[2004/06/30]

→ this one's for you, rach: an article by the michael bierut (of pentagram of course)on taglines and the ywca. def worth a look. | comment 0

[2004/06/29]

→ this gives new meaning to identity theft. a paralegal who works for Fish & Neave opens a bank account under the name Fish Neave and convinces honeywell to send checks to her instead of the firm. doh. see, corporation reallyy are full-on proxies for people. they even get their identity stolen. . . | comment 1

[2004/06/28]

→ the nyt interview with ronald's son. my three favorite quotes would be "Do you and your wife, Doria, have children? No. We have three cats. It's like having children, but there is no tuition involved" and "Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash?" and "One thing that Buddhism teaches you is that every moment is an opportunity to change. And we will have a moment in November to make a big change." | comment 0

[2004/06/27]

→ moore's fahrenheit's opening weekend numbers were quite large: it "opened in 868 theatres, a wide release for a documentary but narrow compared to big Hollywood flicks. The film averaged $25,115 a theatre, compared to $7,190 in 2,726 cinemas for White Chicks." | comment 1

→ war is expensive. in lives and cash. an article at the guardian reports that as of june 16th, "11,317 iraqi civilians and 6,370 iraqi soldiers or insurgents had been killed." and that a thinktank estimates the war "will ultimately cost every American family an estimated $3,415". that's a lot more than that $300 little bush gave back in his tax cuts. | comment 0

[2004/06/24]

→ now one of my (our) favorite local restuarants soy, has a blog. that's crazy. wacky. | comment 0

→ amuzeepy = creepy+amusing+amazing | comment 1

→ lest there be any doubt that the riaa is scum (quick summary at /.) | comment 0

→ kottke has a short, succinct article on moore's fahrenheit 911 with some thoughtful comments. worse a read. we're seeing it tomorrow. | comment 0

[2004/06/23]

→ this article and this one are good starting refs for category 5 specs. | comment 0

→ (via /.) is this slick pr, anti/simulated-grassroots saavy, or just dishonest? you're a think tank. you get almsot all your funding form one company. you release reports that harshly criticize opponents of the company that funds you. this isn't a hypothetical question. "They have a word in Washington for the corporate-sponsored outcry, the grassroots movement that isn’t: AstroTurf. By far the most comical example of this is to be found at the Freedom to Innovate Network (Fin), a “non-partisan, grassroots network of citizens and businesses who have a stake in the success of Microsoft and the high-tech industry”. Fin doesn’t try particularly hard to appear independent—its website, after all, is housed on Microsoft’s own—but it has as its online centrepiece a lengthy collection of testimonials from activist groups with vaguely alarming names..." | comment 0

→ this is a handy little page on on what file types all those three letter and four letter codes correspond with. this site specifically on the same topic looks handy too. | comment 0

→ this feature comparision between filemaker 2.1 and 7 has to be one of the dumbest i have ever seen. who cares that all these features have been added since 1993? hello, what hardware can even run 2.1 these days? and why 2.1? why not 2? | comment 0

[2004/06/22]

→ it's a rumor, and so prob off, but appleInsider is claiming apple will be releasing new displays this month. we'll see. | comment 0

[2004/06/21]

→ (via a link from andrew), a nice, tight open letter to ms saying it's fair enough that future versions of ie (mac and win, both) aren't going to be free anymore, but how about fixing the countless standard compliance bugs in the current versions first, ok? that's, uh, paraphrased, btw. | comment 0

→ one of my coworkers uses vonage for his home number. i just use my mobile now, though i do have a landline for emergencies (ringer is off) and to carry dsl, but the hint that vonage is realeasing a new os x client based on x-ten is exciting. if i was starting a small business right now, i would go with voip like this for a few lines or M5 for full professional system. too bad macktez already owns an older voip-based 3Com NBX. (update: the vonage os x app is avail now) | comment 0

[2004/06/18]

→ this lecture by Cory Doctorow is by far the clearest, tightest explanation of the fundamental flaw in drm (digital rights management; often called "copy protection"). here is an excerpt (do go read the original, at least 1. That DRM systems don't work") too small to convey the argument effectively, but ah wel,l maybe it'll get you to read the whole thing: "DRM systems are broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid. It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day, all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point, the secret isn't a secret anymore." oh yeah, and if you read/liked cryptomonicon, this is required reading. | comment 0

→ if you love that atari gadget rae has, sounds like somone is coming out with a commodore 64 version. just an announcement on that page, alas, no photos. | comment 0

→ a little article at brighthand about why clie failed here, but succeeded in japan makes the point, essentially, that usability is key to the american electronics market. this is especially interesting in the context of the ipod's success over other, much more feature-laden (video, radio, recording, etc) devices. the "it just works" mantra and all that. | comment 0

[2004/06/17]

→ off the top of my head, a list of sites (in a top 10-ish kind of way?) my dad should peruse before writing a chapter in the next version of HT on blogs: first slashdot, then mefi, then maybe kottke or cameron, and then a personal connection saturation. anyone else have any suggestions to add/remove from the list? comments? | comment 0

→ hey, very cool. sixapart changed the pricing again on mt 3.0, this time to one i can understand and imagine upgrading too. the commercial pricing (macktez bought a commercial license for 2.6) is reasonable at $350 or $600 for 20 users, minus the $150 upgade discount. we're not upgrading just yet, but glad to know it's a viable option again. | comment 0

→ choice quotes of the day (given the topic, obviously anonymous): "You have the prostate of an 18-year old" (technically that one is hearsay; and was not adressed to an 18 yr old, btw) and "[Prostate test] Don't recommend it as a leisure activity." good to know. | comment 0

→ went to the opera in the park. took photos. i like cheese. | comment 1

[2004/06/16]

→ the first contact form submission came in remarkably quickly. the page just went up on sunday and got a message yesterday asking a (amusingly) kinda incomprehensible question: "I'll like to ask if you could supply me with Graphical pictures of an entire electrical installlation say in conduit form. Please I'll be grateful for any help rendered.i don't mind 3-d graphics.Thanks a lot ". very politely put. but i'm not really clear what he/she means by an "entire electrical installlation." | comment 0

→ many of the films at the new york asian film festival look interesting, but hero looks especially so. the write up is dripping with recent personal references, from "Wong Kar-wai's cinematographer, Chris Doyle, shot Hero" to "The action is choreographed by the Balanchine of martial arts, Ching Siu-tung" to "autumnal duels take place in forests obscured by whirlwinds of falling leaves" to "this film is a political statement the way the Mona Lisa is a cheese sandwich". i like cheese. i have a lot of it in my bag right now. | comment 1

[2004/06/14]

→ apple vs ms on number of updates: "According to Bereskin, Apple has issued 44 security updates since Mac OS X was introduced in March 2001, and 3 percent of those were classified critical -- a vulnerability that can be exploited remotely. The Help Viewer and Disk vulnerabilities are examples. By comparison, Microsoft issued 78 security updates in the same period, and 65 percent were critical, Bereskin noted." | comment 0

[2004/06/13]

→ what a birthday week. just got some photos up. rach organized a surprise potluck ("bring cheese, liquor, or brocolli") on sun night, prefaced by drinks at the traditional nuevo. on my actual bday she took me to eleven madison park for a magical (and delicious) evening. last night we went to the ballet at lincoln center. | comment 0

[2004/06/11]

→ (from pete) after some system upg at aol's servers you can now send an sms message to a mobile phones from ichat -- and, more interesting to me, actually get a reply and keep chatting. nifty bit of elegant integration. | comment 0

[2004/06/09]

→ just looking at the carrying case, not the (odd) external SATA drives. . . | comment 0

[2004/06/08]

→ (from /.) sandvine reports that 80% of spam now comes from windows computers that have been infected with worms (eg. bagle.a through k). you gotta put some if the blame on ms for shipping millions of copies of windows with numerous gaping holes. this article at /. (and the article it references why windows ia a security nightmare) sums it up well: "Microsoft has set aside a $5 million fund for paying off informants on malware authors. In my opinion a good chunk of this money deserves to be paid to individuals who help catch the Microsoft employees behind the design of Windows Registry and Windows Update. As I found out, the two mis-features work together to deprive Windows users of all protection from malware. " just the fact that you have windows machines getting infected (we have seen this at clients numerous times) within seconds of being connected to the network, before the security updates can even be downloaded and installed. nuts, just nuts. | comment 0

→ this article (at kottke) on using something omnipresent but local (big mac in the case of the economist article it's linking) as an economic indicator reminds of one of the classic "nyc job offer" issues: it costs more to live in nyc than in (for example) rural rhode island, so a job that pays X in ri needs to pay more than X in nyc to account for the higher cost of living. sometimes the diff can be startlingly large. and sometimes people can do a remarkable job at gettin' by with remarkably modest incomes in this city. . . | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/06/07]

→ have a client who uses cisco 7960 phones and i want to use the PoE functionality for the two conf room phones. hard to find non-aburdly expensive solutions for this. but a little wiki called voip-info has the perfect article. looks like i'll be picking up a $25 3com 3CNJPSE to try this with. | comment 0

→ been looking for an inexpensive rack cabinet Keyboard and Mouse Sliding Shelf. looks like this is one. | comment 0

→ when installing firewalls and voip networks where you want two ip networks that are physically isolated from each other, you sometimes need two data jacks at a location in which you only have one. this thingy yo split one enet jack into two separate runs could be handy. | comment 0

→ rachel sent this link to what is likely the cemetary behind the coop to me a while ago; have been meaning to post it here. | comment 0

→ this iPhotoToGallery plugin looks useful. been wondering if there was something out there like this. i was reminded of this by seeing the nifty-looking (for type pad users) iPhoto to TypePad plug in. | comment 0

[2004/06/04]

→ whoah, was looking at a page on futurama and saw, tucked down in the corner, this evidence that . . . well, not sure of what, but if you're name is rach, follow the link.

→ this is only part of the puzzle, but been looking at ways to put a company directory into an ldap server so that os x addressbook-using users could search for it and address email using it. this hint on creating LDAP address book entries to share is a start. i still need a simple (ideally non os x server) ldap server solution and this doesn't seem like the most user-friendly solution, but it's a part. | comment 0

[2004/06/03]

→ josh put together a nice tight page on how to secure the one (still theoretical, mind you; no known exploits in the wild that i know if) os x security hole. | comment 0

→ it's another (good) article on microsoft about how the source of their success (90% from the windows os, office, and server software) puts them in a not insiginificant bind. one noteworthy stat (though unattributed, i should point out): "Fewer than 3 percent of Microsoft Office users have upgraded to the latest version." another though-provoking one: "To remain attractive to investors, Microsoft must demonstrate that it can replace and augment lost revenue by diversifying into new businesses, but only billion-dollar product segments matter to such a big company. Even the Xbox game platform and MSN can’t bring in that kind of money." | comment 0

[2004/06/02]

→ didn't you always wonder how much a glove box would be? only $1392.06 for you to do your own creepy experiments. but i think the airlock, clamping rings, neoprene (or clamping too!) sleeves are additional. | comment 0

→ so sounds like sony is saying goodbye to the US handheld market. that means no more clie's. weird. they supposedly sell second most popular model now too. they're still selling in japan, though. rumors relate to the PSP (playstation portable? personal?) being a full-on pda/mp3 player/etc. maybe that's why? | comment 0