Check out Google Patents for Patents on Farts

The great statesman Benjamin Franklin once wrote a book called "Fart Proudly" (Olde Ben was a bit eccentric)

Anyway, I had waaaaay too much time on my hands and was searching Google Patents which is a list of US patents going back to 1776. Actually some of them are pretty interesting. Anyway, I decided to search the patents for 'fart'. A whole bunch of stuff came up like.

SINGLE CRYSTAL METALLIC FART - Oh My Gosh - never had one of those . What in the world do you have to eat to get one of those??

METHOD OP MAKING A PIPE-COUPLING FART - I usually want my pipe couplings to hold two pieces of pipe together, not to have them fart.

REPLACEABLE TIP MEMBER FOR A TWO-FART HAMMER - I guess those really bad farts kill the hammer after two times.

GOLF TEE WITH SEAT FORMED BY COACTING CENTRAL FART AND RADIATING PETALS - I don't even want to go there


OPTICAL SY.STBM FOR PHOTOGRAPHING OBJECTS AT LEAST IN FART IN A LIQUID MEDIUM - Yep, gotta watch out for those wet farts

TWO-FART MECHANICAL INTERLOCK FOR ELECTROMAGNETIC CONTACTORS - Gee this sounds like some sort of cattle prod - fart twice and ZAAAAPPP.

TELESCOPING LAMP FART - Gee, what happened to Lava Lamps - Now they not only fart they telescope!!

THREE-FART MUFFLER WITH SIDE BRANCH CHAMBERS - For those particularly gassy days when you will be on a date or in an important meeting. The side branch chambers are the key

DECORATIVE MODULAR PULL ASSEMBLY HAVING MODULAR INTERIOR FART - Decorative??? Decorative?? How the hell do you decorate a fart?

BROKEN FART DETECTOR AND MACHINE CONTROL - Broken farts?? That is a disaster of epic proportions.. The "Machine Control" part would worry the hell out of me

STEWART X-RAY FART F - For those silent but deadly invisible hidden farts

GILPIN CORRUGATED CAR FART F - Yep, some farts inside a car have been know to corrugate the steel bodies of the cars

COLLAR OR LIKE GARMENT FART - Huh?? Maybe they mean the scent lingering in your clothes.

HUNT METHOD OF CUTTING SHOE FART BLANKS - Let me guess, the question is "What do you get when you cross foot fetishism with scatology??"

NELSON MEANS FOR SECURING DEMOUNT WHEEL FART S F - I prefer the wheel of fortune to the "Wheel of Farts"


So, you can check out the entire list at http://www.google.com/patents?num=100&q=fart

Remember, the government is monitoring all people making this particular search just to have a list of us morons...

BTW - all of this is a result of the fact that the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) seems to be seeing the P in Part as an F resulting in a lot of farting around

New York to try to charge sales tax on Intenet Purchases

New York State is trying to make online retailers collect sales tax from purchases made by New York residents.

Given the state of the Internet right now, this is going to be a nightmare for online merchants. Currently they say they are only going after 'large retailers'. In truth, given the way that government is known to work, they will require all online retailers to collect NY Sales tax (remember that politicians buy votes by confiscating money from one group of people and handing that money out to other groups of people. Their appetite for taxes is insatiable)

I guess New York needs the money. You can't tell me that the former governor Spitzer wasn't using some tax money during his flings with a $5000/night mattress warmer. The new gov, Patterson isn't any better in that there are serious allegations that state funds were involved in his junkets to the No-Tell Hotel with hookers. So folks, fork it over, NY needs cash.

Anyway, why is this a bad idea?? Here are a couple of reasons

• Taxes on Internet sales have a high 'profit margin' for the state. Since there isn't a brick and mortar presence, there aren't additional requirements for infrastructure such as police, fire etc. Most of the goods will move largely on roads funded by the Federal government.
• The Internet is still in it's infancy. There are a lot of startup companies that are providing good products that are not widely available, that are operating on a shoestring. When they have to start administering taxes for 50 states, filing 50 sales tax returns and writing 50 checks each month, the administrative costs will kill them.
• The point above assumes that only state taxes will apply. What happens in cases like Pennsylvania where the city government of Philadelphia gets and additional 1% because the city leaders are too incompetent to make ends meet even though Philly has one of the highest wage taxes in the country? Now, e-tailers will have to file thousands of returns each month. Oh, by the way, for those of you who have never collected sales tax, different items are taxable depending on the state where you are collecting the tax. The logistics of keeping up with this will be a nightmare. Most of the shopping carts currently available are a long way from being able to track the necessary data and do the required calculations.

