- According to Gerry Adams IRA “moving towards closure in conflict”. It’s a move in the right direction, but if you also read the latest An Phoblacht you’ll see that not everything’s rosy from the Republican side. Also, the unionists have already rejected Adams’ statement as
inadequate
. [jim] - I [Jim] don’t go to our old hangout
Dub’s Pub
much any more, but I did happend to stumble into their website. Not much there, but I clicked on The Bar only to be surprised. The redhead in the middle of the first picture is Steph. [jim] Dave’s commentary: the website’s out of date, and their specials have changed, but I still stop in every once in a while. If I were a better salesman, I’d probably be pestering them about having some web people update their site. Oh wait. I’m already too busy, and notice that I should probably update the Better Nerds site one of these days, too. - In Virginia, spammers could end up in the slammer, thanks to a new law in the state that’s the home to AOL. The law applies to spam sent to or from Virginia. [strib]
- Today’s not a day with a ton of content. Maybe you want to go check out Joey at The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century. He’s been blogging up a storm the past few days, including a bit on the fat-kreme. A fatburger sandwiched between two halves of a Krispy Kreme. Mmmmmmm.
- Zeldman’s got Peerless? iTunes 4 first look roundup. Good coverage of the new iTunes. Me? I still haven’t even downloaded it yet. [zeldman]
- Late last night (just as I was about to go to bed) my server decided to stop running. I would have noticed it sooner, but since these things all seem to happen at once, my phone had also lost its connection to the network at the same time. I won’t go into too much detail on how incompetent the phone support people were there on the first call, but it was almost bad enough to have me cancel my service then and there. Luckily, the phone dropped the connection and I had to call back and actually got someone with a clue. Turns out I might have a bad SIM card in the phone, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it for a while. As for the server, apparently it had panicked, and I’m not sure why, but it seems more likely to be a software than a hardware problem, so I’m not going to completely freak out over it. But I did start a fresh backup of the server before going to sleep last night, since I’d had a pretty big adrenaline rush when I wondered what I would do if the hard drive had fallen down.
- I wrote a quick note about interesting Science Kits for Kids for a friend the other day. Basically I suggested staying away from kits and doing things that would turn into hobbies, since that was what worked for me as a kid.
- Apple’s big announcement was the iTunes Music Store. I dunno. I’m just not that excited about it, especially since part of the announcement is the support for AAC, which is sounding like I’m going to need to re-rip my music. Well, I won’t have to, but it’s a new format, and it will probably be best to adopt it. Heck, it might even lead me to buy some new music, I guess.
- Conceal-carry becomes law in Minnesota, and could take effect in as little as 30 days. More commentary when I have more time. [strib]
- Police issue citations over Spring Jam weekend for Operation NightCAP and yet it still didn’t seem to affect the number of loud parties. Then again, they were mostly targeting drunk drivers, from the sound of it.
- Finally, Brad Templeton has some Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Spam. [boing boing]
- Yesterday was another day with beautiful weather. And once again, I spent pretty much the whole day inside. I had a lot of work to do, but ended up not doing any of it. After the headaches of Saturday night, I was feeling pretty misanthropic, and like Kelly, who’s quoted in the SE Angle article on the hockey riots, I think I’d prefer a riot once a year over getting woken up by the parties around here every weekend. Meanwhile, the weather is supposed to turn rainy midweek this week, so maybe I’ll be able to feel better about being stuck inside.
- The Rise of the Spam Zombies as spammers start using trojans to take over the computers of ignorant users to send out their spam, making them harder to trace.
- Apple Said to Be Entering E-Music Fray With Pay Service, and the press event will be today. In theory, you can go to your local Apple Store to watch the event live. The details are gone from Apple’s site, but are available elsewhere. More details in Apple music service to go live, and Scott Knaster has more on Apple’s music service.
- In jr’s RSS Backlash, he’s pointed to me pointing to Zeldman’s article. He’s leaning toward a minimal RSS feed. I decided to spew everything I type (that appears on the front page) out in my RSS feed. Then again, I don’t think the formatting on my site is so special that you’ll suffer greatly if you don’t get the whole Dave’s Picks Experience. Then again, I’m still of the opinion that my content is the best part of the site. Silly me. On a semi-related note (it’ll make more sense after you go read jr’s post), it was one year ago today when I did my first movie reviews, and mentioned Halle Berry’s tits in the review. The phrase still shows up in searches in a while.
- Yesterday was the Spring Jam 2003 block party at the U. And it was a Very Nice Day outside. This of course meant that people started drinking on their front lawns around noon. The gals upstairs from me were having some sort of gathering in the evening. About 9 pm, after the third stupid guy (why is it always the guys who can’t figure out which button is which?) in a half-hour rang my doorbell trying to get them (even though the front door was standing wide open), I decided I was going to get out before my mood turned homicidal. Time passes at the local watering hole and I return home, thinking things are pretty well done for the night and I can get some sleep. Nope. About an hour later my neighbor gets home and realizes he doesn’t have his front door key with him, so he rings my doorbell for about five minutes until I finally answer the door. I think I conveyed that I didn’t really appreciate being woken up (remember that homicidal mood I mentioned?), but I’m going to look into installing a cutoff switch for the doorbell so I can shut it off when I go to bed. Ugh.
- Bezos in Space . The founder of amazon.com is getting into the space business.
They’re adding staff and aiming toward launching a reusable space vehicle into suborbital space, with seven tourists onboard, in the next few years.
This makes three companies that have recently gone public with their plans to get into space. [boing boing] - Stereotypes dog handgun owners, but this article profiles seven handgun owners who would probably apply for permits under the bill that’s in front of the legislature. [strib]
- I discovered yesterday morning that Virtual PC for Mac won’t let you grow a HD over 2GB if you created it as a DOS 2000 disk, even if you later reformatted it. The thing that bugged me most about it is that there’s no indication in the app why the thing won’t grow any bigger. A call to their tech support offered no help except to say that it was mentioned in the manual. Well, fine. I ended up just creating another virtual hard drive to put a bunch of crap on, but how much trouble would it be to have another dialog:
You seem to be trying to grow a DOS 2000 disk beyond 2Gb. Continued attempts to do so will make the drive size go negative and will implode your computer. Are you sure you want to continue?
Heck, I probably would have clicked Yes anyhow, but it would have been nice to know before I spent an hour searching through their knowledge-base and FAQ and then finally calling in to find out why it wasn’t working. - Florida spammers sue anti-spam groups. It might just be a distraction, and it’s probably related to an upcoming conference being held by the FTC, but it’s still a pretty slimy thing to do.
- How to Make Money on the Net. Pretty much the same way you made money before the net.
- Zeldman says it may be a good idea for many blogs to Unsyndicate. He’s got a point. [zeldman]
- Ashcroft authorizes indefinite detention of aliens, both existing illegal aliens, and asylum seekers from certain countries. [strib]
- Mr. President, please attack Appalachia
- This morning, I woke up at 4:30. Ugh. I’ve got a lot to do today, and planned to try and get an early start, but this is absurd. I’d meant to get at least a couple more hours of shut-eye before starting the daily grind, but either the hot polish sausage that was yesterday’s lunch, or the Papa John’s Grilled Chicken Alfredo Pizza that was supper disagreed. Oh well, it just gives me more time today to try and make Visual C++ my bitch. And I’m sure you can imagine how much I’m looking forward to that.
- Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams are suing the TSA after being detained because their on the FBI’s secret “No fly” list. What makes them “potential terrorsts”? They publish War Times. [Jim]
- More on the story: FindLaw Legal News - U.S. Sued Over “No-Fly” List, to Revise Policy. The most disturbing thing about the list is that the data sources are secret, so there’s no way to know whether they have incorrect information about you or not.
- Forest Service wants to ignore mass e-mails and pre-printed postcards. If you want to comment on a regulation they’re working on, you’ll have to write an original letter.
- The Minnesota House passes handgun bill 88-46. Now it goes in front of the Senate, which will be a much closer vote. Should it pass the Senate, Gov. Pawlenty will almost certainly sign it. [strib]
- Group Weighs Move to Libertarian Utopia: The Free State Project has 3100 people signed up. When they hit 5000, it’s time to vote for which state to try and move to. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.
- The City Pages has The Other War: The Bush administration & the end of civil liberties. Probably nothing new in it if you’ve been reading all my ranting about the bad laws that are taking away our rights, but it’s all in one place here.
- jr’s asking programmers to Code Stupid. Amen! Since last Friday I’ve been working on a suitable replacement for a few lines of too clever code. I’ve decided I just have to rewrite it from scratch and move on.
- Mac OS X Unix Package Management talks about Fink and the DarwinPorts projects. It’s nice to see the ports system moving onto Mac OS X.
- Apple and AMD working together, claims senior AMD official. Now whether it’s just to get the HyperTransport bus and support chips from AMD or whether it’s to switch CPUs, nobody’s saying. But there’s a pretty good chance we’ll hear something about it at WWDC this year, and it’s a good bet that we may be starting to hear about the reasons WWDC got delayed.
- Huh. I found the Google Voice Search Demo the other night. Yeah, it lets you search by voice, but you still need a computer to view the results.
- Claiming singer was impaired, Creed concertgoers sue for refunds . Just imagine if Shane McGowan fans started doing this sort of thing.
- Hey, this is kinda cool: if you google for hockey riots, my talk about last year’s riot is the number one hit on google. I guess it’s a good thing I went and added a link to that page pointing to this year’s coverage (which I’m still updating).
- Sisters Camelot are having a fundraising concert this Saturday. They’re a good local charity.
- Mill City Museum passes elementary hands-on test. It won’t open until September, but they’re taking some kids through it now to see what kinds of things they’ve forgotten. It sounds like a fairly cool museum that’ll be just across the river from me. [strib]
- Gay groups rip Santorum. The funny thing is that in the excerpt I first saw, Santorum said
If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything,
and I thought he had switched to being a libertarian and was for it all. Sadly, no. [flutterby] - Go directly to jail, crime or no talks about Mike Hawash and updates the story. He’ll finally get a hearing next week, at which point he’ll have been held for more than five weeks for committing no crime.
Papieren, bitte!
- Record labels sue VC firm over Napster support:
Two record labels filed suit Monday against Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, accusing the venture capital firm of contributing to widespread Internet music piracy through its financial support of Napster.
And Hummer Winblad could answer for Napster’s sins. If the suit is successful in holding investors responsible for the actions of the companies they fund, it could change the entire nature of VC for the technical industry. [scripting] - There’s potential for movement in the Northern Ireland peace process. Apparently, the UK plans to slash the number of troops–A step in the right direction. [Jim]
- In this bit of MHNA News, I mention that a group of students will be out helping pick up the neighborhood. If you live in Marcy-Holmes and are going to be around during the day, say hello to 'em and thank them for picking up some of the mess.
- I’ve updated a number of the pages in The Geography of Dave lately. At this rate, I might get caught up with all the past places before I decide to move.
- Skot of Izzle Pfaff! is Definitely Not Losing Perspective about getting married, and he’s written some bitchin' vows.
Sorry, ladies. This one is taken.
Heh. - As if tempting the fates, Joey points out that his Winer number is still Infinity. I wonder how long it takes him to change to a number of 1. [accordionguy]
- US Sugar industry threatens to scupper WHO by pressuring Congress to defund the WHO if they recommend that sugar should only make up 10% of a healthy diet. The sugar industry thinks 25% is more appropriate. Dr. Atkins is probably spinning in his grave. The report’s due out tomorrow. [boing boing]
- What was the war in Iraq about? Here’s a hint: US wants permanent access to military bases.
