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

From the SHS mailing list: http://www.ejhs.org/ This is the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, a publication of the Insitute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

Following the DOJ case against Microsoft? http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f1900/1914.htm

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Steve and the friendly iMac: http://www.apple.com/pr/photos/execs/stevelow.jpg I think it's a stupid configuration of an overhyped product, but that doesn't make him any less brilliant as a marketer.

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

In the "what's the worst that could happen if your web site sucks" department: Slashdot points towards an LA times article on the U.S. bombing of a Sudan pharmaceutical plant which says:

But the officials said they did not believe that the plant actually produced such medicines, because they saw no evidence of such an output when they accessed a Web site for it. Web sites for five other pharmaceutical plants in Sudan listed the medicines produced at those plants.

Slashdot continues: "Wonder what they do to people use use the BLINK tag?" I dunno, but if I had that kind of firepower at my disposal, you know Flutterby! would run a spider looking for arbitrary JavaScript.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development ]

John Deamer forwarded me this message:

A group calling itself the Linux Standards Association has set up shop to cash in on the Linux phenomenon [3]. At first it appeared that no-one known to the Linux community was involved in the effort, but it developed that one Michael McLagna is behind it. McLagna's history and reputation in the Linux community is mixed, to put it charitably -,see this page [4], put together by Piotr F. Mitros, for some particulars.

To become a voting member of LSA you have to pay cash -- not exactly in keeping with Open Source common practice -- and the group's Web site [5] does not reveal how much. LSA's charter awards to its two founding members veto power over anything relating to the term "Standard Linux," which LSA has trademarked.

Community comment on Slashdot [6] is dismissive and/or derisive, and rightly so.

Lawyers for Linux International have sent LSA a cease-and-desist letter [7] over the use of the Linux trademark, because of LSA's stated intention of to charge a fee for branding distributions as Linux Standard Compliant.

We're going to see more of this as Linux continues to build mo- mentum and to garner publicity. (Linus Torvalds was recently pho- tographed for a Forbes Magazine cover.) Let's agree to ignore the LSA and perhaps they'll sink into the obscurity they so richly deserve while the actual Linux community continues to go about the business of building great software.

Thanks to Doug Morris <doug@mhost.com> for details and links.

[3] http://www.news.com/News/Item/Textonly/0,25,25453,00.html?tbtfM

[4] http://badragaz.ai.mit.edu/lsa/

[5] http://www.linuxstandards.org/

[6] http://slashdot.org/articles/980818/1247245.shtml

[7] http://www.linux-howto.com/linux.trademark

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Free Software Business ]

Bras found to be harmful to health: http://www.abcnews.com/section...g/HealthyWoman/healthywoman.html

[ related topics: Web development ]

For everyone who's ever wondered where the Pink Flamingo came from: http://www.sunsentinel.com/freetime/home/09180006.htm

CNN reports that Fred Tuttle beat Jack McMullen in the New Hampshire primary. If you read the Salon article I pointed y'all to back in August, you'll understand why this is such a wonderful thing.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development ]

Burning Man I talked to a photographer assigned to this story and he took a picture of me showering behind a water truck. No pictures with the story, if anyone out there sees it I'd love to have one. More pitchers: http://www.saturn5.com/tsheets/bm/

[ related topics: Burning Man Interactive Drama ]

Ran across this posted by Lisa Wolf to the Burning Man '98 Experiences bulletin board:

"Again and again some people in the crowd wake up,

They have no ground in the crowd,

And they emerge according to much broader laws.

They carry strange customs with them

And demand room for bold gestures.

The future speaks ruthlessly through them."

Rainer Maria Rilke

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

Working for Microsoft bad for your Sex Life? So says Rumor Mill this week mainly by quoting most of a Dan Savage column. Time to pick up SF Weekly.

[ related topics: Business Web development Erotic Sexual Culture Microsoft ]

Susie Bright talks about the difficulties of unloading porn at a garage sale in today's Salon magazine. Also, a really interesting exchange between Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman on free software.

[ related topics: Free Software Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]

It pains me to do this, but better you should read the original than some bastardized version put out by news organizations with agendii:

• http://thomas.loc.gov/icreport/
• http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/icreport
• http://www.house.gov/icreport

[ related topics: Politics ]

More Starr report stuff, I finally got as far as an outline, and there seems to be nothing in it but the Lewinsky investigations. Starr cost us how many millions, and the most he could find was that two consenting adults may have fudged the facts about their dalliance? Sheesh. Get a life. http://cnn.com/starr.report/

I keep saying the camera toters weren't in the spirit of things, and that I left my camera at camp so I could participate more, but I keep posting these URLs. Hypocrite me. More Burning Man pictures: http://www.vortexia.com/ http://boole.stanford.edu/~rvg/pictures/BurningMan/1998 http://www.dnai.com/~kcs/BM98 More Burning Man pix: http://www.laurencecook.com/burningman/98esplanade.html

[ related topics: Burning Man Web development Photography ]

From comp.risks, Bear Giles points out that Microsoft is using as a defense against the current Caldera suit against them regarding them deliberately sabotaging DR DOS that they've lost the source code:

No word on whether Microsoft's next defense will be that it stored the source code for Windows 3.1 in an Access database.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft ]

Is anyone else getting excerpts from the Starr report as spam? I've gotten three or four pointing me to various mirrors of the report. I think it's interesting that (apparently) Republicans have to stoop to such levels to get things distributed out of context.

More pictures from Burning Man, bandwidth burners, but good ones, at http://www.scumby.com/~wes/Bman98/, these were the guys who built the awesome horse pictured at http://www.scumby.com/~wes/Bman98/fruitof.htm, although that doesn't do it justice at all. Whoops. That sculpture I liked at Burning Man mentioned yesterday was the lower right corner of this page: http://www.elwing.com/BM/burning2.htm Still more, but I think these folks use JavaScript to do the slideshow thing, so I didn't see all the pix. http://home.earthlink.net/~dmarr/ More Burning Man: We met this man in the dark outside a sanctuary. Cool wheels, neat pictures of places we valued. Thanks! http://www2.southwind.net/~mrscienc/bm1.html More burning man pictures at http://www.elwing.com/burning.htm including a picture of one of my favorite static sculptures, the gold woman and silver man on the bottom right of http://www.elwing.com/burning2.htm

[ related topics: Burning Man Web development ]

In Nerve Magazine, the Starr report and Garcia Marquez' Autumn of the Patriarch at http://www.nerve.com/JacksNaughtyBits/StarrReport/

[ related topics: Erotic ]

According to News.com, Microsoft apologizes again for their arrogance towards developers. In the spirit of extending the olive branch back, does Visual Studio 6 correct any of the gross shortcomings of 5, or just add megabytes of new redundant libraries?

[ related topics: Business Web development Microsoft ]

I wish I had a better way to compile all these Burning Man picture links: http://www.cockybastard.com/bm/bm.htm

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

And a Burning Man essay: http://www.prehensile.com/does/bm.htm

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

On Good Vibrations, Pat Califia has a new Quickies which, among other things, talks about an attempt Cal Poly Pomona's attempt to evict a transgender student from the female dorms and how the cultural beliefs of various ethnic groups account for as much of differences in treatment of breast cancer as economic status. And Carol Queen's Queen On-line writes on coloring books for congress, how Tee Corinne's Cunt Coloring Book is being used to derail James Hormel's ambassadorship to Luxembourg.

[ related topics: Politics Good Vibrations Web development Books Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Salon this morning has an interview with Donna Dubinsky, head of the new spinoff of 3Com to do PalmPilot stuff. Another article on why teachers go postal. And an older article that I missed earlier claiming that universal higher education is a response to the failings of high school.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Web development ]

 Aug19 - 10 Aug24 - 25 Aug29 - 23 Sep03 - 21 Sep08 - 24 Sep13 - 30 
Aug20 - 22 Aug25 - 26 Aug30 - 27 Sep04 - 17 Sep09 - 35 Sep14 - 33 
Aug21 - 25 Aug26 - 23 Aug31 - 37 Sep05 - 15 Sep10 - 34 Sep15 - 40 
Aug22 - 17 Aug27 - 25 Sep01 - 35 Sep06 - 17 Sep11 - 38 Sep16 - 32 
Aug23 - 16 Aug28 - 15 Sep02 - 24 Sep07 - 18 Sep12 - 23 Sep17 - 24 

And just to spit in the face of growing success, Flutterby! will probably once again be without updates next week.

