Showing that you care is something you're not supposed to do. The penalty is death, in a symbolic sense. Better to stay aloof, uninvolved, like a TV character. "I don't really care," I say, when nothing could be further from the truth. This is the American way. (Or at least the California way.)

But, at some point you have to take a stand. Maybe it's in the last days or hours of life, struggling against cancer, heart disease or diabetes, or whatever's gonna getcha. Maybe at that point it's okay to care, to take a stand, to fight. But I suspect not. Even then people say "What's he getting so riled up for?" The answer of course is fairly obvious.

It's called living, and it's worth getting agitated over.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:36:41 PM -

Officials said the Dewie campaign is part of the federal government’s broad effort to promote a “culture of security” and the view that every person who uses computers and networks, such as the Internet, has a role in keeping cyberspace safe.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:59:54 PM -

For which reason, you may observe that the man whose probity consists in merely obeying the laws, cannot be truly virtuous or estimable; for he will find many opportunities of doing contemptible and even dishonest acts, which the laws cannot punish

Stephanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin, Comtesse de Genlis 1746-1830. "Laws," Tales of the Castle. circa 1793

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:48:46 PM -

I particularly enjoyed this week's missive from Hank Blakely. He turns from his weekly W bashing to the news from Pat Robertston:

Pat (actually his real name is "Marion," but that's just a bit gender ambiguous, so he substituted "Pat") and his American Center for Law and Justice (they do both!), have come up with this simply nifty idea they call the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act*. Wow! Huh? We mean, wow! How many loaded words can you get into one title? Do these guys know their business, or do these guys know their business?

More here. [JOHO the Blog]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 1:53:51 PM -

Word Ways, the oddest journal on the planet, and available only in print, has at last put up a website at www.WordWays.com. WordWays is a small-circulation journal for people who treat words as objects. They set themselves challenges and then create enormous word lists of, for example, all the words that can be broken into pallindromic sets. And that's one of the simplest examples.

The site is scandalously out of date, though! It runs Jeff Grant's 10-word word-square that relies on people's proper names but does not yet run the 10-word word-square in the current issue, the first such square with all authenticated sources. It's from Rex Gooch in Letchworth, England. Here it is, with the source of each word to the right:

A B A P T I S T U M     Pulliam

B A H R A M T A P A     in Azerbaijan

A H L E R B R U C H     in Germany

P R E P A R A T O R     Oxford Eng. Dict.

T A R A D A N O V A     in Russia

I M B R A N G L E S     OED

S T R A N G F O R D     in England

T A U T O L O G I A     qv in OED

U P C O V E R I N G     OED

M A H R A S D A G I     in Turkey

Congratulations to Mr. Gooch and all the little Letchworth Gooches! [JOHO the Blog]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:33:39 AM -

Ten years in the Valley, and all Murray Swain had to show for it was a spare tire, a bald patch, and a life that was friendless and empty and maggoty-rotten. His only ever California friend, Liam, had dwindled from a tubbaguts programmer-shaped potato to a living skeleton on his death-bed the year before, herpes blooms run riot over his skin and bones in the absence of any immunoresponse. The memorial service featured a framed photo of Liam at his graduation; his body was donated for medical science.

Liam's death really screwed things up for Murray. He'd gone into one of those clinical depression spirals that eventually afflicted all the aging bright young coders he'd known during his life in tech. He'd get misty in the morning over his second cup of coffee and by the midafternoon blood-sugar crash, he'd be weeping silently in his cubicle, clattering nonsensically at the keys to disguise the disgusting snuffling noises he made. His wastebasket overflowed with spent tissues and a rumor circulated among the evening cleaning-staff that he was a compulsive masturbator. The impossibility of the rumor was immediately apparent to all the other coders on his floor who, pr0n-hounds that they were, had explored the limits and extent of the censoring proxy that sat at the headwaters of the office network. Nevertheless, it was gleefully repeated in the collegial fratmosphere of his workplace and wags kept dumping their collections of conference-snarfed hotel-sized bottles of hand-lotion on his desk.

