August 2003 Archives
Here's a depressing thing to see using the diff feature of NewNewsWire. Green is new and red is deleted.
- John Gruber: "The Exchange/Outlook platform is quite simply a menace -- not only to the organizations that use it, but to the world at large." Now that I can agree with.
- Hunter S. Thompson: "There is a school of thought among sportswriters that believes Mike Tyson should be put to sleep, for the greater good, and I am beginning to think they are right."
- Whiskey Bar: "Maybe they'll bring Saddam back on a consulting contract..."
- DailyKos: "His numbers continue to plummet." Is Kos talking about Arnold or Bush? Ha! It was a trick question. It's both!
- Thomas Friedman: "By the way, how do you get to be a terrorism expert? Can you get a B.A. in terrorism or do you just have to appear on Fox News?"
- Can I really be only 3 hops away from Warren Ellis?
Cory Doctorow, a mad Canadian sci-fi writer and EFF guru of whoop-ass running amok in the US, has released Truncat on Salon. It's like a sequel to Down and Out, only not.
Poor Dave Hyatt. He may be near the edge of his sanity at this point. But I do appreciate him allowing us to see glimpses inside the development of Safari. It's certainly easier to follow, and more entertaining, than a Bugzilla entry.
bq. "It all started innocently enough...You see, the CSS in question tripped over enough unspecified and ambiguous layout behavior to make a grown man cry...Then I wrote more tests and discovered that Mozilla was just plain out to lunch...Ok, so now I was officially irritated...Now I was really confused...Aren't layout engines fun? ;)"
(Photo by Brian Hall)
"For some reason, you're consistently the most photogenic person I know." -- Brian Hall
It's called being a ham.
Microsoft Exchange. Is it a problem, a solution, or both? John Gruber's latest article deals with a few issues of the current IT landscape. I laughed at more than one part of the article and winced at a few others. First the laughing.
There was no way for a virus to spread by opening or receiving an email message.
What progress we’ve made in eight years, huh?
(AP Photo/NBC News, Alex Wong, HO)
...and remember, this is a family show!
I give you Kittens, a 6.9 MB QuickTime movie. I'm still getting used to iMovie. Yes, I know it's easy, but there is a lot of features under than easy looking interface.
I still haven't gotten used to them climbing on my keyboard though.
On Friday the EFF was able to update their subpoena database with over 900 more subpoenas, for a grand total of 1,145. If you use KaZaA, you better check for your username.
That's right everybody, November 18, 2003 we will finally be able to get the first season of The West Wing on DVD. Sweet.
- Rafe Colburn: "Let's be blunt here, if SCO thinks that Eric S Raymond needs to be prodded into going off about something related to open source, they really haven't done their homework."
- Anna: "I've been invited to tag along for part of the Sleepless Summer tour." Go Anna!
- NetNewsWire -- the latest beta supports more things than you can possibly imagine.
- I didn't know that there was an official RSS feed for VersionTracker.
- A hint for dealing with e-mail from Sobig.f, aside from getting all your windows friends to patch their systems.
- KMFDM: "Fundamentalist forces are undermining the integrity of liberal and democratic political structures."
- Frank Deford: "Thank God for Whiffle® Ball. The last decent and honest game." Indeed!
- Does Isobel really have 40 Friendsters?
- I'm amazed at the lack of abuse.
- Dave Winer: "...the grandchildren get to live in a richer world because of the debt we create today." What is that? A Citibank® ad? Don't forget the debt has to be paid back eventually, with interest.
- Kos still thinks Davis might beat the recall here in California. Crazier things have happened, I guess.
- Whiskey Bar is taking a much needed vacation. I need a drink...
- Libya: "The check is in the mail."
- Bruce Perens on SCO v. Linux: "This is it?!?!?"
- Warren Ellis: "I'm leaving everyone and moving to Iceland."
- Once again, the tale of "Two Tiny Knives".
He's a bear that doesn't play by the rules...
He's got posable arms...
And killer tats.
Very cool stuff from Karim and Rebecca and Karim's new favorite store, Kid Robot.
I finished off the season with my best game ever. Not bad...
30 years old, or as some people like to say, I'm in my 31st year. Whatever. A friend yesterday told me that the "Youth of America" no longer found me trustworthy. I wonder what took them this long? Was it the FBI wire I was wearing or the CIA cap that I had on?
The "Youth of America" is comprised of morons. The middle age folks of America are morons and the senior citizens of America seem to be morons as well.
At least I'm not getting bitter as I age.
Ohio Lines Failed Before Blackout
Sorry kids, the Blame Canada game is off. As you saw earlier at Go Back To Sleep America, there is Bush connection. Shocker I know... Keep your eye on FirstEnergy Corporation.
The Great Gatsby is in the pile as well. I should really try reading one book at a time some day.
This is the make-up week. I couldn't find the ball I normally use, or rather it was in use by another bowler. I know, I know... I should have my own ball, shoes, towel, ball bag, etc... But I'm not going there. After this league season ends, that's it for me.
