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- 2004-03-06t08:18:39Z. RE: Bush. Comic Art. Computers. Food. Fun. Games. Green. Haiti. Martial Arts. Presidential Elections 2004. Science. Scribblings. Sex. Show Biz. Tech. Web.
- 2004-03-11t02:42:32Z. RE: Bush. Chicago. Computers. Faith. Food. Haiti. Interesting. Money. Politics. Presidential Elections 2004. Sex. Show Biz. Web. Writing.
- My First CSG Thread: Control and Protection. RE: Martial Arts. Swords. Email. Sports.
- 2004-03-20t10:46:58Z. RE: A v B. Chicago. Computers. Elections. Faith. Food. Free Speech. Games. Green. Interesting. Iraq. Martial Arts. Money. Philosophy. Politics. Science. Sex. Spain. Web. World.
- 2004-03-25t19:53:37Z. RE: 9/11 Commission. Chicago. Computers. Design. Elections. Engineering. Entertainment. Faith. Games. Interesting. Iraq. Martial Arts. Media. Money. Politics. Science. Sex. Terrorism. The Passion of the Christ. Web. World. Words.
2004-03-06t08:18:39Z
| RE: Bush. Comic Art. Computers. Food. Fun. Games. Green. Haiti. Martial Arts. Presidential Elections 2004. Science. Scribblings. Sex. Show Biz. Tech. Web.
2004-03-06t08:18:39Z
Bush
-
Bush bio on Web inflates Guard service
- 'Questions remain about President Bush's long-ago service in the Texas Air National
Guard. But the basic outline of his Guard service is not in dispute: After a year in flight
school, Bush spent five months learning how to fly an F-102 fighter-interceptor and then 22
months as a part-time pilot. He stopped flying in April 1972 -- 30 months before his formal
commitment would normally have ended. ...But the State Department biography of Bush, which
has been on its website since 2001, makes the president out to be more of a frequent
flyer....'
- 'The State Department site --
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/ : pubs/presbush/bio -- says that before Bush graduated
from Yale in 1968, "he went to the offices of the Texas Air National Guard at Ellington Air
Force Base outside Houston to sign up for pilot training. One motivation, he said, was to
learn to fly, as his father had done during World War II." It continues: "George W. was
commissioned as a second lieutenant and spent two years on active duty, flying F-102 fighter
interceptors. For almost four years after that, he was on a part-time status, flying
occasional missions to help the Air National Guard keep two of its F-102s on round-the-clock
alert." '
- The Free-Lunch Bunch: The Bush team's secret plan
to "reform" Social Security
- 'Larry Lindsey, Bush's tutor on economics during the campaign and later chairman of the
White House's National Economic Council, devised a scheme based on creative accounting
principles. Essentially, it proposed that the government would issue substantial new debt to
sustain old-style benefits. This debt would be serviced and paid down by confiscating
revenues from the higher returns from those opting for new-style personal accounts. For the
first nine months of the administration, this was called the "free-lunch" plan--a painless
way to convert to a blended, private-accounts model. Inside of the Treasury Department and
the Council of Economic Advisers, however, officials were befuddled by it. Lindsey seemed to
have never called upon analysts inside the Social Security Administration to run the traps
on his idea. Treasury and CEA did--and the numbers didn't even come close to working out.
But that didn't stop Lindsey, or the president, from believing in and promoting the "free-lunch"plan.'
- Can you say "Why that little fucker!"?
- Bush-Chenney TV Ads. The official ads. I
think using 9/11 in is ads is along the lines of his "Mission Accomplished" and "The Turkey Has
Landed" stunts. It's cheesy and it will work on some chumps. Perhaps it will bring up other 9/11
issues: What about the 9/11 investigation? Was invading Iraq a necessary response to 9/11?
-
http://www.instapundit.com/archives/014443.php
- 'Here in the blogosphere it's been interesting to see a lot of people who have supported
Bush on the war suddenly souring on him on a lot of other fronts, and in many cases even saying
they won't vote for him in the Fall. This seemed to start when Saddam was captured -- just
scroll through Andrew Sullivan's archives around that time and you'll notice a change, though it
wasn't just Andrew -- and has steadily grown and spread.'
- 'The war effort is, in fact, going well -- but to some degree that's actually hurting Bush
by taking it off the front burner. And if Osama turns up captured or killed, that will actually
exacerbate the problem by making it easier for people to pretend that we don't need to worry
about the war any more. ... War is stressful, and the temptation to pretend it's over and put it
out of your mind is strong. I suspect that even some people in the White House -- where the
exhaustion level has got to be high after nearly thirty months of war -- feel that way, at least
subconsciously.'
-
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_02_29.html#002626
- 'If you look at the TV ads the president just unveiled today, you quickly see a main --
probably the main -- theme of his reelection campaign: it's not my fault.'
- 'What we're seeing now is that these two things -- 9/11 and the current state of the country
-- are coming unhinged in the public mind. If they stay unhinged, President Bush looks less like
a 'war president' than a president who just won't take responsibility for anything that happens
on his watch. Thus the new ads, the message of which might fairly be summed up as "It's midnight
in America. But if the Democrats were in, the sun might never come up!" '
- Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist
mastermind
- 'With Tuesday's attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is
now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq. But NBC News has learned that long
before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation
and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself -- but never pulled the trigger.'
- ' "People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to
execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists," according to terrorism expert
and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.'
- Like I've said before: Bush is sort of fighting terrorism but he's doing a suck job of it.
- Confidence Man: The case for Bush is the case
against him.
- 'How can Kerry persuade moderates to throw out Bush? By turning the president's message
against him. Bush is steady and principled. He believes money is better spent by individuals
than by the government. He believes the United States should assert its strength in the world.
He believes public policy should respect religious faith. Most Americans share these principles
and think Bush is sincere about them. The problem Bush has demonstrated in office is that he
has no idea how to apply his principles in a changing world. He's a big-picture guy who can't do
the job.'
- 'From foreign to economic to social policy, Bush's record is a lesson in the limits and
perils of conviction. He's too confident to consult a map. He's too strong to heed warnings and
too steady to turn the wheel when the road bends. He's too certain to admit error, even after
plowing through ditches and telephone poles. He's too preoccupied with principle to understand
that principle isn't enough. Watching the stars instead of the road, he has wrecked the budget
and the war on terror. Now he's heading for the Constitution. It's time to pull him over and
take away the keys.'
- 'In recent months, congressional hearings and document leaks have unearthed a disturbing
history. Again and again in 2001 and 2002, U.S. intelligence agencies sent signals that Bush was
wrong. ... Bush ignored every one of these warnings. They couldn't be true, because they didn't
fit his theory. He couldn't stand the complexity of the facts or the ambiguity of
intelligence.'
- 'Bush was right to propose tax cuts in 1999. The economy was booming. The surplus was
ballooning. ... The point was to keep the surplus from piling up, refunding more and more money
as it poured in from a growing economy. ... Then everything changed. The stock market tanked,
and the economy slowed. Sept. 11 shook the nation's confidence and drastically altered military
budget projections. ... The world changed, but Bush couldn't.'
Comic Art
- C.H.E.S.S. (Calvin and
Hobbes Extensive Strip Search).
- All the C&H strips by Bill Watterson online and searchable!
- 'Calvin: You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help.'
- 'Calvin: Childhood is short, maturity is forever.'
- 'Calvin: It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what's cool.'
- 'Hobbes: Do you think there's a God?
Calvin: Well somebody's out to get me!'
- 'Calvin: A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a
battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.'
- 'Calvin: I hate it when I can't gird my loins with funny animals.'
- 'Calvin I'm a simple man, Hobbes.
Hobbes: You?? Yesterday you wanted a nuclear powered car that could turn into a jet with
laser-guided heat-seeking missiles!
Calvin: I'm a simple man with complex tastes.'
- 'Calvin: It's only work if somebody makes you do it.'
- 'Calvin: This morning I had a wonderful dream. By holding my arms out stiff and pushing
down hard, I found I could suspend myself a few feet above ground. I flapped harder, and
soon I was soaring effortlessly over the trees and telephone poles! I could fly! I folded my
arms back and zoomed low over the neighborhood. Everyone was amazed, and they ran along
under me as I shot by. Then I rocketed up so fast that my eyes watered from the wind. I
laughed and laughed, making huge loops in the sky! ...That's when Mom woke me up and said I
was going to miss the bus if I didn't get my bottom out of bed; 20 minutes later, here I am,
standing in the cold rain, waiting to go to school, and I just remembered I forgot my lunch.
Tuesdays don't start much worse than this.'
- 'Calvin: Where do we keep all our chainsaws, Mom?'
- 'Calvin: Happiness is being famous for your financial ability to indulge in every kind
of excess.'
- 'Calvin: It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of
lightning.'
Computers
-
Assigning passwords to computer history: Biometric scanners, other products gaining ground
- Article hilights:
- Microsoft's solution makes the user use RSA Security Inc.'s SecureID cards plus a PIN.
- Another solution is biometrics like fingerprints or retinal patterns. Fingerprint scanner
are starting to cost only $50-170.
- I think we're still a long way off from feeling comfortable with corporations storing
biometric data. What if someone steals that info? Then they can impersonate us forever
because a person's biometric data does not change.
