Flutterby™! From 2003-09-01 to 2003-09-30

Yesterday we hiked from Mountain Home Inn to the top of Mount Tam and back down. Yes, that's Phil and Mark, but no, they're not apologizing to the gods for returning their gift before hurling the Coke bottle off the edge. A nice hike, something like 1700 feet vertical, we had a decent breakfast back at Mountain Home Inn (a bit pricey but the food was good, lots of ambience). Then later, Charlene and I went and hiked over Deer Park, monster steep uphill (which I did twice because we got nearly to the first knoll before we realized we forgot water), an then a nice meander back down through the trees with a stop to pick blackberries along the trail (somewhat sweet, but not terribly flavorfull).

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Movies Nature and environment Food ]

The Washington Post looks at Playboy at 50. When I moved to California I let my subscription to Playboy lapse, because I found that Playboy was about 3 months delayed from the current happenings out here by the bay.

Back in its heyday, Playboy ran interviews with such luminaries as Marshall McLuhan, Martin Luther King Jr. and Allen Ginsberg. Now it runs interviews with Lisa Marie Presley, Jimmy Kimmel and Tobey Maguire. Hefner blames this editorial devolution on the times.

"There has been a certain dumbing down of society," he says "What do you do when you're trying to create a contemporary magazine for young people? Well, you try to make it as good as you can, but you have to stay in touch with what's going on. Is some of that, for a guy of my age, a conscious decision rather than one that comes from the gut? Sure."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology California Culture ]

I'm finding that I need to bone up on my cultural literacy, and I'm thinking that we need some compilation CD sets. In this case a good overview of show tunes.

[ related topics: Music Sociology ]

Bush assigning a new government official to address vanishing factory jobs. Two things made this leap out at me:

1. Why is the speech that this article almost entirely consists of not yet on Whitehouse.gov? Whitehouse.org is more up-to-date on this administration's policies.
2. This is a damned hard problem, and it's good that he's feeling the political heat from those who elected him, and those whose jobs he promptly sold out following that election.

Those that elected him, because this is hitting the central states first, but as I've whined before, it's not going to stop there. A good portion of R&D for a product is getting a manufacturing line up and running, and the more manufacturing that happens overseas the more R&D will eventually follow. But, a few suggestions:

The places the U.S. competes are the places we have lots of automation. Textiles, for instance. We need to revamp depreciation rules to allow for faster turnover of machinery. We need to create some smaller capital markets so that not everything's tied up in the artificial bubble of Wall Street. We need to revamp the patent system so that there is a good challenge system for overly broad patents stifling innovation in manufacturing line R&D (Yes, I have examples).

We need to consider the place in this process of labor (fitting for "Labor Day"). Jobs are going to get automated, and we have to instill in the culture the idea that what you're doing now isn't what you'll be doing 5 years from now, and you've got to change with the times. We also need to remove the protections that larger companies have in administering benefits, so that people feel more comfortable starting businesses and switching jobs. I'm not as well informed as I could be on the details of health insurance and benefits legislation, but a system which encourages individual health care policies would be a great start.

I predict the Republicans will be unwilling to do what's needed because all of these things will mean pissing off large donors.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Politics Health Invention and Design Sociology Current Events Machinery Economics ]

Because I'm waiting on the travelogue from Meuon now that Burning Man is over and have nothing better to post: On our trip to the San Juan Islands we rented a little Dodge Neon (hint: renting at SeaTac is expensive as hell because of local taxes (including the "Seattle Mariner's Stadium Tax", lest you wonder whether professional sports are really a capitalist enterprise), but if you're going up to the islands anyway then one of the seaplane services from Seattle is probably a better deal), and when I saw it the first thing that sprang to mind was "cop magnet". I mentioned this to the lady doing the rentals, who poo-pooed my concerns, but sure enough, in an otherwise empty parking lot...

[ related topics: Burning Man Travel Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

/. had a link to a CD Freaks excerpt of a Dutch article which found that many CD-Rs are unreadable after less than 2 years. I know that Kodak claims 100+ year lifetime for data recorded on some CD-R blanks, and I've read a lot on the reasons why some are good and some are bad, does anyone know of a good place to buy the good (gold substrate and dye with stable plastics) media? Even if they're a couple of bucks a pop, there are a few things I want to be able to burn, toss in a drawer, and have a reasonably good chance of recovering and migrating when devices to read the CD are becoming obsolete.

[ related topics: Cool Technology Archival ]

I'm sure some folks here moved the TV into storage long ago, but others, like me, still have a relatively traditional arrangement of TV and stereo in a living area. What I also have is large amount of mp3 files in another room, which I'd like to play via the stereo on occasion.

I've considered the media center route, but I don't want the noise of a PC in the living area. Wandering thru Best Buy today, I spied a Linksys Media Adapter which immediately caught my eye as a better solution, but a conversation with a friend outside the store led me to the Prismiq MediaPlayer which runs Linux and their forum has discussions about telneting to the box, writing different code for the hardware, writing modules to decode other types of files, etc.

The Linksys would work fine for me, but a device like this might a candidate as a "front end" for snippet manager and it just plain ol' looks like a positive step toward getting media accessible around the house.

[ related topics: Free Software Music Technology and Culture Open Source Television ]

Mark talks about "choosing to be blessed". Some undetermined years ago I was on my first and so far last 'shroom trip, grooving to the music on the stereo, entranced by the colors in the shadows, when the CD player clicked over, and Marcus Roberts' Alone With Three Giants queued up. Roberts was the pianist for the Marsalis clan for a while, and Alone With Three Giants is a very mellow walk through some great piano jazz. But it's very mellow. Great post-dinner food-coma dark lounge with overstuffed chairs I'm going to sit here with a single malt and chat quietly of nothings with friends kind of music.

Under the influence of those particular hallucinogens, my body felt extremely heavy and lethargic. All the life drained out of me. Breathing took an act of will. And then, suddenly, I realized that I could choose to not listen to the music. I didn't even have to get up to change the CD player, I could just focus on the colors in the shadows or whatever else.

