My own domain, and you don't need to use it if you don't wanna

Look. I have my own mail domain.

Okay, really I have my own freakin' domain, but people don't understand what I say unless I say 'email domain' or 'web domain' or something.

So I have my own domain. I own the rights to it, or whatever the hell I'm getting when I fork over a freakin' moby wad of cash each year (and no, it's not a .com/net/org because those should be fucking deprecated, so it costs a bit more).

But hey, honey, if you don't want a free email account on my server, that's cool. Gmail will like you, and you will like gmail, until they change their terms of service one day to screw you over. I'm your cousin and you can probably count on me doing more for you and fucking with your data less, but their server is faster -- because google's the shit, let's all face it.

Coolness, because if I no longer need to hook in all the shit to consolidate all your eight different hotmail/yahoo accounts into the one, that's just less work I gotta do. Swell!

Am I pissed? Nah! I'm a bit disappointed because I wasted the time before, but it's something I can use next time (and I just pull the packages for the extra features, now, and save myself the potential security headaches).

Now if I can just keep my other cousin from sending fucking 800Mb ISO image attachments to his/our buddy up north... Actually, I'm more surprised it worked, really, and rather proud my little sendmail handled it without blowing chunks and going all spastic, and he's only done it about once a year for the last 4, so I'm fine.

p.s. Yeah, I'm hosting this little mini-blog on Google's Blogspot. That's because I don't care about it, because google's the Shit as I said, and because G can handle it if they get slashdotted.

Now the BBC gets lazy and stupid

I've said it before and I've said it again: if I'm not your friend, you call me something that begins with Mister. It's what we were taught as young children, and it's just respectful.

Apparently the BBC has begun emulating its boorish counterparts across the ocean: it must no longer sees fit to refer to people - such as Maribel Dominguez - in a proper manner, opting to use the hatefully rude form of a last name with no honorific. It may be an attempt to save 1/2 % of its story space, or maybe just cater to more stupid of its readers who apparently can't read and remember what 'Ms' means.

Apparently the BBC realises its mistake: they neglect a byline as well. Perhaps Neglect is the word of the day?

Referring to people poorly is a 'gateway' behaviour pattern; soon they'll be talking like John Wayne and driving great big SUVs. I used to respect the BBC, but I don't expect I will for much longer.

debt.gif (GIF Image, 288x230 pixels)

debt.gif (GIF Image, 288x230 pixels)

William Gibson sees the Coolest things

William Gibson quotes Lord Hoffmann:

This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community….

Such a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.

Reason #486 why we Never Rob Monasteries

Robber's First Mistake Was attacking Martial Arts Monks

Sma-a-a-rt:

Zagreb - A Croatian thief got more than he bargained for when he ran into a pair of karate-trained monks as he tried to rob a monastery.

The 35-year-old thief, posing as a beggar looking for a place to stay at a Zagreb monastery, broke into an office and stole almost R17 000 that had been donated by locals, newspapers reported.

But monks Pejo Orkic, 40, and Ivan Pajtak, 51, cornered him and used karate to first fend off his attacks and then force him to the ground where they held him until police arrived.

The man has been charged with attempted theft and remanded in custody.

- Ananova.com

Fishtank Humour - Article Tank - VIZ Top Tips

Here are some Tips I found. Favourites:

• Invited by vegetarians for dinner? Point out that since you`d no doubt be made aware of their special dietary requirements, tell them about yours, and ask for a nice steak.
• DON'T INVITE DRUG ADDICTS round for a meal on boxing day. They may find the offer of cold turkey embarrassing or offensive.
• OLD telephone directories make ideal personal address books. Simply cross out the names and address of people you don't know.
• TAXI drivers. Why not pop into the garage and ask them to fix your indicators lights for you so that other motorists know where the heck you're going.

A mild chuckle may be found in the rest of the list. Don't drink milk whilst reading, however, lest you find a really funny one and blow milk all over your cubicle.

.. or maybe drink milk, for that very reason. Or eat cottage cheese mixed in green gelatin: that'd be funny squirting out your nose!

You Poor Bastards

I'm gonna be here for my vacation:

Ha haaaa! Suffer!

(oh, I hope nothing goes wrong with the trip, really I do)

Netscape != Netscape

Sucking less, on a budget: Netscape != Netscape
I'm embarrassed for the mothers of those people trying to cash in on the old and decent reputation of a good but dead product, leveraging it to sell licenses for their cheap-ass net service. The double irony of using a Firefox browser is as lost on them as it is on the Firefox developers.

In the Army, Resourcefulness is a Crime

The AP is reporting 6 US troops have been Court-Martialed for Scrounging Equipment. Apparently, inadequately-equipped troops deployed into the field - and by this I mean "we don't have enough trucks to do our job" kind of inequipped - caught scrounging parts from vehicles littered by a friendly forced who'd previously moved on, that kind of ingenuity used to be a good thing. Apparently, the US Military wants their reservists to scrounge only in domestic garbage dumps.

One man's garbage, another man's armour plating.

Oh. It's also been a full year since they captured the leader of this toothless nation they invaded.

As a resident in a neighbouring nation rich in oil, diamonds, clean water and vast forests, let me say I, for one, welcome our imminent American invader overloards.

Guess where I'm vacationing this year

Three guesses:

Since mid-October, there have been six confirmed cases of Canadians who contracted malaria while visiting the Dominican Republic, and several other suspected cases. Two of the travellers are gravely ill. All the infections occurred in the southeast, around the popular tourist resort Punta Cana.

-- The Globe and Mail

Yep yep, I'm in the Dominican Republic in 2 weeks, apparently in one of the worst Malaria seasons yet:

Notice: Malaria, Dominican Republic, 2004 | CDC Travelers' Health: "La Altagracia Province and Duarte Province, including travelers to the Punta Cana resort area"

Guess which province I'm in. Yep, La Altagracia. Guess the area? Yep, Punta Cana. If they had mentioned me by name in the newscast, and said "just don't go there," it could not have been more direct.

Should be a fun trip, and with luck the frightful news stories on television will result in a nice, empty hotel.

Salon.com News | Whitewashing torture?

Whitewashing torture?

The [Word Organization for Human Rights] has formally requested that Attorney General John Ashcroft file criminal war-crimes charges against high-ranking administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush, over the revelations coming out of Abu Ghraib. [Sgt/Mr] Ford said he hoped to join in pushing for that action.

There's been good presidents, bad presidents and even impeached presidents. There are only two presidents who've ever even been potential targets of war crimes allegations, and they're father and son who are immediate descendants of a man convicted under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

War Crimes.

No, really. Like Hitler.

What corporate America can't build: a sentence

What corporate America can't build: a sentence

Here is one from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation based in Palo Alto, Calif.:

"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."

I'm actually appalled that someone wrote, proofed and sent a note with content like the above to someone else and hoped to be taken seriously.

I've run into the odd message from folks with content I dearly wanted to correct, but it's usually just folks asking statements or screwing up homonyms that we all learned in the 4th grade. I'm glad that I never received a message like the above, for I know I'd've been all over it!

I really am thinking of rejecting any mail if it's clearly a derived English - like my favourite, en_AOL - but I don't have time to learn how to fake Sendmail rejection messages!

Now if someone can tell me how to fix the spell-checker in this thing, so that it uses a more common dictionary instead of one only used by one minor English dialect, I'd be eternally grateful.

Sophos Doesn't Like Me

.. which sucks, because they're really, really cool.

I talked with Sid Falzthik for a while - and Sid, man, sorry I got your name wrong, but the thing's impossible to spell! Let me sequé into a story:

So, as the story goes, this guy was new on this base, and getting to know people. Army base, you know, so everyone's got their name on their shirt, right? So this guy's got this name, I swear it was like 30 characters long, this thing, all hyphenated and stuff.

"Hey Pally," the NewGuy says to the other guy, "How the hell do ya pronounce that?" The LongName guy looks at NewGuy long and tight for a second, maybe sizing him up.

"SMITH," he says.

Anyway, Sid was a great guy, if gifted with an equally tragic name, and Sophos, I think, rocks as a company. Buy all their stuff.

Our Mean scores getting Meaner

Of all things, the Christian Science Monitor has to break the news: A 'No Child Left Behind" Bush America is leaving children behind. According to the OECD, America's children are less able to solve simple Life Problems than they were in 2000. See the scores from 2003, or just go see the changes. (Yeah, it's all in stupid, proprietary DOC/XLS formats. The test, apparently, didn't test the testors)

Can I put Linux on this thing?

This new phone from Samsung boasts

1-megapixel camera, two color screens and a 1.5-gigabyte, 1-inch hard disk drive

All I wanna know is: can I put Linux on it? It's about 3 times the minimum requirement to install Linux on that thing, so I'm wondering

1. can I install it?
2. where do I plug in the usb
   
1. serial port, for the pH monitor for my fishy tank
2. NICs, so this thing can route traffic in a hostile environment
3. keyboard and mouse ... or do I just learn T9

No, really, actually: what I want to know is if this means we'll get new, smaller router machines. The Linksys unit is cool, and the usb storage device is cool too, but they both miss the mark. We need a newly converged unit, and this phone could push us there. (more later, when I have time)

Intermezzo has failed. We have no hope.

