Flutterby™! From 2001-08-01 to 2001-08-31

Ziffle passed along this Wired article on collecting old microcomputers. And here I thought I was doing good by scrounging two Apple //c machines for some data archeology a friend needs to do.

[ related topics: Ziffle Apple Computer ]

The movie of the spacecraft landing on the Eros asteroid has been released, of note particularly was the title in the side-bar GALLERY: The best of Eros. Huh, do I really wanna click that at work?

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy ]

Last night NPR was going off on the OxyContin scare in a way that felt a lot like manufactured news, and this morning /. asks why Code Red is getting all the coverage while SirCam is spreading private documents around and getting comparatively little coverage. My bullshit detector is pegging a lot, but I haven't yet put my finger on exactly why. (Just found the Media Awareness Project page on OxyContin. Hmmm...)

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Via Mary Anne Mohanraj, Ingram drops small publishers. As I pointed out back in 1999 this is an opportunity for the small bookstore, but it's one which I doubt they'll take. At least the 'net allows us to get to the independent publishers directly.

[ related topics: Books ]

Despite my attempts to be Lynx friendly, I'm tempted to put up a this website best viewed at 4096x3840 on a 12'x9' wall line on all my pages. (This web site is best viewed with any browser that suits your use patterns.)

[ related topics: Web development Cool Science ]

Remember that vibrator recall I linked to? Well, an EU Commission has reported that phthalates in sex toys poses no risk to users.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health ]

Doctors in Varanasi India have discovered that silk weavers have been using free condoms to lubricate silk loom bobbins. The street finds its own uses for technology.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Via Backup Brain, Cringely asks if we're going to see The Death of TCP/IP as Microsoft prepares to release some potentially big problems with socket exposure in Windows XP. I've been responding to SirCam messages with "Due to design flaws inherent in Microsoft products, you may have just sent me sensitive business information" (yes, a slight overstatement, it's really user stupidity, but design flaws compound that), and I propose that to prevent further spread of Code Red that we urge anyone running IIS turn off their server by clipping the power cord with scissors. This will solve both problems.

[ related topics: Microsoft moron ]

Metricom goes under, leaving nearly a billion dollars in debt.

[ related topics: New Economy Current Events ]

So two married folks meet in an online chat room, flirt for a while, decide to meet for a little adultery, and it turns out that they're married to each other. It's a sickness of the monogamous culture that the natural response at this point is not to fall into each other's arms with a realization of romance rekindled, but to start fighting in the street.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Current Events ]

As if male adolescence weren't made difficult enough by the perpetual erection problem, Viagra may help pediatric lung disorder.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Health ]

Only 22 Days left until Burning Man and this is one of the few links I have found that actually has sound. Sometimes with all the Eye Candy about we forget about the Sounds that make this place.

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

Some info from the EFF about what you can do although I'd say this is no longer an underground issue.

[ related topics: Free Speech ]

Charlene and I took the day off and went into the city to see Ansel Adams at 100. I didn't think it was possible after my previous few visits, but my opinion of SFMOMA has plummeted even further. If you're an Ansel Adams fan you'll probably want to go see this, but the appeal of the exhibit is strictly the work, the organization is absolutely horrible, I could find no rhyme to why one picture was set next to another, and the accompanying prose was unhelpful, and often not only didn't draw on basic knowledge of Adams' work, life, and the artistic context in which he worked, but was actively misleading about the breadth and nature of his output.

Whatever you do, don't get the audio tour, there'll be much more insightful commentary from those around you in the crowd.

This was one of the worst examples of a museum pimping itself out to a name rather than drawing on institutional knowledge and holdings I've seen. Avoid the crowds, head over to the Friends of Photography half a block east on Mission, and then spend the rest of the time you would've spent dealing with annoying docents up on Geary looking at photography in the galleries there.

Speaking of which, in the Fraenkel Gallery we saw Nicholas Nixon's Lovers series. If you liked the recent David Steinberg pictures, Nixon's work is similar.

We also dropped in on the Peter Steinhauer work at the Scott Nichol's Gallery. Still nice images, but not nearly as striking at that size. Worth the trip, and they had better Ansel Adams pictures than SFMOMA too.

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Nature and environment ]

Reports of a smart toilet do nothing to ease my concerns over privacy.

Introducing a model that automatically performs urine and fecal analysis for users and could then transmit the results to the family doctor via the Internet in the event the readings are out of line.

