A lot’s been happening in the world that I’ve wanted to mention, but it can be difficult to squeeze in news updates at times. The FDIC is about to put into place the “Know Your Customer” rule. They want banks to monitor your transactions and then report any unusual behavior to the federal government in hopes that this will allow them to catch money launderers and drug dealers. If this sounds like an invasion of privacy –among other things– you have less than 20 days to change things. One of my (cough, cough) favorite senators –Phil Gramm– has a press release. The text of the rule is available at USA Networks. Finally, there’s a petition available at www.defendyourprivacy.com. If privacy issues are important to you, another good general resource is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

We’ve updated our hosted sites with updated material on our various Listservs. If you’re curious, click on over. If you root around you’ll even find our coverage of the Slam Poetry Oscars. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Our renovation continues. You’ll now find our major links at the top of the screen. The sites we host and our customers will be much easier to find as we tweak things around work for our customers. Of all the projects going on right now, poetryvideo.com is our our favorite. The site is progressing well and most of the site is now automatically created each night. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

We’ve been too busy to update lately, but things have been happening. For instance, our web server is now Apache running under RedHat Linux 5.2. We’re shifting everything to that box. Our previous machine was a Umax S900 running MacOS 8.5. In general, a very dependable, easy to maintain machine, but not up to the loads we now experience on our various servers. More importantly, we can now dedicate that box to what it’s phenomenal at: graphics, web design and publishing. We’ll post more updates as things progress. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

We finished most of the upgrades we wanted to make yesterday morning. We’ll be making other changes on an on-going basis. The server feels faster from our end –as we expected– and hopefully it feels faster from yours, too. For those on one of our discussion lists, or who would like to join one, we’ve created a resource center, with rules, descriptions of the list, archives of past messages and more On a very geeky note to those using a Macintosh, what is probable the best book on AppleScript –the one by Danny Goodman– is once again in print and available on the web: http://www.toexcel.com . Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

It’s Christmas, but as the line goes, wars and rumours of wars continue. Yugoslav forces rolled into Kosovo today. The Iraqi people are still digging themselves out from rubble. And the far eastern economic crisis, continues to cause violence; particularly in Indonesia. On the bright side of things, the International Space Station may be the star in the east at millenium’s end and perhaps our last, best hope to quote the opening sequence of Babylon 5. If you’re given to prayer, remember it’s the best of times and worst of times after you sit down to dinner, but before you dig in. Here, we have some business to announce. The 26th, we’ll be ungrading our primary server, making our websites and email touch and go for the morning. But, you’ll be spending time with the family, right? Or is that shopping, training junior capitalists and generally insuring that the U.S. economy is immune to the slings and arrows of capitalism’s outrageous cycles of fate… In addition, we’ll be making minor improvements, here and there. Most will be barely visible, but should make the site smoother, faster and more useful. For instance, today’s links open in different windows than the one you’re reading our page in. So, you can pull up the site we’re talking about without waiting until you finish reading about it here. We’ll also be posting a page on all the listservs we run. If you’re into poetry, there’s probably something here for you. We’ve avoided forcing people … Continue reading 1998-12-24 →

We never got around to posting a note, but the problems with poetryvideo.com were solved shortly after we posted our notice and the site is evolving nicely. Check it out. An apology to everyone. The internet works by one person connecting to another. You might connect with a modem to an ISP. We have a similar arrangement. The difference is that ours is up all day all night all week all year. Whew! And we never give our equipment a vacation! Anyway, The outfit at the other end of the connection ran into technical problems sometime last night. Things seem to be back to normal, but it will probably take about an hour (until 9:30am Central) for the email that’s stacked up trying to get in and out to be dealt with. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Trying to get to poetryvideo.com?, apparently, someone messed up life, the universe or something and their traffic is showing up here. But, we’re generous, so just click on over to poetryvideo.com. We don’t want to stop the curious. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

For months now, we’ve been submerged in a wave of the-media-needs-to-tell-us-what-we-should-think. Although the Constitution specifies that a President can’t be removed for anything less than ’high crimes and misdemenors’; we’re supposed to remove the President for something that a sizeable minortiy –at least– of men have committed. The rhetoric is so thick, we’ve nearly stopped listening to the news. In the glare of other issues –the economic collapse of one-quarter of the planet, for instance– the fixation on the sex life of one man is firmly in the realm of that which is stranger than fiction. For those of you fed up with the standard line on Monica Lewinski, we’ve agreed to host an alternate viewpoint. Check out Save Democracy, for another take on Washington’s latest bought of nonsense. Cheers! Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook