Memory Lane

Back in 1982, I purchased an Apple ][+ computer. I had put off purchasing a computer for almost five years, passing on Heath Kits and TRS-80s and Commodore Pets. This machine had 48K of memory and a floppy drive on it. My high school had an Apple II (non-plus) that had a cassette interface where we loaded the non-Microsoft BASIC. I found the following ad for an Apple I ad (transcribed from here). SCO should take note of Apple's attitude towards the price of software.

Apple Introduces the First Low Cost Microcomputer System with a Video Terminal and 8K Bytes of RAM on a Single PC Card

The Apple Computer. A truly complete microcomputer system on a single PC board. Based on the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, the Apple also has a built-in video terminal and sockets for 8K bytes of on-board RAM memory. With the addition of a keyboard and video monitor, you'll have an extremely powerful computer system that can be used for anything from developing programs to playing games or running BASIC.

Combining the computer, video terminal and dynamic memory on a single board has resulted in a large reduction in chip count, which means more reliability and lowered cost. Since the Apple comes fully assembled, tested & burned-in and has a complete power supply on-board, initial setup is essentially "hassle free" and you can be running within minutes. At $666.66 (including 4K bytes RAM!) it opens many new possibilities for users and systems manufacturers.

You Don't Need an Expensive Teletype

Using the built-in video terminal and keyboard interface, you avoid all the expense, noise and maintenance associated with a teletype. And the Apple video terminal is six times faster than a teletype, which means more throughput and less waiting. The Apple connects directly to a video monitor (or home TV with an inexpensive RF modulator) and displays 960 easy to read characters in 24 rows of 40 characters per line with automatic scrolling. The video display section contains its own 1K bytes of memory, so all the RAM memory is available for user programs. And the Keyboard Interface lests you use almost any ASCII-encoded keyboard.

The Apple Computer makes it possible for many people with limited budgets to step up to a video terminal as an I/O device for their computer.

No More Switches, No More Lights

Compared to switches and LED's a, a video terminal can display vast amounts of information simultaneously. The Apple video terminal can display the contents of 192 memory locations at once on the screen. And the firmware in PROMS enables you to enter, display and debug programs (all in hex) from the keyboard, rendering a front panel unnecessary. The firmware also allows your programs to print characters on the display, and since you'll be looking at letters and numbers instead of just LED's the door is open to all kinds of alphanumeric software (i.e., Games and BASIC).

8K Bytes RAM in 16 Chips!

The Apple Computer uses the new 16-pin 4K dynamic memory chips. They are faster and take 1/4 the space and power of even lower power 2102's (the memory chip that everyone else uses). That means 8K bytes in sixteen chips. It also means no more 28 amp power supplies.

The system is fully expandable to 65K via an edge connector which carries both the address and data busses, power supplies and all timing signals. All dynamic memory refreshing for both on and off-board memory is done automatically. Also, the Apple Computer can be upgraded to use the 16K chips when they become available. That's 32K bytes on-board RAM in 16 IC's -- the equivalent of 256 2102's!

A Little Cassette Board That Works!

Unlike many other cassette boards on the marketplace, ours works every time. It plugs directly into the upright connector on the main board and stands only 2" tall. And since it is very fast (1500 bits per second), you can read or write 4K bytes in about 20 seconds. All timing is done in software which results in crystal-controlled accuracy and uniformity from unit to unit.

Unlike some other cassette interfaces which require an expensive tape recorder, the Apple Cassette Interface works reliably with almost any audio-grade cassette recorder.

Software:

A tape of APPLE BASIC is included free with the Cassette Interface. Apple Basic features immediate error messages and fast execution, and lets you program in a higher level language immediately and without added cost. Also available now are a dis-assembler and many games, with many software packages, (including a macro assembler) in the works. And since our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost, you won't be continually paying for access to this growing software library.

Precious in the sight of the LORD

This afternoon I attended a funeral of a friend's mother. Her life was an inspiration to us all. Not only did she witness to strangers the love of Christ, she also ministered to the church and her family. The verse that came to my mind was Psalm 116:15.

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

Death itself is not precious to God, nor is the death of an unbeliever. Rather, it is the death of the saints which is precious to Him. The death of the saint is like the prodigal returning to his father. The father runs after him, throws his arms around him, and throws a party.

Carolyn Schmucker, welcome home.

Way Cool

New Scientist is reporting:

The coolest thing in the Universe is now a cloud of sodium atoms in a laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Physicists from the MIT-Harvard Centre for Ultra-Cold atoms have chilled 2500 sodium atoms to within half a billionth of a degree of absolute zero, the temperature at which atomic oscillation slows to a standstill.

'Nothing in the Universe that we know of is naturally this cold' says Aaron Leanhardt, who led the research. Even deep space is six billion times hotter.

'The old record for 'lowest manmade temperature' was published in the journal Nature, so hopefully publishing our result in Science will be considered good enough for acceptance as a Guinness world record' he says.

I know that getting published is important, but the Guinness Book of World Records?

Joshua Claybourn's Domain: Numbered Days

Joshua Claybourn is saying:

The Jerusalem Post is calling for Arafat's death, and the Israeli Cabinet has already approved the action 'in principle.'

Joshua seems to be reading a little too much into this sentence:

Israel's security cabinet ratcheted up pressure on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat tonight, giving the Israeli security services blanket approval to "remove this obstacle."

When dealing with Hamas terrorists the Israelis did not announce in advance they were going to take out specific individuals. Ireland Online reported:

The wording left open the options of deporting Arafat, capturing him or killing him. A senior Israeli official said the declaration was intentionally vague, designed to frighten Arafat and his backers.

Thus, this appears to be more of a shot across the bow.

Including an RSS feed on your site

Here's a really cool way of including an RSS feed on your site, care of the Unofficial TypePad Resources blog.

David Carter-Tod at Wytheville Community College has created a tool that generates a Javascript script that can be put onto any website. This script displays the contents of an RSS feed with a number of formatting options to allow you to display the feed the way you want. For an example of what it can look like have a look here (Right-hand side under the RSS Feeds heading). This is a great program, provided free of charge, that anyone with a website can use.

