April 2000

• Karl Jones does a monthly web-essay. His theme for May is Karl Jones: Green. Check it out while I'm taking my break next week.
• States outlaw spam - or at least try to. The initial article is only so-so, but it links to three or four other good articles.
• There are No three-letter .com names left. At all.
• Web Firms May Vastly Inflate Claims of 'Hits'. And people are surprised about it?
• Dot-coms are ready to interview real stiffs. Post the resume for a dead guy, and see what happens.
• The Googling of America - what can people find out about you? Quite a bit if you use the Internet as much as I do.
• SGI to sell Cray to Tera for $21.5 million. SGI bought Cray for $740 million in 1996.
• Dan Gillmor says Common sense rules in an arrogant suit as TicketBastard gets slapped down for trying to prohibit deep links. Dan also updates the patent situation and the SEC's plan to monitor Internet postings.
• Keep a Web journal, get fired ... or worse. Probably not going to happen to me. My boss is pretty understanding about this sort of thing.
• Hacking credit cards is preposterously easy says the Register. This is a very good article about the real dangers out there.
• Nuke-proof Napster - why the distributed nature of the net is a good thing, and how many internet companies just don't get it.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 28, 2000     April 28 in History

• City fights pigeons with hallucinogenics. It reminds me of Tom Lehrer's Poisoning Pigeons In the Park.
• The San Francisco Weekly brings us That Was the Wit That Was, which briefly covers Greg Proops (of Whose Line is it Anyway?), but spends most of its time on Tom Lehrer, who has a boxed-set coming out soon.
• Ananova is kinda cool. Shame they don't seem to have anticipated the huge number of hits they'd be getting after being featured on CNN.
• Have you seen big blue screens of death?
• Could van be a geek's mobile home? There's often talk about people living in cars (at least part-time) in Silicon Valley. Now Ford's got a better solution (though I think an old RV or a school bus conversion would do better).
• Tom Ambrose is Far better than Al Gore. Funny.
• Hey, it's finally made national news. Ignatius Piazza's Front Sight Institute made USA Today as a Nevada mecca for the gun-toting.
• Overlawyered.com explores an American legal system that too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public's expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 26, 2000     April 26 in History

• The AIP Update Page had a story about The first Left-Handed material which just seems like goofy physics to me.
• What happens when you defrost a Really Big Freezer.
• politechbot is the moderated mailing list of politics and technology. There doesn't seem to be a lot of traffic, and much of it is interesting.
• New Scientist has weekly science news.
• VoltNet.com has many things electrical. It's kinda cool.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 24, 2000     April 24 in History

• I've written an essay on Ease of use in Printing as part of my ongoing On Printing series of articles. It's not often enough that I get happy little surprises like this.
• I've also written some Thoughts about Frontier's Glossary. It's not done yet, but it's probably as far along as it's going to get for the moment.
• Dumbentia has parodies of ads. I want to buy some of these products.
• Stupid Research Tricks - librarian humor. I like it.
• Things I Must Try to Remember, by Chaz, a Chocolate Lab. It's really funny. Don't read it while drinking soda. Your keyboard will thank you.
• SubTropolis sounds like it wouldn't be a bad place to work. For a troglodyte.
• A Day of Missing Information is the Motley Fool's look at CNBC.
• PlayStation 2 a munition, so Japan has export controls on it. Beware of the dreaded assault video game!
• The Rocket Car is a pretty famous urban legend. This one purports to be the story behind the urban legend. I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not you think it's real, but reading it is a darned amusing way to spend an hour or so.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 21, 2000     April 21 in History

• National Guard and Paramilitary Extremists Clash. Dateline Boston, 1775, but reported using today's language.
• All the way down the slippery slope: Gun Prohibition in England and some lessons for Civil Liberties in America. Thanks for the link, Vinnie.
• Bill of Rights Lite describes how may seem to want to interpret those pesky first ten amendments to the Constitution.
• Congress to consider national sales tax, which would repeal the 16th Amendment.
• The Real Radicalism of the Declaration of Independence is that we have the right to throw off our government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
• Crypto-Convict Won't Recant - Jim Bell, author of Assassination Politics is soon going to be free, and hasn't toned down his rhetoric one bit.
• Stop Supporting the Cops! who are breaking the law, and encourage the ones who refuse illegal orders. This is a radical bit of writing. I like it.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 19, 2000     April 19 in History

• Waco:
  • Waco probes could miss the point.
  • The Dallas Morning News has an archive at Waco Re-examined. The archive goes back to January of 1996.
  • The Sierra Times is organizing Mt. Carmel - The Homecoming for April 19.
• Alcohol:
  • Bargeek.com wants to be your ultimate bar guide.
  • Irish pubs open longer hours. And there was much rejoicing.
  • Straw unveils 24-hour pubs revolution. Solving the problem of binge drinking at closing time by not having a closing time.
  • Ray Davies wrote Oh Demon Alcohol. A fine cautionary song.
• Tobacco:
  • The Tobacco BBS has news, history and a good set of links. And an easy to remember URL.
  • Role reversal in the Supreme Court discusses the ruling that the FDA does not have the power to regulate tobacco.
  • They call them 'warning labels,' don't they? Smoking is dangerous. Apparently she gets almost $2 million because she didn't get that.
  • N.Y. Eyes 'Fire Safe' Cigarette Bill. They want to require cigarettes that won't burn. Seems that'd make 'em tougher to smoke.
• Firearms (because with only alcohol and tobacco, it's just another night in a smoky bar):
  • An Army of Gun Lies exposes many of the lies propagated by the anti-gun lobby and politicians.
  • Ban the Bathtub - bathtubs cause hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of injuries every year.
  • Accidental medical vs. firearms deaths. Short, sweet, to the point.
  • One man packs, another attacks. A self-proclaimed peace activist attacked a pro-gun activist who refused to fight back in Colorado. An armed society is a polite society.
  • Australia Co. Claims Safer Handgun which sounds like something I'd never buy.
  • Consequences of a sellout and Power hungry talk about the Smith & Wesson agreement with HUD.
  • I'm Bored by Karl Auerbach is an essay on gun violence.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 17, 2000     April 17 in History

