Nothing makes me ...

Nothing makes me feel happier than cute kitten pictures:

• Wake up, I wanna play
• Kittens-in-a-basket
• Persian fluffball
• Totally harmless
• One cute kitten and giant human foot
• Four kittens at attention
• Future mousers
• Cute cat fight (1.7MB MPG)
• Unbelievably cute kitten

Sorry, not a lot of time this week. In honor of Halloween, I'm going to the dentist today. If I'm lucky, I'll get a yummy root canal.

The NY Times ...

The NY Times has a good article on Brian Robinson, the speed-hiker I linked to on Saturday. I'm still amazed at this guy's accomplishment. Truly something.

Astute reader Erik Kosberg noticed that Slate's Bushisms page has been removed from Slate's web site. Is the page gone because Slate went through a redesign (creating linkrot) or have Slate's editors caved into public pressure to remove anything that may make President Bush look like a moron? Update: Readers are pointing me to this new URL, which proves that it's just linkrot.

Who's Afraid of the CLI? [via Axodys]

The only good thing about Echostar buying DirecTV from GE for $25B is that Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates didn't get it. I still don't think this will stop Microsoft buying their way into the position of putting a crappy Windows-based OS in set-top satellite receivers, it just makes it harder.

Eek! "God and America are inseparable." It's sad that people have forgotten that public schools are places of [unbiased] learning, not extensions of their -- choose --church.God.government.beliefs.

I find it interesting that with all the cable channels available, not a single one of them is running Murphy Brown re-runs. I wonder if it's because no one bought the syndication rights. I mean, there was a Diff'rent Strokes marathon over the weekend (I overdosed, BTW), why not Murphy? Ah, apparently it is playing on the Women's Television Network in Canada.

Satellite News Channels ...

Satellite News Channels Changing the Face of Television News in the Middle East

The Most Dangerous Religion (Hint: It's not Islam): "During the past decade, Muslims have fought (a partial list): Animists in Sudan; Coptic Christians in Egypt, Ethiopian Christians in Eritrea; Jews in Palestine; Eastern Orthodox Catholics in Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and Cyprus; Hindus in India; Roman Catholics in East Timor; Hindus, Confucians, and Christians of various denominations in Indonesia; and finally, of course, secular Westerners in Iraq."

A rather interesting lengthy essay about flying-saucer religions. You can't make up stuff this bizarre.

The Church of the Alien Genetic Engineers (non-religious)

Nielsen's Psychology of Religion: Religion's Role in the Terrorist Attack of September 11, 2001. (Highly-recommended read)

GeekLife: My Undercover Operation into the Adult industry

The Texas Atheist: Debunking the Myth of a "Christian" United States

Lenny Flank: Creation "Science" Debunked

The ever-brilliant Michael Sippey has a proposal for fixing what is wrong with Metafilter. Perhaps if this kind of system were implemented, I'd start visiting Metafilter more often.

Brian Robinson is ...

Brian Robinson is attempting be the first person to complete hiking's Triple Crown, all three of the U.S. National Scenic Trails, in a single calendar year. This inlcudes the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide, a total of approximately 7900 miles. That averages out to 22-30 miles per day. As of October 25, he had 48 miles to go, which means he will likely accomplish this amazing feat today or tomorrow. Update: He made it! [via Jessamyn]

Sigh...I just saw a Christmas TV commercial. It's not even November yet!

NY Times Op-Ed: How to Lose a War

I'm sorry, but this atrocity must be stopped.

There was an earthquake in New York last night. Really. I was in bed finishing up the first book of Raymond Feist's The Serpentwar Saga (not a bad series, fast read) and I heard/felt the walls shake very lightly. My first thought was that there was an explosion somewhere, but I didn't hear any loud bang. I then thought maybe it was a sudden gust of wind that hit the side of the brownstone I live in.

Here's an interesting essay that explores why it is taboo to speak publicly about the great sex you may have had last night.

The University of Michigan Documents Center. Loads and loads of categorized links to articles. Worth bookmarking.

While it's a ...

While it's a little hard to believe, here's an article from the extreme right about the implications of "Homeland Security" and the losses of freedom that accompany it. [Thanks, jcw]

Microsoft on a Mission: "More than anything else, XP reminds me of a tourist trap. You arrive in a foreign city, and a handsome stranger walks up to you and says he will show you around the city. He offers to take you to the very best shops and restaurants. But you soon realize that he is taking you only to places that are owned by his relatives or by someone who gives him a kickback."