If you are comfortable with editing HTML & Javascript tags then dive right in. The Wytheville Community College page gives you instructions on what the code you need is.

For those less familiar with hand-coding pages, I have a tool that provided a limited set of functions for the Wytheville Community College script. There are seven options for this: the location of the RSS feed, the number of items to display, whether or not to display the description of the items, whether the links should open in a new window and whether or not to display the feed title, datestamp & description. There are many other options available, but these are the only ones I've gotten around to including. If people want others, then you'll have to do it by hand. (If people ask reeaally nicely, I may consider including some others)

Radio-dating backs up Biblical text

Nature Science Update is reporting:

An ancient waterway, described in the Bible, has been located and radiocarbon-dated to around 700 BC[1].

The half-kilometre Siloam Tunnel still carries water from the Gihon Spring into Jerusalem's ancient city of David. According to verses in Kings 2 and Chronicles 2[2], it was built during the reign of the King Hezekiah - between 727 BC and 698 BC - to protect the city's water supply against an imminent Assyrian siege. Critics argue that a stone inscription close to the exit dates the tunnel at around 2 BC.

To solve the conundrum, geologist Amos Frumkin, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and colleagues looked at the decay of radioactive elements - such as carbon in plants and thorium in stalactites - in tunnel samples.

The plaster lining the tunnel was laid down around 700 BC, says Frumkin's team. A plant trapped inside the waterproof layer clocked in at 700-800 BC, whereas a stalactite formed around 400 BC. "The plant must have been growing before the tunnel was excavated; the stalactite grew after it was excavated," explains Frumkin.

The study "makes the tunnel's age certain", says archaeologist Henrik Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. The Siloam Tunnel is now the best-dated Iron Age biblical structure so far identified.

The remains of buildings and structures described in the Bible are notoriously difficult to find. Specimens are rare, poorly preserved, hard to identify and often troublesome to access. Says James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, UK: "This scientific verification of historical details in the Bible challenges those who do no wish to take it seriously."

References
1. Frumkin, A., Shimron, A. & Rosenbaum, J. Radiometric dating of the Siloam Tunnel, Jerusalem. Nature, 425, 169 - 171, (2003). |Article|
2. 2 Kings 20:20; 2 Chronicles 32:3,4.

September 11 Leaves No Spiritual Impact on U.S.

Right after 9/11/2001 there was an upsurge of spiritual activity, but now almost two years out, we are back to our apathetic selves. So says Christian pollster, George Barna:

After examining two dozen core indicators of the moral and spiritual condition of the nation, we find that the September 11 tragedy has had no discernible impact on people religious beliefs and practices. If it is true that suffering and persecution forces people to take a definitive spiritual stand, either we need a more substantial dose of hardship to clarify our stand or we have taken our stand and it is very simply that we believe we have things under control and have no further need of God's intervention and protection.

Building Multiracial Congregations

Tom Metzger's endorsement of Cruz Bustamante reveals the seamy side of race relations in Christendom. For those of us who find this abhorrent, what does it take to build multiracial congregations as called for in Ephesians 2:11-22?

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)-- remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

The following study by the Multiracial Congregations Project is helpful:

Multiracial congregations are rare, and any estimates we get from surveys are overestimates. Reflective of the different organizational structures, Catholics churches are about three times more likely to be multiracial than are Protestant churches. Though Catholic churches are more likely to be multiracial, such churches tend to have less impact on the attitudes, religious understandings, and social networks of their parishioners than is the case for those in mixed Protestant churches.

For congregations to be multiracial, a racially diverse neighborhood is usually necessary, but often not sufficient. A tension seems to exist between in the minds of both the leadership and the members as to why they are racially mixed. For some, the diversity is simply due to the neighborhood, for others, the diversity required other forces, such as God and intentionality. Reflecting this tension, when we asked clergy why their congregation is multiracial, the reasons listed as most important most often were 'a movement of God,' and 'the neighborhood became/is diverse.' These responses varied substantially by tradition. For Catholics clergy, the most important reason was neighborhood diversity, for Protestants, a movement of God. Again, reflecting this tension, the reasons listed as the second most important most often were 'it just happened,' and 'the existing clergy developed a vision for becoming diverse.' Catholic and Protestant clergy did not differ on these responses.

This tension points to what we have found in our site visits. There are two main types of multiracial congregations--accidental (different people groups just seemed to show up) and intentional (preparations and changes were made to become racially mixed). Not surprisingly, the congregational model that seems to have the largest effect on parishioners' attitudes, religious understandings, and social networks is the intentional model.

Regardless of the model, the most common type of mixed-race congregation follows this path: A formerly white church in a white neighborhood became a mixed congregation when the neighborhood experienced racial change. The white members are older than the non-white members, and stay in the church because they grew up in the church. The challenge then, especially for the accidentally mixed congregations, is to maintain the diversity after the older members are gone. We have encountered other unique paths that do not follow this model. For example, some congregations create diversity through extensive bussing ministries.

People who attend multiracial congregations have substantially different social networks compared to those who do not. They are much more likely to have best friends who are of a different race than their own, much more likely to have mixed friendship circles, much more likely to have more racial diversity in the people they encounter at work, in their neighborhoods, and in their schools. Based on our site visits, the causal direction is reciprocal. Except for older white members of churches experiencing racial change, parishioners typically have some experience and comfort with mixed-race situations before they enter a mixed-race church. Being part of such a church furthers their experience and comfort with mixed-race situations, further diversifies their social networks, and can alter attitudes and religious understandings.

New version of google-bombing

I have been google-bombed by auto-commenting scripts. Here's another technique reported by kasia in a nutshell:

Remember the good old days when you could make a search phrase on google point to a certain page? Who can forget when the phrase 'go to hell' brought you the Microsoft site as the first hit. That was referred to as 'google bombing'.. simply linking to a specific site with a specific phrase making google ranking for that phrase increase for that site (but you all knew that).

Now there's a new version! Everyone loves their statistics.. of course.. me included.. but many forget, that allowing Google to index your statistics is totally useless for you and the person searching.. and guess what.