- It’s been three weekends in a row now that I’ve had something scheduled for my weekend, and I’ve been feeling it on Mondays. Two weekends ago was a funeral. Last weekend was getting sunburned in St. Paul. This weekend was Easter and dinner with mom, plus a ton of website work that I had to do (and haven’t completed). Next weekend is a wedding. Busy weekends make mondays more difficult, and this morning is no different. It doesn’t help at all that the skies are gray and cloudy (though the clouds are supposed to break up today). I’ve got my trike pretty much ready to go for the spring, but haven’t gotten on a ride yet, and there’s baseball season coming and and and. I managed to find a bunch of links for today, but I’m starting to think that maybe the way to make some time to catch up is going to be taking a few days off from Dave’s Picks. Or maybe some of my readers can step up by suggesting more links. That would help.
- Why TiVo Owners Can’t Shut Up about their toys. It’s true, all of it, both the good and bad. And it's timely because today’s the start of TV Turnoff Week. Would it count if I left the TV off, but let my TiVo capture things this week? [metafilter]
- Today show goes black on Tim Robbins is an interesting piece on Indymedia. Apparently Robbins was being interviewed about his opinions on the free speech and the war and–mid sentence–his mic was turned off and NBC went to black. [Jim]
- I have’nt been able to confirm that, but you’re welcome to look through the Google Search: tim robbins today show to see if you can find anything. All I could determine was that some people think Tim Robbins is Full of Bull Durham!
- US airline pilots get guns finally. In theory, the first armed pilot could have been flying yesterday, but I haven’t heard anything more about it yet.
- Judge: Student Can’t Discuss Tech Flaws in a debit-card system used on over 200 campuses. He was planning to give a talk on the security flaws in the system and has been shut down for now by a temporary restraining order.
- FindLaw Legal News - Denver to Halt ‘Spy Files’ on Peaceful Organizers after a suit by the ACLU. No longer will they be branded “criminal extremists.”
- In Digital ID Exostructure, Doc points out that having a blog may be one way of establishing your identity online. It’s an interesting idea, and since he’s been wrestling with digital identity for a while, he’s got some good thoughts on the subject. [doc]
- I was thinking I’d have a lot of peep-a-rific stories, and bunnies with their ears bitten off for Easter today, but I just couldn’t musted the content. Instead, I guess I’ll have to make do with some tasteful muted colors and the knowledge that the person who called me last night while I was trying to sleep will probably read this with a hangover.
- The fifth edition of the Shorter OED is some Heavy lettering. I’d lust after it if I had anywhere to put it.
- Maxim and FHM have been Taking on Playboy with flash and flesh, and now Playboy’s responding with less nudity?!? I dunno. I guess I’m out of their demographic, anyhow, since they’re after the 18-34 market. [fark!]
- Speaking of language, Bob’s Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, you idiots is as concise of an explanation as you’ll find. [accordionguy]
- Passenger-Carrying Spaceship Makes Desert Debut. Burt Rutan’s aiming for suborbital space now, riding on a rocket fueled by nitrous oxide and tire rubber. [some guy]
- Internet Entrepreneur Sets His Sights on the Satellite Launch Market: Elon Musk, who made his money starting up PayPal, is building boosters at SpaceX.
- Supernova Warning: First Ever Accurate Forecast of Exploding Star. Well, it wasn’t so much a forecast as noticing that the gamma-ray emissions from the star had gone off the chart and knowing that the visible light would get brighter in a few days, but it’s still fairly cool.
- Finally, I’ve updated the Hockey Riot 2003 page again.
- I was all set to write something about OKC and Waco for today, but I figure Bill will have some coverage, and I don’t have the energy to do it right myself.
I’m shocked, shocked, to find out there’s gambling going on in here!
is the quote that came to mind when I read Security officers ‘aided sectarian murders in Ulster’. And in more shocking news from Ireland: British agents conducted illegal, secret war on IRA. I suspect this investigation may soon determine that water’s wet and the sky is blue. [Jim] [colby cosh]- No Help for Callers in Trouble, in spite of years of tax collection for Enhanced 911 service. In New York, the money gets used by the State Police for dry cleaning, office supplice, and whatever else they decide they need. Just another example of
taxation is theft
, although this case is a little more obvious than usual. [metafilter] - Insects thrive on GM ‘pest-killing’ crops, growing 56% faster than bugs eating “normal” crops. Appears the little annoyances have not only developed an immunity to Bt toxin, they’ve figured out to use it as a diet supplement. [metafilter]
- Homeland Security Dept. Fills Privacy Post with the former privacy officer from Doubleclick. I feel so much better now. [metafilter]
- jr conlin’s we are from... France talks about the Nigerian Scammers who are now purporting to be from other places (because some of their dim-bulb victims have apparently caught on to the fact that there's something funny going on in Nigeria). Aaron’s been talking about baiting the scammers lately, and I pointed to Brad Christensen’s scam-baiting page a while back. I guess a link to another Scam Baiter wouldn’t hurt. [some guy]
- Yep. It’s almost Easter and I still haven’t mashed together some sort of pastel color-scheme for the holiday. Maybe you should be thankful…
- DARPA pulls OpenBSD funding. No reason was given, but it puts the upcoming OpenBSD hackathon in jeopardy. Theo’s speculated the cut happened because too many foreign researchers were getting money from the grant. There’s more about the story in the Darpa Funding Pulled story at the OpenBSD Journal.
- Zow! The CSS layout, 3 columns with Header and Footer, Ordered columns, Netscape 4 compatible will help make CSS to do just about any three-column layout you want. And it works in Netscape 4!?! Holy crap in a bundt pan! This is some cool stuff. Speaking of CSS, Netscape is now hosting the CSS Support Charts that were offline for a while. It’s good to have them back. [zeldman]
- Inside the Soul of the Web at Google:
Mankind’s questions unscroll day and night on a computer screen in an office hallway in Mountain View, California.
- I’ve looked through the Ten Security Checks for PHP, Part 1 and Part 2, and I think I’m in pretty good shape. That’s kinda cool.
