Flutterby™! From 2001-03-01 to 2001-03-31

Oh. My. Via Scripting News, Google can return results as XML. Think of this not only as a useful information source, but as a way to return data from your own search engines too!

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Dave Winer ]

Via Elan, mobile positioning will allow cell phone paintball

In the game being released this spring by a start-up called It's Alive, players will track and shoot each other with their cell phones in a kind of high-tech paint ball. Players scanning the landscape may see the shops and cafes lining the cobbled, winding lanes of the city's old Gamla Stan section. But their cell phone screens will indicate they've stumbled on a secret network for aliens trying to take over the world.

[ related topics: Wireless Games ]

Gulp. Okay, if'n y'all are into pain, try the new Flutterby. It's still in testing, the categorization stuff has been automatically generated and needs to be manually edited and trimmed over time, and I'm fairly sure there are still crashy things in various places, but give it a whirl and leave bug reports here or email 'em to me.

Scotch Night at Leo's new house in the city last night. Certain normal moderation was suspended because of the easy availability of public transportion, and the Trader Joe's price on Balvenie Double Wood. This morning I'm prepping for a meeting with the Exluna folks. For the record, I'd rather be sleeping. Yes, I'll try to fix bugs in the new framework this afternoon.

An interesting Press Statement of Commissioner Gloria Tristani on Enforcement Bureau Letter Ruling on WGR (AM) Buffalo, New York Indecency Complaint. I guess WGR can now tell Mr. Palko to piss off over the air.

[ related topics: Language Technology and Culture ]

What with all the rumours of imminent Amazon bankruptcy, the contributions of Amazon to our culture are in question. But gems like the book How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? show that there are things Amazon has to offer that your neighborhood bookstore clearly does not.

[ related topics: Politics Books ]

Happened again. On a web-designish mailing list someone made comments about target platform that would drive away at least 5% of potential customers. When the economics of this were pointed out (How much would your marketing department pay for 5%?), he responded with an attack on the "Linux jihad", never mind that those who pointed out the error of his ways were talking about Mac customers. No, pointing out things you might want to consider about your business decisions is an "education". A jihad is what'll happen when management finds out he made those decisions without fully considering the facts.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Estrogen overload: On Friday I saw The Vagina Monologues at Theatre on the Square. Very good show, both moving and fun, but it was also clear that there were bits that lacked impact on me because of biology. Recommended, especially if you're female. Hopefully Todd's XFL experience on Saturday will help balance out the mood at the office.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

I have a new favorite site: XML Bastard rants about the overhypedness of XML and asks the right questions. I have often said "XML is the subset of SGML that Microsoft's developers could understand", but recently I've had to retract that 'cause it doesn't appear that anyone understands XML, they all just output vaguely XMLish stuff and think "this is progress!"

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Microsoft ]

Life imitates Cryptonomicon with the search for Japanese gold in the Phillipines. Check out the graphic of the Yamashita Gold search.

[ related topics: Cool Science ]

For quite some time, I've stuck with tried-and-true Netscape 4.74 on Linux. I re-gened my Penguin Computing dual-head workstation over the weekend and decided to upgrade some while I was at it. Details in the comments...

[ related topics: Free Software ]

Testing, ignore this entry. [Thread drift: Thanks to Eric we're back on mummification...]

I'm reading Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World by Claudia Roth Pierpont, an interesting, if often harsh, look at 12 female writers who've made a difference, from Margaret Mitchell to Ayn Rand. A few quotes that spoke to me, on the topic of marriage:

"She alone, out of an enormous and dull catalogue of heroines, does not get married at the end of the film, does not die, does not take the road to exile, does not gaze sadly at her declining youth in a silver framed mirror in the worst possible taste, and she alone does not experience the bitterness of the abandoned 'older woman.'"

--- Colette, writing in 1938 on Mae West

"Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage."

