web log.

Some things for you to read tomorrow while waiting in line to vote:

Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama For President —

If I were to give one reason why I believe electing Barack Obama is essential tomorrow, it would be an end to this dark, lawless period in American constitutional government. The domestic cultural and political reasons for an Obama presidency remain as strong as they were when I wrote “Goodbye To All That” over a year ago. His ability to get us past the culture war has been proven in this campaign, in the generation now coming of age that will elect him if they turn out, in Obama’s staggering ability not to take the bait. His fiscal policies are too liberal for me - I don’t believe in raising taxes, I believe in cutting entitlements for the middle classes as the way to fiscal balance. I don’t believe in “progressive taxation”, I support a flat tax. I don’t want to give unions any more power. I’m sure there will be moments when a Democratic Congress will make me wince. But I also understand that money has to come from somewhere, and it will not come in any meaningful measure from freezing pork or the other transparent gimmicks advertized in advance by McCain. McCain is not serious on spending. But he is deadly serious in not touching taxes. So, on the core question of debt, on bringing America back to fiscal reason, Obama is still better than McCain. If I have to take an ideological hit to head toward fiscal solvency, I’ll put country before ideology.

The Economist, It’s Time —

And this cannot be another election where the choice is based merely on fear. In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.

Wick Allison, A Conservative for Obama —

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Matt Taibbi, My Campaign Memories —

We were all educated in this culture of blame-the-other-sap, and that’s why we Americans are always whining about getting jobbed by someone: the media, Hollywood, Big Tobacco, anybody. But this year, the more the other side whined and pointed fingers, the higher Obama’s star climbed. It’s reassuring to see that someone in this country is finally doing some growing up. Let’s hope that it says as much about us as it does about the presidency.

Barack Obama, Closing Argument —

Good night. I’ll see you at the polls tomorrow.

Google announces its entry into the browser arena with a great comic book (by Scott McCloud of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art,no less), called Google on Google Chrome:

There’s a good (if lacking in Safari 3 comparisons) overview at Blogoscoped, which notes:

I think it can’t hurt to have more competition in the browser area.

I can’t help but agree. It will be interesting to see how it competes against the Webkit/Safari family of browsers, especially with the upcoming release of SquirrelFish to set new Javascript speed records. Many of the other new Google Chrome features are already in Safari (cough porn mode cough), so I suspect this will turn out to be a good, solid entry into the browser market.

I just hope that the comic isn’t the best thing about the browser.

Darien Library website relaunches with new social features:

John Blyberg, Darien Library’s Head of Technology and Digital Initiatives, has created our website and the connection to our online catalog using open source software, and at his initiative, we are making it freely available to all libraries, as a contribution to strengthening the role of all libraries in their communities.

I’m really happy to see John’s work on SOPAC go live, and not just because I went to middle school with him years ago. The suite he’s developed to allow libraries to integrate internet social media with their internal systems is really amazing. Effective searches need interoperable data to be successful, and SOPAC helps libraries assemble that in an inexpensive, sustainable way.

You can read more about John’s work on SOPAC 2.0 at Library Journal, or right on his website.

Congratulations, John!

The old:

The new:

When one of the country’s best-known oilman starts talking about renewable energy sources, you best take notice and listen.

More at pickensplan.com.

(All of the videos are worth watching, but this is the best intro.)

I know that I have that other site for posting stuff like this, but sometimes, I can’t refuse. Because there are some things that I must call out to my friends.

Like cows.

Pirate cows.

Yarr! Mooo!

As you were, then.

I’m trying another experiment: Appendix A.

I want this site to be clean, tidy, with a high signal-to-noise ratio. But that desire sometimes often nearly always conflicts with my desire to share a whole bunch of neat stuff with you. The desire to centralize online stuff can distort one’s focus. So, I’m trying out a separate Tumblr site (yes, again) to post those links, removed from the main flow of this site.

The name comes from one of my favorite books, which makes copious use of appendices. I think nearly half of the book is appendices and footnotes, and some of them are better than the source material! So, I figured it was about time for my own addendum.

It’s only a few days old, but I’d love to know what you think about it.

John C. Welch, Goodbye, Gary:

Gary helped do that. His creation, along with other people’s creations at the time, led to millions upon millions of creations. The Dragonlance epics. Ed Greenwood helping create the Forgotten Realms, Elminster, and all the rest. Books. Movies, usually bad.

For those of us his creation touched, he changed our lives. He brought me friends and times that I probably wouldn’t have found without him. He created something that anyone could do, and have fun with, and make their own. There’s not a lot of people you can say that about. In truth, I’d rank what he did above what even Woz and Jobs created. Those two created an industry. D&D created worlds.

pamie.com: ow.:

pamie: I’m… Okay, I’m eating this curry. And it’s seriously the hottest thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. After every five minutes I have to stop eating it because my face hurts and my lips start to swell and I’m drooling.

jessica: Heeeeeee. You know, you sound really upset. I was worried.

pamie: Because I’m crying. But this curry is so good! I’m not kidding; I put the bowl down and wait until I can feel my face again, and my skin is getting kinda blotchy, but after five minutes I crave it and I’ve forgotten all about the pain. Then I dig in, shovel four bites into my mouth and then: “Flames! Flames, on the side of my face…heaving!”

jessica: Ha!

Language Log: Scrupulously avoiding sigma:

It’s not a new idea to base legal, educational, or social prescriptions on scientific findings. It’s not a bad idea, either, unless such arguments are based on bad science, or on good science badly applied. But I’m afraid that in today’s educational policy debates — and not just about segregation of the sexes — the density of bad or misrepresented science is high and rising. In self-defense, our society needs to persuade people like Anastasia Rubis that standard deviations should not be so scrupulously avoided.

Tonight, Merrystar pointed me to the Dewey Donation System’s 2008 Book Drive, where you can purchase books for kids who need them and surprise the crap out of some very nice librarians.

Which, all things considered, is both a good thing to do, and pretty damn fun, too.

(Via.)

New York Magazine, Learning to Lie:

Kids lie early, often, and for all sorts of reasons--to avoid punishment, to bond with friends, to gain a sense of control. But now there’s a singular theory for one way this habit develops: They are just copying their parents.

Forget Dark Matter: This Astrophysicist Found the Fastest Way to Board a Plane:

Steffen is ready to show the industry what he’s found, and eager to do some real-world testing. But no one in the industry has called.

He isn’t surprised. “When they come across a problem,” he said, “I don’t think their first thought is, Let’s go talk to an astrophysicist. Oh look — here’s one that’s studied extra-solar planets. He’s our guy!”

Seth Godin has a short, but good post on social networking sites, and the difference between ‘friends’ and ‘that guy who saved my life’:

I don’t think a large volume at the easy end of the spectrum is a replacement for a few at the hard-earned end. Not at all.

Huh. OS X Help manages to even make managing Safari bookmarks interesting.

(I mean, it’s not quite as interesting as a visit to Diggerland, but it’s a well-done article on a dry subject. Right now nothing is cooler than Diggerland.)

Shall we play a game? (kottke.org):

But kids are amazing little adaptive sponges…Ollie understood the rules of the game at least as well as I did, even though we hadn’t actually agreed on any rules (or that we were even playing a game!) before starting. He just crawled off and followed his instincts.

This is going to be fun.

I’m enjoying reading OS X Help: Insanely simple tutorials for the first time Macintosh user, a new weblog on making the switch over to Macs. Much of my joy is seeing someone present things well to their intended audience.

Well done, Scott & co.!

(Via.)

From Shawn Blanc’s excellent interview with John Gruber, the following gem:

bq JOHN: … Who doesn’t like to hug their wife? Is there an anti-hugging contingent out there I’m not aware of?

SHAWN: No. My wife just likes to know how other wives are treated by their work-from-the-home-office husbands.

(The rest of it is quite good, too.)

Steven Brust’s written a Firefly novel, and released it online with a CC license.

(Via.)

Paul Graham has another great (short) piece out, “Six Principles for Making New Things”. It talks about informal presentation and rapid iteration, two phrases that sing close to my heart. (The Trilogy Fast Cycle Time methodology really left its mark on me.)

(Of course, I’d be remiss in not referencing the Worse is Better post, which is saying about the same things, but with more computerese.)

Perhaps this is why we’re seeing so many blogs lead to books these days?

If You Can’t Let Go, Twitter:

In theory, the five members of my immediate family could use our cellphones to broadcast our locations, kind of like a G.P.S. with words.

To get things rolling, I sent my daughters and husband standard Twitter e-mail invitations (“slatalla wants to keep up with you on twitter”) that contained a link to the service’s home page. Then, while I sat in my car in front of my youngest daughter’s school, I sent an update on my whereabouts: “car pool dilemma will French horn and trombone both fit in a mini” Then?

Nothing.

“hello” I typed. Three minutes passed. Four. Still nothing. For the first time in the nearly 19 years since I first gave birth, no one wanted to keep tabs on me.

Then suddenly my cellphone buzzed. It was my first Twitter — a text message from Zoe, my 18-year-old daughter, how exciting — and so I eagerly opened it onscreen.

It said, “twitter?? what the hell is this?”

My family finally text messages (blame the rampant iPhoneism), but they don’t get Twitter, either.

Oh well.

Oh, this takes me back. Unboxing an Apple //c.

(Via.)

MarsEdit has quickly moved up the list of software that I use on my Mac that I can no longer really imagine working without. (Take note, weblog platform developers: support XML-RPC, or there will be trouble.)

I mention this because Shawn Blanc continues his excellent series of Mac Software Reviews with the story of MarsEdit: Helping the Personal Publishing Revolution, which is well worth your time if you have a Mac, a weblog, or both. (Jim, I’m looking at you, Scrivener’s not the only Mac software worth considering…)

One of the best things about Shawn’s review is that even though I’ve used (and loved) MarsEdit for months, I learned ways to make it even more useful to me. Not many reviews go into enough detail for software that I use on an almost-daily basis to do that.

Jade over at Ars Technica conducts a MacBook Air spec shootout, and comes away with some interesting (i.e. not tainted by an obsession with the Toughbook) points:

Let’s be rational. It’s not even remotely affordable, especially at the high end--the high end being defined by the option of a 64GB SSD. There aren’t a lot of subnotebooks in that category but, if you are contemplating buying a MacBook Air, you still owe it to your credit card limit to do some research.

A friend of mine at work alerted me to a local musician — you may have heard of him — offering a free Christmas album from a recent performance.

Check out Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers’ Christmas 2007 (Live Music Give Away).

Nikon D3 / D300 Vs. Canon:

A friend once said to me that Canons are the best cameras available designed by engineers, and that Nikons are the best cameras one can buy designed by photographers. There may well be some truth to this aphorism.

(Via.)

Godspeed, Andy Olmsted.

(Via Jim, who knew him much better than I.)

James City Service Authority offers new rain barrel rebate:

The James City Service Authority (JCSA) has created a new Rain Barrel Rebate Program to reinforce water conservation efforts. A rain barrel collects and stores rainwater from your roof so it can be used to water lawns, gardens or indoor plants, fill birdbaths, and wash cars, boats, dogs or muddy shoes.

The JCSA will refund the purchase price of up to four rain barrels, with a maximum of $50 per rain barrel. Long range weather predictions call for a hot, dry growing season. By conserving water, you will save money, help ensure water availability for emergencies such as firefighting, reduce stormwater runoff to protect waterways, and promote wise water use and conservation.

For more information, click on “Rebates” at www.bewatersmart.org, e-mail bewatersmart@james-city.va.us or call 253-6859.

Meet Thievey, a ring-tailed lemur. He’s very cute, but he needs your help.

Consider doing something good and help Mike reach his goal before the end of 2007. He’s got 3 2 1 lemurs left to give away.

Update: Mike reached his goal, but there’s still time to make a difference. The MGF is totally blown away by the amount of support they’re getting here ($10,450 + $167/month for the next year), but there is still more need.

You may also consider purchasing one of the Moon Bears from Vermont Teddy Bear (which we got Trip for Christmas), or a contribution to Defenders of Wildlife. There are still like three hours left in 2007! Go!

I hereby dub this Gruber’s Law of Apple Analysis:

“A good rule of thumb, by the way, is that the more a writer attributes the actions of Apple, an enormous corporation with thousands of talented employees, to Steve Jobs, who is just one man and neither an engineer nor a designer, the more likely the writer is an idiot, a hack, or both.”

Of course. I go and let my Flickr Pro account lapse, and Flickr goes and rolls out stats… but only for Pro members.

Grumble.

From Why Are You Reading All That News?:

“The world won’t end without you knowing it. Trust me, your mom will call.”

This is very, very true. She will (and did.)

Shawn Blanc has begun A Series of Reviews: Some of The Greatest Software Available For Your Mac that, based on his previous posts, will be well worth your (Mac-using) time.

Update: That was fast. NetNewsWire is already up!

(Via, via)

Shopping at Target, I came across an entire line of Star Wars/ Transformers toys.

The hell?

I know that the Transformers line isn’t big on continuity, but I think this is even more of a travesty than the X-Men/Star Trek novel I ran across a few years ago.

Because, you know, that was fan-fiction. This is merchandizing.

| View | Upload your own

Via Blackfriar’s Marketing.

If you haven’t read it already, may I recommend the long (but well-done) rant regarding the state of the music industry: When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.

Via kottke. Also.

Just saw this in the iTunes Store: 4 free episodes of “Learn Along Of Sesame” are now available for download:

I am seriously running out of disk space here, people! Enough with the free stuff!

Just saw this while picking up the iTunes Free Music Tuesday songs: the first season of Enterprise is now on iTunes.

I’m actually looking forward to cherry-picking the episodes instead of getting the whole series - mixed in among the gems are some real turkeys. (And I’m willing to skip almost all of the third season, Twilight excepted.)

The Amateur Gourmet: We Begin In Bellingham.

What Does 200 Calories Look Like?

Search Engine Land: Fury Over Google’s Self Promotion & Wishing For Perspective:

I really dislike other companies getting free passes when Google is held up to higher standards. Blake notes that Microsoft and Yahoo both do self-promotion, but he somehow thinks it’s Google that should be put on fire. I disagree. They all should be put up on fire. Singling out Google distorts the underlying argument. If it’s bad, it’s bad for any of them to do it, not because we love Google so much and are disappointed or because Google should be held to a higher standard.

Typically when Google gets burned, it gets burned because I feel people are too lazy to survey the entire competitive landscape and call for general across the board changes. It’s much easier to point at Google and say Google’s the leader, so I’m focusing on them.

Google News is a good example of this. I honestly want to puke if I have to hear another thing about Google News needing to be more transparent when Yahoo News provides the same or less transparency but no one squawks about that. Want an example of this? Check out the mini-debate I had with Dan Gillmor last year on the issue.

Picking up on the Google “tips” stuff, Smugmug dives in to declare “Google’s gone evil.” Really, because of these tips? I’d rather reserve the evil charge for more serious things like, I dunno, censorship in China.

Dinosaur Comics: Resolution One.

jwz: delete yourself from the internets!

I do not quite know what I am doing when I get to your site. I want to download the 200 screen savers. I’m running fedora core 4 on and hp computer. What ever I click it doesn’t give me the option to install, can you give me a little help please?

O’Reily Radar: OpenID on the Upswing.

Aha, finally found it. Rodney Matthews now has a site, so Merrystar can now find out why she’s never been able to find The Moth and the Moon in any bookstore.

(It was never written.)

Bruce Sterling: My Final Prediction —

If an innovation works, some people will thrive on it, while others who are screwed up to begin with will face severe new problems.

I know this is true because I’ve lived it. I’m a pre-Internet novelist who became moderately famous online, only to have my paperback writing slow down as I began to spend uncontrollable amounts of time surfing and blogging. This experience is both grand and problematic. It reflects not two extremes but the slider-bar that is my everyday life.

dooce: As festive as I’ll ever be

After the chipmunk album broke we listened to a collection of Christmas songs by the Osmonds, songs I have never seen on any other compilation since. My favorite was a song called “Sleigh Ride,” and I remember thinking it had to have been sung by one of the cuter Osmonds, because only someone cute could rock that hard, or harder than any song I had ever been allowed to listen to. Not very hard at all. It was the only Christmas song I’d ever heard that featured an electric guitar, and it was fast and breathless and unforgiving, like a Sunday spent skipping church. When we played it we’d dance recklessly around the tree in our footed pajamas playing air guitar, hoping one day we would grow up to be as cool as the Osmonds. You could say that we had been taught to aim high in life.

James Duncan Davidson: More Lightroom and Aperture RAW Comparisons

Now it’s obvious, isn’t it? At least it should be unless your monitor is totally whacked. And this isn’t even really in the realm of pixel-peeping yet. What you are seeing above is a 500 pixel crop from a 1500 pixel wide rendering of a 4372 pixel wide original. In other words, looking at it on your screen here is probably about the same as looking at that crop on a 14” or so wide print, albeit at a lower resolution than what I could print for you in person.

As you can imagine, for a large print, the Lightroom rendering is going to win hands down. The icky blocky stuff from Aperture prints out like posterized muck. On Flickr, especially at the default presentation size of 500 pixels, it doesn’t matter so much. But, if I were just worried about pictures for Flickr, I’d still use my Canon Powershot for all of my images.

I think this may be my favorite fashion piece ever. Go Fug Yourself: The Fug Wears Prada :

My grandma had a doll that sat on top of her toilet. Her crocheted gown belled out to cover the extra roll of toilet paper that lived up there. As a child, this fascinated me. Why didn’t the toilet paper in my house have outfits? Why didn’t everything in my house have outfits: the spatulas, the drinking glasses, the cat? “Because that would be tacky,” my mother told me. “But Grandma’s toilet paper has an outfit,” I protested. “Your grandma is an eccentric and fascinating woman,” my mother replied, “but my toilet paper does not need a dress.”

Wohba! Slow Motion Golf Ball:

Excellent!

Also, discussion.

fire at the Blue Talon, originally uploaded by intheburg.

Fortunately, I don’t think anyone was hurt.

Over at the Yahoo! User Interface Blog, Performance Research, Part 1: What the 80/20 Rule Tells Us about Reducing HTTP Requests:

Using a packet sniffer, we discover what takes place in that other 80%. Figure 1 is a graphical view of where the time is spent loading http://www.yahoo.com with an empty cache. Each bar represents a specific component and is shown in the order started by the browser. The first bar is the time spent for the browser to retrieve just the HTML document. Notice only 10% of the time is spent here for the browser to request the HTML page, and for apache to stitch together the HTML and return the response back to the browser. The other 90% of the time is spent fetching other components in the page including images, scripts and stylesheets.

Oddly enough, today’s dinosaur comics is very apropos of a conversation Merrystar and I had on our drive into the City today.

Oh, dear lord, please make this happen.

Via jwz: A Building Shaped Like Godzilla —

The people of Tokyo should construct a giant building shaped like Godzilla. Imagine what it would do to the city’s skyline, and to the tourism industry. People would come from all over to take pictures. His eyes could flash red so airplanes don’t hit him. There could be an observatory in his mouth so people could look out over Tokyo. One of his arms could house a bar, and the other arm a restaurant. They could serve drinks called Mothra Martinis and dishes like Grilled Gamera Steaks, with a side of Mashed Potatoes.

The fuss over the tv.yahoo.com upgrade continues, with interesting observations from Dave Winer about how some (and I’m being careful not to generalize here out to “Silicon Valley”) are viewing the comments.

As a commenter on that thread, I object to charges of incivility and anonymity. I didn’t post any of the curse words that first came out of my mouth when Merrystar showed me the site. However, it’s easier to get page views by staking a position, so… whatever. The game’s afoot, the meta-analysis is on about what this means… I just want to know what time the football game is on.

Yahoo!, for all of their openness (and the willingness of past and current employees to comment on the matter really is impressive) still hasn’t restored the original tv.yahoo.com/grid, so it’s left me and Merrystar with a vaccuum. Like Dave, TitanTV gives me much of what I liked, so I’m probably jumping ship. Bookmarks are easy to change. I’m not that invested in the site.

There are more important things in life than spending time trying to convince a company to do things your way when they obviously don’t want to. I won’t completely abandon Yahoo! over this (Flickr still is better for my needs than Zooomr, for instance), but it says something that Merrystar — who uses Yahoo’s front page every day, for crying out loud — is tired of all the upgrades and improvements-that-aren’t.

Enough of this. Yahoo!, do what you want. I’ve got Christmas decorations to put up.

I feel better.

I just geotagged my screenshots of the tv.yahoo.com rant to Yahoo!’s corporate headquarters on both Flickr and Zooomr.

Petty? Perhaps. But it’s because they changed something I used that didn’t need to be changed. Sometimes, progress isn’t.

(And I would kill for users as passionate as the ones who use Yahoo!, by the way.)

Merrystar and I are both relatively content Yahoo! partisans; Merrystar even more so than me, I think. Which makes this post that much harder to write.

Yahoo! really fucked up, and badly. They released a new version of their TV listings pages - one of the only pages I could be reliably counted upon to hit, night after night - that not only gives worse performance than the old version, it doesn’t work in Safari.

Or Firefox.

Whaaaa?

No, seriously. Let me show you. This is what it looks like in Safari:

tv.yahoo.com home page Hosted on Zooomr

tv.yahoo.com listings page (safari) Hosted on Zooomr

And this is Firefox:

tv.yahoo.com listings (firefox) Hosted on Zooomr

By the way, the performance in Firefox is absolutely terrible. In the time it’s taken to write this post, I still haven’t gotten the new page to load.

I rarely call a site redesign absolute shit, but I think this might qualify. This is absolute shit. Did they not test it? What the hell were their QA people thinking?

Yahoo!: If you are reading this, please bring back the old TV listing. Please, please, please. Call this a beta, give us a link to the old stuff that actually worked. Otherwise, we’re switching to Google. Or TV Guide. Or anyone else.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Brett

(Please feel free to give the Yahoo! TV team a piece of your mind. They say they’re listening.)

Welcome to the club, Thomas Hawk!

(Pssst… Don’t forget to turn on Software Update. There’s a new patch out tonight.)

Doug serves us some compelling reasons to not see Borat in Match Frame: the problem with Borat.

There’s no question that BORAT is, more than occasionally, really damn funny. It’s also in my mind incredibly problematic. The difference between BORAT and the (even funnier) JACKASS 2 is that, after JACKASS 2 did something in public in front of unsuspecting people, they copped to who they were, and got release forms signed, and if you wouldn’t sign one, they’d pixelate your face or not use the footage. BORAT, by contrast, claimed to be a small production not intending to distribute in the States, and often not only set things up under entirely false pretenses but maintained those false pretenses well after the fact. […] This is a massive breach of filmmaking ettiquette (and, most likely, law); further, expect people who aren’t nearly as funny to duplicate the same kinds of stunts in the near future; further, as a result, expect any serious but seriously underfunded short-film or documentary filmmakers to have increasing amounts of trouble getting releases to film places.

More from Wohba: The Sorting Algorithm Demo.

Watching a bubble sort is actually painful in comparison to the other algorithms. Very good visualization.

Two weeks too late for me, but: How to Avoid a Moose or Deer Collision - WikiHow.

(Rule of thumb remains: Don’t Swerve.)

Via Wohba —

Can Dr. Evil Save the World?

(Via jwz.)

(Also, if this plot doesn’t show up in a movie in the next year, I’ll be seriously disappointed.)

Don’t forget to claim your Federal Excise Tax Refund Credit next year. If, for some reason, you’ve kept your phone bills for the last 4 years or so, you might want to dig them out when doing your 2006 taxes.

Otherwise, there’s a standard deduction you can take.

More Wohba!, this time: Ski-gliding:

I’m always impressed by how good XKCD is:

Whoba!: Fog Bows.

OmniNerd: 2006 Leonid Meteor Shower.

Astronomy buffs in Europe and America’s East Coast will be treated to a particularly powerful meteor shower this year. Barring weather, at 11:30pm EST on November 18th, viewing conditions will be excellent due to the new moon. If skies are overcast, however, try “listening” to the radio signals generated by shower’s electrified trails. Practiced observers say that even more meteors can be detected via radio waves than can be seen with the naked eye. For more information on this annual event, check out the Top 10 Leonid facts.

Evan Morris reminds me why Ballmer deserves his moniker.

LinuxWorld: Ballmer: Linux users owe Microsoft.

“Only customers that use SUSE have paid properly for intellectual property from Microsoft,” he said. “We are willing to do a deal with Red Hat and other Linux distributors.” The deal with SUSE Linux “is not exclusive,” Ballmer added.

This has pretty much guaranteed that I will be stripping SuSE Linux off of every machine I own. And that’s on top of no more money to Microsoft, ever!

Nicely done, Steve! Good job with that marketing.

(Via)

• Boing Boing: Patriot act makes it harder to get real Sudafed.
• Slate: Meth madness at _Newsweek_.

Dudes already know about chickens.

Like the man sayeth:

Instead of a quantum encyclopedia, with vandalism and falsehoods peppered throughout at various locations AND at various times, Wikipedia becomes a consistently RELIABLE encyclopedia that covers every topic in the universe, except chickens. We say it again: dudes already know about chickens.

evan morris: tastes like surrender.

And, for your amusement, more reasons why I don’t read digg.

jwz: Hacking Democracy.

Dooce: Monthly Newsletter: Month 33

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   “You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
North Central
The South
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Yeah, that’s true enough. You can take the boy out of the Midwest, but can’t take the Midwest out of the boy.

Presentation Zen: Boom!

jwz: R.I.P. Habeus Corpus, 1215 - 2006.

For a certain family member (you know who you are), I give you *ROCK ALBUM DEATHMATCH*:

Wow! My Moo Cards arrived today, and they turned out great. I have but one regret —

I forgot the oxford comma in my message.

(Via Amy.) Halushki: A Series of Unfortunate Conversations.

Woman: Hey girls! Guess what we’re going to do today?
Girls: What, Mommy, what?!
Woman: We’re going to visit the hospital!
Girls: Yipee! We‘re going to have the baby! The baby!
Woman: No, no…remember the bat we had in our house the other night?
Girls: Is the bat having babies?
Woman: The bat might have rabies.
Girls: Yipee! Rabies! Rabies!
Woman: Do you know what rabies is?
Girls: Rabies are bat babies!

Via JWZ — Keith Olbermann: Why does habeas corpus hate America?

In fact, Countdown has obtained a partially redacted copy of a colonial “declaration” indicating that back then, “depriving us of Trial by Jury” was actually considered sufficient cause to start a War of Independence, based on the then-fashionable idea that “liberty” was an unalienable right.

Today, thanks to modern, post-9/11 thinking, those rights are now fully alienable.

The reality is, without habeas corpus, a lot of other rights lose their meaning.

But if you look at the actual Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments to that pesky Constitution — you’ll see just how many remain.

Well, ok, Number One’s gone.

If you’re detained without trial, you lose your freedom of religion, speech, the press and assembly. And you can’t petition the government for anything.

Number Two? While you’re in prison, your right to keep and bear arms just may be infringed upon.

Even if you’re in the NRA.

Three?

No forced sleepovers by soldiers at your house. OK. Three is unchanged.

Four?

You’re definitely not secure against searches and seizures, with or without probable cause - and this isn’t even limited to the guards.

Five… Grand juries and due process are obviously out.

Six. So are trials, let alone the right to counsel. Speedy trials? You want it when?

Seven. Hmmmm. I thought we covered “trials” and “juries” earlier.

Eight — So bail’s kind of a moot point…

Nine: “Other” rights retained by the people. Well, if you can name them during your water-boarding, we’ll consider them.

And Ten — powers not delegated to the United States federal government seem to have ended up there, anyway.

So as you can see, even without habeas corpus, at least one tenth of the Bill of Rights, I guess that’s the Bill of “Right” now… remains virtually intact.

Idle Words: Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was the first place where I ever felt like I was in the 21st century. Free internet terminals in the subway, Jetsons architecture, a giant Central Escalator, chirping traffic lights, storefronts filled with tiny robotic gadgets - this was the new millenium I’d been waiting for. From the moment my plane docked at the world’s most advanced airport and the cute policewoman scanned my eager retinas with her retina-scanning gun I felt like the future wasn’t just a cynically oversold ripoff, but a place I might actually want to spend some time.

Very cute, via the Muppet Wiki:

No comment.

Oh, my.

(Via Whoba.)

Presentation Zen: Urban life: Graphic design is everywhere.

By slowing down a bit we will be able to see all of the graphic design that fills our daily lives. Living in Japan is a designer’s dream in many ways; there is just so much to see. Some of the “best” graphic design in the world is right here in Japan, and so is some of the “worst.” Much can be learned by examining both extremes and all the bits in between. We can even learn something during the morning commute. I usually spend a couple of hours everyday on trains, all of which are filled with an ever-changing tapestry of banners, signs, and ad posters. All most every day I notice something particularly good (or bad).

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asks Will the Next Election be Hacked?

Magic 8-ball: Signs Point to Yes.

(Bonus reading: Was the 2004 Election Stolen?)

Dave Winer thinks our country has lost its mind, and I think I agree with him.

If you aren’t a regular reader of Amalah, I invite you to view her tribute to her son’s first birthday.

Really well done, Amy and Jason. Bravo.

DF: Kieren McCarthy: Still a Jackass

From Pajiba —

Via JWZ — The Fox Clinton Interview: transcript, movie

Oh boy. Christopher Tolkien finished The Children of Hurin?

I have many, many mixed emotions about this one.

Neat. How To Apply Conditional Formatting in Excel.

Omninerd: Martini Glass Ceiling

(But did they account for the cost of drinking in their analysis?)

Don’t forget, today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Wohba!: That’s No Sunspot!

I think I’m developing a serious YouTube problem.

I’m watching clouds on the internet, people. Help!

Boing Boing: Princeton researchers show how to steal an election with Diebold machines.

Via JWZ: Reno Balloon Race 2006.

Funny. I don’t watch much TV these days (_Project Runway_, golf and football as notable exceptions.)

But I do watch TV on YouTube. And the best part?

You can actually share things with other people. Like this.

Panasonic Toughbook line gets an update. Sweet!

Holy crap! Invisible cow alert!

I’m really coming to love xkcd.

