Ordinary Nothing

North Korea is apparently a wonderful country in good condition. It’s after all a well known fact that you only get to deal with minor trivia once all the major problems are no longer pressing. So knowing that they have no pressing military, social or economic problems must be a comfort.

I mean, how else can you explain the fact that they have the time to worry about hair length?
Which should be shot. Sorry – a Freudian slip there, I meant short.

They even have a good reason for it, you see it just so happens that:

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence
development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of
nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy.
Men should get a haircut every 15 days, it recommended.

Yep. That’s what they say. If it weren’t a real country, and there weren’t real policies that affect real human lives based on this, I’d say it’s really really funny. As it happens, it’s just tragic.

• Hair grows regardless of it’s length.
• Hair doesn’t consume any nutritional resource by itself. Dead men tell no tales, and dead cells don’t eat. Hair is dead cells. Hair growth does take a small amount of nutrients, but hair grows regardless of it’s length.
• Even if hair did consume lots and lots of nutrition – it still wouldn’t effect intelligence. Unless they’re claiming that this is what brings people to starvation. But if it causes starvation, long term effects on intelligence are the least of their concerns. Hair growth doesn’t barrow down into the brain to suck nutrients. Honest.

Now if you’d tell me that the persons that came up with this plan, and with these justifications, had really really long hair, I may be willing to reconsider. It still won’t prove a cause and effect relationship, but it would at least show strong correlation between hair length and negative effects on intelligence. That’s something…

I never used any serious desktop search tool until now, not considering the basic OS supplied ones, or a simple dir, or ls, command.

The main reason up until a while ago was that everybody wanted money for their tools. This is perfectly legitimate and fair. I’m actually quite capable of paying money for software I want and use, and have certainly done so in the past. But since I’m fairly organized in the way I keep files, I never saw such tools as more than a potentially minor convenience for me, and so not worth me spending my money.

Recently, however, some has been released for free. The first, or at least the one that got the most hype, was the Google desktop search tool. I considered giving it a spin, but decided not to due to several simple reasons (Which from the first reports I read also pretty much apply to the MSN desktop search tool):

1. If it’s a real local program, and is indexing local files, I want a real interface and not an HTML one. No matter how well made, a browser rendered HTML page is not the same, and has its limitations. For a web service that runs on a different computer, that’s fine. But if I already have a program running on my computer, why cripple the interface?
2. I don’t want to run a web server, and talk to a computer on my own computer via HTTP. Why would I need to allow a search program to provide web interface? Why should I need to deal with networking/firewall/communication settings for a program that’s fully local?
3. I want a clear distinction between what’s on my computer and what’s not. This is apparently different from the vision all those search companies are having, where information could be accessed similarly whether it’s stored on the local computer, or on some server on the Internet. What’s on my computer is mine, and I chose to put it there. What’s on the Internet someone else put there, and most of what’s there doesn’t interest me. Even searching for the same keywords, I’d choose these options totally separately and independently. But those search tools try to make everything more integrated and seamless.

The Yahoo! desktop search program is a program with a regular user interface, doesn’t require to install a web server, and doesn’t get confused between file searches and web searches. So it seemed worth a try. In addition, it’s supposed to be based on the X1 program, which exists for quite some time and has gotten pretty good reviews.

So I decided to download and try it. Now Yahoo! did set up a forum/message board for comments. I tried getting in there numerous times, with hours of difference, but it didn’t respond. I did succeed in entering the message board just one time, but after a very initial browse, to see what’s already reported, it stopped responding again.
So I’ll comment here. I assume nothing I have to say is totally new or unique (How much can I notice from a short use?), so it shouldn’t be a problem if nobody notices it.

The good bits:

1. Indexing is fairly fast.  Of course I didn’t have anything else to compare it too, so I can’t vouch for how it is in relation, but it progressed in a nice pace and it didn’t take too long for it to index (and re-index when I made some changes) everything.
2. The built-in preview is nice, and supported the basic file types I tried to search for. Not having to open each file in an external program just to see if it’s the one I’m looking for is convenient.
3. It’s easy to run additional filters based on file name, type, directory, dates and so on. The main options are on the same window, but arranged sensibly and without cluttering the display.