Harriet Jacobs

[ related topics: Quotes Objectivism ]

This is a belated post but I didn't know if I actually wanted to write about it. I went to see Dancer in the Dark last week. It's a macabre Lars van Trier production starring Bjork. If you are a Bjork fan, it's a must see. She was beautiful in the role of the gradually going blind Czech mother in earlier 70's Seattle. I won't say more because I'd have to give away the plot. I recommend waiting for the video just so you can pause the movie and take a good reality check occasionally - otherwise make sure you have plenty of Prozac on hand. I've never been so depressed in my life...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Via Genehack, the O'Really T-shirts are a subset of the O'Reilly parodies from the BOFHCam, including the LART Pocket Reference and the Windows NT Infernal Filesystem.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Microsoft ]

I've been diddling around with Ogg Vorbis 'cause I figured I should finally see what all this digital music fuss is about. So I downloaded a few players, Sonique is the one that finally worked. Kinda. It advertises "a killer user interface". Thanks, I can do without Ted Bundy on my computer. "Hey, let's reimplement all the usual widgets, but make them buggy and unrecognizable!" A decade and a half ago I thought the introduction of standard windowing systems would stagnate user interface design, but between web "designers", Netscape 6, and this crap, I see now why that's a good thing. Down with skins. Please.

[ related topics: Music User Interface ]

The new Clean Sheets has a fun article on the difference between erotica and pornography.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

/. reports a new Perl CSS descrambler (now this'll be a test of my formatting engine...) that's posted on Dr David Touretzky's Gallery of CSS Descramblers and reproduced here because, well, that's what we do. Also of note, the /. entry contains an optimized version apparently fast enough to do this in real time.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w # 526-byte qrpff, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz <sipb-iap-dvd@mit.edu> # MPEG 2 PS VOB file on stdin -> descrambled output on stdout # arguments: title key bytes in least to most-significant order ='while(read+STDIN,,2048){=29;=142;if((@a=unx"C*",)[20]&48){=5; =unxb24,join"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr(^[--+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;= unxV,xb25,;=73;=256|(ord[4])<<9|ord[3];=>>8^(=(=255)&( >>12^>>4^^/8))<<17,=>>8^(&(=(=>>14&7^)^*8^<<6))<<9 ,=(map{%16or^=^=(=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[/16%8])&110; ^=(72,@z=(64,72,^=12*(%16-2?0:&17)),^=%64?12:0,@z)[%8]}(16..271)) []^((>>=8)+=+(~&))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Politics Technology and Culture ]

Wow. Having trouble figuring out why the PostgreSQL query optimizer is doing the wrong thing? vacuum analyze; is your friend. In a big way.

Some quotes from sport announcers, like "He dribbles a lot and the opposition don't like it - you can see it all over their faces." (Ron Atkinson)

[ related topics: Quotes ]

Via Backup Brain, sand pendulum earthquake art, some folks who had a sand pendulum swinging during the recent Seattle earthquake. Very cool.

[ related topics: Web development ]

So the plane pulls away from the gate. Two people talking on cell phones. He puts his away, she keeps talking. He says "you might want to put that away or you could bring the plane down." She accuses him of terrorist threats, he gets led off in handcuffs.

Stating the obvious: PacBell DSL sucks. Here at the office it goes up and down more often than... well... something that goes up and down a lot, but worse than that are their outbound mail servers, which routinely hold Phil's morning mail announcing Scotch Night 'til well after Scotch Night(yes, we're looking at the received headers and mail logs to see where), and the hell that was Dylan's home install was amazing

Yet another attempt to create new TLDs outside of ICANN's jurisdiction (I've been watching this happen since about the time I got an IP connection) comes from New.net, who's trying with TLDs such as ".shop", ".kids", ".mp3", and ".xxx". The proprietor of Daze Reader notes:

I checked out New.net's site last night to see if "sex.xxx" or "xxx.xxx" or "fuck.xxx" might be available. Those had already been registered, so New.net thoughtfully asked if I might want the domains "sex.kids" and "xxx.kids" and "fuck.kids" instead.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Well...I read the Reuters "human interest" news section occasionally...I'm glad today was one of those occasions. MY...GHOD this is funny.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management ]

One of the things I enjoyed about Boston is the prevelance of Dunkin Donut shops (as Heidi said - "they even have one in the subway!"). I've been stuck in the Southeast most of my life now and have been forced to eat only Krispy Kreme as Dunkin Donut shops are rather scarce. Today I saw this article on the Boston Globe sight. UGH!

A request for help: I've got an adult friend who, after many years of therapy and alternative medicine to treat anxiety attacks and attention problems, has decided conventional treatment and drugs are in order. Because of the alternative medicine bent this is not a decision made lightly, and there's no health insurance so resources need to be spent wisely, so said friend wants to find someone who actually knows what's going on, and isn't just prescribing the drug-of-the-month to bored yuppie housewives. I'd heard Daniel G. Amen on the radio and was impressed, my friend found his Brain Place site, and is interested in going to the Fairfield branch of the Amen Clinic.

As usual I've been asked to be a guardian angel, to double-check decisions and references and do a little hand holding. Can any of y'all point me towards good resources on psychoactive drugs and treatment and horror and success stories?

[ related topics: Drugs Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Antidepressants ]

Oh, I've flipped the switch to add Topspin and Dylan to the contributor list.

Of note only because of a Coyote Grits project: CyberCash files chapter 11.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Sounds like we need a road trip up to Sonoma, there are some alternative views of alternative Barbie by Deborah Colloti and others up in Rohnert Park:

But some Barbie products Mattel has no plans to release. There's Menstrual Leak Barb, with the unsightly mark of, well, an accident. Islamic Fundamentalist Barb is covered, head to toe, in black cloth. Pre-Face-Lift Barb has a wrinkled forehead and deep laugh lines framing her smile.

I noted that New.net is trying to add new TLDs, I checked today from home and apparently AT&T@Home is honoring the New.net TLDs, but... also via Daze Reader, Wired reports on the alternative domain registry conflicts.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Ziffle passed along a WorldNetDaily editorial on the engineering of the California energy crisis, more speculation along the obvious path: That the whole thing's been engineered for political reasons. This one Godwinates the subject pretty thoroughly.

[ related topics: Ziffle Politics ]

So along The Internet for Windows ME for Dummies(now there's a tautology!) lines, Dylan just proposed that we need a Buttons for Boneheads tutorial.

[ related topics: Photography Microsoft ]

Marylaine has a new My Word's Worth on finding place, titled Hole to Fill. The last paragraph is very worth reading.

[ related topics: Marylaine Block ]

A realization about story structure: Call me naive, but it was only this weekend that I realized that romance genre heroines have to be unlikeable. While the hero's flaws can be misunderstandings, the reader/audience must be able to say "I can do better than..." to many of the heroine's decisions.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Marylaine passed along some links for my request for antidepressant info. For tracking down information on specific drugs, she suggested RXList, CNN's health news, Reuters Health, and the National Library of Medicine Medline Plus.

[ related topics: Drugs Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Marylaine Block Antidepressants ]

Just had a nice lunch out at Skywalker Ranch courtesy of Phil's wife Kelly, who works there. Phil and I were talking about the software he's writing. If anyone out there is looking for an early investment opportunity in the bioinformatics space with some kickass software and ideas from a developer whose programming and management skills I really admire, gimme a yelp and I'll get you in touch. I don't want to say too much more because of NDA issues, but there's some really good stuff goin' down here.

It's getting in to my favorite time of year in Marin, just after the rains, when the world gets lush and green and the creeks flow. This is just one of the many gorgeous spots on Cataract Creek from a hike three Saturdays ago.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Any Perl hackers want to help with an open source search engine? After looking around at a few of the extant offerings I decided to brush off my old code and tune it up (I'll be deploying on Flutterby soon). Right now the index files take up as much space as the original documents, and on the non PostgreSQL version I still need to set up a better way to handle modifying files (and the PostgreSQL version is completely profligate with disk space), but it does phrases(!), "-" and "+" for exclude and require, and is written in Perl and can use DB_File so that you can deploy it on your favorite cheap web host. (And previous experience says that I can probably get 75% out of the indexes if I care, it's just that disk space is soooo cheap that it hardly seems worth it.)

[ related topics: Free Software ]

Hot Damn! People are using CSS to good ends: The CSS Anarchist and The CSS Anarchist Strikes Again detail ways to do all those things that we had to run custom written proxy servers to do in the past: Stripping out banner ads, making hideous looking web pages readable, all sorts of groovy hints!

[ related topics: Web development Web Standards Project - WaSP ]

QOTD, by Robert Flaceli[unknown char]re, Love in Ancient Greece, p.19, quoted in The Mistress: Histories, Myths and Interpretations of the "Other Woman" by Victoria Griffin, p.42, Bloomsbury Press:

"Death changes all. It gives weight and duration to human destiny, above all to human love. Among the Immortals love is merely a kind of game, without serious aftereffects. But among men it is always an important, sometimes a tragic business."

