satmandu

Thursday, August 25, 2005

FW: [IP] OT: The 2007 Beloit College Mindset List

Who is Greg Gumble?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Wednesday, Aug 24, 2005 4:43 pm
Subject: [IP] OT: The 2007 Beloit College Mindset List

Begin forwarded message:

From: Richard Forno <rforno@infowarrior.org>
Date: August 24, 2005 4:38:06 PM EDT
To: Infowarrior List <infowarrior@g2-forward.org>
Cc: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: OT: The 2007 Beloit College Mindset List

http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/

In the coming weeks, millions of students will be entering college for the
first time. On average, these members of the Class of 2009 will be 18 years
old, which means they were born in 1987. Starbucks, souped-up car stereos,
telephone voicemail systems, and Bill Gates have always been a part of their
lives.

Each August, as students start to arrive, Beloit College releases the Beloit
College Mindset List, which offers a world view of today's entering college
students. It is the creation of Beloit�s Keefer Professor of the Humanities
Tom McBride and Director of Public Affairs Ron Nief.

McBride, who directs Beloit�s First Year Initiatives (FYI) program for entering students, notes that "This year�s entering students have grown up
in a country where the main business has become business, and where
terrorism, from obscure beginnings, has built up slowly but surely to become
the threat it is today. Cable channels have become as mainstream as the 'Big
3' used to be, formality in dress has become more quaint than ever, and Aretha Franklin, Kermit the Frog and Jimmy Carter have become old-timers."

�Each year,� according to Nief, �When Beloit releases the Mindset List, it
is the birth year of the entering students that is the most disturbing fact
for most readers. This year will come as no exception and, once again, the
faculty will remain the same age as the students get younger.�

The list is distributed to faculty on campus during the New Students Days
orientation. According to McBride, �It is an important reminder, as faculty
start to show signs of �hardening of the references,� that we think about
the touchstones and benchmarks of a generation that has grown up with CNN,
home computers, AIDS awareness, digital cameras and the Bush political dynasty. We should also keep in mind that these students missed out on the
pleasures of being tossed in the back of a station wagon with a bunch of friends and told to keep the noise down, walking in the woods without fearing Lyme Disease, or setting out to try all of the 28 ice cream flavors
at Howard Johnson�s.�

According to Nief, �This is not serious in-depth research. It is meant to be
thought-provoking and fun, yet accurate. It is as relevant as possible, given the broad social and geographic diversity of our students, who are drawn from every state and 50 countries. It is always open to challenge, which has an additional benefit in that it reminds us of students� varied
backgrounds. It is still a good reflection of the attitudes and experiences
of the young people that we must be aware of from the first day of their college experience.�

BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST�
FOR THE CLASS OF 2009

Most students entering college this fall were born in 1987.
1. Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.
2. They don't remember when "cut and paste" involved scissors.
3. Heart-lung transplants have always been possible.
4. Wayne Gretzky never played for Edmonton.
5. Boston has been working on the "The Big Dig" all their lives.
6. With little need to practice, most of them do not know how to tie a
tie.
7. Pay-Per-View television has always been an option.
8. They never had the fun of being thrown into the back of a station wagon with six others.
9. Iran and Iraq have never been at war with each other.
10. They are more familiar with Greg Gumbel than with Bryant Gumbel.
11. Philip Morris has always owned Kraft Foods.
12. Al-Qaida has always existed with Osama bin Laden at its head.
13. They learned to count with Lotus 1-2-3.
14. Car stereos have always rivaled home component systems.
15. Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker have never preached on television.
16. Voice mail has always been available.
17. "Whatever" is not part of a question but an expression of sullen rebuke.
18. The federal budget has always been more than a trillion dollars.
19. Condoms have always been advertised on television.
20. They may have fallen asleep playing with their Gameboys in the crib.
21. They have always had the right to burn the flag.
22. For daily caffeine emergencies, Starbucks has always been around the
corner.
23. Ferdinand Marcos has never been in charge of the Philippines.
24. Money put in their savings account the year they were born earned
almost 7% interest.
25. Bill Gates has always been worth at least a billion dollars.
26. Dirty dancing has always been acceptable.
27. Southern fried chicken, prepared with a blend of 11 herbs and spices, has always been available in China.
28. Michael Jackson has always been bad, and greed has always been good.
29. The Starship Enterprise has always looked dated.
30. Pixar has always existed.
31. There has never been a "fairness doctrine" at the FCC.
32. Judicial appointments routinely have been "Borked."
33. Aretha Franklin has always been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
34. There have always been zebra mussels in the Great Lakes.
35. Police have always been able to search garbage without a search warrant.
36. It has always been possible to walk from England to mainland Europe
on dry land.
37. They have grown up in a single superpower world.
38. They missed the oat bran diet craze.
39. American Motors has never existed.
40. Scientists have always been able to see supernovas.
41. Les Miserables has always been on stage.
42. Halogen lights have always been available at home, with a warning.
43. "Baby M" may be a classmate, and contracts with surrogate mothers
have always been legal.
44. RU486, the "morning after pill," has always been on the market.
45. There has always been a pyramid in front of the Louvre in Paris.
46. British Airways has always been privately owned.
47. Irradiated food has always been available but controversial.
48. Snowboarding has always been a popular winter pastime.
49. Libraries have always been the best centers for computer technology
and access to good software.
50. Biosphere 2 has always been trying to create a revolution in the life sciences.
51. The Hubble Telescope has always been focused on new frontiers.
52. Researchers have always been looking for stem cells.
53. They do not remember "a kinder and gentler nation."
54. They never saw the shuttle Challenger fly.
55. The TV networks have always had cable partners.
56. Airports have always had upscale shops and restaurants.
57. Black Americans have always been known as African-Americans.
58. They never saw Pat Sajak or Arsenio Hall host a late night
television show.
59. Matt Groening has always had a Life in Hell.
60. Salman Rushdie has always been watching over his shoulder.
61. Digital cameras have always existed.
62. Tom Landry never coached the Cowboys.
63. Time Life and Warner Communications have always been joined.
64. CNBC has always been on the air.
65. The Field of Dreams has always been drawing people to Iowa.
66. They never saw a Howard Johnson's with 28 ice cream flavors.
67. Reindeer at Christmas have always distinguished between secular and
religious decorations.
68. Entertainment Weekly has always been on the newsstand.
69. Lyme Disease has always been a ticking concern in the woods.
70. Jimmy Carter has always been an elder statesman.
71. Miss Piggy and Kermit have always dwelt in Disneyland.
72. America's Funniest Home Videos has always been on television.
73. Their nervous new parents heard C. Everett Koop proclaim nicotine as
addictive as heroin.
74. Lever has always been looking for 2000 parts to clean.
75. They have always been challenged to distinguish between news and entertainment on cable TV.

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

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

False or True...:

Is this true? (from http://www.houseoftomorrow.com/):April 30, 2005 > Work on Coraline Begins
Stephin Merritt has started work on a musical adaptation of the children's book Coraline by Neil Gaiman. The projected finish date for this is fall 2006. It will be presented at St. Ann's Warehouse, in Brooklyn, New York, as well as several other theaters around the country.Posted by CG

It's completely true. I'm a huge fan of Stephin Merritt's work, so I'm really excited. (And Stephin's Coraline play will be a completely different entity to the Henry Selick Coraline movie.)

...

"

(Via Neil Gaiman's Journal.)

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

algorithmic ring tones

The GTK2 rendering engine Cairo has the option to use algorithmic rendering for the pictures that are the backgrounds for buttons. The idea is that you rapidly get bored of the same background on all the buttons in an interface, thus leading to a paucity of button decoration.

With algorithmic rendering, each background is generated on the fly, thus creating different backgrounds for each button.

In a similar vein, I have noticed how tired I get of mobile phone ring tones. There are very few rings that I mind hearing over and over again. But what if something similar could be applied here?

The problem is that we won't notice our phones ringing unless we notice the pattern in the ring. But I wonder what kinds of patterns are needed for recognition.

Could the pitch and ring tone be varied every time the pohone rings? How far can we go?

I even wonder if a ring tone could just be a silence mask imposed on an arbitrary sound segment.

Would we recognize a pattern of pauses in arbitrary music?

I'm sure somebody has already researched this...

Here are the rankings.

As journalism grows ever more...: "
As journalism grows ever more fractured and shallow, The Washington Monthly remains one of the industry's truly noble institutions. Its sense of public service and the national welfare isn't often rewarded with the kind of 'buzz' that magazine editors obsessively pursue -- to the detriment of our collective IQs. Which is why it's great to see the Monthly's ingenious and inspiring take on the silly ritual of college rankings rewarded with a big Washington Post write-up. (You can thank the magazine's visionary founder, Charlie Peters, by checking out his well-received new book.)
"

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Found Art.

How to get Adium to connect to Google Talk.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Danger in Bangladesh: "On August 17, there were 459 bomb blasts all across Bangladesh, in 63 of the 64 districts, within a space of 30 minutes. In the leaflets, in Bangla and Arabic, found with the bomb devices, Jama'atul Mujahideen, Bangladesh, which was banned on February 23 this year, said: 'It is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh. There is no future with man-made law.' (from the Daily Star)In the 64th district, Munshiganj, where there were no bomb blasts, 120 bombs were seized by the police on the next day ((source)

The bombs injured around 150 people and killed two; their intention seems to have been not to kill but a show of strength.

This map makes the point quite clear.

Meanwhile, Taliban-like forces terrorize the country-side. (e.g., this The young man's feet were tied to a tree, his head dangling inches above the ground. A microphone was held to his mouth while he was tortured so that the villagers who were not present to witness the 'trial' could hear his screams.
The first to hear them were the men in uniform who did not stir from the police station, not far from the tree. The screams rose and fell till the man was dead.
Their mission accomplished, the killers issued fresh warnings to villagers against straying from the Islamic way, swore their loyalty to Bangla Bhai and left the scene.
The incident is one of about 500 cases of killing and torture by Bangla Bhai's armed Islamic bands that were documented by Taskforce Against Torture, a human rights group founded in Bangladesh three years ago.

Indian retired police officer,now commentator KPS Gill writes:

Today, the Islamists, led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, who collaborated with Pakistan in the atrocities of 1971, as well as Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, are again firmly entrenched in the country's politics, its Government, and crucially in its institutions of education and mass culture.

The coordinated series of 459 explosions within a single hour across 63 of Bangladesh's 64 districts on August 18, 2005, was little more than the visible tip of the menacing iceberg that threatens this luckless country. All societies that foster terrorism have eventually themselves fallen prey to this scourge.

Bangladesh cannot be an exception, though the country's political leadership has sought to cover up the realities of state complicity with flat denials of state support to extremism and terror, even as they have sought to mask the steady spiral towards thuggish Islamist extremism, lawlessness and disorder.

Indeed, the falsification has gone well beyond the state. A wide range of international institutions and foreign Governments have contributed directly to the deception, speaking in glowing terms of Bangladesh's arguable 'successes' in development, in health sector reforms, in population control, and in non-governmental sector operations, all of which have been projected as examples for other developing countries to follow.

The truth of the comprehensive political mischief and administrative mismanagement in Bangladesh has systematically been brushed under the carpet.
This truth is now becoming increasingly difficult to conceal, even in the most prejudiced circles, and despite the state's relentless policy of suppression of the national Press and of denial of access to the international media.

It is significant in this context that an independent study carried out by Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, which drew up a listing of 60 of the world's failed and failing states on the basis of twelve specific 'indicators of instability', placed Bangladesh at the 17th position, among the 20 'critical' states that are most at risk.

There is, unfortunately, no evidence of any visible transformation in the trajectory of politics or of the orientation of the state in Bangladesh, despite the country's growing difficulties.

A vigorous American response is necessary to keep Bangladesh from becoming another jihad factory."

(Via TPMCafe - main.)

Rum, Osama, and the Lash: "

Writing in Legal Affairs, Douglas R. Burgess looks to the history of European piracy as a possible precedent for containing latter-day Islamist terrorists. Burgess admits that the analogy 'seems like a stretch' at first, but points out that England's Queen Elizbeth initially abetted the country's later pirate tormentors by recrtuiting them as adjunct forces to the Royal Navy--much as 'the United States is credited with manufacturing its own enemy by training, funding, and outfitting terrorist groups in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Central America during the cold war.' It's unclear how pirates came by the whole blowing-themselves-up-to-achieve-eternal-reward-in-Paradise M.O., but we at Wonkette HQ are admittedly derelict in our studies of Elizabethan naval law. Actually, Burgess's argument is a thoughtful and suggestive one, noting that international jurists managed to strip pirates of most political sponsors by declaring them 'scorners of the law of nations [who] hence . . . find no protection in that law.' He also notes that any such consensus is 'very far away' in the present war on terror.

Still, as we ponder such measures, Wonkette would like to take the opportunity to plead for much greater complements of parrots, rum, and buggery in the war on terror. Also more thigh-high boots, sashes, and eyepatches; never forget this is a clash of civilizations, people. --HOLLY MARTINS

The Dread Pirate Bin Laden [Legal Affairs]

(Via Wonkette.)

Notional list of Klingon fairy tales: "Cory Doctorow:
This McSweeney's list of Klingon fairy tale titles is fantastic:

'Little Red Riding Hood Strays Into the Neutral Zone and Is Never Heard From Again, Although There Are Rumors ... Awful, Awful Rumors'

'Hansel and Gretel Offend Vlad the Impaler'

'The Hare Foolishly Lowers His Guard and Is Devastated by the Tortoise, Whose Prowess in Battle Attracts Many Desirable Mates'

Link

(via Kottke)

(Via Boing Boing.)

Is it just me, or is the recent coverage of Indian issues in the NYT complete crap?

Monday, August 22, 2005

The Domestic Cow

The Domestic Cow
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Crazed Otter Bites Stupid-Looking Dog To Death, Makes Warren’s Day: "

YOUR LITTLE DOG IS DEAD

Heather Davis thought the dark brown otter was just playing with her dog Mike.