The news is always late: Linux needs better network File Systems. This is something that has been discussed only for about the last 5 years, now, but it's good to see the ever-timely NewsForge getting on-board just as the ship sailed.

I guess some folks, those who still live under rocks but actually edit a file on a shared volume, these people would find this to be news.

I mean, the state of Networked FileSystems is pathetic. The Internet, increasingly built and maintained by the lowest bidder and becoming no more in some folks' minds than a nifty channel to choke with fucking adverts, this internet just isn't reliable.

Having suffered a significant outage myself, weekly in the last month, I think my Cable company really believes that the Internet is not a service but more, really, a luxury item that we only use for fucking entertainment rather than as a tool and work medium

Unfortunately, we have little hope:

• Coda is prohibitively hard to install, and, when I tried, I found it wonderfully undocumented. Think of the rich challenge I could have enjoyed, if I only didn't need to do anything else for the next month except for getting this thing set up.
• InterMezzo, a coda-lite, is a dead project. The only people that don't think so are the people still downloading it. One guy maintains it, and that's only when he's not doing work for
• Lustre, the great third-generation product. Replicates, does it? Say, what version of perl does it use to toss journalled data over to the web server on the other end? And you want me to rely on this hokey method, right?

Our last, best hope:

• Radiant Systems has this peerfs thing that, they claim, is a replicated, journalled filesystem that permits true peered replication among N peers and which suffers disconnection gracefully.
  

Unfortunately, I've been once-bitten a few times, and now I'm twice-shy. I'll believe the hype when their Sales Support Engineer calls me tomorrow.

Yeah, the poor guy tomorrow. It's obvious, from my conversation with their sales guy, that they think I've got a spare bucket of money to toss at this. Guys, I'm running white box; I don't even pay for my linux distro, and this is a hobby project with me and two other guys. Where the hell're we gonna get a whack of money to throw at this thing? At least they got back to me..

.. two weeks after I originally mailed them.

I guess we'll see, though.

Buying Software

You people that never pay for decent software, you people suck.

I paid for more software today, so I can be so damned preachy and self-righteous. yay!

I needed to archive the driver/tool CD for my shiny new monitor, and I was just sick of grabbing the stupid trial copy of Alcohol 120%, so I looked at the two and bought a license for Alcohol 52%. I don't need to ever burn my disks, and Alcohol 120% CD Burning is still a bit featureless, so 52% is exactly what I need. Now, maybe, I can archive my freakin' disks without so much hassle.

The King is Dead. Long Live the King!

I blew up my monitor today.

I think I hosed the tube on my 21" Viewsonic Pt813, because, when I turn it on, I hear a staticky buzz just when it should be turning the tube on and the little light goes red. Since it's 7 years old, I'm thinking it's pretty much the tube, and that even asking anyone to even look at it is gonna cost me more than a replacement.

So I replace it. With a ViewSonic VP201s . I was gonna go cheap, but I stare at this thing like 18 hours a day. It's gotta be good. Good news is, Viewsonic is still the king. Yeah, they've got the Q line of Optiquest crap, and the A and E tubes outnumber the G units they sell, but their P line is still apparently a crowd-pleaser.

Yes, the games still rock. But bright! The thing's a frickin' beacon!

Oh, how quaint

I left something at my sister's place the other week, and she's shipping it back to me via Greyhound.

Memo to self: Greyhound has it here overnight, Friday morning, while Fedex Next Day First Thing Just-Get-It-There promised Monday at the earliest. Same for DHL and UPS, so I'm a bit more impressed at Greyhound for small inconsequential packages out of remote areas than Fedex. Remind me to write up, one time, why I dislike Greyhound in general.

Anyway, they phoned to let me know that it was available for pick-up at the local bus terminal. That's fine. Thing is, I can't get out to get it easily so my room-mate - yes I have one and she hasn't killed my grouchy ass yet - has agreed to get it. Here's the kicker: the procedure for her picking up a package on my behalf is

She asks for it

No, really:

• no ID
• no ticket/claim number
• no proof of habitation at my address
• no signing authority
• no Power of Attorney
• no proof of citizenship or landed immigrant status
• no proof of life other than the ability to ask for my package.

