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February 2000 Archives
February 29
Wendi, of slumberland.org, gets to keep her house!
I don't think it's actually on her website yet, but these days the only way to be weblogger #1 is to log something before it happens. If you see Wendi and Jason at The Speakeasy, be sure to buy them a latte.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 8:47 PM PST - 4 comments
Dave Winer , it appears, is mentioned in the new April issue of Macworld. I just picked up the new issue, and looked to the last page, and David Pogue wrote about how different media outlets predicted Apple's demise, and then he went about humiliating them by reprinting portions of their articles or quotes, and responding. Yes, Dave Winer was one of the people quoted.
posted by premiumpolar at 6:12 PM PST - 4 comments
Man, this guy is desperate. Missed out on the Fox pageant? Here's your chance to be the next Mrs. Rockwell. "Last of the true romantics"? If that's true romance, thank god he's the last.
posted by sandor at 8:06 AM PST - 2 comments
Virtual Dub. No, nothing to do with music. Virtual Dub is open source capturing software with built-in capture support
which can often use as much as 90% of your hard disk's maximum sustained transfer rate -- as high as 10 megabytes per second -- without dropping a frame.
We just tested it at work with our ATI All In Wonder 128 and were impressed with the crystal clear results.
posted by prolific at 5:54 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
The
VW vs.
Virtual Works case is a lot like the eToys vs. ETOY battle. The vw.net site is owned by a small ISP that has been using it for the last few years, but VW is saying that their brand is diluted and their trademarks infringed when another company uses the initials "vw". Like the eToys case, it looks like Volkswagon has
convinced a court of this and will be taking the domain soon. If you remember the different top level domains, .org is for non-profits and organizations, .com is for commercial ventures and corporations, and .net is for network companies and network providers. One would think an ISP qualifies for a .net, and that VW should be perfectly happy with their .com domain, or am I missing something here?
posted by mathowie at 12:17 AM PST - 8 comments
February 28
This explains (choose one) (1) The real trouble with Globalization, or
(2) Why Germany has started so many wars.
(yes, Wittler is a German name; you wanna make something out of it?)
posted by wendell at 11:18 AM PST - 3 comments
The fact that there's
a tool like this available just blows me away. Customize your blue screens of death on windows to any color combo you want...as if that helps anyone out (actually the other apps on that page are pretty useful, I just don't know what good a custom BSOD tool is).
posted by mathowie at 10:59 AM PST - 2 comments
Through a random series of events,
Jamie Zawinski (oooh, I'm such a name dropper :) sent me some very old archives of the Mosaic/Netscape sites and their beta browsers. Chuck Lau, the originator of
the Netscape Museum has cleaned up some of them and has just put
October 1994's entire mcom.com site online. Chuck's working on getting the others online (there's at least 5 or 6 more archives of the site at different points in 1994 and early 1995), and will also be putting up a page linking to an archive of the very oldest of Netscape/Mosaic's browsers. The browsers are currently sitting in
dissarray on my workstation here. I tried out
Mosaic 0.4 beta on my windows machine, about the only site that worked in it was
Yahoo's.
posted by mathowie at 12:25 AM PST - 6 comments
February 27
censorship hmm.. one of my posts seems to have disappeared... are you censoring this weblog?
posted by efader at 3:27 PM PST - 22 comments
Slashdot has some good discussion about purchasing domain names. As always, there's a lot of crap in the discussion, but a few informative posts.
posted by fil! at 1:32 PM PST - 2 comments
Amazon is approved for a patent on the technology behind their affiliate program. Wow, this really has the potential to shake things up a bit. Will software
patents like this destroy internet commerce?
posted by webshaping at 11:47 AM PST - 3 comments
February 26
Oh my lord. The
Guess the Dictator/Sit-com character site works by asking a series of questions about a person you have to think of. I selected an obscure sit-com character, Chris Elliot from Fox's ill-fated "
Get a Life" series. If you would have asked me to bet money on it before proceeding, I would have gladly put $20 on the site not figuring it out. After about 15 questions, it guessed right. This is scary stuff. [via
rebeccablood]
posted by mathowie at 6:25 PM PST - 15 comments
I love The
Industry Standard, especially their daily emails like the
Media Grok and
Intelligencer. Friday's Intelligencer email spotlighted a story on credit card fraud, but if you click on the link in the email, it redirects to the Standard's main page. I searched for the article and
you can see it in the results at the top, but it is dated two days into the future and clicking on it redirects to the front page. I wanted to read that article, too bad I don't have a time machine around...
posted by mathowie at 6:04 PM PST - 1 comments
Interpol's Most Wanted are now on the web! Interestingly, no U.S. nationalities on their Top 20 list, but a few with dual citizenship in Canada.