There have been a few "cusp" moments in my life, identifiable, when "everything changed". Although I think we've experienced it within completely different frameworks, Mark in the context of a god, me from my atheist view, when I read about "choosing to be blessed" I understood exactly. And it ain't always easy, and sometimes I forget, but in almost all situations, even if I can't tune out the music, I can get up and turn off the damned stereo.

What are you listening to?

[ related topics: Religion Drugs Music Dan's Life ]

For Windows & .NET programmers, a must read: Startup, Shutdown & related matters.

[Edit: Fixed link from http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/cbr...ba4a-f0c8-42bb-a5cf-097efb25d1a9 ]

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering ]

Woman teaches summer school, discovers that kids can't even spell the dirty words right. Funny and sad on several levels, like when she writes:

It never occurred to me that human suffering was off-subject because to me it always had been the subject -- not of algebra, maybe, but surely of English.

Well, that explains a hell of a lot about my high school English experience. But it's also telling that when she finally gets through to the kids, she runs into other issues:

"So you've mastered the noun," I said menacingly, moving in close to Jack's sweaty face. "How 'bout the verb? How about this? The bitchy bitch bitched bitchily!" I stepped back, elated. "There! How many parts of speech did I use?"

Though this spontaneous grammar lesson marked the first time my students had actually grasped the adverbial, the dean was not impressed....

[ related topics: Children and growing up Humor Education ]

My lesson of the day: Don't underestimate the power of an optoisolator to smooth your nice square waves down into completely undifferentiateable slopes. Corrolary: Remove the redundant bits and your board'll work better.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Work, productivity and environment Embedded Devices ]

CNet has an interv iew with Steve Mann.

I gave a presentation earlier this year that included the Canadian cyborg. (This is currently the script of the presentation, but I'm working on rewriting it as a full piece (complete with illustrations/graphics), and later a flash presentation.)

[ related topics: Cool Technology Artificial Intelligence ]

Via Hack The Planet, SpamAssassin hates Bob Frankston. Says Frankston:

• I like Microsoft's "Trebuchet MS" font though the message is perfectly fine in other fonts but it thinks it is an "odd" font and I lose points for having a modicum of originality.
• If I do want to shout I lose points for large fonts and colors -- some colors seeming to be judged more harshly than others.

Whew. Sounds like having Spam Assassin trash his email is just a welcome side effect of freedom from unsolicited commercial crap. But the nice thing is, when he's done writing brochures and ad copy and actually wants to communicate his mail will automatically be visible again. Ain't technology great?

Frankston is apparently on a crusade, with misinformed bile about AOL's SMTP policies and whining about punctuation in error messages. How do you expect to get email without a static IP? More evidence for the "not interested in communication" theory. Yes, it sucks that we can't trust senders. But someone has to vouch for you, and far better it be the simple notion of someone invested in the peer nature of the internet enough to have a static IP address than that we all be funnelling authentication through VeriSign.

For an example of someone with clue talking about bad ISP policies, Mitch Kapor on PacBell blocking port 135.

[ related topics: Spam Net Culture ]

Saw this absolutely gorgeous tattoo while shopping at the mall Tuesday. I'll not claim to be a tat connoisseur but I've been around illustrated people a bit. This is by far the best work I've seen. The picture doesn't do it enough justice, but it was the quality of the shading that impressed me. I actually didn't think it was hand-done work at first.

[ related topics: Shawn's Life Fashion ]

My favorite dialog box of the moment, from the Atmel AVRStudio software. Three equals zero for sufficiently small values of...

[ related topics: Humor Dan's Life Embedded Devices ]

Girl gets busted for "having oral sex with a boy on a school bus". Girl sues school. Case is dismissed. But girl has incredibly supportive mother:

The woman also claimed it was not clear in the South Side Area School District's written policies that oral sex on a bus was unacceptable behavior.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Law Current Events Public Transportation ]

Saying:

I find it interesting that they cite working with a robust class library as one of the big transitions that developers in old school VB or C++ had to make when moving to .NET. I'm so used to working with languages that have robust class libraries and easily available open source libraries that it just baffles me that people find that difficult.

Rafe pointed to this fluff piece pimping the .NET experience. What struck me was the observation that:

While .NET aims to support many languages, the actual experience of working with .NET is all about navigating the framework, not writing code.

Boy, ain't that the freakin' truth. And there we get to the basic difference between .NET and the various already extant systems it seeks to conquer: By not artificially forcing everything into some silly-ass hierarchy that's dictated more by some wacked politics and history than function, these other systems are much easier to find the right parts for.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

Oh yeah: Ruby, Phil, Igor and I were sitting in 111 Minna last night when the floor did something weird. Actually, Ruby was just walking back from the bathroom and sitting down, so we asked her to get up and repeat the action, and when it was clear that it wasn't her, we figured "earthquake". Sure enough, 3.9 on the Hayward fault.

[ related topics: Bay Area Earthquake ]

For lunch today we all brought the makings of a picnic and trooped over to the San Francisco Symphony concert in the park. Some wonderfully tasty meats, cheeses ("roaring 40s" blue, and this incredible soft cheese that tasted like a really good limburger but didn't smell) and breads, assorted veggies, an illicit bottle of wine (which I forwent), good music (although I've started to be more conscious about details of rhythm and emphasis recently, and I can't say I always agreed with the conducting, but I'd need to listen to more and varied to make a strong statement), and unlike the paying attendees last night we got to hear all of the Stravinsky piece. If you didn't read all the way to the end of that story about the false alarm, the gag revolves around yelling "Firebird" in a crowded theater... I, alas, didn't have a lighter, so I couldn't hold it aloft and holler the requisite request.

On the way out of our building we noticed that this wheelchair is still chained to the lamp post on the sidewalk. So... the occupant parked it there to go into the bank? Maybe they come back and pick it up for rush hour begging? There's a story here, somewhere.

