The View From the Outback

In short, one might conclude that all knowledge, wisdom, and wit are confined to those who inhabit New York City, Washington DC, or Hollywood.

I am now a senior citizen, in my 7th decade. My experience was gained in many cities in the U.S. and in about 30 foreign countries. That experience has included the U.S. Marines, law school, the ATF, the CIA, Fortune 500 executive, writer, public speaker, educator, editor, and publisher - for openers. Some insights come from talking with ham-radio operators in every major country and such idyllic places as the Cook Islands. For over 20 years, I have written articles off and on for various magazines and newspapers. I've had an enormous number of letters published in major national publications. The Outback is the rural area in Northeast Texas where I have lived for the past 15 years. Since most visits to my pages come from searches, I am no longer trying to keep on a regular schedule for updating the Outback.

Sunday, June 4, 2006 - and following

Click on a Topic to go directly to that topic.

• Thoughts While Staring at the Ceiling Fan
• Internet and Phone Monitoring - Invasion of Privacy or Self Defense?
• Protecting Your Data

Thoughts While Staring at the Ceiling Fan

June 29, 2006

An Italian study has shown that exercise reduces blood pressure, even among those who are taking BP medication. (Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, May 2006). This kind of useless study astounds me. My long-time friend, Dr. Kenneth Cooper (Cooper Clinic, Aerobics Center, in Dallas) proved this point decades ago with meticulous computer exercise and physical-exam data at the Aerobics Center - with literally thousands of subjects over the years. I was one of those subjects for about 17 years. The medical world needed this exercise study like we need another regional war. Normally, exercise also takes off pounds. There is a very direct correlation between weight loss and a decrease in blood pressure. Exercise is a Twofer for high BP.

June 29, 2006

I am probably too sensitive to some of the trite words that tech writers use. I used to write and edit complex software and hardware manuals. A pet peeve is that a computer "sports" a 15-inch monitor. The word is "has." A person can "sport" a new hairdo. An inanimate object cannot "sport" anything, in my view. Intelligent people say that they are going to "print out" something. This is a perversion of the noun "printout." You "print" a computer file. You "print" a book. There is no Out in Print. There is confusion about "back up" and "backup." You back up a file. The result is a backup file. Finally, the laptop "weighs in" at only 3.5 pounds. Boxers and jockeys "weigh in." Computers weigh 3.5 pounds.

My favorite when I was a writer and editor was "press any key." Don't have people make decisions when none are required. I always wrote Press Spacebar. It is a big key and you don't have to think about which key to press. Now, you know why I am so picky. People used to pay me to be picky. I once turned down about a $20,000 contract because my wealthy client wanted to argue with me about whether the final " mark went inside or outside of the period or comma. Did you hire me to do this job, or to argue with me? The period and comma go inside the "quotation mark." Except in England and on JEOPARDY!. Long story.

Also, there is no ' in the plural of PC. It is PCs, not PC's (that is the possessive form, as in "my PC's memory"). Same for CDs. A bank in Paris, Texas (inside Wal-Mart) has a huge polished brass (?) sign touting its CD's. Our schools are failing us - but not many kids. That might "injure their self esteem."

June 28, 2006

Celebrities seem to be obsessed with having perfect teeth and many, if not most, have a mouth full of masonry work. But, there is a precedent for people with a gap-toothed appearance being successful. The grandfather of famous gap-tooths is Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine fame. Today, we have Condoleezza Rice, David Letterman, supermodel Lauren Hutton, among others. So, where are the "I'm a Gap-Tooth and Proud of It" T-shirts? Condi Rice and David could make $10 million if they would put out a T-shirt with their photos on it - and copyright it to the hilt.

June 25, 2006

I ordered one of the new Gold Coins from the U.S. Mint. But, after seeing how the government computers and laptops seem to be in open season, I used a one-time credit card generated by MBNA. This one-time card can be limited to a top dollar amount and for only 60-days life, or longer if you so choose. MBNA is now owned by Bank of America. This card gambit made me nostalgic for my old spy days. There was (and presume there still is) a thing called a one-time-pad, where the encryption-key scheme for a message was used only one time.

