The Red Brick Times

A bit of Ohio History - how we got the Township and Section layouts that define Ohio Counties, Cities, School Districts, and the boundaries of your personal space. It all started with a border dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland....

"In the mid-1760's Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, top quality surveyors imported from England, resolved the simmering border dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania by surveying an agreed boundary line into the wilds of the Appalachians. But, they were stopped 30 miles short of the western edge of Pennsylvania because of the danger of Indian attacks. The Mason-Dixon line was the most accurately surveyed line in colonial America and it therefore became the reference point for the public land surveys that followed. "

...including Ohio. Go to http://users.rcn.com/deeds/ohio.htm and see what happened next.

If you look at a county outline map of Ohio (http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/centernet/mapresource.asp) you can see that many of the county edges are straight and square, even along the crinkley-bits of the Ohio River shoreline. Surveying and land speculation began early in Ohio settlement. Compare that with a county outline map of Texas (http://baby.indstate.edu/gga/gga_cart/basetx.gif) where the lands along the Gulf of Mexico are laid out with respect to the Ocean, and the rest of the state references a more national and universal grid system. The coastal regions of Texas were inhabited from the Ocean long before an overall national system was established.

Posted 9:43 AM by Andy (0) comments

The comments have to be disabled for awhile. Somehow a spammer was able to access that directory and use it to, well...., spam. I'm working on it.

Posted 9:00 AM by whatley (0) comments

Uh-oh. What happened to all the comments?

Posted 6:20 AM by Sally (0) comments

Suppressing Free Speech
On '...Monday, March 28, the Secret Service called three everyday people into their offices to discuss why we were kicked out of a presidential event in Denver last week where Bush promoted his plan to privatize Social Security. What they revealed to us and our lawyer was fascinating.

There we were - three people who had personally picked up tickets from Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez's office and went to a presidential event. But as we entered, we were told that we had been 'ID'ed' and were warned that any disruption would get us arrested. After being seated in the audience we were forcibly removed before the President arrived, even though we had not been disruptive. We were shocked when told that this presidential event was a 'private event' and were commanded to leave....The Secret Service revealed that we were 'ID'ed' when local Republican staffers saw a bumper sticker on the car we drove which said 'No More Blood For Oil.'' Related Associated Press story."

Posted 3:47 PM by whatley (0) comments

Show me the money:
The New York Times > Washington > List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm

WASHINGTON, March 28 - The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.

Pamela Hennessy, an unpaid spokeswoman for the Schindlers, said she was initially appalled when she learned of the list's existence. "It is possibly the most distasteful thing I have ever seen," Ms. Hennessy said. "Everybody is making a buck off of her."

Posted 10:06 AM by whatley (0) comments

Peer to Peer (P2P - see Peer to Peer at Wikipedia) networks are the next pillar of the Internet, per an article posted on the online 'Zine, Wired . One early example, Kazaa, is in the courts in Australia over users sharing copyrighted music. Another use for P2P networks is by the evil netbot programmers whose creeping code uses your personal computer as part of a decentralized network to store instructions and bits of itself so widely spread as to be nearly impossible to root out and delete. For example, a P2P network can be commanded to flood a net or web site with messages to crash it. The juciest P2P targets are computers on wide-band connections (DSL, Cable modems) that stay on 24/7 and are idle most of the time (like most home computers). As Russ says - keep the moat full of alligators and the drawbridge up.

Posted 9:49 PM by Andy (0) comments

Options for a small(er) planet: Since hydrocarbon is the daily bread, and since bread prices are in the mid-$50 per barrel range, the auto industry now launches hybrids to attempt market share knockdowns. Hybrid hype is the current vogue of the money-is-secondary set. The online 'Zine Wired has a Hybrids Head2Head review of the current crop. Sorry, nothing under $19K and change. (Tax, title and delivery charges extra. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Contents may have settled during shipping. Antelope freeway, 1/256th of a mile.)

Posted 11:46 AM by Andy (0) comments

I was sampling cheap food from the frozen mammoth section of the supermarket ice age the other day. They sell them at ten for ten dollars. There is a rare dish of chicken nuggets that are breaded breading. I have discovered more chicken in a turkey sandwich. Also a piquant dish of chicken fried rice with accompanying rubber egg roll that emits a delightful attar of overheated wiring insulation. I have yet to review the sweet and sour pork by-products, or the barbequed simulacrum of poultry. And now, to make things complete, I have found the Top Secret Recipes version of Wendy's� Chili. Please serve some to your most favored dinner guests as a bit of pre-prandial finger food.

Posted 11:14 AM by Andy (0) comments

Scenes From the Cultural Revolution A compilation of quotes about American Universities as compared to Maoist propaganda.