While there are positive attributes for such a device in the home I'm wondering how long it will be before someone suggests installing these toilets in the workplace to help control insurance costs. I also wonder what else I never thought would require an IP address will in the future.

[ related topics: Privacy Health Sociology Current Events ]

Some things should be shared. Steve Ballmer jumping about stage like the simian he is.

More Confirmation of how the new viral marketing works. Get the Alpha Pups and you get the followers.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising ]

Sarcasm is an art and I have found a Gallery of a Master

[ related topics: Humor Sociology ]

QOTD:

I have seen God and she is a unix prompt on a Macintosh.

Lynette Millett in the August 5 entry at Medley

[ related topics: Religion Apple Computer Quotes ]

I have found my new God, and his name is Cliff Yablonski.

This man is me in thirty or so years.

[ related topics: Humor ]

FAA study says multitasking is counterproductive. Well, duh. I remember back in the Signal Data days we ran across some fairly compelling evidence that a phone call took 15 minutes off the day. It should not be news that human task switching has high latency.

[ related topics: Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

We just posted the JRS on the official site

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

How do you get employees without breaking the bank? Offer benefits. Such as a relaxed dress code. Dutch call center seeks nudists:

"We've had about 75 responses in four hours. With a normal call center, you'd be lucky to get one or two an hour. And the quality of the candidates has been very good"

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

When we need to go back to representatives of our government and rub their noses in one part of what has been a completely flawed encryption strategy, we can look at this crack of a highly deployed wireless system. Via Hack The Planet, cipher attack delivers heavy blow to WLAN security. Short answer: 40 bit 802.11 WEP can be completely broken in 15 minutes, rendering a whole lot of deployed hardware mostly worthless:

"We all knew it could be done," Craig Mathias, principal at the Farpoint Group (Ashland, Mass.) said of the attack. "The whole purpose of WEP was to make it difficult, not impossible. Forty bits was all the [IEEE 802.11 Working Group] could legally do at the time.

[ related topics: Wireless moron ]

<groan> Some pictures from a french magazine taken during production of Prequel deux or apparently named Attack of the Clones

[ related topics: Star Wars Movies Theater & Plays Current Events Journalism and Media ]

It's amazing how clearly they perceive privacy law when they are the victims

[ related topics: Libertarian Privacy Technology and Culture Law ]

This one's for Ziffle. I meant to post it a while back, but we had too many entries that day, then I forgot about it. A little Economist article on collecting old computers.

[ related topics: Ziffle tolkien ]

You could have bought Terry Gilliam for $297.40 american. I found this by accident while discovering Good Omens is being delayed again...

[ related topics: Movies Monty Python ]

If you get concerned over product placement in television, how do you feel about the government inserting political messages? In "news" programs shown in schools? Salon reports the ONDCP is buying editorial content in teen oriented news ("premium" content).

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up Politics Current Events ]

Been having nightmares lately? Maybe you're a Republican.

[ related topics: Politics Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Study says artificial light prevents 1 in 5 humans from seeing Milky Way.

"The thing that struck me is there are large numbers of people who really have lost the panorama of the night sky -- that's no longer available to them because there is so much of this sky brightness," said Chris Elvidge...

[ related topics: Nature and environment Space & Astronomy ]

Phil came in with the latest copy of Science and said "they've discovered that it really was long, long ago, but not far, far away." Witmer's theory of dinosaur nostrils gives sauropods a frightening similarity to Jar Jar Binks. I thought George's hair was only a holdover from the '70s, but maybe there's some deeper secret of our past that he's hiding...

[ related topics: Star Wars History ]

Interesting Salon overview of online comics and the battles between the new media and the old guard.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Today's burningman related post features camp tools made the old fashioned way. Thoes tent stakes look pretty beefy.

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

FBI chief Robert Mueller lied to Senate.

[ related topics: Politics ]

I learned about Bob Patterson via Brad, and, yes, Bob Patterson, "America's #3 Self-Help Guru", changed my life.

[ related topics: Humor Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Via Genehack (yes, Genehack is back!), some Molly Ivins comments on recent attacks on the First Amendment. There was a link about the Brian Dalton case on Flutterby, but she's also got a quick rundown on the Vanessa Leggett situation.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Privacy Law ]

This Light Polllution Map has some insight, and it looks like we are in the sticks out here in the western half of the states. California has 33million people, which is still too many if you ask me, (which you didn't). Perhaps the satellite caught us durning a rolling blackout?