Now not only are the bad guys (tm) using your statistic pages to increase their google ranking.. some have discovered this is a good way to play pranks by using google..

Yep, it's just more google-bombing .. Simply hit a lot of blogs that allow Google to index their statistic pages with that phrase as a referer.. and suddenly a whole lot of people wonder why, what where..
It's simple to stop google from indexing your statistic pages.. in your root site directory, add a robots.txt file with something like this in it..

          User-agent: *

          Disallow: /stats/

Where /stats/ is the location of your statistic pages.

[Matt pointed out that search phrase to me.]

The Music of the Spheres

Black Hole Strikes Deepest Musical Note Ever Heard:

Astronomers have detected the deepest note ever generated in the cosmos, a B-flat flying through space like a ripple on an invisible pond. No human will actually hear the note, because it is 57 octaves below the keys in the middle of a piano.

The detection was made with NASA (news - web sites)'s Chandra X-ray Observatory and announced at a press conference today.

The note strikes an important chord with astronomers, who say it may help them understand how the universe's largest structures, called galaxy clusters, evolve.

The sound waves appear to be heating gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster, some 250 million light-years away, potentially solving a longstanding mystery about why the gas surrounding this cluster and others does not chill out as existing theory predicts.

The gas is apparently dancing excitedly to the eons-long drone of a deep B-flat.

Kepler wrote in his Harmonice Munde (1619) says that he wishes

"to erect the magnificent edifice of the harmonic system of the musical scale . . . as God, the Creator Himself, has expressed it in harmonizing the heavenly motions."

And later, "I grant you that no sounds are given forth, but I affirm . . . that the movements of the planets are modulated according to harmonic proportions."

It looks like Kepler was wrong. The spheres do emit a sound, and it is a very low B-flat

Estrada Nomination Not First Court Nomination Fillibuster

An interesting philosophical question was posed as follows by ***Dave:

Dean Esmay offers a hypothetical situation:

Let’s pretend that the election of 2004 is the worst-imaginable in the entire history of the Democratic Party. Not only does Bush win re-election, but Republicans win every race--every single race--nationwide in America. Every House race, every Senate race, every governorship, all of them.

I don’t just mean the “competitive” races. I mean, the completely impossible happens, and Republicans win every race, everywhere they’ve fielded a candidate.

I grant you, I am positing the impossible. This is a thought-experiment. But tell me: what happens as a result?

I think his answer is a correct one, based on what’s happened the last two or three decades when one party or the other has actually seized control of the White House and Congress at the same time.
And, yes, you can play the same game with the Democrats, and get largely the same answer.

The context of the discussion on both of these blogs had to do with third parties and the two-party system. I made a comment on Dave's site noting how critical the Senate was in the two-party system. While researching my comment, I found the following little nugget on the Senate historical site. This should be placed in the context that all over talk radio is the premise that the Estrada nomination was sui generis. This quote puts that concept to bed:

October 1, 1968
Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment

In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren informed President Lyndon Johnson that he planned to retire from the Supreme Court. Concern that Richard Nixon might win the presidency later that year and get to choose his successor dictated Warren's timing.

In the final months of his presidency, Johnson shared Warren's concerns about Nixon and welcomed the opportunity to add his third appointee to the Court. To replace Warren, he nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas, his longtime confidant. Anticipating Senate concerns about the prospective chief justice's liberal opinions, Johnson simultaneously declared his intention to fill the vacancy created by Fortas' elevation with Appeals Court Judge Homer Thornberry. The president believed that Thornberry, a Texan, would mollify skeptical southern senators.

A seasoned Senate vote-counter, Johnson concluded that despite filibuster warnings he just barely had the support to confirm Fortas. The president took encouragement from indications that his former Senate mentor, Richard Russell, and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen would support Fortas, whose legal brilliance both men respected.

The president soon lost Russell's support, however, because of administration delays in nominating the senator's candidate to a Georgia federal judgeship. Johnson urged Senate leaders to waste no time in convening Fortas' confirmation hearings. Responding to staff assurances of Dirksen's continued support, Johnson told an aide, "Just take my word for it. I know [Dirksen]. I know the Senate. If they get this thing drug out very long, we're going to get beat. Dirksen will leave us."

Fortas became the first sitting associate justice, nominated for chief justice, to testify at his own confirmation hearing. Those hearings reinforced what some senators already knew about the nominee. As a sitting justice, he regularly attended White House staff meetings; he briefed the president on secret Court deliberations; and, on behalf of the president, he pressured senators who opposed the war in Vietnam. When the Judiciary Committee revealed that Fortas received a privately funded stipend, equivalent to 40 percent of his Court salary, to teach an American University summer course, Dirksen and others withdrew their support. Although the committee recommended confirmation, floor consideration sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination.

On October 1, 1968, the Senate failed to invoke cloture. Johnson then withdrew the nomination, privately observing that if he had another term, "the Fortas appointment would have been different."

EE Times - TSMC reportedly lifts quarterly shipment forecast

Finally, some good news for my industry. TSMC is my company's main outsource silicon supplier. EE Times - TSMC reportedly lifts quarterly shipment forecast:

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer Co. Ltd., the world's largest foundry, said third quarter shipments were likely to be up nearly 10 percent from the April-June period, higher than earlier forecasts, according to a Reuters report on Friday (Sept. 5).

The company expects fourth quarter business to be at least at the same level as the third quarter, the account quoted TSMC public affairs manager Jesse Chou as saying. TSMC said in July it expected third quarter shipments to grow from between 5 and 9 percent from the second quarter and for a revenue increase in the high single-digit percentage.

The Semiconductor Industry Association predicted that worldwide chip sales in the third quarter of 2003 would be 5.9 percent or more ahead of the second quarter in revenue.

Dr. Laura: The Rest of the Story

***Dave quotes a story by forward.com talking about Dr. Laura lapsing from Judaism. The forward.com article quotes the lapse as follows:

In a shocking if little-noticed revelation, Schlessinger — who very publicly converted to Judaism five years ago — opened "The Dr. Laura Schlessinger Program" on August 5 with the confession that she will no longer practice Judaism. Although Schlessinger said she still "considers" herself Jewish, "My identifying with this entity and my fulfilling the rituals, etc., of the entity — that has ended."

