Yesterday, when I signed up with FeedBurner, I wasn't motivated by the cool features this host provides; I was motivated by sheer laziness. I wanted a browser-friendly feed, but I didn't want to take the time to learn how to create style sheets for XML documents. I wanted a collection of "Add to" buttons for the popular aggregators, but I didn't want to have to read and remember the associated terms and conditions. FeedBurner to the rescue! Within a couple of minutes, I had a feed that could be easily accessed by even the newest of RSS users. And I was quite pleased with my shiny new feed: I like how it looks, and I like the fact the "Subscribe Now" area not only makes subscription easy, but also says to the new user, "You have options. You can pick the aggregator that's right for you, and here's a bunch to get you started."

Needless to say, I was rather annoyed when I looked at my feed in Internet Explorer 7 which is in public beta. Without first checking for an associated style sheet, IE 7 slapped its own format on my feed. My "Subscribe Now" area is gone.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that Microsoft is doing their part to make RSS easier for everyone. But I also think IE should respect the appearance of a feed if that feed already uses browser-friendly style sheets. Failing to do so potentially results in the removal of information that the feed creator feels is valuable -- information that the creator assumes is being seen be people viewing the feed in a web browser. In the case of FeedBurner feeds, Microsoft is removing competing aggregators. Coincidence? I think not. By hiding this information, Microsoft is making it more difficult to find and use other products. Why does this sound familiar? Oh yeah, now I remember.

Robert Scoble has said on several occasions that he wants Microsoft's evil back. Robert, you got your wish. Now pass the genie bottle over here, 'cause it's my turn. I don't mind an option in IE whereby the user could opt to override the existing formatting in favor of using the IE styles. But it should NOT be the default. Let more advanced RSS users turn it on if they see fit. Thanks to FeedBurner, I had a feed with the look, feel, and features I want applied to my content -- especially for new users -- and I want it back.

Scott Karp pointed out something which I had not previously considered: We, the long-time users of RSS, aren't doing a heck of a whole lot to make new users want to embrace it. Instead we slap a cryptic little orange "XML" graphic on our site and link it directly to our feed without further explanation -- a move which pretty much guarantees that the few new users curious enough to click on it get scared away. Then we shake our heads in disbelief when Yahoo comes out with a whitepaper that claims things like:

Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.

27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.

So I have decided to follow Scott's lead:

• I signed up with FeedBurner. As a result, my new feed is browser-friendly and facilitates subscription for users of popular aggregators. If you're subscribed to the old feed, that's fine. It's what I gave FeedBurner, so nothing should change for you.
• I created a link to this feed called "Subscribe (RSS)". "Subscribe" is there because it is a familiar, user-friendly term. But I didn't want to leave it at that -- or go with "Subscribe with a Reader" as Scott suggested -- because I want people to make the connection between subscription and RSS; not be protected from it.
• Just in case the "RSS" bit leads to confusion or -- hopefully -- curiosity, I wrote my own What is RSS? introduction for new users and placed a link to it immediately beneath the link to subscribe. That was a tough document to write. I want to explain things sufficiently for a brand new user to get it without insulting anyone's intelligence. I'm not sure if I succeeded... Feel free to comment here with any feedback.
• These items were placed at the very top of my sidebar so that visitors see them without having to scroll.

The one thing I couldn't bring myself to do is kill the XML graphic. It's convention, and it's easy to spot when visually skimming a site for its feed.

I'm not sure yet how I feel about RFID. Some people think it's a useful way to track inventory; others are concerned about privacy violations. And then there's the group of folks who believe it will be a mark of one's "allegiance to the Antichrist." I kid you not. As a quick aside, ever since I heard about the connection between RFID and the book of Revelation on... I think it was the Discovery Channel... I keep picturing a conversation between a young child and her parents at the dinner table:

Child: Will Fifi and Fluffy go to heaven?

Mother: Of course not honey. Don't be silly. Want some peas?

Child (nearly in tears): But why not?

