Any Takers?

Posted on January 29, 2003

It’s official: here is the world’s best classified ad.

Small is Beautiful

Posted on January 29, 2003

Now, this is interesting. For as long as anyone can remember, the trend with computers has been to get faster and cheaper, but the size has always remained relatively constant. Today, though, now that just about any computer is fast enough for most people, vendors need a new way to differentiate themselves, and many have seized on size. The latest is Lindows, with their startlingly small and cheap ($350!) Lindows Media Computer — a 933MHz box suitable for general computing tasks, as well as more demanding stuff like DVD playback.

Frankly, this is a welcome development. I’ve been drooling over Shuttle‘s small form factor “XPC” systems for a long time — if you took their latest offering, the SN41G2, and stuck an AMD Athlon XP CPU and decent graphics card in, you could have a killer gaming PC the size of a GameCube. If you live in a small apartment like I do, that’s an attractive proposition.

Lindows’ new offering isn’t really aimed at the same crowd as Shuttle’s, though. Rather, it’s aimed directly at the new systems running Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition. These “Media Center PCs” are supposed to be plunked down in your home entertainment center — they’ve even got a modified UI that is surfable with a remote control — but the actual implementations of this concept have missed the mark on size and price considerably. The most heavily advertised Media Center PC, HP’s implementation, is the size of a standard mini-tower PC — hardly something small enough to set on top of the TV, or next to the stereo — and it starts at a cool $1,350! High-end game system boutique Alienware gets the form factor a little better with their Navigator system (which is roughly the same size as the Shuttle XPCs), but they start at $1699 and go all the way up to a non-trivial $2899. At that end many people would have spent more on their media center PC than they did on the rest of their media center!

Is Lindows’ system going to kill these beasts? Probably not; Lindows has always had a reputation as an odd duck among Linux distributions, neither fish (its ballyhooed compatibility with Windows apps is actually pretty iffy) nor fowl (Lindows users have to pay to get updates from Lindows that they could download from other Linux sites for free), so it’s hard to imagine this box launching them to dominance. Taken on its merits, though, this is a pretty compelling system; $350 buys you all the computer the average user will ever need, and it’s small enough that you can put it just about anywhere. For many people, the Lindows Media Center may be just what they’ve been looking for.

‘Nuff Said

Posted on January 28, 2003

In her State of the Union address, Burningbird (aka Shelley Powers) says it all.

Norman Ain’t Stormin’ Anymore

Posted on January 28, 2003

Got doubts about war in Iraq? You’re not alone — Norman Schwarzkopf wants to give peace a chance.

So, Who’s Next?

Posted on January 27, 2003

Did you know that Dave Barry has a blog? Neither did I.

It’s Game Time, Baby!

Posted on January 27, 2003

Best part of this year’s otherwise anemic Super Bowl?

“Terry Tate: Office Linebacker“, hands down.

$400 a Month

Posted on January 22, 2003

From Scripting News:

I asked what [my prescription] would cost if I didn’t have insurance. $400 per month. And that’s just one drug. How do people pay for this? How does the government justify going to war in Iraq. Where are the priorities. If Bush had to pay $400 per month for one drug, out of his own pocket, I can’t imagine he’d have too much bandwidth left for Saddam Hussein.

Dave hits the problem on the nose — our health insurance system is a mess. I was without insurance for a month and it cost me $1200 out-of-pocket when I needed prescriptions. $1200! What do the 20% of Americans who are uninsured do?

“Diamonds Are For Never”

Posted on January 21, 2003

Anil Dash has a great essay up on his blog about diamonds and the incredible contempt for the public that goes into their marketing. Definitely worth your time.

The Revolution Will Be Blogged

Posted on January 21, 2003

Someone Set Us Up the Tissue!!!

Posted on January 21, 2003

Who knew the lives and loves of paper products were so complicated? Apparently, the Japanese did. Go figure.

Orwell Would Be Proud

Posted on January 20, 2003

You think we’ve got it bad, civil liberties-wise, here in the States? You should try living in the UK. As if being constantly monitored by video cameras wasn’t bad enough, now they’re in the final stages of evaluating whether to mandate that all British subjects obtain a national identity card.

The government over there, moreover, seems intent on giving the effort as many Orwellian overtones as possible. First off, they’re not “identification cards”, you see — they’re “entitlement cards“. There’s even an Entitlement Cards Unit within the Home Office that’s responsible for managing the study. (Boy, there’s a name that doesn’t sound sinister, eh?) And don’t worry, the cards are not compulsory, they’re just “universal”. What’s the difference? As the ECU’s FAQ helpfully explains:

universal – where everyone would be required to register and obtain a card but there would be no compulsion to carry a card.

Ah, I see — you have to get one, you just don’t have to carry it. But you will, of course, be asked to produce it on demand. As Privacy International notes, under this scheme, “[y]ou will not be required to use a card unless you wish to work, use the banking or health system, vote, buy a house, drive, travel or receive benefits.” See? That’s not so bad! Move along, citizen!

(And somebody should tell the Home Office’s Webmaster to get with the program, jargon-wise: he’s titled the document that explains how “entitlement cards” are not at all the same thing as identity cards “Identity Cards Frequently Asked Questions“. Oops!)

It’s a good thing that they’re taking public comment on the plan before rolling it out, though — surely the British public will bury all this doublespeak in a torrent of condemnation…

10 Downing Street: “Public support is growing for the government’s proposals on entitlement cards. The response so far to a public consultation on the scheme shows a two-to-one split in favour of the plans.”

Oh. Never mind then — even though the comment period doesn’t end until January 31, it looks like Downing Street’s got all the data it needs. At least it’s gratifying to see someone else beating us in the race to go from land of the free to home of the slave.

Busted!

Posted on January 20, 2003

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has busted the Bush Administration for hypocrisy on the issue of race.

It turns out that the White House had a little tradition, started by Woodrow Wilson almost 100 years ago, of sending a wreath on Memorial Day to decorate the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The reason? To honor Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy and therefore perhaps the biggest American segregationist who ever lived. Back in 1990, however, George Bush Senior, to his credit, put an end to the practice, and that was the last time a President sent a wreath to honor a segregationist.

Until 2001, when Bush Junior took office — when the wreaths started being sent again!

That’s right — after an eleven-year hiatus, Bush went out of his way to re-start this practice, and (so far) the outrage that sent Trent Lott packing hasn’t landed on Bush’s doorstep yet. Considering how willing Bush was to throw Lott to the sharks the minute he became politically burdensome, I bet ol’ Trent’s having a pretty happy time today.

Suppose it’s appropriate that this news should come out on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — somewhere, MLK is probably spinning in his grave…

UPDATE: Well, now it looks like Time.com, the source of Marshall’s story, has retracted their original article, so I suppose I owe Bush and Co. an apology. Consider it extended.

Charango

Posted on January 17, 2003

Been listening to the newest album from Morcheeba lately. It’s called “Charango” and it’s fantastic; each track has its own unique style, ranging from earnest soul to creamy lounge music to wry hip-hop, but they’re all tied together by a singular sensibility. Give it a listen, you won’t be disappointed. (Want a sample? You can listen to one of the best tracks, “What New York Couples Fight About”, online in streaming Windows Media audio; versions are available for low-bandwidth and high-bandwidth connections.)

Priorities

Posted on January 15, 2003

Boy, if we were gonna identify the one brutal dictator in the world who seems most likely to be the next Hitler, I’m sure glad we picked the right one!

(sigh)

Copyright Cartel Conquers Courts

Posted on January 15, 2003

From Larry Lessig’s blog:

“The Supreme Court has rejected our challenge to the Sonny Bono Law.”

Well, looks like the copyright cartels have won the right to fence off the intellectual commons to whatever degree they can buy support in Congress for. If we ever see another publication hit the public domain in our lifetimes, I’ll be surprised.

This is a sad day for anyone who cares about ideas, and who wants to see them survive beyond our time to speak anew to generations yet unborn.

My pages will be grey for the rest of the day, in regret.

UPDATE: I’ve switched from grey to black in sympathy with the similar effort underway at BoingBoing.

AOL Is Dead

Posted on January 14, 2003

You’ve probably heard by now that Steve Case is leaving AOL/Time Warner. Naturally AOLTW shareholders are cheering, as they’re tired of watching their stock deflate, and they pin the blame on Case and his management of the merger.

This is 100% wrong. Seeing Steve Case leave AOL should be a sad moment for anybody who cares about the Internet.

It’s been fashionable for a long time for Net-savvy people to dismiss AOL as a backwards haven of grandmas and kiddies, who pollute the Net with their cluelessness and the world with their ubiquitous AOL CDs. This kind of elitism, frankly, burns me up. It’s incredibly shortsighted and shows a clear misunderstanding of how the Net, and AOL, have developed.

AOL started out as a private network without any connection to the Internet. At the time, the world of online services was completely dominated by one company: CompuServe. CompuServe was the eminence grise of the online world; its interface was a “green screen”, completely devoid of graphics, that would look just as much at home on a VT100 terminal as on a modern PC. But it had gotten there first, and had been smart enough to forge alliances with companies like Sabre to provide services that appealed to its audience of businessmen.

(My first online experience took place on CompuServe, in 1985, dialing in over a 300 baud modem. It completely blew my mind! The experience of having access to a huge information service at my fingertips was incredible.)

So here’s little AOL, trying to break into a market dominated by this staid monolith. How could they hope to succeed? Steve Case came up with a cunning battle plan. Instead of playing on CompuServe’s turf, he literally changed the rules of the game, by leaving behind the green-screen interface and instead providing a rich, graphical interface to his service. Unlike his competitors, he had the insight to see that PCs had become so graphically powerful that green screens were hopelessly outdated, and he designed his service to make the most of the PCs that were just starting to be available to nearly anybody. Additionally, he had the other key insight that the way to compete with CompuServe’s powerful services was not to try to match them, but rather to emphasize something different altogether — community. The AOL environment was completely built around bringing people together. These two features combined gave AOL the weapons it needed to take on CompuServe. (I should know; after 7 years of using CompuServe, I tried AOL for the first time in 1992, and saw from the ground floor how revolutionary Case’s service was.)

Did it work? Let’s put it this way: today AOL owns CompuServe. And do you know anybody who uses it?

As times changed, Case & company showed an amazing ability to reinvent their service to fit the zeitgeist. When the Internet took off in 1994, AOL moved faster than anybody expected to interoperate with this new network, by providing access first to e-mail, then to newsgroups, then to the Web. When the standard pricing for Internet access became established as a flat $20/month, AOL dropped its per-minute charges like a hot potato. And in the process, they blazed trails with technology such as instant messaging (AIM was the first product to make IM a tool for people other than geeks) and browsers (by backing the Mozilla Project even as development of its revolutionary Gecko engine dragged on for four years).

And then there was the crowning achievement — the merger with Time Warner. At the time, the move shocked the world; at the peak of the dot-com boom, why would AOL waste time buying an old media company like TW? The only person I saw who understood Case’s plan at the time was Robert X. Cringely. Cringely wrote that the merger was really Case’s way of getting off the dot-com train; Case knew, argued Cringely, that the bubble was doomed to burst, and before he did he wanted to convert his insanely overvalued stock into some real assets (read: Time Warner) before the market woke up and realized that AOL wasn’t worth nearly what it was trading at. “If that was to happen to AOL,” wrote Cringely, “then having the diversification of owning CNN and HBO and all those magazines and cable properties would look very, very smart.”

Nobody was paying attention at the time, but Cringely nailed it. NAILED IT. If you were an AOL stockholder before the merger, before you bewail the deflation in Time Warner stock since the bubble burst, ask yourself this: what would AOL be worth today had the merger not occured? In other words, what would AOL be worth if it was still just a dialup Internet service? Probably not much.

The merger was Case’s biggest gamble ever — a way to try and protect his company from the train wreck he could see looming ahead. In the end, it didn’t work; AOL and Time Warner were just too different to fit together comfortably. And of course, when it didn’t work, the Time Warner folks (who should only be angry at themselves for being so swept up in the Internet hype that they practically gave their company away) howled for Case’s head.

