Art Buchwald is still around (barely?)

An awesome article about one of the great satirical writers of the twentieth century.

My dad got me a copy of Whose Rose Garden is it Anyway many many years back, and I never looked back.

PalmOS is dead! Long live, umm, umm...

Palm is giving up on Access developing the Linux based PalmOS that is supposed be be a successor to PalmOS 5. Instead, they are doing it themselves.

The Treo700p is at version 5.4.9... which has an end of the line version number feel (If you remember that Other 4.9 piece of software... Windows ME). If Palm does release a linux based OS in early 2007, that might be a viable alternative, but carrying legacy PalmOS overhead might be a royal pain. But I don't see a GSM PalmOS based Treo in sight, and my phone is showing its age.

And thus, I'm hedging my bets by researching alternatives for that inevitable day.

I've been looking at the Nokia E61 as an alternative to the Treo. It isn't available in the US, except at the Nokia store in Chicago, but it does support quad band GSM & UMTS for data. The price, at $400 is competitive with other unlocked phones I've seen. Let's look at the highlights I care about:

• 
  An excellent web browser: The E61 does run Symbian 9.1, which now supports Nokia's KHTML based browser, kin of Apple's Safari, and which from all reports is the hands down best browser available for small devices at the moment. If you have ever used the browser in a Treo, let alone less capable devices, you know how much the inferior browser hampers the capabilities of the device. A workable browser, sitting on the tail of functional desktop browsers, is a notable improvement.
  
  
• Mac Synchronization Support:
  There exists an OS X iSync plugin for the device, so that's good. A phone without synchronization is no go for me at this point. I'm done entering data into a phone. That's what full size keyboards are for.
  
  
• Unfortunately, the Nokia E61 seems to have a very significant bug in accessing mail on an IMAP server. This crosses a red line for me... IMAP mail is essential for any product, and if the product doesn't handle mail reasonably well compared to Chatteremail on my Treo 650, I can't upgrade.
  

Now of course if Apple introduces an iPhone in August... all bets are off.

I am going to assume that any apple phone will be tied to Apple's ecosystem, which I can stomach, since I do happen to be heavily invested in the Apple environment, but imagine a non Apple GSM phone with an excellent browser, and Gdata over the air synchronization, supporting open standards, at least a 320x320 screen (or more) and plenty of on phone storage... maybe in two more years.

The Squeal

The Mac Book Pro started squealing today.

Time to send it back for a replacement... sigh.

Kosher?

Kosher?
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Why can't this administration stop pissing me off.

NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet

The Apocalypse is Here

The Apocalypse is Here
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Cyrus pointed me to this collection of headlines Sunday

Captain Obvious Does it Again

From the Beeb:

Clone 'would feel individuality'

Human reproductive cloning is currently not allowed in the UK
A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests.

Scientists drew their conclusions after interviewing identical twins about their experiences of sharing exactly the same genes with somebody else.

"Duh".

Re: San Diego Comics Convention, or why Warren Ellis isn't going

Best Line Evah.

Purportedly Via Warrenellis.com:

San Diego: "

I never want to have to piss while standing next to Klingons again.

"

Angela's Wedding

Angela's Wedding
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

My camera died. This is the only picture I have.



Ted's fianc Rachel Kelly with sparklers in Angela's driveway after Angela had left in the limo.

Nasa Clips

There is a beautiful clip looking down from the Solid Rocket Boosters of the Space Shuttle as the shuttle takes off.

It's actually a quite fascinating video, as you see the florida coast line slowly shrinking in the distance, and there's roughly a point at which you think to yourself, that's what the coast line would look like from an airplane... and then it shrinks even further.

And then I am bitter.

On Pirates

The best way I can put the movie is that I had quite a bit of fun, without feeling cheap.

And at the Harlem theatre too, which was quieter than the even the 34th St theatre I've been to.

And the cheesy epithets, the douglas adams derived humor and oh the cheesy epithets.

I loves it.

TibetMobile

TibetMobile
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Found on a storefront on Kalpana Chawla Way in Jackson Heights.

The Dam Breaks

In regards to today's SCOTUS decision...




From SCOTUSblog:

Even more importantly for present purposes, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today's ruling. The commissions are the least of it. This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely," and that "[t]o this end," certain specified acts "are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever"—including "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." This standard, not limited to the restrictions of the due process clause, is much more restrictive than even the McCain Amendment. See my further discussion here.

This almost certainly means that the CIA's interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administation has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes).

Best Cabbie Fare Ever

Purportedly Via New York Hack:

Recognize him? I did immediately, and I don't even have cable. (It's Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, in case you weren't sure.) Much to my own surprise, I was a bit starstruck. So much so that I actually forgot to turn the meter on for about 15 blocks. He was on the phone and remained oblivious to me for the entire ride until finally, as I dropped him at his destination, I worked up the gumption to interrupt his conversation. And you know what? He was cool as hell. So many cabbies have celebrity stories where the person turns out to be a total asshole, but not Jon Stewart.


I sputtered away at him for a minute and finally told him about the blog and asked if I could take his picture. He graciously posed for me and was incredibly modest and nice. And thank goodness, because it would've been depressing if I had to write about one more dick.


Oh yeah, and he tipped well, too.

"

Jokes

A current Afghan joke asks the difference between Americans and Russians, and the bitter answer is: “The Americans are better paid.”

from here.

On the Canadian Terrorists

Money Quote from the comments:

real men do not attack Canada

Purportedly Via OxBlog:

I SEE, ITS OUR FAULT: Who is...: "

I SEE, ITS OUR FAULT: Who is to blame for the aborted terrorist attack on Canada?


Open thread: I'll buy a beer (or a sparkling mineral water) for the person who can come up with the most unrigorous, cliche-ridden effort to apportion blame to the Canadians.


Extra drinks if you can work in to your litany the following: 'neo-liberal', 'root cause' and 'demonise.'


UPDATE: The efforts so far have been mighty fine. But there is stiff competition.

"

the mosquito ring tones

For those of you enthralled by the story about the mosquito ring tones, here's some shorter samples that can be used.

How do you lose a large flightless bird?

How do you lose a large flightless bird?
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Picture of the Day: The Cat Who Scared The Bear

Wizard!

Purportedly Via Gothamist:

Picture of the Day: The Cat Who Scared The Bear: "

Photo by AP Photo/Suzanne Giovanetti

Comment

<"

Bend it like Beckett

(the title was allen's genius)

ESPN & ABC's coverage of the World Cup is abysmal.

The commentators are clueless.

The England game Saturday was filled with references to Posh Spice, and the repeated mistake of saying Beckett in lieu of Beckham.

For the later games, we switched to Univision's coverage.

There's nothing like hearing GOL GOL GOL GOL GOL loudly after a score, and also being able to tell how the game is going from the change in the lilt of the quite excitable commentator's voice during a notable moment.

On ABC, you got the vibe that the commentator was reading from his crib notes.

On Univision, You could clearly hear the ball getting kicked.

Yes. In the ABC coverage, you couldn't hear the ball getting kicked.

Unforgivable.

remix

Imagine the FANTA jingle, except HANTA HANTA, hantavirus...

trailer for the namesake

It's out and looks awesome.

Les Incompétents

Russia extradited Zelenovic to the Bosnian authorities on Thursday. He was hiding from the U.N. war crimes tribunal for years in Siberia until authorities there detained him last year, the AP reports.

What kind of Dumbass hides in Siberia to avoid a United Nations administered prison in Europe?

Mouse Chewed

Mouse Chewed
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

A mouse chewed through the bottom of my door last night.

Well, tried to anyways...

Gali noticed the shavings on the floor this morning.

iClaudius cleaned them up in short order.

Mars Rover: I can see you

The Domains of your gut

Analysis has revealed that the organisms in your GI tract span all three known domains of life (bacteria, eukarya (us) and archaea), which split over 570 million years ago.

The non-human cells in our guts have twice the number of genes as does the human genome.

That's pretty awesome.

I see you

Thanks.



Only works for iSight equipped visitors.

Advice: Vote Early & Vote Often

RFK, Jr on the stolen 2004 election in Rolling Stone.

heh

I just got carded.

3 cheers for disneyworld

I hates it.

No?

Would wearing this shirt be ironic for doctors?

During Rounds?

Wrong?

Purportedly Via Warrenellis.com:

Nor Do I Play One On Television: "

Another profoundly important t-shirt from TopatoCo.

"

Stanford's Stickybot wall-climbing robot lizard

I would like my Van der Waals interaction boots and gloves now please.

Stanford's Stickybot wall-climbing robot lizard: "

Filed under: Robots

We thought MIT's slime-climbing robo-snail was pretty, er, slick, but we have to admit that our new fave wall-climber has got to be Standord's Stickybot. The robot gecko has feet coated with a polymer designed to mimic the properties of setae, the tiny hairs on gecko feet that enable the lizards to climb walls. That allows the bot to clamber freely without the surface in question having to be doused with slime, as required by MIT's bot. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon is already interested in adapting the tech for military use in gloves and boots for soldiers. We can only hope this trickles down to civilian uses fast; we're so ready to connect with our inner Spidey as we climb the walls in our gecko gloves.

[Via I4U]

"

(Purportedly Via engadget.com.)

nonos

You should never have to wonder if that smell from the seat across from you on the subway is coming from an exotic breath mint or cheap vodka.

The Horror,The Horror

Teenagers on the subway singing "I love you, You love me" from their fondly recalled, Barney infested childhoods.

Fuckers

Read this blurb on the XM lawsuit by the RIAA.

You're Rich Biotch!

I was at a Citibank ATM near 45th and sixth avenue yesterday, and the machine told me it only had $50 bills, and helpfully offered me quantities of money in increments of $50.

I laughed my way to the ATM next to it.

Serial Communications from OS X

I can use screen instead of Zterm or minicom!

ls /dev/tty.*

gives me:

/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem /dev/tty.KeySerial1
/dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync

I then run:

screen /dev/tty.KeySerial1 9600

And I get a serial console to whatever the serial port (in my case a Keyspan serial adapter) is connected to.

I use this to quit screen:

control-A, then control-
This is very very useful...

Thoughts on the Treo 700p

Cy asked me what I thought about the Treo 700p. Coming from the perspective of a GSM Treo 650 user, using the phone on a network (T-Mobile USA) that doesn't officially offer or support it, but does offer excellent voice and data tariffs, here are some of my thoughts:

Note that I haven't played with one yet.

Frankly, I'm a bit jaded with Palm right now. Having used the Treo 650 for the last year, the platform is showing its age.

The OS crashes a lot. The web browser is, to put it mildly, inferior to many browsers from Nokia and you can't run a decent version of Opera on it either.

Hotsyncing contacts and calendars is still a joke (compared to what is available with Blackberries and Windows Mobile based devices when tied to Exchange Server.)

Here's where my Treo has gotten me at this point in my phone expectations:

• 1. Reception Everywhere
  
• 2. QWERTY keyboard.
  
• 3. Long Battery life with continuous background network connectivity.
  
• 4. Always on email. (ChatterEmail does this well.)
  
• 5. Syncing contacts and calendar with computer and beyond (eg Google Calendar), automatically, and over the air, in the background. (You can do this with Palm Desktop or The Missing Sync, but it is SLOW, and a blocking foreground process.)
  
• 6. Camera that works well in low light.
  
• 7. Ability to add mp3 ringtones (works with 3rd party add-on on Treo) and 3rd party software at will to and from my phone, and not through the phone company's wireless network.
  
• 8. For the love of god not crash more than once a day.
  
• 9. Touch Screen Phone Interface(once you start using it... It just works really well.)
  
• 10. Have enough space on the device to not HAVE to have expansion cards to store data.
  
• 11. Run on a user expandable Operating System (linux)
  
• 12. Pre-emptive Multitasking.
  
• 13. External audio silencer button.
  

The GSM Treo 650 handles #1, #2, #4, #6, #7 (without supporting mp3 ringtones... come on), #9and #13.
The CDMA Treo 700p improves on the 650 by adding #10. I bet it will still have problems with #5, #8, and they don't plan on moving to #11 or #12 before next year, and there's still no GSM Treo 700p, so forget #1, as it won't work abroad.

The Blackberry handles #1, #2, #3 (I hear), #4, #5, no mp3 support so no #7, #8, #10.

I still think the 700p will be better than any other phone out there, but only barely, Blackberry is catching up.

And if Apple does come out with a phone someday...

Break of Reality

Break of Reality
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Playing at 59th St/Columbus circle on the uptown Central Park West platform at Rush Hour.

Call Me Crazy

But I've been thinking the same thing this weekend.

There's a certain poetic justice about Gore in 2008.

And given a choice between McCain and Gore, I would vote for Gore.

Frankly, healing the Republican Party just is neither my problem nor my project. And after what will be eight years of this nonsense, I just don't give a damn.

Fwd: [IP] real good SNL: If Al Gore were President

Do watch the clip. I caught it on my DVR earlier today.

Beyond the parody, there is something almost poignantly painful about Al Gore talking about so many of the issues that many of us thought were important back in the 2000 election, that have so ignominiously blown up in our faces during this Bush Administration.

I had almost forgotten how much I miss competent government.

If the Democrats can just remind us of this, I think they have a hell of a chance in the next elections.


Begin forwarded message:

From: David Farber
Date: May 14, 2006 3:28:54 PM EDT
Subject: [IP] real good SNL: If Al Gore were President




Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks
Date: May 14, 2006 1:16:43 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] SNL: If Al Gore were President



Last night, "Saturday Night Live," <http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/> opened their show with Al Gore addressing the nation as if he was the President of the United States. Gore was focused and quite funny in this entertaining spoof of the current administration and their long range of failures. He also parodied himself and the media (when they falsely claimed he said he created the internets) by saying that he invented an Anti-Hurricane and Tornado Machine.

