Both Dean’s site and Angela’s site are down. I wonder which one of them tripped over the cable, or forgot to pay this month. No doubt they’ll be back online in no time.

RunDMC DJ Jam Master Jay was shot and killed at a recording studio in Queens, New York yesterday. The gunmen have not been apprehended as of yet. Police cannot identify a motive for the killing. Jay’s death is a tragic loss for the family he leaves behind, as well as the music culture he helped popularize.

When I blabbed off about Romanian TV programming being a veritable rerun fest, I forgot to mention that *M*A*S*H* is also on the list. In fact, it’s a daily staple Monday through Friday. Yes, I’m talking about MASH, the Korean War comedy series with Alan Alda. It’s freaky seen a young Alda in MASH, and then seeing him as he is today in the documentaries that he does on the National Geographic Channel - talk about back to the future.

Rebecca dug up this article by Dan Bricklin that focuses on the ongoing debate about the effect of file downloads on music CD sales.

Dan points at the numbers: “RIAA claims that “If just half of the blank discs sold in 2001 were used to copy music, that would mean that the number of burned music CDs worldwide is about the same as the number of CDs sold at retail.” You’d have to assume, reading such material, that if it weren’t for personally copied music, CD sales would be double, and with the copying they should have dropped by at least half, not 10%.”

More fun can be had over at Eric Meyer’s site, with his inventive ‘face-builder’. Stereotypes has the potential to keep you busy for hours, just don’t let your boss catch you.

If you’re looking for more Google-related fun, here it is. Googlism is “a fun tool to see what Google “thinks” of certain topics and people.” Enter a name, place or time, and Googlism will produce a lengthy description of whatever it is you entered.

A selected few Googlisms for my name:

• ryan is getting a raise he already makes about $400k posted
• ryan is `second to none’
• ryan is an idiot
• ryan is being his real name in internet
• ryan is alone in his belief of a possible defection and must go out and establish contact with ramius before the soviets sink the red october
• ryan is 40 degrees fahrenheit with a july temperature average of 78 degrees
• ryan is every bit as brutal as you’ve heard
• ryan is described as being in a coma in southern california with brain injury from a fall of three stories

A Canadian Correctional Services report reveals that prison inmates are using their computers to devise escape plans, make fake IDs and commiting fraud. When convicts are perpetrating crimes from inside prison, you know that something has gone awry in the system. Although “prison regulations forbid the use of modems or computers,” “authorities failed to realise that modern PCs have built in modems and technology to allow Net connections through mobile phones.” Whoa whoa whoa! Back up a second… regulations forbid the use of computers… so then why are the authorities letting these guys use them? Connections through mobile phones? Inmates are now allowed to have mobile phones? Excuse me, but how did we allow prison life to get so cosy?

A little more than a month or so ago, table nouveau, a listing of websites that use only CSS for structure and layout, disappeared without a trace. Browsing the WaSP site I learned that Meryl has kindly mirrored the old database here, where you can now submit your own CSS-only site, or look for others.

I’ve decided to put together a weekly top 5 list. This was something that came to mind when I first watched the movie ‘High Fidelity’ many months ago. Simply put, this will be a pick of my favorites or not so favorites from a given category. For example: top 5 people I’d like to meet, top 5 cities, top 5 holiday destinations, top 5 foods, top 5 movies that suck, top 5 people to avoid, etc. Hopefully you won’t find it too overdone.

I’ll collect all the top 5’s on a single page, but for now, here is this week’s top 5. Remember that I’d love to have your input too, so feel free to comment what your choices would have been, or let me know how much you hate my selection ;)

The Observer is doing a three week piece on Kurt Cobain’s diary of sorts. The article features numerous hand-written journal entries covering everything from his first drum set, to rants about MTV and the music industry.

Growing up, I never knew who Nirvana were until quite some time after Kurt’s death. It wasn’t until a day in May 1995, when I had some spare cash, and wanted a new tape for my walkman, that I picked up MTV Unplugged in New York. At first it was tracks and renditions like ‘Come as you are’, ‘Oh me’, ‘Plateau’, and ‘Lake of fire’, that astonished me… Later, I enjoyed songs like ‘Lithium’, ‘Something in the way’, ‘About a girl’, ‘All apologies’, and ‘Smells like teen spirit’ too… how had I missed out on all this?

Ok, so my playlist is reaching that unappetizing state of affairs where I haven’t heard anything new or different in too long. As far as my music preferences go, whatever sounds good goes, anything from Antiloop to Schubert, Metallica to Moby, Ani di Franco to The Cult, I’ll listen to almost anything at least once. So please make your suggestions, anything in particular that’s got your ear at the moment?

I spotted a link on Rachel’s site to an new photoblog resource. Photoblogs is a listing of photoblogs, where you can submit links to… wait for it… blogs with photos, and vote for your favorites. Useful for finding new sites to browse, hopefully it develops into something more interesting than that alone.

Yesterday I came across the best Winamp3 skin ever. This skin is simply incredible, it comes with around 30 colour schemes included, and is equally elegant in full mode, or compact mode. I hope the guy who made it will do an XP theme.

The Sixth Day was on the box tonight, but I don’t think missing the first half hour (because I was at the airport) made much difference. I could hardly believe how similar Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in this production was to his role in Total Recall. Guy’s head is messed with, guy finds out about himself, people try kill guy, guy kills people. Real deep.

Habits are hard to shake. When jumping back and forth between Mozilla 1.1 and IE6, I run into one frustrating hurdle in particular. In IE6, I keep clicking the scroll wheel button on links, thinking they will open in a new window or tab, as they do for me in Mozilla. Instead I end up just reloading the page, because that’s what my scroll wheel button is set to do in IE6. Try as I may, I can’t seem to stop doing it. Frustrating.

Aside from learning Mandarin (and making me totally jealous of the opportunity in the process), Eric Bin is also picking up on some pretty cool stuff. Today Eric has struck on the origin of the word ‘ketchup.’

Just when I’m tossing around ideas of migrating to Linux, and also experimenting with the new Mac OS, Andy Baio reveals a couple of Longhorn screenshots. The new Microsoft OS continues in its long-standing tradition of appropriating the ideas of others. Multiple desktops are a *nix thing.

A few days left until Josh Allen’s site turns seven (October 31st), and he makes known the sexiest sentence alive.

This year’s World Series has certainly has been a riveting one. The matchup between a team who last saw the like of the post-season in 1986, and a team whose lineup included the Homerun record-holder, always promised to be entertaining, especially when both teams are from the same state. I doubt that any imagined that it would be such a nailbiter though, with the whole shin-dig coming right down to the line. Don’t ask me who I’m rooting for though, I can’t even figure out it I’m a Mets fan or a Yankees supporter. It all ends tonight.

