Sucky site of the day: http://www.tasteyoulove.com/ (I Can't Believe It's Not Butter). Here's a clue, guys: If I turn off JavaScript and images (my default browsing configuration) and get nothing, you need to can the losers pretending to do your web design. Just as well that I got nothing, though, the JavaScript shows frames out the proverbial.
While I'm going on about various random topics, http://www.news.com/ is reporting that J. Baker is suing Andersen Consulting for not addressing Y2k issues in 1989 . I have no idea what Andersen is claiming, but J. Baker's case rests on Andersen not having told them about the issues. C'mon, in 1989? How incompetent were these folks? I was concerned about Y2k issues then. Now on the system I was concerned about then we decided that there was going to be a replacement in 10 years, but at least we were aware of the issues. Go hire your local college dropout, s/he's probably much more on the ball than your average Arthur Anderoid.
Speaking of which, have I ever told y'all my "not trying to get downsized" story? At one of those "multimedia" shebangs in SF, this one was sponsored by Andersen Consulting, talking with one of the Andersen suits, and he asked what I did, I said most recently I'd written the Windows video decompressors for the Toy Story Animated StoryBook, he asked "what's that?", I told him just the biggest selling edutainment title ever (not to mention a best seller even if you didn't restrict to genre, derived from a blockbuster film, and all that) and he said "Oh. Well, last year I was just trying to not get downsized." If my career goals are ever "trying to not get downsized" would someone please implant a clue by way of something big, heavy and painful?
Yeah! A while back I reported that various strip clubs and sex shops around Times Square were to be shut down while their lawsuit against the new zoning rules was going on. Well, Reuters reports that at least one video store is managing to stay open because the city has "failed to establish by clear and convincing evidence that these establishments ... fall within the definition of 'adult establishment' under the law". Not wonderful news, but it's a start.
And this has direct bearing on me (Dan): What the hell is up with Pixar stock? 28? I'm gonna have to buy soon, but I leave for Burning Man on Wednesday.
Those lovable brits were a little late on Friday, but you can pick up Need To Know today. As for My Word's Worth , however, I'll save you the trip, Marylaine's taking it easy this week and re-running best-ofs.
The results of the cat scanning contest at, where else, http://www.cat-scan.com
The Silicon Valley Tarot Page . What does an inverted New Hire of Hosts, an 8 of Disks, and a Double Latt mean for my future?
Rumor Mill this week talks about Hollywood versus Silicon Valley.
Take a look at http://www.netstudio.com/makeover/ , then consider nominating them for their very own Muddies award. On the other hand, maybe it just isn't worth your time. More "web designers" who just don't get it.
Also in Salon this morning, the real reason Newt Gingrich isn't saying anything about Monica , some commentary on the difference between facts and learning and how computers in the classroom promote the first. A good issue today.
In Salon Magazine, Susie Bright claims that Clinton's woes give America a crash course in sex ed
The North Face game: http://lab.cs.orst.edu/northface/
Tired of seeing all those people walking across campus in that needless North Face gear? Wondering why mommy and daddy saw the need to invest $400 into their child's wardrobe when their campus isn't even above the 47th parallel.
I've started to throw a couple of hacks up for download.:
Anyone else out there going to Burning Man ? Interested in hooking up? Drop me a line.
If you don't happen to live in one of the 17 biggest marketing metropolitan regions in the U.S., or, like me, you just can't stand getting near a mall, here's a Pixar fan who's got some pictures and text about his visit to the A Bug's Life mall tour stop in Tucson: http://www.netzone.com/~tradica/pixr/page1.htm "Mcdisixar", gonna have to remember that.
Another voice of reason in the rush to technology. A review of Failure To Connect in Salon
The New York Times reports on a potentional acquisition of the Baca ranch in New Mexico by the federal government for the U.S. Forest Service.
"Damn Straight, It's Linux": http://www.sonic.net/~roelofs/greg_lnxpic2.html
A new set of Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet strips, a Babylon 5 dream sequence. Fell a little flat with me because of that.
And Marylaine Block talks about libraries taking on the chain stores in My Word's Worth this morning.
Kewl! Locking is now working in Newwwsboy, go nuts. Also, since we have outsiders contributing, I probably should hack in some system to show who sends what. Anyone got suggestions? (BTW, the "I" in this case is Dan
I saw a cool TV commercial today (something I don't see often). From the Partnership For A Drug Free America (which I usually don't refer to in a positive light at all). It was a couple of skaters grinding and thrashing, with "For the best high, use the pure stuff. Adrenaline."
Unfortunately, the kids were skating in a manner that, in my experience, attracts the attention of the constabulary. And if I'm gonna get busted for something, it may as well be worthwhile.
I don't think the ad had the desired effect.