June 25, 2006

The Opera Web browser, version 9.00, is available for free download at opera.com. It has many nice features. I use only Firefox and Opera, unless forced to use IE6 - such as for Windows XP updates.

June 25, 2006

Washington D.C. Metrorail officials are considering adding Spanish-language signs, system maps, fare-card machines and announcements in stations. Putting up Spanish signs, as is done in Chicago, New York, and providing Spanish on ATM machines, is a bad idea. This continues to foster an attitude that you don't need to learn English to prosper in America. It also is a subtle encouragement for more illegals to come to the United States. A little tough love is in order, particularly at a time when bills in Congress would require immigrants who want a path to citizenship to learn English. Also, to single out Spanish speakers, although they are a significant group, especially if you count the illegals, is ill-considered. D.C. area riders represent 193 countries and speak languages including Chinese, Korean, Farsi, Urdu and Amharic.

June 23, 2006

The major media are so full of crap. They love to create anxiety (and ratings) by predicting gloom and doom. Dan Rather was the Doom and Gloom Master of Hyperbole, but we still have plenty of others left. North Korea is NOT going to shoot a missile at the United States. The missile will NOT have a nuclear warhead. The reason we have submarines with nuclear missiles is to dissuade someone from attacking the United States. North Korea's leadership, even their irrational leader, knows that if they fired a missile at the United States, in theory within an hour North Korea could look like the surface of the Moon.

One TV network did mention in passing that perhaps the missile payload was a satellite. So, the paranoid North Koreans might want an "eye in the sky," like the rest of us. Maybe they have made a deal with DishNetwork to bring satellite TV to North Korea. Maybe they want to provide broadband Internet via satellite to its citizens. These speculations are no more stupid than the one that North Korea may launch a missile at the United States. Don't lose any sleep over this. It's a giant Texas Hold 'em poker game. The North Koreans have only a pair of pocket Deuces. They are bluffing that it is a pair of Aces. They want us to fold and rake in the pot, that is, more concessions and more aid.

Maybe the North Koreans do have a pair of Sixes instead of Deuces. They know that we cannot risk using high-yield atomic weapons on North Korea due to its proximity to South Korea and China and the potential collateral damage. There are about 40,000 U.S. Troops at or near the North/South Korea border. The North Koreans also know that we are addicted to, and dependent upon, computer chips, LCD and Plasma screens, HDTVs, cell phones and now high-gas-mileage cars from South Korea. The N. Koreans know that we are loathe to provoke them, since they might unleash their artillery - and whatever - on Seoul and the industrial might of S. Korea. In truth, the North Koreans have us somewhat over a barrel because of all our dependence on products from South Korea. On the other hand, have they not seen President Bush's act? He invaded two countries that never fired a missile at us. It's a Mexican standoff. Actually, we're not doing too well there either. The Mexicans are winning.

June 16, 2006

A Reuters story points out that in the U.S. Senate more than a third of its 100 members are at or well past 65 with no plans to retire anytime soon. Sen. Robert Byrd is 88 and plans to run for another 6-year term. Ridiculous. In the Outback for October 5, 2005 (outbak11.htm), I wrote an article entitled "Our Country Is Being Run By Old Geezers." In addition to speaking about old geezers in the Senate, I noted that Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court is 85 and that Chief Justice Rehnquist died on the job. Many of the hits on the Outback are from NY City. I often wonder how many in the media there check my pages from time to time. Many of them have never had an original thought.

June 16, 2006

The American Medical Association is calling for a temporary halt on advertising for newly-approved drugs. In part, this is to avoid the following conversation with a patient: "Doctor, is MESSOCRAP right for me?" "How the hell would I know? I haven't even read the brochure or gotten my samples."