Well, Jeffrey Zeldman has just about completed redesigning his site. For those of you who saw the ‘red’ version earlier in the week, I will admit that it felt a bit bloody, but the ‘teal’ feels somewhat ‘girly’ to me. Yes, it’s a pastel, yes it’s more subtle and probably easier on the eyes, but it’s not a guy color. There really is nothing wrong with the site though. A pleasant change, it’s always refreshing to see something new.

Two weeks ago, we saw the Japanese National Space Development Agency (NSDA) test a new reusable space shuttle design. You can bet your bottom dollar that NASA and Boeing have also working on a new reusable shuttle. In addition, BBC World reports today on the European Space Agency (ESA) has its own shuttle plans. The ESA imagines that it will only cost $50 million… cute! The new Wembley Stadium will cost more than $1 billion!! (and that isn’t even going to the moon).

Jason has put together a handful of photos that make me wish I was in New York City right now. I have only visited the ‘Big Apple’ once, that was in January 2000. The three days my buddies and I spent there seemed to go by faster than the 5-hour trip on the Greyhound bus from D.C.

As ‘touristy’ as we could be, we had to see all the famous landmarks, the Statue of Liberty included. After missing 2 ferries, we only made it to Staten Island at around 5:30 pm. We ran to make it inside, and felt so very lucky when the line to go up into the statue was cut two people behind us. We breathed a monumental sigh of relief, and waited patiently as the line of people snaked it’s way up inside… slowly, very slowly. When we eventually reached the top, a couple of girls in front of us were not impressed when I joked “See guys, I told you so… there’s nothing inside a woman’s head!”

While my friends scampered down the steps to the base of the statue, I found the descent particularly trecherous: the spiral of steps leadidng down is particularly steep, the steps are very small, and I couldn hardly see where I was putting my feet. This was complicated by the fact that I am 6’ 3” and the clearance height between one level of steps and those above it certainly felt less than that - as multiple welts on my forehead attested. Needless to say my ‘friends’ had a good laugh about it when I finally made it down.

The weekend has been less than productive so far. At least I have my PC back to normal (minus 1 hard drive of course), but I feel nice and comfy again. Not much food left in the cupboards, so I’m down to making toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches, used the last of the ham in an omlette this morning. It’s rather unusual for me to run out of supplies over the weekend. In any case, will pick up a few things now, when I go to pick up family and friends at the airport later this afternoon.

I have been short of time since Wednesday, the hard drive failure put me out, and things have been a little busier than usual around here, so I haven’t been around as much as I would have liked to. Amongst today’s highlights:

• Finding someone who has the CDs for the latest Redhat, and SuSE Linux builds. This will keep me busy for hours on end in the upcoming weeks.
• Spending some time with a buddy of mine that I haven’t seen in nearly a month. There was a lot to talk about, amongst other items, I got my XP disc back, and borrowed his copy of ‘Small Business Networking for Dummies’ (should provide sufficient reading material for quite a few trips to the can!)
• Arriving home sometime after 8pm, downing a couple of tasty pizzas, enough Coca-Cola to float a houseboat on, and then crashing out on the sofa, waking periodically to catch glimpses of a Julia Roberts/Nick Nolte movie on one channel, and a stripper movie on another channel.

Ryan is sleepy now, Ryan is going to bed. Ryan will restore his PC to its former glory, track down post-worthy news items, take a shower, and catch up on e-mail, when he falls out of bed in a few hours.

In conformance with the laws of certain countries, Google has removed the listings of a number of controversial sites in its search engine listings. The sites that Google was required to remove are your usual right-wing extremist, neo-nazi, white-supremacist, anti-semitic type sites, but they have also been required to ban certain Christian sites, and anti-abortion sites. I find it rather strange that they should be forced to ban anti-abortion sites rather than abortion sites, that seems to say that it’s ok to dig up information on murder, but not ok to research the joys of life.

Hey, I’m not taking sides either way here, but I want consistency. If they’re going to ban anti-abortion sites from the listings, then they should have to scrap abortion sites too; no anti-semitic sites, no pro-Jihad sites. The report contains no mention of removing terrorist related sites, or jihad related sites. At this rate they might even ban anti-whaling sites, but I’m guessing that anti-globalisation homepages will suit them just fine. The French really get my goat sometimes.

Usually, I would just pass on an article like this one that reports on the increase in the number of employers who restrict and monitor employee’s internet access. I don’t take kindly to the idea of someone reading my e-mail, and recording the content that I access - as long as my work is done, and I am not jeopardizing the company’s interests, I should be left alone. Today, however, I was forced to re-evaluate this position.

I heard about something that may at first seem anecdotal, but is in fact no laughing matter. A business associate of the family was recently forced to fire the entire staff (some 30 odd people) of his company. That may sound rather extreme, but the punishment fits the crime. About a month ago, an associate of our friend urged him to consider monitoring his employees’ e-mail and internet browsing. Initially, he declined to do so because he trusted his employees, and did not want to invade their privacy. His associate, however, persisted in his suggestion. Finally, with a certain degree of regret, he undertook to briefly examine how his staff were spending their time on the office computers.

I can only imagine the disbelief with which he must have been wrought when he discovered what his ‘trusted’ employees were up to. Following his shocking findings, he decided to continue to monitor and evaluate the online habits of his staff, in order to evaluate the context of what he had uncovered.

It came out that certain employees were sexually involved with several of his clients, some of the relationships were extramarital. The confidentiality of his business activities was shattered, as the employees relinquished information about business dealings with other clients. He was even betrayed by staff members whom he had tutored, and assisted financially. He found that a few employees had been using the office as their personal HR center, sending out their resumes to anyone with an e-mail account, or fax number; that whenever he left the office, or someone spotted him on the way to the office, messages were transmitted amongst the workers that the ‘bird had flown’, or was ‘incoming.’ The receptionist was visiting tens of porn sites a day, and many other workers spent the majority of their time at work on personal e-mail or mindless web-browsing. Imagine how rumors of these activities have damaged the reputations and interests of his company, and those of clients, over the years.

After informing the clients that may have been affected by what had been going on, and unable to trust a single one of his employees, he terminated all their contracts, and is now in the process of taking on new staff. I think he is as inconvenienced as he is disgusted. Over a number of years he has tried to develop healthy working relationships with all of his staff, only to be kicked in the teeth. A very sad state of affairs indeed. I’m not sure if he will continue to monitor the activities of his new staff, on a permanent basis, or even spontaneously. Cases like this are more likely to be the exception to the rule, especially in more developed societies where corruption and greed are not omnipresent. Notably, this case demonstrates that the application of monitoring policies can in fact be rooted in the business interests of company and client, more so than the stereotype of sadistic managers grasping at the straws of modern technology to assert and maintain control over workers.