[ related topics: Music Bay Area Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Had a wonderful... three hour tour (sorry)... aboard the Hawaiian Chieftan this morning. The wind in the rigging, the bay around us, wine, friends. Nice trek, the food was buffet cold cuts and such, the band was more than decent, a good time was had.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Boats ]

Idle Words has a great little rundown of the history of the Bush administration line on Iraq: Comment Withheld.

[ related topics: Politics WTC/Pentagon attacks War ]

I'm not sure what John Robb is working on, but he's looking in some fascinating directions. Most recently, he's asking about RFID, specifically whether anyone's playing with this stuff at home. I haven't dug too deep, but over at BuyRFID it seems that dev kits are running in the several thousand dollar range and tags are still $3.50 quantity 1k. Here's a reason I want RFID tags in everything: If every pair of underwear has a tag I can scrounge, that's a cheap way to populate my own home experiments.

On the other hand, since I'm diddling about with media players in the living room, maybe it's time to break out those old CueCat thingies and resurrect the idea of my book collection as a lending library.

[ related topics: Privacy Clothing RFID ]

Another random shot from yesterday's outing on the Hawaiian Chieftan. Alas, I should have dragged the bigger cameras along, because I didn't have a wide enough lens to capture the boat while we were on it, and I didn't have any good views of it from elsewhere.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Boats ]

/. today has a link to Spider Robinson bemoaning the state of SF today:

I believe with all my heart that the pendulum will return, that ignorance will become unfashionable again one day, that my junior colleagues are about to ignite a new renaissance in science fiction, and that our next 50 years will make the first 50 pale by comparison, taking us all the way to immortality and the stars themselves.

On Friday night we watched Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It's been at least 20 years since I read the book, and I was struck by two things: There's a lot of "New Age" claptrap about subjective worlds, but there's also a strong push to seek truth outside the myths of the tribe, to throw off the shackles of conformity and strive. If we evolve that out to The Celestine Prophecy, we see that the story has gone from one of exploration to one of revelation, from the desire to excel (How fast can a seagull fly?) to the desire to check out of this existence.

In short: Spider is right, we are losing track of what could be, and have reduced ourselves to metaphors and similes chronicling what is.

In related news, Columbine too is back from Worldcon Toronto and is musing about outcasts.

[ related topics: Books Movies Invention and Design Sociology Current Events Heinlein Birds ]

Via Yet Another Web Log, Controversial ecstasy research used wrong drug. A paper in the September 2002 issue of Science found:

...that three consecutive doses of ecstasy, or methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), given to squirrel monkeys and baboons caused profound damage to dopamine-producing neurons in their brains. These are the neurons lost in Parkinson's disease.

Except that they'd actually given the animals amphetamines. The fact that "Two of the 10 died within hours after developing hyperthermia", symptoms not seen in the humans in situations like they were simulating, might possibly have been a clue? And, not to put too fine a point on it, but how, except for buying from a street dealer, do you get those two confused?

[ related topics: Drugs Health Current Events ]

In my old age I've mellowed from my sometime strident anti-theism to an acknowledgement that some people need to have "spiritual experiences". So when I ran across the Real Live Preacher I was kinda fascinated by someone sincere, with whome I could relate, but who definitely needed to seek the spirituality. I've also been hearing the buzz about Christopher Lydon, so when Mark pointed to an MP3 of a Christopher Lydon interview with the Real Live Preacher I had to go listen.

I don't think there's anything there you won't get from a few minutes poking around Real Live Preacher, but having heard the word in use, I'm now more convinced than ever that there should be immediate and serious consequences to anyone using the word "blogosphere", and I'm also convinced that when anyone refers to themselves as being part of it, the "l" should be silent.

[ related topics: Religion Weblogs Journalism and Media ]

Okay, because the low numbers of "DL161" no longer mean anything, I'm dropping my oldest still-extant email address, "danlyke@chattanooga.net". Anything received at that address from now on will be used for spam tagging. Please update your address books if you happen to still have that somewhere in your lists. Thanks.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Spam Chattanooga ]

Erik links to Clay Shirky's editorial explaining why micropayment schemes will fail, and Free is here to stay.

Between the failure of the Internet as a business model, China's apparent ramping up of technological advancement and current U.S. foreign policy/attitude I'm beginning to wonder if we will ever see a meaningful economic recovery. Capitalism - the traditional U.S. free-market version, anyway - seems to be just scrabbling for purchase at the cliff edge.

Back from a few hours at Seybold. My buzzword detector is currently saturated, and everything appears to be a buzzword. Enough snake oil that the floors are slippery. Damned scary. Out of all of the consulting companies pretending to be content management product companies there are a few who probably actually have a product, but I still feel like I need to go home and take a shower. Quote of the day, from a presenter at the Macromedia booth talking about a CSS design tool:

"Not the actual page, because it contains nothing. It's just the content."

[ related topics: Quotes Content Management Graphic Design ]

"I hear he's big in Vancouver": The Rev reports that he's now a Martha expert on morning drive-time radio. Howzabout some digitized audio for the geographically challenged?

[ related topics: Humor Current Events ]

An independent magazine for the publication of fiction, poetry, art, etc. It's a print mag, but you can submit work (only) via the webpage.

Stories to talk about with your friends or colleagues that explore the universe, the self, or the alley outside your window. We are hoping to publish the intelligent and creative who can't seem to or don't want to cram their ideas into a pigeonhole long past stuffed with pigeon feces.

...

We want our mothers to take one look and drop into a dead faint.

[ related topics: Writing Art & Culture Comics ]

For all of us who got our brains shook up in youth by the stories of Valentine Michael Smith, the Puppet Masters, and The Man who Sold the Moon: A lost first novel by Robert Heinlein is being published soon. It predates his famous first SF story Lifeline, but was considered too racy for publication in the late 1930s. It will be good to hear a voice of reason and confidence once again in these troubled times.

