October 2002 Archives

Bush: king of political cash flow
"Bush's fund raising record will be hard to break," says Norman Ornstein, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute here. "The most astonishing thing is, here we've brought the entire world to a halt to deal with Iraq, plus terrorism, the Middle East, and North Korea — and the president is taking 12 days out of Washington to campaign. No one has called him to account."

That's right ladies and gentlemen. President Bush broke President Clinton's fund raising record. He did this without any hit to his popularity. I'm sure even if you told people how much money, they wouldn't really care. President Bush is a good man. It's only when bad men raise money that would should be concerned.

Frankly, I don't have a problem with him breaking the record or being good great at raising money. I do have a problem with people not seeing it as hypocritical though.

Pat, surely you're joking...right? He's a politician. By definition he's hypocritical.

Nope. Screw that. He doesn't get to play that card because said he was going to restore honesty and integrity to the office of the President. By attacking Clinton/Gore for being money grubbing bastards, he put himself in this situation. Of course, it doesn't matter to most folks. But if President Bush wants to be held to higher standards, I won't shy away from the task.

Mr. President, shape up, or ship out.

Dell selling Apple's iPods In a case of strange bedfellows, Dell Computer has started selling Apple Computer's iPod portable music player, CNET News.com has learned.

How classic is this? I guess Mr. Dell isn't thinking Apple should shut it's doors and give us stockholders our money back anymore. Good for him, they all come around eventually ;-)

Emacs. It's massive. Actually, that's probably an understatement. I theorize that emacs is so massive that it has it's own gravitational field that eventually sucks you in, continunally adding to it's own mass.

When I first got an account on a U*NIX machine, the first thing I was taught was vi and elm. When I found out that you could edit your command line with vi commands I was very happy. But then, for some reason that is unknown to me, I started leaving my bash shells in emacs mode.

Now that I'm using Mac OS X, most of the system text dialogs obey the emacs cursor commands. Even BBEdit got on board with basic emacs cursor movement support. Anytime I'm near a Mac I'll use BBEdit over vim or emacs any day of the week though. I haven't gone completely insane.

It gets worse. Today I found myself going through the emacs tutorial. It's not the first time that I've tried to get a grasp on emacs. But the thing that scared me is that the tutorial started making sense.

Help me.

Mark ponders a problem I will never have, thankfully. Comment spam. Unless you consider the posts that "Josh" makes as spam...

War marketing It saddens me that the administration has so little faith in the American people that they refuse to bring us an honest case to back up their agenda. [rc3.org]

My relationship with beta software seems to be cyclical. When I got my first Mac (an LC running at 16MHz baby!) I was a bit paranoid about the software I put on it. I didn't want to break anything. As I became more comfortable with the system, I experimented with software. Beta software. Of course this was in the days when beta still meant something. Alpha and beta have lost their meaning, but that is another rant, for another time.

The big leagues I found a link to Michael J Radwin's PHPcon presentation about Yahoo's move from a proprietary page scripting language to Yahoo in Anil's list of links. This is the first really in depth behind the scenes look at how things work behind the scenes at Yahoo. I always wonder how things work at the really, really big Web sites, so the presentation is quite a treat. [rc3.org]

This was indeed a very cool presentation. I wish I could have been there to see the actual talk and not just get the PPT presentation. But, beggars can't be choosers.

Japan Hesitates to Put 'Zombie' Businesses Out of Their Misery. The Japanese have dubbed many of the companies kept alive through endless bank loans as "zombies." By James Brooke. [Fresh Stuff]

Pah...everybody knows you can't kill a zombie. It's already dead!

This Modern World Morality, American-style. [Salon]

Apple Stock Gets An F From Schwab [MacSlash]

Aha! Another sign that the end is near for Apple. Josh will be happy that he was right about the death of Apple. He's been predicting the imminent death of Apple for mor than five years now. I should have listened...

