September 2002 Archives
Would somebody please tell the programmers at Microsoft that list elements are allowed supposed allowed in HTML (but required in XHTML) to have closing tags? The HTML automatically generated by Microsoft products is bad enough; don't try to "correct" me when I'm coding compliant HTML by hand.
You think I'm being a lame-ass slacking non-blogger now? Just wait until October 15. (And go read some MegaTokyo or something.)
Contrary to earlier reports, St. Louis area Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Enterprise fans may be able to catch their beloved programming this fall after all. WHSL, the local Home Shopping Network channel which is scheduled to become a UPN affiliate next spring, has received permission to jump the gun with the two series.
According to the article, both programs will be shown during a Friday evening block from 7-9 PM on local channel 46. The season premiere of Enterprise, which was shown tonight in most markets, will air (along with last season's finale) during that period this Friday, September 20; Buffy will begin its season in St. Louis at 7PM on September 27.
Until you can be bothered to pronounce the word correctly, I can't be bothered to take anything you say about nuclear weapons seriously.
Last month, despite reservations, I linked a rather alarming article that claimed that John Ashcroft was planning to establish camps for "enemy combatants" being held without benefit of due process. I should have listened to the skeptical little voice that told me to seek out some confirmation; now, the piece looks like a deliberate misinterpretation of an old Wall Street Journal article. (Not that Ashcroft's detention of American Citizens as "enemy combatants" isn't scary enough on its own.) Of course, this is hardly the only willful misinterpretation being used as political propaganda in the wake of last year's terrorist attacks. I only learned about this particular deception from a sidebar to a longer article on the outrageous claims some news outlets have been making about the NEA and their proposed 9/11 lesson plans.
A computer scientist has proposed an interesting new statistics-based method for identifying and blocking unsolicited bulk e-mail. Instead of looking for specific keywords in isolation, this process does a probabilistic analysis over a number of keywords. Best of all, this technique appears to be adaptible to changing spam techniques, and the author suggests a number of enhancements to make it even more effective if needed. For those evn more technically-minded than myself, Eric Raymond has released an open source proof-of-concept implementation. [via Risks]
Kevin "Captain Cyborg" Warwick may have bitten off more than he can chew this time. His latest publicity stunt of planning to implant a child with a tracking chip seems to be encountering some legal opposition. A concerned electronics expert has raised questions with legal and medical authorities about the safety and necessity of the proposed operation. The Reg raises a lot of questions of its own, about the practicality of Warwick's scheme.
If it's an open letter, why is the full text only available to "premium" subscribers?
It looks like the St. Louis area is going to be a slayer-free zone this fall, according to a hastily-constructed website that doesn't have half as many facts as it does pop-up ads. Supposedly, the local WB affiliate which carried the UPN series Buffy the Vampire Slayer last season won't be carrying the new 7th season this fall. (I just wish that the disappointing sixth season had left me a little more upset about this development.) What concerns me more is the possibility that we won't be getting any of the other UPN programming that KPLR was carrying, specifically Enterprise. Anyway, the site implies that the St. Louis market may be getting a UPN affiliate, but not until next April.
That is all I can tell you, but it won't be enough to prepare you for this. [via plasticbag]
