Jim Bassett's Weblog

This one takes the cake.

A SPAMMERS LETTER OF RESIGNATION:

Dear Spam hater:

We are quitting, but before we do we are going to expose detailed information about the largest spam operators in the USA that ripped us off so bad we had to get a bank loan to get out of credit card debt.

Do you want to know how to send the crap back to them?

OF course you do!

Forget about clicking REPLY...you know by now that doesn't work. We know what DOES work.

For more information please email us at: Cleanbox@fastermail.com...

And it goes on for like three more pages telling you how terrible spammers are, how you can never get off their lists by replying, while at the same time repeatedly asking you to send them your email address. I'm surprised these people don't explode in a puff of logical contradiction.

Holy hell is it hot. We had to sleep in the office (in the basement, with an AC) last night. Every time I sleep somewhere else I'm reminded that we have the greatest bed in the world. You might think you have a nice bed, but that's only because you've never slept on this one. Of course when you put that bed on the fifth floor of a five floor tenament - with no AC and it's 100 degrees out - it looses several points of awsomeness. But that's not really the bed's fault, is it?

Why we don't just get the AC fixed is an interesting question. Part of it is stubbornness. Part is just being lazy. But I think the real reason has something to do with the satisfaction of having very simple concrete problems. Sure it's blazing hot and uncomfortable, but that's a pretty easy problem to understand, and maybe it forces out any thoughts of dealing with other sneakier problems that are more difficult to get a handle on. "If I can just make it through this heat..." Kind of gives you something to focus on.

I wonder how many stupid problems in the world are semi manufactured like this just so people don't have to deal with the really hard stuff? Anyway, did I mention it was hot? I'll think about this in the fall when it's cooler.
- jim 7-30-2002 7:24 pm [link] [3 comments]

I'm thinking of this past week as the great blog outage of '02. I just haven't been able to write. Busy weird times. Now we're back out on Long Island. Things seem to be looking up. I don't think it's only because of the three beautiful women in our party of four, but I guess that helps. Not sure how I got so lucky. I'm recommending this ratio though.

Despite the rather drunken start last night, this will be another working vacation trip. About to start in now. This project needs to be wrapped up by Monday, and then I'll be back to blogging. No, really. Lots of stuff happening in the computer world and elsewhere.

Are we half way through this summer yet?
- jim 7-27-2002 6:41 pm [link] [add a comment]

Came out to Long Island on Wednesday. This is our yearly house sitting "working" vacation. MB brought her new firewire hard drive and has been using the flat panel iMac that lives here. I brought my crt iMac, which is pretty easy to do if you are in a car. But it seemed like a joke at first, as I couldn't really do any work on Thursday. But it sure is nice to live in a house with a big kitchen and deck and garden and pool...

But then yesterday, which started out slow, ended up being a really productive day. Maybe the first one since I've been back from Montana. Sure, I've done lots of stuff since then, but I hadn't really gotten in deep with anything. Yesterday I wrote the entire foundation for a new site I'm building (well, rebuilding.) I noticed that when I'm really cruising on a project I like to hear the same music over and over again. Yesterday it was six Lucinda Williams tracks off the MP3 player. Over and over again. I think I do this so I don't have to listen too hard. I can just work, and the repetition somehow marks the time. It gives my brain something to hold onto. Otherwise time can really slip away when you're staring at the screen.

Woke up this morning and I'm anxious to get right back to work. That's how I know it's going well.

This evening we'll take a ferry out to Fire Island to celebrate Stephen's birthday. Home to NYC tomorrow. Feeling very good.
- jim 7-20-2002 3:54 pm [link] [add a comment]

Wow. My friend Dave posted some amazing pictures from his new temporary home in New Zealand.
- jim 7-19-2002 7:58 pm [link] [add a comment]

Check out this switch ad Apple has pulled off the air. Apparently she seems too "stoned". I don't know about that, but it's the best Mac ad I've ever seen. (Quicktime 5 required)
- jim 7-18-2002 7:19 pm [link] [1 comment]

Steve Job's keynote just finished (MacWorld New York.) New 17 inch flat panel iMac (1440x900). 256 megs ram, 80 gig hard drive, Superdrive (DVD player/burner; CD player/burner), Gforce 4 mx graphics.

