schlock

Was it necessary to have one person putting ona flute rendition of "My Heart Will Go On" on the upper level of the Times Square subway station, and another person playing it on steel drums on the QNRW level?

The Bathroom is Totally Busted

The Bathroom is Totally Busted
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

This is what happens when you let Republicans move into your apartment.

ID

Several people have told me this is a fantastic read. I wholly concur.

ID: "The 139 page decision in the Pennsylvania 'Intelligent Design' case is fascinating reading -- remarkably lucid and interesting. http://www.sciohost.org/ncse/kvd/kitzmiller_decision_20051220.pdf

The 'why this is not an activist decision by an activist judge' bit on page 137 is terrific, although you're best off getting there the hard way, starting at page 1, including slogging through the appalling behaviour of the people on the School Board who started it, who, despite feeling it was important to expell Darwin (and Darwin's finches) and get the Old Testament God back in the classroom, had somehow managed to fail to realise that any of that stuff in the Bible about bearing false witness applied to them.

...

Michael Zulli writes to let me know that he's finished another painting and put it on eBay. He's also put a rough of the next painting, a magnificently goatish Pan, that he's working on now as the final image of the auction. Keep an eye out at http://www.michaelzulli.com/pan.htm to watch it progress and to see when it goes up on eBay (or alternately just write to him and offer him lots of money for it. He won't mind. It's how he can afford to buy more paint)."

(Via Neil Gaiman's Journal.)

Chance favors the driver who is prepared.

Chance favors the driver who is prepared.
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Why do you ask, is Shana grinning at me from a car next to me on the Ohio Turnpike?



The story that I've been told is that Alexis noticed that I was driving two cars ahead of her on the freeway. Shana calls me and notes to me, "Traffic's pretty heavy, isn't it?" This followed by an offer to meet for coffee at a service plaza, and an unsolicited contribution of Windshield Wiper fluid for our rental car.



If you believe that.



The far more likely hypothesis is that they're working for Red Team, and that I've been under surveilance for months. Those may look like healthy, happy dogs, and that may look like new ski equipment on their roof, but in reality, that's all part of the NSA echelon transponder & relay system they've been ordered to carry. The fluid? Obviousl the latest in nanite technology. The wiper fluid still doesn't work.



But you my dear reader won't find any mention of this in FISA paperwork.



Pretty fucking convenient, no?



But I leave the matter of trust to you. You know which explanation is more credible.



Back to the road...



And I know you're on to me.

Return to MI

Mad props to Scott, Liz & Honey for driving me back from NY this evening.

It was quite a sight to occasionally wake up while Scott drove to see him focusing on the road with his headphones on... Quite the trooper.

FW: [IP] LA Times on NYT spying story

It is times like this I wish I could fire the New York Times, and then realize I don't have any better options.

This could have tipped the balance in the last election.

Large news organizations hold their own interests and judgement above yours.

If only there were an organization that lived up to the Fox News "mascot" of we report you decide.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Tuesday, Dec 20, 2005 5:42 pm
Subject: [IP] LA Times on NYT spying story

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brock Meeks <Brock.Meeks@msnbc.com>
Date: December 20, 2005 1:53:16 PM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: LA Times on NYT spying story

<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na
media20dec20,0,7619720.story?coll=la-home-headlines>

Very good behind the scenes reporting by the LA Times on NYT's internal debate about the timing of their spying story.

Turns out, the NYT did, indeed, have the story in time to run before last year's election and didn't.

-------------------------------------http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

Recipe File: Cooked Egg Nog

yum.

Recipe File: Cooked Egg Nog: "

Egg nog is a classic, rich beverage served at Christmastime. There are many variations out there that range from alcohol-free to practically hard liquor with some creamy flavoring, but most egg nogs have one thing in common: raw eggs. Even if you closely examine the eggs for cracks and wash them before cracking them open, consuming raw eggs presents a slight health risk - a risk magnified if you or your guests have weakened immune systems or are pregnant. Here's a recipe that cooks the eggs first to help reduce the risk even further.

Cooked Egg Nog (serves 10)

"

(Purportedly Via Cooking For Engineers.)

We've got 10 days, and we need $100,000. Please help

We've got 10 days, and we need $100,000. Please help: "

So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support -- both for the very cool projects we're launching (see, e.g., the license interoperability project, discussed recently in Technology Review, and the two new projects announced this week), and for the very uncool pressure we're under from IRS regulations to demonstrate 'public support' as a condition for keeping our (absolutely essential as in we can't live with out it) tax exempt status. So please, anything helps. Lots of anything helps lots.

"

(Purportedly Via Lessig Blog.)

The Strike is Over

The Strike is Over
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

It's so nice seeing Public Transport again.

I spent $70 on cab fare today.

The Transit Strike Life

Leave Client: 5pm
Arrive @ ZipCar lot at 108th & Amsterdam: 6pm
Pick up Dave & Yulia @ Bleecker & Macdougal: 7:10pm
Arrive at Brighton Beach: 9:50pm.
Find food at Russian store before it closes at 10pm.
Drop Yulia off at her place on E 78th: 11pm.
Get home: Closer to 11:50pm.


Polish Bacon with Bruichladdich 17, worth all the time in the world.

CULTURE: An American Psycho Christmas

I can't tell if Bret Easton Ellis fanfic should bother me or not...

CULTURE: An American Psycho Christmas: "On Yankee Pot Roast, Mick Stingley's 'An American Psycho Christmas':

‘Joy to the World’ is being piped in over the din of the late afternoon crush at Saks Fifth Avenue and I am cursing the fact that I have to wait so long for the clerk to return with my credit card. I am pressed against the counter as all manner of last-minute shoppers flood the aisles of the perfume and cosmetic counters. Already some annoying woman has scuffed my A. Testonis with the wheels of her stroller and I am livid. In the left pocket of my black cashmere Ermenegildo Zegna coat I grip the handle of the small Wüsthof cleaver I carry and breathe easy as the blond little hardbody at the Chanel counter returns with my receipt and my purchase. She hands me my American Express Black card and the Chanel parfum, No. 5, which she has gift wrapped for me, and flirts. ‘She’s a very lucky lady.’ I manage a half-smile and notice that she looks like the blowjob girl from Asseaters II, which I still haven’t returned to the video store. ‘It’s for my sister,’ I lie. I take a business card out of my Louis Vuitton wallet and hand it to her. ‘Maybe we can have a drink after the holiday and you can tell me about perfume.’ She touches my hand and slips the card into her pocket. ‘I’d love to.’ I wink and turn away to exit the store, knowing full well that getting a cab on Fifth Avenue on December 23rd is going to be fucking next to impossible; but I manage to get one anyway and head downtown to SoHo to meet everyone for drinks at Gush.

via Gawker

(Written by: susannah_breslin)

"

(Purportedly Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Pac Man re-enacted by humans at U. of Michigan

Pac Man re-enacted by humans at U. of Michigan: "Xeni Jardin:
Boing Boing reader William says,

Two students at our school, the University of Michigan, dressed up as Pac-Man and the Ghost respectively, ran through the UGLi (the Undergraduate Library) and the Fishbowl (a huge computer lab on Central campus) during finals week. Pac-Man screams in horror as the Ghost chases him yelling 'Waka Waka Waka.' This video has spread like wildfire on our campus, and killed the original hosting site's bandwidth.

Link to *.mov

"

(Purportedly Via Boing Boing.)

Together, we shall keeeeell heem!

Jeanne pointed this out to Yulia, who then pointed this out to me.

Together, we shall keeeeell heem!: "

Moochas gracias to Kay, in Buffalo, MN. Yes, Kay, it's very cute!

"

(Purportedly Via Cute Overload.)

Heck Watch

"He's done a heck of a job," Bush said of Rumsfeld, "and I have no intention of changing him." As for Cheney, "my respect for him has grown immensely," Bush said.

Sometimes I wonder if it is opposites day from You Can't Do That on Television.

Clooney Love

I've seen two George Clooney movies in two days.

A real class act.

All of it.

ummm

I just got a "good night butta" from a client, followed immediately by "I meant Brotha"...

Penny Arcade! - One Day In The Future

Sigh. Ad Infinit...

Penny Arcade! - One Day In The Future: ""

(Purportedly Via Penny Arcade!.)

The Flock Browser

Here's a list of thirteen things you really should try with Flock. We're bragging, of course, but at the end of the list you'll also find a few warnings about things we're still working on.

Flock rocks.

Based off of Firefox, flock integrates Del.icio.us, flickr, and blogger support.

Awesome.

If you're the type of person who likes Beta software, get it here.

Dresden Dolls Love

Wil links to them.

MarsEdit 1.1 Public Beta

I've been in the beta program for MarsEdit 1.1, the adjunct to my favorite Mac Program, NetNewsWire.

MarsEdit is the program I use to do most of my posting to Blogger & LJ, and the new version finally supports the ATOM API, which blogger uses, which means that I can finally post to blogger from MarsEdit with Titles.

This is very good news. Now MarsEdit 1.1 has entered Public Beta, so here's the relevant info for MarsEdit 1.1b5, for those who want to try it:

ranchero.com announcement:

http://ranchero.com/?comments=1&postid=1231

inessential.com announcement:

http://inessential.com/?comments=1&postid=3228

What's New in MarsEdit 1.1:

http://ranchero.com/marsedit/whatsnew/marsedit1.1.php

Beta/download page:

http://ranchero.com/marsedit/beta.php

Oh Yeah, and this is OS X only... sorry wainkers...

Deep Thoughts Fortune Cookie

Deep Thoughts Fortune Cookie
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

The food at Grand Sichuan Int'l Midtown is not as enigmatic as this fortune, and I assure you much better. The food is fantastic, and is now #2 in my NYC Chinese Restaurant rotation.

How to spell phở

This character: ở is especially hard to get right.

On a mac, open up the international control pane in system preferences, and then activate the Unicode Hex Input keyboard.

You can then open up a cocoa program, and type in "option 01A1 0309".

Easier on a pc, here.

Dec 7

Pearl Harbor plus 64.

That is all.

google books fun

search inside a book for this search term: "a | the | and | but | of | on | from"

Google Mashup of the Moment: Manhattan All Night

I LOVE NY.

Google Mashup of the Moment: Manhattan All Night: "

Another day, another nifty Google Maps mashup. Today's pick: Manhattan All Night. It's only got Manhattan stuff, hence the name, but it still manages to list 100 restaurants, 102 Deli/bodegas, 57 drug stores and 21 other stores that just don't close. That 280 24-hour spots for you to hit up those times when you're just too wired to get to sleep.

Speaking of Google mashups, if you haven't played with it yet, check out our own Gothamist Maps. Not to mention our Superfun Christmas Tree Map!

Via Google Maps Mania.

"

(Purportedly Via Gothamist.)

Meta pretention

This pretentious phrase was thrown at me today.

It took a while, but I eventually figured it out.

CULTURE: The 50 Greatest Independent Films

I've seen 27/50.

Shameful, I know...

CULTURE: The 50 Greatest Independent Films: "Empire lists: 'The 50 Greatest Independent Films.' Intended to highlight movies made without big budgets and big stars in service of creating bolder and more creative films, Empire trots out what it deems to be cinema made with a truly independent spirit. Number 49 is 'Run Lola Run.' Number 38 is 'Grosse Point Blank.' Number 24 is 'Happiness.' Number 12 is 'Eraserhead.' And, Number One is:

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Some will bleat that this is an easy, obvious choice, while others will say… well, pretty much the same, but nominate differently. Our criteria for deciding the films were: firstly, the circumstances and spirit in which they were made, second, the quality of the result and, finally, its mark on the movie world. This is how Reservoir Dogs gained consensus as the winner. Consider firstly the film's creation: script written in two weeks while the author was in a dead-end day job, it barely changed from first draft to shooting script, and attracted attention by word of mouth. It garnered rave reviews, but Dogs' box office performance wasn't great - again, it had to wait for word of mouth. Most importantly, the magnitude of effect this one film has had on indie culture in the last 13 years is, to say the least, overwhelming. The fact is that more than one generation has had their eyes opened to the long-snubbed world of movie-making's outsiders, be it American mavericks, foreign actioners, or just plain old B-pictures. If it wasn't for Dogs, Hong Kong action cinema would still be a lot more marginal than it is today, and nobody would likely have got around to transferring blaxploitation titles onto DVD yet. You only have to look through the homages and ripoffs that have abounded - how many more films have suited gunmen, feature heists gone wrong, have people talking about pop culture, or 'boast' a fractured narrative? Love or hate it, Reservoir Dogs is the greatest independent movie ever made.

(Written by: susannah_breslin)

"

(Purportedly Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

FW: [IP] 24 hours!!! review of elections-computers' source-code completed in 24 hours!

Yet another reason not to trust government south of the Mason Dixon line.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Thursday, Dec 1, 2005 5:36 pm
Subject: [IP] 24 hours!!! review of elections-computers' source-code completed in 24 hours!

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Date: December 1, 2005 4:36:08 PM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>, Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: review of elections-computers' source-code completed in 24 hours!

Sheesh! Hope EVERY computer-literate citizen of North Carolina learns about this -- and screams bloody-hell to their legislators. What a amazing SHAM!

--jim

From: Justin Moore <justin@cs.duke.edu>
Organization: Duke University Department of Computer Science
Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 13:31:05 -0500
Subject: [NCVI] Diebold back in NC

It seems that Diebold didn't cut and run from North Carolina after all. Less than 24 hours after Diebold finally placed all of their source code into escrow -- OS and all, they claim -- the State Board claims that
their source code audit confirms that Diebold system meets necessary
security and reliability standards.

