The undying myth of the forefathers

Do You Recognize Bush’s America? by Arriana Huffington (AlterNet) contains a lot of good, hard information about the Bush administration, covering the massive contradictions in policy versus pablum that should be evident to any 10-year-old, but evidently escapes most Americans (though, to be fair, they miss it because of the paucity of real information provided by criminally negligent media).

Then she ends the article with:

“The guiding principle behind George Bush’s rebooted Democracy is... [More]”

Long-time earthli News reader, Nico Michael, participated in the filming of a short political feature as told in Film lets N.Y.ers drop a dollar on President (NY Daily News). The “15-minute film” is sponsored by “a nonprofit group that distributes films promoting social causes and human rights” and simply shows people sending their opinions to the White House via public phone.

If you dare step away from the video card world for more than a few months, you find, on returning, whole new vistas of acronyms, bandwidths, core-speeds, registers, pipelines and “technologies” waiting to eat you alive. The latest cards from the two top vendors, ATI and NVidia, are lining up to play tomorrow’s games at 1600x1200 with 8x Anti-aliasing and all effects on high. Quake 3 doesn’t even make a dent — assume it runs at 300FPS with everything on.

Radeon X800 XT

ATI’s latest card,... [More]

So in Iraq the US has what many call a Vietnam. There are a lot of parallels you can draw between the two wars and a lot of people are doing so. They’re the ones using the word “quagmire” a lot. It’s a detrimental term meant to reflect poorly on the one caught in the “quagmire” (the US). It also serves to dehumanize the opponent as a sucking force from which the US should disentangle itself before more harm comes to it. The harm inflicted on the country being called the quagmire is implicitly... [More]

Please note the incredible coincidence, once again, of news heating up at home and a coup abroad. Qusay and Uday have been killed. DNA verification came within hours. Let’s stop talking about what the President said or didn’t say; ok, he said it, but let’s stop talking about what it meant; ok, it was crystal clear what it meant, let’s stop talking about whether it was true; ok, it was definitely not true, let’s stop talking about whether the President was aware it wasn’t true …

Qusay and... [More]

Ari Fleischer is leaving the administration and his massively disengenuous efforts will be sorely missed. Ari & I (AlterNet) has an interview with the master disseminator. We live in times, however, where I feel that many will sympathize with poor Ari in this short inteview as he does his best to avoid making a commitment when he’s not sure; the reporter in this case is simply hectoring and badgering him unnecessarily.

The question he asks is extremely simple, but it is difficult to answer, because the... [More]

Here is an intriguing solution to spam. An infinite supply of email addresses; useful for when you must submit a usable email address (e.g. where a mail is sent to verify registration).

All mail sent to addresses you give out from spamgourmet is routed through that site and filtered through rules before going to your real address. For example, if your user name is ‘dude’, then you can sign up for a dodgy website with:

xxxgirls.5.dude@spamgourmet.com

This will allow 5 messages sent to this... [More]

Stupid Microsoft Tricks by Robert Cringely (PBS) talks about recent happenings in yet another lawsuit for anti-competitive practices that Microsoft is involved in; in this case, they are accused of flat-out stealing another company’s technology after prolonged (2 years) discussions with that company about licensing.

When asked to provide all emails from that period, the record at Microsoft came up blank for 35 weeks.

“The reason for this mass erasure, it was explained, is that Burst technology was unimpressive and not... [More]”

Poor Nations Can Purchase Cheap Drugs Under Accord (NY Times) covers a recent accord passed by the WTO allowing poorer nations, particularly African ones, to purchase generic versions of needed drugs from non-approved vendors.

“Under the accord, poor countries will be able to import generic versions of expensive patented medicines, buying them from countries like India and Brazil without running afoul of trade laws protecting patent rights.”

