"Small, Hairless, Blind, and Dependent on a Larger Rodent for All His Information: "

Snark! Snark! Snark!

Scott McClellan Wanders Off Reservation, Is Shot and Killed:

We would like to apologize for our characterization yesterday of Scott McClellan as a puppy dog. Thanks to the New York Times, we were able to review all of his statements on the Rove-Plame matter and now we feel that a more accurate analogy would be that Scott McClellan is like a hapless baby rodent of some kind. Perhaps a gerbil or a weasel. Small, hairless, blind, and dependent on a larger rodent for all his information. So it's true, McClellan did, in extreme flustered mode, yelp out such regrettable declarations as 'I've made it very clear, [Rove] was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was,' and 'The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved,' and, more brazenly, 'There has been absolutely nothing brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement.'

These statements are all in sharp contrast to the more maturely weasely statements of the President and Rove himself, around which there is enough wiggle room for a fat, bald man to slither through and stay employed for at least three more years. All this proves is that no one tells Scotty anything. It's not really his job to know anything. His job is to say what he's told to say, or, in some extraordinary cases, what he intuits they might say with the power of his mind:

I've known Karl for a long time, and I didn't even need to go ask Karl, because I know the kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct.

Like we said, he doesn't know anything.

Past White House Briefings on C.I.A. Leak Case [NYT]

Earlier: The Rove Show, with Scott McLellan as Old Yeller [Wonkette]

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

There's a new beta of the Flash 8.0 plugin for the mac, which is supposed to address the serious performance issues with the mac version.

It doesn't play strongbad emails, making it in my mind

Useless.

The idea has come up of declaring the mice terrorists, and thus having a rationale to have the Department of Homeland Security come in for a "cleanup" operation.

1995 was a hell of a year. But calling diaries protoblogging?

Belgrade native Jasmina Tesanovic on 10 years since Srebenica massacre: "Xeni Jardin:

Jasmina Tesanovic is an author, translator, and filmmaker from Belgrade. Here's a link to one of her books, and here are a couple of urls with more about her work. Here was her proto-blog penned during the war, 'A Diary from Belgrade.'

Below, snip from a recent essay she wrote on the massacre in Srebenica, which took place exactly ten years ago today.

In June 1995, I was finishing off my book on refugees from former Yugoslavia, The Suitcase, interviewing women and men of different nationalities, wherever they came from and wherever they had been displaced.

One of them was a young man from Srebrenica: displaced in Vienna. He was a Muslim, very polite and kind to me, a Serb writing for the Americans; he invited me to his flat, offered me dinner and told me how he fled the troubled country through the Red Cross in Belgrade. He considered himself a Yugoslav and loathed the wars, according to him made by politicians, not people.

At the end, he said something I will never forget, a sentence that at the time sounded creepy and muddy: If something happens to my family back there in Srebrenica which is a Muslim enclave protected by UN troops, I swear to God that I will kill with my own hands the first Serb I come across here, my co-worker in Vienna, and I don't care that he is not guilty, I don't care if I go to prison forever...

Link to the complete textfile of 'Srebenica 2005.'

Ms. Tesanovic can be reached via e-mail: [politicalidiot] at [yahoo.com]."

(Via Boing Boing.)

Today is 7/11 - free slurpee day at the same.

Some of you wankers might even have a 7/11 around where you live or work.

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory dark and sinister, says the Beeb.

monster paintings: "

Dylan Sisson

Monster Engine

"

(Via jwz.)

yawn

It is a violent femmes, tylenol, sake and mango juice sort of morning.

(morning defined as the four hours after I get up, which I'm still comfortably in.)

Rushdie writes on Islam in India & Pakistan.

Yes India does have two law systems, one for muslims, and one for everybody else. It is the cause of much tension. Segregation of law in the defense of a minority can be a very very bad thing.

Attemping the convergence life

One Treo 650, One 1 Gb Sandisk Ultra II Plus SD Card, one 2.5mm to 3.5mm audio cord convertor from treocentral, and both TCMP and Pocket Tunes loaded on the Treo, which is hooked up to my iPod headphones.

The iPods are sitting lonely at home.

The Pros: One Device to Rule them All.

Gapless playback. The iPod still doesn't have it.

Fade-in/Fade-out between tracks.

The Negatives:
Playing MP3s kill's the Treo's battery.

For the first time since I had the Rio500, I am using a non iPod MP3 player interface. None of the alternatives are better, yet.

I can't sync with iTunes. This isn't that much of a problem. I've been meaning to go back to gtkPod anyways, especially for when the 320Gb hard drive for the linux music server arrives Monday.

The programs I am using on the Treo don't normalize. Quiet music tracks followed by loud tracks suck without it.

Again Battery life. Who sells aftermarket Treo batteries with more oomph? Anybody?

Again, the interface. At the minimum, replicating the iPod's music database, with similar navigation is needed. Browsing by song and folder on the disk is so Winamp 2.x...

I've been talking about this eventuality for years, for those who have been listening.

For the morality based vegetarians: Is this engineered meat acceptable in a way that would finally let you enjoy meat with a clear conscience?

For those practicing Jews/Hindus/Muslims: Is Pork/Beef grown this way acceptable?

(No feet touching the ground. Ever.)

Ya want cloven hooves? We can splice in the genes for hooves. Do the Books say that hooves actually have to be expressed in the organism before the meat is kosher?

Watch out for that small loophole of opportunity before the relevant Rabbis outlaw this...

Fighting Global Warming With Lab-Grown Meat: "

(Author's note: I debated whether to post this today; it's not exactly keeping in tone with the earlier pieces. I decided, however, that at a time when reality is almost too much to bear, a bit of surreality is useful.)

'Faux' meat biologically identical to real tissue but grown in the lab is something of a staple in science fiction. In January, researchers at the University of Manchester, UK, came up with a method of using ink-jet printer technology to build animal tissue structures, including differentiated skin, bones and organs. I referred to them as 'meat-jet' printers, and argued that they could be the harbinger of the future emergence a new kind of cuisine: cruelty-free, waste-free, prion-free meats grown in the lab. Little did I know how rapidly this scenario might come about.

In the June 29 issue of Tissue Engineering, researchers describe methods of mass-producing 'cultured' meats: muscle tissues with the same taste, nutrients and texture of 'real' meat, grown under controlled conditions in the lab. This wouldn't be fake meat made from processed vegetables, it would be cellularly identical to the flesh from livestock -- but no animal would be killed for its production. (The article itself is under a subscription barrier The article is now available online, and a detailed summary is available here.)

The researchers -- from the US and the Netherlands -- aren't just talking about theory. They've started a non-profit company called New Harvest to develop cultured meat.

The production of such 'cultured meat' begins by taking a number of cells from a farm animal and proliferating them in a nutrient—rich medium. Cells are capable of multiplying so many times in culture that, in theory, a single cell could be used to produce enough meat to feed the global population for a year. After the cells are multiplied, they are attached to a sponge-like 'scaffold' and soaked with nutrients. They may also be mechanically stretched to increase their size and protein content. The resulting cells can then be harvested, seasoned, cooked, and consumed as a boneless, processed meat, such as sausage, hamburger, or chicken nuggets.

Setting aside the vaguely-discomfiting visuals of growing hamburger in vats, cultured meat actually has some distinct advantages.

'There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat,' [project leader University of Maryland doctoral student Jason] Matheny said in a statement. 'For one thing, you could control the nutrients.'

Meat is high in omega-6 fatty acid, which is desirable, but not in large amounts. Healthful omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in walnuts and fish oils, could be substituted.

'Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat,' Matheny said.

Raising livestock requires million of gallons of water and hundreds of acres of land. Meat grown from tissue would bypass those requirements.

But perhaps most important would be the significant reduction in greenhouse gases that would result from moving away from livestock-based food production. In this month's Physics World, Dr. Alan Calverd argues that over 20% of human-caused CO2 comes from livestock farming. (This figure doesn't include the methane production from livestock, which also contributes to greenhouse gas buildup.) He suggests a global move to vegetarianism as a way to combat global warming. For those who can't give up their burgers and chicken, cultured meat would be a nearly-as-climate-concious alternative.

New Harvest is still studying cultured meat's nutritional and production issues. It may take a few years before they have something they can bring to market (or at least make available for testing), but in terms of the technology, there's every reason to think that tasty, indistinguishable-from-'real' cultured meat will be possible to make. The question is, will people buy it?

I think so. Many (most?) of us already experience meat only in the cleaned, sliced and packaged format, where it looks nothing like the animal from which it came. Cultured meats would (presumably) be no different in appearance than other processed meats, and would have distinct health and safety advantages. And, eventually, even a cost advantage: the factories to grow cultured meats would take up far less space and far fewer resources than livestock ranches, and traditional ranching is likely to come under increasing economic pressure due to the effects of climate disruption.

Cultured meat is one of those developments that seems almost too bizarre to be real, but could have significant worldchanging implications. Will we embrace its advantages? With New Harvest on the job, we may soon find out.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in Plausibly Surreal - Scenarios and Anticipations at 04:37 PM)"

(Via WorldChanging: Another World Is Here.)

FW: [IP] more on RealID: How to become an unperson.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Thursday, Jul 7, 2005 9:15 pm
Subject: [IP] more on RealID: How to become an unperson.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Wong <rbw001@gmail.com>
Date: July 7, 2005 8:33:55 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Fwd: FW: [IP] more on RealID: How to become an unperson.
Reply-To: Brian Wong <rbw001@gmail.com>

Dave, having lived through 9/11 in Washington, DC, it seems to me that you have to consider how the workers of London's fast food restaurants would get to work, and then home again, without mass transit. I don't know London's neighborhoods, but my guess is that the wages paid to those workers does not allow them to live within walking distance. There may or may not be an "imminent threat" of danger - and on this day who can make that call other than the government, right or wrong? - but there are good reasons to limit traffic and congestion for the rest of the day.

- Brian -

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

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

FW: [IP] more on RealID: How to become an unperson.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Thursday, Jul 7, 2005 8:17 pm
Subject: [IP] more on RealID: How to become an unperson.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Andy Duff <andy.duff@edengene.com>
Date: July 7, 2005 5:58:49 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on RealID: How to become an unperson.

Dave

Little insight from London (publish only if you think appropriate)

After being close(ish) to today's events on the Tube, I rang a friend from the Middle East who happended to be in London to propose a night of beer, and crap (a.k.a. bad for you) food.

Beer was no problem, with 99% of Londoners treating today's attempts to disrupt our lives with the contempt we've given the IRA's similar attempts for over 30 years.

Crap food, though, proved more of a problem. First stop Burger King on Old Brompton Road closed, so we headed to BK on Gloucester Road - also closed. KFC next door? Also closed. So I questioned the guy putting out the rubbish (trash) - apparently, an HO edict had determined that they close in light of the "imminent threat".

Global brands? Start living up to the realities. This is not the time to be hiding.

Andy D

-------------------------------------

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

Speakeasy plays the Magnetic Fields as hold music.

Did I mention I'm looking for an excuse to switch from Time Warner NYC Cable internet and their horrendous service and customer service?

Mike leaves DCist. I suppose I'll have to change the link on the right soon.

Wikipedia has some excellent comprehensive coverage of the London situation.

More praise for the Brits:

He [a person in a subway car next to the one blown up] praised the ambulance, police and London Underground for the way in which they dealt with the situation.

He said: "They kept checking we were okay then they led us to the Methodist Church nearby and gave us a cup of tea."

There's something about bombings and their ilk that call for full scale immersion in the news.

BBC News on full blast. Reports say that the London Stock Market hasn't fallen beyond the normal range.

I'm trying to follow all relevant fark threads, which drop gems such as these:

2005-07-07 07:36:02 AM dukefluke [TotalFark]

Pubs in and around Liverpool Street are filled with people who are there for "news reports". Brilliant. I love being English.

2005-07-07 07:37:35 AM wildvigilante

early reports indicate that units of mi6 have been detached to work with scotland yard...



/not true, just wanted to use that picture

And these useful bits of information:

2005-07-07 07:57:13 AM RumMunkey

Posted this morning at the website of an AQ-affiliated terrorist organization:

amaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of Qaeda't al-Jihad in Europe

In the name of God the most merciful...

Rejoice the nation of Islam, rejoice nation of Arabs, the time of revenge has come for the crusaders' Zionist British government.

As retaliation for the massacres which the British commit in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mujahideen have successfully done it this time in London.

And this is Britain now burning from fear and panic from the north to the south, from the east to the west.

We have warned the brutish governments and British nation many times.

And here we are, we have done what we have promised. We have done a military operation after heavy work and planning, which the mujahideen have done, and it has taken a long time to ensure the success of this operation.

And we still warn the government of Denmark and Italy, all the crusader governments, that they will have the same punishment if they do not pull their forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

So beware.

Beware my ass.

9/11 I found out about from fark.

The London bombings I found out about from Drunkenblog, since I now look at NetNewsWire first in the morning.

The local PBS station WLIW is simulcasting BBC World into my living room.

Found in slashdot thread about the plans for the sequencing of the Neanderthal Genome:

Re:Shouldn't be too hard (Score:4, Funny)

by Rei (128717) Alter Relationship on Wednesday July 06, @04:33PM (#12997429)
(http://www.cursor.org/)

Back in their day, all they had were AMP and ADP; ATP hadn't been invented yet. In those times, glycolysis took two glucose for every one ADP produced, and they were proud of it! Back then, everything ate up that precious ADP - even the Calvin cycle. Oh, sure, it violated their ability to continue on as lifeforms indefinitely, but it was all they had to work with.

Back then, oxygen didn't end up making it into the bloodstream and then to the cells and mitochondria through diffusion from concentration differentials across membranes; they had to put it in manually. It got tiring after a while, all of the precision injection work, but it gave them exercise - a good muscle builder, it was. And, boy, did they need that muscle tone to hunt, what with only being able to synthesize two of their amino acids on their own.

We've come a long way, my friend. A long way.

a. More from the Voltron department.

b. from Another Bean.

TECHNOLOGY: Your Own Flame-Shooting Fighting Mech For Just $35K: "


Carlos Owens, the man behind the mech-producing endeavor known as Neogentronyx, has put the fearsome NMX04-1A prototype suit on eBay. Now, you can own your very own 18-foot tall robotic mechanical suit, listed for a mere $35,000. You'd better hurry, though, bidding closes at 12:08:57 PDT on July 8th.

Owens says that the mecha has a hydraulic system capable of 40 possible movements, that he's fixed a bug that would cause it to tip over (that's a relief), and that he's going to add nail-shooting guns to Neogentronyx's shoulders before shipping it to a buyer. Owens plans to use proceeds from the sale to build an amphibious version.

Owens claims that future mecha will be used for uses 'from fighting forest fires far too hot and unsafe for a human, riot control, construction, maintenance and handling of hazardous waste in hostile environments, modern day warfare, to the entertainment industry..' Riot control? Did he not see Robocop? Is an 18-foot tall human-piloted robotic creation really well suited to quell public disturbances? I'm not so sure. Let's just hope he doesn't plan on putting flame-throwers and nail guns on that version.

(Written by: bean)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

If it can not be New York, then let it be London.

[In regards to the Olympics, not the events of Thursday morning.]

Cooking for Engineers' second, long promised piece on cooking Bacon is now up.

Before I go to bed, this note of importance.

Also, there is a twenty second period on the subway between when someone starts talking to you and when you realize they are a crackhead. Sometimes this period is even shorter. Use it wisely.

The Next Open Thread: "

by DemFromCT

Lance Armstrong is doing fine. But does anyone know who won the Wife Carrying Championships? The Estonians had the edge. Winner gets his wife's weight in Nordic beer.

"

(Via The Next Hurrah.)

normalcy

A 4th of July Celebration in Boston should have the Star Spangled Banner playing.

And definitely the Boston cover (better than the Hendrix version.)

Playing the native

I just got asked where Fenway Park is.

I don't know.

My roommate and the bride

My roommate and the bride
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Tonight at the Sheva Brachot.

FW: [IP] Gates Says Technology Will One Day Allow Computer Implants -- But Hardwiring's Not For Him

Gates doesn't want his body to be hooked up to a computer.

If I was responsible for Windows...

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Sunday, Jul 3, 2005 5:17 pm
Subject: [IP] Gates Says Technology Will One Day Allow Computer Implants -- But Hardwiring's Not For Him

Begin forwarded message:

From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@westnet.com>
Date: July 3, 2005 5:05:48 PM EDT
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: [johnmacsgroup] Gates Says Technology Will One Day Allow Computer Implants -- But Hardwiring's Not For Him
Reply-To: johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com

From Techology Review --
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/07/ap/ap_070105.asp

Gates Says Technology Will One Day Allow Computer Implants --
But Hardwiring's Not For Him
By Rohan Sullivan

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Technological advances will one day allow
computers to be implanted in the human body -- and could help
the blind see and the deaf hear -- Bill Gates said Friday. But
the Microsoft chairman says he's not ready to be hardwired.

"One of the guys that works at Microsoft ... always says to me
'I'm ready, plug me in,"' Gates said at a Microsoft seminar in
Singapore. "I don't feel quite the same way. I'm happy to have
the computer over there and I'm over here."

Meshing people directly with computers has been a science
fiction subject for years, from downloading memories onto
computer chips to replacement robotic limbs controlled by
brain waves.

The fantasy is coming closer to reality as advances in
technology mean computers are learning to interact with human
characteristics such as voices, touch -- even smell.

Gates, whose Redmond, Washington-based company is spending
more than US$6 billion (euro4.95 billion) on research and
development this year to stay a world leader in software
development, was asked at the seminar whether he thought
computers would ever be implanted in the human brain.

He noted that cochlear implants and other medical implants
were already being used to treat hearing problems and some
conditions that cause constant pain, and were changing some
people's lives dramatically.

Cochlear implants, which employ digital pulses that the brain
interprets as sound, can help profoundly deaf people hear.

Advances were also being made on implants that can help fix
eyesight problems, Gates said.

These types of technologies would continue to be improved and
expanded, especially in areas where they would be "correcting
deficiencies," he said.

"We will have those capabilities," Gates said.

He cited author Ray Kurzweil, whom he called the best at
predicting the future of artificial intelligence, as believing
that such computer-human links would become mainstream --
though probably not for several generations.

Gates also predicted that the keyboard won't be replaced by
voice recognition software, and that the pen will make a
comeback -- although without ink. The three would form the
basic ways people will interact with their computers in the
future, he said.

He said when computer pen technology -- scratching words onto
a screen that a computer tries to read -- gets more
sophisticated it will do things like let people draw musical
notes and chemical signs, as well as recognize handwriting.

"Some people today underestimate the pen, because that
recognition software is at an early stage," Gates said. "But
it's on a very fast learning curve."

Speech would probably become the main way to input information
in mobile devices, though Gates noted the huge popularity of
mobile phone short messages services -- used almost
fanatically across Asia.

"In some cases -- mobile phones -- speech will be the primary
input (because) either the pen or the keyboard is a bit tough
-- although a lot of young people are awfully good with that little keyboard," Gates said.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Related:

Notebook:
There was no major announcement in Chairman Gates' speech at
this MS confab in Singapore. Still, it was a decent rundown of
what one guy is thinking about the future of microprocessor
technology -- a guy who controls around $6 billion in computer
R&D funds annually. -- By Paul Angiolillo

What Others Are Saying:

As Forbes noted (below), at the same MS conference, Gates
cited Internet security as his company's key challenge.

And, as News.com reported (also below), in an interview, the
Chairman also hinted that he may license Xbox gaming device
manufacturing to third parties.

-------------------------
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2005/07/01/afx2120303.html

AFX News Limited
Bill Gates says internet security is Microsoft's biggest
challenge
07.01.2005, 07:08 AM

SINGAPORE (AFX) - Internet security is Microsoft's greatest
challenge while developing mainstream technology to be able to
talk to a computer is a frontier about to be crossed, company
chairman Bill Gates said.

Delivering a wide-ranging lecture on technology to thousands
of delegates at a Microsoft forum here, Gates said giving
instructions to a personal computer by voice will become
mainstream in 'three to four years'.

Gates said Microsoft is investing 'tens of millions of
dollars' annually on this technology, although he expects the
computer keyboard will remain an important device.

Asked what is the biggest technology challenge for Microsoft
apart from piracy, Gates identified security on the Internet,
which he explained included privacy issues and controlling
spam e-mails.

'The thing we are investing the most in is our work on
security,' Gates said, adding that users should feel more
secure in giving out their credit card numbers and other
information online.

'I think the security challenge certainly for the forseeable
future will be the biggest thing.'

Gates also said the 'next big thing' on the information
technology horizon is pushing the functions of the Internet to
a higher level, such as making online searches faster and
easier.

'The Internet is so popular today that we need to just keep
evolving ... the way we navigate information -- we need to
make it easier to find.

'People are very impressed about searches today but it's
really quite poor compared to what it should be,' Gates said.

He said searching for information on the web directs the user
to a lot of links instead of giving out the information
immediately.

'(A) higher level of understanding (by the computer) -- that's
the biggest thing because it means you will write a lot less
code and you'll find anything you want very quickly,' he said.

Gates said the next 10 years will be 'far more interesting'
than the past 30 years because technology gains will change at
a faster pace the way people work and live.

2005 Forbes.com Inc
--------------------------------------------------------------

http://news.com.com/Gates+considers+Xbox+clones/2100-1043_3-5770507.html

Gates considering Xbox clones?
By Michael Singer

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is dropping hints that he may be
ready to license the brains of the Xbox gaming device to other
companies. It's a risky move to better compete with Sony's
PlayStation, according to one analyst.

In an interview with Nikkei Newspaper in Tokyo, Gates was
asked whether Microsoft would consider opening the manufacture
of Xbox units to third parties. Gates responded that "there is
nothing concrete" but said the company is always talking with
partners about how to expand the Xbox culture.

Gates declined to give details, such as which companies
Microsoft might be thinking about working with or if a license
would be extended to the underlying software of other
electronics equipment, such as handheld devices, PCs or home
digital media centers.

Microsoft's Xbox currently plays second fiddle to Sony's
PlayStation when it comes to sales, with Nintendo's GameCube
ranking third. The PlayStation makes up more than 60 percent
of the market, with the Xbox accounting for 29 percent of
sales and the GameCube rounding out the top-tier players with
11 percent, according to the latest statistics from NPD Group.

All three console makers are preparing their next-generation
gaming box. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is expected to hit store
shelves later this year, with Sony's PlayStation 3 available
soon after and Nintendo's Revolution console expected in 2006.

Despite the suggestion that Microsoft's device could be
cloned, Xbox representative Molly O'Donnell reaffirmed the
company's stance that the Xbox is exclusively a Microsoft
product.

"There's certainly a potential for other hardware companies to
manufacture Xbox some day in the future, but that is not
something we're focused on right now," she said.

Licensing the Xbox's underlying software to other
manufacturers is, of course, not outside the realm of
Microsoft's capabilities. The company found sterling success
in licensing its Windows operating system to PC makers.

But breaking the traditional proprietary mold of the game
console world is something no one else has tried and something
JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg says would be a
bold move on Microsoft's part.

"Clearly, everyone at Microsoft is thinking out of the box to
increase sales. I mean, look at the nontraditional way of
introducing the Xbox on MTV," Gartenberg said. "It sounds like
they are just testing the waters with a hybrid of the (white
box) PC model and the (proprietary hardware) video game
model."
AOL launches video search service
Will SAP sample hosted recipe?
XP Starter under the gun
Previous Next

Gartenberg said Microsoft's strategy may be centered on gaming
software. The majority of money made in the video game
industry comes from the games themselves, not from the
hardware. Recently, both Microsoft and Sony reported that the
newer models of their devices will be priced far less than the
cost needed to make them.

Microsoft's reasoning, Gartenberg said, may be that the more
Xbox-like consoles there were on the market, the easier it
would be to sell Xbox-branded games. That would mean Microsoft
would have a larger market for the titles it published. And it
could also put the squeeze on the PlayStation by inspiring
game developers to focus on titles for the Xbox and its
generic brethren.

"No one video game software developer just writes for Xbox,"
Gartenberg said. "But what it would do is tell publishers,
'Hey, look how many more consoles we are on.'

"Still," Gartenberg said, "Microsoft would have to make sure
that all the people who license their Xbox are up to their
standards, and at the end of the day they would still be
competing with Xbox sales."

Copyright 1995-2005 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

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"When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra
"Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
-- Arthur C. Clarke
"You Gotta Believe" - Frank "Tug" McGraw (1944 - 2004 RIP)
"To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you
are doing and that's real power." -- Ayn Rand

John F. McMullen
johnmac@acm.org johnmac@computer.org johnmac@m-net.arbornet.org
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The first steps to Johny Five.

iRobot's PackBot Explorer to hit the war-torn streets: "

It’s been a little while since we’ve heard much about iRobot’s
PackBot—we understand they’ve been busy making those things that have been scrubbing and vacuuming our floors—which since we first checked it out over a year ago has since been recruited by the armed forces for Iraqi and Afghani military ops. Their latest version of the PackBot, the Explorer, doesn’t seem too different from the original modular machine, but has a variety
of surveillance and intelligence options including three cameras. Well, nice to check in and hear it’s doing well for itself—just don’t get all blowed up, ok PackBot?





[Via SpaceDaily]

(Via engadget.com.)

Oops

Apparently, Commerce bank has moved the last time to deposit a check so that it clears the next morning from 3pm to 6pm.

This I find out after a ten block sprint at ten to three.

New York City needs one of these. Damn you Seattle.

When a Treo 650 connects to a web server, this is the ID it sends:

"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/hspr-H102; Blazer/4.0) 16;320x320"

Windows 98?

male angst on craig's list

Laura sent this along to me...

-=-=-=-

-=-=-

From:

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/rnr/81550467.html

 

Re; Men Don't Know What They Want - Here's Why

---

Reply to: anon-81550467@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-06-29, 3:06AM PDT


Brilliant best of for the day.
---------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: anon-81548932@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-06-29, 2:07AM PDT


It's not the 1950s anymore. You are the new Modern Woman, and that means you're entitled not to marry the first man that shows interest in you. Fair enough, but what does that mean? Think of every guy that's ever shown interest in you. And interpret the word 'interest' loosely - whether he casually asked you out after school, wrote you a 14-page sonnet for Valentine's Day, or grabbed your ass at the bar. it's interest, isn't it? Think about how many of those guys you reciprocated interest in. Well, it couldn't have been that many, otherwise you'd be having sex with every guy that grabbed your ass, which I doubt is the case.


But rewind a bit, think about when you first started dating, not too long after the cooties stage. When Johnny the quarterback asked you out, weren't you thrilled? He had gorgeous eyes and a brilliant smile and he was the perfect boyfriend. until you found out he was dumb as a box of bricks. Well, Johnny didn't seem so perfect after that, and maybe you realized being hot wasn't the only thing you should look for in a guy.

So eventually you looked for your intelligent stud, shooting down other suitors who were otherwise physically attractive but dumb as posts, and finally found him in your college English class. Owen was a nice guy, he wrote incredible poetry and flattered you with his verses, but he was kind of a pussy. In fact, he was completely a pussy. He hated parties and thought binge drinking was "the bane of our generation" and basically seemed like he was already thirty-five years old. Well, you weren't 35 yet, so maybe it was time to find a fun guy. Owen might have made a good boyfriend for a girl someday, but you weren't that girl, and it wasn't someday yet.

You found Mr. Fun Guy at the frat party you went to that night. It took you awhile before you started talking to Mr. Fun Guy, known as 'Mike' to his friends and 'Shithead' to his fraternity brothers. He was actually a lot more intelligent than you thought, drunkenly yet coherently rambling on about George W. Bush and his corrupt foreign policy plans. And obviously he was fun, as he easily socialized with everyone in between his sixth and seventh keg stand. So you were thrilled when Mike gave you his attention, so thrilled that you gave him head that night.

And then you found out why he was called Shithead. You thought maybe it was some gross story involving actually feces, but the truth was much more disgusting:

"Well, most girls end up thinking he's a shithead, actually."

The next party you saw Mike at, his arm was wrapped around some other girl. Mike was a player. Well, fuck that shit. Fuck that shithead. If you just wanted ass, you could've gotten it from the other six or seven guys that hit on you that night. You really liked him, and you promised yourself then that you'd never give another guy head unless it was clear he really liked you too.

And so college ends and you take your degree and you go off to law school, like the other hordes of college students who don't know what to otherwise do with their lives. That's when you meet Trent, a different kind of flavor than the guys you're usually into, with the vintage jeans and piercings and tattoos. But Trent, well, he's hot and he's smart and he's fun, so you give him a chance even as all the other hipster/alternative/grunge/punk guys that have hit on you and fail whine, "that's not fair!"

Trent's smart, easily able to shift his expert opinion from subjects ranging from music to. well, music. But, well, he kind of has this problem with ambition. As the cliché goes, he smokes a lot of weed and he doesn't realty have a job, aside from selling the weed he has that he manages not to smoke. And sure, it's so superficial to care about income and you don't want a sugar daddy, but. well, it's about time you start thinking about the future, right? You don't want a family now, but you know you will someday, and seeing as you're going through grad school to ensure your future, shouldn't your future husband?

So, see ya Trent. And yeah, almost everyone in your law school classes have tried to make a pass at you, and you finally relent and date Curtis. Curtis is intelligent on every level you care about, he's socially capable and a great conversationalist with you and everyone you know, and obviously he has ambition if he's in law school. Great guy, except. he's not hot. He's just not. He's not hideous, but you admit to yourself that a physical connection is important, and maybe you're not as superficial as men tend to be, but you can't ignore the fact that you like a lean body and nice eyes. You know, like Johnny.

Where am I going with this?

This doesn't happen with men. We're not constantly being approached; we're doing the approaching. If you go on five dates, that probably meant you rejected forty other guys. You shouldn't be forced to date every guy you meet, especially when you determined they're just going to be another Johnny/Owen/Mike/Trent/Curtis, and you know it didn't work out with them.

But us? Well, we're usually one of the forty, and even if we're one of the five, we usually still end up dumped anyway. So seeing as we're being rejected 80-90% of the time, how the hell are we in any position to have any standards? How the fuck do we know what we want? When we show interest in girls that meet some very basic criteria, a girl that we find attractive, and maybe on a particularly picky day, a girl we can stand talking to for more than five minutes, and we're still getting rejected eight out of ten times. well, Jesus Christ. It's no wonder we think with our penis. Our brains can't think, because it has nothing to base thinking on.

So this is what happens to guys like me. We meet a girl that we find attractice and cool, and we want to date her. And lo and behold, she's the rare ten percent that want to date us. But then down the line other factors come into play. Maybe this particular girl is also pothead deadbeat, or we find out "cool" and "smart" are sometimes exclusive qualities, or maybe she just likes to stay in all the time and be boring. We don't find this out until weeks, or maybe months down the line, and that's when we realize "hey, maybe this isn't going to work out."

Ah yes, and the famous "fear of commitment" line comes out. Men are constantly backing out of relationships within weeks or months, before it gets serious, because of some innate inability to engage in a serious relationship. Except it has nothing to do with fear of commitment, we simply don't want to commit to someone we're not interested in. And unlike women, we don't get a chance to even figure out what we like, and what we don't like, because we're getting shot down all the goddamn time.

Oh, and we become "assholes" too, because during these weeks or months when we're trying to figure all this out, we're having sex. God forbid.

 

And now the Times comes out too against the new Freedom Tower design.

Church & State discussed by NYU law prof Noah Feldman.

He defines two very useful terms: legal secularism, and values evangelism.

He argues that both of these, the current opposing sides in the debate, are insufficient to resolve the crisis.

A critique of New York.

Would the Right Honourable Jedi MP please stand up.

Summer camp for atheists

This sounds like an excellent addition to Hindu Summer Camp.

Seriously.

Let me be the first to say it: The new World Trade Center / Freedom Tower design is crap.

Let me think of the words and phrases this design invokes:

Boring.

Suxor.

Now even more Libeskind free.

Phallic.

-=-

Where's the ground breaking awe inspiring science to make this a beautiful jaw dropping technical marvel?

I want columns of standing high energy sound waves playing their part in creating structural integrity fields.

I want a building twice as high as the old one, at 220 stories.

If not, I want a tower 1787 feet high. Enough about the Declaration, let it reflect the Convention. After all, everybody declares independence.

I want Curves.

I want Gargoyles.

And nanotech.

Worldchanging technology.

And Lasers.

Ok. Maybe not lasers.

With billions of dollars at stake, the visions from the competition to create the a new design for the world trade center have clashed with other more recent requirements, such as emergency service and office space considerations.

And once again, we are left with a shadow of what might have been.

To what might have been.

By the way, has anybody noticed how damn good Wikipedia's article on Roe v Wade is?

I'm getting sick of people quoting the law without understanding it at all. (I'm guilty as charged too.)

Federal jurisdiction has long been extended beyond simple control over interstate matters, with or without congressional bullying by threats to withhold hundreds of millions in highway funds to non compliant states. The Civil Rights Acts in the 60s affected businesses with no interstate commerce links. You can imagine how little influence those laws would have had in instances where a restaurant was being forced for the first time to serve black patrons in states that vehemently legislated otherwise.

Generally, people tend to wring their hands over federal interference in state affairs and smoke the federalism pipe when they don't agree with federal policies and vice versa.

Journalist's blog documents DEA's war on California: "Cory Doctorow:
My friend Ann Harrison is covering the ongoing skirmishes in the drug war in California. The state of California has legalized growing and distributing pot to people who have medical marijuana prescriptions, but the DEA has begun to arrest these people on federal charges (despite the fact that federal laws only have jurisdiction over interstate matters, so pot grown and distributed in California is outside the DEA's jurisdiction).

The DEA is conducting this war like a guerrilla attack on the people of California. Private citizens who record their busts from public sidewalks are assaulted by DEA agents who try to erase their camera-memory. The press-conferences are closed to the public. The dispensary raids concentrate on computer records of patients and growers, and many of those arrested face ten-year minimum sentences.

Ann is bent on blowing the lid off of this. While the stories she files with newspapers get trimmed to 'news haiku,' on her blog she's publishing transcripts of the secret press-conferences, information on the use of local law to do the Feds' bidding, and the myriad ways that the DEA is cooking the process to wage its war on Americans.

Q: Does the California law that permits patients to use medical cannabis have any bearing at all on protecting the medical cannabis dispensaries?

Pena: Before I answer that question, one thing, and I think it is really important that I forgot to mention and I think it's a public concern. On these three grow locations that we visited, they all had illegal wires tapping into PG&E the outlets all over the houses, very unsafe. I'm sure that you have heard of the situations were houses have been burning down, this causes a great deal of concern for us.

Like I said once you see that CD which we are handing out you will see the wiring system which is what causes the fires that were all contained in the three different areas that we went to. So this is how some of our houses are getting burned down.

What is your question again?

Link"

(Via Boing Boing.)

So that's what bills of attainder are.

One party state watch: Congressional...: "

One party state watch: Congressional Republicans warn Major League Baseball against allowing George Soros to take an ownership stake in the Washington Nationals.

Roll Call reports that the following from Government Reform Chair Tom Davis (R-VA): 'I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes. I don't think they want to get involved in a political fight ... I don't think it's the Nats that get hurt. I think it's Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions' from anti-trust laws.

Do these jokers need to be reminded of the constitution's prohibition of bills of attainder.

"

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Apparently Bush the younger was on television tonight attempting to link Bin Laden to Iraq.

Meanwhile, Canada has legalized Same Sex Marriage.


Also, has anybody else noticed the story about General Motors Management not being allowed to sell purchase or sell shares in GM, the policy to last indefinitely?

history

I met somebody today who used to own an Apple Lisa.

Do you have any idea how expensive those were?

Google introduced Video.google.com today.

You can apparently search for video, and play it using a slightly updated version of VLC .0.8.2 (which came out yesterday.)

The version that Google puts up for download is for windows only, and uses ActiveX.

I have bacon in the freezer I really should be "taking care" of pretty soon.

This device sounds great. How is the bacon cooled overnight though? Perhaps a nice modification would be a connected tank of Liquid Nitrogen to make sure that the bacon sits nice and cool.

Wake n' Bacon: wake up and smell the... bacon?: "src="http://img.engadget.com/common/images/3868866987697409.jpg?0.44719566945168576" align="top" border="1" height="163" hspace="4" vspace="4" width="420" />

There are oh so many ways to bring home that bacon, but only a precious few to get those lovely saturated fats ready
for your system. But thanks to the Wake n’ Bacon, now you too can shave a few steps off your morning process while also
managing to add a little oily greasiness to your environs. As soon as your alarm goes off, boom, halogen lamp broils
you up some bacon in about 20 minutes no problem—just don’t keep smacking the snooze button, or you might wind up with
some seriously charred remains.



[Via Near Near Future]

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

Ads by Google

"

(Via engadget.com.)

The question of whether we are spending enough money to protect the troops in Iraq can best be described by asking the question, "Do American Government officials travel in US Military vehicles when traveling in Iraq?"

The Answer.

Air Guitar World Championships.

There are videos.

Does the use of the phrase "London-Rome Axis" bother anybody else?

If I didn't have dinner plans, I would be here:

Giant Robot: "

Today, the store Giant Robot, known in L.A. and San Francisco for its selection of cool toys, books and clothes (hello, Mr. Dob), opens a New York location - Giant Robot New York - in the East Village. And tonight, there's an opening reception from 6-10PM, with sponsors like Dumpling Man, Glaceau, Uglydoll and Matador/Beggars (we suspect there will be eats, good tunes, and, hopefully, a lifesize Jeero!)! Plus, the artwork of Eishi Takaoka (whose sculpture is on the cover of Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore) will be displayed for through July.

Giant Robot

437 East 9th Street

Between 1st Avenue and Avenue A

"

(Via Gothamist.)

Here and Now

Here and Now
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

David Enders (on the left), before another trip to Baghdad.

H5N1 why don't you love me.

Has a certain ring to it, doesn't it?

Say what you will about AOL, their new AIM.com mail service (which gives everybody with a AIM screen name a mail account) offers 2Gb of IMAP mail.

This will complement my gmail account very very nicely...

Most any Sigur Rós news is good news.

MUSIC: Sigur Rós "More Rock and Roll" on New Album: "Sigur Rós have spent over a year and a half working on their fourth album, according to their recent interview with Icelandic newspaper morgunbla?i? (what vowels are those?), and the results might surprise long-time fans of the band.

The songs i heard didn't exactly fall under the short pop/rock structure which is rumoured to be the theme of the new album, but it's clear that there is a transition in style here: the songs are more focused, while at the same time more 'rock and roll' than previous material. Kjartan, the keyboardist, goes on to say later in the interview that this is precisely what sigur rós is all about: rock and roll. Somehow it is a more popular opinion that the members of Sigur Rós are tea drinking new age hippies who write songs about elves and lava. Jónsi exclaims 'no, we only drink hardcore coffee around these parts'. but then he adds with a smirk 'well, hardcore coffee topped off with a little soy milk'.

Their official site says that the as-yet-unnamed (as if we'd understand it, anyway) album will feature ten songs, has been completed, and is being mixed in New York as we speak.

Suddenly i decide to make a bold move, and ask plainly whether there is any ideology behind the new album. Kjartan does the talking: 'Hmm. It was just a natural progression from the last album. The last album was so heavy, so it felt better to rock this one out. Damn, that was a really lame sentence.'

[Hat-tip: One Louder]

(Written by: Keith)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Check out the picture associated with the article.

They have found a second instance of mad cow in the US in less than two weeks.

Factoring in the industrial capture of the US Agriculture Department, this is likely in indicator of a much much larger problem. Now would probably be a good time to stop eating regular beef from your supermarkets, and asking questions when you go out to eat at any restaurant.

Thank the gods I can afford Organic Beef.

I guess it is pork from here on out.

pissing off the roommates

I threw out the roommate's coffee into the kitchen sink.

It was sitting on the island in the kitchen on this warm day, all
lonely.

I opened it, checking to see if it still looked good, but it had a
old milk in coffee thing going.

The small paper cup it was in, a greek cup, was tossed, with its
white plastic cover, slightly stained, unceremoniously into the trash
can, joining the empty can of sweetened condensed milk.

Alas, the roommate still wanted yesterday's coffee.

Alas.

Google for @$$ to @$$.

Jeopardastic

Brandy (yet another friend from Ted' s home town) won on Jeopardy
tonight.

College Quiz Bowlers rock.

gmail tempations

Gmail dangles html editing buttons in front of my face.

So tempting. No. I must resist.

Also, must stop gratuitous use of the ellipsis.

..

FW: [IP] Flag-Burning Amendment and Another Word War

Note that the Daily Show "accidentally" juxtaposed a patriotic sparkler and a small American flag, leading to a flag burning, earlier this week.

To the tune of "killing me softly" now:

Burning my flag for my country...
-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Thursday, Jun 23, 2005 6:29 am
Subject: [IP] Flag-Burning Amendment and Another Word War

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Date: June 22, 2005 10:41:29 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: lauren@vortex.com
Subject: Flag-Burning Amendment and Another Word War

Dave,

The proposed amendment reads:

"The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration
of the flag of the United States."

Since it specifically says "physical," we can assume that non-physical representations such as illustrations, photos, and so on are not
covered.

But what does "desecration" mean in this context?

Public burning is obvious, but what about hanging the flag in
unusual orientations, making subtle (or obvious)
alterations/additions, or juxtaposing the physical flag with
unsavory or unpopular items or imagery? We've been trying for
decades to deal with the meaning of "obscenity" -- are we now
setting up for similar battles over yet another word?

One thing seems pretty certain. The passage of such an amendment
would convert the currently very rare, generally ignored act of flag
burning in this country into a potent symbol of political protest
with vastly expanded power to draw attention. As such, we're likely
to see a massive *increase* in flag burning -- and subsequent
crackdowns -- as a result.

One hopes that this isn't what the proponents of the amendment
actually have in mind.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@pfir.org or lauren@vortex.com or lauren@eepi.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, EEPI
- Electronic Entertainment Policy Initiative - http://www.eepi.org Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com

-------------------------------------

If you're a history/sci-fi buff, you should pick up Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent The Years of Rice and Salt. A lot more on this in there.

When Zheng He sailed the ocean blue: "

History buff that I am I was shocked to learn from July's issue of National Geographic Magazine that I had never heard of Admiral Zheng He. His story is movie-worthy and his exploits provide a new lens through which one may view South Asia during what were the Dark Ages in Europe and much of Asia. The article about Zheng He was brought to my attention by my father (because the article that immediately follows it was about the Mars rovers). From the article by Frank Viviano [I transcribed most of the quotes below since the full article is not available online]:

Exactly 600 years ago this month the great Ming armada weighed anchor in Nanjing, on the first of seven epic voyages as far west as Africa-almost a century before Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas and Vasco da Gama's in India. Even the European expeditions would seem paltry by comparison: All the ships of Columbus and da Gama combined could have been stored on a single deck of a single vessel in the fleet that set sail under Zheng He.




Its commander was, without question, the most towering maritime figure in the 4,000-year annals of China, a visionary who imagined a new world and set out consciously to fashion it. He was also a profoundly unlikely candidate for admiral in anyone's navy, much less that of the Dragon Throne.




The greatest seafarer in China's history was raised in the mountainous heart of Asia, several weeks' travel from the closest port. More improbable yet, Zheng was not even Chinese-he was by origin a Central Asian Muslim. Born Ma He, the son of a rural official in the Mongol province of Yunnan, he had been taken captive as an invading Chinese army overthrew the Mongols in 1382. Ritually castrated, he was trained as an imperial eunuch and assigned to the court of Zhu Di, the bellicose Prince of Yan.




...Renamed Zheng after his exploits at the battle of Zhenglumba, near Beijing, he was chosen to lead one of the most powerful naval forces ever assembled.

"

(Via Sepia Mutiny.)

TECHNOLOGY: Microchip Pioneer Dies at 81: "Over at TotalFark, we call this [sad]

DALLAS - Nobel laureate Jack Kilby, whose 1958 invention of the integrated circuit opened the way for the microchips that are the brains of today's computers, video games, DVD players and cell phones, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 81.



[. . .]



In 1958, his first year working with Texas Instruments in Dallas, Kilby used borrowed equipment to build the first integrated circuit, in which all the components were fabricated in a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. He also co-invented the hand-held calculator.



Kilby's fingernail-size integrated circuit, a forerunner of the microchip used in today's computers, replaced the bulky and unreliable switches and tubes that had been used in the first computing devices.



He won the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for his work, which according to the Nobel citation 'has laid the foundation of modern information technology, particularly through their invention of rapid transistors, laser diodes and integrated circuits.'

Without Mr. Kilby's work, there would be no Suicide Girls . . . and a world without hot goth boobies on my computer is a world I don't even want to think about. So thank you, Mr. Kilby. May you rest in peace.



The full story, including some pretty cool thoughts from his friends and co-workers, is at Yahoo News,

(Written by: WilWheaton)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Nooooooooooo

Nooooooooooo
Originally uploaded by Valeriekt.

Cyrus is a man.

US Dept of Breakfast

US Dept of Breakfast
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

E pluribus bacon,

In bacon, veritas.

Shana's old laptop

Shana's old laptop
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

The Powerbook 190cs.



"This is a prop"

"(for funny)"

I am a terrible person

Shana's birthday presents are sitting in my fridge.

And there they shall stay, all weekend.

Before Warren posts it, a two faced cat.

Stop Hurting My Country

When traveling along a curve, you can take a tangent from the point you happen to be at, which will show you the direction you would travel if you flew off of the curve at that moment.

The curve I'm plotting in my head tends to travel through each disturbing story I read about the direction of this country. If you want links, you can ask for them, but it shouldn't be too hard to find them for yourself.

Sixteen year old girls who only speak english being sent back to Bangladesh because they dared to, like many many other high schoolers, explore their faith.

Congressmen who decide that Crony Capitalism is too moderate of a position to stand on, and unabashedly form symbiotic by the book corrupt relationships with companies in their districts they funnel government contracts to.

White House political flacks that edit scientific articles for content based upon their past experiences lobbying against the same.

DOJ lawyers reducing the requested judgement against the Tobacco industry by 120 Billion dollars. (Yes, I have read the rebuttal on this issue by the DOJ lead attorney on this case - but you can not expect to be listened to as an impartial participant in this issue when the higher ups are former attorneys for... the tobacco industry.)

Bye Bye PBS?

Bitching about Democracy in the middle east, in countries such as Iran, and Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan.

This all in the last several days.

What bothers me the most is two years ago, there was at least a semblance (ah the rose colored glasses of looking at yesteryear) of playing by some of the rules.

Be wary of conflicts of interest, be honest with and respect the people you represent. Is this too much to ask?

In the eighties, Reagan's appointee to the EPA James Watts said that there was no reason to worry about the environment since the second coming was at hand.

I now feel that is how the Republicans in power feel about the country. Don't worry. The rapture is at hand.

The tangent from where we are right now is pretty grim. The world doesn't respect us. We are travelling on inertia. We are governed by born again believers in the Great Chain of Being. Where's a Great Awakening when we need one? Billy Graham in a stadium just isn't cutting it any more.

And if you think I am unnecessarily bitter, I'd just like five minutes with your god. Outside. Right now.

Half-male, half-female, all crab: "David Pescovitz:
Fishermen caught a crab in the lower Chesapeake Bay that's literally half male, half female. Among other differences, male blue crabs have deep blue claws while females' claw tips look like they were painted with red nail polish. The fishermen noticed that this particular crab had one of each. Researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science say that the condition, known as bilateral gynandromorphism, is caused by a 'chromosomal mishap.' Studying the rare animal could increase understanding of crab sexual development and breeding behavior. From the Washington Post:

Before turning over the crab to the scientists, (boat captain David) Johnson and other watermen conducted their own experiment into its sex life, with bewildering results. They dropped a female crab, which was just about ready to mate, into its tank.



First, the half-and-half crab cradled the female under his legs, as a male crab would do in preparation for mating.



Then, the crab seemed to lose interest in the female and let her go, Johnson said.



Then a day later . . .



'He ate half of her,' Johnson said.

Link to Washington Post article, Link to Virginia Institute press release (Thanks, Vann Hall!)"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Best fake quote evar.

Mr. President, Democrats are claiming you don't have a mandate. Would
you like one? It's $200 per hour. - Jeff Gannon

jwz points me to this blog, which has this beautiful piece:

It's a measure of our country's desperation that many hopes among US government officials are pinned to the just-completed 1000-mile oil pipeline between Baku on the Caspian Sea and the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. The idea is to get oil from Kazakhstan on the far eastern side of the Caspian sea through several other former Soviet states, bypassing a shorter, older route through the Black Sea, and creating an alternative to the ongoing horror show of the Persian Gulf.



The main problem is the idea that the American economy, and the easy-motoring lifestyle that holds it hostage, will now depend on a 42-inch wide oil pipe running through nations fraught with Muslim-Christian conflict on top of post-Soviet gangster politics. The good news is that the $4 billion pipe is buried underground so it will not be vulnerable to the small arms so abundant in that part of the world: shoulder-launched missiles, rocket propelled grenades, or .50 caliber bullets. The bad news is that it is only a few feet underground and can still be blown up by five pounds of Semtech strapped to a donkey.

They may be hypocrites but damn it they're our hypocrites.

Blaming the Victim: the latest twists in the Mukhtar Mai saga: "

We reported earlier on Mukhtar Mai / Mukhtaran Bibi, who fought back after having been savagely raped on the orders of her village jirga. Instead of staying silent, she took her rapists to court, and used the compensation awarded by the government to open a school for girls. Her bravery and class made her a cause celebre all over the world.

Unfortunately, her story didn't end there. Recently, she was invited to come speak in the US by ANAA (Asian American Network Against the Abuse of Women). In response the Pakistani government flipped out and put her under house arrest. She is banned from leaving the country, and hasn't been able to see her lawyer.

In phone conversations in the last few days, she said that when she tried to step outside, police pointed their guns at her. To silence her, the police cut off her land line... Ms. Mukhtaran continued her protests by cellphone. But at dawn yesterday the police bustled her off, and there's been no word from her since. Her cellphone doesn't answer.

Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer who is head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said she had learned that Ms. Mukhtaran was taken to Islamabad, furiously berated and told that President Pervez Musharraf was very angry with her. She was led sobbing to detention at a secret location. She is barred from contacting anyone, including her lawyer. [NYT]

Incredibly, the government claims it is just trying to protect her:

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters in Islamabad that any security measures in place were for the protection of Ms Mai. [BBC]

And the US government has made it clear that it is unconcerned:

... on Friday, just as all this was happening, President Bush received Pakistan's foreign minister in the White House and praised President Musharraf's 'bold leadership.' [NYT]

"

(Via Sepia Mutiny.)

FW: [IP] Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for x86 Leaked?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Monday, Jun 13, 2005 6:39 pm
Subject: [IP] Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for x86 Leaked?

Begin forwarded message:

From: Benjamin Black <ben@layer8.net>
Date: June 13, 2005 4:03:45 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for x86 Leaked?

Dave,

While something claiming to be Tiger x86 might be on the warez sites, those hoping to have OS X on their PC will be sorely disappointed when it boots (unless they have a thing for really disturbing porn).

Ben

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

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

This is what I've been thinking about the last several days, before I bought my air conditioner. But this setup would work especially well hooked up to a faucet...

Good thing I don't pay for water.

jwz wrote xscreensaver...


I for one am much looking forward to Sunbird...

Vendor lockin sucks.

Apple lockin sucks harder.

that was, in fact, the final straw.: "

Remember last week, when I tried to buy exactly the same audio card that 99.99% of the world owns and convince Linux to be able to play two sounds at once? Yeah, turns out, that was the last straw. I bought an iMac, and now I play my music with iTunes.

This took... let me see... just about zero effort. Well, I still have to go buy some longer audio cables, but that's it.

I plugged a mouse with three buttons and a wheel into the Mac, and it just worked without me having to read the man page on xorg.conf or anything. Oh frabjous day.

Go ahead and say 'I told you so' if it makes you feel better.

Anyway, this means several things:

• You shouldn't be holding your breath waiting for a new release of Gronk.

• I also got to stop using the crapware known as Mozilla Sunbird; now I can use iCal, which Just Works (for example, the alarms actually go off, and it doesn't periodically shit a WAV file into my .ics file.)

• The future direction of xscreensaver has become... highly ambiguous.

I'm still using my other Linux machine to read mail and run XEmacs, but I'm hoping to wean myself of that eventually, one way or another. If all goes well, then in six months or so, the only Linux machines I'll ever have to touch will have no video or sound cards in them at all.

The only thing I couldn't figure out how to do: compile xscreensaver. It stopped working some time between OSX 10.3 and 10.4 due to some GTK/Fink stupidity where pkgconfig/gobject-2.0.pc never gets installed. I'm trying not to care. That's going quite well.

Dear Slashdot: please don't post about this. Screw you guys."

(Via jwz.)

dork love

Dave's DVD player remote has the same battery as my first graphing calculator (which used three), the Casio 7500, which had 26 user accessible registers and a whole 4 kilobytes of NVRAM. The manual that came with it had a program you could enter into the calculator to solve quadratic equations. I wrote my first program on that machine, a clock that updated every minute, that had a timing loop that had to be hand adjusted.

Sigh.

Did I mention the battery in the remote is almost dead.

Dave? Are you listening? You need 1 CR2025 battery.

Z is for Zedra

Procrastination is hitting full steam this morning.
First, Neil Gaiman on Tea. I'm not quite sure what it is about British writers that brings them to write about tea. I have a hankering suspicion that it may be Love.

I had a discussion with a roommate last night about the defense of the religious. For the record, I'm not opposed to the religious. I'm opposed to the religious ignorant - those that cloak their ignorance in a mantle of religion, and thus denigrate all other religious people.

Now for some gleeful moral equivalence: If a vocal minority of ice cream eaters (say in the larger tens of millions) suddenly takes to fits of savagely beating a good friend of yours (for the sake of the argument, let us call him progress), you might begin to give the ice cream eaters (who coincidentally largely look away and focus on sucking on their cones) some dirty looks.

Just a leetle bit, no?

An article at the nyt reports on the growing movement of the religious ignorant to spread bigotry through the land:

Georgia State Senator Nancy Schaefer on gay/straight alliance clubs in (gay/straight integrated) high schools:

"I just don't feel like homosexual clubs have anything to do with readin', writin' and 'rithmetic."

And now for something completely different

I had forgotten about Pokey.

No longer.

Store Wars

Thanks to Kt for this cute gem:

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html

I miss Bill Nye.

Two Words: Road Trip.

Singing at the gates or Mordor: "

Spamalot and The Light in the Piazza were the big winners at Sunday’s 59th annual Tony Awards. Any early favorites for next year? From April’s Detroit Free Press:

The next big thing in theater, the musical version of ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ is scheduled for its world premiere in 2006 in Toronto. Previews won’t begin until Feb. 2 and the show has yet to be cast but producer Kevin Wallace offered a preview Thursday night to tour operators and other invited guests at the Renaissance Center.




Emphasizing ‘LOTR’s’ human aspects before he mentioned its special effects, Wallace called the show ‘as powerful and emotional a story as you’ve ever experienced in the theater.’




Some particulars: The show will run 3 1/2 hours, including two intermissions; the music is by Indian composer A.R. Rahman (‘Bombay Dreams’) and Finnish folk group Varttina, and there will be Hobbits mingling with playgoers before the show.

Playbill.com recently noted that advance tickets are already being snatched up:

In the first week of sales toward the February 2006 Toronto world premiere of the musical The Lord of the Rings, theatregoers snapped up $7 million (Canadian) in tickets, a spokesperson for the Toronto producers confirmed.




One might cringe imagining a quirky show tune of sweet admonition from Frodo called ‘Oh, Sam!,’ about hobbit pal Sam’s dogged faithfulness. Don’t expect it: Traditional musical theatre is not what India’s most popular composer, A.R. Rahman, and the Finnish group Värttinä, collaborating with Christopher Nightingale, write.




What would the elves sing? What is the sound a hobbit dances to? Can an orc carry a tune?




Expect varied Asian- and European-influenced sounds to suggest the many tribes of the story.

No word yet as to whether or not the Orcs will dance Bollywood style in the background.

"

(Via Sepia Mutiny.)

Köszönöm to Antonia enlightening me on the correct spelling of köszönöm.

Also, Shanakah nears...

I want gills.