March 2000
Friday, 31 March 2000
Dana Blankenhorn: Toys, Copyright and Cyberwar - Dead on. If you read one OpEd piece this month, read this one.
This email… either you understand it or you don’t.
Thursday, 30 March 2000
Edsger Dijkstra is retiring.
New Scientist: Darth evaders - “Making locusts watch battle scenes from Star Wars could eventually help cars steer themselves out of trouble.”
Wednesday, 29 March 2000
The Big Brother Flag Ammendment was miraculously defeated. Thank God. No, thank 37 senators who had the moral character to stand up to this nonsense, and thank the ACLU, Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights, General Colin Powell, Senator John Glenn, and thousands of volunteers across the country who put in the time and effort to make this happen. Also thank Senator Robert Byrd and Senator Richard Bryan who saw the light at the last minute and provided the deciding votes to tank the ammendment.
DARPA: Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation - “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative research proposals on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA). The overall goal of this program is to develop devices and machines that will increase the speed, strength, and endurance of soldiers in combat environments. Projects will lead to self-powered, controllable, wearable exoskeletal devices and/or machines.”
Wired: Be an Irish Catholic Priest .com - “The Irish Catholic Church went online Tuesday in a high-tech effort to attract more young men to train as priests in an increasingly secular society.”
Tuesday, 28 March 2000
Leprechaun in the Hood: “After a long and golden dormancy, the Leprechaun is brought back to life by three bungling rap artists looking to launch their music career. Evil’s in The House”
Log items now have direct links - copy the link from the timestamp.
Toy: Soda - lets you construct models out of springs and weights, then move them around. Fun.
The sixth sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick. [so say said sentence sextuply…]
Monday, 27 March 2000
Michael Schrage Forget 2001. HAL Will Never Get What You’re Talking About - “To help you truly appreciate how we will verbally communicate with tomorrow’s computers, stop thinking of Star Trek and instead imagine in your mind’s ear the sociopathic musings of a digital Robert De Niro.”
Sunday, 26 March 2000
“In 1986 I chaired the Computer science and Telecommunications Board and Gore was our dinner speaker at the National Academy of Sciences. He spoke about the importance of a National Information Infrastructure. At the time he was a senator from a fairly small Southeastern state and I was amazed at his national vision. He has continued to be a national leader in promoting the importance of the internet for commerce and education. Could we perhaps see an end to cheap shots from politicians and pundits about inventing the internet.” -Joseph Traub
CNN: University uses Backstreet Boys to ‘torture’ students - this would have some interesting legal implications in the US.
Attention dot-communists! Wondering what your company actually does? The answer is here.
IP Law Center: Patent Lawyers Whine About Patent Reforms That Would Reduce Their Income
Saturday, 25 March 2000
The same White House that invented the Internet finally learns that UNIX tends to be case-sensitive. This is hardly surprising. “I was using UNIX” ought to be a valid legal defense anyway - a subset of the insanity plea.
Static rendering support coming RSN to Frontier. Very nice.
More evidence for black holes.
Salon: The Mr. Peanut Chronicles - “we’ve reestablished that Lucky is totally in control.”
Friday, 24 March 2000
Chocolate is good for you.
Mahir gets funky - BUT KISS YOU STILL
This Budweiser thing is getting out of hand.
F.A.I.S.A.L.: Functional Artificial Infiltration and Scientific Assassination Lifeform
Tom Peters: WOMEN RULE! - this has happened to just about every woman I know, particularly the ones with money.
Thursday, 23 March 2000
Wednesday, 22 March 2000
Is the Internet Bubble really the Prozac Bubble?
NASA Denies Validity of News Reports On MPL Failure
Nasa ‘knew Mars mission would fail’
Tuesday, 21 March 2000
Booze + Cell Phone + Lion = BAD: “The question still remains, why the #%@& would you name a lion ‘Zeus’?”
Sunday, 19 March 2000
Intuit’s MacInTax sales site is either very unclear or outright wrong about what you’re getting when you order. Items that allegedly download turn out to be shipped, with an additinal shipping charge that is tacked on after the order is complete. You can’t call them without paying them $2 per minute. They won’t cancel the order after you’ve made it, claiming it’s “in process”. If pressed they’ll claim it has already shipped, even though it hasn’t. After all this they ask you to fill out a servey about the site. That’s a failure too, since it does not allow for any negative feedback whatsoever, so this kind of thing just gets missed. Consider carefully whether you really want to trust your tax returns to this kind of lunacy.
Saturday, 18 March 2000
SprintPCS News. Having done everything to show me that they are a bunch of incompetent idiots, SprintPCS now sends me to a web site with a font so small it doesn’t actually display on my system without jacking up by a factor of 4. THANKS!
Brown & Williamson is getting crazy with the answering machines messages again. 1-800-578-7453
A rap fan who violated local noise ordinances was forced to listen to Wayne Newton for two hours.
Friday, 17 March 2000
We’re all kinds of green over at o'memepool today.
Archived Memepool Post: Mar 17, 2000
Bodenstaendig 2000: We have no idea what it is, but the “Hi-Tech-Version” is so very 1983. Gotta love that scientific help system, too. (Posted to Computing)
Thursday, 16 March 2000
Archived Memepool Post: Mar 16, 2000
With Bulimia Blowdown at High Noon from zooass.com you can send your favorite toothpick celebrities into politically incorrect regurgitative combat. PURGE! (Posted to Media)
Wednesday, 15 March 2000
Iridium, finding no way out of bankruptcy, is going to burn up its satellites.
Top Ten Reasons to Throw Your Press Release in the Trash
“Hold on - let me go somewhere where I can talk.”: a new feature for cell phones to automatically put people on hold while you get out of the restaurant. Alternatively, use Colleen’s Law: “Never use a cell phone in a place where you’d be embarassed to sing.”
Monday, 13 March 2000
Surreal catfight of the week: PETA v. MADD - a PETA ad campaign advocates that college students stop drinking milk and start drinking beer. When called on the issue of underaged drinking, a spokesman claims that college students won’t drink beer after all. Smooth.
FORIX: an F1 stat/history junkie’s dream.
FrameMaker 6 is coming. Excellent.
Astronomical Tours has a trip to the 2001 eclipse in southern Africa.
A Washington Post journalist is crossing the country, taking a picture every mile.
Friday, 10 March 2000
When I first moved from the old log to the Blogger based log I took all the old content and put it here on one scary page. After moving the site to Radio Userland and then moving the log back to Blogger (Pro), I was able to retrieve the old site’s data and move it to its original date schedule. If you’re looking for something here you should be able to find it in the archives of the past few months. (Rewriting the previous note about site content moves, in the midst of site reconstruction, 19 July 2002)
Thursday, 9 March 2000
The old log site was at faisal.editthispage.com. The material has been moved over to this one. I’m now using that site to test out various Manila features.
Test. 2.0.
An Open Letter From Jeff Bezos on the Subject of Patents: READ THIS
Wednesday, 8 March 2000
Jon Carroll has written the best article ever about the “Blame Canada” censorship nonsense.
Sunday, 5 March 2000
“Straight from Virginia, this required my attendance. I’m here to tell ya ‘We Declare our Independence!’”
Saturday, 4 March 2000
“Blame Canada”, the Academy Award™ nominated song about censorship, is going to be censored for the broadcast of the Academy Awards™. Trey Parker has told the Academy that he won’t be changing the lyrics, and that ABC can bleep out some of the words they don’t like.
Friday, 3 March 2000
Bruce Sterling: Hard Times: A Letter from 2035 - “I hope I’m not being all depressing, but that is kind of my point here.”
Archived Memepool Post: Mar 3, 2000
dynamism.com imports the latest in supercool fast lightweight notebooks from Japan, because you really love diminishing marginal utility. (Posted to Computing)
Thursday, 2 March 2000
David Pogue has a great list of ‘Apple is doomed’ quotations. He’s wrong about the Forrester Research quote, though: Apple as we knew it is dead. It was reincarnated as something different.
Think theorists can predict the long term global climate any better than your local TV weatherman? Think again.
Wednesday, 1 March 2000
How not to land a plane.
“On March 1 1990, the offices of Steve Jackson Games, in Austin, Texas, were raided by the U.S. Secret Service as part of a nationwide investigation of data piracy. The initial news stories simply reported that the Secret Service had raided a suspected ring of hackers. Gradually, the true story emerged.”