$1999.

Clearly the most powerful consumer machine in the $2000 range. Only an incremental improvement, but it's very impressive nonetheless. As a first computer there isn't a better choice.

Also, the 5 gig iPod drops to $299, the 10 gig to $399, and a new 20 gig (!) is $499. Oh, and they work with Windows now. Still can't make playlists on the fly though. :(

Lots of Jaguar (OS X 10.2) previews. Out August 24th. $129. Looks great.

iTunes 3 is out, with only minor revisions. But my most wanted feature was added, so I'm very happy. iTunes will now automatically normalize the sound levels of all songs across your collection. This was a nightmare problem for me making playlists for the restaurants. I had to go in by hand and tweak the levels on all the songs because some CDs are so much louder than others. But no more. Nice.

iCal is the new (free download of course) calendar app. Looks very slick. I'll be quite interested to see how open the data format is.

More to come on iSync and Rendezvous. Certainly Palm and bluetooth phone owners will be happy with the much improved integration. Looks like I might have to get the Sony/Ericsson T68i.

- jim 7-17-2002 7:09 pm [link] [5 comments]

For my next trick I will try to download and install the new Quicktime 6 just released by Apple. If it doesn't completely fubar my system I will report back.
- jim 7-16-2002 7:03 pm [link] [add a comment]

I think it's great that NYC PBS has been showing episodes of The Prisoner Sunday night at midnight. Still, I failed again last night to make it through to the end. The plots are interesting (and the location is amazing) but there is something very methodical about it. Almost hypnotic. Does anything every happen? I'm usually asleep by 12:20.
- jim 7-15-2002 10:58 pm [link] [6 comments]

Looks like Salon is the soon to be named mystery partner about to bring "thousands of blogs" (first item) online through a partnership with Userland.
- jim 7-15-2002 10:11 pm [link] [add a comment]

From Dave Farber's Interesting People list:

On 7/14/02 6:04 AM, "vint cerf" wrote:

even if WorldCom enters chapter 11, I am confident that UUNET and the MAE Systems will continue to operate normally.

vint

Just in case you were worried.

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone"

--Bjarne Stronstrup (originator of C++ programming language)

We went to see De la guarda last night. This is an Argentinian show put on in a beautiful old bank building right off Union Square. To start, everyone is herded into a dark room. A low fabric ceiling hangs above. The walls are dark fabric. The crowd is just standing around in the low light, not quite sure what is going to happen. It's not clear if there is a stage, or a direction to face, or an optimal place to stand in the shoulder to shoulder crowd.

And then you notice some rising ambient music. Like sounds of the jungle. And then you notice lights flickering up above the fabric of the ceiling. And other strange sounds. Is that water falling on the other side of the ceiling?

And then more lights flickering above. And then the shadows of people. Swooping. Flying up above your head, their shadows racing across the fabric roof above you. The music gets louder. The flying becomes more frantic. And then eventually the people above start to tear through the fabric of the ceiling. The music explodes. People are yelling. The whole ceiling comes down and the night of acrobatic bungie jumping Argentinian dancers running and flying and looping and spinning overhead begins. They literally dance up and around the walls. They pick a few people up from the crowd and swoop around with them overhead. Neat.

Lots of drumming. Lots of water (you get a little wet.) Lots of crowd participation. Pretty cool gimmick.
- jim 7-15-2002 6:03 pm [link] [add a comment]

Went to a party in Booklyn last night (the 7th Ave stop on the F.) Absolutely amazing views from the Verrazano all the way around to Queens (which includes the entire New York harbor, Statue of Liberty, Red Hook in the foreground, Manhattan in the background, etc...) We were treated to a great sunset as well.

