The Exile: Suicide ...

The Exile: Suicide on the Volga River: Tale Of Two Republics

Washington Post: Leaving the States in the Lurch. The Bush administration continues to overspend and slash upper-income-bracket taxes, while the states are slashing services like Medicaid and school funding in order to meet budgets. Man, whoever gets elected in 2004 (it won't be Bush) is going to have one hell of big mess to clean up. The actions of the GOP over the last year or so have all but assured the fact they're going to lose control of Congress in November. Also check out the most recent polls. The Democrats have a leading edge in almost every poll. [via dangerousmeta]

The new AOL Search, which is powered by Google is going to be sending me all kinds of new traffic. I think anyone with a frequently-updated weblog is going to experience an upsurge in AOL traffic. Watch them log files.

Damn, July is ...

Damn, July is a long month.

I wonder if Microsoft's new software licensing scheme could ever be ruled illegal. Companies are feeling that they are being forced into paying more for Microsoft software than what would normally be expected. Volume licensing fees jumping from 33% to 107% certainly does not seem fair. I'm not a lawyer but this seems excessive and surely an abuse of monopoly power. Microsoft is so paranoid about software piracy, but they don't seem to understand that their pricing structures actually encourage people to use illegal and cracked copies.

Dang. Scientists in Australia are testing a new jet (called a scramjet) that may allow air travel at eight times the speed of sound. That would theoretically allow you travel around the world in about 5 hours.

SF Gate: Department of Homeland Secrecy

There has to be a better way to gather information and gauge public interest than for uniformed police to flag down passing motorists who have broken no laws. I guess they do things differently down there in Florida. Not surprised at all. I know that if I were one of those motorists I would have been livid. Just one more step towards the police state that our politicians are in love with implementing. Anything for money, right? Screw and annoy the public just because they can.

For once, I ...

For once, I agree with a judge's common sense in regards to people who abuse corporate trademarks within the context of a domain name.

Too Greedy: I'm starting to think that Microsoft is unintentionally driving people away from their OS platform, mostly through their new subscription-model pricing and expensive upgrades. I am a lone Mac user in an office of 30 people. Everyone uses Windows except a few of the developers who use Linux. In the past month I've had three different people in my office, including my boss, ask me about my Titanium Powerbook G4 and OS X. I took an iMac we had sitting around collecting dust and put OS X on it for them to check out. It's really kind of weird, after years of being ignored, people are looking at Apple's products in a new light and are starting to evaluate it in their minds as a replacement for the increasingly expensive Microsoft solutions. It's an added bonus that a good majority of the Linux apps have already been ported over to OS X. I should also mention that I work in the financial services industry (Wall Street) in New York, which for the past decade or so has been nearly 100% Windows-based.

Wired: Microsoft's Big Stick in Peru. Yet another example of a greedy company using it's money and influence to get its way. How sad it is to see Microsoft donate as much as $50 million to Peru. These actions go far beyond simple philanthropy. I'm not sure what you call it when there are business agends hidden behind donated money, but I'm sure it's not called philanthropy. If Microsoft really wants to help a country out, why not donate a couple billion bucks to the U.S. government to replace the money slashed by Bush's administration.

Part of me just wants the world to wake up and say, "Hey Microsoft, you already have enough of our money. Please go away now."

Wow. Check out this interview transcript from former President Clinton. Perhaps now is the time for the American public to start demanding the resignation of all kinds of people in Bush's administration. [via dangerousmeta]

We started back in '98 warning about the accounting problems and when my Securities and Exchange Commissioner tried to stop the Enron accounting practice of accountants being the consultants, the other party stopped us, and their main lobbyist was Harvey Pitt, who is now head of the SEC.

Nando Times: Tips for winning friends, contract renewals in consulting

Coming soon: New hackable kids toys. Can you imagine hacking the Instant Messaging stream and making the toys swear? Or saying things like "There's a monster in your closet. I saw it. I'm your pal."

