July 2002 Archives

Py found a great link to mini ping-pong. At least we know this would fit in our house. The hunt is over though...until we get a bigger place anyway.

rc3.org Daily I got my TiVo in the mail today. Finally a Linux box that I can get to work properly ...

Funniest thing I've seen all night...

Tonight's movie is Traffic. It's pretty easy to wander away from. The dogs needed to play frisbee. What can I say.

I set up a SourceForge project page for the football code. Now I should setup the database and get the code up and running on SourceForge.

Kuch came up with a great name for me: GoalPOST.

Update: Attention John Ashcroft! Time to smack down Nevada. This thread at Metafilter talks about pot potentialy going legit. Wonder where he will stand on States' rights on this one? Probably the same place as with California and medical Mary Jane.

Salon.com News | Learning from Bill Buckner The Red Sox veteran accepted responsibility for his 1986 World Series gaffe, and he lives with a kind of grace now. Pete Rose and Ann Coulter, listen up.

Keith Olbermann is a great writer. It would be interesting to see how Coulter would respond to this. I'm sure she would just say that Olbermann is a part of the Liberal Media that continually crushes the poor conservatives. Of course, that wouldn't be an answer to the question, but it would be par for the course with Coulter.

Since I bash Coulter, can I be part of the Liberal Media now too?

Plastic: Bush To Powell:You're Best Seen, Not Heard A good diplomat knows that two stances are better than one; the practice of pointing out political hypocrisy is like shooting fish in a barrel: its easy to do, and when you score a direct hit, no one really cares because it is a foregone conclusion.

I'm sure as long as his popularity is above 70% nothing will change.

I hope you see like I see
I hope you see what I see
I hope you feel like I feel

And the world don't stop
There is no time for cracking up
Believe me friend
'Cause when freedom comes
I'll be long gone
You know it has to end

From The Verve's Weeping Willow.

Security warning draws DMCA threat - Tech News - CNET.com "HP hereby requests that you cooperate with us to remove the buffer overflow exploit from Securityfocus.com and to take all steps necessary to prevent the further dissemination by SnoSoft and its agents of this and similar exploits of Tru64 Unix," Ferson wrote, according to a copy of the letter seen by CNET News.com. "If SnoSoft and its members fail to cooperate with HP, then this will be considered further evidence of SnoSoft's bad faith." [CNet]

I saw the link in a bunch of places, one of which was slashdot. Bruce Perens, of course, got roasted. Not surprising in the least of course. Perens, just like RMS and ESR is out there trying to make a difference. They all do it in different ways, but at the heart of it all they are trying to do good. Help 'em out eh.

But on to the DMCA...no case has come to trial where the defendant wasn't some "hacker" being painted as a common crook. The 2600 case was a classic example of this.

The Felten case was dropped since the RIAA caved and didn't have a "hacker" to put on trial, but rather a career professor who was interested in teaching people. There will probably never be a challenge where the defendant won't be somebody that can be painted as a hood. I mean look at this research institute that HP is trying to silence. They all go by 31337 haxor names. The kind of people who don't stand a snowball's chance in hell in a court room.

We all know that Freedom of Speech is only for nice people.

So I put Mullholand Drive in the DVD player and I have the laptop fired up. Will the movie be interesting enough to keep my from getting the football pool sourceforge project page done?

We shall see...

Oh and speaking of movies:

• K-19: Depressing.
• Goldmember: Funny. Not good. But funny.
• Reign of Fire: Good for a "blow stuff up" movie.

Okay, so now I've seen Mulholland Drive. In the DVD extras I found the reason that David Lynch is whacked out. He is an Eagle Scout. It has a very profound effect on your psyche. I should know, since I'm an Eagle Scout as well.

Not nearly the load of crap I've been taking for having the gall to like the new Red Hot Chili Pepper album. Even people who liked Episode I are getting on me...geez. ;-)

I thought this was one of my best slashdot posts ever. Of course, it didn't get any moderation.

dive into mark/July 30, 2002 Gentoo Linux has 17-step installation instructions that include compiling your own compiler.

Possible Gentoo slogans

• Gentoo: For people who think Slackware is too user friendly.
• Gentoo: Putting the ego back into the OS!
• Gentoo: You can try and install it if you want to, but we don't recommend it...

Just kidding...I'm sure it's fine for those that dig that sort of thing. I just don't have the time to recompile glibc anymore.

Finally. The first release, which is very, very crappy, is out. I tagged it at version 0.1. I think I may have been too generous. I'd like to thank Kevin Mantooth for helping me test it out and giving me great feedback. Think of it this way...it can only get better!

Download the code!

It's released under the BSD license, which means I don't really give a damn what you do with my code. You are free to do what you want with it.

I do have to say this is way better than my Java signature randomizer though.

Now off to my new aggregator...

Oh man...I'm not even done with the football pool code and already I'm off on another project. I'm going to implement a php news aggregator to mimick the Radio news aggregator. This will be web based, have user accounts and prefs, and have "Post to..." buttons for your weblogging system. The first one will be Movable Type because that's what I'm using right now, although it won't be hard to support the other systems.

There are already tons of sample code for PHP/RSS, so now all I need to do is wrap it up in a nice package. I'm kinda surprised that nobody has done it yet. Well, they probably have and I haven't found their project yet. But if I can't find it with google and freshmeat, it probably doesn't exist ;-)

But as promised, off to the football pool code. You guys are lucky that Reign of Fire doesn't show until 10:15 or my ass would be in a movie seat right now...