From this ***Dave concludes:

I listen to Dr. L. sometimes on the drive home on Fridays. While she's sometimes blindingly black-and-white in her thinking, I've tended to find her no-nonsense insistence on keep your commitments and don't use your feelings as an all-trumping excuse to be refreshing. To basically have her be unable to live up to that in her own life (and, evidently, not see that herself) is pretty sad.

Well, has Dr. Laura dropped her commitments that she commends to all her listeners? Well, in a word, no. Note, the following worldnetdaily article (which predates the forward.com article by a week) with a more extended quote:

Schlessinger, known to millions as Dr. Laura, says she is "very committed still to all my moral issues, and the charitable issues. I mean that hasn't changed. My putting out hasn't changed. My identifying with this entity and fulfilling the rituals, etc., of the entity — that has ended." [emphasis mine]

While I disagree with many of the commitments of Dr. Laura, it is a stretch to say that she lacks commitment. It is my hope and prayer that she shifts her commitments from her previous moralism to the God of Scripture who loves His people and sent his Son to die for them. Only time will tell if that will happen.

George Will: Political Football Wastes Time

George Will noted that:

Once upon a time, there was a theory that the federal government had only limited powers, that some things were none of the government's business.

Well, that was long ago.

Last Thursday, there were congressional hearings ? I'm not making this up — on college football's system for arranging bowl games.

Good grief. How did that become Congress' business?

I agree. Well, maybe not. If Congress wastes its time on this, maybe it won't mess something else up.

Update script finally done.

In a comment to this post, I said I would ping him back with my new trackback mechanism. It is now done, so I am doing the promised ping. This works by adding a javascript source insert at the end of my blog. The script checks to see if an update is needed and then outputs when the last ping is done. This does both trackback and weblogs pings. Now for the script:

<?php>

// Use xmlrpc value

include('xmlrpc.inc');

function getval ($key) {

  global $HTTP_GET_VARS;

  if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {

    return stripslashes($HTTP_GET_VARS[$key]);

  }

  return $HTTP_GET_VARS[$key];

}



//Make strtotime accept ISO formatted time often found in RSS

function toUnixTime($string)

{

  $unixTime = strtotime($string);

  if ($unixTime == -1) {

    list($year,$month,$day,$hour,$minute,$second)

      = split("[-:T\.]",$string);

    $unixTime = strtotime("$year-$month-$day $hour:$minute:$second");

  }

  return $unixTime;

}



//Call the trackback script.  If the trackback link ends with a slash

//then do an http POST otherwise do a get.  A trackback ping includes

//title, excerpt, url, and blog name extracted from the rss.



function pingURL($trackback, $title, $url, $excerpt, $blog_name) {

  $poststring = "title=" . urlencode(trim($title)) . "&excerpt=" .

    urlencode(trim($excerpt)) . "&url=" . urlencode(trim($url)) .

    "&blog_name=" . urlencode(trim($blog_name));

  $tab = parse_url($trackback);

  $host = $tab['host'];

  $path = $tab['path'];

  $query = $tab['query'];

  if (strcmp($query, '') != 0) {

    $file_name = $trackback . "&" . $poststring;

    $file = fopen($file_name, "r");

    if (!file) {

      while (!feof($file)) {

	$line = fgets($file, 4096);

      }

    }

  } else {

    $fp = fsockopen($host, 80, $errno, $errstr, $timeout = 30);

    if ($fp) {

      fputs($fp, "POST $path HTTP/1.1\r\n"); 

      fputs($fp, "Host: $host\r\n"); 

      fputs($fp, "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n"); 

      fputs($fp, "Content-length: ".strlen($poststring)."\r\n"); 

      fputs($fp, "Connection: close\r\n\r\n"); 

      fputs($fp, $poststring . "\r\n\r\n"); 

      while(!feof($fp)) { 

	$line = fgets($fp, 4096); 

      } 

      //close fp - we are done with it 

      fclose($fp); 

    }

  }

}



// This function looks at a referenced site and looks for an RDF entry 

// inside of an HTML comment.  (Moveable type standard practice and

// added to the blinne.org blogger blog).



function pingSite($link) {

  global $title, $blog_name, $description;

  list ($url1, $aref1)  = split("#", $link);

  $file1 = fopen($url1, "r");

  $aref1 = trim($aref1);

  if ($file1) {

    while (!feof($file1)) {

      $line1 = fgets($file1, 4096);

      $pattern = "a name=\\\"$aref1\\\"";

      if (ereg($pattern, $line1, $reg)) {

	break;

      }

    }

    while (!feof($file1)) {

      $line1 = fgets($file1, 4096);

      if (ereg("\\]*href=\\\"([^\\\"]*)\\\"", $line1, $reg)) {

	$link1 = $reg[1];

	list ($url2, $aref2)  = split("#", $reg[1]);

	$file2 = fopen($url2, "r");

	$aref2 = trim($aref2);

	if ($file2) {

	  if (strcmp($aref2, "") != 0) {

	    while (!feof($file2)) {

	      $line2 = fgets($file2, 4096);

	      $pattern = "a name=\\\"$aref2\\\"";

	      if (ereg($pattern, $line2, $reg)) {

		break;

	      }

	    }

	  }

	  $foundRDF = 0;

	  while (!feof($file2)) {

	    $line2 = fgets($file2, 4096);

	    if (ereg("\\	      $foundRDF = 1;

	      break;

	    }

	  }

	  if ($foundRDF) {

	    $linkFound = 0;

	    $trackbackFound = 0;

	    while (!feof($file2)) {

	      $line2 = fgets($file2, 4096);

	      if (ereg("dc\\:identifier=\\\"([^\\\"]*)", $line2, $reg)) {

		if (strcmp($reg[1], $link1) == 0) {

		  $linkFound = 1;

		}

	      }

	      if (ereg("trackback\\:ping=\\\"([^\\\"]*)", $line2, $reg)) {

		$trackback = $reg[1];

                $trackbackFound = 1;

	      }

	      if ($linkFound && $trackbackFound) {

		$trackbackFound =0;

                $linkFound = 0;

		pingURL($trackback, $title, $link, $description, $blog_name);

	      }

	    }

	  }

	}

      }

      if (ereg("QSM.item.end", $line1, $reg)) {

	break;

      }

    }

  }

}



// Do an XML RPC to weblogs and blogrolling.  Weblogs is commented out

// because Blogger pro automatically is pinged by blogger and it is slow

// to ping to boot.

function ping_weblogs($name, $address) {

  $f = new xmlrpcmsg('weblogUpdates.ping', array(new xmlrpcval($name),

						 new xmlrpcval($address)));

  //This is done by blogger.

