Flutterby™! From 1998-03-01 to 1998-03-10

FILH Photos: Black and white figure photography an attempt to look at abstract forms through the female body.

[ related topics: Web development Photography ]

Bill Buxton has some good ideas on interface design.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Those of you who make your living through computers, especially if you have to deal with the general public in conjunction with your duties, are undoubtedly acquainted with the Tales from TCP Towers, and the original BOFH (archived at, among other places, http://www.xnet.com/~raven/BOFH.html ). I'd run across this site once before then lost the URL, but just in case you were suffering from withdrawal, the BOFH lives at http://www.networkweek.com/bofh.shtml with reports from the field as recent as this month! Yes, there is literature with lasting socially redeeming value on the 'net. Those of you who don't spend your days fighting computers, users and ridiculous requests, move along, there's nothing to see here. "What was your user name again?" <clickety-clickety>

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development ]

Experimental electric vehicle racing. Including the motorized wheelie-poppin' La-Z-Boy(tm), couches built for cruising, and the 45MPH shopping cart.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Essays by the short quiet guy of Penn and Teller, http://www.sincity.com/teller . I've also read some of Penn's essays and, 'though I haven't gotten around to reading the ones on http://www.sincity.com , suggest you check those out too.

http://www.westegg.com/cliche/

Have you been searching for just the right cliché to use? Are you searching for a cliché using the word "cat" or "day" but haven't been able to come up with one? Just enter any words in the form below, and this search engine will return any clichés which use that phrase...

The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting? Nerve Magazine has essays from Lisa Carver to Al Goldstein to Sally Tisdale to Norman Mailer. Plus dirty stories and pictures! And, if you just want the dirty stories, Mary Anne Mohanraj has a book of 'em, and no matter what the subject matter I wish I could write as well as Jordan Shelbourne

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books User Interface Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Giggle... Chuckle... Smirk... "That's not funny!" What happens when you give an alcoholic quadraplegic a sense of humor. The politically correct need not apply.

[ related topics: Humor ]

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, revealed at last. In the words of the page which sent me there[1]: "do not read it while drinking unless your keyboard needed cleaning anyway." http://home.att.net/~joserojas/conspiracy.html

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has been outed by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. We have built this page to inform, educate, postulate, and to fight the lies. We have been maligned, slandered and misquoted. On this page you shall find THE TRUTH! Awaken to the knowledge, Arise to the dawn of a new age, Advance to the Promise Land, to the TRUTH!

[1] The Steve Jackson Games daily illuminator: http://www.sjgames.com/ill

[ related topics: Politics Web development Games ]

Users of Netscape and other software from vendors without foresight to build in really big buffers can try http://194.159.85.168

And the longest machine name I've yet seen is http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyl...drobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk

Tech Web reports that Internet users don't have much use for entertainment sites. Most users are looking for schedule or similar information when they go online, they still get their reviews and such from other media.

Apple goes over to the dark side The New York Times reports that Microsoft is going to announce new non-standard extensions to the Java programming language.

Several industry executives said Microsoft would get limited endorsement from Apple Computer, which is trying to walk a middle ground between the warring camps.

[ related topics: Language Apple Computer Web development Books Microsoft ]

The new crypt newsletter is out.

[ related topics: Privacy ]

This is being sent to a whole bunch of people, so watch your follow-ups if you reply to it. For one thing you may end up for all the world to see on http://www.flutterby.com unwittingly (If you haven't checked it out recently, it's got frequent updates of my rants and interesting stuff). I've been struggling recently with a bunch of ethical questions about our culture. It's fairly well known that I believe that the educational system we've come up with is corrupt and interested primarily in furthering its own growth, actually imparting knowledge to students is somewhere on the bottom of the list. I've been struggling over our brand of warped capitalism, where a heavily protected stock market (I hesitate to call it a capital market) exists not to fund great projects, but solely as a speculative tool for people who think they can second guess the other participants. And of course, like most people, I cringe at the complex web of rules and mores which has made "business" students more valuable to the culture than those who actually produce. In that light, may I recommend reading: http://photo.net/philg/school/tuition-free-mit.html On at least one of these forums John Deamer and I have virtually canonized Philip Greenspun, author of Travels with Samantha and host of Photo.Net. Well, he's long contended that people who go into engineering fields are fools, because they spend a lot of money for training which they could probably learn on their own, and then get jobs which don't pay terribly much when compared to finance, business or even medicine. In his own words:

In my engineering department (electrical engineering and computer science), we claim to offer special expertise in building products and services that are vital to society. If this is true, we ought to be able to find some way of getting money that does not involve shaking down middle-class families in Oklahoma. If this is not true, then we ought not to be teaching.

I have decided to stop personally participating in the system of extracting money from MIT kids and their families. On Thursday, March 12, 1998 I guest-lectured an MIT class (on db-backed Web service design). I calculated that the students were paying about $80 in tuition/lecture-hour. I withdrew a stack of $100 bills from my BayBank account and I handed one out to each undergraduate in the course. I then proceeded to give my talk, telling the students that I was happy to teach them but I was not going to take their money.

