Joe's Random Ramblings - Latest Comments

Ankit Basnet [Visitor] in response to: Origin of Windows 7 landscape picture

Ankit Basnet [Visitor] — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 13:33:06 +0000

fantastic

carlakennedy [Visitor] in response to: No more Elmex toothpaste in the US (updated 2x)

carlakennedy [Visitor] — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:49:10 +0000

Hi I live in Spain and this week I've been having treatment on my teeth(veneers)by a very good german dentist. He recommended me to use Elmex which I hadn't heard off, I've always used Colgate. This morning I went to the nearest city Cartagena and easily bought Elmex 2 for 6€, (special offer) Very easy to buy from Spain, they also had some mouth rinses by elmex

Joe [Member] in response to: UNVA Diploma mill in Virginia raided

Joe [Member] — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:26:16 +0000

On one of the many discussions that started about this diploma mill after it got raided by ICE, somebody posted this email/newsletter from the then UNVA chancellor (he since resigned):
"A brief history of UNVA accreditation.

UNVA was initially accredited by ACICS.

In 2007-2008 there was a “management coup” in which the management took control of the university from the owner. The management group created a competing university and did a great deal of damage to UNVA. We believe (they actually told one of our team) that the intent was to destroy UNVA and move the students, staff and faculty to the new school.

During this time there were issues with ACICS. The management team reached an agreement with ACICS in which accreditation would be withdrawn in August, 2008 and that UNVA would never again apply for ACICS accreditation. The August date meant that they would keep accreditation while they were in control but that it would be lost when the actual owner was back in control.

When the owner returned, the university was in chaos. More than 50 boxes of files had been shredded. Student and faculty records and financial records were in disarray or nonexistent. Money had been drained from the accounts. The student population was down, and very few new students had joined, meaning that the current students were about to graduate. There was no functional electronic student records system, and the electronic data we had was incomplete, inaccurate, and located in multiple unconnected files. In short, the university was in no condition to apply for accreditation.

For the next 18 months, we focused our efforts on recovery. We corrected all of the above problems. Our student population grew. We added additional locations with upgraded systems. We finally felt that we had made enough progress to begin a new accreditation process. We elected to apply to SACS, considered by many to be one of the most difficult accreditations to obtain. We assigned staff and also hired consultants for the project.

The application took more than a year to write. That is because during the process we found areas in our university which we needed to improve in order to make the application stronger. We finally completed the application and submitted it to SACS. They accepted the application and began their review process.

During this time, I was trying to keep everyone informed through articles in our newsletter. SACS notified me that I was breaking an accreditation rule by doing so and told me to stop. I wrote an article in the next newsletter saying that because of the rule I could provide much less information in the future.

SACS returned the application with the recommendation that we withdraw. They gave several reasons. The most difficult to correct was the lack of an acceptable Institutional Effectiveness Plan. This is a process where we show that we collect data about the effectiveness of our university (graduation rates, learning outcomes, whether students get jobs after graduation, etc.). We also have to have ways to identify problems and to correct them and to show an ongoing history (with proper documentation) of following the plan.

We agreed to withdraw the application, which is the reason that I am now able to write this article. We can resubmit after we have addressed the areas in which they have concerns.

We also spoke to ACICS regarding their willingness to accept a new application from UNVA, given the extensive changes and improvements in our school in the past 3 years. They made no promises but they were at least willing to speak with us. While we were in those discussions, we got the ICE raid. Since then we have had no further discussions with ACICS.

While accreditation is very important to UNVA, our immediate focus is on responding to the SEVP letter. We will re-focus on accreditation as soon as the immediate crisis is resolved.

David Lee"

It seems that there are forces that try to suppress this letter. That's why I am re-posting it here, to preserve it for eternity...

Grace [Visitor] in response to: No more Elmex toothpaste in the US (updated 2x)

Grace [Visitor] — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:36:02 +0000

Thanks for the information, I am a new expat from Switzerland in the US and found your comments while trying to buy Elmex here. I have been using the Elmex line (toothpaste, mouth-rinse and proffesional toothpastes as well as the toothbrushes) for the last 11 years and I think they are just excellent. I am happy to see that amazon carries the toothpastes in the US (although heavily overpriced!!) but am dissappointed of not being able to get the mouth-rinses, I don't know if you know them, but they are very good and essential in the prevention and treatment of dental problems. They are colourless, and with almost not taste and without alcohol, just with the ingredients that are specifically developed for the care of the teeth (caries prevention, over sensitivity, erosion and email protection)and not just for the breath. The rinses I found in the US (including from Colgate) are just dealing with the cosmetic part, which is to prevent bad breath but do not care about the teeth. Also they are with artificial colouring and very strong taste which is hard to hold in the mouth for the required time without sensation of strong burning. Would somebody know where could I get the Elmex mouth-rinses or another brand with similar ingredients in the US? I just checked the webpage of Colgate and found nothing regarding mouthrinses?
Thank you!