The portion of relevant state law is

===
c) Prior to certifying a voting system, the State Board of
Elections shall review, or designate an independent expert to review, all source code made available by the vendor pursuant to this section and certify only those voting systems compliant with State and federal law. At a minimum, the State Board's review shall include a review of security, application vulnerability, application code, wireless
security, security policy and processes, security/privacy program
management, technology infrastructure and security controls, security organization and governance, and operational effectiveness, as
applicable to that voting system.
===

By certifying Diebold's system, the SBOE claims (implicitly) that they have conducted this review within the last 24 hours on all code placed in escrow.

Perhaps the NC SBOE could publish their audit methods in the next top- tier software engineering conference. This is the most amazing code
audit -- in terms of speed, breadth, and depth -- that I have ever seen.

-jdm
-- Duke University Department of Computer Science, Durham, NC 27708-0129 Email: justin@cs.duke.edu
Web: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~justin/

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Poor Man's iTunes Tagging

There still isn't any useful tagging in iTunes.

Doing a get info on a file and entering stuff in the comments field of the ID3 tag of the file doesn't count. I want to be able select a bunch of files, create arbitrary tags, and apply them all at once.

As a workaround, I'm tagging songs with one star as a negative tag - don't copy this song to the iPod. This gives me six tag states which are addressable by selecting many songs and right clicking and changing, or just letting me see the tags from the initial song interface.

The Tag States:
_ No rating
* Rating (equals do not play)
**-***** Rating (ok to great)

Songs such as the Notre Dame fight song have a 1 * rating.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says it is every soldier's obligation to stop torture if they see it

Good Cop Person, Bad Cop Person.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says it is every soldier's obligation to stop torture if they see it: "

Great exchange between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who seems to be a normal, real, honorable human being - and then there's idiot Rumsfeld...

When UPI's Pam Hess asked about torture by Iraqi authorities, Rumsfeld replied that 'obviously, the United States does not have a responsibility' other than to voice disapproval.


But [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs] Pace had a different view. 'It is the absolute responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it,' the general said.


Rumsfeld interjected: 'I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it.'


But Pace meant what he said. 'If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it,' he said, firmly.

"

(Purportedly Via AMERICAblog.)

Science: Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered

Dear Santa,

I want to go on vacation to...

Science: Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered: "The Fun Guy writes to tell us New Scientist is reporting that deep-scan radar results from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft have revealed vast amounts of subsurface ice. From the article: 'Intriguingly, the signal reflected from the bottom of the crater is so strong and appears so flat that it may be liquid water. 'If you put water there, that's what the signal might look like,' Johnson told New Scientist. But he cautions the data is based on only one pass over the region and could be caused by another material.'"

(Via Slashdot.)

The Precious Allure of Brooklyn

HAHAHA

The Precious Allure of Brooklyn: "

By the time we got to the third page of Mark Lotto's ode to Brooklyn in today's Observer, we were starting to think that, in fact, Brooklyn might be the way. The borough's celebrity-friendly neighborhoods, sprinkled with 'Sesame Street idealism' and domesticated couples clutching soy chai lattes, very well may be the antidote to the perpetually adolescent woes of Manhattan living. And, God, it just sounds so damn nice out there. Why don't we just take the leap and cross the river?

‘You know in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, when, at the end, the hobbits have been up in this fantastic place, and they’ve been hanging out with Gandalf and Liv Tyler and all of these people, right?’ said Edward Wilson, 36, a banker at Goldman Sachs who moved with his wife, Hesu (Suzy) Coue, 39, from the West Village to a brownstone in Park Slope. ‘And then suddenly they’re back in the Shire, and they’re all kind of in the pub. And when we were watching the film, and it’s all over, we just looked at each other and both said, ‘Brooklyn.’’

Investment bankers who think they're Hobbits. That's why.

Welcome to Schnooklyn [NYO]

"

(Via Gawker.)

The elephants behind the curtains

A solid read of Web 2.0...

The elephants behind the curtains: "Every once in awhile I stumble across a blog post I want for all the world to take as my very own and post it on the site. Jim Lowney's Party Like It's 1999 is one of those entries, and it's been kicking around my head (and lurking in my..."

(Via DrunkenBlog.)

Vernors in NYC

Vernors in NYC
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

David was kind enough to bring me a bottle of this from Michigan.

This barrel aged, bold tasting nectar prized in the Midwest - I will now enjoy it in a party cup with a slice of American Cheese delicately liberated from its wrapper.

And you thought that MidWesterners had no class...

I need to visit Hungary

Introducing Ask Erzsi: "

[Editor's Note: Today marks the first installment of 'Ask Erzsi' by famed Hungarian-American advice columnist Erzsébet 'Erzsi' Gyergyószépfalvy.]

Dear Erzsi:

My husband and I are having a terrible quarrel. He says that my főzelék tastes terrible, and that the problem is that I don't use real pork lard when making the rántás. But I've been trying to get him to lose a few kilos, and I don't think there is really a difference in the taste. Who's right?

Healthy in Hajdúszoboszló

Dear Healthy:

Well, I'm afraid that this time you're hubby's right! True, you can make a rántás (roux) with any kind of fat or edible oil and starch, but you can only make a true, silky-smooth rántás using proper animal lard and flour. Plus, do those few extra kilos make your husband any less loveable? I didn't think so!

Smoothly, Erzsi

...Snipping out lots of good stuff...

The 'Weekly Stink' will return next Monday. Send you questions for Erzsi to tips@pestiside.hu

"

(Via Pestiside.)

mixed messages

I saw a christmas tree stand being carried on the subway today that had the trade name "Santa's Last Stand".

Not the first thing (stabby, stabby) that comes to mind...

The Death Of The Chemicals Of Love

Now let the drug companies get to work on this.

I can already see Stage 2 Trials for a drug code named "LP9"

;-)

The Death Of The Chemicals Of Love: "

Romance lasts little over a year, Italian scientists believe.

The University of Pavia found a brain chemical was likely to be responsible for the first flush of love. Researchers said raised levels of a protein was linked to feelings of euphoria and dependence experienced at the start of a relationship. But after studying people in long and short relationships and single people, they found the levels receded in time. The team analysed alterations in proteins known as neurotrophins in the bloodstreams of men and women aged 18 to 31…

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

Dilbert on Cloning

Comic for 28 Nov 2005: ""

(Via Dilbert.)

Thanksgiving Meal

Thanksgiving Meal
Originally uploaded by sstrudeau.

Thanks to Scott for the kickass meal on Thursday.

The Menu

The Pic is annotated (you can do that?)... proving once again that the audaciousness of Scott's adeptness knows no bounds

Purity Of Essence

a beautifully depressing rant regarding such

White Balance on Blue

Zach Braff (of Scrubs & Garden State) has a blog. The next Season of Scrubs supposedly comes out in January, and it will be a full season.

By the way, Zach's blog is adorable.

Also, I just finished watching Scrubs Season 2 on DVD with Yulia (and partially with Scott).

And thus I feel comfortable admitting that I am in love with the Jordan character from Scrubs.

True.

FW: [IP] Risks Digest 24.10] Risks of applying to law school

law school maw schpool.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Thursday, Nov 24, 2005 3:49 pm
Subject: [IP] Risks Digest 24.10] Risks of applying to law school

No, not the risks you're thinking of.

A friend is applying to law school. He's young but knows something about computers. Law schools collaborate with the Law School Admissions Council
(http://www.lsac.org) to use a single application form. This form is created using OmniForm (published by Nuance, formerly known as ScanSoft). OmniForm requires that you install an ActiveX control on your computer. This control apparently only works on Windows computers. Macs are not welcome. (So much for "Legally Blonde.") Linux and other flavors of UNIX are beyond the pale.

My friend was mumbling obscenities about installing this control. The computer he was working on apparently died during the process so I took a deep breath and said he could work with my notebook computer. He dug into the application, got to the ActiveX installation screen and the control refused to install. At that point I took over (not wanting him messing with my security settings). I finally got the control to install after doing the following:

- Disabling my anti-spyware software (ewido security suite). I then tried to install the control with no luck.

- Setting the privacy permission for lsac.org to "allow." Again no luck installing the control.

- Eliminating all security by making the security settings (Tools/Internet Options/Security/Custom Level) completely open. I enabled each and every ActiveX and other control including unsigned controls and controls marked as not safe. The control then installed successfully.

Now perhaps I didn't have to go quite that far but a deadline was
approaching and I really didn't want to take the time to perform the trial and error that would apparently be required to determine exactly how much security to give up.

It occurs to me that this is truly THE law school admission test. If you're dumb enough to let this control install you're probably good law school material. OTOH if you don't let the control through then you're too smart to be a lawyer. (That's about all the humor I can manage after 1.5 hours fighting with this stuff. I've disconnected from the net and am running my usual four scanning programs right now.)

Tony Lima, Prof. of Economics, California State University, East Bay tony.lima@csueastbay.edu (510) 885-3889

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[IP] Risks Digest 24.10] Risks of applying to law schoolDavid Farber <dave@farber.net>To: ip@v2.listbox.com Reply-To: dave@farber.net

The Triangles

This is what I call a damn good catch.

The Triangles: "

The Triangles are the new Polyphonic Spree. Only they’re Australian, there’s only five of them, and they don’t sound all that much like the Polyphonic Spree. But you know what I mean, right? Listen to ‘Applejack.’ Then read the lyrics, because it’s not often you hear the words ‘lungfish’ or ‘mitochondria’ in a song.

And if you don’t understand the line ‘Sing a song/About how things seem more important at night’… forget it. You won’t get it.

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

Farewell Sensei

Pat Morita 1932-2005.

Say what you will about your fond memories of The Karate Kid, but Pat Morita made it cool to be Asian in America, and for that he will always be remembered.

Farewelll Pat.

Also an article about Morita in Stars & Stripes from 1967.

Today I learned

Conjunctions of predicates demand no commas.

The small PRT tracks are only three feet across,
and compliment modern office architecture.

Psst, the word you want is 'complement' with an 'e'.
If you 'compliment' (with an 'i') something, you praise it.
If you 'complement' (with an 'e') something, then you complete it.
(In the realm of aesthetics, things that complement each other
mutually enhance each other.)
Mnemonic: 'complement' = 'complete'.

The comma is incorrect as well.
This is a conjunction of predicates, not of clauses,
and therefore demands no comma.

[Raymond is currently away; this message was pre-recorded.]

"

(Via The Old New Thing.)

Reducing Firefox's Memory Use

Somebody write a firefox patch quick...

;-)

Reducing Firefox's Memory Use: "Many people have complained about Firefox's memory use. Federico Mena-Quintero has a proposal for reducing the amount of memory used to store images, which, in his proof of concept code, 'reduced the cumulative memory usage [...] by a factor of 5.5.'"

(Via OSNews.)

Farewell Sensei

Pat Morita 1932-2005.

Say what you will about your fond memories of The Karate Kid, but Pat Morita made it cool to be Asian in America, and for that he will always be remembered.

Farewelll Pat.

Flights: PriceGrabber Travel

This could be cool.

Flights: PriceGrabber Travel: "

Comparison-shopping agglomerator PriceGrabber has moved into the travel-vending game, with a simple interface and broad range of air carriers and hotels forming a nascent challenge to other meta-searchers. A particular innovation is the seamless integration of basic data from FlightStats, allowing you to quickly check the historic on-time reliability of a particular flight. The PriceGrabber search results are pretty extensive as well, listing pretty much every possible carrier and flight (a few filtering options let you narrow things down). A pretty good way to check out a lot of possibilities quickly.

PriceGrabber Travel [Official site]

Previously: FlightStats, Kayak Multi-City Airfare Search, How to Survive Extended Grounding, Reserve Airport Parking, The Road to BA Clublife

"

(Via Gridskipper.)

From a dear friend.

i'd marry him, i just don't know if i want to marry his country

FW: [IP] American corporations wouldn't sponsor the Darwin exhibit

My Poor Country.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Wednesday, Nov 23, 2005 9:18 pm
Subject: [IP] American corporations wouldn't sponsor the Darwin exhibit

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: American corporations wouldn't sponsor the Darwin exhibit
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:40:44 -0500
From: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: dave@farber.net

According to the Telegraph, a British news paper, the exhibit on Charles Darwin at the American Museum of Natural History in New York has been unable to attract any corporate sponsors.

"It is a disgrace that large companies should shy away from
such an important scientific exhibition," said a trustee
of another prominent museum in the city, who was told of
the exhibition's funding problem by a trustee of the AMNH.

"They tried to find corporate sponsors, but everyone backed
off."

More details at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/20/wdarwin20.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/11/20/ixportal.html

Perhaps equally interesting, as far as I or Google News can tell, no American news website has picked up the story, even though it's been out there for three days. Is it that the story couldn't be confirmed? To me it would certainly seem newsworthy.

--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

-------------------------------------
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

Michigan is Fucked

Check out the article.

MS Offer File Formats as Open Standards, Sorta Open

Typical bullshit.

MS Offer File Formats as Open Standards, Sorta Open: "You may have heard the news that instead of just supporting ODF, the format Massachusetts has chosen, Microsoft has announced they areoffering their file formats as an open standard. According to the press release from Microsoft, there are some co-sponsors, including Apple and Intel: Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)today announced it will take steps to offer the file format technology behindbillions of documents to customers and the industry as an internationalstandard. Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, the British Library, Essilor, IntelCorporation, Microsoft, NextPage Inc., Statoil ASA and Toshiba will co-sponsora submission to Ecma International, the standards organization, of theMicrosoft(R) Office Open XML (Extensible Markup Language) document formattechnology.Here's an article in ComputerWorld with some thoughts on what this could mean: Microsoft Corp. today said it will offer its Word, Excel and PowerPoint document formats as open standards, a move that could spark a war with technology rivals over standard document formats.Microsoft said it would submit its Office Open XML document format technology to the International Standards Organization (ISO) to be adopted as an international standard in time for the launch of the next version of its Office software suite, code-named Office 12. So, looks like it's war. Read the licenses on these file formats. That's my advice. If the license makes it impossible for GPL'd software to use the standard, then it isn't an 'open' standard. It's just an anticompetitive maneuver against Microsoft's only real competition. This is so basic. Does Apple not know? Intel? It is interesting and telling that Microsoft found so few to stand up with them, but two is enough to make the assertion that the standard, if approved, is not tied to one vendor. You may wish to review David A. Wheeler's Open Letter to Microsoft for many more details: Basically, if you choose Microsoft’s XML format, you have decided against open competition, in perpetuity. . . . If a specification cannot be implemented using the GPL, it discriminates against open source software (because the GPL is the most common such license). If a specification discriminates against open source software implementations, then it is not a specification that allows open competition. This was not as big an issue decades ago, when large-scale open source software systems were uncommon, but it sure is now. Andy Updegrove hassome quick thoughts on the subject on his blog, which I asked if I could share withyou. What does it mean? And then after that, I'll provide the full press release."

(Via GrokLaw.)

The Avenging Unicorn

The Avenging Unicorn
Originally uploaded by wigu.

For every leetle girl & boy.

Sunday Mornings

Getting up early (Ten am) on a sunday morning after a fabulous night eating heavily at Jeanne's Thanksgiving party.

Cleaning with Dave & Gali, with nobody else up.

Then relaxing with coffee & Veal & Potato Pelmeni, and watching Intolerable Cruelty with them.

Perfection.

Dr. Pepper commercials

Stacey's Mom in a commercial?

Tying in prune juice tinged sugar water?

Just Brilliant.

Users sue Match.com for date fraud or Taking Cheap Shots

The Whois information for match.com:

Registrant:
Match.com, L. P. (DOM-1326381)
3001 E. Pres. George Bush Hwy Ste. 100 Richardson TX - 75082 US


Just sayin...

Users sue Match.com for date fraud: "Xeni Jardin:





Frustrated Match.com users are suing the online dating service over complaints that company employees posed as interested date prospects -- online and in-person! -- to trick accountholders into re-upping paid subscriptions. Please stifle your ROFLs.

Match.com is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy.

'This is a grossly fraudulent practice that Match.com is engaged in,' said H. Scott Leviant, a lawyer at Los Angeles law firm Arias, Ozzello & Gignac LLP, which brought the suit.

Link to story (Thanks, Mo)"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Roll Call

Isn't "your honor, it was the truth" a defense against charges of impugnment?

Roll Call: "

Roll Call (sub.req.) ...

The partisan spat over the veracity of testimony by oil company executives last week spilled over into personal barbs on the Senate floor Wednesday, with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) accusing Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) of impugning his character on the chamber floor.

‘It’s been brought to my attention that the Senator from Illinois has unfairly maligned my character,’ Stevens declared on the floor almost three hours after Durbin accused Stevens of making it easier for oil executives to lie to Congress about whether their companies were involved in closed-door energy policy meetings with Vice President Cheney in 2001.

How often do witnesses not get sworn in when they go before congressional committees?

"

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Looking West at 39th St & 6th Ave

Looking West at 39th St & 6th Ave
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

The sun was shining down NY streets at & this morning, on what felt like the first morning of Winter at a bitter 33 Degrees F.

Notable.

POLITICS: The War on Gaping Assholes: "Abraham Lincoln once said that when you ‘familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage you prepare your own limbs to wear them.’ Pat Robertson quoted Lincoln when he launched his Presidential bid, as did Paul Giamatti in The Negotiator. The sentiment, that when we are exposed to oppression we act as though we are oppressed (even when we are free), can be applied to the war on porn. Or the war on the hardest of hardcore porn. And the war on pee in porn. Those at SuicideGirls and SG’s members know of the potential of prosecution because of depictions of simulated gore and urination.



Because the Devil lives in Photoshop and people’s urtheras, many other hardcore porn sites are seeking web hosting outside of the country and, like SuicideGirls, have changed or removed images.



Of course, if you are a guest of the CIA at Guantanamo Bay, those acts aren’t vulgar; they’re standard operating procedure.

Ironically, the behaviors described as prosecutable and obscene in the FBI memo overlap quite directly with behaviors that FBI agents and others have witnessed at U.S. facilities holding prisoners in the War on Terror. At these facilities, actual torture—not adults hurting each other for sexual pleasure, but adults torturing other adults in order to coerce confessions—has reportedly occurred. Pictures have surfaced showing U.S. soldiers engaging in a level of brutality that makes the brutality dished out by Max Hardcore seem gentle in comparison. And at the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an FBI agent has reported seeing prisoners 'chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.' One had pulled his own hair out so that it lay in a pile on the floor next to him. Even more ironically, it was Gonzales who, in 2002, as White House Counsel, signed off on a memo widening the possibilities for violent behavior by U.S. interrogators, a memo that led directly to Americans viewing, in pictures from Abu Ghraib and reports from Guantánamo Bay, the sadism, urination, and defecation that Gonzales appears to abhor so greatly in another context.



And still more ironically, this month top Bush administration officials have been fiercely lobbying against a move by Senator John McCain to outlaw any further torture of prisoners held by the United States, with Vice President Dick Cheney emerging as the most prominent and passionate administration defender of torture. Meanwhile, American conservatives have responded positively to Gonzales's move to curtail the sadistic porn available to Americans, with the Family Research Council announcing 'a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general' as a result of the new obscenity squad.

It’s very easy to apply a ‘slippery slope’ argument to the idea that torture is ‘acceptable’ in certain circumstances of national security, or that it’s a ‘slippery slope’ if you condone or censor people like Max Hardcore. But there is a huge difference between the investigation and prosecution, case by case, of obscene, nonconsensual acts and inciting fear in people who share the predilection for rubberized hoses in asses, enjoy viewing or taking part in double-fisted, double-penetration, and/or like peeing on themselves or their man-whore.



But there’s something to be said that if pictures were posted on the internet of CIA interrogators ‘protecting freedom,’ they would be violating federal obscenity laws.

(Written by: Christopher)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

The Democratic Hawks are calling for withdrawal from Iraq.

The AP article on Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.'s ( [After serving in the Marines in the early 1950's, he re-enlisted in 1966, at the age of 34, and served in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross for Gallantry, according to The Almanac of American Politics.] ) comments are far harsher.

On Cheney's comments criticizing criticism:

Vice President Dick Cheney jumped into the fray Wednesday by assailing Democrats who contend the Bush administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq, calling their criticism ''one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.''

Murtha, a Marine intelligence officer in Vietnam, angrily shot back at Cheney: ''I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.''

And there's this bit:

...he related several stories of visiting wounded troops, including one who was blinded and lost both his hands but had been denied a Purple Heart because friendly fire caused his injuries.

''I met with the commandant. I said, 'If you don't give him a Purple Heart, I'll give him one of mine.' And they gave him a Purple Heart,'' said Murtha, who has two.

