December 1999

• George F. Will is Recalling Y1K.
• The end of the world as we knew it is another review of the past year. It's notable mostly because it's full of links to stories I missed the first time around.
• Wars Rage in Third of World Nations - one third of the world's nations are actively embroiled in conflict. Sigh.
• At times, 1999 got pretty ugh-ly is Dan Gillmor's look back at the world of technology in 1999.
• Fixed software still had Y2K bugs say folks who are going back and double-checking. Imagine that. A quick patch doesn't entirely solve the problem. There really is a false sense of security.
• Abuse of power as art form: We've been fairly unapologetic about finding ways to act where we've found that Congress hasn't acted. Seems someone doesn't understand the concept of separation of powers, not that that's news. In related a related piece, Emperor Bill seizes another million acres of land.
• Human-borne tracker sparks privacy fears. It could be deployed sometime early next year. According to Marc Rotenberg, It sounds dreadful. That's about as bad as it gets.
• The Dallas Morning News reports that the U.S. switches course, agrees to Waco test.
• On a lighter note: Sunny Delight turns child yellow. Helpful tip: 1.5 litres of it per day is too much.
• The Intl Belt Sander Drag Race Association is pretty much just what it sounds like. Feel like doing some creative engineering on your power tools?

Weather in Minneapolis for December 31, 1999     December 31 in History

• Leonardo On-Line is being sued by a French finance company. The press release is Lawsuit Against Leonardo. This is the same sort of crap etoys.com is trying to pull with etoy. I'm not sure what to do about it, but it's got me feeling pretty grumpy.
• Simon's Stuff is the home of the Bastard Operator from Hell. The Register is getting new writings, but Need To Know has the archives. The Bloke's Page is especially good.
• Have you been to A special hell called dating?

Weather in Minneapolis for December 27, 1999     December 27 in History

• NORAD Tracks Santa Claus.
• Joseph Farah asks When will Jesus return? and answers that he thinks it'll be soon. As if Y2K wasn't enough to worry about.
• Checking up on The Bill of Rights: Court says no to warrantless entry is good news on the privacy front, and the court has reasserted the rights laid out in the Fourth Amendment. An ACLU Lawsuit Says Feds Went too Far in shutting down the website containing the video Military Takeover of New York City, which attempts to protect the First Amendment. And finally, Count your blessings ... as 1999 turned out to be a pretty good year for the Second Amendment.
• New Domain May Unite Europe. ICANN is still pondering it, but Europeans want to see .eu.
• A court has ruled there is No Copyright Protection for Images on the Net, which seems like a pretty bad idea.
• Kosovo culture clash - things in Kosovo aren't improving much. War criminals in the former Yugoslavia are getting a free ride from French and American peacekeepers.
• The tax man slippeth and the IRS thinks that's bad news. On the other hand, Two Senators Seek IRS Probe since the IRS has closed investigations of Bill Clinton's cronies.
• Steve Forbes says Chinese bought Clinton, Gore and other interesting things in an interview done by WorldNetDaily.
• Bond lovers mourn Q. Desmond Llewelyn died in a car crash on Sunday, 19. December. Guess it's a good thing they got John Cleese in as R.

Weather in Minneapolis for December 24, 1999     December 24 in History

• High-tech paradise lost. ...unless dramatic improvements are made in the area's quality of life, Silicon Valley may become a victim of its own success.
• Business Week asks Is buggy software inevitable? Software companies make money on upgrades, so there is little incentive to achieve a perfect first release. Well, except for pride in workmanship.
• The New Crime Boss discusses APB Online. Useful, but will they manage to make money doing crime reporting?
• The Intelligence Gap almost makes me feel sorry for the NSA.

Weather in Minneapolis for December 20, 1999     December 20 in History

• Jon Carroll tells the FBI I Am Not Now A Blind Cleric. It's a funny essay on the new anti-terrorism strategy the FBI is pursuing. Thanks to the Crypto-Gram Newsletter for pointing it out.
• The bloody truth about Kosovo. Sigh. Now it's the Albanians doing the ethnic cleansing, but apparently that's just fine with our President.
• It's retirement, Charlie Brown. Charles Schulz is hanging it up after 49 years.
• Paul T. Riddell is Killing Millions With A Sharp Twist of the Tongue. Actually he's talking about messing with people's heads by being polite. How very odd. I like it.
• Companies soliciting via email need to Back Off. This is a good article in that it actually looks at how a company you've asked to send you mail should. If they overdo it, they're likely to lose you as a subscriber.
• The European arms hustle tells of William Cohen's arms hawking in Europe. Since 1961, there hasn't been one U.S. secretary of defense who didn't end up a multimillionaire. Ever wonder where the money comes from?
• Judge dismisses Miami-Dade County lawsuit against gun manufacturers. The county is not the proper party plaintiff to bring this lawsuit.
• Big battle expected at S.F. Net tax hearing. It doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me to have to pay taxes on things ordered on the net, but only if the same taxes are charged for things ordered mail-order from catalogs, and if they're the same as the state sales tax I should be paying. Of course all taxation is theft, but it's also much more fair to enforce the laws uniformly.
• You may have had some very young skate board toting library patron ask you, "Do you have any Guyver?" or a student requesting the seven tape set of the Hakkenden, subtitled, or had a club ask to use your meeting room to show anime. Have you wondered what all of this was about? The Librarian's Guide to Anime and Manga will tell you.
• Wanna buy a sub? There's a Russian Submarine for sale in Florida. It's the largest existing non-nuclear submarine.

