Category: Personal

Ahn came on as a sub early in the second half and, leading a high pressure Korean offense, evened the match with a sweet header. Too bad he turned things sour with a strange pseudo-speedskating celebration. Friedel was terrific and made several major stops in the half, he has to be the man of the match for the USA. The South Korean team had some solid opportunities in addition but just could not convert. Mathis turned up with a wild Mohawk hairdo but couldn’t get any shots in the second half. Landon Donovan was breaking deep several times but kept getting pulled down and the US couldn’t make anything of the free kicks.

Still, the Americans have to be very happy, sitting at the top of Group D, with four points after two games. From my calculations, a draw against Poland on Friday morning will be enough to get us through to the next round. Even if Portugal beats Poland later this morning and South Korea in the third game, that means the Koreans finish with four points, a draw is five to us and we go through along with Portugal. The weird result would be a Portugal-Poland tie and wins for both Poland and Portugal next time, leaving everyone in the group with four points. With Poland looking like the group’s weak sister, the odds have to be with us.

Go USA!

So it’s 1-0 USA at the half! Clint Mathis took a lovely pass in, damped it with his right foot, and slammed it passed Lee, the Korean keeper, in the 24th minute. Brad Friedel had a positively brilliant save on a penalty shot after Jeff Agoos took down one of the Koreans in the box. The commentators, especially Ty Keough, keep saying that the American team and its fans should not expect many calls to go in its favor given we’re playing the home team. Keough surely has been right, with two fouls in the box by Koreans that probably would have been penalties had it been any other team.

Fingers crossed!

Close doesn’t count – the Nets are making valiant attempts to win against the Lakers but this isn’t horseshoes and close isn’t getting the job done.

Nice portraits of two of the most influential artists, from film and rock, still creating today:

John Woo – Auteur of Action, a Thoughtful Turn

David Bowie – 21st-Century Entrepreneur

Let me join the chorus that has certainly already sprung up: the referees, especially the referee’s assistant on the far side, Jens Larsen, took the game away from Italy. No problem with either of Croatia’s goals, nice touches by both Olic and Rapaic in quick succession, but the two disallowed goals for Italy were both terrible, terrible calls. Especially the diving Vieri header around the 52nd minute, no way was any player from Italy offside. And the strange, dribbling goal well into extra time, disallowed on an alleged foul, when there was no foul to be seen. Italy has every right to be very angry. Hopefully the players will take it out, cleanly, in the game against Mexico Thursday. I have to check some web sites but I wonder if there’s rioting on the streets at home.

Italy is considering an official protest to FIFA but apparently there is no chance that the result on the field will be changed. Mexico plays Ecuador tonight in the other Group G second league game and if Mexico, which is a big favorite, takes a win, Italy will need a win against Mexico in the third match or else become another favorite (Argentina, Portugal, France, are you listening?) going home early.

The NY Times has an interesting article today, Gnat or Parasite? Angst Over Adware, which gives a pretty up to date and reasonable look at the state of spyware/adware. What I find so amusing is the quotes from executives of all the companies shoving this crap down our throats; none of them are doing anything bad or unwanted, it’s always someone else. Of course!

Explaing recent VXGN activity – Dr. Don Francis’ response to a Scientific American article about VaxGen’s AIDS vaccine candidate, AIDSVAX; here’s the misguided original.

I’ve read three of Nick Hornby’s four novels (and I’m looking for a copy of the fourth) and I thought the first film I saw based on one of them was terrific–I thought High Fidelity, starring John Cusak, was one of the best films of the ’90s. But given the flood of summer movies and the pace at which they drop out of the cinemas, I worried that I might miss this one until it arrived on DVD. But a meeting dragged me up to San Francisco and ended just in time for The Sweet One and I to take in a pre-dinner show at the Metreon.

