2002.04 (Apr)
2002.04.30 (tuesday)
Radio: Centralized or Decentralized? It’s a floor wax! It’s a dessert topping!For all the ignorant Radio-bashers complaining that you’re dependent on Userland’s machines to serve up your weblog, you can (very easily) serve your pages from any machine that has both FTP and HTTP servers. You don’t even need any server-side CGI ability like you do for greymatter or movable type, you can use a completely static server, and still get all of the features. If you really want to cut the cord to Userland, you can turn off outgoing notifications to weblogs.com, or even setup your own Radio Community Server. You’re still technically dependent on Userland for updates, but outages at Userland (which they’ve always been upfront about in my experience) have no impact on your ability to post or serve pages, and Userland can’t exercise any control over your content.
I’m not really sure what people want, they seem pissed that Userland has the balls to throw in the server space on their machine with the Radio license, as if they’re somehow forcing you into a dependent relationship. They give you a choice (included hosting with them, or on-your-own hosting where ever you want) but get knocked for it by people who haven’t even researched the product, much less used it.
It would be nice to be able to use scp instead of ftp to upstream from Radio to my webserver, though. It seems like this shouldn’t be to hard to implement.
10:52:06 PM #
Fascinating: load up a bunch of wav files from old video games in winamp and set the full-screen visualization to “spectrum analyzer + voiceprint” - the blocky, pure, digital tones make it easy to follow the voiceprint (they also look great in the oscilliscope). The Galaga Intro [134kb wav] works particularly well for this, as does the post-fighter-capture music [140kb wav]. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to get a good screen grab from this. 10:03:20 PM #
Dear webby awards: screw you. Instead of doing the considerate, normal thing and making your links to nominated sites plain-old HREFs, you had to be a big bunch of webdork assholes and make them javascript thingys to open the links in a new window. And just to show me how much you know about the web and how little I know, you set the window size to what you though was appropriate. Now my new MSIE windows are all opening at your “optimal” size, which just happens to be a lot smaller than I like on my big 1600×1200 display. Thanks.
8:00:26 AM #
2002.04.29 (monday)
HP and Compaq: An insider’s adviceFinally, someone (besides Carly) with something good to say about the merger. Bonus points because he’s a technical guy and not some wall street turd-analyst who only thinks about his presario. (Disclosure: I am employed by Compaq as a systems engineer.)
10:36:03 PM #
Godwin’s Law [30 jun 00]:
Any off-topic mention of Hitler or Nazis will cause the thread it is mentioned in to an irrelevant and off-topic end very soon; every thread on UseNet has a constantly-increasing probability to contain such a mention.
Or, more essentially:
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Novarese’s Addendum:
Ditto for “terrorists” and the phrase “then the terrorists will have won.”
10:27:51 PM #
2002.04.28 (sunday)
Kensington FlylightThis USB-powered LED thingy is a pretty clever idea, but I was amazed and how poor the execution is given the amount of buzz I’ve heard around it. The neck almost stays where I want it, but the vibration from my typing is enough to make it slowly move. The lens covering the LED is disperses the light too widely, and it shines right in my eyes even when aimed perpendicularly to my line of sight (I’ve already thought of about five fixes for this, most involving electrical tape). However, it has been invaluable tonight, as I’m typing in the dark on a new laptop with a keyboard layout I haven’t had time to adjust to.
Update: I found some heat shrink tube left over from an abandoned project, and it works perfectly. Now I have a nice shroud over the lens and it looks a lot better than electrical tape would.
1:19:09 AM #
Ok, David Lynch is a big dickhead. The copy of Mulholland Drive I rented went all chunky about fourty minutes in, and after I popped the DVD out to wipe a big greasy thumbprint off, I discovered there is just one big fucking chapter for the whole movie. 1:10:51 AM #
2002.04.26 (friday)
Francis E. Dec“Tribute” site to a master kook, with audio readings of his literature. The MP3 files are very large, as they are encoded at 192-256kbps, which is way too much for straight speech.