[ related topics: Quotes ]

Just when you thought we were gonna go all "liberal arts" on you: The hazards of bad Perl: Slashdot: Sophomore Uses List Context; Cops Interrogate.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Local Rant: The "semantic web" is hogwash is an expression of my frustration with the W3C standards processes, especially as they drive off the experienced members who've actually done implementation work and ignore development in any direction that might actually create useful semantic information. So instead, much as Jorn Barger predicted, we'll be forced to fall back on massive regular expressions as an attempt at natural language parsing for anything useful.

[ related topics: Jorn Barger Web development ]

Columbine has a follow-up to last year's On User-Directed Narratives (which I linked to last year) titled Token Trading, Colored Locks, and Pixel Hunts.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games ]

Some neat Brad Wallis erotic photographs in the current issue of Clean Sheets.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic ]

For Topspin, the Clean Sheets Limerick competition results.

[ related topics: Erotic ]

Two months ago, in downtown San Rafael.

[ related topics: Photography Child-Freedom ]

You plunk down your and install your game and what the heck, you go for the full install and chew up 800meg of hard drive space for one game! Thats all in the realm of acceptable but when they force me to put the fucking CD!! in everytime I want to load that game. They have crossed the line. This might be an acceptable answer. I think software companies should get paid but not at the cost of making the product anoying. Don't even get me started on Dongles....

[ related topics: Free Software Privacy Games ]

Via RC3, the .com 1040.

Via RC3, the .com 1040 (Actually, Rafe linked to this jpeg version of the .com 1040).

East Palo Alto police have armed standoff with "gunman" who didn't exist. The three alleged "hostages" who were reported on the radio yesterday as "rescued" said there was no one else in the house from the beginning.

Yesterday, Veronica Cazzalli, Luis Cazzalli's sister, led reporters through her home, pointing out holes in windows and walls made by tear gas containers along with shattered door frames and boot prints on walls. "This was totally uncalled for," she said.

Greek dentist who posed nude suspended by professional organization for unfair competition.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Verio cuts off John Gilmore for having an open SMTP relay. John Gilmore is one of the cofounders of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, and thus should definitely know better. I tend to take a fairly harsh line on the whole "public nuisance" thing, I think it'd be just fine if swimming pools didn't have to have fences, but an open relay is akin to walking around with a hand-grenade with the pin pulled out, and blaming the other shoppers when it gets dropped. Yes, we should be able to have open relays, but reality intrudes.

I use Xemacs when I'm going to be editting the same file for more than a few minutes. Today I was playing around in the preferences and found something about an editing emulation of 'CRiSP'. Turning it on doesn't seem to do anything though. Does anyone with more emacs knowledge have any idea what it's supposed to do?

It looks like the rash of viruses that have been circulating around lately may do more for putting Linux on the desktop than some killer app. Action Aid, a worldwide charity is turning to Linux as a solution for its infestations.

[ related topics: Free Software Technology and Culture ]

So on Monday, Microsoft is going to release HailStorm which, from the advance buzz, sounds like "browser meets ICQ". Open Source folks: If you want to beat Microsoft long term, concentrate on how the younger generation works. With Windows XP Microsoft is targeting older people who need a lot of screen real-estate taken up with on-screen prompting and explanations. If HailStorm lives up to the hype they'll be targetting bored horny housewives who can't type complete words ("r u hot 4 me?"); teens with the same problem, albeit with broader interests; and drooling idiots posing as CEOs of unethical .com companies. Stick with building solid operating systems to support those doing work and there will always be a market. Of course no one will pay for it, but that's the lot of those who actually make the world go 'round.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft ]

Point Reyes Lighthouse back in April, when the Scotch Night crowd went there for some Sunday morning whale watching. Saw a couple, fairly far out.

[ related topics: Photography ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

There was a response at Medley to David Chess's casting term limits as a prisoner's dilemma problem. And they're both wrong, because individuals no longer have anything to do with politics, and there's no way to limit a political party's term.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Old News: Greenspun leaves Ars Digita

[ related topics: Web development ]

Gary tells me that I must go see the Reverend Billy C. Wirtz, "director of The First House Of Polyester Worship And Horizontal Throbbing Teenage Desire", on March 27 at Biscuits & Blues in San Francisco. Check Reverend Billy's schedule to see when he's appearing near you. Any Bay Area rednecks out there feel like gettin' down with the man who wrote Sleeper Hold on Satan and Honky Tonk Hermaphrodite?