Blame Canada? No, America must catch up and start producing better international criminals. Of course, I could be wrong...
posted by wendell at 6:04 PM PST - 2 comments
The Half-Human, Half-Silicon Chip sounds like something out of a movie I saw on MST3K. And the reference to the "cell in the hole" sounds like an old catchprase from
Seinfeld. In other words, TV Comedy Technology.
posted by wendell at 6:00 PM PST - 1 comments
Hadn't seen this mentioned anywhere, but it looks like
Adobe is trying to hook designers (Web and otherwise) up with gigs. You can post a resume and an online portfolio, and get searched by location, name, or specialty. Seems kinda neat.
posted by endquote at 3:22 AM PST - 1 comments
Jason thinks he can set a new world record or something with the most obscene or porn-related posts in a row. Well we'll see about that! Let's challenge him! Let's beat him at his own game! Post porn on
your weblog. Bring the goliath down! Just kidding, Jason, we love you! [get him, guys]
posted by premiumpolar at 12:32 AM PST - 7 comments
February 25
If you were to draw one stick person every second 24 hours a day, it would take you 200 years to make 6 billion drawings. The YouDraw exhibition will show 6 billion drawings of the world's people together for the first time ever. 500,000 drawings of people will be collected from the internet. These 500,000 drawings will be compiled in a book of which 12,000 copies will be produced. 12,000 books will represent a total of 6 billion drawings and will be in shown in an installation, to be exhibited internationally.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 3:55 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
BringOutYourDead.com. Coming soon to a browser near you: webcasted funerals. What a great idea, I could really see people getting emotional over some jerky, highly-compressed, blurry RealVideo of a casket. On second thought...
posted by mathowie at 11:47 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
February 24
The Dick Tracy age is upon us. Web access in a watch? Count me in, although I'd hate to have to learn yet another new language like WWML (wrist watch markup language, I just made it up) to make a watch-compliant version of MetaFilter.
posted by mathowie at 2:33 PM PST - 2 comments
After all the death-penalty arguements have been made, there is only one reason to link to the story about this Texas case: to use the phrase
Beets Around the Bush.
posted by wendell at 11:20 AM PST - 24 comments
We may be lonely, but at least we're enjoying it. Today, the results of a new internet use survey were released. The main finding is that 70% of users say that the internet is improving their lives, another notable stat was that over 50% of those polled had used the internet before. There was one odd thing they found, almost 60% said they enjoyed the idiot box (TV) more than the internet. Could it be because you actually have to participate to use the internet, and it's not a passive medium? Personally, I can find more enjoyable content on the web in five minutes than I can surfing a TV dial for a week.
posted by mathowie at 10:28 AM PST - 3 comments
February 23
the bill gates makeover "He is the father of the future, the symbol of a new generation, and he really needs a makeover. Bill Gates as you've never seen him before; it's almost as if he were an entirely different person."
posted by palegirl at 8:32 PM PST - 5 comments
perhaps i would have read more in high school...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Nurse Ratched: I destroy my patients psychologically so I can have power and control.
Randall P. McMurphy: But freedom and happiness are good things.
Nurse Ratched: Lobotomy time for you, buster.
(McMurphy DIES but inspires HOPE so OTHERS may LIVE.)
posted by bluishorange at 2:04 PM PST - 4 comments
It's a DVD Player, it's a CD player, it's an mp3 player, it's a karaoke machine! ... okay, so I probably won't use the karaoke part, but at $179.95, I had to grab the APEX AD600A DVD player. It's even got a supersecret menu so that you can change region settings... not that I would *do* that, but... you know... if you've got friends visiting from Taiwan or something...
You'll note I didn't post the link until my order was confirmed. I'm all about sharing the love, but not at the risk of having the love backordered.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 1:29 PM PST - 9 comments
Apparently, the digitization of all words ever spoken by human beings would take up 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Or, 5
exabytes. How long will it be before
my laptop has that much space?
posted by sandor at 11:16 AM PST - 3 comments
Steve Champeon, one of my personal favorite Web-type people, has a good article over at Webmonkey called
RTFM: A Guide to Online Research. The gist of it is "look it up on the Web before you ask a stupid question on a mailing list", but it goes far beyond that in providing sources one can use to find answers to all sorts of questions.
posted by jkottke at 10:33 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Space Ghost is old news. Brak is the new king. His variety show "Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak" on The Cartoon Network the other night was the surreal highlight of my TV year. Another episode comes along March 16th--miss it if you dare! And please, please, please let the mentioned CD of songs be real. My girlfriend called me at work today and played Brak's rendition of "Highway 40" to cheer me up!
posted by austinspace at 9:05 AM PST - 2 comments
Buyer's Guide to Alternadomains . Can't secure a .com/.org/.net domain? As we know, a host of small nations are selling their domainspace, but the requirements have always been a bit confusing. So I did my research and compiled all the basic information on one page. Now you can comparison-shop among .cc, .gg, and .nu!
posted by joeclark at 6:43 AM PST - 5 comments
February 22
KNAC was the heavy metal station in southern california from 1986 to 1995. Their stickers graced the back of many a 4x4 and street sign. While driving around today, I noticed a KNAC PURE ROCK sticker for the first time in ages, but there was a .COM where "105.5" used to be. Going to
KNAC.COM reveals that they are in fact back with their same format, now solely internet based. After firing up their broadband stream, I heard some good old Ozzy and it was like being in high school again. This begs the question though, since they went under from a lack of advertising before, is there enough money in internet radio to keep them afloat today?
posted by mathowie at 9:06 PM PST - 2 comments
CyberCafe.com is a nice worldwide index of internet-enabled coffee houses and bars. Although their presence is waning in the US (
The LA area only has three), most other countries have a handful in each major city and they're quite handy when you're traveling. A friend recently came back from
Ecuador, where he used one for about a dollar per hour. By the way, I noticed something odd in the Ecuador listings, one cafe is called "BillGato Zona Internet." Am I translating that correctly as "Bill Gates Zone?"
posted by mathowie at 7:48 PM PST - 7 comments
For the low price of only $220, you can have 40 lbs of M&M's candies in
your choice of 21 colors. School mascots could throw school-colored candy at crowds, but it's all fun and games til someone puts an eye out.
posted by endquote at 2:30 PM PST - 6 comments
Web-related software patents are starting to look like the new cyber-squatting equivalent. People are patenting all sorts of mundane things like "electronic shopping carts" and "making secure purchases via the internet." My guess is in 3 or 4 years, after many of these silly patents have been awarded, we'll see a restructuring of the US patent system.
posted by mathowie at 10:01 AM PST - 2 comments
2GET+HER - Did anybody besides me see this movie on MTV last night? I never would have, since movies about boy bands aren't exactly my idea of a good time, but
Leslie told me to watch it and I always trust her judgement... she was right, it was hysterical! If you missed it, it's okay - it's playing once or twice more:
Fri 25 8:00 PM 2Gether MTV
Sat 26 4:30 PM 2Gether Pre-Show MTV
Sat 26 5:00 PM 2Gether MTV
Sun 27 9:30 AM 2Gether Pre-Show MTV
Sun 27 10:00 AM 2Gether MTV
Sun 27 6:30 PM 2Gether Pre-Show MTV
Sun 27 7:00 PM 2Gether MTV
Be sure to check out the songs
Say it, Don't Spray It and
You're my Baby Girl...
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 9:54 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
February 21
Scientific American has an interesting article on brand loyalty on the web. Researchers at MIT are concluding that people stick with familiar commerce sites. Even though the web is supposed to enable shoppers to choose from any site, they instead stay with their favorite, even paying more for the security and familiarity. The researchers also concluded that $20 off coupons and bargain deals aren't going to bankrupt top sites, because it's a considerable investment (from a user's prospective) to shop at a new commerce site, and the offers offset that cost accordingly.
posted by mathowie at 10:53 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
(1 new) Just recognizing another underdocumented IMPROVEMENT in the Metafilter. Visitors who aren't members will miss out on the site's ability to tell you what's been added since your last view... now it even points you to where the new comments are. Matt, you are at the top of MY list of web whizbang artists, and there should soon be about 390 new comments on this post seconding my motion.
I'll never need to do my own weblog again, and I can go on dedicating my site to
afflicting the comfortable (shameless plug)
posted by wendell at 8:28 AM PST - 17 comments
Xenoblogs I got a bit tired of the Amerikanski domination of Weblogging (
not that I don't love you all!), so I've started a compendium of blogs maintained outside the USA, which I've given the snappy name
Xenoblogs. The current list is based, with permission, on a well-known
geographical map of worldwide blogs. Additions welcome.
posted by joeclark at 7:44 AM PST - 1 comments
February 20
Grab your water-wings while you can, because I'm afraid I am the bearer of bad tidings.
We only have a billion years of beach time left, because our planet's ocean's are going to dry up completely. Fortunately, earth will be almost completely unlivable by then, so our descendents will already be dead. According to professor of meterology James Kastings, "My calculations are somewhat pessimistic and present a worst case scenario..."
posted by sixfoot6 at 11:57 PM PST - 2 comments
Bantu is the holy grail of instant messaging apps. The people behind it have been working on this for a while, and they're now offering a web-based, java client that can talk to
ICQ,
MSN, and
Yahoo instant message clients. If it were a client side application, I'd probably use it, I'm not a big fan of leaving a browser window open all the time. Another drawback is that it can't reach AIM users.
posted by mathowie at 7:37 PM PST - 3 comments
workspot Sometimes you run across something on the web and you go "gee, why didnt I think of that?". Imagine being given your own linux box, with a way to view the desktop remotely via a java app that only draws the changes to the screen. Workspot does that and more - you get StarOffice, TheGimp, the K desktop, and a web server with cgi - bin access... it's cool!
posted by triptych at 12:32 AM PST - 3 comments
February 19
I love seeing a well established offline brand bring their image and experience to the web. Tonight, I stumbled upon
Blue Note Records' site for the first time. Blue Note is famous for producing both
wonderful jazz records and
beautiful album artwork. The splash page shows a random artist and the graphics are reminiscent of their covers. They're even cool enough to offer live streaming music from their library, which sounds great over my cable modem (although it's done through windows media player).
posted by mathowie at 6:16 PM PST - 5 comments
Who Wants To Marry A Liar-Loser/Multi-Millionaire? Unfortunately for Hard-bodied nurse Darva Conger, her. It seems that the pointy chinned-geek multimillionaire of Fox's ratingsfest "Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire" wasn't exactly the man he made himself out to be. (I personally would've gone wither with the other blonde, or the brunette next to her at the end.) - Aw c'mon - you can admit it - I know you saw at least some of that two hour scoop o' slop... - Uhhmmmm welll... yeah - well I was just testing you - I didn't see it either... yeah... umm I was watching basketball.... On an entirely different note - how about that 90210? - I'm really getting worried about Kelly...... Uh yeah, well I was just testing you again... Ummmmm... I gotta go now...
posted by Magnus at 5:54 PM PST - 2 comments
If you're tired of using canned Latin "
Lorem Ipsum Dolor" to fill the text areas in your design projects, how about using
21st Century Greeking instead. It features such meaningful passages as: "Fundamentally transforming well designed actionable information whose semantic content is virtually null. To more fully clarify the current exchange, a few aggregate issues will require addressing to facilitate this distributed communication venue."
posted by mathowie at 5:00 PM PST - 3 comments
Sony web site mobbed... The number of nline orders for the PSX2 at the Sony web site forced Sony to close down the page temporarily as they were getting 100K hits in one minute yesterday.
