Flutterby™! From 2009-06-01 to 2009-06-30

Guillaume Marceau did a compelling longitudinal comparison of computer languages. He used a standard set of benchmarks implemented written in 72 different languages. Actually, it's 72 different compilers and interpreters. No overwhelming surprises - compiled C code rocks - Python's well balanced. The overall result was that the maturity of the implementation played more of a role than any other factor. So much for language design! Of course, that means we should all be using COBOL and Fortran (not in his analysis).

Be sure to scroll down and click on the link for the 2009 version with Mozilla's TraceMonkey and Google's V8 Javascript interpreters in the mix. Tracemonkey is still lacking but V8 is shaping up nicely. Maybe Google will succeed in producing a viable cross-platform application language where Sun has mostly failed.

[ related topics: Open Source Python Java ]

I've been thinking a bit about brands and their value recently. A recognizable brand on a coffee, for instance, is a negative indicator of value; not only has that bean been roasted en-mass and sitting for who knows how long in the distribution channel, the purchaser for a large brand doesn't have the ability to say "no" to a batch of beans. So the small coffee companies, especially your local roaster, gets better pick of better beans, and roasts them more closely to when you consume them. If you're buying coffee in a strange city, don't buy a brand you recognize.

In purchasing a lawnmower, I ran into a similar situation. I was interested in an electric, we've got a small yard and I've managed a power cord for such things before, and there are apparently two manufacturers of electric rotary mowers: Black & Decker, and a private label manufacturer that makes "Earth Wise" and "Task Force" and a number of other house brand mowers. Now I know B&D from tools, so I was already predisposed against them, but there mowers also have plastic decks. As I dug around, despite many of the positive reviews, Black & Decker worked as a negative, and I went with the unbranded product.

So while I was doing this I went to Amazon to look at reviews. Saw their alleged discount off list price, tossed the things I was going to buy into the shopping cart to see how much they'd cost, printed out that sheet and then headed off to Lowe's, figuring that being able to examine the merchandise and have it today was worth a few bucks. On the way, thought I should stop at OSH to price things out, and sure enough they had all the items. And when it came to checkout, I'd gotten a better string trimmer than I'd priced at Amazon, and the whole order came to 10% less than Amazon, further weakening the strength of the Amazon brand.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Consumerism and advertising Real Estate Woodworking ]

Browsing with Firefox just got less secure: Microsoft Service Pack quietly installs Firefox add-on that "...adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for websites to easily and quietly install software on your PC. Since this design flaw is one of the reasons you may've originally choosen to abandon IE in favor of a safer browser like Firefox, you may wish to remove this extension with all due haste."

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering moron ]

Y'all have seen that Dr. George R. Tiller, one of the very few U.S. physicians providing late term abortion services, was shot and killed in the lobby of his church yesterday. Previously, in 1993 he was shot in both arms, and in 1986 his clinic was bombed.

A couple of articles worth reading from the MeFi thread:

Grief, Gratitude, and Baby Lee:

Dr. George R. Tiller specializes in terminating late-term pregnancies after the fetus has been diagnosed with a birth defect: a deformed heart, missing kidneys, Down's syndrome, anencephaly.

He calls his work a "reproductive ministry," and he offers his patients many of the same services as the hospice. Tiller encourages parents to hold, dress and photograph their aborted children, whom he delivers stillborn but intact. His staff takes ink-prints of tiny feet and hands; he brings in a chaplain for baptisms. Letters from grateful patients line the clinic's walls.

Gretchen Voss: My Late Term Abortion.

Radha Lewis: Why I Provide Second Trimester Abortions.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Current Events ]

Oh, good, now I don't have to actually pay for a movie this summer: http://www.explosionsandboobs.com/ and http://cocktailsandcocks.com/

[ related topics: Movies ]

Tom looked at the history of YouTube treatments of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" to provide context for this brilliance: Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version

[ related topics: Music Video ]

Just ordered a ScanTool.net ScanGauge II display for the Mazda B4000 truck to give me an MPG gauge (and more) like Charlene has in her car. It plugs into the OBD-II port on all cars sold in the U.S. later than 1997 (and several cars earlier than that) and gives access to all sorts of interesting data. At $160 it ain't cheap, but thinking about where on the projects I have to play with the "hack up my own MPG meter" solution was, it seemed like I should just spring for it.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Automobiles Machinery Embedded Devices ]

Leo was musing that maybe we are now in the golden age of movies and pointed out Wayne Schmidt's Box Office Data Page.

[ related topics: Movies ]

SFGate has an article about a GM dealership out in Tracy:

"People don't look at Chevys for hybrids," he said. "They want something big and muscular. Personally, I wouldn't drive a hybrid if it was the last car on Earth. To save fuel, I'd push my El Camino before I'd drive a hybrid."

When your primary market and fan base is driving a car that hasn't been made in over two decades there's not a whole lot of room for new car sales.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Don't need another freakin' project, but just ordered the bits to make a Arduino based "GPS Shield" location logger.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

From Google Earth Blog, if you've ever wondered what good the Google Earth browser plug-in was... Check out this cool Star Trek Voyager themed exoplanet explorer.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Star Trek Space & Astronomy Astronomy Archival Aviation - Helicopters ]

Nation's Restaurant News: Nonalcoholic drinks raise bar, spike sales at upscale eateries. As one who's largely stopped drinking, I both find this news heartening, though it'll mean I spend more on dinners, but also see a couple of fun inspirations in the article that I think I'll pursue.

[ related topics: Food Current Events ]

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?

Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.

Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?

Caine: No.

David Carradine, December 8, 1936 - June 3, 2009, we pass no judgements surrounding your death, only mourn your passing.

[ related topics: Privacy Pop Culture Flying Spaghetti Monster ]

Typical events for Boulder... The Marriot was evacuated by the fire department because housekeeping opened a can of bear repellent left behind by a visitor. Why would someone staying at the Marriot need bear repellent? Maybe last week's mountain lion shooting sheds some light.

[ related topics: Current Events Pyrotechnics ]

Charlene and I took her car up to Grass Valley on Friday night for Roz's graduation, drove back on Saturday, then I ended up driving up to Santa Rosa before we headed back down to Larkspur for the ferry into Bookstock. A lot of driving the new car.

The car has a trial period for Sirius radio, so while we were tooling around we were also sampling the offerings. The thing that struck me was how bad the codec for that is. Music mostly sounds okay, but the voice quality was so bad that the only way it was listenable was with the treble knob turned all the way down, and even there there was clipping and hiss, so bad that I almost didn't recognize Peter Sagal's voice. Went back over to the FM version and it was fine. The free trial is not terribly enticing.

And while we were up in the foothills, both the TomTom and the iPhone tried to send us down Lost Lake Road. I'm not seeing how to turn off the road layer on Google Maps there, but if you look at the plain satellite images there's no road where the map line indicates there should be. I think it's that other cut over to the left, but at the second set of puddles of indeterminate depth we decided to back out and try another route.

Be wary of those GPS suggestions...

[ related topics: Music Automobiles Maps and Mapping Public Transportation iPhone ]

Transexual takes to the footy field:

LIKE many young Victorian males, Will loves his footy. He dreams of joining the thousands of men who lace up their boots every weekend and play in amateur competitions. He's just like them in every way but one — he was born female.

The author of the Sensible Erection entry sums it up:

Story I found interesting in that the AFL will let him play as long as he's a legal male, and the legal system is happy to call him male when his reproductive organs are removed.

[ related topics: Law Shoes ]

A friend sent me a link to an article from the AAAS about using carbon nanotubes for permanent data archives. That's really cool because one of the biggest challenges facing archivists is the constant need to transfer information from decaying media to newer media.

But the real fun came from an ad Google showed while I was reading the prior bit in my email for the Manual Hard Drive Destroyer, noted as the green solution to drive destruction:

The model MHDD, Manual Hard Drive Destroyer, is designed for the destruction of all standard hard drives. It is ideal for emergency situations when electricity may not be available and quick destruction is a must.

I've never been in a situation where my electricity had been cut off and, for some reason, I had to quickly destroy all my hard drives. But it's good to know that it's available if I ever need it ;)

[ related topics: Cool Science Technology and Culture Enron Archival ]

Edit: Aack, simultaneous posting: See Eric's post below

Eric pointed out the Avax Manual Hard Drive Destroyer:

The MHDD also has a motor (MTR) option allowing automatic operation. This option does not limit the ability to be used manually in case of an emergency. The manual handle will still operate with the motor attached.

[ related topics: Law ]

What I Learned Today: 0.000000435%. The U.S. Treasury has spent fifty billion bucks on GM for 60% of equity, implying a value of eighty three billion, but GM's all-time high in 2000 was fifty six billion.

This guy has my heart:

Green Shoots

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices ]

The Volokh Conspiracy: Surplus of Males and Runaway (with the Bride-Price) Brides. Looks at a book called Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population, by Valerie Hudson and Andre den Boer (2004), and notes that in general as women become more rare, they're treated more and more like property.

From a Columbine entry that you probably can't read.

[ related topics: Books Sociology ]

Realization yesterday: The iPhone has made me realize that I really like a smarter phone. Now I'm counting down the days 'til my contract is up so that I can get one...

Bonus link: I wrote a little thing to let people automatically upload tracks and pictures from the GPS Log iPhone app. Need to figure how how to monetize that capability.

