OK, a puzzler for you webmaster types (spoiler below).

So I get a call from my a client that two of their people were having trouble logging into the alumni database. I tested these people’s logins in every browser I had handy and they worked fine. No one else was having problems logging in. I went to the job site and sure enough, I couldn’t log in as anyone from two machines, both running IE6. Javascript was enabled. Cookies were enabled. What the heck was going on?

The site uses HTML hosted on a virtual domain at earthlink and database data coming from phpwebhosting.com, all married together in a frameset. Login authentication is handled via PHP sessions.

So why weren’t any logins working from IE6? Give up? This one took quite a while to figure out.

[ ... spoiler ... ]

First of all, PHP sessions are really just a simplified wrapper for a specialized form of cookie. So start with the realization that cookies aren’t getting planted even though cookies are enabled in the browser.

IE6 has a cookie tolerance slider that defaults to Medium. On the Medium setting,

“Internet Explorer prevents Web sites from storing third-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy or that use personally identifiable information without your explicit consent. The browser also prevents Web sites from storing first-party cookies that use personally identifiable information without your implicit consent.”

Compact Privacy Policy:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/using/howto/privacy/config.asp

Ah. So now I have to find out how to implement a compact privacy policy. Jeezis christ. See also:

http://www.w3.org/P3P/

and

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-268478.html?legacy=cnet

And finally, I find the deployment answer in a PHP forum. This affects me because the site is pulling HTML and PHP/data from two different sources:

“MSIE 6 has an inaccurate definition of third party cookies. If your domain is hosted on one server and your PHP stuff is on another, the IE6 P3P implementation considers any cookies sent from the second machine “third party”. Third party cookies will be blocked automatically in most privacy settings if not accompanied by what MS considers “an appropriate Compact Policy”. In order to make this new piece of tweakable garbage happy I’d suggest you’d par exemple send

header(’P3P: CP=”NOI ADM DEV PSAi COM NAV OUR OTRo STP IND DEM”‘);

before sending your cookie from your second machine. This header enables your cookie to survive any privacy setting.

So in the end I went to privacycouncil.com, filled in the wizard, which generated a CPC similar to the one above, and started sending it in the header of auth.php.

What a huge hassle. And I shudder to think how many sites this going to affect. There’s a good intention behind it, but it’s virtually useless, since you can virtually make up the privacy policy (it doesn’t have any necessary bearing on ACTUAL privacy) and meanwhile, it’s going to make a hell of a lot of sites inaccessible.

Re: credibility of the Tom Waits interview below - theonionavclub doesn’t appear to be satirical at all - rather an offshoot of theonion. My theory is that they’re just expanding on the brand - reaching for the same audience with more than just humor. Seems like a pretty good site. Smaht kiddies.

Ack packet via : Fantastic Tom Waits interview.

Give a man a chicken head and he eats for a lifetime.

as he appeared with the rubber chicken head I made him wear for his starring role in Visit To A Sad Planet.

With principal shooting complete, the chicken head had nowhere to go and nothing to do. So our hero cut it in half and gummed the business end to his motorcycle helmet.

Ladies, admit it - you want to date this man. Serious inquiries to .

There’s so much conflicting data out there on whether or not MP3s and digital music distribution affect CD sales, but this is a first : Eminem’s as-yet-unreleased CD is currently the 2nd most popular CD being stuck into CD players, according to Gracenote. Also interesting that Gracenote can track popularity of CDs being played regionally (presumably by mapping IP addresses to geography). Not that I feel sorry for Eminem, mind you, but anyone who insists that digital music means more record sales has to take this picture into account.

Came across the most unusual bicycle shop today - a little hole in the wall in a hallway mall that connects Bancroft and Channing. Outside was a bright orange road bike with that really “straightforward” style like the bikes in Holland. Turns out it was Swedish - Europeans right now are apparently going nuts over mid-century bicycles, or resurrections of them. Next to that bike was a grayish purple Japanese road bike - again super “normal” looking, but also really clean in a form follows function sort of way.

Turns out the proprietor had this vision of filling Berkeley with thousands of used Japanese and European road bicycles. The bikes have really long lifespans, but most Europeans and Japanese want to replace their bike every couple of years just for the hell of it, like computer upgrades. So zillions of these things sit around in landfills, available so cheap they’re almost free.

The guy had a good job at IBM and had saved up a bunch of money. He didn’t need any more money. He needed to see Berkeley have access to good bikes for cheap. So he started up this business importing used road bikes and selling them for less than it cost to import them. What a cool guy - his name is Kai, the place is called Momovelo. Wish there were more Kais in the world.

Stayed home sick Thursday - clogged head, cloudy thoughts, generally achy. Found “Thunderbirds Are Go!” videos at the video store, rented a few. Wow wow wow! These are so good. Sci-fi stop-motion puppet supercharged rescue action, filmed in “Supermarionation.” Tremendous attention to detail, super-stiff dialogue:

Stewardess: “It’s the maiden flight of the new atomic-powered Fireflash.”
Passenger: “Isn’t that the new aircraft that flies six times the speed of sound?”
Stewardess: “That’s right, but don’t worry: it’s perfectly safe.”
[Cut to: interior, Fireflash landing gear, a device clearly labeled "Auto-Bomb Detonator Unit"]
Sinister bad guy (talking to himself for no readily apparent reason): “Perfect. Enough explosives to smash the Atomic Reactor.”

This stuff was made in ‘64, I should have seen it as a boy but didn’t - we didn’t have TV through most of my childhood. Don’t want to deprive our kid of this though - want to buy all 36 episodes, but the DVDs are expensive. Amy loved watching these as much as I did - they’re visually gorgeous.

eWeek reports: “A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed.”

I also loved how Allchin tried to make the point that Sun, by encouraging Java use, is discouraging interoperability. Orwell would be proud.

I have no words for Pokey Man. Or the accompanying Chimgam.

Remember when audiophiles went nuts about the fact (or claim?) that you could improve the fidelity of audio CDs by drawing a ring around the outer track with a green marking pen? The practice has returned, but for different reasons. Now it’s being used to defeat CD copy protection.

A small sub-group split off one of my mailing lists recently — half a dozen people talking about music. Within a few hours we found this chemistry between us. By the end of the first day we had generated more than 100 messages between us. On the second day there were even more. It turned into this flood of rants on music, culture, collections, old girlfriends, having kids, lives of obscure musicians, computing arcana, server configuration…. Can’t stop reading or writing. Don’t have time to, but can’t pull myself away. It can’t go on like this. It’s like an explosion of words from all of us simultaneously - we just struck a vein with each other for some reason. Exhausting.

Almost finished with the SKSM database. Need to wrap up the final freelance obligations in the next month or so so we can start prepping the baba’s room. Also wrapping up the Alumni database at work - has been on the back burner for a long time, but making huge headway lately. Feels good. And finally got Cecilia’s Win2K install squared away (though I missed the SF Documentary Film Fest last night because of it).

Hilarious: Things my girlfriend and I have argued about. The thing that occurred to me after reading this for a while is the fact that the two of them are actually very much in love. It’s a screwed up dysfunctional kind of love, but I really don’t think they hate each other. Note: Amy and I argue like anyone, but we are *not* like this couple.

Birdhouse just got a really favorable mention in the Utne Reader’s Web Watch.

Surprise May rainstorms over the past couple of days - kind of nice.

Uh oh - feeling the beginnings of a head cold this morning.

Friday afternoon decided last minute to go with Mike and Cleve to see Motörhead in the city. I’ve never been a metal-head at all, but this is a band I’ve somehow learned to respect without ever owning any of their records. They’re like the progenitors of the entire speed / metal / thrash / lineage. Even though I haven’t heard much, I’ve always known that theirs is very pure music - absolute rock with no silly metal trappings or pretense. The weird thing is that Motörhead sits in the middle of this sea of bands that are all about pretense - big hair, satanic or christian mumbo jumbo, really bad lyrics, really bad cover art … the whole Spinal Tap trip, but without the irony.

We show up at 3rd and Townsend and the place is swarming with black leather and chipped black fingernail polish. Pop a few vics and get in line, get frisked, get inside. The smell of hair care products and stale beer fills the air. Righteous. T-shirt vendors everywhere. The whole metal scene is all about the t-shirt - hardly anyone there not wearing some band’s shirt - and it’s uncool to wear the shirt of the band you’re there to see - it’s got to be the shirt of the band that the lead singer of the band you’re there to see was in in the early 80s or something. So there are all these shirts of obscure, half-baked metal outfits from 15 years ago. And every stand has like 10 designs. Found a Motörhead shirt that says in big gothic letters on the back, “Everything Louder Than Everything Else.” The classic original Motörhead design on the front. Can’t resist, buy one, now part of the machine.