Of course I didn't have a camera. That G1 is great, but it's too big to just throw into your bag. And since I wasn't even carrying a bag last night it was definitely out of the question. Clearly I need one of those casio wrist watch cameras to fill in the gaps.
- jim 7-14-2002 6:38 pm [link] [1 comment]

David Reed breaks it down for the FCC.

My argument is based on a simple but crucially important technical fact: the useful economic value in a communications system architecture does not inhere in some abstract �ether� that can be allocated by dividing it into disjoint frequency bands and coverage areas. Instead it is created largely by the system design choices � the choice of data switching architecture, information coding scheme, modulation scheme, antenna placement, etc.

The most important observation about the impact of systems architecture on economic value is this: there exist networked architectures whose utility increases with the density of independent terminals (terminals are end-points, such as cellular telephones, TV sets, wireless mobile PDAs, consumer electronic devices in the home, etc.) Network architectures provide tremendous gain in communications efficiency on a systems basis � I call this cooperation gain, because it arises out of cooperative strategies among the various terminals and other elements in a networked system.

(emphasis mine.)

This is of little consequence (unlike the rest of the oh so important posts on this page) but I can't be the only one to have noticed that the New York Times has a reporter on the high tech beat whose byline is Jennifer 8. Lee. She's written lots of columns over the past 6 months or so. Check the front page of today's Circuits section. My question, of course, is what's with the middle initial?

First of all, I didn't think your could have a number for a name (I remember reading about somebody unsucessfully trying to change their name to a number, but maybe that was an urban myth.) But beyond that, why the period? Is her middle name really 8675309 or something? Because if it's just 8 then there shouldn't be a period. And if it's a longer number that starts with 8 - well, I don't know - shouldn't it be Jennifer 8... Lee? Or is that only if it repeats?

Or maybe it's a pseudnym for an otherwise last named Jennifer who had to perform some oval office type acts on...

Oh forget it.

Now don't get me started about the umlauts in The New Yorker.
- jim 7-12-2002 12:46 am [link] [6 comments]

We can always argue about motives, but the campaign against the general purpose computer is alive and well and going forward. Several major announcements occured while I was away including some insights into the grand plans of Microsoft in this area - now called Palladium (see Bob Cringely's I Told You So critique.)

(Etymological side note: Palladium - "From the Middle English Palladion, a statue of Pallas Athena believed to protect Troy..."

Well, if it was good enough to protect Troy then it - oh, no wait....)

Kuro5hin has a great overview of TCPA and Palladium. Cryptome has the full text of Microsoft's Digital rights management operating system patent. (They mean the digital rights of IP owners, not customers, although they do their best to conflate these two groups.) This is a shocking, but not surprising, end game gambit being played by the forces of control and dominance.

But my own personal view point on all this has gone from outraged to apathetic. Who cares what happens with this stuff? What's the worse case scenario? I can't watch a hollywood movie, or listen to Britney Spears unless I buy one of their "trusted" computers? Actually, I was looking for a way to ensure I didn't digest any more of their worthless crap. Or maybe it will be illegal for me to own a computer running linux? That will just give me the thrill of being a freedom fighter bravely putting myself in danger for my beliefs (things were getting a little dull around here anyway, plus, chicks dig an ethical outlaw.) Maybe they'll shut down the internet? That would probably be the only event that can get the ad hoc mesh WLAN alternative I'd like to see off the ground.

The forces for creativity and sharing have always already won. Sometimes there's just a little more to do than other times. But the busy times are often more fun. So bring it on mega-corp. Take your best shot. The force of your strike will just be redirected against you (because there is no us to strike - aren't you reading up on all this assymetrical warfare stuff?) Hopefully you'll knock yourself clean out.