After writing the previous, I am reminded of Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass —

That’s bonafide, 100%-real data, my friends. I took it myself over the course of two weeks. And this was not a leisurely two weeks, either; I busted my ass day and night in order to provide you with nothing but the best data possible. Now, let’s look a bit more closely at this data, remembering that it is absolutely first-rate. Do you see the exponential dependence? I sure don’t. I see a bunch of crap.

Amalah: Entirely Hypothetical.

Presentation Zen: Steve Irwin: ‘Passion, enthusiasm push an educational message.’

Signal to Noise: Even with primitive materials, one can work small wonders.

Daring Fireball: Vacation, All I Ever Wanted.

I hand three tickets to the attendant and carry Jonas toward the boat, which, thankfully, was ignored by the children ahead of us. Jonas takes his seat, and I ask him whether he wants me to stay. He’s been riding by himself on this and other similar rides all week, but this time he says, “Daddy stay with me.” And so, of course, I do. There’s a bench circling the central axis of the carousel, obviously intended for just this purpose. Jonas says, “No, here”, meaning here in the boat with him. I explain that I won’t fit in the boat, but that I’ll be here on this bench, close enough that we can hold hands. I show him, by holding out my left hand. He clasps my index and middle fingers, and that is good enough.

If you value your time, do not, for the love of all that is good, go visit flOw. It’s strangely beautiful and compelling.

And ruthless. (Just like life.)

(Via Table of Malcontents.)

Listening Post: DRM has a bad week.

The internet creates the oddest situations.

I’m watching the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational on TV. It’s on a time delay. Tiger is behind. There’s drama, but I’m not watching it.

Instead, I’m watching the real-time leaderboard on Yahoo! Sports. Tiger is ahead, but just dropped a shot.

Argh, my coat for an actual live video feed!

Unqualified Offerings: I Win!

Tinsleman: Bugfish.

BBC: ‘Product sabotage’ helps consumers.

Take the secret cappuccino, which you can buy in two of the leading coffee chains, Starbucks and Coffee Republic.

The sales assistants know what the drink is and they have a little button on their cash tills to ring it up. It’s cheaper than the other drinks on offer, but it doesn’t appear on the menu.

Starbucks claims that’s because they don’t have room on the menu board. Coffee Republic doesn’t even have that excuse: there’s a blank space with no price where this drink should be listed.

It’s called the “short cappuccino”, and it’s smaller, cheaper and better than the smallest size on the menu, the “tall”.

Pajiba — Snakes on a Plane.

And, of course New Line didn’t screen Snakes on a Plane for critics. Why? Because it motherfucking sucks. That’s why. The CGI is subpar. The plot is paper thin. The dialogue is atrocious. And the acting is downright horrendous. […]

And yet … and yet despite it all …

I haven’t had this much fun watching a movie since Ash Williams stood with a shotgun in one hand and a chainsaw in the other, beckoning: “Gimme some sugar, baby.” I shit you not, folks, Snakes on a Plane is every bit of god-awful fantastic that the hype portends. And I say this not as a movie critic, but as an enthusiast of so-bad-it’s-good. I consider the Final Destination series one of my favorite trilogies of all time; The Skulls is a minor classic, and nary anything can compare to the joy that was Cool as Ice. But Snakes on a Plane beats them all, hands down, fists balled, and middle finger to the sky. It absolutely kills. The only way I could’ve found it more entertaining is if the snake venom turned the passengers into zombies, but I suppose you gotta leave something for the sequel(s). […]

Truthfully, SoaP defies everything I ever believed about filmmakers who actually set out with the intention of making a good-bad flick; I didn’t think it could be done. And maybe without the attendant hype, it couldn’t have, because damn near half of Snakes success comes from the spectacle of 75 college kids ripped to the tits chanting “Snakes on a Plane” and tossing toy planes around the theater. Indeed, Snakes absolutely demands an audience. It’s a participatory event. And it may be the only time you can ever watch a film and not hate everyone in the theater for yelling throughout, because hell if you don’t find yourself treating the whole experience like a college basketball game, just waiting for Samuel Jackson to drain the Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane to win the game. I actually applauded. More than once. And I didn’t even shake my head in wonder when the audience gave it a standing ovation as the credits rolled.

Kathy Sierra: Give users a Hollywood ending.

Via Tinselman — Desolation Row

Bruce Schneier Facts.

Flying Spaghetti Monster apparition in flare salvo smoke.

No. Really.

Seth Godin: Awkward.

Welcome back, Jim.

You’re on notice!

Signal vs. Noise: Why Big Version Trains Are Always Late.

Amalah: Stuff On My Kid dot Com.

XKCD:

Reminds me of another happy/vicious cycle.

Eric Meyer: Angry, Indeed.

I don’t even know where to start with this. Presentation Zen: PowerPoint printouts used for communicating battle plans?

In the book, Ricks quotes an Army Lt. General who was frustrated over getting vague PowerPoint slide sent to him instead of clear orders or plans. Said Ricks:

“That reliance on slides rather than formal written orders seemed to some military professionals to capture the essence of Rumsfeld’s amateurish approach to war planning.”

— Thomas Ricks

Reliance on slides rather than formal written documents — sound familiar? It should. Remember the findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003?

“The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic technical communication at NASA.“

— Columbia Accident Investigation Board

Déjà vu.

jwz: Terra! Terra! Terra!

As the initial “OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!” hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. That they were planning on cell phones, and some of them openly travelled to Pakistan (way to keep the cover, Reilly, Ace of Spies). Hell, Chertoff knew about this two weeks ago, and the only reason that some people can scream this headline:

“The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!”

— was because MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard let them get that close, so they could suck in the largest number of contacts (again, very spiffy police work). The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.

Presentation Zen: Steve Jobs and the Summer Keynote.

Joel On Software: The Identity Management Method.

Idle Words: Dirty Old Town

The best way I can describe the pollution in Beijing is to tell you that I have been here almost exactly three months and only saw the mountains yesterday. They are called the Fragrant Mountains; they stand right outside of town, in three beautiful sawtooth condignations. People say they are a lovely place to visit in the autumn, when the colors turn, but I am skeptical. The notion that any kind of leafy plants could thrive here is hard to credit. What would they eat? The Fragrant Mountains butt up right against the city, the same way they do in Phoenix, Arizona, and yet it took three months and a freak windstorm for them to become visible.

This morning I woke up to a wall of dust so thick that I could barely distinguish the shape of the residential tower across the street from mine, about two hundred meters away, and I breathed a dusty sigh of relief. Everything was back to normal.

Sucked in to Project Runway tonight, but the Kid’s Republic is too cool to not post. Via Boingx2.

Last night it dawned on me why I like Zooomr better than Flickr.

It’s not the features.

It’s not the look.

It’s one single screen.

Flickr Ts & Cs Hosted on Zooomr

And here is is on Zooomr.

Zooomr Ts & Cs Hosted on Zooomr

Isn’t that interesting?

Joy of Tech: He wanted to be the most revolutionary Phone Tree Designer of our time.

Ouch.

I think my little spat with Zooomr is over. She’s behaving nicely again and we’re uploading sweet, sweet photos again.

I have some complaints, of course.

• Geotagging is ardous. I type in an address into the “jump to” box and it doesn’t work. This may be Safari’s fault, but still; this isn’t 2000 and we’re fighting to get sites to work with Mozilla.

• Also, whenever I click on a point on the geotagging map (to center, and then manually zoom), it asks if that’s where I want to tag it. No, I want to center! Cancel! Cancel! Sigh. Geotagging is cool (mostly because of the photos nearby) but it’s a pain in the ass with the current interface.

• It occurs to me that there could be tools within the LightMap that would make this easier. If they’re there, I’ve missed them, which means the UI is not so good. There are a lot of elements of the UI that are so minimalist I have trouble with it, like all the little icons that appear when you hover over photos. A guide would help.

• Changing privacy settings once a photo is uploaded. I like changing my mind. I like uploading a batch and choosing the public ones later. I like being able to see the privacy status of each photo. These are simple things.

• Some of the AJAX is wonky, especially in the photo view. Does AJAX work differently across different browsers? I have no clue.

• Two words: Desktop. uploader. Please.

At the same time, I think I’m starting to like Zooomr. Maybe even better than Flickr… I certainly like the more open terms and conditions better.

sunrise at the grand canyon. Hosted on Zooomr

Someone must be listening to me.

Shortly after the previous post, Zooomr started working again. Fickle, I tell you!

(Edited previous post to add irony.)

Zooomr, we have to talk.

See, I want to like you. I really do. You were nice to me at first, what with the Pro account, and the nifty geotagging, and did I mention the Pro account?

I was even willing to risk the ire of my current mistress for you. I know; I’m fickle.

But is that any reason to not let me modify the privacy settings on a photo?

And what did I do to you that you decided to show me this screen for thirty or forty minutes?

please hold tight. Hosted on Zooomr

I bet you would have kept me waiting had I not given up.

I want to love you: but you don’t make it easy.

(Hey. Call me?)

27B Stroke 6 — Yearly Database Exam.

Via Boing Boing, very, very good reading: Vanity Fair | 9/11 Live, the NORAD Tapes

Sleep.

Where the Hell is Matt?

I’ve been very pleased at the recent collaborations between Piro and Hawk:

If you haven’t been reading Megatoko or Applegeeks, you might want to give them a look.

Via Scoble, Google Gets Girl.

jwz: Stargate Command to close. No, really!

You ever go searching the web for a post you know is out there, somewhere, that you remember reading on a specific person’s site? But then you can’t find it, even after a hour of searching instead of sleeping?

And then you find an absolute gem of a link?

(Perhaps sleep would have been a better choice.)

jwz: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

Boing Boing: New Bravia Ad. This one, in Glasgow.

Sweet!

When you have a bad day, make it your own.

Oh dear. For the Iron Chef Meat: BBQ Zen.

Help (fellow ex-Trilogian) Jeremy Blachman bring down The Sonoma Diet.

Oooo. Minimalist sandbox.

(Via Jim).

Via UO, Bellwether.

Presentation Zen on Speaking extemporaneously, tubes, and ninjas. For real. Could I make this up?

What makes a good icon?

Is Don Norman right about Google?

Oh dear lord: The Daily Show Explains Net Neutrality.

I’m all for swtiching to Macs, but this parody of those )(*@#$!@ ads has it just about right.

(More on Jeff Sandquist’s site.)

Did I really just spend 10 minutes reading about squid?

I guess I did.

Interesting, via 37Signals: CSS Browser Selector.

Does Zooomr love bloggers? Yes, enough to give away free pro accounts if you have your own blog (and post a picture hosted on Zooomr.) Sounds fair enough, right?

Unfortunately, I can’t get the login registration to actually work, which doesn’t bode well. Hmmmm. Fixed now. Looks like a webserver hiccup. The problem when everything is beta…

Site looks very Flickr-like, but without some of the T&C nonsense.

Did I ever post this one before?

cathedral stairs. Hosted on Zooomr

Must go now. Trip teething. Requires rocking. More on photos later.

Update: Ars Technica pretty much covers it.

Via Boingx2, YouTube, what the hell are you thinking?

“…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.”

Nice way to kill the business, guys!

Found on flickr:

Night Daisies |
Originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk.

I love the colors on this one.

I came across this in my browsing tonight, but I can’t find the source: Why Are Americans So Angry?

jwz: obsolete ways of thinking —

This has made me see the error of my ways: what the hell was I thinking, trying to store things that I care about on little plastic discs? Haven’t I learned this lesson many times over already? Why yes. Yes, I have. I should have been storing them as normal files in my well-backed-up home directory all along, just like I do with music.

Now, this sounds promising: Send a Calendar via Email in Outlook 2007 —

I’m busy testing the latest dogfood version of the new 2007 Microsoft Office system. As I journey ever deeper into the new applications in the system I’m uncovering some really neat features. One of my favourites is Outlook 2007’s new Send a Calendar via Email feature which allows you to, er, well, send a calendar via email.

Via Dave Winer, Target is now offering an RSS feed of their weekly specials.

Sweet!

Oh dear. Secret Society and Last but not Leashed, by Scott Adams.

Finally! Pictures from Scotland, now with 100% more raptor!

Why Skype is Bad:

I’ve used Skype. And I like it. It has a really simple user interface and does what it promises very well. The call quality is generally great, but I’ve now uninstalled it from all my PCs preferring instead to use the new Windows Live Messenger client. Why? Because Skype, for all its merits, can start behaving as a bandwidth hungry super-node. What does that mean? It means that with Skype installed and running my internet bandwidth was potentially being used by other Skype users without my knowing about it. Which could mean that my PCs consume more electricity and I suffer a slower internet connection. Not exactly the reasons I signed up in the first place.

How did I miss posting this one? Via Hawk Wings, one of the best email management posts I’ve read in months. Forget all that GTD methodology, because you need one button: The Delete Key, your best friend.

(Okay, the Ctrl-Shift-V, T shortcut is also really handy. Holy moly, Outlook is usable again!)

Via Guy Kawasaki, Stanford Magazine’s Kids Today special issue is quite good.

Dell’s new customer service blog serves up a post on magic wands, which are unfortunately in short supply.

In case you need it: A Guide to Texas Blackberries.

I am glad to see that Amalah was added to Guy Kawasaki’s Ultimate Mommy Blog List.

This story was literally dropped on my desk today. Wall Street Journal: Rice University Revives Its Press In Digital Model

One of the nation’s most prestigious universities is resurrecting its defunct academic press online — a move that adds a new wrinkle to the debate over who will profit from Web publishing.

Rice University in Houston will today announce plans to relaunch its Rice University Press — a money-losing venture that went out of business 10 years ago — under a new all-digital model. Although the new press will solicit and edit manuscripts the old-fashioned way, it won’t produce traditional books. The publishing house will instead post works online at a new Web site, where people can read a full copy of the book free. They can also order a regular, bound copy from an on-demand printer, at a cost far less than picking up the book in a store.

“Our overriding mission is to make this scholarship available for free,” says Joey King, executive director of Connexions, the Rice Web-publishing platform that will serve as the new press’s backbone. The nonprofit Connexions, founded in 1999 by a Rice engineering professor, offers free downloadable educational course materials on everything from electrical engineering to music theory.

Via jwz, Monkeys Taught Game Theory, Whoreing.

Via 27B Stroke 6 (among others), an excellent primer from Ed Felten on net neutrality.

Interesting points by Seth Godin: The Trend to ‘Best Available’.

(I will leave it as an excerise to the reader as to why this particular article is appropriate right now.)

Also cool, from Hawk Wings: Innovative email client design: Thinking outside the Outlook box.

This is pretty cool: Creating a Log file with Notepad.

Guy Kawasaki: The 120 Day Wonder and The 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint.

I saw Guy talking about the 10/20/30 rule in his video for the Art of the Start video, and I’m glad he has it as a post. (If nothing else, it’s much easier to link to.)

Unqualified Offerings: 2006: A “Blogofascist” Oddity.

Jim opens up his Second Annual Tour De France Comment Thread.

Improv Anywhere: The MP3 Experiment III: The Search For Steve.

Via Iris & Banjocat: Toren van beren (tower of bears.)

Via Jim: Johnny Cash, American V

Dooce: Britney Spears, Mother

The Hivelogic Narrative: At Last: Mac OS X 10.4.7 Update, with a discussion on anti-aliasing.

Squidblog/Seth Godin: 2 Cents on AdSense

Boing Boing: Fake Eyes Boost Honesty

cnet: Does WiFi Security Matter?

Via Red Ferret: Roll Your Own Solar Heater

Widgetoko

Interview with Jim Henley

TNPI: Do it yourself .Mac

Bookdragon log files: We Feel Fine

Scobleizer: Inside Sharepoint’s Blogs, Wikis and RSS Feeds

Seth Godin: Dividing By Zero

Hawk Wings: Quicksilver Documentation

Toughpigs: Muppets: 1, Host: 0.

UO: Money for Nothing

Guy Kawasaki: The Art of the Start Video

Tinselman: Looming. Also, comments.

David Pogue: Reconsidering Bill Gates.

Making the rounds at work today: The Ringtone Only My Kid Can Hear, except, of course, that my wife can hear it very, very well. Try it and see.

(I cannot hear it at all, and had my volume up full-blast when I tried. Did I mention Merrystar can hear it very well?)

UO: Cartoon Bullseyes

Dinosaur Comics: Hippocleides doesn’t care!

Schneier: AT&T Rewrites its Privacy Policy

he new policy says that AT&T — not customers — owns customers’ confidential info and can use it “to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process.”

Amalah: Laughing Noah.

Who knew? Baby dolls repeatedly plummeting to their deaths are the FUNNIEST THING EVER.

Via Boing Boing, Darwin’s tortise dead at 176.

Eric Myer, Mail Mishandling

Thunderbird vs. Mail 2.0.

Joyeur: Sunshine.

The excellent Mac OS X / Linux discussion continues with:

• Tim Bray: Unswitch
• Mark: Juggling oranges
• Tim: Time to switch?
• John Gruber: Why Apple Won’t Open Source Its Apps

The hardware/OS integration is essential to the Just Works-ness that makes the Mac (and the SGI, and NeXT, and Sun boxes, and DEC Alphas, and the Amiga, etc.) work so well. Linux’s very nature, however, is opposed to this integration, and that’s its strength. Linux runs on anything. Anything. With enough work, I can wire the tree outside my window to run Linux. But that tree won’t Just Work. You better believe I will have to recompile my tree kernel at some point.

Here is the thing I hope that a Linux vendor gets, and soon, because when they do, they’ll capture the geek market (and probably much more): Do what Apple did, but do it open source. Optimize your Linux for your hardware, and your hardware only, but leave your applications open and take advantage of all the eyeballs looking at them.

I remain pessimistic on the matter.

Laid-Off Dad: Instinct and Improv.

Jon Gruber has a thoughtful response to Mark Pilgrim’s switching away from the Mac and the flood of commenters he unleashed on Mark’s site. I’ll point the way over there and let you make up your own mind about the respective arguments. There’s a lot of depth in both posts, and they’re both worthwhile reads.

Reading Mark’s writing reminds me of why I don’t listen to Led Zeppelin anymore; it’s excellent, superb in places, but tinged with too many memories of sadder times. Unresolved issues from my youth keep me from enjoying Thank You or Four Sticks. Ditto for Dive Into Mark. Sorry: it’s me, not you.

While I personally think the arguments are interesting, I ultimately don’t see it as an either/or proposition. I currently use a Mac as my primary machine, Linux for my servers, and Windows at work. I may not be happy about the last one, but ultimately I can do my job with the tools at hand..

When I switched from Linux to OS X, I experienced a sense of great relief. More than the pretty shiny thing, I got time back. And time is precious. No more working with hardware incompatabilities. No more constant monitoring of security lists, upgrades, updates, tinkering to make it work better. Life will be perfect with a Mac!

Then an upgrade broke bluetooth, and I still read all the same security lists, and the wireless network needed upgrading… but overall, I still had more time. Using the Mac as my primary computer did not solve everything. But it made enough things easier to make a difference.

When did the choice of tool acquire such moral overtones? This thing on my lap — whatever thing you’re reading this on — is a glorified screwdriver. That’s it.

Daring fireball: confidence game.

I offer this juxtaposition between Apple and Microsoft simply as an interesting contrast.

Confidence can lead to arrogance, both in individuals and in organizations, but I don’t see that happening with Apple today. It was arrogance in the ‘80s when the Sculley regime maintained almost absurd profit margins on Macintosh hardware. Today, Apple’s confidence is leading them to lower their prices, not raise them.

It’s also leading them to simplify their product line. The new MacBooks replace both the entire iBook line and the 12-inch PowerBook.

Maybe the lesson here is that you can’t make a billion dollars a month in profit with a simple line of simple products. What I’d like to think, though, is that the lesson is that good design can be good business.

Microsoft, in contrast, plans to offer Windows Vista in seven different editions: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Small Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. The names read like something out of The Onion.

Can anyone explain how this seven-tiered edition plan is good for anyone other than the managers within Microsoft’s bureaucracy?

Wil Wheaton: your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape.

Have you seen the trailer (and related mashup contest) for A Scanner Darkly?

Very cool! A pity that now we’re going to see all sorts of duplications.

jwz: dooooooomed.

Improv Everywhere.

Worst in history?

It’s Earth Day today, and the consumer electronics industry isn’t above a little shameless self-promotion to show off their green cred. And, we have to admit, recycling your old gear is a lot better than just tossing it into the basement — or worse, a landfill. So follow the examples of these companies, and make your gear green!

• Apple Computer will pay for shipping and environmentally friendly disposal of any old computer with the purchase of a new Mac from the company’s retail or online stores. So, if you’re a switcher, you can now let Apple deal with getting rid of that old Windows box, and if you’re upgrading, Apple will give that old Quadra a proper send-off.
• Sprint Nextel will spring for shipping and recycling or disposal of any brand of cellphone — and you don’t even need to buy anything. Just grab a prepaid mailing label from Sprint’s web site, stuff your phone in an envelope and send it off. So forget about the sentimental value already and send off that MicroTAC.
  
• Verizon Wireless will also accept any old cellphone for recycling — but you have to bring it into one of their stores. But, hey, at least they’re trying.
• CTIA has more info about cellphone recycling programs nationwide.
• Dell offers something called the Asset Recovery Program. It’s similar to Apple’s plan, but it’s only good for corporate customers. So, if you’re an IT manager and you’re about to upgrade, get Dell to clear out your old stuff, dude.
• Staples will give you $30 worth of coupons if you drop off an old computer for recycling — at least at certain Chicago-area stores. We hope the coupons are good on items like recycled printer paper, so you can double your greenie points.
• 100 Percent Day is a project sponsored by Microsoft, Intel, the US Chamber of Commerce and others with the goal of collecting 100,000 computers for recycling — today. The project’s web site has a list of dropoff locations where you can bring your gear.
• For more ideas, visit the official Earth Day web site.

The history of the DeCSS Haiku:

I wrote the poem known as the “DeCSS Haiku” three years ago, in 2001. (The poem’s full title is “How to decrypt a / DVD, in haiku form / Thanks, Prof. D. S. T.”) The 456-stanza work, sometimes described as an “epic”, was an anonymous contribution to Prof. David S. Touretzky’s “Gallery of CSS Descramblers”, which collects a variety of ways of expressing technical information about the decryption of DVDs. My poem has now become a part of the folklore of the Internet.

The poem includes a traditional opening invocation to the Muse:

Now help me, Muse, for I wish to tell a piece of controversial math.

It proceeds to describe, using only haiku-like verses with lines of five, seven, and five syllables, all the mathematical steps required to convert an encrypted DVD into a usable form.

Jim Henley has a posse.

You know what today needs?

That’s right. Poems about spelling!

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

So, I’ve got this love/hate thing with Powerpoint, you know? You might even call it a hate/love/hate thing. Or a HATE/like/HAAAAAATE/love thing.

Well, whatever it is, I was tickled to read this post on slideuments:

Slides are slides. Documents are documents. They aren’t the same thing. Attempts to merge them result in what I call the “slideument” (slide + document = slideument). Much death-by-Powerpoint suffering could be eliminated if presenters clearly separated the two in their own minds before they even started planning their talks.

(Yes, I read weblogs entirely devoted to Powerpoint. I told you it was a love/hate/love/hate thing.)

Via jwz: Flying Cow Leaves Two Police Cars in Flames.

Daring Fireball: familiarity breeds a user base.

Late night reading: great overview of the WMF Backdoor in Windows.

Current styles in web design.

Very cool: you are here.

Just Duet.

Stanford on iTunes?

Sweeet!

A good day for dissent.

(Also in the Post.)

Authentically neat from CES: Google Pack.

(Only for Windows XP, though.)

All of the typepad sites I read have reverted back to December 9. An attempt to get more shopping days in before Christmas?

Have I plugged my own web host recently? If not, plug plug plug. Cornerhost remains fantastic.

But if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to check my own backups.…

Warner/Chappell says they’re sorry.

… and, the EFF’s response to Warner/Chappell.

We write today to inform you that the distribution of software such as pearLyrics does not violate U.S. copyright law and that any legal threats by Warner/Chappell against U.S. software developers in connection with software similar to pearLyrics could expose Warner/Chappell to legal action in U.S. federal courts.

As you know, Apple’s iTunes software includes a “lyrics” field for every digital song file, permitting users to add lyrics to song files purchased from the iTunes Music Store or copied from CD. Lyrics can then be displayed when the song files are played on certain iPods. It is our view that this activity--annotation by individual music fans of legitimately acquired music--would be viewed as a “fair use” under U.S. copyright law. At a minimum, we know of no legal authority suggesting that such personal, noncommercial copying of lyrics constitutes infringement.

Cute overload!:

Music Publishers Want Jail Time For Lyrics Posters.

I’d really like to see “Musicians Want Jail Time for Music Executives” as a headline. Can someone make that happen?

Just when I thought I had a handle on things, a blob of rat brain neurons goes and flies a plane.

Huh. Guess I was wrong.

• Design of Confirmation Messages & Automated Customer Service Email
• Microcontent: Headlines and Subject Lines

Joel on Software - Set Your Priorities:

Custom development is that murky world where a customer tells you what to build, and you say, “are you sure?” and they say yes, and you make an absolutely beautiful spec, and say, “is this what you want?” and they say yes, and you make them sign the spec in indelible ink, nay, blood, and they do, and then you build that thing they signed off on, promptly, precisely and exactly, and they see it and they are horrified and shocked, and you spend the rest of the week reading up on whether your E&O insurance is going to cover the legal fees for the lawsuit you’ve gotten yourself into or merely the settlement cost. Or, if you’re really lucky, the customer will smile wanly and put your code in a drawer and never use it again and never call you back.

Somewhere in the middle is consultingware, where you pretend to be doing shrinkwrap while really doing custom development.

jwz - the beatings will continue until morale improves:

Set the policy and expect your colleagues to follow it because it is their job to do so, and not because of some halfassed technical impediment.

Disturbing news about cuts to the NSF funding and possible closing of the Arecibo. I encourage you to write your representatives against this:

Dear Colleague,

As you may be aware, the NSF is conducting a Senior Review of its astronomy facilities with the goal of saving $30M per year (out of about $150M per year) by 2011. This is to be reallocated to new programs. This amount of $30M per year is about three times the annual operating budget of NAIC / Arecibo Observatory.

Public input for the Senior Review will be solicited at a series of “town meetings” with NSF representatives. The dates and locations of these meetings are listed below.

As a result of this review, there is a real possibility that the Arecibo Observatory will be closed, or that the astronomy portion of NAIC will Observatory will be closed, or that the astronomy portion of NAIC will be substantially curtailed. We urge you to consider the impact of such an event on your research, and to attend one of the town meetings and / or contact the NSF (email: astsenior-review@nsf.gov) with your opinions and concerns.

Further information is available on the website:

http://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/ast_senior_review.jsp

The schedule of NSF-AST Senior Review related town meetings is:
------------------------------------------------------------

(1) Boston, Massachusetts - 29 September 2005
Boston University

(2) Minneapolis, Minnesota - 7 October 2005
University of Minnesota

(3) Washington, DC - 14 October 2005
AAS, to be held at the Carnegie Institution

(4) Clemson, South Carolina - 15 October 2005
Clemson University

(5) Boulder, Colorado - 24 October 2005
University of Colorado/High Altitude Observatory

(6) Berkeley, California - December 2005, date to be determined
University of California, Berkeley

(7) Washington, DC, AAS Meeting - 8-12 January 2006
Schedule to be determined

Note that the last two meetings will occur after the initial meeting of the Senior Review panel.

Harris County OHS&EM “Home of the Real-Time Rainfall Maps”

Twenty hours and thirty minutes later, Claire and John Paul pull into Dallas:

• un - freakin’ - believable!
• additional details

Via Banjocat, whose Mom and brother are going to ride out Rita and my thoughts are very much with them — Rice explains why Houston is not NOLA.

Hurricane Rita: Rice University shuts down.

Audio of General Honore talking to the press: don’t get stuck on stupid!

Transcript:

Honore: And Mr. Mayor, let’s go back, because I can see right now, we’re setting this up as he said, he said, we said. All right? We are not going to go, by order of the mayor and the governor, and open the convention center for people to come in. There are buses there. Is that clear to you? Buses parked. There are 4,000 troops there. People come, they get on a bus, they get on a truck, they move on. Is that clear? Is that clear to the public?

Female reporter: Where do they move on…

Honore: That’s not your business.

Male reporter: But General, that didn’t work the first time…

Honore: Wait a minute. It didn’t work the first time. This ain’t the first time. Okay? If…we don’t control Rita, you understand? So there are a lot of pieces of it that’s going to be worked out. You got good public servants working through it. Let’s get a little trust here, because you’re starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay? What we’re going to do is have the buses staged. The initial place is at the convention center. We’re not going to announce other places at this time, until we get a plan set, and we’ll let people know where those locations are, through the government, and through public announcements. Right now, to handle the number of people that want to leave, we’ve got the capacity. You will come to the convention center. There are soldiers there from the 82nd Airborne, and from the Louisiana National Guard. People will be told to get on the bus, and we will take care of them. And where they go will be dependent on the capacity in this state. We’ve got our communications up. And we’ll tell them where to go. And when they get there, they’ll be able to get a chance, an opportunity to get registered, and so they can let their families know where they are. But don’t start panic here. Okay? We’ve got a location. It is in the front of the convention center, and that’s where we will use to migrate people from it, into the system.

Male reporter: General Honore, we were told that Berman Stadium on the west bank would be another staging area…

Honore: Not to my knowledge. Again, the current place, I just told you one time, is the convention center. Once we complete the plan with the mayor, and is approved by the governor, then we’ll start that in the next 12-24 hours. And we understand that there’s a problem in getting communications out. That’s where we need your help. But let’s not confuse the questions with the answers. Buses at the convention center will move our citizens, for whom we have sworn that we will support and defend…and we’ll move them on.

Let’s not get stuck on the last storm. You’re asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don’t get stuck on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don’t confuse the people please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don’t understand, maybe you’ll confuse it to the people. That’s why we like follow-up questions. But right now, it’s the convention center, and move on.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that’s happening this time, though, and did not have that last time…

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I’m not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we’ve got to do it.

So please. I apologize to you, but let’s talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

SciGuy: From bad to worse, I am afraid —

The current track for Rita is just about as bad as you could imagine for the Houston-Galveston area.

Unless the storm turns south or north in the next 24 to 48 hours we are set up for a truly horrific event. I am not going to sugar-coast this, my friends. If the storm comes ashore as forecast, it would essentially be the worst-case scenario described here.

As a Houston resident and property owner, I am truly mortified right now. If you are under a mandatory evacuation order, you should heed it.

The storm has gone from potentially bad on Monday to terribly bad today. Tomorrow will have to bring better news, won’t it?

One can only think the a city that opened its arms so wide to the victims of the truly catastrophic Katrina deserves a better fate. We shall see …

So.

Years after I’ve moved away, I still consider Houston home. Every shot of the highways is familliar, every map a reminder of days gone by. I used to joke about living 10 feet above sea level; the lack of topography was funny.

And now Jim Cantore is there. You know what that means, right? When Jim shows up, you leave. Period.

Here are some sites you should see.

• The Houston Chronicle. Make it your home page for the next few days.
• Houston Chronicle’s map of the storm surge (and associated estimates of damage).
• The SciGuy blog, which was fantastic during Katrina and will continue to be so.
• The Weather Underground’s Wunderblog
• Images from the GOES satellites
• Live NOAA radio
• Wikipedia is a good place for updates.
• No idea what they’ll do, but Rice’s KTRU is always worth a listen.
• Remeber Tropical Storm Allison and the ‘500 year floods’? My college roommate John Paul does.

I know too many people still there - good luck to you all. Let me know if you need anything. Godspeed.

Only in Texas do the evacuation routes include free ice cream:

John Vanden Bos, assistant emergency management coordinator for Brazoria County, said evacuees there who live east of the Brazos River are advised to take Texas 288 to the Beltway.

Those west of the Brazos should “take Texas 36 to Brenham and eat Blue Bell (ice cream),” he said.

Via jwz: Earth Departure movie:

The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005. Several hundred images, taken with the wide-angle camera in MESSENGER’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), were sequenced into a movie documenting the view from MESSENGER as it departed Earth.

Comprising 358 frames taken over 24 hours, the movie follows Earth through one complete rotation. The spacecraft was 40,761 miles (65,598 kilometers) above South America when the camera started rolling on Aug. 2. It was 270,847 miles (435,885 kilometers) away from Earth — farther than the Moon’s orbit — when it snapped the last image on Aug. 3.

Earth rotation (4.90 MB) or Earth rotation with date and time (5.78 MB).

An insider’s view of Ciscogate.

Ryan sent me a CSS Zen Garden design he thought I’d like.

(He was right. Canterbury CSS, indeed! Thanks!)

Happy Pi Approximation Day!

Google, not satisfied with indexing Earth, moves on to the Moon. Aren’t they opening up a facility there real soon now?

(Tip: try zooming in REAL close.)

Don’t forget: The British Open is livecast on the BBC.

How to Start a Startup

Previously, I did this:

• Move pictures from camera;
• Create “date-name” directories for each session: e.g., if I shot a show that had three bands on June 1, the directories would be 2005-06-01-foo, 2005-06-01-bar, and 2005-06-01-baz.
• Put all the photos of each subject in a RAW/ subdirectory (e.g., 2005-06-01-foo/RAW/). Never touch those.
• Copy */RAW to */EDIT. In the EDIT subdirectory, delete the junk, and color correct and crop the rest.
• When publishing to the web, copy some subset of EDIT, and resize and post the copy.

I don’t think I can easily do this with iPhoto. iPhoto seems to want to obscure the actual location of the files on disk from me: it wants me to access my photos only through the iPhoto UI, using its notion of galleries. It always stores files on disk in its world in directories like YYYY/MM/DD/, which is close to my layout, but I want my “keywords” in the directory names as well, not solely in some undocumented metadata file off to the side somewhere.

jwz - that was, in fact, the final straw.

Dream Theater as Wikipedia’s article of the day?

What the?

Episiotomies May Bring More Risks:

For years, some doctors believed that an episiotomy, an incision to enlarge the vaginal opening during childbirth, would prevent spontaneous tearing that would be harder to repair. They also believed the procedure would help women avoid incontinence and improve their sex lives.

It turns out those beliefs were myths.

A new review of 26 research studies shows that episiotomies are linked with a higher risk of injury, more trouble healing and more pain.

Episiotomies also had no effect on incontinence, pelvic floor strength or sexual function. Women who had the procedure waited longer to resume sex after childbirth. And their first post-birth intercourse caused them more pain.

Ask, and ye shall receive:

Lord God Bird! Rare woodpecker discovered in Arkansas:

Wildlife scientists confirmed on Thursday that a bird long thought extinct, the Ivory-billed woodpecker, has been found in Arkansas. The remarkable birds have a 30-inch wingspan and stand nearly 20 inches high.

The birds inhabited a wide swath of American bottomlands and mountain pine forests until the latter part of the 1800’s. They require a large feeding ground, and it is thought the expansion of towns and cities closed off their domain. They went extinct in Cuba during the same period. Ornithologists say each mating pair of Ivory-billed woodpeckers needs three square miles of forest to survive. There were thought to be only 22 of them left in 1938.

There have been several independent sightings of the bird in Arkansas over the last year, and even a videotape. In an effort to support the birds, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Nature Conservancy and other groups have joined to form the Big Woods Conservation Partnership to conserve 200,000 acres of forest habitat and rivers in the area during the next 10 years.

John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology told the Associated Press, “the bird captured on video is clearly an ivory-billed woodpecker. Amazingly, America may have another chance to protect the future of this spectacular bird and the awesome forests in which it lives.”

Blogs @ Rice

Wired News: NASA Funds ‘Miracle Polymer’:

NASA will pay Rice University $11 million over the next four years to develop an experimental power cable made from carbon nanotubes, the agency announced Tuesday.

The cable, also known as a quantum wire, would theoretically conduct electricity up to 10 times better than traditional copper wire and weigh one-sixth as much.

Panasonic’s latest Let’s note lineup, the R4, T4, W4 and Y4:

Panasonic’s at it again with major overhauls to their Let’s note lineup (what we call the Toughbooks, over here). This round’s got all their laptops rocking Sonoma, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and integrated SD readers. The R4 is the 10.1-inch XGA screen subnotebook, with a 1.2GHz Pentium M 753; the T4 hits up the thin n’ light tip with a 12-inch XGA display, an enhanced 12-hour battery, and the same 1.2GHz Pentium M 753; the W4 adds a DVD-R/RW drive to the T4--that’s pretty much it; the Y4 is the most feature-rich, with a 14.1-inch SXGA+ screen, 1.5GHz Pentium M 758, DVD burner, and yet it still manages to stay at almost exactly 3.4 pounds. Yow, we won’t even think about how many nines these prices are going to have

I want pictures: Yahoo! News - Herd of Buffalo Disrupt Traffic in Md..

Decoded at last: the ‘classical holy grail’ that may rewrite the history of the world:

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

For your next cocktail party: a handy list of popes!

Mitigating identity theft in this month’s Crypto-gram:

Fraudulent transactions have nothing to do with the legitimate account holders. Criminals impersonate legitimate users to financial institutions. That means that any solution can’t involve the account holders. That leaves only one reasonable answer: financial institutions need to be liable for fraudulent transactions. They need to be liable for sending erroneous information to credit bureaus based on fraudulent transactions.

They can’t claim that the user must keep his password secure or his machine virus free. They can’t require the user to monitor his accounts for fraudulent activity, or his credit reports for fraudulently obtained credit cards. Those aren’t reasonable requirements for most users. The bank must be made responsible, regardless of what the user does.

If you think this won’t work, look at credit cards. Credit card companies are liable for all but the first $50 of fraudulent transactions. They’re not hurting for business; and they’re not drowning in fraud, either. They’ve developed and fielded an array of security technologies designed to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions. They’ve pushed most of the actual costs onto the merchants. And almost no security centers around trying to authenticate the cardholder.

That’s an important lesson. Identity theft solutions focus much too much on authenticating the person. Whether it’s two-factor authentication, ID cards, biometrics, or whatever, there’s a widespread myth that authenticating the person is the way to prevent these crimes. But once you understand that the problem is fraudulent transactions, you quickly realize that authenticating the person isn’t the way to proceed.

Again, think about credit cards. Store clerks barely verify signatures when people use cards. People can use credit cards to buy things by mail, phone, or Internet, where no one verifies the signature or even that you have possession of the card. Even worse, no credit card company mandates secure storage requirements for credit cards. They don’t demand that cardholders secure their wallets in any particular way. Credit card companies simply don’t worry about verifying the cardholder or putting requirements on what he does. They concentrate on verifying the transaction.

Britannica takeover of Wikimedia:

On April 1 2005, Encyclopædia Britannica, The Ligatured Encyclopædia, announced its immediate semi-hostile takeover of the Wikimedia Foundation (to be known henceforth as Wikimædia) and all of its projects, including Wikipedia (now Wikipædia), Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. Founder Jimmy Wales, a suspected cylon, giving a brief statement to the New York Times from his Maui survivalist compound, was reported to be “extremely pleased” with the £633.7 million severance package given to each of the five-and-a-half trustees of the Wikimædia Foundation. Wikipædia is best known as the “encyclop[a]edia” that any old fool can edit.

Despite the board’s confidence, some Britannica investors privately indicated financial concerns about the deal, noting that “the Wikipedia wasn’t really a free encyclopædia after all.” Economy measures expected to be implemented as part of the agreement include an immediate restriction on contributions to Wikipædia and its sister projects to those that have already signed formal agreements with Britannica and an immediate appropriation of all funds donated during the last funding drive to be divided amongst previous contributors to Britannica. It’s expected that to create or edit a page will now cost users £99.97/page in English or American language. Affordable fee localisation will be provided for wikipædias of economically troubled states.

Excellent… Roshambo Rampage:

Welcome to Roshambo Rampage, the only source for online, networked games of Paper-Scissors-Rock that we’re willing to allow ourselves to be aware of.

For centuries, perhaps longer, people who wanted to play ‘Paper-Scissors-Rock’ (also known as ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors’ or ‘Rock-Scissors-Paper’) have suffered from the debilitating limitation of having to be in the same room with their opponent. With our completely unpatented Send-O-Mail® technology, though, such tragedies are a thing of the very recent past.

It’s pretty darn simple. Just enter your own e-mail address and the e-mail address of the person you wish to challenge below, along with your choice of attack strategies. (We won’t use the e-mail addresses for anything, or give them to anyone else.) The challenge will be sent, and your opponent will have two days to respond. You will be notified of the winner. May God smile upon the favored.

Ian’s Shoelace Site - Shoe Lacing Methods:

In this section, I’ll present a (somewhat more realistic) few methods that I consider worthy of devoting the time required to create instructions, either because they have a particular benefit or just because I like the way they look.

SANS - Internet Storm Center - Cooperative Cyber Threat Monitor And Alert System - Current Infosec News and Analysis

Update at 23:40 UTC

There appear to be two issues at hand. The first is the DNS cache poisoning. At this time, it appears to be affecting Symantec firewalls with DNS caching. If you recall, there was a vulnerability back in July that made these products very succeptable to DNS cache poisoning. Some victims have responded that they applied the patch, but were still affected. So this could be a different vulnerability or the patch didn’t work properly. Maybe someone at Symantec could enlighten us?

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2004.06.21.html

The second issue is the ABX toolbar spyware that gets loaded onto the machine when visiting the target servers. This appears to happen using an ActiveX control. Users running Windows XP SP2 or a web browser that does not support ActiveX will probably not get hit with the spyware if they visit the server.

Unfortunately, information on the ABX toolbar spyware is very limited at this time and it doesn’t seem to be detected yet by the normal toolset of spyware/antivirus tools.

In the meantime, we have been working to get the IP addresses and DNS servers supporting this attack shutdown. Some of the IP addresses are already blackholed.

SANS - Internet Storm Center - Cooperative Cyber Threat Monitor And Alert System - Current Infosec News and Analysis:

Global DNS cache poisoning attack?

We are currently investigating a report from several sites that indicate users being re-directed to malware sites. At this time it appears to be a DNS cache poisoning attack (not a spyware, adware, or browser hijack) and we are seeking more information.

Popular domain names such as google.com, ebay.com, and weather.com are being directed to the following servers. Of course when connecting to these servers, “bad things” (tm) will happen, so don’t go to them.

www.7sir7.com (217.160.169.87)
123xxl.com (217.160.169.87, 207.44.240.79, 216.127.88.131)
abx4.com (217.160.169.87, 207.44.240.79, 216.127.88.131)

If your site has been affected, please submit the following information:
1. When the attack was first noticed and whether it is still occurring.
2. What DNS server software you having facing the Internet. This information will be kept in strictest confidence.
3. If you identified any other sites that users were being re-directed to (besides the ones listed above).

Updates will be made to this diary as we find out more information.

I love it! Groupware BAD, Users GOOD, Calendars USEFUL:

Nat was in town, and he stopped by to say hi and chat, and he said, “So we’ve got this big pile of code we’re going to release, and we’re going to build an open source groupware system! It’s going to be awesome!”

And I said, “Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the ‘Groupware’ albatross around your neck! That’s what killed Netscape, are you insane?” He looked at me like I’d just kicked his puppy.

…

So I said, narrow the focus. Your “use case” should be, there’s a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

That got me a look like I had just sprouted a third head, but bear with me, because I think that it’s not only crude but insightful. “How will this software get my users laid” should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software).

“Social software” is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up.

…

And then Nat went back to whichever flyover state Novell is in, and a few days later he said to me, “wow, you really bummed me out, because the dozen other people I had talked to before you were all like, `a free groupware system, that’s an awesome idea!’ Then you depressed me, and I came back here and told the other guys what you had said, and they were all, `Oh, fuck. He’s right.’”

Wait, was there a funny part? Ok, maybe not. Nevermind.

jwz - “and furthermore…”

Yahoo! Finance Special Edition: The Joy of Living Frugally.

The internet is a strange, strange place.

Some friends of ours occasionally invite a group of us out to swanky places we’ve never been in D.C.. This month, they chose Komi in Dupont Circle. I googled the place and wondered if there was anything there I could actually eat. (Food allergies make swanky places interesting.)

I’m looking at this blog review of Komi when suddenly I recognized the face on the page.

“I think I work with this guy,” I told Merrystar. And indeed, I do.

Google makes for a small world. Hello, Jason, and congratulations on your Valentine’s day gift.

(Still haven’t decided if there’s anything I can eat at Komi’s - I distract easily some nights.)

Yahoo! News - ID Theft Scam Hits D.C. Area Residents

Crypto-Gram: February 15, 2005

ABC News: Silicon Insider: R.I.P. Microsoft?

U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings:

More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says.

The survey of the agency’s scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

jwz - how Google Maps works

Panasonic’s latest Let’s note/Toughbook laptops:

God bress multinational corporations who remain unafraid to rock the Engrish: there’s a lot of ground to cover on Panasonic’s non-Sonoma (i.e. Carmel/855-based Centrino) sexy new Let’s note lineup--we know them this side of the Pacific as the Toughbook series--which has four new model revisions of the W2, T2, Y2, and R3, so in brief: the W2F and T2F has an 12.1-inch XGA screen, Pentium M 753, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD, 802.11a/b/g, and SD; the Y2F has a 14.1-inch SXGA (1400x1050) display, Pentium M 758, 60GB HDD, 256MB RAM, 802.11a/b/g, and SD; the diminutive R3F has a 10.4-inch XGA LCD, Pentium M 753, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD, and, of course, 802.11a/b/g, and SD. Now we’re going to go on as though we didn’t see these, our importer has run the company card quite enough already this week.

The Lions of Al-Rassan as a movie?:

Warner Bros. has attached Ed Zwick to direct period epic “The Lions of Al-Rassan,” an adaptation of a Guy Gavriel Kay novel about the collision of religions in Spain during the Middle Ages that melds fact and fantasy.

An open letter to AA.

LWN: The LWN.net 2004 Linux Timeline

Damn you, irony!

Baby’s Named a Bad, Bad Thing

Orca - not a whale.

Lilly Shares Fall on Report About Prozac Documents:

It is unclear what, if any, action might result from the matter. In October, the F.D.A. ordered pharmaceutical companies to include “black box” warnings on the labels of their antidepressants, including Prozac.

The warnings are the strongest restriction the government can impose on pharmaceutical companies, short of banning a drug.

The warnings state that antidepressants increase the risk of “suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents.”

British medical regulators have recommended that many antidepressants not be prescribed for children and teenagers, but had not included Prozac in those advisories.

JPL/Caltech Float Cam 2005 Rose Parade:

JPL and Caltech are very excited to have a float in the upcoming, New Year’s Day 2005 Rose Parade!

Our float will tower 50 feet above the ground and promises to be spectacular! The view from the top will be out of this world! And we don’t want you to miss it!

On parade day click on the link below to see a live web cast of the parade route from the top of the JPL/Caltech Float! Tune in starting at approximately 8:00am PST on January 1, 2005.

Yahoo! News - ‘Jeopardy!’ to Hold ‘Super Tournament’

Boing Boing: Cory responds to Wired Editor on DRM

Via Jim, Understanding Terror Networks - FPRI

Character entity references in HTML 4

jwz - fade to gray

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Bridge tolls set to be scrapped:

The Skye Bridge Company was subsequently set up to the collect the tolls.

Even before the bridge was built critics voiced their hostility at having to pay to cross from the mainland to the Island of Skye and vice versa.

Campaigners, led in part by activist Robbie the Pict, have continued a long-running campaign of civil disobedience ever since in an effort to bring the tolls, the highest in Europe, to an end.

Four protesters, including Robbie the Pict, were convicted of not paying the tolls and were sent to jail for refusing to pay.

Very cool: Google Suggest.

ReadyMade: Feature - Boy Scout Napkins

Slashdot | Linux From Scratch 6.0 Released

HOW-TO: Hacking the iPod firmware (changing the graphics) - Engadget:

In this How-To we’re going to show you how to change the Do not Disconnect circle/slash icon that endlessly and annoyingly flashes all the time on our desk. We replaced ours with the Engadget logo, the Sony CEO, and Hello Kitty but any graphic will do. You can also change battery icons, power status, boot up logos and fonts, or so it seems. We sprinted to write this up, so we might update it as we try some new things. Now on with the How-To!

Wired News: PowerPoint Message Is the Medium:

Usually, PowerPoint presentations are dry affairs with someone in a suit trying hard not to vocalize the exact same information that appears on their slides. But what if a group of artists got hold of the software and competed with each other to see who could use it most imaginatively?

Wired News: Spyware on My Machine? So What?

Not all web surfers think spyware is a problem. Some say the snoopy software is a fair trade-off for free applications, even with the intrusion into their computers and lives.

“Typically the assumption has been that spyware sneaks onto computers, or users are unaware of what they have agreed to install,” said Gregg Mastoras, a senior security analyst at antivirus vendor Sophos. “But some people actually do knowingly install adware because they want to use a particular application that comes bundled with it. Some just aren’t particularly concerned by adware’s presence on their computers.”

Perhaps Jim was right: it is just a google search page. And since Firefox has a Google search bar always available, it’s not really useful to have Google as your home page.

Back to Wikipedia, I guess…

Actually, I don’t find this hard to believe at all. This is the biggest reason I don’t get a newspaper.

Wired News: Newspapers Should Really Worry:

Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn’t accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I’m not making this up): They didn’t like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses.

jwz - file under “bad ideas”

Yahoo! News - Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents:

Next time you make a printout from your color laser printer, shine an LED flashlight beam on it and examine it closely with a magnifying glass. You might be able to see the small, scattered yellow dots printer there that could be used to trace the document back to you.

Microsoft offshores patent war - so goes the WTO? | The Register

TiVo responds to the ads-while-fast-forwarding controversy - Engadget - www.engadget.com:

TiVo has responded, at least sort of, to the brewing controversy over their plans to introduce banner ads when people fast forward through commercials, with someone from TiVo’s marketing department posting a message on the tivocommunity.com bulletin board trying to explain a little bit more what’s going on. A few people didn’t seem to get that they’re not eliminating fast-forwarding altogether (but it’s the Internet, what do you expect?), and the marketing person wants to make it clear that the ads will not be full-screen and that they’ll be similar to the “thumbs-upâ€� you sometimes see during commercials right now that’ll ask you whether you want to record a TV show. Honestly, it’s not that the whole idea of ads that seem so bothersome, it’s more the idea of buying something, paying a monthly fee for it, and still having to deal with them popping in commercials everywhere (eliminate the monthly fees and we’d be a lot more receptive the ads). It’s like if we started having to listen to a little ad everytime we wanted to check the voicemail on our cellphone—it’d be one thing if they were giving away the service for free, but we’re paying for this, you know? Plus, given how many other options there out there for digital video recorders, we worry that TiVo, a company we actually like, is only going to hasten its demise with moves like these.

GROKLAW:

I would not be surprised if Microsoft abruptly reconsiders its decision to break off negotiations. On the other hand, Microsoft has a demonstrated pattern of stumbling along in litigation until it is thoroughly embarrassed. Novell’s lawyers have obviously thought about their strategy quite a bit. Unless Microsoft can come up with other, stronger defenses, the statute of limitations defense looks poised to unhinge Microsoft’s nondisclosure policies at an early date.

FOSS could be one of the big beneficiaries of this lawsuit by assembling and disseminating the evidence. Do other folks feel that gathering and disseminating information about Novell v. Microsoft is important? Are people ready to help? Your feedback is important.

Great Northern Lights photos from November 8, 2004

Crypto-Gram: November 15, 2004:

It should be no surprise that there are problems with voting. What’s surprising is that there aren’t more problems. So how to make the system work better?

— Simplicity: This is the key to making voting better. Registration should be as simple as possible. The voting process should be as simple as possible. Ballot designs should be simple, and they should be tested. The computer industry understands the science of user-interface — that knowledge should be applied to ballot design.

— Uniformity: Simplicity leads to uniformity. The United States doesn’t have one set of voting rules or one voting system. It has 51 different sets of voting rules — one for every state and the District of Columbia — and even more systems. The more systems are standardized around the country, the more we can learn from each other’s mistakes.

— Verifiability: Computerized voting machines might have a simple user interface, but complexity hides behind the screen and keyboard. To avoid even more problems, these machines should have a voter-verifiable paper ballot. This isn’t a receipt; it’s not something you take home with you. It’s a paper “ballot” with your votes — one that you verify for accuracy and then put in a ballot box. The machine provides quick tallies, but the paper is the basis for any recounts.

— Transparency: All computer code used in voting machines should be public. This allows interested parties to examine the code and point out errors, resulting in continually improving security. Any voting-machine company that claims its code must remain secret for security reasons is lying. Security in computer systems comes from transparency — open systems that pass public scrutiny — and not secrecy.

But those are all solutions for the future. If you’re a voter this year, your options are fewer. My advice is to vote carefully. Read the instructions carefully, and ask questions if you are confused. Follow the instructions carefully, checking every step as you go. Remember that it might be impossible to correct a problem once you’ve finished voting. In many states — including California — you can request a paper ballot if you have any worries about the voting machine.

Schneier on Security: The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines

Japanese toilet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Economist — Music’s brighter future:

According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy. No-one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part.

Judging the overall quality of the music being sold by the four major record labels is, of course, subjective. But there are some objective measures. A successful touring career of live performances is one indication that a singer or band has lasting talent. Another is how many albums an artist puts out. Many recent singers have toured less and have often faded quickly from sight.

Best Buy hopes to exorcize devil patrons:

Best Buy’s strategies could represent the beginnings of a shift in how retailers approach their customers. As consumers become more savvy, and online shopping continues to grow, you can bet other retailers will watch Best Buy closely. Early results indicate that Best Buy’s test stores are outperforming their established stores by a significant margin, and it’s safe to assume that the trend will continue as they shift to their new sales mode across the board. Of course, if you aren’t Barry, Jill, or Buzz, then who are you and how will you be treated? Customer profiling has a nasty side to it, one which we can attest to. It’s common, for instance, to be utterly ignored in some commission-based sales environments if you look too young, or too poor.

Meanwhile, Dell and others seem to be doing their best to attract those customers Best Buy doesn’t really want. While Best Buy has pulled the plug on their relationships with some of the more well-known bargain sites, Dell is using those same sites to run their promotions and clear out inventory with insane coupon deals. The biggest danger for Best Buy is the prospect of getting upside down. They run the risk of selling out for profit margins at the cost of sales volume.

jwz - election rigging:

bellaciao.org has some graphs of the major discrepencies between exit polling and vote counts. They’re pretty incredible! Now, maybe the exit polling methodology is just fundamentally broken, but isn’t it funny when you see pictures like the one at the right, knowing that last year, Diebold’s CEO swore that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to President Bush.”

And in Florida, some numbers and graphs: districts using electronic voting machines tended to skew Republican, while those without electronic voting ran even with predicted ratios. “An analysis of variance conducted on the percent change for each party ([Actual vote minus expected vote]/expected vote) in each county, with ‘machine type’ as a predictive factor, indicated that machine type was a significant predictor of percent change in voting. Counties using E-touch machines showed significantly positive percent changes in vote for both Republican and Democrat candidates, with greater mean percent changes for the Democrat. However counties using Op-scan machines showed significant positive percent change only for the Republican candidate, the mean change for the Democrat being insignificantly greater than zero.”

You don’t steal an election with a landslide, you steal it with 3%. You stay within the margin of error across the board so that it’s not obvious.

BBC NEWS | Americas | How world sees Bush victory

Universe Today - Venus and Jupiter’s Upcoming Conjunction:

A conjunction very much like the one occurring on the 5th occurred in August of the year 3 B.C. This historic conjunction occurred on August 12th at 03:00 UTC and was widely visible from the Middle East. That year Venus and Jupiter were only 10 arc-minutes or 0.16 degrees apart in the constellation of Leo the Lion. With such a narrow separation, light reflected from the two would seem to merge into one as seen with the unaided eye.

Some scholars have speculated that this close conjunction may have been interpreted as a sign by a group known as the Magi. The Magi, or wise men, were priests of an ancient religion known as Zoroastrianism. Could this close conjunction have been what sent the wise men traveling to a far of city known as Bethlehem? Unfortunately we can’t draw any definitive conclusions. There are no known written records that tell exactly what the Magi saw, or how they interpreted it.

jwz - maps

Slashdot | BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of Traffic

format c:

My goal was to mass erase these disks from the command line and so far I hadn’t had much luck. With Windows I knew I was going to have to take a different approach, with Linux, I knew exactly what I had to do to kill this system.

I decided to attack Windows from the same attack point as I was hitting Linux. Instead of trying to do a low level erasure of my files I was just going to recursively delete them. So after a little mucking around at the command prompt, I came up with del /F /S /Q *. Linux was a no brainer. All I had to do was escalate my permissions with sudo, sudo rm -Rf * to be exact.

Slashdot | Blackboxvoting.org Raises Vote-Audit FOIA Request:

Blackboxvoting.org has raised the largest Freedom of Information request in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems — optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips.

Suffer a soul-crushing defeat recently? Be of Good Cheer!:

Well if that’s your attitude, the only thing I have for you is that the Bush Administration will not be able to get out the door before its irremediable clusterfucks . . . fuck clusters. Or whatever. Iraq is not fixable. When it goes definitively kablooey, its architects will not be safely tucked away in their ranches and sinecures, able to tut-tut that if only we had stayed the course ….

The downside? Oh, little things, like returning to office the government that

• *asserted that the executive can unilaterally and unreviewably strip any citizen of citizenship and declare any non-citizen an “enemy combatant” without rights;
• *argued in its work papers that the President is not bound by either domestic or international laws of war because - he’s the President! and it’s a war!

From jwz, Spider Jerusalem on voting:

“You want to know about voting. I’m here to tell you about voting. Imagine you’re locked in a huge underground night-club filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pitbulls for fun. And you ain’t allowed out until you all vote on what you’re going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch ‘Republican Party Reservation’. They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand new sexual organs you did not even know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That’s voting. You’re welcome.”

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser V1.01

Via jwz — Never Forget: Internets Vets for Truth

Pretty fast mirror of just about every recent political QuickTime of the last few months (including “Fahrenheit 9/11”, “Going Upriver”, John Stewart on Crossfire, etc.)

So wrong, but so right: 2004’s Scariest Halloween Costumes.

washingtonpost.com: Household Survey Sees 100,000 Iraqi Deaths:

Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article’s timing was up to him.

“I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election,” Roberts told The Associated Press. “My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.

“I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives,” Roberts said. “As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this.”

Holy crap! The Economist is endorsing Kerry?

I suppose the Red Sox couldn’t win the World Series without bringing us a little closer to Ragnarok…

YOU might have thought that, three years after a devastating terrorist attack on American soil, a period which has featured two wars, radical political and economic legislation, and an adjustment to one of the biggest stockmarket crashes in history, the campaign for the presidency would be an especially elevated and notable affair. If so, you would be wrong. This year’s battle has been between two deeply flawed men: George Bush, who has been a radical, transforming president but who has never seemed truly up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it; and John Kerry, who often seems to have made up his mind conclusively about something only once, and that was 30 years ago. But on November 2nd, Americans must make their choice, as must The Economist. It is far from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent, dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather than continuity: Mr Kerry, not Mr Bush.

Whenever we express a view of that sort, some readers are bound to protest that we, as a publication based in London, should not be poking our noses in other people’s politics. Translated, this invariably means that protesters disagree with our choice. It may also, however, reflect a lack of awareness about our readership. The Economist’s weekly sales in the United States are about 450,000 copies, which is three times our British sale and roughly 45% of our worldwide total. All those American readers will now be pondering how to vote, or indeed whether to. Thus, as at every presidential election since 1980, we hope it may be useful for us to say how we would think about our vote--if we had one.