Worth reading his reasoning. Once again, one of the reasons that http://www.photo.net contains some of the best stuff on the web.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Web development ]

A random manifesto generator. It gave me this: Friends, we all know that elections are a waste a time. However, we'd rather not lose our deposit again, so please vote for our party.

1. A vote for us is a vote for politics.
2. More tax on road cones - spend the money on sweeter sewers.
3. Let's exchange a harder future.
4. We will exsanguinate chewier Volvo drivers.
5. We will swap carbuncles for roads to improve our liberty.
6. Our strong rivals want more crime.
7. We know that lobotomies can embarrass Parliament. We will have more taxation instead.

I got there from the Tool of Objective Truth, measuring the veracity of any statement. And there because the good folks at http://www.crushmicrosoft.com sent me to the Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter

[ related topics: Free Software Politics Web development ]

ZDNet UK presents the Manifesto for the Bawdy Trousers Party

If you care about freedom, send the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund money!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Privacy ]

Absurdity du jour Attractive Nude Models Performing Shakespeare The majesty of the Bard's work, performed as he intended it.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

That Swiss Army knife just isn't enough? You like the Leatherman^tm, but it doesn't get the looks from the cow-orkers? Check out SOG Knives PowerPlier with Titaniam Nitride coating.

[ related topics: Web development ]

News.com has a report that Hacked.com has shut down. Who? If you care about security, the only place to be is L0pht Heavy Industries.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Business Web development ]

Two weeks ago Marylaine Block recommended that I check out Totally Absurd, a chronicle of some of the best(?) of American invention.

[ related topics: Marylaine Block ]

There's a URL for everybody. Even people whose purpose is reporting fatal bus accidents around the world.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Sick of the ridiculous pronouncements of the MIT Media Lab? Here's the cure.

[ related topics: Humor Web development ]

This explains the conspiracy.

[ related topics: Web development ]

From Emerson's Self Reliance

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?

[ related topics: Web development ]

The Substantive Law Behind Model Releases As a budding photographer I wonder about the ethics of photographs of people on the street. This paper at least clears up the issues from a legal standpoint.

Memorable Quotes from Alt.Sysadmin.Recovery includes this gem:

"Includes Adobe PageMaker. Now you can create layouts that look like you paid a professional!" No, now you can create layouts that look like you used a tool that a professional might have used, had you had the sense to pay him.

Our pens have been favored by professional writers for a full century! Now you, too, can own one of these fine pens, and write as well as they did!

Christopher R. Maden

[ related topics: Quotes Web development ]

The WWWF Grudge Match Gary Coleman vs. Webster, Pee-Wee Herman vs. Gilligan, OJ Simpson vs The People's Court. The important battles of our time. Currently: You decide, Cliff Clavin vs. Newman. Be there.

http://www.lightlink.com/grudge/

That Damned Boat Movie

"I just saw Titanic, which is a $200 million film about a real-life disaster at sea, but according to Hollywood Logic, none of the actual passengers was interesting enough, so the writer-director had to invent a Romeo and Juliet-style fictional couple to heat up the catastrophe. This seems a tiny bit like giving Anne Frank a wacky best friend, to perk up that attic."

- Libby Gelman-Waxner, from the March '98 issue of Premiere.

(In its defense, I very much enjoyed the movie, although I only saw it once)

[ related topics: Ziffle ]

Finally, someone speaking out for the rights of the Seal Clubbers Check out especially the Coastal People brand canned Seal.

Positive Propaganda Creating ad banners with a counter cultural motive.

Linux Weekly News One of the best information sources on the current happenings of Linux I've run across. Recommended if you're into that sort of thing.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama ]

TeamTake, for once an honest web design group.

Ronald L. Rivest has written a paper called Chaffing and Winnowing: Confidentiality without Encryption which proposes ways to legally circumvent the proposed key escrow legislations His techniques also make reasonable the multiple decryption targets that we've all seen discussed, so that a document can be decoded to multiple targets. This could give a person plausible deniability: "Sure, here's the key", while maintaining the real key separately. The universe treats government intervention as damage and evolves around it.

SFGate reports that the Berkeley is overhauling its nudity ban Currently nudity in Berkeley is a misdemeanor, which requires a jury trial. The problem (as the town council sees it) is that no prosecutor has been able to get a jury to convict someone, so the council wishes to downgrade the offense to an infraction, which would allow ticketing and conviction with just a judge. Mayor Shirley Dean is claiming that nudity is fine in theaters, but not in front of "unwilling" viewers on the street. Now this is a can of worms... I'm making a list of things which other people display which offend me right now, some of you can expect the stormtroopers to descend on you next time you go into the streets. Sounds to me like the people have already spoken. And wasn't this the reason that the jury system was instituted in the first place?

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Tamagothi, a keychain toy for the tragically hip

[ related topics: Web development ]

Linux Seen as OS Lifeboat

[ related topics: Free Software Web development ]

>From Nerve Magazine, specifically http://www.nerve.com/Bell/unbelievers/

"As for the unbelievers, it is the same whether or not you forewarn them; they will not have faith. God has set a seal upon their hearts and ears; their sight is dimmed and grievous punishment awaits them." --- Koran, "The Cow" 2:5-7

[ related topics: Religion Erotic ]