Issued by a japanese group of artists:

These method arts, on the one hand, return to the tradition which
each form depends on, and on the other hand, sing in chorus a single
principle in the same age. We, methodicists, doubt liberty and equality
which have produced license and indolence in arts and sciences, and re-
instate logics as ethics.

Bowie's aflysning p? Roskilde l?ser et stort problem for mig - massive overlap af cool fredag - men skaber et for Roskilde med en manglende crowd pleaser midt p? aftenen.
Velunderrettede kilder minder mig om at The Cure faktisk har et hul i spilleplanen lige netop fredag...
Ikke noget skidt bud, og s? med en ny plade ovenik?bet.

[UPDATE: N?, det blev s? Slipknot. Hvor lamt.]

Positively the baddest furtuituous linkage to classy.dk ever! The conspiracy theory "Steve Jobs turing Syria".
The link to classy is an archive of posts mentioning

• itunes, hence Steve Jobs


• American foreign policy in Syria


• The Turing test

If only it had been another Steve and a story about the outlook for tech jobs the accident would have been complete.

...they will stoop to to fence culture with copyrights. Latest reminder of this sad fact is a new bill being proposed that tries to characterize P2P software makers (and presumably streaming media player makers by extension) as child abusers. No, it's not a joke. Here's how it works:
The bill is called the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act and it is backed by some choice guilt by association rhetoric:

“It is illegal and immoral to induce or encourage children to commit crimes,” said Hatch.

“Tragically, some corporations now seem to think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal,” said Hatch. “Some think they can legally lure children into breaking the law with false promises of ‘free music.’”

Have these people got no shame. This is almost as crazy as the an eye for an eye, a hack for a hack bill of yesteryear.

How about an "Inducing Acceleration of Obesity Act" to sue McDonald's now you're at it. Oh wait, I forgot that somebody already did that. Let's hope Hatch's insane legislation meets the same destiny as at least some of these lawsuits.

So I was looking for the "Contingency design hall of shame" that 37signals had running at the URL http://www.37signals.com/dnf/ some time ago.

But that link had died - and instead I didn't get a well designed error page like you might expect, given the content of the site that used to be there, but instead an advertisement for a book. The table of contents was listed, and the book's 7th chapter was described like this

7. Get Out of the Way
Eliminate obstacles to conversion (e.g. unnecessary ads, registration, navigation, etc.).

Sadly the item of value to me on the 37signals was gone.

The talk on open source that Tim O'Reilly has been giving all over the place for the last year or so - including at last years Rreboot event - has now turned into an essay.
The talk was excellent so I'm certainly looking forward to the essay.

Cy Brown har gravet et hul. Det er ikke helt klart hvorfor, men hullet er meget stort. M?ske bliver han p? et tidspunkt n?dt til at flytte det. Hvem ved.
Den pointel?se grave?velse f?r uvilk?rligt ?n til at t?nke p? Peter Seebergs gymnasieklassiker "Hullet", hvor et sjak af arbejdere (Cy er faktisk et godt navn til en af dem) pr?ver p? at danne mening af det meningsl?se i at skulle grave et stort hul uden yderligere forklaringer.

Nr 3 i en serie af virkelige fiktioner

Via netSummary.

Dette er entry nr. 1000. Et lidt lavere antal end 1000 er faktisk offentliggjort.

Suk

Normalt er det meget bedre at se fodbold på svensk TV fordi kommentatorerne i det store hele er meget mere objektive og ser mere af spillet end de danske. Men gårsdagens dødsyge kvartfinale var en undtagelse. Kampstatistikken viser det vi også så: Total hollandsk dominans som dog var alt for energifattig og svag til at gå igennem kompakt svensk forsvar. Enormt mange spilafbrydelser. Stort set totalt fravær af svenske chancer. Og alligevel skal man høre svenske kommentatorer sige "Det var vores sejr på point" og "Vi føler vi vandt kampen men var uheldige".
Kedsomheden vandt kampen mand!
Vi kan kun gøre det bedre i aften.

More lawsuits with lower standard of evidence on the way.

A few weeks ago Cory Doctorow spoke at Microsoft about DRM (full talk here) and recently David Weinberger did too, although he was asked there for different reasons. I like the following answer to a question on what's wrong with digital rights management and aggresvie use based copyright control:

When it comes to creative works, we are not "consumers," and we are not users. Rather we appropriate creative works, that is, we make them our own. We apply them to our own context. We get them somewhat right or entirely wrong. They become part of us. That's how how we learn and how culture changes. But that means that creators should lose control of their works as quickly as possible. [...] A pay-per-use system and allowing artists to control their works much past launching them into the world will kill culture. Further, since publishing creates the public [a point I'd made earlier], building an infrastructure designed to allow that type of control will damage the new public of the Web as well as cripple culture. It's a really really really bad idea, so don't do it.

Amen to both points (the one of co-creation and the one on the public). In fact I made the exact same point almost exactly 2 years ago:

[T]he act of comprehension of any text or other intellectual content, is in fact a long running, never ending and many faceted process. In the simplest form [of DRM/use based licensing], you would skirt an issue such as this, and go with something simple like "hours of direct personal exposure to content via some digital device". That works for simple kinds of use [listening to a record], but not for complicated use [e.g. software]. And is should be clear from endless "fair use" discussions that content owners are very aware of the presence of ideas made available in their content in later acts of expression.

A wild farfetched guess would be that as we digitize our personal space more and more, expression will be carried to a greater and greater extent over digital devices, so that the act of thought is actually external, published and visible (witness the weblog phenomenon). In such a world, the notion that reference is use becomes quite oppresive.

Med Frankrigs nederlag til Grækenland har endnu et hold fået den ultimative straf for fedtspil.
Er dette EM endeligt det defensive fedtspils farvel? Er det beviset på at moderne fodbold er baseret på ANGREB!
Svært at svare på - Grækenland er vel ikke netop sprudlende, men har bare fighting spirit. Til gengæld er her et ubestikkeligt fact: Det mest befolkningsrige land tilbage i dette EM har kun 16 mio indbyggere. Alle de store nationer er slået ud.

S? skriv hvis du mangler og ikke har lyst til at mangle.
caveats apply as before

A spokesperson for House Speaker Dennis Hastert made the following wonderful blunder of a remark:

It's extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government

Perhaps Hastert or his spokesperson needs to read op on their Montesquieu and the importance for democracy of the Separation of Powers. The complete lack of basic respect for democracy of the current American government is one of those problems that keeps one up sleepless. Please, Americans, vote for Kerry, not Bush.

It's either a brilliant parody or just brilliant. But it is most certainly l33tish:

bak 2 skewliez :(:(:(
omgz sooo i hvant riten n a looonong wile!1 haf u missD mi? hahah omgz i missD yaLL!!! butt i geus prt of mah gruoundin wuz dat i wuz off da comptrer...ah wel i'v bene doin gode sooos mah Daddi let meh on 4 a wile.

2dai wuz da friste dai off skewlie. :(:(:( da onlee gude prt wuz dat MeLiSsA wuz rite n dere iz a HOTTIE NU BOI!!! loloerzzz
He totalli wunted mi, i culd tele. n hiz naem iz...
BOBBY!!
omgomgomzzzz hez soooos HOTTIE!!! n he iz totalli n2 mei. i juss kno it.

There's more where it came from.

Det nytter ikke noget at holde op med at spille fodbold når dommeren ikke har fløjtet af. Det er pisselatterligt at lave tilbagelægninger til målmanden når man ikke er i en presset situation. Det er sådan man taber fodboldkampe.

Svenskerne havde ikke spillet til at klare kampen. De fik det forærende at en slap defensiv fra ca 75 minutter og kampen ud.
Nu venter Tjekkiet og dermed, med til vished grænsende sandsynlighed, nederlaget.

P.S HVIS I slår Tjekkiet, jamn så er alt forladt selvfølgelig.

CNN is not having one of their proudest moments on what must be a rather slow newsday apparently.
Among their top stories today you will find:

• Hail the size of baseballs pounds Texas Panhandle


• Study: Rocket fuel chemical found in milk


• 2 inmates with artificial limbs escape jail


• Ben Affleck wins $356K in poker tourney


• Report: Liv Tyler pregnant

Not exactly world stopping stuff.

The following story seems bonafide, although given the content one has to be on the lookout for any manipulation: Some ingenious deciphering is going on of a photo of handwritten talking points for George W. Bush from a cabinet meeting. The notes on the other hand are less than ingenious, being the same key points hammered upon on every occasion, still without any depth of argument.
Not that we didn't know from "The West Wing", but the talking order of press reporters after a meeting is no conincidence either. Bush has a list of reporters to allow questions from in the order in which they are to be prompted to ask.
It's easy to joke about the simplicity of the messages but on the other hand if one has ever worked in any kind of organization trying to maintain a long term goal in spite of endliss lists of little problems one will recognize the importance of returning to the original message all the time.

(via netSummary (in Danish))

Målgennemsnittet har efter dagens kampe med ialt 10 mål rettet sig til 2.55. Det er ikke rekord for en slutrunde og traditionelt daler det lidt i kvart- og seminfinaler fordi der er mere på spil, men det er bedre end de kedelige mesterskaber for 4 år siden. De fleste af de mnange mål kan nu genses som om du var med i The Matrix med virtuelle kamerature fra tilrige vinkler i BBC's Virtual Replay (tak for link Frede!). Her kan man gennemse 4D modeller (3 rum dimensioner og en tidsdimension) af alle målgivende spilsituationer og også af nogen af dem der bare var tæt på.
Det er kort fortalt oversejt. Man ser tydeligt Nistelrooys offside. Man ser tydeligt hvor frækt det første danske mål mod Bulgarien er. Man kan vælge et lækkert 1. persons "boldcam" og hvis der er noget der går lidt for hurtigt kan man gennemspille målene i helt ned til 1/8 tid mens man veksler mellem skudvinklerne. Kanong.

Som han sagde på en pressekonference:

Jeg ved ikke hvem der har fundet på at der i kampene skal bruges sorte net i målene. Det synes jeg er en katastrofe. Det skal da være hvide net, som på Wembley. Det er jo for tilskuerne. De vil jo se hvordan bolden går i nettet - så ler hjertet jo. Sorte net? Det kan da kun være en funktionær der har fundet på det. Det er da utroligt er det.

Bjørn Lomborg er et internationalt mediehit. Det er nærliggende at tro at det er fordi der er noget om snakken (altså hans snak) men det er mest fordi hans budskab er populært hos omkostningsbevidste, pressede politikere overalt i den vestlige verden. Hvis de på en eller anden måde kan bringe miløspørgsmål i miskredit som pjattet, nytteløs luksuspolitik, så kan man bruge pengene på noget andet. Og for den strategi er Bjørn Lomborg så enten nyttig idiot eller loyal medvider.

Bjørn Lomborg giver cost-benefit analyser et dårligt navn.
Han gør det ved at demagogisere og opstille falske alternativer. Copenhagen Consensus er en af de dummeste ideer man har hørt om længe: Man laver en relativ analyse af en række problemer. Ekspertnerne kunne have ringet deres konklusioner ind der er ingen grund til at mødes for manuskriptet til konklusionen har stået i Lomborgs bøger hele tiden: "Mennesker først. Miljø er pjat." Og så det virkeligt beskidte trick: "Vil du virkelig ofre menneskeliv for miljøgevinster". Det forløjede ved projektet er listen af alternativer. Der er jo ingen regering der har Lomborgs liste af problemer på agendaen som et sammenhængende sæt af alternativer til hvilken man tildeler midler fra samme konto, og derfor er det ikke realistisk at overveje disse problemer som relative problemer. Selv ikke her i det ellers blåøjede Danmark er det tilfældet. "Vi skærer lidt i miljudgifterne, så vi kan overføre pengene til sexualundervisning i Afrika". Det er simpelthen ikke alternativer der er behandlet på konferencen.
Af den grund virker hele initiativet i bedste fald fantastisk naivt, i værste fald uhyggeligt demagogisk. Det er sådan noget man laver i temauge i gymnasiet: "Hvis du skulle vælge ville du så udrydde hungersnød eller fjerne AIDS?". For en mand, der pryder sig af at ville tilføje lidt realisme til miljødebatten, er det fantastisk blåøjet at tro at der rummer nogen som helst mening at lave en så overordnet konklusion på så forskelligartede spørgsmål.

Denne sammenblanding af politiske beslutninger om alternative prioriteringer, af egentlige cost/benefit analyser (altså vurdering af omkostninger i forhold til gevinster ved et enkelt sammenhængende projekt), og af talrige anklager om venstreorienteret talfusk i miljøbevægelserne var allerede til stede i Lomborgs bog og Lomborgs vilje til ukritisk at sammeblande disse vidt forskellige lag i emnet understreger præcis hvor politisk hans indlæg i debatten egentlig er. Copenhagen Consensus er ren politik forklædt som fagvidenskab.
Det gør mig simpelthen dårlig at det er det Danmark skal være kendt for.

It was on April 1st Google announced GMail and started handing out test accounts. In the time from then till now a market for test accounts got started, matured (several competing operations offered to broker "Gmail for good deeds" deals between inviters and invitees) and now it has almost disappeared as reported by Wired News (some 10 days ago - a lifetime apparently in this kind of environment). In less opportunistic environments (like here in Denmark) invitations have been going for free for some time).

As a side note, artificial scarcity just kills as a marketing strategy. Two and a half month worth of free editorial advertising and blogger bragging is amazing. It works like Harry Potter preorders on Amazon or like dollars in high inflation countries.

