A new NETFUTURE is out, in a departure it includes a piece from a 19 year old Argentinian who's glad that the net is corroding his culture:
How could I swap a culture that cheers intelligence, curiosity, talent, debate, humour and weirdness for a culture that enforces traditionalism, blatant media manipulation, economical profit by cheating and plain non-thinking?
And a response by a woman who grew up in India, who starts with a compelling argument but loses it about mid-way through.
Need To Know has arrived.
Oh my. The National Game Review , "As Accurate as Al Sharpton", presents computer Gaming's Hottest Guys Pin-up Calendar , if you're into that sort of thing. I'm not. Not just "no, thanks" not, I mean "the very thought makes me quake in fear" not. No offense meant, guys.
Via Robot Wisdom (although his spin was different), an article in Nando times reports that a Danish study in the New England Journal of Medicine links schizophrenia to being born in cities or during late winter.
Hungry Mind Review has an interesting review of Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Vs. the Goddess, Neal Gabler's Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, and Mitchell Stephens' The Rise of the Image the Fall of teh Word. I'm more and more conscious that language helps define how we think and how we problem solve. It provides us with the tools for symbolic manipulation that let us formalize what we'd otherwise have to depend on hunches for. I find it more than a little disturbing that we're losing much of that in our quest for less symbolic entertainment.
Sorry about that entry below, Mouthorgan is at http://www.mouthorgan.com/
A new Mouthorgan this morning, Debbie dissects Danielle Crittenden.
Well, having been completely taken to task over my link to Joe Thompson's critique of the Moral Defense defense of Microsoft, here's his follow-up talking about how the free software movement fits in . No use of the "O" word here...
Cameron points out that http://www.textfiles.com/ is quite similar to http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/
Swatch has announced that it will ship a wristwatch telephone before the end of this year.
Via /. , the site I've been waiting for. http://www.textfiles.com/ has all sorts of text files from the BBS world of the '80s! Remember Krakowicz ? Total flashback city, I'm remembering acoustic couplers, the TI Silent 700 and running the thermal paper through it 4 different ways (80 column paper, 40 column BBSs). Anyone out there remember the Ghost Ship East or Stormbringer ][ or any of the southwestern Connecticut scene?
The saga at Sluggy Freelance continues this week, as Bun Bun shreds the evil demon from another dimension in the Burger Meister meat grinder.
And you might want to catch up on User Friendly .
Marylaine weighs in on the Monica incident in a My Word's Worth titled "Crossing the wide semantic".
Whoopsie! AP reports that in Parkside Pennsylvania the police aren't smart enough to cover their tracks when browsing child porn on the department's computer. It's long been asserted that the vast majority of child pornography traffic is via law enforcement, although most people assume that that's because they're using it for sting attempts. Apparently that isn't the case in this situation.
So while I was sick I finished reading Tad Williams' Otherland: City of Golden Shadow which I started on the recommendation of Cameron . Full review coming in a bit, it's the first in a series and seems to be heading towards a couple of the VR clichs, but it did get me back into the mode of thinking about immersive environments again.
Two things leaped out at me: I think I went to high school with the cover artist; and there was a comment in there about how at the beginning of this century packaged foods were coming in and were primarily a domain of the rich, and how at the end of this century the rich are the ones with the best access to fresh food and it's the poor who eat the packaged food. I think the same parallel can be drawn to television. Something to consider next time you hear calls for more computers in the schools.
Anonymous quote of the day regarding the Microsoft anti-trust trial:
It's so characteristic of them to not prepare their case meticulously, but rather ship first and try to debug in the field...
There's a rant boiling up about demographics, privacy and marketing. But here's a resource: http://www.antitelemarketer.com/
Columbine writes about the need to do more than survive and the malaise that grips Eastern Europe, in Alewife Bayou.
Need To Know is up.
Forwarded book recommendation of the day: The Slang of Sin by Tom Dalzell. I'll have to check it out.
