How's Tricks?

How to enforce a screen saver in OS X using Active Directory

2010-07-28T16:38:00.000-06:00

I couldn't find this anywhere on the internet, so I figured I would add to the knowledge out there: If you have Snow Leopard and an Active Directory infrastructure that you have extended the schema on (or have a dual directory structure) and want to enforce passwords on screen saver unlock, it's not easy. Set up the appropriate computer group. On the permissions for the group, select "Details" and add a "com.apple.screensaver" item (any screensaver will do.)

Edit the item, and under "Always" add a New Key of "askForPassword"
Set that to a Type of Integer and set the integer to 1.

That's it. You're done, and you can stop googling for "Snow Leopard Active Directory Enforce Screensaver" or "OS X Screen Saver Active Directory."

Musings on--stuff white people do: ask black men wearing dreads for weed

2009-10-17T10:32:00.000-06:00

Just read: stuff white people do: ask black men wearing dreads for weed

If I were Seattle Police, I would have a cop permanently "under cover" with dreads. All you have to do to make a bust is walk around with dreadlocks and occasionally say "you want me to sell you marijuana?" Sounds too good to pass up.

Question: would this help or hinder racial equality? I mean, it would eventually fix the symptom of black men being harassed for weed but it wouldn't do much to address the underlying assumptions.

Spam Fail

2009-03-17T09:21:00.002-06:00

I was cleaning out my spam folder. Gmail's shooting 183 for 183 over the past five days--not a single spam got through and not a single good email got marked as spam. Thanks Gmail.

Anyway, worst subject line for a spam email this week goes to: "We'll hamper your confidence"

I think it's pretty neat, anyway

2009-02-10T14:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/10/salma-hayek-breastfeeds-a_n_165676.html

Is your cat trying to kill you?

2008-11-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.catswhothrowupgrass.com/kill.php

Hypno-Dilbert

2008-10-24T09:39:00.002-06:00

I'm just adding another blog to my RSS feeds... and apparently it's the guy who writes Dilbert. How odd.

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/morality_of_influence/

Mmm... Moist Robots.

Johnny channeling Elvis

2008-10-11T12:41:00.002-06:00

Holy shit he's good: Johnny Cash does Elvis

Random link of the day

2008-10-11T11:44:00.000-06:00

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v45/cosier/ltmrkt050918.gif

Obama's current standing in the polls

2008-10-07T12:03:00.002-06:00

Looks like Obama has broken the 50% ceiling and is now up by 9 points.

Alternative historian

2008-03-24T22:07:00.004-06:00

I'm reading a book about "what would happen if aliens invaded during WW II and Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, et al had to work together?" An interesting premise, but really those are all powerful people who we know made history. What a snore. How about if aliens invaded during Vietnam and Nixon and G.W. Bush had to stand up and make history? Then there's be some suspense.

Apple iModem

2007-10-30T07:43:00.001-06:00

It occurs to me that opening up the Apple platform to third-party software will soon mean that I can use my iPhone as a modem. And not just as any modem: with access to both the wi-fi and cell networks we may be able to use the iPhone as a normal router without resorting to software on our laptops--linux, mac, and PC could all use it to connect to the net!

Blue Caillou

2007-10-28T23:15:00.000-06:00

This NPR piece has perhaps the best ever clip from a kid's show.

http://216.35.221.77/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15636600

Promising research

2007-10-25T22:38:00.000-06:00

This breakthrough is clearly going to lead to tremendous benefits to man kind. Just imagine what the future will be like after this discovery.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2443298420071024

Splitting your time

2007-10-09T09:54:00.000-06:00

Mightygirl discussed a quote from designer Valentino in which he says that in order to be polite he splits his time at dinner parties, talking to people "first course to my right, second course to my left. " I like this suggestion and would love to witness an event where everyone followed this advice, first speaking to the back of the head of the person to their right...

Heroic customer awareness

2007-10-03T19:43:00.000-06:00

I used to play an online game named City of Heroes and I still receive their newsletter (becuase it's interesting, not because they're stalking me.) Today they sent out an announcement of a new service that lets you move your characters between servers, presumably so that you can play with your friends. Of course, in the last month people have started talking about technology that will make it possible to have an unlimited number of people in a single "instance" of an online world, and the City of Heroes people are aware of this. So in their announcement they did a fantastic job of announcing the service, while also warning their customers that it may be superfluous in the future--that the $10 they spend now may have been completely wasted in a few months. Contrast this paragraph with the iPhone's price break:

IMPORTANT! It is possible in the future that we may make changes to the game that would remove the need to transfer servers. One example of such a change would be a “server-less” game configuration where all players can group with anyone, without the restriction of which server they play on. We are not committing to this “server-less” configuration, and there are no plans to implement a “server-less” environment this calendar year, but because we are charging a fee for these services, it is important that our players understand that the possibility exists. We want to be very clear in this regard so that those who do decide to make use of a server transfer understand that they may not need it in the future.

Habeas Schmabeas

2007-09-20T19:21:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine recently made a statement that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. That was before this vote. I have trouble comprehending how we got here, but at least the people who are to blame have their names permanently recorded.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070919/cm_thenation/15234404

Cigars and smoke rings

2007-09-01T22:13:00.000-06:00

While trying to identify the best title for today's Boulder Photo a Day posting, I went to onelook.com to use the thesaurus. I learned that "Today's word is phalic." Perhaps I was set up to be unable to pass this up by yesterday's article in the Daily Camera by Kate Becker, Trying to talk about Uranus like adults. (For those too short of attention to read the article, the short version is that she failed.)