Weather in Minneapolis for December 17, 1999     December 17 in History

• 1999 Register Stories of the Year. Highlights. I expect to see more of these before the year is out, but few will be as good as the ones from The Register.
• Do I Have a Bargain for You! explores the phenomenon that is eBay.
• Should the start of the new Millennium be at 12:00 PMT? The French think so.

Weather in Minneapolis for December 13, 1999     December 13 in History

• Bored? Looking to rouse some rabble? Check out Protest.Net to see what's hot. (I find myself wondering why AAA doesn't have a pointer to this so you know where NOT to go on vacation. It really woulda sucked to be vacationing in Seattle last week.)
• Do you have Urine Trouble? Since the late 1980s, the degrading ritual of peeing into a cup on demand has become increasingly familiar to American employees. My solution: work for myself.
• Prehensile.com asks you to Laugh till you pee. I don't know if it's that funny, but it does have pointers to other good things. And it kinda fits with the previous link.
• I started a survey asking What happened to the Mars Polar Lander? You have to register to vote, but don't let that discourage you.
• Dan Lyke asks What are archives for and doesn't really come up with answers, but brings up some issues that need to be solved. For example: Why save just the URL for something interesting?
• The History Channel's This Day In History also lets you see what happened on any day of the year.
• PDR.net for Consumers has healthcare information you can trust. They're not far wrong, and it's handy being able to look up more information about a prescription than you normally get. The only downside is that you have to register.
• Rip Rense is Having yet another LTSEWH day (which stands for Less than satisfying encounters with humanity and is something that bugs me, too.)
• Selectsmart's Presidential Selector lets you enter how you feel on some issues and then tells you who you should vote for. Saves having to think! (And it told me I should vote for the Constitution Party candidate, with the Libertarian a close second.)
• The Economist: The style guide is handy if you're writing, and I wish more people would use it when they're writing things I end up reading. Similarly, the DOs and DON'Ts for News Sites has some good ideas about how to put news on the web.
• Alan Keyes called me a racist tells of a reporter's run-in with Alan Keyes. OK, I've thought about it. Keyes has become unhinged and unreasonable. Personally, I'm trying to decide if being a nutcase keeps someone from being a viable candidate.
• Fireball lct - world's quietest desktop HDD is a story I'd like to see more of. I've got three computers running most of the time, and the hum gets deafening sometime. Quieter is good.
• Dan Gillmor's Civil cases and wronged consumers talks specifically about the Microsoft cases, but covers class-action suits in general. The only ones who win are the lawyers.
• Bryan Pfaffenberger of the Linux Journal asks "Is There an "Alarming" Shortage of IT Workers?" and points out that the H1-B program is an excellent mechanism for holding down wages. The only real shortage is of skilled, unmarried, youthful workers who are willing to work 80-hour weeks. Bryan also has written Copyright Strikes Back, which is another good article that has the premise that Copyleft is Copyright done right.

Weather in Minneapolis for December 10, 1999     December 10 in History

• Stevie Wonder hoping for experimental eye surgery which may restore partial vision. Stevie suffers from Retinitis Pigmentosa, which is what we were collecting dollars for (every time one of the Saint Paul Saints hit a home run) last baseball season.
• Weblogs are the hottest thing, right? Cam on Weblogs discussed them back in January. I still don't understand the recent explosion of noise about 'em.
• Jamie Zawinski wrote an article on Intertwingularity. I'm still not sure what to make of it, but it's interesting. It's kind of what I was thinking of when I wrote Re: XML-RPC Interface for Email.
• Report: Growth of new Web users sinks. Could this be the thing that slows the surge in tech stocks?
• What if the United States Went Public? What would the stock be valued at? What would you think of our CEO?

Weather in Minneapolis for December 6, 1999     December 6 in History

• UserLand has released Manila. It's some pretty cool stuff. I'd say more, but I'm still too busy figuring it out.
• Slate's Eve Gerber: How Congress Resists the Web by withholding full information about pending bills.
• Jobs bans credits on Apple products: the fun was already gone from most about boxes, but this clinches it.
• 20th Century Castles will sell you a refurbished missile silo. It's probably too late to move in before Y2K, but maybe if you move fast....
• FBI says geeks are dangerous -- do you match their criteria?

Weather in Minneapolis for December 3, 1999     December 3 in History