Then the 4-foot-long otter seized Mike’s snout with its teeth and started to drag the fluffy, white dog into the lake.

Heather screamed for help. As the otter pulled the dog under, a family friend grabbed a pole, jumped into a small boat and tried to rescue Mike. But the dog already was limp and floating away. ‘The otter went under water,’ said Rick Wolf, 19. ‘Then it jumped on the back of the boat and started attacking my foot.’

‘The otter had his whole mouth around (Wolf’s) shoe,’ said Heather. Wolf, whose shoe was not penetrated by the otter’s teeth, kicked and jabbed it with the stick. The otter swam over to Mike, grabbed the dog and glided off.

The body of the dog, an American Eskimo, was found on the shore of the lake on Wednesday, a day after the attack…

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

More Fun with the Lattice of Coincidence: "

Two days ago I suggested that the Abramoff case might be the uber-scandal, rather like the BCCI case in the mid-1990s, tying together all the other threads of corruption and dishonesty of the last few years.

But here's another: Last night I saw that the former publisher of the Chicago Sun-times, F. David Radler, had been indicted on many counts of fraud in the Hollinger/Conrad Black case. Hollinger has owned the Sun-Times since 1994.

Who is the most prominent employee of the Chicago Sun-Times?

That would be Robert Novak.

Who were some people on the board of Hollinger Corp., suspected of abetting the fraud?

The best description of the board: 'the roster of independent directors reads like the politically plugged-in guest list at an American Enterprise Institute dinner' There was Henry Kissinger, former Illinois governor James Thompson, and most notably Richard Perle. Perle was a member of the executive committee, profited handsomely himself through a Hollinger investment fund he was put in charge of, and by his own admission exercised very little oversight.

What's the relationship between Robert Novak and Richard Perle?

It's not just that both have proudly worn the nickname, 'Prince of Darkness.' They are bound by their stock in trade: leaking and receiving leaks of classified information. In 1975, Perle leaked classified information to Novak with the purpose of scuttling the SALT II treaty.

Who is the prosecutor who indicted the former publisher of Novak's paper?

Patrick Fitzgerald.

(Via The Decembrist.)

Robot News:

R Daneel: the robot that picks itself back up again: "

We’re pretty sure the last thing any robot-humanoid researcher wants to do fifteen times a day is pick up and
reorient a 150 pound machine every time it falls, but the R. Daneel Study 1 (whose name is not only an Asimov
reference, but means Responsive Dexterous Actions aNd Embodiment ELucidation) developed by the University of Tokyo is
officially in the running for our robot of the year award. Long gone are the days when you could disable a robot by
pushing it on its back like a turtle—looks like we’ll have to come up with a new weakness to exploit in the
future.

[Via New Scientist]

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

(Via engadget.com.)

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Rachdl Miriam & Brendan Stuart

Rachdl Miriam & Brendan Stuart
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Rachel Miriam & Brendan Stuart on the occasion of their nuptial day.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Good Morning World: "

Photo by Leslie:

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

LifeStraw purifies water instantly for under $2 a year: "

There are gadgets that make life more fun, and then there are
gadgets that make life possible. The LifeStraw from Denmark’s Vestergaard Frandsen Group has the potential to fall into
the latter category. A device about the size of a large pen or drinking straw, the LifeStraw is a complete water
purification kit that draws its power from the person sucking down the water. The LifeStraw is the product of ten years
of development work, based on the goal of creating an efficient, affordable water-purification system for the
developing world, where water-borne illnesses are a major killer. When produced in quantity, each LifeStraw — which
uses a combination of mesh filters, iodine-impregnated beads and active carbon to remove particulate matter and
bacteria — is expected to cost under $2 and be able to provide a year’s worth of pure drinking water. When and if this
hits the market, we hope to see some worthy charity distributing them by the millions (you listening, Bill and
Melinda?).

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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

Ads by Google

(Via engadget.com.)

My mind's voice automatically reads these with the voice of Jon Stewart now.

The Daily Show needs too hire these people. Seriously.

lulululululululululululululu

The Power of Imagination

Giblets will never under...: "

The Power of Imagination

Giblets will never understand these Iraqis. You invade them, flatten their cities, lock up and torture their relatives and what thanks do you get? Either a lot of explosives or the lamest candy-and-flowers display Giblets has ever seen. Weak, Iraqis. Very weak.

Well Giblets can end it all, and pretty damn fast. He has all he needs to end the war right now: an extra hundred thousand troops or so he intends to send to win the war. Where did he get them, you ask? Simple - for Giblets, at least. He got them with the power of imagination.

Yes, even now Giblets is searching his mighty mind for imaginary recruits and within one week expects to crush the insurgency with two thousand armored leprechauns, eight battalions of snuffalupagi, six divisions of heffalumps and the 101st Airborne Oozle Brigade! Guided by the unmatched tactical genius of Mr. Squigglesworth, Giblets's six-armed tap-dancing purple space squid and Secretary of Pretense, Operation: Wishful Thinking cannot fail! And if it does, Giblets will merely declare an Opposite Day. Losing IS winning in pretend!

Do you doubt the genius of Giblets? That is because you are made of stupid! Pretend troops are just what we need to fight for a pretend cause! Only Giblets's imaginary army will finally manage to locate Saddam's hidden stash of nukes buried deep within Fairyland! Only Giblets's fictional fighting men can spread democracy by discovering the long-lost Fountain of Freedom under Baghdad, whose magical waters turn everyone who drinks them into a fully-functioning republic! Only Giblets's dream draftees can end terror forever by assassinating the boogeyman! Everyone join hands and believe - or you stab our glorious playtime in the back! Onward, make-believe soldiers!

"

(Via Fafblog.)

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

How Not to Run a Company

From: "David Koretz" <david@bluetie.com>
Date: August 12, 2005 3:45:11 PM EDT
To: <david@bluetie.com>
Subject: Full Report on BlueTie Mail Store & Backup

BlueTie Customer,

I know it has been a challenging week with the email problems that
you encountered, and I want to update you on the history and current
status of the email problems you have experienced this week.

This email is being sent now that service has been completely
restored, and all necessary information on the occurrence was
gathered, as that was our first priority.

I would like to personally apologize for any issues this may have
caused you, and assure you that we have made significant changes and
will continue to make changes to ensure that this can never happen
again.

What happened?
On Thursday August 4 the MCI hosting facility in Elmsford NY lost
both primary and backup HVAC, causing the ambient temperature to rise
to 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Had we been made aware of the condition,
we would have immediately shut down our servers to prevent
overheating. We were not notified by MCI due to a failure in their
process and therefore our servers continued to run and the redundant
RAID array on one Mail Store was damaged. Only customers on this one
Mail Store have been affected.

MCI is producing an RFO (Reason for Outage) document on Friday August
12 that will document the causes, immediate resolution, and long term
prevention of future occurrences of this outage. I will be glad to
share the document with you once we have it.

As a result, on Monday August 8th BlueTie experienced intermittent
delays and two temporary outages affecting only the BlueTie customers
housed on that particular mailstore, which includes your company.

The first was a result of a single drive in the RAID array failing at
approximately 11:45AM EST. After running diagnostics and recovery,
the RAID array was fixed and put back in service at 1:00PM EST and
service was restored to all users.

The second occurred at about 4:00PM EST when 3 drives in the same
RAID array failed simultaneously. Important points about this outage:

All mail received while the mailstore was down was queued. None of it
was lost, and it was delivered when your new mailstore came online.
We worked all through the night to recreate all of your accounts on a
new mailstore. By Tuesday morning, all users were able to login and
send and receive email. All accounts were functioning normally. This
was our highest priority.

The next step was to recover your mail from the backup system and
insert it into your new account. This was completed on Wednesday,
August 10 at approximately 4:00PM EST.

Then we merged the new email (sent or received since 4:00 PM EST
Monday August 8) with the recovered mail. This was started at 8:30PM
EST on Wednesday and was completed at 2AM EST Thursday morning. In
order to preserve data integrity we had to once again queue mail,
meaning that incoming mail would not be delivered to your new account
until the rest of the process was completed.

The final steps were to update the attributes on the mails in the
accounts on the new Mail Store (attributes are used to make email
fast and searchable) and release the queue, allowing mails received
since 8:30PM EST Wednesday to flow into your account.

We expected the entire process to be completed by 9AM EST Thursday
morning.

Between 10am and 1pm, users began to see emails restored into their
accounts. At 1:10pm we released the queue, and now all queued mail
has been delivered.

Further Complications
As we worked through the recovery process, it became increasingly
apparent that there were problems with our current backup process:

Incremental backups were not being successfully created on a nightly
basis
The full weekly backup did not backup email audit and messages more
than 100 days old
The full weekly backup retained items that users had marked as
deleted or as junk.
The full weekly backups after July 20 did not include some of the
most recent messages.

What we restored into your account is much less than perfect.
Because there are no incremental backups, emails sent or received
between the evening of August 3 and 4pm August 8 can not be
recovered. They simply do not exist anywhere.
Significant numbers of emails that should have been on the backup
were not, and therefore they are also lost. Specifically, non-POP3
users will be missing messages more than 100 days old and may be
missing messages sent or received after July 20.
Large numbers of deleted and junk mails were put back into your mailbox.

What is in your account now is all the mail that we were able to
retrieve. There is no other resource or archive that might contain
the data.

What about email audit files?
All customers using email audit should have received their CD/DVD for
the month of May. Because June, July and August through the 8th were
on the failed mailstore and were not backed up, that data is lost.

Can anything be retrieved from the damaged RAID array?
There is less than a 1% chance that data can be recovered based on
what we know about what happened to the drives. However, we have
contracted a data recovery specialist firm to try everything possible
to get information from the drives. I will send you another update
as the work progresses.

What is BlueTie doing to prevent this problem from recurring?
Installing temperature sensing equipment in the MCI facility and
connecting it to our monitoring applications so we can independently
monitor them
Completely reworking the backup policy and process to give you full
real-time replication across multiple boxes, in addition to full
daily backups of your entire mailbox
Improving our disaster recovery process and conducting quarterly
disaster recovery exercises to verify the process
Moving to geographically distributed mirror servers for all
components in the BlueTie architecture. One set will remain in the
MCI facility; the other will be in our data center at our corporate
headquarters in Rochester, NY. These servers are architected to fail
over in less than four seconds in the event of an outage.
A low level device monitoring has been implemented. This will report
disk drive deterioration so preventative action can be taken before a
drive fails.
Adding checksum verification to the backup process to validate that
the backup and mailbox are identical.
Audit data will be backed up until it is burned onto CD or DVD for
delivery to you.

BlueTie is Issuing a Service Credit
BlueTie will be crediting you for the entire month of August. You
will receive a bill marked Paid In Full for the month, along with
another letter from me that outlines the completed improvements we
have made to give you confidence that we have permanently resolved
the problem.

We are also going to have a technical auditor come in and evaluate
our new backup process and redundancy and give us an independent
verification and appraisal to give you further confidence. I am happy
to share this verification with you once we have completed the process.

I appreciate your patience and understanding during this situation,
and am totally committed to ensuring we deliver an incredibly
reliable solution that you are thrilled with.

Best regards,

David Koretz
President & CEO
BlueTie Inc.

This message is intended solely for the individual(s) to whom it is
addressed.
If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination or copying
is strictly
prohibited. If you believe you received this message in error, please
notify
the sender and delete from your system. Thank you.

Does exposure to the Phishers of the internets translate into to "Verify, then Trust" in the real world?

I don't think so, but I'm not so sure it would be a bad thing.

IT: Anti-Phishers Pose as Phishers to Make Point: "Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes 'This article notices a new trend in efforts to fight phishing: Anti-fraudsters are posing as phishers to 'to train users to be more careful about sharing sensitive information online.' Or, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, 'To fight computer crime, the good guys are masquerading as bad guys pretending to be good guys.' West Point cadets were among those who got fake phishing emails -- in their case, from Aaron Ferguson, a teacher at the academy. 'The gullible cadets received a 'gotcha' email, alerting them they could easily have downloaded spyware, 'Trojans' or other malicious programs and suggesting they be more careful in the future. ... Nonetheless, he says the exercise upset some cadets, who felt it exploited their inclination to follow an order from a colonel, no questions asked. He says the new edict is, 'Ask questions first, then execute.' ''"

(Via MirrorDot.)

We can call this Best Economist Job Evah!

Angelina and the Economist: "
Besides filming the new Robert DeNiro-directed The Good Shepherd in New York City and becoming an honorary Cambodian citizen, and besides shtupping America's Favorite Friend's husband and being hotter than hell, Angelina Jolie is making news with the announcement that MTV will air a 'video diary' of her trip to Africa. Jolie and Jeffrey Sachs - yes, that Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, the noted economist who works for Columbia's Earth Institute and advice UN Secretary General Kofi Annan - traveled to Africa with Sachs' team that is trying to stop poverty and hunger. Though Angelina gets top billing, we love how the name of the show actually is 'The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr Jeffrey Sachs in Africa.' Way to go, MTV, for trying to give world economists a higher profile - even though your audience wants to know whether Stephen will chose Kristin or LC more.

More information about Sachs' UN Millennium Project. And Sachs does have a wife, so Angelina is not always a homewrecker. Yet.

"

(Via Gothamist.)

In the midst of reading business news, sometimes you come across a gem, like this comment from Linspire/Lindows/MP3.com's Michael Robertson:

We were sorry to lose him, but love is thicker then VOIP.

Some Changes at SIPphone: "
My colleague, Erick Schonfeld reports that Jeff Bonforte, president of SIPphone and the man spear-heading the Gizmo Project has jumped ship and joined Yahoo. Yahoo’s aggressiveness in the VoIP space is no surprise, but I wonder if Jeff’s departure leaves the two companies in a bit of a limbo.

‘I have to figure out how to integrate voice everywhere it should be—and to beat Skype,’ he tells Business 2.0. Jeff will report to Brad Garlinghouse, and will try and figure out ways to take Yahoo’s VoIP beyond just a ‘VoIP+IM’ client. Bonforte assured me that it was more of a personal decision and things are going well at SIPphone, and The Gizmo Project.

Michael Robertson wrote back in an email: ‘Jeff’s move was planned for some time because his fiance lives in San Jose. We were sorry to lose him, but love is thicker then VOIP. Jason Droege is now President.’ Robertson says there have been some improvements in the software. ‘We’ve implemented new firewall penetrating code that is very effective at getting past troublesome routers and firewalls which is a big deal for SIP software,’ he says. So far, there have been 100,000 downloads of the Gizmo software.

(Why do I feel it in my bones, that something is going to happen at Gizmo/SIPphone very soon? Maybe I am looking for shapes in shadows….)
"

(Via Om Malik on Broadband.)

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Great Lines

The unidirectional nature of the time continuum makes that an unlikely possibility.

A great line from Ronald Moore written for Data in Season 4.

I've had my eyes on this for a while. I do need living room speakers...

Yamaha rolls out YSP-800 Digital Sound Projector: "
As previously noted, Yamaha has been working on a more affordable successor to its $1,300 YSP-1
Digital Sound Projector, and it looks like it’s about to land in Europe. The new YSP-800 is a similar compact system
that simulates 5.1 surround sound without requiring you to set up speakers all over a room. The newer model has a
somewhat lower output, at 82 watts instead of 120, which should still fill most home theaters or living rooms. Other
features include an automatic sweet-spot setup and ‘Night Listening Enhancer,’ which automatically lowers the volume
and enhances speech, so that you can keep Jerry Bruckheimer’s explosions from waking the kids, but not miss any of the
gripping dialogue. The YSP-800 is expected to be out in Europe this month for €699 ($866).

[Thanks, K.Y.]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.

"
(Via engadget.com.)

I remember the framed Playboy bunny symbol that was over my bed when I was a child. My parents really didn't know about the symbol's pedigree, and had put it up on purely aesthetic grounds.

In retrospect, quite amusing.

CULTURE: Playboy for Schools: "One of Britain's leading stationary retailers top selling brands is its Playboy themed range.

'Playboy is probably one of the most popular ranges we've ever sold,' says head of media relations for WHSmith, Louise Evans. 'It outsells all the other big brands in stationery, like Withit [a range of cute cartoon animals], by a staggering amount. That should give you an idea of how popular the brand is. We offer customers choice. We're not here to act as a moral censor.'

Several protest groups are up in arms about the use of Hefner's logo on stationary aimed at children. Eleanor Kirwan of Coloma Convent Girl's School has organised numerous protests outside WHSmith's Croydon, London branch.

The pressure group Object, which is also campaigning against WHSmith's promotion of the Playboy brand to children, says: 'Playboy's logo clearly represents pornography. The magazine routinely features sexualised and full-frontal images of naked young women. It also promotes pornographic videos and strip shows. Playboy is about men buying women and presents this as natural and normal male behaviour, together with fast cars, football and male role models (not shown naked). WHSmith is therefore endorsing pornography to young, impressionable and possibly underage girls.'

Kirwan says the teenage girls in her school 'are aware of what the Playboy icon is' and 'were saying that, even though the pencil cases feature no blatant pornographic images, the bunny symbol represents pornographic images. The girls are able to acknowledge that symbols have a deeper significance than that which is on the surface. For stockists and manufacturers to deny this is shockingly disingenuous.'

But for WHSmith it's a style choice. 'We believe it is a fashion range,' says Evans. 'There's no inappropriate imagery. It's just the bunny. It's a bit of fun, popular and fashionable.'

While some will always defend the media being saturated with images of women as sex objects and the mainstreaming of porn as 'a bit of fun', others are deeply concerned about the damaging effects it is having on the perception of women. Kirwan's class debates confirm that children do not always understand that media representations of women are not real. 'The girls do not yet have the mental sophistication to recognise that the Playmates are not real. They don't realise that the image of female beauty that they see in the media is staged and not something they can expect to emulate. They really didn't know about the amount of styling that someone like Posh [Victoria Beckham] has. I do recognise an attitude among the older ones that it's not a problem to be a glamour girl or a playgirl. '

Talking about any kind of sex, particularly in school, is excruciating for some children. 'One 12-year-old told me,' says Kirwan, 'that since we had started discussing the stationery, she had thrown her Playboy pencil case away. 'It's gross. I don't want that on my stuff,' she said. These are girls of the age where even using the words sex or pornography can be embarrassing. Lots of the 11- and 12-year-olds hadn't even heard of pornography and yet had the porn king's logo on their school equipment and plastered across their chests at weekends.'

Considering the age of the children buying this range, what do you think?
(Written by: SomeOneUK)
"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Women in Science.

1. Greenlighted Fark headline:

(Some Nervous TFette)

TFette's satellite is finally launching today at 6:32 EST. Come in and give some support. Yes, she's even TFing on launch day. (Link goes to satellite's NASA page)
(177)

2. A Register article points to a very simply way to increase the number of women majoring in Computer Science:

... it seems that restricting the choices available to adolescents, and making it mandatory for all pupils to study maths and science subjects throughout their secondary education, correlates with a higher proportion of women going on to study computer science at university.

"The principle of being free to pursue your preferences is compatible and coexists quite comfortably with a belief in essential gender differences. This essentialist notion, which helps to create what it seeks to explain, affects girls’ views of what they're good at and can shape what they like," said Charles.

Monday, August 15, 2005

I'm seriously considering this...

Build your own Mac for $199US: "
Filed under: Hacks, Cult of Mac
While this may not be the first time we've seen a homebrewed x86 Mac, it just may be the cheapest. This post at the OSx86 project website lists exactly the parts used to create a functioning Mactel:

Case - $9.95
Motherboard - $52.99
Processor - $60.77
2x 256 RAM - $38.00
20 Gigabyte HD - $25.95
DVD Drive - $12.00
Grand total: $199.66US
Ok, so this machine won't be winning any design or speed awards, but I think this falls more under the 'because I can' category than anything else. If you need more information than just a hardware shopping list, check out this very detailed tutorial.

The whole idea is interesting, and I'm sure it's inevitable that we'll see more and more basement solutions as time goes on, but I've still got to agree with C.K. on this: while this may be a fun weekend project, I'm still content to have OS X running beautifully on Apple hardware.

[Via Make:Blog]

Read Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

More Umich Library love.

UMich Archives Old New York: "

From bridges to pandas, Gothamist loves a lot of things (what can we say, we're passionate people) but if there is one thing we have an undying love for its the history of our fine city. Which is why it was with great pleasure that we found the lead article in the Times City section today on the University of Michigan's Making of America digital archive. Sponsored by Lawrence J. Portnoy, a Manhattan lawyer, the archive currently include over 300 books from the turn of the century on the state of New York City. We're talking about titles like 'The nether side of New York; or, The vice, crime and poverty of the great Metropolis' from 1872, 'Who's who of the Chinese in New York' from 1918 and 'Working girls in evening schools: a statistical study' from 1914. The Times selections from the archive include such juicy tidbits as what a 20s 'shop-girl' ate to stay on her feet (gumdrops and éclairs), the best way for a prostitute to rob her john blind (have a co-conspirator hidden in the walls of her bedroom) and how much it cost to live in luxury while incarcerated in the Ludlow Street Jail (anywhere from $15 to $100 a week depending on how much luxury one wanted).

The complete UMich collection on New York can be found here. You can print out and keep as much of it as you want, or you can have Michigan print a book out and send it to you for a variable fee.

Still want more? You can always check out the New York Public Library's increasingly awesome Digital Library.

Photograph by Fabrizio Constantini for the Times

(Via Gothamist.)

Sunday, August 14, 2005

The Database of North Korean Propaganda.

Relive the twentieth century, as North Korea thinks it is living it now.

Also, note this giant penis in North Korea.

fried turnip cake

fried turnip cake
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Ready to go to the table on a Dim Sum sunday at 103 Mott.

Yes of course there is pork in there.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Read the absolutely fascinating article on vacuum packed food in Sunday's Times.

Seminarians turned scientist, the phrase "completely undisciplined", and the supposedly perfect temperature to cook eggs, 64.5°C.

FW: [IP] A New (London) Low

Craziness. But five years of this case must traverse several election cycles.

Clearly this country ain't about life, liberty & property...

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Saturday, Aug 13, 2005 4:38 pm
Subject: [IP] A New (London) Low

Begin forwarded message:

From: EEkid@aol.com
Date: August 13, 2005 4:08:27 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: A New (London) Low

A New (London) Low
A refrigerator box under the bridge: The Kelo Seven prepares for the worst

by Jonathan O'Connell - July 14, 2005

Those who believe in the adage "when it rains, it pours" might take the tale of the plaintiffs in Kelo v. New London as a cue to buy two of every animal and a load of wood from Home Depot. The U.S. Supreme Court recently found that the city's original seizure of private property was constitutional under the principal of eminent domain, and now New London is claiming that the affected homeowners were living on city land for the duration of the lawsuit and owe back rent. It's a new definition of chutzpah: Confiscate land and charge back rent for the years the owners fought confiscation.
In some cases, their debt could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Moreover, the homeowners are being offered buyouts based on the market rate as it was in 2000 .

The hard rains started falling that year, when Matt Dery and his neighbors in Fort Trumbull learned that the city planned to replace their homes with a hotel, a conference center, offices and upscale housing that would complement the adjoining Pfizer Inc. research facility.

The city, citing eminent domain, condemned their homes, told them to move and began leveling surrounding houses. Dery and six of his neighbors fought the takeover, but five years later, on June 23, the downpour of misfortune continued as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the city could claim the property for economic development.

Dery owns four buildings on the project site, including his home and the birthplace and lifelong home of his 87-year-old mother, Wilhelmina. Dery plans to make every remaining effort to keep his land, but with few legal options remaining, he's planning for the worst.

And for good reason. It's reasonable to think that people who purchased property years ago (in some cases, decades ago) would be in a position to cash in, especially since they're being forced from their homes. But that's not the case.

The New London Development Corp., the semi-public organization hired by the city to facilitate the deal, is offering residents the market rate as it was in 2000, as state law requires. That rate pales in comparison to what the units are now worth, owing largely to the relentless housing bubble that has yet to burst.

"I can't replace what I have in this market for three times [the 2000 assessment]," says Dery, 48, who works as a home delivery sales manager for the New London Day . He soothes himself with humor: "It's a lot like what I like to do in the stock market: buy high and sell low."

And there are more storms on the horizon. In June 2004, NLDC sent the seven affected residents a letter indicating that after the completion of the case, the city would expect to receive retroactive "use and occupancy" payments (also known as "rent") from the residents.

In the letter, lawyers argued that because the takeover took place in 2000, the residents had been living on city property for nearly five years, and would therefore owe rent for the duration of their stay at the close of the trial. Any money made from tenantssome residents' only form of incomewould also have to be paid to the city.

With language seemingly lifted straight from The Goonies , NLDC's lawyers wrote, "We know your clients did not expect to live in city- owned property for free, or rent out that property and pocket the profits, if they ultimately lost the case." They warned that "this problem will only get worse with the passage of time," and that the city was prepared to sue for the money if need be.

A lawyer for the residents, Scott Bullock, responded to the letter on July 8, 2004, asserting that the NLDC had agreed to forgo rents as part of a pretrial agreement in which the residents in turn agreed to a hastened trial schedule. Bullock called the NLDC's effort at obtaining back rent "a new low."

"It seems like it is simply a desperate attempt by a nearly broke organization to try to come up with more funds to perpetuate its own existence," Bullock wrote. He vowed to respond to any lawsuit with another.

With the case nearly closed, the NLDC may soon make good on its promise to sue. Jeremy Paul, an associate UConn law dean who teaches property law, says it's not clear who might prevail in a legal battle over rent. "From a political standpoint, the city might be better off trying to reach some settlement with the homeowners," he says.

An NLDC estimate assessed Dery for $6,100 per month since the takeover, a debt of more than $300K. One of his neighbors, case namesake Susette Kelo, who owns a single-family house with her husband, learned she would owe in the ballpark of 57 grand. "I'd leave here broke," says Kelo. "I wouldn't have a home or any money to get one. I could probably get a large-size refrigerator box and live under the bridge."

That's one way to get out of the rain.

http://fairfieldweekly.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:119000

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

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

Yoopers

Yoopers.

Friday, August 12, 2005

My subscription to the NYT started today.

Now I need to buy a pencil.

Cadilac Desert Midwestern Style

So Wisconsin is now running out of ground water and wants to raid Lake Michigan.

Tears can't express the feelings...

Thursday, August 11, 2005

I'm in the shopping for a suit, and I'm perusing the Men's Wearhouse web site, and I can't read anything on their web site without hearing the voice of George Zimmer in my head.

Also, is it bad that the first thing I noticed on their site is the link to corporate governance information?

Any other recommendations for places to get suits?

Still don't make you kosher...

Pig Brain Injections: "
Pig brain cells could be implanted into human brains by the start of next year if trials of a pioneering treatment for Huntington’s disease are approved in the US.

Similar tests on primates have proved ‘astonishingly successful’ in treating the degenerative brain disease, according to researchers who carried out the work at Living Cell Technologies (LCT) in Auckland, New Zealand.

The injection of live animal cells into human brains is likely to raise ethical concerns and fears of pig viruses being transmitted to humans. But researchers say the benefits of a cure outweigh such concerns. ‘Yes, we have created a chimera, but one that is tolerated and beneficial,’ says Bob Elliott, LCT’s medical director…
"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

Fracking hilarious.

"Sean Hannity (631) 673-8003": "
Indie rockers force Hannity to change number
A few weeks ago, we introduced you to Brooklyn indie agit-popsters Kids Against Combs, who'd just finished an album that used the private phone number of Fox News loudmouth Sean Hannity as its title.
Sean Hannity (631) 673-8003 was set to be released on July 21 by 10-34 Records. But, according to a press release sent out last week by the band, Kids Against Combs and 10-34 were issued papers on July 15 from Hannity's attorneys, 'threatening to sue both parties if they proceeded with releasing an album named after Hannity's home phone number and containing the political pundit's home address in the CD's liner notes.' (The digits, meanwhile, are now disconnected; 'changed to an unlisted number,' says the recording.)
[...] Luckily, the band had freshly printed copies of the album for sale, sans home address and retitled The Album Formerly Known As Sean Hannity's Phone Number ... Currently Sean Hannity Is a Democracy Subverting Douche Bag.
Despite the fact that 66 percent of our Style and Usage Panel prefer that 'douchebag' be written as a compound word, they're in unanimous agreement that the new title works just as well.