June 15, 2006

Kathleen Blanco, Governor of Louisiana, signed into law the Emergency Powers Protection Act. The law prevents government entities in Louisiana from confiscating firearms during a state of emergency, as took place in New Orleans last year. As state, local, and the federal government encroach more and more on our liberties, often in the name of protecting us, the Second Amendment to the Constitution has increased meaning. It was not put in there to protect duck hunters from having their guns confiscated. It is there to prevent the government from becoming tyrannical. Cry and moan all you want that the 2nd Amendment does not grant any individual right to carry arms. What took place in New Orleans is a frightening example of what can happen if citizens are forcibly disarmed. They are at the mercy of the lawless and potentially oppressive police. And historically, New Orleans has a record of brutal and ofttimes oppressive policing. You might also ask the people of Darfur and the Muslims of Bosnia what happened when the government took away their guns.

Now, we see an increase in murders in New Orleans and the National Guard called in. Police and National Guard on the ground are nice, but they cannot be everywhere at once. Many times, the only resort is to defend yourself. We had one man kill three people here in the Outback within several minutes. Nearly every house in the Outback has a gun, and once the word spread about the killings, citizens were prepared. By the time law enforcement got on the scene, all they could do was engage in a standoff with the murderer who had retreated to his house. He apparently shot himself during the standoff.

June 12, 2006

Running the Windows XP operating system is getting more and more ridiculous. Now, we learn that the Windows Genuine Advantage program was sending data to Microsoft every day about our computer's legitimacy. Once it checked and saw that our Windows OS was not a pirated copy, what the hell is the problem with those idiots? Under pressure, they will now query the computer every 14 days. Even then, what is their problem? If I had a legitmate XP program on May 1, 2006, am I going to replace it with a pirated copy two weeks later? Morons. Bullies. Jerks.

Update July 5, 2006

There are now two lawsuits against Microsoft concerning the Windows Genuine Advantage program. They speak of it being spyware and also that the WGA was slipped onto computers in the guise of being a "critical update." Where do I sign up?

In order to keep my WinXP computer free of worms, viruses, trojans, and assorted spyware and malware, I run several programs in the background. As I was surfing the news today, I got three notices; my antivirus was being updated, my spyware program definitions were being updated, and my firewall was doing a scan for spyware and malware. There is little doubt that my next computer will be an Apple with an Intel chip. I will run my main programs with the Apple OS and boot into XP or Vista only when absolutely necessary to run a program not yet available for the Mac. More likely, I will keep my present computer as a Windows computer and turn it on only when I cannot use a program under the Mac OS. I will resist buying MS Vista until the last drop of blood is squeezed out of me by Microsoft's failure to support XP properly. Most of my computing is done with Firefox, WordPerfect, Eudora e-mail, and Quicken. So, there should be few times I would need the Windows computer. Obviously, I don't now, or never will, use Windows Office, Word, Outlook, et al. There is computer life with other than Microsoft products.

In their most recent update on June 13, Microsoft plugged 21 security holes. Even though I now have satellite broadband Internet, I still had to fire up three computers and download the updates. This is getting very old. Instead of harassing those of us who have legitimate copies (3) of Windows XP, they could better spend their time coding a more secure product. Vista will be that secure product? Don't bet the farm on it. Buy a Mac instead.

The "buy a Mac" news gets better and better. A new program, called CrossOver Mac, to be released this summer, will allow you to run Windows programs on a Mac without having Windows installed.

June 10, 2006:

In the Outback for May 1, 2006 (Outbak19.htm), I once again referred to my "English Only" article from a 1988 issue of The Dallas Times Herald, which appears under Letters on my main Web page. I said that I was inspired to write that article by a menu in McDonalds in San Antonio that listed "Quarter Pounder con Queso." I rolled on the floor when I read that GENOS cheesesteaks in South Philly had posted a sign that says: "This Is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING SPEAK ENGLISH." The lead in the AP article is: "Bistec con queso? Not at Geno's Steaks." It took 18 years, but I am vindicated by immigrant Italians, who no doubt speak Phillyese, which is itself hard for outsiders to comprehend. How many rich Hispanics do you know in America who don't speak English? The waiter in your favorite Mexican restaurant may not speak (or barely speak) English, but you can bet that the owner or his kids are fluent in English. This has nothing to do with discrimination. English is the language of commerce in America.