The Talking Moose says that Windows Messenger is spyware. Apparently, you can't quit the application if you're running Outlook, Outlook Express, MSN Explorer or Internet Explorer. Of course, Windows Messenger requires the use of a Passport account so that Microsoft can track your every movement and leak all your credit card and personal information to unscrupulous hackers who take advantage of the as-yet-undiscovered security holes. Microsoft is attempting to "link" all of their applications together and create unnecessary cross-application dependencies. Here's a hacker tip: find a hole in one app and you've found a hole in them all.

When is a word processor not a word processor? Lovely quote from Microsoft: "Microsoft's approach regarding the spell checker dictionary and thesaurus is to not suggest words that may have offensive uses or provide offensive definitions for any words. The dictionary and spell checker is updated with each release of Office to ensure that the tools reflect current social and cultural environments." Uh, that seems a bit heavy-handed, you think? I'm sure that they haven't but wouldn't it be just perfect if Microsoft removed the word "monopoly" from their dictionary? What about "dictatorship?" I'm also betting that the words "Net" and "Passport" are Microsoft-ized (I haven't checked). Puh-leeze Microsoft, what's so wrong with licensing Webster's? At least with that option, we'd be able to avoid the ridiculous subtle bias you seem intent on inflicting upon your users. [via flutterby]

In true Microsoft fashion, the Company decided to block users of Mozilla and Opera from being able to visit MSN.com, but then backpedaled after the media caught wind of the latest bullshit wafting from Redmond. Microsoft's spokeperson claims that they did this because Opera and Mozilla don't comply to the W3C standards. Huh? What kind of funny weed are they smoking up there in Redmond? Both Mozilla and Opera are more W3C standards-compliant than both IE 5 and IE 6. Oh, I find it rather humorous that MSN.com renders fairly well in Netscape 4.x, and is not one of the user-agents that was being blocked. This fact alone makes Microsoft's standards-compliancy excuse seem blatantly ridiculous, since everyone knows that Netscape 4.x is the worst browser in the world when it comes to supporting standards.

I learned an interesting lesson today while doing some site production. I wanted to duplicate a directory and then move it inside itself. So from the comamnd line I typed:

cp -r directory directory/newdirectory

People who fully understand Unix will know what happens. In fact, they're probably giggling pretty hard right now because they know that this creates a recursive loop, as Unix tries to copy a directory into itself. I realized what happened when the command failed after filling half a screen full of */newdirectory/newdirectory/newdirectory/*. The solution isn't to try to copy the directory into itself, but to copy it first with cp and then move it with mv.

OK, this is just silly.

Yesterday, I asked ...

Yesterday, I asked my readers to send me links that supported the multiple points of view regarding the Israel-U.S. relationship:

• The Jewish Virtual Library
• CAMERA (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America)
• U.S.-Israel Relations: A Special Alliance
• AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee): Timeline of U.S.-Israel friendship
• Roots of the U.S.-Israel Relationship
• a very large page that attempts to outline the Jewish influence in the American government
• The Truth Shall Get You Fired in the USA. An article that talks about some incidents where people were fired because they wrote articles or books that infuriated American Zionists
• A Daniel Pipes article that reports on the claim that Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed were murdered by "the West" because of Fayed's Islamic nationality and religious beleifs
• How Special is the U.S.-Israel Relationship?
• Well-written and easy-to-read essay on the current Israel vs. Palestine conflict
• The State Department's backgrounder on Israel
• Public radio show "This American Life" episode #196 (Real Audio)

Once again, read the sites linked above with an open mind. Sure, some of them are incredibly distasteful hate-filled racist screeds, but they still have a right to say the things they are saying. Also note that I do not endorse or necessarily believe in anything written there. Sending me hate mail because I'm linking to something you don't like certainly isn't the answer. Also remember that perhaps some of the information presented in those sites isn't necessarily true and may be false. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it true. If you feel that a particular point-of-view or perspective isn't represented in the list of links above, by all means, send me links that support it.

I'm not the only one who thinks people are attacking the messenger too often. Dave Farber's Interesting-People mailing list is full of links and articles that often fall outside the norm or have a strong bent towards points-of-view that are not popular. He recently posted a message reminding his readers that it is up to them to judge the validity of what he passes along. I ask my readers to do the same thing.

For those anonymous readers who insist on labeling me a racist just because I'm linking to items that may or may be racist (you decide!), well, shame on you. How incredibly narrow-minded that is. It only underscores my contempt for you when you email me through my contact form without leaving a name or return email address...

