VOTE ANARCHIST!
A new update to Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet this morning.
A new My Word's Worth , this time the first of a multi-part column.
New NTK out today.
Susie Bright does it again in Salon: http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/brig/1998/03/nc_27brig2.html
A new Need To Know
the weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the UK
iFrom Eric S. Raymond's fortunes files
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.
Albert Einstein
Strom Thurmond stifling the truth
Well, okay, that's probably not really news, he's a politician after all, and Washington is where we send the liars and dilletantes to keep them as much as possible out of our hair.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that wine makers are being kept from telling the truth about their product , and Strom Thurmond is leading the charge.
To learn the health effects of moderate wine consumption, send for the federal government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, USDA, 1120 20th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036 or visit its Web site: http:// www.usda.gov/fcs/cnpp.htm
Or just read the newspapers.
But I was only doing my duty...
What scares me most about the recently released papers on the Mississipi Sovereignty Commission isn't that there were people in government that ignorant and prejudiced. It's that there still are, and we don't know about them.
Think about this next time you call on the government to solve a problem.
If you live in the bay area and have Wednesday, Friday or Saturday evenings free, you might want to take a field trip .
Pictures at http://209.104.221.62/electrum/electrumpics.html for the rest of you.
It would help if I could spell "chronicle". D'oh!
Marylaine Block has a new issue of My Word's Worth this morning, this time it's musing on desires for anonymity.
Six new strips this morning at Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet .
Susie Bright on Feminists and the Lewinski scandal
http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/brig/1998/03/nc_13brig2.html
I can't take it anymore! Every time another pundit or reporter claims to describe what feminists are or aren't doing about the White House scandals, I want to scream, "That's no feminist you're talking about, buddy, that's a Gutless Wonder with a Vagina."
Disband the patent office!
It appears that on January 13, 1998, the patent office issued a patent for the bicycle wheel. The heck with the problems with software patents, we need some sanity on patents in general.
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5707114
CyberPromotions gone , for now.
ONE-MILE-WIDE ASTEROID TO PASS CLOSER THAN THE MOON IN 2028
Excerpts from the URL at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/pressreleases/1997XF11.html tell us:
Recent orbit computations on an asteroid discovered last December indicate it virtually certain that it will pass within the moon's distance of the earth a little more than 30 years from now. The chance of an actual collision is small, but one is not entirely out of the question.
The asteroid, known as 1997 XF11, was discovered by Jim Scotti in the course of the Spacewatch program at the University of Arizona. This program utilizes modern electronic technology on a 36-inch telescope at Kitt Peak that was built 77 years ago.
[snip]
Observations made on March 3 and 4 by Peter Shelus with a 30-inch telescope at the McDonald Observatory in western Texas extended the observed arc of 1997 XF11 to 88 days. This time, the orbit computation indicated a miss distance of only 30 thousand miles from the center of the earth; the earth's radius is about 4 thousand miles. The time of encounter would be around 1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday, October 26, 2028. That evening the object should be visible with the naked eye. In Europe, where it would be dark by that time, the object should be a splendid sight as it moves from northwest to southeast across the sky over a couple of hours.
Whoops, that "Why Photograph?" link is bad, try the "Why Photograph" (without the ?) instead!
My how far we've come. I've now seen a real world application which is crashing because something (we're not yet sure what) is using signed 32 bit integers to keep track of memory, which is exceeding two gigabytes. And we're getting nervous about only having 32 bit pointers in our application.
I'll let that sink in for a moment.
A running application using 4 gigabytes of data.
Choke. It was only a short time ago when we thought that was a big database.
It's funny to hear OS and hardware vendors revise terms in year or two old documents which refer to this as "essentially unlimited."
From: http://www.ora.com/people/staff/stevet/netfuture/1998/Jan0698_63.html
Peter Cochrane, Head of Research at British Telecom Laboratories, was asked "What do you want to say to the elderly who cannot get to grips with all these newfangled contraptions?" He replied:
Don't worry -- you're going to die soon.
http://www.ora.com/people/staff/stevet/netfuture/1998/Jan0698_63.html
Putting the Internet in Perspective Dept.: Gary Chapman notes that "the entire global Internet-using population is about four percent of the `Baywatch' audience." An estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide tune into "Baywatch" every week.
Remember this when we talk about the indispensibility of the 'net.
For those of you who have trouble remembering when to use that stupid apostrophe.
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News
From The Gate: You know you're in San Francisco when you get your entry form for the Gay and Lesbian Tennis Federation's Team Tennis and see that players are divided into: Top, Bottom and Versatile
Hugh Thompson deserves more recognition. During the My Lai massacre he helped stop the killing of Vietnamese civilians by American troops. A story worth reading.
Archives of neat sites posted to Flutterby , notes to webmaster@flutterby.com
