One of my tasks for the day, and believe me I’ve been so busy recently with work that I had plenty of tasks to perform today at home, was to look into buying some theatre tickets for the Lion King musical at the Orpheum here in San Francisco early next year.

As with many of these things, the tickets are being sold online through TicketMaster. Sounds good? Well, the people that designed the TicketMaster booking system should be fired! The system, for those that have not tried using it, requires the user to guess which particular show will have seats left and then enter one of those words-in-a-graphic validation things. If you were unlucky in your guess, you get to go back to the beginning and guess again.

How much intelligence does it take to realise that what any user will want to do is specify the number of seats, the acceptable classes of seating and have the system present a list of dates that have matching seats available?

Finally, just to rub salt into the wound, if you do finally manage to find a date where seats that match your needs are available, they charge you what they call a convenience fee. How does this system rate as convenient? What definition of the word are they using?

Anybody else fed up with credit card applications? I am getting them at a rate of about one per day. A while back I decided that there was only one solution: stick the terms and conditions page they always include back in their reply-paid envelope and mail it back to them. Perhaps if enough people do this they will get the message and stop sending these applications (either that or they will stop sending reply-paid envelopes).

Anyhow, this week one bank managed to send me two applications and in both cases they had a window envelope enclosed for the reply. The return address was on the back of the application form. Smart, but not smart enough – the part that was pre-printed with my name and address was on the opposite side, so I simply cut the form in half, making sure that there was no identifying information left, and glued that to the terms and conditions.

So, I think it is time to see if we can (a) stop this game and (b) generate some additional revenue for the postal service. Whenever you get a credit card application, send back the terms and conditions in the reply-paid envelope and be sure to shred the actual application form to prevent identity theft.

I’ve read a lot about hacking and security flaws this week, culminating in yesterday’s issuance of a federal arrest warrant for Adrian Lamo, the hacker who breaks into sites and then calls their owner to help them fix the flaws. Seems that one of those “victims” didn’t take him up on his offer of help, and instead went to the FBI. It is believed to be the New York Times at the moment, but that has not been confirmed.

Other tales that caught my eye this week include the story of a whistleblower who ended up in jail for trying to report a serious security flaw in a system that promised its customers absolute security.

Then there were conflicting reports about the Romanian police’s capture of the person who launched another variant of the MS Blaster worm. On the subject of dealing with these kids that launch these attacks, a perhaps not very scientific survey of IT workers over some beers concluded that the solution for the teen arrested here in the US for launching MSBlaster-B was to “Fry him!”

Of course, we shouldn’t forget this week’s five new security flaws in the products from the world’s least secure software house, Microsoft. Amusing that the US Department of Homeland Security issues a warning about MS Blaster and, in the same month, decides to select MS products for its own servers.

It is not all bad news though. Earlier in the week police arrested a man who was registering misspelled domain names for things that kids might like, such as Teletubbies or Britney Spears, and then linking them to porn sites. Not one or two either, 3000 of these a year. Sadly, it seems that the maximum this sub-human person can spend in jail is 4 years; shame it can’t be 4 years for each domain name registered really.

Finally, there was a report that a new worm was attacking British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s website. It seems that this one overwrites text with the words “Infected by the WIN32.SORT-IT-OUT-BLAIR Virus!” can display a message accusing him of wasting money on immigrants (probably true) and also launches a denial of service against the 10 Downing Street website.

No matter what you feel about the moral correctness of the results of their work, nobody can deny the impact on world history that the work of theortical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s team of WWII scientists at the Los Alamos laboratory in northern New Mexico had.

Now you can read the history of this laboratory, from before it even had a location (and therefore its name) through the acquisition of the Los Alamos Ranch School to the successful completion of its mission.

For those who prefer to get their history in movie format, I recommend Fat Man and Little Boy – a movie from 1989 starring Paul Newman as General Leslie R. Groves and Dwight Schultz (from the 80’s television series The A-Team) as J. Robert Oppenheimer. I couldn’t find it on DVD, but it is available on VHS, and is shown on TV every now and then too.

Seems that there are those out there (in today’s case it would seem somewhere in Lublin, Poland) who feel the need to archive whole web sites on their local machines. How do I know this? Well, my web statistics suddenly get hit with a spike. The graph below is for August up until yesterday.