- Some old but good links I dug up:
- Good Programmers Are Not Lazy
[PDF].
- The Case Against
Extreme Programming
- When good interfaces go crufty
- What
must the great programmer know?
- Real Programmers Don't Use
PASCAL. Ye olde classik. BTW: It's a humor piece and some of the stuff is damn dangerous.
- 'If you can't do it in FORTRAN, do it in assembly language. If you can't do it in assembly
language, it isn't worth doing.'
- 'Real Programmers don't need comments -- the code is obvious.'
- 'If there is not enough schedule pressure on the Real Programmer, he tends to make things
more challenging by working on some small but interesting part of the problem for the first nine
weeks, then finishing the rest in the last week, in two or three 50-hour marathons. This not
only impresses the hell out of his manager, who was despairing of ever getting the project done
on time, but creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation.'
- 'Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found
others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic
features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped when we got a clean compile on the
following syntax:
for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);
To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that allowed such a statement was
beyond our comprehension!'
- 'Real Programmers don't write application programs, they program down to the bare metal.
Application programming is for feebs who can't do systems programming.'
- Programmers
Are Like Artists: Linux expert Bruce Perens on the motives of people who work on open-source
software -- and the communities it creates
- 'Now, programmers are like artists. They derive gratification from lots of people using
their work. Writing software that just gets put away feels like intellectual masturbation. All
of the good comes from someone else participating.'
- 'Q: What else is driving open source?
A: There's also plain old economics. Here's the case with Hewlett-Packard. They have something
like 2,000 operating-system programmers. For Linux, they will have [about] 200 programmers
because they're sharing the cost of that with IBM (IBM ), Intel (INTC ), and many other
companies. They're saving money on that. Most software is not a profit center but a sales
enabler for hardware and services.'
- Halloween X: Follow The Money
- 'Excuse me, did we say in Halloween IX that Microsoft's under-the-table payoff to SCO for
attacking Linux was just eleven million dollars? Turns out we were off by an order of magnitude
-- it was much, much more than that. The document below was emailed to me by an anonymous
whistleblower inside SCO.'
- 'This is the smoking gun. We now know that Microsoft raised $86 million for SCO, but
according to the SCO conference call this morning (03 Mar 2004) their cash reserves were $68.5
million. If not for Microsoft, SCO would be at least $15 million in debt today.'
- Gates:
Buy stamps to send e-mail
- 'Many Internet analysts worry, though, that turning e-mail into an economic commodity would
undermine its value in democratizing communication. But let's start with the math: At perhaps a
penny or less per item, e-mail postage wouldn't significantly dent the pocketbooks of people who
send only a few messages a day. Not so for spammers who mail millions at a time.'
- 'Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of
computing time to solving a math puzzle. The exercise would merely serve as proof of the
sender's good faith.'
- My first reaction was "Bill you evil, greedy bastard!", but it does sound like a possible
anti-spam method. We'll have to think this one through more.
- It Had To Happen: The
Disposable Computer. Funny because I also have a link on a disposable phone in this post
too!
Food
-
McSupersizes to be phased out. About time! "Would you like that super-sized?" was one of the
most annoying phrases: it wasted time and it felt like they were trying to gyp me. I've
super-sized an order as often as I've used the Windows Briefcase feature: never!.
Fun
Games
Green
-
Ocean Power Technologies to Harness Spanish Waves
- 'Ocean Power believes the 100 megawatt plants will be able to produce at an operating
cost of 3-4 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with 5-6 cents for wind.'
- Gee jobs are tough, what come after the info/service economy? The post-oil economy.
Companies like OceanPowerTechnologies.com
will rake in the dough. But Bus is so entrenched in oil that he's dragging us down with him.
-
Insurer warns of global warming catastrophe
- 'The world's second-largest reinsurer, Swiss Re, warned on Wednesday that the costs of
natural disasters, aggravated by global warming, threatened to spiral out of control, forcing
the human race into a catastrophe of its own making.'
Haiti
- Bush accused of
supporting Haitian rebels
- ' "The Bush administration is again engaged in regime change by armed aggression,"
former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark said. "This time, the armed aggression is against
the administration of the democratically elected president of Haiti." '
- ' "The U.S. talks about democracy, but it's their democracy, not the people's
democracy," Dupuy said. Using Venezuela as an example, Dupuy and Clark accused the
administration of not supporting governments that replace any group of ruling elites. "Any
government that has the support of the majority of its people will have a problem with the
United States," Dupuy said.'
-
Aristide Leaves Haiti to 'Avoid Bloodshed' Holy cow! An unexpected personal act which may
actually save lives! However it seems that the rebels may go ahead with their plans. This should
be a good window to send the international peace keepers.
Martial Arts
- FBI Guide to Concealable Weapons [PDF].
- Dozens of variations of concealable knives and spikes.
- Reminds me of stuff lying around the house of my friend Nick.
- Box cutters and their like might be good for an assassination in a crowded situation,
but such weapons will never again be used to hold an entire plane hostage.
Money
Presidential Elections 2004
Science
- The Girl Who Feels No
Pain
- 'Gabby [Gingras] was born with a genetic defect called "Hereditary Sensory and Autonomic
Neuropathy Type-5". It is so rare her doctors don't know of another person with it in this
country. Research done for her parents turned up a dozen known cases in the world.'
- 'The teeth she didn't break off while biting toys were removed by an oral surgeon after
Gabby chewed up her mouth and tongue so badly she had to be hospitalized. "Pain is the
protective mechanism, and she doesn't have that," Dr. Smith says. Gabby didn't have pain to
save her eyes either. She scratched them so severely, that at one point doctors sewed them
shut to keep her fingers out. But, the damage was already done.'
- 'Gabby broke her jaw a year ago and no one knew it for more than a month. Last fall, she
snuck out of bed, stood in front of a hot steam humidifier and suffered second-degree
burns.'
- Science, Strong Inference (The
New Baconians) [1964-10-16]. 'Certain systematic methods of scientific thinking may
produce much more rapid progress than others.'
- The Junk Science of George
W. Bush
- 'Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration--aided by right-wing allies who
have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals--are
engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since
the Inquisition.'
- That fucking fucker. The article has many explicit examples ranging from:
- Air quality at ground zero.
- Microbes in our food.
- Global warming.
- Ground water contamination by Halliburton.
- Drilling in ANWR.
- Water diversion from the Klamath River.
- Everglade wetlands
- Pesticides in drinking water.
- Abuse of mountain top strip-mining.
- 'Spadaro, the nation's leading expert on slurry spills, recalls, "We were geotechnical
engineers determined to find the truth. We simply wanted to get to the heart of the matter--find
out what happened and why, and to prevent it from happening again. But all that was thwarted at
the top of the agency by Bush appointees who obstructed professionals trying to do their jobs."
'
- 'In a dramatic expansion of this disturbing strategy, the Bush Administration now plans to
systematically turn government science over to private industry by contracting out thousands of
science jobs to compliant consultants already in the habit of massaging data to support
corporate profits.'
- 'At least federal employees enjoy civil service and whistleblower protection intended to
allow them to operate professionally and independently. Private contractors don't enjoy the same
level of protection. "You can shop for the right contractor to give you the kind of result you
want," says Frank Buono, a retired Park Service veteran who now serves on the board of a
nonprofit whistleblower protection organization.'
- 'Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing world. At their best,
scientists are moral individuals whose business is to seek the truth. Over the past two decades
industry and conservative think tanks have invested millions of dollars to corrupt science. They
distort the truth about tobacco, pesticides, ozone depletion, dioxin, acid rain and global
warming. In their attempt to undermine the credible basis for public action (by positing that
all opinions are politically driven and therefore any one is as true as any other), they also
undermine belief in the integrity of the scientific process.
Now Congress and this White House have used federal power for the same purpose. Led by the
President, the Republicans have gutted scientific research budgets and politicized science
within the federal agencies. The very leaders who so often condemn the trend toward moral
relativism are fostering and encouraging the trend toward scientific relativism. The very
ideologues who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have now institutionalized dishonesty and made it
the reigning culture of America's federal agencies.
The Bush Administration has so violated and corrupted the institutional culture of government
agencies charged with scientific research that it could take a generation for them to recover
their integrity even if Bush is defeated this fall. Says Princeton University scientist Michael
Oppenheimer, "If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge and in a
search for the truth, this White House is an absolute disaster." '
-
Experts Say New Desktop Fusion Claims Seem More Credible and
Shrimps spew bubbles as hot as the sun
- 'Sonofusion has already achieved more scientific respectability than cold fusion ever did,
with two articles published in major journals. And unlike cold fusion, sonofusion is based on
known science. Scientists have long observed a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence, in which a
burst of ultrasound causes a bubble in a liquid to collapse and emit a flash of light; some have
speculated that the gases trapped in the collapsing bubbles could be heated to temperatures hot
enough for fusion to occur.'
- I dunno. They've cried wolf with this stuff so many times that I'll just wait and see.
Scribblings
- I'm having one of those days where I just stare at my work. I've made a few micro-steps of
progress, but this is definitely not a day where I'm in the groove, lost in thought, and typing
furiously. Nor is it one of those days where all I need is a little break to surf, sip, or
strech. I need to totally pull back and re-center myself.