[ related topics: Libertarian Art & Culture Heinlein ]

I've stayed silent on the whole RIAA doing their best to piss off music purchasers even more thing, as CD purchases decline more quickly than file sharing and Apple's iTunes service thrives, because others have been speaking much more eloquently. In this case, it's the artists that the RIAA claims to represent:

"This is not rocket science," said David Draiman of Disturbed, a hard-rock band with a platinum debut album on the charts. "Instead of spending all this money litigating against kids who are the people they're trying to sell things to in the first place, they have to learn how to effectively use the Internet."

And some of this discussion ties back to the debate around that Clay Shirky article that Shawn linked to on Tuesday:

"Bruce Springsteen probably earned more in 10 nights at Meadowlands last month than in his entire recording career," said rocker Huey Lewis.

For years, most of what the artists have been getting out of record contracts has been fame, and it's been up to the artist to leverage that fame into money via performance. If that model is to remain, the record companies are going to die. I'd like to see the artists able to make something from their efforts, but it sure won't bother me to see the L.A. lawyers go broke.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Children and growing up Music Law Current Events Art & Culture Net Culture ]

Johnny Cash died last night due to "complications due to diabetes." Why does everyone have to die of some medical reason? Why not, "the Man in Black gave up living after losing his beloved wife, June..." (June passed away in May of this year)...

And almost missed this one: John Ritter died. I guess we don't have suffer through any more Three's Company reunions...

[ related topics: Music Technology and Culture Television ]

Random thought of the moment: If you get a good "pinko socialist commie versus heartless libertarian" flame war going, one of the arguments for social services oft introduced is that a "social safety net" offers a benefit to the economy. I'm involved in some situations where I'm seeing how poorly administered that social safety net is. So if there's an economic benefit, that implies that there's an opportunity profit, especially since the private company could pick and choose rather than having to help everyone. How do we do this? The only ways I can think of involve indentured servitude which, alas, is only legal if you're a credit card company.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Law Economics ]

Nerd Question: I've been playing with ideas for the Snippet Manager using Perl::Tk, but I've been seeing lots of cool stuff happening in Python and Gtk and I've been wondering if maybe going with Gtk-Perl would work? Except that that hasn't been updated in years, and I'm not sure how their cross-platformability is going. Anyone have insight into a good Perl widget set, or should I just drop back to C and use Gtk? And... hmmm... here's gtk2-perl.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source ]

Among other things, I want a smart badge in my wallet that tells the elevator that I'm going to floor 2 or the ground, unless I hit another button in some small interval.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Cool Technology ]

What ends up in lost and found at San Francisco Sex Clubs?

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Saw Ruckus last night at the Cafe Amsterdam, dropped in for dinner and a song or two and stayed 'til midnight thirty. When I was younger, I used to think of musicians like Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson as masters of the guitar. Nowadays I realize that there are guitarists with those chops, who can throw in licks that cover the best of their work while playing bluesy rock that appeals to me now. The bassist, who grabbed a guitar for a few numbers, and whose name I forget (Trevor? He was blind), is such a musician. Some good original stuff, some fun covers, good people watching, and they were conscious of their audience and not being too loud, although sometimes this mean that the band's balance was off, overall it meant we enjoyed the evening a lot. Worth a listen.

[ related topics: Music Bay Area Handicaps & Disabilities ]

At the ferry there's a poster for 24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies that Destroyed Faith in Corporate America, which advertises "Lying and cheating. Greed, arrogance, and egomania run wild. It's a business story unlike any other." Well, pardon my cynicism, but... Oh, never mind.

[ related topics: Business Current Events Economics ]

This morning's hike was a nine mile walk along the Tolay Creek and Dickson Ranch (and no, it wasn't the kind of nine mile walk that's "...no joke, especially in the rain".). But it was a long flat slog. It'd be a good hike if you've got a birder and some good glass along, or maybe on a bicycle, but as a straight walk it was just damned boring, and according to the GPS we kept a pretty damned steady 3.8 MPH all the way around it.

Bring long lenses and binoculars, lots of cool egrets and raptors and such, and a bicycle would make it much more enjoyable. Picture is Canada geese, over the farm.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Maps and Mapping Bicycling ]

On Thursday, walking up to the ferry after drinks with cow-orkers, I saw this small aircraft carrier like thing docked at the end of a parking lot just south of the Bay Bridge. It's not the USS Hornet, anyone know?

[ related topics: Bay Area Boats ]

Jnnoo potneid to this post at Joi Ito's wlboeg auobt the orniedrg of leterts. Intesrnietg, bsuecae I tlel meyslf taht one of the wyas that Iv'e lnaeerd to deal with my dsiexyla is to read whloe wrods, so I wnoder waht sort of seepd defeirncfes three are beweetn dnfreifet ppolee in rdeaing text lkie tihs. Try it yusorlef.

[ related topics: Language Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Well, I've already sent in my absentee ballot, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has issued a decision postponing the October 7^th recall election. From the summary decision:

Plaintiffs allege that the use of obsolete voting systems in some counties rather than others will deny voters equal protection of the laws in violation of the United States Constitution. They seek to postpone the vote until the next regularly scheduled statewide election six months from now, when the Secretary of State has assured that all counties will be using acceptable votinbg equipment, and all the polls will be open. We agree that the issuance of a preliminary injunction is warranted and reverse the order of the district court.

Full text. And so the circus goes on.

[ related topics: Law Current Events California Culture ]

According to the Guardian: Apple's current strategy is more focused on niche markets than mass appeal No shit!

[ related topics: Apple Computer Economics ]

Aaargh! Apologies to Joce, Justin, Mark, Jim and Elle, and thanks to Ben Williams for telling me and answering with the right information to get me to figure out what was wrong with new user registrations. Should be working now.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta ]

New (well, newly discovered by me) comics on my comics page:

• Applegeeks looks an awful lot like Mac Hall.
• Vern & Dern are your classic enjoyable redneck brothers, with an occasional dash of geekiness. And,
• PvP is yet another gamer/geek comic.

Besides pointing to an editorial on the supposed connection between porn and violence/aggression/crime, passing the word on National Orgasm Month (not to mention Pleasure Sunday) and keeping us up-to-date on the latest trends in nude calendars (UK cinema workers this time) for charity, World Sex News Daily now has an RSS feed. Huzzah!