The spikes near the middle of the month are from the mention that the WiFi Shootout got on TechTV’s The Screen Savers – I had nothing to do with the contest, I just offered to host their results page for them after their Earthlink free site was turned off – the slashdot effect.

The spike on the 25^th is a result of somebody at a Polish university using wget to suck down the whole of the blueDonkey.org site. Since the bulk of the content here is database driven (either in MySQL or in the RCS files that TWiki uses), it seems somewhat pointless to download it all as pure HTML. I don’t even know if it will work once downloaded.

Just watched Real Time with Bill Maher, a show I think that more Americans should watch (in some ways it is a pity that it is airing on a premium cable/satellite channel). The guests normally include at least person who is a little controversial; this week’s show had Ann Coulter.

Surprisingly, she wasn’t the person with the most controversial statement IMHO, though she was quick to support it. Instead, Californian Congressman Dana Rohrabacher wins my award for arrogance this week with this statement:

Europeans don’t look at marriage as being something that is a love and a relationship. … Americans take a relationship with their husband or wife much more seriously.”

Not be outdone, Ann Coulter followed it up with:

American liberals are like Europeans that way you know, abortion, adultery, lies, no church-going.

These statements were prompted by some comment about the Italian prime minister not appearing too upset about the fact that his wife was having an affair with the former mayor of Venice. I guess that rather than down playing his personal life in the media, he should have started a massive public enquiry, costing tens of millions of Euros so that he could have had all the gory details of the affair published as a best-selling paperback…

Orlando Jones, the third panel member on the show, seemed to have the right idea when he said that Americans were just too uptight about this stuff. Everybody knows that it is going on over here, and it is just that the Europeans have a more mature response to it. Although, to be fair, he might take that comment back if he read some of the British tabloids 🙂

Fancy a nice house in San Francisco, or the surrounding areas? Well, I thought I’d point out a few nice places for you. Just remember where you read about them if you buy one (and at least invite me over for the house warming party):

1) Sea Cliff ocean-front with close-up, stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco coastline and Marin Headlands. Gated, fenced and private, large view-oriented rooms, retractable dome skylight, three bedrooms, three and one-half baths.

This one asking just $9,500,000 (yes, that is nine and a half million dollars for a house perched precariously on the edge of a cliff – make sure you can afford the insurance, and check it includes coverage for houses falling into the sea).

2) The incomparable Round Hill Estate. Approximately 3.5 acres of exquisitely landscaped grounds, abundant recreational facilities and retreat-like privacy. Main residence of approximately 10,500 sq. ft., including 2 guest suites, office complex, solarium & theater. Separate staff quarters of approx 2,500 sq. ft., racquetball court, amphitheater and tennis court w/fully equipped cabana. 2 pools, spas, stream, waterfall, huge level lawn and views of the Golden Gate and the entire San Francisco skyline. Garages for 6 cars and additional carport and motor court parking. Also includes APN 039-171-08. Showing schedules will be published and stictly adhered to.

This one lists for $24,500,000, but look at what you’re getting – even the staff quarters are larger than most of the new houses I’ve been looking at!

3) Approx 7,000 square feet of new construction, just completed! Best lot in Paradise Cay. South facing, bay front. Wow curb appeal, perfect floor plan & stunning kitchen/family room with fireplace,2 islands, breakfast area,pantries, patios & grass lawn. Huge, gorgeous master, mahogany-paneled library,seperate office. (7th bedroom),family room, Livingroom & Dining room,kitchen/FR,laundry/powder/wine rooms & guest suite w/Livingroom, Bedroom & Bath, all on ground level. 5 fireplaces, 140ft. dock w/power & water,stone-covered decks & palm trees. Fabulous! You haven’t seen a Cay house like this.

This one is a steal at just $7,775,000, and includes the 140′ dock for the yacht that you could buy with the money you saved by choosing to move out of the city (this one is on Tiburon).

4) Large, stately home at the end of long driveway. Impressively gated entry & beautifully landscaped motor court with lots of extra parking & turn-around. Top-level living space with formal rooms & huge family room with veranda, & absolutely awesome views from Mt. Tam through SF district. For the buyer who wants privacy, fabulous entertaining space, incredibly expansive views, & very impressive curb appeal & street presence.