TIME reports that women are suing Alabama over that state's ban on vibrators.
Old story, but it doesn't mind a recycling: Remote controlled cockroaches in Tokyo.
Many of us looked to Purple Moon as a pioneer, breaking out of the young male computer game market. We had some questions as to their methods, the game I played with, Rockett's Tricky Decision, was a hideous rehash of the worst elementary school girl stereotyping, but it should have at least sold. Well, the Mercury News reports that Purple Moon is no more. The market grew to $85 million, but Mattel owns most of that.
Aaaaargh! Well, Cameron works for the online division, so this I can't direct this at him, but... Why would the Borders in San Rafael tell us that they carry a (weekly) magazine and to call back regularly to see when they had it in, when they don't? And we called back for a week and a half before someone finally said "Oh, that's crossed off on the list, so we must not get it anymore".
Luckily Book Passage, our local independent, still had that edition. Now if they'd had a better magazine selection in the first place we would have thought of them first when we were trying to track it down. Oh well.
Via Scripting News comes irrefutable proof that Tinky Winky is not gay
In Salon, another LA person complains about how boring LA people are . You don't have to go read the article, there's really nothing there, it's just another example of how with postmodern attitudes everything quickly reduces to self-parody.
A new mouthorgan tackles the problems of real-time multi-player virtual spaces that go for social interaction. Spot the "Dan" quotes.
Sorry nothing went up yesterday, I've been sick.
Don't believe the front page, Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet really did update yesterday.
via /. , Computerworld reports that Burlington Coat Factory is switching to Linux:
Over the next 12 to 18 months, Burlington will install Linux on 1,150 computers in its 250 stores, Prince said. "Linux has come along so strongly, and the price of Intel PCs has dropped so much . . . [that it] is attractive from both a price and performance standpoint. It's free, and it runs like the wind."
What happens when you plug in "amazing new technology" to AltaVista ?
Magitech , the "#1 Leader in Orgone Technology" presents the amazing life energy test :
- Print the transfer diagram above.
- Put the diagram on a table or any other surface. It should not be on your knee or in direct contact with any large living organism.
- Now hold the center of the palm of any of your hands approximately one inch (3 cm) above the printout of the diagram.
You may be surprised to feel something almost immediately: either a slight tingling in your hand, a gentle cool breeze, or, as is the case with most people, an agreeable sensation of warmth in the center of your palm that may spread out from the palm.
Warning, don't print out the diagram at 72DPI or you'll open a vortex to the nether regions of an alternate dimension and have your soul devoured by slobbering demons.
Along those lines, AquaClara "is bottled with 800% more pure oxygen than ordinary water." Ummm... H2O, right? How do you fit 8x more O into that? Wonder what happens if you try to put out a fire with it...
Burning Man fix: http://www.templetons.com/brad/burn.html has a huge panorama that brings back much of the feeling of being there.
Joe Thompson, who identifies himself as an Objectivist, takes to task the folks at http://www.moraldefense.com/ who call for a cessation of the anti-trust litigation against Microsoft.
The most common parallels they draw are those between Standard Oil and Microsoft, and between John Galt and Bill Gates. I wasn't able to find specific comments by Ayn Rand on the Standard Oil breakup, but I will in this essay attempt to draw parallels between Microsoft and Taggart Transcontinental under the ownership of Jim Taggart, and distinguish it from Rearden Steel.
Marylaine is sick, so she suggests checking out her column on Fox as My Word's Worth isn't being updated today. Peter Zale promised a new Helen , but it's not up yet. Remember Sluggy Freelance and User Friendly though.
Alright, I've given up on all pretense of privacy, if y'all are a part of Six Degrees and want to add Dan, go for it.
Cool warning message of the day on the documentation for some some electronics components I just got. Here at work we're wondering what "near" means:
CAUTION: Board puts out 1000VAC at 200KHz. It can cause severe R.F. burns. Use extreme caution and do not get near the board while voltage is applied. If you must work on or near the board, disconnect the input voltage!!!!!
