...more recent posts
The Swiss are going to have a national referendum to decide the question of giving animals legal status as "beings" and not "assets." (from kuro5hin)
Macs in space. Using orbiting G4 Cubes to provide low cost wireless internet access anywhere on the globe.
Desktop Websites is the latest catch phrase from the userland camp. He's definitely got something here, but I wonder if it can be bootstrapped into existence. The problem, as usual, has to do with Metcalfe's law which states that "the usefulness, or utility, of a network equals the square of the number of users." Or, in other words, it won't be cool until a lot of people are using it, but how do you convince people to invest the time and/or money associated with adopting a new technology before it's cool? As always, we're watching. It's not out of the question that I would move to their platform.
Here are some really good photos of the monolith that "appeared" in Seattle after New Years.
Oh good. I've been looking for a reason to uninstall flash.
From 7CR:
"... I have to give professional spammers a point for creativity with the recent flock of email that says, 'Is this XXXX, if not sorry for the bother.' I can only imagine how many valid email addresses that must have harvested. Still, should I ever meet the purpetrator on the street, I can think of some fine action involving a ball-peen hammer and really bad opinion of direct marketing. It's the cowardice. At least beggars have the courage to look you in the face and ask for money with no suppositions..."I got one of these too. I was going to mention it, as this was probably pretty effective for them. As I've said once before - DO NOT REPLY to any message that you do not want, or that you don't know what it is. Spammers want to get lists of active email addresses to sell to other spammers who want to fill you mailboxes with useless offers for off shore tax havens, and various get rich quick schemes. If you reply to a message like this, then they know your address is good, and YOU WILL BE SOLD and resold untill your mailbox is no good to you anymore (unless you are really lonely, and you'd rather get these spams then nothing, in which case you are in luck...) No one will ever read your message, so all the cursing or pleading or whatever you try to do is all to no avail. Just ignore them, and while they won't go away, they might not bother you as much. And just for the record, although I do hate spammers, and would love to meet one in real life, I'll take them over a total government monitoring program that would be needed to stop them. Stiffer penalties might be a good way to go though. How about $250,000 fines for convicted spammers, and the money goes into funding existing and new MAE nodes (is that what you would call them?)
Yes, hello, I am still here. Just barely. The Wheel throws a mean party. I'm going to put it in the top 5 on my all time best time list, although I'd be at a loss to pick out the other four. My monitor is still causing me problems, and while it occasionally (like now) does work, I had moved it to the floor, and now my back will not have anything to do with moving it either back up to the desk or out to get repaired. My kingdom for a flat panel display. Maybe I'll just wait for the powerbook g4 announcement later this month and jump to the portable world.
Talked to another old friend from Montana a few days ago. Always makes me feel good, although now there is a certain vertigo associated with thinking back so long in time. I guess I'm still young enough that this is a novelty. Not so long ago there was no such thing as "long ago" or if there was it involved me as a child. Now I'm starting to have a long ago where I was out on my own, ostensibly an adult, although I have to admit that the person I remember as me was pretty lost and clueless. Still am, I guess, but now I'm a little more clever about it. I guess that comes with the "long ago" bit. Anyway, it's nice to hear from the past. Especially from this person. I lived for a few years with her and two other guys in college. All four of us combinded had maybe the motivation of one regular person in terms of thinking or planning for future careers. I guess this was something that drew us together. Sort of like a black hole. Fun fun times though. Now one of us is a big shot money manager type guy, the other male is a high powered computer consultant, and now she is in law school and loving the work. Go figure. I guess everyone gets it together after a while. Maybe there is still some hope for me.
Sitting at our table on New Years Eve, a girl to my right was asking people about new years resolutions. None of us had any, of course, but Alex had the best reply: "I'm low resolution this year." Cheers to that. I'm feeling a bit pixilated myself. When's that Montauk vacation?
Years from now I'll probably still be telling the story of how Mike and MB saved New Years Eve 2000. The last thing I remember was MB poking me in the side and saying "look at the light." I peeled an eyelid open and saw an incredible hazy orange dawn sky out of the window. That was all I could manage. The next thing I know it's a few minutes before nine and I hear Mike and MB come bouncing into the apartment laughing. They are both completely covered in snow. They have the look I don't often see here in New York of people satisfied with having completed a tough physical job. Out the window I can see 6 or 7 inches of snow on the fire escape already, and it's still coming down heavily. Looks like we're in for a big one. And then it all clicks in my mind. There had been some concern about getting the party to the party in such a storm, but I hadn't taken it too seriously. "The wine?" I ask. "It's all set" I am assured. They had moved the whole stash from Mikes to an undisclosed location very close to the party. With people like this on the job we will not be foiled. A tip of the hat to the New Years elves, working hard to insure out intoxication. Cheers.
The New York Times (Friday) has a full page obituary for W.V.O. Quine, an American philosopher, who died Monday at age 92. I wanted to be able to say something more on this occasion, but I just don't have the time today. If you have the NYTimes maybe you should check it out. It's fairly lengthy. He was very important to me, and to the path I took with my college career. I read the essay "Two dogmas of empiricism," which the Times talks about, in my freshman year, and it really set my mind toward philosophy (at least as it was presented in that context.) Not sure how it turned out, but I was surprised to see all the space the Times lavished on his obituary. I guess he was important to some other people as well. I'll have to find that essay and read it again. I think its in my storage space. Yikes. That would be quite an adventure. I haven't been there in years. Anyway, I wonder how I would find it now. Perhaps I'll report back.