[ related topics: Photography Maps and Mapping iPhone ]

A cute little article on the Silver Crest Donut Shop in South San Francisco. When my family was out visiting, my Dad and I dropped my sister off on her flight to go home at oh dark thirty and stopped for coffee on the way home. This was the joint we stumbled into. Has all the character the story gives.

[ related topics: Bay Area Sociology ]

Making <time> safe for historians, on the new HTML <time> attribute and the difficulties of specifying dates.

[ related topics: Web development Archival ]

Free Chex Report

Had an overdraft? Too bad; everyone knows now; its public knowledge it appears.

Is there a database so we can log in evertime a bank or financial institution lies to us?

[ related topics: Databases ]

While I've been waiting for the device to do its thing I've been looking around a bit at location based stuff. Once again, XKCD hits close:

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Comics ]

Probably 95% of the blogs I follow are about geospatial technology - Flutterby used to be the exception... And I'm not helping. A word of advice - don't trust a GPS to tell you which house to demolish.

[ related topics: Current Events Maps and Mapping Real Estate ]

Twitter users, the Twitpocalypse is upon us.

Twitpocalypse is the name given to a bug that’s about to be exposed. Apparently, it’s similar to the Y2K bug in its nature, and stems from the fact that every tweet sent out has a unique numeric identifier. This identifier is about to hit 2,147,483,647. This number is the signed integer limit and apparently when some third-party Twitter clients start hitting it, the identifiers will start turning negative, and those apps are likely to crash as a result.

Twits indeed.

And the NT stock Exchange is having computer problems today too.

Of course at least we have time before the Internet Crashes in 2038.

Of course John Titor will be back to fix things it appears.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Just built a MintyBoost auxiliary battery charger for USB devices. So far works great. I'll be building another one as a power supply for the GPS tracker I'm in the process of making.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

OMFG! I Can Has Cheezburger: The Musiclol

Is inflation coming? Houses will be down for a while then commodities and daily needs look like they will skyrocket. Here is a fascinationg history of the Weimar inflation.

Whats that dime worth in Silver?

About a buck? Buying groceries today with real dimes.

[ related topics: Movies Currency Economics Real Estate ]

It was a busy weekend. Charlene's last day with kids was Thursday, and last day of school was Friday. so this weekend was a break in routine. I was expecting that she'd be gone all Saturday, so I'd planned a killer bike ride, but I was feeling like hell on Friday evening and canceled. We spent Saturday cleaning and organizing, Charlene went off to her event in the late afternoon while I did more house stuff. Then yesterday we took as a day of just hanging out. Spent some time in the morning lying on the grass in the back yard, and went down to San Rafael to wander around the Italian Street Painting Festival, hung out listening to Frobeck and the Banda Italiana di Marin performance in the church, and while we were there noticed that The Girlfriend Experience was playing at The Rafael. So with a little shuffling of the schedule of some guests arriving late last night we went to see the 8:55 showing.

As the credits rolled at the end the guy behind us got up and proclaimed his disappointment in a loud voice. I understand where he's coming from, if you haven't been privy to the subtleties of life around our household that previous paragraph reads as something like "same old same old", and The Girlfriend Experience was all about the subtleties of what wasn't there.

You've read the summaries at this point: Chelsea, played by Sasha Grey, who's best known for her work in porn (as Roger Ebert amusingly referenced in his review, one of her films is called "My First Porn #7."), is a high end call girl. Chris Santos plays Chris, a personal trainer to the same set, and her boyfriend. The film compares and contrasts her relationships with her clients to his relationship with his, and theirs with each other, using the backdrop of the financial system meltdown of last fall in Manhattan.

Much of this happens in subtleties. It didn't strike me 'til we'd been home for half an hour or so that each of the investment suggestions that Chelsea's clients recommend to her had a few levels to them. The film is only 77 minutes long, but doesn't seem short at all; every word is carefully chosen, the temporal discontinuity of the film takes effort to piece together, and there's a lot that the film explores that's the sort of thing we gloss over because those are the lies we tell ourselves to stay sane.

But the film has led to some interesting conversations, and I either want to see it again on DVD so that I can skip forward and backwards to put all the pieces together, or to read the screenplay. The poster for the film said "See it with someone you ****", and, yeah, it was a good film for sparking discussion on that.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Movies Economics ]

New York Times: America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making :

Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a widely cited study on the dangers of the current deficits, describes the situation like so: “Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it.”

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Bay Area California Culture Education New York Economics ]

My wife teaches yoga at The Yoga Workshop. She just received an ultimatum from the studio's new owners that all teachers need to by incorporated as limited liability corporations (LLC) by July 15th. We are trying understand the motivations behind this pronouncement.

Like most yoga teachers, my wife has always been paid on 1099s. She's always been an independent contractor. But the State of Colorado seems to be cracking down on businesses that abuse 1099 employee status. For instance, my wife has regular scheduled classes - a schedule that changes, at most four times a year. She's not doing fixed piecework. It's also common - but not too frequent - that she has only one or two students show up. She is paid by the head, so if she teachers for two hours and only one student showed up, she's making about $2.50/hour on a 1099.

It is enough of a problem that last year, when gas prices spiked, she rearranged her schedule so she was making fewer trips in to work because she was losing money by the time she paid for gas.

What are the benefits (and cons) to a company employing 1099 contractors versus W2 employees? What are the benefits (and cons) to a worker being paid on a 1099 versus a W2? What defines an independent contractor versus an employee?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Currency Marriage ]

Anti-news, but at least the psychology profs are proving the obvious: Humans prefer cockiness to expertise.

The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are.

Via SE.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Economics ]

Interesting: Opera Unite. Simple web app hosting from your browser on your personal machine.

I see some possibilities here.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Philip Greenspun talks about Universities and Economic Growth:

Bureau of Labor Statistics says that 1.7 million Americans work as college teachers (source). If Yale can't find teachers who can use classroom time effectively, what hope is there for universities with less money and prestige?

Comments are showing up on his blog.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Education Economics ]

I'm installing an "uber system" in a third world country right now.. and I'm realizing it's a bit like giving nuclear weapons to neanderthals. They can push the buttons, but they don't know why or what it does. Example:

• They have exactly ONE large ethernet switch. - Everything including their public 'net connection (with 32 IP's) and their "private" network is plugged into it. And their other net connection (128k and 512k) and both sides of their sonicwall "Firewall".. and.. and..

• The 10KVA APC UPS we sent has been "kludged" into their electrical distribution panel.. Feed->Breakers->UPS->Breaker Panel->Outlet... The y won't let me put the UPS in the rack, or plug the servers directly into ot. They don't understand it IS the protection, and has breakers in it... (good ones), and I'm not able to convince them otherwaise. I'm really worried they are going to wire up the AC to it. It's not meant for that kind of starting or running load.

• And.. and..

[ related topics: broadband Sports Guns ]

In response to the "Cocky beats correct" entry, Meuon said:

Why complain? It's how I make a living :)

It is with that in mind that I link to this list of 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive, allegedly taken from the book promoted by this site.

[ related topics: Books Weblogs Archival ]

When I was a wee lad growing up in upstate New York, we lived on the edge of a pond. My grandfather built me (or perhaps it was us, but I was the oldest) a little square ended rowboat, and my sisters and I spent a lot of time out amongst the beaver lodges and heron nests and catfish and... well... no way around this... really yucky leeches, rowing around the pond.

My parents now have a place in Iowa that has a pond, my nephew heads out to visit them regularly, and we live fairly close to the flat water that is the Petaluma River, and have a couple of kids now infiltrating their way into our good graces.

I heard about the Bodega Bay Fisherman's Festival Wooden Boat Challenge at a SCWA meeting a month or three ago, and have been thinking that it'd be really cool to get together with my dad and build a boat for my nephew. Or, perhaps even cooler, would be to do the major cutting to the point where the thing can be assembled with a screwdriver and a power drill and let the nephew build it himself.

And I'm thinking that if our Family Connection kids show any interest, that may be a cool thing to do out here.

Anyway, here's a resource: Hannu's Boatyard - free boat plans has a number of nice little plans, including a two sheets of plywood dory that looks like it'd hold three people if two of them were small, something on the scale of the little red and white pram that my grandfather built for us. Not the size of a surf or swiftwater capable dory, but might be fine for an acre sized pond, or the protected tidal water of the Petaluma river.

Or maybe the 10½' skiff, which would be right at home on a small pond, or, at a foot and a half extra and a little more room for two adults, the 12' skiff looks like it'd be just about perfect for a lazy sunday row past the herons and egrets.

And all of those look like they could be done with a few sheets of super cheap 3/8" ply, which may not last forever, but my attention span isn't... hey, wanna go ride bikes?

[ related topics: Nostalgia Children and growing up Boats Woodworking ]

Old news, from back in 2007, but I've had the discussion about what media to expose babies to a few times recently so I think it's worth a note: babies shown infant "educational" videos learn fewer words:

For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found.

Some of this may be that the videos aren't actually verbal; there could be some benefit to having the kid watch Jim Lehrer or Daniel Schorr.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Education Video ]

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Nathan Bedford Forrest Has Beautiful Eyes, reflections on myth-making from the losing side:

I don't propose that blacks are alone in our myth-making, or in our desire to ennoble ourselves. But given the power dynamics of this society, we're the ones who can afford the comforts of myth the least. This is doubly true for those of us who are curious about the broader world. By the time I came to Howard University, I was beginning the painful process of breaking away from the "oppression as nobility" formula. But the clincher was sitting in my Black Diaspora I class and learning that the theory of white kidnappers was not merely myth--but, on the whole, impossible because disease (Tse-Tse fly maybe?) kept most whites from penetrating beyond the coasts until the 19th century.

Via a Mefi entry which pulls another quote: "The temptation to continue to lie, to see yourself as the victim in a grand play is formidable".

[ related topics: Education Race Archival ]

Elf looks at MILF porn:

I think there needs to be a Seattle-based line of porn films: Seattle Cougars I through XXXVI, all with hot women who both have the maturity to know why they fuck, and bodies that have not been abused by endless hours of UV radiation.

Except that it'd never be commercially viable.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture tolkien Seattle ]

Jeff forwarded around this video of the last 3 laps of MotoGP 2009 Round 6 in Catalunya. I'm not much of a motorsports guy, but an amazing show of skill and different riding styles as Lorenzo battles Rossi for the lead, with some spectacular passing. "Oh mama mia mama mia mama mia" indeed.

Shadow sent two drunk guys trying to move a log with a bicycle. The exact opposite.

[ related topics: Movies Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

I've been letting this one settle for a few days, trying to figure out how to have more conversations about The Girlfriend Experience. I really like the thinking it's gotten me doing, but as I've been poking around trying to find more reviews and essays on the film I've run across two things: Reviewers who didn't get it, who think that the economic talk and investment suggestions given by the clients to Chelsea is background noise, rather than strong metaphor about the sort of relationship their having with her (these are also the reviewers who pan Sasha Grey's performance as "flat", apparently expecting some sort of Tom Cruise-like scenery chewing), and reviewers who, like me, fumble around how they liked it, but not finding the words to expand on that.

So, a few notes. Several interviews with Soderbergh or Grey I've read say that the screenplay, or at least the parts that Soderbergh let the actors see, was only 15 pages long, that for the most part Soderbergh knew what he wanted from the scene, knew the high points, gave the actors goals for the scene and let them loose. This Screen Crave interview with Sasha Grey has some insight into that, and Glen Kenny, real life movie critic who played the proprietor of an online escort rating service, has some amusing notes on shooting his two scenes. I think this is what gives the movie so much power: Much like real life, we know what we want out of a transaction, but we largely only have glimpses into the motivations that drive us to those goals.

I can obviously buy into the notion that all relationships are transactional, that we get things from the relationship and put things into the relationship, that some of us are willing to extend more or less credit in that economy, but that there is a market and a transaction there, and when the balance gets too far out of whack, we walk. No surprises there.

What makes the film interesting is that more so than most, the relationship market isn't frictionless. Trying to avoid spoilers here on the front page, the scene where Chris tells Chelsea how he expects the weekend will end up is remarkable not for its prediction, but because if he truly believed his prediciton and were willing to extend the credit, he could offer a different set of possibilities.

And as participants in a market there are a number of ways that we can meet the prospect of competition. Chelsea's reaction to finding that she is indeed in a commodity market, even as other scenes have shown us that she knows this intellectually and is trying to build her way out of it, is very well done.

I'm not going to "out" anyone here, but in a private email exchange it has been suggested that we lack the tools to communicate about some of the issues raised by the film. I'll concede that point, but I want to live in, or build, a culture where we don't.

I also find it interesting that in The Limey I found the editing style very challenging. Now the non-linearity of the storytelling has become part of the language of film.

And I want to see the film again.

By the way, Sasha Grey has a YouTube channel

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Movies Sociology Economics ]

Mention something on Twitter and who knows what comes out of the woodwork? In this case it was Ileana Pietrobruno, the director of another film called Girlfriend Experience. The trailer shows it to be a completely different film from Soderbergh's, but still looks like it'd be discussion provoking.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Movies ]

City of Bozeman Montana asks job applicants to provide their web site user names and passwords. Hypercrit has a roundup of media coverage.

Were I near Bozeman, I'd be highly tempted to create some accounts, put some basic stuff in them, deliver them and their passwords on the job application while simultaneously publishing the names and passwords on something like 4chan /b/: as the inevitable mess occurs, then ask the city to prove that it wasn't responsible for the desecration of my public presence.

[ related topics: Privacy Journalism and Media Heinlein ]

Brilliance: Matt Bors comic on the unrest in Iran.

Speaking of which, on Twitter my location is Tehran and my timezone is +3:30. Is yours?

[ related topics: Archival ]

Argh. I finished the GPS Shield this evening, but don't have any FAT16 SD cards. Well, I've got a 1GB one, but I had to jump through hoops to make it work in the embedded device its currently driving, and for whatever reason the Arduino device isn't working with it and I don't want to risk a reformat.

Put a call out on Freecycle, but I'll probably be seeing if anyone still sells 1GB or less cards in the morning.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Robotics Work, productivity and environment Embedded Devices Maps and Mapping ]

Why can't you get a netbook with Linux on it? Microsoft is strong-arming the manufacturers. Groklaw has the run-down.

