one has been able to squeeze enough power out of a 50 degree temperature difference to make the effort worth while. We are talking steam engines here. Steam engines have been well understood for better than a hundred years. It is unlikely that some intrepid inventor will make a great breakthru in steam engine technology.
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