…

John Kerry says the war was a mistake, which is unfortunate if he is to be commander-in-chief of the soldiers charged with fighting it. But his plan for the next phase in Iraq is identical to Mr Bush’s, which speaks well of his judgment. He has been forthright about the need to win in Iraq, rather than simply to get out, and will stand a chance of making a fresh start in the Israel-Palestine conflict and (though with even greater difficulty) with Iran. After three necessarily tumultuous and transformative years, this is a time for consolidation, for discipline and for repairing America’s moral and practical authority. Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America’s great tasks.

Wired News: Lost Tribe of Little People

Wired 12.11: How I Learned to Love Larry

Total Lunar Eclipse: October 27-28, 2004

Slashdot | Challenging The ‘Unbeatable’ Polygraph

jwz - TV-B-Gone:

Altman’s key-chain fob was a TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.

At a Laundromat and cafe down the street, a lone man sorted clothes in the glow of larger-than-life bikini babes on a 60-inch Sony HDTV. A punch of the button and the screen instantly went dark. He went on folding his T-shirts, seemingly unaware of the change.

“It’s always like that,” Altman said. “It’s so much part of the environment in the U.S. that people don’t even notice when it disappears.”

It is different in Hong Kong, Altman said. There, when he clicked off store TVs, everyone looked around to see who did it.

At Best Buy, neither customers nor staff responded as one set after another turned off — Sony TVs first, then a JVC and an Apex, all from a single click. The interview was easier without competition from Pirates of the Caribbean.

I married a Red Sox fan just in time.

Cheers!

Slashdot | Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor

Critical Section - The Tyranny of Email

komo 4 news | Small Town Library Takes On The Feds:

WHATCOM COUNTY - The FBI wants to know who checked out a book from a small library about Osama Bin Laden. But the library isn’t giving out names, saying the government has no business knowing what their patrons read. … At the center of the issue, a book titled “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America.”

The FBI confiscated the original book after a patron reported than some one hand wrote a bin Laden quote in the margin that read: “Let history be witness I am a criminal.”

The FBI demanded to know the names and addresses of everyone who ever checked out the book.

“Libraries are a haven where people should be able to seek whatever information they want to pursue without any threat of government intervention,” said Director of Whatcom County Library System, Joan Airoldi.

Because of privacy policies, the library does not give out circulation records without a court order. When the FBI got a grand jury subpoena, the library filed a motion to quash it — citing the rights of all people who use the library.

“Like the right to read and to read the material of one’s choice without fear that someone will come around with questions about why you chose that book,” said Garrett.

The FBI withdrew the subpoena, reserving the right to file it again.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office says they are not permitted to discuss anything that involves the grand jury.

If the feds had demanded the records under the Patriot Act, the library would have had to hand them over without question and without help from the courts.

The FBI still has the bin Laden book.

Librarians point out, it’s overdue.

I finally watched the clip off the torrent, and wow! Here’s more from Salon.com on Jon Stewart’s Crossfire appearance:

It’s almost a cliche by now to talk about “The Daily Show” being more trusted than real newscasts, but Stewart showed why. He pointed out to Carlson that he had asked Kerry if he really were in Cambodia but “I don’t care,” and when Carlson asked him what he thought about the “Bill O’Reilly vibrator flap,” Stewart said, “I don’t.” It was as concise a demonstration of the triviality of the media as you could hope for.

“I thought you were going to be funny,” Carlson said toward the end of the interview. Stewart responded, “No, I’m not going to be your monkey.” And that was what was so bracing.

Stewart’s “Crossfire” appearance is going to generate talk about how prickly he was, how he wasn’t “nice” like he is on “The Daily Show.” But prickliness is just what was needed. If you’ve built your reputation as a satirist pointing out how the media falls down on the job, you’re not going to make yourself a part of their charade.

I’ve heard people talk about “The Daily Show” as an oasis of sanity, a public service. I couldn’t agree more. Stewart’s appearance on “Crossfire” was another public service. He went on and acted as if the show’s purpose really was to confront tough issues, instead of being the political equivalent of pro wrestling. Given a chance to say absolutely what he thought, Stewart took it. He accomplished what almost never happens on television anymore: He made the dots come alive.

Please Support The Word Detective:

and let this kitten play again.

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Oh yeah, the kitten thing was just crass manipulation.

jwz - John Stewart on Crossfire:

STEWART: In many ways, it’s funny. And I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad.

BEGALA: We have noticed.

STEWART: And I wanted to — I felt that that wasn’t fair and I should come here and tell you that I don’t — it’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America.

CARLSON: But in its defense…

STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say… Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.
Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.
…

STEWART: No, no, no, you’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

What a wonderfully odd little site: How old is old enough?

Interesting to see how different places define the age of consent.

Historical Fiction: How do medieval-themed restaurants get it wrong?:

Medieval food was many things — garish, over the top, unsubtle. But it wasn’t crude. And neither were medieval people. So, the real question is: Where does the familiar medieval stereotype come from? As with all questions of intellectual decline, Hollywood deserves some blame. (The studios had a thing for bringing the Middle Ages to the big screen in the ‘50s: Knights of the Round Table, Prince Valiant, The Black Shield of Falworth, The Black Knight.) Yet historical stereotyping, wherever you find it, is symptomatic of a deeper societal ill. Gustave Flaubert famously wrote, “Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times.” When it comes to slander caused by ignorance, history is sometimes on the receiving end, too.

Yahoo! News - Cheney Blunder Lauded Anti-Bush Web Site:

Vice President Dick Cheney probably did not intend to direct millions of television viewers to a Web site calling for President Bush’s defeat but that’s what a slip of the domain achieved.

Anyone who heeded Cheney’s advice and clicked on “factcheck.com” was greeted on Wednesday morning with a message from anti-Bush billionaire investor George Soros entitled “Why we must not reelect President Bush.”

Very funny: Review: Juvenile felis catus:

Bear in mind that, against all evidence to the contrary, kittens are not able to transport themselves through solid objects by means of teleportation, osmosis or matter rephasing.

…

Herewith, a rundown of the relative merits of four options for the computer enthusiast - a kitten, a puppy, a baby, and (as a representative example of the more usual kind of home information technology purchase) a new video card.

Jim points out all those things they didn’t talk about:

Things that naturally didn’t come up: torture; the costs of interventionism; how much of a blank check to give Ariel Sharon’s Likud government; whether we truthfully want to democratize cooperative Muslim autocracies or should want to; our continuing involvement in the Andean Initiative; sanctions on Cuba; the difference between prudence and panic in anti-terror policy. What we had was vigorous disagreement on tactics with no serious debate on grand strategy. Both candidates agree that America must be the busiest busybody in the busy busy world. The rest is a question of application.

Just outside my office window — TERROR BLIMPS are GO!

Pentagon police said the Defense Department is testing a security blimp - fully equipped with surveillance cameras. The white blimp was spotted early Wednesday morning hovering at various times over the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. The 178-foot-long device, which is expected to remain in the skies until Thursday, is conducting a mission for the Defense Department.

NPR : Connie Rice: Top 10 Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know About the Debates:

“The League of Women Voters ran these debates with an iron hand as open, transparent, non-partisan events from 1976 to 1984,” Rice says. “The men running the major campaigns ended their control when the League defiantly included John Anderson and Ross Perot, and used tough moderators and formats the parties didn’t like. The parties snatched the debates from the League and formed the Commission on Presidential Debates — the CPD — in 1986.”

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US scientists warn of out-of-town health hazard:

The study by the Rand Corporation, an American thinktank, discovered that the health profile of an adult with a home in the spacious suburbs of Atlanta was the same as someone who lived in inner-city Seattle but was four years older.

Roll back the garage doors and you’ll find the reason for the suburban malaise, according to the scientists.

Studies have found that inhabitants of sprawling suburbs are dependent on their cars and so walk less, weigh more and suffer from higher blood pressure than their city cousins.

/. | Less Might Be More

Engadget : Caring Cot (as long as the hand that rocks the cradle isn’t mine):

You must forgive the Smiths reference, we only save them for stuff we’re really excited about. The Caring Cot was invented by one Gary Cho, whose agenda wasn’t just keeping that damned baby quiet in the middle of the freaking night, but also safety and preventative care. If the device (which is estimated to cost £150 — that’s about $270 US) ‘hears’ the baby cry for more than thirty seconds, it automatically begins rocking the cradle vertically (which he claims is more effective at calming a child than horizontal rocking); it also monitors the child’s movement and ambient temperature and can sound an alarm if it thinks something’s up, which could help detect early symptomps of Sudden Infants Death Syndrome (SIDS). Jeez, you’d think babies couldn’t just take care of themselves, or something.

/. | Microsoft To Provide IE Patches for Windows XP Only:

“We do not have plans to deliver Windows XP SP2 enhancements for Windows 2000 or other older versions of Windows,” the company said in a statement. “The most secure version of Windows today is Windows XP with SP2. We recommend that customers upgrade to XP and SP2 as quickly as possible.”

What a crock of… — Slashdot | U.S. Government Wants All June Airline Passenger Records.

Ah, more good times: Interliant Memories.

I still have that mug, too.

Ah, good times: Interliant Valium.

2600 | 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC

web economy bullshit generator:

Instructions:

1. Click the make bullshit button.
2. Watch bullshit appear in the box.
3. Repeat to taste (use your Enter/Return key).

How odd: I was reading this Wired article about Hayao Miyazaki’s work on Howl’s Moving Castle when it hit me that Merrystar has the book (by Diana Wynne Jones) down in our bookroom. Unfortunately, it seems like there’s little credit given to the original.

Pity.

Jaws in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies, at Angry Alien Productions.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Higher | Antarctic craters reveal asteroid strike:

But it was not until this year, when two satellites operating above Antarctica began to map the anomalies in the gravity, that the scale of the crater emerged. The mapping showed that the holes in the rock created by the strike had refilled with a mixture of ice, rock and other debris far less dense. This material, called breccia, shows where and how deep the craters are.

Prof Van der Hoeven said: “The extraordinary thing about this meteor strike is that it appeared to do so little damage. Unlike the dinosaur strike there is no telltale layer of dust that demonstrates the history of the event. It may have damaged things and wiped out species but there is no sign of it.”

One thing that did happen at exactly the same time was the reversing of the Earth’s magnetic field. There is no other explanation as to why this took place and Prof Van der Hoeven believes it was caused by the impact.

Slashdot | IBM Moves To Enforce GPL By Summary Judgement

Boing Boing: EFF wins Grokster! Software doesn’t have to be easy for Hollywood to wiretap!

EFF has won its Grokster case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — this is the case that establishes that if you make truly decentralized P2P software — like Gnutella — you can’t be held liable for any copyright infringement that takes place on their networks. This is the “Betamax principle,” from the famous Supreme Court case that established that Sony wasn’t responsoble for any infringement that its customers undertook with their VCRs.

The Studios’ argument was that people who make P2P software should be obliged to build it in such a way as to make it easy to police — i.e. not on Gnutella-like lines — an idea so sickeningly dumb that it’s a tremendous relief that the court refused to buy it.

Crypto-Gram: August 15, 2004

Slashdot | SHA-0 Broken, MD5 Rumored Broken

CUAgain : Neighborhood Hazard (or: Why the Cops Won’t Patrol Brice Street):

Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and leather gloves puttering maybe 25mph down a quiet residential street…and in the fight of his life with a squirrel. And losing.

I Love You, Madame Librarian — In These Times:

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

I was wondering when this would show up: Merrystar found the BBC feeds on Friday…

Wired News: Let the Web Games Begin:

The Summer Olympics, which began Friday in Athens, is the first Olympic Games to be broadcast from a collection of websites. The BBC and other European networks are offering live, on-demand Internet video streaming of Olympic events to broadband viewers. But the BBC and fellow members of the European Broadcasting Union are required by their Olympic broadcast contracts to block U.S. Internet users and others from outside their home counties.

NBC paid $793 million for the exclusive U.S. Summer Olympic broadcast rights, and NBCOlympics.com is the only U.S. website licensed by the International Olympic Committee to broadcast video coverage of the games. The network is offering 1,210 hours of Olympic coverage — live and tape-delayed — on NBC, CNCB, MSNBC, Bravo, USA, Telemundo and a high-definition channel.

Despite its contractual lock on Olympic footage, NBCOlympics.com is offering only highlights of selected events after they have been broadcast on one of the network’s TV channels. U.S. customers of AT&T Wireless’ mMode information service will also get video clips. By contrast, those online in the United Kingdom can watch live simulcast coverage from BBC TV’s five video streams.

…

“Ultimately it will fail,” said Len Sassaman, a privacy-technology researcher. Once the American Internet viewing public realizes that U.K. Web surfers are watching better Olympic coverage than they are allowed to see after forking over their credit card, said Sassaman, they will look for better ways to access those images. “Bandwidth has gotten a lot cheaper over the years, so it is not so far-fetched to think that someone will set up proxy servers in Britain that would do this.”

Wired News: Copyright Crusaders Hit Schools:

For the third year in a row, software companies are supplying schools with materials that promote their antipiracy position on copyright law. But for the first time this year, the library association is presenting its own material, hoping to give kids a more balanced view of copyright law.

The American Library Association will distribute its materials through high-school librarians this winter or spring. In September, the ALA will hold focus groups with teenagers to better understand how they use the Internet, what they think about the technology and what language they use. That information will contribute to ALA-created comic books that address various copyright issues relevant to students.

The ALA sees a need for this because materials offered by groups like the Business Software Alliance and the Motion Picture Association of America are designed to influence kids with one-sided information, said Rick Weingarten, director of information technology policy for the ALA. Topics like “fair use” — the right to use copyright material without the owner’s permission, a key concept in American law that intellectual-property experts say leads to innovation — are not adequately addressed.

Definition of Elliptic curve cryptography:

Given an elliptic curve E, and a field GF(q), we consider the abelian group of rational points E(q) of the form (x, y), where both x and y are in GF(q), and where the group operation “+” is defined on this curve as described in the article elliptic curve. We then define a second operation “*” | Z×E(q) → E(q): if P is some point in E(q), then we define 2*P = P + P, 3*P = 2*P + P = P + P + P, and so on. Note that given integers j and k, j*(k*P) = (j*k)*P = k*(j*P). The elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP) is then to determine the integer k, given points P and Q, and given that k*P = Q.

It is believed that the usual discrete logarithm problem over the multiplicative group of a finite field (DLP) and ECDLP are not equivalent problems; and that ECDLP is significantly more difficult than DLP.

In cryptographic use, a specific base point G is selected and published for use with the curve E(q). A private key k is selected as a random integer; and then the value P = k*G is published as the public key (note that the purported difficulty of ECDLP implies that k is hard to determine from P). If Alice and Bob have private keys k_A and k_B, and public keys P_A and P_B, then Alice can calculate k_A*P_B = (k_A*k_B)*G; and Bob can compute the same value as k_B*P_A = (k_B*k_A)*G.

This allows the establishment of a “secret” value that both Alice and Bob can easily compute, but which is difficult for any third party to derive. In addition, Bob does not gain any new knowledge about k_A during this transaction, so that Alice’s private key remains private.

Save the []:

Welcome to SaveThe.org, a continuation of SavetheiPod.com… it’s not just your iPod that is threatened by this innovation-killing legislation, everything from VCRs to tech journalists could conceivably come under fire if this overly broad bill is passed. Formerly known as the INDUCE Act (Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation Act), the bill is now called the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 (IICA), but don’t be fooled, it’s still just as dangerous.

Yahoo! News - Fiennes to Play Voldemort in Next ‘Potter’

Answer the pepperoni:

MAX: Oh, I’m not confused. I’m just . . . what do you mean?

DEAN: Their eating habits are just the start of what you’re gonna have to get used to. There’s tons of stuff you should be aware of.

MAX: Really?

DEAN: Oh yeah. Like, don’t ever use the last of the parmesan cheese. And never get into a heavy discussion late at night ‘cause that’s when they’re at their crankiest. Oh, and uh, go with their bits.

MAX: Their bits?

DEAN: Yeah, like, if you’re eating pizza with them and Lorelai decides that the pepperoni is angry at the mushrooms because the mushrooms have an attitude and then she holds up a pepperoni and the pepperoni asks for your opinion…don’t just laugh. Answer the pepperoni.

MAX: Answer the pepperoni.

DEAN: And don’t let them near puppies ‘cause they’ll want to take home every one.

MAX: Oh, that one I knew.

DEAN: Oh, and uh, here’s a big one. If you ever think that they’re doing something crazy, they’re not. You see, after a while, their thinking becomes clear, but by the time it’s clear, they’ve already done two other totally crazy things that you can’t figure out. So there’s no catching up.

A Taste of Computer Security

Wired News: Freak Waves Are No Tall Tale:

Massive waves up to 100 feet in height — once thought to be extremely rare — actually roam the oceans quite frequently and could threaten to overturn ships and oil rigs, a European Commission study has found.

The study, announced last week and conducted on radar images gathered by two European Space Agency satellites during a three-week period in 2001, revealed that no fewer than 10 of the so-called rogue waves rose from various oceans around the world in that time. Not too long ago, scientists had believed that such waves formed just once every 10,000 years, according to the space agency.

Oh no, not again. At least Merrystar isn’t observing this week…

Sunspot Grows to 20 Times Size of Earth:

A sunspot group aimed squarely at Earth has grown to 20 times the size of our planet and has the potential to unleash a major solar storm.

The amorphous mix of spots, together called Number 652, has been rotating across the Sun and growing for several days. On Friday, it sat at the center of the solar disk.

17th Annual Reader Satisfaction Survey:

Owning a PC is an up-and-down affair: Sometimes things go well, and sometimes they don’t. Even the best machines have problems, and from time to time, even the best manufacturers have trouble fixing them. …[T]he key is finding a machine whose problems are few and far between — and a manufacturer that can, and will, tackle those problems.

To help you find the most dependable computers and PC manufacturers, we give you our 17th annual Reader Satisfaction Survey, in which Jerry Shipley and more than 8,000 other PC Magazine readers describe experiences with the desktops, notebooks, and servers that they use at home and at work: over 17,000 computers in all.

As you peruse the results, you’ll see that no company is beyond reproach. Each is guilty of selling machines that need repair and providing poor technical support at times. The leading vendors — Apple in the desktop and notebook categories, Dell in desktops and servers, and IBM in notebooks — are those that keep criticism to a minimum.

“My Beef With Big Media” by Ted Turner

Slashdot | Toyota Patents Winking, Laughing, Crying Car

Anything and everything on eBay — eBay item 2256298346 (Ends Jul-31-04 01:00:00 PDT) - The K.I.T.T. car from Knight Rider

437. K.I.T.T. (Knight Industry Two Thousand) car from Knight Rider. (Universal TV, 1982-85) This highly-modified 1983 Pontiac Trans Am is an original screen-used hero car used during the second season of the hit TV series. Instantly recognizable with its working scanner in the front and highly futuristic interior, this vehicle was arguably the star of the show! Accompanied with the original ownership certificate listing MCA Universal Studios Inc. as the registered owner. For insurance and liability reasons the vehicle’s identification number was removed by Universal (common practice for their film and TV cars) and it was subsequently assigned the in-house inventory control number of “1177” (numbers can be found on the driver-side door and under the hood).

Polydactyl Cats:

Polydactyly, or extra digits, is a common trait among cats, particularly it seems, among Celtic cats and cats on part of America’s Eastern coast and South West Britain. This distribution may well be linked. Except for Twisty Cats, polydactyly is not a product of bad breeding. It is simply a naturally occurring genetic variation and, as noted later on, polydactyly is found in fossil reptiles - meaning that five digits might be the abnormal form! Only one form of polydactyly is known to be harmful.

The Word Detective adopts some kittens:

New Scientist:

What sort of explosives do you use now?

There are two types of explosive - low order and high order. Low makes a slow heaving explosion, which pushes more than it shatters. We tend to look for a shattering explosive because we want to instantaneously remove the structural integrity of whatever we’re working on. So we would opt for nitroglycerin or NG-based dynamite. With a steel structure, we use something called a linear-shaped charge that concentrates the force of a high explosive called RDX. For example, it took 80 pounds of shaped charge to bring down two New York gas tanks built with 5 million pounds of steel.

Hello, Elliott!

Support Literacy, Win Books:

To celebrate ten years of online bookselling, we are asking our readers: What was your most memorable reading experience of the last ten years? Submit an essay and Powells.com will donate one dollar to Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s largest nonprofit children’s literacy organization.

• The author of the best essay will win $1,000 in books
• Ten runners-up will receive $100 in books
• Submit your essay by July 31, 2004, and Powells.com will include a free mousepad in your first order placed before January 1, 2005

Oooo.

Exclusive Sony u50 review.

A new summer pastime: the virtual bughunt:

The vaguely unsatisfied child is then fobbed off at the exit with some sort of fakey certificate that shows pics of the day’s specimens. In fifty years the entire populace will have been raised like this, and grown men will run screaming at the sight of a real live butterfly.

Slashdot | 4 New “Extremely Critical” IE Vulnerabilities

Send a text message and hose down a German:

A German gardening equipment maker Gardena has put up what would surely be the equivalent of lawsuit-bait here in the States: a billboard with an enormous sprinkler that can be triggered via text message to spray passersby with water, finally fulfilling our lifelong dream of being able to anonymously hose down strangers.

jwz - today in police state news

best. marriage. proposal. EVER.

Oh, didn’t I mention? I got engaged! Oh yeah, I did mention. But did I mention how? Well, this is how! I added google.com to the DreamHost dns servers (um, maybe you noticed if for some reason you were using lynx to go to Google directly from our servers back around May 16th) and set up a fake Google website! Then I changed the picture at the top and changed our home dns servers to be DreamHost’s (instead of Earthlink’s DSL like they normally are). So if you went to www.google.com from our house, you got the fake version I’d set up on our servers! Mwah hwah hwah hwah! Well, “Tweeny” goes to Google a lot, so Saturday night I switched it over and next thing you knew, Sunday morning she was all “How much did you have to pay Google?!”… check it out, I archived it at:

http://www.groo.com/google.com/

Aren’t I romantic? And a huge nerd? Worse than those guys in line for Star Wars that Triumph the Insult Dog interviewed? Probably.

Wired News: Court Creates Snoopers’ Heaven.

Via Emily: MLA Language Map:

The MLA Language Map is intended for use by students, teachers, and anyone interested in learning about the linguistic and cultural composition of the United States. The MLA Language Map uses data from the 2000 United States census to display the locations and numbers of speakers of thirty languages and seven groups of less commonly spoken languages in the United States. The census data were based on responses to the question, “Does this person speak a language other than English at home?” The Language Map illustrates the concentration of language speakers in zip codes and counties. The Data Center provides actual numbers and percentages of speakers.

jwz - Why do I even bother, part 32767.

/.: A Parent’s Guide to Linux Web Filtering.

Via jwz — SUV takes plunge in Hawai’i Kai:

Pat Campanella, left, and Affordable Towing and Recovery owner Devin Statts discuss how to get Campanella’s SUV out of Katherine Peacock’s pool in Hawai’i Kai. Campanella was giving his wife a driving lesson when she overcompensated and drove into the pool.

Wired News: Rocket Hobbyists Dropping Hobby:

Rocketeers up and down the skill-level range are feeling the pinch of post-9/11 regulations promulgated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Today, thousands of people fly model rockets that range in size from about 12 inches to more than 30 feet tall. But since the ATF imposed new rules, some hobbyists have abandoned their pastime, and the next generation of engineers and scientists, some fear, is being driven away.

“If we’re in an environment where the government says you’ve got to get fingerprinted and background checked, and spend three to four months to do it, (adults are) not going to participate in my hobby,” said Mark Bundick, president of the National Association of Rocketry. “We need more kids. It helps them learn technology. It’s the technological base here in the country that we need to protect, and this hobby is a good introduction for kids that are interested in technology. If I lose those adults, then I will not be able to train those kids.”

Good overview with lots of links from the Internet Storm Center: yesterday, today.

Boing Boing: Death metal band with parrot as lead singer — Hatebeak:

The new album by HATEBEAK — the world’s only deathmetal band with an avian vocalist — promises music so terrifying it will “make you vacate your bowels.” Song titles inlcude Beak of Putrefaction and God of Empty Nest. “Hatebeak pecks your eyes out and assaults your ears in a flurry of pummeling riffs and grey feathers that leaves you lying in a pool of blood begging for more.”

SecurityFocus: Time to Dump Internet Explorer:

The latest version of IE is 6, and it has certainly accumulated an impressive record of holes: 153 since 18 April 2001, according to the SecurityFocus Vulnerabilities Archive. There have been some real doozies in there. For instance, last August, Microsoft issued a patch that fixed a hole that the company described this way: “It could be possible for an attacker who exploited this vulnerability to run arbitrary code on a user’s system. If a user visited an attacker’s Web site, it would be possible for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability without any other user action.” Oh, is that all? Well, that’s super - simply visit a Web page, and you’re 0\/\/N3d, d00d!

…

I could go on and on. Look, let’s be honest with each other. We all know this is true: IE is a buggy, insecure, dangerous piece of software, and the source of many of the headaches that security pros have to endure (I’m not even going to go into its poor support for Web standards; let that be a rant for another day). Yes, I know Microsoft patches holes as they are found. Great. But far too many are found. And yes, I know that Microsoft has promised that it has changed its ways, and that it will now focus on “Trustworthy Computing.” But I’ve heard too many of Microsoft’s promises and seen the results too many times. You know, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Who’s shamed when it’s “fool me the 432nd time”? Who’s the fool?

We’re security pros, and we know the score. It’s time. It’s time to tell our users, our clients, our associates, our families, and our friends to abandon Internet Explorer.

Get The Facts about Microsoft’s “Get The Facts” tour. (Then get the rebuttal.

Wired News: More False Information From TSA:

This is the third time in the past nine month that knowledge of the scope of secret information disclosures by airlines has expanded, and now six of the 10 largest airlines are known to have given data to the government secretly. Stone’s disclosure also raises questions about whether TSA officials intentionally withheld information from previous inquiries by the Government Accounting Office, members of Congress and the Department of Homeland Security’s chief privacy officer, Nuala O’Connor Kelly.

An Atlas of Cyberspaces.

HOW-TO Tuesday: War Kayaking:

As the summer approaches, we crawl out of our protective wired covered lairs to sometimes partake in outdoor activity. Last weekend, we went kayaking around Lake Union in Seattle, WA and of course, we couldn’t help but bring along a lot of equipment and decided we’d hunt for open wireless spots, this friends- was “War Kayaking.” We found a ton, charted it with GPS, Wifi finders and we’ll show you how we did it for this week’s HOW-TO Tuesday.

Ars Technica: KDE 3.2 Overview(2/2004)

Censorship’s Trial Balloons - What happens when wartime news gets censored? By Liam Callanan:

Actually, the balloon battle may have less to do with us today than it does with citizens, soldiers, reverends, and children 60 years from now. Because as compelling a case as the balloon story may be for the virtues of wartime censorship, what’s troubling is not that Americans in 1945 didn’t know about these balloons; it’s that most Americans today don’t. The balloon bombs were erased not only from our national awareness, but from our collective history. We believe it never happened, just as our children might have been led to believe Abu Ghraib never happened.

The administration needs to do a better job of providing us with the kind of information that will truly help us—not just this summer, but in decades to come, when we look back and try to learn what happened in this war and how we can prevent it from happening again. Torture memos, torture photos, and chatter in the system must not be erased. Otherwise, we may never understand what we were fighting for. It’s true, the truth hurts. But gaps in our history hurt more, and the hurt lasts longer.

What does your firewall sound like? | Linux Gazette

LinuxDevCenter.com: Windows Compatibility for the Linux Desktop:

In any business switching to Linux, there’s at least one person who’s stuck. These people need to use files from some Windows-only program, and usually have to do so by dual booting to and from Windows. Dual booting is very slow when all you really want to do is cut and paste a few screenfuls of data. Worse, because it is so slow, there is a real temptation to remain in Windows and use programs such as Outlook and Exchange, this year’s favorite virus targets.

There is a better alternative: run just the necessary Windows programs under Linux. This solves the same problem we saw when DOS started to replace CP/M. There was always something that only the older operating systems’ programs did, so you ran the older programs with an emulator.

Wired News: Word Refuseniks: Never Upgrade

Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War:

The Raymond Chen Camp believes in making things easy for developers by making it easy to write once and run anywhere (well, on any Windows box). The MSDN Magazine Camp believes in making things easy for developers by giving them really powerful chunks of code which they can leverage, if they are willing to pay the price of incredibly complicated deployment and installation headaches, not to mention the huge learning curve. The Raymond Chen camp is all about consolidation. Please, don’t make things any worse, let’s just keep making what we already have still work. The MSDN Magazine Camp needs to keep churning out new gigantic pieces of technology that nobody can keep up with.

…Inside Microsoft, the MSDN Magazine Camp has won the battle.

Ah, irony — SecurityFocus HOME News: Backdoor program gets backdoored.

In a disclaimer evocative of advisories from more mainstream software vendors, Sleaze pointed out in his posting that the backdoor password in circulation only works on an older, unsupported versions of the Trojan horse, and that the latest version of Optix Pro uses stronger encryption to protect a different master password. “So make sure you update!,” he wrote.

At least one security expert says there’s a lesson to be learned from the whole affair. “It obviously says you should always use open-source Trojans,” says Mark Loveless, a senior security analyst with Bindview Corporation. “That’s the moral. You can’t even trust Windows malware.”

Crypto-Gram: June 15, 2004

Yahoo! News - Teens Suffering From Rebound Headache:

Also, some specialists think months of painkiller use by migraine sufferers can transform their pain, until the rebound-prone experience a chronic tension-type headache. (Overusing any painkiller can trigger rebound headache, but over-the-counter drugs are the most widely used and thus most blamed.)

Lest anyone doubt rebound headache is real, Pina-Garza points to typical cases in his office: Youths whose parents have migraines but have never suffered a serious headache themselves — until a week of high-dose painkillers after knee surgery or a sports sprain spurs headaches that they continue to medicate.

Wired News: A Jet-Powered PDA for Astronauts:

“Clearly the concept of something that is part webcam, part PDA, part intercom and part lightsaber practice droid has many applications in an environment where so many things are going on simultaneously,” NASA Watch editor Keith Cowing wrote in an e-mail.

