Nels Cline Rulz!

'Cause he does.

http://www.nelscline.com/
4:41:36 PM    comment []  

A sad and entirely avoidable milestone.
12:15:53 PM    comment []  

Windows: More Flawed Than Ever. In particularly embarrassing disclosures, Microsoft warns consumers about four critical new flaws in Windows. The company acknowledged problems in its software-publisher authentication technology and in its help and support system. [Wired News]

Normally, I wouldn't even comment on this item, as it's one of those "sun rises in the east", pope-funny hat, bear-woods bits of obviousness. But, look at this:

All four of the most dangerous new vulnerabilities affect versions of Windows 2000, which is commonly used by corporations and government agencies. Three of them also affect other Windows versions, including Microsoft's flagship Windows XP software, popular among home users, and Windows Server 2003 for businesses.

Microsoft shares rose 55 cents to close at $29.07 in Wednesday trading on the New York Stock Exchange (emphasis mine)

OK, this pretty much confirms that someone at M$oft (Steve Ballmer, maybe?) is fellating Satan on a regular basis. They publicly cop to their products being crap and their stock price goes UP?!?!?! Amazing.
11:49:55 PM    comment []  

ooooooooh.....white light.

ooooooooh......canned meat!

ooooooooh.....white light.

ooooooooh......canned meat!

::feedback howl::
11:21:18 PM    comment []  

After Successful Trip to Space, China Plans Return. The swift commitment to more space exploration underscored the confidence and enthusiasm infused into the space program by the Shenzhou V mission. By Jim Yardley. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

After welcoming home its newest hero, China announced plans to quickly return to space:

The space program's director for manned space engineering, Zhou Xiaofei, said at a Beijing news conference that China had busy space plans in coming years, including another manned Shenzhou mission within a year or two. He listed the program's immediate priorities as, in order, space walking, mastering the docking of space vehicles and establishing a space lab.

"Our plans are in their first stages," he said of a space lab. "The space lab won't be anything like Mir or the International Space Station."

As a human being, I'm glad to see a vigorous manned space program reaching for the stars. As an American, I'm saddened that our manned space program seems to have lost its way in the wake of the Columbia disaster.

Oh well, it's not like I was going to get on the astronaut list anyways.....

Oh, and does the ground crew totally look like the minions of Blowfeld or what? What is that? A still from You Only Live Twice? You gotta hand it to dictatorships; they got snappy uniforms.
9:38:56 PM    comment []  

Edison's mistakes recapitulated by RIAA. George Ziemann of MP3 NewsWire has posted a terrific installment in his ongoing series on the history of copyright and technology. Today's installment is called, "RIAA Sequentially Repeating Edison's Mistakes," and it walks us throught he way that Edison's film monopoly -- which was eventually crushed by the Feds -- had a history that was very parallel to the RIAA's own tactics here.

The government allowed the Motion Picture Patents Company, which had been formed in December, 1908, to get away with their anti-competitive control over the industry for less than four years. The U.S. government brought an antitrust suit against the MPPC in 1912 and declared it illegal in 1915.

Considering that the government has a) been trying to diffuse the voice of the music industry for a half century, if not silence it altogether and b) four of the five major labels are foreign-owned, sooner or later someone at the top end of government is going to possess the lucidity to wonder why the government should even care what happens to the record industry.

The only real issue is how long we have to wait. Step 8 should be worth waiting for -- the same independent renaissance that filmmakers enjoyed in the 1920s and 30s when Edison's movie empire fell apart. But the indie filmmakers didn't even wait for the government. They simply walked away and started over.

Link

(via /.) [Boing Boing Blog]
3:56:28 PM    comment []  

FCC raids pirate station in Castro neighborhood: Low-power broadcast on FM dial for years

JACK BOOTED THUG ALERT!!!!