Gangster Computer God Worldwide Secret Containment policy made possible solely by Worldwide Computer God Frankenstein Controls. Especially lifelong constant threshold brainwash radio. Quiet and motionless, I can slightly hear it. Repeatedly this has saved my life on the streets.
9:56:19 PM #
Roman Catholic Vestments and Structure of the Catholic Hierarchy (via flangy) 9:29:42 PM #
The Non-implemented 33-Year English Protestant Calendar
Even so far back as AD 1079, Omar Khayyam had shown that an eight leap-years in 33-year cycle provides an excellent approximation to the year as measured as the time between vernal equinoxes. The advisers of Gregory XIII knew this but instead recommended the inferior 97/400 leap-year system we use, perhaps in the belief that the Protestants did not know of the better 8/33 concept.
8:40:56 PM #
2002.04.21 (sunday)
I’m an emacs user (via mark)Finally, an emacs user who can admit that vi has some redeeming qualities. I use vi for pretty much everything, but I have found that the emacs edit mode in ksh is about a zillion times better than the vi mode. Actually, I use the gmacs mode, because I prefer its transpose (ctrl-t) behavior better (that’s the only difference between emacs and gmacs mode as far as I can tell).
9:01:21 PM #
Mach-O MozillaMac OS X native mozilla build.
Tons of issues exist such as filepickers not working, apple event support not working, no splash screen…
Oh, no, don’t make me use this crappy software with (gasp) no splash screen! The horror!
8:48:51 PM #
Jarvis Products CorporationHorrific slaughterhouse machinery. It’s pretty scary to think what a lung gun or a semi-automatic oil gland cutter could do to a human, but if that’s what’s needed to get me some more bacon, I’ll deal with it.
8:45:52 PM #
2002.04.20 (saturday)
Swingin’ GoogleYeah, sure, the first wave of google API apps were silly, but the naysayers [bb] [edd] will eventually be eating their words. The second generation is already coming, and this one looks pretty sweet. Swingin’ Google has a ton of potential, and I’m hoping it will surpass the usefullness of Copernic in its heyday before it got cruftified.
Jeez, if you don’t produce a masterpiece in the first week, the vultures are ready to swarm all over you.
As for the claim that this has no usefulness for blogging, I guess it depends on your definition of blogging. If your weblog exists as an end unto itself, just a place to dump some thoughts (eg, a journal or diary), then yeah, the google API means nothing to you. If, however, you actually use google to find things that you later put on your weblog (but you would have been looking for them anyway, eg a *log* of your *web* usage, hence *weblog*), then the google API is a tool - and not just another tool, but a tool with a lot of unrealized potential. Swingin’ Google could turn out to be a boon for mining google, refining results, and producing excellent resource pages (eg my Del McCoury Resources or Jorn Barger’s extensive James Joyce Resources) (see also Jorn’s excellent how-to for building content-centered resource pages).
No one ever said just plopping a google box on your page was going to magicly bring the flow. The API is a tool, and if used effectively, it will enable people to build better pages, which is what really brings the hits in.
8:48:20 PM #
2002.04.19 (friday)
I just discovered that my MTA has been silently dropping all my outgoing mail. I’ve fixed it, but I have no idea how long it’s been like this (ok, I’ve narrowed the start of the problem down to sometime between march 21st and 30th). If you sent me somthing and expected a reply and didn’t get one, mail me again.
7:20:48 PM #
Wi-Fi Has Reached ‘Escape Velocity’
Wi-Fi is the TCP/IP of wireless…
Uh, isn’t it more like the ethernet of wireless? I always thought that TCP/IP was the TCP/IP of wireless.
4:52:07 PM #
2002.04.18 (thursday)
Who are the bad guys in ecommerce? What fears do you have when shopping online? Are you worried some dirtbag teenage hacker is going to sniff your credit card numbers? That’s like the last thing I worry about. The credit card companies are mostly concerned with these kinds of bad guys, and they try to make you think they’re doing it for your benefit, but the interest they are protecting is theirs (you’re only liable for a max of $50 of fraudulent credit card charges, and they’ll usually waive that if you ask).The guys I’m afraid of are the people I’m doing business with (indirectly). I’d love to order some new batteries for my cell phone from some of these super-cheap mom-and-pop dealers out on the internet, but all of the dealers with half-decent prices on real, official nokia batteries and stuff are affiliated with yahoo, and with their recent change to a “default spam” policy, there’s no way in hell I’m giving them any of my information. Most of these guys are probably operating out of their basements, so they don’t take orders over the phone. Some take paypal, but I don’t trust them any more than I do yahoo. Where the hell is my digital-cash Cryptonomicon ecommerce utopia?
11:14:18 PM #
Nokia HDW-1 Bluetooth Wireless Headset(Warning: worst use of kerning *ever*) This is a perfect example of a great application for Bluetooth that would be total overkill for a 802.11b device. If this thing would work with my current Nokia, I’d plop down double what they’re asking without hesitation, but I don’t think we’ll see any bluetooth Nokia phones in the US for a while (Ericsson’s TDMA T60d is currently available and offers a Bluetooth headset, though). I love my headset, but lugging it around is a total pain because it’s always getting tangled up on things. Worse yet, in the car it can be downright dangerous; I’ve managed to get snagged on my gear shifter more times than I can count and the stupid little microphone wart on the cable always gets caught on the collar of my shirt, which sometimes pulls the earbud out of my ear when I turn my head (while merging, eg).
I see one potential problem, though. Right now, I use the “auto answer” mode, which causes my phone to (duh) automaticly answer the phone when the headset is plugged in. How will this work with a wireless headset? What if the headset is in my pocket? I hope there is a button or something on the headset that does the equivelent of sending a signal to the phone that it’s ready to use. Hmm, I guess a “power” button would do that.
One other thing that has been bugging the shit out of me about the Nokia phone interface: the call log sucks. Bad. First of all, if a guy calls you, then three other people call, and then guy number one calls back, it deletes the first call from that guy and puts his latest call in the first slot in the log. Now I can’t go back and see what time I originally talked to him. Any call from a guy who doesn’t send caller ID information doesn’t get logged *at all*, which is even worse. If someone calls and I’m away from my phone, I have no way of telling what time they called, I just see a note that I missed a call. Why not just put an “unknown” entry in the log? The combination of these two problems causes yet another problem. Let’s say I step away, then Alice (with caller ID) calls, and then Bob calls (without caller ID). I see “2 missed calls” but only “1 new number” - so I can’t really tell if Alice called twice or if I just got an additional call by a CID-blocking phantom.
10:07:48 PM #
MS to
ship Bluetooth hardware, mouse, keyboard. (via htp’)
Bluetooth can of course do both, but as Microsoft is also pushing 802.11x hard (and indeed uses it as the connectivity for Mira), it needs to establish the extent to which the two technologies can coexist.
This is a much milder version of the opinion that says 802.11b and Bluetooth are somehow competitors. I can only assume that this notion comes about because both are wireless, but it’s like saying a Ford Taurus and a Freightliner Semi are competitors (ugh, not another computer/car analogy). Hello, my keyboard doesn’t need its own IP address. Well, maybe Ashcroft would like that to make it easier for his goons to directly connect to it and download my keystroke history.
10:01:09 PM #
2002.04.17 (wednesday)
I just saw the most amazing thing. I was out walking in the neigborhood when I noticed a satellite cross very near Saturn. Then, antoher, right behind it. I watched the two chase each for a while before I realized that it was the International Space Station [orbit details] and the Space Shuttle, which just undocked earlier this afternoon. Even if it had been just one of the two, it would have been a very nice flyover to observe, as conditions were great and they were in sunlight for several minutes before passing into shadow.As soon as I got home I looked it up on Heavens Above, and sure enough, there they were. I had assumed (for no particular reason) that the shuttle would be trailing ISS, but the shuttle is actually in the “front” (though I have no idea how they are oriented relative to their motion).