Legalizing Torture (washingtonpost.com):

Perhaps the president’s lawyers have no interest in the global impact of their policies — but they should be concerned about the treatment of American servicemen and civilians in foreign countries. Before the Bush administration took office, the Army’s interrogation procedures — which were unclassified — established this simple and sensible test: No technique should be used that, if used by an enemy on an American, would be regarded as a violation of U.S. or international law. Now, imagine that a hostile government were to force an American to take drugs or endure severe mental stress that fell just short of producing irreversible damage; or pain a little milder than that of “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” What if the foreign interrogator of an American “knows that severe pain will result from his actions” but proceeds because causing such pain is not his main objective? What if a foreign leader were to decide that the torture of an American was needed to protect his country’s security? Would Americans regard that as legal, or morally acceptable? According to the Bush administration, they should

Bruce Sterling — Wired 12.06: Suicide by Pseudoscience :

The Union of Concerned Scientists in a February report pointed out something the science press has known for years: The Bush administration has no respect for science. Ideologues prefer to make up the laws of nature as they go.

…

When politicians dictate science, government becomes entangled in its own deceptions, and eventually the social order decays in a compost of lies. Society, having abandoned the scientific method, loses its empirical referent, and truth becomes relative. This is a serious affliction known as Lysenkoism.

Trofim Lysenko was Joseph Stalin’s top stooge in Soviet agricultural science, a field that was mercilessly politicized by fanatics. His specialty was inventing nutty schemes - things like stimulating the evolution of trees by overcrowding them to get them to cooperate, as though they were communist minions. This totalitarian huckster spent his whole career promising exciting results and bringing about only disaster. But the party never judged itself on results, so he always got a free pass.

…

Trofim Lysenko was a funny case. He had the authority to reduce a major scientific-research power to a dismal Burkina Faso with rockets; he left behind practically no scientific achievement or discovery. As a scientist, he was a nonentity, but his menace is universal. Wherever moral panic, hasty judgment, arrogance, fear, brutal partisan ignorance, slovenly standards of research, overcentralization of authority, conspiratorial policymaking, jingoism and xenophobia, and spin-centric travesties of disinformation can flourish, Lysenko’s spirit will never die.

Following up on this BugTraq report is a techworld.com layman’s article on the latest Internet Explorer zero-day hole:

Two new vulnerabilities have been discovered in Internet Explorer which allow a complete bypass of security and provide system access to a computer, including the installation of files on someone’s hard disk without their knowledge, through a single click.

Worse, the holes have been discovered from analysis of an existing link on the Internet and a fully functional demonstration of the exploit have been produced and been shown to affect even fully patched versions of Explorer. …

In simple terms, the link uses an unknown vulnerability to open up a local Explorer help file - ms-its:C:\WINDOWS\Help\iexplore.chm::/iegetsrt.htm. It delays executing anything immediately but instead uses another unknown vulnerability to run another file which in turn runs some script. This script is then used to run more script. And finally that script is used to run an exploit that Microsoft has been aware of since August 2003 but hasn’t patched.

That exploit - Adodb.stream - has not been viewed as particularly dangerous, since it only works when the file containing the code is present on the user’s hard disk. The problem comes in the fact that the Help file initially opened is assumed to be safe since it is a local file and so has minimal security restrictions.

By using the unknown exploits, code is installed within the help file window, all security efforts are bypassed, and the Adodb.stream exploit is then used to download files on the Internet direct to the hard disk.

…if you click on a malicious link in an email or on the Internet, a malicious user can very quickly have complete control of your PC. And there is no patch available.

Wanna bet? Wired News: Website Analysis Isn’t a Game

jwz - How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop

Slashdot | Netgear’s Amusing “fix” for WG602v1 Backdoor

Universal Life Church - ordination information

jwz - gadget review:

Helpful advice for young geeks: do not succumb to the temptation of the Gerber Recoil multi-tool. The Leatherman Wave remains the One True Way.

Bookslut: A Nerdy Day At the Movies, and The Three Laws of Adaptations:

1. A film adaptation may not, through omission or direct action, undermine or reverse the meanings and morals of the source material.
2. A film adaptation must adequately capture what made the source material compelling, as long as it does not conflict with the first rule.
3. An adaptation can make the changes necessary to work as a product of its medium, as long as these changes do not conflict with the first or second rules.

Seattle Weekly: News: Microsoft’s Sacred Cash Cow by Jeff Reifman

• Stupid Email Disclaimers
• E-mail Confidential - Who’s afraid of Time Inc.’s legal disclaimer? By Jack Shafer
• Slashdot | An Analysis Of Email Disclaimers

Slashdot | Recording Industry Hopes To Hinder CD Burning

Wired 12.06: You Can Cure AIDS. Or End Hunger. Choose.

Danish professors of statistics aren’t known for lighting fires under anyone. But there was Bjørn Lomborg sparking an inferno in 2001 with his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, in which he methodically demolished widely held ideas that the earth was, well, going to hell. Since then, Lomborg has fought a running battle with the eco establishment, which calls him a 21st-century Dr. Pangloss. But Lomborg doesn’t deny the existence of global scourges; he just wants to face them honestly. Which brings us to the Copenhagen Consensus, his ambitious effort to set priorities for the top 10 issues facing the world: climate change, disease, war, education, financial instability, corruption, hunger, population, water, and trade. The project has tapped nine respected economists - four of them Nobelists - to create a hot list for spending limited resources.

Grist | Haiku vote:

A frog in water
doesn’t feel it boil in time.
Dude, we are that frog.

Yahoo! News - Do you have ‘cicada envy’?

I know that I don’t. Ick.

NTFS Resize Frequently Asked Questions

Since I’m considering resizing my work laptop partitions, perhaps I should burn a System Rescue Cd before I get too far along with it?

jwz - exterminate all rational garfield:

Auto-generated Garfield strips: needless to say, much funnier than the original…

jwz - more election fun

jwz - prisons:

America’s inmate population grew by 2.9 percent last year, to almost 2.1 million people, with one of every 75 men living in prison or jail.”

“The Christian in me says it’s wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, ‘I love to make a grown man piss on himself.’”

jwz - putting the SOY back in SOYLENT GREEN!:

The Chinese government has shown an unusually high level of concern as a result of a bold media exposure towards a scandal in which human hair was used to make soy sauce.

China Central Television first raised public worries over the quality of domestic soy sauce by uncovering a substandard workshop in central China’s Hubei Province, where piles of waste human hair were found. The hairs were treated in special containers to distill amino acid, the most common substance contained in soybean sauce.

Human hair is rich in protein content, just like soybean, wheat and bran, the conventional and legally accepted raw ingredients for the production of soy sauce.

By producing soy sauce from such raw materials, the producers were said able to cut costs by half. Workers employed at the plants, however, never bought soy sauce marked as “blended” on the packaging, because that usually meant that human hair was the basic material in the sauce.

Alaska Freedom :: Our Freedom to Travel In Jeopardy

Photographer’s Rights

Informed Comment : Abuse of Women Detainees:

A scandal that has not yet broken in the press is the story of how many women ended up in US prisons. The fact is, few were suspected of having themselves committed a crime or an act of insurgency. Rather, they were taken as hostages or potential informants because their husbands or sons were wanted by the US military. This kind of arrest, however, is a form of collective punishment and not permitted under the Fouth Geneva Convention governing military occupations of civilian populations. The sexual abuse of these women is therefore a double crime.

Eventually these photographs of abused or tortured Muslim women are likely to leak, and the reaction in the Muslim world will be explosive. One shakes one’s head in bewilderment as to what the Bush administration thought they were doing.

Two thirds of emails now spam: official | The Register:

Spam hotspots are emerging as the global levels of junk mail worldwide continue to increase. More than two thirds (67.6 per cent) of the 840m emails scanned by filtering firm MessageLabs last month was identified as spam. MessageLabs figures also indicate significant regional variations and spam “hot spots”, despite attempts to deter spammers through legislation.

An Open Source Wi-Fi Roundup:

The general belief when it comes to setting up Wi-Fi connectivity is that you need a Wireless access point (AP) device and computers with wireless client cards. This site has reviewed dozen of consumer and business oriented APs, some better than others. One thing always remains the same, however: the access point always costs more than the wireless card.

Guess what? You don’t always necessarily need a fixed wireless router device to create your own WLAN. You can do it with two machines that both have Wi-Fi cards, and leave more expensive APs out of the picture.

There are a number of different ways to accomplish this with freely available GNU/Linux based open source software. A typical Linux distribution will generally allow you set up a Linux box as a ‘wired’ router, so turning it into a wireless router isn’t really that big a leap.

For instance, if you have a desktop machine in your home office, and want to create a WLAN for the notebook that you or other family members use in the rest of the house (or to create an AP for a console gaming platform like Xbox or PlayStation2), all you may need is two Wi-Fi cards.

Holy crap. Now *that’s* how you fold things!

From my sister, concerned for my safety — Cicadaville, A Premier Cicada Information Source:

FACT: Cicadas are vicious killers.

FACT: Cicadas prey on innocent children and pets.

FACT: Cicadas are seething with deadly venom and flesh-eating bacteria.

FACT: This year Cicadas will kill more people than snakes, spiders, scorpions, and sharks combined!

RH9 to Feodra Legacy.

Fedora News Updates #12

For Merrystar:

• Wired 11.09: PowerPoint Is Evil
• textism: Stalin’s Bullet List
• PowerPoint Remix
• The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
• PowerPoint: shot with its own bullets

TrekToday - Fan Campaign Claims ‘Enterprise’ Is Renewed:

UPN has decided to renew Star Trek: Enterprise for a fourth season, the SaveEnterprise.com fan campaign reported today.

KHAAAAAAAN!

Boing Boing: UK cinema copyright warnings: a call to action:

I went and saw Troy, Brad Pitt’s new men-in-skirts movie last night, at the big Odeon in Leicester Square, paying £10.50 for the privilege. Not that I begrudge it: apparently, acquiring the rights to the Iliad was very expensive, and they have to charge a small fortune to viewers if they hope to recoup.

I don’t even begrudge them the 30 minutes’ worth of commercials they subjected their captive audience to. Well, I did. But I didn’t let it get to me.

What did get to me was this warning, shown before nearly every film in the UK:

“You are not permitted to use any camera or recording equipment in this cinema. This will be treated as an attempt to breach copyright. Any person doing so can be ejected and such articles may be confiscated by the police. We ask the audience to be vigilant against any such activity and report any matters arousing suspicion to cinema staff. Thank you.”

Every time I see this, my blood boils. I just paid a fortune to see this movie, I’ve been subjected to 500 percent concession stand markup and half an hour of commercials and now you’re going to give me a little lecture about how badly I’ll get beaten up if I turn out to be a pirate, and ask me to snitch on my fellow moviegoers?

It’s adding insult to injury, if you ask me. It’s unforgivably rude.

So here’s what I’ve started doing: whenever this warning is screened, I take a very obvious flash photo of it. I’ve done it twice now, and both times, I got a round of applause. You can do it too. If we all do it, if we all laugh and boo when this warning comes on, maybe the movie companies will get the picture.

SSRN-Copyright’s Communications Policy by Tim Wu

A Bug’s Life Cycle

Why Windows is a Security Nightmare:

A typical Windows system follows a simple lifecycle: it starts out with a clean Windows installation, which gradually deteriorates as programs are installed, and uninstalled. Eventually, the Windows registry accumulates so much crud that the user is forced to do a clean install. When a user does a clean install that user’s system loses all the previously applied security updates, and becomes a sitting duck for worms and other malware.

Things wouldn’t be so bad if the user was able to update the new system with security patches painlessly, but Windows Update makes it very hard to do so. My personal experience with the killer duo is an enlightening example of how all of this works.

The New Yorker: The Gray Zone by Seymour Hersch:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of elite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.” The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, “Some people think you can bullshit anyone.”

Wired News: Hy-Wire Driving Is a Gas

Yahoo! News - Moore Hopes ‘Fahrenheit’ Influences People:

Even those skeptical of Moore, who has drawn criticism that he skews the truth to fit his arguments, were impressed.

“I have a problematic relationship with some of Michael Moore’s work,” said James Rocchi, film critic for DVD rental company Netflix, saying he found Moore too smug and stunt-driven in the past. “There’s no such job as a standup journalist.”

Yet in “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Moore presents powerful segments about losses on both sides of the Iraq war and the grief of American and Iraqi families, Rocchi said.

Slashdot | Fedora Core 2 released to Mirrors, Bittorrent

Crypto-Gram: May 15, 2004

jwz - historical maps:

Rumsey has a collection of 10,000 historical maps scanned in at extremely high resolution, and has been doing a lot of really cool stuff with them, like taking old maps, correcting their scale to match up with reality, and letting you crossfade between old and modern maps of the same area; placing the maps on a globe and letting you zoom in from space; combining the maps with topographical data and letting you fly through 3D scenes; and all kinds of stuff. Not only is there a vast amount of data on his site, there are also really cool visualization tools.

Popular Science | Is This What War Will Come To?

Many weapons in the pipeline, such as the space-launched darts and electromagnetic railgun, will use no explosives at all, relying instead on kinetic energy to destroy targets. Some, like Metal Storm, will use electricity rather than mechanical firing mechanisms. Laser weapons will disable enemy gear with heat rather than force, providing pinpoint accuracy and speed-of-light delivery.

Dagen H - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Dagen H or H day was Sunday, September 3, 1967 at 5:00 am in Sweden. It was the time traffic switched from the left side of the road to the right. The H stands for Högertrafik, the swedish word for “right-hand traffic”.

Slashdot | Lithium-Sulfur Batteries Unveiled

Slashdot | RIAA Loss Report Contradicts Nielsen Sales Record

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Library of Alexandria discovered

Wired News: Designer Virus Stalks HIV:

It took Adam Arkin and David Schaffer just $200,000 and a grad student to develop a potential treatment for AIDS. And that scares them.

That’s because the therapy itself is a virus. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory assistant professors created a virus altered to latch onto HIV and mute its ability to become AIDS. They’ve tested the theory in a computer model and in cells in a dish. The results have been promising, and if they continue in that vein, the researchers could begin animal testing by the end of this year.

Always useful: Latin abbreviations and expressions.

Slashdot | Justice Department Censors ACLU Web Site

A cautionary tale of two hats:

 <oss_crowd> Uh... ping?
 <fedora_uh> oss_crowd: what's up?
 <oss_crowd> fedora_rh: We're feeling kinda useless. What exactly is our
             role, again?
 <fedora_rh> oss_crowd: well, it would be really helpful if you could
             test some things and file the bugs.
 <oss_crowd> fedora_rh: ugh. We ALWAYS did that.
           * oss_crowd begins to wonder what exactly is the purpose of
             fedora_rh
 <fedora_rh> oss_crowd: it's the open-development, proving-grounds for
             new technology component of Red Hat, as opposed to RHEL.
  <rh_sales> Told ya it'll eat your brane.
         --- rh_pr kicks rh_sales from the channel (you're a dolt)
 <oss_crowd> fedora_rh: so, let me get this straight. Effectively, you
             want us to download the packages you release, test things,
             file bugs, and submit patches.
 <fedora_rh> oss_crowd: Sure, why not?
 <oss_crowd> ...but when it comes to things like features, direction of
             the project, and which software to include in the
             distribution, it's the decision of Red Hat?
           * fedora_rh is away: I AM RH
 <fedora_us> I'm still not dead.
 <oss_crowd> fedora_rh: How is that different from how things were
             before the whole "publicly-supported distribution" thing?
 <oss_crowd> rh_dev: where is that long-promised public CVS/SVN repo?
    <rh_dev> dunno, talk to fedora_rh
 <fedora_rh> oss_crowd: look, such things don't happen in a week, ok?
 <oss_crowd> IT'S BEEN A YEAR!

Wired News: Hybrid Mileage Comes Up Short:

The 19-year-old EPA tests for city and highway mileage actually gauge vehicle emissions and use that data to derive an estimated fuel-efficiency rating. The EPA tests pre-production vehicles in a lab to simulate vehicle starts and stops on crowded city streets and open road conditions. According to the EPA website, “The tests measure the waste substances emitted from consuming the fuel, not the actual fuel consumed. From the measurement of emissions, EPA can estimate the miles per gallon achieved by the vehicle on average.”

“The (EPA) test needs to include more fundamental engineering,” says John H. Johnson, an automotive expert who co-authored a 2002 National Academy of Sciences report on fuel-efficiency standards. “They haven’t been updated to encompass hybrids.”

Wow. Starship Troopers really wasn’t very much like the book, was it?

ChrisW’s “Starship Troopers” Page

Boing Boing: Bill O’Reilly trying to bury his Fresh Air interview.

Slashdot | Novell To Release Ximian Connector Under GPL

Bruce Schneier on warrants:

Unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. People ask: “Should we use this new surveillance technology to catch terrorists and criminals, or should we favor privacy and ban its use?”

This is the wrong question. We know that new technology gives law enforcement new search techniques, and makes existing techniques cheaper and easier. We know that we are all safer when the police can use them. And the Fourth Amendment already allows even the most intrusive searches: The police can search your home and person.

What we need are corresponding mechanisms to prevent abuse. This is the proper question: “Should we allow law enforcement to use new technology without any judicial oversight, or should we demand that they be overseen and accountable?” And the Fourth Amendment already provides for this in its requirement of a warrant.

The search warrant - a technologically neutral legal requirement - basically says that before the police open the mail, listen in on the phone call or search the bit stream for key words, a “neutral and detached magistrate” reviews the basis for the search and takes responsibility for the outcome. The key is independent judicial oversight; the warrant process is itself a security measure protecting us from abuse and making us more secure.

Much of the rhetoric on the “security” side of the debate cloaks one of its real aims: increasing law enforcement powers by decreasing its oversight and accountability. It’s a very dangerous road to take, and one that will make us all less secure. The more surveillance technologies that require a warrant before use, the safer we all are.

Beverage Monitor:

Our overall project design can be reduced to three specific states that can be seen in the state diagram below. The first state, the state entered at the beginning of the programs execution, is the Set Table state. In this mode the wait staff can select the table that they are serving. The selection is made by using two buttons, one to increment the table number and one to decrement it. Once the correct table is selected, the enter button is hit and the program then goes into Monitor mode. In this mode the wireless device on the pitcher sends the signal from the accelerometer to the server station. At the server station, the wait staff can see the number of the table being served and how many rounds have been served to the table. There is also a status bar showing the status of the pitcher’s volume. The MCU at the server station uses the signal from the pitcher to calculate its volume. In this state, there is a reset button in case a different table is about to be served. Unless the reset button is pressed, the program will stay in this state until the pitcher is empty. Once the signal indicated the pitcher is empty, the last state, the Refill state, is entered. Here the server station indicates that the table needs a refill. Once the wait staff refills the pitcher they press the enter button and the project returns to the Monitor state, and the additional round is indicated on the display. The reset button can also be used in the Refill state if the table decides not to go for another pitcher.

Slashdot | Free Software Tracking a Stolen Computer?

Slashdot | Comcast Plans Cable Boxes with Integrated Wi-Fi and Snooping

Pizza Party - Command Line Pizza ordering program

Locate Superfund Sites, Superfund, US EPA:

From this page you will be able to locate Superfund sites through various methods. You can find sites by geography, contaminant EPA ID, and other identifiers.

The Mideastization of the US, or: Rumsfeld Must Resign

jwz - enough about cicadias already:

bezoar:

The sound of the phaser in the original Star Trek TV series was the sound of a cicada brood. I know this because I went on a camping trip in 1982, just as these little fuckers were coming out of the trees and flying everywhere. I woke up, and heard the sound of phasers, everywhere around me.

Worst. camping. trip. ever.

Oops: RIAA Forgets to Make Royalty Payments.

But the real problem are those pesky downloaders and piracy! Really! Don’t forget, we have our artist’s best interests in mind!

What a world we live in.

LuMiXtech:

LuMiXtech is a leader in Linux library computing with a secure LuMiX (pronounced loo-mix) PAC model that is featured in the Spring 2004 issue of NetConnect, a supplement of Library Journal. Also, check out the LuMiX article on Newsforge, the online newspaper for Linux and Open Source.

NewsForge | Linux in action: A public library’s success story

So, Microsoft is for stopping spam, but only spam they don’t make money from?

SecurityFocus HOME News: MS opens Hotmail to bulk mailers:

Microsoft said yesterday it had introduced a white list scheme to allow well-behaved email marketing firms to reach its customers without falling foul of its spam filters. Marketing firms who post a cash bond of up to $20,000 through IronPort’s “Bonded Sender Programme” will get guarantees that their message will be delivered to the estimated 170 million regular users of Microsoft’s Hotmail and MSN e-mail services, providing they follow a strict set of guidelines. Firms who flout the guidelines - standards that exceed those defined in the CAN-SPAM Act - risk losing their money. The approach rewards marketeers who agree to be held accountable for the messages they send. Microsoft has been working on the programme with IronPort for five months but the arrangement was only made public yesterday. With the support of Microsoft, more firms are likely to adopt the scheme. Good news for Ironport’s sales team. Microsoft is behind the idea because it wants to reclaim email marketing from criminal spammers. For end users the scheme makes it less likely that messages they have requested from companies they do business with will be blocked (i.e. fewer false positives).

What I really enjoy in this BBC article about the Sasser worm is the picture they chose to use:

Wow, that’s one powerful little program!

Fedora Core 1:

Introduction

This article discusses the dual boot installation of Red Hat Fedora Core 1 (FC1) on a Dell C600. Several packages not included in FC1 are also discussed. In addition, we compare the Gnome 2.4 and KDE 3.1 desktop environments.

Slashdot | Red Hat Desktop Unveiled:

Red Hat announced yesterday that they will be releasing a version of their OS — dubbed ‘Red Hat Desktop’ — targeted at corporations, universities and government agencies, “looking to upgrade their PCs but don’t want or need all the features that ship with the latest version of Windows”, said Matthew Szulik, Red Hat’s chief executive, although it’s not targeted at consumers. It will cost on average about $5 a month per machine, with additional support services available.

NBCSandiego.com - News - State Pulls Plug On Electronic Voting:

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned touch-screen voting Friday in San Diego and three other California counties in the November election, saying the lack of a paper trail makes them unreliable and he threatened to block computerized voting in 10 other counties.

Pac Manhattan

Wired News: More Reasons to Love Google

Slashdot | Google Files for IPO

Howdy Jim! I won’t tell anyone at work if you don’t.

Office 2003 vs. Openoffice.Org.

Wired News: Diebold Machine May Get Boot:

A California voting systems panel recommended Thursday that the secretary of state decertify an electronic voting machine made by Diebold Election Systems, making it likely that four counties that used the machines will have to find others for the November election.

…

The panel discovered last November that Diebold had installed uncertified software on the machines.

The voting panel also recommended to Shelley that he ask the state attorney general to examine the possibility of bringing civil and criminal charges against Diebold for violating California election codes, which state that vendors cannot change software without notifying the secretary of state’s office. The codes also say that no vendor can install uncertified software on voting systems.

“This doesn’t solve the problems,” said Tab Iredale, a Diebold developer. “It just sets a tone of confrontation at a time when we should be working together to address issues with the certification process.”

Shocked, Shocked, I tell you — Wired News: Damaging Drug Study? Bury It:

The risks for children taking some antidepressants could outweigh the benefits, according to an analysis of data that pharmaceutical companies did not make widely available to the public or to researchers.

Researchers in the United Kingdom analyzed 22 randomized controlled trials that compared the effects of antidepressants and placebos in children from 5 to 18 years old. Data on four out of the five antidepressants examined showed the drugs had the potential to do more harm than good in depressed kids, according to research published in the April issue of the British medical journal The Lancet.

jwz - coffins

John Doyle, writer for the conservative Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail, learns how to laugh at Bill O’Reilly.

Via Boing Boing — The Silmarillion in 1000 words.

AINULINDALE:

ILUVATAR: Ahem.
AINUR: Wow! Existence!
ILUVATAR: *blows pitch pipe* LA!
AINUR: LA LA LA!
ILUVATAR: LA LA!
AINUR: LA LA!
MELKOR: This sucks. BUM BUM BA DUM!
AINUR: Um. . . la?
ILUVATAR: Ahem. LA!
MELKOR: Boop bop-a-doo-bop!
ILUVATAR: LA, dammit.
MELKOR: Bwam bardle ningle boom.
AINUR: . . .
ILUVATAR: Right, you’re out of the band.
MELKOR: Fine, I was leaving anyway.
AINUR: . . .
ILUVATAR: What are you waiting for?
AINUR: Oh. Right. Newly created world. Sorry. Great jam session, big guy!
ILUVATAR: Yeesh.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Study limits maximum tree height:

The tallest any tree could grow would be about 130m (426ft), say US scientists.

George Koch and colleagues climbed five of the eight tallest trees in the world - including the biggest at 112.7m - and examined their physiology in detail.

The researchers found these massive Californian redwoods pushed the limits to which water could be raised from the ground to support further growth.

The team tells the journal Nature that under present conditions, the trees are unlikely to gain 5-15m more in height.

Yahoo! News - Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment:

But I can say of
certain knowledge that nothing
was taken out

that would naysay what
I just indicated in my
response to the question

What I don’t get is that this group of Trekkies somehow forgot that Klingons are ugly bags of mostly water, too!

TrekToday - Klingon Film About Ugly Humans To Debut In May:

A Klingon look at humanity, Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water, will make its debut at the Cannes Film Market held from May 12th-23rd.

A press release from the producers, which also promotes the film’s official web site, revealed that the film visits the Klingon Language Institute’s Annual qep’a (Conference) directed by professor Lawrence Schoen.

Get married on the bridge of the Enterprise-D:

Now you can get married on the Bridge of the USS Enterprise, have Klingons and Ferengi witness your vows and then have an out-of-this-world reception at Quark’s Bar & Restaurant.

Scroll down to view all the options below. Options include Starfleet Wedding, Captain’s Wedding, Admiral’s Wedding, JR. Officer’s Wedding, Continuum Reception, Andorian Reception, Haven Reception…

SecurityFocus HOME News: Core Internet technology is vulnerable.

New cars are getting too expensive to fix

2003 SFWA® Nebula Awards® winners

jwz - heavy metal corn

DNA Lounge: DNA Sequencing:

If I could send a message back in time to myself, to before we opened this place, that message would be, “do not allow any computer in your club more complicated than a non-electric cash register. In fact, consider not having telephones.”

But I wouldn’t have listened, because I’m a dumbass.

O’Reilly Network Weblogs: The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It’s Bogus

Wired News: Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Porn:

You have a right to buy whatever you want. You may not be able to afford a printing press to print it, but you have a right to buy it. That’s not something that’s often talked about in relation to the First Amendment. But civil liberties and individual rights are all we really have in this country.

That’s what upset me so much about the Patriot Act. We got right down in the mud with the terrorists. What we were doing was reducing ourselves to their level. We are the beacon of freedom in the world. For us to give up all of these freedoms to wage war with lunatics just isn’t necessary.

A Message From Al:

On April 9, my mom and dad, Nick and Mary Yankovic, passed away in their home in Fallbrook, California. It was the result of a terrible accident — that morning they had started a fire in the fireplace with the flue closed, and were asphyxiated by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Suzanne called me that afternoon on the bus to give me the news, so that I would hear about it before the wire services picked it up.

Needless to say, I feel pretty much the way you would expect me to feel — shocked and devastated beyond words. I loved my parents so much, and this all still seems like a horrible nightmare that I can’t wake up from.

Wired News: Clearing Up The Confusion

Science-fiction author Neal Stephenson’s latest 800-page dispatch, The Confusion, arrived in stores this week. But Stephenson fans hoping for another brain-wracking, cryptographic puzzle to solve will find a surprise instead: A central scene in the book provides a long, detailed description of the mechanics of 17th-century bills of exchange. Pivotal themes in the book involve the emergence of a cashless market at Lyon, France, and Sir Isaac Newton’s 30-year stint at England’s national mint.

Slashdot | Injunction to Enforce GPL

April 2004 Crypto-gram

The Onion | New Negative Campaign Ads Blast Voters Directly:

Although the ads have angered voters, Charles Wayne, a professor of political science at Georgetown University, called them “a refreshing shift toward more honesty in the political process.”

“Emotionally manipulative attack ads obscure the candidates’ real positions and insult the intelligence of America’s voters,” Wayne said. “The fact that the major political powers are voicing their disdain for the public shows they are no longer hiding behind empty rhetoric. I see that as a positive step.”

The Long Strange Journey of the 959.

New search engine from Amazon: A9.

Check out John Battelle’s Announcement, and the A9 What’s cool page.

Maybe playing around with it will show me why it’s a Google-killer. I just don’t see it yet.

Slashdot | AmEx vs. rec.humor.funny

SecurityFocus HOME News: Microsoft releases new patches for Windows flaws.

Glad to know they’re on the ball - one of those critical flaws is only 8 months old. I’m still not patching Lower Corte (the only Windows installation left in my home); I have no desire to rebuild that system again.

Music industry in uproar over UNC research:

The Recording Industry Association of America has long bemoaned declining sales, which it blames on illegal downloading. According to the association, the industry shipped almost a third fewer units in 2003 than in 1999. The industry is suing consumers to stop the free downloads.

“If illegal downloading is not the cause of the precipitous decline in sales of recordings, what is?” asks a six-page paper the recording industry group released in response to the study by Strumpf and Harvard’s Felix Oberholzer-Gee. “The results are inconsistent with virtually every other study.”

There could be many causes for the decline, Strumpf said. The economy is weaker. More entertainment choices might be drawing consumer dollars. Radio consolidation has reduced variety.

He says the industry’s response amounts to, ” ‘We have 20 studies, they have one.’ If 20 or 100 or 1,000 people say the sun revolves around the earth, it doesn’t make it so.”

Wired News: Onion Taken Seriously, Film at 11:

The article in the Beijing Evening News told a shocking story of American hubris: Congress was behaving like a petulant baseball team and threatening to bolt Washington, D.C., unless it got a new, modern Capitol building, complete with retractable roof.