If I say my horse is faster than yours, and you says yours is faster, and we let our horses race around the track, that establishes the point. But if you shoot my horse, that leaves questions in the air. Is your horse *really* faster? If so, why shoot my horse?

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft Open Source moron ]

Good Linux Users Groups sound like beer drinking activities. I just attended a Guyana Linux Users Group aka GLUG meeting and was impressed by the technical expertise in the room and a world-class presentation and live demonstration of Snort as an Intrusion Prevention System.

Discussions rambled and they feel that the poor adoption of Linux in both business and personal use stems from their perception that almost no-one pays for Microsoft products anyway. Including many/"most"regional businesses and government agencies. They install it, disable updates (they don't have enough bandwidth to handle massive updates), and when it gets infected badly enough, reinstall and do it all over again.

The group members feel Linux is a much better solution for their country in the long term, but are having problems getting adoption. Our dropping a massive mission critical Linux system in their midst is a start, but they are looking for ideas.

At least they don't have MS enforcement tactics to deal with.

[ related topics: Free Software Humor Microsoft broadband Open Source moron Beer ]

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I'm even more disgusted by the RIAA's recent verdict against Jammie Thomas-Rasset. I mean, how could she have caused $1.9M worth of damage to the recording industry? Even her earlier verdict of $222K was out of line.

I don't buy a lot of music anymore - having bought into the recording industry's churn and replaced all of my albums and cassettes with a substantial CD collection (some of which have already deterioriated to the point they are unplayable). When I buy music nowadays, it's usually form the artist directly. I really don't mind handing the artist $15 for a CD, especially when I know they are getting the entire $15.

BTW, does anyone know if the RIAA has started actually paying artists from the funds they recover through lawsuits and settlements?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Art & Culture ]

Okay, what's the trick on the whole Mentos & Cola thing? Tried it yesterday and had minimal fizzles. Maybe it was the $.88 generic cola, but it certainly wasn't "drop the string, get fountain".

And using cola as the reaction mass when pumping up the bottles to turn 'em into rockets? Sticky...

We don't shop at Safeway except when we need something in the hours that no other store is open. The prices are generally high (and we do shop at Whole Foods...), the produce selection (most of what we buy) is usually weak, there's just not enough there to drag us in.

Viv does, and finds them lacking. She's written An Open Letter to Safeway.

bunnie's blog: On Influenza A summarizes and talks about Nature: Emergence and pandemic potential of swine-origin H1N1 influenza virus, which looks like its worth tracking down. bunnie looks at it from a computer geek's point of view, putting it in terms of "How many bits does it take to kill a human?"

[ related topics: virus Nature and environment ]

Kodak retires Kodachrome. I know its been hard to find a place to process it for quite a while now.

Argh! Do you have any idea how long its been since I've been tripped up by an errant semicolon after an if (...) block? Damn, that hurts. And chewed a few hours today.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

How a Heartwarming, Kick-Ass Father's Day Photo Shoot Ended Up Face Down in Handcuffs on the Addison Airport Tarmac

But according to one of the crew, they had ID'd me as one of theirs, and the tower knew and tried to call it off. But once the wheels were set in motion, it could not be stopped. The pilots were pretty much cool and laughed at me and were even willing to escort me to take more shots. One old-timer gruffed under his breath, "It's the U.S.A., not U.S.S.R. -- I didn't fight to protect this shit." One even offered me his seat on a ride.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation ]

From the website of Der Spiegel, via Little Green Footballs, is an intriguing photo gallery of East German industrial design. It's all from the 60's, so it has that bright, plasticky sheen of the era. Some of the stuff, like the Jena glassware, is very handsome, while the power lawnmower looks like it was designed by the same guy who built the T-38 tank. What is interesting are the notes about how the products were marketed or used. The "Erika' portable typewriter is a similar to the ones we had back in college, but you had to submit typing samples each year to the Stasi so they could track samizdat writings.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising Art & Culture Graphic Design ]

Hidden Features of Perl, PHP, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Java, Ruby, Python and others. I've learned things from the C, C++ and Perl pages.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Software Engineering C++ ]

In linking to Marion Nestle's pointing out that the recently recalled salmonella tainted pistachios were simply re-packed and re-issued, Lyn said:

Obama needs to add fixing our food supply and food safety system to his long list of ToDos.

I've been on the fence about where to fix the food supply, but one of my on-going assumptions has been that it's cheaper to do this en-masse, that government regulation can provide an economic streamlining that each of us individually knowing the people in our food chain can't do for a reasonable expenditure of time.