A couple of people have noticed the lack of quality yesterday, let me apologize in advance for the errant apostrophes today.
So Mark just walked into my office and asked "If someone pleads not guilty, and the court finds them guilty, didn't they commit perjury?"
http://www.whump.com/www/moreLikeThisXML.html
Jorn, poster of that essay about structural markup that I linked to a couple of paragraphs down, started this thread , my contribution is here .
More important than the end of the impeachment proceedings is, of course, the latest edition of Need To Know .
Impeachment proceedings: Article 1 failed, 55 not guilty to 45 guilty CNN /ABC . Article 2 failed 50 to 50.
And in other news, Kiki is working on a flaming waterfall sculpture and, based on the experiments I've seen thus far, could have easily lit that grounded ship on fire .
I didn't see this one when Dave Winer apparently linked to it, but Jorn Barger, in his The Mythos of Structural Markup , think's I'm a member of "a 'ciwah cult' that's guilty of extreme intellectual pride, derived from a (very limited) mastery of the idea of structural markup." I love the "for the same reasons that they're afraid of trying to display personal style in dress or decor, etc". How's your glitter nail polish, Jorn?
I've got a column to write, a friend to help move, Valentine's day to celebrate, and a large project to move out of the living room, but I want to expand Newwwsboy to give me a search engine and at least one XML based representation of my pages, probably using Dave Winer's DTD for compatibility, and possibly something that comes closer to expressing the information I care about. Anyone got suggestions or standards for this? How about an expansion that allows some sort of "choose what you want to see" and third party submissions?
No guarantees this is truly the original attribution, but it's one of the better written versions of the old gag:
California, n.:
From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."
-- Ed Moran
Sean Kennedy points out that the Television Season Premiers I posted a few days back is similar to, but not exactly like, this piece in the onion .
http://my.netscape.com/ has some undocumented (well, okay, not very publicly documented) private channels .
In Nerve , Joana Cagan explores the bodice-ripper part of the romance genre from the perspective of an editor looking back. Touched on a lot of the things that disturb me about romance and about being in the entertainment industry in general. Good reading:
I'm increasingly convinced that romances are so popular because they work not so much as sexual fantasies, but rather as potent cultural ones.
Also via /. , a Valentine's day ode to Unix :
I know what you're thinking: this metaphor -- this author -- is deranged. Anyone with a need for this kind of intimacy with a virtual machine could use some serious psychiatric attention.
Via /. , _Excite reports (http://www.excite.com/computers_and_internet/tech_news/zdnet/?article=/news/19990210/2206436.inp ) (not that there's likely to be any conflict of interest here) that Yahoo will move sites submitted for review to the front of the line for $199. So, I guess this means that we can start using Yahoo as a filter for the things to ignore, huh?
Coupled with the Amazon revelations of earlier this week and the "free PC" hoopla, it's another reminder that you should always be thinking about what the real revenue stream and business model of the entities you're dealing with is.
According to USA Today , Steve Jobs is worth all 100 pennies that Apple is paying him for being CEO of Apple, and a total bargain for Pixar, which is getting his services for free.
More silly Latin. Anyone want to letter this one up in diploma form? I could use something official looking:
Hic confirmat [your name here] habentem litteras commendaticias verbis latinis ad murum suum.
I'm pretty much a "my kink is not your kink and I'm okay with that", but the recent exploits of Annabel Chong in setting the dubious record of having sex with 251 men on camera in a 10 hour period. Via CNN, a Turner Entertainment Report quotes her as saying ""What I hoped to accomplish firstly, was to explore my own personal sexuality, my boundaries, and I think I accomplished that. To see how far I could go off the beaten track of the passive female who likes to be romantically seduced." I'm not sure what it is about the whole thing that disturbs me like it does, and I haven't seen the documentary film, but it seems that she was pretty darned cavalier about the STD issues given that after 10 hours there's gotta be some damaged tissues, but more so that also that this "more faster" attitude seems to be a reflection of the worst part of American culture. If ever there was an activity that needed to emphasize the subjective elements of the experience and leave behind the numbers for their own sake attitudes, sex is it.