- Hey, I now know where the Pig’s Eye Brewing Company website is, thanks to an email from Jeff. They’ve kept the original recipes, and the beer is starting to appear on store shelves at about the same price it was before Minnesota Brewing went under. Good news for this summer! [some guy]
- Well, I’m not back on a normal schedule yet, but I’m feeling ready to get some work done again today after yesterday’s meltdown. I’m not sure what all was involved myself, but I think a combination of a very long Tuesday, a drop of 40 degrees (Fahrenheit) in the temperature and a cloudy day combined to suck the energy from me. I also spent most of the day with my forehead and nose shedding a layer after getting sunburned last Saturday. I did get some stuff done, but it was grudging work at best, and the most important things on my to-do list are still waiting for me. And if I’m really lucky, it’ll snow here today.
- The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness talks about sleep deprivation. Of course I found the link at 2AM this morning. I suspect this is another culprit for my non-productive day yesterday. I didn’t get my nap on Tuesday, so I was feeling cranky and tired yesterday. [boing boing]
- I’ve updated the Hockey Riot 2003 coverage again, since there were a half-dozen new stories in the Daily. Kudos to the Daily for their coverage, which has been much better than that of the Strib.
- Are Rebates Scandalous? I’d say almost certainly, but then I always check to see what the real price is and comparison-shop using that, rather than the
after rebate
price. I assume I’m never getting a rebate, and if I do get it, it’s a happy surprise. I think the last rebate check I actually got was over two years ago. [some guy] - So now there’s a Privacy Threat in Primary Colors, and strangely enough, Jim Bidzos is taking credit for it. I guess driving a stake through the heart of PGP wasn’t good enough for him. Then again, maybe this is his attempt to atone. I dunno. I’m probably completely off-base, but I remember enough from the early days of PGP to not have a very good impression of the guy.
- Parents to ‘outlive obese youngsters’:
Today’s generation of children could die before their parents because of the soaring rates of obesity.
There’s a bit of sunshine for the day. - LSD turns 60 today! Wow, man! [metafilter]
- U to consider changing student conduct code to include off-campus behavior.
- Gophers take a championship bow at Mariucci. It’s sad that their victory was overshadowed by the riot. [strib]
- Arson suspect charged in U hockey riot. That’s the first one. [strib]
- Hey, did you hear the department of Homeland Security dropped us to a yellow alert? Time to breathe a big sigh of relief, right?[fark!]
- Saddam Proud He Still Killed More Iraqi Civilians Than U.S.:
Bush has a long way to go before he can match me,
Saddam added.My hands are red with the blood of the innocent. His are merely a light pink.
- University Of Minnesota Police Department is asking people to help identify some people involved in Saturday night’s hockey riot. I’ve also got updated coverage in the Hockey Riot 2003 page.
- But between the hockey riot stuff and the fact that I’m currently working for or negotiating with eight different clients, plus doing four different projects that don’t pay (note, I’m not necessarily coding for all those clients, but I’m managing the projects, with my employees or subcontractors doing the work), I don’t have a lot of juicy picks today. Go read SteveO’s Moronboss tales and remember that I work for myself. D’Ohh!
Yesterday I got out to take a look at the aftermath of Hockey Riot 2003. Pictures and commentary are included there, as well as links to many news stories about it at the end of the page. The Daily has the most thorough coverage.
Burned Out Car (3xx 15th Ave SE) -
I’m still feeling pretty sunburned from spending Saturday afternoon in the Saints parking lot. Here’s the picture showing the turnout when I got there. Apparently there were even more people around about 10am.
Single-Game Ticket Sales 1600x600(151k) 640x240(12k) - Slow down / Patriot Act’s effects still unclear, and Orrin Hatch alreadyt wants to extend it. [strib]
- Town ordinance penalizes officials who cooperate with Patriot Act, but law may not stand up in court. It’s happening in Arcata, CA, and officials who illegally cooperate with the Patriot Act can be fined $57. [fark!]
- Yesterday was a beautiful spring day in Minnesota. The temperature was near 70, the sun was shining, and there was just enough breeze to cool me off so I didn’t notice how sunburned I was getting as I sat around talking with friends during the single game ticket sale at the ballpark.
From what Eric Webster (“Webby”) had to say, the plans this year are to change most of the entertainment at the park. Gone will be the cheerios races, and most of the other contests involving fans from the stands. There’ll be an organist, “ushertainers” and a number of other things to fill the void, but it sounds like Eric’s got a pretty good plan, and it’ll be interesting to see some changes after a decade of things being pretty much the same. There also will be a new scoreboard that’ll hopefully be installed in time for the start of the season, and it’ll include a big screen so they can show us prepared videos, rather than having interns doing skits.
In all, yesterday was a pretty enjoyable day, and I’m looking forward to the season more than ever. But first I’ve got to wait for the red glow from my arms and forehead to subside a bit. - Rowdy Gophers fans get out of control after hockey victory last night. The same sort of thing as last year, including bonfires in the middle of intersections and plenty of drunks. As an added bonus there were helicopters circling the neighborhood all night, keeping me awake. I may wander over to Dinkytown this morning to see the aftermath. [strib]
- But we don't need anything like The Battle for Booze in Fairfax, VA:
[emptybottle]The police there have decided that getting drunk in a bar is an arrestable offense worth enforcing. You don’t have to be starting trouble, getting in a fight, or climbing behind a wheel—the simple act of drinking in a bar gives them enough probable cause to harass and subject you to tests. And if you actually have the gall to have more than a couple beers while in that bar, you’re going to jail and getting fixed up with a nice criminal record.
- Fun-loving Saints to create Randy Moss hood ornament and give them out at the August 16th game. And July 14th will see St. Paul (yes, that early Christian guy) bobbleheads. Single game tickets went on sale this morning at 9am. [strib]
- Republicans Want Terror Law Made Permanent. That’s the USA-PATRIOT Act, which certainly is terrifying. But see, the War on Terror isn’t over, and never will be. Orrin Hatch is leading the charge this time. This would be a good time to contact your Senators and Representative and make it clear to them that you don’t really feel like living in Oceania [metafilter]
- Ron Paul (aka Dr. No ) exposes some War Profiteers. Where did that $20 Billion go? [endwar]
- Privacy International’s Stupid Security Winners have been revealed. [some guy]
- The Montana State Legislature passed HJ 12, which looks like an anti-terrorism bill that actually might work. Its main point is that the people of the U.S. can probably do more to stop terrorism than any number of government spies, and without damaging our rights. [endwar]
- I wrote a bit about 1129 - 8th St SE and 727 - 15th Ave SE the other day. They’re part of the geography section, which I’m slowly filling up. with tidbits from my past.
- I also wrote a short little essay about The Preferences Problem this morning. I don’t think there’s a good solution, but if you know of one, I’d love to hear about it.
- It’s Friday, so go check out cocktaildb.com, the Internet Cocktail Database. Need to mix a drink? Here’s your spot. [via Looka! ]
- A bicycle built for soup talks about the Soup Peddler who delivers fresh soup to a maximum of 100 clients each week in Austin, TX. Sounds pretty darned cool. [some guy]
- Transit concept gets its first test, the PRT or SkyWeb Express looks like an interesting alternative to cars. There’s a lot more information at the Taxi 2000 site. [strib]
- I didn’t know What to Expect in PHP 5.0, and I’m still not sure I do, but the article tells me it’s going to
take the world by storm
because it’s going to support Java and .Net objects (and have a big change to the object architecture within PHP). Thing is, I don’t really use those features, and don’t care about Java or .Net objects, and I fear upgrading will mean enough syntax changes that I’ll need to go in and touch all my PHP code again. jr conlin has some thoughts about PHP5 that he shares in Achillies' Other Heel. The nutshell?Plus, i liked no budget Kirk better than high budget Picard.
- In the Hands of Geeks, Web Advertising Actually Works. There have already been a couple times when I’ve bought something as a result of google’s adwords. It’s a lot easier than trying to navigate the heirarchy of crap at Amazon or put up with a ton of popups that cover up the product I’m trying to buy. Go to google, search for what you want, and then look at the top ten results and the ads on the right. My experience is that most of the time you’ll find someone who’ll sell it to you with minimum fuss. [doc]
- Independents' day talks about how independent labels are doing okay, even while the major labels flounder and whine about piracy. The one thing that most of the articles about indy labels seem to leave out is that while they do work great for established artists, how well do they work for someone trying to break into the biz? It’s hard to say from this article, since it only talks about names I’d heard from major labels. [some guy]
- Software to unzip identity of unknown composers: basically by compressing an unknown bit of music together with a few known bits of music, and comparing the change in compression ratios, you can match up genres or music, or composers of classical music pretty well. The process just works on the raw data, with no idea about what it’s looking at. Pretty much the same process has already been used on text.
- Habeas Sues Haiku Abusers who have improperly used the Habeas trademark in an effort to get their email past spam filters. Now if they could just get fax.com to quit spamming my fax machine. That finally got bad enough that I just shut the machine off. The Minnesota AG has already sued one junk faxer (the case is still going on), so they’re probably not going to go after another.
- Marketer Challenges Anti-Spam Crusader [popups]. George Allen Moore Jr., is upset that his email address, home address and phone number are available on the net, and is suing Francis Uy, who posted the information. Moore sells various crap via spam, including pirated copies of Norton Systemworks, and Symantec will probably be talking to him, and then the very next day: Ruling Backs Anti-Spam Activist [popups], saying that his posting of the home address and phone number does not constitute harassment. Cool beans. [fark! and boing boing]
- Dean has a good grumble about the press release about Quark XPress 6. Yeah. No OpenType support, but hey, they’re going to let people write for the web now. So basically Quark’s going to ship a new version and its typography will suck more than it needs to. It’ll make web-pages now, and they’ll almost certainly suck more than they need to, too. And I can’t muster the time or energy to sit down and write an application that would do things right and still be able to read and write Quark format files (which I think would be the key to knocking them off of their pedestal). Feh.
- GM pulling plug on electric cars, shutting down their EV-1 operations in CA. They’ll all be off the roads by the end of the year, most likely. [strib]
- Speaking of shutting things down, Concorde grounded for good, but they’re going out with a sale. Only $3,999 for a round-trip ticket from New York to London, and $1,999 for a one-way, with a coach-class return ticket. You have to fly before the end of summer. [some guy]
- Wireless Firms Still Fight Portable Phone Numbers [popups], but it sure looks like you’ll be able to take your number with you when you switch phone services, and maybe even before the end of the year. Naturally the phone companies hate this idea. The biggest problem with switching to a new telco is that you have to tell a bazillion people your new number. Take that friction out of the system, and you might actually see some real competition in the phone business. Horrors! [boing boing]
- Why we may never regain the liberties that we’ve lost [popups]. Well, a state of permanent war (on terrorism) means that the government will be unlikely to ever relax the restrictions it’s placed on us. A pretty pessimistic article to read first thing in the morning. But hey, we’re only 19 years behind schedule. [boing boing]
- There was A shadowy figure aboard Flight 722, but nobody seemed to care. See a woman’s credit card was stolen, and someone charged an airline ticket for a man with a middle eastern name, to the city where the President was speaking. And orange alert notwithstanding, she couldn’t get anyone to investigate it. [metafilter]
- Domestic Security: The Line Starts Here. Seems the snake-oil salesmen have been queueing up for a while, but now the money’s starting to flow out from the government, and the feeding frenzy has turned into a full-on orgy of greed. [boing boing]
- Librarians Use Shredder to Show Opposition to New F.B.I. Powers. The librarians in Santa Cruz are now shredding records as soon as they no longer need them. Less for the feds to subpoena. Nice work. [endwar]
- All-seeing tour guide spots NY’s eyes. The Video Surveillance Tour of Manhattan will show you all the surveillance cameras along the tour route. [fark!]
- Belgium guts ‘genocide law’ to end war crimes cases against Sharon, Bush Sr., others [popups]. Seems that people were getting prosecuted that they figured shouldn’t have been, so the law’s been modified a smidge. Isn’t that special? [metafilter]
- EMI Music Anti-Copy Control Information. Seems EMI’s (Capitol Records here in the US) now releasing all CDs with Copy Control, which means they aren’t actually CDs. And a Canadian’s giving them a fair amount of grief about it. [colby cosh]
- Damn. I missed the Circle Line Party II (and I). They nearly made two laps of London before getting shut down. Quite the cool concept. Check out Santacon 2001, too. Oh man! It hurts to laugh.
- Joey’s got a long post telling us What happened to me and the new girl (or, "The girl who cried Webmaster"). The short version? He was saved from a con-artist by his blog. [accordionguy]
- Huh! Gary Hart has a blog now. How very odd. I thought he was dead.
- Hmm. Maybe I should write some PHP to connect to The Apathetic Online Journal Entry Generator so I could update real often.
- Hard Times for Flip Mo, as they’ve lost a huge lawsuit in Illinois, which if it weren’t for all the other states depending on payments from the tobacco settlements, would resuilt in bankruptcy. As it is, the states who’ve latched onto the tobacco settlement money will probably end up rewriting some laws to keep Philip Morris afloat.
- DaveNet : NY Times archive is back. Dave Winer follows up on the New York Times archives. [scripting]
- In other news of things that have returned: the Pioneer Press Business Round-up has (if you scroll down to the bottom) the welcome news that Pig’s Eye Brewing is in business, and has shipped beer. Yay! [some guy]
- Life inside a Lenin-Marxist Cult in Minneapolis:
—code name for a Minneapolis man who repulsed Stein. [Reed, via Instapundit]Claire,
the memo [from her superior] began,
It has been seen that you should engage in an organizational PR [personal relationship] with the strategic aim of having a child. This will be a critical step in your development. At present it is suggested you establish a PR with Stan - And as a parting shot, MOOREWATCH.com is watching Michael Moore’s every move. Yeah, it’s a case of fish, barrel, smoking-gun, but what the hell, eh?
- Things are somewhat back to normal around here. Yesterday was a day of napping through the NASCAR race, then watching TV through the evening, followed with a little web-surfing to end the day. Pretty much a normal Sunday for me. But today I’ve got to get back to work, and after basically taking a week off, getting back into the swing of things is pretty hard. I’ve got twenty-some emails backed up that I need to respond to. I’ve got to handle the hours for the folks who are working for me. And I’ve got to try and figure out what I was working on ten days ago. Oof. I’m expecting a fairly frantic Monday, and it doesn’t help that neighborhood association stuff has started heating up again, so I’ve got to think about that, too. Oh, and the OpenBSD CDs ship in a few weeks, so I need to start thinking about getting my server in shape for the upgrade, too. Much to think about. Nothing like enough time. And I need to make time to check in on Mom to see how she’s doing. Oh well, at least the snow they were threatening us with this morning seems to have missed me so far.
- jr conlin’s talking about More Google Gaming, specifically wondering about how google treats blogs:
Looks like if Google is using blogs for relevancy, they’re not really returning the favor.
What I’ve found is that the type of blog makes a big difference. If you have permalinks that look like static pages (i.e. they end in .html), it seems google’s more willing to show your pages in the search results. That makes some amount of sense, since dynamic pages can disappear (though they seldom do on blogs), and google wants to point to things that are going to stick around. The other thing I’ve found is that big site-reorganizations can be tricky. If suddenly all your content rearranges, it can take months for google to like you again. There are probably more tips & tricks that are rattling around in my brain, but those are the big ones that spring to mind at the moment. - I’ve been watching Simon Schama’s History of Britain, and in the past couple of episodes have noticed that he’s mentioned the small and fictional town of Mucking-on-the-Wold. The interesting thing is that while this seemed to be a clear enough example of a fictional place, it doesn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere on the web, or at least nowhere that google has searched. No real point to this, I guess, just a chance to mention the name that I’d heard and couldn’t find when I searched, so the next person who looks for it will most likely end up finding this page.
- Hydra is a Mac OS X-only editor that lets multiple people work on the same document. Pair-programming made easy. You just need to be on the same local network, and Rendezvous makes the rest happen. I expect there will be multiple groups using Hydra at MacHack this year. [some guy]
- National Archives go online (partly). It’s far from everything, but it looks like it might be some useful information that’s now more easily available to those of us who are working on family histories. Of course the article doesn’t include a URL. The National Archives Research Room looks like it’s probably the best place to start. [fark!]
- Child Porn Law Creates Catch-22, since Pennsylvania requires ISPs to block websites, but won’t tell anyone which sites have to be blocked, since that would be spreading porn.
- I linked to Cursor.org just about a year ago, but I guess it’s time to do so again. Their manifesto is
to expose the absurdities and excesses of an increasingly corporatized, sanitized and celebrity-driven news media
and they’re based here in Minnesota. [some guy] - RIAA Hits Students Where It Hurts, suing four students for running software which, unlike what the article says, isn’t
napster-like
, but rather software that indexes the files available on an existing network which can already be seen by anyone on the network. - Copy protected CDs: artists can be the losers. See if record companies send out copy-protected CDs, at least some radio stations can’t play them, because they use PCs to hold all the music and quickly access it. Who loses? The band who isn’t getting heard at all. But remember, the RIAA is just there to protect the artists, right?
- Yesterday was the funeral for my mom’s
special friend
(as it was expressed at the service). But I fear that’s only the beginning, as Mom’s unused to living alone, and I’m not sure how she’s going to handle it. I’m gonna hafta keep an eye on things for a while, I suspect. - Joel Spolsky wrote about Finding an Office in New York City. It’s a pretty good tutorial on shopping for office space anywhere, I think.
- Tobacco companies sue California, saying ads "vilify" industry and have caused the awards in lawsuits to be larger than they should have been. [fark!]