Four bands on tonight. “Speed Demon” are clearly lying - half of them are too huge to be speed freaks. And they sound like parodies of themselves - close your eyes and you really are at a Spinal Tap show. Next up “Today Is the Day,” which sounds all nice and rosy until you realize they basically mean “today is a good day for an apocalypse.” So they’ve got something in common with your Revelations-reading grandmother, except your grandmother probably isn’t wearing a shirt that says “Kill or be killed” across the front. The singer shrieked relentlessly, totally unintelligible. The drummer defined new levels of posession - played with his eyes rolled back in his head (freaky), throwing his entire weight onto the kit, sweat splashing everywhere. Seemed like he would take a drumstick and start stabbing the heads at any moment. Amazing, but kind of pathetic too.

“Morbid Angel” was the next band - what an idiotic name. Total reliance on that double-bass drum sound Metallica pioneered - 30 minutes of hammering 1/64th notes. Vocals over that were all a single low note - lame attempt to sound satanic. Gimme a break. So much intensity from these bands, but so much of it doesn’t seem sincere. Well, this is the day’s sounded kind of sincere, but the other bands didn’t - more about the shtick. Popped another vicodan, bought another beer. If we’re going to be here, better get into the right frame of mind for it.

A total relief when Motörhead came on. All the pretenses ditched - still a super-high level of intensity, but - my god - there were actual songs buried in there somewhere. And - shocking - some actual pyschic communication between the players - cohesion, kung fu. Sounded so fscking great, totally exhilarating. To enjoy this, you have to just drop all your associations about the metal scene and all of its negative associations, and give yourself over to the purity of it. It’s like racing through the hills on a motorcycle, playing with the edge, hanging on but just. In total control, but knowing that if they took it one level higher the whole thing could fall apart. Incredible.

Lemmy is in his 60s - beautiful to see a man that age up there rocking that hard. Best cockney accent: “I’m not just a little deaf, I’m totally f*cking deaf! Is it loud enough for you out there?” I wore earplugs through the whole thing, but removed them for their unbelievable cover of the Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen” and again for their Ramones cover (forget which song). And again for “Ace of Spades.” Ears ringing pretty badly today. Not sure if that’s because I took the plugs out a few times or whether it was just loud enough to do ear damage right through the plugs. Hard to say.

Motörhead rocks. Great to see Cleve again too (lived with him in the early 90s). We should hang more often.

Kind of hung over today, but went to breakfast in Point Richmond with Chris and Amy, then kicked around on Solano ave. Checked out some birthing classes - we’ll get started on those soon. In the afternoon went to a matinee of Lantana, which was very good but not what we had expected. Ah well. Rented “Made” (by makers of “Swingers”) and watched in the evening. Down-time day. Tomorrow back on track with all the crap piling up.

Some Apple reps came to campus to talk to departments about OSX rollouts over the summer. Looks like Jaguar is going to make a lot of the things we want to do a lot easier (e.g. integration with active directory, windows file sharing, etc.). But it’s also probably going to come later than we want/need — we want to start our OSX upgrade in the next few weeks, but Jaguar probably won’t be ready until the students are almost back. They didn’t give exact dates - just floating hints.

Watched the QuickTime stream of Job’s introduction of Xserve for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe it’s just as well that I got strong-armed into hosting the jschool site on a Windows box six months ago. Now if the topic ever comes up again I can lobby to do it on an Xserver.

Nothing like shooting an entire afternoon guzzling the sweet nectar of apple propaganda ;)

To add a unique password to every record in a 2,000 row database:

- generate list of random passwords (posted about that a few weeks ago)

Write short script that:

- reads every ID in database into an array
- reads every row in the password list into an array
- for every item in the ID array, do a SQL UPDATE with a corresponding element in the password array

The gears of two tables mesh like clockwork. Two thousand rows update in less than a second. I smile and go home.

Recently discovered that my original Meat Puppets tshirt from around 82 or 83 is still intact. Too tight to wear now, but that’s okay. Guess I’ll just have to keep it around forever ;)

I only have two of the shacker tshirts. Should probably have more.

Some pretty interesting / inspiring words on gumptionology.

Spending a lot of time helping out students with their final web projects over the past few days. End of semester panic mode. I’m actually enjoying that.

Through the metasynth links in my previous post, have started listening to music generated via mathematical analysis of images. Some of it is wonky, as expected, but much of it is surprising, and surprisingly interesting. Now fascinated by this two-way generational relationship between images and music.

The most elusive goal of the perfect LJ Friends page is to display a roster of friends that represents the widest possible array of human experience, and thus to, at any given reload, be able to spontaneously generate an essentially random cross-section of human diversity in collage form.