Now that they’ve got it, what lies ahead for AOL? Probably the same fate that befell CompuServe — AOL will become just a brand, just a name that TW keeps around because it has better consumer recognition than “Time Warner Internet” would. And given TW’s insanely stupid Internet decisionmaking in the past, it seems likely that AOL will drift into mediocrity and, eventually, irrelevance, as its technically savvy customers switch to broadband (AOL has a broadband service, but I’ve used it and, trust me, it sucks) and the rest of its base gets peeled away by services like MSN. There’s no evidence anywhere to suggest that TW has any plans to use AOL as a platform to innovate in any meaningful way. Which, in the end, is the saddest legacy of all; for all the scorn it’s suffered from the Internet cognoscenti, AOL has helped an entire generation discover the beauty of the global network, and the reason it was able to was because for fifteen years Steve Case saw the future more clearly than almost anyone else. Here’s hoping that he holds his head up high as he leaves the company he built behind.

China Cracks Down On Blogs

Posted on January 11, 2003

Looks like the Chinese government has recently blocked access for its citizens to several major blog services hosted outside that country, including BlogSpot. Naturally, bloggers are up in arms. In a way, this isn’t too surprising; China has spent the last few years building a network of firewalls for precisely the purpose of controlling the content their citizens can read. It’s so extensive that it’s been referred to (only half in jest) as the Great Firewall of China. Russell Beattie points out that much of the technology for the Great Firewall came from Cisco, and he thinks (and I’m inclined to agree) that Cisco should be ashamed of itself for selling that tech to the PRC. Even if they didn’t configure it to act as a censorship machine, it should have been obvious that that’s what the Chinese wanted it for.

Censorship of any kind is a crime against humanity. The Chinese government has a lot to answer for today.

Life Imitates Art

Posted on January 9, 2003

From an excellent article in today’s New York Times covering Microsoft’s new product announcements:

Microsoft has built a new national wireless data network, based on the data broadcasting ability of FM radio stations. The company says that compared with traditional paging systems, this network makes it cheaper both to broadcast data and build receivers.

Does this remind anybody else of the plot of a certain bad movie??? I guess life does imitate art after all!

E-Begging Just Got Worse

Posted on January 8, 2003

You’ve heard of Save Karyn, right? The site where the woman asked the world to send in contributions so she could pay off her credit cards? Unbelievable, right?

Wrong. Karyn raised every penny of the $20,000 she was looking for. And now, a girl named Michel has taken the concept to a whole new level with…

http://www.giveboobs.com/

Yes. Pure, unfiltered brilliance. Not only is she insecure enough to want to get her breasts enhanced, she’s also cheap enough to expect the rest of the world to pay for them. Hmmm, insecure plus cheap… someone get me that girl’s phone number!

And, just to prove that this kind of gall is not exclusive to the fairer sex, I present you with Help A Geek Get Laid, in which our male protagonist asks the world to give him a down payment on a house, because he lives with his parents and can’t get busy whenever he wants.

From his FAQ:

Q: But I’m not a geek. So why should I give money to you?
A: Because you’ll be helping me get laid.

Hard to argue with that logic! Man, oh, man, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the gene pool…

Wise Words

Posted on January 7, 2003

Saw this on Bartleby.com and thought it was insightful enough to be worth passing along:

“Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn’t stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband-it creeps up insidiously … step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realises that it is gone.” — Baron Lane, British judge and Lord Chief Justice of England; quoted in the Independent, 2/3/1990. (http://www.bartleby.com/66/87/33687.html)

Wise words — and worth keeping in mind today, as our freedoms are eroded bit by bit…

Vroom!

Posted on January 7, 2003

After my little run-in with stupidity the other day, I found myself needing to buy a new car to replace my faithful Escort. After some looking around, I finally have purchased a new set of wheels: a brand new silver 2003 Subaru Impreza WRX.

How is it? It’s a blast! The WRX is a street-legal version of Subaru’s impressive rally car — it packs a 227hp engine under the hood, combined with tight suspension and steering. The interior is a little Spartan (other than the leather-wrapped Momo steering wheel), but that’s because it’s not designed to be the car to take your kids to soccer practice in, it’s designed to be fast. And fast it is!