About a Boy is, like High Fidelity, the story of a man (Hugh Grant plays Will) who refuses to grow up but is shown that what he’ll gain by doing so far outweighs any loss. In this instance by 12 year old Marcus. The movie starts with a pair of voiceovers, from Will and Marcus, that give quite different perspectives on the proper path in life. Will says that John Donne, who said “No man is an island,” was full of it. In our modern age, with a little bit of money and just the right attitude, one can live nicely as an island. Marcus figures just the opposite is true but he never had the chance to find out what money can do. His mom (Dad is a long gone doofus who apparently only shows his face at Christmas) is depressed and suicidal and Marcus decides that what people need, him in particular, is backup; that’s why the standard family has two parents. So he attempts to recruit Will off his island and into the nuclear unit. The movie shows how their worlds collide and their orbits change.

Grant is a fine casting choice for Will, just the right age and a suitable world weary face, though one wonders what Will has to be weary of. Nicholas Hoult doesn’t try and give us a slick, 12 year old as short adult performance as Marcus, he gives a very genuine, awkward resonant performance. Toni Collette, who came to our attention in the wonderful Muriel’s Wedding, is Marcus’ mom, who uses her eyes to show the depth of her character’s depression. Rachel Weisz plays the love interest but isn’t given enough to do, outside of one good restaurant scene, to really matter. The Weitz brothers, Paul and Chris, co-wrote and co-directed the film, moving up in class from their American Pie series, showing they can handle adult material too–there isn’t even a flash of skin to be seen–taking just enough from the novel to give us substantial growth for all three main characters and maintain a solid pace for the film’s 100 minutes.

Definitely Recommended

She’s so sweet but is clearly fooled by the truly shallow nature of my understanding of the world’s most popular sport

Winterspeak points us to what he claims is an extremely good article on economics in Slate, Shut City Hall!. I beg to disagree with Zimran and author Steven E. Landsburg. The Supreme Court (in the April Tahoe decision), according to Landsburg, concludes that most government agencies should be out of business. What the Justices wrote in their decision was that compensating property owners for every decision that is less than a complete taking is prohibitively expensive for governments. Since the cost exists whether the government pays it or the property owner does (by losing the amount, since this is a zero sum game), Landsburg says that what’s good for the goose ought to be the same for the gander. If the cost is too much for the government to bear, it must be too much for anyone to bear. He cites the economic analyses of that were done about 30 years ago when politicians were debating whether or not to change to an all-volunteer army and claims they show explicitly that such a conclusion is already proven.

However, Landsburg makes clear his logical error when he writes: “But it follows inexorably from what he [Justice Stevens, in the majority opinion] did say.” Cost, in some abstract, economically perfect world, probably is the same no matter who bears it, I’ll concede, but we don’t live in such a place. Our society has chosen to operate on the basis that some government decisions will cost some people or corporations money, directly through taxes or indirectly through regulations, and so it does not follow inexorably that the Supremese must recognize that almost all routine government decisions “are … unjustifiable luxuries.”

HP plans to sell off middleware products but who would want to buy the skanky ass software? The WebGain news was weird but makes a little bit of sense. They paid good money for Bluestone and its app server less than two years ago although lately they have been giving it away with every copy of HP/UX. I wonder if HP would take a bid of $1 (no zeroes) for the app server?

Formed over the past three years as a Java development tools powerhouse, WebGain news leaked today that the company will sell it’s TopLink OR mapping tool to Oracle, discontinue development of its market-leading IDE Visual Cafe/WebGain Studio (but make the source available to the Open Source community), and try to make a living off licensing and support revenues. The 120 person IDE R&D staff can kiss their jobs goodbye although the TopLink developers will get jobs at Oracle. Apparently, only TopLink was bringing in revenue while most of the R&D dollars were going to the IDE products. Given the good tools freely available from Sun (Sun ONE Studio, formerly Forte for Java/NetBeans) and IBM (Eclipse), combined with very tight corporate purchasing lately, this turn of events isn’t very difficult to understand. One does wonder, though, if the revenue plan will ever deliver back the sunk investment.