Yes, after nearly a decade on the air, Michael Powell's jack-booted thugs have shut down neighborhood institution San Francisco Liberation Radio, a microbroadcaster operating out of the city's Castro neighborhood.

As the Chronicle story tells it:

Federal marshals and representatives of the Federal Communications Commission raided a residence on a quiet block in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood Wednesday, confiscating equipment used to operate an unlicensed, low-power FM radio station.

Volunteers at San Francisco Liberation Radio, which has been on the air for 10 years, said the agents removed an antenna from the roof and seized computers, tape and CD players, turntables, a mixing board and other equipment.

"We were a little surprised," said Charlotte Hatch, who along with her husband, Jim Hatch, has provided space in their building for the station for the past year. "We thought we might have another warning or so."

Not only had SFLR applied for a license, the station had the backing of the city government. From SFLR's website:

8/19: San Francisco Supervisors Vote Unanimously to Support SF Liberation Radio 93.7FM In a superb victory in the struggle against the FCC, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to support SF Liberation Radio. The eight Supervisors present voted 'aye' to not only support SFLR in its history and endeavour but also to ... condemn the FCC and Congress[base '] attempts to further deregulate the corporate media. Thank you all for the help and support we have received in the lead up to this vote. The fight moves to another level! For more on the vote and the actual text of the resolution, click here.

Folks, when only the rich and powerful can have a voice on the airwaves, then only the things that the rich and powerful want to discuss will be discussed. And you can be sure criticism of them, the politicians they've bought and paid for or their policies won't be on the menu.

Despite setbacks like the recent vote in Congress, Powell's Corporate Tool FCC continues to consolidate the available avenues for public conversation into money troughs for Republican fund-raisers like Clear Channel Communications.

It's more important than ever to support the efforts of groups like MoveOn.org, who are fighting to keep the public airwaves truly public.

Let's hope that SFLR has only temporarily been silenced.

http://www.moveon.org/ Just because.
12:53:58 PM    comment []  

Titan 2 launch delayed
Posted: Wed, Oct 15, 2003, 7:37 PM ET (2337 GMT) The launch of the final Titan 2 was delayed a day Wednesday when launch preparations fell behind schedule. The Titan 2 was scheduled to liftoff Wednesday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but Air Force mission controllers decided a couple hours before the launch to delay the flight when an air conditioning duct used to cool the DMSP F16 satellite repeatedly detached from the fairing, delaying other launch preparations. The launch has been rescheduled for Thursday at 12:16 pm EDT (1616 GMT), with a 90 percent chance of acceptable weather. The launch of this particular polar-orbiting weather satellite has been delayed since early 2001 because of multiple problems with the satellite and launch vehicle. The launch will also be the last for the Titan 2; 14 of the former ICBMs were converted into launch vehicles 15 years ago. The Titan 2 was also used in the 1960s in NASA's Gemini program.

A fitting counterpoint to the flight of The Shenzhou 5 and the item with which we say.......

    
11:47:49 PM    comment []  

After 21 Hours, Chinese Spacecraft Lands Safely. The Shenzhou 5 spacecraft made a safe, early morning landing on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia on Thursday. By Jim Yardley. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Welcome home, Colonel Yang Liwei! At least someone is bringing poeple home from space safely. Too bad they're either ex-Soviets or Chinese communists.

Whatever happened to "Failure is not an option?" Has it been relegated to being the title of a History Channel special?

I'm reminded of Spain in the early 1500's- after an initial early lead in exploration of the New World, the Spanish got caught up in the Inquisition and left the sea lanes leading to the New World to the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese and the English. Eventually, they struggled back to a place of exploratory prominence, but it was a long road back. Is the U.S. the Isabellan Spain of the 21st century?
11:04:18 PM    comment []  

Man, it's like the NYT is reading my blog and taunting me about letting my Visor go fallow.

But you know, they're right. How many electronic doo-dads do you have lying about, collecting dust? Yeah, I thought so. Me too.

Good thing we can always ask the Rubber Nun for forgiveness, even if we don't deserve it.
4:38:17 PM    comment []  

GEEK ALERT!

Ah, where to go when reality bites and you're sick and tired of not ruling your world?

Take to the stars, sez I! You can rule the entire galaxy!

I've been spending lots and lots of time playing Escape Velocity Nova (for Mac & PC) by Ambrosia Software. Originally developed for the Mac and now ported to PC, it's a mix of role-playing and space combat- you get a crappy little shuttle to start off with and you shuttle cargo and passengers around, collecting pay for missions and profits from trading goods, all the while saving up your credits to buy a bigger, badder starship. Once you've got something with some firepower, things start to get interesting as you start getting missions from one of five different organizations or governments. WooHOO! Let's kill some pirates! Or Feds! Eventually, you may even get to rule the universe.

EV Nova also supports user-created plug-ins, which can add whole new dimensions to the game. Some plugs are even total conversions, hijacking the EV Nova game engine for their own scenarios.

I used the "Ship Variants" plug to acquire my current ride, the Bobcat II.

Addictive escapism at it's finest.

For tips on how to play there's no better place to go than:

EV-Nova.net

Just watch out for the Auroran Drop Bears.......
3:24:45 PM    comment []  

It's about time!

I may actually use my Visor Prism again.
1:50:40 PM    comment []  

rotund: Dictionary.com Word of the Day. rotund [Dictionary.com Word of the Day]

rotund roh-TUHND, adjective: 1. Round; circular; spherical. 2. Rounded in figure; plump; chubby. 3. Full and rich in sound; sonorous.

"The Oort cloud is a rotund blanket of comets and debris, occasionally disturbed by passing stars, much to the delight and fright of Earthlings, who are pummeled by stray comets from there every million and a half years or so."
1:15:31 PM    comment []  

China Sends Man Into Orbit, Entering U.S.-Russian Club. The spacecraft Shenzhou V blasted off from the Gobi Desert, carrying a lone astronaut and leaving government leaders jubilant. By Jim Yardley. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Mazel tov!

It's a man in space!
12:32:11 PM    comment []  

Symbolism, indeed.

As goes a nation's spacecraft, so goes its economy? Perhaps.

China's economy is soaring, albeit in a way that most Americans would find a bit down-market, just like their brand-spanking-new manned space program: thirty years behind the US, but with far more vigor than the American space program, which is most notable for crashing and burning.....just like the economy.

What will it take to revive things here in North America?

To the moon, Alice!!!!!
12:26:49 PM    comment []  

Preliminary numbers show that the new G5 supercomputer at Virginia Tech could be the second most powerful supercomputer on the planet, according to Wired News: "The Big Mac's final score on the Linpack Benchmark won't be officially revealed until Nov. 17, when the rankings of the Top 500 supercomputer sites are made known at the International Supercomputer Conference. But Jack Dongarra, one of the compilers of a Top 500 list, said Tuesday that preliminary numbers submitted to him suggest Big Mac could be ranked as high as second place."

As an Oakland Raiders fan, I'm intimately familiar with the, ahem, joys of being second place, but in this case, I'm pleased as punch that an Apple is second in something.

What's exciting about this is that if you can put a supercomputer on your desktop (or more likely, under the table next to your desk), then there are going to be a lot more supercomputers out there, which is a Very Good Thing. Why, you ask?

Supercomputers tend to be used for modeling things. Really cool things, like weather patterns and the Oort Cloud, unlike your little brother who used to make models of drooling Rat Finks.

So, the more supercomputers we have, the more we can know about our universe. And that's A Very Good Thing, innit?
11:51:18 AM    comment []  

Therapist: "Did it ever occur to you that you're right? You aren't good enough. If you were, you would have done SOMETHING. As long as you think you should be some sort of creative person, you'll avoid being the person you are and shirk the responsibility of taking care of yourself like everyone else in the world. You're not going to be a rock star or a writer or an entertainer. Your job is helping your mom take care of your dad and occasionally babysitting your nieces. It's a crappy job, but you can't get fired. I'd say it's just about perfect for you."