You may recall a similar accord being tabled last year, but... [More]

Grand Theft Auto in the dock… (The Register) brings violent video games back to the fore in US news, since:

“…two teenagers − William and Joshua Buckner, 16 and 14 years old respectively − opened fire on vehicles on the Interstate 40 highway in Tennessee with a .22 calibre rifle, killing one person and injuring another severely.”

When caught, the clever little imps had a reason all ready: “…they were bored, and decided to mimick their favourite videogame − Grand Theft Auto”. Note their ages; they are more... [More]

First Person Shooter − Under 100KBs of Code (SlashDot) delivers exactly that — including all textures and sounds. The screenshot below shows you that it’s a relatively normal looking 3d shooter, with a bit of a Quake2 feel to it, but with “Doom3-style graphics, that means full Phong lighting model with various light sources and normal mapping everywhere, and of course stencil based shadows”.

.kkrieger Screenshot

How do they do it? There’s a comment Explanations! by one of the developers, where he explains.

“All content,... [More]”

New Negative Campaign Ads Blast Voters Directly (The Onion) does it again with another article that will probably end up coming true before November. Now here’s a spot I’d like to see:

“A controversial 30-second TV spot for Kerry that aired throughout the Midwest Monday blamed the country’s ills not on Bush’s policies, but on the “sheer stupidity” of America’s voters.”

The Bush team fights back with:

“‘Are you going to vote for a candidate whose campaign promises would cost America $1.9 trillion over the... [More]”

It’s that time of year again. Slashdot has a story on it at The National TV Turn Off Week. The main site’s at TV Turnoff Network and is a spinoff of Adbusters. It’s a good idea and I’ve got just the challenge I need this week: the second season of 24 is playing 2 or 3 hours per week on a local German channel. I’ve watched the first 14 hours or so over the last 5 or 6 weeks. I don’t watch a lot of TV anyway — I’m debating what the significance of skipping 24 this week would be. I’m sure... [More]

That’s how Bush describes himself. That’s how his administration thinks of itself. They see it as justification for pretty much any action, as absolving them of any blame, as an excuse not to answer hard questions and as a reason to ignore all unbelievers who do not think the way they do.

We are at war. With us or against us. Shut up and sit down.

The attitude showed up in spades in Rice’s testimony this week, it’s apparent in every word Rumsfeld says and the President exhudes it while still... [More]

I just saw a piece of his daily press conference on CNN and, at first, he’s funny. He’s not funny in the way he thinks he’s funny, but funny in that he talks exactly like the people who make fun of him make him sound. The February 2nd, 2004 Doonesbury (pictured left) put the question of weapons of mass destruction into the Rumsfeld grinder and got:

The JavaScript Calendar page looked too nice and was putting earthli Software to shame. No longer! The summaries are small News articles, which means that software is now dynamic and searchable. There are only four entries so far, but more are coming. So far, the earthli Browser Detector has gotten an update. The code will be updated with the next WebCore release, but the algorithm description is much clearer now.

You’ve probably been to travel sites that let you use a cute little calendar to pick a date. You click an icon and up pops a calendar in a little window, you cruise around the months and click on a day to select it. The window goes away and your date is magically entered for you. It almost feels like a real GUI on the web!

earthli Javascript Calendar is just such a component, designed to easily integrate into your site’s design with no muss and no fuss. It’s free and open source and yours for... [More]

No, I’m sorry, but that’s way too much *data* by 87C751 (Plastic):

“Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.”

- Clifford Stoll & Gary Schubert

Yes, and before someone chides me…

“…Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.”