I'm beginning to think that I'm wrong. I'm coming to the conclusion that there are so many externalities in food that all of the alleged gains we think we've seen in the past century or so are really just trading convenience for hidden costs, and that if we ask the government to "fix" this, we're just going to end up with a huge bureaucracy that favors the large producers. That the only way to fix the food supply is to go back to knowing the people who are growing and processing our food, and to be able to inspect those processes ourselves.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food History moron Current Events Economics ]

Sarah Gilbert chooses 10 notable ad campaigns that contain nudity. My favorites are the Nike "Bear Butte" running camp ad for the "Nike Free 5.0" sneakers, and the Air New Zealand nothing-to-hide ad (and "making of" video).

[ related topics: Nudity Consumerism and advertising Sports Shoes Video ]

really. I hate 'em.

We just had our work computers serviced. Evidently we hadn't had any virus protection since 2007 or something.

Anyway, the geek took it upon himself (not Mike) to upgrade Thunderbird, our email program to 2.0.0.22. Now my signatures are gone. I found an add-on "signature switch 1.6.4" that will allow me to have multiple signatures but it is not compatible with the version of Thunderbird I have.

I think I should be able to deduct his hourly rate for every hour I have to spend putting things back the way I had them before he took the computers away. I don't know if he reads flutterby or not. I'm frustrated at the moment and really don't care.

Anyway, if anyone has an add-on that will let Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 give you a choice of which signature to use (by right clicking in the body of the email; at least that's how it worked before), I would really appreciate the link.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama virus Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

Grace Wong Bucchianeri surveyed 600 women in Ohio, and then cross-referenced that information with tax records and census data to look at home ownership vs happiness. The paper is The American Dream or The American Delusion? The Private and External Benefits of Homeownership:

An interesting portrait of homeowners emerges from my analysis. While homeowners report higher life satisfaction, more joy from both home and neighborhood and better moods on an unadjusted basis, these promising differences become insignificant and much smaller in magnitude once I control for a basic set of confounding factors: household income, housing value and health status. Overall, I find little evidence that homeowners are happier by any of the following definitions: life satisfaction, overall mood, overall feeling, general moment-to-moment emotions (i.e., affect) and affect at home. The average homeowner, however, consistently derives more pain (but no more joy) from their house and home. Although they are also more likely to be 12 pounds heavier, report a lower health status and less joy from health, controlling for the less favorable health status does not change the results. ...

And note that this was done back in the middle of the housing boom. Of course it was also Ohio... Newspaper story, Newspaper story, and the inevitable MeFi entry. This whole thing also echoes Philip Greenspun's observation:

If you can rent anything decent, try to avoid buying property. Think about the most interesting people you know. Chances are, most of them are renters. People who rent talk about the books that they've read, the trips that they've taken, the skills that they are learning, the friends whose company they are enjoying. Property owners complain about the local politicians, the high rate of property tax, the difficulty of finding competent tradespeople, the high value of their own (very likely crummy) house or condo, and what kinds of furniture and kitchen appliances they are contemplating buying. Property owners are boring. The most boring parts of a property owner's personality are those which relate to his or her ownership of real estate.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Journalism and Media Real Estate ]

In honor of yet another hypocritical politician getting busted for cheating on his wife, and the ensuing trite press conference in which all the usual lame tropes are dragged out, Randy at Something Positive has made a Political Press Confession Bingo card.

[ related topics: Politics moron Conferences Marriage ]

According to Supreme Court, students in a school setting are protected by something less than the “probable cause” standard:

"The lesser standard for school searches could as readily be described as a moderate chance of finding evidence of wrongdoing,” the court said.

Hooray for the judges that they found the strip search of 13-year-old Savana Redding as a violation of her rights. But boo on them that they didn't hold the violators liable. Evidently, the law was vague on the subject, so the school administrators had not liability. WTF? The law was vague? It's the freakin' Fourth Amendment. Making a 13-year-old girl strip to her knickers is unreasonable unless you have damn good probably cause.

I wonder why they aren't going after these people for child-molestation!

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Civil Liberties ]

Hanging out in Pacific Grove. We go whale watching tomorrow, generally take a few days off (yes, I am typing this on my iPhone).

Sat next to a family speaking Persian at dinner, noted a large number of Middle Easterners in the supermarket. Seemed weird until I realized that we're right next door to Monterey, home of the Defense Language Institute.

Oh: had my iPhone screen repaired this morning. Further info and full review when I'm back at a real computer, but I now know *the guy*.

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture iPhone ]

On Tuesday evening, I dropped my iPhone and cracked the screen. Everything still worked, so I wasn't expecting to get it fixed 'til we got back from our vacation, but I did a search for iPhone repair near Petaluma on Google, there were two results, and Rami from MyIphoneRepair.com, repairing iPhones up in Santa Rosa, got back to me first. Yesterday morning I drove up there at the crack of dawn and watched as he replaced the screen.