[ related topics: Astronomy Maps & Mapping ]

Is this an Operating System that won't fuck you??

Sorry for my potty mouth boyz & grrrls, my twisted humor has control of the hands today

[ related topics: Free Software Humor Sexual Culture Open Source ]

Chess in 672 bytes

As much as I like aspects of Burning Man, I don't get into the raver side of things. Now scientists are beginning to understand why. Italian researchers have found that house music causes impotence.

"Music heard in the clubs causes an alternate state of consciousness, which distracts the brain from taking care of its vital functions", researcher Chiara Simonelli said.

[ related topics: Burning Man Music Erotic ]

I'm surprised I haven't seen a discussion here about this issue. Thomas Reedy was sentenced to life in prison for distributing child pornography. I can't find any press that says he even was in the presence of a minor at any point. Can someone help me understand how this makes sense? I understand that we should protect our children but this looks like a serious violation of the First Amendment as well the idea that the sentence should fit the crime.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture ]

In the process of legalizing prostitution, the Dutch authorities have created situations that prostitutes deem unsafe. Micromanagement almost always does the wrong thing.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

While I tend to agree with Objectivism, I also think we should not take things too seriously

[ related topics: Politics Objectivism Humor ]

Iran to step up public floggings. The only issue I have with this is their list of offenses. If we could do this to people who run IIS servers and send HTML email, I'd be behind this sort of punishment in a heartbeat.

[ related topics: Politics Web development ]

Via /., an MIT Technology review article about algorithms built to get patents. The folks at Genetic Programming, Inc have a rules based system that they claim is up to recreating several fairly recent patents. I'd be interested in seeing more detail.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Oh, the vagaries of small point-n-shoot lenses. Tiny picture of a big ol' rabbit on the Pine Ridge fire road up above Carson falls on Sunday morning's hike. Just me and Bill and Terrence, Phil decided to go off autocrossing.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Yay! Some projects are coming together for Burning Man! Patricia suggested a collaborative project, which I whipped up a prototype of on Saturday (and that we fleshed out ideas for the remainder of on Sunday), and that got me started on a repeat of last year's sound sculpture, and I now have a half completed naked plaster woman sitting in my driveway disturbing my neighbors. So we'll actually have some art this year! And camp will be cool, we're making plenty of space to sit and chat and be sociable. Only issue is that I think Todd and I will be bailing on Saturday, anyone with a trailer hitch wanna take responsibility for bringing the structures home in exchange for some bomb-proof shade spaces and a cool place to hang?

[ related topics: Burning Man Todd Gemmell Coyote Grits Space & Astronomy ]

A new programming metaphor: Veal. Code which has been kept in a tight confined space, fed only milk, and not exercised at all.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Hikers die in flash floods in Grand Canyon. In 1984, I, my dad, and a friend, were hiking up out of the Grand Canyon, I think we'd gone down the South Kaibab trail, and were coming back up the Bright Angel Trail. The rest of the two families were hiking down to meet us. We'd stopped for lunch at the Indian Gardens plateau when a thunderstorm hit. Since these things lasted 45 minutes and happened every afternoon, we thought nothing of it and started back up the trail. Shortly thereafter, we heard someone up the trail yelling "get up! get up!" so we scrambled up a bank and watched this wall of water come down the trail, dry in front, 3 to 5 feet of water behind, and completely destroy a rock retaining wall beside where we'd been standing. The party coming down had a similar experience, they ducked into a hiking shelter and saw rocks and water tumbling down on either side. Being an easterner, I'd never imagined what a flash flood was really like and thought people who got caught in flash floods must be morons; since then I'm a complete coward any time I think there may be precipitation uphill from me, especially when I'm in low vegetation environments.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Current Events ]

For Larry, via /., a Chicago Tribune article on recent successful attempts to recreate Damascus steel. John Verhoeven, an Iowa State professor of metallurgy, and Al Pendray, a Florida blacksmith, seem to have figured out the right combinations of steel, carbon and vanadium (the secret ingredient) to build Damascus steel blades on a forge.

