POTD

Odd

I just got this in an instant message from someone I don't know:

how are you?i hope u're living in an atmospheric condition.i just to tell you more about me. tessy is a woman with a big heart,but it's always hurt by people who doesn't appreciate the good things i do.I am a woman who likes the truth.I am very honest and trustworthy.Respecting people is what i love doing best,treating and caring for people equally is all part and parcel......Female from New Jersey. Care To Care

This was from an actual person, not a bot. She apparently found my ID randomly and wanted to talk to someone.

Quite an opener.

End

The home of Bell Labs, one of the most important research organizations of the 20th century, will be demolished by a real estate developer.

A sad, sad end to an organization that created so much of the technology that made the 20th century what it was. Is anyone doing pure research anymore? Is the market-driven death of Bell Labs truly the end?

Printing

Update: It looks as if that nasty Photoshop printing bug has been fixed in the PowerPC 10.4.7 update.

POTD

I heard somewhere that contrast is good in photos.

One More Thing...

I forgot to mention...

Who do you think are among Mr. Stevens' top-20 campaign contributors?

1. News Corp.
3. Verizon
5. Viacom
6. AT&T
7. Walt Disney
9. General Electric (NBC)
19. Sprint Nextel

Are you surprised that the man who tried to steal a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money for a bridge no one wanted is, in effect, taking bribes from these companies to introduce favorable legislation? I'm not.

Idiot

I should mention that I'm no fan of Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). In more than one way, he personifies much of what is wrong with Washington politicians. But like him or not, you really should take a listen to his "It's a series of tubes" theory of the internet.

I'm never surprised to find out someone is an idiot. I'm always surprised, however, when people go far, far out of their way to demonstrate the depth of their idiocy. I'm not Sen. Stevens even knows what he means; his logic is actually quite twisted and strange.

An mp3 of Sen. Stevens' brainfart is available here.

"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people

[...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

[...]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me."

Ringtone

Ha! I just made this mp3 (via Chuck Shotton) the ringtone on my cell phone. Don't play it too loudly if you are at work.

But I can.

It is work related!

Enron

Washington Post: Enron Founder Ken Lay Dead of Heart Attack

Chaos

Swedish freelance photo-reporter Martin Adler was murdered in Mogadishu, Somalia. The country has once again descended into chaos. 5000 of The United States' bravest young men and women could do a lot of good there.

Material