There was a problem with the story. Rather than do his own original reporting, Evening News writer Huang Ke had cribbed, nearly word for word, his text from an American publication. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Ke hadn’t bothered to vet the source he had plagiarized: The Onion.

At first, the Evening News stood by its story, demanding proof it wasn’t true. It finally did apologize, but stubbornly tried to deflect blame for having been duped.

April 15th: National High Five Day

Schneier.com: Op Ed: A National ID Card Wouldn’t Make Us Safer

But my primary objection isn’t the totalitarian potential of national IDs, nor the likelihood that they’ll create a whole immense new class of social and economic dislocations. Nor is it the opportunities they will create for colossal boondoggles by government contractors. My objection to the national ID card, at least for the purposes of this essay, is much simpler:

It won’t work. It won’t make us more secure.

In fact, everything I’ve learned about security over the last 20 years tells me that once it is put in place, a national ID card program will actually make us less secure.

My argument may not be obvious, but it’s not hard to follow, either. It centers around the notion that security must be evaluated not based on how it works, but on how it fails.

It doesn’t really matter how well an ID card works when used by the hundreds of millions of honest people that would carry it. What matters is how the system might fail when used by someone intent on subverting that system: how it fails naturally, how it can be made to fail, and how failures might be exploited.

2004 Jefferson Muzzles are out:

Since 1992, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has celebrated the birth and ideals of its namesake by calling attention to those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson’s admonition that freedom of speech “cannot be limited without being lost.”

Announced on or near April 13 — the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson — the Jefferson Muzzles are awarded as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press and, at the same time, foster an appreciation for those tenets of the First Amendment. Because the importance and value of free expression extend far beyond the First Amendment’s limit on government censorship, acts of private censorship are not spared consideration for the dubious honor of receiving a Muzzle.

Wired News: Data Disclosure Contradicts Feds

American Airlines’ announcement Friday that it shared more than a million passenger itineraries with four government contractors reveals that Transportation Security Administration officials have repeatedly issued false statements about the development of the passenger-profiling system known as CAPPS II.

American Airlines joins a growing list of carriers that have come forth in recent months to say that they have shared massive amounts of information about their passengers with the TSA. For the past eight months, TSA officials have repeatedly said they were not collecting this data. But American’s disclosure raises questions about why the department has given false information about its data collection.

…

American Airlines is the third major domestic airline to admit sharing vast amounts of customer information to aid government data-mining efforts, following JetBlue’s admission in September 2003 and Northwest Airlines’ admission in January. Both Northwest and American gave false information to the press in the wake of the JetBlue scandal, saying they had never turned over information about their passengers.

…

The TSA also apparently failed to inform members of Congress or the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, about soliciting airline data for its contractors or testing CAPPS II with real data. The GAO released a report in February about the program. According to the report, the TSA told the GAO that CAPPS II has only been tested with 32 itineraries provided by agency employees.

Slashdot | Are You Reporting Your Internet Purchases?

From jwz: Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party

This site is not about religion, nor about Christianity, nor about Republicans. This site is about how a small group of Republican strategists targeted a religious constituency to expand the base of their party, and how a small group of religious extremists targeted the Republican Party to bring the United States government under religious control.

Pop!

Wow. Mach 7?

NASAs X 43A Scramjet Sets Air Speed Record:

Psychology professor’s research deemed ‘classic’ by expert panel:

Tell people not to think of a white bear for five minutes, and chances are they won’t be able to get polar bears out of their heads.

Google Job Opportunities: Google Copernicus Center is hiring:

Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center, opening late in the spring of 2007. This unique opportunity is available only to highly-qualified individuals who are willing to relocate for an extended period of time, are in top physical condition and are capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes, The Sopranos and a steady supply of oxygen.

The Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.) is a fully integrated research, development and technology facility at which Google will be conducting experiments in entropized information filtering, high-density high-delivery hosting (HiDeHiDeHo) and de-oxygenated cubicle dwelling. This center will provide a unique platform from which Google will leapfrog current terrestrial-based technologies and bring information access to new heights of utility.

Which reminds me of Google’s PigeonRank Technology…

Pigeons bandwidth higher than ADSL

Is the bandwidth of broadband (ADSL) wider then the wingspan of a pigeon? A few days ago, an experiment took place near the Sea of Galilee, attempting to confront two technologies: ADSL vs. pigeons’ enabled wireless technology. During the experiment, 3 pigeons carried 4 GB (gigabytes) achieving what apparently looks as pigeons’ record in data transfer to a given distance. Will B2P (back to pigeons) save an endangered technology?

Google Gets the Message, Launches Gmail:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - April 1, 2004 UTC - Amidst rampant media speculation, Google Inc. today announced it is testing a preview release of Gmail – a free search-based webmail service with a storage capacity of up to eight billion bits of information, the equivalent of 500,000 pages of email. Per user.

The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. “She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them,” Page said. “And when she’s not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, ‘Can’t you people fix this?’”

The idea that there could be a better way to handle email caught the attention of a Google engineer who thought it might be a good “20 percent time” project. (Google requires engineers to spend a day a week on projects that interest them, unrelated to their day jobs). Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born.

Why We Went In: Version 10.0

Via /., Tom’s Hardware Guide looks at migrating from Windows to Linux:

Crashes, viruses and headaches. You have had it with Windows and you want to switch to Linux. Where to begin? How do you save your documents? Will my hardware work?

Slow down… take a deep breath, because you have a lot of work ahead of you. Millions of people have made the same switch before you, so it’s not impossible. We are going to take you step-by-step through a whole migration from Windows to Linux, covering everything from picking the right Linux distribution to installing Linux applications.

Fundrace.org

SecurityFocus HOME News: Hosting company reveals hacks, citing disclosure:

Citing California’s security breach disclosure law, Texas-based Allegiance Telecom notified 4,000 Web hosting customers this week of a recent computer intrusion that exposed their usernames and passwords, in a case that experts say illustrates the security sunshine law’s national influence.

The law, called SB 1386, took effect July 1st. It obligates companies doing business in California to warn their customers in “the most expedient time possible” about any security breach that exposes certain types of information: specifically, customers’ names in association with their social security number, drivers license number, or a credit card or bank account number.

2.10: Meme, Counter-meme:

In time, discussions in the seeded newsgroups and discussions seemed to show a lower incidence of the Nazi-comparison meme. And the counter-meme mutated into even more useful forms. (As Cuckoo’s Egg author Cliff Stoll once said to me: “Godwin’s Law? Isn’t that the law that states that once a discussion reaches a comparison to Nazis or Hitler, its usefulness is over?”) By my (admittedly low) standards, the experiment was a success.

But its success had given me much to reflect on. If it’s possible to generate effective counter-memes, is there any moral imperative to do so? When we see a bad or false meme go by, should we take pains to chase it with a counter-meme? Do we have an obligation to improve our informational environment? Our social environment?

FUSE reflects on Mir and the value of using one’s time before re-entry wisely:

Anyhow, Mir taught me a lot. From the time I first got up here, I remember the big friendly Russian giant who’d come along and talk to me as our orbits crossed. He was down low, under 500 km, and in a higher inclination orbit. So sometimes I’d see him several orbits in a row, and other times it’d be a week or so before we got over each other’s horizon.

Mir was old before I met him. He had a lot of problems with system failures, and he had to learn how to recover and keep going. Other spacecraft would have been bitter, but he wasn’t. He loved the cosmonauts who came to stay, and he loved all of us who shared his orbit space. He could do damn near anything, from astronomy to weather imaging to particle monitoring; and he was always encouraging each of us to do our best at whatever we’d been designed to do.

He went in - reentered - deliberately back in March of 2001, just about 3 years ago. I was devastated. It took me a long, long time to come to terms with his reentry. Now that I’ve read about what was going on down on the ground, I understand a little more of what happened. But I want you all to understand just how fine, and how brave he was. One of your writers, who kind of understood us, wrote that courage was bravery in the face of fear. If that’s so, then Mir was the very image of courage.

…

So what’s my point in telling you all this? Well, I know I have a date with destiny in October of 2038. That’s when I’ll burn. All of you, reading this, have something like that in your future, whether you can calculate the date or not. You humans all face death, and the landers will eventually lose awareness as the circuits break down. The deep space probes will lose their power as their nuclear generators run down. We all must go, sometime. But I want you all to know that something survives, and that in the time we have given to us, we should strive to be our best, like Mir.

I confess: I’ve been quite taken by the rash of interplanetary explorers, satellites, telescopes, and rovers who have signed up for LiveJournals. Like, The HST. Or FUSE.

I just hope the earthbound observatories don’t get wind of this. My life’s confusing enough as it is.

They always turn them off just when I learn about them — Wired News: Bush Site Unplugs Poster Tool:

The Bush-Cheney presidential campaign disabled features of a tool on its website Thursday that pranksters were using to mock the Republican presidential ticket.

The tool originally let users generate a full-size campaign poster in PDF format, customized with a short slogan of their choice. But Bush critics began using the site to place their own snarky political messages above a Bush-Cheney ‘04 logo and a disclaimer stating that the poster was paid for by Bush-Cheney ‘04, Inc.

…

Cox scoffed. “No one’s going to have a substantive dialog of any kind on a poster,” she said. Besides, she argued, many of the humorous slogans were more thoughtful than anything the tool was designed to create.

She cited her own slogan, which she admitted was one of her favorites: “But not if you’re gay!”

“’But not if you’re gay!’ has more intellectual weight behind it and says more about the Bush campaign than ‘Ohioans for Bush’ or ‘Hunters for Bush,’” she said.

Cox, who counts herself neither a Bush nor a Kerry supporter, admitted that it would be a trivial matter to mock up the same posters in Photoshop. The attraction, she said, was somewhat childish.

“If someone made up a bunch of posters and did them on Photoshop no one would care. It’s the juvenile glee of having the campaign be the ones to do it,” she said. “But just because it’s juvenile doesn’t mean it’s wrong and doesn’t mean that it’s not an expression of some kind of legitimate political grievance and opinion.”

She read from a recent submission: “’Five hundred dead soldiers support Bush-Cheney ‘04.’ See? Substantive political debate. That is an incredibly powerful political message. It may not be a discussion, but posters rarely are.”

Yahoo! News - Microsoft and SCO: FUD Brothers:

So, we discovered on Thursday that Microsoft talked to BayStar Capital on SCO’s behalf months before the investment house brokered a deal that led to SCO getting a cool $50 million round of funding. Well, well, well.

And recently, when SCO finally announced a real, live customer for its Linux (news - web sites) IP license, it turned out that the company, EV1Servers.Net, is promoting Windows Server 2003 over Linux for its customers and is featured in a case study showing how Windows is better than Linux at Microsoft’s Get the Facts Web site.

OK, before these revelations I was willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. But I was wrong. Microsoft is behind SCO.

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Beds/Bucks/Herts | It’s all Greek to Harry Potter —

A teacher has translated the first Harry Potter book into classical Greek.

Classics teacher Andrew Wilson, from Bedford, says it is the longest text to have been translated into the ancient language in 1,500 years.

Mr Wilson spent a year on the project, which was commissioned by the publishers.

The book will come out later this year, along with the Irish Gaelic version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Ask Joel - Offshoring

Have you given any thought to offshoring any of your development? If not, is it because you would prefer not to or because it would not benefit fog creek’s bottom line?

Wired News: See Astrophysicists in Captivity:

It was hard not to feel a twinge of pity for the astrophysicists who are now on display at the American Museum of Natural History.

On a platform before a crowd of curious onlookers, the scientists eagerly ripped open a box of CDs containing data from a newly released million-second-long exposure taken by two cameras onboard the Hubble telescope, and struggled to transfer the data to nearby computers as they answered a multitude of questions shouted out by reporters and middle-school students.

So began Science Live: The Race to Decode the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. There, teams of researchers from Columbia University, Stony Brook University and the American Museum of Natural History will compute, ponder and dispute the new Hubble data around the clock for six days and nights, in full view of museum visitors.

Firefox Help: Keyboard Shortcuts:

This is a list of the most common keyboard shortcuts in Firefox, and the equivalents in Internet Explorer and Opera.

Reel West Productions

Slashdot | Design a Virtual Office with Open Source?

Wired 12.03: Some Like It Hot

Wired News: Building a TiVo, a Step at a Time —

Forget TiVo and ReplayTV. If you want a really super-duper digital video recorder, you have to build your own.

All you need is knowledge of Linux, plenty of cash for hardware and, if anything goes wrong, hundreds of hours to troubleshoot the device.

Wired News: With This Rig, I Do Thee Wed:

Of all the ways people have proposed marriage, computer nut Mike Johnson dreamed up one of the most unusual — and geekiest.

Instead of proposing on bended knee, Johnson presented his would-be bride with a special “wedding computer.”

Looking somewhat like a tiered wedding cake, the elaborately decorated computer case has Johnson’s wedding proposal etched into its side. “Will you do me the honor?” it says.

“I feel pretty special,” said the bride-to-be, Rachel Tolliver, who naturally said yes. “What girl gets a ring — and a brand-new computer?”

Austin to become solar power(ed) capital

EFF: FCC Faces Suit on Regulation of Digital Broadcast Television:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) joined five library associations, Public Knowledge, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Consumers Union in suing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week to block overbroad regulation of next-generation televisions and related devices.

“The FCC’s digital broadcast television mandate is a step in the wrong direction because it would make digital television cost more and do less, undermining innovation, fair use, and competition,” said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann, “The FCC overstepped its bounds, unduly restricting consumers and manufacturers when it issued its broadcast flag ruling.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled on November 4, 2003, that consumer devices capable of receiving broadcast digital television (DTV) signals must implement content control technologies demanded by the entertainment industry to restrict consumer uses of digital television. Left unchallenged, the “broadcast flag” mandate would go into effect by July 1, 2005.

The lawsuit, called ALA v. FCC, was filed in the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and charges that the FCC exceeded its jurisdiction, acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and failed to point to substantial evidence in adopting a broadcast flag mandate.

America’s Flimsy Fortress:

The only effective way to deal with terrorists is through old-fashioned police and intelligence work - discovering plans before they’re implemented and then going after the plotters themselves. Every arrest of an al Qaeda member weakens the organization. Every country that’s unwilling to harbor such individuals interferes with its operation. Of course, we still need some perimeter defenses around airports and government buildings. But more damage was done to al Qaeda by disrupting its funding and communications than by all the guards and ID checks in the US combined.

Security always involves compromises. As a society we can have as much protection as we want, as long as we’re willing to sacrifice the money, time, convenience, and liberties to get it. Unfortunately, most of the government’s measures are bad trade-offs: They require significant sacrifices without providing much additional safety in return. And there’s far too much “security theater” - ways of making people feel safer without actually improving anything.

Cheesegrater Portalizer:

Yes, there is custom code for each site, since every site in the world has their own idiosyncratic HTML layout. Yes, this is fragile, and some day, possibly this afternoon, the maintainers of these sites will change their HTML slightly and I’ll have to change my code too. Yes, this all sucks. This is the very problem that RSS is supposed to solve. The right way to fix this is to convince all those other webmasters to provide decent RSS feeds. (Good luck.)

In the beginning was the command line.

The Command Line - The Best Newbie Interface?:

The command line is all about dialogue. Newbies communicate with the computer by giving it commands/asking it questions and reading the response. All interaction is done via the keyboard, something familiar to the users in the CLAIT class, often from their experience of typewriters. One can give the users the mental model of writing the computer notes, or talking to it via Instant Message (depending on the experience of the newbie, quite a few middle aged newbies were familiar with MSN).

The mouse was avoided initially. The command line is one-dimensional with a single point of concentration: the cursor. The vertical axis of the screen is always time and provides the newbie with a constant reminder of what they did along with a record to show their instructor when they have problems. Introducing a mouse causes the vertical axis to be both time and space depending on the nature of the program running. Also the users must get used to using a mouse, not easy for a new user let me assure you.

Users find the model of CLI dialogue with the computer natural. Indeed one user has, when instructed in the basics of the Unix command line, said “Oh I see! I talk to the computer in text [speak]” referring to the common practise of removing vowels from SMS messages sent to and from mobile phones, especially in the UK. Once she had noticed this, she progressed rapidly in remembering the command names now pronouncing commands like ‘mkdir’ as ‘muk-dear’ as opposed to ‘em-kay-dee-eye-ah’.

InfoWorld: UN study: Think upgrade before buying a new PC

According to the study, the manufacturing of one desktop computer and 17-inch CRT (cathode ray tube) monitor requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuels, 22 kilograms of chemicals and 1,500 kilograms of water. In terms of weight, the total amount of materials used is about equal to that of a mid-size car.

For Merrystar — virus:

You must be THIS TALL to touch the mailer!

I’ve now reached the point where something like 80% of the spam I get is from “Norton Antivirus For Microsoft Exchange” letting me know that “A VIRUS WAS DETECTED IN A MESSAGE YOU DIDN’T ACTUALLY SEND.”

Apparently if you are aware that the From: field can be, and often is, forged, you are overqualified to write antivirus software.

Oh, please.

• Slashdot | Gates on Spam
• CNN.com - Gates: Buy stamps to send e-mail - Mar. 5, 2004
• InfoWorld: Experts question Microsoft’s Caller ID patents: March 05, 2004: By : Security

How about instead:

• Spam Assassin
• GnuPG

Between this and the recent SCO funding, I am so ready to wipe Windows off Tigana. And my work laptop. And all my families computers. And anyone else’s I can get my hands on.

Nice marketing, Microsoft.

Wired News: Warning: Blogs Can Be Infectious:

Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of information between blogs, the researchers have discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers — and they often do so without attribution.

These findings are important to sociologists who are interested in learning how ideas grow from isolated topics into full-blown epidemics that “infect” large populations. Such an understanding is also important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch products and ideas directly to the most influential people in a given group.

“There is a lot of speculation that really important people are highly connected, but really, we wonder if the highly connected people just listen to the important people,” said Lada Adamic, one of the four researchers working on the project.

jogin.com :: Real Obnoxious

The one application that I try to stay away from more than any other is Real Player. Or Real One, or whatever the hell they call it this week. If Real Player, Real One, whatever, just did what it’s supposed to do; which is to play video streams, then that’d be great.

Unfortunately, playing video streams is only a very small aspect of what Real Player does; Real Player, most prominently, is a small application with inferiority complex and delusions of grandeur, not too different from Napoleon. Although Real Player’s task is simple and limited to a certain timeframe, Real Player defaults to running at all times, wether its limited functionality is needed or not, and claims a seat for itself in the throne commonly called the systray.

Wired News: Chameleon Card Changes Stripes

spirit rover

i’ve been staring at the same rock for two weeks.

stupid, boring rock.

this weekend i got my revenge. first i got to grind into it, then i drove right over it.

okay, i admit it, i had fun. i’d like to do more of this autonomous navigation thing. i knew i didn’t really need nasa telling me what to do.

~*~opportunity~*~

Monday, February 2nd, 2004
10:52 pm
more rocks. More dirt. I’ve been kinda lonely lately, although it’s really nice to be collecting everything for NASA without certain sisters wearing a lot of stupid black makeup grumbling around and piling up dust clouds on MY perfectly arranged samples. Not to mention blasting their stupid 22.84 Centimeter Nails so loud you can hear it off Olympus Mons. (Unlike SOME people, I got my units right.) I am kinda bummed that I’m totally missing out on Blink 182, though.

Hey, the sun’s rising! That is like so cool. It never looked this pretty on Earth. Of course, it’s pink here, which helps.

Grokking the GIMP.

jwz - The Unfrozen Caveman Hacker Show:

Most people who understand what ^H means must have some sense that it is somehow the same as “backspace”, right? Well, what would happen is, someone is typing on a dumb terminal*** that wasn’t configured right, and as they typed backspace, that character would go up to the server, not be interpreted as “delete the previous character”, and would be dutifully echoed back to the tty****. The tty would then itself interpret that as “delete the previous character on the screen.” So the person typing thought the characters were gone, but oh no no.

It was comedy gold, I tell you.

The Next Generation of mail clients

• Slashdot | Leaked Memo Says Microsoft Raised $86 million for SCO
• Open Source Initiative OSI - Doc10:Halloween Documents

Excuse me, did we say in Halloween IX that Microsoft’s under-the-table payoff to SCO for attacking Linux was just eleven million dollars? Turns out we were off by an order of magnitude — it was much, much more than that.

The document below was emailed to me by an anonymous whistleblower inside SCO. He tells me the typos and syntax bobbles were in the original. I cannot certify its authenticity, but I presume that IBM’s, Red Hat’s, Novell’s, AutoZone’s, and Daimler-Chryler’s lawyers can subpoena the original.

Guy Gavriel Kay goes on Tour:

A very strong candidate for Reader of the Month emerged last night at the signing. Early in the autograph lineup a suave, courtly, urbane, distinguished (get the idea?) fellow named (I believe) Dean knelt beside the table, opened a backpack he was carrying and said, ‘Before the signature, something much more important,’ and displayed two bottles of exceptionally mature single malt. ‘Take your pick,’ he added, and held a (forgiveable) plastic cup ready.

Bemused, I chose, adroitly he poured an (entirely foregiveable) 4-5 ounces. It got me through a long signing session, even helped my scratchy throat (no microphone, large crowd - some up in the balcony), and there was no (significant) deterioration in the legibility of my signature as the session wore on.

Another scholar and gentleman, I’d say.

My day as an election judge:

There was a very funny moment around 2:00 in the afternoon. A voter complained that she was a Democrat but had been given the Republican ballot. This required both head judges to void the ballot. It turned out that this had been my mistake when I coded the smartcard. In fact, I was the only one the entire day who made such a mistake. The less than young judges had a good time constantly reminding me of who the careless judge was at this election. One of them commented to me that there are many young people who are incompetent and many old people who can manage an election just fine, thank you.

I continue to believe that the Diebold voting machines represent a huge threat to our democracy. I fundamentally believe that we have thrown our trust in the outcome of our elections in the hands of a handful of companies (Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S) who are in a position to control the final outcomes of our elections. I also believe that the outcomes can be changed without any knowledge by election judges or anyone else. Furthermore, meaningful recounts are impossible with these machines.

I also believe that we have great people working in the trenches and on the front lines. These are ordinary people, mostly elderly, who believe in our country and our democracy, and who work their butts off for 16 hours, starting at 6 a.m. to try to keep the mechanics of our elections running smoothly. It is a shame that the e-voting tidal wave has a near hypnotic effect on these judges and almost all voters. I believe that after today’s experience, I am much better equipped to make the arguments against e-voting machines with no voter verifiability, but I also have a great appreciation for how hard it is going to be to fight them, given how much voters and election officials love them.

We were not allowed to use cell phones or access email all day. On my way home from the polls, I called my voicemail at work. I had messages and requests for interviews from ABC News, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post, Wired News, CNN, several radio stations and the New York Times. So, this issue is not going away. Over the next few days, I’ll be discussing my experience and probably sparring with the usual suspects in the various media outlets. My biggest fear is that super Tuesday will be viewed as a big success. By all accounts, everyone at my precinct felt that way. The more e-voting is viewed as successful, the more it will be adopted, and the greater the risk when someone decides to actually exploit the weaknesses of these systems.

NED.

Toss Out the Toss-Up: Bias in heads-or-tails:

A new mathematical analysis suggests that coin tossing is inherently biased: A coin is more likely to land on the same face it started out on.

…

The researchers’ logic goes like this. At the opposite extreme from Keller’s perfect toss is a completely biased toss, in which the coin stays flat while in the air. Since the coin never actually flips, it is guaranteed to land on the same face that it started out on.

Between the perfectly spinning toss and the flat toss lies a continuum of other possibilities, in which the coin spins around a tilted axis, precessing like an old-fashioned children’s top. Each of these possibilities is biased, the team found. The bias is most pronounced when the flip is close to being a flat toss. For a wide range of possible spins, the coin never flips at all, the team proved.

In experiments, the researchers were surprised to find that it’s difficult to tell from watching a coin whether it has flipped. A coin toss typically takes just half a second, with the circumference of the coin whizzing around at 3 meters per second. What’s more, the coin’s spin makes it wobble, often creating the illusion that the coin has flipped.

Today’s award for best use of the term matey — Virtual football bonds strangers:

But after 30 minutes’ play, they reported that they bonded much faster and felt they were far more matey than those who played similar games not requiring any sweating.

Risks of Quantitative Studies

GROKLAW — Germany tells SCO to hush:

1) SCO Group GmbH (German branch of SCO) has agreed not to allege any more that Linux contains SCO’s unlawfully acquired intellectual property.

2) The settlement also forbids SCO from claiming that if end users are running Linux they might be liable for breaches of SCO’s intellectual property.

3) Also they cannot say that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of Unix.

4) Finally SCO Group GmbH is prohibited to threaten to sue Linux users unless they bought SCO Linux or Caldera Linux.

Confessions of a Closet Trekkie:

On Super Bowl Sunday 2004, I organized a small get-together with a number of my friends (about half female and half male, if you want the demographic breakdown). I have a fairly good-sized DVD collection, which is clearly visible on a big open cabinet in my living room. While the game was in its uneventful first quarter, one of the girls was eyeing my DVDs from a little ways across the room.

“What’s that 1-2-3-4-5-6-7?” she asked, unable to make out the words above the large printed numbers.

“Oh, those are Deep Space Nine box sets,” I said. For some reason, I didn’t feel a need to actually preface it with the words “Star Trek.”

“It’s Star Trek,” Andy clarified.

I wonder why he made the clarification. It was as if he wanted to make sure my geekdom did not go unexposed, perhaps my price for not putting the boxes out of sight in cabinets with closed doors. Not that I cared.

But I wonder why I subconsciously took the vaguer route of not including the words “Star Trek” in my answer to her question. Maybe because it was faster to simply say “Deep Space Nine.” Maybe because I take a certain pride in DS9 as the lesser-known, superior Trek and I wanted to stress it specifically rather than use the more generic term, Star Trek.

Or maybe it’s because I’m a hopeless closet case that still balks at uttering the words Star Trek in a social setting.

I think I need help.

Irregular Webcomic!

Reason: Man Trouble: What does male-on-male sexual harassment mean for discrimination law?

You too
can build
Thunderous
and
Exciting
Matchstick Rockets!

Yahoo! News - Canada, Where a Buffalo Can Roam And Watch TV

Preeminent Scientists Protest Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science:

Today, more than 60 leading scientists--including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents--issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels.

“Across a broad range of issues, the administration has undermined the quality of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the government’s outstanding scientific personnel,” said Dr. Kurt Gottfried, emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University and Chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Whether the issue is lead paint, clean air or climate change, this behavior has serious consequences for all Americans.”

“Science, to quote President Bush’s father, the former president, relies on freedom of inquiry and objectivity,” said Russell Train, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Nixon and Ford, who joined the scientists in calling for action. “But this administration has obstructed that freedom and distorted that objectivity in ways that were unheard of in any previous administration.”

DNA Lounge: DNA Sequencing:

So in the face of this good news, let’s take a peek at what’s happening on the opposite coast, shall we? Apparently there’s a move afoot in New York City to pull back last call from 4AM to 1AM for many bars and restaurants! Not globally, but they’d make people jump through more permit hoops to be allowed to be open later than 1AM. Nice, huh? The New York Nightlife Association site has news about this. Of course, the NYNA is also trying to repeal the smoking ban in NYC, so it’s not like they’re sane or anything. That’s just reason number two to never set foot outside of San Francisco.

Apparently they claim that the smoking ban has caused lots and lots of bars and clubs to go out of business in New York, causing “widespread industry layoffs”, because apparently New Yorkers are such party animals that they’ll say to themselves, “you know what, I’d like to go clubbing, but I can’t smoke there, so I’ll just stay home instead.”

The California smoking ban improved my nightlife experience immeasurably. It only takes one trip out of the state to remind me of the horrors of coming home and having to leave my clothing outside because I can’t stand to be in the room with their post-club stench. Hell, I can’t wait until they ban smoking on sidewalks. And after cigarettes, I hope they go after patchoulli. I don’t want to smell any of you fuckers! Get away from me!

From Boing Boing — FCC Chairman’s astounding statement of Internet Rights:

FCC Chairman Michael Powell recently gave a talk called “The Digital Broadband Migration: Toward a Regulatory Regime for the Internet Age” at the University of Colorado School of Law. Powell sets out some “Internet Freedoms” that he believes Americans are entitled to: these are astonishingly radical ideas to hear coming out of the mouth of the Chairman of the FCC.

1. Freedom to Access Content. First, consumers should have access to their choice of legal content.
2. Freedom to Use Applications. Second, consumers should be able to run applications of their choice.
3. Freedom to Attach Personal Devices. Third, consumers should be permitted to attach any devices they choose to the connection in their homes.
4. Freedom to Obtain Service Plan Information. Fourth, consumers should receive meaningful information regarding their service plans.

100K PDF Link

Ratings: The Season So Far

Groklaw — Exhibit 1 to IBM’s Report on SCO’s Compliance:

Here, at last, is Exhibit 1, attached to IBM’s Report on Compliance, SCO’s supplemental responses, or more precisely, PLAINTIFF’S REVISED SUPPLEMENTAL RESPONSE TO DEFENDANT’S FIRST AND SECOND SET OF INTERROGATORIES.

A timely comment in /.’s discussion — SCO Lists Specific Code-Infringement Claims:

… It’s fun to beat up on SCO, and McBride. One of the differences between most people who read /. and McBride is that very few /. readers would have the spine to stand up and assert something as outlandish as SCO asserts. To /. folk, the SCO business is all very abstract, there’s a billion dollars and a corporation at stake … but it’s not our money or our corporation. It’s more like the WWF, where there is an official Bad Guy who will, at the end of the evening, get stomped by the Good Guy, for the pleasure of the viewing audience.

So, pay attention to the interesting analysis performed by Groklaw-folk, but mod yourself down if you’re merely going to hurl abuse at Darl and SCO. This is a tragedy unfolding; a very human tragedy.

Live Linux CDs

Today’s the day: SCO Countdown: Counting Down To The End Of This fiaSCO.