The PSX2 is projected to be released on March 4th. =)
posted by hobbes at 10:19 AM PST - 3 comments
February 18
Tomb of Osiris Found! Ok, so this isn't a great reference. I originally saw a piece about this on MSN; two hours later, I was unable to find it on their site due to unbelieveably inconsistent and crappy nagivation. (Did they ever consider that maybe 'Search' should allow you to search just MSN? Or that story links, uniform in appearance but in fact linking to heterogenous destinations, are confusing as hell?) Anyway, fun stuff. Did you know George Bush Sr. worships Osiris?
posted by lbergstr at 1:46 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
What? No sock puppet!? It really makes little sense for pets.com to offer all of the other goodies but no sock puppet for the kids....(yeah...kids, that's the ticket). I bet everyone at Chiat-Day (pets.com advertisers) received one, why can't we?
posted by Cavatica at 10:22 AM PST - 2 comments
February 17
Do we all need to get out more? Although they're putting the "too much time with computers, not enough social interaction" spin on this study's findings, there are actually some good results of it. Heavy internet users spend less time in traffic (because they
look up traffic before going anywhere?), less time in malls (shopping online instead, duh), and less time watching TV (this is the best news of all, I barely watch it anymore because it's mostly inane garbage, whereas on the internet, I can find
interesting things to
read and
enjoy). As for the less face time with friends and family, I have a growing number of friends online that I consider to be as close as any Real Life friend could be.
posted by mathowie at 10:41 AM PST - 11 comments
And thanks to all the fish? British researchers say fans of loud music may be responding to a 'pleasure-inducing hearing mechanism' passed down through evolution from fish to humans.
Well, slap me with a large trout!
posted by prolific at 12:38 AM PST - 4 comments
February 16
Welcome to Burma.com How's *this* for net access?! And we sometimes complain about how the government views the net in our own countries... fact is we don't know how good we've got it.
posted by tomcosgrave at 7:22 PM PST - 3 comments
The Razzies dis-honor the worst achievements in film for 1999. My personal favorite, Heather Donahue in Blair Witch. Forget the Oscars.
posted by E-Boogie at 8:43 AM PST - 2 comments
Apple released brand new versions of all their hardware, and I want to change. New Powerbooks with FW ports built in, and a graphite iBook, but what is it about moving from PC to Mac that gives one the feeling of coming out the proverbial closet and shielding themselves from being pelted with tomatoes?
posted by Cavatica at 8:20 AM PST - 11 comments
February 15
You want to know the definition of irony?
Take a look at this, and notice where this video is the number one seller. I've ranted before about my local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video not carrying this title in LA, but that screenshot speaks volumes about a large group of repressed people.
posted by mathowie at 10:52 PM PST - 3 comments
More Live-Action versions of beloved cartoon icons. I was thrilled this morning when I heard an actress being interviewed about her upcoming lead in the new Josie and the Pussycats movie. That thrill turned to disgust when I discovered it was Rachael Leigh Cook (Devon on Dawson's Creek) and not Laura Prepon (Donna from That 70s Show) being interviewed. It only got worse when I discovered that Jennifer Love Hewitt is being wooed for the role of Daphne in a possible Scooby Doo project (with Mike Meyers as Shaggy???). Hey, Laura Prepon could do that one too!
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 10:37 AM PST - 1 comments
The U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Association has a pretty detailed site up. On the one hand, It has made me anxious for the roar of the engines and the smell of the fresh cut grass, but it makes me sad too - ever since Sta-Bil bought out the lawn mower racing circuit, it's become way too commercial. My favorite line is a caption from the picture on the front page: "The Webmaster Leadin' the Pack on his Blades of Thunder in Lisle, IL." It's nice to see someone who is able to combine their work with their passion.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 9:08 AM PST - 7 comments
This year's list of Oscar nominees seems way, way off. But here's my big five predictions given their lame choices (along with my personal faves if I could choose anything): best pic: American Beauty (Magnolia), Actor: Denzel Washington (John Malkovich), Actress: Hilary Swank (same), Supporting Actor: Tom Cruise (Philip Hoffman), and Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie (same, she was amazing).
posted by mathowie at 8:38 AM PST - 16 comments
February 14
Jerry Lewis pulled an Andy Kaufman at a recent comedy awards Q&A session. When asked about female comics he admires, he answered with "I don't like any female comedians" and went so far as to say that he considers a woman "a producing machine that brings babies in the world." No word yet on whether or not he'll start professional wrestling anytime soon.
posted by mathowie at 11:09 PM PST - 4 comments
Here's a nice survey of geographic location of domain name ownership. I was surprised to see that people in
Los Angeles own more domains than San Francisco, but I assume the researcher didn't lump all the Silicon Valley cities together to get that number. I'm sure a "Bay Area" grouping would be number one. Of the .com, .org, and .net addresses, the US still leads the world with 2/3 of all addresses in that domainspace, so I guess the web will continue to be American-centric for some time.
posted by mathowie at 12:34 PM PST - 1 comments
Indiana University Bans use of Napster It appears that Indiana University has banned the use of Napster recently. Apparently it was accounting for 50% of IU's Internet traffic. Officials are sighting bandwidth as the reason for the ban. I wonder how many schools will follow suit this semester.
posted by fil! at 12:21 PM PST - 7 comments
AOL jumps on the get-rich-quick bandwagon. "Every time you generate a new member for AOL who stays for 90 days, AOL will pay you $15. Imagine how much extra cash you could make! Make $20,000, $40,000, $80,000, $100,000 - the sky is the limit!" Wow, it almost sounds easier than working...
posted by mathowie at 10:24 AM PST - 1 comments
An interesting article over at Slashdot on
the 9 continents of the Internet. I've always had a sense that there were these different "circles" that people ran in, but I never could quite pin them down. Of course, I'm not sure that they can be pinned down precisely to 9, but I can appreciate the attempt.
posted by jkottke at 9:25 AM PST - 8 comments
Forget
Fezbot (Feb 13th) - now you can try out Linux with a bootable CDROM.