Posted 2:22 PM by whatley (0) comments

Outside of my own CDs/LPs about the only thing I listen to anymore is streaming internet radio. I mean, let's face it, broadcast radio really sucks now. Huge blocks of advertising broken up by the occasional Britany Spears song(?) or its equivalent. Ugh. Especially dissapointing as Cleveland radio used to be a rich environment. Well, anyway, one of the sites I listen to has played this cut a few times. It caught my interest enough that I did a search of the title and, much to my happy amazement, found a legal mpg download of it. There's both an accoustic version (what the 'net radio is playing) and a band version. Give 'er a spin (so to speak)!
'We Can't Make It Here' by James McMurtry

Posted 5:52 PM by whatley (0) comments

I installed a DSL line at home today. Actually it has taken me all week with the few moments I have. My first call to support resulted in a hardware fix or something between me and the main high speed trunk. The second call took two waits in the queue while I got bumped up to someone who knew what was going on. I am fast now. After going to the support web site to set up my new email I got redirected to a page that says, not yet available in your area, please call support.
My confidence is diminished, I immediately went to configuration and moved my firewall protection level from low to medium. Reading the brick is making me nervous. Russ said something about port blocking and NEB? but I get confused in the jargon and nuance of internet jousting. Maybe there is a place for Russ to configure a business plan that includes helping people like me triumph over the Goths and barbarians of cyberspace.

Posted 4:43 PM by Ray (0) comments

BBC NEWS | Technology | Have hackers recruited your PC?
Followup to the last three posts and a good description of another common broadband danger. This is the situation I found on one of my company's PCs at first inspection.

Posted 6:51 AM by whatley (0) comments

As startling as Russ' last post is there are a couple of simple things you can do to protect yourself and your information.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER follow a link in an email to a financial site. If you get an email that seems legit. Open a browser and type in the site address manually or use a Favorite/Bookmark if you have it set up.
Any time any legitimate site begins asking for sensitive personal information check the address, if you don't see https:// instead of http:// (note the added s) DON'T FILL OUT THE FORMS.

How's this scam work, then?

Web pages you see are answers to requests you have sent to another computer (server). Once the answer is returned to you the 'connection' between you (the requester) and the server (responder) is severed. Each click is a separate and distinction request/response cycle. BUT ...

Though the use javascript/vbscript and others it is easy to impersonate another site. It is not that the scam artists have hacked the financial institution computers, they haven't (if they had they would not be asking you for details, they would already have them). What they do is open a fake site, then use hidden elements to link to the real site and direct the displays to show any publicly available information (like a branch locator service) on the fake site. They can do this because 'public service' stuff is available through http:// and has to be so potential customers can use the site without having to log-in to an established account. The hackers/scammers CANNOT link and capture the parts of the financial site that are using https://.

What should a well-designed, public web site for a financial institution do to protect us?

The financial institutions can, during the request/response cycle, ask for some information from the requester (you) before sending a response back, including, but not limited to, 'what is the address currently displayed in the address field of the requester's computer?' By checking it and verifying there is nothing untoward in the address the financial site server can do a high level - low security check to be sure their site isn't being dragged into a spoof site. If the returned address is suspicious then there are steps the financial site server can do (just like Netcraft does).

In addition, depending on the design technology used, more complex analysis of the 'conversation' can be done increasing the security assurance from low to medium.

You best defense is you !

NEVER give sensitive information to any web site that isn't using https://.

Posted 11:57 AM by jeichenlaub (0) comments

Whenever I notice that the last several posts in a row are from me I vow to shutup for awhile. Afterall, this isn't a personal blog, it's a community one. Then, as always seems to happen, I stumble on something like the link below and think, "wow, that's news to me, and kind of important to know", and want to inform/warn people about it. Maybe it isn't news to you or you just aren't interested in this kind of thing. If so please let me know and I'll cut it out.

Online Banking Industry Very Vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting Frauds:
"Well known banks have created an infestation of application bugs and vulnerabilities across the Internet,allowing fraudsters to insert their data collection forms into bona fide banking sites, creating convincing frauds that are undetectable to most customers. Indeed, a personal finance journalist writing for The Motley Fool was brave enough to publicly admit to having fallen for a fraud running on Suntrust's site and having her current account cleaned out. It's a reasonable premise that if a Motley Fool journalist can fall for a fraud, anyone can."

There's a link at the bottom of the above page to a free (IE only) toobar that combats this sort of exploit.

Posted 6:25 AM by whatley (0) comments

Recently a business acquaintance of mine asked if I could help him with his home PC. It had become extremely slow, both at boot up and when running, and was constantly displaying pop-up ads, some of which were clever enough to appear as though they were legitimate prompts from the programs he was using. Yep, you guessed it, a spyware/malware issue. A few weeks prior to asking my help he'd hired a local computer firm to deal with the problem. They sent a tech out (at $100/hr) who tried to hunt down and delete the responsible files and sold him a router with firewall capabilities. $400.00 later everything seemed ok, but in a week or so things were just as bad as before (after a certain infection point you can't just delete files as core portions are resident in memory and merrily reinstalls itself as soon as you walk away). I fixed it, but only by bringing the PC home and 1) destroying the existing hard drive partitions, 2) creating new ones, 3) reinstalling the operating system from scratch, 4) reinstalling all drivers and, 5) reloading all programs. Took me most of a day even though he (luckily) had all the needed original CDs and very little data to be saved. This was a radical fix but in some cases it's the only viable option. I also installed some software to help avoid future problems of the sort. When I took it back I spent an hour teaching him and his family how to use the software I installed and general things to be aware of on the internet today. The bill I presented (I don't do this for free y'know) includes a final visit in two weeks to check up on the PC and answer any questions they may have.

