1. I am by definition, “the intended recipient”
2. All information in the email is mine to do with as I see fit and make such financial profit, political mileage, or good joke as it lends itself to. In particular, I may quote it on usenet.
3. I may take the contents as representing the views of your company.
4. This overrides any disclaimer or statement of confidentiality that may be included on your message.

(words via John Sullivan)

For over a year, various morons at your organization have been sending email to my gmail.com address. Repeated replies requesting that the senders completely remove my email address from your organization’s contact lists have failed. Various forms of assuredly private information including profit/loss statements, merchandise invoice information, requests for payroll adjustments, insurance bills and quotes – stuff that I’m sure would be unfortunate to have publicly known – have been repeatedly sent to me.. This is my last reply in an attempt to address your incapacity to figure out who the hell you are sending email to. Today, I received two more emails from Patricia A. Phillips, so this is it..

If you cannot figure out how to manage your email and I receive future messages from your organization, I will simply publish each and every message, past and present, in a conspicuous place such as reddit.com for feedback from the public.

Thanks.

For one, it’s difficult for me to provide a completely objective review – this device is intended to evoke emotion and that’s exactly what Steve Jobs wants – you are *supposed* to fall in love with the iPad. Secondly, I do not own an iPhone nor an iPad – I’ve played with other people’s iPhones quite a bit and have not seen an iPad in person, yet. So, if you absolutely adore your iPhone, compare every other handheld device to it, and within 30 seconds declare that all other handhelds are bred of lesser mobile genes, sleep with it not just on the nightstand, but perhaps under the pillow, then you may wish to stop reading.. I have an opinion or two.

First and foremost, Apple is crazy brilliant at marketing. Everyone is iPad-caffeinated right now because deliveries have started and people now have these devices in their hands and flooding the twitterverse with their excitement – same has happened with each iPhone hardware and software release. There is love in the air, and Apple loves you for loving them. People do not do the same with ThinkPad hardware releases and Windows updates (unless MS breaks shit, which happens..)

There is a lot to love with the iPad! I don’t want to be a party-pooper, far from it – I want an iPad, too! The form factor is killer – this type of device will definitely change the way people interact with the web, social media, medical patient rounds, watch movies, etc. The physical hardware engineering – the beautiful touchscreen, the weight, the *feel* (yeah.. when I actually get to feel one), the applications – these type of devices *will* change the Internet world, so I would like one, too, please.

Will I buy one? Should you? That depends.

I probably won’t – not unless Apple comes out with a compelling Gen2 iPad.. Look around at some of the (non-iFanBoy) reviews in the last couple days: no camera (the chassis has the identical insert as iPhone’s camera CCD, so it will eventually get one), no multi-tasking, difficult data transfer, etc. For me to be compelled, at the very least, Apple needs to allow me to run more than one application at a time, if I would consider it anything more than a browsing toy. I think the #1 design failure of iPad was basing the OS off the iPhone OS, as opposed to a mobile port of OS-X, but I understand the business decision. The iPad is a fantastically gorgeous toy and if that’s your thing, it is something you should absolutely have! Go get one! Just don’t expect to do any actual work on it, unless your work is directly related to the social media arena – even then, I would almost guarantee that you will still do most of your *real* work on a laptop or desktop. After all, Apple doesn’t want to kill their laptop business, do they?

http://www.businessinsider.com/i-really-hate-what-apple-is-trying-to-do-with-the-ipad-2010-4

“If it can’t print what’s the point..?” – Can your iPhone print? Yeah, that’s what I thought. With the Gen1 iPad, you get essentially a neutered iPhone (it can’t make calls and no camera) with a big screen and a few extras like a very, very cool eReader and the potential to run iWork. You can absolutely work on documents, presentations, etc., but you can do that efficiently only if you do it the Apple way. If you have existing documents you wish to load up on the iPad, I understand from second-hand knowledge that it is rather difficult. Things will get better, and people will figure out how to do some work on the iPad (do you *work* on your iPhone?) – there will be some cool apps that make interesting use of the screen real estate, for sure, but..

The apps.. you really only get one choice of where to shop for your applications. And the iTunes App Store has full control over the extent of your freedoms. If you keep your entire music and video media collection in iTunes, and if you are fine with paying for almost every song and every piece of software you use (some are free), and if you either you don’t know anything about, nor understand, nor really care about software freedom, then by all means keep doing what you are doing – it is a system that really does work well. Apple does this very well – the Apple ecosystem is very functional, very pretty – even sexy, but you are bound to it by design. This ecosystem (and that’s really what it is – a technological island environment with a wonderful array of cohabitating hardwares and softwares that compliment one another – if you have the ability to build your own boat and can brave the waters, you can do some cool things outside of Apple Island) does not go well with my philosophy and beliefs in Open Source Software (google it, non-techies..) and the extreme idiocy of a great deal of software patents granted in the last 10-ish years. (sidenote: New Zealand is considering a patent reform bill that bans some forms of software patents)

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/thumbs-down-for-software-patents-in-nz

So where I am going with this.. buy an iPad, but don’t expect it to be something that it is not. You might want to wait until they come out with the next version – the iPhone 3G kicks the pants off the original.

I truly believe that this type of device is the perfect (although not yet perfected) device for non-technical users – I’m fairly convinced that my mom would learn to love it. You really don’t have to think much, once you figure it out; the UI and the UX are wonderful; the hardware/software island leads to little (I hope) in the way of trouble from trojans and other exploits.

As a good schizophrenic, yeah, I would love to have an iPad. I love computing devices and I could certainly find ways to use an iPad that suit it’s design very well and it would be fun. Most likely I would hack it – I’ll build my boat (using boat plans of more talented boat designers than I), see how far I can travel off the island, and wave back at the curious looks from the sheep on the beach.

I’d guess that more likely, if I decide to spend money on a keyboardless tablet, I will get something in the same form factor, but one that allows me to have the ability to use Open Source Software, one that allows me to run an email client *and* browse the web at the same time(!), and most definitely one that has a kick-ass SSH client (is there a good one for iPad?) – much of what I do is on remote servers, so SSH is an absolute must.

Update: I understand there are a couple really good SSH apps – this alone might be the “killer app” for me.

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/03/19/apple-ipad-how-about-a-little-german-innovation-instead/

I’m a bit of a nutcase when it comes to free software (free as in speech, not beer) – just ask my mom how fired up I get in conversations about technology.. I breath it. I tattooed it on myself. So take my words with a grain of salt, if you wish – these are only the opinions of a highly opinionated technology advocate.

um, yeah.. all that..

Brilliant!

Hello,

I understand from a bit of searching that Network Solutions replaces or wildcards expired domains with records for resalehost.networksolutions.com, however, this practice is completely misconfigured, and has been so for at least 2 years from old mailing list posts I have found. There are many reports of serious load problems that this practice causes on caching nameservers around the world, and my company has recently seen a large number of occurrences of this issue.

It would be greatly appreciated if someone with some detailed knowledge of DNS RFCs fixes this problem once and for all, for I, personally, am growing weary of being paged in the middle of the night, to find massive amounts of queries for resalehost.networksolutions.com…

It would be quite simple for Network Solutions to reconfigure the wildcard to something proper, or perhaps to do the same as almost every other domain registrar, and simply let old domain records expire, which would result in resolution failure, instead of replacing or wildcarding the expired records improperly, against RFCs, creating a far worse problems for the internet in general.

Please, feel free to contact me on this matter, if you wish.