This is all the more delicious for me, since when I was a Federal agent in Philly, I used to eat frequently at Pat's Streaks in South Philly at 9th and Passyunk, which is across the street from Geno's Steaks. Genos was not on that corner in the old days. Some people were offended by the sign, including some folks at "Pat's King of Steaks." Of course some idiot Hispanic group is talking about sending people to Genos to order in Spanish - and they might take legal action if refused service. Hey, I would not screw with the long-entrenched Italians in South Philly. It was in my days there, the residence and hangout for the Mafia. I shared many a cheesesteak in the same line at Pat's as a Mob guy. We both had to eat. If they go to the mattresses over this sign, I know who will end up floating in the Skukyll River. Silencio, amigos! Parlare Inglese.

June 8, 2006

During a House debate on a new Telecommunications bill, an attractive Congresswoman stepped to the mike to claim her one minute of fame. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D. Wisc.) was so attractive that I flipped to her bio in the C-SPAN Congressional Directory. There was a small lower-case "dp" followed by "Lauren Azar." The "dp" stands for Domestic Partner. I had to get excited over the only Lesbian in Congress! It never ends for me. Lauren Azar is an attorney in Madison, Wisconsin, where she and Tammy share a house.

The only other gay in Congress who came to mind was Rep. Barney Frank (D. Mass.). His status is listed as "single." Either he does not have a boyfriend or he is not proud of him. The last note I have on Barney Frank was from 1990 when he was reprimanded by the House of Representatives for paying a male prostitute, Steve Gobie, to be his live-in boyfriend. And there was some nonsense about his boyfriend running a male-prostitution ring out of Cong. Frank's residence in the District. Makes you proud to be an American. It proves that we are a society that will embrace (tolerate) almost any kind of conduct by our public officials. There was the famous case of the guy who had the intern under his desk, and many other similar cases.

June 5, 2006

A shingles vaccine by Merck has been approved by the FDA. Shingles affects the elderly in particular. The vaccine is only for adults who previously had chickenpox, since shingles is a reactivation of the chickenpox virus. If you are "elderly," how can you remember if you had chickenpox? What if all your relatives who knew you in your youth are dead? And your pediatrician is dead. Well. This vaccine sounds great. Fat chance most elderly people will have a record anywhere of having had chickenpox.

June 4, 2006

The decline in reading and writing skills becomes more and more obvious. In an article about the Arctic once being tropical, by SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer, he writes: "The researchers say their studies appearing in Thursday's issue of Nature also offer a peak at just how bad conditions can get." Oh, that we could PEEK into the future of global warming. At least he did not spell it "pique." I make a lot of typing and spelling errors. I am senile and do not work for AP. I have no copy-editor. Apparently neither does AP.

In an earlier Outback, I suggested that on American Idol the other contestants should plead no contest to Katharine McPhee. Maybe it is because I am much older than the average Idol viewer, but I get no message from Taylor Hicks. By accident, I stumbled across a blog where some were saying how great McPhee was in singing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." A few said she copied from Jane Monheit. I have Jane's "Rainbow" on both CD and DVD. There is a remarkable resemblence in sound. So. Harry Connick, Jr. sounds like Frank Sinatra. There was an online report that said Andrea Bocelli was so taken with Katharine McPhee's voice that he said that he wants to take her on his upcoming tour, if the "Idol" producers say it is okay. I love Jane. I love Kat. There is room in my MP3 player for both of them.

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Internet and Phone Monitoring - Invasion of Privacy or Self Defense?

The NSA intercepts phone calls made from the U.S. to suspected terrorists overseas. Several phone companies are accused of turning over call-record databases to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Attorney General wants Internet ISPs to retain customer records of traffic for two years. Many complain that all of this is an invasion of our privacy. Senator Russ Feingold wants the President impeached over his authorization of the "warrantless" NSA intercept program. Liberal law professors say that the President violated criminal laws by authorizing the NSA program.