In other sex news, Daze Reader points to a well written article about the increasing number of women consuming porn.

Wired is running a story that really should come as no surprise, about how anti-terrorist laws and tighter national security pressures are hampering scientific research. It's the old question that we in the tech industry are well-acquainted with: Does reducing and controlling information/communication/knowledge serve public safefy or hinder it? Per the article, some who were previously researching ways to combat deadly biologics are now abandoning their work and destroying their samples.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Howcum we never has disputes like this in the US? Apparently an artistic row between the management of the famous La Scala Opera House in Milan and the artistic director has escalated into a power struggle between Premier Berlusconi and the Communists.

[ related topics: Current Events Art & Culture ]

Okay, this goes beyond the pale. As reported on /., these weasely bastards have conspired to break the domain name system. As of right now:

$ host lksdasfas14598fcldzkjs.com

lksdasfas14598fcldzkjs.com has address 64.94.110.11

For you non-techies out there, there's a system that converts those names you use to "IP numbers", which are the 4 digit period separated addresses that the computers actually use to talk to each other. The weasely bastards have broken things so that when a name isn't found, rather than giving you a "not found" error message, they funnel you to their site where you can pay them money. Yet another reason that Verisign sucks. There are two possible fixes:

1. ICANN might be able to do something, they can be told that people care via their complaint form.
2. ISPs and software can start looking for 64.94.110.11 and interpreting it as "not found". This is not a good long-term solution.

[ related topics: moron Net Culture ]

Okay, Un*x kiddies, there's an OpenSSH buffer overflow bug [Edit: root exploit in the wild /. was apparently wrong, there's not an exploit out there, just an overflow that might lead to denial of service issues if pushed]. Debian "stable" users should make sure that they have a:

deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

line in their /etc/apt/sources.list, and run "apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade" immediately. All other users should take the appropriate steps. Don't let this turn into a Microsoft style situation.

[ related topics: Free Software moron security ]

Just when I was happy to get my desktop Linux box consuming roughly 65 watts including the 17" display, The Register reports that Intel CTO Pat Gelsinger thinks 100W for a desktop CPU is OK.

[ related topics: Cool Technology ]

It was a simple, yet elegant idea.. and it stared the local Chattanooga burners in the face. It came from Atlanta, and although this was my only picture, I felt it was worth sharing and providing some levity to the negative tone of Flutterby lately. For those of you that have not visited, one of the oldest and most classic tourist traps of the SouthEast is Rock City and it is famous for birdhouses and barns painred up just like this one. We laughed and we cried when it went by.

[ related topics: Photography Chattanooga ]

Hiking along the top of Canyon De Chelly on top and in the middle of lots of rock, was this interesting litte pond in solid rock. Not sure why it was there.. not much rain lately, yet there it was, Mother Nature teasing us.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

John Burns on journalism in the context of Iraq:

There is corruption in our business. We need to get back to basics. This war should be studied and talked about. In the run up to this war, to my mind, there was a gross abdication of responsibility. You have to be ready to listen to whispers.

Essentially the same questions I asked when I linked to Eason Jordan's admission of collaboration, but with the perspective of someone actually there.

[ related topics: Ethics Journalism and Media ]

In developed countries, girls do better academically than boys, and now have higher expectations.

International education figures, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, show a consistent picture, across cultures and continents, of women achieving better results than men.

The OECD survey is a detailed comparison of education achievement and spending in 43 developed countries.

I wish there were more detail about sources in that article, I poked around the OECD and only found this press release about literacy results from the Programme For International Student Assessment for summaries.

[ related topics: Language Children and growing up Sexual Culture Current Events Education Economics ]

The Sexual Culture topic is getting way too full, with everything from notes on gender to sexual freedoms to gay culture to... Anyone have suggestions for ways to break that down into subgroups? Similarly, the Erotic topic should probably have a little more than "the author of this post thought this was groovy" to it.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Flutterby Meta ]

Sheb Wooley, of Purple People Eater fame, dead at 82.

[ related topics: Music Current Events ]

Capuchin monkeys exhibit desire for fairness in reward for work.

Some economists and experts on labor activism, for example, hold that an emotional sense of fairness may be just as important as coldly rational considerations in cases of collective bargaining and economic decision-making. This same sense of fairness seems reflected in the responses of the capuchin monkeys, according to Brosnan and de Waals.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

Yes, I know, but I'm feeling silly this morning:

My inner child is ten years old!

The adult world is pretty irrelevant to me. Whether I'm off on my bicycle (or pony) exploring, lost in a good book, or giggling with my best friend, I live in a world apart, one full of adventure and wonder and other stuff adults don't understand.

How Old is Your Inner Child? brought to you by Quizilla

[ related topics: Dan's Life Pedal Power ]

Mark had a link to an ACM Queue interview with Jim Gray, head of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center and recent ACM Turing Award winner. Mark quoted Jim Gray on development:

You see this today. Two groups start; one group uses an easy-to-use system, and another uses a not-so-easy-to-use system. The first group gets done first, and the competition is over. The winners move forward and the other guys go home.

And noted the "TerraServer SneakerNet" too, which is just the modern version of "don't underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of mag tapes".

On the second, while I'm diddling with hardware and control systems, my cow-orkers are working on a large system to distribute and synchronize that data. We're talking about polling versus notifications, and net traffic across various bandwidth trans-oceanic links, and what can get scheduled and what needs to be synchronous. It's important to remember that a buck or three a gigabyte means that if you ask with a SOAP message if something's changed every 15 minutes, that's about half a buck a year. If you start doing that with a lot of computers, it's a simple multiplier.

Something the RSS guys need to keep in mind as they babble about the current polled architecture and replacements for email.

I also think it's worth noting his notes about development processes, and the reasons that Tandem failed, might subtly conflict with some of the things he thinks about why the big database vendors are on top, although he cannily refrains from making any real substantive statements along those lines.