The way this will work is that New York will pass the law. As the legislator's greed grows, they will start going after the smaller e-tailers. The NY Attorney General, like Eliot"I'm a F----ing Steamroller" Spitzer will single out a couple of e-tailers based in neighboring states and subpoena or indict them for failure to collect the tax. Stick a couple of heads on pikes at the city gates and you start to have compliance.

What can you do about it.

• At some point, someone will need to form an association of online retailers that will lobby at the state and federal level to protect e-tailers from absurdity (ie filing a couple of thousand state and local tax returns each month)
• Remind the folks in New York that one of the reasons the government is trying to tax Internet sales is that New Yorkers have consistently elected corrupt tax-and-spend-spend-spend legislators.
• Call your federal representative and senators and ask them to do what they can to prevent the states from creating a byzantine labyrinth of regulations for e-tailers.
• If you live in New York, call your state reps and blast them.

Why I don't like to use background images on websites

I have a client who insisted on keeping the background images that were on their website. We did it because we will give the clients what they want. However, we did advise against it for a number of reasons

1. Background images make readability tough even when they are really washed out. You need to go at least one or two points larger with the font and you usually need to bold the font because of the noise of the background
2. Having a background image tends to limit the amount of text you can put on a page.
3. There is always a possiblity that the search engines will hit you with a spam penalty if they think the text and background are too close.

Well, now, we need to add a lot of text to one of the pages. We can't reduce the font size because the picture will obscure the text. We did go with a scrolling background image which worked to a point. The client then mentioned that they didn't like the change we made to the background color. We hadn't changed the color. What is happening is a sort of optical illusion. When you deal with background images, you have a lot of visual interaction going on.

• Background color
• Text color
• Positioning of the text
• Weight of the text (font size and bold)
• Background image colors and shade
• Placement of the background image relative to the text
• Color of the foreground image.
• Any ‘skins’ on the browser’
• Windows color setting which carry to the browser.

Someone who is an artist or who has artistical training would probably have a lot better intuitive grasp of the consequences of changing any one of these variables than I would have.

If you want to get an idea of how the brain interprets what the eye sees, take a look at an example of the checkerboard illusion. That shows just how complex things are and why I like to stick with a solid backround and solid text.

You Vill Let us search your Laptop - SCHNELL!!!

Apparently the feds can poke through your laptop, cellphone and other devices at will according to a wired article. OK, so it's good to bust child porn purveyors and those who believe in clothing by DuPont. However, allowing your laptop, cellphone or camera to be arbitrarily searched is a bit disconcerting.

The problems I have with this are

1. Let's start out with the tinfoil hat thing. Suppose the government doesnt' like me because I'm too opinionated in my writings. It would be child's play to plant a couple of files say in the browser cache and then bust you a couple of weeks later.
2. It is impossible to travel without some sensitive info, ie: contact lists, encrypted passwords to clients sites, financial info, info restricted by non disclosures, preliminary business plans etc. How can we trust government agents when we have congressmen like William Jefferson of Louisianna with 90 thousand dollars of cash in their freezer.. Sorry, I'm not ready to trust everyone.
3. Do you have to give them your passwords? What happens if you don't? Again, I'm not happy with having to give officer friendly my access codes. I usually change things when I travel but it would be easy to get your email passwords, financial passwords etc. Someone in need of a little extra cash could get a nice ID theft business going.
4. Can you be sure that no software such as a keylogger has been installed on your machine? How would you even know?
5. Will they ghost your hard drives and chips for a leisurly dissection later??

OK, so there you have some objections to the ability of the government to look into your laptops. Perhaps to even the score, Joe Average Citizen should be able to walk into his senator or congressman's office and sit down with their laptop for a bit.. You know, just to make sure they aren't doing like Randy Cunningham taking graft to award Government Contracts or like the illustrious Governors (Plural intended) of New York possibly using taxpayer funded assets to satisfy their need for paid companionship.(Read hookers).. Of course, you all know it is "one rule for me, another rule for thee".

So, what can you do about this.

1. Don't go to places like CLub Med, take photos of yourself and your significant other on your camera or phone and go through customs. The question is, how do you get the pics home. Will they search for all the memory chips. Will they bust you if they find a chip that happened to work it's way into the lining of your dinner jacket in your suitcase?
2. NEVER, let anyone else handle your laptop. It would be a real bummer if you let your neighbor or business partner use your laptop prior to a trip and they happened to click on a underaged pic.
3. Encrypt all sensitive data on your laptop. This is a good practice anyway. The truth is that you won't slow the feds down if they want to look at the data. However, if you are only getting a cursory inspection, they might not end up reading your plans for a multi million dollar patent and filing it first.
4. For Legal photos and such, you can try simply sending them via the net and then deleteing them from your laptop, camera etc. You can do this a number of ways. If you are more savvy, you can simply set up a server where you can upload your pics. That way, the good border agents won't be snickering at the pic of your middle aged gut hanging out at the nude swim up bar at club med.
5. Memory chips hold quite a bit. You can put your sensitive stuff on a secure SD chip somewhere creative. Keep in mind that you could be asked if you have any other devices etc with you. If you lie, you get thrown into the darkest dungeon forever (However, if you are a member of congress, lying does not count. You just get re-elected)

I would suspect that there is a certain amount of profiling in determining whose devices will be searched. In other words I don't think a couple in their 70's coming back from Bermuda will get the same scrutiny as a single male coming back from a non business trip to Thailand.

So, now that I'm done writing this, I'm going to call Congressman Murphy's office and ask if I can get a bunch of citizens together to go through his computers. I'm sure he'll be most agreeable to that.

Vista Home Premium and an Intel IAStor EventID 9 error

Since getting this laptop with Vista Home Premium around January 08, I've had a number of crashes (surprise Surprise). This afternoon, the machine crashed and rebooted with an even log of

Error 4/22/2008 1:33:03 PM iaStor 9 None

Logging in after the reboot and doing a 'check for solutions' pointed to the IAStore driver from intel and pointed me to the Intel Site. So far, so good. The intel site suggested downloading and installing a driver patch of Intel(r)TurboMemory_All.exe . So far, so good. I downloaded and installed the 32 bit version. At the end of the install, it wanted to do a reboot. OK.

When I rebooted, the machine simply hung on startup. (The black screen with the useless little green bar going left to right). After about 20 minutes it became obvious that it wasn't going to boot so I did the 'hold the power button in and shut it down' trick.

When the machine tried to boot again, it could not and went into the repair/system restore mode. My guess is that it undid the intel patch. I checked the event viewer and saw that there have been five previous crashes from IAStor averaging about one a month (Computer PMS??)

Fortunately the system restore got things running again and I didn't lose anything especially a program I just installed a couple of days ago. I don't have time to screw around with it right now so I'm going to leave well enough alone. Anyway, I'm not sure if the blame goes to Intel, Windows or just plain old dumb luck. Time to think about buying those XP machines before they stop selling XP in June..

Store Manager for Oscommerce from MagneticOne

One of our clients is running an OScommerce 2.2 store. They have a fair number of items with options (ie, colors etc). Setting this up with the basic oscommerce admin panel is tedious at best.

I looked for a solution and found a trial version of the MagneticOne OsCommerce Store Manger.

What it does is to put a client on your PC or Laptop that will make the connections to the SQL database that runs your store. I tried the regular connection and got blocked because the SQL user is limited to localhost only (ie, must be running on the server). I tried setting up another MySQL user with rights to log in from any host. No luck there. I then tried using the Tunnel.
No luck there either.

Keep in mind that the connection problems were the result of fairly tight security on the host. It's not a fault of the store manager.

Now, the folks at MagneticOne are really thinking. They included a neat little php bridge. It's a small php app that you ftp to your admin folder in your catalog. The store manager then connects via the bridge. YOu download the store info, work on it, and then upload the changes.