[ related topics: Humor ]

I'm playing with a new look, I may tear it down shortly, it hasn't yet been implemented on all my pages, and I'm still trying to reconcile a few design issues for differing use cases. Anyway, tell me if it sucks too hard, and other suggestions are appreciated too.

The TransAmerica pyramid from the Carnelian room in the BofA building, thanks to the folks at BASIS for serving Todd and me breakfast up there and having John P. Lucich of the High Tech Crime Network give us a little talk on security that was mostly plattitudes but made me think about why physical security needn't be the last word. (Run-on-sentences is me!)

[ related topics: Photography ]

After that discussion on Gilmore and spam Ziffle passed along this article on when spam can be good. An encryptor called Spammimic makes your messages look like stanSPAM.AR

After that thread on Gilmore and spam, Ziffle passed along When Spam is Good which describes Spammimic, a steganographic program designed to encode messages to look like spam to avoid detection by Carnivore like filters. (Didn't they rename "Carnivore" to something more fluffy-bunny like?)

[ related topics: Ziffle Libertarian Privacy ]

Microsoft has released the Hailstorm whitepaper. Summary: In about a year, using a Microsoft Passport ID, there'll be centralized servers for MSExchange services. Apparently nothing interesting is available yet, so this looks like a "We needed to scare the competitors and now have 9 months to implement this" sort of thing. Sigh. The Register weighs in on HailStorm too:

But almost unnoticed in the rush to discuss the usage (or abusage) of SOAP, XML and other technology specs is the more significant story. Microsoft promises to make Hailstorm a "business center", piped through the Passport hub. In other words, it's pay-to-play.

[ related topics: Microsoft Microsoft Hailstorm ]

Park Wars is worth a few minutes of your time (if you have a high speed connection).

[ related topics: Humor Star Wars Animation ]

Interesting letter from Igor of Voyeurweb, some notes on the economics and social issues of running a 'net porn site with a half-million buck monthly bandwidth charge.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Salon introduces a subscription service. Interesting bit: 'Premium subscribers will be able to view Salon without banner or "pop-up" ads.' Translation: They're making less than $30/year/subscriber from ads. Given that in the economics of the dead-trees world subscriptions are a way to verify interest for the advertisers, this means that the 'net has not yet happened.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Supreme Court rules against SC

"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that public hospitals may not test pregnant women for drug use and provide the results to the police without the patient's consent or a warrant."

This is good. Health care is a private matter and providing name-specific info to public agencies is unethical without patient consent.

Artist looks at military patronage of child prostitution, American Family Association shoots the messenger.

[ related topics: Books ]

Via Tastes Like Chicken, the story behind Enemy at the Gates. Fascinating.

Local Rant: Drizzle: A response to HailStorm is a proposal for a first step towards a HailStorm like architecture that would allow users control over their personal data.

[ related topics: Web development Microsoft Microsoft Hailstorm ]

Via /., Microsoft: Erroneous VeriSign-Issued Digital Certificates Pose Spoofing Hazard. "Do you wanna install this Active-X control? It might have been signed by Microsoft!"

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

I was browsing Crutchfield's online store and came across this Rockford-Fosgate Solidstate MP3 Changer. It's $250 with just one 8MB card but can use up to 8 SanDisk MMC cards (up to 64MB each). Granted you'll end up spending $1000 for the player and the cards, it looks like an interesting system for playing MP3s on the road. What's most interesting about this system is the chassis that holds the MP3s is small enough to mount in the glovebox - unlike most CD changers.

[ related topics: Music ]

Need to find a sushi bar in unfamiliar places? Check out The Sushi Restaurant Reference. Someone needs to teach the designer about colors, but the site is loaded with info.

I recently bought an older Porsche 911 and came across the site of Pelican Parts. It's your basic e-tailer site but they have added considerable information on repairing and restoring Porsches and BMWs. And yes, they have always been an auto parts store and never just a .COM. For contrast, visit their main online competition: Automotion. Both have a good selection of parts. Automotion is MUCH glossier but completely lacks the added informational content of Pelican Parts.

So a 24 year old teaching intern allegedly performed a "sex act" on a 13 year old student. Here's Mark Morford's take on the incident:

"Look, if 13-year-old boys in this country had any voice whatsoever, had any say at all regarding society's laws or how they'd like to enjoy their own rites of masculine passage, if they could describe what sort of scenario they'd orchestrate if given the choice and of course barring any impossible fantasies involving skateboards and wanton Playboy bunnies and/or Penthouse Forum letters come to life, "afterschool specials" would rankright up there..."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Mark Morford ]

Since rolling blackouts seem to be on the minds of the non-Californians I correspond with, Lodi is standing up to PG&E and the state power regulators. Lodi is one of the towns that set up its own generation facilities, and now is refusing to hand that power over to PG&E as part of the rolling blackouts program. Go Lodi!

So I am looking at Cam's mention of New York's Dumb laws so I looked up California Dumb Laws and have concluded that the law makers out here are not only dumber but just plain stooooopid and wierd. City Council order reads: "No dog shall be in a public place without its master on a leash

It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood Boulevard at one time

It is illegal for a man to beat his wife with a strap wider than 2 inches without her consent

Prohibits elephants from strolling down Market Street unless they are on a leash

It is illegal to wipe one's car with used underwear

and on and on...

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Web development Libertarian Sexual Culture ]

I know it's old news but I finally watched The Naked News and I'd have to say I was a little giggly watching a nude vixen try to read cue cards. For some reason the anchors seemed way more relaxed once they got naked. The striptease portion felt very stiff(hmm pun slipped in there) but seriously I could picture the cue cards. "And today Mir crashed in the pacific ocean (slide bra strap off shoulder) and thus ended an era in the russian space program (pull panties lower) and here's bunny with todays's weather

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Well, we finally have confirmation that there is at least one viral outbreak that MS Outlook isn't responsible for.

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Okay, before I get a gazillion messages on the topic: Yes, if you didb't upgrade BIND when the potential exploit was found back in January, you've probably got bigger problems than some sleezy "security" folks pushing the Lion Worm scare.

Ashcroft tries to out-Leiberman Leiberman in blaming video games for school violence. It utterly flabbergasts me how these people who've obviously never listened to a teenager are given press. But I suppose I just perpetuated that problem, didn't I? Damn.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games ]

It's good to know that I've got sentiments that have been around since at least the early 1100s. From Peter Abelard's Historia Calamitatum as quoted in The Mistress by Victoria Griffin, Heloise asks:

Who is there who is bent on sacred or philosophical reflection who could bear the wailing of babies, the silly lullabies of nurses to quiet them, the noisy horde of servants, both male and female; who could endure the constant degrading defilement of infants?

[ related topics: Quotes Child-Freedom ]

"No blue screen of death" vows Seamus Blackley, Xbox technology officer at Microsoft. So instead they're going to make it a more manly steel grey?

[ related topics: Games Microsoft ]

I've been using Opera 5 Beta 6 as my primary browser for the better part of the last month. Except for some JavaScript weirdness, it's been rock solid - only occasionally will I find a page that will kill the browser - and much rarer - a page that will take down X. It's much faster that Netscape 6/Mozilla (at least the most recent builds I've tried). But Friday I found one of those pages that kills the browser - but it killed it in a 'nice' manner and Opera was able to save the last viewed pages. When I tried firing up Opera this morning it kept hitting that page and core dumping... UGH!

Just a response to Eric's Opera woes below: Beta 6, being the first built on the version 5 rather than 4 code base, had some problems, but Opera for Linux beta 7 fixes that issue and most of my other complaints. They still don't have Flash support (a mixed issue...), and there are some Qt issues around widget color customization (which Netscape completely ignores, so this is a "sucks less" issue). I haven't had it bring down X, although it has core dumped a few times, but given the IE problems I'm having this morning I'll take those issues any day.

[ related topics: Free Software ]

Via Rebecca Blood, the animated Evolution of Alphabets.

[ related topics: Books ]

I was watching Junk yard Wars and this week was building an amphibious vehichle. I looked about the net and noticed you can buy a personal water car or try to track down one of these Bad Boyz

[ related topics: Technology and Culture ]

User Friendly goes public.