- In DaveNet : The paper-of-record, Dave Winer talks about the implications of the New York Times making their archive pay-only. I’ve been through this with a number of newspapers I link to, almost all of which end up making articles unavailable after time, and it’s plenty annoying. One of the things (pretty far down) on my to-do list is to wash through every link on Dave’s Picks and flag it as good or bad, but I don’t think there’s a good automated way to do it, since you’re so often redirected to a
you could read that if you paid
page, rather than getting a real 404. [scripting] - VirtualFund chairman to avoid angry shareholders. Man. The mess that the former LaserMaster has become… [some guy]
- When Spring comes the thoughts of the young turn to Critical Mass. The April '03 Minneapolis ride will take place on the anniversary of what was, I believe, the largest attended mass locally. Tentatively, the route this month will be a
STRIDE Mill Ride
–From Loring Park -meet at 5PM Friday, April 25th–to Lake and 35W where STRIDE is fighting the35W Excess Project
then over to St. Paul to Ayd Mill Road where neighbors are fighting the use of their street to connect I94 to 35E. [Jim] - The Better World Club provides roadside assistance for cyclists. Yep! It’s like AAA for your bike. [Jim]
- Daylight Saving Time returns tonight for most of us in the US. Remember, it’s spring ahead, fall down.
- Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists, now straighten up and fly right, or it’s into the pokey with you. (Do I need to mention that this is a Bad Idea?) [flutterby]
- The Secret War Machine explores the link between Iran-Contra and al Qaeda. Hmm. John Poindexter? Hey, speaking of John Poindexter, TIA proponents defend domestic spy plan. Yeah, spying on everyone, just because they might be a terrorist is a good way to preserve what makes America special. Do Privacy Fears Allow Terrorism? Heather MacDonald, a lawyer at the Manhattan institute says we should shut up and cooperate, since that’ll make us all safer from terrorism. Perhaps someone should show Ms. MacDonald just how much information is available about her and see what she thinks about the subject then.
- Traveling? Take Big Brother Along. The information contained in CAPPS II is nothing compared to the information stored in most travel agents’ reservation systems. And guess what, they’re pretty much centralized and probably available to the TSA.
- It’s a little disturbing to know that my TiVo is a Spy TV, and could rat me out to the feds. Then again, I don’t know if there’s a lot to worry about, except for someone discovering that I watch way too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Do you have the Fear of a Million Big Brothers? Maybe you should. Most websites keep fairly detailed logs about what the people who surf those sites are reading. Here on Dave’s Picks, I’ve almost got all the software hooked up so I can gather the information I want without using the regular server logs, and all the extra information that’s collected in them by default. It’s not perfect, but it means that I still get the raw data I want, and what you do while you’re here is pretty well private. Of course that’s just one server on the whole internet, but it’s got to start somewhere. [endwar]
- Fed Agencies Asleep at the Wheel:
This is how ill-prepared the federal government is to protect itself against terrorist attacks: Many of its agencies don’t even know which buildings and computer networks to defend.
They were ordered to figure out which facilities were critical five years ago. But hey, it’s best to trust the government to take care of this sort of thing, right? At least it offers some comfort—if they can’t even keep track of their own facilities, maybe there's some hope of keeping a little privacy after all. - Marylaine has a whole slew of pointers useful for Tracking Our Government.
- Akamai ends Al-Jazeera server support. On top of the hack attacks, having their reporters kicked out of the US stock exchanges, and then kicked out of Iraq, they’ve now lost the server farm.
- The City of Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution today Defending the Bill of Rights. The original PDF document is online, too. I think this is a pretty darned good thing the council did, and I’m happy to see it. I don’t know how much effect it will have even within Minneapolis, but it’s at least a little sand in the gears of the totalitarianism that’s embodied in the USA-PATRIOT act, the Homeland Security Act, and recent executive orders.
- I drove up to Mom’s yesterday to help her out with a few things, and it was one of the most hellish drives I’ve ever been on. There were about fifty miles of driving in freezing rain, with 35mph crosswinds. More than once I was driving down the road, and suddenly found my car a foot or so farther left than it had been a moment before. There were a dozen cars and trucks in the ditch, and all the rest of us were moving along about 50mph instead of the usual 80mph. White-knuckle driving at its finest. At least mom seems to be doing a bit better. Ice causes problems in northern Minnesota, Icy Roads Blamed for Fatal Crash in Central MN, and Freezing rain causes dozens of accidents are the news stories about the messy roads yesterday.
- Skot at Izzle pfaff! is on a roll lately. Go read Creature Discomforts. You’ll think your shitty roommate (you know, the one who drinks all your beer and eats your last slice of pizza, even though you live alone) is pretty easy to get along with. And then maybe read the one that precedes it. That ought to brighten up a fairly dreary Friday.
- Quatloos!: Brad Christensen Gallery:
Over the years, Brad Christensen has been deluged with every type of
Wait until you have some time, and then go read the whole thing. Or just waste your Friday on it. [boing boing]URGENT
offer imaginable from Nigerian scam artists. Finally, he decided to fight back by conning the con men. With humor and imagination as his weapons, Christensen preyed on the scammers' abundant supply of greed and ignorance, taking our 419 friends for quite a ride, and always at their own expense. What follows are some of Christensen’s more creative exchanges… - Remember how I mentioned yesterday that Microsoft was planning to take aim at google? Well, if you ask google what the worst search engine is (that’s a cached image just in case it changes), you can see what they think of Microsoft as competition.
- There’s a fairly long article on Making An RSS Feed that might’ve been more useful for me if I’d found it a few weeks ago. But frankly, I found it easier to just go look at the simplest version of the spec and some commentary about it, look at what some other folks were spewing, hack together some code, and see if it worked in NetNewsWire, and then eventually run it through the validator. [zeldman]
- Hey, there’s a handy-dandy online Regular Expression Tester out there. Useful when you’re lost in a sea of punctuation. [holy schmoly]
- Baseball season’s starting and The Minnesota Historical Society has an exhibit called
Play Ball
–including historical artifacts of the Minneapolis Millers, The St. Paul Saints and the Minnesota Twins. Looks cool. And tomorrow’s the home opener for the Twins. But it's still a month and a half until the Saints start. Sigh. [Jim] - I spent some time the other night walking through macosxhints. Hey, there’s some pretty darned useful things there.
- Seamless city
is a continuous visual image of the city made up of sequential photos of a walk through the city shot from a pedestrian point of view. Each image is visually connected to the next as the objects are in the real world.
