All posts by Mick

society

Health Care?

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RAM, (Remote Area Medical) a US charity group originally started to provide health care to remote regions in the Amazon is now doing 6o% of it’s work in the US:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/28/60minutes/main3889496.shtml

“RAM operates on a shoestring budget of about $250,000 a year. Yet, last year, it treated 17,000 patients.”

“You created this medical organization designed to go into Third World countries to go into remote places, and now doing 60 percent of your work in urban and rural America, what are we supposed to make of that?” Pelley asked Brock.”

“In the expedition to Knoxville, RAM saw 920 patients, made 500 pairs of glasses, did 94 mammograms, extracted 1,066 teeth and did 567 fillings. But when Stan Brock called the last number, 400 people were turned away.”

CBS estimates that there are 50 Million people in the US without health insurance, that’s means about every one in six people has inadequate health care.

Debian, Java, Linux, programming

Eclipse 3.3.2 and Debian

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So I wanted to install Eclipse at home, the version that comes with Debian is 3.2.2-5 and I wanted to try 3.3.x and install WTP and some other plugins that aren’t packaged with Debian (anyone know why?).

After downloading and installing Eclipse the welcome screen would appear with an error message saying:

Error creating the view.

org.elipse.core.runtime.Plugin

This is because the default jvm or java executable on my system was one provided by gcj and for some reason Eclipse’s eclipse doesn’t seem to work properly with gcj (or I had a too old version), Debian’s 3.2.2 Eclipse packages seem to work fine with gcj. Gcj is an Open Source Java compiler provided by GNU.

Using Sun’s JVM solved this. To install Sun’s JVM, if you don’t already have it, issue the following command:

aptitude install sun-java5-bin

Debian uses what’s called alternatives, this means that the java executable /usr/bin/java is actually a symbolic link to /etc/alternatives/java which itself is a symbolic link to the real java executable. You can manually change the links in /etc/alternatives or run:

update-alternatives –all

And change all the java tools to point to the ones that come with the Sun JVM. Alternatively, you can install galternatives which is an easy to use GUI tool to manage alternatives.

Updated March 2008: Corrected misspellings, and grammatical mistakes.

flickr, photo, picture

My Flickr Explore (Feb 2007)

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My Flickr Explore Feb 2007.

1. Fred and his cap!, 2. Sunrise @ the lake, 3. Boston Twilight, 4. Donegal Town: The Diamond 1973, 5. Celtic Sprially Wrought-iron, 6. Frozen Bog Puddle, 7. Boston Sunset, 8. Maghery,

9. Under Lough Eske Bridge, 10. Celitc Spirally Wrought Iron, 11. Big Waves, 12. The Atlantic near Dungloe, Donegal Ireland, 13. Donegal Bay, 14. Donegal Town: The Old Castle, 15. Old Donegal Town Postcard

From Big Huge Labs:

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/scout.php?username=bettlebrox&sort=date&year=0

Also, see your “interesting” flickr pics at:

http://interestingby.isaias.com.mx/pm.php?id=40092103@N00

Linux

Boston Linux Installfest XXVII

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Boston Linux Installfest XXVIII
When: Saturday, March 1, 2008 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: MIT Building E-51, Room 061, 2 Amherst St, Cambridge

What you need to bring: Your computer, monitor, power strips and yourLinux distributions. We do have copies of some distributions. In general we have expertise with most distros, but if you need special expertise, please email the BLU discussion list in advance.

COST: It’s free! However, we DO have expenses, and contributions arewelcome. Please consider contributing $25 per machine.

Our volunteers will help you to install Linux on your own system. While Linux runs on most systems, some systems do have configurations and hardware that may not be supported. Please consult the following web pages for hardware compatibility.