[ related topics: Cool Science Current Events ]

Debra has some interesting musings on friendship, especially in terms of her divided life. But I think that many of the issues she's dealing with are universal, especially as the 'net has given us contact with people who have very similar interests but extremely geographically diverse, and who expose to the 'net mainly what they can't expose to their geographically coherent social groups.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

In Mary Anne Mohanraj's current diary entry (which should have an august 12^th archive entry) she muses about film adaptations of some of her stories. The "what if we could make 'good' porn" idea pops up occasionally on several mailing lists I'm on, it always falls apart because 'good' is subjective, but Mary Anne has the writing chops to make a universally workable story even if it isn't everyone's turn-on.

[ related topics: Erotic Movies Writing ]

Reflected light in one of the fountains near Moscone Center in San Francisco.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area ]

I haven't linked to anything from Clean Sheets for a while. The current exhibit by Bernard Leduc is all over the place stylistically, but a few of them came across like what might've happened if Georgia O'Keefe had done explicit images.

[ related topics: Erotic ]

Debra has been reporting on the recent bust of the Til Eulenspeigel Society gathering in New Jersey, a BDSMNLOP group that cleared things with local authorities, rented a conference center, and then had some overzealous state troopers videotape and bust because even though no alcohol was being served at the event, the conference center had a liquor license and thus events fell under the liquor license rules. Now, via Edgecase, the California Supreme Court says schools may search students without reasonable cause. So we're acclimating the kids to having no right to privacy, and, much in the way that Burning Man is getting more and more police control and interference, we're getting adults used to the paranoia that illegality is a broad region with ill-defined borders, and the only way to avoid it is to conform and obey, always.

[ related topics: Burning Man Children and growing up Privacy Sexual Culture ]

You've probably seen this everywhere else, but the NASA/AeroVironment solar wing Helios flew to 96,500 feet, shattering both propeller and jet airplane altitude records (although there's a little bit of question over the official versus unpublished accomplishments of the SR-71...). Kudos to Paul MacReady's vision.

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events ]

Via /.: I've been a fan of Walter Bright ever since the days of the lamented Datalight C compiler. I used the Zortech C++ compiler that he wrote up into the days that Symantec bought it and completely destroyed it as a product. I hadn't been aware that he'd turned that into the Digital Mars C and C++ compiler for Win32, Win16, and DOS (which looks like it ships with some cool libraries too!). Anyway, he's got a specification and a proposal for a D Programming Language, higher level than C++, given his history it ought to be worth an evaluation.

[ related topics: Cool Science Software Engineering ]

Yesterday, /. reported that NVIDIA and Square were demoing Final Fantasy frames at .4 sec/frame at SIGGRAPH. When Square purchased a gazillion RenderMan licenses from Pixar, we were told that it was only a stop-gap 'til they could get their own renderer implemented. Today Kuro5hin mentioned Square's massively parallel ray tracer, called Kilauea, but the images are kind of disappointing; if I had a several hundred processor Linux render farm doing ray tracing I'd be doing something more interesting than plastic with hard-edged shadows (the transport vehicle on the very left of the second line is the most impressive to my eye).

[ related topics: Pixar Movies ]

An anonymous friend of Todd and me is doing aid and development work in South Africa. He's given us specific instructions not to post any of his dispatches from the front, alas, but he forwarded along a pointer to Algorithms in Africa, subtitled "Maybe the rush to market for spreading internet access across the globe isn't in anyone's best interest--a report from the front."

In fact, the developing world is littered with unused X-ray equipment, broken-down tractors and empty schoolrooms contributed over the years by well-intentioned and simpleminded donors. These resources are made useless not from missing user manuals or lack of web access, but by the lack of trained technicians, mechanics and teachers.

In short, what empowers people are skills.

In my rantings about the "cargo cult" mentality of those who acquire equipment without understanding the how and why of using that equipment, I hope I've predicted some of the problems that Wayne Marshall has obviously seen and experienced first-hand. Food for thought, although I'm sure we'll all bring different opinions away from the essay.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Todd Gemmell ]

More Cringely conspiracy theories about Microsoft. Along with some ridiculousness of the patent system.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Web development Microsoft moron ]

View From The Heart has some conjecture on what a major epidemic in the US might look like (scroll down to "Epidemic Worries"). I've said a couple of times that we're kind-of overdue for a replay of the flu epidemic of the early part of last century, it looks like that idea's becoming part of the greater consciousness...