There is only one problem with all this talk about invasion of privacy, impeachment, and violation of criminal law. Terrorists use e-mail, Web sites, landline and cellular telephones to keep in touch and hatch their plots. The Canadians arrested 17 people in connection with an alleged terrorist plot. For one thing, they had a much larger stash of ammonium nitrate than was used to bomb the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City - and had fashioned a cellphone into a detonator.

The Canadian terrorists used Internet Web sites to communicate. Some of the traffic was encrypted and the Web sites required passwords. But ... Canadian intelligence officials had been reading the Internet traffic as far back as 2004.

It is easy for politicians who want to score points to attack an administration that is taking many positive steps to monitor potential terrorists plotters. It is easy for law professors who have never held a "real" job to say that the President violated the criminal laws and should be held accountable. But, if you have been a Federal agent and an intelligence agent, as I have, you know that the data collected is carefully screened for "traffic relevant to a terrorist investigation." And that there is not enough manpower or hours in a year to sit around compiling lists of millions of citizens who have no connection to terrorism. Gen. Hayden, former NSA director and now CIA director, testified that if an innocent American is caught up in one of the intercepts, that person is flagged to be taken out of the database and the record expunged.

Further, that the FISA Court is not set up for some of the modern surveillance contingences. Finally, if you brief too many people in Congress on a top-secret program, you WILL end up reading about it in the NY Times or the Washington Post. Every person in Congress has a huge staff. If the Congressman does not leak the information for political advantage, there is always the possibility that a staffer was briefed or a classified document was left lying around in the staff area. The staffer, who obviously has an ideological bent, or he or she would not be on that particular staff, may decide that the informaiton needs to be leaked - for the good of the country. This staffer may be a 25-year-old law graduate from one of our fine Liberal Eastern law schools. And so it goes. We must always harken back to the compartmentation in the intelligence community and the rule of "need to know."

A few leaders in Congress and on the intelligence committees have a need-to-know. The trick is to balance adequate oversight with a Congress that is prone to leak for partisan purposes. And to maintain a strict need-to-know at the Pentagon, the CIA, the DIA - to name a few. For example, there are very few people who work at NSA who know the particulars of the "warrantless intercept" program. FYI: none of the folks in Congress, some of whom were taken to NSA and given a full briefing of the NSA intercept program, said that the program was illegal or should be shut down. Some expressed thoughts that somehow the FISA statute should be amended to cover oversight of programs like this. The most vociferous opponents of the NSA program were those in Congress who were not briefed. They felt left out of the loop and reacted irrationally in many cases.

Now, the hot-button issue; surveillance of the U.S. Muslim population, electronically or otherwise. Many of the terrorists caught in England in recent cases were Muslim citizens or legal residents who became radicalized - apparently in many cases without outside help or initiation. In Canada, the terrorists rolled up in the recent raids were "homegrown." All had Arabic names. They were either born in Canada or came there at an early age.

So, is it "racial profiling" to keep an eye on various Muslin communities in the U.S., or to single out people with Arabic names for airport screening? No more than it is to require sex offenders to register and provide their current address. This is not a difficult piece of deduction. Sex offenders are often repeat offenders, so we keep track of them to protect our children. Terrorists so far have been Muslin extremists, not registered sex offenders, so we keep track of the Muslims to protect against bombings or worse. Sadly, innocent Muslins have been drawn into the scope of terror investigations and will continue to be. Is that a good enough reason to bow completely to the "invasion of privacy" groups?

In Dallas, we once had a black female City Council member who was always complaining about how the police "targeted" blacks in certain parts of Dallas. Guess what? If you listened to the scanner or looked at the crime statistics, those predominantly black neighborhoods were where much, if not most, of the crimes in Dallas were taking place. The police simply responded to where the crimes were located.

Two American extremists, who were on an FBI watch list, are said to have visited members of the Canadian cell in Toronto to discuss targeting in the United States. Obviously, the Mexican border is not our only border problem. There is a good bit of anti-American sentiment in Canada (as there is in much of the world). The U.S.- Canadian border is an easy transit point for Canadian terrorists to slip into the U.S. and for American terrorists to go to Canada to conspire. Canada has an estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants within its borders, predominantly living and working in the Toronto area.