  $c = new xmlrpc_client("/RPC2", "rpc.weblogs.com", 80);

  $r=$c->send($f);

  $c = new xmlrpc_client("/pinger/", "rpc.blogrolling.com", 80);

  $r=$c->send($f);

}



// XML parser support routine

function startElement($parser, $name, $attrs) {

  global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link,$date;

  $tag = $name;

  if ($name == "ITEM") {

    $insideitem = true;

  }

}



// XML parser support routine

function endElement($parser, $name) {

  global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link, $date, $last_update, $needed_update, $latest_time;

  if ($name == "ITEM") {

    $time = toUnixTime($date);

    if ($time > $last_update) {

      if ($time > $latest_time) {

	$latest_time = $time;

      }

      $needed_update = 1;

      pingSite($link);

    }

    $title = "";

    $description = "";

    $link = "";

    $date = "";

    $insideitem = false;

  }

}



// XML parser support routine

function characterData($parser, $data) {

  global $insideitem, $tag, $title, $description, $link, $date, $blog_name;

  if ($insideitem) {

    switch ($tag) {

    case "TITLE":

      $title .= $data;

      break;

    case "DESCRIPTION":

      $description .= $data;

      break;

    case "LINK":

      $link .= $data;

      break;

    case "DC:DATE":

      $date .= $data;

      break;

    case "PUBDATE":

      $date .= $data;

      break;

    }

  } else {

    switch ($tag) {

    case "TITLE":

      $blog_name .= $data;

      break;

    }

  }

}



//main starts here

error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_PARSE);

$insideitem = false;

$tag = "";

$title = "";

$description = "";

$link = "";

$date = "";

$needed_update = 0;

$latest_time =0;

$blog_name="";





$rss = getval("rss");

$name = getval("name");

$address = getval("address");

$rss_update = $rss;

for ($i=0; $i < strlen($rss_update); $i++) {

  if ($rss_update[$i] == ':' || $rss_update[$i] == '/') {

    $rss_update[$i] = '_';

  }

}

$file = fopen($rss_update, "r");

if (!$file) {

  $last_update = 0;

} else {

  $last_update = fgets($file, 4096);

}

$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();

xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startElement", "endElement");

xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "characterData");

$fp = fopen($rss,"r")

  or die("Error reading RSS data.");

while ($data = fread($fp, 4096))

  xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))

  or die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d", 

		 xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)), 

		 xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));

fclose($fp);

xml_parser_free($xml_parser);

if ($needed_update) {

  $file = fopen($rss_update, "w");

  $last_update = time();

  if ($latest_time > $last_update) {

    $last_update = $latest_time;

  }

  fwrite($file, time());

  ping_weblogs($name, $address);

}

$time_string = strftime("%c", $last_update);

echo "document.write(\"Weblogs Last Updated: $time_string\");";

?>

Update Script Working

I have created a new script called update.php that looks at the rss file for this blog and pings weblogs and blogrolling, it it is fresh. A future version will do trackback pings. Once this is completely done, I will give all the technical details.

Update: See Sunday's post on the final version.

Experts fear network paralysis as computer worms blast Internet

Nature is reporting Experts fear network paralysis as computer worms blast Internet. My comments will be interspersed throughout.

[PARIS] Blaster, Welchia, SoBig — the late summer blitz of computer worms was the last thing the world's universities and researchers needed as they prepared for the start of term. And worse could be on the way, computer scientists say.

While this article is focused on the affects of university, the effects on industry should not be discounted. While universities have been lacking on dealing with computer security, industry has been complacent because they were "safe" behind their firewalls. More later...

Universities were seriously disrupted by the SoBig.E worm in late July — which copied itself into reams of e-mails that it sent out from infected machines — and the Blaster worm, which struck on 11 August causing computers to restart constantly. Next came the Welchia worm, which tried to fix computers infected with Blaster but ended up causing its own problems. Then, on 18 August, came the SoBig.F variant, the most voluminous e-mail worm in Internet history.

'The volume of traffic created by the worms gorged many university networks, often grinding them to a halt,' says Theresa Rowe, a security official at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.

Despite the widespread disruption, many computer professionals say that the attacks could have been far worse. SoBig's worm-laden messages may have accounted for one in every 17 e-mails worldwide at one point, but specialists say that far more disruptive worms could potentially be let loose.

Worms spread much faster than computer viruses — whereas viruses need to piggyback on other programs in order to propagate, worms simply self-replicate.

Computer departments in most universities and research laboratories had been on the alert since 16 July, when Microsoft announced a flaw in a connection protocol, called the remote procedure call (RPC), used by every Windows machine linked to the Internet. This flaw was quickly exploited by Blaster.

Here's the problem: if an infected user logs into a work system using virtual private networks, RPC calls can infect computers behind the firewall.

SoBig only spread when users opened the e-mail attachment in which it was hidden. Although the worm saturated networks and slowed down the Internet by creating huge volumes of e-mail traffic, it was widely spotted by antiviral filters and wary users, and only infected about 100,000 machines.

Far more worrying for computer experts is the potential trajectory for 'autonomous network worms' such as Blaster. Instead of arriving in e-mails, these worms crawl the Internet, scanning millions of computers for security weaknesses — such as that in the RPC. When they find one, they hack in and replicate themselves. Users are often unaware that their machines have been infected.

