Yearly Archives: 2005

This may well clinch it

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John Gruber thinks I should get a new Powerbook this year, which has been my tentative plan — this one’s 3 years old and nearly out of Applecare, and having the expense against 2005 taxes would be good. The counterpoint is the possibility of faster Intel-based machines in 2006, but my gut — and Gruber’s — is that I’d rather have the last iteration of PowerPC hardware than the first iteration of Intel hardware.

Remember Hurra Torpedo?

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Yeah, they of the appliance-smashing cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart? There’s a Rockumentary. From the filmmaker’s project writeup:

I’m going to follow Hurra Torpedo as they tour across the United States, and capture every smashed fridge on film. I will be there for the music, the magic, and also for the quiet times when the boys are just being themselves. I will capture the faintest noise, the loudest silence, and the unspoken internal lives of these three visionary young men. I’ll be there for the groupies, the fights, the parties, the jam sessions, and the make out sessions. I will be with them the whole time, like that woman in that movie about those gorillas in that mist. Only instead of gorillas, I’ve got Norwegians: Aslag, Egil and Kristopher. And no mist.

The site is a video blog of sorts (the clips are in Flash). Do not miss the frat party, the trip to the American appliance store, and (in the Behind The Scenes area), the clip about the groupie.

In which we remind you of the brilliance that is Fafblog

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When Muslims Attack! Excerpt:

Know your muslims! Some muslims can be relatively harmless, like the reclusive blue-crested muslim which only attacks when provoked, or the northern spotted muslim which just imitates the colorful patterns of its more aggressive venomous cousin. But watch out! There are thirty-eight species of man-eating muslim and they are all hungry for freedom, including the saber-toothed pipesian, the hinderical alzabo with its terrible fire-breath, and the fearsome malkinite chimera, which has the head of a lion, the wings of a winged lion, and the body of a much bigger lion eating the first two lions. The only way to defeat it is to trick it into saying its name backwards, which will cause it to vanish in a puff of liberty.

2,900

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This is the 2,900th post on Heathen. And boy are my fingers tired.

(Yeah, we know the header says 2,897; that’s the overnight count.)

What Is And What Always Was

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It’s been pointed out to me again that I don’t have an RSS link on this page. This isn’t, however, because I don’t have a feed; I do. It’s just because that, heretofore, I was too lazy to put a link up about it.

Well, look over to the right. It’s got a link and everything now. Happy?

(If this doesn’t make any sense to you, don’t worry about it.)

Dear 74 percent of Texas:

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Fuck you.

If you voted for this monstrosity, you’re no friend of mine. I’ve said for years the climate would run me out of Houston, but it looks more like the wingnut right will do it first.

Update: My friend Lisa points out that what I really mean is “Dear 74% of 15% (who voted) of 84% (who are registered) of Texas…” Which, I think, is actually more damning.

Two Things About the UPS Guy

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  1. If I’m working upstairs, the cat will be on her window perch surveying the neighborhood. (Once I move downstairs to the office, she’ll be perched on the desk surveying the insides of her eyelids.) As she dislikes visitors in general and door-knocking in particular, she has learned that “big brown truck == potential knock at door,” so she runs to hide when the truck stops outside. Ergo, Bob is my UPS alarm.
  2. Today, the UPS guy asked “So, you’re working at home now?” which is a wholly unsurprising question (I am; he’s brought me many RFID tags in the last week). His second question was a bit more interesting: “So, y’all just got married, too, didn’t you?” Of course he’d notice; he delivered a metric ton of gifts from our far-flung families and our net-shopping friends. It makes me wonder what else you could know about a household just by being the UPS guy, though.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

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If you’re an audiophile and have far more money than sense, perhaps you’d like to buy some of these products:

OPUS MM Speaker Cables
Apparently, “OPUS MM unleashes thrilling levels of performance…”. That may well be so, but OPUS MM also unleashes thrilling amounts of cash from your obviously overfull audiophile wallet. Your shiny new speaker cable will set you back a truly outstanding thirty thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars, and no cents. I’ll say that again: $30,750.00

Preach on, brother

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Five email tics I’d love you to lose, by Merlin Mann:

  1. The liberal use of the “VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!” flag
  2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
  3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the “Unsubscribe” I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
  4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you’ve ever sent
  5. The including of my — plus 98 other strangers’ — personal email addresses in the “To:” line of your friendly reminder about Tyler’s birthday party

Of course, had someone not committed sin number 5 in my direction back in ’01, I’d probably not be married, so there you go.

Go burn something in effigy.

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Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!

Guy Fawkes, guy, t’was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England’s overthrow.

By god’s mercy he was catch’d
With a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys, Let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the king.

And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!

Sadly, not that surprising

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As it turns out, the military has been dumping dangerous weapons and waste off our coasts for years, usually without anyone in the local or state governments knowing anything about it.

The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste – either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.

Why We’d Kill the Web If It Were Invented Today

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Corante references a Financial Times piece wherein James Boyle points out how the world would greet such an open technology today. He closes with:

Why might we not create the web today? The web became hugely popular too quickly to control. The lawyers and policymakers and copyright holders were not there at the time of its conception. What would they have said, had they been? What would a web designed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation or the Disney Corporation have looked like? It would have looked more like pay-television, or Minitel, the French computer network. Beforehand, the logic of control always makes sense.”Allow anyone to connect to the network? Anyone to decide what content to put up? That is a recipe for piracy and pornography.” And of course it is. But it is also much, much more. The lawyers have learnt their lesson now. The regulation of technological development proceeds apace. When the next disruptive communications technology — the next worldwide web — is thought up, the lawyers and the logic of control will be much more evident. That is not a happy thought.

Bush goes down, down, down

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New polls show Bush is at about 60% disapproval, his poorest approval rating yet — far lower, for example, than that Evil Pervert Clinton, who actually had high approval ratings the day he was impeached by a vengeful GOP.

This brings up a question, though: how low can Bush’s ratings really go? What percentage of people will approve of him no matter what? Slacktivist has some possible answers, but the one that sticks for me comes from Kung Fu Monkey:

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37 percent approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is — Tyrone: 27 percent. John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority. Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27 percent of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5 percent of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27 percent Crazification Factor in any population. John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behavior? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification? Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy. John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US? Tyrone: Does that seem wrong? John: … a bit low, actually. cite

Fred goes on to point out that Dick Cheney’s current approval rating is a stunning NINETEEN percent, i.e., well below the political Mendoza line reference above, which means that even the raving nutbird looneys who voted for Keyes can’t stomach him.

“Ask your doctor for a reason to take it”

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The parody site Panexa.com is apparently so well done that it fooled CafePress. Don’t miss the disclaimers, particularly those about squirrels. Said section begins:

PANEXA is a prescription drug that should only be taken by patients experiencing one of the following disorders: metabolism, binocular vision, digestion (solid and liquid), circulation, menstruation, cognition, osculation, extremes of emotion. For patients with coronary heart condition (CHC) or two separate feet (2SF), the dosage of PANEXA should be doubled to ensure that twice the number of pills are being consumed. PANEXA can also be utilized to decrease the risk of death caused by not taking PANEXA, being beaten to death by oscelots, or death relating from complications arising from seeing too much of the color lavender. Epileptic patients should take care to ensure tight, careful grips on containers of PANEXA, in order to secure their contents in the event of a seizure, caused by PANEXA or otherwise.

Dept. of Today

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This is a busy day in my calendar.

  • My friends Bradley and Carolyn had their son in 2001.
  • My friend Mariana’s daughter was born, also in 2001;
  • My grandmother passed away that same day, after a long illness; and
  • It was my father’s birthday; today, he’d have been 65.

So, later, have a drink for Ben, for Eva, for Mimi, and for Carl Sr. if you feel like it. But smile when you do; the good far outweighs the bad.

What has it got in its pockets?

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Nothing.

Apparently, George Bush carries nothing in his pockets. I understand why — aides handle his phones; he never needs identification; he doesn’t need to pay for anything — but I never actually thought about it before. I’m sure Bush is no different in this regard than any prior president. It still seems sort of surreal.

I’m pretty sure if I was president, I’d still carry stuff. Maybe not money or ID or credit cards, but definitely my own pen, a pocketknife, Carmex, and maybe a small notebook or Palm. Or maybe not; maybe it’s just too liberating to go without — or too easy to make aides carry all your crap.

Weird.

(It occurs to me that this is really just another manifestation of something his father famously took heat for: being wholly unaware of the existence of supermarket bar-code scanners. Why would G. H. W. Bush have ever seen such a thing? He’d been president for a few years at the time, and his prior job was 8 years as Ronnie’s veep, which takes us right back to the 1970s. Still, how weird would it be to be that disconnected from the everyday life of everyone else?)

Could this suggest the long-forgotten Democratic spine is resurfacing?

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Harry Reid has forced the Senate into a closed session to discuss the manipulation of Iraqi war intelligence.

The GOP, of course, insists it’s a publicity stunt, and that the Democrats have “no convictions,” which is an odd choice of words considering the looming conviction of at least Scooter Libby on their side.

(Heh.)

Anyway, Pandagon has the text of the speech Reid gave as he called for said session.

As it turns out, Sony are more or less universally WEASELS

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They’re using black-hat rootkit techniques to install and hide their copy protection scheme on CD purchasers’ systems. Lovely. (Via BoingBoing.)

(Translation for nongeeky readers: When bad people try to intrude on and take control of other people’s computers, they sometimes use a class of software package called a “rootkit,” which is named for the “god” level account present on Unix-like operating systems (“root”). Rootkits typically modify the system to achieve whatever theintruder’s goal might be AND conceal the hack from the computer’s rightful owner by deleting log entries, hiding files, and modifying the programs a user might use to detect the intrusion. If this sounds like serious electronic breaking & entering, that’s because it IS.)

So, once again: Leave Windows if you can, and do NOT buy copy-protected CDs. Ever. As we see here, putting a copy protected CD in your Windows box may well do serious damage to your computer’s software — damage that is not accidental.

More on Sony DRM, wittily and scathingly written.