I have the Google toolbar installed in all my copies of IE, and have the pop-up blocking feature enabled, because I really hate pop-up ads. This is sort of like at your house, you lock the door and have a sign that says "No Salesmen".
Certain sites are using Javascript tricks to bypass pop-up blocking software. This is sort of like they come to your door, find it locked, see the "No Salesmen" sign, and sit down and pick the fucking lock.
What part of "NO" is it you don't understand, you assholes? I put the blocker there because I don't want to see your crappy ads, not as a technical challenge for you to work around. Stay the fuck off my screen!
Dame Clinton has been busy:
"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
That pretty much says it all. A regular robbing hood.
Pat LaMarche, the Green Party vice-presidential candidate is s good-looking woman. If she lost about 80 pounds, she would be really hot. Too bad she's a real lefty moonbat.
The California Court of Appeal has repealed the 1st amendment.
"Digital brownshirts"? Keep it up, asshole. Keep reminding us what a bullet we dodged when we sent your sorry, worthless, leftwing, moronic ass back to Tennessee.
What a disaster this cretin would have been as president.
Rex Reed just creams himself over Farenheit 9/11.
God, I am going to just gloat when Bush wins reelection. I hope all these fucking lefty assholes have cerebral hemorrhages and die when the returns come in.
Now go change your underwear, Rex.
Another food nazi, Bruce Taylor Seeman, writes for Newhouse News Service about how we're all just poor victims of the nefarious food industry and advertising, and Steps Must Be Taken.
He has scary quotes from such objective observers as Margot Wootan from CSPI (if it tastes good it will kill you), and the odious Marion Nestle, reigning queen of the food nazis. The sane reaction to any article which uses quotes from Marion Nestle in any way except to heap ridicule on Marion Nestle is like that of a coal miner finding a dead canary -- it's time to get the hell out. For an example of an article that uses Marion Nestle is an appropriate way, try here.
These people are so crazed for power and control that they will seize on any issue and try to twist it to their own evil ends. CSPI should be shut down for the RICO organization that it is, not quoted on the news. And Marion Nestle should be where we, in more sensible days, put dangerous lunatics: locked up for her and our protection.
An "Anonymous source" has written a book critical of the Bush administration's policies in the war on terror.
He thinks an attack on the U.S. will come during the campaign season, with the intention of keeping the Bush administration in power:
"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.
My immediate reaction is to round up every Muslim non-citizen in the U.S. and send them back to the third world toilets they came from. That should cut back on the ability of Al Qaeda to mount any significant attacks. If you have one hundred alien Muslims, and one of them is a fanatic terrorist, isn't it better to kick out the hundred than to let the one remain?
And as far as "Anonymous" is concerned, I would expect him, since he knows so much about bin Laden's whereabouts, to be dispatched to Waziristan to provide personal expertise in the search. Up close and personal.
I have been playing with the style sheet for the weblog, making small changes and looking at it with IE and Netscape, and a funny thing happens:
In Netscape, the text alignment (from the style sheet) is consistent from top to bottom, ruler-straight.
In IE, the text drifts towards the left side of the pane, off by at least 15 pixels at the bottom relative to the top.
In technical terms, WTF?
Update: This seems to happen when borders are used, and does not happen if borders are not used. Hmmm.
At the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute site (I won't link to it - it's distasteful enough that I had to go there myself) there is the disarmingly named "Open source tip of the day", which relates that you can find links to articles to columns by Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal at LinuxToday.com, and suggesting that the links are there because Open-sourcers hate to pay for copyrighted material.
What you will find at LT is abstracted articles with a "complete story" link that takes you to the original article -- hosted on such well known pirate sites as ZDNet and MSNBC (those guys are real revolutionaries).
This piracy is so flagrant that the newest Gomes article linked is from July, 2003. Truly a hotbed of copyright violations. That particular story links you here, to a site that is widely known for its flouting of copyright.
I mean, really, doen't this idiot even understand how the internet works? Or how copyright works, for that matter (see Fair Use).
Ken Brown is the author of the grotesquely misnamed "Samizdat", a work of fiction which postulates an alternative universe in which a character he calls "Linus Torvalds" created an operating system he calls "Linux" by stealing code from other works, mainly works which are supposedly now owned by a fictional company named "SCO". However, this fictional book is so poorly written that any confusion between it and the real world could only be due to stupidity on the reader's part, since the provenance of Linux is one of the best documented in the IT world. Even the real world SCO doesn't claim that Linux was stolen from Unix in its beginning, only since kernel versions after 2.4.