Father (in a soothing voice): Sweetie, remember when we took Fifi and Fluffy to the vet to get those chips so that we can find them if they ever get lost?

Child: uh-huh

Father (voice still soothing): Well, those chips not only let us find our pets, but they let the Antichrist find them too. So I'm afraid Fifi and Fluffy will have to burn in hell for all eternity when they die.

Mother: Who wants more potatoes?

Anyway...

The State of New Hampshire is considering legislation on RFID, presumably to prevent its misuse. I hadn't heard about this bill, but the state employees certainly have because they are exempt from protection during working hours.

358-S:4 Restrictions on State Use of Tracking Devices.

I. The state or a political subdivision, department, or agency shall not issue, or permit others to issue on its behalf, any identification document that contains a tracking device or uses tracking devices to locate an individual, either directly or indirectly through other persons, except in the following circumstances:

(a) To locate a person who is incarcerated in the state prison or county jail, is housed in a mental health facility pursuant to a court order after having been charged with a crime, is subject to court-ordered electronic monitoring, or is a resident of a state or county hospital, nursing facility or assisted living facility;

(b) When the tracking device is implanted in an identification document that is to be used on a toll road or bridge owned or operated by the state or a political subdivision, department, or agency thereof, but only for the specific purpose of collecting funds for the use of that road or bridge; or

(c) To locate a state employee engaged in the performance of his or her official duties during normal working hours.

I have no problem with paragraph (a). I'm in favor of paragraph (b) because it's creepy to think that the government might use E-Z Pass transponders to monitor where we go. Although I do wonder if "collecting funds for the use of that road or bridge" might include issuing speeding tickets based on the amount it time it took you to get from toll booth A to toll booth B... Paragraph (c) is not good. If you want to know where a state employee is, why not use cell phones, walkie-talkies, or pagers and ask the person where he or she happens to be? Why does the state need to be able to monitor the location of its employees at any given time? I don't think it does, and I do think this exemption lends credence to those who worry about the implications of RFID with respect to our privacy. Besides, surely such a move will impact morale. After all, nothing says "You're untrustworthy" like a tracking device. Sheesh.

Gee, I wonder how the driver of this van feels about Bush. It's so hard to tell....

Via BuzzMachine.

Ripping CDs has been interesting. I had forgotten all about some of the music in my collection, like It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah from Black Grape and Electriclarryland from the Butthole Surfers. Listening to these forgotten albums has been fun and, apparently, rejuvenating: I just got carded for the first time since... I don't know when. Being 35 and looking every bit of it -- if not more! -- I was surprised.

So what has been collecting dust in your music collection? Have a listen!

UPDATE: Just found Big Band Fever (2 volume set): Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, ... Very cool!

I have been considering whether or not I need an MP3 player. "What!?!" you exclaim in disbelief, "A podcast-listening, (former) iTunes-using, geek such as yourself doesn't own an MP3 player?" Well, no, I don't -- at least not in the traditional iPodish sense. That doesn't mean I'm glued to my computer, mind you. I have placed a series of 900MHz wireless transmitters, speakers, and headphones throughout the condo through which I can listen to music, podcasts, audio books, television shows, and the radio without having to carry around an MP3 player and wear ear buds. When I want to take something on the road, I just put it on an SD card and listen on my iPAQ. The one thing that was missing was a decent way to listen in the car -- at least until yesterday when I picked up a Belkin TuneCast II FM transmitter for my iPAQ. Problem solved. So I really cannot see any reason to buy an MP3 player. Is there something I'm missing out on because I don't have one?

Anyway, now that I have a solution for the car, I figured I'd start ripping all of my CDs to disk and moving songs over to SD cards. By the way, 1 GB SanDisk cards are on sale for $69.99 at CompUSA this week, which is great given the number of music CDs I have. I hadn't counted. If you had asked me yesterday, I would have guessed around 40. It turns out I have 96, plus whatever's in the car, which could easily be 10 more. If the average CD costs $10, that's over $1000, not counting all of the music I've bought through iTunes. Granted, that's not a huge amount of money, but it's not a small chunk of change either. And it makes me wonder about the economics of the music industry's current attempts to stop illegal distribution of music through intimidation and lawsuits directed at individuals who lack the money and time to single-handedly fight back.

I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that the majority of people who get their music through file sharing networks would not have bought all of those illicitly-gained albums or songs if such networks didn't exist. Sure, they might spend a bit to get their favorite tunes, but why would you use a p2p network to get your music unless there is something preventing you from buying it legally, like a lack of money, or mom and dad telling you "no"? If I'm correct, then the end result of the RIAA's and MPA's current efforts will NOT be increased revenue because the folks in question aren't going to turn around and spend lots of money on music -- because they can't. If you ask me, that's a pretty large investment for little to no financial return. How does that make sense?

It makes even less sense when you consider the fact that the industry's actions are pissing off their existing customer base. I refuse to buy any more music from the industry at least until they stop their ridiculous behavior. Instead, I'm buying music from independent artists through services like CDBaby.com. And from what I've read in the blogosphere, I'm not the only one boycotting. So not only is the music industry failing to gain new customers through their tactics, they're losing existing ones. Are they just plain stupid? Don't they realize that they are cutting off their proverbial nose to spite their proverbial face? Guys: Proverbial noses, just like real noses, are pretty darn hard to reattach. To be honest, I've been enjoying the expansion of my music collection beyond what the industry thinks we should hear. And I'm feeling good about the fact that a significant portion of the money I spend on CDs from CDBaby.com goes directly to the artist -- which is how it should be. Now that I think about it, I might never go back to supporting the music industry. So RIAA and MPA: Keep doing what you're doing because your demise may very well be exactly what the doctor ordered for both artists and their fans.

I was going through my feeds this afternoon when I noticed something different on Minor Tweaks: a link for "I Have OPINIONS." What I found there was a page for a podcast named, not surprisingly, I Have OPINIONS. I had a listen and.... How shall I describe it? Each show is a short essay (on a silly topic about which no one would write an essay) written in the genre of Third Grade Homework Assignment and delivered via text to speech. But that doesn't fully capture its flavor. It reminds me of the time when I shattered my wrist and was given oxycodone and told to "take it easy". Taking it easy soon became really, really boring so I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking in order to write. Some of what I wrote was work that I needed to do, and some was writing just for the sake of writing. The resulting documents all made perfectly good sense at the time, but when I went back later and read them without the benefit of the painkillers, it was clear that I had been VERY stoned. I Have OPINIONS is kinda like that. So have a listen for yourself. I think it's amusing, and you've been properly warned.

Last week on Hometown Tales, I learned that one of the things that made Nashua unique was triangular manhole covers. I did a bit of research and found some info at Wikipedia as well in this story originally in the Telegraph. I also looked around today when I was out running errands, but I didn't find any -- although it is admittedly hard to spot them at normal driving speeds, and getting close enough on foot to see them can be dangerous. But that might not be why I failed to find any. As the Telegraph explains:

...when covers have broken or streets have been torn up for other reasons over the past year or so, Nashua has been replacing the triangular covers with newfangled circular ones. It's a slow process and triangular covers will remain around for years to come, but like VCRs and afternoon newspapers, they're on the downward slope to extinction.

Seeing as how that article was written in 2003 with quite a bit of road repair occurring between then and now, it's going to be harder and harder to find them. So where are they? If you happen to know, please leave a comment. And thanks in advance!

Yesterday I discovered MyStickies (hat tip to Spyndle). I've been using it since then, and I really like it. Based on what it does now -- and what the creators indicate it will eventually do -- MyStickies might become the ultimate social bookmarking tool for the ADHD crowd.

The ADHD crowd???