(image ripped off from heavens-above.com)
Pass Details
| Date: | Wednesday, 17 April, 2002 |
| Satellite: | STS-110 |
| Observer’s Location: | West Little Rock ( 34.7°N, 92.4°W) |
| Local Time: | Central Daylight Time (GMT - 5:00) |
| Orbit: | 385 x 399 km, 51.6° (Epoch 17 Apr) |
| Sun altitude at time of maximum pass altitude: |
-19.8° |
| Event | Time | Altitude | Azimuth | Distance (km) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rises above horizon | 21:18:02 | -0° | 305° (NW ) | 2,299 |
| Reaches 10° altitude | 21:20:11 | 10° | 296° (WNW) | 1,443 |
| Maximum altitude | 21:23:11 | 36° | 228° (SW ) | 640 |
| Enters shadow | 21:23:30 | 35° | 213° (SSW) | 654 |
Red line: orbit of satellite
Blue line: visible area for the observer
Fat red line: part of the orbit, where the satellite is visible for the observer. For this, the satellite has to be in the sun, the observer in the dark.
The new ground track is pretty sweet, too. Well, I say “new” because it’s new to me; I haven’t been to this site in over a year.
9:59:38 PM #
2002.04.16 (tuesday)
Reminds me that Dvorak eventually did answer the question I asked. He picked blogs at random from the recently updated section on blogger.com. I guess each review of blogging is a reflection of which microcosm the reporter tapped into. It would be interesting to see a reporter write a piece based on the updates at weblogs.com, which is the source of news in the blogging world that I refresh 80 times a day.
Earth to Dave, just because a site pings your page when it updates doesn’t make it high-quality (e.g. this site pings weblogs.com).
Hmm, and he links to kottke, which I haven’t read in a long time; I see that he uses absolute pixel sizes in his CSS and he picked a tiny font I can’t read. What a user-hostile loser. PLONK.
6:33:29 PM #
The Neighborhood [related washpost story]Flat-rate unified local and long-distance telephone service from MCI, $50-60 per month (depending on location). Unfortunately, they just tell you where this is and is not available, you have to give them a phone number and then they’ll tell you if you can get the service yet (if it isn’t, they helpfully offer to spam you when it is rather than give you an estimate of when it will be available).
12:49:43 PM #
2002.04.13 (saturday)
Literary Gangster
9:36:09 PM #
Well, I finally broke down and bought a Leatherman Pulse. It’s awesome, of course. I’ve cured that obsession, but now I’ve got a new, even more annoying one: notebooks. Not computers, but old-fashioned dinosaur-tech paper notebooks. I currently use little 3×5 inch memobooks, because they fit nicely in my shirt pocket. The problem is, the largest-capacity one I can find [qv] only has 75 sheets of paper in it, which I burn through pretty quickly; additionally, the wire spiral needed for 75 sheets isn’t big enough for my new Zebra Sarasa pens which I really dig. I’m considering calls to major notebook manufacturers to request 200-sheet 3×5 memobooks, though I don’t think they’ll bite. In the meantime, I may try to take a larger 5×7 mini-notebook and use a paper/finger chopper to lop off an inch or two of the right margin. 9:01:40 PM #
GooglematicIM bridge to the Google API; works with AIM and MSN Messenger.
Hmm, googlematic doesn’t seem to give the same results as the website or the API (at least, not Radio’s implementation). A search from the website for “gammatron” returns the old weblogger.com site first, while googlematic returns the really, rilly old editthispage.com site first and doesn’t even have the weblogger.com site (where I was for almost two years) in the top five, though it returns two hits for the “gammatron secret labs” that I ran while dinking with Radio before making the decision to move over full time.
screenshots: [web search] [googlematic search]
actual search results: [googlematic] [google search] (Radio-API results below)
(Current Googlematic results replicated here)
[16:54] googlematic: Top sites:
0 - Packed up and moved….
1 - Kendall-Gammatron Co.,Ltd.
2 - eHam.net Reviews - Heintz-Kaufman 811A Gammatron
3 - gammatron secret labs
4 - gammatron secret labs: faq
![[web search]](/images/2002/04/13/google_web_search.png){kind=link}
![[googlematic search]](/images/2002/04/13/google_api_search.png){kind=link}
4:57:23 PM #
2002.04.12 (friday)
I got my first hate-mail, in regards to some comments I made about Tom Bearden [4 Apr 02] - w00t!
ATTENTION ASS HOLE:
United States Patent No. 6,362,718 entitled “Motionless electromagnetic generator,” was issued to Dr. Tom Bearden and his colleagues March 26, 2002. If your reading comprehension and IQ were high enough, you could actually look up the patent at USPS.gov and read it for yourself. Over unity performance was measured and confirmed by none other that the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This irrefutably proves Dr. Bearden is right.
I have no doubt that your head is so far up your ass that you STILL will not accept this as real. Thank you for thus proving my above assertion that YOU ARE AN ASS HOLE!
10:50:09 PM #
Bob The Builder Navy Blue Bucket T-ShirtArgh! Make it stop!
10:42:54 PM #
The Hollow EarthIntroduction to Hollow Earth kook theory. Appently this was first seriously proposed by Edmund Halley, who tried to explain variances in Earth’s magnetic field with a series of nested spheres inside the Earth. Unfortunately, there are no details as to why he thought there would be life in the inner shperes, nor are there any explanations of the thoughts behind the progressively kookier theories that built on this.
See also: Hollow Earth - Fact or Fiction and Our Earth is Hollow!
10:35:24 PM #
I’m now pretty sure I’ve got some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. Since being struck with the “Leatherman” bug [7 April], I’ve been unable to go three minutes without thinking about buying one or at least saying the word “Leatherman” out loud. I’ve gone to Target (twice!) and stared at them for 45 minutes, but didn’t actually buy one. The only time I can get any relief is while I’m at work. Today, however, I found a cure; my unstoppable Leatherman train of thought was derailed. At the grocery store, I saw a box of rice pilaf, and now I can’t get the word “pilaf” out of my head. It’s a very nice word, very pleasant and easy to say. Say it out loud a few times; “PEE-LAUFF,” it’s fun. So now on the whiteboard on my refridgerator, under the “Things to Get” heading, I have “PEE-LAUFF” right after “Leatherman.”
10:10:16 PM #
Tree Circus (via heathen)Tree trunk topiary. This is most impressive just because of the patience and time commitment required to pull it off.
5:59:45 PM #
2002.04.11 (thursday)
Bizzare cell phone story: a cow-orker dropped her Nokia 5160 in some water, which crippled it, though it still “sort of” worked. The next morning, she went to get a new phone, and got a Nokia 3360. For some reason, the Cingular morons couldn’t transfer her phone numbers over, so she had to do it manually. Anyway, she got about halfway through that when we had to leave to go to a meeting. As we’re parking at the customer site, her phone rings. She picks up the new one, hits the green phone icon button (to answer) and says “hello.” Nothing happens, and the phone rings again. Oh, the *old* phone is ringing. She picks that up, hits the “Answer” button, and says “hello.” She can hear her boss on the other end, but only very faintly. Then she realizes his voice isn’t coming through on that phone at all, but instead is coming out of the *new* phone.The only explanation for this that I can think of is that when you push the button to accept a call on your phone, you actually transmit some sort of “ready” code back to the tower, which then proceeds to transmit some “initiate call” code back to the handset, which tells the phone to start transmitting data from the microphone and play the incoming stream to the speaker. If this is the case, it would mean that the phone company can remotely activate your phone (in theory, at least) and basically use it as a “bug” without your permission. Given that capability, I don’t find it unreasonable to assume the manufacturer would have secret codes that might tell the handset to send a stream from the microphone but not turn on the speaker at all, and also not to change the display to indicate anything is going on.
9:56:51 PM #
2002.04.07 (sunday)
I always get overwhelmed when I go to staples to buy pens. This is not a trival task, and luckily, I’m not the only person who thinks so [commentaries on cheap pens]. I write a lot during the day, but it’s more a quick note here and there than any extended writing at one time. I keep a little spiral-bound notebook (about the size of a deck of cards) instead of a PDA so I don’t have to worry about battery life or sitting on the thing or whatever. I ended up getting some Zebra Sarasa pens today, and I really like them. They’re retractible, which is a big plus since I don’t want to worry about losing the pen cap, the ink is very consistent, and writing is generally pretty effortless with this pen. However, it’s too big to fit inside the wire sprial on my notebooks, which I’m kinda pissed about, but I was looking at some fatter notebooks with bigger spirals that would still fit in my shirt pockets anyway, so it’s probably not going to be a big deal.I also saw these new Liquid Sharpie markers, and I instantly thought of Arnold saying “Liquid Metal” in T2. Say it out loud, “LIQUID MEHTAL… LIQUID SHAH-PEE.”
11:08:56 PM #
Nick Koudis Portfolio
10:51:17 PM #
Bizzare David Hasslehoff VideoToo wierd too describe. Find the hidden dachsunds for bonus points.
10:40:11 PM #
OK, I’ve decided that I’ve just got to get a Leatherman. The only problem is, there are way too many models to choose from. From a completely logical standpoint, the Wave is probably the best model for me, but it doesn’t have a corkscrew, and I’ve developed some irrational fear of buying a multi-tool without the corkscrew and then getting stuck in some MacGyver situation where a corkscrew would save the day. I’ve used a corkscrew about three times in the last year, and it was in my kitchen every time, and I already have a very nice corkscrew in the kitchen, so that isn’t a problem. The new Juice cs4 Glacier has a corkscrew (with assist!) and has bad-ass anodized blue handles, but doesn’t have a file (another thing I will probably never need but am afraid to get caught without) and doesn’t come with a Bat-dork utility-belt holster (though it’s not hard to buy one seperately). I’ve read at least one review that says the blue anodized finish chips off very easily, and the blades don’t lock, which has me a little worried, but the corkscrew! The Juice xe6 Thunder adds a file and a second, serrated knife blade, but still doesn’t have any locking mechanism. Ugh, I’ll probably just do nothing… I’ve survived this long without one. 10:35:46 PM #
2002.04.06 (saturday)
Best Knight Rider Tribute Page EVER
11:53:49 PM #
Periodic Table of HaikuI don’t get it… supposedly a collection of haiku about the elements, but lots of entries don’t even come close to meeting the definition. It would seem to me that if you were actually going to attempt to write a haiku about titanium, you’d know how to count sylables. I could understand not having a perfect haiku for Ununhexium (but they got that one right!), but this entry for Lithium is pathetic:
battery charge
- and great to slice!
That’s not even the right number of lines!
11:44:02 PM #
Jabra VentClipThis thing is awesome. It’s just a cheap piece of plastic that clips on to the air vent register in your car and holds your phone, but it works perfectly and it doesn’t use any goofy glue gunk like most third party phone holders or require screws like the official nokia car holder for the 8260. It also has little fold-down arms that will hold your earpiece and power adapter or other cords.
However, this product is probably only a good idea for you if you already use the nokia belt clip that has the little knob thing on the back of your phone, as this product uses the same knob to hold the phone. If you don’t already have a knob on your phone (you can get leather cases that have them integrated in the back or a clip-on type that slips under the battery of the 51xx/61xx) you probably don’t want this, as you’ll have to use the glue-on knob that comes in the package.
11:18:09 PM #
Mag Instrument RX1019 Heavy-Duty Rechargeable Flashlight SystemDo you really need a flashlight system? At $90, this must be for the “serious flashlight hobbyist.”
2:15:56 PM #
2002.04.04 (thursday)
The Tom Bearden WebsiteIf you can get through the screed and the trippy java-applet title graphic, you can find all kinds of kook info on topics from cold fusion and other “free” energy schemes to cancer cures, missle defense, and mind control.
10 TRILLION PERCENT OF THE CURRENT PRODUCED IS WASTED!
12:01:41 AM #
2002.04.03 (wednesday)
I can’t believe how shoddy I’ve found the mainstream media’s coverage of technology consumer electronics to be. The reports are, like this one, shallow and uninformative. I’m not talking about hardcore technical specifications or tests even, how about a comparison of the sound quality of these devices, or a listing of which has the best battery life?
To play devil’s advocate here, we’re talking about a NY Times story, not something in PC World. It’s more of a survey of this “new and exciting” technology for the masses, and it probably serves its intended audience pretty well.
People are saying that Weblogs are not journalism, but all I keep thinking is that I get better information from Weblogs about many of the things I am interested in. Finally, there’s not a new piece of information in this article anywhere. No conclusions drawn, no recommendations made. Where’s the beef?
Now, this, on the other hand, is a good observation. Everyone else has been so busy reacting to mainstream journalists’ pieces writing off weblogs as a fad (haven’t we heard that before?) that they haven’t even bothered to look at the glass house from which they’re lobbing these turds. Just like the music industry suing anything that moves, the establishment journalists would rather discredit and destroy a new concept than adapt to the “competition” (though no one I know of is looking to put the NY Times out of business) and improve because of it. Instead of pointing to a story on how weblogs are nothing more than a bunch of cat pictures and saying something useless like “these guys don’t get it” people should be fighting back by pointing out that we need more pages with cat pictures, not less, and then pointing out the pathetic crap that passes for “real” journalism and saying “you expect us to put up with this garbage when we can get better content with less ego and no pop-ups over here?” OK, so the “less ego” part may be completely false in some cases, but the “a-list” bloggers with the biggest egos and most sycophants seem to put out the least interesting content.
11:51:58 PM #
Mail, and my reply:
> what precisely is “TurdWare?”
I generally use this term to refer to software that is actively hostile to the users (as opposed to passively hostile software that might just have a shitty user interface). These are generally applications that get installed without my knowledge or that use sneaky methods to get installed. These are always applications that provide at most ZERO (sometimes negative) benefit to me, the “user” (though in this cases, that should probably be “me, the USED” or “me, the TARGET” or “me, the SUCKER”).
This includes not only the usual spyware such as Gator and Bonzi, but also anything that involves “trust” or “rights management” (where the user is DIStrusted by default, and the rights that are managed are the rights of everyone EXCEPT the user), and formerly useful applications like RealPlayer that have been commandeered by marketing losers and converted into advertisement-delivery vehicles and assume that by installing them you give the application consent to take over your entire computer, and could even include whole websites like Yahoo that decide to randomly reset your spam preference to “Call me at home with exciting mortgage rate offers, please!”
Clear enough?
11:30:56 PM #
2002.04.02 (tuesday)
Fucking turdware on my machine! How the fuck did gator get on there? I caught it with a routine adaware sweep, but I can’t figure out how the hell I got it. I went back and looked at all of the applications I’ve installed lately, and none of them seem suspect. It would be nice if someone maintained a list of programs that drop turds all over your machine, but the best I could find was spychecker, which has a database of these shitfucker applications, but you can’t just see the whole list, you have to type in one suspect at a time into a webform and let it tell you if it has that particular spelling in its database. Do I type the application’s proper name in there, or just the name of the installer application, or what? I didn’t get any positive hits, so I don’t know if this thing is worth a shit or not.I can only pray that some cosmic karma scoreboard does in fact exist and the losers who are responsible for these applications end up reincarnated as hemmorroids. How the hell do they live with themselves? It would be almost (ALMOST) comprehensible (though never forgivable) if they were making scrooge-mcduck-sized piles of money, but supposedly no one is making money off of advertising, so these guys must be doing it just to be big fucking pricks.
11:02:39 PM #
2002.04.01 (monday)
If nobody is making any money off of advertising on their web pages, how come they keep putting *more* ads up?
10:58:14 PM #