"

(Via jwz.)

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

POLITICS: Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance: "Radley Balko has a smart op-ed in the Washington Post about draconian zero tolerance measures against parents who wisely choose to supervise underage drinking.

Imagine for a moment that you're a parent with a teenage son. He doesn't drink, but you know his friends do. You're also not naive. You've read the government's statistics: 47 percent of high school students tell researchers they've had a drink of alcohol in the previous 30 days. Thirty percent have had at least five drinks in a row in the past month. Thirteen percent admitted to having driven in the previous month after drinking alcohol.

So, what do you do with regard to your son's social life? Many parents have decided to take a realist's approach. They're throwing parties for their kids and their friends. They serve alcohol at these parties, but they also collect car keys to make sure no one drives home until the next morning. Their logic makes sense: The kids are going to drink; it's better that they do it in a controlled, supervised environment.

That's exactly what a Rhode Island couple did in 2004. When they learned that their son planned to celebrate the prom with a booze bash at a beach 40 miles away, William and Patricia Anderson instead threw a supervised party for him and his friends at their home. They served alcohol, but William Anderson stationed himself at the party's entrance and collected keys from every teen who showed. No one who came to the party could leave until the next morning.

For this the Andersons found themselves arrested and charged with supplying alcohol to minors. The case ignited a fiery debate that eventually spilled onto the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving oddly decided to make an example of William Anderson, a man who probably did more to keep drunk teens off the road that night than most Providence-area parents.

In fact, the Andersons were lucky. A couple in Virginia was recently sentenced to 27 months in jail for throwing a supervised party for their son's 16th birthday, at which beer was made available. That was reduced on appeal from the eight-year sentenced imposed by the trial judge. The local MADD president said she was 'pleasantly surprised' at the original eight-year verdict, and 'applauded' the judge's efforts.

Eight years for supervising their son's drinking? MADD isn't just mad. (And I mean mad as in 'nuts.') MADD is petty. MADD is vindictive. MADD now has enemies who are not drunk drivers.

(Written by: Michael_J_Totten)

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

metacycles

I've been struggling to place where I have seen this funerary media circus surrounding Peter Jennings' death before.

I think the best comparison, albeit a loose one, is the death of Di. Sure that event took on ridiculous overtones, but Jennings' death has similar overtones of the media losing one of its own, combined with that earnest outpouring of public grief from the many that themselves only knew him through the focussed lens of the media.

And to those who would say "Lo Siento Mucho, I hardly knew thee" - please shut up.

Monday, August 08, 2005

My favourite bar

My favourite bar
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Toast at 125th st.

A bathroom, looking at a poster for Anchor brewery through the mirror.

observations

There's a woman reading Highlights on the subway with the rapt attention often given to Cosmo.

Ldd is your friend.

I spent several days tearing my hair out over failures of installing rhythmbox on my debian system.

Then I ran ldd on one of the troublesome libraries and discovered that a library in
/usr/local/lib was being called. It turns out that I had compiled some version of gnome years ago and put it in /usr/local/lib, which was conflicting with the much newer gnome libs in /usr/lib.

One "sudo mv /usr/local/lib /usr/local/lib.old" and I was good to go.

Wakatake made an excellent birthday present...

Discussion: Wakatake Onikoroshi (Junmai-Ginjo): "What is your tasting note for this one?? I find this light with a dry finishing of citrus and hint of melon. By the way, Onikoroshi' means 'demon slayer,' and there are many sake around Japan sold under this product name. Once upon 'Onikoroshi' referred to sake that was so bad it would kill a demon that drank it. But Wakatake decided to embark on against-the-grain(or rice) marketing, saying their sake was so darned great it would kill a demon that drank it.

Kanpai
Paul (AzianBrewer)

Join this discussion.

(Via The New York Sake Meetup Group: What's New.)

Coding humor into their style sheets: "

Filed under: Humor, Odds and ends

Now this is funny. When Apple first released the Mighty Mouse last week, C.K. wondered if Apple had gotten the legal clearance to use the name, first made famous by the cartoon character, of course. The fact that they did doesn't make this screengrab of the Mighty Mouse page's source code any less amusing. Note the clever class attribute used for the legalese portion.

It's good to see they can still make a joke over there once in a while.

[Via I Heart Apple]

Read	Permalink \| Email this \| Linking Blogs \| Comments

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Peter Jennings, The Eulogy:

What Antonia said.

Btw, I miss my roommate.

And Allen wants "us" to get a Netflix subscription.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

userfriendly : 31 jul 2005 (8161): ""

(Via User Friendly the Comic Strip. by Illiad.)

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Worth checking out...

MUSIC: Germans Love David Has... I Mean Johnny Cash: "I've just heard the most bizarre version of 'Space Oddity' since The Langley Schools Music Project:

For the past few years, producer Jennifer Sharpe has amassed a small collection of what she likes to call 'foreign tongue recordings.' They're versions of hit songs from the American charts, sung by the original artists, usually in German, Italian or French.

The singers learned the lyrics phonetically, line by line, taught by a language coach. Sharpe says the songs were recorded in a time when English-language songs had a tough time making it in Europe.

I don't know much about the German language, but I'm pretty sure the Beatles butchered it unmercifully.
(Written by: Cigarette)
"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Thursday, August 04, 2005

I just discovered information about the Choose Your Adventure Book Inside UFO 54-40 - a clear precursor to the Sliders TV series, and one of the gems of the CYOA series.

Apparently the book had an Easter Egg...

/me wants it.

Soft Power.

POLITICS: Iraq’s Sergeant Sheik: "U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Dale Horn managed to earn himself the unlikely title of ‘Sheik’ in Iraq. Here’s how he did it.

Late last year a full-blown battle between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces had erupted, and U.S. commanders assigned a unit to stop rocket and mortar attacks that regularly hit their base. Horn, who had been trained to operate radar for a field artillery unit, was now thrust into a job that largely hinged on coaxing locals into divulging information about insurgents.

Horn, 25, a native of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Horn's first Humvee patrols.

Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk to people about their life and security problems.

Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area: he now boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months.

Mohammed, Horn's mentor, eventually suggested during a meeting of village leaders that Horn be named a sheik.

Some sheiks later gave him five sheep and a postage stamp of land, fulfilling some of the requirements for sheikdom. Others encouraged him to start looking for a second wife, which Horn's spouse back in Florida immediately vetoed.
(Written by: Michael_J_Totten)
"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Here's a question from this. Does the ionosphere block frequencies in the 2.4Ghz range? If one can reach 125miles with WiFi equipment, perhaps communications with satellites in Low Earth Orbit may be possible with the same equipment.