You see, my problem is not a lack of decent bookmarking tools. I currently use Yahoo's MyWeb 2.0, another tool currently in private beta, and, to a lesser extent, del.icio.us. Instead my problem is three-fold:

• If I get distracted before I can bookmark something, it doesn't get bookmarked
• Even if it does get bookmarked, there's an excellent chance I won't take the time to retrieve -- or remember that I even created -- that bookmark unless it's really important
• In order to keep my bookmarks from becoming cluttered with things that are not important over the long run, I only bookmark the stuff I really care about and anticipate caring about in the future.

I also have a related, but non-web-based problem: I can't remember jack. I leave myself notes; I use Outlook's calendar and tasks list with a healthy dose of the reminder feature and then sync it with my PDA; I set alarms in my cell phone. I'm still hopeless because I never find the notes, or the reminders/alarms occur when I cannot stop what I'm doing to deal with them -- or I shouldn't deal with them, but I get distracted by them and then forget to do the thing I was doing when I got interrupted by the reminder.

Most people with ADHD I've talked to have these same problems.

Enter MyStickies. To bookmark the page you are viewing, all you have to do is click on the "New Sticky" button and write. Because you can view all your stickies from your Accounts page, you can use MyStickies like you would use the current social bookmarking sites. However, because it is so very easy to slap a note on the page you are viewing, and later delete that note when you're through with it, it also makes sense to use MyStickies for things you wouldn't bother to bookmark as well as for setting reminders. And the fact that you can place a sticky on any page, means that the reminder appears when it's relevant and at a time when you can deal with it. For instance, I might put a note on my company's online calendar reminding me that I need to schedule a meeting. (What better time to schedule a meeting than when you're already looking at your calendar, eh?) Or I might place the URL of a new movie I heard about in a sticky on my favorite movies site so that the next time I'm in the mood for a movie I find my note.

I am so loving MyStickies!

My one concern -- which wasn't a concern until I read some of the comments at Jacob Wright's blog -- is privacy. As was pointed out there, if the MyStickies extension automatically displays the stickies you've placed on any given page, it must check every page you visit to see if you've placed a sticky there. Are those site visits being logged or discarded? I would hope discarded, but I haven't seen that stated anywhere. If they are being logged, I would be much happier if MyStickies would become an AttentionTrust member and also build into the MyStickies tool what the Attention Recorder has: A "do not record visits to this site" option.

Today and tomorrow is the rally to stop eminent domain abuse in Weare. I wish I had known sooner. It would have been fun to see how much media coverage this is getting and what the reaction of the locals is. New Hampshire being the Live Free or Die state, residents don't take too kindly to being told what to do, especially by outsiders like this rally's organizer. By the same token, they don't like the idea of eminent domain. I wouldn't mind seeing a Hotel Chez Souter, but then I'm a non-native who enjoys instances of ironic revenge.

This rally got me to thinking: We haven't heard much about the Freestaters lately. So I wandered over to their site. Apparently they're still a bit shy of the goal of 20,000 people moving up here.

That might explain it....

Apparently the wireless network used by officers in the Keene P.D. interferes with the computers at Dunkies, forcing the painful choice between donuts and law-enforcement-related connectivity. Fortunately, they are planning a network upgrade. Coincidence?

Read the full story at Homeland Stupidity, a blog that I stumbled across thanks to an item in my Technorati Watchlist (New Hampshire, not homeland stupidity ) and may have to subscribe to. For instance, did you know that your innocent geocache might be viewed as a terrorist's plot?

This country already has far too many "super centers" contributing to urban sprawl, a more generic America, and the decline of small, local businesses. And Wal-Mart is the worst of the bunch given, among other things, the lousy way they treat their employees. So I'm thrilled anytime I hear that a local community has defeated Wal-Mart's attempts to force itself upon the residents. Thus it is with complete and utter joy -- excuse me while I do my happy dance again -- that my own city of Nashua denied Wal-Mart the ability to:

• force a locally-owned business out of their space against their will
• destroy area wetlands, which Wal-Mart claimed they'd replace. Yeah, right.
• create a traffic nightmare on Amherst Street, which already suffers from clogs of Bostonian proportions
• do all of the above when there's an existing Wal-Mart super center a few miles away on the same road

Now I know how the Munchkins felt at the end of the Wizard of Oz. Ding Dong the Proposal's Dead! Hail Planning Board!