- What am I doing? What am I spending my time, thoughts, feelings, efforts, and life on? What
is my contribution, my added value? Here are some answers in no particular order:
- I live with and love my wife and kids. I have my extended family and friends.
- Contributions: Important, humane, and satisfying. I haven't regretted any time I've
spent romping with my kids,communicating with my wife, or interacting with my family and
friends. Even the rough times are worth it. I need to enrich this activity
further.
- I am the head programmer for Iclops, a start up company that does diagnostic OLAP data analysis
for the health care industry.
- Contributions: Company needs me and we fulfill some niche in society. The work,
while technically challenging, could be more meaningful or I need to make more money or both.
Or perhaps if the company would make some sales. In any caseI can set my own hours at Iclops,
so the flex time is unbeatable.
- I practice martial arts, with a current focus on swords.
- Contributions: Good for my health and fun. Contributes to the continuation and
propagation of a worthy field. The martial arts has always been a good environment for
making friends.
- I explore topics and write about them.
- Contributions: Satisfying and fun. Oddly enough a few others benefit from some of my
explorations. I like the breadth of topics I cover but perhaps I should be a choosier
about my topics and cover certain topics (such as ethics) with more depth.
- I play WarCraft III, a computer Real Time Strategy game.
- Contributions: Fun but entirely selfish. This eats time from all my other
activities. The strategic insights gained are probably negligible. Clearly I need to kick this
addictive habit but I need some sort of clear breaking point. Perhaps I should switch to
playing Go.
- What would I like to do?
- Work in a more meaningful field such as science, teaching, environment, archaeology,
writing, artificial intelligence, world hunger, politics, etc.
- Perhaps I don't dream enough
when I job hunt. I don't job hunt when I currently have a job (but perhaps I should), so
when I job hunt it is out of necessity and usually I grab whatever comes my way.
- On the other hand we're all ants in colony and even the simplest jobs fill a niche.
- Make a hobby of making more money: probably through interesting investments.
Sex
-
Woman Reports Neighbor for Disturbingly Loud Sex. I guess I'd rather be kept awake by
sex-noise than boom-box-noise.
-
I Did It For Science:
Experiment: To have sexual relations with "the world's finest love doll." [NSFW]. I was
going to ignore this but at $6000+ per doll, the folks at
RealDoll.com [NSFW] are clearly serious about their silicone,
fully-articulated, full-size, fully-customizable product. These are definitely not the freakish
looking dolls that Billy Murray might have pulled out on a SNL skit. However, depending on your taste,
I suspect they are in Mashiro Mori's Uncanny Valley.
-
Woman uses sex act as
manslaughter defense
- 'But [Heather] Specyalski claims that [Neil] Esposito was driving, and she was performing
oral sex on him at the time, said her attorney, Jeremiah Donovan. He noted that Esposito's pants
were down when he was thrown from the car.'
- 'Assistant State's Attorney Maureen Platt said the defense is flawed. "His pants could have
been down because he was mooning a car he was drag racing," Platt said. "His pants could have
been down because he was urinating out of a window. His pants could have been down because he
wasn't feeling well." '
- The other thing is that it is most likely that Esposito was driving the car since it was
his.
Show Biz
- The Passion of the Christ
- Matrix
Tech
-
Philips' New Camera Lens Works Like Human Eye. 'Unlike high-end digital cameras, the new
lens does not require mechanical moving parts because it works by manipulating two fluids in a
tiny transparent tube.'
- Digital Utopia and its
Flaws: Cory Doctorow In Conversation With R.U. Sirius [for NeoFiles]
- Yikes! Over-quoting again! A good interview.
- 'You went from where you controlled 100% of who got to listen to your music to where you
control 0% of who got to listen to your music. You went from where only people who bought a
ticket could listen to you to where anyone who could build or buy a radio could listen to you.
It made Napster look like kids' stuff.'
- 'This year's music publishers are last year's pirates ... always. The radio barons are the
people who were pirating music; the recording industry are the people who were pirating sheet
music; the cable operators were the people who were pirating broadcast television. It's not hard
to understand that someone who has gone up the ladder wants to pull it up behind them and close
the hatch.'
- 'NF: The person who makes music available is seen as adding value.
CD: Right. It's about taking back your cost centers and turning them into profit centers. From a
business perspective, if you can take back all of the stuff that costs money and get your
customers to do it, and just keep the stuff that makes you money, you make more money. Duh. And
this is the thing the music industry has yet to figure out about the whole file sharing universe
is that it throws their cost centers like marketing to their customers. Marketing is
accomplished through a word-of-mouth mechanism like file sharing.'
- 'Every other media revolution that we've had from Gutenberg to the radio to recorded music
and so on, ended up with an industry that's a thousand times larger, that makes a thousand times
more money, and makes available a thousand times more work. That happens every single time!'
- 'What does it mean to own a book? In some ways, if you own a paper object, you own the book
in a less meaningful way than if you own the ASCII version of it cause the ASCII version can be
turned into the paper book. The digital book turns easily into the paper book. The paper book --
it's really unwieldy to turn it into the digital book. And you can't change it to 100 formats.'
- 'And in some ways, selective enforcement is the best regime you could hope for. For example,
a cop picks up a kid who is doing something wrong and makes a decision to let the kid off with a
warning. The policeman has an opportunity to do genuine, on-the-ground, human, community
policing. He is allowed to exercise some judgement. Now when that judgement gets exercised in a
way that's racially discriminating like profiling it's a disaster, but every single one of us
growing up probably did one dumb thing that got us into trouble with the cops. But not all of us
got hauled off to jail for it. Some of us got taken home and had to sit down with our parents.
And we didn't do that dumb thing again. That's to the good.'
- 'The problem with adhocracies is that they have no defense mechanism against what happens
when someone exercises their judgement poorly; when someone tries to hijack the system they
sometimes succeed. Now I don't buy the idea that every system that's hijackable is hijacked. The
internet is full of systems that at least at a certain scale don't get hijacked. And then maybe
they hit a certain scale where they do. I mean, trolls are a great example of this. Any time you
have a message board of a certain size where you have no rules and no moderators, you get them.
Usenet at a certain size worked. But Usenet at a bigger size still works. I think that anyone
who says Usenet doesn't work isn't paying attention to the fact that lots of people send and
receive messages that have nothing to do with their penis size on Usenet every day. Usenet
unequivocally works but it works really differently than it did. It has had to develop some
defense mechanisms as a consequence.'
- 'NF: As you read along, it's your protagonist who is disrupting the adhocracies. He's
assuming that there's a state of hostile competitiveness coming from others, and as a reader
you're not sure if the protagonist is correct.
CD: Right. And one of the category errors that he commits is the error of assuming that he
can act in a way that would be unconscionable if someone of ill will did it because he is a
person of good will. And it's the same category error that spam fighters make ....
NF: ... and nearly all political activists and politicians....
CD: Right. We have this idea that we will never enforce ideas badly. But spam fighters have this
idea that it's perfectly acceptable for AOL to silently discard mail without telling the sender
or the recipient based on criteria that are secret. In any other regime, we would think this is
a really bad idea, right? But spam fighters are people of good will. And I'll even stipulate for
the sake of argument that every span fighter today is a person of good will. But when we
enshrine in the architecture of the network the ability for someone to silently discard mail
based on secret criteria without telling the sender or the recipient, then we create the
opportunity for someone of ill will to do very bad things. The internet is a kind of ongoing
process of discovering how to defend utopia.'
- 'Trust is one of the hardest things to do in network design and trust is one of the hardest
things to do in social design. And trust and betrayal are what our social contract revolves
around. We have a first amendment not because of what people of good will would do if we put
them in charge of who may say what -- and not because there aren't some things that are so
unconscionable that they shouldn't be uttered -- but because the framers couldn't think of a way
to trust people to reliably decide what should and shouldn't be spoken. '
- 'I think that normative pressure is what keeps us all in line. I think that we all have
urges toward deviance in some ways. I mean, not in the kind of leather-and-chains sense but in
the traditional sociological sense ... being a little bit weird. I think the only reason in
fact that it mostly appears that we're all doing the same thing is because we don't look hard
enough.'
- 'There's this amazing Bill Gates quote from Davos last week where he was talking about how
Microsoft was going to get back into search and compete with Google and someone said, "You know
you guys did a pretty crappy job with search the first time around." And he said, [paraphrasing]
"Yeah. You know what we did? We focused on the 20% of the queries that represented 80% of
what people were looking for instead of the 20% that were really odd. But what we found out is
that the whole perception of value lives in whether or not it meets those little queries." '
- Disposable Cell Phone -
Phone-Card-Phone
- 'Trademarked the Phone-Card-Phone®, the device is the thickness of three credit cards and
made from recycled paper products. This is a real cell phone (outgoing messages only) with 60
minutes of calling time and a hands free attachment.'
- Cool. Now I drug dealers can have more freedom.
- UC Berkeley
researchers developing robotic exoskeleton that can enhance human strength and endurance.
Gee, I could've used one of those the last time I went hiking. I wonder how it would have
handled all the mud, slippery logs, and sharp rocks?