Was thinking over breakfast today that the ability to locate an object in history is one of those uniquely human behaviors that would be extremely difficult to teach to a computer. For example, most anyone can look at a radio, an automobile, a jar, a brochure, an article of clothing, etc. and tell you with fairly good accuracy whether it was made in the 1920s or the 1960s or the 1970s or the 1990s etc. What is it that is shared by the radio, the automobile, the jar, the brochure, and the article of clothing? What marks these things as having come from a particular era? Color choices? A certain formalism of line? Fonts in fashion? This is extremely hard to pin down, and would be almost impossible to develop computer algorithms to accomplish. And yet it is an almost trivially easy task for humans.

Aphex Twin embedded his own likeness in the waveformss of his song Windowlicker. As I understand it, the process works like this: Use metasynth to create sound waves from an image - in this case Aphex’ own face. When the music is played back and viewed with a spectrographic visualizer, the process is essentially reversed, which reveals the image in the sound waves. Kind of like steganography, but not. Does not work with MP3s, since the compression algorithm destroys the image. The track came out in ‘99 but no one found the embedded image until now.

My editor (BeOS Bible, MP3 book) and friend Simon is selling 1/2 can of compressed airon craigslist. An opportunity not to be missed.

At the other end of the spectrum, Duchamp’s famous urinal will be auctioned off on Monday.

Watched our friend Matthew Sperry playing with Tom Waits on Letterman last night. Thought he might be hidden in the background or something, but he was right up close, on the left, very visible, exciting. Hope this turns into some kind of major career break for Matthew. If you watched the video I posted a few months ago - the birthday song we wrote for Roger’s 40th - Matthew wrote the music and I wrote the words for that.

Adamation just sent me a $75 gift certificate to Tower, which was really cool of them. Spent it yesterday on:

Orchestra Baobab - Pirates Choice (double CD)
Tom Waits - Blood Money
Tom Waits - Alice
Elvis Costello - When I Was Cruel

Pirates is considered to be the best Baobab ever laid down, in ‘82. So loose and rubbery and easy soulful organic funk of the earth. Amazing. Listening to Wait’s Alice now - all throaty, pensive, half-drunken s - a return to the tempos of Nighthawks or Closing Time, but with the messed up xylophone percussion styles of Swordfish Trombones.

Attention globalization fans (you know who you are): The Global Country of World Peace has released its own currency, called the Raam. One Raam = around US $10. According to the Maharishi, the appearance of the Raam marks the onset of a harmonious, peaceful world. One love, one heart, one wallet. Yay!

See also: The Popup Ad Campaign From Hell : “It’s the latest in Web marketing innovation: Hijacked Web surfers, exploited Web browser vulnerabilities and malicious spyware all wrapped up together.”

Very good article by SiliconValley.com’s Dan Glimor on how the information and entertainment industries are trying to control the ways in which the public consumes content. Note to stupid dinosaurs: fighting with your customers is generally not considered a good business model.

So there’s this professor here with a bad back. As in *really* bad. He lectures laying down on a mattress, and walks really slowly and stiffly. I always assumed it was a more or less temporary thing he was working through. Today I got to talking to him and discovered that he was nearly beaten to death by Chinese cops in ‘89 for trying to cover the 3rd anniversary of the Tiannemen Square riots. It was a small piece he was preparing - 10 seconds of video for the evening news. And he was brutalized for being there with a camera.

No matter what my complaints about America are sometimes, I am grateful not to live in so many places in this world.

After lunch, purchased one pouch of Royal Orchids Wasabi Coated Green Peas — “A Happy Present from the Earth.” Recent controversy in LiveJournal indicates that people either view wasabi peas as some form of hell-spawn or as a simple tasty treat.

After failing to open the packet via the provided tear-off mechanism, resorted to scissors. Inserted one green and beige wasabi pea into mouth and sucked. First, brief impression was of sweetness. This sensation lasted approximately one second but was quickly supplanted with the familiar “blinding sheet of pain racing up the front of my face” sting of wasabi. However, unlike wasabi paste sting, the sting of the pea was extremely short lived. After crunching into the pea, its own nutty, bready flavor combined with both the sweetness and the wasabi. The combined flavor experience was very pleasant.

I have now eaten several dozen of the suckers, and will likely consume the entire bag by 3:00 if someone doesn’t stop by to share them with me, and if I don’t start bleeding from the gums (whichever comes first).

Verdict: Wonderfully intriguing mixed flavor experience, recommended either as a zesty snack or as a plucky conversation starter.

My Grado SR-60s* died. Had them since the early 90s. Re-soldered the connections in the right phone twice this morning, but nothing. And so into the dustbin (oooh, how British!). Will live with the AKGs for a while (though I must say, those RS1s sure look tempting ;). They make me look like an air traffic controller, but I’m okay with that.

* Heh - the same ones I’m wearing in my current LJ icon photo.