Read more at WalmartWatch.com.

Double Rainbow's pumpkin ice cream. This is REALLY good!

This evening I decided to head south of the border (to Massachusetts) to pick up some more mead from Wine Society. While I was there, I looked around and found that beer from the tasting that I wanted to warn you about. It's Cisco Brewers' Moor Porter. As Cisco's Randy states:

I love a full, flavorful dark beer so I went all out and pushed the envelope of the porter style.

Clearly some envelopes should not be pushed, at least not that hard. Avoid this beer.

As long as I was in the neighborhood, I decided to stop by Trader Joe's for some cheese and crackers to go along with my freshly-replenished mead supply. I love Trader Joe's, and they always have a great selection of, well, pretty much everything -- including tasty cheeses. Besides, I had never met a cheese I didn't like. So it was without hesitation that I selected a cheese I had never heard of: Saint Nectaire, a semi-soft cheese from France.

When I got home and began unloading my purchases from the car, I noticed a faint musty smell coming from one of my TJ's bags. I dismissed it figuring the bags had been in a damp environment. I soon discovered it wasn't the bags, but the cheese itself. "This can't be good," I thought, but immediately reconsidered. After all, some cheeses are stinky. A quick web search confirmed what I was smelling:

The aroma could be described as the smell of an old, dark and humid cellar of rye straw on which it ripened, a distinctive characteristic of this cheese.

Fine, I'll open it up and try it. How bad can it be? Answer: I would have killed for some Moor Porter to get the taste out of my mouth. This wasn't humid, or old, or straw. This was foul. This was taking the envelope, stomping on it with muddy boots, then shredding it, and finally lighting the resulting scraps on fire. This was just plain wrong, and it had to be destroyed.

Once the garbage disposal had done its duty, I decided to perform another, more specific search: "saint nectaire" trader joe's. Apparently I'm not alone. Firefly Fifty Five recently had the same experience:

Sometimes I like to try a new cheese - I bought a saint nectaire cheese at Trader Joe's, but found it disgustingly smelly and gross. I've read it can be mild with a nutty, even woody, flavor. Well, it tasted like a cow chewed it up and crapped it out. Even though they would refund the few bucks, I tossed it out.

So stay away from Saint Nectaire, at least at TJ's. Maybe when I've fully recovered, I'll see if Whole Foods has this cheese.

Words cannot do this justice, so you'll just have to go check it out for yourself.

Via Scripting News.

Last week Technorati celebrated its 1st "tagiversary". Congrats guys! Tags have become a regular part of how I do things: I tag my blog entries, I use tags to search for content, and I use tags when I store and retrieve items on the various bookmarking sites I am trying out. I like tags a lot.

That said, I find that the use of tags as currently implemented has some limitations. There's the issue of tag selection, of course. In other words, how many synonyms and word variations do I need to associate with my content in order for it to be found by people interested in that content? I don't think this is a big issue, however, and I suspect it will resolve itself over time through conventions adopted by members of each content community and through the growing data that search sites are surely gathering on synonyms, word variations, and related terms. For instance, perhaps vegetarians will get into the habit of using the tag "vegetarianism" (because that's what they see on other veggie blogs) which will make articles on that topic easier to find. But at the same time, a search on "vegetarianism" might also return items tagged "vegetarian" or "meat-free."

The other issue I have with tags, which I think is deeply rooted in my being a left-brained, former librarian , is that tags are imprecise: merely keywords strung together with commas and lacking a way to indicate the extent to which they describe the item they label. Is an article equally about all of its associated tags? Is it primarily about one tag, and only secondarily about the others? Do some of the tags elaborate on other tags more than they describe the article? You won't know for sure unless you read the article.