[ related topics: Health ]

So, lemme get this straight: Trying to enter the president's property with a high-powered automatic weapon is just a misdemeanor? Florida man pleads guilty to trying to enter Bush ranch.

[ related topics: Politics Web development ]

Hot weather leads German workers to strip:

"My boss doesn't mind this at all," Bild quoted Kirsten Sauer in an article next to a picture of the bare-breasted 23-year old saleswoman cooling off in front of a fan in the Berlin clothing store where she works.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Mounties are warning a cross-continent walker that he must keep his clothes on. No software patents, bare breasted saleswomen. Europe's looking more attractive all the time.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

As a follow-up to yesterday's press-releases about rendering, check out Exluna's gallery of images made with their Entropy renderer. Note the motion blurred caustic, the hairy monster, and the area light demo.

[ related topics: Movies Graphics ]

Went to see Le Placard (aka The Closet) last night. The first foreign film I would have liked to have dubbed rather than subtitled, because much of the acting was subtle. You've all heard the summary: Monsieur Pignon, a boring accountant, gets fired from his job at a condom maker, his new neighbor sees his predicament, doctors up a photo of him, bare-assed, in chaps, getting groped, and sends it to his employers, who promptly re-hire him because the negative publicity from firing a gay man would ruin them. Hilarity ensues as everyone around Pignon perceives him in a new way while he hasn't changed. I don't know if it was the subtitles or if the film wasn't long enough, I felt that some of the character development didn't go far enough, but there were a bunch of fun gags and a cool story about a man coming into his own.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies Work, productivity and environment ]

David Steinberg examines Hedwig's Angry Inch. On my list to see, might actually get there this evening.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies ]

Interesting Marcy Sheiner review of Magdalene Meretrix's Turning Pro, "an employee handbook for the oldest profession."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Work, productivity and environment ]

Dori complained about the Umbra notice that they won't support Mac IE, which seems contradictory to her support of the Web Standards Project browser upgrade campaign. I still mean to try to figure out just whatinthehell Mac IE is sending in form text fields, Mars and others have complained that something it's doing ends up causing my formatting engine to double-space their comments, but I've no idea what that is.

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

Apologies for the down-time, don't know what went wrong, but Eric kindly kicked the power switch and manually fscked the two partitions that seemed hosed, and we're back. I need to get Mike on the phone to arrange some hardware rearrangement.

Debra over at Pursed Lips linked to fallout from coexisting conventions in the same venue as the recent TES30 event that, I think, completely describes the difference in perspectives:

"I'm killing myself to fill the room with an Oprah Winfrey kind of day," she said. "And surrounding me is everything degrading, disgusting and demeaning about the human race."

Um. Yeah. But if Kris Grippo had given up on the whole Oprah Winfrey thing and instead experienced the joyful celebration that was going on outside her room (and apparently limited horizons), she could have turned the weekend into an incredible uplifting and enlightening experience.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events ]

I'm sure it will do nothing to dispel the "all-male clubhouse" feel to Flutterby, but I've been stealing enough links from Shawn off of the SHS mailing list that I told him I'd happily add him as a contributor. So I have. He's also webmaster over at Millerswork, purveyors of fine erotic content, and promises that they'll have a 'blog up soon. Hopefully there'll be enough crossover content to keep us all happy.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Flutterby Meta ]

Via David Chess, and Onion interview with Berkeley Breathed:

"I could never get Bloom County started today, because it wouldn't make any sense as a marketing platform."

[ related topics: Humor Consumerism and advertising ]

Even though we've been able to simulate AOL users in chat rooms with simple Perl hacks for nearly a decade, it's only now that researchers in Israel have an AI that simulates an 18 month old human well enough to fool language and child development experts.

[ related topics: Web development Perl Open Source Robotics moron ]

I'm a little concerned about this 'cause my cable modem gets billed through some bastardized arrangement that includes Excite. It appears that Excite@Home is going down, but unlike all the dying DSL providers, they're losing money on Excite.com and Blue Mountain greeting cards and the media side of things. Why must you morons conflate my high speed 'net access with lame portaldom? Why?

[ related topics: New Economy broadband Journalism and Media ]

Following up on yesterday's note about Oprah fans leading empty lives, via Daze Reader we find that German erotica magazine O has sued O: The Oprah Magazine.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Journalism and Media ]

Via Camworld, a good rant on why Gnome and KDE are misguided.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett User Interface ]

Would one of you Mac IE users try replying with a multi-line multi-paragraph message to this entry? It'd probably be better if you weren't logged in when you tried to post it so you had to go through the login procedure. Thanks.