- The Universal Card
- 'Wired News is carrying a
story about a new product
from Chameleon Network that's supposed to replace
all of your credit/debit/customer cards. It can read the information off of the magnetic strips
of credit/debit cards, scan the barcode off of customer loyalty cards, and even memorize the
RFID signals of devices like the Mobil SpeedPass. All of this information is stored in a device
called the Pocket Vault, and is unlocked with the user's fingerprint. If you wish to use a
magnetic strip card, you select the card from the touch screen and put a Chameleon card, which
looks like and can be run in standard readers like a credit card, in the Pocket Vault. The
Chameleon card will then assume the identity of the card you selected, but only for 10 minutes.
In this way, if the card is lost or stolen, nobody can use it. In the case of RFID, you just
hold the Pocket Vault up to the RFID scanner for a reading. For barcode-based cards, the barcode
will appear on the screen and can be scanned by a standard barcode reader. Chameleon Network
says this technology will be available in early 2005 and is expected to cost under $200.'
- Alas there's still that problem of having your personal biometrics encoded, which if hacked,
would be usable forever.
Web
- CSS.MaxDesign.com.au. Many variations on lists
and stuff on floating and selectors.
- Color Scheme. Very nice. See
colors interactively using HSL, different common combinations (schemes), web-safe or not, and as
viewed by different kinds of color blindness. The funny thing is that I was just tinkering on my
Color section.
- The Deep Web
- 'Information stored in databases is accessible only by query.'
- 'Non-textual files such as multimedia files, graphical files, software, and documents in
non-standard formats such as Portable Document Format (PDF).'
- 'Information that is new and dynamically changing in content will appear on the deep Web.'
- This topic is relevant given the current browser wars between Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. EG:
Yahoo to expand offerings.
- Warning:
Blogs Can Be Infectious
- 'Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of information between blogs, the
researchers have discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly borrow topics from
lesser-known bloggers -- and they often do so without attribution.'
- 'When they plotted the links and topics shared by various sites, they discovered that topics
would often appear on a few relatively unknown blogs days before they appeared on more popular
sites.'
- ' "A lot of sites that get listed by search engines as most relevant are not always the most
relevant," said Adar. "For instance, Slashdot often gets listed at the top, but it's just an
aggregator. I may want to go to the source." '
- Everyone learns from everyone else and ideas are shared all over, but you'd think that with
links it is much easier to attribute your source than ever before.
2004-03-11t02:42:32Z
| RE: Bush. Chicago. Computers. Faith. Food. Haiti. Interesting. Money. Politics. Presidential Elections 2004. Sex. Show Biz. Web. Writing.
2004-03-11t02:42:32Z
Bush
- Bush's flip flops
- Here's just one on the list: 'Bush is against nation building; then he's for it.'
- Hehe. That's the thing about simplistic arguments: they're easy to counter. The problem
is most people may never hear the counter.
-
Pre-9/11, Bush Deprioritized Counter-terrorism and Targeted It For Cuts. And while you're
there check out
The "Average Joe".
- Promises, Promises
- 'Economic forecasting isn't an exact science, but wishful thinking on this scale is
unprecedented. Nor can the administration use its all-purpose excuse: all of these forecasts
date from after 9/11. What you see in this chart is the signature of a corrupted policy process,
in which political propaganda takes the place of professional analysis.'
-
- Press Briefing by
Scott McClellan [2004-03-09 Tue]
- Recently Kerry pointed out that Bush has time to go to a rodeo but is only willing to give
the 9/11 investigation commission 1 hour of his time. This press briefing labored the point to
absurdity. Scott McClellan could have simply said that the meeting is scheduled for 1 hour but
that if they need more time he will give it to them. So much for "full cooperation".
- 'Q Scott, this morning you were talking about -- you said that the President will answer all
the commission's questions. There seems to be a change in tone, when this afternoon you're
saying that one hour is a reasonable period of time.
MR. McCLELLAN: Everything I said from this podium here, this afternoon, is consistent with
what I was saying earlier today.
Q Well, now you're emphasizing that one hour is a reasonable period of time.
MR. McCLELLAN: I've said that before.
Q Right, but this morning you were talking primarily about -- you said over and over again,
the President will answer all questions asked --
MR. McCLELLAN: And, of course. I want to make that point. Obviously, the President is going
to answer all the questions that they want to raise.
Q And even if that --
MR. McCLELLAN: But many of their questions have already been asked and answered.
Q Even if that runs over the allotted period of time?
MR. McCLELLAN: Nobody is watching the clock, Terry. But again, there is a reasonable period
of time that has been set aside for this meeting.
Q Just to nail it down --
MR. McCLELLAN: Terry two, or Terry one. Okay, Terry one.
Q It's on the schedule for an hour --
MR. McCLELLAN: And believe me, you can answer a lot of questions in one hour.'
- Create Custom Posters.
The official GeorgeWBush.com site has this feature
that let's you easily make a Bush poster. So why am I posting the link here? Well you can have
fun by hacking it by putting in your own message. I like how it says "Paid for by Bush Cheney".
- Support for
Bush Falls on Economy and Iraq. 'President Bush, the target of months of criticism during
the Democratic primary season, has seen public support fall to the lowest level of his
presidency for his performance on the economy and the situation in Iraq, a new Washington
Post-ABC News poll has found.'
- The new Pentagon
papers
- 'A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed
information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.'
- 'I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the
Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in
the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within
OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion
of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the
executive office of the president. '
- 'In November, my Insider articles
discussed the artificial worlds
created by the Pentagon and the stupid
naiveté of neocon assumptions about what would happen when we invaded Iraq. I discussed the
price of public service,
distinguishing between public servants who told the truth and then saw their careers flame out
and those "public servants" who did not tell the truth and saw their careers ignite. My December
articles became more depressing, discussing the
history of the 100 Years' War and
"combat lobotomies." There was a
painful one titled "Minority Reports"
about the necessity but unlikelihood of a Philip Dick sci-fi style "minority report" on
Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney's insanely grandiose vision of some future Middle East, with
peace, love and democracy brought on through preemptive war and military occupation.'
- 'War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the
Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be
false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered
to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from
which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of
the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling
a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and
occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population
might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get
the chance for an honest debate.'
- This is what I've been saying all along!
- 'Will Americans hold U.S. policymakers accountable? Will we return to our roots as a
republic, constrained and deliberate, respectful of others? My experience in the Pentagon
leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq tells me, as Ben Franklin warned, we may have
already failed. But if Americans at home are willing to fight -- tenaciously and courageously --
to preserve our republic, we might be able to keep it.'
Chicago
- Did a Comet Trigger The
Great Chicago Fire?
- 'Perhaps it was not Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern that sparked the Great
Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the downtown area and claimed 300 lives. New research
lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even
more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a
comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere. '
- At first I was doubtful but this Robert Wood guys should know a thing or two about the
orbit of comets.
-
Wanted: 4,000 candidates. City schools beat drum for local council elections.
- 'The elections will be held April 21 at elementary schools and April 22 at high schools.
Registered voters living within each school's attendance boundaries vote to elect the council's
six parent and two community representatives. The Board of Education appoints the council's two
teacher representatives; the principal automatically is on the council. The councils approve
school budgets, review school progress, and every four years vote on principals, said James
Deanes, director of school and community relations for Chicago Public Schools.'
- 'Deanes said many people don't sign up to run because they worry about the time commitment.
The councils typically require between 5 and 10 hours of work a month, he said. Anyone
interested in running for their school council can get an application at their school, library
or post office or contact the Chicago Public Schools office, Deanes said.'
-
Local School Councils. The official CPS link.
-
Voting information.
- Don't forget to vote on 2004-03-16 Tuesday Chicagoland!
- Funny but my polling place this year is the showroom at Sierra Auto Inc., 2352 W. Belmont
Ave.
-
Chicago Tribune endorsements
Computers
- What's on my Pen Drive?
- 'Just recently, I read an article somewhere on the 'net in which an industry pundit
suggested that in the (near) future, PCs would simply act as processing and display engines,
and we would all have a memory stick with all our "stuff" on it. Well, hey, this was a great
idea, but me being me I didn't want to wait for the future, so I set about looking for a way
to do it myself.'
- 'I determined that these would be my requirements:
- A Word Processor - MS Word compatible - for writing reports; [A:
MS Word 5.5]
- A Spreadsheet Application - MS Excel compatible - for converting data in
emergencies, and moer important, keeping my expenses up to date; [A:
Sphygmic]
- Secure Shell (SSH) application - to remotely manage my system; [A:
puTTY]
- Some sort of development software - I sometimes need to write ad-hoc stuff off site;
[A: Borland's Turbo Basic 1.1 and
Pacific C]
- Web browser; [A: OffByOne]
- Email client; [A: Ultrafunk's Popcorn]
- My favourite "toolkit" applications; [A: He gives a nice little list of freeware]
- Any client software I need to install;
- Storage space, for "stuff". [A: 10 MB to spare!]'
- Then he crams all this stuff onto a 32 MB USB pen-sized drive! Ha ha! Old software never
dies!
- Links for different models of USB memory sticks.
- The Macintosh at 20:
Interview with Jef Raskin.
- Jef Raskin created the Apple Macintosh in 1979 and invented click-and-drag selection.
