billso.com

This article explains why your computer might substitute one character for another in an e-mail message. This is a common question in Hawaii and at my university, as we have many computer users who speak English as a second language.

It all revolves around ASCII, “quoted printable”, and Unicode.

I found this link in the New York Times.

This is a good time to mention that some news sites, like the New York times and CNN, are difficult targets for hyperlinks. The Times shifts many news articles to a paid archive after a few days, while CNN deletes some articles from its public web site after a few weeks. There are ways to maintain links by adding additional arguments to the URL.

Sometimes, Google’s cache can be used to find old news articles.

So for New York Times and CNN articles, I usually save the print-friendlty version of the article as a PDF. Mac users can use the Print, Save as PDF dialog to do a PDF capture. Windows users can install freeware like CutePDF.

U.S. Mulling How to Delay Nov. Vote in Case of Attack from Reuters.com: The Federal Government currently has no menas of cancelling or delaying the general election naitonwide.

World: Anatomy of a 419 scam [printer-friendly] | The Register: Beware the Nigerian scammers. “Sadly, though, it’s clear that the 419ers continue to operate with considerable success. The following is an account of how one US citizen (we have called him DG) recently lost $1,000 to a UK-based 419 outfit who used a combination of plausible correspondence, phone calls and a fake bank website to reel in their victim. ”

USA: washingtonpost.com: Ground War: “‘There are 172 days left between now and Election Day,’ Rosenthal says on this day in May, ‘and 537 is the number of votes that they claim that George Bush won by in Florida.’ ‘Boooooooo!’ chorus the canvassers. ‘What I do when I am thinking about an election is, I break it down,’ says Rosenthal, ‘person by person, name by name, every single voter that we talk to, and who they talk to, to connect them to what we need to do in this state.’ Pennsylvanians will cast between 4.8 million and 5 million votes, Rosenthal predicts, and ‘we have to get 2 1/2 million of them.’ ”

Tech: washingtonpost.com: Keyless Remotes To Cars in Waldorf Suddenly Useless: “However, in Waldorf, along Old Washington Road, a 300-foot-tall AT&T tower built in 1955 has several microwave dishes and a blinking white light affixed to it. The primary function of the tower, known as a ‘point of presence,’ is to coordinate local and long distance telephone service, as well as cell phone service. But on certain days, said operations manager Philip Clark, the tower also sends out a different signal. Clark would not specify the purpose of the signal or when it is used. Another employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the signal was related to ‘government’ work. ‘I’ve had problems with [my keyless entry] also,’ Clark said. The disturbance ‘is probably coming from our transmitter.’”