Who are you guys? If the logs are to be believed (and they may not be complete) some interesting stats. We thought we had tops 10 regular readers. Requests of the document at http://www.flutterby.com/ per IP address per day (excluding Dan):

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

In Salon this morning, spell checkers see the truth in names. The results of the latest 21^st challenge aren't quite as funny as I'd hoped (the challenge was to come up with fictional geek gadgets), but did come up with:

Laptop Humidor

Since no one at the office is fooled anymore by your possession of a portable computer (there are techs and secretaries to do all that scut work, for Christ's sake!), you might as well keep your illegal Cubans (a REAL status symbol) close at hand ... and it still sends e-mail, plays Freecell and corrupts Excel spreadsheets as well as a non-humidor laptop.

-- Keith Welch

[ related topics: Web development ]

Pixar's A Bug's Life release date is November 25^th. Go see it, and sit through the credits to see my name, or I'll be forced to thrash you soundly. http://www.calendarlive.com/HOME/CALENDARLIVE/t000084810.html

[ related topics: Pixar Web development Animation ]

iMac watch: http://www.vasher.com/istapler/istore.htm

iMac watch redux. Taking animé a little bit too far... http://www.din.or.jp/~toy/tb/tb20ea.html

[ related topics: Web development ]

More catching up: Susie Bright in Salon magazine on how the Starr report has taken all the fun out of talking dirty.

[ related topics: Web development Sexual Culture ]

If this doesn't get the pucker factor up: Ziff Davis reports that two companies are planning on selling the InterNIC whois database on CD-ROM for the purpose of direct marketing. It is for this reason that the founders of our great nation felt it necessary to give us the right to keep and bear arms.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development Music ]

"The wages of sin aren't much but the benefits are fun" -- Joe Thompson

On the Burning Man BBS, a long rant about the downsides of Burning Man.

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

A neat article in Salon on deception and birth control has started some good conversations in several mailing lists.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Another Dan passes this along:

The Everest IMAX film shot in 1996 by Ed Viesturs/David Breashears expedition will open at the San Jose Tech Museum on November 3. Advanced ticket purchases are recommended.

http://www.thetech.org/ops/imax/

Another interesting site on a 1998 Everest expedition...

http://everest.mountainzone.com/

In Salon Magazine, a neat little essay on why Playboy has become passé. Although this focuses on how changing feminism has left the controversy over the "College Girls" issue behind, it hits a lot of points that came to mind when I asked Catherine to drop my subscription (it was a gift).

[ related topics: Web development Dan's Life ]

How about some choices we can actually get behind, like Joycelyn Elders, for instance? http://www.thewhitehouseproject.org/vote_ballot.html is running a poll on possible female presidential candidates. (Those suggesting Annie Sprinkle will be applauded for their foresight, then clobbered for their complete lack of political acumen.)

[ related topics: Politics Web development Sexual Culture ]

From the Scary Devil Monastery (if you have to ask, you aren't a sysadmin) comes this gem:

I honour and express all facets of my being, regardless of federal, state, and local laws.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

"Blender is a complete and integrated suite for modeling, animation, rendering and post-production." For Linux, and they're selling copies of their manual to see if making the software freely available can still give them a revenue stream.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Web development Animation ]

The Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality mentioned below is way cool. Peer reviewed articles include topics like College Students' Perceptions of Women's Verbal and Nonverbal Consent for Sexual Intercourse. Small so far, but growing.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

David Schlussel was the creator of the gold and copper couple copulating sculpture at and the people emerging from the playa sculptures at Burning Man: http://www.slip.net/~dschluss/images/burningman/

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

The Bears! The heartwarming story of a father and son and the results of an afternoon spent pursuing a mutual interest: embarassing the neighbors. Thrill to the visuals of tacky lawn windmills... ...no, I mean, very tacky lawn windmills... Do I have to spell it out for you? If copulating masonite animals offends you, don't go there. Complete with animated GIF.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development Animation ]

MacOS on your NT box? http://members.xoom.com/yaro/macos/unload.htm Well worth the visit, and I don't often say this, but turn on Java and such first.

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Dictionaries Online: The OED 2nd edition, and Merriam-Webster.

[ related topics: Web development ]

A Maxfield Parrish page

Finally, I found the Water Woman website. See you there?