Side note to side note: I tried really hard to combine the two words blogger and bragging into a new 'blogword' (brogging? blagging?) but none of them seem to convey the original two words very well.

[UPDATE: Ah - turns out that blagger is already in operation (but means something in the nature of complaining). It was the best of the two.]

I fully support the interpretation of the current perl 6 plans that perl is moving from an engineering art (i.e. a kind of physics) to weird unicode dependent alchemy (i.e. a kind of chemistry). Hence the periodic table of perl 6 operators.

Enhver slutrunde har brug for en fodboldkamp der demonstrerer hvorfor fodbold bare er verdens bedste spil. Altså den slags kampe hvor begge hold kører for fuld gas, hvor alle spillere på banen er dygtige, hvor spillet bølger frem og tilbage og så skal de jo også helst slutte med en sejr til den ene part (det er nu ikke nogen betingelse for de af os der husker semifinalen Frankrig-Tyskland 1982) og gerne med en masse mål.
Indtil videre har det knebet lidt med at få sådan en kamp. Masser af lige kampe med nerve, og også gode halvleg af et hold eller to, men ikke 2x45 total kamp med teknisk overskud og generelt drøn på. Og turneringens målgennemsnit røber også at der lige mangler det sidste drøn i de fleste af de deltagende hold.
Heldigvis for denne slutrunde har Holland og Tjekkiet netop spillet årets bud på sådan en. Brilliant spil af begge hold. Total fight. Overnaturlige redninger. Det hele krydret med fremragende trænerindsats fra Tjekkiets træner, som gentog tricket fra første kamp med at skifte forsvaret af så man kan komme op og få nogen mål, og når de så indfinder sig skifter man lige en enkelt forsvarer ind for at stabilisere. Fantastisk cool indstilling, og hvilken luksus at have spillerne siddende på bænken der gør at man kan køre med denne noget luksusagtige strategi. Dick Advocaat var mindre overbevisende da han skiftede hollands initiativ, personificeret i Arjen Robben, af efter 60 minutter. Katastrofalt for hollænderne simpelthen, selv om de, helt i kampens ånd, havde 100% chancer til det sidste minut.
Hurra indtil videre også for at slutrunden fint har demonstreret af gustent overlæg til enhver tid kan slås ud af absolut fightervilje og/eller held: Indtil videre er England, Tyskland, Italien, Spanien og nu Holland blevet skuffet i forventningerne om at kunne køre den hjem uden at spille fodbold. Sådan skal det være.

Kampens eneste mislyd var en katastrofal misbrug af den nye offside regel som bragte Holland på 2-0. Dels skulle der helt klart ikke have været dømt mål - der havde ikke været noget mål med Nistelrooy onside - og dels lammede fejlkendelsen fuldstændig dommeren i resten af kampen, sådan at han dømte offside på alt hollandsk spil i resten af kampen.

[UPDATE: De er sluppet op]

Et undisclosed antal gmail invitationer venter på faste læsere af classy.dk der er blevet snydt indtil videre. Hvis du gerne vil have en gmail og du tror jeg læser din blog eller du læser min eller jeg ved hvem du er eller du ved hvem jeg er så læg en kommentar til denne post.
Jeg opdaterer posten når uddelingen er færdig. Du kan ikke drage nogen konsekvenser af ikke at få en gmal. Der var nok bare ikke nogen tilbage. Hvis du fik en er det enten fordi jeg synes du er en homeboy, eller fordi jeg er en taber uden rigtige venner at give dem til.

PS: Du er velkommen til at camouflere din adresse med abe 'at' manden.com eller apeREMOVEVME@manden - men jeg skal naturligvis bruge din rigtige emailadresse.

PPS: Hvis du sysn det er pinligt at indrømme at du ikke har en gmail endnu så skriv istedet til deeREMOVEME 'at' classy.dk

Herlige billeder. Endnu bedre billedtekster:

Det var en flot Julemesse Handelstands-
foreningen i Nr. Broby havde stillet på
benene i Hallen d. 24 og 25 nov. 2001

Nyd også den scrollende bookingtekst.

Joelonsoftware takes issue with the .NET strategy. He's annoyed about the lack of an upgrade path (in his case from VB) and he basically thinks Microsoft is squandering their platform advantage by moving to new things all the time. There's no lock-in in new things.
I don't really buy it. It's not like the Windows API is going away, it's just that you can consider it frozen. If and when the new way (.NET) proves as productive as hoped that will finance the upgrade in and of itself. As far as I'm concerned the new stuff in .NET is mainly about increasing developer productivity and very little about enhancing user experience.
Obviously, if MS fails to deliver the gains in productivity they will have made a terrible strategic blunder.
Among the interesting stuff in this worthwhile essay is an assertion (borne out by the leaked windows source code) that it is simply not true that Microsoft has deliberately broken thid party products to make room for their own. In contrast, a lot of effort has gone into keeping features around to ensure smooth upgrades.

[UPDATE: Loosely Coupled chimes in and agrees. Phil Wainwright summarizes his position in the title of a post: Avalon: Microsoft's microchannel, i.e. an attempt to redefine the PC industry that will fail (like IBM's microchannel arcitecture) because everyone is locked in to todays Windows. In an earlier post he has coupled this with the notion that XML is to Microsoft as PC was to IBM, meaning that the embrace of open standards of information interchange automatically opens up the platform. It will either stay open and compatible or become irrelevant. To carry the analogies one step too far: If Microsoft is IBM in this story then the network is Microsoft. Staying open and network compatible is more important (and cost efficient) than staying Microsoft compatible today - just as staying Microsoft compatible was better back when IBM introduced the PS/2-OS/2 combo]

The power of both arguments depend on whether or not Microsoft does in fact hold monopoly power. It will take that kind of power to keep customers locked in to Windows (and not switch them to Linux or at least Open Office).

Firefox 0.9 has changed the default behaviour when clicking URL's from using focused tab to opening a new window. I've been playing around with config parameters to stop it - but nothing works. (in particular the *opentabfor* parameters don't do it)
Do you know how to fix this? Tell me please before I have to downgrade to 0.8.

[UPDATE: someone did know - thanks Claus!]

Right before the game winning penalty kick in the England-France match last sunday Zinedine Zidane vomited twice while on the pitch. He then stood up and scored the goal required and expected of him.
Here's the video (with Swedish commentary).
Physical exhaustion and dehydration possibly play a role as well but one would guess that the main reason for this incident is quite simply the enormous pressure on a player in that situation. That pressure was certainly augmented when England's star Beckham failed the same test of cool a little earlier in the second half.

Sidste vinter udkom Hitskabelonen - en kritisk bog om hitlistemusik og hvor ensrettet den slags musik er, tilrettet til et kvælende radioformat. Udover en gennemgang af nogen af branchens vilkår er der også nogen konkrete beskrivelser af hittets anatomi som skal give os en følelse af hvor kvælende ens al hitliste musik er. Budskab såvel som hitkarakteristik minder iøvrigt utrolig meget om de statements der fremkommer i videoen til Korns Y'all Want A Single": Hits varer 3.5 minutter. Hooket kommer inden for de første 20 sekunder. Formatet er altid "A B A B C A B" (og C-stykket kommer altid ca 2/3 inde i nummeret).
Det er et meget besnærende argument, som jeg dog ikke køber helt fordi musik selvfølgelig har en form uden at der er noget galt i det. Det gælder også al standard jazz og i klassisk musik har man sonateformen som spændetrøje. Det skal virke. Desuden er der skrevet et utal af musikalske mesterværker der overholder skabelonen (masser af musik af Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, David Bowie osv osv), så den fanger altså ikke helt hitmusikkens monotoni.

MEN, nogen gange er anklagen helt på sin plads, som f.eks. i tilfældet Nickelback, et canadisk poppet tungrock orkester som her tages med bukserne nede i færd med at plagiere sig selv. En skarpsindig flash hacker har ganske enkelt arrangeret det sådan at man hører ét Nickelback nummer i højre øre og et andet i venstre og der er ingen forskel. Prøv selv. Det er chokerende hvor ens sangene er. Et andet band der var kandidat til samme behandling ville iøvrigt være Linkin Park der mig bekendt aldrig har skrevet mere end et nummer.

Linket er bøffet fra netSummary

Sofar the Euro 2004 football championships (yes, that's soccer) is a lowscoring, high penalty - but oddly entertaining series of events.
There's way too many incidents of professional misbehaviour - in particular high elbows seem to be in fashion this year. Sofar it's mainly been Croatia and Latvia exercising this nasty habit but the other teams aren't far behind.
Low scoring - the average is at 2.13 - compared to the amazing Euro 2000 championships that's positively disappointing.
But it has to be sad in spite of all that that we've seen at least one exciting game per day, and even 2 on monday if you're a dane.

I've recently beefed up my old school hiphop collection with some of the better known names from hiphop's golden age, Stetsasonic, Ultramagnetic MC's, Mantronix and Public Enemy. The main reason to shop at all was to get Stetsasonic's "In Full Gear" including the original "Talkin' All That Jazz" that Dimitri from Paris turned into such an amazing dance classic on A Night at The Playboy Mansion. Indeed, the mix is included on the reissue of In Full Gear that I bought.
What a great album! What a fresh, rocking sound. Considering the present state of boring R&B crossovered synth loops I just have to say that I really miss the time when hiphop had this kind of rough but funky rock'n roll attitude. The music was so much more interesting and energetic.