Kind Regards,
Michael
DNS Systems

…
06:11:24.340034 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1804 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.340332 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1805 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.340656 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1806 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.340949 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1807 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.341253 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1808 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.341563 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1809 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.341876 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1810 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.342184 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1811 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.342490 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1812 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.342797 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1813 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.343101 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1814 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.343412 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1815 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.343718 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1816 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.344022 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1817 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.344330 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1818 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.344666 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1819 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.344974 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1820 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
06:11:24.345282 IP xx.xx.xx.xx.1821 > yy.yy.yy.yy.53: 256+ MX? resalehost.networksolutions.com. (49)
8489 packets captured
8644 packets received by filter
44 packets dropped by kernel
mshuler@cachens1-1:~$ host resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
resalehost.networksolutions.com CNAME resalehost.networksolutions.com
Possible CNAME loop
mshuler@cachens1-1:~$ dig resalehost.networksolutions.com
;resalehost.networksolutions.com. IN A
resalehost.networksolutions.com. 805 IN CNAME
resalehost.networksolutions.com.
resalehost.networksolutions.com. 805 IN CNAME
resalehost.networksolutions.com.
networksolutions.com. 206 IN NS ns3.netsol.com.
networksolutions.com. 206 IN NS ns1.netsol.com.
networksolutions.com. 206 IN NS ns2.netsol.com.
ns3.netsol.com. 71502 IN A 205.178.190.165
ns1.netsol.com. 71502 IN A 205.178.190.164
ns2.netsol.com. 71502 IN A 205.178.191.42
;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Wed Dec 6 06:13:04 2006
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 186

A little more searching, and I found that there is a Novell wiki page that has all the links to the files:

http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/SUSE_Linux_Enterprise_Server

Cool – found it. But again, why is this SO difficult…!?

Anne Gervasi is a licensed psychologist. She donated her time and her talent working with Katrina refuges at first, Reunion Arena and then, the Civic Center. This is her first hand account and reaction to what she had to deal with. If you blog, please put this out there. We want everyone in the country to read this first-hand account of the horror that is Dallas. If you have an extensive mailing list like I do, please forward it, too.

There are so many words that come to mind. As a scholar I am thinking Diaspora, social displacement, systemic disruption, mass trauma, pandemic and unbelievable chaos. As a clinician, I am looking at something that we have never been trained to handle in this country–a level of victimization and its resultant psycho-social ripples that mandate a whole new field of clinical practice-mass victimology. Katrina kicked the top off of a racist and social termite’s nest that has been growing beneath the ground since Reconstruction. These were deeply religious people who have lost God and for that matter, faith and hope. Hope has been replaced by magical thinking that augurs a second and more terrible level of social disruption and anger not far down the road.

Over and over, I kept hearing a framing of self that puzzled me until I realized that this is how it must have been for blacks after Reconstruction. Over and over, people said, “everyone has been so wonderful, thank you, thank you.” When I said, “there is no need to thank us, you are our fellow citizens and we want to help you–American to American,” there would be a long pause as if the idea of being the same never struck them before.

They are angry and it is growing. The system failed them. For that matter, there is no system because all the safeguards and preparations that we thought were in place aren’t there. I have been begging anyone who would listen over the past two years for a program in mass victimology to prepare for the next tragedy after 9/11. Now it is here and the lack of organization, science, and preparation are going to result in terrible consequences for us as a nation.

Imagine sending people who have been assimilated into the most stable demographic population in America into cities an d towns all over the US who are as unprepared as the victims to understand their sense of dislocation and their support needs. The lower Gulf States have a language, a history, a social dynamic, a faith, a societal structure, and a ritual system unlike any other in America. These people have lived in and been acculturated to this system for generations. When the dust settles and the mud dries, we are going to see all over America, a nation that will lose patience with the needs of a foreign refugee population. Abandoned once again, the fury and the trauma that have been momentarily quieted by the outpouring of empathy and support post-crisis, will arise larger and more terrible than we have been equipped as a nation to handle. I hear it now, over and over, in the survivor stories, in the loss of self, and the need to reclaim dignity and power.

Right now, numbness is being replaced by magical thinking. “People want me here–here is better. I think I’ll stay here.” What is going to happen when reality sets in? The bulk of people who are planning to stay don’t understand the system here. Even though we abut borders, we are a vastly different nation. At least we are southerners. What is going to happen to the thousands being sent to Connecticut or Illinois or New Jersey? They are being offered free apartments, furniture etc, by generous and well meaning people who haven’t thought the long term consequences through very well. A lot of the apartments are in areas where they won’t have transportation or jobs. What is going to happen six months down the road when the magic wears off and the help slowly fades? How about the holidays for a people who thrive on ritual, tradition, and celebration?