Most of the feedback I've received so far has been of the type trying to make me feel ashamed for linking to certain "questionable" sites in the list above. That's just silly. Would you rather I only link to stuff that passes the Disney purification filter test? How incredibly bland. I know my readers are smart enough to make up their own minds about what's "right" and what isn't. This is such a touchy subject that if I only represented a single point-of-view, then I'd be doing exactly what the proponents of that perspective want.

My old friend Bill Dedman has a new article in the Boston Globe that talks about how the U.S. Postal Service is mass-mailing postcards to every person in America. The postcards will have a checklist of things people should be wary of regarding suspicious mail. Bill won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting back in 1989. Bill also runs the PowerReporting.com web site, which is full of excellent resources for reporters and information junkies like me.

Great weblog by Mark Bernstein, who is part of Eastgate Systems which makes Storyspace, a cool piece of software for storytellers and writers.

So, the new WindowsXP TV commercials imply that by using WindowsXP, I can fly. Yes you can. If I break some bones trying, can I sue Microsoft?

I wish I had a cat that could do this.

A reader wants to know where he can send links and information about sites that trap credit card numbers (illegally). I imagine the FBI. Does anyone know more specifics?

• www.fraud.org
• International Net-Based Credit Card/Check Card Fraud with Small Charges

Sort-of Disclaimer: Before ...

Sort-of Disclaimer: Before I get inundated with hate mail, I suppose I'd better remind my readers that I don't necessarily support any of the views represented in today's links. I feel it's very important that opposing and alternative perspectives are heard. Many of the links today are clearly not in the majority. Please read with an open mind and realize that [for a lot of people] the world does not revolve around whatever country you live in or whatever religion you believe in.

I find it rather interesting that I'm finding several references in Islamic and and Palestinian news channels calling Israel the "51st State." If this is such a widely recognized perception and point-of-view in the Middle East, why is the American news media ignoring it? Here's an article that articulates this point-of-view with some pretty strong words. Remember the video of Osama bin Laden saying that America deserved what they got because of their support for Israel? I admit that I'm ignorant on this issue; why is Israel so important to America? Send me links (will post links/comments tomorrow, keep them coming).

It's also interesting to read these Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Letters to the Editor back in August, 1998 after the U.S. bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the terrorist attacks that destroyed American embassies in East Africa.

This anti-imperialist rant also clarifies some of the feelings in the Middle East regarding America's military interests in Israel.

Little-known fact: In 1954, the New York City Council appointed a committee to study the possibility of NYC becoming the 51st State.

Other contenders for the 51st State title:

• Great Britain
• Canada
• Cuba
• Puerto Rico
• Australia
• Taiwan
• Afghanistan?

Tim McCoy writes in with a Windows XP analogy/rant:

Can you imagine if you had a 3 year old Sony 36-inch color TV and you ordered cable and the cable guy said that you need to buy a new TV in order to use their cable and that your 3 year old TV will never work. Then you told him that you just moved to this area and the previous place you lived had cable and your 3 year old Sony worked fine. And he said, "Well yeah, but our cable is better." They you said, "Oh yeah, in what way?" And he said, "Well you get fewer channels, it costs more, and oh by the way, your VCR will not work anymore because you might be taping our signal."

The Apple iPod looks pretty cool. While it's designed specifically for storing and playing MP3s, I wonder how long it will be before someone is able to create alternative applications for it. Like a GPS mapping program, or a restaurant locator (with menus!). Could the iPod be Apple's first step back into the world of PDAs? Think about it, a PDA with a 5 GB hard drive and firewire port. Wow.

Reality Distortion. You know, it's kind of disturbing sometimes how the entertainment and advertising industries intentionally distort reality. An example that keeps cropping up in movies and TV commercials is the yellow Checker Cab. Despite the fact that these cars haven't been made since 1982 when the Checkers Motor Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan ceased production, I continually see bright yellow Checker cabs in commercials and movies. I just saw one honking at a Jeep Cherokee in an ad for the 2002 model. I live in NYC, and I don't think I've seen a Checker Cab in the two years I've lived here. I don't know why this bothers me, but it does. It bothers me in the same way that Hollywood's fake computer graphics bothers me.

This Economist article ...

This Economist article made me think about what kind of madness would break loose should the next terrorist attacks on the U.S. happen during Microsoft's big marketing launch of Windows XP here in NYC. Think about it. America's richest man. One of America's richest companies. In America's richest city. Scary.

Every day I see more articles about people freaking out about biological and chemical warfare. Much of this behavior stems from people being scared by the media. For the past six weeks, most of the nightly news shows like 48 Hours and 60 Minutes have been about nothing but terrorism, and chemical and biological warfare. I even watched a few minutes of Sam Donaldson walking around a giant map of the Middle East using his feet as pointers trying in vain to educate dumb America about geography. I think that what most people need to realize and remember is that the media is in the business to sell news. Meaning that they are a for-profit industry. Meaning that the more papers they sell and the more viewers they have, the more they can charge their advertisers which increases their revenues. Nothing sells more papers than printing scary articles (no matter how inaccurate or biased they may be). Whether we like it or not, America is a media-obsessed country and most Americans follow the mainstream media around like sheep. Monkey-see, monkey-do. The key to beating these terrorists is to educate the people. The more we know, the less scared and more prepared we are for whatever they may try next. The last thing we need is more sensationalistic news and footage of people making frantic runs on grocery stores and gas stations. I haven't seen any news reports of it, but I'll bet that there are a number of companies raking in the money from scared Americans building bomb shelters, just like they did in the 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

New slang, borne of IRC:

  joshua: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011021/re/people_britain_spices_dc_1.html
  susank: not like they were still reigning, anyways
     cam: susank is kind of like a spice girl
     cam: susank and the pussycats
  susank: gee THANKS
  susank: I like the latter better
  susank: that could be me, Kylie and Venus
  susank: Venus is the fat stupid one, so she'd be on drums
  susank: Kylie would probly do better vocals than me
     cam: yeah, but who's the one that dances around the stage and smashes guitars?
  susank: that would be Kylie.  She knocks everything over
  susank: crashed my orchid this morning
     cam: that sounds like some slang
     cam: "Man, I totally crashed some orchid last night..."
  joshua: drug slang, heh
     cam: who said anything about drugs?
  joshua: let's use this phrase and see if we can get it into the language
  susank: crashing the/my orchid?
  susank: sure
  susank: cam: all slang comes from drugs or sex
  joshua: dude, i'm gonna crash some serious orchid tonight
  joshua: No match for "ORCHIDCRASHER.COM".
*** sottix (sottix@62.211.255.54) has joined channel #collab
*** sottix has left channel #collab
     cam: man, my orchid is so crashed right now
  susank: who was that?
     cam: i don't know, but he totally crashed my orchid
   elise: this orchid phrase is bad.
  joshua: you're just not used to it yet
     cam: hey elise, wanna crash my orchid with me?
  susank: c/mon elise, you'll love it
     cam: it's kind of like the slang "whipping your own cream"

Americans aren't the only ones raising concerns about Windows XP and their forced-arm software licensing schemes. [via Dermot O'Connor]

OK, who shot the Talking Moose?

The worst benefit concert ever! Hilarious account of Michael Jackson's over-hyped benefit concert last weekend in Washington D.C. [via Backup Brain]

OK, why not. ...

OK, why not. Here are some Wizard of Oz links:

• Theosophical Society in America: The Wizard of Oz: Archetypes and Metaphysics
• The Female Hero: Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz Compared to Luke in Star Wars
• Jim's Wizard of Oz Criticism Page
• 14850 Magazine: We're Off to See the Wizard
• You'll Never Get Out of Bedford Falls: The Inescapable Family in American Science-Fiction and Fantasy Films
• Parapsychology: I Married the Wizard of Oz

U.S. Name Generator. Type your name into a form field, hit Submit, and it generates a new name for you based on the 1990 U.S. Census. My name in 1990 would be Brandon Ingram. Most excellent. It's rather curious. George Bush would be Adam Owen. Osama bin Laden is Alfred Pearson. And Foobar Thingamabob is Floyd Evans. Apparently, there is no logic being used here, just some kind of random character matching.

Mark Morford: How to feel calmly patriotic and yet not the slightest bit reassured by Bush & Co.

Lockergnome: "XP's movie maker truly sucks; you can't do ANYTHING with it. No transitions, no export options other than Windows Media, etc. Save your money and get a TRUE video editor. Better yet - use iMovie on the Mac. Just don't think you're gonna film a businessman flying around your neighborhood and wind up producing an award-winning film using Windows XP. It ain't gonna happen with this crapplet." To be fair, Chris has some nice things to say about XP as well...

Adweak.com is a very clever parody site focused on poking fun at the advertising industry. [via Magenetbox]

CIO Magazine: Let's Stop Wasting $78 Billion a Year in Software Development

Introducing Teletubbies XP. And a complimentary comparison image.

The lawyers at ...

The lawyers at Macromedia must be getting desperate for them to claim that they own the patents behind some of the "web publishing" technologies in Adobe's Photoshop and GoLive. Macromedia claims they patented said technologies in 1998. How absurd. I was using Photoshop to build web site graphics as far back as 1994. I also was using GoLive as far back as 1997 when it was a beta product from an innovative German company. Both of these uses pre-date Macromedia's patent claim by several years. I find Macromedia's abuse of the patent process almost as bad as Microsoft and IBM. One more reason to not use Macromedia software, I guess.

Dori Smith thinks that this is Macromedia's response to Adobe's lawsuit against them for infringing upon some patents that Adobe owns. If you watch carefully, you can see the lawyers piss all over each other during this silly pissing match.

The prices of ...

The prices of HDTVs are starting to drop to levels that people can actually afford. I'm pretty confident I'll be able to buy one next year. I think I'm going to wait until after Christmas and take advantage of some of the sales during that time.

Personal Knowledge Management links:

• Personal Knowledge Management : Who, What, Why, When, Where, How?
• Overview of Personal Knowledge Management
• MindModel: Personal Knowledge Management Software
• Some research on PKM

One of my former coworkers (several of them are extremely talented professional DJs) has a new CD out.

Come to think of it, I don't think I ever compiled a list of my coworkers' Web sites (both former and present), so here it is:

• James Duncan Davidson (CollabNet)
• Brian Behlendorf (CollabNet)
• Frank Hecker (CollabNet)
• Susan Kelley (CollabNet)
• Todd Fahrner (CollabNet)
• Jeff Love (CollabNet)
• Josh Lucas (CollabNet)
• Leonard Richardson (CollabNet) (also runs Segfault)
• Elise (CollabNet)
• Manoj Kasichainula (CollabNet)
• Jason Hunter (CollabNet)
• Stephane (CollabNet)
• Kevin Maples (CollabNet)
• James Barry (CollabNet)
• Jon Stevens (CollabNet)
• Amber Nixon (CollabNet)
• Ryan Marsh (CollabNet)
• Omar Green (CollabNet)
• Caitlyn Webster (CollabNet)
• Alen Capalik (CollabNet)
• Kathy Allen (CollabNet)
• Daniel Rall (CollabNet)
• Matt Caillouet (CollabNet/Alphanumerica)
• Neil Durand (CollabNet/Alphanumerica)
• Josh Lerner (CollabNet/Alphanumerica)
• David Boswell (CollabNet/Alphanumerica)
• Greg McNulty (CollabNet/Alphanumerica)
• Derek Sisson (Borders.com)
• Ben Jenkins (Borders.com)
• Jeanee Wallace (Borders.com)
• Lawrence Lazare (Borders.com)
• Matt Simerson (MichWeb)
• Brian Carnell (Western Herald)
• Aaron Draplin (White Pine Press)

Updates over the ...

Updates over the next week or so may be pretty sporadic as I'm nearing some insane deadlines at my consulting job and expect to have no extra time to dedicate to this site.

The Mozilla 1.0 Manifesto.

Is it a bot? or a clueless MSN tech support person? You decide!

Fun-fun-fun for girls and boys: Make Your Own Urban Legend

I know I ...

I know I linked to the Hobbit Name Generator when it first came out, but I recently took another look. I think it's brilliant that George Bush's hobbit name is Squinty of Simpleton.

Diet Day #1: Today I start the diet that I promised myself I would start in January. Unforseen health problems that cropped up this spring and summer prevented me from maintaining a diet and actually caused me to gain about twenty pounds. Today's weight is 235. My goal is to lose thirty pounds by Christmas. Two meals a day and nothing to drink but water ought to do it.

Web Design Patterns. Excellent resource.

Patterns for User Interface Design.

List of NYC restaurants participating in the Fixed Price Restaurant Week from October 15-21.

My favorite Onion headline of all time: Graphic Designer's Judgment Clouded By Desire To Use New Photoshop Plug-In

RIAA Challenge: I've got a bunch of MP3s on my laptop. I'd like to see the RIAA try to hack into my Powerbook G4. In fact, if they manage to do this I'll gladly give them my MP3s. Good luck guys.