The bad bits:

1. Changing parameters caused the program to re-index everything instead of trying to sensibly find the differences (If I add a single file extension to index, why not simply search and add those files?). Actually, it’s far worse, simply entering the configuration dialog and then closing it, without chancing anything, caused the program to re-index everything.
2. The search edit box, where the search query is entered, doesn’t match the default system code-page. Meaning to say, the test system was a Win2k computer, with an English interface, but also support for Hebrew. But I couldn’t search for Hebrew characters since when I tried to change the input language I got the "western European" characters instead of the Hebrew ones. I assume this means no UNICODE support, also.
3. The installation placed files in places that were different from where the search interface was looking for them. When I selected a file that it could not preview, it tried to show in the preview pane an HTML file that came with the program, containing the message that the file cannot be previewed. Instead I got an error message that it cannot find the HTML file it tried to show. The files were installed into the program directory, but it looked for them under the user profile directory.
4. When it could not find a file that was indexed, the error came up in the form of a message box. This means that whatever I was doing was interrupted until I pressed the OK button. This is really really bad. It means that when I started to enter a search term, it would cut me off in the middle to show this box I need to confirm. And when I scrolled through several files, again it would occasionally just cut me off and break the flow. Errors like that should be presented without interrupting the user. You can’t find the file? Then let me go on to choose another one instead of interrupting me. Take the same text you’re showing on the message box, and show it in the preview pane instead of a fancy HTML. Due to the previous problem, this came up a lot.
5. Sometime it couldn’t find and open files for no good reason. The files were real, and exactly where it listed them as being. But no, I got an error message stating that the file cannot be found. Many of these files contained spaces in the file name or directory name, but I think not all of them.
6. When the files did contain a space, it was listed in the messages as %20, not as a space. This is fine when sending it to a browser, but not for a regular message box.

The would-be-a-nice-addition bits:

1. Index also email messages from Thunderbird/Mozilla and other mail clients. Not just Outlook or Outlook Express.
2. When rendering HTML files in the preview, maybe allow to use the Mozilla/Firefox engine instead of IE? I don’t think this is a trivial thing to do, and since these are only local files it’s not as critical as when rendering content from unknown web server, but it would be nice.
3. Try to determine file content/type for extensions that were not selected to index. Maybe this would require a separate do-not-index list for people that want this for security/privacy reason. It’s good to have control, and I could (and did) add my extra extensions myself, but I was surprised not to get full-text indexing for text files, even if their extensions were not on the list. On some level I expected that things like .log files, or .cpp and .h files, will be indexed and searchable. They’re just text after all.

That’s either about it, or about what I recall now.

What mostly bothers me about the bugs I found isn’t so much that
they’re there (since that can, and probably will, be fixed), but that
they’re the things that very basic beta testing should have found. Since
it’s based on an existing product, and since Yahoo! are certainly
capable of affording a QA team, I’m not sure how these things got
through…

Overall YDS is really nice, does a good job, and is much better than the internal windows search option. I still don’t think I need any file search tool enough to pay for it, but for a free version I’ll probably keep using YDS once they get rid of those constantly popping message boxes.

I do admit that picking on people that decide to call in to participate in silly radio programs is not very sportive. By definition they won’t be the best and the brightest, so making fun of it isn’t nice.

But still.

I got to hear about 1-2 minutes of some radio show. I didn’t listen long enough to actually figure out what’s their point or what the show is about. All I know is that they have callers which are apparently competing with each other for, or about, something. Also, since I managed to catch a glimpse (can I say glimpse when it’s radio? What’s the proper alternative?) of this show in the past, I know they like to ask the callers to describe things in a reverse order as part (all?) of their challenges.

When I tuned in they asked a participant to briefly describe the plot of Back to the Future, in reverse. The participant responded by an inspiring "eh… back from the future?… hmm… I… err…" . Either she didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, or, as the host of the show told her on the air, she was wasted after drinking too much alcohol.

The second participant was asked to describe making a salad, in reverse. While paying more attention, the poor guy couldn’t get his mind around the fact that he was required to describe the process in reverse. His reply: "A tomato, to cut. A cucumber, to cut. To mix". After finishing to giggle, the host kindly said that it’s not that bad on the salad part (possibly the host never ate a salad in his life? To me the salad part sounds wholly inadequate as well), but totally wrong on the reverse part.

At about this stage I decided it’s not really for me and switched channel. Depressing to know that people with this high caliber of intelligence are wandering around and feeling proud enough in themselves to go live on air.

Industrial laser marking machines are usually adorned by some warning stickers, to inform people that there’s laser radiation, and that the machine should be operated without all the necessary precautions.

