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.
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 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.)
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.
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: "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.)
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.
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.)
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
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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.)
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.