Here's more about Mutha.

Bethany reminds me that my most excellent high school English/US History teacher Dr. Doug Collar celebrated 25 years of his jazz shows on WKAR radio this summer.

I suddenly feel very, very young. I can only hope to look that good after 25 more years.

;-)

I call this "Woodward getting taken down a notch".

Woodward is Woodward: "

I'm not sure I have an opinion on Bob Woodward's culpability for keeping silent about the fact that he'd been a target of the Valerie Plame leak well before other reporters. While courts at all levels concluded that Matt Cooper and Judith Miller were required to testify, nothing would have required them or Woodward to rush forward unbidden. Woodward's worst offense was joining in the Victoria Toensing/Joe DiGenova chorus of 'there's no crime here,' which is only a little more shameful than it already was, now that we know what he knew.

Much more interesting are the obvious strains in his 'odd relationship' with his Post colleagues, especially Walter Pincus. I should say that I know nothing about what goes on in the Post newsroom. But for as long as I've been reading the Washington Post regularly, I've found it sort of ironic that the paper has some of the most amazing investigative reporters in history, reporters who really earn that overused modifier. Pincus and now retired George Lardner are the best examples, but Morton Mintz was another and in the younger generation, probably Dana Priest is a fourth. All are the kind of reporters who understand how to break open a federal agency, nurture an unhappy bureaucrat with a story to tell until he's ready to tell it, or read through 10,000 pages of public records to find the connections between two events. And none of them are or were all that well known.

Meanwhile the paper also had someone who was probably the embodiment of the term 'investigative reporter' to a generation, but who is actually not that at all. Woodward instead is a stenographer of the narratives of the people at the very highest levels of power, recording their semi-official versions of history. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just a different activity. Even Deep Throat turns out to be not a White House underling shocked at what he's witnessing but basically a rival center of power in Washington at the time, the post-Hoover FBI. I've always wondered if that caused a little tension at the paper. (When I say 'stenographer,' echoing Maureen Dowd's criticism of Judith Miller, I don't mean to associate Woodward with Miller, whose 'entanglement' with sources and her role in the story, makes her something other than a journalist.)

I was glad to see that Greg Anrig linked to an old Joan Didion essay about most of Woodward's books. To my mind the most interesting and revealing of those books is the most unlikely: Wired, his out of print 1984 biography of John Belushi. Wired is almost like a French experimental novel of the 60s, like the novel whose name and author I forget right now that is written entirely without the letter 'e': It is a book about humor written entirely from the perspective of a person without any sense of humor or irony. It's years since I read it, but I vividly remember the flat earnestness with which Woodward recounts the 'Bees' segment from the early Saturday Night Live, and Belushi's dislike of it, the same tone he would later bring to Colin Powell's march to war. He has no idea why people would dress up as bees, laugh at people dressed as bees, or that there are motives and paradoxes underneath the surface. Woodward's mind has a total literalness to it -- as Anrig says, he believes that 'what's really going on' is exactly the same as what his sources tell him. That's wired in, not something he can do anything about, and so I've always been a little sympathetic to Woodward. (And before anyone says 'Asperger's,' let me just say my name's not Bill Frist and I don't do remote medical diagnosis.) And you can get something out of his reporting, if you bring your own sense of irony and skepticism.

p.s.: The book I was thinking of is 'Le Disparition,' by Georges Perec, which I cannot claim to have read either in French or in its English translation. From Google and Wikipedia, I learn that such texts are called 'lipograms' and that 'writing this way is impractical.' Indeed.

"

(Via The Decembrist.)

If you're savoring the Nouveau, I'm going to laugh at you.

Paris: Beaujolais Nouveau Wino Weekend Begins: "

In North America, people celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November; it's a day of gratitude, love, and generosity. France, being France, celebrates a wine -- the year's new Beaujolais -- on the third Thursday of November. It's a day of drinking, drinking, and, uh, drinking. Beaujolais can be most charitably described as simple, young, and fruity. Most Frenchmen, however, describe the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau as a great excuse to drink the cheap vinegary stuff. In large quantities. This is not one of those wines where you sniff at the cork, take a sip, then swish around in your mouth to fully appreciate it in all its exquisite complexity. It's more of a 'whoo, the weekend's almost here, let's go to some smoky old wine bar with friends, and drink bottle after bottle of the stuff while snacking on little sausages-on-a-toothpick!' No tips needed to find a good place to quaff the ol' Beaujo': almost all cafés, brasseries, and wine bars in Paris and the rest of France will be offering a special today and in the next few days to come. So elbow up to your favorite bar counter with your friends, and let all that astringent goodness flow. Incidentally, in New York, today's advent of the Georges Duboeuf vintage shall be commemorated with various Frenchish restaurants serving dishes and/or cocktails created with the wine, available through November 20.

Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2005 [Official site]

[Eric Z. Chang]

Previously: Best Lebanese Dining in Paris: El Fares, Chocolate, Meet Booze, Digital Living Festival, The Campbell Apartment, Music Mash

"

(Via Gridskipper.)

Once there is PC hardware that supports the CableCARD device, we should be able to see linux devices coming out soon afterwards that also support it.

Which means finally a workable MythTV setup without needing external Cable Box Tuners.

I can't wait.

Microsoft announces CableCARD for late 2006: "

We know they’ve been long and hard at work getting it, and now Microsoft’s finally got the
missing link to their Media Center
platform strategy: CableCARD support. This
means, of course, that no longer will Media
Center users (or Vista users, as it were) be subject to the whim and fancy of cable operators and their boxes, but
will be able to get true, integrated high definition cable television support straight to the PC. There is a caveat,
however. Microsoft is only penned to get one-way CableCARD support (v1.0), meaning Pay-Per-View, on-demand programming,
advanced EPG, and the like (v2.0) are out of the question.



[Thanks, Dave]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.

"

(Via engadget.com.)

I know there's a purchasing power parity joke in here somewhere...

Guy fixes computers in exchange for sex: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Sync has a short piece about a 34-year-old guy named 'Ray Digerati' who placed an ad of Craig's list that said 'WILL FIX COMPUTERS FOR SEXUAL FAVORS,' and he says it's been non-stop action ever since.

Most of the calls I get are for spyware removal and viruses. One girl didn't even wait for me to finish the virus scan—she just grabbed me and gave me a blow job.

Do you have a set, um, pay scale?

No, I leave it up to their discretion. One girl didn't want to have intercourse, so she offered me a massage and then finished me off with a hand job. It's basically all about the time I spend: If I'm working for one or two hours, I'd like a blow job. An orgasm for every two hours of service is pretty fair. If it's something simple that I can fix in 15 minutes, I'd like to get a foot massage.

Link"

(Via Boing Boing.)

For the record, after watching House last night, I'm giving up Sugar Free Chewing Gum.

Do you have to have a habit before you can proclaim that you are giving it up?

Umm, I've also stopped beating my wife.

Open Source is a fairly good program. It's on my list of podcasts I try to keep up with.