Today I noticed someone that got a teensy bit carried away with the radiation
thing. The machine didn’t have any warning against not operating it
with the protective doors close, or about using protective eyeglasses.

What did it have? Something like this:

DANGER – RADIOACTIVE

Which is a total nonsense, of course.
Any
dangers of operating such a machine are solely from the laser beam
itself, and the danger is to the eyes. Lead underpants won’t help, and
are not necessary…

I very much hope that they don’t force anyone to wear protective anti-radiation gear…

It’s so nice when people botch up translations.

I just logged into my Hotmail account, went to the inbox, and on the top of the page there appeared an ad from Microsoft. The ad was for the MSN Toolbar, and in Hebrew.

I think what they wanted to say was along the lines of "The pop-up blocker is one click away", or something of the sort. What they did say was "The ad blocker is one click away"… In their banner ad…

Which is a good point, I don’t want to see this ad. It’s quite refreshing to see simple ads that can not only describe a product, but also demonstrate that you really need it.

I have my doubts that the MSN Toolbar will work on my Firefox browser, though. But I do have the (quite wonderful) AdBlock extension, so I’m proud to report that I will now no longer need to see this ad. And they were perfectly right, it was just one click away… Thanks for the reminder.

BTW, I am aware that using the free service without seeing the ads is not very nice. But if they can discriminate against me just because I don’t live in the US or in Puerto Rico, then I’m allowed to be pissed off and not see their ads.

Not that it should really surprise anyone.

And yet, the following
correction appeared in the Yedioth Ahronoth (One of the three largest newspapers in Israel) newspaper on Sunday morning
(translation into English by yours truly. Needless quotation marks and needless repetitions of the word "company" were in the original):

Elaboration: In an article that appeared in our paper on Friday about
the new mobile phone by "Samsung" company, which is capable of
"translating" SMS messages, there has been an error: "Samsung" did not
acquire "Motorola" company.

So everyone can relax now. Especially the Motorola people that probably
had no idea that they were for sale, or that Samsung was buying…

A pity I didn’t keep the Friday edition. It would have been interesting
to see how someone managed to slip such breaking news into an article
about yet another new cellphone model.

There’s a new anti smoking law in Italy that recently went into effect.

The law,
which bans smoking in indoor spaces unless they have a separate area
with continuous floor-to-ceiling walls and a ventilation system, is one
of the toughest in Europe.

Smokers ignoring the ban face fines of up to $363, while owners of premises risk penalties as high as $2,904.

Sounds like they’re taking it seriously.

I especially appreciate the continuous floor-to-ceiling walls
bit. It has gone past silly and into absurd to see that the difference
between the smoking area and the non-smoking area at most places is an
arbitrary imaginary line inside the building.
I never quite figured how
the smoke is supposed to know that it’s not allowed to cross a one
meter distance between a smoker and me, just because we’re in those two
different areas. Apparently the smoke usually isn’t able to figure it
out either, and stumbles into the non-smoking areas quite freely.

Complaining against the smokers has no effect, since they’re in the
allowed area. Complaining about the smoke also has little effect, maybe
just because it’s a smoking-free area and not smoke-free area, though
possibly also because smoke isn’t a legal entity and cannot be sued.
Hmm…

It also appears that they not only have a law, but are actually paying attention to it and trying to enforce it:

Minutes
after the law went into effect after midnight, a young man was fined
for smoking in a bar in Naples, TV stations showed. The man’s plea that
a cigarette was only normal after a coffee won him no reprieve, and he
was fined the minimum penalty of $36.

Hopefully
it’s indicative, and not just police playing with a shiny new toy before they’ll get bored. Even more hopefully,
maybe more countries will pay attention and decide to make such a law of
their own.

Maybe even around here, sometime… Hey, one can hope…

My father received an envelope sent to him from abroad by Time Magazine. In contained a page with a subscription offer. I’m not sure where they got the name and address from, since he definitely didn’t have any previous relations with them.

