Random Brain Dump

Earlier this year, the city of Tuttle in Oklahoma became the laughing stock when its city manager wrongly threatened a software engineer for “hacking.”

City manager Jerry Taylor, pictured here, claims to be a computer expert with “22 years in computer systems engineering and operation.” This so-called expert logged onto the city web site one day and saw a boilerplate configuration page from Apache on CentOS (a Linux operating system) instead of the usual city website. He panicked & assumed it was hacked and fired a threatening email to CentOS:

“Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else form accessing it??? Please remove your software immediately before i report it to government officials!!”

To which, the engineer from CentOS replied

“I feel sorry for your city…”

He followed up with helpful information which Taylor ignored and instead threatened to report the alleged hacking to the FBI . So emails flew back & forth. In the end, the developer figures out that it was the server had crashed and somebody reinstalled CentOS, hence the default test page. When everything was straightened out, Taylor finally apologized but still stubbornly pointed out that the whole situation could’ve been avoided had the developer informed him the problem in the beginning.

Unhappy with the apology and feeling unappreciated for help resolving a problem he didn’t even cause for free, the engineer posted the entire email exchange on the web. The exchange took on a viral effect. Pretty soon, people all over the world started blogging about it, articles were created on wikipedia, a deluge of phone calls made & emails sent to the city manager. In a short period of time, the city & its manager became the laughing stock on the web. Taylor had this to say about the incident, which didn’t exactly helped his cause:

“This is just a bunch of freaks out there that don’t have anything better to do. When I came in to work Monday morning, I had about 500 e-mails, plus anonymous phone calls from all the geeks out there. [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he’s got on his hands.”

Looser with a capital L.

Here’s a TV news report, a Wikipedia entry, as well as the entire email exchange is posted here. This is one of the funniest thing I read in a long time.

Classic! 🙂

Okay, these are a bit geeky, but can’t argue that they are anything but uncool:

• Video of demo of a digital drawing board @ MIT.
• Here’s cool video of the inner workings of a hard drive. Amazing machinery.
• 3D bump desktop

Time takes a look the state of education with the cover article called “How To Build a Student For the 21st Century“. The article points to a report coming from a bi-partisan commission which concluded that we need to advance education into the 21st century. Right now, our education system has a low aim: traditional reading & math competency. The article suggest these additional skills are necessary also:

1. Knowing more about the world
2. Thinking outside the box.
3. Becoming smarter about new sources of information.
4. Developing good people skills

One thing I didn’t see addressed here is arts which is woefully lacking in public school these days. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policy further worsens the support for the arts since it only put emphasis on academic studies. As a parent of 2 preschool girls, education is one of the biggest & most challenging concern I have.

Update: here’s an entry with links to bloggers discussing this article…

Imagine you’re on a car trip for the holidays with your family. You’re off to see friends & relatives like millions of other people this time of the year. Then imagine that somewhere along the trip, the weather begins to get bad in Oregon. Night begins to take over and in the darkness, you make a simple mistake: missing a turn. You look at the map on hand and spot the next turn coming up. So you decide to take the next turn instead of wasting more time turning back.

Once taking the turn, you notice that the road gets narrower & gains altitude. But you keep on driving with the motivation that you’ll hit your destination before the night gets too late. The snowfall gets heavier and the night gets darker. When you start to hear the wind howling outside, you begin to wonder if you’re the only creatures out on this miserable night. Your station wagon fights through the wind and snow in the darkness. But soon, you begin to resign to the notion that the elements got you beaten. You decide to turn back.

You spot a stretch of the road where you can think you are able to turn the station wagon around. But as you turn the car around on the narrow road, your car got stuck in the snow. You panic a little as you look over to the back seat– the 7 months old baby is sound asleep and your 4 years old daughter is busily applying yellow crayon on Pooh Bear. Your wife is also asleep all wrapped up with a throw blanket. You put on a jacket and quietly zip it up all they way to your neck.

As you get out of the car and the shearing wind immediately hit you. You’re rudely reminded as how nasty weather can get in this part of Oregon wilderness. You brave the wind and try rocking the car back and forth. The only thing you accomplished is waking up wife & startling your older daughter. Giving up, you re-enter the car to escape the weather. You explained to the wife: “we’re stuck!” After calming yourself down & discussing the situation with the wife, you both realize that the only option is to leave the car & the heater running and wait out until the morning.

Dawn breaks. You did not get a wink of sleep. You struggled to get out of the car to access the situation. You’re alarmed to discover how much snow was dumped on top the car.

I have been following the ordeal with James Kim’s family since last week.

Unfortunately, the news broke out that the ordeal ends tragically. James was found face-down in the snow, dead. Tragic. I watched James on Tech TV.

KTEH started running a pledge drive this past week. On Saturday evening, the station aired a concert by Celtic Woman, a group of 5 lovely Irish women artists with amazing talents. Suzanne tuned in and an unexpected thing happened. We left the TV on and when we returned a bit later we discovered Allison sat quietly on the couch intently watching the concert– I’ve never seen her watching with such concentration. When I tried to change the channel, she made me turned it right back. She told us that she liked the music.

Her favorite seemed to be Máiréad who’s petite (perhaps that’s why Allison took a liking?) & plays a fiddle.

USC, ranked #2, only needed to win their last game of the season over UCLA to advance to the championship game. Everybody thought the Trojans’ offense was going to roll over UCLA like last year’s game! The stage for an upset was there. And the upset happened. I tuned in the 4th quarter and couldn’t believe the score. In the end, USC was ruined by The Bruins. ‘SC’s offense & their championship run were ultimately stopped by UCLA’s defense. I loved it, what a way to end the season!