DemoLinux.org is making available downloadable disk images that you can burn to a CDR and boot from your CDROM drive. This
Mandrake distribution recognized my video card and mouse without any problems (but not my soundcard). A healthy variety of software (like
Gimp,
Netscape, and
Corel WordPerfect) is included.
posted by hit-or-miss at 7:51 AM PST - 1 comments
Well, the word is out, Windows 2000 ships this Thursday and, with it, approximately
63,000 bugs. The spokespeople are saying:
"All software ships with issues. The difference is (that) no software in the history of Microsoft development has ever been through the incredible, rigorous internal and external testing that Windows 2000 has been through."
While that's great and all, they didn't say they actually fixed the bugs that those 750,000 people found.
I certainly won't be switching anytime soon.
posted by othermatt at 7:04 AM PST - 8 comments
Well, that was quick. Last week Clintion & Reno urge the FBI to go into a full investigation of the DoS attacks of Yahoo, eBay, etc., and they're already
suspecting it was German crackers. They don't actually say how or why they suspect them, other than the program used in the attacks might have been German. It'd be nice if they could actually show that the attacks originated from German IP addresses before they start suspecting anyone.
posted by mathowie at 4:48 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
February 13
Adventures in Consumer Stalking: Interactive TV "Broadcasters and advertisers, meanwhile, have long been eager to fire up interactive services, because they can know more about who is watching (and doing) what, and what consumers are buying. Targeted advertising with better response rates has long been a goal in the television industry."
posted by jenett at 12:41 PM PST - 1 comments
Linux just got easier than Windows ever will.
Fezbox is a *web-based* installer for Red Hat Linux and works in either Linux (as a windows update-style site), or in Windows itself (apparently you can partition and install linux over the web too). If this works smoothly, I'm in awe.
posted by mathowie at 10:49 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
February 12
So
Charles Schulz ran out of ink about two hours ago, preceded in death by about five hours by
Tom Landry. The worst part is, both were in my
dead pool, which starts in about 24 hours. (The second-worst thing is all the "It's a sad day for Snoopy" and "Good grief" ledes we're going to have to endure. Blech.)
The Dallas Morning News obit went over the wires at 85 inches before Landy was even cold. Gee, you think they saw this one coming?
posted by luke at 11:50 PM PST - 9 comments
The Bad Touch by The Bloodhound Gang. I love it and
KROQ is playing it pretty much every hour, so if they haven't already been labeled loser-sellout-musicians-non-gratia they will be soon. Musically, I'm the kiss of death.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 12:42 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
February 11
politically incorrect may air a gay marriage. if they can find two guys who will exchange vows, P.I. will air it on febuary 18th. hmm. "The on-screen wedding will kick off an episode devoted entirely to gay marriage, a particularly timely topic given Vermont's recent block of an anti-marriage bill, California's upcoming Proposition 22"
posted by palegirl at 3:51 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
New STATUS info for MetaFilter! Now I can see what has happened during the 15 minutes I was away!
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 1:16 PM PST - 7 comments
Uncle Sam wants YOU to solve the internet's problems. President Clinton announced yesterday that, due to a complete lack of knowledge about the internet, it will cost $2 billion in 2001 to develop anti-hacker secuity. Plus they intend on subsidizing college costs for computer science majors that agree to work for the government. Hey if he'd give me just one million dollars, I'd be able to pay off my school costs and hunt down hackers personally, like
Boba Fett.
posted by Awol at 10:05 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
How much would you pay for a giant donut? Don't answer yet. What if that donut were not 7, not 9, but 14" in diameter? Now how much would you pay? $10? $20? $25?
Best Donut Man of New York will deliver a giant 14" donut to your doorstep for a mere $43.95 (which includes overnight delivery)! Now if only I could find someone to deliver a garbage can size cup of coffee and some throwrug sized napkins, I'd be totally set.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 9:25 AM PST - 3 comments
February 10
IBM has developed a
new storage technology called Millepede which has more in common with old-school punch cards than it does with magnetic hard drives. The system uses a tiny heated sensor to mark a thin polymer layer, and can already store
400 gigabytes per square inch. And it will improve. Will we ever have enough important information to fill up such ridiculous amounts of space?
posted by sixfoot6 at 6:17 PM PST - 4 comments
The Ultimate Bad Candy Website is not the most high-end in production design but the stories of these two guys eating everything under the sun provided me with a a good 15 minutes of joy.
posted by Awol at 6:06 PM PST - 1 comments
Southpark makes waves overseas. "The U.S.-made adult cartoon show was responsible for a rise in swearing and misbehavior" said the student council. Lets all sing together: "Blame America! Blame America!" (hopefully you've seen the Southpark movie and
heard this)
posted by mathowie at 5:45 PM PST - 1 comments
Parlimentary, my dear.
New Zealand breaks ground with the world's first Transsexual Member of Parliment (formerly the world's first Transsexual Mayor). Her maiden speech included the circumspect
"I was quoted once as saying this is a stallion that became a gelding and now she's a mayor. I do have to say that I've now come full circle and become a member."
[
stolen found on
:::..::: Cortexposted by CrazyUncleJoe at 3:57 PM PST - 1 comments
So
a few days ago, I went off on some resume sites going out and pilfering my resume off my personal site. Well, I
opted out of
passportaccess.com, and
here is their response. My favorite part: "Once you post your resume or any sort of material on the internet it becomes public information and therefore, can be spread from site to site very quickly." Uh, excuse me? Since when did "public information" equal "copyright-free and we can do anything we want with it?"
posted by mathowie at 12:18 PM PST - 5 comments
Freaks and Geeks, arguably the best new show of this lackluster TV season, is being
shelved for the remainder of February sweeps. Although it will return next month (and if you've never seen it, check it out), its future is pretty dim. Why does the public constantly complain about the lack of quality shows, but refuse to support the ones that do rock?
posted by Awol at 10:13 AM PST - 5 comments
February 9
One thing is for sure:
Overstock.com and
American Science & Surplus aren't the run-of-the-mill e-commcerce sites. I love AS&S's detailed information, which occasionally runs like: "Unfortunately, the default colour is chartreuse", or "You have to buy at least three per order. Believe us, you'll probably need the parts."
posted by tdecius at 12:21 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
TheSimpons.com ride's along with K-Mart's
Blue Light Special to offer free internet access and email. While what is considered the top ISP offering free internet;
NetZero, it would just seem much
cooler to be
chillin@thesimpsons.com.
posted by sikk at 11:29 AM PST - 4 comments
SPOON! I'm not sure how I feel about a live action Tick, but I suppose if you're going to do it, you could do worse than to cast Patrick Warburton as the Nigh-Invulnerable Blue Guy...
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 10:20 AM PST - 5 comments
The Today Show really pisses me off. They never have links to the stories I want to pull up (like the head of the KKK in Jackson saying "why is everyone so bigoted and full of hate when it comes to *us* trying to preserve our heritage"), but they
do have stories like
Allowances, sleepovers and street crossing...
Is your child ready to take that next step?
Regarding the KKK piece, the story was about a Missouri Legislator planning to introduce a bill to rename a section of road "Rosa Parks Highway" in response to the KKK's participation in the Adopt-a-Highway program. While it seems pretty obvious to me that the KKK would just move to another section of road, I was a) offended by the comments of the KKK spokesman, and b) irritated by the State Legislator's lack of preparation for the interview. Why didn't he directly respond to the accusation of hate and bigotry? Why didn't he have facts on hand about the 'heritage' that the KKK was trying to preserve? Why didn't he have information about it's past and present activities and mission? Why didn't he point out that membership in the KKK is
in and of itself sufficient to get you booked on the Jerry Springer Show? These things always bug me, because it's clear that groups like the KKK do quite a bit of preparation in fact distortion and spin control, but the Voices of Reason seldom do any prep work at all.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 9:16 AM PST - 3 comments
DoS Attacks for Fun and Profit - It looks like the list has expanded quite a bit this week... enough that the FBI is going to hold a press conference today at 11
PST. This is almost enough to argue
against unlimited bandwidth for the average consumer. I hope they track the bastards down; not only does this impact the future success of eCommerce ventures, but it lends to stereotyping the technically elite as potential closet-evildoers.
posted by othermatt at 9:11 AM PST - 1 comments
Like some people, I'm obsessed with traffic. I was very happy to hear that Toyota is
developing chips to drive smart cars, since groups of people in cars can't seem to drive very well on their own. I've studied traffic for years (living in LA means lots of "time in the lab") and have actually tried
no-stopping experiments and observed
merging behavior. People seem to use their brakes too much, or over-react to people ahead tapping their brakes. I can't wait until the day traffic flow can be controlled by computer, LA might be livable again. Just to prove to
others that this is in fact a thinly-veiled simpsons newsgroup, Homer and Bart benefited from similar driving-assistance technology in
episode #AABF13.
posted by mathowie at 12:02 AM PST - 2 comments
February 8
Page 33 of the latest Red Herring is a full-page ad for Morrison and Forrestor, attorrneys at law. What's great is that in big, yellow print is the firm's URL:
mofo.com. Now, they
have to be aware of the multiple meanings here, but they appear to be playing it straight, and the site is full of
MoFo news and
MoFo history.
posted by luke at 11:32 PM PST - 5 comments
Add Buy.Com to the list of sites getting hit by Denial Of Sevice Attacks lately. The site went down just as they were getting extra traffic because they just released their IPO, good timing...or I should say bad timing.
posted by Mark at 7:00 PM PST - 2 comments
The Athlon 1.1G Processor is due out this summer. I'm sure I'll need it to run my
36GB hard drives and my
140GB CDROM, but it's still a bit of a shock considering that only a few years ago I decided to splurge and get a cutting edge 486-66(MHz) with a 170MB hard drive I knew I'd never fill it up.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 2:58 PM PST - 8 comments
Presto Technologies is hard at work on
Presto Pass - an example of the growing m-com (mobile e-commerce) market.
SF Gate has an article about it which is (according to my source within Presto Technologies) not entirely accurate
WRT which company does what in the process, but covers the actual product pretty well. Will this be a vector for the rocketlike Shopping-Cart-At-A-Time grocery store checkouts we've been promised, or just another way to track consumer demographics for Madison Avenue? Can I have one of these implanted in my scalp, so that I can find my head even when it isn't attached?
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 2:07 PM PST - 2 comments
Paul Ford's Ftrain has a great piece on Micrsoft Word, writing, and the web. His stream-of-consciousness essay has hilarious nuggets like the "computer science axiom 'all software expands until it can send mail.'" There's a couple illustrations worth noting:
the first looks like Word with
all the tool bar icons enabled, and
the other is Word's paperclip assistant interfering with an especially private moment. Great stuff.
posted by mathowie at 1:01 PM PST - 1 comments
February 7
Personal rant time: I wrote
my own resume a while ago, and have been building onto it for a couple years now. To me, it is copyrighted material, just as anything else I write. So why is it showing up in all sorts of resume databases? I'm getting calls from recruiters saying they got it from
Aquent,
Passport Access, and various other resume sites. These sites seem to be sucking down resumes, putting them on their site, and making money off them. I can't see my own resume, since I haven't paid to look at it. I find PassportAccess to be especially annoying: they offer
an opt-out page. What the hell? Why should I even have to do this? It's my resume, not theirs!
posted by mathowie at 7:52 PM PST - 13 comments
Corpses are great if used to prove points, and they mayor of Taipei wanted to make a point in cleaning up the rivers there so it can become a tourist attraction. I think his point was well made when a corpse of a 50 year old man came floating by.
posted by Mark at 5:24 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
In addition to SelectSmart's
Presidental Candidate chooser app which was
mentioned here before, AOL
now has one and iVillage
does too. Although all the questions are different, I'm getting the same top three in all apps. A funny sidenote: if you leave everything at the defaults of "no preference" at AOL's candidate chooser, Al Gore comes up as first choice. Although it's just a bug caused by alphabetizing the candidates, I think it's a little too close to the truth to ignore. :)
posted by mathowie at 12:06 PM PST - 4 comments
I wouldn't normally post a job announcement URL here on MetaFilter, but this one is different because
it may be every young web jedi's dream. Industrial Light and Magic is looking for web and database people. Can you imagine the street cred you'll have when you get to build the pages for the SW movies and trailers months before anyone gets to see them? I wonder if Lucas would force you into some sort of solitude, so you wouldn't leak any juicy info
to others.
posted by mathowie at 11:27 AM PST - 5 comments
February 6
Did anyone watch the Simpsons Sunday night? Did you notice how bad it sucked?
Maybe it was on purpose, as a response to
the feud going on between the show's writers and the alt.tv.simpsons newsgroup.
posted by jkottke at 10:03 PM PST - 18 comments
FoxTV has reached a new all-time low. I couldn't find an official site, but
here's the listing over at
tvgrid.com. "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire" is an upcoming special where a single guy will pick from one of 50 women, and get legally married by the end of the program. This one is pathetic all around; for the freak going on TV to pick his wife in a matter of 2 hours, the 50 women lining up to marry a man for his money, and for Fox pulling such a lame ratings stunt.
posted by mathowie at 9:08 PM PST - 5 comments
Today I was once again reminded why I hate
domain squatters so much. I wanted to find the website for
Scream 3, but
scream3.com is some half-assed hacked site. Every domain with "scream3" in it
seems to be taken (some by Miramax), but none of them resolve to a movie site. The only one that looks halfway official is
in french. Here it is, opening weekend, and there doesn't seem to be an official site up that I can use.
posted by mathowie at 6:45 PM PST - 3 comments
I often forget that there's still a community of visual basic developers out there building all sorts of goofy apps for windows.
This site has a whole bunch of useful utilities, including
Gribouille, a program that lets you draw all over your desktop,
Pubcruncher, an app that kills popup windows, and my favorite: "
Nap and Coffee", a fake app that lets you walk away from your computer and make it appear that you're copying large files, scanning for viruses, or setting up a program.
posted by mathowie at 11:39 AM PST - 1 comments
February 5
Who wants to be a twenty-aire? $20 for you, $10 for me. Or,
$20 for you, $10 for Justin. Or whatever. Either way, I can't find the catch. Free money, and you don't even have to write a review of anything.
The way Bank of America has been dicking me around, I expect to transfer to an Internet bank by the end of the year. Although x.com is interesting and is giving away free money, I don't think this will be it. I'll probably wait until ETrade gets its act together with Telebank. If precedence is anything, I expect ETrade to give $100, United miles and a toaster to early adopters.
This is also the first one-letter domain that I'm aware of. (I lack the interest go try all 26 to find out.)
posted by luke at 9:39 PM PST - 4 comments
Jason's got a real noodle scratcher at his site. I'd say the first gunman and second gunman should take their first shots at the third gunman, but they're likely to miss, then the third gunman would kill number 2, the first one gets another shot, but it's again only 1/3 likely to hit #3. #3 then shoots #1 and it's over. I bet the correct answer is for #1 to shoot at himself or something, but that makes no sense either.
What do you think?posted by mathowie at 9:05 PM PST - 8 comments
metafilter is famous!!! well.... maybe? "Metafilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment
to.
Its purpose is to break down the barriers between people, to extend a
weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its
members.
The site has centralized numerous discussions so you can participate on
topics ranging from the "New Northern Ireland" to "Microsoft's font
demos". The topics get more interesting as people with different
interests
participate.