- 'I'm very disappointed in the Macintosh interface. It's more complex, harder to use than it
was when we started. It's always puzzling people. Even though I have the latest version, OS X,
what they call Panther. The Panther keeps on biting me, crashes once or twice a week. The whole
system crashes, individual programs crash pretty often still, but the interface is so complex,
there's so many parts to it that I have to go to other people and ask them how do you do this.'
- 'As for the one-button mouse, I'd observed at Xerox Parc which had a 3-button mouse,
that people were very confused as to its use and when I was designing the software for the
Macintosh, in designing the interface, I figured that if there was only one button, there would
never be any question on what you have to press the number of ways of using a one-button mouse.
I think this was probably a mistake ... So if I was designing one today, it would have two
buttons and they would be labeled.'
- Ha ha ha! The one-button mouse sucks!
- iPod ad parody: Steve Ballmer [Flash
animation]. Ballmer is actually that enthusiastic.
- Optical
Drives: Simplified DVD Labeling
- 'HP has come up with an elegant answer: Use the same laser that already burned the data to
make a label on the flip side of the disc. A technology dubbed LightScribe enables drives to
burn a silk screen-like, high-contrast label on the upper side of CD or DVD media bearing a
special coating. After completing a data burn, users will be prompted to flip the disc over to
burn a label onto the other side. '
- Brilliant! One of those ideas that make you say: "Why didn't I think of that?"
- iPod Used In Domestic
Homicide
- 'A Memphis woman [Arleen Mathers, 23] was arrested and charged with first-degree murder
after she bludgeoned her boyfriend [Brad Pulaski, 27] to death with an iPod.'
- 'According to law officers, Mathers was hysterical when police arrived and told them that
she killed her boyfriend only after he accused her of illegally downloading music and erased
about 2,000 of her MP3s. Mathers complained that it took 3 months to build her music
collection.'
- If only she had made a backup. When will people ever learn: SAVE OFTEN!
- 'According to Apple's website, the iPod is partially made of a hard metal plate that's been
praised for it's resistance to regular wear and tear, like drops and coffee spills.'
- I wonder if her iPod still works? Does it give a licking and keeps on ticking?
- The world's two worst variable names
- Hmm. The article title alone entices me to use
$data and $data2 as
variable names. Obfuscation, here I come!
- 'Of course it's data! That's what variables contain! That's all they ever can contain. It's
like you're packing up your belongings to move to a new house, and on the side of the box you
write, in big black marker, "matter." '
- 'More generally, any variable that relies on a numeral to distinguish it from a similar
variable needs to be refactored, immediately.'
- Ha ha! Programmers walk around the world and when they see something blatantly wrong they'll
say things like "The White House needs immediate refactoring!"
- Best
Computer Pranks Ever. I'm not one for pranks: some of these are punishable by an
ass-kicking.
- The Command Line - The Best Newbie
Interface?
- Ha ha! CLI rules!
- 'This essay describes the surprising results of a brief trial with a group of new computer
users about the relative ease of the command line interface versus the GUIs now omnipresent in
computer interfaces. It comes from practical experience I have of teaching computing to complete
beginners or newbies as computer power-users often term them.'
- 'Firstly, Tillie doesn't do more than one thing at a time. Certainly she 'multitasks',
putting the kettle on while reading mail for example, but her attention is focused in one place
at any one time. The indication to Tillie that the kettle has boiled is unobtrusive and
effective but she defers dealing with it until after she has read her letters.'
- 'Another feature of Tillie's life is known locations for known things. Letters have a
certain place when they should be replied to and when they should be sent. Tillie does these
things at different times during the day.'
- 'Finally we notice the importance of dialogue in her life, both implicit and explicit.
Tillie has an implicit dialogue with the letter box, opening and looking for letters is
equivalent to asking the box 'Have you any letters' and it replying, in this case, 'Yes, two'.
Tillie has explicit dialogue with the grocer while retrieving information about today's
products. '
- 'One could consider a newbie a tourist in the land of the computer. We must remember the
neither know the language or the culture.'
- 'All users, after an initial bootstrapping phase, preferred the CLI "discussion" method for
interacting. All reported that they felt more in control and better able to find things out.
This probably was due to the higher amount of interface consistency and more task-based
interface that the CLI tends to encourage. '
- CeBIT to premiere USB Swiss
Army Knife. Drooool...
Faith
- NatReformAssn.org (The National Reform
Association).
- 'The mission of the National Reform Association is to maintain and promote in our
national life the Christian principles of civil government, which include, but are not
limited to, the following:
- Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government. Jesus
Christ is, therefore, the Ruler of Nations, and should be explicitly confessed as such
in any constitutional documents.
- The civil ruler is to be a servant of God, he derives his authority from God and he
is duty-bound to govern according to the expressed will of God.
- The civil government of our nation, its laws, institutions, and practices must
therefore be conformed to the principles of Biblical law as revealed in the Old and New
Testaments. '
- Fundamentalists like these are a hair away form other fundamentalists like the Taliban.
One of the worst kinds of evil is evil done in the name of the good.
- Interestingly enough, they are aware that the US founding fathers were not actually
Christians but Deists since they include a link to
ISmellARat.com.
- FIRST-PERSON: Mel Gibson's
end-around
- More frightening religious people. It's a fictional account of the Left's views on the
Right as presented by some very Right-oriented Baptists.
- ' "You're positively quaint. That kind of stuff went out with virginity and 'love thy
neighbor.' In our world, there are no longer any such ideals as courage and character. There
is no absolute truth. We make it up as we go along, film by film. You're joking, right?" '
- As if no one else knows about courage and character. As if they know what the
absolute truth is.
- TheocracyWatch.org. "The Rise of the Religious
Right in the Republican Party"
- 'March Toward Theocracy: Since the Religious Right began to dominate the Republican
Party, and the Republican Party won majorities in both Houses of the U.S. Congress, the
influence of the Religious Right has become immense. And they have a powerful ally in the
White House. The President's Faith-Based Initiative is transforming the United States into a
"Christian" nation.'
Food
Haiti
Interesting
-
'Dead' girl, mum back together
- 'A Philadelphia woman [Luz Cuevas] has been reunited with her daughter [Delimar], who
was declared dead six years ago after a kidnapper [Carolyn Correa] took the child and
burned the house down to cover her tracks.'
- 'Delimar's mother never believed her child had perished. "She said when she ran up and
the baby was not in the crib, she said she knew that the baby was kidnapped and was not
burned in the fire," said local politician Angel Cruz, who helped Mrs Cuevas get her child
back. But no one believed Mrs Cuevas until she attended a birthday party in January for the
child of a friend. Mrs Cuevas noticed that a six-year-old party guest bore a striking
resemblance to herself and her other children.'
- Ad with singing poop maggots
[Korean Flash]. Bizarre but my kids liked it.
- Cat and Bunny [Korean
Flash]. Very good, much better than the preceding. A sweet little love story. Whoops the
original link is dead. You'll have to dig it out at the maker:
SamBakZa.net.
-
Simpsons-Related Dear Abby Column Pulled. 'The column is titled "Wife meets perfect match
after husband strikes out." In the letter, the writer describes herself as a 34-year-old mother
of three who has been married for 10 years to a man who is "greedy, selfish, inconsiderate and
rude." The writer says her husband, Gene, gave her a bowling ball for her birthday -- complete
with the holes drilled to fit his fingers and embossed with his name. Undeterred, the woman
decides to learn to bowl and heads to the local lanes, where she meets another man, Franco, who
is "kind, considerate and loving." '
- Are You Bipolar?
- Freaky Frogs
- Sleeves: Original Tatto'd Clothing. The IP is
suspicious.
- Texas public service announcement
against drunk driving [video, scary]. The video concludes by showing
Jacqueline Saburido, the surviving victim of a
drunk driver. Please don't drink and drive. Jacqui: the world appreciates your courage in
participating in this campaign.
Money
- Given the recent successful charges against Martha Stewart and WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers,
I hope this is a sign that the American justice system is aware that we need accountability in
this country. I hope this spread to President Bush.
- PriceNoia.com. This site checks the price for your
item at the 6 international Amazon.com stores. This would
be more impressive if it also checked other vendors.
- Warren Buffet's annual letter
to his shareholders
- 'Berkshire, on your behalf and mine, will send the Treasury $3.3 billion for tax on its
2003 income, a sum equaling 2½% of the total income tax paid by all U.S. corporations in fiscal
2003. (In contrast, Berkshire's market valuation is about 1% of the value of all American
corporations.) Our payment will almost certainly place us among our country's top ten taxpayers.
Indeed, if only 540 taxpayers paid the amount Berkshire will pay, no other individual or
corporation would have to pay anything to Uncle Sam. That's right: 290 million Americans and all
other businesses would not have to pay a dime in income, social security, excise or estate taxes
to the federal government. (Here's the math: Federal tax receipts, including social security
receipts, in fiscal 2003 totaled $1.782 trillion and 540 "Berkshires," each paying $3.3 billion,
would deliver the same $1.782 trillion.)"
- OMFG! If every major US corporation paid an appropriate amount of tax like Berkshire,
we'd all be much better off! Berkshire is not suffering any by paying taxes and neither do we.
- SaveOvertimePay.org
- A site by the AFL-CIO.
- 'Under a proposal by President Bush, more than 8 million workers
might not be paid extra for the overtime hours they work. The Bush administration is pushing to
finalize these changes before March 1--including a change that would
take away overtime pay
from veterans.'
- Related links:
- The Economy
Summed Up: Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden, to Avoid Creating Jobs
- Mark Schmitt quotes Charlie Cook: 'In December, the CEO of a California-based high tech firm
told me that "there is no amount of overtime that we will not pay, there is no level of
temporary services that we will not use, there is no level of outsourcing or offshoring that we
will not do, in order to prevent us from having to hire one new, permanent worker in the U.S."
As I travel around the country, meeting with business leaders, I hear similar, though less
succinct thoughts in almost every sector and every part of the country. U.S. wages, health care,
and other benefit costs have gotten so high -- and the press by investors for high stock prices
is so great -- that the premium is on wringing every last bit of work out of as few employees as
possible, to do anything but incur the costs of adding permanent employees.'
- 'First, it puts outsourcing/offshoring in context. It is not a phenomenon to be studied and
accepted or discouraged or encouraged in isolation, but part of a larger trend that include
various techniques to avoid actually hiring people.'
- 'Second, it strengthens a point that was true in the prosperous period of the late dot-com
boom as well as today: We have been consistently invited to give up security in exchange for
short-term prosperity.'
- 'Government, under the liberal consensus of the New Deal through the 1970s, did not
redistribute income. Rather, government's greatest achievement was to create SECURITY --
the kind of security that created the opportunity to join the middle class. Deposit insurance,
pension insurance, COBRA (the provision that allows people to maintain health insurance after
losing a job), unemployment insurance, etc. -- these were the great achievements of American
liberalism. And they are either becoming irrelevant, or completely neglected in the current
climate.'
- 'Third, the Cook paragraph shows that we must do something about the costs that prevent
American businesses from hiring.'
- 'There is no reason that risk should be the burden of some employers, while other employers
evade health care costs entirely. This is why I find the idea of a system in which health
insurance is attached to the individual rather than the job so appealing. It not only ensures
near-universal coverage, it gives business predictability in their health care costs and
requires all businesses to contribute, rather than letting some employers take advantage of
others. The New America Foundation has the most detailed approach here,
in a readable and
persuasive paper.'
Politics
Presidential Elections 2004
-
Voters face stark choice in the fall
- ' "There is a tremendously polarized electorate," said Joe Andrew, who was chairman of
the Democratic Party in 2000. "Democrats are much more aggressive and my Republican friends
are the same way. There is a tremendous gap not on where they think the country will go
but on where they think the country has been. Usually in elections there has been an
accepted set of facts of what has happened, a story line. Here the story line is so
different [between] the two groups. That will dictate the politics." '
- This is in essence what makes this election the most politicized ever. There is
selective remembering, selective forgetting, and selective interpretation of the past on
both sides of the fence. The issues aren't honest anymore because we can't get to the
heart, the facts of anything. This is one of the strongest reasons for why I believe we
need an administration change. I want someone who will see more sides of the issues.
Admitting weaknesses and uncertainties strengthens your credibility. Having principles
does not rule out having doubts.
- 'Richard Nixon famously said that a GOP candidate runs to the right in the primary
season, then moves to the middle for the general election. And a mirror image of that has
been true for the Democrats.'
- RNC tells TV
stations not to run anti-Bush ads
- 'The Republican National Committee is warning television stations across the country not to
run ads from the MoveOn.org Voter Fund that criticize President Bush, charging that the
left-leaning political group is paying for them with money raised in violation of the new
campaign-finance law.'
-
Sen. McCain Open to Being Kerry's VP. It's unlikely but I'd OK it! Yet another sign of
Republicans acquiring a distaste of Bush too.
Sex
-
In just 30 days, aisle is cleared for gay marriage. Not detailed but a nice little rundown
of the past 30 day on the issue.
- PoleTricks101.com.
- 'Women all around the country are finding out that pole dancing is a sexy way to
entertain your man (or men!) Not only that, it's good exercise and just plain fun.
PoleTricks 101 is dedicated to bring you the training, the equipment, and the satisfaction
of dancing with the sexiest of all props... the pole!'
- Riiight. Actually they're just selling an instructional DVD. I seriously doubt that this
is the next exercise phenomena.
- Safe For Work Porn. Everyone is fully clothed
and no genitalia or expressions are shown but the positioning is unmistakable. Exposes certain
elements about porn that are often overlooked because of the explicit content. Content
originally entitled "Pornography" by French artist
Edouard Levé.
- Poll Finds
Growing Support for Gay Civil Unions
- Good news! America is not filled with homophobes. We need to grow this support further
and tell Bush where he can shove his amendment.
- 'Public support appears to be growing for legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples, as
well as for allowing states to make their own laws regulating gay marriage, according to the
latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.'
- 'About half the country -- 51 percent -- favors allowing gay couples to form civil unions
with the same basic legal rights as married couples, up 6 percentage points in less than a
month. A slightly larger majority also rejected amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex
marriages in favor of allowing states to make their own laws, an increase of 8 percentage points
in recent weeks.'
-
Online porn often leads high-tech way. Not surprising actually. There's money in them there
gams!
Show Biz
- I forgot to mention the Oscars last week.
- I watched it live. Billy Crystal has been the best host for a number of Oscars now.
- Lord of the Rings won all 11 Oscars that it was nominated for last week. Whoo hoo!
-
Questions for Oscar. So Sting was playing a "hurdy-gurdy"
Web
- BugMeNot.com.
- 'BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that
require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information
(such as the New York Times).'
- I like the idea but it sounds like they could run into legal problems.
- RSS is raging
- 'Now that RSS is ascending so powerfully, I want to make an offer on its behalf. It
would be easy to say that other formats don't matter, but even if I believe that, the
community is better off if we have one format we're all promoting; as opposed to having
continued arguments about whether "issued" is better than "pubDate". The truth is that
neither is better or worse. If it works it's good. So from this strength, I've outlined a
plan to merge RSS and Atom,
much the same way we merged UserLand's format with Netscape's format in 1999. By making this
offer to the Atom people I'm giving them a chance to get out of conflict with RSS.'
- Sounds civil and fair to me. Backwards compatible with features that everyone wants and
plans for a non-proprietary future.
- The perils of Googling.
Hmm: How to use Google to help you crack passwords.
Writing
- To read or not to
read: New Shakespeare translations are the question
- Example:
- "Tut, I am in their bosoms, and I know wherefore they do it." -Act 5, Scene 1.
- "I know how they think, and I understand why they're doing this." - Same scene, "No
Fear Shakespeare" translation.
- Example:
- "Beware the ides of March." Act 1, Scene 2
- "Beware of March 15." Same scene, "No Fear Shakespeare" translation.
- Clearly these translations should only be used as supplements.
2004-03-13t16:18:19Z
| RE: Martial Arts. Swords. Email. Sports.
My First CSG Thread: Control and Protection
Here are a few posts from a thread in the Yahoo Group
of the Chicago Swordplay Guild about
control in swordplay and the influence of protective gear. I'm recording the thread here because
it's a nice topic and it was my first exchange in the group. :)
Background: Dan designed and created a fiberglass sword because he was frustrated with how
quickly shinai (Japanese bamboo practice swords) broke in full-contact long sword sparring. The
initial engineering on the sword is impressive but it needs some work: It deforms, it's pokey, and
it "slaps". There was a thread about the sword and the experience people have been having with it in
class. I jumped into that thread with a small comment that led to a fairly meaty thread. I knew my
comment would be slightly controversial, but, hey, it broke the ice.
NOTE: I've removed all last names except for mine.
#4888
1)these are not meant for hockey helmet use
2)we all need to pull cuts and thrusts better regardless of what simulator is used...I've had
my bell rung pretty good by shinai as well as hard hits to the ribs. If we can't learn better
control really quickly than I don't see how anyone should be fencing with aluminum.
dan
#4905
Perhaps a few bouts without armor, while dangerous, would encourage better control. A full
speed blow stopped a hair away is impressive and beautiful.
-George Hernandez
#4906
Impressive and beautiful... true. After all, if we're hurting each other with protection
doesn't it make sense to get rid of the protection? Let's crack a few skulls in an attempt to be
beautiful and impressive. After all that's what we're trying to do. We're not about scholarship.
It's better to look good than to actually be good right? I am one of the people who has had the
most issues with control. This was witnessed by all on Saturday with an excessively late blow
against Ralph. Yeah, it would have been so much better if he wouldn't have had a helmet on.
And now this might be crazy but how about we try to use control while wearing the proper
protection? Any and every time a sword or sword simulator is in your hands it is an opportunity
to practice control.
Why dont' we do that instead of getting stupid.
Jain
#4907
George, you haven't been around for very long, so I'll be gentile. =)
Safety first. Period. See you Sat!
-Dave (GB)
#4916
Clearly we should wear protection. I'm sure that our insurance requires it. As far as
actually free sparring without protection, I don't think that can be done safely with live
weapons even by the most skilled.
My background is 13 years of training and teaching practically everyday in Shotokan karate.
The only protection we used were cups and cloth fistpads. We relied heavily on control. Anyone
can hit you and hurt you, but it takes training to exchange blows without injuring your partner.