Marketing Numbskulls: You'd think that marketing people have a clue. Apparently not. Today in my email I received a promotional email from Buy.com with the title "Win a Porsche Boxster!" I thought sure, why not, I'll enter. I then caught the little notice "Florida and New York residents are not eligible." OK, explain to me this. Buy.com knows I am a New York resident (they have my shipping and billing address), so why did they send me and every other New York and Florida customer of theirs this email? I'm debating as to whether to report this email as spam, since it's obviously of no use to me. The marketing schmucks at Buy.com need to buy a clue and learn to strip out ineligible customers from their customer database before spamming them with this kind of promotion.

More E-commerce Silliness: Over the years I've bought a number of things from Other World Computing (MacSales) and have never really had a problem. Until now. Last night I was trying to order a new hard drive for my Powerbook G4 and got all the way into the checkout process only to notice that they had my billing address as being my old address in Michigan. I looked for a long time for a way to change this info (you can change the shipping address, but not billing) and finally gave up. Today, I called them up and placed an order over the phone. I spoke with a very pleasant sales representative who explained to me that there was a limitation in their database software that prevented existing customers from changing their billing address. Huh? That's crazy, I said. I asked the sales rep to delete my old account so I could create a new one with the same userID. My guess is that it's not really a "database limitation" but rather the undesired side effect of patching a security hole.

How to play ...

How to play Conkers. I have vivid childhood memories of searching for the perfect conker and spending hours trying to break the conkers of the other kids in my neighborhood.

XML.com: Using W3C XML Schema

Linux-based GUIs: A perspective

Solving the E-mail Crunch: How Sendmail Scales Up with Mainframe Linux

Happy Birthday Draplin! One more year, much less hair. The head polish is in the mail.

Perry Metzger: GOVNET Redux (or why security in Microsoft's products is so bad)

Some web sites ...

Some web sites are pulling information that might be considered sensitive to the current military operation going on in the Middle East. Information like names and locations of supposedly top-secret U.S. military communications bases around the world. While I applaud the site owners for taking a proactive approach, I don't think just removing the info will do much good. I lived on one of these "top-secret" bases as a child in England and I can assure you that there was nothing really top-secret about it's location or name. All of the locals knew exactly where it was located and they often joined the Americans on the base for holiday festivities like the Fourth of July. If someone wanted to make a map of all the U.S. military bases in a specific country or area, there are other ways to get that information than looking on the Internet.

A new meme has been circulating the Internet. Two sites have sprung up to capture it. TouristGuy.com and TouristofDeath.com.

Please forgive me, for I watched Joe Dirt the other day. I noticed that David Spade [in the film] was wearing a non-authentic "I Choked Linda Lovelace" t-shirt. Non-authentic because it wasn't this one. For the t-shirt to make any sense, you have to know who Linda Lovelace is and why someone would be proud to have choked her. I started scouring the Internet for the origin of this phrase (who said it first?), but was unsuccessful. However, I did find some guy's pretty funny made-up TV scehdule.

I love mixing up memes. Another one.

Yes, there is such a thing as taking your religion too far. It's unfortunate that this guy's religious convictions led him make such poor judgement. You can read/apply that last sentence any way you'd like.

The Relationship Between Software Aesthetics and Quality

Interview with Jim ...

Interview with Jim Munroe, my new favorite author.

Bill Machrone: "Windows XP Home is essentially a downgrade from Windows 2000, gussied up with pretty icons and trimmed out with multimedia features that were mostly present in Windows Me."

Winterspeak: Belly of the Beast revisited Deconstructing Microsoft FUD.

SprintPCS has released ...

SprintPCS has released something called the Sprint PCS Wireless Application Manager. It aims to be a platform for building secure wireless applications for mobile phones. I've met most of the guys behind this technology and feel that SprintPCS is headed in the right direction. Within a few years, mobile phones (and other portable computing devices) are going to be regularly used for e-commerce transactions. Imagine sitting at a restaurant with a group of people. Instead of trying to split up the bill, it will be possible to synchronize everyone's cell phones and authenticate them with the restaurant's credit card machine which will then debit each person's stored credit card automatically. No more plastic. No more cash. Just a cell phone and some very cool technology.

A Norwegian reader writes in informing me that Telenor Mobil already has a mobile commerce platform implemented and in use. You can currently do such things as buy movie tickets and use vending machines with your cell phone acting as the commerce transaction layer.

Another reader wrote in and pointed me towards Sonera's Mobile Pay, which is partnered with Nokia.

The Algebra of Infinite Justice "The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one." [via Madman]

Boy, do I get some weird email sometimes. This one includes an attached picture of pig's feet?