- Frank Zappa

1. You immediately complain that this should be subscripted as zero.
2. Most people say “Go To Hell,” but you tell people to redirect to /dev/null.
3. By the time you’ve gotten here in the document, you’ve run Tidy or a similar app to check my X/HTML skills.
4. The statement (0x2b||!0x2b) makes sense to you.
5. You find 4 funny.
6. You note with disgust that it always evaluates to true, since 0x2b != 0.
7. Point 6 disgusts you, because under languages other than C++ (e.g. Java), it would throw an exception,... [More]

An oft-quoted myth by a properly-trained American is that the US is too ‘good’ to other countries; we give too much aid/money/support/food/personnel to other countries in need, purely out of the goodness of our hearts. Report on U.S. foreign aid statistics (Kuro5hin) covers the actual amounts given by the US and compares it in absolute and relative (to total GDP) terms to other nations. It’s the ‘relative-to-GDP’ number that’s the most damning — the US ranks lowest of the 22 countries listed, which... [More]

Fast-Food Chains Get a Break Today (Washington Post) notes that

“[t]he Republican-controlled House on Wednesday voted to ban supersize lawsuits that blame the food industry for expanding waistlines and health problems, saying such cases could bankrupt fast-food chains and restaurants.”

I’m sorry, what? I can understand a dislike for specious lawsuits and disengenous plaintiffs claiming they should get a lot of money for ignoring health warnings from not only their own groaning, wheezing, farting, sedentary, and... [More]

The earthli WebCore now uses a nifty JavaScript calendar component to let users easily choose and set dates. This makes choosing dates for pictures in earthli Albums a breeze!

You don’t have to get the WebCore to use it — it’s also available as an separate open-source component. Check out a demo or download it now.

Brought to you by earthli Software.

“Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.”

This article originally appeared in 2004. In the meantime (it’s 2009 as I write this), a lot has changed and the major complaint—a lack of explicit contracts in C#—will finally be addressed in the next version of C#, 4.0.

A Conversation with Anders Hejlsberg (Artima.com) is a four-part series on the ideas that drove the design of C#. (The link is to the first page of the first section; browse to Artima.com Interviews to see a list of all the sections.)

Virtual vs. Static

I found some points of... [More]

“The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”

In Fajulla recently, four Americans were burned to death. Their bodies (which were by this time charred beyond recognition) were dragged through the street and hung from a local bridge to cheers and dancing from a crowd of townspeople. Gruesome images jolt Americans (Canoe) talks about how torn the media was in deciding whether to air the gruesome footage. “White House press secretary Scott McClellan called for “responsible” media coverage of the murders Wednesday of four security contractors”. What... [More]

The other presidential candidate has written Equality Index Catalogues Economic Gap by Ralph Nader (Common Dreams), covering the recent release of the National Urban League on The State of Black America 2004. This list provides “a statistical measurement of the disparities which exist between African American and whites in economics, housing, education, social justice and civic engagement.”

There are some pretty significant differences between blacks and whites in America today, where whites still make up 69% of the population... [More] (US census)

Microsoft has been just plain bad in the world of business for a long time. They break rules, abuse monopolies and starve or absorb entire industries right and left. They’ve got strangleholds in dozens of tech markets and leverage them all to acquire even more. They get caught all over the world − you relatively often read of Microsoft in court or paying fines − but they continue to do business exactly the same way.

Why is that?

The answer is relatively obvious, but Timing is Everything by Robert Cringely... [More]

Ronco Spray-On Usability (Daring Fireball) is an essay on software usability triggered by a column by the rambunctious “Eric S. Raymond”. The setup covers some of the background of Linux usability, but gets interesting near the middle, where he proposes that:

“The problem isn’t just that dear old A.T. [Aunt Tillie] can’t use desktop Linux — the problem is that even Linux geeks have trouble figuring it out.”

That indicates that people, Raymond included, who believe that Linux is a few hard nights of coding away... [More]

The same busy little lobbyists who are doing their best to outlaw your Tivo are also hard at work preventing the Cable-TV consumer’s dream: A la Carte Cable. Sorry — No a la Carte Cable (Washington Post) explains that the same people are hard at work making sure your cable bill never, ever goes down.

What is “a La Carte Cable”? Imagine, if you would, a world in which you only pay for things you actually want and use. As a cable-consumer advocate put it: “When I go to the grocery store to buy a quart of milk,... [More]”