Category: depressing

In A Fix With Yahoo

My password was just changed on my Yahoo account. I don’t know why or by whom. Perhaps it was sniffed over the wire while I was on a wireless connection today. I don’t know.

But the trouble is, Yahoo won’t email me my new password without my putting in my identity information. But I had bogus identity information in there, stemming from when Yahoo’s marketing tactics were getting unpleasant.

So… I can’t remember what date of birth and zip code I put in there. My real ones don’t work. And without those it won’t let me request a new password (they DO have my correct email, to send my password to).

So I can’t change my yahoo groups subscriptions or anything like that.

I can’t login to Yahoo Messenger anymore.

I am Yahoo-Screwed.

That’ll teach me to withhold information from Big Brother, I guess. :(

If you’re used to contacting me on yahoo messenger, well…. I guess you won’t be anymore. Until I establish a new yahoo ID and track you down again.

Crap.

Only thing I can think of is possibly to write a script to brute-force the DOB and ZIP on the new password request form.

Fake Credentials for Government Information Systems Pooh-Bah

Reason: Cut-Rate Diplomas: How doubts about the government’s own “Dr.
Lauraâ€? exposed a résumé fraud scandal — If this sort of thing is widespread, it explains a lot about the government’s relationship to computers and software, and the laws and corporations that deal with them. (Equal opportunity outrage! This fraud not only was in charge of information systems for Homeland Security under Bush, she also covered up lost emails that were subpoenaed for the Lewinsky scandal under Clinton!)

The Torture President Still Choosing Pro-Torture Cabinet Members

ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society: White House Chooses New Homeland Security Chief
: ‘According to American University Law Professor and ACS Faculty Advisory Herman Schwartz, Chertoff is the second major Bush cabinet nominee to be involved in the scandal over abusive treatment of detainees. In an August 18, 2004 op-ed published in Newsday, Schwartz writes that “[h]arsh ‘stress and duress’ tactics used by the CIA in early 2002 – such as simulated drowning – were reviewed and apparently cleared by the Justice Department Criminal Division, then headed by Michael Chertoff.”‘

And There Goes Sound.

UPDATE: Boy is my face red. Sound was fine the whole time. While I was moving the computer I unplugged the speakers. When I plugged them back in, I plugged in the wrong set of speakers. I recently got a new set of speakers (thanks Mom) and the old ones were still nearby and unplugged, and the cord looks exactly like the one from the new set… and I plugged in the old set. Which were not plugged into the power outlet. So sound was working perfectly and was being piped to inert speakers. As for the wireless, I’m going to theorize that the connection was poor cause it was too far away. It got bad when I moved the base station significantly far away. It’s wired now and I’m not worrying about it.
Overall, I retract my frustration about Linux sound. This had nothing to do with Linux, it was just me being a dork. Sound in the 2.6 kernels seems pretty smooth. I must apologize to Linux, and thank my anonymous commenter for keeping the faith.

I hate Linux sound. It’s a gigantic mess.

Mysteriously, the sound on my Ubuntu system started working a while back.

Mysteriously, it doesn’t work now.

I have no idea how to begin to debug it.

No idea.

I don’t have that kind of time in my life.

Maybe I should try the newer, more bleeding edge version of Ubuntu. I dunno.

I just don’t know.

UPDATE: I know it would be a bit much to ask, but my old USB external CDR/W doesn’t seem to work either. All the unix cd burning utilities still depend on the hideously archaic “pretend any CD burner is a SCSI device” technique, and apparently Ubuntu isn’t hip to that. I know it was asking a lot to want my old external USB CDR/W to work, but… it would have been nice.

UPDATE: did I mention that wireless connectivity using ndiswrapper periodically flakes out too? Just plain doesn’t work sometimes, even though it reports having a good signal? Disappointing. Disappointing.

A lot of things *do* work on it, but the networking is a real problem, the sound is really annoying, and the usb burner — well, that’s just a minor disappointment. It’s got really pretty screensavers though.

Playing Politics with Earthquake Aid

So I heard on NPR this morning that the deal with the President announcing his “coalition” of nations who are going to work together to help out victims of the disaster — well, the thing is, there already is an organization that helps nations work together to coordinate disaster relief. Duplication of efforts in these things is a serious problem because people die when aid that could have helped them goes someplace where the same aid is already present. That’s why an international agency already exists to coordinate this kind of aid. You know, so people don’t die needlessly and time and money isn’t wasted.

Of course, that international agency is run by the U.N. And the U.N. can’t be trusted, because they thought that invading Iraq was a bad idea and it probably didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Therefore the U.N. must be sidelined, ignored, and discredited at all costs in favor of alternative organizations which will not inconvenience, disobey, or contradict the Bush Administration.

Even if it means a few extra people in the Indian Ocean basin have to die because aid was badly coordinated.

Thank you George W. Bush. Always protecting us from the dangerous U.N.

Ah well. This is based on a radio report that I heard this morning on npr and I could be misremembering it or misunderstanding the significance of it. I hope so.