In this simple subscription offer where two noteworthy problems:

1. They presented the prices in a very interesting way. After a supposed discount, the price came to "Ns249". I have no idea what this "Ns" is. The obvious explanation is "New Shekel", but nobody writes that as "Ns", and certainly not as a prefix to the number. The official way to denote Shekels is by "ILS" that stood for "Israeli Shekel" and now stands for "New Israeli Shekel". Everybody that does international commerce in multiple coins manages to find this hardly hidden info, so it’s surprising Time couldn’t. There’s a different abbreviation that is sometimes used "NIS" for "New Israeli Shekel". It’s not correct, but it’s common. But no, they had to go and invent "Ns". Not very inspiring. Unless of course it means something else, in which case I think it’s worse since it’s even less clear.
2. They offered a free (assuming you believe a "price includes" kind of offer, possibly after a matching price increase, can be considered free) digital camera to subscribers. I took a short look at the camera’s details, and one line caught my attention: "High Resolution 100K Pixel". Yep, they said "High Resolution" in the same sentence as "100K Pixel". Because, you know, a simple mainstream mid-low-range digital camera today would take pictures of about what ? 3.1 megapixels ? 4 megapixels ? That’s only roughly about 40 times more pixels. So 100 kilopixels would fit the definition of high resolution about as much as a 14Kbps modem dial-up connection would fit the definition of broadband. Cute. Or maybe the envelope was just delayed at the post office for a few years…

And in case anyone wonders, no, Time Magazine did not gain a new subscriber.

OK, Hotmail changed their log-in screen to provide an explanation as to why new mailboxes are now large while my old existing account remains at a measly 2MB.

As the log-in screen goes:

250MB inbox available only in the 50 United States, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

And since I’m not from the US, from DC, or from Puerto Rico (nice board game, though), I can stay with the old small mailbox while new users get big mailboxes.

I was also under the impression that Washington, DC, was kind of located, well, inside the US… So the separate listing may be very PC, but does not serve any other purpose. Oh, well.

An effectively international service using
an upgrade policy that depends on geographical location strikes me as odd.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get it.

In a previous post I mentioned that due to high usage of English I mistakenly wished a friend good luck using an inappropriate Hebrew phrase (Using a literally translation instead of the correct semantic one).

It recently occurred to me that not only me, but many other people
as well, are routinely guilty of a very similar mistake. The situation
is the same one where one would like, using English, to wish "Good
Luck". If the relevant activity is one that depends, even to a small
extent, upon the abilities of the person, it is quite common to add
something along the lines of "any may you won’t need it". This
expresses the hope that the person’s abilities are up to the task, and
that success would be achieved even without luck.

The good-luck semantic (though not literally) equivalent in Hebrew,
"Behatzlacha", does not talk about luck, it rather just wishes a
success. And yet it becomes a more and more frequent occurrence to hear
people follow it by what literally means and may you won’t need it.
The phrase and usage from English has entered the used Hebrew language
to such an extent that it seems natural to people. Nobody ever notices
that it makes very little sense to wish someone a success and that they
won’t need that success. It’s understood that the second part refers to
luck even though the first part has nothing to do with it.

I find it funny that there’s a common Hebrew phrase that only makes
sense if you replace half of it with a semantic equivalent in English.

I knew it was just a matter of time (last paragraph). Apparently it took more time for me to find about it than for it to happen. Well, now it’s official, the cause of the Tsunami:

The Egyptian nationalist weekly Al-Usbu’ has published an
investigation by correspondent Mahmoud Bakri, titled "Humanity in
Danger," claiming that the earthquake and tsunami in Asia may have
resulted from joint nuclear testing by the U.S., Israel, and India

Good
to know. I’m glad the the relations between Israel and India are good
enough now that we feel comfortable making joint nuclear testing.
Especially considering that:

The three most recent tests appeared to be genuine American and Israeli
preparations to act together with India to test a way to liquidate
humanity. In the[ir] most recent test, they began destroying entire
cities over extensive areas. Although the nuclear explosions were
carried out in desert lands, tens of thousands of kilometers away from
populated areas, they had a direct effect on these areas

What can I say?
<sigh>

This greatly amuses me.

I talked with someone who studies Biotechnology in BIU. This is a hard degree with many courses that have difficult material, or that require to study a large amount of material.

And this person had a complaint about one particular course they have to take. Students routinely get very low grades on this course, and it is considered very hard. Many students choose to delay taking the course until their later years, so they will have more time to dedicate to studying for it, or simply since they want to delay the unpleasant for as long as possible.

Mind you, in this degree they have courses which are practically infamous for being hard, such as organic chemistry, cellular structure, and various other courses of this kind. But this really worrying course isn’t one of them.

It’s a course in microeconomics. Yep, microeconomics.

As someone who finished a university bachelor degree in economics, I find this hilarious. I also have an interest in the exact sciences, though mostly as a hobby, so I know, rather than assume, that many other things that they study there are much more complicated. I’m familiar with both kind of material.

