Turkey! Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States. That's where we stuff ourselves with food, exagerate how great our families are, watch mentally-challenged guys in pads run into each other, and act generally unproductive in emulation of what we think a group of lost Europeans did centuries ago on the eastern seaboard of what became the U.S. T.V. trivia: in this week’s episode of one animated prime-time show, one character asked a Native American character if Indians celebrated Thanksgiving. "Once." was his response. Most Common Activity for Americans this Evening: psychological preperation for the descent into the outer circle of hell known as The Mall. The price of escape back to purgatory: spend too much money on unwanted, but easily-returned Stuff. Revenge, of course, is the object of the exercise. Because the target of The Gift has to either descend into The Mall, keep the The Gift or wrap It in hopes the next recipient will not want revenge for The Gift. We’ll be back to our normal, but still slightly tongue-in-cheek, routine Friday. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

It’s an interesting question: can computers pray. Loretta Skeedle, an artist who makes her living as a Systems Administrator, posed that question in an installation called The CyberRosary, part of the School of Visual Arts’ New York Digital Salon. She set up a circle of computers that will say prayers based on input from viewers. More: Chronicle of Higher Education. Perhaps this very issue has been resonating in the Vatican, because they recently named Isidore of Seville (c560-636) patron saint of computers, computer users, computer programmers and the Internet. There is a lot to know in computers, so I suspect he’s spent the last millenium plus preparing for the Y2K bug. I can just picture a six pack of multi-colored macs sprouting legs, and circling around a statue of St. Isidore, chanting and swirling incense. On the other hand, it is nice to be doing something that’s accepted as something positive in at least one church’s mind, as opposed to indirectly vilified as a group of twisted people who are either into glorifying violence or raping the world for bigger profits. Perhaps we’ll establish a little shrine… Next weekend –December 1st– is World Aids Day and many sites on the internet will "go dark" in remembrance of those who are no longer with us. If you run a website and are interested in joining the effort, redirect your site to a black page with a simple message of rememberance and respect. Then, on December 2nd, reopen your site. If you’re … Continue reading 1999-11-24 →

SBC and Prodigy have initiated a merger of their internet operations. This may position the combined unit to become the second larges ISP after AOL. Coverage: Wired, ZDNN. Over in the land of roaming charges, the number of cellphones is expected to reach 88 million in the U.S. by year’s end and one billion worldwide by 2003 leading to several $US 100 billion mergers. They seem to have become a necessity, even as evidence mounts that we’re doing something akin to a slow microwave of our brains. Follow-ups. One of our pet-peeves is the lack of follow-up and the general short-sightedness of the western media. So… Space.com reports that China’s biggest gain from joining the U.S. and Russia in the space flight big leagues is prestige. And, if you like weblogs, but just want to hit "the best" (whatever that means), Beebo.org uses the frequency of links between weblogs to rate them. And, in Echelon-related news, Wiring Taping Abuses are far too common for some people’s taste and the ACLU and EPIC filed a lawsuit challenging new wiretap rules that would dictate the design of the nation’s communication infrastructure so the FBI could track the physical location of cellphone users and increase eavesdropping on the internet. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

If you happen to be a fan of slam poetry, the guy who started it all –Marc (so what!) Smith– is getting married on December 5. Steve Marsh is collecting money to send Marc and his bride off in style. Interested? Contact Steve or send some dinero his way: 11462 East Lane, Whitmore Lake MI 48189, USA And, it's monday, so it’s time for our hopelessly complete waste of time. This week's complete waste of time involves American TV, Movies and Pop Culture. Throw in a dab of Japinese Anime, some juvenile humor, a little adult content, a lot of parody and you’ve got The Food Court. Have you ever wondered why MSNBC isn't quoted very much? Think that perhaps Microsoft is a little overbearing? You just don’t get to take some polls. But, it is their right, isn't it? If you’re near Austin, remember that tonight is the