Hvis du ikke læser Jyllands-Posten (jeg gør normalt ikke) har du muligvis ikke læst historien om Jens Okkings usmagelige malkning af EU-systemet - Skuespilleren der aldrig skulle have været valgt til EU-parlamentet i første omgang fandt det belejligt dels at beholde de EU midler han modtog til administrative formål selv, og dels så har Okking belejligt udviklet en depression under sin parlementsperiode hvilket udløser en livstidspensing i 600.000 kroners klassen. Sådan! Vis os allesammen hvor korrupt EU systemet er Okking!
Hykleriet er tommetykt. Naturligvis er Okking stadig i stand til at arbejde som skuespiller. Det var kun politikken der gør ham deprimeret. For nu at citere Okkings rolle i "Slægten":

"Hvad fanden er det for noget,
kan du ikke passe dit arbejde din idiot?"

One of the most admirable qualities of the USA and its tremendous military force is that there is not a trace of doubt that the US military is under firm democratic control. The army acts because it is asked to act by elected officials. There simply is no history to back any suspicion that it should be any other way. This is an essential difference between America and any other major aggresive military power the world has known in the last couple of decades.
On the other hand this indicates quite clearly to me that is Ricardo Sanchez approved the use of turture at Abu Ghraib, as reported by The Washington Post, he was told to do so by somebody even higher up in the Bush administration even if there is no paper trail (yet).

There is no triviality test for patents. If its new its patentable - witness the doubleclick patent.

As some of the comments here point out, there are interesting specifics to the patent: It is specifically about using simple input devices in simple equipment and using input timing patterns as meaningful input. That's an actual interface that you need to carefully develop - but it's still a problem that patents are issued with very broad characterizations of the invention and consequently overly broad applicability.

If you come by London anytime soon I can recommend the Helen Chadwick retrospective - both the main event and the Blood-hyphen appendix at the Woodbridge Chapel. Chadwick's pieces are modern art - but not quite of the Young British Art vogue. She has a more oldfashioned approach, specifically her art feels difficult in another way than the young british art. You just have this idea that it was more of a struggle being modern a few years earlier than in the glorious booming 90s.
But the works are great - and occasionally surprisingly so. Who would have thought that a 2m diameter circular pool of bubbling hot, melted chocolate would be so captivating.

Howard Hawk's "To Have and Have Not" is on television, and there's nothing to say but that Lauren Bacall is still the toughest talking 20 year old to ever appear in film:

Slim: You know Steve, you're not very hard to figure.
Only at times.
Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say.
Most of the time.
The other times ... the other times you're just a stinker.
(She kisses him)
Harry: What'd you do that for?
Slim: Been wondering if I'd like it.
Harry: What's your decision?
Slim: I don't know yet. (She kisses him again)
Slim: It's even better when you help.
Uhh... sure you won't change your mind about this?
This belongs to me, and so do my lips, I don't see any difference ...
OK You know you don't have act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything.
Not with me.
Ohh, maybe just whistle.
(Turns to leave, then turns back)
You know how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together...and blow.

[monologue lifted (with fixes) from here]

[UPDATE: The y stayed with the IETF]

I simply don't get how a situation like the Atom standardization stalemate (original info linked here) is at all possible. While it sounds reasonable enough to debate whether a body of standards will be consistent if developed by different standards bodies, the current situation sounds too much like organizational turf war to me. In fact it sounds like corporate infighting, only the actors are standards bodies (one or more of the organizations might object to this term, being usually applied to expensive government run organizations).
What makes it absurd is the simple fact that the people seeking to standardize Atom have expressed no desire to work with the W3C. For all I care they could start up the Atom Standardization Organization, I am - and I think most everybody else is as well - mostly interested in seeing the actual specs solidify to everybodys satisfaction. I don't see how the W3C is really helping that at the moment, and I don't see why they would want to hinder that process.
The most important argument seems to be that the W3C has a better process for dealing with IP rights issues. The right way is to waive any rights on the work done of course but at the current medieval stage in the history of ideas - where knowlegde may be forbidden as it was in the dark ages - that seems out the question maybe.

