Mike Cohen

Spectacular Failure

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From now on “Giuliani” will be synonymous with “to fail sail spectacularly despite high expectations”.

Hopefully Obama can still get the nomination, despite Hillary’s big win.

A McCain nomination for the republicans would be difficult for the Democrats, since people mistakenly believe he’s a moderate. McCain is anti-choice and a strong supporter of Bush’s war in Iraq. He also wants to attack Iran. We don’t need another war president. We need a new foreign policy based on respect and diplomacy.

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links for 2008-01-30

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"Free Public WiFi"

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Did you ever wonder what those “Free Public WiFi” adhoc networks you see almost every place people use laptops? David Pogue explains it. A stupid Windows bug that acts like a virus but it really isn’t a virus.

The original article goes into more detail:

If a laptop connects to an ad-hoc network it can later start
beaconing the ad-hoc network’s SSID as its own ad-hoc network without the
laptop owner’s knowledge. This can allow an attacker to attach to the laptop
as a prelude to further attack.

This is basically a configuration error that spreads virus-like from laptop to laptop. In field tests, numerous ad-hoc SSIDs such as “linksys”, “dlink”,
“tmobile”, “hpsetup”, and others have been documented.

In other words, if a Windows laptop connects to such a network, it will start advertising the same network name without the owner’s knowledge.

Parallels Compressor + Split Disk

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I like to use split disks with my Parallels virtual machines, since it makes backing up the drive image a lot faster and easier. It seems that Parallels Compressor isn’t able to properly compact a split disk, though.

Today I decided to run Compressor since my Windows XP virtual disk was over 15 GB, even though it had less than 6GB used. After running compressor, the file ballooned to 19GB! I converted the drive back to a single file and it’s now down to 6GB.

My vote counted?

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Instead of the usual “I Voted” sticker, they gave out stickers saying “My Vote Counted”. However, I know for a fact that my vote most likely *won’t* count, thanks to the Democratic party’s infighting over a stupid rule the state party had no control over. I wonder if Hillary will still be pushing to restore Florida’s delegates if she loses? Still it felt good to see Obama’s name on the ballot and vote for him, even if it won’t make any difference.

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Missing Joe Strummer

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Today I was reminded how much I miss Joe Strummer and The Clash. First, someone linked to this video. Tonight in the gym, “Bhindi Bhagee” came up in my shuffle playlist.

The Clash was so much more than a punk band. They blended genres from rock through Ska, Reggae, and World Music.

For the first time I didn't get sick at Macworld

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I see on Twitter that almost everyone came home from Macworld Expo with some kind of cold/flu/plague, as I usually do every year. This time I didn’t get sick because I prepared. I started taking this stuff twice a day for the week leading up to Macworld, every day while I was there, and I’m still taking it every day.

The reason I didn't get sick at macworld