Leave God Out of It. "We should beware Dubya's Bible-thumping. When a US President invokes God, he has something to hide. Bad religion hides dirty politics."

AP on Weblogs: "People are smart enough to realize that not everything they read on the Internet is true."

NY Times: This ...

NY Times: This Is a Religious War (read this twice)

...this surely is a religious war -- but not of Islam versus Christianity and Judaism. Rather, it is a war of fundamentalism against faiths of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity.

Following Locke, the founders established as a central element of the new American order a stark separation of church and state, ensuring that no single religion could use political means to enforce its own orthodoxies.

John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration (circa 1689)

Monopolies + Lawyers + Big Business Hidden Agendas = Nightmare in the Software Industry. "Imagine that suddenly, all distributions of GNU/Linux were illegal in the United States. As well as Zope, Python, Perl, Apache, and all other open source software products. While that arguably may not be the goal of the Security Systems Standard & Certification Act (SSSCA), it would surely be a result."

The Management of Content: Universities and the Electronic Publishing Revolution. [via Aaronland]

On Sunday I'm ...

On Sunday I'm going to go see Blood: The Last Vampire, the new anime/manga film done by the same guy who did Ghost in the Shell. Check to see if it's playing near you during ResFest (a worldwide digital film festival).

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Chuck Taggart over at Looka is reporting that Microsoft is now telemarketing people using phone numbers pulled from the whois domain registration database. Sigh...

People ask me why I don't like Microsoft and then try to convince me that Windows is a great OS and that IIS is a great web server. Now, don't misunderstand me. I don't hate Microsoft software, I hate Microsoft. More specifically, I hate Microsoft's incredibly unethical and monopolistic business practices. I regularly and happily use Microsoft software on both Windows and the Mac and am pleased that Microsoft has some brilliant engineers working on some incredible technologies and writing great software. What I don't like is when Microsoft uses its monopoly position in the OS and Web browser markets to hurt the competition. What I don't like is when Microsoft treats their customers like shit because they know they've got most of them locked into a technology choice.

Brian Livingston: "What all these new XP "features" have in common is that they make Windows more convenient for Microsoft but less convenient for users."

PlaneCrashInfo.com is one of those sites that you start looking at but can't stop reading. Loads of data, photos, and statistics. [via punkchick]

Jessamyn recently took a trip on Greyhound. She was not pleased by the service (or lack there of).

How Apple Can ...

How Apple Can Increase Marketshare. Last night I read this article about the dis-satisfaction of businesses who are getting squeezed financially by Microsoft's upcoming software licensing. It mentioned that a number of companies are going to consider switching to Linux running emulation software like Win4Lin and Wine that would allow end users to run their Windows applications without a an expensive Windows OS. This led me to think that Apple shoud acquire Connectix and roll their VirtualPC emulation framework right into Mac OS X. Companies can then purchase new hardware, while still being able to use their old Windows software without being forced, pushed, bullied, and shoved by Microsoft into "renting" new software (and an operating system) on a two-year basis. I mentioned all this to my brother Damien, and he wrote up a short summary.

Something that Microsoft seems to have not factored into their future is the inevitable recession that the world seems to be sliding into. With reports that it will cost anywhere from 33% to 107% more per year to keep your company using Microsoft's operating system, I think that many companies are going to start looking at the millions of dollars they can save by not using Microsoft. Many of these companies may benefit greatly by switching to an alternative and less costly operating system, especially if that operating system is able to run all their old/existing Windows software without a hitch.

A lot of readers have written in pointing out that you still need to own a copy of a Windows OS to use VirtualPC. I guess I wasn't very clear. My point is that companies who want to save money by going this route can use the copies of Windows95, Windows98, and Windows2000 they already own. Buying new PC hardware forces the company into adopting WindowsXP because Microsoft has the OEMs between a rock and a hard place. But by buying new Apple hardware with integrated VirtualPC, you can avoid the WindowsXP licensing and use your older Windows OS's while still having new hardware.

ThunderCats Erotic Fan Art. Yes, really.

This three-dimensional map of lower Manhattan is incredible. Someone at CNN really did an excellent job.

Ban Outlook? Sure, ...

Ban Outlook? Sure, sounds like a good idea to me. While we're at it, let's ban IIS and WinXP as well...