The changes are done via an SQL script. Overall it works pretty well. Since we are using the bridge, we backup before and after via the oscommerce control panel. Also, I tend to publish after each group of items.

Some of the advantages of the store manager are

1. Working with options such as color is MUCH easier. You need to purchase the full version for this option to work. You can set up the options for one item and move things around


2. Formatting the product descriptions is a lot better since a wysiwyg editor is available. THis means that you do NOT have to mod your oscommerce install with a wysiwyg editor such as fckeditor.


3. If you are familiar with SQL, the store manager gives you the ability to write your own reports. The nice thing, if you are using the bridge, is that the reports are run against your local database and not the live database giving you a little extra safety. Keep in mind that it is possible, with SQL commands, to trash your database. Backup Regularly.

There are some things you need to consider

1. You are using a third party program and giving that program access to your store data.


2. If you have heavily modified Oscommerce, especially the file structure, there is a possiblity that you could end up corrupting your data. Backup regularly.


3. We are using the bridge mode as mentioned above. Right now, only one person is working on the database. I'm not sure how good of an idea it would be to have someone working online through the web interface while you are making changes via the bridge. Things should be OK but regardles, Backup Regularly.


4. The license is about $150 US for one machine. You can access as many stores as you like. If you want to purchase additional licenses, they are currently about $50 each.


5. If you don't set up the ftp connection, you can't use the store manager to upload pictures. Right now, we are using the bridge without the FTP connectivity and working with the pictures later.

In summary, this is a neat little product. The

For more information, see the MagneticOne Store Manager page

Steampunkt Duel

Here is a time waster. Great animation though. I can't imagine the animation that will be available in a couple of years.





The url at youtube is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCP2qbHDGIs

A tip on the tips for the Belkin F5L010 Travel Power Supply

Update: Belkin did get back to me within 7 working days as promised. A tip is available for my laptop. They also re-organized the online list to make it easier to find your laptop. All I need to do now is fill out the form. You can get one free tip per serial number.

Update 2: I ran into a slight glitch when ordering my free tip. For some reason, I could not find a serial number on my unit. I emailed their support and got a positive response back within an hour. Not bad at all. The tip is on it's way and should be here monday.


I use my HP DX6000 laptop a lot at home and in the office as well as on the road. Unplugging the power supply and stuffing it into the laptop bag gets to be a real pain. I saw a Belkin Laptop Travel Power Supply, model number F5L010, at the local office supply store. It looked to be a pretty good deal with the following features:

• The ability to plug into a 110v outlet as well as plugging right into a 12v outlet eliminating the need for an inverter while using 12v power
• It has a USB port which I could use for charging cameras and my bluetooth either while at a hotel or in the car.

Well, that all looked pretty good. I could leave the Belkin Power supply in my bag and the HP OEM Power supply at the home office. I got the unit home and unpackaged it. They include 11 tips and the packaging says "If we don't include a tip for your Windows based PC, tell us at www.belkin.com/powersupply and we'll ship one to you free!". I checked the printed documentation and found that there was no tip listed for the HP DX6000. Then I checked their Handy-dandy online wizard. No dx6000 listed there either. I then filled out the "request a tip" form. ... and waited... I filled the form out on april 2nd and had not heard anything back by the 9th.

I called customer service. The tech support is India based and essentially said that they could not answer questions about new tips. The rep was pretty helpful and gave me the number and options to get through to customer support which is US based.

The first person I talked with at customer support was a huge disappointment. She sounded thoroughly bored with her job. Here is what I got from her.

• Belkin can't tell me if or when a tip would be available for my machine
• Belkin does not take returns so if I go past the return date for the store where I purchased it I now have a cute white $100 paperweight.
• They'll ship a tip to you free if and when they develop a tip for your laptop.

Fortunately she passed me on to a guy who was a lot more knowledgeable and seemed like he cared. (My inital perception of her was probably wrong because she did forward me to someone who was a little better able to answer my question) What I got from him was.

