Joe Update

Well, unfortunately its not good :(
Recently posted on Facebook by Janet Sperber who is currently in Seattle:

Yesterday, Joe really showed signs of his decline. Sores and rashes all over legs and back due to Leukemia. Pain meds every two hrs. This past weekend he did great. We had him out in the sunshine in a wheelchair during BBQ hosted by Elk's Lodge. Yesterday, he was mostly in bed. At this point doctors trying too keep him comfortable. He is aware we are here. No solid food over two weeks. He is dying.

With a followup from Joe's daughter Shana:

This is Shana, my dad is declining rapidly. I will be going back up to be with him tomorrow.

How People see You when You Fix Their Computer versus Reality [Humorous Image]

Yes, it is safe for work. It is also way too true. Just keep the cats and coffee out of the way when you open this page.

16 Suspected 'Anonymous' Hackers Arrested in Nationwide Sweep

From Fox news:

Sixteen suspected members of "Anonymous" were arrested this morning in states across the country, from California to New York, in a federal raid on the notorious hacking group.

Met Police accused of phone-hacking inquiry failures

This is big news in the UK. The news of the world paper in the UK got shut down over it. There's also links to more info on the page in the title.

From the BBC:
"The Commons home affairs committee also criticises News International's "deliberate attempts to thwart investigations" into hacking."

Search Engines Ruin our Memory, Make us Smarter

What a strange headline! The article doesn't support the fear mongering aspect of the headline. Changing which information we store is not ruining our memory. Humans are incredibly adaptable. We adapt very quickly to use what helps us and reject what doesn't. At least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Another Joe Update

Hi all. I just wanted to give another Joe update.
As luck would have it, my work brought me to Seattle this week, so I had the opportunity to see him. We had a good visit on Sunday, though I would say he was quite a bit tired and had to disappear for a little bit to go lay down and nap. My understanding from Sue is that it was one of his more "up" days. She thinks it was actually the fact that I was coming by that kept him running. Needless to say, when he was dozing off and needed to take a nap, I fully understood. I had actually not expected to be there as long as I was. While I was there, he asked me for assistance getting his laptop connected to a MiFi so he could get online, which I was happy to do for him. He did have a very difficult time typing once we got him in the chat, but he was very happy to be there and at least say hi to everyone and read everyone's best wishes. Please keep that in mind if you see him in there again, please don't rush him. Its possible he may not even say anything at all, but assume he is reading so please go ahead and say hi.

To be honest, if I had not before seen the recently posted picture of him, I don't think I would have recognized him. Besides his beard being shaved off, he has lost a lot of weight.

Unfortunately, during another visit I had with him this week, he wasn't as "spunky". He was very tired, and unfortunately, his health does seem to be declining. Here is a post from his daughter Shana that was put up on Facebook:

This is Shana again. Joe getting very sleepy these days., as is expected. They will be giving him an IV to administer fluids and meds to help with the nausea. Prayers are appriciated. I know if you are on this list, you mean something to my dad and he does to you as well. Thank you for your support in this very difficult time!

Also, if anyone wishes to send a card to him, they can be mailed to:

Seattle VA
1660 S Columbian Way
Seattle WA 98108
Att: Joseph Roy Polinsky CLC #106

Please continue to keep Joe and Sue in your thoughts and prayers.

Aaron

Netflix Users Protest Proposed Price Increases With Social Media Firestorm

During a discussion on this very subject today, we speculated that Netflix had thoroughly vetted this decision before announcing it. Maybe not, considering the reaction. This is one to watch. This is a huge price increase for those who both have one at a time DVD and also use the streaming.

Wi-Fi–Hacking Neighbor From Hell Sentenced to 18 Years

One of the morals of this story is don't use WEP. I know I've been using WPA for years. It is heartening that the victim's boss and associates believed him and helped track down the lowlife. I'd actually call the guy a cyber stalker. Hacker is too good a word to waste on him.

let's hear it for building your own computer!

I know it might be cheaper to buy than building these days. I'm still a die hard builder. Since, I'm a geek my last computer cost me a total of under $60.00 with shipping. Had everything else. OK so it ain't the latest and the greatest. I can go online do email and word process. I've got 2 80 gig HD's 2 GIG's of MEM. threw in an older Nvidia video card. Also, an oldish DVD burner. I'm set.
This MB BTW.

Oracle and Microsoft could cash in big on Android | Wireless - CNET News

Here's an interesting article that Rob sent us in chat today.

From the article: "Both companies are seeking as much as a $20 licensing fee per device from handset makers that choose to use Android. That'd be roughly double the amount that Google makes in search revenue, on average, from every Android device, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg. Google gives away the Android operating system in hopes of generating that revenue."

Joe's current condition

Many people have asked what Joe's current condition is. I asked our friend, Rick Schrieve (SchmooBro) to write something up that is easy to explain. The following are his words. Rick has been in contact with Joe daily to help explain what the doctors are telling him in more layman's terms, so I felt he was the best to explain what is going on. This is information is posted with permission from both Joe and Sue.

Now, from Rick:

First a disclaimer: I will not swear to the accuracy of anything here; best I recall from med school and the reading I have done for Joe and just sorta a summary off the top of my head.

This is just a short summary of the medical condition that has led our good friend AJ to find himself in his current dire medical straits, where, to be frank, with the withdraw of Dialysis treatments Joe has but days or at best weeks to live. His disease is now causing significant pain in the bones of his spine, and with the kidneys no longer filtering the metabolism products from his blood and the Narcotics used to treat his pain no longer being removed, he will just drift to a state of lesser mental acuity, and kind of a sleeping, "mead-like" not really drunkeness, but sort of lack of awareness. It really seems a pretty nice way to go, when your time is up. And in his current situation, there will be none of that shoving plastic tubes down your throat, cracking ribs with CPR, that too many people suffer in their last few moments of life in an acute care hospital as the Lord comes to take you to his arms.

