"I’d thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both) couldn’t get a clue if it were pounded into you with baseball bats. What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a Satanist orgy?"

ESR's response to a remarkably bad attempt at recruiting him. Good reading.

I almost forgot:

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Rebecca Turner.

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At the Slipper Room.

POTD

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Reporters Without Borders is tracking incidents of violence against journalists covering Katrina.

I'd love to know who the shouting guy is. [Windows Media video]

Is it interesting that Cheney doesn't address the guy? Not only doesn't he address the insult, but he looks down, ignoring the person, as if it isn't happening. An act of denial. These are your constituents. That guy might even have voted for you in '04, Mr. Vice President.

Great politicians can roll with this kind of thing. Imagine someone trying to shout down Teddy Roosevelt, or for a modern example, Bill Clinton. At least engage with the person. Disarm them. Crack a joke. Do something.

The CEO President:

Before joining FEMA, [Michael Brown's] only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. [via Time online]

CEOs should start speaking up. The president is making them look bad.

Brown's lack of experience in emergency management isn't the only apparent bit of padding on his resume, which raises questions about how rigorously the White House vetted him before putting him in charge of FEMA. Under the "honors and awards" section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University". However, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here,"

If the White House needs someone to help out with Google searches, I've got some free time.

I'm going with Jerk Store!

Sony released a $1000, 10 megapixel camera, the DSC-R1. It has a fixed 24-120mm (equivalent) lens and an APS-C size sensor. Very interesting for three reasons: 1) that is a good price for 10 MP, if the quality is OK and 2) that is a big sensor for an all-in-one consumer camera, and 3) 10MP on an APS-C sensor is really dense. I wonder if this is a Sony sensor, or if they bought it from Nikon.

The DSC-R1 (great name, by the way), doesn't have an optical viewfinder; rather than a prism, it has an electronic viewfinder linked to the sensor. Normally these EVFs stink, but we won't know until the camera is released. The DSC-R1, though, has some nice stuff in the viewfinder: all the normal stuff (ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and EV), plus white balance, image size, a live histogram (luminance only, though; RGB histograms are available in playback mode), clipping indicator, and gridlines (!). I'd like to see shutter lag numbers.

At $1000, I'll be interested to see who buys this camera. For the same price, you could buy either Nikon's D70 or Canon's 350D as a kit with a lens. The Sony's Zeiss lens should be somewhat higher quality than the kit lenses, but not too much. The digital SLRs are pushing aggressively down-market, while Sony is doing the opposite.

The National Press Photographers Association is running news about the photojournalists covering Katrina. Just in case you haven't had your fill of insanity.

Nerd TV. Their first show? Andy Hertzfeld. Oh, yea.

Has Walt Mossberg ever met an Apple product he didn't like?

Dear Apple,

Would you please pick a fucking shade of grey and stick with it?

Thanks.

P.S. I'd like one of the new iPods.

POTD

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For school, I just started a photo class. My first project is "looking up and down". I was wondering if anyone had any pictures that fits the angles like that or any photobuckets with pictures like that or any websites that show that so I could get some ideas. I only have a few ideas.

I really want to get off on a good start in photo because I've always liked photography and I wanna be able to persue it for longer than just this school year. SO PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME.

Someone is really not getting the idea of a photo class.

Anne Rice: Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?

POTD

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This is Prince. Prince used to be a dancer. His birthday was on September 3^rd. He has lived on the streets of New York for twenty years.

Cool stuff. If you are using MacOS X, and would like a geekier picture of what is going on with your filesystems, try this:

sudo fs_usage

...and check the output. This is very handy. Apple has the man page available, and rentzsch.com explains how he found it useful one day.