If you design webpages, you might check out David Baron’s test of how well different browsers –including the latest version of Mozilla (Navigator 5.0)– handle cascading style sheets. If you’ve got a few minutes, he’s got some interesting links and pages that cover browser tests, satelite weather maps and other equally esoteric stuff. We should start generating a lot more traffic. We’ve gone through the hoops to get indexed by about 50 different sites. One of the more interesting is weblogMonitor. One of the sites it monitors pointed me at WuName. Type in your name and it comes back with something odd. Say Undiscovered Fishlip, Likeable Warlock, Half-Cut Skeleton, or, in my case, Greasy Oddity. Hmmm… Another approach to watching for weblog updates is MetaLog, monitoring the sites 166 weblogs link to most. Yesterday at 6:30am, China joined the United States and Russia by launching a vehicle capable of carrying a pilot into orbit. The ship –named Devine Ship or God Ship depending on the translation– orbited the earth 14 times over 21 hours and touched down in the northern province of Inner Mongolia. The vehicle –compared in reports to both the U.S. Apollo capsules and the Russian Soyuz– was carried aloft on a modified version of the Chinese Long March rocket. Coverage: China Daily, BBC, Space.com, Space Views. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

William Gibson, one of the founders of cyberpunk and one of the handful of science fiction authors whose work crosses over into the more literary realm has a new book: All Tomorrow’s Parties. Slashdot.org has a review and an interview with the author. There’s another interview at the music site Addicted to Noise. The Motley fool has an interesting interview with an Executive at Nortel Networks on the future of the internet’s infrastructure. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Yesterday, a 90 year tradition in Texas was marred by tragedy. Each year at Texas A & M University, a large tower of logs –typically well over 50 feet tall– is built to ignite in a bonfire prior to the school’s football game with arch-rival University of Texas. At least eleven students perished when the tower collapsed; two are still trapped. Monday would normally feature a pep rally at UT. This year, in a show of support, there will be a candle-light vigil instead. At Texas A & M, there was a memorial service at 7:00pm last night. Additional coverage: CNN, Bryan-College Station Eagle, DallasNews.com, Texas A & M. On a more positive note, a tip of the hat to Ted Turner. The U.S. hasn’t paid it’s U.N. dues in years. Long enough that the Secretary General has been threatening to pull the U.S. seat on the Security Council. But, knowing the Congress, it was Turner’s money and the people he hired to work the issue –several former congressmen– that did the trick. Watch a little TNT for Ted. More coverage: Washington Post. In another bit of good news, space.com reports that NASA, instead of taking the massive cut that appeared likely is only going to take the same 0.38% hit that most agencies are taking. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

We’ve updated many of our documents, including our infamous humor page. And we’ve added new ones that cover the proper way to address mail –especially for bulk mailings, an Echelon page, and a guide to switching your computer to use the Dvorak keyboard layout. It’s an old but very important resources on the internet: Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg collects and republishes –for free– older works that no longer fall under copyright. The list of titles is almost endless, but includes authors such as: Poe, Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Twain, Martin Luther, Thomas Hardy and Balzac. Mozilla Milestone 11 has just been released Linux, Mac OS and Windows. Mozilla is the next browser from Netscape and is being developed under an Open Source license. This version still has a few missing features, but it’s very usable and stable. An actual beta release will probably be available by year’s end. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

We forgot to post word that the Transmeta website has gotten a little more informative. Transmeta is a new company backed by Paul Allen’s money and the brain power of people than include Linus Torvalds. Based on various press reports, they seem to be designed processors that can be reprogrammed so they can emulate other processors on the fly. While you’re there, view source for the hidden message. News.com has a story with some more details. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Today is the 25th anniversery of the Arecibo transmission. The transmission, aimed at M13 –a star cluster 25,000 light years away– is covered at space.com and they’ve also got a graphic showing the full image that was transmitted. If you run a Windows NT server, be afraid, be very afraid of service pack 6, if you also run Lotus Notes. And if all of that is much too serious, go get some trivia and other Useless Knowledge. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook