The Windows installation on my computer is currently spending many hours to accomplish something that should take less than a minute.

Most computer storage systems have a sort of thing that some of us know as directory and others know as folder. People speak and tend to think of files as being in these things, but actually files are only in these things in much the same sense as a persons are in a phone book. Hence, directory is at least the less misleading term (paper files being in paper folders more as people are in buildings). Directories are usually themselves implemented as files, which then makes it trivial to put directories in other directories.

Logical disk C on my computer entirely resides on one physical hard drive. I have a directory on C such that I'd like to move it from one parent directory on C to another on C. What that literally means is that I would like to add a listing for it to another directory, remove a listing from the earlier parent, and change what the moved directory lists as its parent. I don't want to relocate the files that it contains to another part of the logical drive; I certainly don't want to relocate them to another physical drive. I don't even want to relocate the directory in question. I just want to change which parent directory lists the directory in question (and what it lists as its parent directory). So I did a cut-and-paste from one folder to another, something on the order of twelve hours ago. The move is still in-process; the progress bar indicates that it is less than half done. The disk drive is in a state of near-continuous activity, and the dialogue box is listing the subcontents of the directory one-by-one.

(Sadder still, this move is in preparation for moving the files in question to a different physical device, which will take considerable time no matter which operating system is used.)

After four months, one week, thirteen hours, and thirteen minutes, the Wikipedia arbitration to which I previously linked was finally closed.

One of the seven editors involved — indeed, the editor who petitioned the Arbitration Committee in the first place, specifically targetting another editor — has been stripped of his administrative privileges. He and two other parties to the case are part of a larger cabal who've abused administrative privileges and acted like a pack of hyænæ. Although his petition launched the case, at some point he seems to have ceased to actively participate, and thus made himself the best candidate to be thrown under the bus. The remaining four parties, two of whom are also members ot the cabal, have been admonished. The original target of the petition seems to have been the least scathed party.

In any event, it appears that the cabal has taken enough of a hit to pacify its active opponents, but not so great a hit as to bring about an intervention by Wales on its behalf. But the Arbitration Committee has (somewhat as predicted) lost much respect all-around, albeït perhaps even more for having taken so long to reach a decision than for having failed to act more decisively against the cabal.

Some of my searches on Google are resulting in a 403 error return (Forbidden) from Google itself, with this message:

We're sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

If you're continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser's online support center.

If your entire network is affected, more information is available in the Google Web Search Help Center.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.

This is, of course, a bit annoying. But it is also interesting, as it says that Google is acting to stop the use of their system by malware. However, I don't see how spyware per se would make use of Google.

The searches in which I've engaged which have triggered this have used the Google site operator, and have looked for a PHP-generated page. Further, the 403 error return is more likely to come after I have moved through multiple pages of results.

My inclination is to think that what Google is really trying to block is some sort of zombie searching for vulnerabilities in the sites to which it provides links.

In the interval since I installed a new Linux driver for my AMD ATI video adapter, I have had fewer incidents of being logged-out when using Firefox, but there were still a few pages such that I would be logged out of my Linux session when I attempted to scroll through them with Firefox.

Yester-day or to-day, AMD ATI released a newer version of the driver, which seems to have resolved the remaining problem.

[Addendum (2008:08/27): Ah, I wrote too soon. The frequency of the problem has dropped further, but Firefox will still cause me to be logged out of the linux session when I scroll at least one of those pages.]

Amongst other things, I've been hacking at the theme for this 'blog, fixing bugs and simply tweaking things more to my liking. While I'm at this task, visitors are occasionally going to find the 'blog either cosmetically flawed or just plainly dysfunctional. (And, tragically, they may find it thus after I'm finished.)

In the course of my hacking, I wanted to use the PHP function file_exists() to check amongst files within the theme directory. One possibility would be to hard-code a relative specification of the theme directory (the theme slug appended to wp-content/themes/), but that approach isn't robust; it would increase the ways in which the theme could be broken by external change or by cloning.

While WordPress has a function call to return a specification of the directory, it does so in the form of an HTTP URL, notwithstanding that there is a call that explicitly requests the theme URL, to the same effect; meanwhile, PHP function file_exists() will choke on a URL. I went prowling around the WordPress documentation, and did some code-diving, but didn't find a function call or global variable for anything more like a relative specification of the theme directory.

However, there is a function call for the URL of the 'blog — get_bloginfo('template_directory'). My hack to get the relative specification, which could preface file-specs that could be usefully handled by file_exists(), was

substr(get_bloginfo('template_url'),strlen(get_bloginfo('url')) + 1)

The + 1 is to account for the fact that returns to queries to get_bloginfo() for directory URLs don't have a terminal slash.