What people are searching for at CamWorld. I am not surprised at all. And this is just for July's logs:

Military jets chase UFO over Washington. Hmmm, I wonder who they were coming back for.

Tim O'Reilly shares an email from a Microsoft Mac developer, and sums up the situation pretty clearly. Microsoft is being greedy and will do anything to retain their large profit margins and kill competition.

Loren Coleman is ...

Loren Coleman is a cryptozoologist, a scientist who studies unknown animals. His web site is full of reports about abominable snowmen, Sasquatch, the mothmen and other fascinating sightings.

For about $30,000 ...

For about $30,000 you can fly in almost every Russian military jet fighter ever made. Better skip breakfast. If you're near Reno, Nevada, you can fly in a MiG jet fighter without needing to go all the way to Russia. [More...]

FTrain: August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web. Also read the NY Times article, Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp.

Salon: A fool's ...

Salon: A fool's paradise for CEOs [via Josh Lerner]

Nando Times: "According to the Direct Marketing Association's guidelines, quoted by PC World, not responding to an unsolicited e-mail amounts to opting-in - a marketing strategy known as opting out." Sigh, that is just plain wrong...

A friend of mine who lived in Japan for some years told me about some of the uninitentionally funny t-shirts found on the streets. My favorite, and perhaps the most classic is a baby-doll t-shirt that simply says "Lovery." Dropping the 'l' from English words is very common in Japan. Based on this insight I did a search of Google for the word 'lovery' and found some interesting sites, all in Japanese.

• Lovery hampster, apparently a site for pet hampster lovers
• My Lovery Polo, apparently someone likes their car
• Engrish-wear

CNet: Can the Internet Survive Filtering?

Wired: Microsoft Is Bad, Uncertainty Is Worse

Bernard Shifman is an idiot. I remember reading Bernard Shifman is a Moron Spammer a few months ago and linking to it. I've just received Bernard's resume in my inbox, sent to my PayPal email address which he could only have gotten from a spambot. What a moron.

Bernard clearly doesn't grok the issue if spam. He is sending unsolicited emails with two file attachments. The Word resume is 71K and the HTML version of his resume is 118K. I know that sounds backwards, but upon viewing the source of his HTML resume you'll see why. It was created with MS Office products, and has several hundreds lines of non-standard code. Is this really a person you want running your IT department or in charge of your computer networks? I didn't think so.

It's a Small ...

It's a Small World, Part 1: Riding the C Train from work on Friday evening, I was headed home to change and then meet Rael Dornfest for dinner and who do I run into on the subway but Cameron Marlow, the guy behind Blogdex. He joined Rael and I for dinner and conversation. It turns out that Cameron is doing some contract work for Nick Denton and is in New York City for a short while.

It's a Small World, Part 2: Earlier today, I am shopping at the huge B&H Audio/Video store on 34th Street and again I run into Cameron Marlowe, who had two friends from MIT Media Lab with him. We end up grabbing milkshakes at a diner down the street and then going to a birthday party at somebody's backyard in the East Village.

It's a Small World, Part 3: I placed a bid on eBay for a Mountainsmith Tiaga backpack which I need for an upcoming trip I am taking. I got a pretty good deal on it and then I noticed that the seller is a mountain bike enthusiast in Colorado who uses Blogger to maintain a weblog. Crazy.

Last weekend at ...

Last weekend at the H2K2 conference they demonstrated some amazing feats of social engineering by calling a Starbucks store and getting the employee on the phone to give them all kinds of information that he shouldn't have given. Here's a story about a college student who used social engineering to get into her school's computers and change her grades. Of course, she got busted because she changed only her own grades.

Technology Review: Who's Afraid of 1984?

What happens when you combine Amazon with Google? You get this.

One more reason to cancel your land-based telephone service. If the FCC isn't going to protect the consumer from telemarketing leeches, then you're going to have to take measures to protect yourself.