A long article about U.S./Canadian immigration policy appears at:

www.immigration.ca/us/

Much of the article takes to task the poor control the United States has over its borders and vistors. But then comes this fascinating insight:

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Protecting Your Data

I try to keep track of - and protect - my data. I subscribe to an inexpensive e-mail service from a credit-bureau which notifies me if anyone accesses my credit information - including legitimate inquiries. I order the three free credit reports staggered throughout the year (www.annualcreditreport.com) and send in corrections as needed. I find it easier to mail in the form rather than jump through the hoops required for phone or online submissions. I have the request form saved in a .PDF file for recurring use. I receive an e-mail every week from my bank that informs me of my current checking-account balance. Every few days, I check my bank and credit-card accounts online and compare them to my current balances and purchases noted in Quicken.

I use fairly long and complex passwords, with no common words ever, and I change them periodically. I never allow my Web browsers to "memorize" passwords for financial institutions. I never click on a link inside an e-mail. I never open unsolicited attachments from strangers. Often, I will look inside an attachment from a friend with a "viewer" to see what it contains. I have Zone Alarm Pro set to block and notify me of any attempt by my computer to send sensitive data (by using only part of the data string to trigger an alert). My antivirus is updated each time I turn on my computer - and it runs in the background. Webroot's Spysweeper (anti-malware/sypware) is running in the background. I have a firewall and encryption enabled on my router.

Every so often, I will update and run AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy and other little snooping applications I have collected in one folder. I use Microsoft's IE6 Web browser only as a last resort and do not use Word or any MS Office product. It helps to alienate and insult friends and wannabe friends when they send you FW: e-mail, jokes, hot news, etc., (I scan about 10-15 news sources a day. It is probable that I have already downloaded the information to my monstrous archive of Internet articles, in about 50 separate categories). I stop e-mailing to anyone who puts my e-mail in a long list of addressees in the open, rather than using (Blind Carbon Copy - BCC). Having offended most of the world, I now get only a couple of personal e-mails a day, and virtually no spam.

I back up data files several ways. I run batch files that back up data to a second internal hard drive and an external USB drive at the same time. I will run the Homepage backup batch file as soon as I save and close this current file, and nearly every time I use Quicken, for example. Many think that DOS commands are not available in WinXP. (In the Run box, type CMD. Then type xcopy /? and you will see how easy it is to make custom backup batch files. See example below.) About once a week, I run a monster backup in Nero BackItUp of all my data files and archives of Internet articles, etc. to the USB hard drive. Periodically, I run the same FULL data backup to a DVD-R. Each night, Acronis True Image automatically runs a full image of my C: drive onto my USB hard drive. I keep the files on the C: drive to a minimum and use D, E, F, etc. for most programs and data - and separate partitions on the USB hard drive for the full image of the C: drive and for all data backup. Me paranoid? Yes. But, so far, so good. I can't remember losing a data file, for any reason, in many years.

This is the simple batch file I use to back up my Homepage files each time I update anything. The icon is in a Desktop folder named Backup, along with many other backup files. One batch file backs up Quicken to the external USB drive, whereas the internal Quicken backup command backs up to a second internal hard drive. You can never have too many backups of Quicken. I back up my Firefox profile, My WordPerfect Address Book, and so on. Of course, all of the data backed up by the batch files is also later backed up by the two FULL backup methods noted earlier. I have never used a backup service to an online server, free or not. With the ability of hackers and crackers to break into Web sites - and to crack encryption schemes - I have no faith in those venues. Plus, I have no faith that the vendors who provide the storage services don't "read the mail."

A Notepad text file named homepg.bat

E:
CD \HOMEPAGE
XCOPY *.* M:\HOMEPAGE /d:05/01/2006 /Y
XCOPY *.* D:\HOMEPAGEBAK /d:05/01/2006 /Y

------------------------------------ End of Batch File ---------------------------

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