The internet is not a friendly place for home users anymore. Without proper protection and practices people who get cable/DSL connections at home have no idea what they're letting themselves in for. When I stop to add it up it's amazing how much of my time is spent dealing with stuff like this, and I'm not just talking about home users, but in established companies as well. That started me wondering.......

What do you think about a company whose business plan is to service local home users who find themselves in a similar situation? Maybe offer to do the initial cable/DSL hookup so it doesn't happen to begin with? I mean as a part time/sideline sort of thing. Overhead would be practically nonexistent and inventory would be not much more than a few routers. Think it would fly? How could it be efficiently and effectively advertised? What fees would be acceptable? Would you consider using it? Anybody interested in doing some of the non-techy work involved?

Posted 4:54 PM by whatley (0) comments

Guardian Unlimited | Arts special reports | crumb
"From 60s hippies to 90s film-makers and 21st-century art galleries, each generation has rediscovered the misanthropic, sex-obsessed cartoonist Robert Crumb. Now it is to happen again: in coming days he will be the subject of two retrospectives, a film season and a new biography. To celebrate, the Guardian this week will publish a selection of new and little-known Crumbs, along with some more familiar works. Today, Simon Hattenstone introduces the series by interviewing him at his home in the south of France."

Posted 5:48 AM by whatley (0) comments

Dear Condi, -- Lloyd Axworthy was Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs for five years (1995-2000). Now that he's no longer in government, he doesn't need to be so diplomatic.

Posted 8:12 PM by whatley (0) comments

Credit Reports Will Now Be Free (link goes to Plain Dealer article)
You've probably already heard about this, it's been fairly well publicized, but just in case you haven't, as of March 1st Ohio has been included in the national rollout of states whose inhabitants are eligible for free credit reports. You can get them here.

I gave this a whack yesterday, getting a report from just one of the three credit bureaus as recommended by the PD article. Once on the selected credit bureau site you need to have some information at hand to verify you are indeed who you claim to be. I was asked to choose two out of three catagories; existing credit card info, previous addresses, or previous loan account numbers. You also have to create a login user/password. After completing that process the report was made available, along with come-ons for further services at a fee. Bit of a hassle but, I think, well worth the trouble.

Posted 6:02 AM by whatley (0) comments

Earth's Magnetic Field Collapses! Widespread electronic chaos! Radiation scours the planet! Migrating birds fly in circles! The magnetic sky is falling! This could be the Y2K for the current millenium. Go look at the Pure Energy Systems web site to contemplate the dire results of the pending flip of the Earth's magnetic poles.

Posted 9:38 AM by Andy (0) comments

From ecoglobe :

Basic figures (approximations) for hydrogen energy used for a hydrogen fuell cell - electric car in comparison with petrol powered piston engin car:

(1) Solar panels (Photo Voltaics) can generate electricity at 90 - 100 Watt per square meter. In other words, 10 square meter of solar panels can produce 1 kWh of electricity in one hour.

(2) Producing 1 cubic meter Hydrogen gas costs 4 kilowatthour, by means of electrolysis of water.

(3) Therefore the production of 1 m3 hydrogen gas requires 40 m2 of solar panels.

(4) One cubic meter of hydrogen gas at normal temperature is equivalent to one litre of liquid hydrogen at minus 253.6 degrees centigrade: 1 m3 H2G = 1 L H2L.

(5) The energy contained in one litre of petrol is equivalent to 10 kWh electricity (at 100 % conversion efficieny).

(6) Petrol consumption of a small passenger car: 7 L /100 km = 6.7 kg / 100 km

(7) Hydrogen: 1.8 kg H2L = 25 L H2L (density: 70 gram/L)

(8) The energy contained in 6.7 kg of petrol is equivalent to the energy of 1.8 kg of liquid hydrogen, or 25 litre H2L, or enough for 100 km.

(9) At current market conditions one litre of liquid hydrogen (H2L) costs SFr. 4.00 (US$ 2.70). At a consumption of 25 L H2L / 100 km the fuel costs will be SFR.100.00 / 100 km (US$ 67.50)

From Me:
Note: That means you pay $67.50 for the hydrogen to travel each 60 miles.

Of course, not everyone wants to erect 40 square meters of photocells. That's a square array about 64 feet per side. Some will specialize in photo-farming. Each acre can hold about nine such arrays. They will work better in Flagstaff than in Cleveland. And all trees will be cut down, all vegetation cut off from sunlight, all rainfall diverted to holding tanks to provide raw material for hydrogen production. The more complications added, the higher the total costs will be. TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch).

Posted 9:03 AM by Andy (0) comments

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