Jim's math problem

Given that I last sat in a math class about 20 years ago, I was surprised that I was able to figure out Jim Roepcke's math problem. Unfortunately, his comments are set up in a way such that I couldn't answer him there, but really, I did figure it out, and before Seth, too.

Things I want

I can't decide whether I want this T-shirt or this T-shirt more—but want I do.

NaderWatch #4

NaderWatch, #4 in a series, this time from Gallup:

Kerry 49%
Bush 48%

Kerry 47%
Bush 47%
Nader 3%

The good news, of course, remains the fact that, to date, Nader has qualified to be on zero (none, nada) state ballots.

Grrr

I'm having one of those days where the amount of hatred I have towards computers is exceeded by only one thing: the amount of hatred computers have towards me.

Happy anniversary to us

Thursday is our 3^rd wedding anniversary, and we have dinner reservations here. Yum. You foodies (and you know who you are), feel free to check out their menu and make recommendations.

Sonic.net Hotspot Hosting

This is slick: a local ISP, Sonic.net, allows DSL subscribers to Host a Hotspot. The deal is that you get DSL through them and use a Wi-Fi router, and if another Sonic.net subscriber comes by and shares your bandwidth, Sonic.net cuts you in on the proceeds, 50-50. It's a shame that I just renewed my SBC DSL contract, or this would be darn tempting.

Fun with blurbs

We were cruising through the guide listings on our ReplayTV, and came up with a movie that had this description: "A man accused of murder tries to stop hairless people driven to kill by bad LSD in college." I just love some of the condensed descriptions that are forced on the people who write these guides. After we stopped cracking up, we looked up Blue Sunshine on IMDB. Didn't really sound much better there.

Not Like I Loved My Freedom

Lynn Siprelle and I are only a few months apart in age, grew up within a dozen miles of each other, and had at least two mutual friends. So of course, we didn't meet until last year. Her latest, Not Like I Loved My Freedom, is a dead-on picture of what growing up in the South Bay was like in the late '70s. Go read it.

And while I'm at it, Happy 5^th birthday to The New Homemaker!

World turned upside down

So I'm doing my daily surfing today, and I start to wonder what's happened to me, because I agreed with many of the points made in articles by George Will and Andrew Sullivan. Huh? But I don't think that it's me that's changed, I think that it's them, which is a sign of something truly huge.

Article 1: Time for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq by Will, in the Washington Post:

Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.

Article 2: Public Domain by Sullivan, in The New Republic (may require a subscription):

In practice, the death penalty is effectively outlawed by the Catholic Church. Put it this way: The Church opposes abortion in 100 percent of cases; it opposes the death penalty in 99 percent of cases. Now consider George W. Bush's record as governor of Texas. He signed death warrants at a pace almost unheard-of in other states; he has made jokes about executing a woman prisoner; he is not just in favor of the death penalty, but is an enthusiast for it. If "life" truly is the issue, the distinction between Kerry and Bush is a very narrow one. In many ways, Bush's cavalier support for killing serious criminals is worse than Kerry's support for legal abortion—because a politician like Bush actually signs the death-warrant.

Huh. What next? Free market, balanced budget, smaller government conservatives realize who they're in bed with and recoil in horror?

Use a Better Browser

The Use a Better Browser campaign sounds a whole lot to me like the late, lamented Web Standards Project Browser Upgrade Campaign. Hey, I can't be the only person who lamented the BUC's death if people are recreating it, right? Bonus link: Tim Bray on why this is a good idea.

OS X Con 3 CFP

The O'Reilly Mac OS X 2004 Conference has announced their Call for Participation. There's four tracks:

• For administrators, gurus, and decision makers
• For developers, programmers, and scripters
• For digital musicians and audio gear heads
• For everyone, our insanely great Mac track

The deadline for proposals is June 11.

Mac OS X riddled with security holes?

I wish I had the time to go through this Techworld.com article, Mac OS X riddled with security holes, and make fun of it paragraph by paragraph, but not today. So, go forth and do it yourself; the idiocies are obvious enough.

Okay, here's a running start: which is worse, a Mac OS X security hole with a released patch and no known exploits, or a Windows security hole with a hugely prevalent exploit? You make the call.

Who picked "Tiger"?

Steve Jobs to Kick Off Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2004 with Preview of Mac OS X "Tiger": okay, who picked "Tiger" in the pool?

Fix your f'ing mailing lists!

First, I'd like to say that I have the highest respect for everyone I've ever met who worked on any part of Apache and/or Perl.

BUT!!! Your mailing lists (both Apache's and Perl's) are so fucking broken as to be a danger to the Internet itself.

The problem, itself, is simple:

1. Stupid Windows user gets a virus.
2. Stupid Windows user happens to have several email addresses on his system. One is the support questions auto-responder for the 4^th edition of our JavaScript book. Another is some address related to one of the above mailing lists.
3. Stupid Windows virus sends an email claiming that it's to my support address, from one of the list addresses.
4. Support auto-responder responds just the way it's supposed to.
5. Stupid broken mailing list says "Hey, this is an email to my subscription address, so I'll go and add it to my list of subscribers!"
6. Joe Doe sends an email to the list, and gets back a message from my auto-responder. Repeat ad infinitum.
7. Hilarity ensues.

This isn't the first time this has happened, and I'm getting really darn sick of it. And unfortunately, there's no way for me to get off of their lists without reconfiguring my email accounts, because the support email address doesn't actually exist and they don't have any way of unsubbing that doesn't require me to create a new email account.

Anyhow, the Perl-porters list is the latest one to get bit by this. My apologies to you if you're getting email you don't want. I don't want your mail either. Give me a way to unsubscribe and I'll be off in a hot second.

Or do everyone a favor and simply require the word "subscribe" in either the body or the subject line of the email. Lots of really good email servers already have this capability; you might want to look into it. Because the chances are good that I'm not the only person this has happened to.

Adobe Creative Suite on Mac OS X won't install?

From the Adobe Support Knowledgebase:

Some system components—for example, device drivers and virus protection utilities—can conflict with the Adobe Creative Suite installer and result in an incomplete or failed installation. To prevent these conflicts, install Adobe Creative Suite from the desktop.

Grump. It ought to include something about, "Sorry about the amount of time you wasted trying to figure out what the problem might be!"

Oh, and ignore the part about putting the contents of the 2^nd CD into a folder on the desktop; that doesn't work. Thankfully, the 2^nd CD (unlike the 1^st) does work just fine.

Keyspan Digital Remote Deal

We've always liked the Keyspan Digital Media Remote; we have used it for presentations, controlling our Macs, and other stuff. DevDepot has it on sale for only $28.95. It works on either Mac or Windows. Check it out if you've always wanted a remote control for your computer. Your hot tip: if you carry the remote in your computer bag, when you pull it out you can easily find that the batteries are dead, because the buttons have pressed aganst stuff in the bag. The solution is to store the remote inside an Altoids tin, then throw it in your bag.

Free After Rebate

This is my kind of site: Free After Rebate.

Everyone loves to get free stuff. Free After Rebate will point you to stores that sell products that end up being free after you send in for a rebate. You'll have to pay for the item up front, then submit the rebate materials. Some time later (usually six to eight weeks) you'll receive a rebate check. We only list products with 100% rebates, but those rebates usually don't reimburse for shipping and sales tax.

And they have an RSS feed, too!

Later note: for you folks on Windows, check out the price on McAfee VirusScan 2004 V8.0—it's -$2 after rebates. Yes, they pay you. If you don't have an up-to-date anti-virus program, get one, especially with the Sasser worm picking up speed.

Today's Right-Wing Lies

A new website, Media Matters for America, "will document and correct conservative misinformation in each news cycle. Media Matters for America will monitor cable and broadcast news channels, print media and talk radio, as well as marginal, right-wing websites that often serve as original sources of misinformation for well-known conservative and mainstream media outlets." Good luck, guys; it's a big job. But it's good that more folks are doing this on a daily basis. The Daily Howler and Spinsanity are good, but they can use some help.

Apple's picking up the slack

John Moltz of Crazy Apple Rumors is taking a week off the rumor biz. Thankfully, Apple's picking up the slack.

Luminex Optical Fiber by Zuzka

One of the coolest things I saw, by far, at last week's conference was a jacket made of Luminex, by a designer named Madame Zuzka. Yes, it's a gawdawful Flash site. Go there anyway, and click on the button that says "Luminex Optical Fiber."

Luminex is a light emitting fabric. Optical fiber, woven with other fibers, connected to a light source (LED) and activated by battery or direct current can turn a costume, a curtain, a sofa or an accessory into something extraordinary.

And extraordinary it surely was. I wanted that jacket desperately. Check it out.

There's a few more pix at Electrowear.com, but they don't do justice to how it looks in person, at night, either.

Boontling

About 50 miles north of us, there is the town of Boonville, in Mendocino County. It's known for Boontling, a language that's spoken only there. This 2001 article from the SF Chronicle gives a nice overview of this linguistic oddity. Via Paul Music.