Seen

Things I've seen here and there around the Internet and want to save for myself.

A letter to Murray Campbell, Globe columnist, about National Pharmacare. Since the Globe appears unlikely to publish it, I include it here.

Read More:Always More.

Wrote this comment for Steve Gilliard's news blog. Steve is ex-NetSlaves and an excellent writer, even if sometimes I think he's talking out of his hat.

Read More

Here is an interesting development: a spammer who has attached a blatent advertisement to what appears to be a pseudo-joke list.

Read More:See The Spam!

Here's an automatic Garfield generator. It's sad that randomness can make a better cartoon than Jim Davis can today.

This one's a good one. Others generated are less funny, more surreal. And still others are not funny at all...

If you are going to wait for the ultimate in DVR technology, you might as well wait for the big kahuna.

Read More:yes please, I don't watch nearly enough TV as it is

Found an article about how the US Medicare and Social Security systems need to change for today's young people (20- and 30-year-olds) to draw any benefit whatsoever from it. The author talks about generational warfare -- where the young, taxpaying workers rebel against supporting their ageing and expensive parents. You can draw similarities for Canada with just as dramatic problems. I've long said that the boomer generation owns more of the blame for today's financial problems than they care to admit, and their pleas for 'tax relief' are ill-made.

Read More:Always More.

Very rarely, you see something truely insightful on Slashdot. In a discussion about whether it is a good idea to get a lawyer to review an employment contract with terms you don't like and/or don't understand:

Assume that you're just as good at revising some lawyer's contract as you'd expect that lawyer to be at revising your code. Act accordingly.

I'm going to credit the Slashdot account American AC in Paris (230456) for this, but that may be wrong.

Personally, I know I will never again sign a contract with the phrase other duties as required in it -- I ended up being a move monkey once as a result.

Following my impromptu Mars:Earth scorecarding, I discovered that someone else has done a lot more research on the matter.

For the record, prior to Opportunity's landing attempt, the sore is 20:16 for Mars.

Slashdot links to an article talking about how to say things you can't say. In it, the author writes:

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.

He's definitely been reading Slashdot. And of course the Slashdot discussion is completely oblivious of their repeated proof of his point.

Joel Spolski of the popular programming commentary web site Joel On Software reviews Eric S. Raymond's The Art Of Unix Programming, wherein he says:

Raymond all too frequently falls into the trap of disparaging the values of other cultures without considering where they came from. It's rather rare to find such bigotry among Windows programmers, who are, on the whole, solution-oriented and non-ideological.

Hah. I spit up my morning juice when I read that one. Windows programmers, lacking bigotry? I think that Joel is falling into his own trap of generalizing his own community from the his immediate surroundings, while generalizing the external community from the loud fan-boy internet discussion sites. There are definitely Unix programmers who acknowledge that Windows has its place -- while I've met many sneering Windows programmers.

Further, he says:

This haughtiness-from-a-position-of-weakness is the biggest flaw of The Art of UNIX Programming (...)

You know, I had a similar thought when reading this review. Mr. Spolski brings up many of the compare-and-contrast points of unix vs windows programming, and while (in my unix-centric view) most unix points stand on their own, the windows points are rather fluffed up with artificial and (in my unix-centric view) rather unconvincing hand waving. Most of his points seem to boil down to

• windows does it this way because it is better for users; and
• problems in windows are due to bad windows programmers mis-using the api

...without really being able to explain or justify either statement. So we use the Evil Registry instead of Elegant .rc Files because we want to sell millions of copies of our word processor? Why?

In the end, Mr, Spolski's review falls into the same category that he would like to pigeon-hole Mr. Raymond's book -- an attempt to be balanced and fair defeated by the author's self-inflicted blinders.

Arcade Ambiance, recreating the audio environment from a 1980's video arcade. It is odd how soothing this white noise is to an old timer such as myself... kids today have no idea.

Seen in a discussion about the Lord Of The Rings III:

"Our intellectual culture has a bias against fantasy," says medievalist Siewers, who says the prejudice extends far beyond the Academy Awards. "Fantasy is outside the classical curriculum at universities and relegated to the back aisles of bookstores because it hasn't shaken off the stigma of popularity."

That's right sportsfans, if something is popular, it can't be good. I think that this attitude speaks volumes as to why the average Canadian couldn't give a flying monkey out of his ass about the CBC. Canadians are tired of self-appointed pseudo-intellectuals trying to tell them what their 'culture' is and how it should be celebrated.

Seen on Slashdot:

Why you should never take investment advice from Slashdot

Read More:Date-Captured Image Inside

The Angry Economist notes that there are too many laws.

Why Nerds Aren't Popular by Paul Graham.

Found:

"If you look at the demographic trends, the Muslims in France will grow to 30 percent of the population within 50 to 100 years. An average French couple has less than two children. An average North African Muslim family or Palestinian couple will have 7 or 8 children. Through immigration and the high birth rate of Muslims already in France, it won't be long before Muslims are the largest voting bloc. Most citizens don't know what they want from the government and many don't vote at all. A relatively small but well-organized and coherent group of voters can easily take control of a democracy."

I'm honestly not sure if this is fearmongering, racism, or what -- but it sure is interesting.

And the Americans thing they have trouble with the French today...

Seen on Usenet:

"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.a"

- Douglas Adams, on Windows '95.

This has been in my collection for a couple of years, but only came up today.

"Never ask a man what computer he uses. If it's a Mac, he'll tell you. If it's not, why embarrass him?"

-- Tom Clancy

I found a flash ad which was pointed at this Airbus page, claiming that you could save $1 million. While I'm sure that's significant savings... I somehow doubt that an airplane is the kind of impulse buy item that benifits from advertising in this manner.

In entirely unrelated news, I'll be unavailable for the next two weeks as my A318 is being delivered November 3rd, and I still have to find someplace on the street to park it.

Study hard, go to a good school, and one day you too can do important science.

I knew I was in the wrong field.

Read More:a reprint is enclosed

The modern Formula One car is the most efficient way of going round a circuit with as little interest and enjoyment as can happen.

Stirling Moss

1. Go with your strengths:

   Driving south through London Ontario from Stratford, we came upon a mini-mall with a sign posted by one of the tenents:

   WE HAVE LOTS OF PORN

   The 'V' was about three times the size of any other letter on the sign, read into that whatever you like.

2. I didn't realize it was a major problem:

   Headed north, I can't remember where but I believe it was somewhere west of Woodstock Ontario, there is this sign that reads:

   Gator Financing Available

   ...and nothing else. Sez me to the wife: I didn't realize aligators had that kind of mass market appeal.

In the course of writing the letter to the Citizen regarding the 10 Commandments, I had to look up the actual text of the commandments. This was because I recalled the TV coverage of the Alabama incident to include the text of the First Commandment as "I am the Lord, thy God," a recollection which prompted my letter.

My fleeting thought as I watched the TV was "that isn't so much a commandment as a statement." I wondered if that was seriously the actual first commandment or if it was merely another religion-affirming statement decorating the monument in question.

The website I hit on was this one which describes five separate sets of commandments.

Interesting.

Seen:

* okay, if you're smart enough to write a mail gateway that identifies a well-known windows worm that's known to fake the From address, how come you insist on sending "hello, you're infected by a virus" mails to that address?

- online.effbot.org

One way to fight back against telemarketers

Seen on Slashdot:

...the best CEO I ever worked with defined happiness as having enough cash in the bank to walk in off the street and buy a top of the range Mercedes with a personal check...and not do it, so when you're stuck in traffic next to the guy in the 600SEL you can think "You're going just as slowly as I am, and you're paying through the nose for it."

- panurge (573432) on Slashdot

Hey, I learned something today.

Liberty is 'safety' from the state. "Liberty to be safe from my fellow citizens" is a misapplication of the word "liberty".
mrex(25183) in a Slashdot comment

OK, next someone gets to explain to me why 'liberty' is more important and desirable than 'safety from my fellow citizens'. Because personally, I have far more concerns about my fellow citizens than I do about the state.

Irony is suggesting that the computers of software pirates be fair game for destruction, before checking your own computers.

Now to be fair to the idiot^Wsenator, he probably has nothing personally to do with his web site except for content direction and being the figurehead at the top of the organization which pays the hosting bills. This is, as with the vast majority of political controversy, a misdirected, overblown fuss over practically nothing.

But it's still funny. That and the porno link he's got on his front page.

(About net message boards,) the rule of the game is that it's okay to say anything you want, about anybody, no matter how offensive or incorrect...but to defend yourself (or someone else), to take the person to task for it, THAT'S somehow wrong, it means you can't stand the heat, or you're infringing their right to speak, or being rude, or somesuch.

It's carte blanche for the assholes and the nutcases and the rude folk to say any damned thing they want, no matter how untrue, hurtful, or libelous. And most astonishing of all is that people buy INTO this bullshit.

The ones who badrap everybody the most, who feel that they have the right to do whatever they want to other people, are always the ones who go most bugfuck when somebody goes after THEM in return. THAT they don't like, THAT is unfair.

It's the logic of the guy who pees in the pool 'cause he thinks its fun.

I say fuck 'em.

-- J. Michael Stracynski
Creator, Babylon 5

I somehow think that if he'd been around for BBSing or Usenet, he'd have said the same thing. These symptoms are only aggravated by most of the participants being less than fully engaged in the society around them (heck, that's always been my problem).

The problem with public communication is the public.

You are Morpheus, from "The Matrix." You
have strong faith in yourself and those around
you. A true leader, you are relentless in your
persuit.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Not -- although it is interesting that I am identified as the one who gets to experience close up what happens when religion hits the real world. Is that my destiny?

A comment on Slashdot.

Let's have some sense of proportion here.

UFO or cloud? Cloud, of course. Nature is stranger than we can imagine, yet there are always those who try to attribute natural phenomena to artificial means. (Have a closer look at the same cloud.)

There's an excellent article on K5 which discusses the larger issues surrounding the 'music on the internet' debate. A salient passage:

For the sake of argument, let's take your example a step further. Let's assume that the album in question isn't available, anywhere -- at retail, online, or from used CD sellers. You're arguing that (a) because the album isn't available, the artist isn't losing a sale; and (b) by taking the album out of circulation, the artist essentially "forced" you to download it. Again: Control, not money, is the primary motivation behind copyright. (Money follows as a result of control.) Copyright law grants an artist the right to decide that he doesn't want to distribute his album any further, regardless of whether there happens to be another person who would like to own it.

I like it. I've long felt that just because someone wants something, there is no obligation on another party to sell it (or even a copy of it) should they not wish to do so.

Naturally, the hoards on K5 are outraged.

This is just too cool: an image of V838 Monocerotis showing light echos of dust clouds thrown off the star in previous explosive episodes.

You'll note that the cross-hairs on the local stars are at an angle -- this tells us that the shot was cropped at an angle from what the original was taken. I wonder why this particular angle was chosen? It would be interesting to see the original, un-rotated and un-cropped shot and compare it to what is presented here.

Update, 2 April 2003: Today's APOD is a dancing gif of the light echo progressing through V838's dust clouds over an 8 month period. A visible example of the speed of light.

BBC News has an article on scientific research showing a correlation between religion and brain damage. I'm sure glad we got all that cleared up.

Pseudorandom linkage of the current indeterminate time period: a collection of error type messages that you may see from your computer in the future. I especially like this one.

When NetSlave's Steve Gilliard has his head in analyst mode he can come up with some really good writing (as opposed to his bitter, out-of-work-html-jockey mode where he just comes off as childish). He's come up with an interesting analysis of how and why Iraq ended up as it did, the result of choices which were made when they were made for understandable reasons. While probably just as slanted as much of the propaganda which is passing for news these days, this analysis brings to light several mitigating factors which influenced the Iraqi behavior.

Incidentally, I still don't think that the US has sold the need for this war very well, and that even though '30 nations' have supported this action, there will be serious consequences down the road because of it. I am dismayed that the US is commiting practically every charge they have accused Iraq of (posessing weapons of mass distruction, illegal and improper extention of force on another nation, ignoring the will of the UN, and the capper -- preventing the theoretical deaths of 'thousands of americans' by pre-emptively killing thosands of Iraqis for real). I can't believe that the US sincerely thinks that their politicians are the only ones worthy of the right to change their minds.

But all that is water under the bridge right now. There's a war on now, and we can only wait to see who the Americans turn their attentions to next.

Go try it.

Another mass-mailed screed, this one explaining how to praise and condemn individuals.

I think these are interesting ways of presenting ideas, and it shows that many of the base ideas in many religions are the same. Even if we do not subscribe to the literal guidance offered by a religion, many of them comment on the same issues and have things for all of us to consider.

Read More

mosfet discusses user interface configurability.

Personally I don't care how configurable or not an interface is, as long as it is configrable to look how I want it to look and act how I want it to act. So something as 'rigid' as olvwm fits me fine, while all the additional flexibility in gnome does nothing for me.

Lookie what I did: my first +5 post on Slashdot. I've had a few +4s in the past, and one comment about JarJar I thought was brilliant, but this is the first time I've been rated as high as I can go.

Kinda ironic this coming so soon after my comments about moderation.

Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1970:

Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another.

And this was in 1970. The constitutionality of spam as protected speech doesn't even pass the laugh test. To paraphrase it as I've said here before: Your right to speak in no way compels me to listen to that speech -- you confuse the right to speak, which you have, with the right to a particular audience, which you do not have.

Something a bit different -- religious spam. Makes for interesting reading. I have received a couple of these, mostly sent to email addresses scooped from Techdirt -- but this one is by far the most fascinating.

Read More:let the word be forevermore.

The original quote from Edward Bulwer-Lytton is actually conditional:

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.

This leads one to several conclusions:

that we are not beneath the rule of such men; and/or

the men we are beneath the rule of have an inappropriate view of themselves

I did not know this until today.

This was sent to me though a mailing list.

Read More

A letter to the Ottawa Citizen.

Read More:Always More.

Always remember the 5 stages of product development.

• Wild enthusiasm
• Bitter disillusionment
• Search for the Guilty
• Punishment of the Innocent
• Promotion of the non-participants

(unknown)

At the height of the dot-com craze, there was this add for some broker service or other which had a punchline somthing along the lines of "the future is bullish".

I looked at Jenn, and said to her that last word is mis-spelled and lacking a 't'.

Letter to the editor time again! This time, the lucky recipiant is the Kanta Kourier-Standard, a community paper serving Kanata.

Read More:here he goes again

You know how it is, all these press releases to go through. Enron this, Congress that, SPCA the other. It's all so tiresome. However, we've only just received word of an important press conference held back on 26 September 2001. It addresses a rather critical piece of law and hopefully clarifies it somewhat.

True, this information is only available now because we've finally got around to reading all the junk mail sent to us, but our motto is "You Know About It When We Know About It." Well, so we don't really have a motto, but if we did it would be something like that.

This article appeared in the February 23, 2002 issue of the Lakeshore News - Salmon Arm, BC. It was written by Ron Adams, a local financial advisor who writes a regular column in the paper. Ron is sometimes a little irreverent and ruffles many conservative feathers in town but he is often entertaining and usually gets straight to the heart of the issue.

Read More:I'll have fries with that.

A letter to Linux Weekly News.

Read More:Always More.

Speaking just for me, I don't think I have Linux blinders on my eyes. I can see other platforms, but I *choose* to ignore them on the theory that if I ignore them hard enough they will go away. This theory is obviously crazy. However, it also appears to be working.

-- Eric S. Raymond

The ultimate in special services: a professional stalking company. I don't know if these guys are for real or not. I'm not sure I want to know if they are.

A missive on why Slashdot sucks.

Read More:it's lengthy

Oh sure, Windows lets you do the things you need to do. However, its place in the world of computing is comparable to the place in the car world held by the Yugo: it has four wheels, a motor, a place to sit, and is generally capable of getting you and your things from point A to point B -- but it's hardly a proper _automobile_, is it?

me
after being challenged on whether Windows was a "real" OS like unix

Information wants to be expensive.

Stewart Brand
aka the guy who said "Information wants to be free"
(seen in a .sig on /.)

Actual question overheard at the helpdesk at one of my customer sites:

Why was the stuff in my "Deleted Items" folder deleted?

(This user had set up an elaborate set of folders to track things which he deleted and coupled it with a clever set of macros which removed anything older than a couple of months. Problem is, when the contents of your Deleted Items folder is higher than some percentage, Exchange deletes your Deleted Items folder.)

Mr. Parker,

A recent addition to the Magic 100 morning program has been a little side corner known as Parker's Point. Here, our faithful news correspondent shares with us a little piece of what he's been thinking about and invites listeners to email him anytime. I get the feeling that you are perhaps not getting the wild public response that perhaps you hoped for.

Read More:there's a point to all this

This is fucking hilarious.

My wife should know that no particular commentary is implicitly meant by this link; but no particular commentary is denied, either...

"I have watched kids testifying before Congress. It is clear that they are completely unaware of the seriousness of their acts. There is obviously a cultural gap. The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house. It should not matter that the neighbor's door is unlocked. The press must learn that misguided use of a computer is no more amazing than drunk driving of an automobile."

Ken Thompson

So the basic premise seems to be that war is bad because people die.

Let me say the following things:

Read More:Originally submitted to NetSlaves

By Jack Bryar, NewsForge.com -- but I think in this case, he won't mind.

Found on The Register

Read More:Read this and think about it.

By Jack Bryar, NewsForge.com -- but I think in this case, he won't mind.

Found on The Register

Read More:Read this and think about it.

Seen in asr:

The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an "airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference - one can see only a very few things at once.

Fred Brooks

Ray Richards, one of the Canada Computes! farm team of authors, has penned an interesting screed blaming hackers for the current tech economic downturn. I wrote this reply and submitted it to the canadacomputes web site.

Update, 28 August: my comment has been added to the above web page.

Read More:all five of us hackers

I read this article (abortively titled Don't put down this) on K5, and composed this reply (reproduced below).

Read More:who the heck is Aunt Minnie?

A reply I attempted to post to /. when someone made some comparisons between OS Wars and the players in World War II.

<OBDisclaimer>Warning: this post contains gratuitous stereotypes and blatant historical revisicisim. Misinterpret at your own risk.</OBDisclaimer>

Read More:we need more historical revisicism these days

While digging through some of my ancient files, I discovered some articles that I captured from Network Computer World. This magazine was back from the era when the java-based network computer was going to take over the desktop PC's jobs. This series of articles entitled The Next Ten Minutes date from March through June 1998, and talk about the external forces affecting Microsoft's shaping of the Windows NT successor. This is interesting because even through the concept of the Network Computer is dead, it's influences ironically shape the core of Microsoft's .net proposal, much of which is predicted in general terms in these articles.

These are raw dumps of the HTML pages, so none of the images nor any links you find on these pages are expected to work. Read parts one, two, three, and four.

While digging through some of my ancient files, I discovered some articles that I captured from Network Computer World. This magazine was back from the era when the java-based network computer was going to take over the desktop PC's jobs. This series of articles entitled The Next Ten Minutes date from March through June 1998, and talk about the external forces affecting Microsoft's shaping of the Windows NT successor. This is interesting because even through the concept of the Network Computer is dead, it's influences ironically shape the core of Microsoft's .net proposal, much of which is predicted in general terms in these articles.

These are raw dumps of the HTML pages, so none of the images nor any links you find on these pages are expected to work. Read parts one, two, three, and four.

A thread on Techdirt discussing Microsoft's behaviour regarding schools, which degenerates into a discussion of whether or not laws should be 'optional' or selectively enforced.

Read More:optionally degenerate this!

Steve Giliard and xdroop discuss the state of management as it relates to the college education. Skimmed from the NetSlaves forums.

Read More:Everyone back to class!

A comment regarding advertising-financed "news" programs shown to high school aged kids.

Read More:originally posted on K5

Poll question on NerdPerfect, 5 August 2000: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?

Read More:Well, does it?

Something I posted about Netscape and other open source projects that never seem to end.

Read More:Well then?

A couple of comments about hackers I posted to NerdPerfect.

Read More:Evil details.

Something I posted to NP after Grapes commented that the only reason why Internet Explorer was the dominant web browser was because there was a complete lack of quality alternatives.

Read More:I know quality when I see it.

An Annonymous Coward on Slashdot weighs in on the topic of poor quality software releases.

Read More

By Orson Scott Card. From Windows Sources, March 1995

Read More:Always More.

Randal Denny, Ottawa Citizen, Saturday January 25 1997

Read More