What an amazing game! A goal in the fourth minute, I thought, hey even if we lose, at least we scored first. Then, with the seecond goal, maybe we have a chance for a draw. After all, the Portugese have to wake up at some point, right? But then the third goal, McBride in the the 36th minute, I’m thinking we may win. Talk about wishing I had not stopped biting my nails! I was watching on tape and it was all I could do not to fast forward or walk over and check on the web but through sheer force of will I held myself back. And was it ever worth it! You can say Figo has a torn ligament in his ankle, you can say the Portugese defenders were asleep for the first half, I don’t care. We have the three points, we have the momentum, we have a legitimate shot to go through to the second round. What an amazing game!

3-2

3-2

3-2

Oh. My. God!!!

Hockey shocker – who thought the Hurricanes would win even one game, much less Game One on the road?

Steven goes deep with The critical question and let’s just say the answer isn’t 42

Some observations: There are more blondes and red heads on the Japanese squad than Belgium and even one dreadlocked Brazilian-born. The Belgians have a very odd looking all-orange uniform. If you though Sacramento fans were loud cheering on the Kings in Sunday’s game 7, you should hear the Japanese!

No host in the previous 17 Cups has ever lost an opening match.

Both teams are playing 3-5-2 configurations and through the first half neither was really able to generate any offense because they just didn’t bring enough players forward. On most runs I noticed only two offensive players on the attack and four or five for the defense. Easily shut down, then. But after the start of the second half, both teams started coming more aggressively.

Wilmots started the scoring in the 57th minute with a beautiful foot over head backwards. Suzuki (one of the blondes) two minutes later tied it after slashing through two defenders at the top of the box for a tap past the keeper. Inamoto, who plays for Arsenal in the English Premiership, put Japan into the lead in the 69th minute after some sweet dribbling around two defenders and a blast to the far corner.

Belgium is looking very tired and keeps giving up long on-side runs. With 20 minutes left, they have yet to make any substitutions (Japan has made two, losing their captain and best defender to foot/ankle injury) but the commentator says its because their bench. But Peter Van Der Heyden, starting right fullback, tied the match at 74:30 with a soft lift over the goalkeeper after the Japanese defense could not get a clear off a corner. The European side finally makes a substitution in the 83rd minute.

Inamoto almost put the Japanese team ahead with five minutes left, he put the ball in the net, but he was offside. Most of the players seem to have very little left in the tank! Just at the 90 minute mark, the Belgians were robed of a penalty shot after Japan’s keeper came off his line and took a dive to tackle a Belgian coming through to shoot. They couldn’t make anything off the corner kick they were left with.

All over, 2-2 tie. So for the first time in World Cup history, a host team does not win. But South Korea, the other host, did their part with a 2-0 win in Pusan over Poland.

Sometimes corporations luck out with a product that hits the sweet spot of the market and stays there for years. IBM has had such products for much of its corporate life; among the current is the AS/400 midrange line. Heck, I vividly remember attending the global product announcement of the AS/400 back in 1988 because my employer at the time, Central Holiday Tours, used an older System 34 that was in need of replacement. Getting a lease on an AS/400 was one of the first computer related deals I ever made.

Anyway, one of the ways IBM has been milking the customer base over the last few years has been a special program that tells the system how much effort to allocate to a certain type of application. A type that is used by many, if not all, AS/400 customers. A program that can cost anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to millions.

But another company has been selling an application, called Fast400, at an apparently much lower price, that tells the system the same thing. Surprise, surprise, IBM doesn’t like it. So they’re trying to tell customers that Fast400 violates their license and IBM will not provide service to machines on which it is installed. Storage Solutions Group, the program’s publisher, points out that, contrary to IBM statements, their application does not modify the system in the way IBM claims and therefore does not cause any violatation of the customer license.

No, it just pulls a pile of cash off the IBM stack.

The scammer gets scammed – Savannah Says (Elizabeth Hanes) has posted the utterly hilarious Kizombe Correspondence for your reading pleaure