QOTD: I think I'm losing the ability to properly appreciate parody, because all the parodies are so *MUNDANE* compared to the shit that really happens.
- Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
Just in case you have been living in a cave for most of your life and didn't realize that the Olympics are much more a political event than one celebrating any actual accomplishments or skills (the boycott of the last winter games by all the good snowboarders and subsequent lack of media coverage of same was interesting), may I present the Report to the Board of Trustees from the Board Of Ethics Of The Salt Lake Organizing Committee For The Olympic Winter Games of 2002.
Mouthorgan looks breasts this week.
Linux for the Nintendo 64 . Find a way to make a living via the platform and with the philosophy, 'cause it'll be more pervasive than you can possibly imagine.
QOTD:
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
-Ferenc Mantfeld
A new Net Future is up:
I've wanted to put this Special Issue together for a long time, but never felt up to the task. My desire was to begin sharing with you some of the germinal convictions from which nearly all my commentary in NETFUTURE has arisen.
According to the AP , Jerry Falwell is outing Teletubby Tinky Winky, apparently on the basis of the purple suit, magic bag as a purse, and a triangle on his costume. Hmmm... I wonder what sort of assumptions we can make about bigoted preachers in green sport coats?
Clean Sheets is up, although only Are you a good girl or a bad girl leaped out at me from the title page.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
David Steinberg's new column is out, titled "THE SIXTIES AND THE EROTICIZATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE"
Via The Daily Illuminator comes this note for all you festive apocalypse type people: The AP reports that Israel's National Parks Authority has contracted "to build a submerged bridge into the Sea of Galilee that would allow tourists to simulate Jesus' miraculous walk on water." Luckily, should the savior show up you will be able to rely on simple pushing and shoving to separate the posers from the real thing: "It will not be railed in order to enhance the 'walking on water' effect, and lifeguards and boats will be in attendance in case a walker slips off."
http://www.hampsterdance.com/ ... I'm told that the music adds more to it, but just the image of 400 animated GIFs is kind of disturbing.
Jakob Nielsen on Why People Shop on the Web . Price wasn't the most important, and it's not sufficient to have just product listings, people are looking for information. If, anywhere on your web pages, you resort to sending people paper catalogs, you're definitely not getting it.
Marylaine is a book-finding Fairy Godmother in My Word's Worth this A.M.
And you might want to catch back up on User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance .
Columbine writes about talking to the Pixies in Alewife Bayou. What will decide how well we use computers isn't how many facts we can memorize about using Microsoft Word, but rather how well we talk to all of the little micro-apps which will do all our searching and organizing and such.
"You're going to end up learning the language of the pixies whether you like it or not. Do you use a search engine a lot? Several of them? D'you notice how they each like to be slapped and tickled a slightly different way? Are you beginning to get the hang of knowing the correct incantation to get what you want?"
Crypt Newsletter has a background of "cyberterror" misinformation as perpetrated by assorted government agencies, culminating in President Clinton's recent remarks.
I... uh... can't talk about why this is specifically interesting to me, but the inherent coolness factor should be obvious to you computer gaming and graphics junkies, here's an article about Square's studio in Honolulu and the making of Final Fantasy: The Movie including this one rendering of a human . Sometime in 2001 we'll watch Toy Story again and be completely shocked at how primitive it looks.
Need To Know is up.
Not that I'm one to defend the stock prices of Amazon , but those who think of Amazon as an online bookstore are going to be surprised, and I think Barnes and Noble and Borders and the other online bookstores need to take something into account when they're looking at Amazon as competition: The right model on which to evaluate Amazon is as the next WalMart.