The number of bugs per line in Murray's code was 500 percent that of the overall company average. The QA people sometimes just sent his code back to him (From: qamanager@globalsemi.com To: mswain@globalsemi.com Subject: Your code... Body: ...sucks) rather than trying to get it to build and run. Three weeks after Liam died, Murray's team leader pulled his commit privileges on the CVS repository, which meant that he had to grovel with one of the other coders when he wanted to add his work to the project.

Two months after Liam died, Murray was put on probation.

Three months after Liam died, Murray was given two weeks' leave and an e-mail from HR with contact info for an in-plan shrink who could counsel him. The shrink recommended Cognitive Therapy, which he explained in detail, though all Murray remembered ten minutes after the session was that he'd have to do it every week for years, and the name reminded him of Cognitive Dissonance, which was the name of Liam's favorite stupid Orange County garage band.

Murray returned to Global Semiconductor's Mountain View headquarters after three more sessions with the shrink. He badged in at the front door, at the elevator, and on his floor, sat at his desk and badged in again on his PC. From: tvanya@globalsemi.com To: mswain@globalsemi.com Subject: Welcome back! Come see me... Body: ...when you get in.

Tomas Vanya was Murray's team lead, and rated a glass office with a door. The blinds were closed, which meant: dead Murray walking. Murray closed the door behind him and sighed a huge heave of nauseated relief. He'd washed out of Silicon Valley and he could go home to Vancouver and live in his parents' basement and go salmon fishing on weekends with his high-school drinking buds. He didn't exactly love Global Semi, but shit, they were number three in a hot, competitive sector where Moore's Law drove the cost of microprocessors relentlessly downwards as their speed rocketed relentlessly skyward. They had four billion in the bank, a healthy share price, and his options were above water, unlike the poor fucks at Motorola, number four and falling. He'd washed out of the nearly-best, what the fuck, beat spending his prime years in Hongcouver writing government-standard code for the Ministry of Unbelievable Dullness.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 12:49:59 AM -

Posted by The Happy Tutor

Good communication is whatever is best understood by your audience. With a dog say whatever you want and wave a piece of meat. With politicians say what you will and wave money. With women, well, forget it...there are limits to what can be said even on this site.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 8:42:03 PM -

Father Guido Sarducci, a brashly innovative thinker, conceived of something called The Five Minute University.  He postulated that, since most of what one learns during college is eventually forgotten, courses should be reduced to key points that can be taught quickly.  For example, a business course is basically about "buying stuff and selling it for more."  Economics is just "supply and demand."  Using this approach, the entire four-year curriculum could be trimmed down to five minutes.  Actually, Sarducci acknowledged that, "about a minute-and-a-half-a would-a be taken up inna registration."  You've got to allow time for bureaucracy.

I think this principle could work in Congress.  The current system produces many convoluted laws that clearly don't work and cause enormous confusion, so how much worse could it be if the congressional term only lasted five minutes?   If nothing else, the official record of the proceedings would be short, and easy to read.  Here's a sample of a session dedicated to the Internet -

Digital Rights Management -  Prominent companies want this.  Let's give it to them.  Truth is, after a while users will revolt and the companies will find that it isn't worth the hassle.  Until then, we need a law so people feel like we did something.  The law will say a bunch of complicated things that no one can figure out.  It will be challenged, and will work its way through the over-burdened court system until the the marketplace revolts.

Hyperlinking - declare it a scarce public resource and auction off linking rights to the highest bidder.  The strategy here is to tax corporate stupidity.  Obviously, people are going to link as they please, and they aren't going to pay anyone for the right to do it.  But some people would believe the government could do this, and would therefore bid for the rights.  By making business people bid against one another for a useless right you increase the financial burden on a companies that are stupid, and therefore likely to go bankrupt anyway -- and you put money in the public coffers.  This is sound economic policy.

Library filtering & kids' access to porn -  Very controversial stuff.  Controversial issues are always challenged on constitutional grounds anyway so let's not worry too much about a sensible solution.  Try to make as many people happy as you can.  Pass a law that says if anyone uses a computer to look at nudity of any kind they pay large fines, which --once collected-- are distributed to the RIAA or the Motion Picture Association.  That will make the religious fundamentalists happy and help subsidize our foundering entertainment industry.  Eventually the Supreme Court will rule the law is laughably unconstitutional, but by then the kids will be grown up.  And hopefully they will have learned how to keep their kids from seeing porn using a low-tech method: i.e., being a watchful parent.

P2P hacking - Let the companies do it, what the hell.  Microsoft's programmers are smart. What could go wrong?  Well, okay something might go wrong.  So create an agency that can add some regulations along the way.  Why?  Let's say the hacking code gets out of control, creates network congestion, and results in huge delays in Internet traffic.  People will complain about the stupid law.   But you've got government officials with a vested interest in defending it, even if it obviously impedes commerce and causes chaos.  Just like the Transportation Security Agency.

Obviously, there other important issues --copyright term extensions, broadcast flags, and so on-- but you can't tackle everything at once.  Plus, you have to leave at least a minute and half for the lobbyists.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:33:33 PM -

Keating, Boesky and Milken collectively swindled Wall Street out of more than $500 million. Yet together they served less than 10 years. I know a man serving 20 years for an $800 heist.

Americans say they want to see greedy, dishonest CEOs punished. But in truth, most Americans are more afraid of boys from the housing projects holding them up in an alley for 20 bucks than they are of having their pensions and portfolios gutted by Wall Street scoundrels.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 8:33:00 PM -

Jesus takes your calls - actually he doesn't have time for that, so he just put out and FAQ, which you might want to look at.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:21:29 PM -

From a mailing list comes a quote from an interview in the spring issue of "Boulevard" (not available online). The interview is with Ha Jin, "a writing professor at Boston University and the winner of an enviable list of awards — including the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Hemingway/PEN Award, and the National Book Award..." (What, no Heissman Trophy?)

Chinese is very rich in describing feelings. For sadness there are some words English doesn't have. So too for taste. ... [But] there are some abstract words that Chinese doesn't have, such as 'truth,' 'identity,' and 'solitude.' Obviously, English is a more speculative language, whereas Chinese is more earthly, closer to things.

This would sound like an urban myth if it didn't come from such a durn good source. Amazing how different we can be while still being the same. [JOHO the Blog]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:52:09 PM -

Bob Lewis nails it again.  On the current round of accounting scandals and the regulation backlash to come...

• As we sit in the rubble of Enron, ImClone, WorldCom, Tyco, AOL, and other, as-yet-undiscovered or unpublicized corporate implosions, it's worthwhile to wonder which is the egg: the lack of accountability resulting from more than two decades of business deregulation, or the corrupt perspective of the corporate elite who acquired the resulting additional power.
• Lord Acton notwithstanding, I think the corruption came first.
• Without regulation, those businesses that resort to any tactic to win have the advantage over those that restrict their behavior to conventional codes of ethics.
• Consequently, ethical CEOs should welcome government regulation, not fight it.
• The goal of an ethical CEO would be efficient regulation, not deregulation.
• For more than two decades we've been subjected to unrelenting propaganda from the BIG/GAS (Business Is Great/Government and Academics are Stupid) contingent decrying any and all regulation as a fundamentally bad idea.
• Regulation, we've been assured, prevents American businesses from being competitive in world markets, harms productivity, and hampers profitability.
• The business community no longer has the credibility to be part of the process.
• Their goal will be minimizing any chance of new abuses, unfettered by considerations of how hard or easy it will be to comply.
• Every new regulation will result in reporting requirements, every reporting requirement will require new information technology, and nobody is going to care how hard it is to build.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:48:28 PM -

Part of breaking down irrationality would seem to require some basic information concerning why people worry about particular things. Today's New York Times (free registration required) has a nice piece that outlines some of the main reasons for worry and gives examples of how people react.

After you've read the piece, think about how many government policy decisions seem to be based on irrational fears. But we can't just blame a government - we are all far too ready to look for a scapegoat for any problem or risk. Instead, we must consider how our opinions about risk are driving government policy decisions. As a simple example, there is incontrovertible evidence that many lives would be saved if everybody wore seatbelts in cars yet governments in some jurisdictions won't enforce it by law because of public pressure against it.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:41:49 PM -

Posted as a Public Service by The Happy Tutor

As composition is to writing so shopping is to Brands.

As writing falls into genres, such as slogan, riddle, invective, lyric, comedy, tragedy, epic, so Brand compositions cluster in Lifestyles: Of the rich and famous, of the Cowboy, of the Athlete, of the Rebel.

Bottom the Weaver lives the lifestyle of the Bumpkin.

Decorum: A Bumpkin should dress, act and talk in the style of a Country Clown; Kings should dress, act, and speak in the style befitting their station. (Horace)

In the world of Lifestyles, Bottom the Weaver wears the signs of the Polo Playing elite.

Aspiration has replaced Decorum: The Clown dresses as King. The illiterate buys bookcases from Levingers. The Half-wit wears a Harvard T-shirt. The Virgin dresses as a Whore. And, the Whore dresses as a Nun.

Who sold Bottom the Weaver his paste-board Crown? Light-fingered Ned, who has sold so many Crowns that he is now King of the Mint.

The Freedom of the Market is horizontal only; higher and lower has been abolished - no station in life is higher than another, no manners are good, no taste is good, no culture is high.

Good, Better, and Best is a Sears Branding Strategy.

To Bottom the Weaver, and Light-fingered Ned O' the Mint, more and less is the only measure of success.

When the King is Ned O' the Mint, the The Book of the Courtier will not dwell on good manners.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:35:52 PM -

Not only does Passport to the Pub: A British Guide to Pub Etiquette teach you how to make your way around an English public house, it's an excellent blueprint for any social environment guide. Here's a snippet about buying the barkeep a drink in lieu of a tip:

"This may initially seem like an unnecessarily convoluted and tortuous way of giving someone a tip. Most visitors, however, find the 'and one for yourself' ritual a refreshingly friendly alternative to the impersonal handing over of coins.

"Feel free to offer a drink even when the bar is busy and the publican or member of staff will not have time to consume it immediately, or even to join you at all. It is quite appropriate for them to accept your offer, add the price of their drink to your order, and enjoy it later when the bar is less crowded. On pouring the drink, even several hours later, the recipient will try to catch your eye, and raise the glass to you in acknowledgement with a nod and a smile, perhaps saying 'cheers' or 'thanks' if you are within earshot."

[kottke.org]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 8:12:45 PM -

  Source: Doc Searls Weblog; 8/19/2002; 8:11:37 AM.

Feel good, automatically 

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 8:23:32 AM -

Even Eric Schlosser, author of the muckraking book "Fast Food Nation," is a fan. "I think they're great," said Mr. Schlosser.[Scott Loftesness] [ericfreeman.com]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 9:43:16 AM -

From Illustrated Armenian Sayings

Armenian: "¶ÉáõËë Ï°³ñ¹áõÏ» Ïáñ"
Transliteration: "K'lukh's g'artuge gor"
Translation: "He's ironing my head"
Meaning: "He is bothering me"

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:36:28 PM -

Micah Wright has put up this wonderful site with posters done in the style of US WWII propganda posters. Here are reduced versions of two of my favorites that he did. Go to his site to see the full size versions. Recommended (although he says that the site, hosted on Apple's iMac service, is frequently taken down towards the afternoon as it exceeds bandwidth limitations).

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:30:17 AM -

Malcolm Gladwell on The Naked Face we all wear:

"But there's nothing secondary about the face, and surely this realization is what set John Yarbrough apart on the night that the boy in the sports car came at him with a gun. It's not just that he saw a microexpression that the rest of us would have missed. It's that he took what he saw so seriously that he was able to overcome every self-protective instinct in his body, and hold his fire."