Seth Dillingham: Brian Carnell & Knowledge Management: "I have to admit to being a little jealous of Brian Carnell, but mostly I'm just very impressed. He's just one man, but he's built a collection of ultra-high quality, content-rich web sites with Conversant. In fact, it's hard to believe that one person has done all that." I can believe this. Brian and I worked together at the same college newspaper some years back. I remember trying to stump Brian with an acronym game. He challenged anybody and everybody to come to him with an acronym he couldn't figure out or not know. As far as I know, no one ever succeeded.

9:18 PM: If ...

9:18 PM: If you're not watching West Wing right now, you're missing out. Exceptional episode.

9:57 PM: OK, West Wing is over. The episode went downhill and my opinion changed. Still a good episode, but not as good as I thought it would be.

New Toys! Mac OS X 10.1 is now on my new G4. I also got a copy of Summoner, which looks like a cool video game. And I just bought a Canon ZR25 MC Camcorder. Help, I don't know what to play with first!

Nooface looks like a great site that is covering the concept "in search of the post-PC interface." Lots of great links.

A nice chart of Web-based WYSIWYG editors.

David Podvin: The Media Cover-Up of the Gore Victory

Please listen. Just because I link to something (this time, the Ann Coulter article) doesn't mean that I agree with or support those points of views. The astonishing amount of email I've received trying to get me to remove the link to that article or make me ashamed about linking to it is absurd. Have we really come to a point in this country where any dissenting or controversial opinion is attacked and not treated with the same respect as an opinion or idea that socially acceptable? How sad for this country, if that is the case.

Top Ten Ways To Look Like A CNN Correspondent

More shifty marketing crap from Microsoft. I hope Novell wins a huge settlement over this.

William F. Buckley also has an interesting idea. Let the governments of the world "declare in full voice that Islam is widely profaned and mistaught." Treat it (the radical form of Islam that the terrorists practiced) much the same way communism was treated in the 20th century. Simply don't stop until it is gone and the world is educated about how bad it is.

How to write shell scripts (with examples)

Clay Shirky: Web Services: It's So Crazy, It Just Might Not Work

XML.com: Generating Unique IDs and Linking to Them

Bruce Perens: We'll fork the Web to keep it Free. Looks like we were right. Remember when I said the Internet was going to fracture into three pieces: A Microsoft Internet, an AOL Internet, and a "free" Internet -- the first two built on top of proprietary technologies and monopolies and the latter built on top of open standards.

Ann Coulter has ...

Ann Coulter has a disturbing, but interesting idea. Deport all foreign nationals who are Muslims regardless of whether they are in this country legally or illegally and then let them all back in, one by one, checking their histories and profiles against an FBI database. What may be even more disturbing is that she got fired from her job at the National Review for publishing controversial ideas. What is this country coming to? [via rc3.org]

One of my former coworkers has put up an excellent slide show of photos he took on September 11, 2001. He lives only four blocks from the WTC.

Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, has given a speech that every American must read. The only way to fight the perpetrators of the attacks of 9/11 is with education and awareness. Every person in America and every person in the world needs to be educated about how undemocratic and oppressive the Taliban regime is. About how the terrorist attacks in the U.S. weren't just attacks on Americans, but attacks on the "western" world.

Mareen Dowd: "Even as the White House preaches tolerance toward Muslims and Sikhs, it is practicing intolerance, signaling that anyone who challenges the leaders of an embattled America is cynical, political and -- isn't this the subtext? -- unpatriotic." Perhaps Ari Fleischer should be forced to resign or (gasp!) fired for his "unpatriotic" remarks. After all, anyone who makes the mistake of preaching such Orwellian concepts to our country doesn't deserve to be in the position of power and authority he is in.

I knew it was only a matter of time. www.camworld.nl is a webcam site dedicated to webcam porn. Sigh...

It's called a monopoly for a reason. Abusing monopolies is illegal. Hello? Is anyone listening? If Microsoft keeps up with these tactics, they're going to find themselves losing a whole lot of business, especially if a recession hits us and companies start looking to save money by not buying Microsoft products. The scary thing is that Microsoft is probably one of the only large software companies in the world that has enough cash and solid revenue to outlast a multi-year recession.

Oh yeah. You know that "breakthrough technology" Microsoft calls Cleartype? No surprise here that it (sub-pixel font rendering) first showed up on the Apple II, twenty-two years ago.

An excellent overview of how the press around the world has been responding to the 9/11 attacks and the aftermath.

Tom Gutting: "Two days after the president's speech, I used my regular column for the Texas City Sun to raise some doubts about the quality of his leadership. There was loud public outcry, and I was fired."