• Tips for High-Tech Consultants talks about recruiters and headhunters and how to avoid them.
• Joel on Software has a lot of good essays on software development.
• The Pragmatic Programmer will help you go from journeyman to master. It's pretty darned good so far. Reminds me, I need to update my reading list one of these days, too.
• The Programmers' Stone is one of the most cogent, coherent, visionary and inspiring pieces of writing about programming I know. I don't know if I'd go that far myself, but it's pretty darned good.
• Inside the Leviathan is part one of a short and stimulating brush with Microsoft's corporate culture. Inside the Leviathan (Part Two) is the rest of it.
• Distributing DeCSS via DNS. An extremely cool hack.
• Unix. I hate It. Kill It. Please. seems appropriate as Apple's moving their OS to *nix. Sigh.
• BSD sleight of hand: Why has the BSDI-FreeBSD deal gone almost unnoticed among OS handicappers?
• Geektools has useful things. And they're pretty good about keeping their links up to date.
• Acronym Finder lets you type in an acronym and get the various meanings it might have.
• Intel buys Kuck and Associates. I remember KAI from back when I worked at ETA, and they were working on the vectorizer for the ETA-10.
• Boffins unveil 600Gb per inch NVRAM. Now there's some serious storage.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 14, 2000     April 14 in History

• First, Lee Petty dies, April 5, 2000. Another NASCAR legend gone.
• There's going to be some noise made in D.C. this coming weekend. While I'm not in favor of trade protectionism, I don't think more intervention by the IMF, World Bank and WTO is the solution, either. My friend Jim comes to more or less the same point from the left, and he sent me most of the following links. Kari Tauring also endorses the protests.
• ZNet's World Trade Crisis gives background on the IMF & World Bank. Jim's comment: It's pretty academic, but I suspect Dave's Picks readers could plow through it while cleaning their guns. There's a lot of text, so you'll either need to be extra-meticulous or have a lot of guns that need cleaning.
• Mobilization for Global Justice April 16-17, Washington D.C. is the main site of the folks organizing the event.
• 50 Years is Enough of the IMF/World Bank. The 50 Years is Enough Fact Sheets explain (as Jim says) why those pinko hippie weirdoes are protesting in the first place.
• It's not all pinko hippies, either. The AFL-CIO Global Fairness page explains why labor will be there, officially distancing themselves from the pinko hippies.
• indymedia - dc is the Independent Media Center's coverage of the event. Their coverage of the Seattle actions was outstanding. says Jim.
• From the Nation: Seattle Sequel in DC. The article is short, but has a lot of links at the end, including some I hadn't found earlier.
• Protesters aim at IMF, World Bank is Bloomberg's take. Among the tidbits in it: Seattle-based Starbucks is installing shatter-proof windows on its store a block from the World Bank offices on Pennsylvania Avenue.
• The Goldilocks Economy Unmasked, An Imperial President's Moneybags, Russian fundamentals, and Risky business are a four-part serie on the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the international financial system by Anne Williamson and carried in WorldNetDaily in October of 1998.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 10, 2000     April 10 in History

• The Misanthropic Bitch has a lot of text. I've enjoyed the bits I've read.
• The Stile Project claims to be A Degenerate 21st Century Freak Show. I can't argue with that description.
• Wild Wilderness believes that America's public recreation lands are a national treasure that must be financially supported by the American people and held in public ownership as a legacy for future generations.
• junkfaxes.org is helping to stop illicit junk faxes. I actually got my first junk fax in early March, which is why I looked it up.
• The FBI FOIA Electronic Reading Room will provide you with frequently requested documents released under the FOIA.
• I'm not suggesting anyone in particular should join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, but it doesn't seem like a bad idea in general.
• Ports used by AppleShare IP Services is a handy reference.
• AriCraft offers paper airplanes in PDF format. Handy!
• Celera completes human genome map. They're done with the sequencing phase. They've still got some data crunching to do, but the deal's basically done. They also promise to publish the information on the net.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 7, 2000     April 7 in History

• From Esquire, FreeWheelz.
• Free software sucks is part of the April Fools Salon. There are about a half dozen good articles in there.
• Is this your cubicle?
• Did you notice Google being foolish? I took a picture.
• VNET.COM and vBay - Your Dumpster Diving Community are from previous years.
• MetaFilter does Scripting News
• New York prankster makes April fools of the media.

Weather in Minneapolis for April 3, 2000     April 3 in History