- jim 7-11-2002 9:32 pm [link] [1 comment]

Interesting analog dj turntable gone solid state digital hackery. (via /.)
- jim 7-11-2002 8:19 pm [link] [2 comments]

I'm having the most frustrating problem on one of my client sites. None of the images are viewable in IE 5 on Mac OS X.

If I type the image URL into the address field in the browser I can view the image. But the same URL inside an img tag results in no image. How could that be?

Curiously, if the image is in the browsers cache it will display it. Clearing the cache again results in no image.

Anyone...anyone...Bueller?
- jim 7-09-2002 10:33 pm [link] [1 comment]

Photos from Butte Montana are up. Butte is my favorite city in Montana. At the end of the 19th century it was the richest city in the West thanks to the huge copper mine it was built on top of. Lots of wealth was generated, lots of different people moved there (over 100,000 at it's peak,) and lots of big ostentatious (for the non-coastal west at least) building went on. It feels urban. Even to someone from NYC.

Today it is incredibly toxic (double superfund site.) The copper mine became a huge open pit mine, and is now completely filled up with water containing all sorts of nasty heavy metals. This one mine single handedly endangers the drinking water of the entire pacific northwest. Trees wouldn't even grow in the valley until very recently. The people are strange, even to other Montanans. MB called it a "ghost city." We all loved it.
- jim 7-08-2002 12:44 am [link] [1 ref] [13 comments]

If you're running Mozilla, you should install Mouse Gestures. They are awkward at first, but I can already tell I won't be able to surf without them once it becomes automatic. Here's a guide to what gestures control what actions in the browser. For instance, instead of clicking on the back button in your browser, just click and hold the mouse (no matter where you are on the page) and drag it to the left. Click and drag to the right to go forward. Mozilla is cool.
- jim 7-07-2002 10:35 pm [link] [1 comment]

We had to take a mini vacation after getting back from the vacation. Just got home from a day and a half on Fire Island. That place is growing on me. It's the country for people who live in the city and don't really want the country. Sort of nice actually.

Going for a bite at Fresh now, and then tomorrow I'll finally get back to work.

No, really.

Really.
- jim 7-07-2002 4:59 am [link] [add a comment]

Diana, I made you an email account here as we discussed. You can get to it at digitalmediatree.com/webmail. Your name is 'diana' and hopefully you remember your password (lowercase as well.) Post something here if you don't and I can give you a hint.

Great seeing you. Let's stay in touch. Hi to Ron.
- jim 7-04-2002 9:54 pm [link] [add a comment]

Here is a page that will contain all the links to photos from the Montana trip. Only the first set from Flathead Lake are up now. More to follow.
- jim 7-04-2002 9:35 pm [link] [5 comments]

We stopped over in Minneapolis on the way home. Walking through the crowded terminal I started to get a little panicked. There were too many people around. I've never felt that before. I had a sudden desire to flee. Not the thought, but the physical desire. And I wasn't even back in NYC yet.

I wonder if some people feel that and actually can't go on. It's not like that for me. I just noticed the feeling with some interest and kept walking. No big problem. My social filters had atrophied, but I knew my urban defenses would come back up soon enough. It had only been two weeks. Still, I wonder what the transition would be like if I had lived out in the country all my life. I think New York would be oppressive.

And frankly, right now it is. But not because of the people. I'm already used to them. It's this heat. Oh my god. Last night we could barely sleep. This is some serious stuff. Not having an AC is pretty much unthinkable, yet that's our situation. Sort of like being in the sauna all day. The upside is that just surving seems like an accomplishment. Pesky things like work can be put off without the usual bit of guilt.

Not sure how to write about the trip yet. It was an important one for me. Maybe I'll just concentrate on getting some pictures up. I had a great time, for sure, but it already seems far in the past. It's harder than I thought to reconcile these different worlds. But it sure is fun to have the chance to try.
- jim 7-04-2002 12:09 am [link] [3 comments]

older posts...