Tony [Visitor] in response to: The current AT&T DSL and IPv6 solution

Tony [Visitor] — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:04:08 +0000

One problem with using 'bridge' mode on these modems is that they sometimes get reset to defaults by the provider. I think it happens whenever there are "a lot"(?) of line problems. So, personally, I've given-up on using bridge mode and instead I'm satisfied enough with the 2-Wire DSL/router I got from AT&T.

Rwolf [Visitor] in response to: Out-of-control TSA

Rwolf [Visitor] — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:30:11 +0000

TSA or Tyrants Squeezing Ass?

Imagine the fallout if a famous movie star’s naked airport scan was circulated or sold on the black market by a TSA employee. That might happen when you consider that TSA has been documented keeping thousands of naked scan photos of U.S. Citizens.

If not stopped, Airports are just the beginning of Citizens being X-rayed / Stripped Naked by Government, having their Private Body Parts Touched, Squeezed and Patted-Down by Government Employees. It is problematic Americans (next) will be X-Ray Scanned and Physically Molested boarding trains, cruse ships, buses; when entering sports events and office buildings. Continued Low Radiation Exposure is Accumulative and believed to cause Cancer.

Americans should boycott airlines; that would get TSA’s attention and stockholders of airlines. Meanwhile Not just pilots and flight attendants, “ordinary air passengers” should also be afforded privacy, when felt up, searched at public airports.

Talk about government in your face. Recently the Obama government purchased hundreds’ of X-Ray Vans that will travel our streets without warrants, x-raying Americans, seeing Citizens naked when walking, standing, riding their bike. Government/police will use the x-ray vans to peer though Citizens’ homes and vehicles, exposing Americans and their families to radiation. X-ray vans are an affront to privacy, allowing government to view Citizens in their bedrooms. Americans need to ask Obama if independent studies were conducted to determine if Citizens could develop Cancer, if (repeatedly exposed) to police X-rays. It is easy to imagine government/police with or without a warrant every night X-raying a person of interest in his or her home. It is foreseeable some Citizens might install similar to smoke detectors, sensors that will set off an alarm, if their home or vehicle is being bombarded with X-rays.

Obama’s X-Ray Vans can ALSO be used by the military or police to secure perimeters to control civil unrest and instances of revolt, to screen and stop Citizens carrying guns, cameras; any item. Does Obama expect Americans to revolt?

The Nazis used national emergency as a premise to repeatedly target and detain, search and question Germans boarding or taking trains considered political dissidents or morally unworthy; targeted Citizens were intentionally delayed by police/military so they would be late or miss work. Of course many lost there jobs and could not survive.

Josh Lehan [Visitor] in response to: The current AT&T DSL and IPv6 solution

Josh Lehan [Visitor] — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:16:53 +0000

I use the humble Speedstream 4100 as well. I have a "sticky static" PPPoE connection over AT&T DSL. It's as close to a static IP as they will sell these days (unfortunately I had to move a few years ago, and lost my grandfathered true static IP at that time).

I've never trusted the built-in PPPoE on that modem. I have the modem set as dumb as it will go, in "bridged" mode. I use pppoe(8) on my Linux firewall box to create the "ppp0" device that all traffic flows through. This leaves the modem's original Ethernet device free for me to query directly, at 192.168.0.1 (or thereabouts), which is nice for gathering stats about the quality of the DSL line.

Seems to work great, I'm running a Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel through it now.

Joe [Member] in response to: The current AT&T DSL and IPv6 solution

Joe [Member] — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:13:10 +0000

Thanks for the info.
I did handle PPPoE on my Linux box a long time ago, when I had a metered ISDN connection. It was a PITA then, and that's why I didn't even try to do that.
But it is nice to know that in bridged mode, they pass everything through. So this seems to be a problem with a crippled PPPoE implementation on the Speedstream. I really hate crippleware...