Win2kpro comes with the IE5 browser (which is good for a few laughs when looking at many CSS-intesive sites), and because I’m on 56k, and will soon be reverting to XP pro, there’s really little motivation for me to download IE6. As a result, I’ve only been using Mozilla, which I already had downloaded.

I’ve noticed quite a few blips that I didn’t notice before, even when testing the site in Moz. I’m making a note of everything as I go, and I’ll make the necessary adjustments and corrections as soon as I have a spare moment.

Paul Jarvis is tired of cooking the same old food all the time, and wants your recipe suggestions. Normally I would have suggested he steal a peek at the new book Eric just got, but it turns out Paul isn’t much of a red meat man.

Personally, red meat is my best friend, I couldn’t live without it. Mmmm-mmm! Give me a juicy steak, or a rack of lamb, and I’m a happy man. I’m really not a fan of chicken, I avoid most forms of chicken at all costs - the only chicken that I enjoy is a variety of different Asian dishes.

Jeremy reports that another sequel is on the way. Say it isn’t so. Who thinks Al Pacino will consider it?

Funny how the ‘Forbes Global’ October 28th edition showed up in the mail last week, and the October 14th edition only arrived today. Makes you think.

Ok, so the drive is dead, and I can’t get any of my e-mail off of it (not good, because I don’t have a few of those addresses listed anywhere else). Still, not too serious. Very frustrating though.

Going back to windows 2000 pro is no fun. I miss so many of XP’s built in functions, improvements, and the more stylish GUI. I would be on XP right now, but a friend has my CD, and I have no idea when I’ll be able to get in touch with him.

Now I also have to haggle with IBM for a replacement (the drive is still under warranty), complicated of course by the fact that I purchased this particular drive up in the US. [waits for call-center to open… *sigh*]

Ok, so my primary hard drive died about an hour ago, I had to setup win2k pro on my secondary drive so that I could get online using this machine. It isn’t for certain yet that the other hard drive is a goner, I will know for sure when I test all possibilities in the morning.

In the event that it is irrecoverable, I won’t have lost anything too important, all my work, music, movies, pretty much everything in fact is backed up on the secondary drive. Just a few bookmarks and e-mails, and addresses that will be lost, and of course I will need to reinstall all my programs. I was getting ready to switch to a dual-boot Linux, winXP pro setup soon anyways. It just means I’ll need to buy another hard drive for redundancy.

Some good did come out of all this, well if you can call it good, I found the fan that was making all the noise that I was telling you about. Problem is it’s on the video card (I will search for a replacement fan tomorrow) - if I can’t find one, then I’ll have an excuse to upgrade to a GF4 ti4200!

This week, Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau bases his work on weblogs. Mark Pilgrim comments on how the cartoon strip has managed to keep up with the times.

TV programming in Romania may be hopelessly outdated for the most part, but it’s a golden opportunity to catch up on those episodes you missed while the shows were actually running. At the moment, one station is showing The Highlander series with Adrian Paul - side note: I much prefer Adrian Paul in the role than Christopher Lambert (there’s just something unsettling about Lambert’s forehead: it looks as if he has been exposed to copious amounts radiation).

Another station is showing the second season of MacGyver. I loved watching MacGyver when I was kid. Sure Richard Dean Anderson’s character was a goody-two-shoes, but his ability to invent stuff on the fly allowed you to look right past that. After the show ended, Anderson simply disappeared, and I was surprised that he didn’t show up in other roles. Years later, when he finally returned, I was shocked, disgusted in fact. How could he stoop so low as to appear in something so utterly crappy as the Stargate series? I can only imagine that he was having a serious midlife crisis, or owed the Russian mafia a great deal of money.

When I first visited here in 1996, I was lucky enough to be able to watch the original 1960s Star Trek series. Seeing Kirk, Spock, and the Doctor running around with the then ‘futuristic’ props and special effects was quite a laugh, and served to show just how far film-making has come since those days. For me it was difficult to believe that people were ‘wowed’ by techniques that now seem so amateurish. In 40 years, however, I imagine that a younger generation will look back and be qually stumped by how we ever consideredour computer graphcis and special effects to be ‘state of the art’.

There have been a plethora of these dated shows in my time here: Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Rockford Files, Columbo, and many more that I can’t quite think of at the moment. For those who rely on TV as their primary source of entertainment (not me), this can become all too depressing, but I’m sticking it out for the day that they finally show Hannibal Smith, and the rest of the A-Team!

The BBC are also in the mood for making changes. The news site will now prompt you to choose between a UK edition, or a World Edition. I’m sure the people who are only interested in reading on of the news versions will welcome this, but for those of us who want to know it all, it now requires a little more effort.

Viewing the site in Mozilla 1.1 makes my Win XP taskbar flicker erratically. Annoying.

Jeffrey Zeldman has made good on his promise to ditch the use of tables on his site: Zeldman.com is undergoing an all-css makeover. Now it’s clear that Jeff wants you to see red, but Mao? What’s up with that? No doubt it will be explained at some point in the future.

I haven’t seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon yet, and was planning to watch it on Romanian HBO. Unfortunately, I didn’t count on them dropping the English subtitles for the Romanian ones. Now I have no problem reading and understanding the Romanian subtitles, I mean it’s a bit of a crunch, but I can do it. Whenever there’s a noise from the kitchen, or I’m on the phone, I can keep up with movies even though the TV is on mute, because I just read the Romanian subtitles. I’m not so sure about how much fun it will be to read my way through the whole movie though. Especially, because the translations from English to Romanian aren’t perfect, never mind the translation from Chinese to English to Romanian. Invariably, 20 years turns into 200 years, and kilometers are substituted for miles (conversion not included), names and places are confused, dates are swapped. Ideas are lost when “you’re fired!” becomes “taking leave”, and language is toned down to the degree that “die bitch” turns into “have a nice day!”

So am I missing much? Should I rent the movie sometime?

Tickets for the all-Californian World Series are scarce, and Jason finds that people will do anything for WS tickets!

• “I will trade fifteen minutes of my ass in exchange for two tickets to the World Series.”
• “Will trade my iMac for your World Series Tix”
• I have a ton of Cisco equipment and would trade equipment for tickets”

Some desperate people there.

Ok, here’s another plug for a fledgling project that could use a boost. The Coffee Cup Project is your chance to show off your favorite mug(s), no matter whether you’re using it for coffee, tea, soda, or just to store your pencils in.

With a little work, I think this project could turn into something really fun. After all, many of us have already turned the process of getting our daily (every 5 minutes for some) fix into something of a ritual. Sacred mug, favorite roast, hand-picked beans, pouring in the milk and the water at the same time, stirring it with your preferred spoon, clockwise and then back again. This could add to that.

Ok, so what’s the big idea? My inbox is empty - sure it’s spam free, but I can count the number of people who owe me some correspondence on… [counts fingers…] ok only one hand, but still. You know who you are… no not you. You, you on the left!

Seriously, it’s a pretty slow weekend over here, if you’re fingers are feeling overly energetic, and you want to give them a workout, hit me up with some e-mail, I’d love to hear what’s on your mind.

Yes, of course I have other things to do, but work really isn’t on my list of priorities for the next 36 hours ;)

A few weeks ago, the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) medium found it’s way into the headlines in the blogosphere. Mark picked up on it, so did Jeremy, Tomas, and many others. The idea behind FOAF is that you can store a personal profile (your name, e-mail, telephone number, links to people you know, what college you went to, etc.) in an XML/RDF file on your website. In theory then, your FOAF will be linked to the FOAFs of people you know, and their FOAFs will be linked to other FOAFs, and so on and so forth.

So what’s all this profile sharing good for? Perhaps it will provide a new means for learning more about bloggers you know, and for discovering those you don’t know. Who knows maybe one day you’ll even be able to track down that old flame! For now though FOAF seems rather limited. Perhaps no one really knows what to do with it. After all, we can already find out about the authors of most sites by just clicking on the ‘about’ link. How is linking to someone else’s FOAF file different from linking to their website? It isn’t. Sure, the idea of a standardized format sounds nice, but what are you going to do with it? There are no FOAF aggregators out there at present of which I am aware - so much for pooling all this data. Perhaps when it becomes more popular, Friend of a Friend will provide an interesting distraction for looking at how the blogosphere is connected, community patterns, and all that good scientific stuff.

Tomas points out that FOAF’s first real use might be an undesirable one. Think about it, files full of personal data, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, etc. Wouldn’t all your favorite marketing and telephone sales companies just love to get their hands on it. Surely some half-wit will build an aggregator to scour FOAF files for juicy bits of info, compile them into a database and sell it off to the first bidder, and the second, third, fourth… (you get the idea). Before you could say spam, you’d be finding it in your inbox (more than you receive now anyway). Friend of a Friend huh? Could have fooled me.

update: ok so maybe the gist of that last paragraph is a bit dramatic. I mean afterall, our e-mail addresses are already out there for the most part, we can try to hide them, but all it requires is a little more digging from those who want to find it. FOAF doesn’t expose us, it just makes things a little easier to find and collect.

I’m not entirely sure who Lucky Green is, but it seems he is trying to do us all a favor. Wired has the story on how Green is attempting to prevent Microsoft from applying Palladium anti-copying technology to hardware and software. Green has filed patent applications for methods of “using the Palladium infrastructure to assist in the enforcement of software licensing,” and with no intention of using, or marketing the patents, his acquisition, thereof, would prevent anyone from using the said technology. This would spell a significant delay in the implementation of anti-copying gadgetry.

This, however, will only work IF the patent office awards the patents to Green, and he later succeeds in defending ownership of the patents in any legal challenges that Microsoft is sure to raise. Even if things do work out in his favor though, it will only serve to delay anti-copying technologies for as long as it takes to research other methods of implementation.

update: Tomas looks at Palladium and what it all means. “Today the Internet is free… The Internet via Palladium fundamentally changes that concept.”

Ok. this might sound a tad softy-ish, but what ya gonna do? This past week I have really enjoyed tracks from the Elisa Toffoli album Then Comes the Sun. Her vocals aren’t too stuffy, could be loosened up a bit, but are generally well-composed. There’s something about the rhythm that’s slighly off-beat (literally), which really mixes it up - the same sort of elusive rhythm that got me hooked on Krs-One and Company Flow.

It was the music video for her single ‘Come Speak to Me’ that prompted me to sample some more of her work. ‘Heaven out of Hell’, ‘Dancing’, and ‘Stranger’ are also on the album, and make for quiter listening.

Coincedently, she fits into my playlist right next to the Elliot Smith Good Will Hunting soundtrack additions: ‘Miss Misery’, ‘The Morning After’ and ‘Somebody’s Baby’. More easy listening. All of which is complemented by shuffling to some touchy-feely stuff from Rammstein: ‘Mein Herz Brennt’ (trans. ‘My Heart Burns’).

You know, first I was a Netscape fan (1998), then I switched to IE because it just seemed faster, during that past two years I also jiggled around with Opera a bit (which I found nice and fast when you’re dealing with a few windows, but seems to get really bogged down once you open a bunch more than 20). The last 18 months, however, I’ve stuck with IE. Recently, I’ve been watching the Mozilla develop. I think it’s still too bulky (haven’t tried Phoenix yet), but 1.1 really does the job very nicely.

I love tabs (it was one of the things that kept me interested in Opera). In Mozilla, ‘dotted’ means ‘dotted’, not ‘dashed’ like IE. The Internet Explorer engine doesn’t seem to be up to the task of dealing with transparent .png’s either. Sometimes I wish that there was just one browser so that we didn’t have to worry about display differences. That just isn’t realistic though, and without competition we would not be where we are now — not too sure exactly where that is.

They say that life is about the little things: a brisk shower to wake you up in the morning, the rich smell of your favorite roast in the the coffee house, a cool breeze in July. Well, in my esteemed experience, here are a few little things I could do without:

• realizing halfway through a shower that you have no towel
• going to the store and forgetting what you wanted to buy
• sour oranges
• hitting the off button on your phone when someone important calls
• dumping the milk in the trashcan, and putting the empty cereal box in the fridge

Feel free to share your little things.

You gotta love this one Dean got from Gail. Heh! Now that’s a mean list.

Jeremy Hedley has redesigned his site. Go check it out.

My dictionary says: “New Edition for the 1990s” Does this mean I need another one for the new millennium?

Microsoft’s new pricing policy has been on the cards for some time now, and at last they’ve followed through. The new policy will charge corporate users for yearly updates of their software, rather than splurging out everytime Microsoft spasmodically offers up a new version. Ultimately, this translates into a steadier revenue for Redmond, while users of their products will have to tighten their belts another notch.

In an age when so much emphasis is placed on re-inventing the marketplace, devising ingenious management strategies, and rethinking how we do business, I find it striking that companies and their management echelons are so conformist on software issues. Businesses complain about software and license expenses. Managers are skeptical of the increased productivity that new product versions promise to provide. What value will new Information Systems add to their companies; is it worth the outlay? All these concerns and more, but at the end of the day no one takes the initiative to research a better solution, and they find themselves trapped in a cycle of new products, upgrades, and licenses.

“Sex Messaging System,” well at least that’s what Private Media Group thinks. The same people who intend to convert Napster into a porn sharing network, have now launched a service that will allow you to access adult content via your mobile phone, and receive personalized adult SMS messages. The next time you’re thumbing a quick message to your buddy, and you look up to see people gawking at you, you know what they think you’re up to.