And that's when I decided to kill myself.

Man, I wish I could.

I'll prolly just drink enough to put myself to sleep and then wake up to another hopeless day. But maybe someday, somehow, I'll find the courage to pull the trigger and end the joke that is my life.

Fuck. I'm already dead inside.

Y'all go read Ibsen's The Wild Duck. I'm in it. You'll know it's me- I'm the photographer.

Well, I'm gonna go get drunk and pass out.

See y'all tomorrow. And the next empty, hopeless day after that.
8:16:33 PM    comment []  

Keeping with the job theme, it doesn't look like I'll be moving back to San Francisco anytime soon. Check out these stats:

S.F. economy then and now

Since the last mayoral election in November 1999, the bottom has fallen out of San Francisco's economy. Here are some statistics:

Unemployment

Nov. 1999 2.7%Aug. 2003 6.7%

Office vacancies

Third quarter 1999 3.5%Third quarter 2003 24%

Taxable sales

(Percent change from previous year)

Third quarter 1999 +9.6%Third quarter 2003 -1.0%

Source: California Employment Development Department; Grubb & Ellis; California Board of Equalization

YEEEE-OUCH!!!!

I hear that rents are finally falling, tho'.

I'm sorry, I tried really hard to come up with a funny one-liner for this item, but a wet burlap potato sack of despair (not filled with mice, wet or otherwise) just tossed itself over my mirthanator.

Do I get credit for coining a new, if somewhat lame, compound comedy word?
2:14:10 PM    comment []  

cerebration ser-uh-BRAY-shuhn, noun: The act or product of thinking; the use of the power of reason; mental activity; thought.

"Assiduously avoiding excessive cerebration, the state of California elected a new Governor last week."
12:39:14 PM    comment []  

Funny, today my therapist and I were talking about how I'm not actually unemployed, but rather how I do have a job- helping to take care of my parents- and how in many ways I've resigned myself to slogging through my crappy job, just waiting for the day I can retire and collect my pension (inheritance) and then along comes this story, reminding me of what once upon a time would have been my dream job.

Like most middle-class kids in America, I loved Legos. I was never very good at building anything- all of my cars, houses, time machines and airplanes all had resolutely square edges and corners. It was obvious that most of the imagination put into them was in the service of suspending disbelief that the plastic box with a clear box at the front and a red box at the back and two blue boxes in the middle was, in fact, a time machine with a seat in the middle of it. But still, wouldn't it be cool to get paid to click primary colored plastic bricks together?

Gee, when I put it that way, it sounds kind of tedious. Clicking little plastic bricks together, one after another, day after day. Sounds like just about any other job. But the difference is that at the end of the day of most jobs you've got what, a pile of TPS reports? At Lego, you'd have a space shuttle or the Golden Gate Bridge or a Ferrari. That you built. Out of Legos.

How cool is that?

Now, just how the hell do you make a perfect sphere out of rectangles?!?

I gotta get back to work.
12:28:00 PM    comment []  

Goodnight, Bob.
11:47:53 PM    comment []  

"It is a kind of myclonic jerk, which means a sudden muscle contraction," said Dr. Neil B. Kavey, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. "It is also called a sleep start, a hypnic jerk or a sleep jerk."

Funny, I always thought a sleep jerk was someone who made you sleep on the wet spot.
8:57:13 PM    comment []  

"Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, we all believe that,'' says Fadel. "But the people who say they've come to help me, they haven't come in a friendly fashion. They've come into my house and pointed a gun at me. How can we welcome someone who does that?"

The final quote from the article pretty much says it all; invaders are never saviors.

