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]”

Did Somebody Say Macho? by Zack 'Geist Editor' Parsons (Something Awful) takes on the daunting task of creating an objective scale determining any given person’s “Macho-ness”.

The macho-factor is a 2-dimensional matrix defined along the Swayze-Eastwood Axis and the Shatner-Kressley Axis (Kressley is the dude from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, who, apparently, is the cultural opposite of a guy who “was probably watching re-runs of “TJ Hooker” when his wife drowned in the pool”).

There is, of course, a helpful questionnaire to help you find... [More]

“There is hope… but not for us.”

Kafka

According to several sources (check Google News), the Democrat and Republican parties have officially merged into one organization. The move was ostensibly made to cut down on administration and production costs and does not mean the two parties themselves cease to exist; it just means Kerry and Bush might be sharing the same TV studio when filming mud-slinging commercials.

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie explains:

“…this move has nothing to do with ideology — it’s simply a matter of good... [More]”

The one real good side-effect of the invasion and take-over of Iraq was supposed to be a steady supply of oil to keep gas prices stable. Alas, Americans are feeling the pinch as gas prices hit an all-time record of $1.80 (national average). The Gas Price Crisis (White House.Org) is, as always, a highly non-reliable news source, but they did include a fake quote from Bush that caught my attention:

“Vice President Cheney and I know the oil industry inside and out. In fact, one of the reasons a near-majority of... [More]”

Here’s Aaron McGruder’s helpful contribution to Bush’s re-election strategy. This is the Boondocks from March 22 − March 27.

I got a link the other day, showing a recent talk show hosted by Dennis Miller. It was an interview with author Eric Alterman. Alterman’s written a pretty well-researched book called “What Liberal Media?”, in which he points out the rather obvious fact that the mainstream media is far from liberal. For all his trouble, he somehow got on the Dennis Miller show.

In the video, the guy on the left (Alterman) is presenting cogent arguments and facts. The guy on the right (Miller) is making fun of... [More]

In a fantasy world where people read and form their own opinions instead of accepting their thoughts from corporations intent on making them better consumers, Bush wouldn’t be hard to beat. In this fantasy world, Bush gets as many votes as Nader will in the real world and Nader is a legitimate threat. John Kerry is ignored because he had the gall to think people were dumb enough to simply vote for ABB (Anybody But Bush), regardless of his platform.

Instead our choice is restricted to exactly... [More]

I know it’s too late for Saint Patrick’s Day, but here it is anyway. Some of you can probably use it any day of the week.

Feet cold and wet.

• problem − Glass being held at incorrect angle.
• solution − Rotate glass so that open end points toward ceiling.

Feet warm and wet.

• problem − Improper bladder control.
• solution − Stand next to nearest dog, complain about house training.

Beer unusually pale and tasteless.

• problem − Glass empty.
• solution − Get someone to buy you another beer.

Opposite... [More]