So yesterday Kat ran a half marathon up in Napa. That's 13.1 miles. A good 8 miled farther than I ever run, on purpose. It was also a trail run, so it wan't an easy 13.1 miles either. There were narror trails, streams to jump over, and poison oak to avoid.

We stopped at a pumpkin farm on the way back and picked up a couple of pumpkins. They were very cheap. We got two medium-small pumpkins for $8. They were much cheaper than anything we could have found within 30 miles of San Rafael.

Today we met up at Ryan and Josh's place and carved our cheap pumpkins. I took a few photos.

In other news the Giants have officially blown the World Series. They lost to the Anaheim Angels. I have a huge rant, but a) I'm really tired and b) nobody cares. So I'll just leave it at the fact that they blew it. What more can be said?

Now all I need to do is finish setting all the clocks in the house. My phone, vcr, and computers all managed to do it all by themselves. My car radio/cd player clock is busted, so I haven't had to set the time on it for about a year and a half. I guess it's time for that "atomic alarm clock" with a battery so I never have to set the time again.

Only I didn't say "fudge."

I don't really see the Giants winning a game 7 in Anaheim. Which is a shame...

I really hope I'm wrong.

There will be some more downtime today as py and I upgrade the webserver to RH 7.3. Actually it will probably be mostly py and not so much me. I'll be there to provide moral support though.

Like anything that gets too popular, weblogs are now getting big time backlash. It used to be that nobody cared if you had a weblog or not. Now it seems like you have to either love them or hate. I don't know how many times this year I've heard, "You have a weblog, my God I hate those things!"

Some people have gone to great lengths to explain why they hate weblogs, in excruciating detail.

Now the news about blogger getting hacked is making the rounds. The slashdot response shows this backlash in action, in ugly detail.

I'm glad I don't use a blog:

I wouldn't want some l337 hax0r coming in and reading everything about my personal life...

Oh wait, everyone can do that.

Doh!

It goes on and on, it typical slashdot fashion. Even the editor gets a knock in, and, heh-heh, they don't have anywhere else to talk about it - here you go.

As with anything that get's over-hyped, weblogs will still be around when the bubble bursts. The same people who were they before, will still be there plugging away. A few new recruits will stick around. A lot of people will forget all about it.

It's almost like being a person who lives in a tourism driven town. You hate all the people who come in, make noise, litter, and take all the good parking spaces. But at the same time, the town would be worse off if they didn't come and spend money in your town.

What can you do?

This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball.

The Giants certainly did their fair share of hitting last night in the 16-4 spanking of the Angels. They are one win away from their first world championship since they been in San Francisco. That's right. The Giants have been not winning championships in San Francisco longer than the Angels have even been in existence. One win away...

Woo! We're #1! We're #1!

At the table tonight:

• Champ
• Jerry
• "Josh"
• "kat2"
• Pat
• Py
• Steve

Showing how harsh a mistress Trivia can be, the team that got a perfect score last week, didn't even place in the money this week.

Rafe: For whatever reason, I've not been pleased with "The West Wing" this season.

Yikes! Harsh words considering last night was a re-run. Okay, they aren't exactly harsh. Maybe a look back at a past episode gave him time to reflect on this season. I missed the first season and a half of The West Wing, so I can't do a season by season run down in my mind and since I don't get HBO, I only see The Sopranos on DVD, I'll stick with The West Wing being the best show, on my TV at least.

Steal these buttons. Don't worry, you won't be the first.

The Giants have just tied up the World Series at two games a piece.

The crazy thing is that Pac Bell park is still packed. It doesn't look like a single person has left the park.

Terry Gross interviewed Charles Barkely on Fresh Air tonight.

I love Barkley. He has always been honest, to a fault at times. I heard him talk to Tom Tolbert on KNBR 680 here in San Francisco and he talked about how insulting it is to hear a black athlete say they are "keeping it real" when they do something dumb. Luckily he talks about this very topic with Terry. It's a great interview. Even if you don't like sports or athletes, Charles is worth a listen. Even if you hate Real Player, it's worth it.

Bush urges ban on "morphed" porn Warning of the dangers of the Internet, President Bush asks Congress to ban child pornography where no real minor is involved and praises police who patrol chat rooms undercover. [CNET News.com]

Now, while I'm not for child porn, this article shows very clearly that President Bush would love to put some reins on Freedom of Speech.

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

While President Bush knows that he will surely be turned back by the courts, he can hold up his moral stand during the next election. Does anybody know if the Democrats are going to run anybody against him? They might want to to think about getting a candidate in the news someday.

So today I discovered that my iMac at work had the caching bug in the LaunchServices csstore. What does it all mean? It means that no matter how hard I tried to set my default browser to Chimera, IE would always launch when I clicked on a URL. Yuck! Luckily Mac OS X Hints had 5 hints about how to fix it. Luckily, the newest hint worked like a charm.

I bet there is some hidden command line trick to fix in defaults to fix this...

Goldfish always make an attractive addition to any webpage. I think I can blame "Flangy" for linking to the
Lunchmeat Webpage backgrounds page.

Experimental build of Phoenix for Mac. "This is not an official Mozilla.org product. Please do not file bugs in Bugzilla with this build. Using this program may cause flushing, blushing, running of the mouth, high stool, and shortness of pants." [ via Aaron Swartz: The Weblog]

It's almost too bad because the Phoenix people are intentionally not doing OS X development because of Chimera. Which, by the way, you simply must download the nightly build because you get command+arrow for forward and back navigation. You never know what you use until it isn't there.

The auto-complete in Chimera is buggy though. If there is only one entry, there doesn't seem to be any way to get out of that entry. No matter what key I hit I always go to that url, even after I've deleted all the junk I don't want. Oh well, off to check which bug database it goes in, or to vote for the bug if it's already there.

When he isn't rapping about killing his mom or raping his wife or going on about how much he hates "faggots," he can put out some nice tunes. I still think that I'm mainly attracted to the music and not so much his rapping. The track Lose Yourself from his critically panned 8 Mile is very catchy. It's been running though my head ever since I saw the movie trailer. I still think I'll pass on the movie though.

I also understand that his music is just music and his lyrics are just lyrics. It should be left at that.

Update:

kotte: lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go...that's good advice no matter who it's coming from.

Apple's Stickiest Marketing Ploy One of Apple's greatest -- and no doubt cheapest -- marketing coups is handing out decals of the company's logo, which proud users slap on everything from cars to skateboards to Windows computers. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

Both Kat and I have Apple stickers on our cars. I see them all over SF and San Rafael. But then, we are within 50 miles of the center of the Apple universe.

Had a bit of downtime today. It looks like we got new telephone poles on our block. I don't know what they did, but the DSL modem needed a swift kick in the power cycle to get back into the land of the living. All is well now, I hope...

So while I was entering the rules to EFFBall, I knew that they didn't make a whole lot of sense unless you know what the playing field looks like. Above is the bookshelf with the strike zone highlighted in red. In the picture we are using a folding chair instead of the couch cusion because somebody was actually sitting out the couch.

Here we have a shot of the wall which marks off the distances you have to hit the ball. So, I hope it all makes a little more sense now. If not, don't worry. We tend to make a lot as we go. We've only played two games so far, so there are bound to be more tweaks to the rules.

The one weekend I want to buy Raiders tickets, they are sold out.

60% of the teams that win the first game win the World Series. Giants took game one. We'll see.

Everyone though it was a pretty easy night, and alas, there was the first perfect score in over three years. Unfortunately it wasn't us ;-) We did do very well, only missing four points out of the total fifty eight. A very good night indeed.

At the table:

• Champ
• Jerry
• "kat2"
• Pat
• Py

It's good to have "kat2" back, although it does mean she is on "the bench" and probably driving herself crazy with international daytime TV.

So here at work we just rented the building right next to us. The whole block used to be one big building, so we just knocked a few holes in the wall and now our office is twice as big. Well there is nothing but carpet and construction equipment next door right now. All that space just, well, taking up space.

Kevin and I put it to good use today with a variation on Whiffle Ball which we will now call EFFball. We used an empty book case with no shelves for the strike zone. To keep the noise down we put couch cushions in the case. Any pitch that hits the cushions is a strike. You get two strikes per out, two outs per inning, and five innings per game. You can score a maximum of five runs per inning. Any ball hit that lands in the first 15 feet, where the first steel beam is, is an out. Past that it goes from single to double to homerun in steel beam increments.

I was very lucky and won the very first game of EFFball in the bottom of the fifth inning. It was a lot of fun. I hope people don't move next door too soon and ruin our field.

Bush Troubled by North Korean Nuclear Arms Program ATLANTA (Reuters) - President Bush believes North Korea's admission that it has a nuclear weapons program is "troubling" but wants a diplomatic solution and views the situation as different from Iraq's alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the White House said on Thursday.

Daniel is wondering if the North Korean situation will be that different from the Iraq situation. They are both in the "Axis of Evil" right? Yes. But not all evils are created equal. There is money to be made in Iraq, no matter now much the war costs. It's the way it is. I don't like it, but I've come around to face reality. Don't think for a second that France and Russia are really throwing a hissy because they just want "peace" in the region. They want their oil contracts to stand and not be tossed out by an installed government.

If we were really concerned about probable threats, we wouldn't be focusing on Iraq. There are other countries that are more closely linked to terrorist groups than Iraq. There are other countries that pose a more dire threat to the US than Iraq.

Why Iraq then? If you have to ask, you'll never know.

I had a crazy dream where I got to meet President Bush (43). Yes, it probably had to do with watching The West Wing last night. But why couldn't I have met the fictional President Bartlet? I didn't even get to meet 43 in the Oval Office. What a rip! The really odd part was that somebody came in and told the President something about Wil Wheaton. Wil was probably in it because he's dropping the EFF office again next week on his way to a Screen Savers appearance on TechTV.

Now for the really odd part. I hardly ever remember my dreams. I know it's because when I wake up in the morning I don't make an effort to. There are all these methods to manipulate your dreams by making sure you remember everything as soon as you can. I guess I'm just in no mood to put out that much effort in the morning. Plus, it would take all the mystery out of your dreams. Sure you could have your own little Matrix, where you could be The One, but that would have to get old after a while. Wouldn't it?

1. Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Grey Cell Green (God Fodder)
2. The Beautiful South - We'll Deal With You Later (0898)
3. Adorable - Homeboy (Against Perfection)
4. Bill Hicks - Hooligans (Arizona Bay)
5. Ash - Burn Baby Burn (Free All Angels)
6. Millencolin - Black Eye (Home From Home)
7. The Housemartins - Drop Down Dead (Now That's What I Call Quite Good)
8. Sheep On Drugs - Come Fly With Me (One For The Money)
9. Delerium - A Poem for Byzantium (Poem)
10. Basement Jaxx - Where's Your Head At (Rooty)
11. Meat Beat Manifesto - Circles (Satyricon)
12. Oasis - Gas Panic! (Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants)
13. James - Ring The Bells (The Best Of James)
14. Nada Surf - Where Is My Mind? (Where Is My Mind? (A Tribute To The Pixies))
15. Reel Big Fish - Down in Flames (Why Do They Rock so Hard)
16. KMFDM - Dogma (Xtort)

As promised, here is the track listing for the CD I put together. Format is Track number. Band - Track title (Album name):

1. James - We're Going To Miss You (Millionaires)
2. The The - Love Is Stronger Than Death (Dusk)
3. The Flaming Stars - Bring Me The Rest Of Alfredo Garcia (Ginmill Perfume)
4. The Kitchens of Distinction - Cowboys And Aliens (Cowboys and Aliens)
5. Bis - The End Starts Today (Return to Central)
6. Super Furry Animals - Frisbee (Fuzzy Logic)
7. Leftfield - Dusted (Rhythm and Stealth)
8. Dirty Vegas - Simple Things Part 2 (Dirty Vegas)
9. The Catherine Wheel - Mad Dog (Wishville)
10. James - Getting Away With It [All Messed Up] (Pleased to Meet You)
11. Primus - Making Plans For Nigel (Miscellaneous Debris)
12. Inspiral Carpets - Bitches Brew (Singles)
13. Pop Will Eat Itself - Menofearthereaper [The Concrete No Fee No Fear Mix] (Two Fingers My Friend)
14. Gene - Haunted By You (Olympian)
15. Apollo Four Fourty - Carrera Rapida (Electro Glide In Blue)
16. Echobelly - I Can't Imagine The World Without Me (Everyone's Got One) (Out of Print: See Best of Echobelly: I Can't Imagine A World Without Me)
17. The Bluetones - Bluetonic (Expecting to Fly)

Now before you scream and yell that Primus isn't brit-pop, keep in mind that it is an XTC cover.

Apple is currently playing tribute to President Carter and his recent Nobel Peace Prize.

Bush Seeks To Shift Blame For Economy To Democrats (washingtonpost.com) WATERFORD, Mich., Oct. 14 -- President Bush acknowledged at a campaign rally today that he is worried about the stagnant job market, as the Republican Party prepared to warn candidates that most voters think the economy is going the wrong way.

It seems like an obvious strategy, claim that the problems are all the fault of the Democrats in Congress. Croon on and on about how peachy life would be if only he could get a majority in the Senate and ram his bills through. The economy will improve once we stop abortion! The economy will improve once we invade Iraq! The economy will improve because Jesus told me it would, but only if you vote Republican. And don't call me stupid!

Hyperbole? Of course. But it's pretty hard to do political satire these days. The Republicans have to be freaking out that polls show voters feel that the Democrats will do as good a job on the economy as they will. They used to own that area of politics.

Okay, this is just wierd. How? Why? Who?

For the last couple of months I've only been karma whoring /. for the EFF. I've pretty much only made posts when I could link back to EFF. Maybe they are EFF members.

Anyways...it's just odd. I'll get over it though. ;-)

That's right! Our softball team won the league championship tonight. We had to play two games tonight and the final game was a blow out. I feels great, but I'm beat. Time to crash.

Update: Okay, the details. The final night of the summer season has the final four teams playing. The winners from the first two games play each other for the championship. We started about 40 minutes late because the refs forgot the bases back "at the office." The first game was very, very close, and we ended up winning in the bottom of the 7th inning. It was probably my best pitching performance of the season. We had the usual rules argument about how many women had to be playing. We knew the rules, the ref knew the rules, the other guys didn't. Advantage us.

The next game didn't start out that well. The team we just beat was hanging around and cheering for the team we had just beat. They were being pretty vocal too. The first guy up to bat called time just when I was about to pitch, dropped his bat, and did a flat footed back-flip. That got them pretty fired up. He promptly hit a single. They crowd went wild. I got out of the inning only giving up one run, I think. We came up and scored two runs. We held them and then came up and scored four more runs. It was cruise control from then one. The final score was 14-3. It was nice to have a blow out for the last game.

This Modern World Fox's latest reality show: American Invasion! [Salon]

So earlier I mentioned that I would let you know which was worse, installing Gnome 2 or talking about a war in Iraq with "Dale".

Gnome 2 wins hands down. Dale actually was here yesterday and helped me watch football and baseball all day long and he is about 8x more reasonable in person than through email. Yes, watching that much sport on TV is very intensive and you shouldn't try it alone. The Gnome 2 install is from the Ximian Red Carpet channel. I foolishly thought that things would go smoothly simply because it was from Ximian. As soon as that dialog came up that asked me to make sure I knew what I was doing, I should have stopped right then and there. I'm now thinking of switching to twm or maybe Enlightenment if it's still going.

Gnome 2 doesn't know if it wants to be Mac OS, Mac OS X, or Windows 2000. I can't even edit a file in vim if I have syntax highlighting on. Yes, I filed a bug report...

The whole thing is a big mess to get back out of as well. I think I will just have to download all the old rpms, rpm -e the gnome2 rpms, install, and hope for the best. I would just do a complete re-install but I just got smb printing from Kat's PC working. I'm not about to give that up on a RedHat 8.0 fresh install just yet!

Okay, I think I've got a new layout coming for the weblog too. That and some style so I won't burn "Josh"'s eyes anymore.

Update: Screw it. I used another one of the MT default styles and upgraded all the templates to be 2.5 compliant.

Update Two: I'm guessing that some laptop users are going to have trouble reading some of the font colors. I should probably try to darken them up a bit.

I've deleted all the decoration rules from my style sheet. The only rules that remain are the ones to position the content, color the bar of links on the right, and the ones to make the iTunes box show up right.

Now, let's start over...

Now as most of my regular readers know, I don't really know anything substantial about intellectual property law. But I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb by saying that Lucas could probably get this t-shirt from ThinkGeek pulled for trademark infringement.

I know, I know...they list it as a shirt with a, "very subtle dark grey silhouette of a Bounty Hunter's helmet." The color may be subtle, but the imagery isn't. All that aside, it's a pretty cool shirt.

For those alert readers in the crowd, the use of their image on my weblog is an unauthorized use of OSDN's copyrighted image, but most likely falls under the category of fair use. I haven't gotten that far in my Digital Copyright book yet ;-)

Py asked if I was going to write in Bartlet in the 2004 Presidential election.

Probably not. I feel a bit silly for even stopping to ponder the idea. But the mere thought of it was very appealing.

So the EFF office is closed for construction mayhem today and we have Monday off as well. I'm still getting a little done from home, but I've found a new, painful distraction. Two actually. No, wait, three.

The first is installing Gnome 2. The second is debating Dale on the whole 'war' thing. I don't know which is more painful.

I'll let you know when I do.

But wait, Pat, you said there were three things. Oh yes, silly me. I'm trying to put together a mix CD. I'll post the track list when I'm done.

Okay, I'll admit that I've been fixated on the Eldred v. Ashcroft case recently. A reporter caught up with Jack Valenti after the oral arguments and Jack gave us this lovely soundbite on Congress' passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act:

I guess if the voters don't like it they ought to elect new congressmen.

For once, I agree with Mr. Valenti. We should take action.

Riding along with the Internet Bookmobile Angered by a law that extends copyright terms for 20 years, a crusader named Brewster Kahle wants to use the Internet to make books available to everyone. [Salon]

One of the cool things about working for EFF is the board. Brewster is the newest board member. I got a chance to talk to him briefly at the staff retreat. He is the real deal, a guy who made a bundle and now is trying to make the world a better place. He is also trying to archive the Internet. He so crazy!

Google RSS Google News to RSS is a brilliant hack, and quite clearly violates Google's terms of service ("no automated querying"). Enjoy it while it lasts. [dive into mark]

There was a .NET program that did regular google to RSS. That was pretty cool. But this is just too cool for school.

UPI story via /.

AP story at NYT: High Court Debates Copyright Case via Lawmeme update

First links from Cory: Lawmeme

As soon as I get word from Cindy, Seth, or Aaron I will post something.

Digital Copyright is at the top of my reading stack. Now I know some of you are groaning already, there goes Pat, thinking he wants to be an IP lawyer. Ha! Shows what you know! Nothing could be further from the truth. I just don't want to sound like a moron when I actually have to talk to our IP lawyers. I'm also tired of asking them stupid questions. So I asked them for a good bbook to get me a good base knowledge as all of them suggested this book. It's not exactly a page-turner, but it seems good so far. I'll post more when I finish.

Well...I'm using 2.5. Let's see what I broke. ;-)

Cool. Search works. I don't have time to deal with fixing the template right now.

Pinging blo.gs works. Let's see if when I edit a post that it doesn't send a ping...cool.

So I went to the dentist today. It's been a while. I know. I know. Every six months you have to go submit to the will of the teeth scraper. It's been a while. Four years to be exact. At two visits a year, I've missed eight torture sessions. So, take the pain in one session, multiply that by eight, and that's what I got to do this morning.

No I know you all are thinkging the same thing, and I know it's my own fault.

Did you see Little Shop of Horrors? Remember Steve Martin's dentist character?

Did that hurt?

What gave it away? The blood pouring out of my gums from where you jabbed your death stick into them?

On top of it all, the lasy doing the actual cleaning couldn't stop gushing about how good my teeth were considering I hadn't been to the dentist in four years. Yeah, amazing what brushing will do eh? It got pounded into my head and now I just do it. I don't even think about it anymore.

Your teeth look so good...

Really? Even when they are covered in blood?

Graying Black Panthers Fight Would-Be Heirs. A group of former Black Panthers fear their legacy in African-American history is being sullied by a new brand of Pantherism. By Dean E. Murphy.

The guy who started the Black Panthers has hired a trademark lawyer to squish another group trying to get some fame on the Black Panther name. I know I probably shouldn't find that funny...but I do. Talk about then and now.

I couldn't pass this search hit up...

How the heck can people use Sony Playstation 2 to launch Nuclear Missiles

What more can one say?

This Modern World Conservatives with an attitude! [Salon]

Rafe: War crimes

"Word is that the administration is preparing a war crimes case against various Iraqi officials in the event that they are captured (presumably as the result of our invading Iraq). I'm not completely sold on the idea of an international court for war crimes, but I find it particularly odd that the current administration would press for war crimes charges against Iraq when we refuse to submit to international authority ourselves with regard to war crimes charges. Everybody knows that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, but we don't have to go around putting it in people's faces."

The US, as with any powerful nation, has it's fair share of hipocracy. We seem to be taking more than our fair share lately though. The war crimes is just one example. Rafe goes on in his post to point out that we are erroding the very legal standards on which modern goverment was founded. Is this the legacy that Bush really wants? It just might be...

So I was talking to "Josh" today about weblogging tools and Radio came back up. I've been very, very happy with MT and don't really want to use anything else. But then Josh reminded me that Radio is the only "official" way to get feeds from The New York Times website. Sure there are scrapped feeds, but getting the read deal is always nice.

So I deleted all my old Radio files, downloaded the newest version and set it up from scratch. I even used the hosting that comes with Radio and now I have a RSS feed for a bunch of NYT feeds. Due to the way that the Radio MultiAuthorWeblogTool works, I can only combine feeds into one category. That's why all the entries are in one feed. Now I can read the NYT feeds that I paid for (with my Radio subscription) in NetNewsWire Lite. Cool.

Ah, natural selection... Is it inherent in human nature to break laws? Granted, natural selection and evolution have not been tagged as a Law yet...but you know what I mean. Maybe.

Are we fighting the system we are in, or part of the system no matter what we do? Typically species that destroy their environment don't have an environment to live in, and thus don't live much longer. I'm not trying to get too philisophical or anything, I'm just wondering are we breaking the rules, or simply playing by them since there is nothing that could be illegal, so to speak.

It would be interesting for a Logic and Critical Thinking class to look at slashdot threads. In almost anythread with over a couple of hundred comments I think you find almost every valid and flawed logical argument there is.

It would also be interesting to see what scores higher on average, a valid or flawed argument.

Daniel Dolinov posted the 100th comment to Vertical Hold. There is no prize though. Sorry. Maybe for 1,000 I can give away a candy bar like Jonathon Delacour

Tony Hawk has been a long time mac user. He was instrumental in getting Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 on the mac. It's was a great port and it played great on my TiBook.

I played THPS 1 and 2 to death and was able to beat almost everybody in the office. Then 3 came out and it was just beyond me. I'm sure it has a lot to do with not being able to play it very much. But even so, it was so much harder than the previous two that I doubt any amount of practice would make much of a difference.