Also notable is this figure:

"JOBLESS:Iraqis lined up in downtown Baghdad Monday to find work. Iraq's Labor Ministry estimates that 70 percent of Iraqi workers are unemployed."

Ah, that Bush magic at work. Maybe someday, the U.S. will be just like Iraq......or vice versa. You gotta admit, it takes real, um, talent to be able to drive TWO very different countries into the toilet at the same time. And to think, they called Dubya an underachiever.

Yeah, I'm bitter. That comes with being poor.
8:49:09 PM    comment []  

"Some toad at Soundstone.com made off with my copy of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space."

5:48:11 PM    comment []  

Helen Hoverud is still shaken over the tiger attack on illusionist Roy Horn in Las Vegas. She regards both Horn and Mantacore, the Royal White Siberian tiger, as old friends.

After all, Hoverud has seen the Siegfried & Roy show more than 200 times. "It's like an obsession," said Hoverud, 54, of Starbuck, Minn."

"An obsession?" No kidding?
4:52:39 PM    comment []  

That is all.

Well, almost all. I love her because she's actually funny, actually witty and a stone fox. Also, she has the good taste (and cojones) to be photographed with eye candy. I gotta go take a shower.
3:49:23 PM    comment []  

I use and highly recommend both.
3:15:30 PM    comment []  

Marc Brown (at his buzznet site) laments the state of MacArthur Park:

"Notice the jackass peeing inside the clock tower."

I love the web.
2:23:09 PM    comment []  

"Through Dec. 12, people wandering Times Square can wirelessly download a program called Personal Digital Pal, or PDPal, at a kiosk "beaming station" on 42nd Street. Once the program is loaded, users can record their wanderings by sketching the paths they took and writing commentary about the places they visited. When they get to a laptop or desktop computer, they pour all of this into a central website so others can appreciate myriad overlapping perspectives about the same sites. "

 

Here's a perfect example of how the internet is becoming the home to our collective intelligence, memory and unconscious. Sure, we've been dumping all sorts of data into the 'net for the last decade or so, but now we're pumping more unmediated experiences into the network and the 'net continues to become a place where we shape a more immediate collective experience. Not to mention a time machine- we're transported back in time to one person's experience of Times Square at a given moment in time. Also, we can learn nifty facts like this:

Even landmarks aren't as immutable as they might appear: The Empire Theater on 42nd Street, known as the Eltinge Theatre when it opened in 1912, was lifted and slid on rollers 170 feet to the west in 1998.

Thanks for the mmmemories!
1:31:09 PM    comment []  

Mummmmm. Clutter.
12:17:34 PM    comment []  

Great utility for tweaking OS X.
12:14:38 PM    comment []  

profligate PROF-luh-guht; -gayt, adjective: 1. Openly and shamelessly immoral; dissipated; dissolute. 2. Recklessly wasteful.

Profligate derives from the past participle of Latin profligare, "to strike or fling forward, hence to the ground," from pro-, "forward" + fligere, "to strike down."

Synonyms: abandoned, corrupt, depraved, dissolute, wicked.

Let's try it!

"U.S. Profligate Bush announced today that the Kay Report confirmed pre-war concerns about Iraqi WMD's. In a related story, monkeys flew out of Vice-Profligate Cheney's undisclosed ass."

Yeah, that's it.
11:47:33 AM    comment []  

I had to hack the template to get the comment feature to work.

So, have at it.

click the picture to make it BiG

10:51:09 AM    comment []  

HOTCHA!

Yo La Tengo, Guided By Voices and other goodies are now available from the iTunes music store! One of ITMS's biggest weaknesses was its lack of indie artists and with Matador on board, this can only bode well for more eclectic offerings at The Easiest Music Store In The World.
11:54:37 PM    comment []  

Guitars Inc.
The House of Guitars mushroomed from the cellar into a veritable fantasyland of string, a Ground-Zero for performers -- and one of the Top 10 music attractions in the United States

Damn, I gotta visit.

Armand Schaubroeck peers from behind a B.C. Rich guitar.  Bruno Schlumberger, The Ottawa Citizen
10:57:19 PM    comment []  

Hard-drives as Buddhist prayer-wheels. Who needs Tibetan prayer-wheels when Buddhist theorists are out there reforming their theology to admit hard-drives as instruments of devotion?

Right now, your hard drive is serving as a Mani wheel, because there are several copies of the mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum" on this page, and they are all stored on your hard drive in the cache for your browser.

Link [Boing Boing Blog]
9:34:15 PM    comment []  

Money to burn?

Mission Accomplished! (pt. X^X)

Just one more example of just how far from reality the Bush administration is. Iraq's economy is "reviving?" What about the United States' economy? I wonder if the Iraqi revival is a "jobless" one, too?

I'm speechless.
7:37:40 PM    comment []  

Dammit.

grrrr.
7:09:58 PM    comment []  

Yes, the disturbing trend of religion-related bus misadventures continues apace. Is God sending us a message? Or is it just a really bad idea to mix Christian fellowship with motor coaches?

Oh, the humanity.

Secular humanity, that is.

I ain't taking no chances.
5:30:02 PM    comment []  

My two teams face off and provide three hours of thrills, chills, and a spilt football in overtime. The Chiefs are now a franchise record 6-0 and are looking like the best team in the NFL.

We shall not mention the ongoing disaster that is the Oakland Raiders football team.

I like sports because they distract me from the empty misery that is my life.
5:12:41 PM    comment []  

OK, blogs are cool.
1:42:13 PM    comment []  

http://maggieo.buzznet.com/

Yeah, I signed up. Seemed like a natural for me.
12:36:34 AM    comment []  

Paranoid?

Well, you're about to get that way, at least if you spend any time in public in a city with cellphone-camera wielding amateur spies lurking about, just waiting for you to pick your nose so they can post a photo of it to BuzzNet, a phone-cam blogging site. Are these photographers the children of Weegee and Henri Cartier-Bresson or are they just electro-voyeurs, one step above Upskirt types?

Despite attempts to make this latest fad seem unseemly, most of the photos at BuzzNet fall into one of two categories- snapshots or primitive art. It reminds me of the Lomo fad of a few years ago, which was yet another recycling of the craft of snapshot photography. Nothing wrong or sinister with that. In fact, I think it's pretty nifty to get people thinking about the images they're making, especially since we make so many of them every day.

Don't fret folks; there's very little chance of a photo of you digging for that motherlode in your nose will make it onto the net......
12:10:49 AM    comment []  

NOT MUCH BUCKO!!!!!!

Turns out, just like when I was little, that I'm.....

James T. Kirk:

An impassioned commander with more respect for individuals than for authority, you have a no-holds-barred approach to life and its obstacles.

10:41:37 PM    comment []  

We gots the gear, we gots the cat.

But we're still waiting.

click the photo to make it beeeg.
9:57:42 PM    comment []  

By golly, these gizmos, which my lack of a schedule have rendered useless, still have a hold on my imagination. Maybe it's because my jetpack-deprived futurejones needs something to glom onto or maybe I'm just a consumerist tool, but these handheld computers just keep getting more powerful and colorful and niftyful and dammit, they make all nostalgic for the days of the Internet Bubble[dot accent] and the giddy feeling that we were delivering The Future to the rest of the world.

Christ, I'm nostalgic for something that never happened.

Crap.
9:11:41 PM    comment []  

One book states the obvious, namely that designing cities around automobiles is bad for the health of its inhabitants, and the other apparently reads like the treatment for Todd Haynes' Safe, a near-paranoid rant about the dangers of modern domestic chemistry and electricity.

Our communities are designed to leave us homebound and our homes are deathtraps. Oh joy. But what to do? What to do?
3:32:52 PM    comment []  

3:19:06 PM    comment []