In karate control was learned quickly because our weapons and armor was our own flesh. (You
won't have padding in real life.) A soft block was just as effective as a hard block but a lot
less painful. An uncontrolled technique to a defended target was painful on both sides. Then
there were the exercises that involved practicing receiving blows.
Protection serves multiple purposes. 1. It protects against slip-ups in control. 2. It
encourages faster, more forceful techniques. 3. In non-practice usage it provides life saving
protection. 4. Armor can appear impressive and have a psychological effect. 5. Protection can
discourage certain kinds of techniques or weapons. etc.
However there are negatives about protection: 1. It can encourage sloppy whack-attack
techniques and fighting styles. 2. It can give you over confidence and an under appreciation of
the pain and death your opponent can inflict. 3. It's hot, cumbersome, heavy, sweaty, expensive,
etc. 4. Grappling situations are artificial because your hands are clumsily covered and you
can't work on choke holds through a helmet. etc.
We should use protection but have an appreciation of control. How do we do this? There's
reasoning, there's "punishment", there's immediate pain feedback, there the experience of seeing
the result of lack of control, etc.
I saw that Greg made you guys do more reps if you made contact with the floor. That's good
but "punishment" feedback should be instantaneous. The problem with weapons is that only the
defender gets immediate pain feedback, while in karate both the attacker and defender get
immediate pain feedback.
Personally I'm for reasoning. Saving energy is a good reason for control. Preventing
injuries. The coolness of surgically defeating an opponent. Conserving your costly weapon. etc.
I've had enough pain, thank you. I've also seen enough results of lack of control, thank you.
-George Hernandez
#4917
Thanks Dave, I appreciate it.
You don't have to be gentle with my ideas: Just be gentle with me. :)
I'm happy to argue over my statements, and I'll tolerate ad hominem arguments in person ("Oh
yeah?! Well, you're so ugly that your doctor's a vet!"), but I don't have time for ad hominem
arguments online.
See y'all Sat!
-George Hernandez
#4918
George,
Thank you for an articulate, temperate response to Jain's somewhat testy comments. (Sorry,
Jain.) ;-)
Though it's been a long while since my own study of karate (Shorei-Goju), I can appreciate
your reasoning. For my part, I would put even more emphasis on the differences between
empty-hand sparring and weapons practice.
The crucial difference, it seems to me, is the vastly greater force and speed even a relative
beginner can generate with a weapon, long before he or she can reliably and accurately control
that force. (And I would say that this applies to me at this point.)
After all, aren't the speed and force (and reach) that weapons provide the reasons weapons
were created?
So I suspect that control of weapons, particularly something long and heavy like a longsword
waster or padded simulator (compared to, say, a foil or a kama), is a distinctly more difficult
task than control of the empty hand.
If you don't mind my asking, what rank do you hold in Shotokan, and where do you study?
Scott
#4925
Yes, humans have neither fang or claw so we use weapons. And yes weapons are more dangerous
than empty hands. For example: My son was able to chip my TV screen with a stick whereas his
hands usu. just apply peanut butter.
We can add other dimensions to the control issue:
A. School philosophy. I've appreciated how after just a few lessons, I'm in there free
sparring! Some schools might have you shaking sticks in empty air for months before you even got
close to even ritualized sparring. Don't get me wrong. I like this feature.
B. Newbishness. I see lack of control as a newby feature. (I lost a toe nail because someone
was simply heavy footed during an exercise.) The paradox is you want everyone to attack
vigorously and yet have control. If a newb makes excessive contact, it isn't really his or her
fault. If an experienced person make excessive contact, he or she should be embarrassed.
Of course accidents will happen but they should be much rarer for advance people. When my
opponent happened to burst forward at the precise moment I was punching and he got knocked flat
on his back: that was an accident. When my opponent did a blind reverse spinning kick to my head
and cracked my molar in half exposing the nerve: that was lack of control.
I was a seasoned 3rd dan (degree black belt) nearly ready to test for 4th when I retired in
1999 (my wife and I were having babies, my knees were hurting, work was heavy, and I was tired
of politics). The last place I taught was my own school in Chicago. (The old space 1470 W.
Webster is up for rent if you guys ever want to lease a place. We installed that floating floor
ourselves.)
I'm having an interesting time trying to forget everything I know and learn swordsmanship
from scratch (and from a Western approach). The old "empty my cup before I fill it" deal. It's
all about fun and exercise now.
-George Hernandez
#4933
I think these differences of opinions come from people's different backgrounds. Most folks
training with the CSG don't have much experience in other martial arts, so their sparring
experience is limited to CSG style sparring. For a number of reasons, the CSG has elected to go
down the full contact path (which of course doesn't mean not using control), and so our weapon
simulators reflect that.
There are some historical fencing groups out there who use less forgiving fencing weapons,
such as steel blunts, for the their free fencing from day one. Steven Hand and his group use
this approach. Obviously, they have to practice a lot of control and are not able to go as hard
and fast as we are. Each method has it's own advantages and disadvantages. When you spar full
contact, you get to learn what it is like to fight at full speed and learn to take a hit, but
you don't learn as much control. That is why, IMO, the CSG is going to have a hard time
switching over to the aluminums. It is quite a bit different than most of us are used to.
So I thing that that where Jain and George are failing to meet eye to eye is just the
difference in their respective martial art backgrounds. I believe that some sort of balance
between the two methods of sparring the best approach, but then again, my own personal martial
art background is probably getting in the way. That's just how it is!
-Keith
#4934
George-
I can see already that you are an enthusiastic and welcome member to the Guild!
I appreciate the thought that put into safety issues and the fact that you are a seasoned
veteran of physical contact. These qualities should enhance everyone's experience. I agree that
our foremost safety "equipment" is our discipline and control. It even starts with selection of
Guild members. I am in constant awe of our members' attributes: artists, actors, librarians,
authors, martial artists of various faiths, geeks, athletes. Everyone contributes to elevate the
art. It's like Camelot, or a rennaisance.
So, in that spirit, feel free to question, critique any issue of safety. There is no real
safety without it.
Lessons here:
Think about what you are doing.
Appreciate your partner.
Don't be afraid to question.
Safety equipment doesn't actually provide much safety.
Also, beware large wookies, or a smiling Mark [snip].
Nick
#4936
LOL, yes, George has jumped in with both feet!
For those of you who didn't meet George at last Wednesday's class, here's a formal
introduction:
Everyone, this is George. He took the Intro to Rapier class at Pulaski.
George, this is everyone.
We can all do a face to face on Saturday - perhaps social practice even?
Ash
#4941
OK, as the head instructor, I guess this is where I need to chime in.
Firstly, George I appreciate all three of your posts, and the points you were trying to make.
I also largely agree with them.
As Scott suggested, weapons are...well...weapons and the damage they can cause is nothing
short of lethal. So a certain degree of safety gear is always necessary. But it isn't and
shouldn't be a substitute for control.
Your comments about too much gear distorting technique is absolutely true. Likewise those
wherein any sort of touch is a hit. The two worst martial arts exhibitions I have attended were
a touch convention TKD tournament and a full-contact escrima tournament. In the former, the
fighters were skilled, but they weren't fighting, they were massaging the rules to make fast,
uncommitted attacks that would have done zilch in a fight. In the latter, the rounds were timed
and the combatants wearing escrima armour, which is roughly a gambeson, helmet and hockey
gloves. The sticks are lighter than normal and whoever lands the most hits wins. With little to
fear in the armour, it looked like to spastic cuisinarts attacking each other - not a single
effort being made to parry an attack. Whoever had the fastest hands won.
So as always, it's about balance. We've tried to structure the lower levels of
sparring/fencing - the novice longsword program and its prize-playing with students training in
minimal gear (nothing, or gloves and a fencing mask, depending on the technique) with a training
weapon, and bouting a weapon that is generally safe - the shinai-based swords - that can be used
in minimal gear but still provides enough sting and a "flinch factor" that people aren't willing
to just get hit. So far that has worked relatively well. At this initial level, when a student
is learning basic body mechanics and technique, I think the ability to bout at speed and with
significant force is important to impart how to actually use these weapons.
OTOH, you can know how to hit fast and hard, and not have a clue on how to modulate that
force as necessary. This isn't just a training liability, it's a fighting liability. Thus the
importance on control.
Further, there are just nuances that a metal weapon makes when fencing that a stick of any
sort can't do. Those are lost on newbies, so to my mind the risk of the more dangerous weapon
vs. what they will get out of it isn't justified. But as one progresses that changes. Thus the
scholars should be moving to training exclusively with aluminum and steel swords and bouting
with the aluminum ones - yes with more protection than the shinai, but not much. This is the
point wherein most Guilders are working on getting now.
Anyone who has seen well trained kenjutsu practitioners know that that they practice their
two-man kata (our "set-plays") full-speed, full-force, in distance with boken (wasters) with
zero protection. Escrimadors are the same way with their various flow drills. That is the sort
of training goal we should all have (although there's little reason not to have just a fencing
mask for safety), and while more gear will always be necessary, that is the same sort of control
that we all need to work towards when bouting. It's a long, slow process.
Anyway, there's a lot more to say about this, and more to work on as a group in the months to
come, but I think you get my gist.