Don’t need the dock? Well, this one, listing for just $4,595,000 might be for you. Amazing views (just think of the parties that could be had on that patio area), gated driveway for a little privacy. Again in Tiburon.

5) Extraordinary in every way, this awesome residence of approximately 7,000 sq. ft. combines the premier in location, views and secure privacy with the highest standard of Tuscan design and finished elegance.

Even on Tiburon you can spend real money. This little gem lists for $20,000,000 – you could probably buy a genuine Tuscany villa for less (and use teh money saved to fly over there, first class, whenever you were in the Tuscan mood).

OK, so those are all perhaps a little excessive. If you’re going to spend that much cash, why not go for something a little cheaper here and take a million or so to buy one of the apartments on The World by Residensea. A floating extra luxurious condominium complex that cruises the world continually. The ultimate in homes if you ask me (and if it meant sacrificing the Tuscany villa on Tiburon for a stately home there, or even the new construction in Paradise Cay, that would seem like a good deal to me.

Thanks to the wonders of handwriting recognition software, my iPAQ PDA running Linux and wireless networking I am bringing you this entry of my blog from the small screen via pen based entry. For a PalmOS user this natural handwriting entry takes a little getting used to – I keep trying to use Palm-style Grafiti form. The more I write though, the easier it is becoming – even though I am on this tiny screen that requires me to keep adjusting the scroll-bars.

The purpose of tonight’s entry was to see if my Linux PDA’s little browser could handle this process (and whether I could cope with the handwritng scheme). It has done admirably well so far, so my next PDA entry will probably be from a wireless hotspot out and about.

On that subject, McDonalds has actually gone live here in the SF Bay area with 75 hotspots – I wonder if you can “super-size” your internet access along with your fries?

–> Cleaned up a little- seems that the small screen also makes it really hard to see the places where the recognition s/w got ‘o’ instead of ‘a’ and where there are two spaces instead of just one.

My final posting for the day… a warning for those living in the SF bay area, though perhaps it applies in other places where AMC operate movie theatres.

Last night, Kitty and I went to see Charlie’s Angels – Full Throttle at the AMC 1000 on Van Ness in San Francisco. When we arrived we found that the 8:10pm showing we were aiming for was sold out, so we decided to go for the 10:20pm showing, and have dinner before the movie.

After the movie, we tried to pay for the parking at the automated machine (seems that the cashier’s office is no longer staffed on a Saturday night). The machine wanted $17 for parking though, so we hunted around for somebody who could help. Other people were also having trouble getting the machine to register the validation, so we thought it was just a problem with the validation process.

Eventually, we gave up on the lobby and headed down to the car. As you can imagine with nobody using the pre-pay machines, the lines to get out of the parking garage were long. By the time we arrived at the exit we’d been in the parking garage for 4 hours and 35 minutes. The attendant there, between drags on his cigarette, told us it was $17 because we were over 4 hours and the validation doesn’t apply after 4 hours.

So, warning to all: avoid this theatre, with its poor concessions inside, and extortionate parking rates. Others in the area, notably those run by Century Theatres have just as good an experience and guaranteed free parking, even if you have to wait for the second showing because the first is sold out.

I’ve written to the CEO of AMC Entertainment about this, and would strongly urge anybody else who has been similarly ripped off to do so. His address is:

Peter Brown,
Chairman and CEO
AMC Entertainment Inc.
920 Main Street
Kansas City
M) 64105-2017

Let’s make sure he knows that his competitors don’t rip off their customers this way. $19 for two movie tickets is bad already, but adding an additional $17 makes this a very expensive way to see a movie. For just $20 a month I get access to the NetFlix service where I can see many more movies, and without all the ads beforehand, or lines for overpriced drinks and snacks.

Another article from The Register points out that inkjet printer ink is now more expensive than vintage Dom Perignon champagne!

Further evidence that perhaps I should be using OFoto.com or Shutterfly.com for my photo printing. The results are better than my inkjet can manage, and, as long as I print enough in each batch, I’d guess that the cost might be lower too.

Alternatively, I might try out CostCo‘s in-warehouse digital photo printing service. Kitty’s brother, Wing, used it for some photos taken with his Sony digital camera and the results were good (better in fact than the film prints Kitty had made at the same time using Kodak’s new Perfect Touch system, which gave some photos a digital grain appearance).