January 2002 Archives
Good line from a typical Windows-to-Linux conversion story.To me, the definition of malicious code is simple: any code that prevents my machine from doing what I wish it to do, and/or any code that makes my computer do anything I haven't instructed it to do. Under my definition, Windows had clearly become an extremely malicious virus.
Say it with me: "Celebrity Edition".
Still not convinced? I suggest you go back and watch the recent "Where are they now?" episodes of The Weakest Link for potential contestants.I smell a cover-up.At White House press secretary Ari Fleischer's off-camera briefing this morning, a network correspondent asked what brand of pretzel was responsible for the episode.
Fleischer started to grin and the reporter said wearily, "I'm not kidding. And could you at least tell us if it was a skinny one, or one of the curly ones?"
I love the Philips Electronics take on copy-protected CD's: Because current schemes effectively violate the standards for encoding compact discs, they aren't really CD's at all, and shouldn't be labelled as such. Furthermore, one of the company's lead copyright foks "argues that the protection system is not a protection system as such, but simply a mechanism for stopping the playback of music." I'm looking forward to this fight.
Given my quite unsatisfactoy experience with an old New Year's Day tradition this year, I'll have to make note of a couple of black-eyed pea recipes that
Chuck has pointed out recently: Hoppin' John and Good Luck Black Eyed Peas. Either one would have to be an improvement.
First of all, to tell you that I am extremely fond of the weblogging community, and that two years is too short a time to post among such excellent and admirable writers. I don't read half of you half as often as I should like; and I link less than half of you half as often as you deserve.
Secondly, to celebrate my blogday. Thank you very much for reading my little website.
Thirdly and finally, I wish to make an announcement. I regret to announce that — though, as I said, two years is far too short a time to maintain this site — this is the end. I am going. I am leaving now. Good-Bye!
Two years ago today (scroll down), I started my first weblog over at Pitas. Later, I moved my site here and switched to Blogger, but that Pitas site was my introduction to the world of keeping a weblog. It may not have meant much to anyone else, but I've had a lot of fun doing it. By the way, I'll have a major announcement to make later today.
(By the way, congrats to Rob Bender who started blogging one day before I did.)Note that my decision to switch to Movable Type has nothing to do with any nasty rumors — actually, perfectly reasonable rumors which are getting nasty reactions — going around. [via LMG] I'm not giving up on Blogger due to technical problems, either; I wish Evan the best in smoothing things out again. Although I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Blogger to newbies, I've been feeling like I was outgrowing the service for months now. There are advanced features I've been wanting for a long time that the simple interface of Blogger doesn't offer, and I've finally taken the time to set up a CMS that does more of the things I want.
That's right, a questionable privacy decision in a Microsoft product helped expose a pro-Microsoft astroturfing campaign.Several of the voters evidently followed a link contained in an email, the subject line of which ran: "PLEASE STOP AND VOTE FOR .NET!" We know this, because our logs include the Web address where visitors browsed from; when people click there from a Microsoft Exchange email message, Exchange helpfully gives us the subject line and username. The people who followed that link all had email addresses in the microsoft.com domain.
Every month, the company I work for holds an "employee update meeting" for the latest news on some aspect of the business. Last year, we were assimilated by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, so this month's meeting consists of a goofy year-end video sent out by Buffett to all the subsidiaries. Silly commercials by companies in the collective. Interview clips. And wierdest of all, silly sketches starring The Man.
Warren singing. Warren as Tiger Woods's caddy. Oh my good Lord, Warren and Bill Gates on "Judge Judy" arguing about bridge winnings. Not to mention, lots of cheesy in-jokes that I have to assume make sense to Berkshire insiders. This is an hour of my life that I'll never get back.
Just the same, for all the cheesiness, it's somewhat reassuring that someone that rich and powerful is willing to laugh at himself. And if I had that much money, I could think of worse things to waste it on than professionally-animated vanity cartoons.
