The Web405 list is talking

The Web405 list is talking about reputation-based economies, one of the things I'm recently fascinated by. I've pointed people towards EarthWeb, by Marc Stiegler. You can see the book's website, or enter the "What happened to Microsoft?" contest?

Like most others on the

Like most others on the net, I get a lot of spam. Some of it is strange. And then, some of it is really, really strange. And then, there's the one I got today:

You have 2 months to live.

Are you comfortable? Got enough food in the house? 

Electricity working? Got fuel for the car?

Well come January 1, 2000 all that is going to change. 


Well that little  Y2K problem is going to collapse all the

economies in the world. No more food, electricity, fuel,

communications etc. all those things are going to shut

down like that  "snap" (maybe a week or so)

with them multi-warheads will be flying around

and the survival of the fittest will become the law 

until the antichrist takes over the world.

YOU CAN  STAY HERE FOR THAT

IT'S BEST TO GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE THAT HAPPENS

BUT THE RAPTURE WILL NOT OCCUR UNTIL 

THE UNIVERSE IS PROPERLY DISPLAYED

STAND UP AND OPEN YOUR MOUTH !

THE UNIVERSE     SPACE ENDS & MOVES   O /\ + \/ O

The discovery of the understanding of the universe.

E=MC2 The equation for the atom bomb. It says that 

matter and energy are the same thing. So then what is that?

Matter, look at a brick. Its in a three dimensional form. Its

made of electrons, protons and neutrons (atoms) and they are

moving so the brick is moving. Energy, sunlight.  Its in a

three dimensional form. It comes to us from the sun

therefore it is moving. 3D and moving Both matter and

energy are 3D and moving.  I outproduce Einstein. We

already know all matter has gravity. The bending of light shows

that energy also has gravity. So matter and energy are 3D moving

with gravity. The universe is made of matter, energy, time and

space. That just stated is the matter and energy part. Time and

space. Take everything in the universe and stop it. Does time

progress?  No. Therefore time is the motion and the

understanding of all the motion is the understanding of all of

time. Space. Space ends. Space does not go on forever. Space

is in a three dimensional form. Space moves but does not have

gravity. Space moves like this.  O  /\  +  \/  O

And that is the understanding of time.

   O   This is what was first, in the beginning.

   /\  This is the old kings and queens.

   +   This is democracy.

   \/  This is socialism.

   O   This is when the Lord Jesus Christ returns.

And that is the understanding of the universe. Glory be to the

Father the Son and the Holy Ghost. Revelation chapter

10&1115-19. It is very important the people receive this

information. You may tell someone about this.

                           Thank You

                         Robert Lavelle

PC Week's gossip columnist, Spencer

PC Week's gossip columnist, Spencer F. Katt, says in his Rumor D'Jour that "A Tabby tipster reports that Microsoft just released a beta version of Internet Explorer 5.5 to selected testers. The upgrade is mostly stability improvements and bug fixes but includes at least one new feature: Print Preview for Web pages."

Check out the brand new

Check out the brand new Visual QuickStart Web Workshop--because if we don't plug our own stuff, who will?

Let's Conquer France! Everyone else

Let's Conquer France! Everyone else has--why not you? (Requires Flash 4).

Somebody, please tell me that

Somebody, please tell me that this is a joke.

Finally: Dragon Systems will show

Finally: Dragon Systems will show speech recognition for the Mac at Comdex on Monday. Looks like we'll have two decent systems (IBM's Via Voice is the other) running on the Mac within a few months. Guess I better start thinking about buying that G4.

Here's the video clip of

Here's the video clip of the interview with Dubya where he couldn't answer the questions about foreign leaders. What's interesting here is not that he didn't know the answers; that's pretty understandable. No, it's the obvious contempt he has for the reporter and the way he gets flustered. This does not look like a guy who's ready for prime time. Warning: this is a Real Video file, but it doesn't stream; instead, it's a 2.5 Mb download to your computer. Unless you have a fast connection, it's probably not worth the time.

Good health-related sites from the

Good health-related sites from the WW list:

Lynn Siprelle has redesigned The

Lynn Siprelle has redesigned The New Homemaker. It looks great, and the content's great, too!

From the "Math is Haaaard"

From the "Math is Haaaard" folder: Danica McKellar is an actress who played Kevin Arnold's dream girl in The Wonder Years; she then went to UCLA and got a math degree (summa cum laude). On her site, you can ask questions, or read the ones she's already answered, like:

This week's Cringely Column: A

This week's Cringely Column: A great analysis of the MS finding of fact, by someone who's (gasp!) actually read it.

Stripper Bingo at the Supreme

Stripper Bingo at the Supreme Court. Nuff said.

One good thing about this

One good thing about this Molly Ivins column is that it takes a well-deserved shot at the NYT's Maureen Dowd, whom I think is an incredibly overrated bore. Dowd can't seem to write a column on any subject without it veering into a snippy, bitchy attack on Clinton (and increasingly lately, Gore). The fact that she won a Pulitzer for her repetitive, nasty stuff only shows how low standards have slumped.

Regarding that gift that I'm

Regarding that gift that I'm not getting: what has America come to when a guy can't even build his own flamethrower in his back yard anymore? Sheesh.

Yes, it's that time of

Yes, it's that time of year already. Here's what Dori isn't getting Tom, and here's what Tom's not getting Dori.

Via the Silent-Tristero list: the

Via the Silent-Tristero list: the Molly Ivins column archive. One of the very few political areas in which Tom & I agree.