Rick Schrieve
aka SchmooBro

Joe has had for years a long term low grade type of blood "disorder" sort of like a low grade lymphoma where his platelet making cells are too active, they are very low grade "cancerous", one might say. His body's immune system, which is the function of the immune system, is chronically attacking these bad crazy cells, causing inflammation and scaring - and over the years, he has been on various low grade anticancer drugs to slow the crazy cells, but there really is no "kill the cancer" treatment for his condition.

Over time, with the chronic inflammation of the places you usually make white and red blood cells and other blood elements, the scaring is making your back, and your pelvis, and your sternum just scar filled spaces rather than sites of active blood element production. Thus, your normal "protected" places to make blood elements are being slowly anatomically eliminated.

In response, your spleen is getting bigger. First, it is grabbing some of these weird, large irregular atypical platelet cells and trapping them; this fills it with lymphocytes and other white cells essentially containing these low grade cancer cells.

IN ADDITION, your body has to find other places now to make your red blood cells, white cells, normal platelets, etc -- this would be the SPLEEN AGAIN, as well as spaces in the LIVER. As the spleen grows bigger, it pushes and squeezes other organs, and becomes more fragile and less effective as a lypmphocytic organ itself. Thus, both the liver and spleen swell, becoming less efficient and more fragile to fracture from say external trauma.

So, these are definite problems. as the problem grows beyond the ability of the body to cope, and the low grade anti cancer drugs to help, the blood is more screwed up for carrying oxygen, and can get "sludgy", and all kinds of stuff. As things in your normally healthy blood become more "messed up", this is bad for all of your organs..... most specifically of concern, the heart and kidneys. So, as this disease progresses, you finally get to the stage Joe is at; you have multiple organ failure, a huge spleen, limited normal function of any organ, etc. From then on, the cause of your tiredness and lethargy is not a single problem like heart failure, but just a big blubbery mess of low efficiency and function, and in essence you just sort of "spiral down".

The usual only exception, which did not happen to Joe, is that the crazy platelet cells go totally wacky, and multiply like crazy, and fill your blood stream -- we call that LEUKEMIA... [The process is call a Blast process, as in mekakaryocytic blast cells, not as in "it's a blast to do this"] and the leukemia is pretty instant, massive, and usually you die of sepsis within a few days.

But that is pretty much the basic medical issue, best I can put it in lay terms.

Thank you Rick for this information.

To Slow Piracy, Internet Providers Ready Penalties

"Americans who illegally download songs and movies may soon be in for a surprise: They will be warned to stop, and if they don’t, they could find their Internet access slowing to a crawl."

Hope they do a better job in getting the identities right than they did with the lawsuits.

Joe gets a shave....

For the 11 years I have known Joe, this is the first time I have seen his chin.....

An Update on Joe

A lot of people have been asking about Joe recently. As everyone is aware, Joe was forced to move to Seattle in May due to his health starting to decline. Though he has seen different specialists while there, his health has continued to decline. He was recently admitted to the hospital again, and it sounds like they are going to keep him for a bit, but unfortunately, he is not doing very well at all.

Joe and Sue are aware that all of the On Computers listeners are keeping them in their thoughts are are very appreciative of that fact. Please continue to keep them in your thoughts/prayers/etc as we get through the next few weeks.

Aaron

Telstra, Optus in national broadband network deals

From the BBC:

Australia's two biggest telecoms companies have joined the government's A$36bn (£24bn) plan to roll-out high-speed internet across the country.

Telstra and Optus will close down their infrastructure and transfer customers to the state-owned National Broadband Network Company (NBNC).

About 60% of households have broadband, but speeds are slow compared with many industrialised countries.

The plan is to connect more than 90% of households to a super-fast network.

Firefox 5 is out

I've been using it with Ubuntu 11.04 for a few days and so far so good. All my add-ons work. Be a good geek and download today :-).

Rare earths mining: China's 21st Century gold rush

From the BBC. It's a flash slide show thing. You have to sit through an ad but, worth it. Sound isn't important. just a drum beat kinda thing behind it. Rather sobering when you think about it.

Apt-get replacement Apt-fast

Joe's the one that told me about this handy Linux tool. Think apt-get with multiple connections. You can get the script you need, for Ubuntu here. You've got to install Axel first. Should be in your repositories, was with Ubuntu anyway. There's also step by step instructions here to do after you have Axel installed. It helped me out. I was getting slower than I should "updates". Anyway, TY Joe.

I figured a work around my bank

OK, I've been ranting on Internet Explorer mostly because my work bank site has a problem getting check images. Well, yesterday I figured out a work around. I think this also proves sloppy JavaScript coding. Here goes. With chrome when you try to get a check image, you get a long line of what I think is the site's code. If I cut and paste a piece past an "?" into what is already in the address bar, I get my image, after I reload page. The bank you ask? HSBC.
Have a geeky day!

A way to take out spammers? 3 banks process 95% of spam transactions

Remember "Follow the money?" It seems to work for spam, too.

I still get questions from people about things advertised in spam. Is this legit? I tell them, no.

If no one bought from spam that would shut it down, too. Sadly only a very, very small percentage of people have to buy from spam to make it very, very profitable. So barring people suddenly getting smarter, if we could shut down the banking end of it, it might help. Then again it might just be another form of whack-a-mole.