I've got two goals on the back-burner with Flutterby. I created it because I was checking in on http://www.scripting.com/ every day but wanted a resource that touched my interests, and kept me up to date on the recurring sites I like to read, and I eventually want to make it a collaborative effort, allowing site reviews from everyone and doing some interest matching. I also wanted to do more writing, and while I'm doing a bit of that, not nearly as much as I want. But on the former, while I don't yet have the interest matching stuff happening, people are starting to play with newwwsboy, the software I use to run Flutterby. One such is Glenn Dixon, whose take on the world is a bit different from mine. Note that there's been quite a bit of improvement in the software recently because of daily correspondence with Glenn, so if you download it and have trouble getting it working, contact me and we'll work through it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Content Management Dave Winer ]

A new erotica magazine, Clean Sheets. Mary Anne Mohanraj is one of the founders, so I expect good things.

[ related topics: Erotic ]

http://www.public.asu.edu/~ide4bubu/sexlinks/ Your resource guide to sex information across the world wide web.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Atlantis: the lost continent is finally found. http://www.atlan.org/ includes text-bites like "Atlantologists of scientific repute", and "Despite the predictions of Edgar Cayce".

The Dancing Cannabis page.

In the year 1998 (this was written in '89), one lone bicyclist fights the tyranny of the automobile. If you've ever been run into a ditch, you'll find this horribly cathartic. If you've ever run a 'cyclist into a ditch, see you in hell. Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Another porn mag on the web: Scarlet Letters

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

From Ann and Cathy's list of site reviews and links, the first entry is Ars Magna Erotica, a collection of pictures of erotic art through history.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic ]

http://members.aol.com/achatte218/chat/index.htm begins: "Mother Teresa has reduced my city to the slum capital of the world" and warns "please be aware that the letter is illustrated with photographs of Mother Theresa's organisations which you may find disturbing".

Okay, Greg Costikyan: His home pages are at http://www.costik.com/, from there you can find his recent article on hits this year influencing what's developed for next, and all his other writings on game design.

[ related topics: Web development Games ]

The Bear's Den has archives of erotic stories of a bunch of authors we know and love, but is in a bit of disarray right now. Hopefully that will improve.

[ related topics: Erotic ]

Some notes on teaching with Interactive Fiction: http://k12s.phast.umass.edu/~desilets/teaching.html

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development ]

Anti-Motivational posters from Despair

[ related topics: Web development ]

Well, once again the election out here in the PRC seems to be in the "Hold your nose and vote" situation. I wonder how long a country can survive when the essence of the political process seems to be get what you can while you can and to hell with the long-term. Oh well, some sites to help make the difficult decision even harder:

• http://www.calvoter.org
• http://www.crp.org
• http://Vote98.ss.ca.gov/

It's not like any candidate you're likely to vote for is going to do any good, but at least you can slow the descent.

[ related topics: Politics ]

The 12 principles of animation (as mentioned in the Bug's Life review at http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=2384)

• http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/8607/cashomepageframe.html
• http://www.education.siggraph....on/principles/prin_trad_anim.htm

[ related topics: Pixar Business Web development Animation ]

At long last, the Bastard Operator from Hell pages at Network Week have been updated, including a new series for 1998 (http://www.networkweek.com/bofh/bofh_98.html). Alas, it doesn't have the freshness that Simon once gave it, but...

[ related topics: Web development ]

On Tuesday we tested a launch system that will usher in a new era in Alhambra style liquid nitrogen rockets. I will, of course, have a full report with pictures once we actually launch more than our test milk jugs.

So far as I know, this is the first copyleft CPU design. It can be written to devices like Xilinx XC5202 FPGA and, if I'm interpreting the announce message correctly, leaves space on the gate array so that you can implement special purpose peripherals on the chip as well. Not only do we have computers (nearly) on a chip, you can design your own!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Hooray! Marylaine Block offers direct links to all of her columns at Fox:

1. Intro column: Land of the Pushmepullyou
2. The Gift of Spontaneous Association
--my title was Come Together
3. Some Accounting for Tastes
4. A Common Denominator
--my title was Off Our Backs
5. Changing Careers
--my title was The World's Newest Profession(s)
6. Maps and Legends
7. Cash Machine
8. Thanks a Heap
9. On This Day in...
<
10. Speed Demon
11. Hillary in the Funhouse
12. Check It Out
13. Us against THEM
14. List Fever
15. Open Letter
16. Family Viewing
17. Cartoon History
18. In Praise of Young Men
--my title was No Country for Old Men

[ related topics: Marylaine Block ]

In the New York Times, a quick note on Jane Healy's Failure To Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds -- For Better and Worse, and how people are embracing computers as a panacea for educational problems despite evidence that suggests otherwise.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Business Failure To Connect ]