David Weinberger is up receiving more than 2000 pieces of spam every day. That's spam every 40 seconds around the clock. That is in short a lot of spam.
In term of download bandwidth, assuming a modest 5K a piece (it is almost certainly more) that's 10 MB of spam, which means Weinberger actually needs ADSL or better just to download his email. Using a modem it would take ~ 30 minutes daily connection time to just receive all the email.
Reading the comment thread on Weinbergers announcement is also interesting. Employing a spamfilter is obviously a necessity for mail to remain useful at all. But even with a filter assuming a sounds-nice false negative percentage of 1 (i.e. assuming 1% of the spam is not filtered) that's 20 emails for manual sorting every day. That about as much spam as I receive total and I'm annoyed. Weinberger needs to move into the next digit. Handling false positives, i.e. accepting any messages scored as spam by manually removing them from quarantine is mostly useless with this volume of spam, so in order to ensure reception of messages there is no way around some kind of challenge response like scheme. It may be done socially instead of automatically but it must be done.

Ingen tvivl om at månedens weblink er TOTAL VIKING POWER!!! - en utrolig velgjort parodi på en 14-årigs vikingeactionunivers. Læs f.eks. romanen "Sværdets Søn" som skiftevis er "et sejt drama om vold", "når vold bliver livsstil" og min favorit "En saga om evig magt".
Der er kun guldkorn på websitet der er et TOTAL VIKING POWER RIPOFF af Real Ultimate Power, men den bedste er nu siden om vikingernes fjender, hvor vi bl.a. lærer om samuraier at de ikke er seje, bl.a. fordi

• Samuraier har ikke TOTAL VIKING POWER!!!
  
• Det er nemt at drikke en samurai under bordet.
  
• Samuraier bruger alt for meget tid på at sætte deres hår.
  
• Samuraier går i ufornuftigt tøj, som kan være problematisk i nærkamp
  

Ah, der findes ovenikøbet et Real Ultimate Power spoof directory.

My long running obsession with Area Man has finally been proven worthwhile by the find "Area man charged in panty theft case". Usually he's too busy getting killed - or killing someone else - or remembering D-Day, but this time he's up to some interesting mischief at least.

My first thought, when I heard of The Viennese Vegetable Orchestra was that it sounded very much like an idea cooked up for The Muppet Show - but no. It's real: It's common kitchen vegetables turned into instruments and used to play "classic's lite", very recognizable pieces from the classical repertoire. After the concert the instruments are cooked and served to the audience.
The music needs to be very recognizable since this orchestra looks,

and probably tastes, better than it sounds.

[UPDATE: I take that back, they sound a lot better playing modern music - you can buy their album on Amazon]
Via for_sv

There's so much more to comment on from London of a week ago. While I misinterpreted the Mylo promotion as street art, it's not like Mylo wasn't tagging on to a general trend. Some south bank examples:

The leftmost one I found on my visit, and the rightmost one was submitted to me post trip by the guy I was visiting.

So I'm talking to Justeren about speech acts and come upon the Glossary of Lingustic Terms. Useful. Bookmarked. Obviously Wikipedia is also a good start.

A couple of weeks ago I shared with a few friends a childhood memory of watching with horror and amazement the scene in The Ipcress File where Michael Caine is subjected to mind imprinting psychological torture that he only endures by inflicting pain on himself through making a wound in the palm of his hand with a nail. The scene was so powerful that I had remembered it for years along with only a few other scenes of similar power, without remembering anything about who was in it or what film it was from. All I remembered was the image of the tied up tortured man hurting himself - an image which was hard to comprehend for a child. As it turns out one the guys I told about it had the exact same experience with that scene for the same reasons. [UPDATE: In fact I recall going to see The Manchurian Candidate halway expecting the scene to be there]
One other such moment is the final sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur - where the antagonist is chased to the top of the Statue of Liberty, halfway falls from the torch, but is saved as the hero of the story grabs his jacket sleeve. The seam of the jacket however starts to open ontil the sleeve comes off the jacket and the antagonist falls to the ground and dies. Again it is the strong image of the bad guy hanging over the edge as his jacket begins to rip apart that I memorized. Only years later - as I read Hitchcock/Truffaut - did I realize that it was this film I remembered.

The reason for bringing this up is that I have recently revisited both scenes. As it turns out neither the Ipcress File scene nor the Saboteur scene are able to generate the emotional jolt they gave me as a child - both films seem dated - but it was fun to connect the experience with the film nonetheless. I saw the Michael Caine vehicle on TV, but the Hitchcock film I was only able to see because I just purchased a 7 disc DVD Hitchcock Collection with a good selection of Hitchcock's films: Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Rear Window, The trouble with Harry, The Man who Knew to Much (the '56 version), and Psycho. Considiring that it costs £129.99 on amazon.co.uk, the 400 DKK (approx £36) I paid was a very reasonable price indeed, and Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window and Psycho would have been worth it alone. The other four films are nice extras. It's great to see these movies - many of which I have only seen in old worn film museum copies - in crisp DVD quality, and it will be great to see The Trouble with Harry for the very first time. I am a huge Htichcock fan, but I have holes in my list of films I actually know.