But that’s what frightens the biotech students… That’s what they get the really low grades on… Economics…

Go figure. Maybe it’s because they’re all exact-sciences types, and economics is anything but.

Someone broke into our office last night.

He (Maybe it was a woman, we don’t know. I’m making a statistical assumption. If any overly feminist reader wants to complain that women are also perfectly capable of breaking into offices while possibly on drugs, I concede the point) entered through a window on our second floor kitchen, and covered parts of the kitchen in mud.

The alarm went on almost straight away, since there’s a motion (volume? depth?) sensor in the kitchen. This didn’t seem to bother him too much. As it happened, the security company first calls my boss to let him know there may be a problem, and only after getting to him (or maybe if after some time they can’t) they made a call to the police to send someone. By the time the police arrived it was a long time later, and the guy was long gone.

He turned on the lights (well, if the alarm is wailing, using a flashlight to avoid notice would be stupid, that’s true), and went through the storage room, but apparently didn’t touch anything. He then went downstairs, again turned on the lights, and started to rifle through drawers.

The only thing missing (that we noticed) was the money from the petty-cash box. About 30 ILS overall. Hardly worth his time.

He also took a fireproof locked strongbox and carried it with him outside when he left. It’s not really clear why, since it was locked but they key was in the lock. After he left the building, he dedicated the time to look over the box and opened it (This was BTW still in the premise at the parking area, so he didn’t take it away with him, but spent the time still here while supposedly the police were on their way).

Sadly, for him that is, the box only contained CDs, which he apparently didn’t want. They were left strewn on the ground near the box where we found it on the afterward.

He didn’t touch the computer, or any of the equipment and devices he have in the office. No great damage was done.

Basically we can come up with four options:

1. The likeliest possibility is that it was a drug user that wanted some quick cash to buy more dope. This explains the somewhat odd behaviour.
2. Another possibility is that this was also an opportunity to scope the premise before a larger and more elaborate burglary. It could be that the purpose was to see the area and try to find out if there is anything inside that’s worth a full break-in. As a precaution we made extra sure we have backups of everything stored on the computers, but there’s nothing much beyond that to do.
3. Very unlikely, but it could also be some sort of an industrial espionage attempt, and the minor theft was to throw off the scent. While we do have competitors, there’s nothing likely to justify this, so this possibility doesn’t get much credit.
4. There is the new investigation office above us. Maybe someone wanted to get at them, and didn’t count floors properly. From the appearance of our offices it should be quite clear that we’re dealing with laser systems rather than making investigations, but who knows how observant the guy is?

When standing first in line at a traffic light, most drivers just look at the light, waiting until it turns from red to green. Once it’s green, and preferably after making sure that the intersection is indeed clear, they can start driving.

When standing behind someone at a traffic light, drivers usually wait until the car ahead of them moves, and then start to drive. Preferably they should also check the traffic light to make sure the driver ahead isn’t just rushing in when they shouldn’t.

My brother once stood second in line, and decided to only look at the traffic light. The light turned green, so he started driving. The car ahead of him should have, but didn’t. The rest you can guess.

Today I saw someone do the reverse, in a very odd way. The car was first in line, and the traffic light was red. Cars from the crossing lane (perpendicular to the one the aforementioned car was in) started to drive. The driver noticed that cars in front of him were moving, never mind that they were moving across him and not in his direction, and started to drive straight into the occupied intersection.

Luckily he noticed what he was doing right before crashing into someone, and stopped.

Living in a country speaking one language, and spending lots of time dealing with another one, has it’s problems. Like the tendency to borrow phrases and idioms.

I have a friend who has a big university test tomorrow. So naturally I wanted to wish my friend good luck. I speak Hebrew with this friend, like I do with most of them. But I read in English all the time, write in English a lot, and get to speak a decent amount of time in English.

The result of which was that during conversation I wished my friend "Mazal Tov". "Mazal" is the Hebrew word for luck, and "Tov" is good. It felt very natural to say good luck during the conversation.

There is one big problem, though. In Hebrew the "Mazal Tov" combination is chiefly, heck – always, used in a meaning equivalent to congratulations. Wishing someone a good luck is done by saying "Behatzlacha", which can be roughly translated as with success.

My friend was understandably miffed that instead of wishing good luck, I gave congratulations for success. Since it’s a hard test, and success is not assured, this was not taken very nicely.

Of course once I explained everything was alright… Now I just need to decide if it means I’m using too much English, or if it means I should just pay more attention to what I say…