• They can't tell me if or when a tip would be available and, in some cases the tip will only either charge or power the laptop. Apparently Dell encodes the power supplies so a foreign supply will only power the unit but will not charge it. (That is labeled clearly on the package) See the update at the top of this post. Belkin responded within 7 days and a tip is avialble
• They can't do anything about the return policy for the store.

So, I have to make a decision. Should I give Belkin a couple of more days to see if they can tell me if they can provide a tip or should I just return the dang thing and order a power supply directly from HP? I'm leaning toward the return and going back to plugging the Inverter into the 12v outlet.

If you are going to buy the Belkin travel power supply, you might want to check out the availability of tips for your laptop or device at www.belkin.com/powersupply before you purchase the unit.

One final thought. I would feel a lot more comfortable if Belkin would list the output power of the various tips somewhere. That way, I could match up the tip they recommend with the output listed on the power supply for my laptop.

Boring suit over Google's Streetview

A couple by the name of Boring from Pittsburgh Pa is suing Google over a street view of their house.

Google's Street View is a means by where you can get street level pictures of areas throughout selected areas in the united states.

Their shark in a suit... er lawyer, is asking for over 25 grand in damages. I have some mixed feelings about this. The suit claims that they are on a private lane that is 'clearly marked'. If it is, the markings don't stand out when you follow the street view pictures. If the 'private lane' sign was there and was visible, then the driver should not have gone down that lane. However, when you look at the pictures on the street view, it is difficult to tell where the public road ends and where the private road begins. Also, there doesn't appear to be any recognizable pictures of people on the property.

I can just picture the late night ads now "I'm Joel Cheetum of Dewey Cheetum and Howe. Is a picture of your house shown on Google? If so, I can get you MONEY!!. Call now. 1 800 CONTINGENCYFEE . If we don't collect, you don't pay".

I've found the street view feature to be extremely useful, especially when planning trips. You can see the features before you get there which means that you are less distracted when driving. It's also good for getting an idea of the type of neighborhood where a hotel or B&B is located.

I'm not a lawyer (praise be to God) but as far as I know, photographs of buildings taken from public property are usually publishable with some exceptions (trademarked buildings such as the flatiron building) . I suppose some of the questions that will come up will be (1) is he road public or private (2) if it is private, is it clearly marked as such

My fear is that if this suit is successful, then lawyers all over the country looking for a couple of quick bucks will follow the lead of Dennis M. Moskal Esq. and file lawsuits.

One other consideration that the esteemed barrister apparently didn't consider was that Google Maps also provides high res (approx 1 meter) satellite photos of the area. Will they start trying to have their individual property blocked out from the satellite view.?

Shakespeare had two quotes that come to mind

1. Much ado about nothing
2. What to do with all the lawyers (Henry VI)

The smoking gun has the court filing

Beware of the Phishing Attack

I just had a client fall victim to a phishing attack. He has an adwords account an also happened to have an expiring credit card. He got what appeared to be a legitimate 'please renew' email from Google and renewed. A couple of days later, he got another renewal notice and renewed again.

When he got a third renewal notice, he got suspicious and emailed it to me. A 'view source' of the email showed a url for the link that was something like www.google.com.randomnumbers.cn . A whois quickly confirmed the obvious that the domain was in no way related to Google.

The perps had probably managed to get his credit card info, mother's maiden name, google account info and a bunch of other personal and sensitive information.

There is one very reliable way to avoid this type of attack.

Never, ever, click on a link in an email and then put in login credentials or sensitive information, not even once.

When you get an email about credit cards expiring you should go in to that side the way you always do, with your bookmarks and then login the way you always do. That way, there is no chance that a phishing email link can redirect you.

Some questions in my mind about him getting two phishing emails relating to adwords and an expiring credit card are

(1) Did they know he had an Adwords account or was the email sent out randomly
(2) Did they know he had an expiring credit card or was that also random.

I would think that you would have to send out a lot of emails in order to get to the point where you hit enough people with Adwords accounts and expiring credit cards.

The other thing was that the hosting trail was obscured with proxies and private domain registrations (surprise surprise surprise)

This really ticks me off, especially in light of the recent news about the botnet operator getting a slap on the wrist by some lenient judge. The botnets are the enablers of this type of phishing attack which costs consumers tons of money every year.