Best,
Greg
I liked how this thread could have been a flame war but was diffused. My experience is that
controversial or extensive topics should be discussed in articles, phone calls, or in person (best)
but not in emails and message boards. (For more on this topic see
The Tyranny of Email.) I noticed that many of the posters above were good at avoiding
the flaming and staying on topic: this resulted in a thread with actual substance instead of just an
exchange of insults. This is why it is important that the Presidential candidates debate instead of
merely exchange negative ads (See
Democrat Kerry
Challenges Bush to Monthly Debates).
The topic of control and protection is also related to the recent news in the NHL (National Hocky
League) where Vancouver's Todd Bertuzzi broke the neck of Colorado's Steve Moore with a sucker punch
from behind. [Fighting
loses its appeal for this hockey fan]. If you have a score to settle with someone, then you do
it by beating them at the game or you settle it between yourselves at the bar afterwards. Plus the
whole behind the back attack was lame. Like John Wayne said: Never insult someone behind their back.
In martial arts if you're in a fighting match and you break the rules, it's bad for several
reason beyond the ones mentioned in the thread.
- You're a loser who can't win by playing the rules. This was pretty evident in the movie
Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon, when the 2 heroines fought it out and the younger Ziyi Zhang cheated to
beat Michelle Yeoh when she would have otherwise lost.
- Breaking the rules in martial arts can be very dangerous. Practicing a martial-like sport
instead of a martial art can make you forget that there is danger. Protective gear can make
people forget how vulnerable people are.
- Roughness escalates. This can be used to take your fighting to new levels but often it just
makes your fight stupid.
- Roughness can improve your character and your abilities, but excessive roughness does not.
If anything it detracts from the game, from progress, from fun.
In the real world of personal combat, there are no rules: go assassinate, murder, mass murder,
rape, assault and battery by any means necessary. Of course you'd be wrong, your actions illegal,
and you should go to jail.
In the real world, if you are attacked, if you are in a legal right to defend yourself, then you
should defend against your opponent vigorously by any means necessary (not just any means). Of
course, it would have been better to avoid the situation in the first place but sometimes it isn't
possible.
The concepts of personal combat are transferable to mass combat. The British thought the
Americans were fighting outside of the rules by using guerilla tactics in the American Revolutionary
War. However the Americans were fighting for a "just" cause. I imagine some of the modern terrorists
are fighting the powers that be for what they consider to be a "just" cause. When you have conflicts
between the powerful and the weak (whether class, race, military, economic, religious, etc.), the
weak might be driven to use any means necessary.
That is why the American Civil Rights Movement was a proud moment in history:
- The weak used peaceful dissent to fight a powerful foe.
- The powerful eventually listened and has worked hard to fix the inequities.
Our current situation with terrorism is not one to be proud of:
- The weak are using terrorism and violence to fight a powerful foe.
- The powerful have used pre-emptive war, circumnavigated democratic processes, scattered
cooperation, and have struggled to listen or learn about the causes of the problems.
In martial arts or modern war, we have to harness our violent animal side but dominate with our
minds, fairness, love, and love of life. This is not just yada, yada: Bushido, The Way of the
Warrior, involves thinking deeply about pain and death, which leads you to really appreciate joy and
life.
2004-03-20t10:46:58Z
| RE: A v B. Chicago. Computers. Elections. Faith. Food. Free Speech. Games. Green. Interesting. Iraq. Martial Arts. Money. Philosophy. Politics. Science. Sex. Spain. Web. World.
2004-03-20t10:46:58Z
A v B
- Fork v Chopsticks
- Before I go on with this discussion, it should be noted that I'm very proficient with
chopsticks.
- Lets compare these utensils:
- Picking up tiny morsels. Fingers or a tooth pick would do this job better than
either a fork or chopsticks. I can pick up a single grain of rice with chopsticks but
it's not worth the effort. A fork alone can't pick up a single grain of rice but a fork
combined with a spoon can easily pick up small items, so the fork wins here by a slight
cheat.
- Picking up small to medium bite-sized items. Both are very good at this. However it
is somewhat easier with a fork, so the fork has a minor win here.
- Picking up large bite-sized items that can be stabbed. Chopsticks can do this to a
minor degree, but this is a specialty of the fork. The fork wins easily.
- Picking up large bite-sized items that cannot be stabbed. Neither wins: Use your
hand.
- Drinking fluids. Neither wins: This is a job for a spoon or for drinking directly
out of the cup, glass, or bowl.
- Cutting food. Neither can cut alone: This is a job for a knife. However a fork is
great for helping a knife cuts, so the fork wins by a slight cheat again.
- Appearance. Both can be made to look beautiful.
- Ease of cleaning during a meal. Both are easily licked or wiped during a meal.
- Ease of cleaning after a meal. Tines can sometimes be difficult to clean. Chopsticks
are always easy to clean. Chopsticks win on this point.
- Forming sets. It is slightly more difficult to parse out forks with spoons per
setting, than it is to grab a handful of chopsticks and parse out a pair per setting.
Chopsticks have a win here.
- Summary: The fork has 4 wins, chopsticks have 2 wins, and there are 4 ties. It seems
that chopsticks are more server oriented while forks are more consumer oriented. Both must
be supplemented with more specialized utensils depending on the dish.
- My vote is for the fork.
Chicago
- Marshall
Field's for sale: Sagging results a drag on parent firm [Target]
- Alas! It was bad enough when they stopped making Frangos in house.
- 'The poor performance by Field's, as well as the struggles of another homegrown
merchant, Sears, Roebuck and Co., are clear examples of how fundamental changes are remaking
the retail industry, squeezing traditional department stores. On one side, discounters such
as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target are stealing price conscious shoppers. On the other,
luxury retailers such as Nordstrom Inc. and Neiman Marcus Group Inc. have lured high-end
shoppers.'
- 'Wednesday's announcement creates uncertainty for the Field's chain, known to
generations of Chicagoans for its Frango mints, green bags and Christmas displays in the
windows of the State Street store. It was the nation's first department store to include a
dining room and offer a bridal registry. ... It began as a dry-goods retailer on Lake Street
in 1852 and was renamed Marshall Field & Co. in 1881. Batus Industries Inc. bought the chain
from Chicago's Field family in 1982, and Dayton Hudson Corp., now Target Corp., acquired it
from Batus.'
Computers
-
Lindows Concedes Name Game to Microsoft in Benelux
- O the power of Microsoft... lawyers.
- 'Lindows.com Inc., a maker of low-cost computers running Linux software, on Friday said
it had halted operations in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg in the latest round of
its cat-and-mouse legal battle with Microsoft Corp.'
- 'In its filing, Microsoft had complained that the Lindows main Web site,
http://www.lindows.com, was flaunting a previous Dutch
court injunction against using the Lindows name by referring visitors from Belgium,
Luxembourg the Netherlands and Sweden to a separate home page,
http://www.lin---s.com/. Visitors to this referral
page were met with a stick-figure sketch of an unfinished game of hangman. The accompanying
text, which read Lin---s.com, was situated above the letters of the alphabet. Twenty-three
of the 26 letters were crossed out, with only the "D," "O" and "W" remaining, leaving the
reader to complete the puzzle and fill in the full word "Lindows." '
- I'll have to admit that Lindows was trying to pull of a pretty lame cheap trick.
- FBI adds to wiretap wish
list
- 'A far-reaching proposal from the FBI, made public Friday, would require all broadband
Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL companies, to rewire their networks to support
easy wiretapping by police. '
- ' "It is a very big deal and will be very costly for the Internet and the deployment of new
technologies," said Stewart Baker, who represents Internet providers as a partner at law firm
Steptoe & Johnson. "Law enforcement is very serious about it. There is a lot of emotion behind
this. They have stories that they're very convinced about in which they have not achieved access
to communications and in which wiretaps have failed." '
- Frightening stuff. There is no privacy. This is like having a spy-bug in your computer. You
might as well have a spy-bug on your phone, in your living room, in your car, in your mail,
anywhere, everywhere.
- What The Font?!
- 'Ever wanted to have a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or
ad campaigns? Well now you can, using the WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned
image of the font and we'll show you the closest matches in our database! '
- Nice little online utility.
- Perl/Php Translation. Concise.
- Guinness
record for world's smallest disk drive. 4 GB on a 0.85 inch (22 mm) quarter-sized drive by
Toshiba. Slated for production by 2004-12.
- VisiBone Announcement #11, March 2004.
I've always liked VisiBone's style and products. They've updated their cards and they have a new
nifty card for fonts.
- Graphical User Interface Gallery.
This is actually pretty cool. Different icons in different OSes, remembering what Windows 1.0
looked like, etc.
- Driving to Laptopia. Just
what we need: A4LA (Another 4 Letter Acronym): LOTL (Linux On The Laptop)
-
Cashing In on Virus Infections
- 'After a recent epidemic of computer viruses that seemed much worse than usual, security
experts are questioning whether the antivirus software industry is working hard enough -- or has
enough incentive -- to develop new and better ways of stopping nasty software. '
- Sort of pokes the conspiracist in you eh? Sure some of these hackers do it for their own
reasons (like using your server as theirs or "SCO deserves it") but profit would be a good
reason to do it an the ones who'd profit are the antivirus folks.
- Consider also the pop-up ads: They are extremely annoyin
|
![[PHOTO: George Hernandez]](/h/Media/zMisc/GHLogo.gif){kind=small}