Let me give you an example. Let's say that I decide to rant about the cost of home heating, in particular natural gas, on my blog. My article will focus on New Hampshire insomuch as that is where I live. And I might write a bit about LIHEAP because I really am concerned about folks up here on limited/fixed incomes. I might label the resulting post with the following tags:

• home heating
• natural gas
• cost
• New Hampshire
• LIHEAP
• rant

All of these tags describe my hypothetical article and should help anyone interested in that specific topic to find it. The thing is, not all of those tags should be weighted equally. Sure, the article is about home heating, but not home heating in general. It's about how much it costs to heat your home. That's why I put "cost" in there. But the article is not about "cost" in general; "cost" further defines the home heating issue being discussed. My hypothetical article is not about any of those tags in general. Someone wanting to know more about, say, New Hampshire who searches only for the tag "New Hampshire" probably won't be interested in my article. But depending on how many people tagged their recent articles "New Hampshire," it could easily show up among the results.

So what can we do? Good question. I wish I had a good answer. I'm much better at pointing out (what I feel to be) problems than I am at finding solutions. Still, in the spirit of tossing things out for consideration.... Subjects assigned to publications by librarians are hierarchical. For instance, I just glanced in the front of some of my ancient print books to check out the Library of Congress' Cataloging-in-Publication Data. A couple of examples:

Intellectual Property: Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright
Intellectual Property - United States

Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut, Kurt - Interviews
Novelists, American - 20th century - Interviews
Fiction - Authorship

Something like that might work: Tack the tags that further elaborate upon a main tag at the end (e.g. home heating - natural gas - New Hampshire - cost - rant). That wouldn't involve much more typing because you're just putting a dash (or some other punctuation mark, like a period) between tags instead of a comma. The comma would still be used to separate main tags. So I could do:

home heating - natural gas - New Hampshire - cost - rant, LIHEAP

which would indicate that the blog entry in question is about home heating and LIHEAP. The home heating bit isn't about home heating in general, but rather it's about the use of natural gas heating in New Hampshire. Even more specifically, it's about the cost. And it's not a proper article, piece of research, or something else equally meaningful. It's a rant about that topic.

Because oftentimes an article addresses multiple topics, perhaps the order within the comma-separated list could indicate what the article is primarily about. So the hypothetical tagging scheme I used above would indicate my entry is primarily about the home heating stuff and secondarily about LIHEAP. If it were mostly about LIHEAP, I'd put LIHEAP first in the list.

Mind you, I'm just thinking out loud. I'm not trying to argue that we should adopt a convention like the above. One of the great things about tags is that the content creator (or collector) gets to decide how to classify each item, and I don't want to change that. By the same token, I really want a way to use tags precisely both to describe and to locate items in the ever-growing sea of information.

I just found a wiki-based cookbook. It still looks pretty new, but I was pleased to find two things I like, wikis and recipes, merged into one creature.

A friend of mine and I went out to a beer tasting last night at Wine Society. It was a lot of fun! The offerings were several microbrewery stouts and porters. The winner, at least in my mind, was Fat Dog Stout:

From Pennsylvania's preeminent micro-brewery, the Fat Dog is a fusion of traditional British-style Stouts. This unique bottle conditioned ale merges the smooth complexity of Oatmeal Stout and the extremely rich maltiness and assertive hoppiness of Imperial Stout. The Fat Dog has an inviting silky black color, and a prominent roasted malt character, with a chocolaty coffee-like finish. 9% abv.

With the runner up being Newport Storm's Blizzard Porter:

2005 GIBF medal winner. A full bodied, dark porter with a profound toasted flavor balanced with ample hopping. Dedicated to the Blizzard of 1978, this porter is perfect for a winter day. A hint of roasted chocolate and a spicy aftertaste warm the soul of this brew.

If you can get your hands on either of those, I highly recommend them.

We also tried one porter which I would recommend avoiding at all costs, but, alas, its name escapes me. As I recall, it was from either Rhode Island or Massachusetts. My friend suggested it tasted somewhat like cranberries. Someone nearby suggested cleaning solution while another taster took a sip and winced. Hopefully my friend will remember that beer's name so that I can properly warn you.

After the tasting, we browsed a bit and came across mead. They had mead at Wine Society. I was surprised to learn that mead still existed, and more surprised still when I found out what mead is. I figured mead would be rather beer-like. Shows you what I know. Mead is made from fermented honey. We went ahead and got a bottle of Lurgashall Winery's English Mead. It's definitely an acquired taste. I didn't care much for it upon my first sip, but once you get past the images of plastic honey bears that are inevitably evoked from the smell, mead is actually quite nice. It reminds me of sherry -- honey-flavored sherry. And if it's good enough for Beowulf.... I even found gotmead.com, "your mead resource on the web," in case you want to learn more about this unusual drink.

Microsoft's response to Steve Gibson's claim that the WMF vulnerability was an intentional backdoor is that Steve is wrong:

Now, there's been some speculation that you can only trigger this by using an incorrect size in your metafile record and that this trigger was somehow intentional. That speculation is wrong on both counts. The vulnerability can be triggered with correct or incorrect size values. If you are seeing that you can only trigger it with an incorrect value, it's probably because your SetAbortProc record is the last record in the metafile. The way this functionality works is by registering the callback to be called after the next metafile record is played. If the SetAbortProc record is the last record in the metafile, it will be more difficult to trigger the vulnerability.

via BetaNews.

On the most recent Security Now! podcast, Steve Gibson suggests that the WMF Vulnerability might be an intentional backdoor and not just another one of Microsoft's oopses.

Leo and I carefully examine the operation of the recently patched Windows MetaFile vulnerability. I describe exactly how it works in an effort to explain why it doesn't have the feeling of another Microsoft "coding error". It has the feeling of something that Microsoft deliberately designed into Windows. Given the nature of what it is, this would make it a remote code execution "backdoor". We will likely never know if this was the case, but the forensic evidence appears to be quite compelling.

Listen to the show -- or read it: Steve provides transcripts.

Just got back from the doctor with the results from my liver biopsy. I have Hepatic Adenoma, which is a benign growth. Benign is good. Knowing what I have is good too. Granted, if the doctor had instead told me I had cancer, I might not say that. But the endless tests were really starting to take their toll. I mean being told, test after test after test that:

• You have a condition
• It may be serious -- but don't worry
• The most recent test didn't tell us anything new
• You have to go back to the hospital to have ANOTHER test

starts to wear on one's nerves. Especially when you're on test 6, then 7, then 8, and the hospital staff starts treating you like an old friend. After a while, you start to think that you really are sick even though your chief complaint was a bit of a cough that you can't seem to lose.

In the spirit of "You must learn one new thing every day": One of the chief causes of HA in women is the pill which, I just realized, I've been taking for half of my life (How scary is that?). That's the presumed culprit according to my doctor. Guess I won't be refilling that script this month! I also learned that

The incidence among long-term users of oral contraceptives is approximately 4 cases per 100,000.

All throughout school, my teachers insisted I wasn't special. Ha! Or make that HA! I think I'll buy a lottery ticket today. In all seriousness though, if you've been on the pill for umpteen years as I have, maybe you should ask your doctor about HA. (Geez, I sound like a commercial. "Ask your doctor if pseudomedicocrapinene is right for you!") Yes, statistics say it's rare but how many women are actually tested for it? From what I gather from my doctor, not many: This growth isn't discovered until you have symptoms -- which means the growth has probably gotten pretty large and is doing something yucky like causing internal bleeding -- or they happen to stumble across it while trying to diagnose something else. So I have to question the 4 in 100,000 figure.

Anyway... I've gone off on a tangent I didn't intend to. Bottom line: Seems I'm as healthy as I thought I was before this saga began. Yea! And I don't have to have another test for 6 months, at which point we will hopefully find that the lung nodules are the same and that the HA has shrunk. Maybe Friday the 13th isn't so unlucky after all....