P.S. Best line: "I would ask if you want to buy a vowel, but I think you already own most of them."On the other hand, at least Apple was talking about something in the production line. Bill Gates's CES keynote promoted what looks to me like a vast cloud of home-automation vapor.
Somebody wake me when this magically turns into a shipping product. And then, let me hit the snooze button and doze off again until it looks like something useful.Neither technology (shall we start calling them concepts instead now?) is particularly clever, and what they have in common is that they are intended to support Microsoft's plans to perpuetuate the PC in the home, pitching it as the centre of entertainment, home productivity and home control and monitoring activities. It is not however particularly clear why people should actually need this. A portable webpad type device can connect to the internet perfectly happily via a wireless broadband gateway without a PC having to get in the way, so Freestyle and Mira (particularly Mira) are only important for as long as the PC is in itself a desirable piece of kit for the home.
The article goes on to say that Pentium-based computers are about the minimum that are still useful to charities. Dad, I think it's time to junk that old PC-XT at the very least."Every dollar we spend on disposing of unusable donations is a dollar we don't have to spend on our career and other support services," said Christine Nyirjesy Bragale, a spokeswoman for Goodwill Industries International.
"It's not uncommon that a nonprofit gets a donation, finds out that the computer is not going to work for them, then they're stuck with the cost of recycling the computer. It can end up hurting them," said Joan Fanning, executive director of NPower, which provides low-cost, onsite IT support and training to nonprofits.
The new version of MT seems to have a much nicer default template design; I want to do some design of my own in the long run, but the default should do for now. What's more, it's designed to be very customizable by stylesheets; it only took a cut-and-paste to switch to the current "Rusty" look.
Mind you, I haven't written off the possibility that Jobs could announce something more impressive than the flat-panel Mac that's already been leaked. Update: More detail (both good and bad) about the Moxi.The VCR-sized box may well justify the marketing bumph's extravagant claims, as it's a rare example of a single box combining the broadcaster's tick list - it decodes satellite and cable signals - together with what we'd expect from a PC home server: it acts as router/gateway, a digital MP3 jukebox, a DVD player.
Oh, and it does the job of a TiVO too: it's a time-shift TV recorder, too.
Bah. For all the nice features, I can't stomach the DRM crap. [via Slate]This means that Moxi could be a Trojan horse into the home for media that are controlled not by the user, but the provider; it may even help in realizing the dream of record labels and movie studios (like AOL): a “pay per view” world where every listen of a Lucinda Williams tune or viewing of a “Get Smart” rerun racks up another nickel on the cable bill. Perlman acknowledges that Moxi allows media providers to restrict users but believes the marketplace will compel providers “to provide the right balance—if you cross the line [and frustrate consumers], you’re doomed.”
Another data point for my developing theory that the most distinct difference between the human brain and those of lesser creatures is its ability to filter out excess information, so that we have the capacity to think about other things than our immediate envirenment.But a steady diet of TiVo -- which carries with it the expectation that all television is television I want to watch, when I want to watch it, how I want to watch it -- has made me soft and unsheltered. Because I am no longer watching network promotions, I am appalled anew at their incoherence. Since I typically fast-forward through commercials, when I'm forced to view them in real time, I'm struck with how ham-handed and illogical most sales pitches are. I am the television equivalent of a vegan who's just been force-fed a Big Mac and a pound of M&Ms; my system is overloaded and short-circuiting from the toxins flowing through it.
Clearly, there is a lesson to be learned about the hazards of prolonged exposure to TiVo. Either television has gotten really stupid, or I'm now noticing how stupid it was all along.
I've enjoyed writing on this site (and its predecessor) for a couple of years now, but I'm starting to feel like I've been limiting myself too much. The format, and my habits, seem to lend themselves to short entries based around linked new items, Not That There's Anything Wrong With That. However, writing longer pieces is still hard for me, and I'm starting to feel the need to write a wider variety of things.