Additionally, I’ve now had three female friends describe it as a “babe magnet”, which has got to be a good sign 🙂

So far I’m thrilled with the WRX. Kudos to Subaru for putting such a great car together. Watch your rearview mirrors, folks; if you see someone passing you on the Beltway, that’ll be me!

“Two Towers” Blows Me Away

Posted on January 5, 2003

So I finally got around to seeing The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers today. (I was supposed to see it the night it opened — but I kinda hit a bit of a distraction on the way…)

All I can say is: wow. Director Peter Jackson somehow has managed in three hours of footage to get across a complex story involving three separate plot lines, all presented with such powerful visuals that the time just flies by. His staging of the epic defense of Helm’s Deep, for example, is masterful; the beseiged Rohirrim face danger from several different directions, and yet it’s always clear how each strand of the plot fits into the overall story. Combined with the visceral, bone-crunching nature of the medieval combat in Tolkien’s universe, it makes for a gripping set piece, even for those of us who have read the books and know how it’s going to turn out.

If you’ve read the books, you know how deep and rich Tolkien’s saga is. Heck, a full half of the last book is nothing but appendices fleshing out the history of Middle-Earth for thousands of years prior to the first page of “Fellowship of the Ring”! It’s a tribute to Jackson & Co. that they’ve created two films now that convey the full depth of Tolkien’s imagination, while adding a visual dimension that’s striking all on its own. If you haven’t seen it yet, get on the stick!

Share A Memory With the World

Posted on January 3, 2003

Have you ever been to a concert, or movie, or show, or any other event, and had something happen there that led you to save the ticket stub, as a way to call back the memory of what happened? Maybe it was the movie you saw on your first date, or the last gig your favorite band played before they split up, or something else; but you knew that stub was a kind of totem, and, for whatever reason, you couldn’t bring yourself to cast it away.

Is that you? Then check out Matthew Haughey‘s new site, Ticketstubs, where people share those memories (along with scans of the stubs that go with them), and where you can share your own.

Here’s a few particularly good ones:

• “Forty-Dollar Friendship” is a marvelous story of a young man, a young woman, and the two yuppie food coupons that came between them;
• “And Now For Something Completely Different” recounts how a one-day London Underground pass created a connection between a college student and a legendary comedian;
• and “Dearer Than the House” tells of a woman’s night out with a too-rich-for-his-own-good friend.

Highlights of 2002

Posted on January 2, 2003

A little belated, perhaps, but just thought I’d run down a few of the things I was thankful for in 2002…

• Wilco, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot“. Album of the year, no matter how much fawning over Eminem the media does.
• Coldplay, “A Rush of Blood to the Head”. Was this a 2002 release? Or did it come out in 2001? Who cares? I came late to it, but DAMN if it isn’t fine.
• Mozilla 1.0 was released, and the Web got interesting again.
• Larry Lessig and Creative Commons released the Creative Commons Licenses, making it easy to share your creations with the world.
• The Sims Online brought a fun new twist on the massively-multiplayer online gaming experience.
• We got a slew of great movies; the most recent one I saw was Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited Gangs of New York, which is much, much better than the negative chatter would have you believe. (Hopefully we’ll get to see a longer director’s cut someday!)
• And Tara Sue Grubb showed me that even in its current screwed-up state, our democratic process can bring forward some remarkable individuals.

Here’s hoping that we see more stuff like this in the year to come!

Don Park: “Sash is Trash”

Posted on January 2, 2003

So Don Park is saying on his blog that IBM’s Sash technology is, well, trash — too hard to install, too bloated, too complicated.

Maybe he’s right — I never had the chance to use Sash on a production project, so I dunno. But I have done some noodling around with it, and many of the things he disliked, I liked — particularly the IDE, which is powerful and robust. Park thinks it’d be better if Sash let you write apps just with a text editor, and says the Sash IDE leans too far in the other direction, trying to be like Microsoft’s Visual Studio. Well, I liked using Visual Studio back when I was a VB developer, so from my perspective that’s not much of a strike against Sash. In fact, my reaction when I first tried Sash out was “Wow, an IDE with lots of the nice things from Visual Studio — and it’s free!” Funny how one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, I suppose 🙂