You've most likely: "

You've most likely heard of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff who's been making the media rounds recently, discussing what really happened during the lead-up to war and after. This evening he's going to be on Chris Lydon's Open Source radio show. He'll be taking listener questions both off the air and also from the show's website. If it doesn't play in your area, they also stream it from the site.

"

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

As usual, Ted Stevens makes me sick.

The executives [ from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. ] were not under oath when they testified [ about meeting with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress ] , so they are not vulnerable to charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) not to swear in the executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making "any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation" to Congress.

Frakking wankers all, I tell you.

Desperate Santorum: "

Desperate Santorum makes play for post-Enlightenment Era voter bloc ...

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Saturday that he doesn't believe that intelligent design belongs in the science classroom.

Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a 'legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom.'

But on Saturday, the Republican said that, 'Science leads you where it leads you.'

Actually, to insulate themselves from charges of liberal bias aren't journalists supposed to refer to this as 'what some Democrats refer to as 'science''?

Just asking.

"

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Ann Arbor...

Finally, I Am A Bathroom Graffito: "

Received in email from Tanner Beck, who says:

Suprisingly obscure bathroom graffiti I found in the men’s room at the 8-Ball in Ann Arbor, MI. If people were writing my name above trough-style urinals, I’d like to think random people would email me pictures of it.

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

you should be happier for me, but I understand: ""

(Via a softer world.)

FW: [IP] Young Britons flock east to answer India's call-centre crisis

This feels too cute to be true, but I suppose it's easy to get lost in a rising tide.

;-)

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Monday, Nov 14, 2005 7:22 am
Subject: [IP] Young Britons flock east to answer India's call-centre crisis

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk>
Date: November 14, 2005 6:15:00 AM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Young Britons flock east to answer India's call-centre crisis

Hi Dave:

Here's a surprising new twist on the out-sourcing issue, an issue which was featuring a lot in IP a little while ago.

cheers

Brian

====
From the Independent - a national UK paper - yesterday:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article326822.ece

Young Britons flock east to answer India's call-centre crisis

In a remarkable reversal, the subcontinent's telesales firms are eagerly recruiting British labour to fill a skills shortage
By Stephen Khan
Published: 13 November 2005

An army of British workers is being recruited to staff India's vast network of call centres because of a shortage of suitable candidates on the subcontinent.

In a remarkable reversal of the outsourcing that has seen thousands of jobs lost in the UK, telesales operations are looking to fill a skills gap in the east with young Britons willing to work on Indian wages.

And they are eagerly taking up the challenge. Both recent graduates and those with experience of working in British call centres are flocking to sign up for jobs in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore that pay just �350 a month.

It might not sound like much, but many are finding that they can earn enough to live on for six months or a year before heading off travelling. Indeed, a stint in the call centres followed by a period mellowing out on Goa's beaches or touring the palaces of Rajasthan is becoming the fashionable way for single young Britons to spend a gap year.

However, with surveys suggesting that India's telesales industry will be short of more than 120,000 employees over the next two years, many of the newcomers are expected to stay on.

The problem has arisen because while millions of Indians aspire to work in the call centres, managements are becoming more particular about whom they hire. This follows complaints from callers in the UK about staff being unable to understand them.

There has also been a high attrition rate in many of the centres, as Indians became fed up with punishing hours and abuse from callers.

That has not put off young Britons, though. The clamour for jobs in India has reached such a level that agencies have been set up to place them with Indian firms.

One is Launch Offshore, founded by Tim Bond. "People are desperate to sample a slice of another way of life," Mr Bond said. His firm has close to 100 workers in India and expects to place more than 200 next year. Those who sign up are given flights out and accommodation as well as Indian wages.

Among the first to land in the subcontinent was Kenny Rooney, a 28-year-old from Livingston in Scotland. He had worked in a call centre at home, but after nine months in India says he does not want to return. "This is an incredible country," he said, speaking from Bombay. "I have had a brilliant time and met people from all over the world."

Further down the west coast is Pune, a hub of the call-centre industry. Ian Hussey, a 20-year-old business studies student at Sheffield Hallam University, recently began working there. "Doing the work from the bottom up, you learn about the people and the company. It's great."

Young Britons of Indian origin are also finding the jobs offer them a chance to rediscover their roots. Among them is Hasmita Patel, who is also working in Pune. "This has been the best thing I've ever done," said Ms Patel, from Leicester. "It has really allowed me to see the country and get to know people. I've learned so much about myself."

Those operating the centres are delighted by the newcomers. "The cultural fit of the British works wonders. They are very enterprising. They tell me about how we can enhance what we are doing here, what we can share," said Sukaya Katoch, head of training at Pune call centre GTL.

An army of British workers is being recruited to staff India's vast network of call centres because of a shortage of suitable candidates on the subcontinent.

In a remarkable reversal of the outsourcing that has seen thousands of jobs lost in the UK, telesales operations are looking to fill a skills gap in the east with young Britons willing to work on Indian wages.

And they are eagerly taking up the challenge. Both recent graduates and those with experience of working in British call centres are flocking to sign up for jobs in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore that pay just �350 a month.

It might not sound like much, but many are finding that they can earn enough to live on for six months or a year before heading off travelling. Indeed, a stint in the call centres followed by a period mellowing out on Goa's beaches or touring the palaces of Rajasthan is becoming the fashionable way for single young Britons to spend a gap year.

However, with surveys suggesting that India's telesales industry will be short of more than 120,000 employees over the next two years, many of the newcomers are expected to stay on.

The problem has arisen because while millions of Indians aspire to work in the call centres, managements are becoming more particular about whom they hire. This follows complaints from callers in the UK about staff being unable to understand them.

There has also been a high attrition rate in many of the centres, as Indians became fed up with punishing hours and abuse from callers.

That has not put off young Britons, though. The clamour for jobs in India has reached such a level that agencies have been set up to place them with Indian firms.

One is Launch Offshore, founded by Tim Bond. "People are desperate to sample a slice of another way of life," Mr Bond said. His firm has close to 100 workers in India and expects to place more than 200 next year. Those who sign up are given flights out and accommodation as well as Indian wages.

Among the first to land in the subcontinent was Kenny Rooney, a 28-year-old from Livingston in Scotland. He had worked in a call centre at home, but after nine months in India says he does not want to return. "This is an incredible country," he said, speaking from Bombay. "I have had a brilliant time and met people from all over the world."

Further down the west coast is Pune, a hub of the call-centre industry. Ian Hussey, a 20-year-old business studies student at Sheffield Hallam University, recently began working there. "Doing the work from the bottom up, you learn about the people and the company. It's great."

Young Britons of Indian origin are also finding the jobs offer them a chance to rediscover their roots. Among them is Hasmita Patel, who is also working in Pune. "This has been the best thing I've ever done," said Ms Patel, from Leicester. "It has really allowed me to see the country and get to know people. I've learned so much about myself."

Those operating the centres are delighted by the newcomers. "The cultural fit of the British works wonders. They are very enterprising. They tell me about how we can enhance what we are doing here, what we can share," said Sukaya Katoch, head of training at Pune call centre GTL.

--
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/

-------------------------------------
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

Charlie alerts me to why xfs & reiser can be bad on PC hardware.

Don't trust your hardware: "align="texttop" border="0" height="325" hspace="4" vspace="4" width="400" />

I wasn’t able to see David Maynor’s ‘You are the Trojan’
(pdf) talk at Toorcon, but it’s a really
interesting subject. With such a large emphasis being placed on tightening perimeter security with firewalls and IDS
systems how do attacks keep getting through? The user: bringing laptops on site, connecting home systems through a VPN,
or just sacrificing security for speed.

Peripherals can also be a major threat. USB and other computer components use Direct Memory Access (DMA) to bypass
the processor. This allows for high performance data transfers. The CPU is completely oblivious to the DMA activity.
There is a lot of trust involved in this situation. Here’s how this could be exploited: Like a diligent individual
you’ve locked you Windows session. Someone walks in with their hacked USB key and plugs it into your computer. The USB
key uses its DMA to kill the process locking your session. Voila! your terminal is now wide open and all they had to do
was plug in their USB key, PSP, iPod… With the XBox 360’s eagerness to work with your iPod, I’m guessing it is probably
just vulnerable to this attack as anything else.

Has anyone done this? Maximillian Dornseif presented 0wn3d by an iPod at CanSecWest. The firewire protocol allows
direct memory access and doesn’t require a host which makes this attack even easier. He’s got presentation materials
and code for iPod Linux on his site. There are
legitimate uses. If you were doing forensics you could copy the live memory contents of the machine with minimal
effects.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.

"

(Via hack a day.)

Noice.

CULTURE: London Dating Scene: Brains, the New Black: "Tired of looking for your soulmate in sea of drunken louts at a bar? Or trying to have a talk at a club pounding music out at 150 decibels? Perhaps the new 'intellidating' scene is for you!

Speed dating and clubbing just don't seem to fill the void for many lonely hearts any more. 'Intellidating' is being acclaimed as the hot new way to romance.



Debating societies, art classes and poetry readings -- all are thriving in the British capital as dating turns cerebral.



The trend has been spotted by a wide range of social commentators and even prompted the heavyweight magazine The Economist to declare: 'Seriousness is booming.'



The appropriately named Sebastian Shakespeare wrote in London's Evening Standard newspaper: 'Debates and poetry readings are fast becoming London's most romantic nights out.'

OK, I'm not so hot on poetry readings, but a break from the typical dating schemes is a welcome change according to Ginny Greewood, who runs a club dedicated to cerebral lonelyhearts.

'You are not concentrating on what is happening from the navel to the knee -- you are connecting to the gray matter,' she told Reuters.



'They have got the income and the intelligence: they just need someone to organize their social diaries.'



'I think intellidating is a great phrase,' she said. 'I'm sure it will end up in the dictionary. If you are an intelligent person in an important position at work, you are not going to hang out in a bar or go speed dating.'

John Gordon and Jeremy O'Grady have set up a similar scene -- a debate club called Intelligence Squared that has sold out every night they've organized.

So cerebral daters out for rarefied seduction are treated to mind-stretching debates like 'Better rough justice than another 9/11' and 'The rise of China spells the decline of the West.'



'Whether it is dating or debating is debatable but this represents an opportunity for people who want intelligent dating,' O'Grady said.



'There is such a lack of institutional fora other than the dance floor or the club for them to meet. It is all so hideously difficult.'

Sounds like my cup of tea.

(Written by: Noctua)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

FW: [IP] November mini-AIR - Not Valid in Kansas

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Friday, Nov 11, 2005 3:24 pm
Subject: [IP] November mini-AIR - Not Valid in Kansas

Begin forwarded message:

----------------------------------------------------------
2005-11-06 Not Valid in Kansas

Many things are no longer valid in Kansas, thanks to the November
8, 2005 mandate by the Kansas State Board of Education.

As a public service, we have created warning stickers that say:

NOT VALID IN KANSAS
as per order of the Board of Education,
November 8, 2005

Use of this device or substance may
require, imply, and/or endorse the existence
of one or more of the following:
chemistry; evolution; electromagnetism;
gravity; mathematics; thermodynamics;
education.

You can download a printable PDF file:
<http://www.improbable.com/teach/lessons2005/NOT-VALID-
INKANSAS.pdf>.

NOTE: The Kansas Board of Education is co-winner of the 1999 Ig
Nobel Prize for Science Education for its earlier work on this
subject.

-------------------------------------
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Scott enlightens me tonight with the knowledge that Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin all died at the ripe age of 27.

Check out the 27 Club.

darn

I accidentally deleted Yo La Tengo's and then nothing turned itself
inside-out.

Does anybody have a copy?

Finally, a raison d'être for my 20" widescreen monitor.

Download it and watch it full screen.

The scene with the gendarmes is really, really rich.

C'était un Rendezvous: "

C'était un Rendezvous:

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.

It has just been remastered and released on DVD.

Quicktime here. It's absolutely terrifying, despite looking a lot like a video game. 'Red light! Red light! Red light! GARBAGE TRUCK!!!' The only thing it's missing is a woman pushing a baby carriage, and a couple of guys carrying a plate-glass window.
"

(Via jwz.)

Senator Joseph Lieberman is a tool.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured "enemy combatants" at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts.

...


In addition to Mr. Specter, Republicans voting against the bill were Senators John E. Sununu of New Hampshire, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. The five Democrats voting for the bill were Senators Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

FW: [IP] Greetings from Idiot America

It has been 11 years since I read any hofstadter.

Perhaps too long.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Thursday, Nov 10, 2005 9:21 am
Subject: [IP] Greetings from Idiot America

Begin forwarded message:

From: Kurt Albershardt <kurt@nv.net>
Date: November 10, 2005 12:40:36 AM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Greetings from Idiot America

Greetings from Idiot America

by Charles Pierce
Nov 01 '05
Esquire Magazine, by way of <http://templeofpolemic.proboards42.com/index.cgi?board=theo&action=print&thread=1130126466>

..

The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents�for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power�the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they're talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based.

It's a dishonest phrase for a dishonest time, "faith-based," a cheap huckster's phony term of art. It sounds like an additive, an artificial flavoring to make crude biases taste of bread and wine. It's a word for people without the courage to say they are religious, and it is beloved not only by politicians too cowardly to debate something as substantial as faith but also by Idiot America, which is too lazy to do it.

After all, faith is about the heart and soul and about transcendence. Anything calling itself faith-based is admitting that it is secular and profane. In the way that it relies on the Gut to determine its science, its politics, and even the way it sends its people to war, Idiot America is not a country of faith; it's a faith-based country, fashioning itself in the world, which is not the place where faith is best fashioned.

..

How does it work? This is how it works. On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."

A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy Party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. The sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news in it is where it appeared.

On the front page.

Of The New York Times.

..

--

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