The Royal Society of Chemistry in England will award Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, with an Honorary Fellowship. “Had Holmes really been a flesh and blood hero like Brunel or Livingstone, other Victorian greats, he would unquestionably have been honoured publicly.” Well that’s just the problem isn’t it, Holmes was not flesh and blood. I suppose Batman, The Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew are next on the list…

Brigadier-General Rick Baccus has been ousted from his command at the Taleban prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon was quoted as saying that Baccus was “too nice” in his treatment of the prisoners, and that his Commanding Officer lost ” trust and confidence in him as a commander.” I agree that Baccus has no business comforting, consoling and counselling the captured terrorists.

Nick Denton has the scoop on some good thinking. In the coming war, taking Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit would have great significance. It would eliminate a large portion of Saddam’s support base, and also hit at Saddam psychologically. Tikrit is perhaps as close as it gets to a ‘sore spot’ for the Iraqi Tyrant. I imagine Saddam wouldn’t take very kindly to his hometown being held hostage, and it is therefore of increased importance that the Anglo-American coalition make sure they know what they are doing if they decide to go ahead with such a plan. It is almost certain that Saddam will use chemical and biological agents in a new war, and even more likely that he would spare no end lashing out at the siege of Tikrit.

Rosecrans Baldwin has a fascinating tale to tell on his recent visit to Daniel, one of New York’s finest restaurants. Heck, I would settle for some good chinese take out right now.

I grabbed this one off of Euronews this morning, it’s actually on of the only worthwhile ‘Hi-Tech’ reports that they have ever produced. PhotoLondon is an online showcase for publicly held collections of photography that depict London life over the past Century and a half.

Another gorgeous update from Todd at Quarlo. I find his work so full of feeling. The clarity and rich color make every piece so easy to enjoy.

The images directory plus I don’t know what else just got deleted somehow… some kind of perverted error in ws_ftp pro… gimme a second to try and restore everything *sigh*

I’ve never lived there, but I’ve been there plenty of times. I love it. From my favorite fish & chip shop in Covent Garden to Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre, I can’t get enough. Rachel James reminds me how much I love London.

So I have been brushing up on my chopstick skills. Today’s lunch was two burgers, large fries, a large shake, and whatever else I can find as soon as I’ve posted this. Now I said before that chopsticks weren’t the ideal tool for eating cereal, or toast, but hamburgers - that’s just plain ridiculous!

I haven’t forgotten my promise to compile that article on chopstick custom and etiquette, it just hasn’t surfaced here yet. In the meantime, Eric Bin agrees that you should know your chopsticks.

Ten new epidsodes of Wallace & Gromit are due to be released today. I recall my first run in with the animated duo in 1996 when a friend brought three of their short films back from a trip to England. I was enthralled with their antics. Wallace & Gromit animations are similar to what you might have seen in Chicken Run. The BBC article states that the creators are working on a full length feature film, with the help of Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks Studio. I look forward to it.

In other movie-related news, Michael Douglas has certainly been enjoying life with Catherine Zeta Jones - the couple’s second child is on the way. The couple made the announcement on Douglas’ website. Michael Douglas has a website? Creepy… (and it’s not even web standards compliant… tsk tsk tsk)

One-time Formula 1 Champion, Damon Hill should not be throwing stones. In an interview with BBC Sport, Hill criticized Ferrari’s use of team orders: “Ferrari’s manipulation of race results has been terribly damaging”. It must have slipped Hill’s mind then that Williams used team orders to help Hill gain advantage on more than one occassion in his battle for the championship.

Team orders have been a part of the sport throughout it’s prestigious history, and there is no reason why they should be discontinued. Ferrari’s dominance this season is not the root of the lack of interest in Formula 1 this season, they have been unfairly scapegoated. Why does no one point the finger at Williams (who suppossedly have the most powerful car), or at Mclaren for not offerring up a stronger challenge - if not against Ferrarri, then at least between themselves.

Faithful and protective, dogs are widely considered man’s best friend. An Iranian cleric, however, firmly believes that owning a dog is a manifestation of “moral depravity” and a corrupting influence of decadent western culture. “I [Hojatolislam Hassani] demand the judiciary arrest all dogs with long, medium or short legs - together with their long-legged owners.” Where do they find these people I ask you?

Unfortunately, they are not in short supply. In August, Nick found the “Islamic guide to toilet etiquette, a diatribe against western standing urinals,” in which western style lavatories are considered “bestial kuffaar contraptions.” Xenophobic fantasy I tell you.

Current World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik lost to his computer opponent, Deep Fritz, for the first time in five games on Sunday. In the first five of eight games against the computer, Kramnik has won two, drawn two, and lost one. Win or lose, I think it is an incredible testament to human genius, that Kramnik has so far been able to outwit a machine capable of calculating 3 million moves a second. The achievement is all the more astonishing when you consider that Kramnik is up against the cutting edge in computer algorithms, and for the majority of us it is difficult to advance beyond the medium difficulty levels in the far less sophisticated everyday chess games available for the desktop.

Nick Denton brings word of a new Jason Statham movie. Simply put, Statham is one of my favorite actors. Starring as ‘Turkish’ in Snatch, and playing another leading role in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, his performances are thoroughly enjoyable. The Transporter opened in the U.S. at the weekend, and seems to have made an impressive showing. I can hardly wait to see it.

The thumbnails in the photo section *should* now be linked. I’m not 100% on the current display method for the larger pictures, so I’ll have to think of something. Please let me know if you think the larger versions are suitable, or if you would like to see something a little bigger ;)

I have been frequenting Steve Den Beste’s site for some time now, and I thought I should share it with you. Steve’s perspectives on current events and politics are interesting and thought-provoking; always presented in context, backed with strong supporting evidence, and replete with links to other viewpoints and worthwhile reads.

Today I stumbled across the Captain’s Essential Library. Steve has assembled a small collection of ‘must-read’ articles for those interested in the current US-Iraq order of things.

The Formula 1 Racing season is now over, so what am I going to do with myself every second weekend until the season resumes on March 9th, 2003!?

Ferrari have wrapped up a rock-solid season at the last race in Suzuka, Japan. It’s been an incredible season with more new records being set than any other season in the sport’s history. Ferarri have made an awesome showing, every win a culmination of their technical expertise, hard work, team spirit and unwavering reliability. Michael Schumacher is quite simply one of the finest race car drivers of all time.

Some say Ferrari’s dominance this season has made it all rather boring. Well not if you’re a Ferrari supporter (which I have been since I started watching F1 as a kid in the 80s). Sure, it would be nice to see a stronger challenge for the driver’s title, but you just can’t expect a close shave when you are dealing with the exceptional talent and experience of Michael Schumacher. Schumi’s presence at any team is invaluable - not only because of what he can achieve on the track, but imagine the accuracy and expertise of the feedback he can give to the research teams and car engineers. Surely we cannot scold Ferrari for doing what is expected of any team: their best.

Ferarri’s current team high in the sport makes it virtually impossible for other teams to vie for the top spot. Some teams will always be better than others, and all teams go through highs and lows. The sport is not made interesting only by the race for the title, if there were more competition between the middle echelon teams and even between Mclaren and Williams, things would be more exciting. A good fight between those two at every Grand Prix would certainly intensify interest and perhaps even eclipse Ferrari achievements.

Generally speaking, I think everyone needs to stand back and look at the big picture. Team success rises and falls. In the 80s Mclaren-Honda dominated like no other, in the 90s it was the turn of Williams-Renault, it’s Ferarri’s run now. Schumacher is a champion just as Senna and Prost were, he will always be difficult to challenge. Many of the suggestions to make the sport more competitive this last year can only be seen in the drivers’ own words as “knee-jerk reactions”. Many of the newly proposed changes worry me, they have not been well thought out, and will hurt the less successful teams more than they will Ferarri. The sport’s current financial worries are misplaced, and stem from pre-occupation with the current global economic downturn. The worry-worts need to pipe down and bite the bullet, it will all blow over soon enough.

Lucian and Mirela tied the knot yesterday in what was my first Romanian wedding. A wonderful couple and a beautiful ceremony - I wish them everything of the best. We left here rather later than we had planned, and the pouring rain didn’t help - thanks to Romania’s passion for football, however, most people were indoors preparing for the Romania vs Norway match, so the roads were empty.

I haven’t spent much time in Ploiesti, so finding the church turned into a bit of an adventure. Lucian’s phone was off, and the best man and I kept missing each other’s calls. There also appeared to be some confusion with regard to the name of the church. When asking pedestrians and taxi drivers for directions to the church, we were repeatedly pointed in opposite directions. I’m not quite sure what the deal is, but the name by which the church is generally known (the name on the sign in the front of the church) is not the actual name of the church. Yup, apparently the name in the front of the church is really the name of another church on the other side of the town. Confused? Me too, and I still don’t even know the real name of the church. In any case, we managed to find the church on time.

Aside from being in Romanian, the Orthodox marriage ceremony is quite different from the more Western Christian services that most are familiar with. For one thing, everyone stands throughout the ceremony, not because of decorum, but because there are no pews in Romanian Orthodox churches, so everyone stands all over the place: behind the bride and groom, next to them, in front of them - just about anywhere. Not one, but four priests are involved, each carrying out a different part of the ceremony and singing aplenty. Furthermore, the best man and bridesmade are responsible for placing the wedding bands on the hands of the bride and groom. The most noticeable shocker: there is no “you may now kiss the bride” part of the ceremony.

The reception was great. Good music, plenty of dancing, and in that most Romanian of customs: more courses of food than you could possibly try to count. In keeping with Romanian tradition, the cutting of the cake comes at the end of the whole event, and is actually something to be observed at a distance - unless of course you don’t mind being smeared with cream and icing! The bride, groom, best man and bridesmade needed a minute and a couple of napkins to clean up before making the speeches.

I had come with some other friends, and needed to leave early if my friends were going have any chance of keeping their appointments on Sunday. Arriving home at 4:45 am I had only been away for 12 hours of joyous celebration and carousing. I have plenty of pictures to develop and video footage to digitize and edit. I plan to assemble an album complete with video and pictures of the event to give to Lucian on CD so that he and Mirela can revisit the day any time they pop the disc into their PC.

Congratulations guys! I wish you good health and happiness. Felicitari! Va iubsec!

Saturday is going to be a busy day for me. My good friend Lucian is getting married, and I am the un-official scenic archivist, i.e. the guy with the video camera and other photographic equipment. I’ve dragged the camcorder out and dusted it off, charged the batteries, even browsed through the manual again. My digicam is ready too, with it’s three sets of batteries charged too, lens cleaned, and I’ve managed to find the tripod. Now I just need to run out tomorrow morning and find some extra tape for the camcorder.

My suit is ready, and my shirt is washed, just need to iron it and decide what tie to wear. Unfortunately my shoes aren’t polished - they should be - so I will have to do that as well. It’s an hour drive to the the town where the ceremony will be held, and I don’t expect to be back before tomorrow morning. Let’s hope I can do an admirable job of recording the event, and capturing the moment. Digitzing it in Premiere should also be a nice little something extra to give the young couple when they return from the Honeymoon.

It’s a good day on the internet when you see a prominent site like Wired get with the program and implement standards. Mark Pilgrim points out that they have redisigned the site using xhtml and css, and applying web standards to boot. Faster page loads, improved accessibilty and better browser support, what more could you want.

These kinds of changes are the most encouraging. When the average Joe brings his blog inline with standards it doesn’t exactly send ripples through the community, but when a big name makes the change it prompts others to do the same. No doubt many Wired readers will now realise that it is time to upgrade their browsers and follow web standards guidelines in their own work.

Zeldman hopes that Wired’s “XHTML/CSS redesign will inspire other commercial sites to take the plunge.” I hope so too.

Ever taken pictures of a phone booth? Well, Jason has accomplished that feat.

Today will mark the awarding of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. My guess is that George Bush and Tony Blair don’t stand a chance. What do you think the odds are on Hamid Karzai receiving the honor?

update: The award goes to former President Jimmy Carter. No comment.

Frank Schaap has a couple of books I’d like to get my hands on. They definitely make for better page thumbing than the local TV guide (whose listsings are invariably wrong).

They’ve tried litigation, and stopping short of replacing their own candidate in the New Jersey elections, the Republicans are trying a new strategy. Well not so new. TV spots worked against Torricelli, why not try it against Lautenberg. In a new Republican ad campaign, school kids are seen quitting in class, and at sports, saying “Let Lautenberg do it for me”, and “If Torricelli can quit, so can I.” You have to hand it to these guys for being shrewd.

I was watching Special Report with Brit Hume on FOX News late last night (FOX only comes on here after midnight). It’s always refreshing to see what a network other than CNN, SkyNews, BBC, or Euronews are spitting out. In fact, FOX usually get the ump on the others with quite a few breaking news articles.

Now to the point, last night Brit Hume summarized the Iraqi’s position quite brilliantly: “We [Iraq] don’t have weapons of mass destruction, but if you attack us we will use them.”

Firda found an online breathalyzer test. If you’re from Europe the online breathalyzer might now work for you though. The tests considers 4.9% to be ‘heavy’ alcohol content by volume for beer. Nearly all european lagers and pilseners are around 4.7%. We won’t even talk about a few of the malts…

Scott Herman gave me a good laugh today with his report on the new security procedures at his office building:

“You are Male, correct?” he said, when he got to the field labeled Gender. “Yep.” “Not a … ” pausing for effect, ” … Male Impersonator?” “Um, afraid not,” I said pleasantly. “Is that an actual category?” “Mm-hm,” he said, and he clicked to open the onscreen pulldown menu, to show me.

I’m working on getting the photography section working, so it will be *fudged* for a little while =)

Heather Champ is still crazy! She’s decided that it’s time to start up the old rumor mill again.

Mark Pilgrim is in danger of turning into a runner. Something I should consider too. I’d prefer to be out on the lake rowing, but in all the time that I’ve spent in Romania, I’ve never really tried to get onto the water. I don’t mind that the one or two pint-size clubs here have boats from the ‘72 0lympics, the fact that I would probably rip something off the boat in my first three-quarter power stroke, or the fact that I would have to re-calibrate all the boats settings. It’s just that whoever runs the club will most likely try to assert some false sense of authority in the most bureaucratic of ways, have three hundred reasons why they wouldn’t want me to use their equipment, and in all likelihood never actually show up to open the boathouse on a regular basis.

In any case, winter is approaching, and the lake will be drained and frozen over. It will be too cold and icy to exercise outside, and my gym membership is expired. What to do, what to do…

Hmphffffff! One of the fans inside my computer is making wheezy, splutterring, stop and go sounds. Problem is that there are 8 fans in there (yes 8 - running an overclocked dual processor machine requires some serious cooling) and I can’t figure out which fan it is, it doesn’t seem to be the cpu fans of the intake fan, I have a feeling it may be one of the fans inside the power source. Now I don’t particularly mind messing around inside the power source, where the capacitators could potentially give me a new hairstlye - it’s happened before - but even if it is one of the two fans in the power unit, I have no way of replacing either of them. So for now we’ll just sit here with the annoying less than rhythmic noise that’s becoming all the more annoying. Just have to crank the volume up a bit in winamp, untill I can isolate the source of disturbance.

More juicy New York tidbidts from Quarlo.

Heather is abuzz with the most interesting musings. Today it’s the three F’s. I’m only 100% sure about the first 2 on my list:

1. Sung Hi Lee

2. Ali Landry

3. Vanessa Marcil

4. China Chow

5. Gwen Stefani

Well not really. Went out to shoot some pictures this afternoon, and when I came back the power was out. Fortunately it was just a circuit that overloaded, so I just popped the switch, and everything came back on. I was saved from a cold dinner, and an evening without electronics.

Fancy getting a hold of Kylie Minogue’s bra? How about Holly Valance’s knickers? Here’s your chance, and it’s for a good cause too! These hotties and a few others’, such as Elle Macpherson have donated their lengerie to be auctioned off for charity. All proceeds from the auctioned items and ticket sales will be donated to Breast Cancer Care.

I’m thoroughly disgusted by these proposals. It’s been a while since I’ve seen such blatant pursuit of $$$ over everything sporting competition is suppossed to be about. True fans of the sport support their teams through thick and thin, not just when they’re in contention for the title, true fans should be appalled by these suggestions. If Ecclestone is genuinely concerned about the sport’s financial situation, perhaps he should consider-investing the hundreds of millions that he has syphoned off the sport, to support the weaker teams.

Natural blondes are disappearing. “A study by experts in Germany suggests people with blonde hair are an endangered species and will become extinct by 2202…” The problem is that blonde hair is caused by a recessive gene. In order for a child to have blonde hair, it must have the gene on both sides of the family in the grandparents’ generation.” There just aren’t enough optimum pairings for blondes to be around too much longer. I know this is going to be disappointing for many of my friends, but hey there’s always blonde-in-a-bottle. I’m more partial to brunettes anyways. Colin was first with the link.

“Researchers predict the last truly natural blonde will be born in Finland - the country with the highest proportion of blondes.”

I just can’t figure out why Elisa’s site is partly English, partly Italian. I can understand enough Italian to make sense of most of it. Still, it’s rather bothersome… I don’t want my break to break a sweat to figure things out. Some of her lyrics led me to think that she was Canadian, so this came as a little bit of a surprise.

“Talent borrows, genius steals.”

Chris Walker has been tearing up the streets, hills, and city centre in Nagano, Japan.

A fresh installment of Todd’s fantastic photographic work.

This weekend passed rather uneventfully. Friday was a go slow of sorts, I hadn’t made any plans for going out, spent the evening here at home. Entertainment was lacking though. Very little on the ‘boob-tube’, and what can I say, you can only wach 190 divX titles so many times before you need something new. Chessmaster 6k doesn’t run under XP, so I played a few games of minesweeper, which then turned into about 3 hours of play.

Saturday was much the same, I was hoping to go out on the town with some friends, but that just didn’t end up happening, and I was too lazy to go out and shoot pictures on my own. By mid-afternoon, it became clear that I was addicted to setting new records in minesweeper. The world trick-shot championships on eurosport provided a short break from the boredom.

Unfortunately I missed the GT races on Sunday. My achievements for the rest of the day included tracking down various songs that I got stuck in my head as a kid in the 80s, most notably: starship - sara; richard marx - walk down by the river. I also ripped a few CDs to mp3 for convenience, but mostly because I needed to pump some new life into my 10gb playlist - we’re up to 12gb now.

No not the movie. Frank Kolodziej has some great photography. Refreshing, well thought out work. Take a look-see.

Heather really draws you in today, let her know what you were obsessive-compulsive about as a kid.

That’s right folks, the IgNobels were in town recently. A spoof of the Nobel Prizes, the Ignobels recognize research achievements that “cannot, or should not, be reproduced.” The prizes this year went out to a variety of whacky studies. Everything from a comprehensive survey on belly-button lint to a more accurate method for approximating the surface area of elephants [insert Monty Python “african, or … ” quip here]. There was also a washing machine for cats and dogs. These people really need to find something better to do.

This really deserves to be passed on to as many people as possible. Say no to javascript popups, do it the right way.

The first book in the the Hannibal Lecter series, Red Dragon, is coming to a screen near you. Anthony Hopkins will once again play the role of the Hannibal, I’m quite sure that no one else could pull it off as successfully as he does in any case. In case the Dr. Lecter stuff is wearing a little thin for you, no need to worry, as Red Dragon is not centred around Lecter at all. If you have the chance though, I advise you to read Thomas Harris’ books rather. I read Hannibal on a trip through the UK, and then picked up Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. Harris’ novels are masterful, and as is so often true, the readings were infinitely more enjoyable than movies.

Just in case you are due at the altar, or know someone who is, the Morning News covers some do’s and don’ts you should be aware of. I will be attending a friend’s wedding ceremony on the 12th, so this will come in useful for me. Especially because I have another friend hoping to tie the knot early next year. Of course this doesn’t really apply outside of North America, Great Britian, South Africa or Australia. School yourself anyway.

I caught this on the TV yesterday, and today Slashdot has a link to it. An electric car in Japan capable of doing 310km/h (190mph)! Range is about 300km (187m), at a contant speed of 100km/h (60mph). It doesn’t come cheap though, and it’s 6.7m (21ft) long. Not exactly a convenience car for the city, but they’re working on it.

I won’t really get into this, becuase I don’t think the joke that supremely funny. Like Rafe says, “I was hoping for one that I hadn’t heard before.”

Researchers claim that smoking in the teen years increases your risk of developing breast cancer later in life phenomenally: by up to 70 percent. Quit it. You know who you are.

Results of a recent survey rank Melbourne, Australia as the number one place for expatriates to live. Vancouver followed in second position. Toronto was 4th, Calgary 16th, Tokyo 21st, The top US city was Boston in 31st place, New York was a harsh 53rd. I’m not so sure about some of these though. I’ve spent time in many of the European, and African cities, and I would take New York over Paris (31) anyday. Bucharest, Romania came in 95th. Yes, that’s right… feel for me people!

Microsoft have undertaken some redesign, Zeldman scolds them for failing to practice what they preach.

Angela Gail always cracks me up, this post is no exception.

I think Kottke read my mind either late last year, or early this year. I thoroughly agree that “you just gots to believe.” In 2000 and 2001, I remember everyone hyping that ‘the economy can’t keep growing’, ‘it has to end sometime’, and how much it frustrated me. The markets don’t respond in relation to business performance - take Amazon for example, for how long was Amazon actually losing money and people continued to invest - sending th stock price through the roof. The markets respond to collective expectations. As rumours start to circulate that the market is ‘bound to crash’, everyone climbs aboard and starts selling off, which leads to more selling off, and inevitably more so, finally lead to a demise in investment return.

This phenomenon is again outlined by the effect that a single economic report can have. Every time Alan Greenspan stands up to speak, speculators hang on every word. How does market performance rise and fall day by day, hour by hour: if GM reports a loss in earnings in the morning, suddenly the economy is in ‘ruin’, but later in the day Oracle posts a profit and there is ‘hope’ and ‘resurgence.’

The only indicator that seems to matter is the collective opinion of speculators. These men do not have a crystal ball, some of them grow anxious about market performance the same way a 100m sprinter who has won all of his races during the past year begins to fear that he might not cross the line first in his next, and is soon overcome with paranoia, eventually crashing out becuase of this psyche. The anxious ones spread panic. Panic spreads, turning to freefall.

People need to keep the faith. The economy is strong, it can survive the knocks. We are not going anywhere, America’s foundations - democracy and freedom - are sound and secure. War abroad should not be cause for economic turmoil at home. The toppling of a two-bit flea-bitten camel state does not affect the productive capacity of Germany or Brazil, if there is a war it should not merit an economic slowdown. The loss of Iraq’s trifling contribution to the oil market should not be allowed to become an excuse for OPEC to slap on new profit premiums. The market serves us. Do not allow that to be mis-construed.

Producer Al-Jean has confirmed that there will be a Simpsons movie, and that writing is currently underway. Now I wonder whether it will show up in kazaa before it hits the screens… Link via Slashdot.

The NY Times has an AP article in which the Defense Department confirm the presence of Al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq post 9/11. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” [Bush speech]

On Monday, Rafe said that his favorite feature in winXP is the grouping of buttons by application on the taskbar. I love that too. Today I found something new in Windows that I really like: renaming batches of files. Previously I used to download some or other utility off CNET to get the job done, but now you can do it by just selecting the group of files you want to rename, hit F2, type in the name for the batch, hit enter, and XP will autonumber the files. Definitely makes life easier.

Nick Denton found something amusing about the democrat’s committment, with his take on ‘how the right conquered weblogs.’ (the permalink isn’t working so I can’t link directly to the post)

In honor of his site’s 7th birthday, Josh is holding a contest to find the sexiest sentence you can come up with. hmm… I wonder if he’s fully aware of the fact that Alex reads his site…

An interesting discussion going on over at kottke.org on the legitimacy of P2P programs. I particularly liked John’s idea that we are now in a prohibition-like situation, and that what’s needed is a complete re-think of the laws on copyrighting and how to enforce them.

John says this at his site: “However, I think a better solution — perhaps an inevitable solution — would be to redefine how money is to be made for creative work, or whether it ought to be made. Music and writing were not always commodities, and it seems possible that very shortly they will not be again, at least in their present form. Perhaps we should take the business out of creativity?”

Yesterday, Rafe pointed to a meaty article by Jay Bookman on the Bush Administration’s real objectives in going to war with Iraq. I agree with Bookman’s argument that the outcome of the Iraq situation will do much to establish American Internationalism, but I challenge several of the points upon which he bases his assessment.

Bookman suggests that the government has unjustly “dismissed the option of containing and deterring Iraq.” John Bono asserts that “deterrence is a useless concept unless your enemies are convinced you are willing to fight a war”, but Iraq’s violation of UN resolutions, and continued attacks on coalition patrols are clear evidence that Saddam does not believe that any action will be taken against him. Saddam Hussein cannot be deterred, even if only because of his ignorance.

Stressing that a September 2000 report from PANC “reads like a blueprint for current defense policy”, Bookman cites the nullification of the anti-ballistic missile policy. Yes, there is a link here: the ABM treaty is ineffective, and a successful global missile defense system (GMDS) is a more effective solution. The ABM treaty cannot deal with threats from rogue states, or terrorist groups. A working GDMS can avert all such threats. What this shows is that the Administration is, in fact, realistic, recognizing that the ABM treaty is obsolete, and adapting itself to be able to deal with that reality.

Another example of this lies in Bookman’s mention of “the development of small nuclear warheads required in targeting the very deep, underground hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries.” Another sensible move by the Government. Doesn’t it make sense that we should be able to successfully strike any potential agressor? Perhaps one of the only reasons that Saddam is still around today is because we were unable to strike his underground bunkers during the Gulf war.

He goes on to talk of increased military spending and how it fits into the administration’s plans for Empire. Restructuring national defense in response to 9/11 will undoubtedly require increased expenditure. It is also important to remind oneself that Bush campaigned on revitalizing the military by “giving United States troops the technological superiority they need to prevail.” This is exacty what he is doing.

Bookman underlines the idea that “a successful war against Iraq will produce other benefits, such as serving an object lesson for nations such as Iran and Syria.” We did the same thing with the USSR when we dropped the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

I think that Bookman’s article perceptively points out that a campaign in Iraq will undoubtedly signal a renewed geopolitical role of America the Hyperpower. To argue that this has been 10 years in the making is unfounded. The Bush administration is fulfilling its duties to protect America and her children, in a practical and business-like manner. This is a good thing, the White House needs to make headway in resolving issues at home and abroad. The diplomatic posturing of the United Nations and other world leaders will do nothing to eliminate rogue threats. America is home to the world’s largest economy and most powerful military. Empire is not a goal, it is a result.