[ related topics: Web development ]

The owner of Petswarehouse.com, not to be confused with Petwarehouse.com, has sued a customer for complaining about his companies service on a mailing list. Not only has he sued the offending list member but also the list owner and the company that was hosting the list along with several other individuals connected with the list. He's asking for $10 million in compensatory damages and another $5 million in punitive damages.

There was once a time in this country that companies had customer service departments that existed to smooth over problems that a customer might have with a company's product or service. Now, they have legal departments.

[ related topics: Law ]

If you would ask me "What's the best peice of journalism out there?" I'd say the Wall Street Journal" but a very close second would be the Ecconomist and I just stumbled across a rather lucid article on DRUGS

[ related topics: Drugs Health Journalism and Media ]

Ziffle passed along this note about Microsoft's lobbying campaign to Utah attorney general backfiring. Apparently Microsoft has more support from dead people than Chicago Democrats.

[ related topics: Ziffle Microsoft moron Law ]

Remember the big hullabaloo over the Mindcraft benchmark which showed NT beating Linux in a TCP/IP networking with multiple cards, allegedly because NT had a multithreaded TCP/IP stack. Mike didn't pass along a source on this as well, but he reports taht recent attempts to duplicate that benchmark failed until someone turned on the non-standard 9k MTUs in NT. Further updates as news breaks.

Speaking of this, I saw Microsoft's "99.99% uptime" claim, and I thought about the only way I've ever managed 90%+ uptimes with NT, and flashed on a new Shroedinger's Cat experiment, where you boot an NT box, turn off the monitor, and...

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source ]

California Supreme Court rules ban on topless dancers touching themselves is unconstitutional. Alas this does nothing to the "lewd and obscene" conduct rules.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Yesterday at lunch Mark V asserted a correlation between new crop circle images and Photoshop releases.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

A couple from Ananova:

• For sale: Condoms 64 years past their use-by date
• Not only do Swedish women want more sex, but "...two out of three would consider a threesome."
• A hidden camera to catch litterers in South Carolina has revealed only "toe curling" sex. While "Mr Shealy said there are no plans to give the tapes to police. They've been seen only by himself and the county's two litter officers," I do see a great need for littercam.com.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture History ]

I would chalk up this heartwarming story of loading an entire table via a SELECT then sequentially finding the desired record up to urban legend except that I've worked on Perl code that fetched the keys of an associative hash into memory, then linearly searched the array.

[ related topics: Perl Software Engineering ]

QOTD, regarding Kevin Smith's tribulations with GLAAD over Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, in the message boards, babka said:

Did Mary stand at the foot of the Cross with a hat saying "They crucified my son, give all you can?"

[ related topics: Quotes Sexual Culture Movies ]

Todd just had to bail on Burning Man. I'm bummed. Probably not as bummed as Todd, but bummed. And now our logistics change, too. Damn. Did I mention I'm bummed? Damn.

And furthermore, I don't know if it's just the heat making my firewall flakey, or if I'm getting hit pretty hard with a port scan, but I wish my net connection wouldn't suck right now while we're firing email back and forth trying to resolve what we can cut back to.

[ related topics: Burning Man Todd Gemmell ]

Mark this under things you don't want to happen while on a trans-Atlantic flight. An Air Transat Airbus A330-200 tried its hand a being a glider after possible fuel problems caused it to land without power in the Azores Islands. A "fuel problem" on a trans-oceanic flight is not something an airline wants to be known for.

[ related topics: Aviation ]

A little story of how a father tries to explain politics to his son and gets rather amazing results (Story in first reply)

[ related topics: Politics Humor ]

From Washington Technology comes an article showing us where we are in practical applications of electronic fingerprint scanning. With all the mention of biometrics in here lately I thought I'd pass the link along.

[ related topics: Bioinformatics security Law Enforcement ]

So you would like to put up your own webserver but the only hardware you have available for the task is a PocketPC with a wireless connection? Take a look at PicoWeb Server. I'm sure there are some very good applications for this software but I'm having too much fun imagining racks of PDAs serving up content for some new web venture.

[ related topics: Web development Wireless Invention and Design Software Engineering ]