[ related topics: Humor ]

Via Tastes Like Chicken, Bird explodes after flying into path of fastball. The movie is worth watching.

New SPAM LAW introduced as a bill. let's hope it passes.

(ii) $500 for each such violation, not to exceed a total of $50,000.

[ related topics: Politics Technology and Culture ]

I tell ya, Netscape 6 may suck, but IE 5.5 sucks in different ways, especially concerning graphics. IE doesn't handle transparent PNG files, forcing me into the legal minefield of the GIF. IE doesn't really give me the bgcolor I requested, just something kinda close. And IE keeps stealing my damned file associations back from the programs I've given them to.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Rock on Ikea. I saw This Ad on TV first...

[ related topics: Web development Technology and Culture ]

I haven't skated much recently, the roads in my neighborhoods are pretty rough, so the idea of going to a smaller wheel doesn't hold too much appeal... except... these things look like a lot of fun: Heelys are sneakers with wheels in the heels. I don't know how versatile they are, the videos on the Heelys web site are all the "fast cuts with guitar track" that don't show you what they think is possible, but if you just view 'em as a better sneaker for getting around an urban environment there are some possibilities here.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

So I have been thinking the Sony Clie is pretty slick but check out the new Palm m505 ...drool

IMHO the palm V is almost the perfect form factor of size, screen real estate and just plain coolness. I am totally jazzed they decided to put more goodies in this great shape.The expansion ability must have Handspring worried.

[ related topics: User Interface ]

Just a quick RANT about web design. Have any of you noticed that more and more sites contain unreadable text? This Page is just another example. I normally use 1024x768 resoloution but even at 640x480 it's still not readable. How does this get published??

Hoof & Mouth? no no no it's the first Winux Virus. I wonder if the Mac people feel let out?

[ related topics: Apple Computer Web development virus ]

Cal State Fullerton student chooses stripping over sports:

"As far as exotic dancer Leilani Rios is concerned, stripping pays the bills, allowing her to be the first member of her family to go to college and cross-country running for Cal State Fullerton is just exercise."

Debra Hyde's 2001-03-29 entry on this says the right things.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

I think I need to order one of these mugs to go with my F*ckedCompany coffee mug... Be sure to check out the rest of Mike Daisey's site.

[ related topics: New Economy ]

Via Brain Log, Make your own Steve Jobs keynote!

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

Anti-news: Yet another security hole in a Microsoft product, the rendering engine of IE 5.01 and 5.5 will run random binaries:

In order for the attacker to successfully attack the user via this vulnerability, she would need to be able to persuade the user to either browse to a web site she controlled or open an HTML e-mail that she had sent.

[ related topics: Web development Microsoft ]

Declan McCullagh gets accussed of being a spammer which prompts an interesting article by him on Politechbot.

It's clear that spam is getting worse. Ancedotal evidence suggests the volume is increasing, and I wrote an article recently saying that more spam is coming from overseas. What's more, reliable sources tell me it's unlikely that the House bill that the Commerce committee approved this week will go anywhere. "It's going to be ambushed on Judiciary," one source says, and apparently just about all the staffers who successfully steered the bill through the House last year have left the Hill.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy Technology and Culture Spam ]

Via Need To Know, a wonderfully conspiracist look at Microsoft's influence in the .com crash in Forbes. Good fun reading!

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Also via Need To Know, say you're a good coder who wants to contribute to Linux but doesn't know where to start? Become a kernel janitor, doing the kinds of maintenance work that's fairly well defined but doesn't require lots of kernel architecture experience and specialization.

Also via Need To Know, say you're a good coder who wants to contribute to Linux but doesn't know where to start? Become a kernel janitor, doing the kinds of maintenance work that's fairly well defined but doesn't require lots of kernel architecture experience and specialization.

[ related topics: Free Software ]

Tell me if there's any bugs, just did another update that puts valid Last-Modified: headers in the archives/viewentry.cgi links and only returns headers if the HEAD method is used. Good for search engine type stuff, ya know?

[ related topics: Web development Flutterby Meta ]

Via Hack the Planet, Defending the Right to Pleasure is an article by the webmaster of Violence.de on the cultural attitudes against physical affection, why there's a strong link between those anti-pleasure attitudes and violence, and what he's doing about it.