Great feat, but not a great athlete Praise Armstrong's grit, his determination and his cardio-vascular system. But don't try to convince me he's the world's greatest athlete. First try to convince me he's an athlete at all.

This is a joke, right? Of course it is.

But let us play along just for fun. If Ron Borges wants to say that Armstrong isn't an athlete, then he should also say that cycling is not a sport. He doesn't want to do that because competitive cycling is a sport.

He claims that all Armstrong can do is pump his legs up and down on a bike and that doesn't make him an athlete. But in the same story he talks about Marion Jones, who last I check pumps her legs up and down, albeit with no bike.

After all, all Armstrong does is climb the friggin' French Alps on a bicycle. Pah...that's not hard now is it?

If all Armstrong did was ride a stationary bike with a computer attached telling him how good he was, then fine...he wouldn't be an athelete. But he is out there kicking other people's asses every year to win that race. That makes him an athlete is most people's books.

I certainly say he is a better "athlete" than most of the offensive linemen in the NFL these days...

Plastic: Muslim World Gets A Malaysian Wake-Up Call [Plastic]

Some of what he says makes sense, so obviously nobody will listen to this crackhead. Of course, some of the other things he says are pretty scary.

Learning to love Big Brother / George W. Bush channels George Orwell So powerful was the state's control over people's minds in "1984" that, eventually, everyone came to love Big Brother. Perhaps in time we all will, too. [via Kuch]

Need some depressing things to read? Dive on in...

My mind boggles at the approval rating this clown is still getting. If John Ashcroft and Ari Fleischer don't like what I say or think, they can ram it. Of course I understand that alone I am in no way signifigant, but as part of a larger voice I am.

I'm a Gator fan...and I'm calling in.

dive into mark Netscape 4 turned 5. 5 years ago, my best friend wasn't even dating; now he's married and has two kids. Fucking upgrade already.

Mark Pilgrim returns to his regular weblogging activities after his great look at website accesibility.

Cool. Don't get me wrong...Mark's book was awesome, but I like hearing from Mark the weblogger once in a while too.

Ziff Davis Is Said to Plan a Bankruptcy. Ziff Davis Media, which was a major player in technology publishing, has been telling advertisers that it will be forced to enter a prepackaged bankruptcy by the end of this week. By David Carr. [New York Times: Technology]

I guess Dvorak didn't stir up enough mac user vile to keep that ad revenue up. Now he has something else to blame on the mac.

The Definitive Maybe: National ID revisted Some of friends have harassed me about my stance on National IDs. I might have to rethink my position. It isn't a very libertarian attitude to want National IDs, I suppose.

Gee, I hope Dale doesn't think we are picking on him. I would have made the same arguments to Ashcroft if he had been on #Pirates...

The Miami Herald | 07/28/2002 | Invest more, and replenish It turned out that you would have been better off, from an investment standpoint, if you had fed your retirement nest egg, a quarter at a time, into a Skee-Ball machine.

Okay, so I've found out who left the note. The nice lady across the street told me who it was and not to worry. It isn't a threat. Some of my neighbors are really nice. The people next to us just got a puppy, and are cool about the dogs. Barbara across the street will occasionally walk our dogs during the day. So they aren't all bad. I still wish he would have left his name or number so I could have talked to him about it. Instead I get this "don't turn your back or you'll be sorry" crap on my door. Grrr...still pissed.

Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp

The article makes some good points and some bad points. The bad point is that google is to blame for indexing information. This is what google does. If you put information on the web, you should expect people to see it. If you don't want this to happen, there are very simple solutions to make sure your information is not indexed. You could use a robots.txt file on your web server, or you could password protect your site. Both are faily trivial, and if you don't know how, call the tech support at your hosting company.

The information you put on the web is in a public forum, unless you put it in a private one. It is your responsibility to keep private information private. If you throw your private paper records in the trash, somebody at the dump can read them. If you put you private records on the web, which is like an information dump of sorts, people can read them.

Now the good point is that government agencies are putting records online. This isn't so good. If only you were able to access your records, by authenticating yourself somehow, then it would be fine. But as it stands, this is something government should be very careful with.

Of course, when I was going to Chico State, they used to post test scores with our SSN number in the hall. Oops.

It finally happened. They are officially old. But, it's a good thing. Their latest album By The Way is very, very good. Some people think that Anthony Kiedis is a bad singer...well he's a lot better than me, so that has to count for something!

But seriously, this album will probably not sell well with "the kids" since there aren't any moshable tunes. This isn't Uplift Mofo Party Plan, or even Mother's Milk. This is them having dealt with a life of rock n' roll, and barely surviving though it all to tell the tale. I lost track of how many songs have drug references. By references I don't mean things like "I like to smoke weed" I mean things like "junkie" and "rehab."

You can definately hear the progression from their last album, Californication. This album is the natural next step for them. If you liked the songs like Scar Tissue, then By The Way will be right up your alley.

Tonight when I got home I found a note on our front door with this message:

The neighbors ALWAYS KNOW
when you're not home —
because your DOGS bark and bark
ALL DAY!

PLEASE

KEEP THEM INSIDE
when you're away

'nuff said (for now)...

Okay, first of all I have no problem with people not liking the fact that our dogs bark. That is completely understandable. What I do have a problem with is people leaving anonymous threats on my front door.

I've had a few problems with neighbors and Kat and I have been polite enough to go to them and talk to them about it. I have no respect for someone who pulls a cowardly stunt like this.

But now I have to wonder about the safety of our dogs when a threat has been nailed to our door. Do I report this to the cops? I know that seems a bit reactionary, but it wouldn't look that way in hind-sight if someone does something to our dogs.

How long have I been promising to clean the football pool code up? Well Sunday is the day! Hopefully...

Went out with Cory last night, along with 20 of his other closest friends. Cocktails at his place, then dinner at Buca di Bepo, and then more drinks and dancing at Cloud9.

Which leads nicely into my next theory, which is why women are more friendly with married men than single men. Married men are safe. Women can be their normal selves and not have to worry about sending "signals" and causing uncomfortable situations. It's doubtful I'm the first one to come up with this theory, but I'm the first one to write about it here. ;-)

But maybe I should rephrase that for all the single guys who think that sporting a wedding ring will get you more "chicks." If they are friendly to you with a wedding ring on, they aren't trying to steal you from your wife, they are just being themselves.

Or, am I once again so totally off base that it's funny? No matter for me...

It also really sucks that the Giants lost to the Dodgers last night. Now they are in 3rd place and 5 games out of first. I need to look at getting group tickets for my birthday. I tried to get it together last season and everybody was into it, then I couldn't get tickets. D'oh! Turns out you need to call a special number for group tickets. Now they tell me...

In attendance:

• Adam
• Py
• kat2
• Josh
• Pat

Score: 33.5

It was a tough night for sure, especially without Champ. We were very happy to get within 2.5 points of the money without him though. It was Steve from the Half Montys doing the questions, and they were a bit hard. I was hoping he would have learned from our mistakes. He got a few boos from the crowd.

Never fear Trivia addicts, Howard is scheduled to be back next week, so all will be well with the Universe.

On trial: Digital copyright law - Tech News - CNET.com "I would be very surprised if the court agreed that the First Amendment overrides Congress' ability to create this sort of act. I don't think courts are very amenable to First Amendment arguments right now."

Quote from Dan Burk, a professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in intellectual property law.

Sigh...

What a busy day I've had already, and it's only 2:30.

This morning I dropped Kat off at SFO for a trip to PA. She is visiting some friends from grad school and catching up with some family that lives back East.

I went from SFO to Foster City to have lunch with Adam B.

Now I'm back in the office dealing with the new wireless friendly ISP list we just put up.

I should leave soon and go yell at Sears because we still don't have a ping pong table. Sears is off my list of places to shop now.

Then tonight we turn into Team Gonzo and go kick butt at the Mayflower.

RIAA why
You hate your customers so
Please stop suing us

She's Actual Size, Nationwide, Believe Umm, okay.I've decided to set up a weblog. Why? I think because the people I usually ramble to about stuff are getting a little tired of hearing it. For some reason, having an audience (or the potential for one) seems to lubricate the thought process. So here goes.

Kathleen is part of Team Gonzo, a crack pub trivia team and a huge Ramones fan. I hope she isn't still pissed that I didn't put the Ramones question in the musical questions when we hosted pub trivia... ;-)

At night the people come and go
They talk too fast and walk too slow
Chasing time from hour to hour
I pour the drinks and crush the flowers

What have I...
What have I...
What have I done to deserve this?

From the Pet Shop Boys.

Ridge and Democratic senators call for study of expanded military powers for domestic law enforcement President Bush has called on Congress to thoroughly review the law that bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the Reconstruction-era law, known as the "Posse Comitatus Act."

I think Mark at the Morning Fix explains why this is a bad idea very well:

And it's been obvious and freedom ensuring and clearly enforced for well over 100 years because, well, we aren't Stalinist Russia, and we aren't insane, and most of us are well aware that an overzealous military empowered with such draconian authority is essentially what every sociopathic fist-clenched dictator from Marcos to Hitler used to gain power and maintain control and hack away at the very soul of humanity and pick up their personal dry cleaning on the nation's tab.

So. There it is.

Hello! Am I still asleep? If I am this is the worst nightmare I've ever had. Didn't Bruce Willis in The Seige teach anybody anything?

One of the fabulous interns here at the EFF is going back to Russia this week. So today she brought in some borsh for us all. Everything else she has brought in has been delicious, so I'm tempted to try this even though I'm not a big fan of beets.

This is last day of my physical presence at EFF, so I brought some Russian Borsch* for everyone - to try for lunch. The big pot is in the fridge, top shelf; microwaveable bowls are on the table, and sour cream is next to the pot. The way to eat it is to heat some up in the microwave (make sure you got a piece of meat in there), add a spoonful of sour cream, and mix everything up. You can invent your own ways if you like.

*Borsch - beets soup. Red in color (because of the beets). Includes meat on a bone, potatoes, tomatoes, onion, yellow pepper, carrots, cabbage and a little bit of garlic. Cooked thoroughly, and very thick.

From Beej

these accursed thorns
my bane, you fucking bitches
the tire spills green blood

Today beej set a new record for thorns in his tire during his daily bike ride from BART to his office: 13. Not bad. You may be setting the bar a bit high my friend.

So on one of the mailing lists that I'm on, the topic of the California law for fuel economy came up. It went back and forth and then I thought I was being very clever with this post:

Heard on the news that there is a lawsuit to block the bill now.

Can you imagine automakers up on The Hill claiming that there is no evidence to suggest that there is any such thing as global warming. It could be like the Big Tobacco hearings all over again...

"Senator, we firmly belive that the new Dodge Greenland, which seats 16, has no impact on the environment. In fact, some studies show that the new DODGE GREENLAND, starting at only $39,999.00 fully loaded, may help reduce the chance of heart disease...when combined with a healthy diet and regular exercise. Of course you should consult your physician before starting any diet or exercise program."

"Why thank you Mr. Dodge. You may go about your business. These aren't the greenhouse gases we're looking for."

Even the Bush administration has come to grips with global warming, although they clearly think that nothing can be done about it and we should just "learn to adapt." Dumb bastards...

This morning on the Pat Berry Show, Pat interviewed Vice President Dick Cheney. What follows is not the transcript from that interview:

Pat: "Vice President Cheney, is it true that you said California couldn't conserve enough energy to help make it through the energy crisis?"

DICK: "Yes, and look how right I was!"

Pat: "Yes...I see. Now you claim that nothing can be done about global warming?"

DICK: "Yes, and history will look back and see how right I was! Hey...why are you trying to connect two completely different topics?"

Pat: "No reason Mr. Vice President...just trying to get a feel on your reasoning. So did you invest your profits from insider trading wisely?"

DICK: "Yes! No...wait...yes! No?"

Yet another classic e-mail attachment from Kat. What would I do without her? I'd probably get more of the big stack of webmaster email answered...but I digress.

Is it bad that we laugh at a 5 year old kid flipping somebody 'the bird' in public? Probably. Is it still funny? Oh hell yeah. So laugh away and don't let the tiny pang of guilt in the back of your head make you stop. Give in, become the lowest common denominator. ;-)

Pinstripe Theme for Mozilla Pinstripe is a Mozilla theme made to match the look and feel of a native Mac OS X interface. The theme was designed to compliment both the Aqua and graphite OS appearances. If you're using an alternate theme engine such as Duality, Pinstripe will not honor your theme prefs for the toolbars, but may render some of widgets based on your theme. [via What Do I Know]

Granta: 'What We Think of America' Time and again I'm struck by the extraordinary disparity between the United States's global face and the many individual Americans I know and love. Their sophistication, generosity of spirit, intellectual honesty and subversive humour seem wholly at odds with their country's monolithic weight on the world. Why is it, I wonder, their government is never represented by people like themselves? President after president, administration after administration: all embody the ethos of the far right. Can these frightful incumbents of the White House and Foggy Bottom really express the median view of the commonsensical American electorate, bearing in mind that in this famous democracy only about fifty per cent bother to vote? Are my friends in some way disenfranchised: part of a vital, intelligent and quintessentially American constituency doomed to be forever unrepresented in their Congress and Senate? And if so, why? [via Jonathon Delacour]

I ask myself that question every morning while listening to NPR. The only thing I've come up with is low voter turn-out. When only a small percentage votes, it tends to favor the conservative candidate.

So in the softball league that I play in Monday nights my team made it to the playoffs and even won our first two playoff games. This put us in the Final Four for the league. We didn't really play well and lost 10-8. We usually score around 12-15 runs, which would have clinched it for us.

Oh well. So after the game off we went to a karaoke bar to drown our sorrows and laugh at other people.

I sang two songs. The first was If I Had A $1,000,000 from Barenaked Ladies and the other was These Boots Are Made For Walkin' from Nancy Sinatra. What can I say...they didn't have a great alternative selection. I figure I could pull off a They Might Be Giants song pretty well. You know, the Sun is a mass...

The next season starts August 5th. Let's see if I can stay healthy for yet another season!

Reuters | Breaking News from Around the Globe NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Major League Baseball Players Association has set a Sept. 16 strike date if the union cannot reach a settlement with owners, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday.

Personally, I don't think MLB can live through another stirke, no matter who's fault it is. As usual, I could be wrong...

TIME.com: Wall Street's Verdict -- July 29, 2002 According to a Bush adviser, the President is focused on the big picture and is "relatively uninterested in the daily economic ups and downs."

That's it. I'm personally banning any Bush speeches from 9am to 4:30pm EST.

Is it his fault? No. Is he making it worse? Yes. So will somebody in the White House wake up and keep Bush quiet?

The Web Standards Project Lycos Europe will be moving to a new design that validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and uses CSS for layout. (Netscape 4 users will get a plain text version with no formatting.) Spotted by Tom Gilder, reported in W3C’s public evangelist archives. Hat tip: Tantek Çelik. [Buzz]

Wow. How cool is that? Yeah...I'm a web dork, so sue me.

Diets & Dying

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

CONCLUSION:
Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Some of you may remember The Housemartins. After they split up we got The Beautiful South and Beats International. Some of you also know that Beats International was basically Norman Cook. Some of you may also know that Norman Cook is Fatboy Slim. If you didn't, it's no big deal since nobody really cares about Beats International ;-)

Anyway, back to The Beautiful South... I've been listening to their third album Beautiful South 0898 a lot lately. It's very good. It may be in my top 10 at this point.

I don't really know what's in my top 10 right now. Some people at my old job used to call me High Fidelity because I reminded them of the John Cusack character, Rob Gordon. Unlike Rob though I can't rattle off my top 5 albums for any topic and I have my CDs all in alphabetical order, kind of.

I have them in sections: albums, singles, compilations, and sound tracks. I also have less than 100 actual vinyl records. Which is good since I don't have a turntable.

blo.gs: sharing your favorites

So I'm almost all the way away from using Radio as a news aggregator. I still like using Radio for big news sites like The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, Salon, and The Washington Post. But as far as following "normal" weblogs I totally dig blo.gs. They let you login and set up a "watch list" and then give you a customized sidebar for either moz/Netscape 6 or IE5+. This way I get to see what sites updated and when, then I can go read them.

I was talking to Mark about news aggregators and he mentioned that he liked going to the sites to see what had changed besides the content. The more I use blo.gs the more I see what he was talking about.

A good example is The Flangy News. Adam started putting in some new pictures to mix up his design. I would have missed it if I only read his site through a news aggregator. Okay, that's not entirely true since he did eventually post about what he was doing. It's not a big thing, but the small things make life better.

blo.gs also lets you make your "watch list" public, which allows me to have the dynamic blogroll using this cool php script.

The blogroll is ordered by update time. The entries at the top have been more recently updated compared to the ones near the bottom. Another bonus is that when I add a weblog to my "watch list" through the blo.gs interface it gets updated in my sidebar and the blogroll on my site all at the same time. Very cool.

Dive Into Accessibility This book answers two questions. The first question is "Why should I make my web site more accessible?" If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is "How can I make my web site more accessible?" If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second. [diveintoaccessibiliy]

Very cool Mark. I still have a few tips to implement, like the text sizing. What can I say...I'm lazy.

rc3.org Daily All I can say is that I've done a number of years in the corporate trenches and my personal experience tells me that the ranks of upper management are filled with venal, dishonest people who do what they must in order to feather their nests and bolster their reputations. [rc3.org]

All the more reason I'm glad I'm taking a 'business break' and working for the EFF right now.

rpm --rebuild --target i686 mozilla-1.1a+-2002071518_trunk.src.rpm

Haven't really noticed any difference though. Oh well.

Today I was very, very lazy. I watched Stargate and Mystery Men. I managed to trouble shoot some problems people have been having with the football pool code. I did a really stupid thing. The schema.sql file was way out of date compared to what the code was expecting. It was no wonder it wasn't working very well for people. I still don't have it in a public cvs repository, but I'm getting closer.

I've also been dealing with the linux box crashing. At first I thought it might be my fault since I've been trying to make the performance on it suck less with hdparm. But it turns out that the NVidia drivers that Adam installed were causing the crashes. D'oh. Now if it had been Mac OS X or Windows that crashed because of video drivers all of you stinky, linux hippies would be laughing your ass off, but nooooo, it was your sacred linux that died a horrible death due to buggy drivers. ;-)

I managed to try out KDE 3 today. I gave it half an hour, then went back to GNOME. It's not that GNOME has more features or works better...it just seems to stay out of my way. Maybe I'm just too used to GNOME to switch. I doubt it. I managed to switch to Mac OS X from Mac OS 9 without a problem. Don't get me wrong, KDE seems like a very nice system with a ton of cool features (Like automatic conversion to ogg from cd in the file system browser). It's just not for me.

.mac - MacInTouch Reader Reports No free email only .mac accounts.

I'm sure I will be called an Apple apologist for this. But for all people complaining about having to pay for products can you please shut the fuck up already?

You are all acting like Apple is your buddy and they just stabbed you in the back by taking your girlfriend. Apple is a company beholden to shareholders, in case you didn't get that part. The free iTools came as part of the ridiculous "dot com mania" that swept the tech industry when everybody thought you could get something for nothing. Well, it isn't true now just as it wasn't true then.

Honestly I don't remember ever hearing that you could get you account "free for life" and I would love to see some marketing assests that claim that. I could be totally wrong though.

I guess my next question to the people who love Apple so, is would you demand "free for life" email even if the company would go out of business because of it? Of course, free email isn't going to put them out of business, but in case you didn't notice it's a blood-bath out there in tech land. Companies are doing some very drastic things to stay alive. Would you get pissed if Apple went out of business when they still "owed" you free email?

Scripting News People give me shit for editing my copy on my weblog. Well, you try taking the risks I do on yours and see if you don't want to tweak it up every once in a while.

Ha! People give me shit for not editing. Mostly dumb typos. The problem is that I don't have a draft phase where I really sit and think about what I'm doing. I just open a window and start typing and hit publish. It is usually because I'm either at work and don't want to waste too much time, or at home and don't want to spend too much time on the computer. Or rather I should say Kat doesn't want me to spend to much time on the computer ;-)

The Register If you've been working with OS X since the public beta, your bill for the OS alone will have topped $400 by now. [The Reg via rebelutionary]

Ummm, no.

Public Beta - $20
OS X 10.0 - $129 (I think)
OS X 10.1 - Free (I picked up a CD at Mac World)

I add up $149. How the hell did they get over $400? I don't get over $400 even if I add in another $129 for 10.2.

Josh and Py came up to San Rafael tonight and we went bowling. The first game I totally tanked and barely broke 100. Josh and Py were up in the 120s and kat was at 119 I think. The second game I came on strong at the end and got a 150. I'm pretty blown away seeing as how even when I bowled a lot as a kid I barely got close to 150.

Tomorrow is tennis. It's good to start moving around more. I don't feel like such a slug.

Living in Marin county, you get a bit of a snobbish feel in a lot of places. Not this bowling alley though. This was a honest to goodness white trash hang out. It reminded me of being in Chico ;-)

Consensus at Lawyerpoint: Hollings: Broadcast flag now, by FCC mandate EFF was advised that Sen. Ernest Hollings has written a letter to the FCC advocating immediate implementation of a broadcast flag mandate -- even without additional legislation. Hollings apparently claimed that the FCC already has, under existing statutes, the authority necessary to require that all manufacturers comply with BPDG rules.

This is not good at all. If he gets it done it will be very hard to challenge. Who is feeding him these ideas?

Some of the more frequent readers may know about my attempt to obtain a ping pong table. Well it's almost a week later and still no ping pong table. Sears has failed me. Kuch has given me some great advice on the phone call I'm about to have with customer service.

Hi Sears? This is Pat Berry. Did you get my fax of my foot? Yeah? Will put it up your ass. That's right. No. Thank you.

I'm going to ask for free delivery. I doubt I'll get it, at which point I will cancel my order and try again. Anybody have a truck we could use?

Vorbis.com - Open, Free Audio Ogg Vorbis is officially at 1.0!

Very cool! Congrats to all the Vorbis/Ogg folks. Now Apple, about that iPod's firmware...

I bitch about the President a lot. I voted so I feel like I can bitch as much as I want. But if I was able to talk to President Bush, what would I say to him? What questions would I ask?

He is the President, so I would be polite about the whole thing. So what is the polite way to phrase, "What the hell are you doing?"

Then in random play iTunes played Positively 4^th Street from Bob Dylan.

I wish that for just one time
you could stand inside my shoes
and just for that one moment
I could be you.

yes I wish that for just one time
you could stand inside my shoes
you'd know what a drag it is to see you.

Kinda struck a chord with me at that time. I feel that President Bush lacks perspective, or that he has it and chooses to ignore it. I feel that he is destroying freedom in the name of saving freedom. I wish he would stop it.

Google tells Amazon Light to Cease and Desist (Google Weblog)

I was hoping it wouldn't happen, but it looks like Google may be starting to go down the dark path. I guess we'll see...

A List Apart: Using XML The reason that we use XML instead of a specific application is that XML is not just a pretty face, living in isolation from the rest of the computing world. XML is more than a rulebook for generating custom markup languages. It is part of a family of technologies, which, working together, make your XML-based documents very useful indeed. To demonstrate what I mean, I decided to create a new XML-based markup language from scratch, and show what you can do with a document written in that language, using off-the-shelf tools. [ALA]

Just kidding...you'll never make money with XML ;-)

Very cool article with working examples. If you are just starting to think about looking at XML/XSLT/etc you should probably give this article a read.

Operation TIPS-TIPS: Report TIPS informants Not since the East German Stasi have so many people been asked to spy on their fellow citizens. With the Stasi gone, We're Number ONE!

John Gilmore Sues Ashcroft et al. for Freedom to Travel

Every once in a while I browse the comments of a /. story and every once in a while I find a good one.

From slashdot:

Principle is more important than practacility. Thats very important to remember. If we *really* want to search everyone at airports, lets all get together and pass an amendment giving congress the right to regulate (a) air/space travel and (b) to effect random/non-random searches of air travelers.

Bwahahahahahahahaa. This is so funny, on so many levels that my side still aches from laughing too hard.

Yes, I coughed up $50 for .mac. Yes I hate the name. Yes I like the sevice. $50 for a year was worth it to me. When my $100 bill comes due in 12 months, I will reconsider if it is worth it.

Further Reading:

• The original petition against charging for .mac

Got an e-mail from Amazon with some good news. Seems as though Strange Brew is finally available on DVD.

www.mnftiu.cc | get your war on

Oh my God, this War on Terrorism is gonna rule! I can't wait until the war is over and there's no more terrorism.

I know! Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore? It'll be just like that!

So the other day in downtown San Rafael I got a parking ticket. It was a dumb mistake on my part. It was July 5, and I went to get a hair cut. The streets were empty and I was running late. When I got out of the car, for some reason I thought it was a holiday and didn't put any money in the meter. I was the only car parked on that street. An easy target for sure.

So I noticed on the ticket that I can pay online. Cool! So I go to the site and put in my ticket number and fill out the form. I'm all ready to go when on the confirmation screen it says there will be a $3 convenience fee for paying online. Oh, I get it...I pay online and save them from having to deal with a letter and a check and they get the money directly into a bank account and it's a convienence for me!

Screw that. I'll take the $0.37 "stamp fee" instead.

What really sucks is that if people don't use this they can hold it up as empirical evidence that "people don't want to pay online." I don't know how much the service costs, but $3/ticket is way too much.

New iPods

Very cool. How they got them smaller is beyond me...hopefully a used 5GB one will be in my future ;-)

.mac

You know I'm fine with paying for these services. But now that I will be a paying customer I will complain when mac.com email is all jacked up or if you are filtering messages without telling me what you are doing. What I can't forgive is the name though. Calling it .mac is just ridiculous.

Jaguar/10.2

$129. I knew I would have to pay, but I didn't know I would have to pay that much. Oh well...

iSync

Sign me up right now!

Overall

I was thinking that the keynote would be a dud or huge. Turns out it was in-between. Maybe Apple is getting smarter about these keynotes and managing expectations.

Video Business Online Buena Vista Home Entertainment has revealed the Nov. 5 release of full seasons of TV series Once and Again, Sports Night and Felicity. [Video Business Online]

Sweet! I loved Sports Night. Now I can finally see all of the first season. For those that never heard of it, Sports Night was also an Aaron Sorkin creation. For those that have never heard of him, he writes The West Wing now.

Scary Gov't Logo. Check out this nifty animated logo on the US Patent and Trademark Office website. Link [Boing Boing Blog]

OMFG...

I'm still confused...what country exactly am I living in?

It just reminded me of the scene in Caddyshack where Rodney Dangerfield calls the steak "low-grade dog food" and it just cracked me up. Again, probably not as funny as I think it is...

In case you were wondering it's from Mozilla.

This just landed in my inbox:

Dear Patrick Berry,

*** JUST ANNOUNCED***
Larry Ellison, Chairman & CEO, Oracle Corporation

Join us next month and hear Larry Ellison in addition to other visionary luminaries deliver exciting keynote addresses!

• Scott McNealy, Chairman and CEO, Sun Microsytems, Inc.
• Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology, Google, Inc.
• Douglas T. Elix, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Global Services

Quite a roster there. Sure Linux can never really be "stolen" from the geeks, but they can be put so far back on the burner that they aren't visible anymore.

What will happen when Linus is "done" with Linux. Certainly that would not kill linux, especially now that there is so many suits depending on it.

Image Source

Pretty topical for a day when Greenspan made a big "hang in there" speech.

The Flangy News - Presented by Ronco I had no idea that MiB was the most sold DVD so far. I wonder what the timing of it was that made it so popular on DVD. I would have expected it to be something like Titanic (which I've never seen, but apparently everyone else has.) Or if the original Star Wars was out on DVD maybe that would be a top seller. [Flangy]

Don't worry Adam, you aren't alone in the world. I haven't seen Titanic either, unless you count the trailers. As for MIB, yeah, that is kinda strange. I would have thought it would be Star Wars...oh that's right...IT ISN'T OUT YET.

No, I'm not bitter... Stop looking at me like that.

House OKs Life Sentences For Hackers [Slashdot: Index]

Good thing I just got my Register "Hacker" Polo shirt. I shouldn't be too hard to spot. Although I don't think I'm too keen on a the whole life in prison bit.

It's also really great that this bill will due away with that pesky need for a court order before they tap someones phone or sniff their packets. Um, I know I will surely be called a traitor for this, but what the hell happened to the Bill of Rights in this country? I have a Constitutional right that protects me from unreasonable searches. If they have a reason to tap my phone or sniff my packets then it should be pretty damn easy to get a court order.

I would love to see if the three representatives who voted against this bill had any comments. You know, like how this bill seems pretty unconstitutional and if we had a real Supreme Court it would be ruled as such.

Lately I've been feeling really let down by my government. It looks like we need reform across the board in this country. It's not just "big business" anymore...we've been turning a blind eye to the massive amount of corruption in America.

In November, send a message to them with your vote.

This Modern World. The desperate search for a plausible narrative. [Salon.com]

The house does always win, doesn't it?

Democrats Speak Up On Foreign Policy [Washington Post: Nation and Politics]

About time they woke up and stopped being the puppets they so obviously are.

Day 26: Using relative font sizes. Due to a long-standing bug in Radio, I am unable to include the full text of this post here, for fear of damaging your News page. Please click the item title to read this post safely. [dive into mark]

I wonder if Mark does this just to annoy Dave? (Note: I know that Mark doesn't do this to annoy Dave...it was just my ill-fated attempt at humor when I obviously should have been sleeping instead because even before Mark emailed me I knew he was only sending that RSS to Radio users and not the rest of the world. Sorry Mark.)

Hi Ho. Hi Ho.. To add insult to injury, none of these people seem to know who I am. Do they not recognize my genius? I created Chimera! I invented XUL and XBL! I even implemented them a little! These creations surpass some of the greatest inventions of the previous century! The pay toilet? Bah. The Black and Decker snake light? So it bends. Who cares? And don't even get me started on that stupid little self-balancing scooter. My brilliance is readily apparent. [Confessions of a Mozillian]

By far the funniest 'first day of work' story I've read in a long time.

Dog Research. Dog Research
Rebecca and I have decided it's time to get a dog. The problem now is, if you're interested in a particular breed, how do you proceed? [Confessions of a Mozillian]

Kat and I have two dogs, both are from Humane Society shelters. They aren't pure breed, but we don't care too much about that. We have the typical relationship though, we buy them food and they eat it. What else is there to know?

President Says the Economy Is Fundamentally Strong. President Bush tried to raise investors' confidence in a speech today, even as the financial markets were continuing their slide. By David Stout. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

<irc>
<kucharo> quick, someone tell the President to shut up!
</irc>

When Geroge W. Bush speaks...investors panic. Pretty sad.

Further Reading:

• Market Ignores Bush's Bullishness [Washington Post: Nation and Politics]

Mac users "smarter," more experienced [The Macintosh News Network]

Damn straight! Right Pat? [ModWheel]

Um...yeah. Sure. I...uh...think so.

1. My tennis serve needs a lot of work.
2. When your spouse (probably your wife) asks you if you want to try re-arranging the furniture, you say "yes"

Py wandered over Saturday and we got in two sets worth of tennis. My serve needs a lot of work, but it slowly got better...and then worse as I got more and more tired. Looks like it wouldn't hurt to be in better shape either.

A lot of stuff moved in our house this weekend. Kat moved her desk out of the office into the living room, we moved the big shelf in the kitchen to where her desk used to be, we moved practically everything in the living room around to make room for her desk, and a small shelf went from the office to the kitchen. Whew.

Springsteen Protects His New CD's Online in an Old-Fashioned Way While the music industry scrambles to keep albums off the Internet before they reach stores, one highly successful artist has managed to skirt online piracy with a surprisingly low-technology solution. [NYTimes: Technology]

From the article:

By contrast, a scan of the WinMX file-trading network last week turned up complete or nearly complete albums by Linkin Park and Filter, which are not scheduled for release before the end of the month.