We tried assassinations, it's the same
Demonstrations and violence, but it's still the same to me
Economic sanctions, it's the same
Tried dragging their names through mud, but it's still the same to me

It's the same

Down here in the condemnations, it's the same
Protected by the laws they make, well it's still the same to me
What about the world's reaction, it's the same
The only problem is too many factions, and it's still the same to me

It's the same

Where the hell is the population?
All quiet for a generation
Whatever happened to the human race?
Can't you see the enemy here is you?

It's you

In the Tory, or the Labor camps, well it's the same
Republican or Democrat, but it's still the same to me
Go to Lenin or Marx, it doesn't matter
Starve the people while the rich get fatter
Can't you see they got us where they want us?
Can't you see the enemy here is you?

It's you

Lyrics © Allen D. Jourgensen.

Lyrics source.

Ugh. We got tooled! I can't belive I forgot Verdi's Rigoletto la Donna E Mobile. Oh well, wouldn't have mattered...

Present this week:

• Champ
• Pat
• Py

Next trip to Reno I'm playing these numbers, from Josh's weblog calendar, on a Keno game. Think I should split the winnings with him?

Speaking of Reno...Kat and I were supposed to go up this weekend for a family birthday gatherine, but it looks like Mike's recent hospital stay is putting the nix on that.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.0 (Darwin)
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=Byg3
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Also available as a text file from my webserver.

My EFF key is now revoked.

A Beer In Every Fridge and a KMFDM CD in every changer!

From now on, when you hear Rumsfeld or Rummy, you scream RUMMY! It's just like Timmy from Southpark...only not as funny.

RummarummaRUMMY!

Rummah!

Rummy?

RUMMY!

No more whining I just unsubscribed from Dave Whiner's insane rants, because of his complaint today that Scripting News wasn't the #1 result on Google for "weblogs" despite the fact it clearly should be. I'm feeling good about it - I now have only 99 other feeds to read. [rebelutionary]

The attrition continues. I had to unsubscribe when Dave went off on Lawrence Lessig, for many reasons other than just being a Lessig fanboy. Lessig is also on the Board of Directors for EFF. Dave tends to attack people, then if they respond he then tries to take the "high road" and claim moral victory or call them "monsters."

The only things I see from Dave now are quotes on other sites that I read. Even that can be too much because usually if he is quoted it's because of something outrageous he said.

It's nothing personal, I just don't like his style. But now I have to wonder if Dave is who Scott was talking about in his Googledumped post...it sure sounds like it.

President to Congress: Don't tie my hands

Congress to President: We don't write blank checks anymore.

There has been a lot of talk lately about Mac OS X and it's geek appeal. Rafe chimes in on the discussion and it sounds very familiar:

"At some point, I may have to cough up the extra bucks though, just for the coolness factor."

The argument about price is a moot one for me though. Not because I'm incredibly wealthy, but because I feel that I get so much more for my money when I buy a Mac. Yes, some of the price of a mac is for buying the Apple® brand. But I feel most of my money is spent on making the Mac a great computer to use.

Macs I've bought:

• LC (later upgraded to a 68030 33 MHz w/FPU)
• 7200 (PPC 601 75 MHz)
• Beige G3 (PPC 603 300 MHz)
• G4 Cube (PPC 604 400 MHz)
• TiBook (PPC 604 500MHz)

I also have a G4 iMac at work.

Music preview: Pulp
No band in the world combines acid intelligence and expansive rock bathos with such sublimity. Their new album, "We Love Life," proves it. Listen in.

This Modern World
Election night, Florida style.

Re: Psychotic Fad Diets... I don't deny anyone the right to be wacky about the things they eat. I personally am grossed out by perfectly respectable foods, such as creamy peanut butter and celery tops. I also relish things other people won't touch with a 100-foot-pole, like anchovies right out of the tin and prawn heads. [She's Actual Size, Nationwide, Believe]

How odd that "kat2" posts this right as I'm reading The Hacker's Diet which I found from Mark's archives. Mark also points out that there are four lights.