But Brown presses on, claiming that he believes it's impossible that one Finnish grad student could write an operating system as sophisticated as Linux without wide spread stealing of the code. That's on a par with saying that it's impossible that Henry Ford could have built the 2004 Mustang. Subtleties like this are lost on Brown, because he had decided beforehand what this book's conclusion would be, then tried to find quotes to support the conclusion. Hmm, what well known software monopolist likes to buy predetermined outcome research? Oh, yeah, that one. They seem to have put their money on a loser this time though.
SCO has lost the opening round of their slander of title suit against Novell.
From Groklaw:
Darl McBride waxed eloquent today in the quarterly conference call discussing the Novell suit, and how they were going to win it and move on with their extortion. D'oh!
By keeping the case in federal jurisdiction, it must be fought as a copyright case, not a contract case. By agreeing with Novell, Judge Kimball is saying that SCO's case that they own the copyright is not a slam dunk.
This could really be the beginning of the end. If they don't own the copyrights, even Microsoft can't save them.
The fun part will be seeing how Laura Didio and Rob Enderle explain themselves after SCO is emasculated in court. Their credibility as "analysts" should be pretty much in the toilet, where it belongs.
Hewlett Packard has applied for a patent on internet shopping:
...................................................................................................
United States Patent Application 20040107145
Method and system for making purchases over a computer network
Abstract
A method of making purchases over a computer network includes accessing an agent site on the network, retrieving product information from at least one supplier site on the network, and recording information regarding products designated for purchase from supplier sites in an electronic shopping cart resident at the agent site.
.................................................................................................................
Uh, hasn't this been pretty much done since the internet went public? Won't the internet pretty much die if these bastards keep patenting everything in sight? Is the patent office totally staffed by idiots who live in caves? Stay tuned.
In "The Coming Energy Crunch", New York Press writer Aaron Naparstek looks at the growing evidence that the oceans of oil that modern economies depend on is beginning to dry up.
Having two children who are just reaching the age where they can start looking at being out and on their own, I have been pondering the inevitable time when the availability of fossil-fuel energy starts to decline. What sort of world is coming for them and their children in 2010, 2020, 2030?
Naparstek's article postulates that it won't be a very pleasant place to live. As energy and transportation costs become a larger percentage of the national economy, the impacts on daily routines and expectations will become significant. In a market which has moved more and more into a model which depends totally on rapid and cheap transport of goods over long distances (think Wal-Mart), rising fuel costs will have a dramatic effect. Expect the shelves to empty of items which have to be moved in from distant sources (something which I have already been seeing at the local SuperCenter), followed by shortages in more mundane items (like milk? Milk prices have increased 60% here in the last 60 days, most of the increase due to increased transportation expense).
Naparstek runs off the rails a bit at the end with this bit:
"Kerry could use rising gasoline prices and spiraling violence in the Middle East as a way to create a sense of urgency around energy issues. He could propose a Manhattan Project for energy independence. Such a project would include converting our blackout-prone electrical grid to wind power, incentives for high-fuel-efficiency automobiles, rebuilding the nation's passenger rail system and re-designing American communities for less automobile dependency. "
Uh, isn't Kerry one of the ones who is opposed to the Hyannis wind project? In any case, wind power is notorious for undependibility, and inability to scale to the level needed. Huge tracts of land are taken up for relatively small results. It's sort of like converting your whole house to a solar cell to light a flashlight.
And, as Steven Den Beste has pointed out before, there can't be a "Manhattan Project" when you don't know what you're looking for.
I recently read an announcement that some university had discovered some alga that could be tickled into producing a bio-diesel-like substance which could be refined for automobile use. There was the implication that this is a promising line of research for future energy independence.
Well, sorry, but it's not. Biodiesel is promising only if you reduce the energy requirements of about 70% of the earth's population to zero. And if you can pull that off, you don't need the alga. You can just turn that 70% into biodiesel directly.
"Soylent Green is people".
I will believe in biodiesel from alga as soon as one municipal unit, i.e. village, town, county, starts meeting all its energy requirements from biodiesel made from alga.
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.