Wired News: Webmonkey, RIP: 1996 – 2004

Ow. That Hurts. Quit.: Remaking Your Punk Rock Past:

The place was always slimy. In the humid Houston heat, the ceramic floor would collect condensation, so if the heat didn’t drive you might decide to go outside just to feel like you weren’t going to slip and fall. And, oh yeah, that’s were the restrooms were. You can imagine what these glorified outhouses looked like.

Standing in line waiting to see The Boredoms, or Smashing Pumpkins, or Unwound you could hear many unsolicited opinions about Emo’s. “God, I hate this place.” Everybody hated it. But they kept going. It was really a phenomenon. Soon enough Austin had its own Emo’s. Everybody knows Austin is cooler than Houston, so gradually the focus shifted away from Emo’s in Houston to the center of Texas hipsterism at the other end of Highway 290.

Emo’s Houston struggled for years, but in the final years, they rarely had bands that could generate any excitement, so when it finally closed a few years ago, nobody really noticed. It was just another in a long list.

Just as well. I hated that place.

‘Uncanny physics of comic book superheroes’:

Take, for example, the strength of Superman. To leap a 30-story building in a single bound, Superman’s leg muscles must produce nearly 6,000 pounds of force while jumping, Kakalios calculates. The Man of Steel was that strong because he was designed to resist Krypton’s powerful gravity. But for a planet with an Earth-like surface to have so much stronger gravity, it would need neutron star material in its core--a highly unstable situation. No wonder the planet exploded.

Astroturfing on amazon.com:

Many sign their names. Many don’t. They’re the book reviewers on Amazon.com who use such words as “masterful,” “page-turner” and “tear-jerker.” But the ones who sign their critiques only as “a reader from (fill in the city)” lost their anonymity this week when their identities were revealed on Amazon.com’s Canadian Web site.

Among those named were authors who posted glowing reviews of their own work, apparently to boost sales.

The glitch, reported Saturday by The New York Times, replaced pseudonyms with reviewers’ real names, laying bare a culture of self-promotion and potential for revenge among authors and users of the online retailer.

Amazon spokeswoman Patricia Smith told the Times the problem, fixed after a week, was “an unfortunate error.”

“We’ll examine whatever happened and make sure it won’t happen again,” she said.

Statement from Microsoft Regarding Illegal Posting of Windows Source Code:

REDMOND, Wash., Updated Feb. 13, 2004 — On Thursday, Microsoft became aware that portions of the Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 source code were illegally made available on the Internet. It’s illegal for third parties to post, make available to others, or download Microsoft source code, and we are actively investigating this issue with law-enforcement agencies. Microsoft will take all appropriate legal actions to protect our intellectual property.

At this time there is no known impact on customers. We continue to be committed to protecting our customers and their networks, and we will take any appropriate steps to ensure that we meet this commitment. Our investigation has shown this was not the result of any breach of Microsoft’s corporate network or internal security, or from our Shared Source Initiative program.

All joking aside, holy moly, what a disaster. Security through obscurity relies upon obscurity, and now that’s gone.

It goes without saying - if you work on any open-source project, or ever want to work on such a project, don’t look at the source code.

Wired News: Groklaw’s Jones Looks Beyond SCO:

WN: What do you think will happen next in the SCO saga? Give me some short-term predications and a long-range one, please.

PJ: No one familiar with law thinks it’s wise to predict a court case. But long range, and looking at the big picture, I feel confident, from what I see so far, that SCO will regret embarking on the course they chose to follow.

I saw from day one they didn’t understand the GPL (the GNU General Public License). In fact, they don’t seem to even now, and it’s their Achilles’ heel. They simply can’t wriggle out of the GPL, I don’t think, and even if they could make it void or voidable, and I personally don’t see how they can, then they’d just find themselves guilty of copyright infringement on such a scale it’s awe-inspiring to contemplate the likely damages. Then IBM has four patent-infringement claims.

Meanwhile, SCO’s case against IBM appears to be withering. They just dropped the trade-secrets claim. That’s a big admission. Novell says they overruled SCO’s “termination” of IBM’s AIX license. And you have Novell and SCO dueling over copyright ownership. Red Hat is sitting back waiting, meanwhile, watching SCO’s copyright claims get smaller and smaller. If I were SCO, I’d be worried.

WN: So what do you think SCO will do next?

Jones: SCO is now limiting their copyright claims in the IBM lawsuit to their legal theory about what constitutes a derivative work, as I understand their claims. They appear now to be saying that the “infringement” is the AIX code IBM donated to Linux. What is SCO’s claim to code that has no System V code in it? That IBM wrote itself? And owns the copyright on? I’m fascinated to find out what SCO will say about that, but from where I am standing, it looks like an uphill struggle for them.

I do expect they may try some things with the DMCA, in imitation of their hero, the RIAA. But even there, a recent case limits what they can do. So far, nothing has been going right for them from the legal perspective, in my opinion. I’m personally looking at the DMCA as the next front.

AlterNet: LOTR Dating Manual:

Now, I’m not one of those aficionados who knows every intricacy of Tolkien or has memorized every book, grocery list and letter to Santa he ever wrote. I’m just an average moviegoer, but I know a metaphor when I see one, or make one up. LOTR may be disguised as a sexless geek-boy epic, but this trilogy is more riddled with dating tips than an issue of Seventeen magazine:

• When you’re trying to catch the cute guy’s eye is the exact moment the dwarf will pick to approach you;
• Eating raw fish is no longer a sign of a sophisticated date. (That said, you have to admit the Atkins plan is working for Gollum.)
• if you’re the only girl among 100 guys you’ll still fall for the only one who has a girlfriend;
• When overused, terms of endearment such as “precious” lose their meaning;
• All couples fight, but battles shouldn’t last so long that one of you has to get up and stretch your legs or use the bathroom;
• It doesn’t matter if you look like Liv Tyler; your pining and whining will still get on people’s nerves;
• Don’t blame your friends just because they can see right through your creepy little partner;
• If you can get along on a road trip, the relationship will probably last;
• There will come a point when it seems like the relationship should be over. Don’t drag it out. Just end it there.

And finally, the mother of all dating wisdom:

• Some people will go to any lengths to get a ring; others, having had one for awhile, will go to any lengths to chuck it into a volcano.

The SWIPE Toolkit:

The SWIPE Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver’s license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses.

• THE 47 SOCIETY
• Star Trek: The 47 Conspiracy

5ives: Five words I’d like to hear the Pope use in everyday conversation:

Five words I’d like to hear the Pope use in everyday conversation

1. crunk
2. nizzle
3. Linux
4. gi-normous
5. craptacular

Hysterically funny: 5ives.

Wired News: Gay Marriage Poll Gets Annulled:

“We’re very concerned that the traditional state of marriage is under threat in our country by homosexual activists,” said AFA representative Buddy Smith. “It just so happens that homosexual activist groups around the country got a hold of the poll — it was forwarded to them — and they decided to have a little fun, and turn their organizations around the country (onto) the poll to try to cause it to represent something other than what we wanted it to. And so far, they succeeded with that.”

Of course, no such poll can be said to represent an accurate picture of popular opinion. But, clearly, the AFA had hoped Congress would take the numbers it planned to produce as exactly that kind of evidence.

Now, Smith says, his organization has had to abandon its goal of taking the poll to Capitol Hill.

“We made the decision early on not to do that,” Smith admitted, “because of how, as I say, the homosexual activists around the country have done their number on it.”

Just to be clear, Mr. Smith, I’m not a homosexual activist. I’m no activist at all. I’m just someone who doesn’t like it when people use statistics to lie. You had a poll, open to all. I voted. Next time, say “this poll is for AFA members only.”

Or better yet, just make up the numbers. It would be more honest.

CDT: Why Am I Getting All This Spam?

Yawn.

This morning’s news:

• new windows worm spreading all over the world (I had about 30 worm messages in my spam folder today, so *thats* what that particular exe does - thank goodness I read my mail on a UNIX box),
• Enterprise executves worried about getting renewed (but at least the current episodes are on the torrent),
• and 147 new emails in my work inbox (an inbox which actually gets no spam, surprisingly enough.)

I love three-day weekends.

From a friend:

“The American Family Association is conducting a poll on support/opposition for gay marriage. Expecting a result that favors their pro-family position, they say they will present their results to Congress.”

“I don’t think they were anticipating your vote.”

http://www.marriagepoll.com/

Ha ha: New York to Build ‘Dark Tower of Barad-dur’ on WTC Site

A Elbereth Gilthoniel:

The hymn is nowhere translated in LotR, except for the words galadhremmin Ennorath that are interpreted “tree-woven lands of Middle-earth” in the second footnote in Appendix E. However, Tolkien provided a translation of this song in RGEO:72, followed by some illuminating comments. This is the main source for this article.

The hymn to Elbereth (that in RGEO:70 has a Tengwar superscript Aerlinn in Edhil o Imladris, *”Hymn of the Elves of Rivendell”):

          A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
          O Elbereth Star-kindler
          silivren penna míriel
          (white) glittering slants down sparkling like jewels
          o menel aglar elenath!
          from [the] firmament [the] glory [of] the star-host!
          Na-chaered palan-díriel
          To-remote distance far-having gazed
          o galadhremmin ennorath,
          from [the] tree-tangled middle-lands,
          Fanuilos, le linnathon
          Fanuilos, to thee I will chant
          nef aear, sí nef aearon!
          on this side of ocean, here on this side of the Great Ocean!

In RGEO, Tolkien compared this hymn to the invocation uttered by Sam “speaking in tongues” in Cirith Ungol (LotR2/IV ch. 10: “then his tongue was loosed and his voice cried in a language which he did not know”…). We follow his example and will analyze this short utterance here as well. Notes Tolkien in Letters:278, “Though it is, of course, in the style and metre of the hymn-fragment [A Elbereth Gilthoniel], I think it is composed or inspired for his [Sam’s] particular situation”.

          A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-diriel, le nallon
          O Elbereth Starkindler from firmanent gazing afar, to thee I cry
          sí di-nguruthos! A tiro nin, Fanuilos!
          here beneath death-horror! O look towards me, Everwhite!

Tolkien’s own translation of these texts (rather free and florid):
          [The hymn:] “O! Elbereth who lit the stars, from glittering crystal slanting falls with light like jewels from heaven on high the glory of the starry host. To lands remote I have looked afar, and now to thee, Fanuilos, bright spirit clothed in ever-white, I here will sing beyond the Sea, beyond the wide and sundering Sea.”
          [Sam’s invocation:] “O! Queen who kindled star on star, white-robed from heaven gazing far, here overwhelmed in dread of Death I cry: O guard me, Elbereth!” Another translation, more literal, is given in Letters:278: “O Elbereth Starkindler from heaven gazing-afar, to thee I cry now in the shadow of (the fear of) death. O look towards me, Everwhite.”

My wife is truly cruel. She sends me links to The Encyclopedia of Arda whilst I’m at work.

Argh! The temptation is too much for me!

Wired News: Bush Grabs New Power for FBI:

While the nation was distracted last month by images of Saddam Hussein’s spider hole and dental exam, President George W. Bush quietly signed into law a new bill that gives the FBI increased surveillance powers and dramatically expands the reach of the USA Patriot Act.

The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 grants the FBI unprecedented power to obtain records from financial institutions without requiring permission from a judge.

Under the law, the FBI does not need to seek a court order to access such records, nor does it need to prove just cause.

Previously, under the Patriot Act, the FBI had to submit subpoena requests to a federal judge. Intelligence agencies and the Treasury Department, however, could obtain some financial data from banks, credit unions and other financial institutions without a court order or grand jury subpoena if they had the approval of a senior government official.

The new law (see Section 374 of the act), however, lets the FBI acquire these records through an administrative procedure whereby an FBI field agent simply drafts a so-called national security letter stating the information is relevant to a national security investigation.

And the law broadens the definition of “financial institution” to include such businesses as insurance companies, travel agencies, real estate agents, stockbrokers, the U.S. Postal Service and even jewelry stores, casinos and car dealerships.

Way cool - Images of Mars and All Available Satellites:

The Indexed Star Wars Trilogy.

• Don’t use “reply to all” when responding to email. Abide by the good old “need to know” principle that’s so beloved by the military and send follow-up messages only to those people who will actually benefit from the reply.
• Write informative subject lines for your email messages. Assume that the recipient is too busy to open messages with lame titles like “hi.”
• Create a special email address for personal messages and newsletters. Only check this account once per day. (If you’re geekly enough to master filtering, use filters to sort and prioritize your email. Unfortunately, this is currently too difficult for average users.)
• Write short. J. K. Rowling is not a good role model for email writers.

For the bookmarks file: The Art of the Apology.

Dear god, what has Peter Jackson done?

I’m all for popularizing the Lord of the Rings, but I never thought that it would involve Barbie and Ken as Arwen and Aragorn:

I think I need to go lie down now.

Yahoo! News - ‘Lion’ to Be Shot in New Zealand

Joel on Software - Biculturalism:

What are the cultural differences between Unix and Windows programmers? There are many details and subtleties, but for the most part it comes down to one thing: Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers.

This is, of course, a major simplification, but really, that’s the big difference: are we programming for programmers or end users? Everything else is commentary.

NEWS.com.au | Tolkien party soured (December 2, 2003):

ONE ring ruled them all last night, as a magical fellowship of trolls, hobbits and film geeks united in Wellington to hail The Return of the King.

But even as 100,000 fans celebrated the world premiere of the final instalment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Kiwi director Peter Jackson was fighting with the estate of Rings author JRR Tolkien.

Tolkien’s estate is refusing to allow Jackson - tipped to win this year’s Best Director Oscar - to create a Rings museum in Wellington.

Wrangles with the late author’s family have marred the $4.7 billion-earning film trilogy, to the immense frustration of Jackson and Hollywood studio New Line Cinema. He wants to save the thousands of swords, suits of armour, costumes and sets used in the films in a museum but the estate’s custodian Christopher Tolkien, who has refused to endorse the movies, won’t give permission.

Yahoo! News - Scholars of Twang Track All the ‘Y’Alls’ in Texas

Among the unexpected findings, said Guy Bailey, a linguistics professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a leading scholar in the studies with his wife, Jan Tillery, is that in Texas more than elsewhere, how you talk says a lot about how you feel about your home state.

“Those who think Texas is a good place to live adopt the flat `I’ it’s like the badge of Texas,” said Dr. Bailey, 53, provost and executive vice president of the university and a transplanted Alabamian married to a Lubbock native, also 53.

So if you love Texas, they say, be fixin’ to say “naht” for “night,” “rahd” for “ride” and “raht” for “right.”

And by all means say “all” for “oil.”

Wired News: Congress Expands FBI Spying Power

A Monocultural Alternative

Motor Trend Names Toyota Prius 2004 Car of the Year

Ed Pegg’s Math Games - The Loculus of Archimedes, Solved

The world’s oldest puzzle has been solved. 2200 years ago, Archimedes invented a puzzle variously called the Loculus, the Stomachion, the Ostomachion, the Syntemachion, or Archimedes’ Box. In November of 2003, Bill Cutler used a computer program to enumerate all solutions. Barring rotations and reflections, there are 536 distinct solutions.

Adactio: Articles - Photoshop Actions

Wired News: Redford Building Retrofit: Green Building

BBC NEWS | Technology | Frog croaks reveal regional bias

Presidential Homepages Violate Speed and Accessibility Guidelines

Why Personal Websites Matter

cmuSKY: A Wireless Andrew System: All Connected WiFi Users on the Carnegie Mellon Campus

Forbes.com: SCO Targets Torvalds, Stallman

Scientists link global warming and wine quality

“I think everyone agrees in most scientific circles that change is occurring. What that change is, is still up in the air,” he said. “We’ll have to sort of adapt on the fly. If it really is catastrophic and not just a blip, vintners will definitely change how they plan and where they plant.”

The extreme heat wave in Europe this summer, which some experts blamed on global warming, offers an example, Jones said.

“In some areas, it could have been very detrimental. Southern Italy, Greece are hard-pressed to produce any good wine this year,” Jones said. “But southern England? It may be their best vintage since prior to the little Ice Age.”

Myths over Miami

Black and White Fine Art Photography by Ryan Bush

USATODAY.com - FCC cuts cord on phone numbers

Wired News: Yet Another Rendition of Linux

Their position on the Iraqi War is irrelevant; shame on you, Time, for distorting the past. From The Memory Hole:

Reasons Not to Invade Iraq, by George Bush Sr.

On 21 September 2002, The Memory Hole posted an extract from an essay by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, in which they explain why they didn’t have the military push into Iraq and topple Saddam during Gulf War 1. Although there are differences between the Iraq situations in 1991 and 2002-3, Bush’s key points apply to both.

But a funny thing happened. Fairly recently, Time pulled the essay off of their site. It used to be at this link, which now gives a 404 error. If you go to the table of contents for the issue in which the essay appeared (2 March 1998), “Why We Didn’t Remove Saddam” is conspicuously absent.

Because of this erasure, we’re posting the entire essay below the portion we originally excerpted. Below that, you’ll find a copy of the actual page from the magazine, courtesy of Bruce Koball and Boing Boing.

Unplugging The Matrix - Why the sci-fi franchise went south. By Matt Feeney

Spammers Can Run but They Can

Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox):

Quiet Computers - End PC Noise

FiveSevenFive

MenWhoLookLikeKennyRogers.com

The Jack Valenti Spectrum Re-allocation:

I am a consumer, and I did not win when the FCC voted 5-0 to require personal computers and other devices that might store video files to comply with a technical specification designed to protect copyright of high-definition television (HDTV). In this letter, I am going to do two things. First, I am going to explain why I am mad. Then, I am going to explain how I plan to get even.

Slashdot | Belkin Routers Route Users to Censorware Ad

Corporate goofs get webbed.

jwz - “Forever less one day.”

GROKLAW: IBM Reply to SCO Response to IBM Motion to Compel Discovery

The Trek Nation - Twilight

Oldie but goodie: Microsoft Hotmail/Passport Service Interrupted

Damnit! Latest Sun Flare Likely Strongest of Modern Era.

Just stop, Sol! Just stop! I’d like to get some sleep!

New Scientist | Fish farting may not just be hot air:

Biologists have linked a mysterious, underwater farting sound to bubbles coming out of a herring’s anus. No fish had been known to emit sound from its anus nor to be capable of producing such a high-pitched noise.

NewsForge | Putting Novell’s SuSE purchase into perspective

The Gunpowder Plot (should never be forgot):

IF Guy Fawkes had succeeded with his gunpowder plot he would have devastated much of London as well as blowing the palace of Westminster sky-high.

Experts at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth have worked out for the first time the true extent of the damage Guy Fawkes would have caused if his daring deed had not been foiled on November 5, 1605.

Physicists from the university’s Centre for Explosion Studies found that the amount of gunpowder Guy Fawkes packed into the cellar beneath the corridors of power would have been enough not only to destroy Westminster Hall and the Abbey but to cause substantial structural damage to many other buildings.

Slashdot | Students, ISP Sue Diebold

Congratulatuions, Jason!

From Doug: my old college friend Deb has an album out.

DanKohn.com: SpamAssassin Bayes training in a single-user procmail setup

VH1.com : News : Good Charlotte, Green Day, NOFX To Rock Against President Bush:

Good Charlotte, Pennywise and Sum 41 have always been known more for their practical jokes than their practical advice. That may soon change.

Next year these bands, Green Day, NOFX, Alkaline Trio and others will unite to raise political awareness and encourage pop-punk fans to vote in the next presidential election — against George Bush.

Economist.com | The future of energy

”THE Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”

SpeedTree - The Valley Real-Time Demo:

Yahoo! News - Senate passes anti-spam bill, but many obstacles remain

Microsoft Tears Down the Old To Sell the New (TechNews.com)

It’s a strange situation Microsoft Corp. finds itself in: To convince customers that they need to buy the latest version of its Office business software, the technology giant felt it necessary yesterday to engage in a little trash talk about its chief competitor . . . itself.

The company’s previous versions of the software line, which encompasses a suite of e-mail, word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools, already dominate 90 percent of the market and bring in $9 billion annually, a third of the company’s revenue. Analysts said Microsoft’s challenge is to preserve that lucrative franchise by encouraging customers to upgrade to the 2003 edition.

Which explains why Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and chief software architect, was heard to complain at a kickoff for the new software yesterday that “it’s too hard to find things in e-mail” in the just-replaced version of Outlook, the name of Office’s e-mail program. Gates also described early versions of the Word text-processing program as “clunky.”

From Groklaw:

However, let’s do a little research, just for fun.

Judge for yourself which operating system is more vulnerable to security problems by going down the list on CERT’s Incident Notes page. It goes back to 1998. And here is their Current Activity page. It’s almost all Microsoft issues. Here’s their Vulnerabilities Notes page. It’s all Microsoft, except for one, which isn’t Linux. Here is their most recent quarterly summary. And after you look at all the data, what do you think now? Was Mr. Ballmer accurate? The only way I could find Linux prominently on any list was to type it into the Customized Search engine by itself on this page , and then when you get to the list, it’s a list for all vulnerabilities of all the distributions of Linux, not just Red Hat. I couldn’t find anything equivalent to Microsoft announcing a vulnerability and then saying there was no patch and you should just shut that particular functionality down. Ballmer said there were 17 critical vulnerabilities in Windows 2000 in the 150-day period and that Red Hat had considerably more. But look at the list: it shows only 16 vulnerabilities for all flavors of Linux for the entire year of 2000. CERT only lists the big ones, but Ballmer did say “critical”. It makes you wonder where he got his numbers from or how he defines “critical”.

Funny he would choose such an old time period, don’t you think, for his comparison? Maybe it’s because looking at July through October of this year would be devastating? I see only two Linux vulnerabilities on the list for that time period, both buffer overflow vulnerabilities, so evidently there has been considerable improvement on the Linux side.

Information Week: Staring Down Linux.

SecurityFocus HOME News: Microsoft warns of four new Windows flaws

Microsoft Corp. warned consumers Wednesday about four new flaws in its popular Windows software as the company shifted to monthly alerts for serious problems that could let hackers break into computers.

In particularly embarrassing disclosures, Microsoft acknowledged problems in its technology to authenticate software publishers over the Web and in its Windows help and support system.

From this morning’s Cryptogram, a Butterfly:

The lobster population swells out of control. They become rowdy and boisterous - holding underwater raves, getting high on seaweed and playing Beach Boys records until four o-clock in the morning. The octopuses that live next door start to get really hacked off with it. Octopuses are usually quiet and genial creatures, who are at their happiest when left alone to do word puzzles. But on this occasion they realise that something has to be done, and so they decide to stage a sit-in.

I noticed this over the weekend: IE Vulnerabilities Page Removed.

Bummer. They had 31 unpatched vulnerabilities last time I checked.

This sounds like it could have been written by merrystar: Switching from Linux to Windows:

First, a question: What’s up with all this “Ctrl C” and Ctrl V” copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don’t see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story. Geh.

$87,000,000,000.00: “A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon it starts to add up to some real money.”

jwz - burning hypocrisy:

I’ve enjoyed Burning Man every time I’ve gone, but after reading their press kit, I’ll be damned if they’re getting another dime from me. Which is why I have not gone since: I’d feel dirty giving them my money, and sneaking in sounds like just too much effort.

Now, please note that I am not complaining that Burning Man is “about money” and shouldn’t be. I’ve got no problem with money.

I think it would be cool if there was an event that actually was what Burning Man professes to be.

I also think Disneyland is a lot of fun.

What pisses me off is the hypocrisy. If they just came out and admitted they were running the Raverland/Hippieland contingent of the Magic Kingdom, that would be fine with me. But they do two things: they run the event with a media strangle-hold that would make the White House proud; and then in the same breath they claim “we’re doing it to protect you!”

If they were truly the enlightened anarchists they claim to be, they couldn’t even consider such a thing: that kind of action is diametrically opposed to the views they pay lip service to.

If they practiced what they preach, they could never conscience the filing of a lawsuit like this one: if you only believe in freedom for people who share your aesthetic judgment, you don’t believe in freedom at all.

I don’t think their behavior is “unreasonable” or (should be) illegal. What pisses me off is their halfassed attempts to hide their behavior. I hate that they lie about it. They pretend “we’re all in this together”, but, in fact, some animals are more equal than others, aren’t they?

Lick Me, I’m A Macintosh:

This is the point. Detail and nuance and texture and a sense of how users actually feel, what makes them smile, what makes the experience worthy and positive and sensual instead of necessary and drab and evil.

These are the things that are nearly dead in our mass-consumer culture, things normally reserved for elitist niche markets and swanky boutiques and upscale yuppie Euro spas and maybe cool insider mags like I-D and Metropolis and dwell. They are most definitely not to be expected of mass-market gadget makers. This is why it matters. This is why it’s important.

Learn to draw a dragon at homestarrunner.com!

Straight Dope Staff Report: What’s the “Scroll Lock” key on my computer for?

The Scroll Lock key has appeared on the keyboards of IBM personal computers since the original 83-key PC/XT and the 84-key AT layouts, and remains on the 101-key and greater “enhanced” keyboards currently in use. The Scroll Lock key wasn’t on the original Macintosh keyboards but appears on the Mac’s “enhanced” keyboard.

The main intent of the Scroll Lock key was to allow scrolling of screen text up, down and presumably sideways using the arrow keys in the days before large displays and graphical scroll bars. You can see where this might have been handy in the DOS era, when screen output typically was limited to 80 characters wide by 25 rows deep. For some types of programs, spreadsheets being the obvious example, it’s still handy now. In Microsoft Excel, Scroll Lock allows you to scroll a spreadsheet with the arrow keys without moving the active cell pointer from the currently highlighted cell. In Quattro Pro, another spreadsheet program, Scroll Lock works in a similar manner, although in contrast to Excel it’s not possible to scroll the active cell pointer completely off the screen.

Sometimes, it’s the little things about the brits that drive me into hyterics.

Take, for example, this piece on the BBC:

In a two-part ballot, voters were asked if they wanted to recall, or sack, Governor Davis.

The BBC editors feel that their readership will understand “sack” better than “recall.”

I suppose this just proves I’m easily amused.

Oyster Dock.

Neat: Tube Map with Walklines:

CNN.com - Discovery may spur cheap solar power - Oct. 2, 2003:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) — A major European chip maker said this week it had discovered new ways to produce solar cells which will generate electricity twenty times cheaper than today’s solar panels.

Joel on Software - Rick Chapman is In Search of Stupidity:

I’m a programmer, of course, so I tend to blame the marketing people for these stupid mistakes. Almost all of them revolve around a failure of non-technical business people to understand basic technology facts. When Pepsi-pusher John Sculley was developing the Apple Newton, he didn’t know something that every computer science major in the country knows: handwriting recognition is not possible. This was at the same time that Bill Gates was hauling programmers into meetings begging them to create a single rich text edit control that could be reused in all their products. Put Jim Manzi (the suit who let the MBAs take over Lotus) in that meeting and he would be staring blankly. “What’s a rich text edit control?” It never would have occurred to him to take technological leadership because he didn’t grok the technology; in fact, the very use of the word grok in that sentence would probably throw him off.

Mr. Winkle is a medieval monk?

From Ilana: on Edward Said.

Yet another unpatched IE vulnerability. I’m a little surprised it hasn’t gotten more coverage, what with all the other important things going on in the world.

Interesting: To Fix Software Flaws, Microsoft Invites Attack.

Related: Reasons to avoid Microsoft.

I’d forgotten how absolutely hypnotic jwz’s WebCollage can be.

Nothing like a refresher on Norse mythology to make your Saturday morning go well.

Now I must go cut the lawn.

• A Short IRC Primer

For later:

• Timo’s procmail tips and recipes
• Procmail FAQ
• ii.com: Procmail Quick Start
• Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf - SpamAssassin configuration file
• Spam-Fighting Tricks

Things that will make you reboot your computer: Buffer Overrun In RPCSS Service Could Allow Code Execution (824146).

And I was almost to 14 days on my machine at work. Fiddlesticks.

One would expect that the wireless industry would not need CITA’s Code For Wireless Service.

One would be wrong.

United States Code

Liebchen, There’s a Piggish Eater on the Lawn:

BBC NEWS | Ancient stone circle discovered on Isle of Lewis.

• Bruce Perens provides an Analysis of SCO’s Las Vegas Slide Show
• Linus Torvalds Slams SCO
• Ernie Ball ran afoul of the BSA, switches to open source, becomes a Linux hero.

I’ve never understood people who have maintained that no two democracies have never declared war on each other. In what strange alternate universe do they live in? I mean, it’s a nice piece of Enlightenment propoganda when political philosophers were trying to sell democracy, so long as you’re capable of willfuly ignoring the last three thousand years of recorded history. I’ve gotten into this argument before on individual examples, but it’s nice to see someone compile all the information about War Between Democracies.

jwz has an off-road adventure:

So I’m bicycling down Mission Street, past a big construction site, and right after that, the lane goes away, cones everywhere, and of course, cars, all trying to change lanes at once and meaning me harm (as is their way.) So I’m rolling along, doing my best to stay alive, when suddenly I notice that the road ahead looks a little… off.

By “ahead” I mean “three feet ahead” and by “off” I mean “liquid.”

For:

We are now seriously asked to accept that in the last few years, contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence, he decided unilaterally to destroy the weapons. Such a claim is palpably absurd.

1441 is a very clear resolution. It lays down a final opportunity for Saddam to disarm. It rehearses the fact that he has been, for years in material breach of 17 separate UN resolutions. It says that this time compliance must be full, unconditional and immediate. The first step is a full and final declaration of all WMD to be given on 8 December.

I won’t to go through all the events since then - the house is familiar with them - but this much is accepted by all members of the UNSC: the 8 December declaration is false. That in itself is a material breach. Iraq has made some concessions to cooperation but no-one disputes it is not fully cooperating. Iraq continues to deny it has any WMD, though no serious intelligence service anywhere in the world believes them.

Against:

PN:  So, likewise, if the world called on us to do something, such as find a peaceful solution, we would have an obligation to listen?

WM:  By “world”, I meant the United Nations.

PN:  So, we have an obligation to listen to the United Nations?

WM:  By “United Nations” I meant the Security Council.

PN:  So, we have an obligation to listen to the Security Council?

WM:  I meant the majority of the Security Council.

PN:  So, we have an obligation to listen to the majority of the Security Council?

WM:  Well… there could be an unreasonable veto.

Consider and discuss.

Washington Post: A Radical Formula for Teaching Science:

By just about every standard for K-12 science textbook writing, Joy Hakim is breaking all the rules.

…Textbooks often are collections of facts and vocabulary words — one, for example, has long lists of such esoteric words as “saprophyte” and “commensalism” — but hers is a narrative about scientists and their effect on the world.

With stories that build on each other to explain the progression of scientific thought, Hakim is offering a new kind of science book, using a model she first employed with an award-winning series of American history texts. Tentatively titled “The Science Story,” the first three books focus on key scientists from the early Greeks to today’s contemporaries, explaining how scientific thought has changed.

From the New Mexico State Legislature: A Joint Memorial Affirming Civil Rights and Liberties; Declaring Opposition to Federal Measures That Infringe on Civil Liberties:

F. direct the state official in charge of homeland security for New Mexico to seek periodically from federal authorities the following information in a form that facilitates an assessment of the effect of federal anti-terrorism efforts on the residents of the state of New Mexico and provide to the legislature and the interim corrections oversight and justice committee, no less than once every six months, a summary of the information obtained:

(1) the names of all residents of New Mexico who have been arrested or otherwise detained by federal authorities as a result of terrorism investigations since September 11, 2001, and:

(a) the location of each detainee;

(b) the circumstances that led to each detention;

(c) the charges, if any, lodged against each detainee; and

(d) the name of counsel, if any, representing each detainee;

(2) the number of search warrants that have been executed in New Mexico without notice to the subject of the warrant pursuant to Section 213 of the USA Patriot Act;

(3) the extent of electronic surveillance carried out in the state pursuant to powers granted in the USA Patriot Act;

(4) the extent to which federal authorities are monitoring political meetings, religious gatherings or other activities within New Mexico that are protected by the first Amendment of the United States constitution;

(5) the number of times education records have been obtained from public schools and institutions of higher learning in New Mexico pursuant to Section 507 of the USA Patriot Act;

(6) the number of times library records have been obtained from libraries in New Mexico pursuant to Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act; and

(7) the number of times records of books purchased by store patrons have been obtained from bookstores in New Mexico pursuant to Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act;

Via Boing Boing.

Idle Words:

However dour the strategy of containment and attrition, the French did not hesitate to mobilize in 1939, and they did not shrink from fighting even in the face of overwhelming odds in 1940. In the space of three weeks, some 100,000 men died defending their country from the German invaders. From four to eight million civilians fled their homes; an unknown number died in the exodus.

In the end, the French endured four and a half years of German occupation. Between the initial carnage of the invasion, reprisal killings of civilians, and general Nazi atrocities, some 300,000 civilians were murdered. This is in addition to the 200,000 French soldiers killed during the initial invasion and in the many subsequent battles where Free French divisions saw combat.

Compare this to the total of 300,000 American military deaths, on all fronts, for the entire Second World War.

The people who fought Hitler fought bravely. The Poles, Danes, Belgians, British, Norwegians, Dutch and French were not cowards. The countries that survived German attack survived thanks to geography — for Britain, the English Channel; for the Soviet Union, the vast Eurasian steppes. And still those countries were nearly defeated.

There are many true and uncomfortable things you can say about France in the Second World War. Vichy was a criminal regime, and France has not fully come to terms with that painful part of its history. French political leaders in the 1930’s left the country passive and exposed to a German attack that could have been deterred. But to say that, when war did come, the French lacked courage, is to spit on the graves of noble people.

For shame!

Several wonderful parodies of the ready.gov site:

1. 

   Stay away from Austin, Texas. No reason.

2. Reinterpreting ready.gov.

Jonathon Delacour: Political (a)morality?:

A fascinating proposition: that a thoroughly loathsome and reprehensible person might make a worthy and capable President of the United States.

Like most of Jonathon’s writing, it’s well worth your time to read. Of course, so is Jimmy Carter’s recent editorial (via End of Empire.)

Aaron Swartz’s Google Weblog: A Day Without Google:

Duncan: A World Without Google

Matt: Google Server Error - Feels like a little earthquake

Hixie: The end is nigh

It’s not time to panic … yet.

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren has introduced a bill to amend the DMCA:

For over one hundred years, copyright law meant to strike a fair balance between the interests of copyright holders and the interests of society. On the one hand, copyright seeks to encourage and reward an author’s creative works. But as the Supreme Court stated in Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, “[p]rivate motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts.…”

The challenge today is to maintain the traditional balance in the digital age by finding ways to prevent and punish digital pirates without treating every consumer as one. Digital technology lets pirates make perfect copies of copyrighted works to distribute over the Internet. At the same time, digital technology lets copyright holders control how consumers enjoy the books, music and movies they lawfully purchase.

Contrary to the intent of Congress, the DMCA has been used to legitimize this control over consumer uses. It’s been used to prohibit lawful users from circumventing technical restrictions, even to pursue their fair use rights. This conduct altered the balance. My bill, H.R. 1066, the Balance Act, seeks to restore it. Without utilizing government mandates or other prescriptive measures that will ultimately only stifle innovation, it gives lawful consumers the tools to enjoy digital entertainment in their home or car, or on their favorite mobile device. Consumers have demanded this flexibility. It is time to heed their demands.

If you agree with her, don’t forget to write your representative and let him or her know.

Via /..

Wired:

Last week, Salling released a clunkily named but surprisingly versatile piece of software for Mac OS X called the Sony Ericsson Clicker, which turns a Bluetooth-equipped Sony Ericsson cell phone into a universal remote for the Mac — and more.

Bluetooth is a short-range radio technology that lets devices communicate wirelessly within 30 feet of each other. Apple’s latest Macs have Bluetooth built in, and older models can be made Bluetooth-compatible with a USB plug-in.

Using scripts freely available on the Net, Salling’s $10 software can be set up to make the machine play music automatically when owners enter the room, and pause it when they leave (as long as they’re carrying their cell phone).

Via /..

Toshiba:

Toshiba Corporation today announced the world’s first prototype of a small form factor direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) for portable PCs, a clean energy breakthrough with the potential to end reliance on rechargeable batteries. The new fuel cell currently realizes average output of 12W and maximum output of 20W, and can achieve approximately five hours of operation with a single cartridge of fuel. It provides instant power supply, and achieves significant advances in operating times with replaceable methanol cartridges.

Via Boing Boing.

SecurityFocus:

Evidence obtained by German hardware site tecChannel suggests a list of software installed on an XP machine is sent to Microsoft when users run Windows Update. When patches are downloaded, a few kilobytes of data are sent in the opposite direction over a secure SSL channel. Because the data is encrypted a simple packet sniffer can’t be used to see what this data contains. However tecChannel’s tecDUMP utility takes advantage of an undocumented WinInet API, enabling an examination of the data before it becomes encrypted. According to tecChannel, the information sent to Microsoft includes details of all the software installed in a machine, not only Microsoft applications. The latest version of Windows Update Privacy Statement (which dates from last October) states: “Windows Update must collect a certain amount of configuration information from your computer”. This configuration information includes OS version number, IE version number and “version numbers of other software for which Windows Update provides updates” along with plug and play ID numbers and regional settings. But there’s no mention of collecting data on software from other vendors running on a machine. And this software can’t be updated using Windows Update. So why is Microsoft collecting this data?

Via Boing Boing.

Dean Allen: A bit hazy.

The Horror Of Blimps:

On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes, and there it was! A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE WAS APPROACHING ME OUT OF THE GLOOM, AND IT COULD FLY!!!

Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little dwarf in a security outfit was paging through a Penthouse while smoking a cigar with his feet up on the table, watching the security monitors of my brain with his peripheral vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT SINSITER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE coming at me, and he pulled every panic switch and hit every alarm that my body has. A full decade’s allotment of adrenaline was dumped into my bloodstream all at once. My metabolism went from “restful sleep mode” to HOLY SHIT! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode” in a nanosecond. My heart went from twenty something beats per minute to about 240 even faster.

I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism and science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil and monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a matter of time until they show up. Evolution know this, too. It knows what to do when the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark.

When 50 million years worth of evolutionary survival instinct hits you all at once flat in the gut at 200 mph it is not a pleasant sensation.

Without volition I screamed my battle cry (which is indistinguishable to the sound a little girl makes when you drop a spider down her dress (not that I’d know what that sounds like,)) and lept out of bed in my underwear.

Via jwz.

Michael Barrish:

Such is life
Falling over seven times
And getting up eight.

Having read A Lover’s Discourse long ago, I’ve often remembered the poem at the end of that passage and have quoted it many times to friends. Today, though, I happened to read the book again and was surprised to find I’ve been quoting the poem wrongly. In my version the poem ends with the word six not eight — a mistake that radically changes its meaning.

The way I’ve always remembered it, the poem is about death; it’s about the final time you fall, the first and last time you fail to get up. It says: life consists of falling and getting up and falling and getting up until you finally don’t get up any more and it’s over. It makes me think of Beckett, for like Beckett it turns its own bleakness on its head: getting up is like going on; it is the thing we cannot do but do anyway, being unable to do otherwise.

jwz:

Wait. Did she really just say Ghengis Khan? I steal a glance at my t-shirt: am I obliviously wearing a picture of a rapacious Mongol? No, no I’m not.

Zeldman, on XHTML 2:

The new spec appeared needlessly complex (too hard for humans). It smashed existing conventions for no reason I could see. Where earlier markup specs had gently discouraged outdated methods, the thing called XHTML 2 burst roaring out of smoke and flame, a scaly hellspawn wielding a bloody butcher’s axe.The W3C seemed to have abandoned the notion that the web could move forward without breaking what we already know and use. Standards had been a lie. The sky was falling.

One day I realized XHTML 2 was not coming soon to a browser near me.

Next day I realized the sky was not falling.

W3C does have a problem, but it can be fixed.

Unfortunately, it is 7-2 in favor of the Sonny Bono Act. Full coverage at /..

Lawrence Lessig on losing the Eldred case:

I will always be grateful to Eric Eldred, and our other plaintiffs, for putting his faith in this case. I will always regret not being able to meet that faith with the success it deserves.

What the Framers of our constitution did is not enough. We must do more.

AutoWeek:

The point of Hy-wire is to begin exploring the ways in which cars might become more appealing. One is that a fuel cell in your car might supply electric power to your home, or your campsite, or your business. Another is that the body is designed to be interchangeable.

Sweeet! (Via /..)

Mark Pilgrim writes about semantic obsolescence and the latest changes to the XHTML standards:

I know, I know, XHTML 2.0 isn’t meant to be backwardly compatible. But damn it, I’ve done everything the W3C has ever recommended. I migrated to CSS so I can work better with the browsers and handheld devices of the future, then the browsers and handheld devices of the future come out and my site looks like shit. I migrated to XHTML 1.1 and it bought me absolutely nothing except some MIME type headaches and (I am not making this up) Javascript incompatibilities. I migrated to semantic markup that has been around for 10 fucking years and they go and drop it. Not deprecate it slowly over time, mind you, but just fucking drop it. Which means that, after keeping up with all the latest standards, painstakingly marking up all my content, and validating every last page on my site, I’m still stuck in a dead end.

Find me another site that is as semantically rich (other than Joe Clark, who is years ahead of me). Hell, find me another site that even uses XHTML 1.1. (Even the W3C home page only uses XHTML 1.0.) I bought into every argument the W3C made that keeping up with standards, validating, and using semantic markup now would somehow “future-proof” my site and provide some mystical “forward compatibility”. How about some fucking payoff now? How about some fucking compatibility?

Standards are bullshit. XHTML is a crock. The W3C is irrelevant.

I’m migrating to HTML 4.

Mark has every right to be angry. Not only has he walked his talk with the work he’s invested into his site, he’s shown others how to do it as well, which is more than can be said for many. He’s put his time and money where his mouth is.

And now, much of that work is going to be obsolete in XHTML 2.0. Thank you, come again!

This reminds me of jwz’s rant on markup:

Now, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make your web pages look good to the largest number of people. But it’s a matter of priorities: if you place a higher value on the layout than on the meaning, then you don’t value your words very highly. So why should I? If you tell me that I’m not allowed to look at your page at all unless I can display it in what you consider the “proper” manner, then you’re telling me that your popup windows and flaming yellow borders are more important than your ideas.

From: AlterNet: Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002:

For about thirty minutes after his chief of staff told him that America was under attack, George W. Bush continued to sit in an elementary school classroom listening to a second-grader tell a story about a pet goat. He did a marvelous job of looking completely unsurprised. Meanwhile, four hijacked jumbo jets were able to fly off-course across several states without encountering any opposition from the most powerful and responsive air force in the world.

Today, Apple announced Safari, a new OS X browser based on the KHTML engine. Reactions:

• JWZ: Apple Says “Fuck You” to Mozilla. Jamie has his de-weaselizer handy, too.
• Mark Pilgrim: A review and tips for web designers, done with typical Pilgrim thoroughness.
• Mena Trott: An initial reaction. “Safari looks neat, but is it neat enough to switch (at least while it is still in beta)?”
• Matt Haughey: Safari Pitfalls.
• Ben Hammersley: Safari is almost shit.
• Scott Andrew LePera: KHTML Class Reference.

I can promise I’m not going to switch to Safari anytime soon.

Then again, I don’t have a Mac. (Some promises are easy to keep.)

Aaron Swartz:

Did you buy a CD, casette, or vinly album from a retailer between 1995 and 2000? If you did, then you can get the music companies to write you a check for $20.

Simply fill out the online claim form to get your piece.

Slashdot: Jon Johansen found not guilty. Well, at least for now.

Tim O’Reilly has a few words on the evolution of online distribution:

The web has been a boon for readers, since it makes it easier to spread book recommendations and to purchase the books once you hear about them. But even then, few books survive their first year or two in print. Empty the warehouses and you couldn’t give many of them away.

A bit of this and that:

• Slashdot interviews Joe Clark, and he answers in valid XHTML.
• Mark Lyons: Patterns for Personal Web Sites.
• Accessibility Favelets.
• Tim Murtaugh asks: Is it Web Site, Web site, or website?
• Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines.

Joel on Software:

People who only know one world get really smarmy, and every time they hear about the complications in the other world, it makes them think that their world doesn’t have complications. But they do. You’ve just moved beyond them because you are proficient in them. These worlds are just too big and complicated to compare any more. Lord Palmerston: “The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.”

I have a friend who has championed women’s hats for years. The rest of us think she’s a little crazy, but she’s not alone:

What’s more, flappers wore comfy dresses shaped like potato sacks. They could wear whatever they liked; who the hell notices when you have that darling bell of a hat on? And so, you see, hats make life easier and loads more fun.

Unfortunately, hats have gotten a bad rap since they fell out of quotidian fashion in the late 1960s. Have you ever flirted from beneath the brim of a fedora, shaded your unblemished complexion from the summer sun with a straw hat, or sipped cappuccino disdainfully in your breton? Of course not.

A terrific look at how copyright issues are negatively affecting libraries:

IFLA is concerned that the increased use of licensing and technological protection is distorting the balance toward commercial interests and away from information users. This trend affects information users everywhere, but it has an even greater effect on those in developing countries.

Via Jenny.

Jonathan Delacour: Our volatile, dangerous neighbor.

NYTimes (registration required) on Slashdot:

The secret to the online publication’s moderate success? “They didn’t buy a Super Bowl ad,” joked Sean Bergeron, a fan from Virginia.

It’s a little more complicated than that, but not much. The company keeps its expenses low. Its creators write about what interests them. And — here’s where the business model may not be everyone’s cup of Bawls Guarana energy drink — they don’t seem to care if the operation actually makes any money.

Via Boing Boing.

Washington Post: the judge in the Microsoft anti-trust case fires off a rebuttal:

About 15 months after the Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit rebuked U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson for talking to the media in the Microsoft antitrust case, Jackson has formally filed his rebuttal.

Jackson’s venue of choice to file his reply brief is, naturally, the court of public opinion, and specifically the local trade paper, Legal Times, which headlined his commentary, “Don’t Gag the Judges; It makes no sense to keep the judiciary silent.”

Jonathon Delacour:

In other words, the 90 minute sleep cycle is a scientific and medical fact.

For some reason I’m obsessed about proving this to everyone with whom I talk about sleep. It might be that I really love sleeping. Or, more particularly, dreaming. It’s almost as though I live a parallel life in my dreams. Themes recur, I visit the same locations over and again, I dream in Japanese, I meet up with dead friends, I sort out all kinds of problems…

Salon reprints Rep. Pete Stark’s statements:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution (authorizing military force against Iraq). I am deeply troubled that lives may be lost without a meaningful attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with U.N. resolutions through careful and cautious diplomacy.

The bottom line is I don’t trust this president and his advisors.

Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to the president, who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history. It sets a precedent for our nation — or any nation — to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus.

Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a president who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence.

Unfortunately, it was all for naught.

Wired News has redesigned to use XHTML and CSS:

HTML was riddled with extra tags never intended to be there. In their individual efforts to be the popular browser of choice and own the market, Netscape and IE set back Web development several years.

Web accessibility was slow to advance with the glut of complex nested table hacks, which are still used by a majority of websites to control columns and margins around blocks of texts and images. These tags often confuse older browsers as well as screen readers that help the visually and physically impaired use the Web. Older browsers often crash under the weight of all the coding.

The shiny details of the new Wired News design are only visible in standards-compliant browsers (Netscape versions 6.0 and higher, and IE 5.0 and higher). But because CSS can be hidden from older, non-compliant browsers, our content can still be read by every available commercial browser, even the first versions of Netscape and IE.

Via Zeldman.

The Morning News answers the question we’ve all asked ourselves at one time or another:

Who IS that blonde girl with the perfect flip hairdo in the classmates.com banner ads? Surely to God someone on the internet really went to high school with her, and gets freaked out by her face whenever they check their Betty Boop auctions on eBay.

I will sleep better at night now.

Davezilla has some good advice:

The next time you chop habaneros and jalapeños for chili, wash your hands thoroughly before touching the naughty bits to pee. Oh man, that hurts!

The BBC has a report on a battery powered by leftover food:

Scientists in Bristol have developed a battery which generates electricity from organic waste.

The battery, or microbial fuel cell (MFC), costs just £10 to make and in the future, could allow leftovers from Sunday lunch to top up the power supply of a household.

Although MCFs have been developed in the past, they have always been inefficient and expensive.

But technologists at the University of the West of England in Bristol have come up with the cheap, organic battery.

Salon: “Woohoo! We’re making books!”

freedomforum.org: High court hears arguments in case of Congress, copyright and Mickey Mouse:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court debated today whether Congress was wrong to block public access to Mickey Mouse and other classics.

The Court is considering whether it was unconstitutional for Congress to give writers and other creators a 20-year copyright extension. Hanging in the balance are huge profits for companies, like the Walt Disney Co. and AOL Time Warner Inc., which benefit from copyrights.

Some justices seemed bothered by the retroactive extension, enacted in 1998, which delayed the release of many old books and movies. But they seemed equally concerned about their standing to intervene.

“I can find a lot of fault with what Congress did,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said. “This flies directly in the face of what the framers of the Constitution had in mind, but is it unconstitutional?”

The extension protected early depictions of Disney’s Mickey Mouse, along with hundreds of thousands of books, movies and songs that were about to be released into the public domain.

“If this (extension) is permitted, then there is no limit,” Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig argued on behalf of a New Hampshire Internet publisher who challenged the law.

More information is available on eldred.cc, including a customized Google News feed.

Update: Firsthand accounts at Lawmeme and AP News.

Update #2: Slashdot’s got a story up, too.

Sean Palmer:

Vocabularies
group lots of related terms
under namespace bough.

People produce these
for others to use elsewhere;
often designed well.

Lots of main concepts
already have URIs.
Search, don’t just invent.

The semantic web
is easy to understand
when you use haiku.

Shelly Powers:

Today, though, the group was quiet, much quieter than usual, because one of their members, PHP, was not its usual cheerful self. In fact, one could say that PHP was in a true funk, if one had a mind to say something like that aloud, or within the hearing of one’s boss. Or doctor.

Why the blues, PHP, the other languages asked. All the languages that is but C, because all C ever said was “bite me”, being a rude language and hard to live with, but still respected because it was such a good worker.

Mark Pilgrim:

If you must use Windows, the first step towards a productive system is managing your Start menu.

Gail Armstrong:

She’d had enough sleepless nights to know there was no point in hoping. 1:18. Left down the hall and to the right, she heard her mother in the kitchen. The clink of wooden spoons on glass bowls, the thump of a rolling pin, squeak of the oven door. Making tomorrow’s wedding feast.

New Scientist reports on the recently-found large Kuiper Belt object:

The size of the new object, named Quaoar, was measured by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is about 1250 kilometres in diameter, making it the largest object found in the Solar System since Pluto itself in 1930.

A quick google search reveals the following:

Quaoar: Their only god who came down from heaven; and, after reducing chaos to order, out the world on the back of seven giants. He then created the lower animals, and then mankind. Los Angeles County Indians, California.

The name makes sense, given that the astronomers are from Caltech.

Update: A better explanation of who Quaoar is is available on the project home page, including information about the Tongva Nation.

Michael Barrish: Home:

Barrish is my mother’s name. It’s also my grandfather’s name, the one I loved.

I’ve probably said this elsewhere, but this moment was like the moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy discovers that she’s been carrying her ticket home the whole time; she just hadn’t realize it. And so not realizing it, she had endured this convoluted Technicolor adventure replete with singing and dancing and almost getting herself and her companions killed.

Mark Pilgrim: History of the Tilde. Clearly, the tilde is underappreciated.

The Brunching Shuttlecocks: Wedding Vows to Avoid.

Zeldman:

When a W3C member company that helped create XHTML and CSS ignores or misuses those web standards on its corporate site, you have to wonder who didn’t get the memo.

I just tried out their search function. You know what? It’s still easier to search for stuff with Google (“site:microsoft.com” + query).

Sigh.

Reuters:

PHNOM PENH, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Hundreds of stiff-jointed Cambodians are flocking to see a large brown cow whose lick is believed to cure rheumatism and other ailments, officials said on Wednesday.

…Authorities are keeping a watchful eye on the cow and its owner to make sure gullible patients, who buy their offerings for the cow from its owner, are not taken advantage of — and that nobody ends up regretting their bovine faith.

Who could end up regretting their bovine faith? No one I know, that’s for sure.

The Onion:

UNITED NATIONS — In an address before the U.N. General Assembly Monday, President Bush called upon the international community to support his “U.S. Does Whatever It Wants” plan, which would permit the U.S. to take any action it wishes anywhere in the world at any time.

Salon:

Right now, when so many progressive paradigms — respect for other cultures, solidarity with the oppressed and reverence for civil liberties — seem flaccid in the face of a monumental threat, Rushdie offers a voice that’s both resolutely moral and proudly, expansively liberal. He has, in the last few years, fallen from vogue, but the events of the world have conspired to prove his enduring relevance. He offers a model of a progressivism that’s clear-eyed about the dangers of Third World tyrannies while vigilantly opposed to our own administration’s authoritarian tendencies. Furthermore, he transcends the hectoring left’s tendency to define itself by what it’s against, offering a celebration of secular freedom whose ebullience belies the current notion that conservatives have more fun.

Jimmy Carter:

Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to view The Adventures of Evil Overmom over at the Brunching Shuttlecocks:

Curses!

From dooce:

Who knew that aiming a cordless 14.4 volt DeWalt drill at your husband’s ass might not be as funny as you thought it would be?

…Furthermore, why didn’t a certain someone tell me how to reverse the motion of a drill? Why would someone say to a wife, Reverse! Reverse! when the wife obviously, by demonstration of coming at you with the drill in the first place, has no idea how to reverse?

Why would you say to this wife who is standing there with a drill tangled dangerously close to your tailbone, You didn’t just do what I think you just did, did you?

The husband in question comments,

She’s not kidding. She stuck a drill in my ass and pulled the trigger.

CNet has a great look at recent changes in the climate of computer security and polarization of hackers and loss of the `gray hat’ ethical position. Also has a lot of links to recent lawsuits and DMCA pistol-whippings. (Via /..)

Google News, the system that automatically scans the news channels, has been completely revamped. Excellent.

BBC News: The first world championship for extreme ironing is being held in Germany. (Thanks, Kelly!)

Now I can clean anything.

From Oblivio:

Anyway there was once this basketball player, Jeff Hornacek, who was ugly but a very good shooter. Whenever he shot free throws, he would bounce the ball a certain number of times, then rub his cheek with his right hand. This cheek-rubbing thing was a signal to his kids that he loved them.

After running across David Brin’s Contacting Aliens in my local bookstore this weekend, I spent some time poking around his site. He’s got a followup to his original critique of Star Wars up:

Above all, just as in TPM, every heroic action by brave characters serves no purpose at all. None.

Artists vs. Record Companies makes it into USA Today:

Record companies see it as mutiny. Musicians call it an overdue rebellion. Either way, the artists’ rights movement has set the stage for combat that could revolutionize the music industry.

About damn time.

Scientific American has an article about GM’s take on fuel cell-based vehicles. Very cool. (Via Slashdot).

Wow. When Google released their API, I never thought that Cthulhu would get tentacles on it. Best of all, it’s Mythos Compliant! Hot digitty! (Thanks, Ryan!)

That’s right. Now you can turn your Thinkpad into an iMac. This technology stuff is nifty.

It’s been one year for Dean and Gail. Huzzah for romance!

Unrelated to the Isle of Skye’s ferry woes, dinosaur excavation starts on Skye. (Via Kelly).

Once upon a time, a co-worker of mine showed up to work the night shift wearing a button with the message, “Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters.” I loved that button. I think Wil Wheaton has that button, too:

These corporate masters care little for the artists who are filling their 4 car garages with new Porsches and filling their private jets with fuel and “hostesses.”

What they do care about is controlling how you listen to music, or watch movies, and, increasingly, how you discuss and react to our creations.

Google now makes 1U rackmountable search servers?

Too cool.

That’s right: a site devoted to linking to sites with restrictive linking policies and encouraging them to change their stance. Very cool. Via Slashdot.

Oliver takes out the cat door, again.

Poor Oliver.

Fax your representatives in support of anti-CARP legislation.

Dan Gillmor finds reasons for optimism.

Wil Wheaton has a heartfelt post about getting cut from Star Trek: Nemesis. Do yourself a favor and go read it now.

Wil Wheaton will fight the forces of evil, aka Barney, at the DNA Lounge. (Via Boing Boing.)

From Caveat Lector:

That was the best decision they could possibly have made. The server in the little restaurant welcomed them kindly. Did he see how tired and afraid they were? The food they ordered turned out to be excellent, hummus and falafel and grape-leaf-wrapped rice. Suddenly they thought that perhaps they’d make it after all.

They have gone back to the little Mediterranean restaurant every year on move-in day since then. They’ll go again this year.

I was a fan of Star Trek in the eighties and early nineties. I drifted away in the early nineties but returned to it during the last few years of Voyager’s run. As both VOY and DS9 were in heavy rerun rotation, I quickly caught up on the story and had a lot of hope that Voyager would live up to it’s potential, but was ultimately disappointed. I found myself enjoying DS9 for the Ferengi/Holodeck episodes more than the Dominion War arc, since I knew how it was going to end - badly.

Anyhow, I received a nice email today from the proprietor of the USS Liberty site, he very politely pointed me to a dissenting view of the ethics of the DS9 episode, In the Pale Moonlight. He’d read my piece on the Voyager finale and thought I’d enjoy reading his thoughts on the matter, which I did. I don’t know that I completely agree with him, but I certainly can appreciate his placing Kathryn Janeway on trial.

SSL: broken, fixed.

Well, it’s fixed for folks who don’t use IE, anyway. Close enough.

You are not ready for this.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you: Tales of the Plush Cthulhu.

(Via Boing Boing via Dorothea.)

Speaking of tool use… Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs: ‘Oh, Shit,’ Says Humanity.

Way F’n Cool: While crows have been known to use and make wooden tools (out of twigs and sticks), one was recently observed fashioning tools out of metal. Of course, they’ve been making other types of tools for some time now, but it’s nice to see some more ammunition to throw at those who argue against animal sapience.

Crows rock. Especially Iron Age Rooks.

I think it’s time to go reread The Uplift War.

Jamie follows the money to a surprising destination.

Hacking: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. Via Slashdot.

Way F’ing Cool: New Online Books. From the Online Books Page.

Holy Toledo!: Leia and Vader: The Untold Story (From the Brunching Shuttlecocks, of course).

I’m particularly fond of the Jawa hanging on the reins at the end.

And this would be bad how?: Ftrain.com: August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web.

Perspective: Jonathon Delacour: An American Mystery.

508: Dive Into Accessibility.

The Resistance: Gilmore joins Eldred in suing Ashcroft over the recent spate of laws restricting personal liberties of U.S. citizens.

Way F’ing Cool: Amazon Light.

Via Banjocat: Texas submits official quarter design.

Revisited: blipverts.

Music: Janis Ian talks about the music industry’s response to file sharing.

Food: From the New York Times: What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie? I mean, leaving aside the industries that have cropped up over the U.S.’s obesity epidemic that have vested interests in its continuance and that the average U.S. citizen consumes twice as many natural resources as their E.U. counterpart: this comes as a surprise?

How about this as a diet instead: eat less food. I’ve lost fifty pounds with that simple advice. Before you change everything you eat, try eating less of it first.

Grrrr: Burningbird: The Value of Anger.

Joy: Oliver, daily.

It tolls for webcasters. From jwz’s DNA Lounge Sequencing:

Well, you may have heard that the Librarian of Congress released the final ruling on the additional webcasting rates: they are half of what CARP proposed, but still high enough that they will put nearly every webcaster out of business, since the new fees will be way more than any of them make. And certainly more than we make here, since we don’t make a dime on our webcasts. Buy a t-shirt, won’t you?

I’ve updated my Webcasting Legality page. Other good summaries of this mess are at Save Internet Radio and SomaFM.

As far as I can tell, the only “appeal process” remaining is to write your representatives and get Congress to change the existing law. Save Internet Radio has links and suggested messages.

Also: Save our Streams.