[ related topics: Weblogs Microsoft broadband Databases ]

d00d, g0tz W@r3Z n C0d3z?... arrr, matey, a happy Talk Like A Pirate Day to you.

[ related topics: Humor ]

So I actually haven't listened to a show yet, but I just like the name: .Net Rocks "is an Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers". They don't say as much, but I believe that .Net Rocks are also things that break Windows when you throw them.

[ related topics: Music Microsoft Net Culture ]

After reading Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, I've become a little more interested in the mechanics of elections. I'd like to be a little more conscious of the maneuvering as each candidate decides they can exchange the votes of one state for another, watching the strategies as much as the alleged platforms (which we all know will get sold out as soon as it's expedient). With that in mind, watching Wesley K. Clark join the election is kinda fun. The first thing we notice is the pull quote from his candidacy announcement speech on the front page:

"We're firm in our content...

Firm in our purposes...

We're underway and

moving forward...

Get Ready. We're Moving Out!!!!"

Terry Pratchett has observed that "Multiple exclamation marks [...] are a sure sign of a diseased mind" (Eric), and that the number of exclamation marks used was a good gauge of sanity (Maskerade).

In the incidents I'm sure you'll hear lots of sides about, Stryker runs down the standoff between Clark and the Russians at Pristina Airport.

And it's a good time to introduce Value Judgement for coverage of "Tactics and Substance in the 2004 Elections".

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Terry Pratchett ]

I mention this because I'm getting a hell of a lot of them, which means that someone with me in their address book is infected: If you get an email message allegedly from Microsoft purporting to be security update, don't open it. It's a trojan horse. That is all. Thank you.

[ related topics: Microsoft virus moron ]

Quote of the day, Kim Stanley Robinson in Mother Goddess of the World, collected in Escape from Kathmandu, because every few years I find myself thumbing through the book trying to find it again:

... it's hard to explain. But it's something like this: when you get on a mountain wall with a few thousand feet of empty air below you, it catches your breath. Of course part of you says "oh my God, it's all over. Whyever did I do this! But another part sees that in order not to die you must pretend you are quite calm, and engaged in a semi-theoretical gymnastics exercise intended to get you higher. You pay attention to the exercise like no one has ever paid attentyion before. Eventually you find yourself on a flat spot of some sort &emdash; three feet by five feet will do. You look around and realize that you did not die, that you are still alive. And at that point this fact becomes really exhilirating. You really appreciate being alive. it's a sort of power, or a privilege granted you, in any case it feels quite special, like a flash of higher consciousness. Just to be alive! And in retrospect, that paying attention when you were climbing ? you remember that as a higher consciousness too.

You can get hooked on feelings like those; they are the ultimate altered state. Drugs can't touch them. I'm not saying this is real healthy behavior, you understand. I'm just saying it happens

Although the three stories collected in Escape From Kathmandu can feel kind of goofy (especially the last one), the tales of stoned climbing guides discovering Yeti, meeting Jimmy Carter, and accidentally climbing Mt. Everest are worth a read.

[ related topics: Religion Drugs Quotes Books Health Sports ]

Aaaawww, that's sweet: Debra (of Pursed Lips fame) had much more fun at the Ren Faire than we did.

[ related topics: History ]

Went to Tease-O-Rama or Bust last night at Broadway Studios. Damn good show. Plenty of both tease and bust. If you're down the LA way, I'm betting Tease-O-Rama will be a lot of fun.

Broadway Studios is at that intersection of Broadway and Columbus in San Francisco where all the strip clubs are, so it was fun to see the line of the dressed up folks going to the burlesque amidst the frat-boys frequenting the strip clubs. Saw a bunch of cops dealing with a guy who obviously got unruly and was ejected by the bouncer from one of the nude places.

Kitten on the Keys did great work as MC, Burlesque Costumes was a sponsor, great show, sorry you missed it (if you did), be sure to catch the next one.

[ related topics: Erotic Dan's Life Bay Area Theater & Plays Burlesque ]

Last weekend, Charlene and I were in the Beverly's in San Rafael when an employee tried to give us a deal, "just give me $15 and we'll call it even". Uhhhh, sorry, pal, I want to see that transaction go through the register, and I don't care what your sense of economics is or how stupid you think I am, the $.76 cents savings on my part doesn't justify knowingly receiving stolen property. Late last week I saw this sign on the ground near a BART entrance, where the panhandlers often concentrate. Within half a block, down in the BART station, there's an office that'll give you face value for your tickets.

I guess all the really smart crooks are in politics.

[ related topics: Politics Ethics Economics Public Transportation ]

Yesterday's hike was a burner up from Mill Valley at 300 feet to the top of Mount Tamalpais at 2,572. And the stretch from 800 feet to the top was under a mile and a half, up the Temelpa trail. Alas, we're not as smart on the way down, which was kinda boring and flat. Need to work on those steep descents. The image is from a hike in the same neighborhood with Charlene last week.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment ]

Driving down Highway 50, a sign on a dirt road said: Lexington Arch, 12.5 miles. So we took it. It was a nice off-road ride, with a small parking lot at the end.. and a sign that showed a "1.5 mile walk" to the Arch. Boots, water, food bars.. and a long upwards climb later, we found the arch. Turns out to be the only, or at least one of the few limestone arches (others are sandstone), the top view is looking through the arch, back towards the truck (it's way WAY down there). The bottom view is coming up on it from the trail..

[ related topics: Photography Food Shoes Machinery ]

It has been widely reported that the owners of the Dewey Decimal System have sued a New York Hotel for trademark infringment. There's been the usual back-and-forth, the "how can someone own something we've known and loved..." whining, but it seems to me that the case is pretty strong, the system gets updated, it refers to a specific cataloging system. The Online Computer Library Center seems to have a legitimate claim.

But this news connected some neurons. I've generally preferred the Library of Congress Classification System, and I'm wondering if maybe that would make a good weblog categorization system... Anyone know what sort of legal attachments there are to that hierarchy?

And whether, in light of ISO rumblings about licensing things like country codes, it might be worthwhile to adopt some of the MARC systems?

[ related topics: Language Intellectual Property Books Invention and Design Law Current Events Copyright/Trademark New York ]

Hey, cool! Post pictures, get better pictures from Meuon. Let's try this again: With sunrise getting later, I'm back to actually seeing color as I arrive at the ferry building. Although not for very long, the sky was already blue in the west as the ferry turned around on its way out. Corte Madera creek, with Mount Tamalpais in the background.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Bay Area ]

Wonder why the Indians moved to where they did? Just go there, you'll figure it out for yourself. Water, Air Conditioning. View. Jen and our guide (and me) enjoyed hiking Canyon de Chelly, seeing things off the beaten path. On the right, is 'Spider Rock', where 'Spider Woman' taught people how to weave. Well Dan, does that work?

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Work, productivity and environment ]

Dave says: "Can you believe it -- there are weblogs that turn away traffic based on referrer. This is bad practice." Now I think he's got a specific person in mind, but as we saw with the infamous thread that shall not be named, there are completely valid reasons to want to exclude a certain class of participant. Making no judgements on the situation that might be under discussion...

[ related topics: Weblogs Dave Winer Flutterby Meta Community ]

Playing with light.. Sandstone from a hike in Mesa Verde to see more Petroglyphs and a nice view late in the afternoon in the back of a cliff dwelling called Balcony House. Light and rock work together to create softer evolving space. I've been in work-mode for a week or so.. and I'm craving a nice road trip again.. some caving..

[ related topics: Photography Coyote Grits Nature and environment Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Travel ]

As of January 1^st, Californians may have some recourse against spam: Gray Davis signs a California anti-spam bill:

The bold experiment to fight the barrage of electronic junk mail enables California residents, the state attorney general and Internet providers to seek civil damages against spammers amounting to $1,000 per e-mail and $1 million per incident.

Full text of state bill 186, let the first amendment lawsuits begin.

[ related topics: Spam Law Monty Python Civil Liberties California Culture Net Culture ]

How to have sex in San Francisco: A beginner's guide.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area California Culture ]

Judge rules against FTC do not call registry. No indication of what impact this will really have. Relatedly, Mark Morford deconstructs the Comcast privacy statement. Someone's been putting databases together, because a telemarketer has called my phone number looking for Charlene, so we were itching for that October 1^st to come by so that we could start to collect on this. Hope the Do Not Call registry eventually gets upheld.

[ related topics: Privacy Law Current Events Databases Mark Morford ]

Hmmm... This looks like a variant of an idea I've been interested in: Upcoming is an online communal event calendar, with plans to do social networking and predictions on what you'd like.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

So you've undoubtedly seen that the RIAA has dropped accusations of Kazaa use against a 66 year old Mac user? The article says:

Cohn said she expects more cases like the Wards because Internet service providers like Comcast, used by the Wards, do not assign IP addresses to any one user but shuffle them around.

In my first (and, , I hope only) use of a Windows machine on the unprotected 'net, I'd taken my computer over to play games with the rat boys, and I was wondering why I was getting all of the instant messaging pop-ups and ads. Turned out they had their router plugged in roughly backwards, it was working just as a hub, and apparently Comcast was happily handing out DHCP leases to as many people on that line as asked. I've no idea whether they were reasonably logging IPs to cable-modem MAC addresses, but it sure seems like if they were this is the sort of activity that they'd be wanting to discourage or charge a premium for, so I'm flabbergasted that it appeared to work and that there weren't nasty messages on subsequent bills.

[ related topics: Current Events Macintosh Net Culture ]

Word of the day: "abligurition". according to Dictionary.com:

\Ab*lig`u*ri"tion\, n. [L. abligurito, fr. abligurire to spend in luxurious indulgence; ab + ligurire to be lickerish, dainty, fr. lingere to lick.] Prodigal expense for food. [Obs.] --Bailey.

See Scotch Night (the web site for which needs an update).

[ related topics: Language Food ]

/. reports: Via introduces Nano-ITX. Mini-ITX has pictures, and claims this'll be a 1GHz C3. The boards are 12cm square (size of a CD jewel case) with audio, S-Video and VGA, ethernet and 2 USB ports, so alas, they've done away with the serial and parallel port and I've no idea what power supply issues they've got, but if these are affordable they're going to be way cool to play with.

[ related topics: Current Events Cool Technology Embedded Devices - Via Eden ]

America is such a great place, shoes grow on trees. - While driving down Highway 50 America's Loneliest Highway you will see some amazing things, if you are paying attention.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Nature and environment Shoes ]

Segway recall. Apparently people have been falling off of them when the batteries get low. CPSC notice.

[ related topics: Current Events Segway/Ginger/IT ]

Went to Pearls Before Swine down at Club Galia last night. We were lured there with a promise of a Kitten on the Keys performance, got there at the appointed nine o'clock, and the place was empty. Luckily Kitten and Ward (her honey, and, among other roles of note, part of Polkacide) were there, wondering why the club wanted them there at 6 to set up (they'd actually arrived at quarter after 8, and were still wondering what to do with all the time), so we sat and chatted with them for a while.

Dr. Abacus opened, good enough that we got their CD, and then, interspersed with various other things, Kitten did a few bits. There was, however, a serious lack of vibe going down. There was some DJ spinning the usual boring 2/2 up in the front of the club, allegedly a play-space upstairs (we didn't go up to check), and the various other performers were doing bump-n-grind sorts of things that weren't really playing off the audience.

Part of what makes burlesque so much fun is that there is the audience there to play off of. You don't holler, the scarf doesn't come off. Even in drag shows, where nothing's coming off, it's all about the give and take with the crowd. When the performers start off mostly naked, and when they have that bored 20 year old ennui that I find completely off-putting, there's no audience participation. Yes, there is a certain aesthetic to Suicide Girls posing in the clothing from various places I forget the links to, but it's not something that demands that live interaction. Ho, hum.

The theme for the evening was fetish, drag, pearls and piggies (whence the pearls before swine), I went in silk, Charlene in velvet (our respective fetishes), and there were a few drag newbies and lots of skimpy vinyl and a little bit of leather, but rather than being cool in its eclecticism the crowd just felt cracked and unconnected. Not a bad evening out, but probably not one we'll be chasing down again.

[ related topics: Music Erotic Sexual Culture Theater & Plays Fashion Clothing Burlesque ]

Yesterday I read Dori's link to Andy Ihnatko's look at The Sandman: Endless Nights, and it convinced me that I needed to get it. So I stopped at Stacey's (where they had it behind the counter), and read it on the ferry. I'm blown away.

In his introduction, Neil Gaiman says:

...I was asked if I could tell the story of the Sandman in twenty-five words or less. I pondered for a moment:

"The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision," I said.

What makes Gaiman's work so interesting is not just that that is the extent of the story, and yet he can still take 10 books to show layers of metaphors about dreams changing and dying, and in each case coordinated other vastly talented artists to help him show us the characters involved.

The Sandman: Endless Nights, is 7 stories of the seven endless, that bickering family of anthropomorphisms that transcend the gods, because the gods require belief, that we come to know and love, if not completely understand, in The Sandman series. Death, Desire, Dream, Despair, Delirium, Destruction and Destiny each have their stories, and while the stories stand on their own, they enhance the tales which have come before.

Also amazing in this collection, as in the other comics of The Sandman and his tales of Death, is the spin that the artists who draw each of the stories add to the characterization. From Milo Minara's depictions of the woman who gets what she desires, and is wise enough to be content, to Barron Storey and Dave McKean's fifteen portraits of despair, it's clear that as good as Gaiman is on his own with just prose, where he really shines is in collaboration. Recommended.

[ related topics: Books Art & Culture Comics Neil Gaiman ]

Went to the Folsom Street Fair^sm (wins props for the "best use of service mark symbol ever") today to scope it out as a venue for Charlene's business. Met up with Mike with whom I went to Burning Man three years ago, and got hugs from Angel, whom I know from the same crowd, at the Fantasy Makers booth. Fun scene if you're a little more leathery than we are, it's amazing how many vendors of floggers the community apparently supports, but we're fairly sure it's not the scene for our product. And I like my punk with a little more talent than the bands I heard on the stages.

[ related topics: Burning Man Music Erotic Community ]

As an experiment, a nethead put a fresh, unpatched Winders box on the 'net, with Outlook have an address book of 100 fresh, never used, unusual e-mail addresses. In 3 hours, those addresses were getting SPAM. - I'm looking for a sacrificial machine to try this on myself right now..

[ related topics: Microsoft Spam ]

It was via a post on Weird Ass Shit that I first learned that the band Hell On Earth (slow and flakey site) claimed to be planning on assisting the suicide of a terminally ill person on stage during one of their concerts. The St. Petersburg City Council has passed a law to forbid this [edit: Was "Tampa", my bad]...

...making it illegal to conduct a suicide for commercial or entertainment purposes, and to host, promote and sell tickets for such an event.

But it's fairly clear that there are a few clueless bozos who haven't really looked at the issues surrounding assisted suicide and terminal illness:

"While I still think it's a publicity stunt, we still couldn't sit idly by and let somebody lose their life," council member Bill Foster said.

And for the record: I'm guessing publicity stunt, but we'll never really know.

[ related topics: Ethics Law Current Events Bizarre ]

After recent damages due to hurricaine Isabel in North Carolina, President George Bush declares war on butterflies:

"In 1963, meteorologist Edward Lorenz said that a butterfly flapping it's wings in Japan caused a hurricaine on the other side of the planet. We can't have these lawless insects possessing such weapons of mass destruction. The Texas Air National Guard will begin spraying the island of Japan with DDT this week."

(Note: This is a joke.)

[ related topics: Butterflies Politics History Space & Astronomy Guns ]

Eh? had a link to the amazing... uhh... those wacky Japanese are at it again. It's a rubber hand, mounted on a stand with a 7cm stroke length. Maybe it's time to ring up those folks at J-List to see if they can import one...

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture ]

If you haven't been following the Valerie Plame affair, you've probably been reading the newspaper. Synopsis: Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who went to Nigeria to investigate the "yellow cake" affair. Subsequently, Robert Novak fingered Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative", citing "two senior administration officials". Today The Justice Department is launching an investigation at the request of the CIA.

Others are covering this better than I: Medley, RC3, Sparkey provides a contrarian view, Slate provides a comprehensive run-down which runs a middle-ground, but gives a balanced view of why this probably isn't as big a deal as we wish it were.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Journalism and Media Law Enforcement ]

Nevada County, Nevada has removed all art depicting nudity from an exhibit at the Rood Administrative Center. Artists are upset and fighting back.

Nevada County Supervisor Sue Horne, pointing, tells artist Irene Nicolas that it was a "slap in the face of the county" for artists to cover their paintings of nudes with "CENSORED" signs and leave them hanging in the Rood Administrative Center.

Damn straight. I see you understood the message perfectly.

In typical political two-faced fashion, Horne whines about not "[talking] about it in an adult manner." According to the article, there was no "adult discussion" with the artists before their works were summarily removed. And of course there is the ever-present claim that simply seeing a pair of breasts is going to scar the child visitors for life.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Art & Culture ]

Copy some C header code over so I can rework it for interop. Get it all to C#, try to compile, get complaints about redefining preprocessor directives. Can't see problem in source code. Close file, reopen, problem persists. Close project, reopen, works fine.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Microsoft ]

Just because I need a little levity The Primary Main Objective had a link to a glowstick dress. It's like Burning Man all year round.

[ related topics: Burning Man Erotic Fashion ]

PRBop linked to: Software Utilizes Unique Typing Styles to Identify Individual Users. Back in 1988 or so I tossed the idea of a grant proposal to investigate just this at UTC. I got a big "Oh, that'll never work" from the newly appointed head of the Center for Excellence in Computer Applications, and went off to diddle with stuff they would pay me to do.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Software Engineering Cool Technology ]