Esoteric Collaboration"
posted by efader at 8:01 PM PST - 3 comments
February 4
Hey kids, it's a MetaFilter Challenge! Can you name
all nine talking heads in the Ditherati header graphic? (Note: Consulting Terry Colon for the answers is considered cheating; consulting his illustrations at
Suck for clues is not.)
posted by jjg at 1:32 PM PST - 11 comments
A wonderful thing happened after the recent merger between
eMachines and a company called FreePC. All 25,000 FreePC customers, taking advantage of the company's unique free-internet-and-computer-deal, were allowed to keep their computers with absolutely no strings attached. Real people benefitting from corporate business maneuvers? Gosh.
posted by sixfoot6 at 12:59 AM PST - 1 comments
February 3
Oh Mighty Isis! I admit it, I found this because of a
link on
riothero's weblog, but the memory of Isis (who looked a lot like Catherine Zeta Jones, only without Michael Douglas' lipprints all over her) was just too good to keep to myself.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 8:41 PM PST - 1 comments
Windows Me??? wow, is that the lamest product name ever? previously, my vote was for "
the webster" (which dell smartly re-named). who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?
posted by mmanning at 5:12 PM PST - 5 comments
Just when you think people can't get any stupider, they go and
believe something like this. If you thought the "
Christopher Reeve walking" ad was real, you need to turn off your TV and pick up a book. Oh, and please don't have any offspring either (just trying to help speed the process of evolution a bit :).
posted by mathowie at 5:01 PM PST - 1 comments
Life imitates art in the second anti-Blockbuster screed here. Of course, this won't make sense unless you've seen "Fight Club," as our esteemed columnists apparently haven't.
posted by luke at 4:05 PM PST - 1 comments
alt.callahans is the usenet group we were talking about, Matt. How could you go wrong with lines like this?
Setting a bag of Susie B's on the bar, Freddie winks at Mike. "A round for the house, if you please, kind sir. It would be hard to come up with a better toast than the one just raised, so I'll just add a wish for you all."
You truly can't go home again.
or can you?
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 2:24 PM PST - 3 comments
Remember the movie "
The Day After?" Back in the Cold War days, we were all worried about someday being vaporized by a nuclear blast. Well now, in this post-Cold War era you can relive those wonderful memories with PBS'
Nuclear Blast Mapper. I popped in the coordinates for MetaFilter's server location, set the bomb to a 25 megaton blast and
this is the result. Think about that the next time you hear a country gets their first nuclear weapons.
posted by mathowie at 2:14 PM PST - 5 comments
Love the Liberator? Sure, we all do. But how much do you really know about Simón Bolívar, founder of a good six or seven South American countries? There are a few good quick biographies
here,
here, and
here. The best site, by far, is the
Virtual Library of Simón Bolívar, which not only has detailed scholarly articles but a number of Bolívar's own writings. Stop by and meet
el Libertador again for the first time.
posted by tdecius at 12:06 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
February 2
Speaking of High School newspapers and Matt's
impending reunion, a friend of mine sent me to
highschoolalumni.com a while back. As a result of some email I got from someone there, I found
classmates.com which links to a
high school bulletin board on delphi.com. Now I'm getting email left and right from people I haven't seen in 18-20 years, and it's a little freaky. The best so far was from my freshman year biology lab partner. She was totally the Roller Disco Queen at Skate City, and even had a Linda Blair-esque Roller Boogie picture in the yearbook. We didn't really know each other, so when she said
"I too, am very fuzzy on high school days. It just seems like a life time ago, but I do remember you well", I took it as a compliment. It may seem silly, but I would hate to be forgettable. You see, Matt? You don't *have* to go back, you can interact with all the people you don't want to see again from the comfort of your own home.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 11:52 PM PST - 1 comments
HighWired.com helps high schools put their newspapers (and classrooms and other information) online -- but i wonder if putting articles like
this one, which tell personal information about students, online is a good idea. following that logic, i guess it's good that it's difficult to search high wired or find
a list of all the high school newspapers that it hosts. if you poke around a bit, you
can find many papers and it's
good for a laugh.
posted by palegirl at 9:46 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
The new Northern Ireland government teeters on the brink of collapse over Provisional IRA weapons decommissioning, while the rest of Europe worries about
Joerg
Haider. I find it interesting that some worry about how a government will be formed, and
others worry if they will have a government at all.
posted by tomcosgrave at 1:22 PM PST - 1 comments
February 1
Smart Dog BackTalk lets me exchange vCards and Memo Pad data between my Newton MessagePad 2100 and all of the Palm PDAs scattered about my office. As a lonely Newton user in a world plugged full of Palms, these guys rock! Not bad for a dead platform, eh? Now watch me fire up
my web server.
posted by grant at 7:34 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
First Quote of the Century Here's the first quotable quote of the century. Monica Lewinsky on CNN's Larry King Live discussing her miraculous Jenny Craig weight-loss: "I've learned not to put things in my mouth that are bad for me."
posted by Jeremy at 12:46 PM PST - 2 comments
This article at zdnet is all about how wireless web devices aren't that handy, and how our lives would suck if wireless web access was everywhere. I heartily disagree. I have a wireless 2Mb LAN connection at work and it's liberating (it's possible to code, listen to shoutcast mp3 streams, and check email outside or down at the coffee house next door). My PCS phone is useful too, I can surf a few important websites when I don't have a laptop around, getting news, weather, and email. Wireless access is certainly a Good Thing, and should make our lives easier, but the article's author is blaming the possible deluge of information on wireless, instead of the user.
How would a wireless broadband connection make your life better or worse?posted by mathowie at 10:08 AM PST - 8 comments
NetBabyWorld NetBabyWorld is a very graphically interesting site. It has sort of a gameboy-retro look crossed with sim-city. Anyway, the games are very fun and this is a quite unique site...
posted by triptych at 1:27 AM PST - 3 comments