I worked my way through

I worked my way through college as a school bus driver. It was a pretty good job; I took the kids to school in the morning, went to school myself, then picked the kids up when I was done. Paid well, too, for a part-time job. Now, I don't condone what this guy did, but after driving junior-high kids, I sure can understand it.

Heard of Board of Regents

Heard of Board of Regents vs. Southworth? It was argued before the Supreme Court today. It's basically a nuisance suit writ large, with federal appeals courts as accomplices to the crime. Here's the rundown: Southworth, a conservative jerk at the U of Wisconsin, got his panties in a wad a few years back because his mandatory student fees of $167 went, in small part, to fund student organizations he didn't like, such as gay and leftist political groups. So he sued, claiming that the First Amendment requires that he not have to pay for such detested speech. The idea that a university is meant to expose students to a broad variety of speech cuts no mustard with this guy. He's being helped by a legal foundation that openly supports cases to "defund the left." Why is it that right wingers talk about the sanctity of freedom, but always want to achieve it by crushing other people? For a view of today's Supreme Court action, Slate published Supreme Court Dispatches by Dahlia Lithwick today. She did some great work reporting during the Microsoft trial earlier this year, and this is another good piece.

Yes, I'm still seething over

Yes, I'm still seething over that stupid Salon article (see below). Over on Salon's archrival Slate, there's an article about the same event, which even reaches many of the same conclusions, but with a big difference: the Slate article was written by an adult. You get the opinions, but minus the contempt. And of course, Slate didn't label it as a news story.

I was asked if we

I was asked if we were going to have the only Mahir-free weblog... I guess not. Here's the story on how the whole thing was a hoax--anyone surprised?

Some good political stories, via

Some good political stories, via Joel Preisler:

Here's my take on the

Here's my take on the Salon article on Clinton's online chat referenced below: It's just another example of bullshit online "journalism." The thing is rife with the writer's opinions, not even thinly disguised. There's barely a fact in there. But you get plenty of the writer's (I can't call him a reporter) above-it-all, sneering attitude. "...the meeting felt like a political love-in..." "...the same [speech] he's been delivering since he was a toddler in Hope, Arkansas..." "...until the Clinton-Gore team came and fixed it all."

Not content with trashing just the President, this guy needles everyone who had the temerity to waste his oh-so-precious time with this event. Hey, pal, if news assignments like covering the President are beneath you, find another line of work. I generally like a lot of Salon's stuff, but this is them at their near-worst. They love to trash people from the standpoint of the left, and that's fine. But they lose me when they label it journalism and put it in their News section, rather than opinion.

It's an interesting idea--Builder.com Live

It's an interesting idea--Builder.com Live wasn't sure how much to charge for Jakob Nielsen's workshop, so they put all the seats up for dutch auction on eBay. It doesn't look like very many people are getting the concept as they haven't yet sold enough seats to have the session, but there's still a couple of days left.

A couple of good Salon

A couple of good Salon articles today:

I've been looking for a

I've been looking for a gratuitous DHTML site to use as a bad example. Here's one that has flying everything!

In this New York Times

In this New York Times article, we see what shade of environmental green Dubya would be. That would be the exact color of money.

In any assessment of Bush's environmental record, the unmistakable subtext is the governor's relationship with business and industrial leaders. As an advocate of limited government, Bush believes that lawsuits and regulations are not the best way to achieve clean air and water. Instead, his aides say, Bush has pursued a cooperative approach that emphasizes voluntary solutions instead of government mandates.

But with Bush leading the Republican presidential race, environmentalists are criticizing his closeness to the industries regulated by his administration in Texas. Campaign records indicate that the companies that helped draft the new pollution law have since donated nearly $1 million to Bush's presidential campaign.

NASA got it right, as

NASA got it right, as opposed to my moonphase attempt (Scripts 10.4-10.6) in our JavaScript book. (Via Flutterby)

And to go along with

And to go along with Macromedia's DW3 announcement, there's BlueWorld's announcement of Lasso Studio for Dreamweaver. It's an application! It's a platform! No--it's both an application and a platform!

A simple chart says it

A simple chart says it all:

Closing Price    AAPL      MSFT

Friday 11/5      88.3125   91.5625

Monday 11/8      96.375    89.9375

% change         +9.1%     -1.8%

My past life as a

My past life as a dog. Proving again that there's one born every minute.

It's official, as of tomorrow:

It's official, as of tomorrow: Macromedia announces Dreamweaver 3/Fireworks 3 Studio.

MS meta-thoughts: I'm seeing lots

MS meta-thoughts: I'm seeing lots of places hosting discussions on the MS anti-trust finding. The average opinion is either black or white, with Bill Gates starring as either god or the anti-christ. I've found that I'm writing very little on any of these sites because of the number of stories I've heard of MS employees trolling on discussions. The posts are so ridiculous, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone believes this crap, unpaid. You can't have a reasonable discussion with people who make comments about "This is socialism triumphing over capitalism!"--feh. I've pointed people towards ESR's article entitled Why Libertarians Should Not Love Bill Gates to show that there is a middle ground.

On the Scripting News discussion

On the Scripting News discussion board, Anita Rowland recommended Alexandria Digital Literature (Alexlit.com) for a collaborative guide to books. You put in what you like, and then it makes recommendations for you based on what other people who like those books also liked. Good idea, but poor execution, imo. I couldn't get it to stop recommending that I should read Snow Crash (okay, I loved it, but I know that already!), and I'm not sure why this would be preferable to Amazon's recommendations.