The trauma they are experiencing is so profound that we have no cultural term or machinery set up for it. The dead and nameless bodies by the thousands rotting in the water, arriving dead on the buses with them, or dying next to them in the shelters are a huge festering wound that no one dares mention. This is a true Diaspora the likes of which we haven’t seen since Reconstruction. The immediate needs that are being addressed ignore the greater traumas yet to be spoken. No governmental system can survive the number of wounded and disillusioned people that we are going to see sprouting up all over America. Something far greater and more organized has to be done.

Then to the helpers and what is happening there. Turf wars have already sprung up. In the name of “I know better than you do,” chaos and wasted energy are multiplying. The Red Cross was initially in charge of certifying the credentials of the helping therapists. After Oklahoma City and the pretenders who arrived there, this seemed like a wonderful clearing house. Everyone who wanted to help had to go through a brief orientation and a thorough checking of credentials. Only licensed professionals were allowed. Driver’s licenses were checked for criminal records. This seemed to be a common sense excellent approach to the question of rapists, pedophiles, and other thugs being denied access to a vulnerable population. Actually, things ran better than I expected at the beginning. Then in came the physicians who I guess felt that their non-existent coursework in this area qualified them to better run things. Immediate chaos, disorganization, and all sorts of ersatz “helpers” began running around. They grabbed our current Red Cross badges and then stopped us from going back on the floor to finish seeing our patients without the new badges, which they just happened to be out of. We had an optometrist with prescriptive lenses but no glasses or readers and no idea when he’d ever see any. We had a deaf booth but no deaf helpers. In the midst of all this chaos, thousands and thousands of the walking wounded mixing with the powerless well-intentioned came the whispered word, pandemic. Lots of people are suddenly getting sick, and we have to have precautions. Don’t eat or drink or touch the patients. We only have one bottle of disinfectant in the mental health section, so come back here–the length of the Convention Center–after each patient. “What of the people who are being cycled out of here?” “What are we sending into the population?” If people are sick and contagious, where are the precautions to separate the vulnerable? What of precautions such as masks and gloves to keep the medical professionals and first responders safe? All the here and now is suspended in the hope that maybe tomorrow will take care of itself and the worst won’t happen. Those are the question we asked on the first day. NO ONE IS IN CHARGE

Therefore, there is no consistent answer or approach or forethought. I am no infection guru but as soon as I heard on day one that people with no water were forced to drink water with bloated bodies, feces, and rats in it, the thought of cholera, typhoid, and delayed disease immediately occurred to me. What if the fears of disease are correct? People are fanning out throughout America. Where is the CDC?

In the age of computers, we are doing worse than the pencil squibs and the rolls of paper to log in the displaced after World War II. Literacy and computer access seems to be considered as a given for people who have lost it all. Accessing FEMA is through a website. People are in shelters waiting for FEMA to come “in a few days.” “Be patient.” The Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana pumped my hand and replied to my desperate queries about how to help people find their parents and babies, “Be patient–give us a few days.”

The mothers who have lost their children, and there are many, and the children who have lost their parents, have had it with the “be patient” response. The shelters are surprisingly silent. It is hard to find the traumatized mothers because they cry silently. One mother asked how patient I would be if my five-month-old was somewhere unknown for over a week. Over and over, others would ask,” Do you think my baby has milk and diapers?” “Do you think they are being kind to my baby?” And then, so softly that I would have to ask them to repeat, “Do you think my baby is okay?” My response–the convenient lie. Every time I said, “of course”; I prayed to God that it was true.