I have seen the future, and it is Rykodisk, selling MP3s on http://www.goodnoise.com/ for $.99/song. Maybe it really is time to build a couple of embedded MP3 players to plug into the house network. I wonder how much a high speed low distance Ethernet to radio system would cost so that I can park the car and have the songs I want for the commute automagically downloaded.
In Nerve , Laura Resnick writes about The Purple Rose of Romance . Unfortunately, while she makes a good point about porn, I think it goes on a little long and I don't think she really does get to the essence of romance.
HEROINE: I was expressing uncontrollable passion.
EDITOR: Actually, I think you were expressing mundane lust.
My goof: The NBMA link below is wrong, it should be http://www.nbma.com/
Susie Bright offers survival tips for singles on Valentine's Day in Salon.
And I promise that this weekend we'll kick of idrama, we've had probably 15 new subscribers and no traffic yet. If you're not already subscribed and are interested in interactive story telling and interactive drama, send a message to majordomo@flutterby.com with "subscribe idrama" in the body of the messages.
Similarly, there's a new mailing list for Marin job seekers, primarily a bunch of recent College of Marin grads, but open to anyone looking for opportunity in Marin or the north bay, kinda sorta affiliated with the NBMA . "subscribe marinjobseekers", as above.
I meant "SGML" rather than "HTML" in those comments about patents below, but really even in the HTML 1.0 spec it said that HTML was a markup language, not a display language.
In the "your father was a lawyer" department, BBC news reports that Japanese scientists at Tottori University have rats and mice producing human sperm.
Despite my support of intellectual property in general, I've long been a critic of patents, specifically how patents are implemented under U.S. law. In anothing shining example of the failure of the patent system , Microsoft has patented style sheets, something I thought were inherent in the concept of HTML. Specifically:
"Unlike previous systems, the display regions in this system do not contain any text at the time the style sheet is applied. Rather, the text, or other media such as graphics, is poured into the display region when the title is rendered on the customer's computer."
Ummm... Framemaker's been around for how long? Yeesh. And now it becomes "who has deeper pockets for the lawyers".
A letter to Salon from Tim Fogle elaborates on America's fascination with Monica:
Busty, bottomy women never fell out of favor anywhere but on a few blocks in Manhattan, Paris and Hollywood, but it took a thong, a president with an eye for some hips and a little pole smoking to wake us up from our media-induced Equal coma.
Networking nerds tired of that OSI Seven Layer model thingie that's quoted everywhere but has no bearing on reality and actually encourages bad design because hard separations between layers like they encourage is inefficient? http://www.europa.com/~dogman/osi/
To its credit, we have found that there are indeed a few things in this world that actually follow the seven layer model; but none of them have anything relevant to do with today's high tech world. Case in point; the Taco Bell Seven Layer Burrito.
CNN reports on New York's Fashion Institute of Technology's exhibit on how we eroticize footwear. Unfortunately, their JavaScripted virtual tour seems to be busted, but that's okay 'cause heels don't do much for me anyway. Now a pair of Birkenstocks on bare feet, however...
Mouthorgan this week pans "Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn: Reel to Real".
Okay, so I was reading a (lame) article in Salon and noticed that the author had used "jibe" to mean "in accord with". Pissed off at the misuse of the word, I went for my Houghton Mifflin American Heritage Dictionary, and find that, along with "taunt" and the sailing usage, they list "in accord with" as a definition of unknown origins. I'll tell you exactly where it came from: People who can't pronounce "jive". Sheesh. If I had one wish for the world, it would be for literate editors.
Revoltin' bovines: It's Cows! With Guns! . I've ordered the CD.
Ouch: Sierra recalled 50,000 copies of NFL Football pro '99 . The Washington post quotes President David Grenewetski: "I want to apologize to all our loyal customers for releasing a product before it was ready." This is not business as usual, and I'm shocked, amazed and impressed.
Okay, Flutterby is back. Sorry for that glitch yesterday.
What's a Cool Site of the Year award worth? According to Salon's tech log about $93, if you're not there to pick it up.