Actually, seeing these films on strange film museum copies brought about one of my most memorable movie going experiences ever. I went to see Shadow of a Doubt some years ago (and btw. the train strangulation scene from that film is another one of those childhood moments). The copy screened was, I think, Czech - certainly some eastern european version, with subtitles in a strange looking language. The subtitles were very thorough, often taking up three and even four full lines of text obscuring much of the image. You endure things like that for the ability to see the film at all, but the real masterpiece of the Czech versioning came in a pivotal scene where Joseph Cottens' niece goes to the library and finds a New York newspaper where she learns that Cotten is really a murderer. This scene was completely lost on us that day at the film museum because just as the girl looks down and we see her terrified look and Hitchcock cuts to a view of the headline it turned out that in the Czech version the image of the newspaper itself had been replaced with one of a Czech newspaper! This would have been funny had it been German, but in Czech it was devastating in that nobody was able to understand what it was she had discovered exactly. The entire audience burst into laughter and we didn't really regain the suspense atmosphere of the film for the thrilling conclusion after that.

Network associates gets a patent on bayesian spam filters. Of course the patent filing is newer than Paul Grahams famous A Plan for Spam article which of course is not a reference in the patent filing.

This is the worst news in the spamwar in ages.

Danmarks fineste netk?ndis, Prevn, har f?et skarp international konkurrence fra en utrolig omtalt weblog, Andy Kaufman Returns. En blogger har taget Andy Kaufman p? ordet og realiseret det ultimative gag. Andy Kaufman skal have sagt f?r han d?de at det ville v?re det ultimative gag - at fake sin egen d?d og vende tilbage efter 20 ?r. Nu er det 20 ?r siden han d?de og denneher blog er dukket op som p?st?r at v?re den genopstandne Kaufman.
Enten er der bare mange der er ude i dette ?rinde, eller ogs? g?r han virkelig brutalt til v?rks - med f.eks. en faket pressemeddelelse om at Kaufmans familie er blevet pr?senteret for DNA vidnesbyrd om at det er den virkelige Andy. Den er siden blevet trukket tilbage af den online nyhedstjeneste der havde den oppe.
Reaktionerne varierer fra de der tror p? det, til de der synes det er forrykt men sjovt, til de der synes det er usmageligt og er rasende.

Fra betalt wifi upstarten hotspotlive's hjemmeside:

We offer instant Internet access to the following low prices:

Hotspot Networks focus on the simple. We offers a simple product, a simple price structure, a simple location agreement, and generally has a very praumatic attitude towards things – ”keep it simple”.

Og nu vi er ved det:
Note til café ejere - Det er ikke en vinderservice for dine kunder at de kan få lov til både at give dig penge og betale månedsabonnement på internet. Muligvis er det fedt for din overbo med internet for 99 om måneden, men den tilfældige gæst couldn't care less about dit hotspotlive location partnership. Hvis det var gratis var det sæføli en anden sag.
Note til laptop ejere - Hvis du synes det er vildt fedt at du nu kan give 40 for en Cafe Latte m. sødmælk og email (18 for espresson, 12 for at få varmet et par deciliter sødmælk og 10 for emailen) så har du sgu osse fortjent at give 40 kr for det. Til de priser kunne man jo ligeså godt bare have GPRS abonnement og så være på hele tiden.
Så sparer man pengene til Cafe Latten.

Det er næsten for meget af det gode, men DMI har i katastrofefilmen "The Day After Tomorrow" set en anledning til at gennemgå de omtalte vejfænomener og svare på om de er plausible eller ej. Konklusion: Det er de ikke. Til de der er i tvivl kan jeg også oplyse, selv om DMI ikke gør det at rumskibe der flyver rundt i det tomme rum ikke brummer med en dyb lyd og at eksplosioner i tomme rum heller ikke larmer.
Når det er sagt så er det meget spasst at læse om hvorfor det filmen foreslår ikke kan lade sig gøre og hvad der så kan lade sig gøre istedet. Interessant nok er selve filmens grundpræmis om en pludselig dramatisk forandring i de varme havstrømme ikke helt og aldeles afvises (selv om den ifølge DMI er usandsynlig), ligesom filmens eneste troværdige bid videnskab, den basale viden om at verden kan blive pludseligt koldere overordentlig hurtigt, faktisk er godt dokumenteret af de grønlandske iskerneboringer.