TECHNOLOGY: 125 Miles of Wireless: "Last year at Defcon, four kids from Ohio cobbled together scavenged satellite dish equipment, loaded it onto a truck, and dragged to the desert outside Las Vegas to see how far they could send an unamplified wireless signal. They set the record at 55.1 miles, and on the last day of the conference when they stepped up to accept their award, one of them jokingly asked if anyone wanted to buy their equipment so they could get home.

This year, the same four friends loaded up even more gear and set out for the desert again, with the intention of shattering their record... which they did. They shot a decent wireless signal almost 125 miles into the desert, across the border into Utah.

Contestants had to establish an 802.11b or 802.11g Wi-Fi link using two laptops with home-brewed or commercial antennas, and see how far apart they could place the computers and still get a connection with or without amplification.

The team, iFiber-Redwire, competed for the second time in the Wi-Fi shootout contest last weekend at the DefCon hacker conference here, and achieved a 124.9-mile unamplified connection from atop a mountain in Nevada and a small mound in Utah. (Wired magazine helped sponsor the contest.)

That was several dozen miles farther than the 55.1-mile link that won them the contest last year. They maintained the connection for three hours.

Ben Corrado, Justin Rigling, Andy Meng and Brandon Schamer, all 19 and 20 years old and hailing from Ohio, were hoping to demolish a 192-mile record set by an amplified air-to-ground link in 2003, but were limited by terrain and time.

Even though they had some sponsorship this year, the team was plagued with problems. One of their laptops died in the desert and would only function if held upside-down. Their path to their destination for the shot was blocked by a forest fire. While rigging up their gear, one of the teammates fell from a scaffold and broke his leg.

That's some pretty amazing stuff from young engineers. I can't wait to see what this team is doing in a few years.
(Written by: Shalome)
"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

MUSIC: Sigur Rós Song Title Translations for New Album: "Sigur Rós will release two songs, 'Saeglopur' and 'Glósóli', from their upcoming new album, Takk, on August 16th as downloads on a new site (not launched yet). 'Glósóli', however, will not be available for download in the U.S. for perhaps five minutes, possibly less, depending on P2P upload speeds. Takk will be released on September 13th.

Meanwhile, here are translations of the new album's song titles:

1. 'Takk' = Thanks

2. 'Glósóli' = Glowsun

3. 'Hoppípolla' = Hopping into Puddles

4. 'Med Blódnasir' = I've Got a Nosebleed

5. 'Sé Lest' = I See a Train

6. 'Sæglópur' = Lost at Sea

7. 'Mílanó' = Milan

8. 'Gong' = Gong

9. 'Andvari' = Zephyr

10. 'Svo Hljótt' = So Quietly

11. 'Heysátan' = The Haystack

As we reported earlier, the lyrics for this album are in an actual language, Icelandic. Hopefully someone will take the time to translate those as well when the album is released.
(Written by: Keith)
"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Bass culture: "In the comments section to yesterday's entry I quote an article in Monday's Guardian in which Julian Baggini and other philosophers examine imaginary scenarios designed to present typical modern problems and paradoxes. I particularly liked the first example, in which a 'cosmopolitan' called Saskia is annoyed that a white waiter brings her poppadoms in an Indian restaurant, because she wants to be multicultural herself but prefers the wait staff in the 'exotic' restaurants she visits to remain monocultural. 'Saskia highlights one of the great inconsistencies of contemporary western liberalism,' comments David Goodhart. 'The Canadian scholar Eric Kaufmann calls it asymmetrical multiculturalism, meaning that minority groups should express their ethnicity while dominant ones should transcend theirs.'

I usually refer to 'asymmetrical multiculturalism' as the strange collusion between liberal internationalists and conservative nationalists. Marxy put it rather more bitchily in a debate we were having yesterday about the meaning of a swastika he saw on a Harakjuku fashion-punk: 'I'm against right-wing politics, Momus is for, as long as they aren't Western peoples.' (My counter-argument was that there's nothing inherently right wing about preserving national cultural differences: artists, museum curators and restauranteurs do it as well as right wing bigots. What's more, the punk in question was decontextualizing a foreign symbol; he was more like the non-Christian Japanese women who wear crosses around their necks than a rabid nationalist.)

(Via Click opera.)

I feel sorry for all of you suckers passing your breaktime huddled around a cold exterior fire escape door shotgunning a cigarette before returning to the grind.

(Kt had this picture taken in Maui.)

Added to the list.

New World of Wine Stores: "

Navigating a wine store can be as difficult as trying to walk against traffic in Times Square. Aisle after aisle of labels that might as well be written hieroglyphic codes and cramped little spaces, which are almost begging you to knock a bottle off the shelf, is enough to drive you to drink (hmmm…coincidence or marketing strategy?). Well, times they are a changing - Discovery Wines, a unique and innovative wine store in Alphabet City, is setting out to change the face, or should we say interface, of wine stores.

The second you walk into Discovery Wines you are aware that this isn’t your typical wine shop. The bright modern space feels welcoming and airy – baby stroller and dog friendly – but what really separates Discovery Wines from any other place we have been are the touch screen panels around the store. These touch screens are like having your own personal sommelier guide you through the place. They give out information on wine based on the way we drink wine – a crazy concept. Let’s say you are cooking a chicken dish and are looking for a wine to pair it with – the amazing touch screen has an answer. Or suppose your are feeling a little crazy and are looking for an exciting red wine from Turkey for under $10 – the amazing touch scene has 4 options. Or the best feature yet, let’s just say the green label with the cute little ducks catches your eye, just walk it over to the amazing touch screen to scan and it will tell you what it tastes like, what foods to pair it with and even about the 16 brothers that picked the grapes off of the south side of the hill.

Ellisa Cooper, one of the owners of Discovery Wines, says ‘their mission is to fix what’s wrong with wine stores today.’ Some of the ways they have achieved this is through bright open spaces, offering lesser-known affordable wines (70% of the wines are $20 or less) and of course through those amazing screens. And all the time you save from not aimlessly wondering around the store can be spent at their wine bar, where they offer daily tastings.

We are certainly entering into a new era in the world of wine. It is no longer some esoteric, unapproachable subject. It’s fun, accessible and relaxed. The world of wine is getting a much overdue facelift– and we think it looks pretty amazing.

Discovery Wines, 10 Avenue A between Houston and 2nd Street, (212) 674-7833
"

(Via Gothamist.)

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Yes.

MUSIC: Christopher Lee: Saruman the Metal: "What do you do for an encore after a lifetime spent playing film badasses like Dracula (ten times), Saruman, and a Star Wars Sith Lord? Something that celebrates horror, Tolkien fantasy, and science fiction: metal. And so, 82 year-old actor Christopher Lee will perform at the upcoming Earthshaker Festival in Geiselwind, Germany.

He will sing with two bands, Manowar and Rhapsody, according to concert organisers.

Lee will be accompanied by a live orchestra and a choir and will perform alongside heavy metal bands such as Grave Digger, Dragonlord and Forces of Evil.

Suggested name for Lee's band: Man-flesh.

(via brooklynvegan)

(Written by: Keith)