A new year is, of course, a time for resolutions. Of course, there's a raft of the usual self-improvement promises that I could make — go to the gym more regularly, eat better, try harder to lose weight. Maybe I'll be more successful with those plans this year, maybe I won't. The resolution I really want to make for 2002, though, is to write more — hopefully, a variety of styles and subjects, but in particular, more personal stuff.
I need to find a sort of balance between public and private writing. I feel like writing for an audience, no matter how small (or perhaps even imaginary) imposes a sort of discipline that pushes me to write more clearly, and I've learned a lot from that. On the other hand, I think I need to write things that I'm not ready to share with the world (or at least with certain people). And on the gripping hand, I'd like to believe that someday I'll be ready and able to share those private thoughts.
In the end, I think the best way to keep that balance is to keep my writings in an electronic form that I can publish (or not) as I choose. My nëw handheld should be a useful tool in allowing me to write electronically anywhere, any time, and to use in combination with other tools (some of which I may need to create) to store and share my writings.
Anyway, expect to see some changes, hopefully very soon.The lack of that "acceptance of eccentricity" has always been one of my most persistent nagging fears, a fear I've always had to fight in order to speak my mind. I guess lately the fight just hasn't seemed worth the trouble. Update: According to Andrew Sullivan (find your own link to that braying jackass) America is too important to allow any true tolerance for free speech.If you don't watch what you say, you risk getting run over by the Great American Umbrage Machine. The U.S. political system protects freedom of speech from formal suppression better than any other nation on earth. But American culture is less tolerant of aberrant views and behavior than many others, and that tolerance has eroded further since Sept. 11. And as conservative culture warriors like to point out—or, indeed, complain (as in the political correctness debate)—a society's norms are set by the culture as much as by the political system. In a country like Great Britain, the legal protections for free speech are weaker than ours, but the social protections are stronger. They lack a First Amendment, but they have thicker skin and a greater acceptance of eccentricity of all sorts.
I ended up going to the aforementioned First Night Riverbend for lack of any other New Year's Eve plans. I didn't know what to expect, and at first, I wasn't that thrilled with it. But as midnight approached, drummers started to draw a crowd outside, the ice sculptors lit the torches on their creation, and even on this small college campus, a lighted ball rose to mark the beginning of a new year. Then the fireworks began. As I watched, I shed a few tears over the disappointments and horrors of a particularly brutal year, and finally let myself hope that the new one would be much better.
No, I couldn't be bothered to post yesterday. I was reveling in just being home without any pressure to get anything done. I knew I was stressing out for the past month over getting things done in time to go down to Mississippi for christmas, but I had no idea how badly I was stressing out until I wasn't anymore. I got rest from time to time, but always with an impending sense of "What do I have to do when I get up?" Yesterday, I finally awoke without that feeling hanging over my head, and it was great.
The one obligation that I did feel the need to fulfill on New Year's Day was culinary:We O'Keefes have subscribed to the black-eye and cabbage tradition for as long as I can remember, and I didn't want to miss any chance to improve my luck or prosperity over last year's. However, with all relatives out of town this year, I was left to my own devices, and neither cabbage nor black-eyes is a dish I'd cook except out of cultural obligation. The mighty Alton provided some guidance on the cabbage front, and while it won't become one of my favorites, it wasn't half bad. The black-eyes were another story. I'd grabbed the only can I could find before the grocery store closed on New Year's Eve, and learned a valuable culinary lesson: If a packaged food claims to be "Southern Style", check the manufacturer's address. As it turned out, some damnyankee had inflicted a disturbing combination of synthetic flavors upon the poor, defenseless legumes. All I can say is, for what I put up with, I'd better get some decent luck out of having eaten those peas.Southerners believe that those who eat Black-eye peas on New Years Day will have good luck throughout the coming year. Originally the black-eyes were cooked and tossed with cooked rice. Usually the peas are served with ham hocks and collards, which was based on the cookery of the early West African Slaves. Cabbage is served for prosperity in the coming year.