106th CONGRESS 1st Session H. J. RES. 14 , Designating Monday, January 3, 2000, as the day for the observance of the New Year's Day holiday in that year.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, in order to provide the public and technology professionals with an additional day, prior to the start of the workweek, to begin repairs on failed computer systems caused by the Year 2000 computer problem, the New Year's Day holiday in the year 2000 shall be deemed to occur on January 3, 2000 (rather than the date that would otherwise apply under section 6103(a) of title 5, United States Code).
Yay! The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) has been blocked . Not that I've got anything against protecting children, but, like most laws it's got nothing to do with its title.
In keeping with tradition, Catherine and I did absolutely nothing football related this weekend. We went where the football crowd would be least evident: art galleries. Although why we did that on this special weekend when so many other normally overrun areas are free from the drooling cretins is a mystery, but bygones are bygones. Thankfully we have other people to watch the commercials for us. In Advertising Age , Bob Garfield reviews the Super Bowl commercials . I'm told that the Apple add sucked. Garfield disagrees, but the first half is well worth reading:
When all the empties are collected, and all the street rioting is over and when the Fox pregame coverage finally ends, what will be starkly apparent is that the real Super Bowl loser was the American woman.
In a rout.
Having finished the articles with its synopses, I now feel strangely compelled to go wash my hands. And, funny, I don't feel like I missed a thing.
QOTD:
Let's face it, no-one gets sexually aroused when installing NT, despite the amount of exclamations involving intercourse that are emitted.
-- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
An article in Feed about the completion of Babbage's second Difference Engine. In the "how do our personal biases affect interpretation" department, it came across as the tragedy of centrally planned science.
Via Mary Anne's Diary the new issue of Scarlet Letters . I mentioned before that the themes there don't always click with me, this issue is "bisexuality and polyamory". I've been in a very vanilla mood recently (actually, somewhat depressed and disinterested), so we'll see if any of it works. Relatedly, Mary Anne also says that Best American Erotica 1999 is out, time to catch Susie Bright on the reading tour.
On that "somewhat depressed and disinterested" topic... I spent a week moping, and seem to be back on form. I've got a couple of projects under way, and since I asked for help on one forum and got a whole bunch of cool stuff in return, maybe y'all can help out. The three that I can talk about:
First is the simple one. I'm building a couple of special-purpose timers to let us be far away when the liquid propane powered bottle rocket ascends. I've got a bit of code written and the interface electronics figured out (a couple of 2N2222s and diodes driving relays which then trigger the valves) to do this with the Atmel AVR1200 embedded microcontroller, but I need to interface a display. I could hack together an LED display, but http://eio.com/ has backlit LCD displays for less than the LEDs alone would cost me. Anyone out there played with such things and can give me guidance?
Second, I'm collecting parts for a tandem side-by-side tricycle to be used as a base for some kinetic sculpture. Old bikes in the SF Bay area that you'll let go cheap? Experience with brazing that you're willing to pass on?
Third, I'm building a large environmental sculpture for Burning Man, sort of a "garden of eden" theme. If you're into the non-flammable side of the event, or would like to be, or are interested in sharing a truck to get all this stuff up there in August, drop the webmaster a line.
More Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet strips this morning. And your weekly does of Sluggy Freelance to boot. if all that isn't enough, you can catch up on Userfriendly too.
Life is like Pinball for Marylaine in My Word's Worth this morning.
Via Scripting News comes this article demonstrating massive ignorance on the part of Washington DC's mayor . Please, if there's anyone who's gotten to adulthood without a working definition of the word "niggardly", can you just take steps to remove yourself from the gene pool now? Thank you.
Gary forwards the spam of the day:
From: bestpipe [mailto:bongs@123email.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 1998 4:52 PM
To: bongs@123email.com
Subject: Need a hand pipe?
4 Wholesale pipes and bongs go to http://www.bestpipe.com
Archives of neat sites posted to Flutterby , notes to webmaster@flutterby.com