Who's lying?

2007-08-13T13:19:00.001-06:00

It's amusing to me that this deserved an entire article. I'm pretty sure the "math" involved is within the scope of a typical elementary school student: it is logically impossible for heterosexual men, on average, to have more sexual partners than heterosexual women. The real question, then, is "who's lying more? The men who are claiming a lot of sexual partners or the women who are claiming few?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/weekinreview/12kolata.html

Who's on top?

2007-08-13T06:55:00.000-06:00

Quote from a CNN article:

Rove, who has held a top position in the White House since Bush took office
in January 2001, is to stand down on August 31.

"a top position" because we all know Cheney holds "the top position."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/13/rove.resign/index.html

Fen-Pen

2007-08-11T11:56:00.000-06:00

You may remember that a group of Kentucky lawyers are in trouble for allegedly diverting millions of dollars from a fen-phen class action lawsuit into their own pockets. Yesterday that case took a fascinating twist when judge gave the lawyers in question a choice: stop asking for delays or spend the intervening time in jail. This event is viscerally very satisfying, and if these lawyers did screw their clients out of millions of dollars, I hope they spend the full 20 years in prison. But by putting these very rich white men in the position more often faced by very poor black men, a deep problem with our legal system is highlighted: when your options are to either waive your rights to a fair trial or to sit in jail before that trial, where is the justice?

In this specific case, the judge has basically abdicated his responsibility to make a determination. Bertelsman needs to decide either that the defendants are gaming the system and need to stop, or that in order for them to get a fair trial they require the time they have requested. To leverage them in to giving up their rights is not ethical, not appropriate, and unjust.

But much greater injustices are faced in less notable cases every day. When a poor defendant who cannot make bail is given the choice between a plea agreement and spending time in jail before trial, that choice is meaningless. Lose your livelihood, or lose your right to a fair trial.

So it is important that Bertelsman's decision, which is almost certainly based on his indignation over these lawyers' behavior, not be allowed to stand. But I would also urge that we addressed the bigger issue of pre-trial jail time. And if the fen-phen lawyers spend the time between now and when that larger issue is addressed in jail, my baser emotions will be telling my moral outrage to sit down and shut up.

http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/premium/questions.html

Delicious misspelling

2007-08-09T00:09:00.000-06:00

This evening I was reading Seth Godin's book small is the new big and came across this entry around half way through. Not being entirely certain of my own spelling abilities, nor of my ability to decipher Web 2.0 nomenclature, I retreated to Google. After a little poking around I am pretty certain that yes, that is a typo, he didn't mean to spell it del.ico.us. It's an exquisite typo, though, one that provides fully plausible deniability in context. It's easy to imagine how it got past the editors.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_new_rules_o.html

Cents and Sensibilities

2007-08-07T19:09:00.000-06:00

A New York Times article about the work of Gregory Clark describes an enthralling new theory for how the seeds for the industrial revolution were planted. A part of that theory is that in the West from 1200 to 1800 the more affluent you were, the more surviving children you were likely to have. The remainder of the theory, which is a bit harder to research and will provide much opportunity for debate, is that the downward mobility that this created (at least relative downward mobility--either Clark or the article's author Wade has overlooked some Malthus) pushed upper class sensibilities into the the middle class. These sensibilities were "nonviolence, literacy, long working hours, and a willingness to save."

Two days ago, NPR ran a piece about children being the new status symbol. With the skyrocketing cost of housing, feeding, and educating children the rich are able to afford more children than poor. One commentator says that this runs counter to the last 100 years of history. Though the NPR piece turns toward the snarky, as parents (read "moms", apparently the dads are disembodied ATMs) "hire consultants to potty train their children." But this temporal juxtaposition of Clark's work and a recognition that children are being born proportionally more to rich parents is fascinating and leads me to ask: what sensibilities will be exported from the rich to the poor over this upcoming period of downward mobility?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=b687b5b6f4a28423&ex=1186632000&pagewanted=print
http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/1090/12520633/npr_12520633.mp3

Elections are comin' up.

2007-08-06T20:27:00.000-06:00

Check out this awesome site that lets you rank the US Presidential candidates by comparing your issue positions to theirs. Or anyway, their current issue positions.

http://www.dehp.net/candidate/index.php

Another reason not to live in Mississippi

2007-08-03T06:09:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, the net discovered an article in Reason Online about a quack doctor
in Mississippi using fabricated bite mark evidence to convict people of crimes. Capital crimes. The article itself is scary, including hints that Mississippi remains without a medical examiner in part because of this guy's popularity with the police. But to underline just how scary Mississippi is, I need to point out that ABC highlighted him in 1997 on a 20/20 episode titled "Junk Science" yet his testimony is still used to send people to death row.

http://reason.com/news/show/121671.html

Buscemi, Turturro, and Tucci

2007-07-23T10:50:00.000-06:00

Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, and Stanley Tucci are remaking three of van Gogh's films in English. Van Gogh, you may recall, was the Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by an Islamic extremist angered by the message of one of van Gogh's films. It is gratifying that the final result of that murderer's actions is to gain wide distribution of van Gogh's message while the murderer's name is forgotten even as a footnote. And what a power team of independent filmmakers.

http://www.azstarnet.com/accent/192217.php