Month: August 2001

CSS: Where to get the goods

Oh, have I been struggling with CSS for the past week. But I think I’m getting somewhere, thanks to the following resources:

This kind of thing won’t help Sun

Blatantly biased (note the “Prepared for Sun Microsystems” right at the top) whitepapers like J2EE vs. Microsoft.NET by Chad Vawter and Ed Roman of The Middleware Company will not be swallowed whole by developers. Even with ‘promises’ like “We promise to compare these choices at a logical, neutral, and unbiased level.” Bought and paid for analysis is usually worth a lot less than it costs.

Will Sun get a new life out of StarCat?

ZDNet is reporting that Sun Micro is preparing to launch StarCat for September. StarCat is the codename for the new high-end UltraSparc III-based servers. Something better come along because Sun stock is down $2.64 to $10.79 this morning!!! StarCats will support up to 72 UltraSparc III 750 MHz chips (with 900 MHz and 1 GHz in the pipeline) divisible into 18 separate Solaris domains (that is, virtual servers) with 576 Gb of RAM–imagine how fast Quake would run on this box.

Today’s books: Star Trek Maximum Warp (Books 1 and 2)

Decent adventure, bringing in the Romulans, Klingons, and, of course, Picard and the Enterprise. Another case of Paramount grasping at the money by splitting what should have been one novel into two parts, though. I hate it but I can’t help myself. For a real review, check out what Michelle Erica Green wrote on the Trek Nation site. Let’s just say someone is messing with the primal nature of space itself, creating dead zones where higher forms of energy (like warp propulsion) don’t work, and Picard must work with Spock (yeah, cool) and a Romulan scientist to save all of existence.

Today’s movie: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Some people may dismiss Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back as sexist, juvenile, gay-baiting, potty mouth humor. And they’d be right. Except that it’s really funny and all the political incorrectness is self-mocking. Jay and Silent Bob are finally starring in their own movie after being supporting characters in writer/director Kevin Smith’s four previous gutbusters. Since Smith has announced this is his last ‘New Jersey’ film, he brings back many of the old characters–Ben Affleck plays himself (with Matt Damon and director Gus Van Sant parodying Good Willing Hunting) as well as his Chasing Amy cartoonist, Jason Lee reprises his roles from Mall Rats and Chasing Amy, even Shannon Doherty and Joey Lauren Adams. And Jason Mewes as Jay is all over the place with the machine gun cursing/sexual fantasy raps and director Smith as Silent Bob.

On the other hand, can someone please tell Will Ferrell to take a vacation? The man is in more more movies than I can count and he stinks in all of them

But not Shannen Elizabeth. She falls for Jay, somehow, after throwing over her international ring of extremely hot female jewel thieves for him.

Moviefone (yeah, the place you look up showtimes) has a good feature explaining the characters in Kevin Smith’s universe. And there’s the obligatory interest group controversy, this time with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Being a modern woman or a skanky ho?

Maureen Dowd wrote an interesting Op-Ed piece for the NY Times called The Manolo Moochers all about attitudes towards who pays on a date. Apparently, a lot of women think that men are supposed to pay, but it sure doesn’t mean they’re going to put out. And men tend to agree:

“It is, as one guy says, ‘one of the few remaining ways we can demonstrate our manhood.'”

I know I generally pay but I’m not averse to a woman treating me some of the time when we’re in a committed relationship.

Gay judge to run for Helms’ Senate seat

North Carolina Superior Court Judge Ray Warren, a former Helms staffer and Republican state senator, who came out of the closet and became a Democrat, is considering a bid for the seat currently held by the retiring “crap-ocrat” Jesse Helms. This would be so cool I would be willing to move to North Carolina. (Of course they do have lots of good tech jobs there…) Great quote from Warren:

“We’re all entitled to grow up,” Warren said Monday. “George (W.) Bush had his problems with alcohol. I was a Republican. We both got over it.”

I knew these guys were bad news

Two weeks ago, I wrote that employees should beware of Promethean Investment Group. And I am scared that I’ll lost my highspeed ‘Net connection if Excite@Home goes under. In a terrible nightmare, the two are coming together, as The Standard reports in Creditor Calls on ExciteAtHome; Promethean is calling in $50 million in notes they hold and in a written statement, Excite admitted that if it were forced to repay the notes “it would have a materially adverse impact on the company’s liquidity and its ability to fund its operations.” Excite management claims the charges are frivolous and without merit but I’m shaking in my boots for now. Urggh!!!

Do not f%#k with Matt Taibbi

Matt, I am your buddy, pal, friend, never fear Bill is here. Just please don’t do to me what you did to Thomas Nolle. I will admit that he’s a strikingly good example of some of the excesses in our economy/society. But wow! did you ever get him. And, Matt, Nolle was wrong, oh so wrong!

Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant, came to Matt’s attention after being quoted in the LA Times saying that the Internet is run by “hippy anarchists. Don’t get on Taibbi’s wrong side–not responding to a letter brought on Nolle prank orders of pizza and grocery deliveries, calls to government agencies and known employers, and worse. Worse? How about calling police to report a domestic dispute at Nolle’s home and a call to his neighbors from the DEA who’d “like to ask you a few questions if you could, not about you, but about your neighbor, Tom Nolle.” The kind of terrible things that make life a nightmare.

Matt and Mark Ames, the men behind eXile.ru, live and publish in Moscow but focus on Western topics such as how consultants foisted on Russia by the World Bank to administer aid from the bank pocketed all of the loot. And how good life is in Moscow if you have a few dollars and the guts to brave the place and its macabre mafia violence. The two published a book last year full of their cruel and caustic humor, telling tales no major American paper would dare publish. Let’s just say that being in Moscow gets eXile a lot of slack when it comes to legal ramifications.

God as a programmer, and the DCMA

From James Baughn and the humorix mailing list, the incredibly funny Solution To The DMCA!. Post is in two parts: retelling of the creation myth in terms of the Great Programmer, which provides the underpinning for the religious beliefs of The First Church Of Digital Grepping, and then an explanation of how the church’s tenets ensure the DMCA does not apply to members. Sign me up!

Tonight’s movie: Down to Earth

Hit me with a big stick, this was one funny movie. I didn’t expect to like it but someone decided to get it without asking me (and what’s up with that?) so I went along with the thought. Damn if Down To Earth isn’t funny, especially Chris Rock and Chazz Palminteri. This is a superior update of the mid-70s Warren Beatty flick Heaven Can Wait, which is fitting since Beatty co-wrote his version and Rock is credited for the same here. Brothers Chris and Paul Weitz show their usual strong touch with comedy–they directed American Pie (and AP2) and wrote Antz and Nutty Professor II.

Artists’s Rights

Everyone assumes that when you hear a song on the radio over and over that the song’s selling large quantities of CDs. Probably is. And that the musicians are making large quantities of the green. Umm, not so fast, chachi. Courtney Love has been campaigning to make the realities known and soon she’ll get a chance to tell the California Senate. A good example is the fact that record companies had the CA legislature exempt them and their contracts from a law that limits personal service contracts for entertainers (the kind that most record deals use) to only seven years.

This is just funny

Of course, to “get it,” you need to be a Slashdot reader: History of the World, part N 1. Thanks to gammatron for preserving this important historical document. A ESR would say, gammatron otherwise known as Paul Victor Novarese “gets it.”

Roundup of web search and research sites

Anyone knows to go to Google or Yahoo but what if you need something more specialized? JD Lasica writes a weblog entry on the Lowdown on the search engine conference and gives some excellent pointers on how and where to search for better results and sites where you can get research materials. For example, ever hear of new search sites AllTheWeb or Wisenut? And how about The Virtual Acquisition Shelf & News Desk, a weblog with “Resources & News for Information Professionals & Researchers”?

And Bayern Munich makes it FIVE!!!

This is a little out of the understanding for most Americans, since teams play in one league and then the leagues have their playoffs/championships. College, in most sports, have national championships that roll up the league winners. In soccer, though, there are all kinds of competitions. For top English clubs, there is the regular season (Premiership), the FA Cup, the Worthington Cup, Charity Shield (Premiership winner faces FA Cup winner), the UEFA Cup, Champions League, and Super Cup (one match pitting the Champions League and UEFA Cup winners against each other). There’s also a world club championship but it was cancelled this year and apparently won’t be played until 2003. Reds win 3-2 against Bayern Munich to take the Super Cup to cap an amazing run of five of these: FA Cup, Worthington Cup, Charity Shield (their third win over Man United in a row), UEFA Cup and Super Cup. Liverpool must be regarded as one of the top five clubs worldwide.

And it should only get better. Liverpool FC chairman says the team is aiming for a Super era, and they did get a good draw to help with that. Early voting on Soccernet shows Liverpool as reader favorites to take this year’s Champions League. Go Reds!!

Condit: Roadkill

Shedding his veil of silence 150 days after the disappearance of Chandra Levy before 23 million viewers and Connie Chung, Modesto congressman Gary Condit did himself little or no good. Reaction from his constituents was largely dismissive and personally I thought he showed us a politician who doesn’t deserve re-election. Typical of the press he’s getting today is Levy lawyer says Condit lying about cooperation. The Palo Alto Daily News, which doesn’t put it’s content on the web (boo hiss), headlined it’s front page article Condit Crumbles. Top Five, a daily email humor list, of course made the interview the subject of today’s list; sample line: “His baloney has a first name, and his baloney has a second name, but he’s not telling either.” See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya, Gary.

Space science catching up to science fiction

When I was a little kid, the big excitement was the American race to be first to put a man on the moon. The rush, the pure adrenalin thrill, when we did it was amazing. Somehow, though, that was the pinnacle and ever since we’ve gone downhill to a low key, business-like program. Maybe the Challenger accident in 1986 was the final straw, although there are still some folks pushing us to go on. When I see images and read stories such as Jupiter’s Moons Are Weird Places, the old goosebumps still rise.

Idiots Suck

Another example of how you can find entertainment on the Internet simply by following a few links: CS – Stories About Idiots. This site has other forums but this seem the most amusing. It features stories such as the woman who waited 20 minutes in line to return a video to Blockbuster and the clerk who asked a customer to sign the back of a credit card “so she could verify the signatures matched.” Classics.