The Manhattan in me screams about security and abuse of the system, but I guess it still works for them.

Beautiful

Haikuesque:

You can't build a wall
high enough to keep you safe.
Build a self instead.

-- Nancy Veglahn
via North Maple Rag

Frickin' Magic Show

Work is a magic show: there are these guys who know how everything fits together in this horrid hodge-podge of stuff. No one else has any any clue, and half of what's done is 'just done' because that's the way it's done, you know.

I get the feeling I'm not the only guy digging through 11 different redundantly kept and overlapping documents in order to find out today's method for digging through this rat's nest of code and then learning how I'm going to modify, test, promote and build it.

Of course, it's not really possible to explain it all to us - I think the first rule of Fight Club is never to talk about Fight Club, after all - so we need to all line up and ask these very busy guys these very simple questions so that we can get back to the business of catching up on the work that's been so delayed because the VPs needed to save a couple bucks and so fired the rest of the guys.

Newbies out of college, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into.

moron

Bill Gibson quotes

...the larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, the first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide...the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre... The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people... On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a moron."

--H.L. Mencken, writing in The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Why do people hate this guy so much?

My general lack of respect for this president comes from my generally critical nature, something about (now two) engineered ballots, his family's ties to both Nazis and the CIA and the very real belief that this man will either plunge most of the world into the next world war or his country into the next inquisition.

Firefly Movie Delayed Another Five Months

Joss posted the following at Whedonesque.com:

Are you guys starting to hear that fanfare? Those distant drums? Are you slapping on your side-arms, pulling on your long brownish-colored coats and thumbing your crisp new bills in anticipation of the cinematic event of the year? Well, it's official: on April 22nd you, the true the blue the loyal, can step right up with the rest of America and wait five more months.

Heh. See, sometimes studios shuffle around release dates...

Okay. Don't panic. right now you're panicking. you're thinking, "how could they do this to me?" But what you should be thinking is: "How could they do this to Joss?". Seriously. That pity is mine and I want it back.

So what happened? Well, nothing terribly original. April got crowded with a lot of titles aimed at a similar demographic, and the studio decided September was a clearer corridor for the film to make the kind of impact it should. This isn't about a lack of confidence in the film -- in fact, they told me this before they even saw it. And now they have seen it, and unless they're way better liars than I'm used to, they dug it. Actually, they dug it pretty large, which is a good sign since there's not a single finished effect in the film. There's no reworking the end, no reshoots, no "does it have to be in space?". It's just a marketing issue. Now you'll get to watch lots of trailers in the summer. And hopefully, by the time it comes out, other people, people who ain't us, will get a whiff of what we're up to, and come along too.

I love this movie. I hate waiting to show it too you. I felt pretty much the way I imagine you're feeling right now when they told me. But these guys know what they're doing, and they're trying to protect their investment, not bury it. So I gotta be a grown-up. The release date is September 30th. Hopefully it won't change again.

Spread the word. Keep the faith. And gleam the damn cube already.

-j.
(I modified: BOLD changed to bold)

Frodo has Failed. George has the Ring

The title was on a protest poster in Halifax today.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/continentaldivide/diary_halifax.html

Apparently his first entry into Canada in 4 years included a trip to Halifax so he could say Terrorism a few more times on TV and also thank the people of Halifax for their help during the poorly-planned closure of all American airports on 2001-09-11.

Why is he finally going to Canada, and why are all his advisors quitting? Coincidence? If this was a bad decision, will the advisors who suggested it already have left his employ?

Criminal Code Sections

-- 7(3.7)(e) creates the jurisdiction to prosecute anyone, even a non-citizen, for the offence of torture even if committed outside of Canada as long as “the person who commits the act or omission is, after the commission thereof, present in Canada.”.

-- 7(5) creates jurisdiction to commence proceedings for torture in any part of Canada by providing that proceedings “may be commenced in any territorial division in Canada and the accused may be tried and punished in respect of that offence in the same manner as if the offence had been committed in that territorial division.”

Criminal Code sections 269.1(1), 21.(1) (2) and 22. (1) (2):

-- 269l1(1) torture
-- 21.(1)party to an offence of torture
-- 22.(1)(2) counselling another person to be a party to offence of torture

http://www.lawyersagainstthewar.org/legalaction/bushcharges.html

Now, we know that America - which has about 1/3 the world's population and 1/2 the world's lawyers - is a bit litigious. In fact, a handful of the last few Presidents have been impeached or have nearly been impeached. I think this president (and his father) are unique in that they're the only ones anyone wants to arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity.