The Plastiki is carrying 1,000 liters of water, so the crew (of three) will have to stop from time to time to resupply. Beside the ecological inspiration for the voyage is the 1947 Kon-Tiki voyage by Thor Hyerdahl in a replica of an Incan raft. The Plastiki’s decks, skeletal hull, and cabin are made from composite Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic panels. Each has layers of self-reinforcing PET skins.

If you would like to follow the Plastiki’s voyage, you can follow online at www.theplastiki.com or on Twitter. Follow the tweets of the crew here.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. Be a “Facebook Fan” of Cheshire Cat Photo here! If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

1. Anacapa Island
2. Audubon Center at Ernest Debs Park
3. Angeles National Forest
4. Upper Newport Bay
5. El Dorado Park Nature Center
6. Lake Balboa
7. Mission San Juan Capistrano
8. Ballona Wetlands
9. Aliso Beach
10. William R. Mason Regional Park
11. Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve
12. Salton Sea
13. Ormond Beach, Ventura County
14. Compton Creek
15. Whittier Narrows Nature Area
16. Hollywood (No kidding!)
17. Irvine Regional Park
18. Leo Carrillo State Park
19. Los Angeles River
20. Los Cerritos Wetlands
21. Pasadena’s Lower Arroyo Park
22. Lower Trestles, San Onofre (“Surfin’ Bird“s)
23. Point Dume State Beach
24. Prado Dam, Yorba Linda
25. San Dieguito Lagoon
26. San Elijo Lagoon Ecological Reserve

Explore and enjoy!

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. Be a “Facebook Fan” of Cheshire Cat Photo here! If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

Fess Elisha Parker Jr. was born August 16, 1924, in Fort Worth, Texas. (Davy Crockett’s birthday was August 17!) He played football at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene but was nearly killed in a road-rage knifing in 1946. Parker was discovered by actor Adolphe Menjou, who was a guest artist at the University of Texas, where Parker later earned a degree.

The children of the 1950s embraced 6-foot 6-inch Parker as the man in the coonskin cap, who embodied the spirit of the American frontier. There were coonskin caps, Davy Crockett lunch boxes, Old Betsy rifles, and anything else they could sell. “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” (Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee…”) became a number 1 hit for singer Bill Hayes, and Fess Parker’s version reached number 5.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, in a statement:

“Fess Parker has been a role model and idol of mine since I first saw him on the big screen — he is a true Hollywood legend. As a talented actor and successful businessman, he was an inspirational Californian whose contributions to our state will be remembered forever.”

Former first lady Nancy Reagan said that Parker was “”a longtime friend to Ronnie and me … He will be greatly missed.”

Parker left show business after 22 years. His movies included: “Springfield Rifle” (1952),” “No Room for the Groom” (1952), “The Kid From Left Field” (1953), “Them!” (1954), “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” (1955), “The Great Locomotive Chase” (1956), “Westward Ho, the Wagons!” (1956), “Old Yeller” (1957) and “The Light in the Forest” (1958).

After leaving Hollywood, Parker bought and sold property, built hotels (Fess Parker’s Wine Country Inn & Spa in Los Olivos and Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort Santa Barbara [1]) and grew grapes for wine on a 2,200-acre vineyard on California’s Central Coast, where he was dubbed King of the Wine Frontier, and coonskin caps enjoyed brisk sales. Parker’s vineyard won dozens of medals and awards after its inaugural harves in 1989. Fess Parker’s son Eli became director of winemaking and their daughter Ashley also worked at the winery.

Parker turned down an opportunity to become ambassador to Australia during the Reagan administration.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

Next week, Google is expected to announce the completion of a fast Internet cable under the Pacific Ocean from the U.S. to Japan. The cable has the potential to create a 7.68 Tbps (terabits per second) connection under the Pacific, increasing bandwidth by about 20%.

Google will have its own connection to Asia. Google is entitled to 20% of the overall capacity for its needs.

If you have ever wondered what it will take to “wake up” the telecommunications industry (I have!), you may have your one-word answer: Google.

The testing phase of the $300 million cable project is almost complete. The cable was laid by the Unity Consortium, which consists of Google, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and SingTel. Google invested in the project back in 2008. Pacnet, a telecom provider in Asia, invested $100 million in the project, with the remaining partners spreading the $200 million investment among themselves.

Google issued a statement today:

“The need for information is a global requirement. As the economies of Asian countries continue to grow, data traffic and the use of the Internet expands. Google is a global company and is committed to providing the best quality of user experience regardless of geography.”

According to CNET, Bill Barney, Pacnet’s CEO said:

“Once you buy fiber, you own it for the rest of your life. It’s like launching a satellite.”

The project does not (necessarily ) mean that Google will use the capacity of the new cable to become an Internet service provider to Asia, as it is exploring with “Google Fiber for Communities” in the U.S. (Gee, I hope that someone in Livermore is pursuing the latter.)

However, the cable will link Google data centers with Japan over one of the fastest pipelines on the planet!

You can “call me a cockeyed optimist” (I’ve been called worse), but I expect WONDERFUL things to emerge from that fact.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

… Magic?” – 1965, by John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful

Back on March 9 of this year, I wrote about a new Android-based Vodafone HTC Magic phone that had a Mariposa (Spanish for “butterfly”) botnet client and other malware on it, as discovered by the Spanish anivirus firm, Panda Security.

Vodafone said that early indications were that “this was an isolated local incident.”

At one company that employed me, we used to describe such statements as “blowing the mojo!”

Now, researchers have discovered a SECOND, new, Android-based Vodafone HTC Magic phone with malware, including a program that turns infected machines into zombies as part of the Mariposa credit card and bank log-in-stealing botnet, according to Spain-based PandaLabs.

After the PandaLabs’ discovery, an employee at S21Sec, another Spanish security company, checked his HTC Magic and found Mariposa malware on it, according to a PandaLabs blog post today. The S21Sec employee had not yet plugged his phone into his Windows PC, but when he did and scanned its memory card with with both MalwareBytes and AVG Free. he found the Mariposa botnet client, called AUTORUN.EXE in the hidden NADFOLDER directory, as in the original finding by PandaLabs! The malware had been loaded on March 1, over a week before the S21Sec employee had received the phone directly from Vodafone’s official Web site. A Win32/AutoRun worm” was also found in the SD card.

Vodaphone representatives, who are based in the U.K. could not be reached by CNET for comment today.

(Note added March 19, 2010: Vodafone has discovered that malware found on several HTC Magic phones came from memory cards that were shipped in about 3,000 HTC and other phones. After the discovery [above] of a second infected phone, a Vodafone spokesperson issued a statement to CNET on Thursday that the occurrence of malware was a “local incident in Spain.” Today, the spokesperson issued a statement by email:

“Vodafone Spain has identified customers that could potentially be affected by the incident and Vodafone Spain will be sending these customers a new memory card. Additionally, Vodafone Spain will provide these customers with tools to verify and fix the integrity of their devices.”)

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

“Google: “Don’t be evil.” (“Star Wars,” anyone?)

Apple: “Think different.” (Like the rest of us? Part of an older ad campaign.)

Microsoft: “Your potential. Our passion.” (Well, at least they’re passionate).

Facebook: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” (A little long-winded for a mission statement, and doesn’t include any money-making goals).

And, of course, Twitter: “Be a force for good.” (See above).”

Well, I have personally SEEN WORSE!

As for CNN’s comment about Google and “Star Wars,” I can say that I was once part of the “Sun-Netscape Alliance.”(The “Rebel” Alliance…?)  I have the straw hat to prove it. No, the hat will not deflect a lightsaber.

Most of the really bad mission statements that I have seen are not “statements,” but paragraphs. I am reminded of the Scott Adams‘ Dilbert strip entitled “Business Language Explained,” in which “Asok the Intern” explains “returning to our core competencies” as “we can’t find our a_s with both hands.” A lot of companies write their mission statements that way. If you have to stumble around for three sentences to explain what your mission is, do you really know what you are doing?

Well, do you?

Without picking on anyone, I found an example of a LONG mission statement of a student organization (Criminal Justice Association) at the University of North Dakota. First off, I LIKE students, and respect their attempt (as well as the ability of these particular students to withstand subzero temperatures). (Besides, a lot of for-profit companies have “mission statements” this long. Some of the companies that employed me had mission statements almost this long.) Is this really a “statement?”

“The intention of the Criminal Justice Association is to introduce members to a atmosphere of job opportunities, community events and social gatherings.  To have access to various functions of the association and partake in the activities of UND and the association.  The association wants this to be a friendly, easy, social atmosphere where the opinions and input of everyone is appreciated and respected.   Lastly, the association wants your participation in the association to be a positive, rewarding experience at UND.”

About.com offers advice on writing a mission statement. You can decide how “good” their examples are.

I guess that I don’t mind a little “cheese,” as long as you don’t spread it too “thickly.”

Cheshire Cat Photo’s Mission is “To showcase California through photography.”

That isn’t even a complete sentence! But I think that you know what we mean….

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

Frankly, I enjoyed Pixar’s film, “Up!” much more! Maybe it was the “positive energy” of the Pixar film….

Yes, the candidate (yes, she spent 20 years at AT&T) who brought you the “Demon Sheep” attack ad is at it again, this time with an ad against Senator Barbara Boxer, Fiorina’s ultimate opponent, should Fiorina by some chance win the Republican primary in her attempt to win Boxer’s Senate seat. No positive energy in THIS one! The anti-Boxer ad runs over seven minutes. You might have to be a “knee-jerk” conservative to like this ad. Or just a jerk….

Not that Boxer is a favorite of mine, either….

The reaction of the Boxer camp was swift. According to SFGate:

“Not even another bizarre video can distract voters from Fiorina’s record as a failed CEO who laid off 28,000 workers and shipped California jobs overseas,” said Rose Kapolczynski, Boxer campaign manager. “While Fiorina spends time producing works of fiction, Barbara Boxer is focused on creating good jobs in California and getting our economy back on track.”

I am feeling a little nauseated tonight – not sure whether it is from “springing ahead” into Daylight Savings Time over the weekend, or whether it results from the “revisionist history” of Carly Fiorina (after her support of disastrous offshoring of Americans’ jobs) or from Barbara Boxer’s “distinguished” record in the U.S. Senate. Maybe a good night’s sleep will help….

I DO wish that more of California’s politicians were sincerely interested in saving California, however. It is a good state, with good people, and I LIKE it here.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

Actor Peter Graves, who was perhaps best known for his starring role in TV’s “Mission: Impossible,” was found dead today, at his home. There was no sign of foul play. Graves was 83.

Graves was born Peter Aurness in Minneapolis, MN, the son of Ruth (née Duesler) a journalist, and Rolf Cirkler Aurness, a Norwegian who worked in business.

Graves appeared in more than 70 films, TV series, and TV movies! Some of his best-known roles are listed in the Wikipedia article.

Graves played the character of Jim Phelps for all but one of seven years that “Mission: Impossible” ran on CBS, from 1967 to 1973. He played Jim Phelps again when “Mission: Impossible” reappeared, on ABC, from 1988 to 1990.

Graves also appeared as Captain Clarece Oveur in the 1980 movie spoof, “Airplane!” and in its less-successful sequel, “Airplane II: The Sequel.” Never try to do without “Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker!” Graves originally turned down the role in “Airplane!” but changed his mind after meeting with the film’s writers. (See my comment above!) “Airplane!” was ranked 6th on Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies. In a major 2007 survey by Channel 4 in the UK, it was judged the second greatest comedy film of all time.

In a CNN interview with Graves in 1996, Graves expressed disappointment with the Hollywood movie version of “Mission: Impossible,” which included NONE of the the stars from the TV series, not even in cameo roles.

In 1997, Graves hosted the documentary, “Judy Garland: Beyond the Rainbow,” and became part of a larger group that won an Outstanding Informational Series Emmy for the documentary. Graves is survived by his wife, Joan Endress and three daughters, Kelly, Claudia, and Amanda. Graves was the younger brother of actor James Arness, who starred as Marshal Matt Dillion in the TV series, “Gunsmoke,” which ran on TV for 20 years.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

I just uploaded 33 images from those taken over the winter months, to the albums: San Francisco, California Coast, Outdoor Recreation, Viticulture and Wine, and Wildlife in the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™. Low-resolution images are linked from the Stock Photo Table.

Yesterday, we had rain for about 12 hours, which can happen during winter months in the Bay Area. Today was a bright and sunny day, if a little cool – perfect for the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin, California. The flowering trees are in full bloom in the “Tri-Valley” of the East Bay.

Enjoy the photos. (Don’t expect any snow….)

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

“There are just so many plants coming up,” said Sharon Dall, who works at the California Department of Parks and Recreation rangers’ office in Borrego Springs. “There’s going to be a really good mix of color. It’s just going to be spectacular.”

The story by San Diego Union Tribune staff writer, Robert Krier, includes photos of some wildflowers, links to a photo section with many more, and an excellent suggestion for touring the desert, if you don’t have your own four-wheel-drive vehicle. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park encompasses 650,000 acres (2630 km²) and is the largest state park in California and the second largest within the continental United States (after Adirondack Park in New York). The park includes 500 miles (804 km) of dirt roads, 12 wilderness areas, and 110 miles (180 km) of hiking trails provide visitors with an opportunity to experience the Colorado Desert (see the link for THIS meaning of “Colorado”). The Wikipedia article also states:

“Listening devices for the hearing impaired are available in the visitor center. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is one of 55 California State Parks with wi-fi access in one or more areas. Footage shot at this park was used in the 2005 feature film Serenity. Many visitors approach from the east via California Highways S22, S2, or 78. Visitors from San Diego via Highways 79 and 78 have the added pleasure of driving through the mountainous Cuyamaca Rancho State Park—quite a different experience from Anza-Borrego. The highways from the east climb to 2,400 feet (731 m) or so and then descend about 2,000 feet (609 m) to the valley.”

The Wikipedia article also details the extensive marine and terrestrial paleontology of the Anza-Borrego Desert. The area has an exceptional fossil record. The Wikipedia article and the other articles linked here have extensive descriptions of the flowers and animals that you may find in the park.

OK, so you don’t have your own four-wheel-drive vehicle…. Even if you do, you just may want to tour the backcountry with the park’s sole concessionaire, California Overland Desert Excursions (not an endorsement), and operator Joe Raffetto. Joe was orginally from New Jersey, spent five years at sea as an observer for the National Marine Fisheries Service reporting the numbers of dolphins seen and killed in fishing nets, worked as an art director in New York and as a professional photographer. Now he helps people become advocates for the park by giving them access to areas that are very hard to reach. How? He bought two M35-A2 military cargo vehicles plus an M-715 Kaiser Jeep from a military surplus company in Idaho, got a class B license, modified the vehicles, and took a 90-hour training course, years ago. Now, he knows the desert like the “back of his hand.” Robert Krier’s article has other valuable suggestions:

• The park’s visitors center can suggest spots that match your ability, vehicle durability, and desire to leave the masses behind! Call (760) 767-4205.
• Go on weekdays. Attendance can triple on weekends.
• Take a backcountry tour with California Overland Desert Excursions. Call (760) 767-1232 or go to californiaoverland.com.
• Sign up for guided tours led by members of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Botany Society. Cost is $5. Call (760) 767-0446 or go to theabf.org.
• Take the alternate trail in the popular Borrego Palm Canyon with far fewer people.
• Temperatures are forecast to reach the mid-80s early next week, and that could make many flowers pop.
• For updates on the wildflower status in the park, call (760) 767-4684 or go to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park on the California State Park pages.
• For information about wildflowers around Southern California, call (818) 768-3533.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

I have sometimes wondered (but not really) why two companies that I really generally respect, Apple and Google, have incorporated facial recognition software into their products iPhoto (searched with Spotlight) and Picasa (from version 3.5 onward), respectively. I sometimes think of the feature as “the coolest feature that I never ever asked for!” If you give it some thought, you may reach conclusions about why it is there. (I wondered about the feature when it showed up in iPhoto, and then it showed up in Picasa, too.) I don’t think that it was from a groundswell of enhancement requests by users like you and me.

The feature became especially annoying for me when I downloaded a Picasa upgrade (probably to 3.5) and the software began AUTOMATICALLY, unbidden, to start analyzing and categorizing the photos on my machine. I stopped it right away and have not restarted it since. No, I am (obviously) not a Luddite, but I adopt only technology that is more beneficial to me than potentially harmful. I will probably never carry another pager (if they still exist) in my life (never wanted to; there ARE no benefits), and I recognize the sometimes questionable risk/benefit ratio of cell phones.

It may surprise some Americans to learn that a number of other countries have been leading the deployment of new technologies. The fact first struck me in 1995, when I visited a display of Panasonic flat-screen TVs at a department store in downtown Osaka, Japan. I am sometimes very happy to see other countries try social experiments before the U.S. tries them, especially those in which the cost of “failure” is high. The experiment itself might “succeed,” but produce a large, negative effect on the society that might be hard to reverse. Sometimes it really is hard to put the Genie “back in the bottle.”

CNN has an article today that describes electronic billboards in Tokyo that, with an embedded camera, use facial recognition technology to determine your gender and age (and who knows what else) and to serve to you the OPTIMUM advertisement, based upon your demographics. CNN compares the phenomenon to a scene in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 movie, “Minority Report,” in which cameras in a mall scan the retinas of Tom Cruise and offer up ideal advertisements for him. The CNN reporter, a woman in her 30s, was offered a very appealing lunch advertisement. The current technology by NEC estimates your age within 10 years. New technology demonstrated at a fair in Tokyo got her age right every time! She quotes a consultant from the Netherlands who believes “in this kind of thing.” NEC spokesman Kosuke Yamauchi predicts that within two to three years, such electronic billboards will represent 10% of digital signage GLOBALLY.

Of course the sign works both ways. While the sign is offering YOU an optimum advertisement, it is transmitting information ABOUT YOU back to the database of the company presenting the ads.

Since most of us plan to live longer than two or three more years, we can only speculate what advertising will look like in our lifetimes, ESPECIALLY if signs with facial recognition systems are successful in SELLING.

According to the Wikipedia article called “Facial recognition system,” the early development of facial recognition systems in 1964-1965, by pioneers Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan Wolf, and Charles Bisson, was funded by an unnamed intelligence agency that did not allow much publicity. After Bledsoe left PRI in 1966, the work was continued at the Stanford Research Institute (in Menlo Park, California) principally by Peter Hart. The computer consistently outperformed facial recognition by humans on a database of 2000 photographs. The Wikipedia article further states:

‘By about 1997, the system developed by Christoph von der Malsburg and graduate students of the University of Bochum in Germany and the University of Southern California in the United States outperformed most systems with those of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland rated next. The Bochum system was developed through funding by the United States Army Research Laboratory. The software was sold as ZN-Face and used by customers such as Deutsche Bank and operators of airports and other busy locations. The software was “robust enough to make identifications from less-than-perfect face views. It can also often see through such impediments to identification as mustaches, beards, changed hair styles and glasses—even sunglasses.” In about January 2007, image searches were “based on the text surrounding a photo,” for example, if text nearby mentions the image content. Polar Rose technology can guess from a photograph, in about 1.5 seconds, what any individual may look like in three dimensions, and thought they “will ask users to input the names of people they recognize in photos online” to help build a database.’

“Coincidentally,” asking users to input the names of people they recognize in photos online” (and on their machines) is what programs like iPhoto and Picasa do. We have come a long way since the voluntary distributed computing (list of projects here) of SETI@Home!

(Wikipedia notes that WAY back in 2001, at Super Bowl XXXV, police in Tampa Bay, Florida, used Identix’s facial recognition software, FaceIt, to search for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event. The system found 19 people with pending arrest warrants – WAY back in 2001.)

A “friend of a friend” (jokingly) posted on Facebook that he was going to start wearing “Groucho Glasses”) to defeat facial recognition by the millions of cameras (including the ones in cell phones and the “traffic cameras”) that are proliferating in the U.S. It sounds like Groucho Glasses are woefully inadequate when pitted against modern facial recognition systems, but they may help us “lighten up” a bit under the increasing stress of surveillance.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

A 7-year-old Norwalk, CA boy was called a hero today, after he hid in a bathroom with his 6-year-old sister, locked the door,  and called 911 during a home-invasion robbery by three men with handguns who threatened his parents. The boy pleaded with Los Angeles County Sheriff dispatchers to send help. He thought that his parents had been shot.

“Can you come really fast? Please! Please! . . . They have guns. They shoot my mom and dad,” the boy said, according to a copy of the 911 tape that was released.

The robbers broke into the bathroom and found the boy. There was screaming on the 911 tape. According to authorities, one of the suspects grabbed the boy and asked who he called. The boy said, “911.”

The suspects fled without harming anyone or taking any property.

Anyone with information is asked to call detectives at (562) 863-8711.

What a brave little guy!

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

… sting like a bee.” – Muhammad Ali

A new Android-based Vodafone HTC Magic phone was reported to have malware on it, by an employee at Spanish antivirus firm Panda Security who received the phone. The malware was related to the Mariposa (Spanish for “butterfly”) botnet. (Mariposa is also a census-designated place in California that was an historic mining camp and now sits near a gateway, along the Merced River, to Yosemite Valley (1) [where the photo of the Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly above was taken].)

The Register published a statement from Vodafone that said Vodafone is investigating the matter. “Following extensive quality assurance testing on HTC Magic handsets in several of our operating companies, early indications are that this was an isolated local incident,” the statement said.

According to Panda, the Spanish arm of Vodafone supplied an HTC Magic smartphone preloaded with malware that attempted to establish a backdoor for stealing information on connected PCs during the synchronization process. According to Panda Security research Pedro Busamante:

“A quick analysis of the malware reveals that it is in fact a Mariposa bot client,” Bustamante explained. “This one, unlike the one announced last week which was run by Spanish hacker group ‘DDP Team’, is run by some guy named ‘tnls’ as the botnet-control mechanism shows.

“Once infected you can see the malware ‘phoning home’ to receive further instructions, probably to steal all of the user’s credentials and send them to the malware writer,” he added.

Panda reported that the phone was also infected with Conficker (1, 2, 3) and a Lineage password-stealing code.

A March 2 article by Elinor Mills of CNET had additional details about the Mariposa botnet:

“Authorities in Spain have arrested three men accused of operating a massive botnet composed of 12.7 million PCs that stole credit card and bank log-in data and infected computers in half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 banks, according to published reports.”

The Mariposa botnet first appeared in December 2008 and grew to be one of the largest botnets ever, according to The Associated Press.

The Butterfly worm, which targets Windows XP and older systems, spreads by removable drives, MSN Messenger, and peer-to-peer programs. See these two (1, 2) YouTube videos from Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (in both English and French) about the Mariposa Worm and botnet.

Thanks, Elinor, for answering my question – yes, apparently all 12.7 million infected computers were running Windows. ‘Nuff said.

Elinor also noted today that Microsoft informed us of a NEW zero-day hole in Internet Explorer 6 and 7. (Note added March 12, 2010: Israeli research Moshe Ben Abu released exploit code for the vulnerability, and Microsoft is racing to fix the IE hole.)

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

In Santa Ana, California, Rodney Alcala, 66, is representing himself in the penalty phase of his trial. When he was the “winning bachelor” on The Dating Game in 1978, he had already been convicted of the rape of an eight-year-old girl.

In February 2010, Rodney Alcala was convicted of murdering four women and a child. The crimes date back to the late 1970s. Within months of his appearance on The Dating Game, Alcala abducted and murdered a 12-year-old girl in 1979. Alcala’s conviction for the murder of the girl was later overturned. Alcala has been in prison for 30 years. He was formerly a photographer.

Charming, likable, long-haired “Bachelor #1″ impressed bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw with his “sexy and funny” answers, but backstage before the show, he was intimidating, unlikable, rude, and imposing with the other bachelors. The true unstable, antisocial personality of the apparent psychopath and future serial killer came through.

Although Cheryl Bradshaw chose Alcala as her date, she later refused to go out with him. According to CNN, the noted criminal profiler Pat Brown suggested that being rejected can have a profound impact on serial killers.

Alcala is using a video clip of The Dating Game in his own defense, according to a video in the CNN article, which makes for a fascinating story about this serial killer with a high IQ and his choice to represent himself.

(Note added March 10, 2010: It took the Orange County jury only one hour to deliver a sentence of the death penalty for Rodney James Alcala. The bizarre and emotional details are in the LA Times.)

(Note added March 19, 2010: Huntington Beach police detectives have been swamped with calls from people who think that they can identify one of the dozens of women and girls in photos released last week and linked to convicted serial killer Rodney James Alcala. Many of the more than 400 calls can be dismissed because the people became “missing” AFTER Alcala was jailed for the 1979 killing of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach. He has been in prison ever since.)

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

According to the CNN article:

Los Angeles Times spokesman John Conroy said the “cover-wrap” was an “unusual opportunity to stretch the usual boundaries and design an innovative ad designed to create buzz.”

Tough economic times and lower ad revenues have had their effect on newspapers.

The LA Times online noted that “Alice in Wonderland” earned a record-setting $210.3 million around the world  in its opening weekend! Disney spent approximately $200 million to MAKE the film, including the cost of conversion to 3D after production, so the movie is doing well so far! See the LA Times article for some other records broken!

Audiences gave the movie an average grade of A-, according to the LA Times. There have been mixed reviews, but the audience grade should assure good “word-of-mouth” advertising.

I saw the movie Saturday afternoon at Pixar’s theater in Emeryville, during a “Friends and Family” screening. Although I very much enjoyed the movie, I felt, on leaving, that there was something “missing.” On the way home, I reached for a word (UNUSUAL for me! ), and came up with “suspense.” The movie seemed to me to lack a measure of suspense, or maybe needed a stronger storyline, for me. The film does NOT retell the original story, so there was plenty of room for creativity in the storyline.

Now for the “coincidence….” According to the Wikipedia article about the film:

“Burton said the original Wonderland story was always about a girl wandering around from one character to another and he never felt a connection emotionally, so he wanted to make it feel more like a story than a series of events.”

Fascinating! I always felt an emotional connection to the Alice books, which I read as “The Annotated Alice” (and now own). Of course, I saw and enjoyed the animated 1951 Disney movie long before and own it on DVD now. I also enjoyed American McGee’s Alice game, set years after the Alice books, in which a tormented Alice travels to a Wonderland suffering under the rule of the mad and merciless Queen of Hearts (sound familiar? ). The game presented MANY interesting and creative puzzles, and I NEVER knew what would happen next! To me, the Burton movie seemed less like a story and more like a series of events, without a lot of suspense. I did not find myself wondering “what will happen next?”

But all of us are DIFFERENT…! For example, I LIKE cats (dogs, too) and have nothing but love for the Cheshire Cat!

Nevertheless, YMMV (“Your Mileage May Vary”), and I really DID enjoy the movie! (I would watch it again and will likely purchase the 2D DVD when it is offered.) I hope that you enjoy it, too!

The animated Cheshire Cat in the film was just about purrrrrrfect, although it did take me awhile to get used to the gray and blue (rather than pink and purple) coloration!)

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

Domeier and his team caught 22 great white sharks off Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, 250 miles southwest of San Diego, CA, over three years and applied pop-up satellite tags to them.  The area was the site of an earlier eight-year study by Domeier’s group, in which 56 great white sharks were tagged with pop-up satellite tags on their dorsal fins, around Guadalupe Island. Like the Farallon Islands (the islands have a Web cam!) northwest of the Golden Gate, the area is a hotspot for great white sharks.

The earlier study showed that:

“Guadalupe’s sharks migrate — beginning as early as Dec. 21 but spread over a 19-week period — to a vast pelagic habitat in the mid-Pacific, where they spend an average of 140 days, diving, at times, to 3,000 feet in an apparent search for food.

They then swim back to Guadalupe. The males arrive beginning about July 22, coinciding with the pupping of Guadalupe fur seals. The females arrive several weeks later.

More interesting is that white sharks from Northern California migrate to the same offshore area — some from both groups even travel as far west as Hawaii — but there is no known intermixing. No tagged shark from Northern California has ever visited Guadalupe, and vice versa.

Whereas the Northern California study, carried out by Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, referred to the area as the White Shark Cafe, Domeier and co-author Nicole Nasby-Lucas label it the Shared Offshore Foraging Area, or SOFA.

But precisely why the apex predators visit the cafe or SOFA remains a mystery.

Domeier suggests it’s to hunt rather than reproduce, based on diving patterns, the fact that tagged sharks were widely dispersed at the SOFA, and that they do not return to the island noticeably thin.”

In the more recent study, funded by Newport Beach’s George T. Pfleger Foundation and others, Domeier arranged a voyage with a National Geographic Channel television crew to follow the 22 tagged sharks in a 126-foot boat. The team tracked the sharks for 1,600 miles to an area of the deep Pacific that is around 1,500 miles east of Kauai. The area is considered to be an ecological desert, because it is so biologically unproductive.

The sharks ended their migration in the area and started milling about and diving! Team members had found hardly any fish or other prey that the sharks might be eating, with the exception of squid! Purple and neon flying squid were easy to find. The crew also found the carcass of a giant squid that had been chewed by predators. There were also leaping sperm whales, which are known to feed in spawning areas for large squid. Domeier speculates that the sharks had found a squid-based ecosystem with large enough prey to attract sperm whales. The great white sharks could prey upon large squid, including the giant squid, and any predators that the squid attract.

Since scientists are skeptical folks, and also human beings, and since it is very unlikely that people will actually observe great white sharks preying on giant squid at depths of thousands of feet, Domeier’s findings have set off a healthy scientific debate. People who don’t know scientists very well and hear criticisms of virtually ALL scientific theories, can draw the wrong conclusions. Scientific debate (and publicity) is GOOD, and it can also attract GRANT MONEY! The competition for grant money (and a general aggressiveness and egomania of certain personality types) can generate FIERCE scientific debate!

Education of the public is also good, especially when the education is based upon the results of scientific research, rather than propaganda cranked out by corporate marketing departments. Such education may give the public an understanding of how LITTLE human beings know about the ecosystems that they are rapidly destroying (or about anything ELSE, for that matter).

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

So here goes – first, the CA unemployment statistics for January….

Although the unemployment RATE in January increased (slightly from 12.4%) to 12.5%, California non-farm payroll jobs also INCREASED by 32,500 in January, with eight of 11 industry sectors showing gains according to data from two separate surveys released today by the Calfornia Employment Development Department. The number of people unemployed in California was 2,266,000 – up by 32,000 over the month, and up by 488,000 compared with January of last year.

According to the EDD report:

“Eight categories (mining and logging; construction; manufacturing; trade, transportation and utilities; educational and health services; leisure and hospitality; other services; and government) added jobs over the month, gaining 45,900 jobs. Construction posted the largest increase over the month, adding 16,200 jobs. Three categories (information; financial activities; and professional and business services) reported job declines this month, down 13,400 jobs. Information posted the largest decline over the month, down by 12,100 jobs.”

“In a year-over-year comparison (January 2009 to January 2010), nonfarm payroll employment in California decreased by 701,700 jobs (down 4.8 percent).”

“One industry division, educational and health services, posted job gains over the year, adding 12,400 jobs (a 0.7 percent increase).”

“Ten categories (mining and logging; construction; manufacturing; trade, transportation and utilities; information; financial activities; professional and business services; leisure and hospitality; other services; and government) posted job declines over the year, down 714,100 jobs. Trade, transportation and utilities employment showed the largest decline on a numerical basis, down by 148,900 jobs (a decline of 5.5 percent). Construction posted the largest decline on a percentage basis, down by 18.0 percent (a decrease of 128,700 jobs).”

At the national level, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that the February nonfarm payroll employment was little changed (-36,000) in February, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.7%. (1) Employment fell in construction and information, while temporary help services added jobs. In February, the number of unemployed persons, at 14.9 million, was essentially unchanged.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics report:

“Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.0 percent), adult women (8.0 percent), whites (8.8 percent), blacks (15.8 percent), Hispanics (12.4 percent), and teenagers (25.0 percent) showed little to no change in February. The jobless rate for Asians was 8.4 percent, not seasonally adjusted.”

“The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was 6.1 million in February and has been about that level since December. About 4 in 10 unemployed persons have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more.”

“Job losses continued in construction and information, while employment continued to increase in temporary help services. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 8.4 million.”

“Construction employment fell by 64,000 in February, about in line with the average monthly job loss over the prior 6 months. Job losses were concentrated in nonresidential building (-10,000) and among nonresidential specialty trade contractors (-35,000). Since December 2007, employment in construction has fallen by 1.9 million.”

“Employment in the information industry dropped by 18,000 in February. Since December 2007, job losses in information have totaled 297,000. In February, employment in transportation and warehousing continued to trend down.”

“Employment in manufacturing was essentially unchanged in February. Small job gains in a number of component industries were offset by job losses in motor vehicles and parts and in chemicals.”

“Retail trade employment was unchanged in February, after a sizeable increase in January. Over the month, job gains in building material and garden supply stores (7,000) and in department stores (6,000) were offset by declines in food and beverage stores (-9,000).”

“In February, temporary help services added 48,000 jobs. Since reaching a low point in September 2009, temporary help services employment has risen by 284,000. Health care employment continued to trend upward in February.”

“In February, employment in the federal government edged up. The hiring of 15,000 temporary workers for Census 2010 was partially offset by a decline in U.S. Postal Service employment.”

All in all, a “mixed bag,” with the unemployment situation either holding steady or getting slightly better….

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

Dianne I. Baker, Public Relations Coordinator at Disney Interactive Studios (headquartered in Glendale, CA) sent us a link to a new QuickTime movie file with a vignette of “Alice in Wonderland” uniquely on the Nintendo DS, inspired by the Tim Burton movie. She told us, “Please feel free to share with others or post on your site.” (The games [Wii, too] were released on March 2, and the movie will come out tomorrow, March 5. I posted links to other Alice “stills” and trailers from Disney Interactive, for Wii and DS, at this link.) (Note added March 7, 2010: We saw the movie yesterday, at Pixar’s theater, in Emeryville. More about that later….)

Give the file (LARGE) awhile to load.

As for the Tim Burton movie – OF COURSE it is on my MUST SEE list!

The good news? Today I was contacted by a very good friend (and former coworker) who now works at Pixar, who will take us to a “Friends and Family” screening of the 3D Alice in Wonderland in Pixar’s theater (in Emeryville, CA) this weekend!

Without our friends and our families, where would we be?

(Thank you Disney Interactive, and Pixar folks, too!)

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

… but they just can’t KILL the beast!” -the Eagles, “Hotel California”

The ghost of Kate Morgan at the Hotel Del Coronado (photo above: the hotel, not the ghost ) in Coronado, across San Diego Bay from San Diego, inspires nowhere NEAR the TERROR….

Today, a “funeral” is being held, as I write this,  in Denver, Colorado, with more than 100 people, many dressed in black, to say goodbye to an old “friend,” Internet Explorer 6.

Even Microsoft is trying to kill it!

Premature burial (1)? After all, even Intel is still using it, and sadly, I know schoolkids who are still using it, too! Besides, Google, Adobe, and 32 other silent (ashamed? ) Silicon Valley companies who were using it assisted a cyberattack originating in China by providing a “way in.” Of course, the flaw existed in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 as well, so upgrading would not have saved them!

No, I think IE6 is more like “Night of the Living Dead,” or, if not a zombie (1),  perhaps a Nosferatu or vampire. If it were in my power, you could hand me a wooden stake and a hammer, and I would take care of the final arrangements, and those of its son and grand-daughter, too!

Alas, it is not.

The afore-cited funeral announcement also says that the funeral service began 25 minutes ago, as I write this, and that “Apparently even more people want to see IE6’s cold dead body than we imagined.” The announcement lists the place of death as Mountain View, California (fitting, somehow! ).

Microsoft would not comment on the funeral itself.

“While we recommend Internet Explorer 8 to all customers, we understand we have a number of corporate customers for whom broad deployment of new technologies across their desktops requires more planning,” a Microsoft representative wrote in an e-mail to CNN.

Or more intelligence than some corporate customers can muster…. Internet Explorer 6 was introduced in 2001. You would think that all of those years would be enough time.

(Note added March 9, 2010: Today Microsoft warned of NEW zero-day holes in Internet Explorer 6 and 7.)

(Note added March 13, 2010: You can download a version of Firefox [Mac, Linux, or PC] in an International edition that “speaks your language” here. Not an endorsement….)

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

Three Spaniards were arrested who are suspected of having infected 13 million computers with a program that allowed them to steal personal and financial data in more than 190 countries worldwide!

Spanish Civil Guards worked with the American FBI and computer security firms in Canada, the United States, and Spain to investigate what has been called the world’s biggest network of virus-infected computers (called “Mariposa, or “butterfly” in Spanish)!

In addition to the personal and financial information gained from the infected computers, the malware permitted those who controlled the network to launch a very large cyberattack from the botnet of infected computers.

Personal data from over 800,000 users was found in searches of computers recovered from the homes of suspects, aged 31, 30, and 25, who were arrested last week in the northern Vizcaya province, northwest Coruna province, and southeast Murcia province of Spain.

According to CNN:

“The computer hacking was first detected in May by the Canadian firm Defence Intelligence, which quickly enlisted the aid of Spain’s Panda Security firm and the Georgia Tech Information Security Center in Atlanta, Georgia, the statement said.”

For more of the AMAZINGLY LIMITED details, please see the CNN article.

In a report of this kind, I would expect, at the very least, to see some information about the malware, its mechanism of attack, and the systems that were/are susceptible to the attack. Maybe we will get more details soon. (Note added march 6, 2010: Nope – we learned that the largest botnet in the world was called “Mariposa” or “butterfly” [I already KNEW that Mariposa is Spanish for butterfly] – thanks, CNN, but but you still have not told us the mechanism of action of the malware that was used, nor the type of systems infected. I am almost willing to bet money that all 13 million zombie computers were all running Windows, but that is just a “hunch.” C’mon, CNN, inquiring minds want to know!)

Were they all running Windows?

(Note added March 9, 2010: Yep, they were!)

I imagine that several of the companies with my personal and financial information are running Windows. The one Windows machine in my home (it was a gift that I use solely for loading Garmin GPS maps onto a hand-held GPS unit) is NOT on a network and not turned on, most of the time.

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.