Joe's Random Ramblings

The BBC reports that a deal has been reached to prevent a breakaway series by most F1 teams next year.
This deal includes that Max Mosley, the head of the Formula 1 governing body FIA, doesn't seek re-election when his term ends in October.
And next year, there also will be a US-based team competing.
So, I am looking forward to next year's F1. Of course, this year's competition is starting to heat up, with Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel being the top contenders for the title.

Update: The teams for next year:

• Brawn GP
• Red Bull Racing
• Toyota
• Ferrari
• McLaren-Mercedes
• Williams
• Renault
• BMW Sauber
• Toro Rosso
• Force India
• Campos (new)
• Manor (new)
• US F1 (new)

And yet another stupid politician who thinks buying email addresses is a good idea...
These politicians don't even check if the person behind the email address is located in their state.
In this particular case, the spam came from some politician in Massachusetts, whereas I am living in California.
Geez, when will these people learn?

The actual spam (and of course, there are tracking tokens in the URLs posted, as every spammer has...):

If you are having trouble viewing this E-newsletter, please visit
[http://tsongas.congressnewsletter.net/mail/util.cfm?gpiv=[redacted]&gen=1]
for the Web Version.
Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, Serving the Fifth Congressional District of Massachusetts

Dear Friends,

My most important duty in representing our district in Congress is to make sure that
I am always listening to the voices of Fifth District residents. I try to do this
whenever I am out visiting our communities, during my Congress on Your Corner
sessions, through telephone town hall meetings, and by reading your letters and
emails. From time to time, I also send out brief surveys to get your thoughts and
opinions on current issues before Congress. If you have a few minutes to let me
know your thoughts on the subjects below, I would very much appreciate it. Your
responses are kept strictly confidential, and I will publish the results of the
survey on my website next week. Also, these are complex subject matters that don?t
always lend themselves to simple answers, so please feel free to expand on your
responses in the large text boxes below, or to email me [link 1] your thoughts
directly.

Best regards,

[image =
http://tsongas.congressnewsletter.net/images/user_images/Tsongas_Signature.gif]

Niki Tsongas

Survey/Question [survey]

Survey/Question [survey]

----------------------
footnotes
----------------------
[survey]
http://tsongas.congressnewsletter.net/mail/util.cfm?gpiv=[redacted]&gen=1
[link 1] http://www.tsongas.house.gov/?sectionid=11§iontree=3,11

Website Address:
http://tsongas.house.gov/

Office Location:
Washington DC Office
1607 Longworth House Office Building | Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3411 | Fax: (202) 226-0771
...

And it is not even possible to email that person from outside her district (unless I enter a zip code within her district):
http://tsongas.house.gov/?sectionid=11&sectiontree=3,11

Regrettably, I am unable to reply to any email from constituents outside of my District.

Oh, and two more things:
This spam was sent to my email account at a university in California, so it should be clear to anybody even just looking at the email address that it is outside of Massachusetts.
Second, the name and the email address are obviously unconnected, again as anybody actually looking at the email address could see. It is "some random name" <completely different name at ...>, i.e., what is typically seen only in spam.

In one of the Usenet newsgroups I subscribe to, I found this notice today:

Please note that on or around July 15, 2009, AT&T will no longer be
offering access to the Usenet netnews service. If you wish to continue
reading Usenet newsgroups, access is available through third-party
vendors.

Posted only internally to AT&T Usenet Servers.

So, they are joining Verizon in crippling Internet access.
Shame on them.

Some time ago, I wrote about the problems I had getting IPv6 to work through my AT&T DSL connection.
It turns out that the problem is the crappy DSL modem that AT&T gives to their customers. It is a Siemens Speedstream 4100. Siemens got out of the DSL modem business, and there are no firmware updates for this DSL modem available. On top of that, SBC apparently provided their own configuration, which may have crippled the modem even more.
So, today I finally went out and bought another DSL modem, a D-Link DSL-2320B. With that, I can use IPv6 through a tunnel at HE's tunnelbroker service just fine.
I am actually thinking of returning this DSL modem, though, since it has some other ridiculous setting that is unfortunately not configurable: it renews the IP address every 15 seconds or so... filling up my log files for no good reason. I'll never understand why they can't just provide a configuration option for something simple as that. Even the Siemens DSL modem has that...

My buddy Eli has an art exception, showing his Antarctica photographs, this Saturday, May 30, 2009, at the Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, CA (3333 Harbor Blvd; Costa Mesa, CA 92626).
The event is from 5:30pm to 8:30pm.
He is saying:

I'm going to be showing photography from my two trips to Antarctica. The first wasn't a very successful trip, but I did manage to save my images (nothing else!). The second trip -- made earlier this year -- went well.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, just google "Eli Charne Antarctica"