Basic Privacy Protection: When signing up for new services and buying products, I have refused to give the sales droid on the other end any more information than they need. For instance, why did Con Edison ask for my Social Security Number? I refused to give it to them and made them explain why they needed it. When a company requires that I give them a phone number I always give my work phone number and not my cell phone number. When buying things online, I always enter the phone number 000-000-0000 and give them specific email addresses that I can then trace back later to the offending e-commerce company when the spam starts coming. It's increasingly a consumer-hostile world both online and off. If you don't protect yourself from spam, marketing pitches and potential identity theft, then nobody will. You have the control; don't forget that. Only give out minimal information or just enough to allow product/service fulfillment to happen and you sould be OK.

December 17, 1998: Russian political leader calls U.S. and British airstrikes on Iraq a political mistake.

Krasnoyarsk territory governor Aleksandr Lebed has called the U.S. and British attack on Iraq a failure for Russian diplomacy. "Now the U.S. will get its own Chechnya," he told Interfax on Thursday. "The U.S. is a great power, and its Chechnya will be appropriate," he said. Lebed said the Muslim world may unite against the U.S.

Sadly, Lebed was killed in a helicopter crash in April of this year. He was widely reported to be the likely successor to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It's frightening how ...

It's frightening how little common sense our government leaders have these days. On a related note I just picked up a used copy of The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America by Philip K. Howard. I think I'll read it on my long airplane flight next month.

With Apple's stock price reaching a yearly low (due to a poor financial quarter -- not from a lack of new and innovative products) it's time to load up on their stock again. It's bound to go back up as the economy improves. Disclaimer: Of course, that's just my opinion.

Salon: Deregulation's Big Lie

Newsforge: Fair use advocates silenced at DRM "public" meeting

Beyond 2000: Asteroids or A-bombs

CNet: Are Mac ...

CNet: Are Mac Users Smarter? I love the comment from Gateway's representative. However, when was the last time a frustrated computer owner took a new Mac and smashed it to pieces with a sledgehammer at an Apple Store? I know a lot of very intelligent Windows users but most of the smartest people I know are using Macs, and the people who are even smarter than them are running Linux.

Foreign Policy: The Eagle Has Crash Landed. [via dangerousmeta]

Motley Fool: Political Asylum

John Patrick: The Spam Has Got To Go

Dare I say ...

Dare I say it, perhaps the simplest solution to this problem is to not use (or stop using) HTML-based email? I think Yahoo is just trying to protect their users.

I'm reading Jim Munroe's brilliant new self-published science fiction novel set in the year 2036, Everyone in Silico, and the following dialogue appears between a group of teenagers:

"Did you do alright on the history test?"

"Yeah. Multiple choice was easy. But the essay question was hard, though. What necessitated the dismantling of government during the '20s? What'd you put?"

"Need for more efficient economy, it was riddled with corruption, not willing to take military action against ecological terrorists...uh...I think that was all I got."

"Shit, I forgot the corruption one," said the slender kid.

"I forgot them all," said the tall girl. "But that was such an unfair question! We hardly did any government stuff in in class. It was mostly International Monetary Fund. Yeah, when did the IMF become the United Corporate Interest Council?"

"2023," said Steve.

"No, that was when UCIC moved into the White House," the freckled girl said. "They changed the name in 2008."

I just came ...

I just came from the last Saturday session of the H2K2 hacker conference here in New York City. I forgot how intellectually starved I was. Hanging out with these incredibly brilliant people discussing politics, technology, religion and everything else (seriously) is a breath of fresh air. I met Robert Steele, the guy behind oss.net, a former spy and covert operative, who gives some chilling predictions for the United States. He is convinced that it will take another event like that of 9/11 before the American public wakes up and forces our government to adddress the situation properly. His timeframe for such an event is 3-7 years and when it does happen, it will be all on one day in a series of events around the country.

I was also surprised to see such a large turnout for what I assumed was a small conference. Many of the sessions were standing-room only and most of the speakers were pretty good or at least funny. I feel I have already gotten my money's worth and there's still another entire day. I can't wait for tomorrow. My brain is full.

Oh yeah, the hacker crowd has fully embraced Mac OS X. I saw many Titanium Powerbooks, all running OS X.