I just opened my gas bill. Holy flying crap! In non-winter months my bill is just under $30. Last month it was just under $90. This month it is $152.90, and it hasn't even been that cold. I bet next month I'll be over $200.... On top of this, my electric bill has nearly doubled since I started running my furnace. And I live in a condo, whereas many people up here live in drafty old houses. I bet they had some frightening bills. Wow.... I hope the LIHEAP funding is sufficient for folks on fixed/limited incomes 'cause it's just not right to have to choose between necessities like food and heat.

Remember the good ol' days when the most disturbing violators of our privacy were telemarketers? Alas, those days have come and gone. I don't know which is creepier: the fact that the government is listening in on our conversations, or that records of our incoming and outgoing calls can be easily bought. Heck, AMERICAblog bought Wesley Clark's records for $89.95.

This issue was covered briefly on CBS News tonight, and apparently it has caught the attention of some legislators:

But some in Congress are working to change that, introducing legislation next week that would criminalize the accessing and selling of phone logs.

That's a start. But how about some details, CBS? Who is introducing this legislation? What specifically will it say? Can it really be effective? Is it widely supported? I wish that the television networks would use their sites as a way to further enlighten us on the topics they introduce during the brief gaps between commercials.

"I just gotta figure out what to do about all these messes I've made.... What would Mr. Spock do?.... I've got it! Hey kid!"

It's a shame all the intelligent adults keep running away....

Thanks to Yahoo! News Photos for the laugh.

I may have a new favorite Savage Chickens cartoon: The Undead of Oz.

Check this out: The cafeteria at Atlanta's Grady High School has a special vegetarian lunch line as a result of student advocacy. That in and of itself is awesome, but it gets even better: The vegetarian options are being embraced by the student body as a whole.

Originally designed for the 30 students in (Miriam) Archibong's Vegetarian Club, meat-eaters also jumped in line and the cafeteria now serves vegetarian entrees to up to 400 of the school's 1,200 students each day.

Way to go Miriam, and way to go Grady High! Read the article.

... when you're waiting until it's time to go to the hospital for a liver biopsy. The hospital must have read my mind because they just called to let me know that they're having a "light day" and could move me up. That'll work. Might as well get it over with, right?

There is some good news, though: Last week I had my follow-up chest CAT scan, and the nodules in my lungs haven't changed at all. Yea! So I don't have to have another one of those for 6 months, which is not quite as good as a clean bill of health, but it's good enough.

Well, I guess it's time to get ready to head out. Wish me luck!

This evening I booted up my laptop and was promptly notified by Automatic Update that something new was ready to install. Sure enough, it was the WMF patch. It's about time. Yea!

If you installed the unofficial patch you should uninstall it and then install the official one. Instructions can be found at SANS. There you will also find the URL for a safe test image that, if you are not patched, will supposedly launch your calculator. Happy patching!

The SANS Internet Storm Center says that Microsoft has developed a patch for the WMF exploit but won't be releasing it until next Tuesday. How does the ISC's Tom Liston feel about that? Here are a few key phrases:

• "propeller-heads working on Billy Wonka's Official Microsoft Research and Development Team"
• "The merry, lil' Redmond Oompa Loompas are chanting 'Our patch isn't ready / you have to wait / so keep antivirus / up-to-date'"
• "wonderful, safe, chocolaty place"

Read the rest of Tom's entry.

It's a modern-day, real-life case of Talking Tina. According to Local6.com in Florida:

A mother in Dallas is one of several parents complaining about a new interactive book for toddlers in which Sesame Street character Elmo asks "who wants to die?"

There's a video at Local6.com with the hilarious, er I mean offensive, query so have a listen. It seems the built-in player doesn't like Firefox, however, so you may have to use I.E. -- or give this direct link a try.

By now you have probably heard about the WMF Exploit. The Security Now! Podcast did a special episode to announce a temporary fix. Steve Gibson knows his stuff, and if he says we should install this fix I, for one, am going to do so.