In a paper published last year, scientists at the California-based Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) predicted the emergence of high-speed worms that could hijack millions of Internet computers within minutes (S. Staniford, V. Paxson and N. Weaver "How to Own the Internet in Your Spare Time" in Proc. 11th USENIX Security Symp. 149-167; USENIX, Berkeley, 2002).

The paper's conclusions, based on mathematical models of existing worms, were partially borne out in January when a worm called Slammer infected almost all 75,000 vulnerable machines within minutes.

Relative to this potential, Blaster was something of a damp squib, says Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the CAIDA study. He points out that the RPC flaw was a "sitting target" for a very large Internet attack by a fast worm, given the huge number of vulnerable machines. Slammer, in contrast, could only hit the relatively small number of machines hosting Microsoft databases.

"What was remarkable about Blaster was how little damage it did," he says. "The lack of damage was mostly good luck in that Blaster was so poorly engineered." It was "glacially slow", he adds, which gave computer departments time to build defences against it. "A few tricks and it could have spread within minutes," Weaver warns, adding that, like most worms to date, it did not carry a particularly malicious payload. A properly engineered RPC-targeted worm carrying a destructive payload might have blacked-out computer systems worldwide, he claims.

What is not mentioned is other mechanisms for remote execution such as SOAP or XMLRPC. This is the so-called future of computing including Microsoft's vaunted .NET framework.

Specialists in assessing that sort of risk will gather in Washington next month for the first Workshop on Rapid Malcode to discuss possible technical responses. But for Bruce Schneier, co-founder of Counterpane Internet Security of Cupertino, California, the problem is not so much technical as legal. He wants software suppliers to be held accountable in court for security problems. "When Firestone produces a tire with a systemic flaw, they're liable," Schneier says. "When Microsoft produces an operating system with systemic flaws, they're not liable. That's crazy.

Indeed.

Why I Like Google/Blogger

I had been patiently waiting for the pro version of Blogger, but Blogger Pro ordering was down for retooling. So, I asked their support for an ETA when the site would be back up. I got the following reply!

Since we don't have an ETA for being able to order upgrades again, I just went ahead and gave you a complimentary upgrade to Pro. You should see the extra features next time you log in. Enjoy!

Sincerely, Graham

That's the way customers should be treated. I plan on upgrading as soon as it is available.

Paul Hill: Martyr or Murderer?

The planned execution of Paul Hill has lit a controversy within the pro-life community. It is my usual policy to try to be even-handed. I am making an exeception here and will not dignify the argument that Paul Hill is a martyr. Rather, I will selectively quote those who argue that he is a murderer:

"Pro-life means that you think that every life is created by God and it is sacred because it was created by God, so we wouldn't advocate the killing of anybody, regardless of what they had done," American Life League Vice President Jim Sedlak said last week.

"Obviously, some people are trying to make Paul Hill out to be some kind of martyr. He's not; he's a murderer who deserves whatever punishment the state deems appropriate," Sedlak added.

Florida Right to Life spokeswoman Lynda Bell agreed that Hill won't be a martyr, even though some people are bound to label him as one. She said the unborn babies who are aborted every day are martyrs, not a man convicted of killing two people and wounding a third.

"If you are pro-life, you do not kill to defend life," Bell said. "That is absurd. To say that you are going to take the life of an abortionist because it is justifiable is a contradiction."

Einstein 1 Quantum Gravity 0

This week's Nature is reporting

A strong astrophysical constraint on the violation of special relativity by quantum gravity
T. JACOBSON, S. LIBERATI & D. MATTINGLY
Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742-4111, USA

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to T.J. (jacobson@physics.umd.edu).

Special relativity asserts that physical phenomena appear the same to all unaccelerated observers. This is called Lorentz symmetry and relates long wavelengths to short ones: if the symmetry is exact it implies that space-time must look the same at all length scales. Several approaches to quantum gravity, however, suggest that there may be a microscopic structure of space-time that leads to a violation of Lorentz symmetry. This might arise because of the discreteness or non-commutivity of space-time, or through the action of extra dimensions. Here we determine a very strong constraint on a type of Lorentz violation that produces a maximum electron speed less than the speed of light. We use the observation of 100-MeV synchrotron radiation from the Crab nebula to improve the previous limit by a factor of 40 million, ruling out this type of Lorentz violation, and thereby providing an important constraint on theories of quantum gravity.

What does this mean? In the review article Sean Carroll explains what is the issue here:

Jacobson et al. consider synchrotron radiation, emitted by electrons circling in a magnetic field, from the Crab nebula. To produce high-energy photons through synchrotron emission, the electrons must be moving close to the speed of light. If Lorentz invariance is violated, the maximum velocity for photons and for electrons can have a slightly different value, which imposes a cut-off on the frequency of synchrotron radiation that can be produced. Using observations of radiation at frequencies beyond this cut-off, Jacobson et al. are able to set the new stringent limit on Lorentz invariance. The crucial assumption made in their analysis is that the behaviour of photons and electrons can be described by an 'effective local field theory' at low energies. Such theories are well used in this area of physics, and this seems a reasonable assumption to make, but exceptions are known. So a window, albeit small, remains open for Planck-scale effects.

Einstein has been right a lot lately. First with his so-called blunder, concerning the cosmological constant (now called dark energy) and now special relativity has held up against new quantum gravity theories.

Cisco to grant employees options for 141 mln shrs

The recent accounting scandals have taken away an important tool of the high tech industry, stock option grants. According to surveys that I have seen, newly proposed accounting rules of expensing options have taken them away from employees but not executives. Hopefully, Cisco will be leading a trend in the industry. Reuters is reporting that Cisco will grant employees options for 141 mln shrs:

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc., the leading maker of equipment that directs traffic over the Internet, on Tuesday said it will grant employees stock options for about 141 million shares, in what is expected to be its main options grant for fiscal 2004.

The San Jose, California company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the options will be granted to employees based on merit, and will carry an exercise price of $19.59 per share.

...

Stock options have long been a popular way of compensating employees in Silicon Valley, where many high-tech companies issue them to supplement cash salaries and to provide additional incentives.

During the bull market years of the late 1990s, many high-tech employees became rich on stock options. More recently, stock option grants have become less popular as critics push for stricter accounting rules that would require companies to record the options granted as an expense on income statements.