And geez, because of yesterday's and today's weirdnesses, this one, Flutterby's first outside submission, has gotten about 3 hours of coverage. Let's try again:
Well, if you ever needed to know "why rabbits don't hunt tigers"? or if "men really need prostitution"?? then you might find http://www.feminista.com/ interesting. Warning:people that have a Y chromosome should use caution and not post inflammatory remarks.....less he be clubbed like a baby seal....
http://segfault.org/ isn't officially open for business yet, but their interim graphic is cool.
Pat Califia with a new Topping the News at the Spectator magazine.
Damn, something is weird. Guess I know what I'll be fixing tomorrow. Anyway, here's some duplicates so I've got something up for today:
Winners of the Salon Magazine "What does HTTP://www stand for?" competition. Among others:
Hands to the pants! Wanton willing women!
--Stephen Rojak
Winners of the Salon Magazine "What does HTTP://www stand for?" competition. Among others:
Hands to the pants! Wanton willing women!
--Stephen Rojak
Well, apparently that problem today was a glitch in the upload stuff. Return to your lives, citizens, nothing to see here...
Well this explains some things
LONDON, Aug 20 (Reuters)-Men have higher levels of the sex hormone testosterone if their third finger is longer than their first, according to a scientist from a university in northwest England.
mouthorgan this week continues the discussion of internet rating systems.
http://www.emf.net/~mkent/Xplicit/
SEVENTH ANNUAL NUDE AND BREAST FREEDOM PARADE!
Once again that time of year is upon us when we gather to the streets everyone who wants to realize the freedom to dress or undress as they feel best to celebrate our bodies.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1998
STARTING AT NOON, PEOPLE'S PARK, TELEGRAPH & HASTE IN BERKELEY
Naturists, Nudists, Body-Enjoyers, Freedom-Lovers, and other Celebrants...
YOU ARE WARMLY INVITED
COME BASK IN, AND HELP GENERATE, THE PSYCHIC SUNSHINE OF THE BERKELEY "URBAN NATURIST" EXPERIENCE!
I said I was going to leave the Clinton thing alone, but this one is just so right on. On Scripting News , Dave Winer reports getting the real Clinton speech from "a random source".
Regarding http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/081998clinton-pundits.html
Okay, I really really really don't want to fuel the Monica-mania; I'd hoped that the speech would shut people up and let us get on with the real issues, but apparently the media isn't ready to do that yet. A politician lied to us. Helloooo, can any of you tell me with a straight face that "honest politician" isn't an oxymoron? Have all of these newspaper pundits been taking naive pills? He lied. Get over it. We send the worst of them to Washington 'cause it's where they'll do the least damage; imagine what would happen if we let the congresscritters stay in-state year round?
It's the marriage issue at Nerve Magazine . The articles by David Teague and Marisa de los Santos spoke to me.
Dave Winer is an optimist. He believes that politicians are not fundamentally evil creatures who lie by force of habit. I don't agree with him, but I honor his idealism as expressed in Truth Decay
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9808/17/fringe/israeli.detergent/
The Lever Israel company uses Lewinsky's stained dress -- which has been examined to determine if the stain contains genetic material -- to suggest that its Biomat detergent can deal with even the most stubborn stains.
The 30-second spot shows two actors playing FBI agents breaking into the "home" of Monica Lewinsky at night. Their mission is to remove, wash and return the dress at the center of an investigation into whether Clinton had a sexual relationship with the former White House intern, lied about it and urged others to lie about it.
Late Breaking: Apparently the Whitehouse staff leaked, and Monica has the pole results. Anti-news. They pre-empted Jeopardy for this?
Marylaine's got a new My Word's Worth
People who just don't get it, redux: The folks from http://www.webstandards.org/ sent me e-mail last week complaining about my treatment of them, and I relented, gave them a cursory once-over with Lynx and Netscape 3.x, and apologized based on the fact that they weren't officially open for business. Well, now they are, and all of my original complaints still stand. "onMouseOver"s, gross styles, and to top it off, rather than taking a stand as content developers, they're whining to the browser coders. Log into the clue server and issue a "GET" command, guys! The people actually putting out content aren't having problems here, it's only the over-steroided graphics designers trying to make up for the lack of any real meaning in their sites.
Web standards with a clue: http://www.anybrowser.org/
A new Queen Online at Good Vibrations.
Pat Califia has a new Quickies at Good Vibrations.
Hope I'm an anomaly: A _Redbook Magazine survey__ (http://www.abcnews.com/wire/World/Reuters19980813_11259.html ) tries to correlate male sexual behavior with occupation. And then there's this unanswered question:
The survey said that almost half of small business owners experiment with new positions or sex toys and are also six times more likely to produce whips and handcuffs than other groups.
Need To Know , "Nasty, British and Short".
This week's Jesus of the Week bears a striking resemblance... http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/extra/gilstrap/jesus.html
A new Rumor Mill
a new mouthorgan
From Robert: Crash IE 4 on demand http://www.tla.ch/TLA/FW/OBJECTattack.htm
Marylaine also has her column at Fox News that I keep forgetting to check on and update!
In the San Jose Mercury News, Clifford Stoll is interviewed about why he believes computers have no place in the classroom . I don't necessarily agree with all of his message, but as he says, he's deliberately exposing the negatives because no one else is talking about them. I had skipped Silicon Snake Oil, but now I think I'm going to have to go back and read it.
Along those lines, according to an article published by news.com Nielsen Media Research revealed that "upper-demographic households generally watch less television than their lower-demographic counterparts." I'm not claiming a cause and effect, but it sure seems to me that exposure to media generally makes for better consumers, not better citizens.
From http://www.disinfo.com come a bunch of references to a modern day witch hunt Scary reading.
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,25055,00.html?st.ne.2.head
Microsoft is releasing its first update to the Windows 98 operating system, officially calling it a "multimedia update" as controversy over its purpose persists.
[snip]
Microsoft today acknowledged that the update was originally planned as a "service pack"--a technical euphemism for a software bug patch--but said it changed the name after concluding the package offered added multimedia functionality rather than mere bug fixes.
test
Marylaine on capitalism versus values today, Peter Zale with new Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet (httP://www.peterzale.com/) strips.
MS BackOrifice from the creators: DilDog speaks at http://www.cultdeadcow.com/tools/bo_msrebuttal.html with a description of what BackOrifice really does. Good reading.
Every once in a while we get complacent about the state of freedom of speech. While even here in the U.S. expressing ones-self often comes at a huge legal cost, other nations aren't so forgiving: http://members.tripod.com/~Protesto_MC/index_eng.html
This page was created to gather the support of the international Internet community to protest for the closure of the Terrāvista, last 29th of July. The result? More than 25.000 portuguese homepages suddenly "erased" from the Web.
More on the http://www.webstandards.org/ thing: That was Netscape 4.05 on Irix, IE on my Windows box has chosen to try to write to NULL, so 'til I reboot that machine networking is hosed.
Other than a new Need To Know it seems to be a slow Friday.
In the News.com perspectives: Mike Yamamoto talks about the growing realization that the PC hooked up to a dial-up line "isn't an ideal setting for an evening of family fun."
Along those lines, some first impressions on my new (used) Pilot. I compiled the Linux utilities for it last night, and got AportisDoc installed on it. Dropped an Ambrose Bierce short story on it, and I know have an electronic book that's more convenient (smaller and lighter, though a little more sensitive to lighting environment) than the paper version. Cool! The designers could use a little help from the folks who built the Nintendo N64 controller; the buttons are fine for holding it with one hand and poking at it with the other, but suck for one handed use. A scroll thumb-wheel on the upper left side would be awesome. I know this is old hat to most of you, but this is one of the killer-apps I've been waiting for.
On eBay, a Bill Gates autographed copy of Windows98 .
New mouthorgan
Great article in the Netly News about Al Gore's record on privacy , worth reading as we hear the man trying to sell snake-oil in the form of the "Privacy Bill of Rights". I am not looking forward to the year 2000 election if we have to choose between Gore and some fascist (pardon the redundance) Republican.
Dave Winer writes about The Emotional Age of the Internet
If there is a single theme of NETFUTURE, it is the need for us to maintain a wakeful relation to technology. Assaults upon our attention are decisively important because our consciously directed attention is the only point at which we are fully awake. Attending to something is what it means to be awake to it. And we can only attend in this sense to one thing at a time.
Net Future #75 , more wonderful notes on the encroachment of technology.
Marylaine talks about editorial cartoonists
Jon Krakauer talks about the controversy surrounding Into Thin Air in Salon Magazine.
As you probably know, those mouth-breathers in Alabama have made it illegal to sell sex aids. The ACLU and a group of women have filed suit to reverse the law, hope for success.
From Celestial Reviews 297 posted to alt.sex.stories.moderated. #1 is lame, but I like the other ones:
Third note: Top Ten Things Men SHOULDN'T Say Out Loud in Victoria's Secret: 10. Does this come in children's sizes? 9. No thanks. Just sniffing. 8. I'll be in the fitting room going blind. 7. Mom will love this. 6. Oh, the size won't matter. She's inflatable. 5. No need to wrap it up. I'll eat it here. 4. Will you model this for me? 3. The Miracle what? This is better than world peace! 2. 45 bucks?? You're just gonna end up NAKED anyway!! And the NUMBER ONE thing that a man should never say out loud in Victoria's Secret: 1. Oh Honey, you'll never squeeze your fat ass into that.
Archives of neat sites posted to Flutterby , notes to webmaster@flutterby.com