Prophet Without Honour. Excellent article over at the Economist about how correct Al Gore's 2000 campaign was in pointing out that Bush's presidency is bank-rolled by corporations and special-interest groups.

[Gore] argued that the country needed somebody in Washington who was willing to hold corporate America accountable for its misdeeds...Now he can add the fact that he warned America against putting a corporate dupe in Washington.

Last night I ...

Last night I decided to research my options for web-based email. I was tired of my Yahoo and Hotmail accounts filling up with spam and wanted to replace them with my own webmail system. I thought it would require hours and hours of configuration and research but it didn't. Based on some recommendations I installed Squirrelmail in under an hour (using the QuickAndDirty guide) and that includes tweaking some of the user interface nuances that were bugging me. It was very easy to install and works flawlessly. My next step is to install it for a family domain name and replace my family's Yahoo email accounts. I'm also going to design a much better theme and UI. If it's good I will release it as a downloadable theme for other Squirrelmail users to use.

Pretty funny. Someone hacked into the USAToday.com web site and put up some fake articles. One of the articles 'Bush proposes another new Cabinet post' had the following text:

Today, George W. Bush has proposed yet another cabinet level position. The Cabinet Minister for Propoganda and Popular Englightenment, will be setup to complement the recent addition of the department of Homeland Defense.

If the hacked USA Today site was discovered internally at 10:50 PM and CNN published an article about it at 10:54 PM, um...hmmm....that's odd. [via Andy Stritof]

Announcing CyberSLAPP, a resource and coalition for protecting anonymous speech online.

A coalition of civil liberties and privacy groups today called on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other online companies to adopt policies protecting their users' right to anonymous speech on the Internet. That right has come under attack in recent years through a growing number of "cyberSLAPP" lawsuits, in which companies file suit just to discover the identity of their online critics - often in order to silence or intimidate them.

Molly Ivins has a great rant about Bush's hypocrisy and the Republican finger-pointing. When the President of the United States gives a speech on Wall Street in order to address outstanding issues regarding accounting and stock scandals, the market is not supposed to tank (i.e. "Bush, we don't trust you, nor do we believe you."). This is just more proof that Bush and most of his gang are just too damn cozy in the pockets of big business. What Bush should have said Tuesday on Wall Street is "I am not a crook" and then offered up his resignation. Of course that would leave us with Dick Cheney as President, who on some moral levels is even worse than Bush.

The Anti-Porn Guy. "I want to ban pornography with a 10-year prison term for viewing or participating in pornography, as well as oral and anal sex with a 1-5 year prison term for oral sex and a 1-10 year term for anal sex." Obviously, this guy has never been laid. Notice how he mentions nothing at all about masturbation. Indeed, the religious nutjobs are alive and well in our own country, and they have a copy of Microsoft Front Page. Look out.

I just bought a $90 Leatherman 78105003 Juice XE6 for under $40. Yay Amazon Gold Box!

Have you seen this fish? If so, please kill it.

Sing your own ...

Sing your own ringtone:

Serenata transforms mobile services into interactive entertainment by allowing users to call the service, sing a song, and a unique ringtone is delivered to your handset.

AT&T Wireless is pushing to roll out i-mode compatible services later this year to 24 cities. i-mode is such an incredible success in Japan (and growing in Europe) it will be interesting to see how it fares here.

Don't forget about all the rumors about Danger's upcoming hand-held devices, including the rumor that Apple may be acquiring them. MacWorld Expo is next week. Hmmmm....

Oh my, some company has combined television and SMS. Now you can get SMS alerts displayed on your TV.

I might go to the Open Source Content Management Conference from September 25-27. I need to be on the west coast that weekend, so possibly I'll make it. Plans are forming...

In less than 36 hours, SpamAssassin has caught 1.4 MB of spam (approx. 80-100 messages). Ahhhh, I love the smell of a spam-free inbox.

Here's an idea for a paid web service: Set up a system where people can forward/relay their email for spam-stripping before it gets forwarded back to them. Provide an easy-to-use web interface, with options to customize the filters, set up whitelists, blacklists, MIME-stripping, etc. As far as I know services like this might already exist. Send me links. I believe that you can relay all of your mail through SpamCop's system and then POP it. Not sure of the specifics...

• Doug Hacker says registering your domain with Mailshell allows this.
• Another reader points me to Tagged Message Delivery Agent
• Adam Kalsey has written up a description of such a web service
• Jesse Estevez says Postini.com also allows relaying email to their servers for filtering spam.

Richard Forno: National Information Security: Is Clarke the Right Man For the Job?

Clarke's use of the term "Digital Pearl Harbor" is purely sensationalist rhetoric. Using it as flippantly and regularly as he does is not only inaccurate, it is also irresponsible and negligent.

Coming from FOX this fall: When Ice Cream Vendors Attack!

Ladies and gentlemen, if you please. Slimy politics at work.

Usability comic: If ...

Usability comic: If a tire swing were a web site

NY Times: When Patriotism Wasn't Religious. Well said. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is tiring of the religious rhetoric coming from our government leaders. I'm open-minded enough to respect religion for what it represents, but shoving it down my throat will just cause me to vomit all over you and lose respect for you.

Russian jokes translated into English. Some of them lose quite a bit in the translation but they're still interesting to read:

American jornalist interviews a Russian writer. He puts his feet on the table and asks:
- I hope this does not embarass you.
- Oh, no. Feel free to put all 4 of your legs up there.

A company called Deersoft has released a client-side version of SpamAssassin for Outlook on Windows.

In my quest ...

In my quest to uncover information on how to get SpamAssassin installed on a Pair webmaster account (not quite there, but almost), I uncovered this funny phrase in someone's comments:

Obviously I screwed up somewhere, but I've only been using Perl since 1993, so I'm not an expert.

Good Salon article on spam, that mentions SpamAssassin.

Jon Udell: Control Your Identity or Microsoft and Intel Will

Sweet love of the Spam Gods, I finally got SpamAssassin to work. Turns out that I had a bum installation of SA. Reinstalling, running the Makefile and then make again fixed the problem. Now it's time to tighten up the rules. Thanks go out to Rafe Colburn, Amit Asaravala, Justin Mason, Justin Kramer, and the Pair support guys for the help.

Interesting article about the Department of Hoemland Security's (ugh) web site. "The page currently is nothing but a tawdry public-relations exercise for Tom Ridge and George Bush."

Excellent article from ...

Excellent article from the National Post that correctly points out that Americans are no longer giving President Bush the benefit of the doubt, something that he was freely given in the wake of the terrorist attacks last year. [via rc3.org]

I watched a movie yesterday that most people don't know about. It's called The Beast and was made in 1988. It is an American-made movie about a Russian tank crew that gets lost in the desert of Afghanistan and is chased by angry Mujahadeen guerrillas. What gives this movie a bizarre perspective is that actors who play the Russians speak perfect American English and the Afghan dialogue is subtitled. I know that this is because the movie was made for an American audience, but it's still odd. It's a pretty good movie, regardless, and I suggest you check it out if you like war dramas.

Has anyone successfully gotten SpamAssassin to work with a Webmaster account from pair Networks? Email me and tell me how you did it. I'm stuck.

A Bulgarian physician ...

A Bulgarian physician Georgi Lozanov developed a method for learning foreign languages very rapidy. he called it Suggestopedia. A company called Superlearning, Inc. has since capitalized on this method and has trademarked the name Superlearning and offers learning materials for people who want to learn new languages at a very fast rate (up to 3000 new words a day).

Here is a great article from the Economist about a recent report that outlines why the Arab world struggles so much regarding accepting Western progress and ideals.

"The barrier to better Arab performance is not a lack of resources, concludes the report, but the lamentable shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge and womanpower."

Can Apple Stop the Presses? Reporting on "rumors and speculation" doesn't necessarily equal journalism. Amateurs looking for a free press pass, more like it. I agree with Apple on this one.