Although the accounting controversy has led a number of companies to cut back on options grants, however Cisco continues to use options to compensate employees.
'We do believe in broad-based options grants,' a Cisco spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
Cisco, like other heavyweights across the tech sector have strongly opposed looming action by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (News - Websites) rulemaking body, which would force companies to account for employee stock options as expenses.

Cisco said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that if it had expensed options in the third quarter ended on April 26, earnings would have been $291 million lower, at $696 million.

Applet Patent War Brewing for a Long Time

Microsoft should have seen this patent war coming. Note this August 28, 1995 (!) article in Business Week for another trip down memory lane:

Inter@ctive Week
August 28, 1995
Patent War Pending Over 'Applets'
By Paul Noglows

The price of winding through the Internet may be going up, if a small Chicago company succeeds in its attempt to extract licensing fees for inserting small computer programs into the software used to browse the World Wide Web.

Eolas Technologies Inc. announced last week that it has completed a licensing agreement with the University of California for the exclusive rights to a pending patent covering the use of embedded program objects, or "applets," within Web documents. Applets are poised to be the next big thing in Web browsers by making them truly interactive. Applets are tiny programs that will be downloaded automatically to a computer when a user wants to do something interactively with a browser, such as update a portfolio of stocks or hear a sound clip.

If the patent is granted -- an application from the University of California is under review by the U.S. Patent Office -- Eolas stands to become a big company quickly by deriving a licensing fee from any outfit that supplies or uses applets.

Most affected will be browser companies, such as Netscape Communications Corp., Spyglass Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun engineers, for instance, have been among the pioneers of the incorporation of applets into browsers, through Sun's Java programming language. Java is the basis for Hot Java, Sun's interactive browser, introduced earlier this year. Netscape also has said it will incorporate Java and its applet technology into the popular Navigator browser, which accounts for about three-fourths of all requests from Web servers.

Michael Doyle, chairman, chief executive and co-founder of Eolas and the former director of the UCSF Academic Computing Center in San Francisco, contends that his team of researchers invented the applets technology in 1993.

"Individuals involved at Netscape, Spyglass and Sun Microsystems saw our demonstrations in 1993," Doyle says. "Our technology has been widely discussed over the last year and we are not new players in this arena. There's a perception that Java was there first, but that's simply not the case." Doyle says Eolas has been in discussions for months with user companies regarding both the licensing of the underlying technology (which his company has trademarked as Weblets) and associated products.

While Eolas plans to provide royalty-free licenses to individual and academic users of applets, commercial users would be charged for each piece of software that uses the embedded applications. That charge could range from 50 cents per piece of software for heavy users (on the order of 1 million units) all the way up to $5 per unit for more limited usage.

Users of applets were reticent to discuss the University of California's patent application or Eolas' licensing plans. Spyglass spokesman Randy Pitzer says his company will wait to see if the patent is granted before commenting.

A Sun representative said the company is reviewing the patent application, and any comment now would be premature. Netscape spokeswoman Kristina Lessing says her company would like to review the patent but has not been in negotiations with Eolas.

Despite these companies' current public caution, some experts expect them to vehemently oppose any development that takes money out of their pockets. Whether a patent will be granted is anyone's guess. While Doyle says the University of California spent months researching the issue of whether the technology could be patented, the U.S. Patent Office has had a particularly difficult time in administering software patents. For instance, the Patent Office at one point issued Compton's New Media a patent for the concept of combining digital graphics, video, sound and text into "multimedia" presentations, only to rescind it later; Compton's is appealing that decision.

Eolas has not yet determined whether it will make its patent application public.

Doyle says applets could transform the Web into the preferred means for achieving interactive computing. That's because applets can run either on individuals' desktops or portable computers, or on more powerful computers in networks, known as servers. The user never knows whether the applet runs locally or remotely.

For that reason, Doyle says, the concept of an operating system can now be expanded beyond a program that runs on an individual machine to encompass large numbers of cooperative programs running on a web of computers all over the world.

"The World Wide Web becomes the operating system and the Internet becomes the computer," Doyle says.

Accordingly he adds, this Web operating system will eventually make irrelevant the issue of whether users are running Windows, Macintosh or Unix operating systems for their workstations.

David Bennahum, author of the upcoming book Coming Of Age In Cyberspace, says existing operating system vendors could be hurt. "Who's left out in the cold in this new era? Folks who invested heavily in the personal computer paradigm. No one invested more than Microsoft," says Bennahum.

The acronym Eolas stands for Embedded Objects Linked Across Systems and is also the Gaelic word for Knowledge.

Whence the Comets?

Today's ScienceNOW (AAAS membership required for access) is reporting on a mystery on the origin of the Solar System. In short, where are the comets coming from?

When astronomers discovered a reservoir of icy bodies in the nether-space beyond the orbit of Neptune, they thought they had identified the main source of comets that periodically swing into the inner solar system. But now, a meticulous search for small objects in this so-called Kuiper belt has turned up fewer than 4% of the expected number. The puzzling find may shed new light on the early evolution of the solar system.

The Kuiper belt is made up of lumps of dirty ice--probably leftovers from the birth of the solar system--known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Most astronomers agree that the planet Pluto and its moon, Charon, would be better classified as the largest TNOs. So far, more than 800 TNOs have been found, most of them more than 100 kilometers across.

Using the eagle-eyed Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers led by Gary Bernstein and David Trilling of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has carried out the first sensitive search for very faint (and hence relatively small) TNOs in a tiny but typical patch of sky in the constellation Virgo. Based on the known numbers of large bodies, the scientists had expected the search to turn up some 85 TNOs as small as 20 kilometers across. Instead, they found three.

In a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, the researchers say their results are 'wildly inconsistent' with the observed number of short-period comets--comets with orbital periods of less than 200 years--that are believed to be small TNO escapees.

'This is very exciting work,' says small planetary body specialist Dan Durda of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The dearth of small bodies suggests that the Kuiper belt experienced a bout of intense collisions in which icy bodies a few tens of kilometers in diameter were smashed to smithereens. 'This new find is a valuable clue to the early collisional history of the outer solar system,' Durda says. As for the short-period comet problem, Durda thinks it's possible the comet precursors are not missing at all, but just too small to be seen by Hubble's prying eyes. At the same time, he says, it's also possible the observed number of comets could be generated by fewer TNOs than researchers had assumed.

--GOVERT SCHILLING

Related sites

Preprint of research paper with link to full text
Background information on the Kuiper belt
List of trans-Neptunian objects discovered so far

Stupid Criminals and GPS

Be careful what you steal. The AP reports about a GPS device thief caught by GPS:

JANESVILLE, Wisconsin (AP) -- To track down this alleged thief, all police had to do was flick on a computer.

A 40-year-old man was arrested Wednesday and charged with stealing a computerized tracking device that uses a global positioning system to keep track of jail prisoners on home detention.

'He apparently didn't know what he had because he would be awfully stupid to steal a tracking device,' said correctional officer Thomas Roth, who runs the home detention program at the Rock County Jail.

The $2,500 device was temporarily placed outside a home by a woman serving home detention. The device, which is a little bigger than a brick in size, has a built-in GPS satellite receiver.

Prisoners wear a transmitter about as big as a cigarette pack on the ankle, and it acts as a 100-foot tether to the portable tracking device.

By the time the prisoner called to report the theft Monday night, the device had automatically notified the jail that it had been taken outside the prisoner's home area.

Roth then tracked the device through the Internet on his home computer.

A trail of electronic dots led authorities to an apartment building, where the suspect was captured.

Is America a Christian Nation?

Is America a Christian nation? Evangelical Christians have for the most part pretty much assumed it. But according to Dominic Aquila (editor of PCA News) there has been four different views concerning the relationship between Christianity and the state:

1. Christian Nation. This view maintains that America was founded on biblical principles and that there is a legacy of historical documents to show this (e.g., he Mayflower Compact). Present history and the interpretation of the Constitution must be seen from this historical perspective.
2. National Christian. This view holds that God is sovereign over all the nations and therefore each nation must officially affirm his Lordship. Most prominently held by the Covenanters because of their particular experience in Scotland, there have been attempts to amend the Constitution by adding that Jesus Christ was Lord of the United States.
3. Theonomy or Reconstruction. This view believes that the foundation for social order in any nation is God?s Law and that it should be the basis by which magistrates rule.
4. Principled Pluralism. This view maintains that America is made up of people from diverse cultures and religions and that Christianity is one of these. It is the responsibility of believers to influence and impact public policy with biblical principles by making a case for them in the public square.

On the PCA News web site is an umpired debate on this question. I have provided some quotes from William H. Smith, senior pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Ala, who effectively argues that America was not a Christian nation:

But was America ever a 'Christian nation?' The intuition of many Christians is to say, 'Of course, it was.' But this assumption is challengeable. In their 1983 book, The Search for Christian America, Christian scholars Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden argued that 'a careful study of the facts of history shows that early America does not deserve to be considered uniquely, distinctly, nor even predominantly Christian, if we mean by the word 'Christian' a state or society reflecting ideals presented in Scripture. There is no lost golden age to which American Christians may return.' Those interested in the full argument may consult the book.

From the perspective of the Constitution it is clear that the United States was not established as a Christian nation. While the freedom of the exercise of religion was guaranteed (an amendment that has been tortuously read to require what it did not require when written ? the near total excision of religion from public life), there is no mention of a god, to say nothing of the God of the Bible and his Son, Jesus Christ.

It may fairly be argued that the culture that gave us the Constitution was far more "Christian" than that of today. Christianity was believed, tolerated, assumed, or considered benign enough by the founders and their fellow citizens, but had they intended to establish a Christian nation, they would have said so. Indeed, our brothers in the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America (sometimes called "The Covenanters") know that the founders did not found the nation on God, think they should have, and for a long time refused participation in the government or the practice of law just because the nation and its laws were not founded on the Kingship of Jesus.

...

I also think [in addition to federal Judge Thompson who ruled against the placement of the Ten Commandments monument] that Judge Moore is wrong. He wrongly asserts that this nation is a Christian nation. He is wrong to stand in defiance of a court order. Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:13-17 are timeless instructions that were given to those who lived under a pagan and immoral government that, as Peter warned, would soon turn its powers against Christians. Yet, both Paul and Peter teach submission to the government that is. Judge Moore is now rebelling against the established authority.

What are Christians to do as they sense that their country is "going to hell in a hand basket?" Well, we might try reminding ourselves that we are "citizens of heaven" (Philippians 3:20) and that we are receiving an "unshakeable kingdom" (Hebrews 12:28).

But what about God's Law? We might try first going back to our heritage. Read the Law and confess our sins against it in worship. Proclaim the Law so as to convict sinners and display the glory of Christ. Teach the Law as God's will for every life redeemed by Christ, filled with the Spirit, and motivated by love. And, we might try keeping it. I expect a multitude of law-loving, law-obeying Christians (on whose hearts the Law is written by the Spirit) will make a lot bigger impact than Tablets of Stone sitting in the Supreme Court building in Montgomery.

Snappy Comebacks for T33Kid (a.k.a. Jeffrey Lee Parson)

Here's an interesting comeback to the alleged author of the Blaster worm. Note the comeback in bold and the group it was posted in.

rec.sport.pro-wrestling:

From: Herb Kunze (herbkunze@hotmail.com)
Subject: TeeKid WAS Dejong.
Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
Date: 2003-08-30 04:48:09 PST

10-06-01 t33kid.com Staff 10-06-01
The t33kid.com staff have decided to take a new route with t33kid.com, we are going to focus on our unique programs that we make for internet protection and internet offense.

We will also be releasing the source code for all of our programs 2 months after they have been released.

We Really Hope You Like The New T33kid.com We Are Working Really Hard To Make It The best We Can. We Plan To Be Done Within A Few Weeks. So Look Back Frequently
10-06-01 t33kid.com Staff 10-06-01

John, we've told you before and we'll tell you again, one person DOES NOT make a 'staff'.

Herb Gump