I was thinking about putting google adsense ads on Go Back to Sleep America. Then I looked at the hits for the site. Pretty poor. There are many reasons for that, but all have led me to not bother with the signup process.
Experts Asking Why Problems Spread So Far
I woke up this morning to a flashing alarm clock. The power had gone out sometime this morning. This did remind me of the story I read last night at the NYT about the blackout on the east coast. It had more detail than any other story I've heard or read, and they still didn't know exactly what caused it. A very telling fact is that "this whole event was essentially a 9-second event, maybe 10." There was no time for people to keep the parts from working as they are supposed to in an energy grid.
The bottom line is that there will be a bunch of outrage at a system that worked like it was supposed to. Does that mean that a blackout over most of the north eastern seaboard is a good thing? Of course not. But the system did work as designed. If you want something else to happen, then maybe it is time for a new system. So while politicians will rail on and on about how "this was never supposed to happen again," you can at least be thankful that it will take days instead of months to fix the problem.
The Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court installed a huge rock replica of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the courthouse. People complained and filed suit in federal court and won. Our "rock hound" told the feds to go get bent and exactly where they could put their federal court order because the rock wasn't budging.
"He argues that the separation of Church and State - a key plank of the US constitution - would not exist if God had not ordained it."
Is it just me, or did he just shoot himself in the foot there? Did he or did he not just say that God ordained the separation of Church and State?
He believed so strongly in what he did, that he had his monkeys sneak the 2.75 ton hunk of rock in "under cover of night." There are no reports that this was dubbed "Operation It's God's Court Now."
"You're attacking religion! You’re a faith bigot!"
No. I’m actually thinking that this guy has no clue how the separation of Church and State is critical to religious freedom. The separation of Church and State in America is to the religious groups of this country what anti-trust is to businesses. Many religious groups in this country understand that and are afraid of Bush's faith-based initiatives. It's interesting to see how Bush is trying to break both to give unfair advantages to his cronies.
If this judge wants to spread the word of God, then by all means he should quit being Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court and go do his thing.
As with all freedoms, like free speech, privacy, fair trials, etc., people think they apply only to them or their group. Didn't their mothers teach them to share?
Py went to Finland and he brought us back chocolate sardines. I think that says it all. Of course, we brought him a mouse pad from Australia...
This is the PG&E building across from the EFF office on Shotwell St. in San Francisco. Sucks to be them.
Poll Places Bustamante In Lead to Succeed Davis
Kos pointed out to the Cruz website the other day. It's a pretty nice looking site, for a politician.
If you live in California you can register to vote online. If you have moved or are not registered, do it. Do it now.
Microsoft kills off Outlook Express
Microsoft's business practices haven't changed one bit since they lost their anti-trust suit. How shocking...
Less than 5 shopping days left.
We still have a week to make up. Hitting the lanes again tomorrow night. Does the fun never end?
President Bush is pictured here at Inspiration Rock in Arizona, displaying his kung-fu skills which he says he will use on any "tree-hugger" that tries to stop his Healthy Logging Industry Forest Initiative. Oddly enough the scorched forest that he is standing in was overdue for thinning. A project which was fully backed by the "tree-huggers" and was on hold only due to lack of funding from the Bush administration.
Warren Ellis is having bandwidth issues. Don't worry, the link is to a small archive page with no pix and I'm sure I'll drive a grand total of 3 people to his site (2 of which will likely be googlebot and MSNBOT). He's posting a lot of large jpegs and I'm sure that's what's killing his bandwidth allocation. I wonder if his server has ImageMagic installed so he could use MT to make thumbnails.
A number of people recently have suggested that I try and move into comedy. Be a comedian they say.
Huh? Surely they are the ones that are kidding. Here are the reasons that I will never become a "comedian."
- It's work. And I mean a lot of work. Writing a routine is hard.
- I'm really not that funny. People around me who think I'm funny only think that because they get the inside jokes that are the main part of my schtick.
- It's a lot of work.
- I could never be as funny as Bill Hicks. If you want funny, listen to Bill.
- Playing to a large crowd is hard. I like small groups and by small I mean less than 5.
- Didn't you see Comedian?
- Comedians are broken people. Don't believe it? Watch Comedian or listen to Colin Quinn on Fresh Air.
- I'm serious, it's a lot of work.
I saw the IMAX version here in San Francisco at the Metreon. It was better the second time around, even though we were about ten rows too close to the screen. It's a very entertaining and engaging movie. I'll pick it up on DVD for sure.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to post my review: Rental
U.S. Sending Six to 10 Troops to Liberia (hat tip to Gibbs)
Yeah, we skipped week 11. We make it up next Wednesday. Oh, and bowled my best score ever tonight, a 159. Woohoo!
Yeah, I know...the part that really sucks is that most of them need to be ripped to mp3.