What happened to my Amazon Gold Box? It has disappeared. Was their Gold Box thing only a temporary promotion?

The H2K2 (Hackers on Planet Earth) 2600 conference is next weekend (July 12-14) in New York City (just a few blocks my apartment). The cost is so low ($50) that I'll probably go and catch some of the panels that sound interesting. Please email me if you are going.

So, some guy ...

So, some guy gets a bum PC for Christmas and it takes a few months to get fixed, but it does get fixed. I'm not sure what this guy's attitude problem is but he's clearly out of line. This guy's efforts to get an apology from HP for producing a shitty PC border on harassment. I feel sorry for HP that months and months after this guy's problem was fixed, he was still hounding them for an apology. I'm normally on the side of the consumer when it comes to faulty products, but this guy goes too far. This guy would have a stronger case if he were forced to buy himself a replacement computer while his HP box was getting fixed.

After years of not being able to remember my dreams I am suddenly starting to remember them, and boy are they weird. Last night I dreamed that my Powerbook was damaged and for some reason I had to frantically run through the subways of New York searching for something or someone. I'm going to try and write my dreams down or at least the summaries of them, and maybe they'll turn into short stories, since I want to start writing fiction again. We'll see.

Clay Shirky has ...

Clay Shirky has a great essay on the telecommunications industry and some of the misperceptions that are being spread.

Veteran reporter Dana Blankenhorn points out that no one in the media is standing up to the WorldCom executive management, especially in regards to trying to use "national security" concerns as a scapegoat for their crooked ways.

Only in America can you get a pancake-on-a-stick. I want to try it just to see if it's any good.

Bush's tasteless "trifecta" joke. Where are the critics? Apparently the Bush administration was successful in their push to silence their dissenters. I had to look up the word "trifecta." I guess I'm not much of gambling person.

Regarding the three caveats that made up Bush's "trifecta" it turns out that Al Gore was actually the person who said them two years ago during the 2000 election campaign. Either the Bush administration is very, very smart or really stupid. Bush's advisors, by allowing him to go on and on with his stupid "trifecta" joke knew that it would only be a matter of time before the press dug up the fact that Gore was the one who outlined the three budget deficit caveats (with Bush's people later saying "me too"), therefore shifting the focus of the "trifecta" from Bush to Gore. But wait, shouldn't it be pointed out that the Bush camp wasn't smart enough to look far enough ahead and realize that during a possible war, the budget would slip into a deficit? Clearly, the Bush administration is either hiding the fact they realized this two years ago or they were too stupid to predict such. After all, we know the GOP loves corporations and there's nothing corporations love more than huge government spending during wartime to keep their revenue numbers high.

The guy who started the lawsuit to remove "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance (a good thing, IMHO) now also wants it removed from our money. Considering that the separation of Church and State has been written into our Constitution for hundreds of years, his arguments make complete sense. With all the (ahem) religious people in our current political adminsitration, who wants to bet this guy gets audited by the IRS every year for the rest of his life?

Tom Cruise has been quoted saying "I think the U.S. is terrifying." and is moving his family away. Hey Tom, I think Scientology is terrifying. What are you gonna do about that? By the way, don't read that article I linked. The movie-title puns are as lame as they're ever going to get.

Let the OS ...

Let the OS defection begin. All of Microsoft's shenanigans and hidden agendas are likely very good news for competing operating systems like Apple's OS X and the various flavors of Linux.

This is perfect. Someone has nominated their dog, a border-collie mix, to run for Congress in Florida against Katherine Harris. Can you imagine? I hope Percy goes all the way to the White House. I prefer a dog over a chimp anyday. www.percyforcongress.org

Tim O'Reilly: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Open Source Vendors (read page 2). No doubt someone with a lot of money is lobbying the government. Some investigation is in order.

ClickZ: Macromedia vs. Microsoft. Asks the question of what will happen if Microsoft sees Flash as a threat to its monopolies. [via Chris MacGregor]