You can find a Windows Media version here: <http://movies.crooksandliars.com/SNL-Al-Gore-5-14-06.wmv>.
You can find a QT version here: <http://movies.crooksandliars.com/SNL-Al-Gore-5-14.mov>.

Well worth checking out!

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>

Harlem Lanes

Harlem Bowling Lanes
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

On the 3rd floor at the corner of 126th and Adam Clayton Powell, after being patted down for weapons.

Clubbing with Koalas

Purportedly Via Warrenellis.com:

NEXTWAVE #5 Sneak: "

NW005018

Pencilled art by Stuart Immonen, violence towards cuddly cuddly baaars by me.

"

If you liked Black Narcissus...

I finished watching Black Narcissus this afternoon.

IMDB notes that if you liked Black Narcissus, you might like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King...

FEMAil: Don't Get Shot!!!

With fans like these...

Purportedly Via Wonkette:

FEMAil: Don't Get Shot!!!: "

The fan mail is generally funnier than the hate mail. We wish this writer had gone on CNN to give those bitches (presumably a veiled Anderson Cooper reference) what-for.

'
"

Videos of the Day: TMBG Fan Flix

A video mashup of my favourite televideo series.

And by the way Season 3 comes out on DVD tomorrow.

Purportedly Via Gothamist:

Videos of the Day: TMBG Fan Flix: "

The fans of Brooklyn's supergroup They Might Be Giants love to make tribute videos. We're particularly partial to the Scrubs mashup we've linked here, but some of these are also pretty amusing/inexplicable/absurd/awesome:
"

Full bottles go here

Full bottles go here
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Our Cupboards, Refridgerator, and Pantry are out of space. All full bottles are now being lined up next to the baseboard heater. This will be a problem in winter. The two yellow capped Coke bottles are all we have left of the twenty bottles of Passover Coca Cola we had purchased.

userfriendly : 06 mei 2006 (9116)

HAHAHAHA.

Purportedly Via User Friendly the Comic Strip. by Illiad:

userfriendly : 06 mei 2006 (9116): ""

DARPA doing the right things again

If NASA was just run like DARPA, I'd be writing this from Mars.

DARPA Funds Bold Research on Limb Regeneration

Don't Be Evil

I'd like to believe that Microsoft is trying to tie up this patent so that it can sue people who try to violate this patent, all in the name of being a red blooded american company, but I'm not optimistic.

On the other hand, hey, a neat idea for a public interest IP firm. Patent all of the evil ideas, and keep people from using them. After all, there's no such thing as compulsory licensing,right?

Purportedly Via Slashdot:

Your Rights Online: Microsoft Seeking to Patent Automatic Censorship: "theodp writes 'Microsoft is back at the USPTO, this time seeking a patent for the automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast, a system and method for automatically altering audio to prevent undesired words and phrases from being understandable to a listener as originally uttered.'"

Palm's Blackberry Connect software for the Treo650 is worthless

Blackberry announced Blackberry Connect software for the Treo 650.

It uses the built in VersaMail mail client. How often do you hear people asking for a mail client on their phone or pda "just like Versamail?"

The answer is never. Snappermail and Chatteremail (my current fave) are what power users tend to use.

Futhermore, it seems that the Blackberry connect server does sync the mailbox and calendar with a blackberry enterprise server, but not the contacts, which means that you still need to sync your phone with your computer to do backups and sync your contacts.

Perhaps Blackberry doesn't want to cannibalize sales of their own devices.

This might be useful for those people who work at an organization that has a Blackberry Enterprise Server, and wants to look at using Treos, but doesn't want to consider using Goodlink's services, which sync contacts, calendar and mail.

I don't think that market exists.

On Line

On Line
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

For Colour Me Kubrick

Best Buy Invaded By Legion Of Blue-Shirted Pranksters

Gizmodo has the whole story... but I'd argue this ImprovEverywhere event is tons more fun than that last nopants event...

Purportedly Via Gizmodo:

Best Buy Invaded By Legion Of Blue-Shirted Pranksters: "

Photo by Chad Nicholson

Mission: Best Buy [Improv Everywhere, via The Morning News]

Improv Everywhere Best Buy [crnphoto on Flickr]

'"

Lessig in nyc

Lessig in nyc
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

@ free culture film screening.

flashback

I just heard a remix of a prodigy album in a footlocker that brought me back to chris danek playing quake freshman year.

Damn.

A friendly Cow

Sigh.

New York Apartments aren't made for cows.

Man vs Ape

I just found the most brilliant demarcation for separating humans from all other species.

Humans are the only species to use birth control.

Poly-Phasic Variations

I've been doing some research on poly-phasic sleep (again).

I did manage too find this link to nap music, which is nice because it is set for specific periods of time, after which the music tries to wake you up.

friendly juxtaposition

There's something that just works about playing Dr. Mario while audio from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome plays in the background.

"Two men enter, One man leaves!"

HDCP: Why So Weak?

Professor Felten makes a very interesting point about the encryption used in next generation cables boxes, televisions, and high definition media formats (such as HDDVD and Blu-Ray). The encryption being added to these products is insufficient to stop hackers from breaking it, or to stop companies from releasing software or hardware to circumvent it.

Instead, this protection is only there to allow lawsuits under the DMCA (under the anti-circumvention provision) to keep products out of the marketplace (that haven't been authorized for interoperability by the HDCP cartel).

So just like with the DVD cartel, the law of technology is being bent (dare I say it is being used as intended) to control players in the HDCP affiliated industries.

Question: Is the weakest link here the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA?

Purportedly Via http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/:

HDCP: Why So Weak?: "

Today I want to wrap up (I think) the discussion on security weaknesses in HDCP, the encryption scheme used for sending very high-def video from a device like a next-gen DVD player to a TV monitor. I wrote previously (1, 2, 3) about how HDCP will inevitably fail — catastrophically — when somebody manages to recover the master secrets that are the source of all power in the system, and publishes those secrets on the Internet. I wrote, too, about how this problem could have been avoided by using standard cryptographic primitives rather than custom-designed ones.

It seems very likely that the people in charge of HDCP knew what they were doing, and made a deliberate choice to use the less-secure scheme rather than the more secure, standard one. (I don’t have definite proof that they knew about the security problems, but it’s pretty hard to believe that their engineers failed to notice it.) Why did they choose the weak system?

The academic paper on HDCP, by Crosby et al., says that HDCP’s designers were given a ‘budget’ of 10,000 gates. (Gates are one of the basic building blocks from which digital chips are designed.) Crosby estimates that a more secure design would have required about 30,000 gates, to fix the vulnerability I discussed earlier and some smaller vulnerabilities. How much does it cost to add gates to a design? That depends — the high end of the cost range is around $100 per 10,000 gates, but the low end might be much lower.

There are really two questions here. (1) Why did they think it was worth paying for 10,000 extra gates to have the weak system, rather than no encryption at all? (2) Why did they think it wasn’t worth 20,000 gates to have a stronger system, rather than the weak system? Let’s consider these questions in order.

First: Why is the weak system worth spending 10,000 gates for? The answer doesn’t lie in platitudes about speedbumps or raising the bar — any technical bumps or bars will be obliterated when the master secrets are published. It’s worth noting, too, that the data stream they are protecting — uncompressed super high-def (1080i) video — blasts so much data so fast that there’s no affordable way for a would-be pirate to capture it, at least today. About all that can be done with such data streams today, at reasonable cost, is to display them, or to run them through simple format converter boxes. In future years, capturing the video stream will become a viable piracy strategy, but by then the master secrets will almost certainly have been published. So temporary piracy prevention doesn’t seem like a good explanation.

A much more plausible answer is that HDCP encryption exists only as a hook on which to hang lawsuits. For example, if somebody makes unlicensed displays or format converters, copyright owners could try to sue them under the DMCA for circumventing the encryption. (Also, converter box vendors who accepted HDCP’s license terms might sue vendors who didn’t accept those terms.) The price of enabling these lawsuits is to add the cost of 10,000 gates to every high-def TV or video source, and to add another way in which high-def video devices can be incompatible.

The second question is why they weren’t willing to spend an extra 20,000 gates to use a more secure crypto scheme. Doing so would have reduced, in the long run, some types of P2P infringement. They apparently felt this would not be a good investment, presumably because other infringment scenarios were more troublesome. Why spend money strengthening one link in a chain, when other links are already weaker?

The bottom line is clear. In HDCP, ‘security’ technologies serve not to disable pirates but to enable lawsuits. When you buy an HDCP-enabled TV or player, you are paying for this — your device will cost more and do less.

"

Coca Cola with sucrose in lieu of HFCS

CocaCola with sucrose in lieu of HFCS
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

We bought 20 bottles.

Slurpee Fun

It's a magnificent day in New York City, and I've been walking from client to client all day.

There's nothing comparable to walking into an office, looking at people tired of working inside, and having them exclaim, "WHERE DID YOU GET A SLURPEE!!!"

The 7-11 at 6th & Lexington, and I'm going back outside now...

FW: [IP] CDMA Defined

Brilliant:

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Wednesday, Apr 12, 2006 7:24 pm
Subject: [IP] CDMA Defined

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Atkinson, Robert" <rca53@columbia.edu>
Date: April 12, 2006 6:36:56 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: CDMA Defined

A correction published in Tuesday�s Wall Street Journal:

�The wireless technology called CDMA stands for code division multiple access. An article Thursday about an investigation of Qualcomm Inc. incorrectly said the acronym stands for code division multiple complaints.�

Bob

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

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

I just saw a sticker on a newspaper stand that said "celebrate neurodiversity".

<seinfeld>What does that mean?</seinfeld>

I assume they're promoting proper embryonic differentiation, but I can't be sure.

One more reason not to need Exchange

Shared Calendaring from Google:

calendar.google.com

Argentina On Two Steaks A Day

Best Travel Article Ever.

Argentina On Two Steaks A Day: "

The classic begginer's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it's the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don't forget to drink water).

(Purportedly Via Idle Words.)

mentionable unmentionables

Showtime had their preview weekend a week ago.

Is it just me, or does their ShowtimeN channel seem to cater to black people...

Intentional?

arbitraging gender

I just saw a poster for a gym with the line "I'd pay to see you sweat."

UN findings

The UN finds that 75% of Syrian women won't admit to being beaten.

Darwin's meditations on marriage

Darwin's meditations on marriage
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

When deciding upon whether to marry, Darwin made two competing lists, pro-wife, and pro-bachelor.

On the Pro-Wife side of the page it is written, "Better than a dog anyhow".

@ the Darwin Exhibit at the Natural History Museum.

Boobies!

Boobies!
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

@ the Natural History Museum Darwin exhibit.

Why Mommy is a Democrat

At last!

Democratic Agitprop Comrades!

Purportedly Via Fraser Speirs:

Why Mommy is a Democrat: "I genuinely can't decide if this is a joke or for real:

How odd."

Why I love Antonia and wish she were living with me again

The "globalization" of Christianity undercut its diversity, standardizing religious practice much like McDonalds has standardized its sesame seed buns and beef patties.

For the record, she just compared Christianity to a McDonalds hamburger.

Now I'm hungry...

Arab Strap

Arab Strap
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

@ Southpaw.

Success

A cold rainy April day.

Clearly an excuse to tie the stereo to the Airport Express to Airfoil to QuickTime Player playing the WDBM live stream. (ok or the WCBN stream.)

Yah.

overheard in the village tonight

"Where is Ray's pizza where the heroin is?"

XLI

Deep words. Also, I have taken up buying and drinking half gallons of OJ again.

At least Vitamin C is water soluble...

XLI: "

Odysseus dropped by today.


He sheepishly asked me how I had been doing, and how my butt was feeling.


I assured him that my ass was fine and thanked him for the grapes.

"

(Purportedly Via under odysseus.)

Mozilla donates to OpenBSD

It is good to see the Open Source ecosystem taking care of its own.

Donations Update: "Frank Hecker
from the
Mozilla Foundation
contacted Theo to inform him that the foundation decided to donate $10,000 USD to the OpenSSH project. Frank mentioned this today in the Mozilla Foundation's
status report.

The OpenSSH project truly appreciates this gesture of solidarity from such a
respectable open source project.

Besides this sizeable donation we also received hundreds of smaller donations,
mostly from
individuals and small companies. Thanks everyone for stepping up
to keep OpenBSD/OpenSSH ticking."

(Purportedly Via OpenBSD Journal.)

The Death of the Bahamas Tourism Industry

Buh Bye!

"The [Bahamian government Plays and Films Control ] board chose to ban it [Brokeback Mountain] because it shows extreme homosexuality, nudity and profanity, and we feel that it has no value for the Bahamian public," Chavasse Turnquest-Liriano, liaison officer for the control board, said Wednesday.

a. The Bahamas has a Plays and Films Control board.

b. They are afraid of extreme homosexuality. I shudder to think what the heterosexual analogue to that would entail.

Another Apple II Lab Bites the Dust

Does it make me old to fondly remember using a logo program on the Apple II?

Holy shit, there's a version for OS X!

Purportedly Via Cult of Mac:

Another Apple II Lab Bites the Dust: "
Vance Carruth, a third grade teacher from Huntington Beach, California, is retiring -- and his clutch of twenty Apple IIe systems will be going with him, the Mac Mothership website reports.

Even though the technology is almost thirty (30) years old, Vance's third graders fight over the chance to get use of one of these puppies.

... the school system purchased Apple IIe's for each classroom back in the 80's. In the early 90's they were replaced by IBM compatibles and most recently by Dell's. Each of the teachers were told they could take their Apple IIe home or move them to a designated storage room. Most elected to not take them home. The storage room later became Mr. Vance's classroom and he inherited the equipment. Mr. Vance decided to setup and network the desktops and has been supporting this effort with other machines that he has salvaged parts from for the last fifteen (15) years.

Now the real bad news. Mr. Carruth, (AKA Mr. Vance - Student's nickname for him) will be retiring this coming June. This comes only after 39 years of service at the same school. Once Mr. Vance has gone, there will be no other teacher to take on this support effort and the Apple IIe legacy along with Mr. Vance will vanish from Smith School.

"

Falling Behind Nippon (Again)

And all this despite large content owners like Sony calling Japan home.

Purportedly Via Lessig Blog:

Lost in regulation: "

In the late 1990s, I travelled a bunch to South America to talk about cyberspace. In conference after conference, I listened to South Americans describe how they were waiting for the government to enact rules so they could begin to develop business in cyberspace. That reaction puzzled me, an American. As I explained to those who would listen, in America, business wasn't waiting for the government to 'clarify' rules. It was simply building business in cyberspace without any support from government.

Yet as I listened to the Japanese describe the stuff they were doing with content in cyberspace, I realized we (America) had become South America. One presentation in particular described an extraordinary database the NII had constructed to discover relevance in linked databases, and drive traffic across a database of texts. I was astonished by the demonstration, and thought to myself that we could never build something like this in the U.S., at least until cases like the Google Book Search case was resolved.

And bingo ‒ the moment of recognition. We are now, as the South Americans in the 1990s, waiting for the government to clarify the rules. Investment is too uncertain; the liability too unclear. We thus wait, and fall further behind nations such as Japan, where the IP (as in copyright) bar is not so keen to stifle IP (as in the goose that ...).

(Oh, and re broadband: NTT is now well on its way to rolling fiber to the home. Cost per home -- between $30-50/m, for 100 megabits/s).

"

LOTR & Army of Darkness

Has anybody else noticed the similarity between certain scenes?

Or is it a given that any scene involving the secret knowledge of gunpowder will have one person (say Ash) keeping the idiot with the flame away from the combustibles...

He Man Does 4 Non Blondes

Jon alerts me to this brilliance.

Watch the video...

Bringing it all together

This is why I love Wil Wheaton. He puts this snarky mirror to the last two decades in the same way that Neal Stephenson does for the future, while still capturing the essence of the spoken word poetry that we would occasionally gather for at the Half Ass.

And by the way Charlie, I'm not sure how I can ever thank you for introducing me to Battelstar Galactica.

climb so high and gain so low:

My Road is paved with d20s and TRON DVDs and Atari 2600 games. It's lit by the glow of TNG and BSG episodes and the soundtrack is by Vangelis. It's patrolled by Rover and they sell Soylent Green in the rest stop vending machines. The speed limit is 42, but if you flash your Bavarian Illuminati card, you can use the FTL drive to make it to Milliways in time for dinner.

(Purportedly Via WIL WHEATON DOT NET: Where is my mind?.)

Boys Who Like Macs Who Also Use PCs

Windows on Mac
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Yes, that is the installation of XP on a Mac. By a quirk of the installation process, that installation screen is at the native resolution of the MacBook Pro, as opposed to the windows standard 640x480. Which Means that Windows Works Better On a Mac.

This doesn't mean I'm switching to XP, it's just nice to have options to get my work done.

Pho

Allen was apalled at my attempt to hijack the symbolism of Boromir's death scene for my gluttony.

FreeiPods.com Sold Private Data -- Despite Promising Not To

Thus proving once again that "there is no such thing as a free ipod lunch."

FreeiPods.com Sold Private Data -- Despite Promising Not To: "

FreeiPods.com, the wildly popular marketing scheme that offers free iPods for trying out various subscription offers, sold the data it gathered on 7.2 million Americans to an email advertising firm, according to a story at Wired News by my colleague Ryan Singel.

(New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer) announced Monday that e-mail marketing giant Datran Media had agreed to a $1.1 million fine for knowingly buying marketing lists from companies with privacy policies that promised not to sell or transfer the lists to a third party.

... Datran's biggest purchase, according to the text of the settlement (.pdf), was a list of 7.2 million Americans' names, e-mail addresses, home phone numbers and street addresses from Gratis Internet, a company best known for promising free iPods, televisions and DVDs to users willing to sign up for promotions offered by partners such as Citibank, Blockbuster and BMG's music club.

The sites inspired dozens of 'Is there really such a thing as a free iPod?' stories in the press (including one by Wired News), and internet forums were packed with pleas for information on how to acquire a free version of Apple Computer's signature fetish item. The freebie required a registrant to sign up five others into the program, and eventually the legalized pyramid scheme reached its inevitable saturation point.

While many did indeed get a free iPod, all ended up with inboxes full of marketing pitches, which began showing up within hours of registering.

Gratis lied to me for the story I wrote originally about the company (also linked above), which did wonders for their early credibility, and then lied again for a follow-up story I wrote about it's privacy practices that was prompted by the avalanche of spam its customers mysteriously received.

In addition, Gratis Internet was a member of Truste, which provides a 'privacy seal' to companies it says have a trusted privacy policy.

When asked by Wired News in 2004 how third-party spammers got hold of Gratis members' e-mail addresses, Truste said it could not find a problem with Gratis' practices.

'The results of our investigation indicate that Gratis Internet did not violate their privacy policy,' Truste investigator Alexander Yap wrote in an October 2004 e-mail. 'Truste did, however, work with them to strengthen and clarify their privacy statement.'

Several months later, Truste revoked Gratis' seal of approval, then quickly reinstated it, then pulled it again, but declined to state publicly its reasons.

In the wake of this week's settlement, Truste's spokeswoman did not return repeated phone calls, and executive director Fran Maier did not respond to e-mailed questions about why Truste never discovered the alleged sale or informed the public that Gratis was not adhering to its privacy policy.

"

(Purportedly Via Cult of Mac.)

Windows XP on Intel iMac: confirmed

How to do it.

This is what I'm doing later tonight.

Windows XP on Intel iMac: confirmed: "One Mac user is over US$13,000 richer, as his solution for booting Windows XP on Intel Macs is verified. Are you ready to dual-boot Windows XP and Mac OS X natively on the same machine?

"

(Purportedly Via Ars Technica.)

pstdelta 060315 (Default branch)

I can't believe somebody didn't implement this before. Having a large number of Outlook users on your network backing up (or storing) PST files on the server makes differential backups a complete nightmare.

pstdelta 060315 (Default branch): "Pstdelta can be used to store the differences
between an old and new version of an Outlook .pst
file. It can then generate the new file using just
the old file and the output generated by pstdelta.
It was created in order to vastly reduce the size
of differential backups of .pst files.

---

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

---

Changes:

This release fixes a bug that caused verification failure in specific situations. It adds a nightly script to help facilitate the use of pstdelta in differential backups.

"

(Purportedly Via freshmeat.net.)

This Poor Excuse for a Winter

Coats and T-Shirts coexist on the street, cats and dogs lying together...

Friends, this doesn't look good..

XP booted From the internal drive of an Intel Mac

Dual Boot XP Any Day Now...

XP booted From the internal drive: "

narf2006 posted a photo:

The installed XP after booting from the internal drive. Still one more reboot to go before getting to the desktop.

"

(Purportedly Via narf2006's Photos.)

The Bronx Sudetenland

Marble Hill, the only part of the borough of Manhattan now connected to the bronx.

Trivia Subquestion: What is the northernmost subway stop in Manhattan?

Everybody Lies

What's more disturbing than dreaming about hanging out with television doctor Gregory House, and managing to find snarky situations to quote his lines back to him?




Finding out he's actually a pretty decent guy...

unsurprising surprises

You'd think I'd know by now that when a girl says "Guess what?" to you that "I'm getting hitched" is a likely candidate...

:-D

Laura, furrowed brow

hunter ski trip13.JPG
Originally uploaded by jeanabaena.

I think this is my favorite Laura picture so far.

Mac Book Pro Day 3

I finally have 1.5Gb of RAM on the machine, up from the standard 512Mb, which just wasn't enough.

The stripped screw over the ram compartment that was keeping me from adding ram (due to a right shitful screwdriver from Radio Shack) has been fixed by the quite resourceful people at Digital Society this afternoon.

I'm now sitting at Starbucks on 8th St just west of University Pl, with Belle & Sebastian on the store speakers, and internet through T-Mobile's free weekend hotspot service for T-Mobile customers, and a large cup of Hot Chocolate at my side.

The machine flies.

Full Speed i386 virtualized performance is only days away, and I do look forward to running windows side by side with OS X.

The machine flies.

Also, I just saw a man walking down Broadway with a cat on his hat, speaking loudly (I assume) to his cat, which was sitting quite serenely and taking in the sights.

The season finale of Battlestar Galactica is next Friday, and Jon Stewart takes the stage tomorrow night.

This is a bad time to be a television hater.

On Apple's New Products today

As seen commented elsewhere:

"$350 for a speaker? Who the hell spends $350 on a speaker? Now if they threw in an iPod..."

Quote for the Day

A Gandhi he is not.

Quote for the Day: "

'Toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has ended his hunger strike on health grounds,' - the Scotsman.

"

(Purportedly Via Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish.)

Caitlin & Laura, the rematch

Caitlin & Laura, the rematch
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

There's always time for Dr. Mario when friends visit.

rolling keegan's stomach

rolling keegan's stomach
Originally uploaded by becksu614.

Note also the uncredited fifth Mich Haus member in that picture.

The Hobart industrial dishwasher to Molly's left.

Sigh.

I miss that dishwasher (as I look at my sink...)