On 17 July, LiveJournal, Inc, announced the return of Basic Accounts. As previously noted, what was actually happening was that Basic Accounts were going to be replaced with a new sort of account with the same name.

The essentials of the new programme have now been reported:

• Journals of Basic Accounts will display advertisements to anyone not logged-in, but will not display them to those who are logged-in.
• New Basic Accounts cannot be directly creäted, but one can creäte new Plus Accounts, and then downgrade these to Basic accounts. (The official report is somewhat confusing on this matter, because it is inconsistent in its conceptualization of Account.) The objective of blocking direct creätion seems to be to get new subscribers to try a Plus Account before trying (and often before discovering) the Basic Account.

The report does not discuss what happens when Permanent Account journals are viewed with Basic Accounts. In the case of community journals where the subscription is internal (eg: lj_2008), banner ads are shown when individual entries are viewed with Basic Accounts. In other cases, ads are not being displayed by Permanent Account journals viewed with Basic Accounts.

Based on some experiments, the advertising policy for registered external IDs appear to be same as for the new Basic Accounts.

I have received another, different CNN spoof e.mail, this one ostensibly from CNN Alerts <ontlook_1970@brace4u.com> with subject CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert, now with a link to http://missglobe-albania.com/cnnplus.html — go there only at your own risk. The page again seeks to download and install malware adobe_flash.exe. See my earlier entry CNN Trojan Horse Attack for some discussion of this malware.

I received an interesting piece of malevolent e.mail to-day.

It represents itself as coming from "Daily Top 10" <Aleksandra-namgof@asntechnologies.com> which isn't very slick, but the subject is given as CNN.com Daily Top 10, and the body looks very authentic: Some of the links were indeed to servers at cnn.com, but the video links were to http://97folders.org/news — proceed there only at your own risk. When I looked at that site, it attempted to persuade Windows users to download and install a program named adobe_flash.exe, which contains trojan malware which AVG identifies as I-Worm/Nuwar.V.

(Now, someone might expect users to know, from the site-name of 97folders.org, that this wasn't a legitimate CNN site, but the fact is that I've more than once been sent by a legitimate — if none-the-less goddamn'd stupid — organization to a site with an odd name. So I won't much blame anyone who trusts this site.)

When run on a Windows system, this malware adds

to the System folder (typically \WINDOWS\system32\). If you know a system on which this file has been installed, delete it. A file of this name is not part of an original installation, so if you find one then it is probably an artefact of an infection.

The trojan horse will also make a number of modifications to the WIndows registry. If you know how to edit the registy, then delete keys containing either the string CbEvtSvc or LEGACY_CBEVTSVC.

According to McAfee, if the code has been resident for about 30 minutes or more, then it will have attempted to download further malware.

My best thinking seems to be done in the shower. Yester-day, in the shower, I came up with the idea for what may in fact be a killer app.

The thing that distinguishes a killer app is not that it provides an excellent solution to a problem so much as that it provides an acceptable solution to an excellent problem. That is to say that a killer app may not have ideally efficient code, but manages to do something very desirable that other programs pretty much aren't doing at all.

Some time ago, I wrote a simple pair of programs for the use of the Woman of Interest and myself. Their functionality is very limited, and they were written under an assumption that now seems more dubious. So I was thinking about how to rewrite them into something more powerful, and quickly developed the general idea for the hypothetical app.

Later, I returned a phone call from my friend Phillip (a programmer), and during the course of our conversation sketched the idea for him, telling him that I would want to discuss it at some future date. But Phillip quickly got very actively interested, and discovered that I had coherent answers for related programming questions. (What I don't have are answers for some of the marketing problems.) Basically, he wouldn't let go of the subject, and we ended-up talking for hours. Phillip had one excellent technical suggestion about how to improve the app. He's planning to research potential sources of competition, and then get back to me.

The nature of the app is such that, if some party produces a decent implementation and gets a significant number of users before anyone else produces a decent implementation, then that party can probably profit for years, by virtue of path dependency. But, if a well-funded rival recognized the potential market before there were already a substantial number of users for the app, then that rival might be able to get utterly displace the first party. Hence, I'll remain annoyingly vague about the idea, until I either abandon it or have product ready to move.

Speaking of LJ, the behavior of legomymalfoy, the member-elected representative to the Advisory Board, is raising eyebrows and ire. Upon her election, she cut herself off from those not on her Friends-list. adameros is polling members about how they feel about this behavior.