...more recent posts
is the nsa now admitting to echelon?
seeing lots of reporting today (nothing new, just what we've already heard) in The Independent, UPI and NY Times...)
Someone had this book at the bar last night (which bar? My bar, of course.) And then today, Rasterweb had a link to it. I guess everyone is getting ready for surviving some worst case scenarios. Interesting book; hopefully not too useful.
250,000 presold copies to be delivered around the globe by 9,000 Amazon.com ordered FedEx trucks? I'm gonna have to read one of those Harry Potter's someday. Until then, however, let me suggest one from a transplanted Brooklyner by the name of William Kowalski, his '99 novel, EDDIE'S BASTARD is a real fine "coming of age" story. Also I would like to express my regrets for not being at Bill's Fourth of July Bash and would like to be the first--or if not the first, the skinniest--to say, Happy Birthday Lady Liberty.
Frustration last night, as I kept getting busy signals from ISP Inch. Then I caught the TV news saying that Bell Atlantic had outages from Maine to Virginia. A cut cable. Couldn't post till this morning. Felt justified in fudging the date. The more we depend on this technology, the more reliability becomes an issue. I suspect we don't really have the fall-back positions we need. Where'd I stash that Y2K manual?
google pats itself on the back.
heres a pretty good napster article from inside regarding their impending legal strategies.
The "first draft" of the Human Genome Project is complete. Get me rewrite!
Beyond here there be dragons.
I haven't put too much time into it, but I'll bet I could waste a few hours (or worse) in here. Looks like a real attempt at a hypertext novel. This was a big idea in academic circles ten years ago (at least where I was at school,) but as far as I can tell, never really caught on with the people actually making the web (as opposed to the scholars just thinking about the web.) Anyway, this is what some people were saying was going to happen to writing. Think it will catch on?
I used to take my art-rock very seriously. Dr. Progresso still does.
Here's an article on the possibility of micropayments (the ability to charge a very small amount for web content.) This idea has been around for a long time, but hasn't ever caught on (for some technical, and maybe other reasons.) Now it looks like it might be almost ready for real use. Would this be a good thing? Or is it better for the web that people write things just because they want to? (from hack the planet, but now I see that Kottke is talking about this, and I guess it's hot on metafilter too. What comes around...)
I don't usually like to get cc's of joke mail, but I did get a funny one relating to the latest virus (which I've already received about twenty copies of, at work).
It's the Voluntary Compliance Virus: "please erase your hard drive, then send this message to everyone you know. Thank you for your cooperation."
foreward from gore vidals 1991 book about hl mencken.
How about this new sport (?): geocache. Thanks to the improved Global Positioning System (GPS) information now available to people without security clearances, all sorts of new opportunities have been opened up. Like this crazy sport (again: ?) where people hide caches of "stuff" around the planet (often in pretty out of the way, hard to get to places) and then players try to find the stuff. Not really a sport I guess, but sort of interesting. Somebody stop me if you hear I'm getting into this. From the site
"Geocaches are already located in many locations around the world. Many thanks go out to the geocachers that have placed geocaches. It's just as challenging to create a good geocache as it is to find one. If you find a good geocache and you enjoyed the adventure of the journey to find it, be sure to thank the geocacher by writing your comments in the logbook or sending them an email. Geocaching can be a fun and rewarding new sport that welcomes us to the 21st century with many new adventures."
Welcome to Mark, new author of roll your own one lap (although possibly that's not really the title.) I'm not exactly sure what this is going to be, but he comes with high recommendations. Not sure if he is reading this page, but feel free to introduce yourself Mark, if you want. Or not. Either way we'll check out what you are doing, which isn't too clear to me at this point, but I believe it involves some love of auto racing, combined with a (chronical of a?) sabbatical from the wild world of information technology. This may or may not become the future home of his page, so make real nice, and maybe we can add another to our strange little world.
this is kind of interesting, the presidential aircraft gallery at the usaf museum.
More trouble with names and fancy language.
Owing to priority rules in paleontological nomenclature, Tyrannosaurus rex is in danger of losing its name. Say it ain’t so, Manospondylus! (via Ancient World Web)
Yes, the site was down for some time yesterday afternoon/evening. I'm not sure of the exact length of the outage. When I got home from a late dinner everything was back up. I know some of you are getting really slow connection speeds (although for others it seems O.K.) I'm trying to understand this problem, and while I'm not near any sort of solution, I have learned a bit more about internet topology. Hopefully we'll be able to get everyone up to speed soon.
im not sure. does this belong in sustenance? i guess that depends on who you are asking.
I put some navigation links on the discussion pages. Is that what was wanted? Also, I don't think anyone we don't know is reading the site, but if this isn't true it must have been a pretty frustrating read. I just saw this morning that if you weren't signed in, the system would print out all comments in a section all the way back to the beginning. This made the group page many hundreds of K, and basically unusable. Fixed that, so while everything is still slow, it is much more reasonable now. I must remember to keep testing things without being signed in.
what happened to my d-day comment? can anyone see it?