i just got the worx professional php book from fatbrain. i figure once i go through that, i’ll spend much less time searching through the various online documents / message boards to find how to do something silly (ie, incrementing through sequential variable names).
i don’t know why i haven’t thought of this before. the uspo should become an official key authenticator. coded numerical addresses aren’t a bad idea either.
this is too funny. “Any PC built after 1985 has the storage capacity to house an evil spirit,” the minister confirmed.
ooh, flash Austin club list for sxsw.
in more fun boeing space station news, they accidentally threw away two air tanks last month and unsuccesfully searched through the landfill looking for ’em. value of lost tanks: $750,000. chump change considering their $1 billion overrun, i suppose.
AMD has won the GHz race. more mindshare than anything else, but it does give me the warm fuzzies. AMD also has their press stuff online at: http://www.onegigahertz.com.
AMD stock up 6+ ticks currently. in fact, it’s at a 52wk high right now.
haha. via neoflux, ralph nader pushing new tld: .sucks – i’d get a few of those. probably start with usc.sucks
also at neoflux, snoop doggy dog’s weblog, a sesame street thanksgiving pic, and what jennifer lopez wore to the grammy’s (right down the block lastmonth).
old news, but i might as well get my blog backlog out now, while i’m still procrastinating on my schoolwork.
wp article about mitnick on the hill. the full transcript of the senate testimony on the freekevin site.
phil askey implemented a forum search for his dpreview site. pretty keen. i lurk on some of the forums, there’s some good info on there.
i noticed that on the comment page for tim o’reilly’s conversation w/ bezos followup that philip greenspun had posted a comment:
March 3rd, 2000 5:31 PM
Jeff Bezos is right about shopping carts sucking and 1-click ordering being the right thing… which is why I implemented it at Hearst and MIT Press in 1995 and 1996.
If memory serves, this was before it launched on the Amazon.com site because I used to tell skeptical managers “Yes, I know that Amazon uses a shopping cart but trust me, this is better.”
It is kind of ironic that Seattle-ites pat themselves on the back for being less greedy than people in Los Angeles. Yet Seattle seems to be a magnet for the world’s greediest people. When society hands them $billions for doing something unoriginal, they respond not with gratitude or philanthropy but by desperately trying to bleed the public for the last 5%.
My company (arsdigita.com) is opening a Seattle office soon and if we want to achieve a reasonable modicum of public spiritedness, we might have to import programmers from Wall Street!
Philip Greenspun
although philip’s comments are a bit harsh, i have to say that while i can understand the pressure that bezos must be under seeing as amazon isn’t making money, this patent biz is 1) counter productive, and 2) not acceptable behavior — making the web proprietary will kill the current rate of innovation that everyone (including amazon) is benefitting from. a bit like killing the goose that lays the golden egg…
also on friday afternoon was the jakob nielsen /. q&a. good interview. i like this quote: “In the old days, an operating system was designed to optimize the utilization of the computer’s resources. In the future, its main goal will be to optimize the user’s time.”
there’s a pr0n blog called sexlog. funny. ok, and with that, i think i’m all caught up. that was a good 15 minutes wasted. now back to work (or putting it off).
i just set up webalizer on my site. also, realized i wasn’t recording referers and agents before right now so i fixed that up. also too lazy to experiment w/ multiple log files / confs or recompiling to do reversedns lookups. ok, off to the photolab.
post on the playstation2 by hobbex:
Like everyone here, I can’t help but drool over the technical specs to this machine, and what Sony has managed to squeeze into the price. It is obviously a damn fine piece of technology, and I salute Sony’s developers for this achievement.
But, on the other hand, there is a side to this that I can’t help worrying about, and choices made for which I do not salute Sony (aka a leading member of both the RIAA and MPAA). These machines are the most propietary of the proprietary, and include copyprotection schemes that make CSS look childish. And Sony’s goal with the PS2 is not just to push another console onto the market, but to start chipping into the things which PCs are used for today, making there machines the standard way to access the Internet.
The PS2 is not a machine designed as an instrument for the consumer, it is designed as an instrument for Sony to drive consumers into buying more games, more movies, and more of whatever other services they plan to offer. Inviting a PS2 into your living room is not buying a piece of electronics to serve _your_ agenda, it is opening the door to a piece of robotics maticulously designed to use you, granting you as little freedom as possible (“lets see, what Sony licensed proprietary title shall we play today”) in the process.
The personal computer will always be more than just a piece of electronics, because it is a tool designed for you, and only for you. The PC is a statement of integrity and freedom. It serves your agenda, when you want it to, and, with a little knowledge, in whatever way you want it to. It is the PC that povided the basis for the developement of Linux, and it is freedom of PC usage that has shaped most of our ideas about electronic freedom.
The bad things that Microsoft do with their control of the PC desktop are nothing compared to the bad things that companies like Sony will do if the PC is replaced by closed machines like the PS2 as the primary tool for accessing the Internet. Do you think there will ever be a Napster client for the PS2? Or an SDMI-free mp3 player? Or the ability to save and store information on your terms?
The proliferation of the PS2 is a further step into a future where corporations control every aspect of your electronic life. A world where the machines that should be our tools are instead turned against us, meant only to ensure the continued cashflow toward existing capital, where large money will not hesitate to fuck you over at any point.
Oh happy day!