It is true that Bruce isn't exactly popular with the online-music-leechers. Maybe that has something to do with the lack of files online?

I don't know if I expect too much from the stores that I shop at or what. Very rarely do I feel that the customer service is even at an average level. The store for today is Big 5 Sporting Goods.

I wanted to buy a ping pong table for Kat. There is a table at her office and she really, really likes to play. I call around and find a store that has one in stock. I drive on over and find where the tables are. It's one of the places where they just have pictures of the table and keep all the stock in the back to free up floor space. I wait. I try and flag some people down but they make every effort to duck back into some closet before I can get close enough.

I give up on the floor help and go to the register. When my turn is up and I explain that I want to purchase a ping pong table and give her the model number of the one that I wanted. She gave me this look like I just asked her to pick up my dry cleaning. She then tried to flag down someone else to pawn me off on.

I finally got some movement and was ready to pay when the question about getting the thing home come up. I explained that I was prepared to put it in my car, or tie it to the rack if it didn't fit. I was then told that they couldn't sell it to me unless I had a truck. The manager-type person then explained that it weighed so much that going over a simple bump in the road would collapse the roof of my car. I countered with the fact that it was a luggage rack and rated to handle over 200 lbs. Still no go.

So off I went to SEARS. There it went a little better. The thing that annoyed me was that we went to the right section, right to the section with the pictures of ping pong tables and waited a bit. There were four people about 30 feet away all talking about how it sucked to be working on the weekend. As soon as we got close though one of them sprang into action. He explained they weren't in stock but could have it here by Tuesday.

Can I tie it to my Subaru?
Sure, no problem.
Excellent.

U.S. Peacekeepers Given Year's Immunity From New Court. The Security Council on Friday voted to give American peacekeepers a year's exemption from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. By Serge Schmemann. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Do as we want you to do, not as we do ourselves. Or something like that.

L is for lawsuit. Angry that little Johnny flunked, increasing numbers of parents are suing teachers. [Salon.com]

Parents: It's everyone elses fault!

"Road to Perdition". Neither a good Paul Newman nor a bad Tom Hanks can save this dreary art-house flick from the airless grip of "American Beauty" director Sam Mendes. [Salon.com]

I can't imagine Salon not liking a movie...I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

AT&T Concerned About H2K2 [Slashdot]

If I had a phone network that was this easy to hack, I would be concerned too...oh wait, I use that network. Damnit!

2.6 and 2.7 Release Management [Slashdot]

Let the Linux kernel flame wars begin, all over again!

$165 billion budget deficit projected by White House [San Francisco Chronicle]

The Bush Era Part 2 (Welcome to Debt, Recession, and War), take 36, rolling...and ACTION!

The scary part about releasing code is that other people are going to see it. A number of people have asked for the code to my football pool. I've sent it to them, in a certain state of disarray of course. It was never intended to be used by anyone but me.

I can only wonder how many boneheaded errors I made that will stick out like a sore thumb on a hand full of normal thumbs. Anyway, this weekend I'm going to clean it up and make a real public release under the PPL. Just kidding. It will probably be under the BSD License.

Josh was talking this morning about Launch. I've ranted about Launch before, but this time it's about Mac support.

Here is the error I get from Launch:

Sorry, your set up does not meet the system requirements for a Macintosh, which are:

Platform: MacOS 8.5 or higher (Not Mac OS X) Browser: Netscape Navigator 4.5 or above (Not Netscape 6.0 or higher)

Player: Windows Media Player Version 7+

No support for OS X. At all. Bummer. From a development perspective I know what they are going through though. They designed a system that relied on Flash, either Real or WMP, and the ability to have javascript control everything. What a nightmare.

I still wish it would work on OS X though.

Tonight was the night we (Team Gonzo) filled in for the immortal Howard Rachelson at The Mayflower Inn for Trivia Night. It was a blast. We knew that to do well (read: not have people hate us) we should stick to the same format as Howard and try to have the same flow to the night.

We were close, but we scewed the questions a little on the hard side. On a good note, we had a good spread of scores without a lot of ties. People generally seemed to have a good time so that made me happy. I need to html-ify the questions and answers and will post them later.

We handed out $290 to 8 teams. My favorite team name of the night was Gonzo Sucks Butt.

Update:

1. Q: This is a 2 part question
   1. In the movie and TV show M*A*S*H, what does the acronym M*A*S*H stand for?
   2. What was the number of the unit?
2. Q: What is the second element on the Periodic Table?
3. Q: Current Events. Recently both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have come under fire for potentially shady business dealings with companies they were involved with. What are the names of the two companies?
4. Q: This is a 2 part question
   1. What stock exchange does the FTSE 100 (pronounced "foot-see") index represent?
   2. What does it stand for?
5. Q: This is a 3 part question. Al Pacino has been nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role five times. He has won only once.
   1. What movie did he win for?
   2. What are two other films he has been nominated for?
6. Q: What country, other than Germany, is regarded as the first to decrypt German Enigma messages during WWII?
7. Q: Lake Tahoe is the second deepest lake in the United States, at 1645 feet. Which lake, nearly 2000 feet deep, is the deepest?
8. Q: In WWII, John F. Kennedy captained a boat in the Navy. What boat did he captain?
9. Q: This is a two part question
   1. What is the title of Voltaire's famous satirical work (published in 1759)?
   2. What character in the book promoted the philosophy that this world is the "best of all possible worlds"?
10. Q: What was the name of the group of American volunteers who fought for the Spanish government in the Spanish Civil War?