Linux.ORG: http://www.linux.org/hardware/index.html
Hardware HOWTO: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html
Linux Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.linuxdoc.org/

Generally our volunteers have sets of the latest Fedora, SuSE and Ubuntu distributions:
* Fedora – http://fedora.redhat.com (Fedora 7)
* Open SuSE – http://opensuse.org (OpenSuSE 10.3)
* Ubuntu – http://www.ubuntu.com (Gutsy Gibbon 7.10)

Please refer to the BLU website (http://www.blu.org) for further information and directions. Parking is available in front of the building on Amherst St. Enter the building, and take the elevator to your left down 1 floor. Room 061 is opposite the elevator.

Nature

Golden Frogs

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Two great videos on YouTube about the Golden Frogs and 2 scientists attempts to save frogs affected by the chytrid fungus, a fungus that is affecting and killing and driving many of the worlds frogs to extinction.

Part One:

Part Two:

See my previous posting about the Panamanian Golden Frog:
http://timony.com/mickzblog/2008/02/02/waving-frog-waves-for-the-last-time/

hoax, money

Fake IRS E-mail: AKA Spam

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Don’t fall for it! If you get an e-mail like this don’t click on the link, because it’s NOT from the IRS. It’s someone is trying to fool you into giving them your bank account number and social security number.

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $480.23.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 3-6 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons.
For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

Note: For security reasons, we will record your ip-address, the date and time.
Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated.

Regards,
Internal Revenue Service

I’m not leaving the link in that was in the original e-mail, in case someone clicks on it and thinks it the real IRS. But it leads you to a site that looks just like the IRS’s website. This is what the e-mail looked like:

Just enough information to make you think it is from the IRS, but trust me it is NOT from the IRS. See the IRS’s website for more information, where they say:

Updated Jan. 14, 2008 — A new variation of the refund scheme may be directed toward organizations that distribute funds to other organizations or individuals. In an attempt to seem legitimate, the scam e-mail claims to be sent by, and contains the name and supposed signature of, the Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations area of the IRS. The e-mail asks recipients to click on a link to access a form for a tax refund. In reality, taxpayers claim their tax refunds through the filing of an annual tax return, not a separate application form.

See http://www.irs.gov for more information.

picture, Tech

Header Image

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Trying to replace the header image in the theme I’m currently using. The image is the word unsleepable in the screenshot below:
Default Unsleepable blog theme header image

The theme is called Unsleepable and is by Ben Gray, which is a modified version of the K2 theme by Michael Heilemann.

The instructions at http://openswitch.org/2006/04/16/title-graphic-how-to/ say what file needs to be replaced, and the approximate size. And then used the instructions at http://www.technomono.com/blog/stylish-glossy-text/ to create glossy text thing:

/home/mick blue glossy image for the header of the Unsleepable theme

It doesn’t look bad here on this posting, but in the header it just doesn’t look great. I think I need to change the colour and remove the forward-slashes (/). What do you think?

/home/mick blue glossy image preview in the Unsleepable theme

I’ll try making another one over the weekend.

Updated with unmickable:

Unsleepable WordPress them with unmickable image.

However the font looks too blocky. I wonder if this is because I’m using the Gimp?

Ireland, News

Drugs in Wexford

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Interesting editoral on RTE about heroin use in Wexford (Ireland) and the lack of attention it’s getting from the Government. Seems to me (many) politicians wait until things reach crisis point before they act, as they don’t get credit for preventing things but for solving crisis’s!

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0217/drugsfeature.html

If these people were dying at one time in one place (such as a shooting at a University) there would be a national outcry. But the information I have is that people are dying now every week from drugs overdoses all across Ireland. This, to me, is a crisis. But what Government minister has said the same thing? Not one. Even the opposition politicians don’t seem to have their finger on the extent of this disaster – and it is a disaster.

When most people think of heroin, they think of users injecting themselves. But what is happening now is that the vast majority of people taking heroin now are smoking it on a Saturday night outside pubs. Some people on a night out are having their drinks, going out for a cigarette, taking some cocaine or moving round the corner and lighting up heroin and smoking it. They think it’s only ‘recreational’ but the story which ‘Sinead’ tells in my RTÉ news report from Thursday evening shows that one fix of heroin and you can be addicted. And it’s only a matter of time before somebody suggests you get a better kick from injecting …