I am sure that there is a special ring of hell for the media: The survivor stories end-on-end for the titillation of the public. I heard Soledad O’Brien say something about the still unrecognized need to address the psychological trauma. I sent a response to the CNN tip-line that there were hordes of every manner of mental health professional working 24/7. CNN’s response? Dr. Phil and the stories of the survivors on Larry King. They went to the guy who lost his clinical license for serious professional infractions to tell the stories? I could see the “entertainer” down there gathering tales of the already exploited so that he and Larry could both pimp their ratings. The real unsung mental health heroes, the counselors, psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists dealing with un-medicated psychosis and severe traumatic responses were represented by Dr. “Keep-It-Real”? We don’t need tabloid help from the media. Scream about accountability and point fingers for those who can’t. Where is the real help from the media? Help us find those babies and parents and missing family. We have a man in one of the shelters who is caring for four kids. They call him uncle. He is actually the cousin of the fiancé of the mother who is probably dead. The children are silent. They sit and play and weep with open mouths that can’t scream. Where is the media to scream for them?

Finally, to hell with this “no blame game.” The stories that I know to be true are enough to make me boil. The compassionate foreign doctors who can’t find anyone to validate their credentials, the expensive mobile hospital still sitting parked waiting for federal paperwork to move into Louisiana, the five C130s sitting on the Tarmac in San Diego since the night of Katrina, still waiting for orders to move. Where the hell are the beds? We have some old people sleeping on hot plastic pool floats with no sheets. They are still no showers for people who have walked for hours through fetid waters. Their skin is breaking out in rashes. Still no showers. Where the hell are the DeCon showers bought with Homeland Security money that can shower 30 people at a time. The convention centers have no bathing facilities so the filth and skin reactions are getting worse. What of lice? There are no clothes for the really heavy and large. I was reduced to writing the women I knew who went to Weight Watchers to comb their attics for “before” outfits. When I arrived with the sack of my gatherings, I had to engage in a full scale battle and puff myself up to all my red-headed doctor fury to get them distributed to the women still sitting there in their stinking clothes.

The survivors are like the Mayor of New Orleans who apologized to George Bush for his anger. “If we tell the way we feel, maybe help will stop.” All the apologists on the air distancing George and his co-vacationers and idiot appointees should be impeached. I liked Nagin when he called it all bullshit. He was right. How about Haley Barbour complaining about the lack of support for his state? Did he so soon forget his past life and what he did to set up this government of spin artists? If they had acted like a government the body count would be less. The aid would be better managed. The days of filth, and feces, and death would have been ended sooner. God help all of the poseurs in charge when these folks finally get in touch with their justifiable rage. Did you see the White House’s logo for the hurricane? George and some asshole in a ball cap against a background of Katrina waving the flag. They had the energy and time for a nice logo but no time to get the elements of help in gear?

The tragedy is leavened by some moments of farce, the guy who arrived with a case of Gucci shoes in various sizes that he “saved” from his closet. The man wearing twelve expensive watches up his arm. I guess he is a punctual sort. There are the too-poignant-for-words vignettes. I saw a lady sitting on a blanket holding a photo of two children that she had pulled from the water. She kept crying and looking at it. I thought they were her children. She didn’t know whose they were. They were just losses and she mourned them.

Of course there were the criminals, thugs, and mobsters. One of the greatest indictments of the “spin machine” that is going to come from this situation will be the repeated characterizations of the victims as lawless and criminal. Over and over I heard people tell me about how ashamed they were to be portrayed that way. Ninety-nine percent of these people never were characterized as anything but lawful and good citizens. In their most desperate hours to be reduced to taking food and water to survive and then to be lumped with the television thieves and the shooters is too shameful for most of them to bear. I heard from hospital employees that survived on a cup of watered grits so that the patients could make it. And then I heard had they had to hide the ones that didn’t in closets to keep up the morale of the others.

The people that survived this tragedy and the people who help them all know one truth. The help and the love and the care that has been extended to them have been on a citizen-to-citizen basis. The churches, doctors, therapists, and ordinary citizens who are giving all they can in time and resources are managing to band-aid at the most elementary level-neighbor to neighbor. The government has failed We are more vulnerable now than before 9/11 because faith in the system is gone. No system can sustain itself as a viable entity when the citizenry are the walking wounded. Victims implode a system from within and expose its decay. This is the beginning of the end unless we can get a drastic change of philosophy and restore the government to a system “by the people for the people.” Right now nobody down here believes we have that.

Anne Gervasi
agervasi@sbcglobal.net
gervasi@dal.devry.edu
Euless, TX 76039