It’s an idea I’ve thought about for the section of the Mississippi here in Minneapolis, but gosh that’d be an awful lot of pictures, and I haven’t had great luck making panoramas from even a single location (stitching pictures that include a bunch of river is something most stitching software is pretty bad at). [boing boing] - Annual Perserverance as Measured With Google Hits measures how many first annual, second annual, etc., events there are on the net using google. No big surprise that the peak is for second annual and it falls off pretty fast from there. Maybe a guy could talk a bunch of websites into having the seventh annual something or other now, just to skew the data. [boing boing]
- Speaking of google, Microsoft Says to Take Aim at Google, and plans to build a better search engine. [fark!]
- Pizza Box or IMac? No, an IBox. The first Apple clone since Apple terminated its cloned licensing program in 1997. A guy in Chanhassen (a southwestern suburb of Minneapolis) wants to try it, building boxes from parts sold by Apple for repairs. There’s a good change he’ll end up facing some legal challenges from Apple.
- Things are still hectic and not terribly pleasant around here. I’m not ready to write about it, so I’m going back to ranting about that freedom stuff.
- You bet there are issues with governor’s pay-for-arrest plan. It probably doesn’t charge enough to cover the costs of arrests, and it probably charges too much for many protesters to pay. And it’s probably unconstitutional. Not that that’s ever stopped the government from passing a law. [strib]
- Big Brother Is Watching You Shop, using credit card records to track
terrorists
(and the rest of us). - Minnesota hunters, anglers now must provide Social Security numbers, as will anyone who wants a drivers license (that’s been optional until now). The bill’s not law yet, but it’s expected to pass easily. It’s being forced by blackmail at the federal level.
Collect the numbers, or lose $350 million per year in child support money.
Feh. - Bar Association wants
pirate
WiFi regulated. See, that’s because WiFi is basically a way for people to share pirated files, not a useful tool that lets me surf the web from the front steps while watching the neighbor gals play frisbee in the street on a beautiful day like we had yesterday. No sir, it’s no good for that at all. Better ban it. Or maybe the lawyers should move to places where cute neighbor gals playing frisbee in the street. [boing boing] - Margaret Atwood writes A letter to America.
You’re the 21st-century Romans. Your admiring friends used to know you well: land of the brave, home of the free. Now, as you obsess over the omens of war, we wonder if you know yourself.
It gets better from there. Go read the whole thing. - Are Scott, Carly and Larry risking time at Camp X-Ray? Well, Mike Hawash apparently did by giving to the same sort of charity they did. Mike’s a US citizen who’s being held, and as far as anyone on the outside can tell, has been stripped of his rights. [boing boing]
- Ebay Inc Gets Letter From US Attorney Of Missouri saying that PayPal has run afoul of the USA PATRIOT act. Ebay’s also shutting down half.com, which sucks, since that’s where I get most of my books. The two don’t appear to be related.
- Michael Moore Reconsidered. Okay, so most of the
facts
in Bowling for Columbine turn out to have been made up. I have to agree with Evan thatif I seriously believed even half of what Michael Moore claims to, I’d be stockpiling sniper rifles in a buried strongbox at the park.
The strangest thing about this is that while so many of the assertions in hisdocumentary
are false, people just don’t seem to care. Now if only there was a way to find out what the hell was actually happening in Iraq (and in the inner sancta in D.C.). The TV news sure isn’t telling us much in the way of facts, and it appears most people are just happy being lied to. - Yesterday morning my mom’s partner/SO/boyfriend died. I wasn’t especially close to him, but I was busy yesterday trying to get things in order around here so I can take a day or two off work if I need, and I expect I’ll be extra-busy helping my mom out for the next few days. The linkage may be light, and I might even miss a day. Don’t panic.
- TidBITS: Apple Reschedules WWDC Yet Again. As a friend of mine said:
GAK!
- Some of my daily reads have gone to great lengths for April Fool’s Day. Witness MetaFilter or Flutterby, and A New Constellation Takes Hold of the APOD too.
- MacMerc.com's April Fool's Pranks are mostly Mac OS X specific.
- Last Month
30. April, 2003 - another month gone already?
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29. April, 2003 - fall down, go boom
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28. April, 2003 - too darned nice out
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27. April, 2003 - a day of rest, dammit
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26. April, 2003 - Virtual PC grumbles
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25. April, 2003 - too early
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24. April, 2003 - Code Stupid!
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23. April, 2003 - Sisters Camelot Fundraiser
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22. April, 2003 - Happy Earth Day
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21. April, 2003 - Another Dreary Monday
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20. April, 2003 - Happy Easter
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19. April, 2003 - eight and ten years ago
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18. April, 2003 - Good Friday?
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So it’s Friday afternoon and I’m downloading the latest safari update, and while it’s downloading, I figure I’ll surf the web a little (it’s late in the week, and I’m probably not at my brightest) using Safari.
The update’s plugging along, and I’m reading some long and ranting webpage about how a guy looked at his car stereo and was surprised not to see the artist and song listed.
And then the window went away. Heck, the whole application quit.
What the heck!?!
Oh yeah, I’m updating Safari. Software update says “Installing Safari” just about now.
Duh.
17. April, 2003 - back in the saddle
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16. April, 2003 - late, late, late
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So it’s later in the day. Here’s an update of sorts:
Yeah, I know the update’s late. And it’s going to be unsatisfying, too. I’m running well behind my normal schedule, and don’t really have much to say. Maybe later in the day.
15. April, 2003 - too damned busy
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14. April, 2003 - got your taxes done?
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13. April, 2003 - sunburned
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12. April, 2003 - single game tickets on sale
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11. April, 2003 - miscellany for the weekend
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10. April, 2003 - no sir, I don’t like it
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9. April, 2003 - war=peace—freedom=slavery—ignorance=strength
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8. April, 2003 - blogging can save your life?
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7. April, 2003 - returning to normalcy?
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6. April, 2003 - well, that’s over, sorta
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5. April, 2003 - I keep trying to avoid war news
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4. April, 2003 - gray friday
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3. April, 2003 - Play Ball
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2. April, 2003 - back to ranting
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1. April, 2003 - no foolin'
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