You know, I never gave much thought to MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield as a serious journalist. She always struck me as more of a pretty face the network trotted out to grab people’s attention while they channel-surf. But something really remarkable has happened that’s changed my thinking on that subject a bit. On April 24, Kansas […]

Here’s another example for the continuing saga of companies using EULAs to give their customers the shaft: Watchfire, the company behind the popular Bobby Web accessibility testing package, is using the EULA for their new Bobby 5.0 release to camouflage a major change to the way the software is licensed, and to deny refunds to […]

After many, many years of stagnation, it looks like Palm, Inc. is finally innovating again — they’ve just announced their newest device, the Tungsten C Handheld, which packs the savory goodness of Palm OS 5 in a package with a feature I have yet to see in any comparable device: built-in WiFi. All for a […]

John Callendar is running an interesting piece entitled “ Media Coverage and the War at Home” that examines how the decreasing quality of journalism in America has affected the climate in his area: [W]hat about that nearly 70% of US citizens that are getting their news from the cable news channels? It gets worse with […]

This is SO COOL: a regularly updated archive of streaming video clips from Jon Stewart’s awesomely funny program, The Daily Show. Be sure to catch it before Comedy Central’s lawyers hear about it…

The new album from the Blue Man Group, “The Complex“, kicks some MAJOR ass. Consider yourself warned!

Well, isn’t this interesting….

Any user of Microsoft’s Windows products is by now probably familiar with the wonderful ritual of patch-applying. I use Microsoft’s Windows Automatic Update software to let me know whenever there’s a significant, must-install patch released for Windows 2000 Pro, which I use both at home and at work. It’s annoying when the notifier bugs me […]

Ever wonder how Google attracts and keeps so many smart people? Here’s one way — check out Google Daily Menus, a compendium of what’s for lunch in the Google cafeteria. (Thanks to Ev, who is probably looking forward to lunch, for the pointer.)

Anil Dash has an interesting suggestion for how to improve perceived speed on your PC: cache critical data (bookmarks, My Documents, etc.) to a RAM drive. It’s an “everything old is new again” kind of idea: back when hard drives were slooooow, using a small amount of memory as a kind of virtual disk was […]

Oh, dear sweet God, not this. That’s wrong in more ways than I can count. Thankfully someone is doing something about it. The question is, will the Powers That Be listen?

You have no idea how much I wish I could write like Chris Locke… MAN, he is something else.

CNN journalist Kevin Sites, who closed down his blog at the request of the network, has come back online with a stunner — apparently he was captured and held hostage by Iraqi paratroopers outside Tikrit. He’s got an audio account of his experience posted on the site. Sounds like the war’s not over everywhere…

Hey, now you can’t say nobody ever put flowcharting software to good use.

What I learned today: When you have to work next to somebody, all day, every day, it helps if you don’t describe as “the bottom-feeders of society” the profession that person happened to be in during their last job. I’ll give that tip to ya free of charge, kids. No need to thank me.

What do I want out of life? Dan Bricklin, the fellow who came up with VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet, has a great history site describing the process by which VisiCalc went from an idea to an industry. You can even download the original VisiCalc for IBM PC — it runs fine under Windows 2000, […]

Well, it would appear that the regime in Baghdad has finally collapsed, and good riddance to them. They’ve been a scar on the Islamic world since they seized power 24 years ago. It’s good to see Iraqis able to speak freely in the streets the way Americans are. I would, however, caution people about reading […]

You owe it to yourself to check these out if you haven’t already: PrefBar — easily toggle preferences on and off right from the main browser window CookieBar — see all your cookies in a sidebar tab, and kill the ones you don’t want (I’m looking at you DoubleClick!) RadialContext — you have NO IDEA […]

An essay on the dangers of arrogance and overconfidence.

Robert Burrows’ “Great American Parade”, the novel crowned by the Washington Post as the worst novel ever, is now available free online, God help us.

John Robb is asking an interesting question: if we’re going to be fighting/occupying large parts of the Middle East for the foreseeable future, why doesn’t the US Army have an Arab Division? There are probably lots of patriotic Arab-Americans who’d be willing to volunteer, as well as non-citizens who’d be eager to serve in exchange […]

I’ve already noted one friendly fire incident from Iraq, but the BBC is running a story about another one that will send chills down your spine. BBC world affairs editor John Simpson was traveling with American Special Forces troops and Kurdish militia when his convoy came under attack by US Air Force F-15s: As I […]

The Miami Herald is reporting on an Army chaplain with V Corps who is taking advantage of a weeks-long water shortage by allowing baths in a 500-gallon water supply he’s gotten hold of, with one teensy condition: ”It’s simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,” he said. […]

Looks like Diego Doval is proving that the original promise of Java isn’t dead after all: his nifty Java app Spaces, developed on Windows and tested on Linux and OS X, apparently runs fine on OS/2 as well. That’s right, OS/2, the operating system from IBM that was supposed to give us in 1990 what […]

Interesting stuff: Metaphor and War, Again.