August 1999

• James Lileks has put up The Institute of Official Cheer.
• Mir's amazing era draws to a close.
• Reno vows to `get to the truth on Waco'. Why did it take six years for this to happen?
• Computer lemon law proposed for PA.
• Wacky Hospitality Sites. Curious collection of links.
• Alertbox: Do Interface Standards Stifle Creativity?
• ZoneZero: from analog to digital photography. Cool online art.
• The Internet Museum of Flexi/Cardboard/Oddity Records.
• The BAD FADS Museum.
• Dan Gillmor: High-tech hypocrisy on visas, Y2K legislation.
• WordPerfect 3.5 for Mac is available for free download from Corel.
• Washington Post: Cyberspace Electronic Security Act. Grr. Also San Jose Mercury News: Feds seek authority to secretly crack codes on personal computers.
• MSNBC: Search engines tricked by someone stealing meta-tags.

Weather in Minneapolis for August 27, 1999     August 27 in History

• In Computer Age Productivity, Fred Moody 0f ABC News says that Windows crashes cost between $10 and 15 billion annually.
• Hart Scientific unofficial Year 2000 statement. More people should have this attitude.
• IBM workers start trade union
• The Cost of Living in Silicon Valley links to a number of stories.
• Can Linux survive software patents? and Absurdity can be patented.
• The Register: OS-9 developer set to battle Apple's Mac OS 9.
• The Register: Time to feed the World (Wide Web) talks about the NETAID.ORG site.
• Word Safari and Computer Currents High-Tech Dictionary can both help your vocabulary.
• Belief that AIDS is myth cripples efforts in Africa.
• CNET: Microsoft: Resistance is futile.
• 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall has programs to print the lyrics in 227 computer languages.
• San Jose Mercury News: The Architecture of Silicon Valley.

Weather in Minneapolis for August 20, 1999     August 20 in History

• Salon: Don't link or I'll sue! prompted me to write a letter to InfoWorld.
• The Economist: Bill Joy, the brains behind Sun. The "other Bill" is still a nerd.
• Michael Nesmith's Videoranch. All things Nez.
• The Register: Eclipse update: Apple PR stunts shocks World. Heh!
• The Register: Man beaten to death for using cellphone in beer garden.
• How To Prevent Alien Abduction might be useful for you.
• San Jose Mercury News: Famed Nevada bordello closed.
• San Jose Mercury News: Scientific blunder may have given Britain mad cow disease.
• The Register: Computers kill Brits. There's a lot of links in this one. Also see IT blamed for killer stress levels.
• The Register: Thai military in knots over Y2K. Seems they're not going to make it.

Weather in Minneapolis for August 13, 1999     August 13 in History

• The Big List of Movie Mistakes.
• Stories From the Path of Totality is the Exploratorium's site about the upcoming solar eclipse (August 11 in Europe).
• First free computer network going offline.
• James Lileks: The Gallery of Regrettable Food 2.0.
• The Register: Avoid MS Word, judges warn lawyers. Seems Word can't count words correctly.
• LAT group70 is trying to build the world's largest amateur telescope.
• Ask Tog: How Programers Stole the Web. I don't agree with everything in it, but, as usual, Tog makes a few good points.
• Attention Fat Corporate Bastards says we already have what we want on the Internet.
• David Plotnikoff: It's a Wal-Mart cyberworld, after all.
• State of the First Amendment, 1999: First Amendment Center survey finds public wary of First Amendment freedoms, especially press. And Free speech takes a hit in California.
• Lunar Prospector on crash course. They slammed it into the moon and are trying to see if they hit ice.

Weather in Minneapolis for August 6, 1999     August 6 in History