Yeah, its a process I probably could have done myself, but as he describes it it took him several busted parts 'til he got the procedure down, and he's got the extra inventory for when that happens. Totally worth paying him to do it, he did a really nice job of it, and my iPhone is now back to new with genuine Apple parts.

And, sorry Gary, he won't touch the old iPhones.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Movies Invention and Design Heinlein iPhone ]

If you knew Cynthia Johnston, perhaps at MetaCreations, Adobe, Rampt, or Meta4, she's got some major medical issues and needs help. Charlene and Susan Kitchens are looking at organizing fundraisers for her and seeing what else we can do, but starting by gathering a big list of friends that we can build into an extended support network for her, even people who can just say "Hi, remember me?" as she goes through the next few months would be great.

Please contact me, danlyke@flutterby.com, Charlene or Susan.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama broadband ]

Darrin Bell tittered "If any editorial cartoonists draw Michael Jackson moonwalking through the Pearly Gates, I will personally beat them down w/a sock full of quarters." Apparently Bruce Plante was the first....

I grew up fairly far out of the mainstream, and moved only slightly into it when our family moved to Connecticut and I went to a public school for 8^th grade. I remember semi-embarrassing myself, turning it into a "ha ha just kidding" moment, when in high school band the sheet music to "Billie Jean" or somesuch was passed around and I asked "who the hell is Michael Jackson?" I stand by that statement. Can we STFU about it already?

[ related topics: Music ]

Howl: An interview with San Francisco zookeeper Jane Tollini on sex in the animal kingdom, and a hilarious part two.

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

Just kidding Eric, but it does seem you might now be able to legally collect and use rainwater in Colorado. at least for: fire protection, animals, irrigation and household use.

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics ]

"Slightly overweight" people live longer than "normal weight" people (/. summary linking to Science Daily article and NY Times article).

Charlene and I have some differing views on health and nutrition. There are several places where each of us looks at the belief structures the other has and ask "how can you know that?" and "how can you believe that?". In particular, Charlene's a fan of the Gerson therapy, an alleged cure for everything that involves copious amounts of fresh vegetable juices, but whose health claims I believe don't hold up under scrutiny. On the other hand, her variant of this has helped her go from a size 18 to a size 6, so its hard for me to critique too hard.

But as I look at some of the claims of the proponents of Gerson therapy, its hard for me to critique them when on the conventional medicine side I'm met with things like the four food lobbies which became the ludicrous food pyramid, and I'm met with quotes like:

“It may be that a few extra pounds actually protect older people as their health declines, but that doesn’t mean that people in the normal weight range should try to put on a few pounds,” said Mark Kaplan, DrPH, coauthor and Professor of Community Health at Portland State University. “Our study only looked at mortality, not at quality of life, and there are many negative health consequences associated with obesity, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.”

Because high cholesterol might lead to heart disease which might lead to early death? Uh... yeah. Not to mention that the whole "high cholesterol" thing has morphed from "high cholesterol" to "high LDL cholesterol" to "the 'proper' ratio between....". And how did we come up with "normal" weight here in the first place?

[ related topics: Politics Health Food ]

Freakonomics blog entry which points to Donorcycles: Do Motorcycle Helmet Laws Reduce Organ Donations?, an as-yet unpublished paper that says that:

Our estimates imply that every death of a helmetless motorcyclist prevents or delays as many as 0.33 deaths among individuals on organ transplant waiting lists.

A friend of ours is currently on the waiting list for a liver. I support choice in helmet use.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Speaking of cognitive disconnect, here's an article about California's budget crisis with emphasis on Modoc county, highest recipient per-capita of state funds, Republican stronghold:

Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County), vice chairman of the Assembly budget committee, represents Modoc County. He said cutting social services is not what he has in mind when he talks about deficit reduction - it's chopping other things, such as regulatory oversight committees and government employees.

He said health and road services cost more per capita in rural places like Modoc because they're remote and expensive to reach. So don't blame the sticks for consuming more funding per person, he said.

Uh. Yeah. So it's a lifestyle choice to live out there, and they're independent and all and don't need your government services anyway, but that lifestyle and location is just naturally more expensive so they're entitled to all that money and shut up about it?

[ related topics: Politics moron California Culture Economics ]

Adrian Colesberry (warning: all flash site) has written a book titled "How To Make Love To Adrian Colesberry". Susie Bright has some excerpts, it looks very funny, but Adrian Colesberry also has a blog. His observations on kink in politics seem worth a read:

There was no raping of female prisoners during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, which is almost unheard of in wartime. The soldiers were quite happy to starve women to death, to pull their fingernails out one by one, to suffocate them with plastic bags, to let them die in childbirth, but no raping.

[ related topics: Politics Books Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

A chin up from Sam Maloof (link is 404) (Hat tip to Rockler).

[ related topics: Woodworking ]