A must-read article about what people see when we look at each other and how some have taken that skill to a seemingly super-human level.

Reader Comments (add yours)

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 8:16:20 PM -

Rick Klau's wants more privacy:

I think this should be an option built in to Radio, but it's relatively easy for you to do on your own. Here's the issue: Radio is a web content management system - when you add content to Radio, it automatically uploads that content to your website. For many users, their web site is hosted at http://radio.weblogs.com/. (Others, like me, host it at their own domain.) Radio maintains its content in a hierarchical folder structure. But relatively savvy individuals can type in your URL and add folders they want to "snoop" on - and Radio doesn't prevent this.

There's an easy way to do this: drop a text file into any folder you want to restrict access to. The text file is just a couple lines, and it includes a meta refresh command that forces the browser to load a new page. Here's my file - save it as index.txt, and drop it into any folder other than your "www" folder.

To try this out, try going to someone's Radio weblog and adding /categories after the URL. You'll now see all the categories they've set up. This isn't necessarily snooping, but there may be some private categories they've posted. (There are other examples, but hopefully you get the idea.) If you're the individual maintaining the blog in Radio, adding this text file to the folder will automatically redirect the browser to your site's home page.

Memo to Userland: I'd like this to be an option in the application itself. If I disable directory browsing, Radio should automatically drop this text file into any folder it creates.

[aka Blue Sky Radio]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 8:56:59 AM -

Will the US keep the torch burning? - Neal Stephenson's words are relevant:

The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. . . . We Americans are the only ones who didn't get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals. via Instapundit

I don't want to sound like a doom-sayer, but I often wonder if our American culture  --with it's strong federal government, and inclination to address important issues from a central authority-- doesn't contain seeds that will weaken its place in a world that is increasingly vesting power in individuals.  I realize that's a bold assumption, i.e. that we are vesting more power in individuals.  But, if you believe it, as I do, then you have to recognize that the power shift is so subtle that it isn't yet registering on any measuring scale.  Nevertheless, I can't help concluding that technical advances such as the Internet are making central control less meaningful.  Maybe that's why government, along with Hollywood,  is enchanted with the notion of controlling the flow of information on the internet.  Maybe not consciously, even.  Are beauracracies capable of unconscious wishes? Freud and others would say absolutely not.  Anyway, I was just wondering.  You may now return to the regularly scheduled broadcast.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 7:59:50 PM -

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

Poul Anderson

[the Quotations Page] via [Jake's Radio 'Blog]

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 9:19:28 PM -

I had one of those fun browsing evenings where I was pointed toward one thing on the web, which lead me to another, which lead me to another and so on. I have concluded that there are some really creative people doing fun political stuff on the net these days. I wonder if it is a function of all the unemployed web designers? In any case, we partisan political junkies are the beneficiaries.

Joe Conanson of Salon pointed to this both funny and pointed advertisement for the Democrats, done by some creative webbie with Flash skills, to the tune of Pink Floyd's Money. If only the Democrats had enough spine to run ads like this.

I decided to look around www.blah3.com and see what else was on the site. There are a fair number of Flash ads, most of them accurate but with a strong message. Then I followed the top link to http://www.stolenelectioncoin.com/, where I found these coins:

Then back to www.blah3.com where I found this wonderful poster above, cited as being originally "From Barney Gumble on the BartCop Forum".

So off to see what BartCop was, where I found this TIPS button, as well as a hilarious and terrifying doctored picture of Ashcroft that I wouldn't want to show on a family friendly blog. Then I decided to call it a night, happy with the treasures I found on the net tonight. I hope that you enjoy them too.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 1:14:55 PM -

I can only imagine how fortunate you must feel to be reading my review. This review is the product of my lifetime of experience in meeting important people and thinking deep thoughts. This is a new kind of review, and will no doubt influence the way you think about the world around you and the way you think of yourself.

Although my review deserves thousands of pages to articulate, I am limiting many of my deeper thoughts to only single characters. I encourage readers of my review to dedicate the many years required to fully absorb the significance of what I am writing here. Fortunately, we live in exactly the time when my review can be widely disseminated by "internet" technology and stored on "digital media", allowing current and future scholars to delve more deeply into my original and insightful use of commas, numbers, and letters.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:59:45 PM -

Operation TIPS is getting more surreal all the time. Salon is reporting (in its subscribers only section) that when its reporter who had signed up to be a TIPster called the Department of Justice TIPS line, his phone call was transferred to a receptionist at "America's Most Wanted", who told him "We've been asked to take the FBI's TIPS calls for them."

I am flabbergasted - I can't think of anything to add to this story.

The ACLU put out a press release with more of the details of the story, for those who aren't Salon subscribers. Their commentary:

"This is like retaining Arthur Andersen to do all of the SEC's accounting," said Rachel King, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "It's a completely inappropriate and frightening intermingling of government power and the private sector. What's next - the government hires Candid Camera to do its video surveillance?" 

Tip o' the hat to the mighty snoops at Strangelove, where I saw this first. I suspect it will be all over the net by tomorrow.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:04:28 PM -

This is the Strangest piece of spam I have ever seen.

It's so weird I can't describe it. It sounds very much like they're selling marajuana, except they arent, but, it... you just ahve to go read it for yourself... it's is realllly strange. [weblog.masukomi.org]

That is truly whacked. Bet they were smoking their product ... [Brett Morgan's Insanity Weblog]

This is TheWeirdestSpamIEverReceived. It's very long, so I'll just paste the first three paragraphs here. Follow the wiki-link for the rest.

Hello

Later this year - prophecy will holdtrue, you will see.
For it is written in the eyeinthepyramid...

The Entity does not want to be caught out!
In fact right now, the Entity is doing everything in its power to get you to discredit this emailcommunication. The Entity is a ForeignInstallation that sits inside your consciousness and lies to you and dis-empowers you, robbing you of your essence, and aims to weaken you and bring you into pain and suffering.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:04:19 AM -

A Technological Maginot Line - great article in the Atlantic Monthly (special report Sept. 2002; not available online) by Charles Mann, who discusses a security guru Bruce Schneier's views:

"The way people think about security, especially security on computer networks, is almost always wrong.  All too often planners seek technological cure-alls, when such security measures at best limit risk to acceptable levels.  In particular, the consequences of going wrong--and all these systems go wrong sometimes--are rarely considered."

Then, discussing our politicians' post 9/11 effort to festoon all public places with security measures, he offers these thoughts:

"To armor-plate the nation's security they increasingly look to the most powerful technology available: retina, iris, and fingerpring scanners; "smart" driver's licenses and visas that incorporate anti-counterfeiting chips; digital surveillance of public places with face-recognition software; huge centralized databases that use data-mining to sniff out hidden terrorists."

Schneier, who understands computer security at a level few of us can, says "if you think technology can solve your security problems...then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand technology."  I think this message needs more volume.  We need to crank it up to eleven (which, as Spinal Tap reminds us, is "one louder").   When politicians aren't kissing babies, or standing on the Capitol steps reciting the Pledge of Allegiance they are often touting how some new technology (which the government will implement and control) is going to solve our problems.   Let's use a centralized database (like Larry Ellison says) and let's make the unique identifier the person's thumbprint.  What's wrong with that?

"Okay, somebody steals your thumbprint," Schneier says.  "Because we've centralized all the functions, the thief can tap your credit, open your medical records, start your car, any number of things.  Now what do you do?  With a credit card the bank can issue you a new card with a new number.  But this is your thumb -- you can't get a new one."

These are the simple problems that people who really know something about security analyze.  And what do our politicians really know about computer, security, or technology?  That's the question we need to always remember to ask.  And, the answer of course, is obvious.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 2:30:35 PM -

The Baen website says the texts on the CD-ROM will be unencrypted, requiring no special readers or decoders. The files are in .rtf or .html format, and the buyer will be able to download them into their PDA of choice.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 11:10:27 PM -

Network-enabled Tivo

"I recently got networkworking on my Tivo. This allows me to do a lot of things I couldn't do before. For example, I can control the Tivo from any computer that's connected to the Internet. I can add season passes remotely, control what's currently playing, delete shows, etc. There are a lot of possibilities.

One thing Tivo people like to do is compare and contrast the things their Tivos record for them. So I figured I'd make it easy for people by putting all that information up on the web. On my new Tivo page, you can see what's currently playing (even if nobody is currently watching it). You can also see the full list of shows now showing, all of my season passes and the todo list. Maybe someday I'll even get a screen capture of what's currently playing." [lukwarm.com, via life - listed chronologically]

I am strangely fascinated by these lists on Lukas' site. I want this for my ReplayTV!! We need neighborhoods, aggregators, and rankings for sharing these types of lists.

I actually probably would share my ReplayTV lists because I wanted to, but not if the entertainment industry demanded it. Too bad they don't understand how to work with their customers instead of repeatedly antagonizing them.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 9:59:19 PM -

Before Bart Simpson and before David Letterman, there was Alfred E. Neuman, the creation of a respected 62-year-old portrait artist who responded to an ad in The New York Times only to find that the magazine that wanted him was Mad.

The artist nearly huffed his way out of the offices of the fledgling humor magazine. But editor Al Feldstein convinced him to try and give life to a poorly formed Mad character.

"I wanted him to make this kid into a real live kid. I wanted him to be lovable, not ugly," Feldstein said at the Comic-Con International convention, which ends Sunday in San Diego.

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 9:51:02 PM -

Forwarded via Tim Hiltabiddle via an unknown source, apparently initiating somewhere in Juniper Networks, here's a map of the unfolding scandals. (Click on the snippet below to see the entire illustration.)

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 9:56:56 AM -

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, an hologram is the pattern produced on a photosensitive medium that has been exposed by holography and then photographically developed. Or it can be the photosensitive medium so exposed and so developed.

Let's forget this definition and read on.

In the months leading up to the debut of the new Ford Thunderbird last fall, the car's four-person design crew was asked to show its most recent tweaks to company executives. So it did what any auto-design team does: It hauled its latest prototype out to the center of a conference room for a group "walkaround." There, managers cooed over the slick coupe's rakish lines from every imaginable angle.

But "prototype," in this case, might be the biggest understatement in automotive history. What the designers and executives were in fact viewing was a computer-generated hologram -- hovering slightly off the floor -- that not only rendered the T-bird in perfect 3-D but also provided different views as observers moved around it, as if it were really there.

You'll find a 2-D illustration here.

Until now, holograms have been little more than second-rate gimmicks, thanks to the fact that holographically creating anything more than small, washed-out images has proved exceedingly expensive and time-consuming. But that's about to change. Zebra Imaging, a six-year-old startup in Austin that created the Thunderbird holograms (as well as another for the P2000, one of Ford's experimental hydrogen-powered vehicles), is but one of several companies refining new techniques for producing life-size holograms on the fly, using both real and computer-generated images.

Zebra's new technique uses a digital image in place of the physical object. Its computers convert a standard graphics file into a pattern displayed on a large, translucent LCD screen. A laser then fires three different-colored beams through the screen. When the beams converge and hit a special film that can be quickly developed with ultraviolet light and heat, the image emerges in startlingly realistic 3-D detail.

When I worked at SGI, we used Zebra Imaging technology to create an hologram to put on our booth in different trade shows. That was a hit with customers. You can even still see it on their web site at the bottom of this page.

In addition to Ford and SGI, Zebra Imaging attracted customers like Boeing or Exxon. The company also created a life-size hologram of Bob Marley. You can see it at the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica.

Additional comment on August 2, 2002

John Robb mentioned yesterday that he was unable to access the Zebra Imaging web site. This is still the case by now.

So here is the image of the Ford Thunderbird I was referring to.

Source: David H. Freedman, Business 2.0, July 2002 Issue

- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 7:55:33 PM -