Robot Wisdom WebLog for April 1998 (waxing)

This Day in Joyce History: In 1936, Stannie was expelled from Italy.

Ana's finally getting some breaks, including Sinbad's Vibe: [Messy BBS URL]

Morning project: a new Joycepage: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/jj/archetypes.html

Which are smarter, butterflies or bees? http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/4_11_98/bob1.htm

James L. Gould has trained bees to choose the lower right petal of a blue artificial flower between 9:30 and 11:00 in the morning and the lower left petal of a yellow flower between 11:00 and 12:30.

A pre-Java Byte timeline of programming language development: http://www.byte.com/art/9509/sec7/art19.htm [TCC]

ca. 1946: Konrad Zuse, a German engineer working alone while hiding out in the Bavarian Alps, develops Plankalkul. He applies the language to, among other things, chess.

More insightful hacker sociology/ anthropology/ history from Eric Raymond: [multipage, highly abstract] http://earthspace.net/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading-10.html [SN]

The matrix culture's taboo against visibly ego-driven behavior is so much intensified in the hacker (sub)culture that one must suspect it of having some sort of special adaptive function for hackers. Certainly there is no such taboo among many other gift cultures, such as the peer cultures of theater people or the very wealthy!

..boasting or self-importance behaves like noise tending to corrupt the vital signals from experiments in cooperative behavior.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1903, also Good Friday, James in Paris got a telegram that read "NOTHER DYING COME HOME FATHER". In 1951, Nora Joyce died at age 67.

Bandwidth-hoggish software uses UDP instead of TCP...? http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/11579.html [YMMV]

Even Stanford profs can suffer data-loss... if they rely on Windows: http://www.sjmercury.com/business/center/stanford09.htm [SB]

When the technicians attempted to load that backup onto the server, the dean said, they effectively "overwrote" the original contents, making retrieval impossible in some cases.

A disheartening account of government waste (hotel bills): [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/wlust/feature/1998/04/10feature.html

Would you trust your private key to this agency? Since 1956, the NSA has had a secret deal with the Swiss company that supplies the world with crypto: http://www.caq.com/CAQ/caq63/caq63madsen.html

Once the cipher machines were rigged to include the secret decryption key, the BND and NSA codebreakers could use the transmitted key to read any message sent by Crypto AG's 120 country customers.

When Gates hears the words 'PR disaster' he reaches for his wallet: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/BUSINESS/UPDATES/lat_microsoft0410.htm [Drudge]

Opinion pieces are to be written by freelance writers, and perhaps a "national economist," according to one document. The writers would be paid with costs "billed to Microsoft as an out-of-pocket expense."

This Day in Joyce History: In 1882, Parnell was released from Kilmainham Gaol. In 1928, Lucia danced at Vieux-Colombier.

New The Nation asks whether caffeine is really okay for kids: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980427/0427cord.htm

Ask industry representatives about the health consequences of children consuming caffeine, and they frequently point to two "nonprofit research organizations"-- the International Life Sciences Institute (I.L.S.I.) and the International Food Information Council. Both are funded by major food, beverage and agribusiness multinationals, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola and major coffee suppliers Kraft and Procter & Gamble. Both refer questions to scientists who maintain that there is absolutely no cause for concern about caffeine and kids.

And amusingly questions the hype about school uniforms: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980427/0427poll.htm

Vint Cerf on the future of flat-rate pricing: http://www.sjmercury.com/business/center/cerfqa040698.htm [YMMV]

The whole flat rate thing is a kind of unleashing of your curiosity. You don't feel uncomfortable crawling around and looking at things.

Videogame production takes up an insurance-trick from Hollywood: http://cgw.gamespot.com/column/3542.html

From a Larry Wall interview: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980408S0020 [OS]

Two years ago Tim O'Reilly came to me and said, "You know, I believe in freeware. Half of the titles we publish are about freeware, we make a lot of money on freeware. We'd make more money on freeware if freeware did better. Therefore we're going to try and help freeware do better."

What we don't have yet and what is actually my current project is to write a backend that will spit out Java byte codes.

My wife and I were studying linguistics in grad school with the idea of going probably to Africa to study unwritten languages, figure out a way to write them down, and to translate various things including the Bible into new languages.

Ana-image of the week

Net-based word processing without Java? http://www.inergy.com/rev_ibd.html

What can you say? http://www.abcnews.com:80/sections/business/DailyNews/microsoftsony980408/index.html

Craig Mundie, senior vice president of Microsoft's consumer platform division, said the next version of WebTV will be based on the CE operating system.

Also, Microsoft pushing webpages over the airwaves: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/085930.htm

Broadcasters that have agreed to provide the service with programming related to their shows include NBC, CNN, Lifetime and the Weather Channel.

Providers of the Internet content include Time Warner's New Media unit, USA Today, Weather Channel and Wall Street Journal Interactive.

(Evil bastard!!! But you gotta figure each network will cut its own deals, about whose pages are broadcast...?)

California testbeds a faster, 'gated' Internet: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/BUSINESS/t000033613.html [Feed]

As the fifth anniversary of Waco approaches, how amazing that this documentary-- arguing that Waco was our own backyard My Lai-- was nominated for an Oscar ...yet the stonewall just rolls on: http://www.waco93.com/reviews.htm

(When else has the NY Times covered such news only in its movie reviews???)

The Waco documentary is critiqued here, with full transcript, by a party who thinks it doesn't go far enough: [multipage] http://www.mnsinc.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/burial/doc/wtroe.html

X-Files movie soundtrack will include remixes of the Police, Three Dog Night, and Sarah McLachlan, as well as the Cure, Ween, Better Than Ezra, Tonic, the Cardigans, and the Foo Fighters. (agc)

Xena sings the national anthem: [mild nudity, 57k] http://www.naked-celebs.com/hot/xena2.jpg (asg)

(PhotoShop fans will get a kick from the files of the Fake Detective:) [mild nudity, 74k] http://207.156.166.78/detective/

The Rupert Murdoch of Canada is Conrad Black: [long, very good] http://www.cjr.org/html/98-03-04-black.html

By American political standards he'd be a moderate Republican; in Canada he's the enemy of the political left.

"He'd publish a communist newspaper if he thought he could make money with it."

He is a master at gathering up small, financially-challenged newspapers and, with prodding and pruning, turning them into little cash machines, with profit margins averaging around 30 percent, almost twice the industry average.

"He wants to be the dominant media baron of his age. He wants to influence politics without experiencing the discomfort of running for office."

He was expelled at fourteen from a Toronto private academy for selling exams, then went on to Carleton College in Ottawa to study journalism...

"We are, as far as I can see, practically the only buyers in Canada of daily newspapers."

"Don't look at what Black says. Look at what he does. There is zero training for editorial employees, no mid-career training, no interest in professional development at Hollinger."

Black's Daily Telegraph, the 142-year-old conservative standard-bearer in Britain, recently had a Spice Girl displaying her cleavage on the paper's op-ed page.

Black told Siklos in Shades of Black that the success he has had is due in part to cutting non-editorial costs and "presenting Britain's gamiest, kinkiest, most salacious, and most scatological news with apparent sobriety, but with the most explicit, almost sadistic detail (involving) the indiscretions of deviant clergy, the activities of paid flagellators, and the rest of the vast English supermarket of unconventional sexual titillation."

Hits on my Ana page the day before the USA Today feature: 100
Hits the day of the piece, corrected: 311
(Oops, turns out my first figures were wrong because I'd let two days get merged.)

One for comp.risks: Lexis-Nexis archives don't synch with published versions: http://www.cjr.org/html/98-03-04-archive.html

My study uncovered problems at every step -- from the first capture of information to the last connection between a commercial database and a searcher.

Robot-wisdom department: Can Quicken inspire people to reduce their debt? [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/04/cov_09feature.html

"Pie charts that make you see in four colors that you spend 25% of your income on clothes and you had better stop are really good."

Consumers are the only borrowers dumb enough to pay an 18% interest rate in today's economy, when most other interest returns hover in the 5-7% range.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1921, Mr Harrison (a typist's husband) threw several pages of Circe manuscript into the fire, after seeing an earlier version of this (U15.4631):

CISSY CAFFREY: They're going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE: The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE (blushing deeply): Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry saint George for me!
STEPHEN: The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR (loosening his belt, shouts): I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM (shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders): Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver!
CISSY CAFFREY (alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve): Amn't I with you? Amn't I your girl? Cissy's your girl. (she cries) Police!
STEPHEN (ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey): White thy fambles, red thy gan And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES: Police!

Everybody thinks the name AltaVista is theirs: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20927,00.html

Can Nando.net charge other sites for linking? http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20915,00.html [YMMV]

Prime Cut = Blue Velvet - 15 years

YAY! USA Today features Ana Voog: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctc443.htm

A robot to clean up Chernobyl: http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/98/110360.html

Pioneer, a 1,000 pound, radiation-tolerant robot, will be built by Red Zone Robotic and will run on tank tracks. Its multi-camera mast, sensors, bulldozer plow and concrete-penetrating drill will "open doors" otherwise closed to humans, who will operate the robot from inside a lead-lined room.

Is Dave Winer a complete jerk? I tried suggesting he provide more anchor text than "Oooooh. This could be interesting! This tooooo." and that he limit his main newspage to the last three days, so it loaded faster, and his answer in full was:

With all due respect, I don't care what you think.

(Microsoft rubs off, I guess.)

Lots of anecdotes-to-the-wise about data archives: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/015205.htm

By the mid-1980s, computerized land-use maps of New York State produced in the 1960s became unavailable; the state archives found that the software required to analyze the data had not been stored with it and that the hardware and operating system no longer existed, so the original data remain available only in printed form

Interruption-model toy causes fatal crash: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/015379.htm

Greek terrorists equate Citibank with CIA: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/012451.htm

Probabilities: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/056419.htm

         Convenience store robbery, 2 in 3
         Computer hard disk failure, 1 in 75
         100-year flood, 1 in 100
         Serious structural fire (New York City), 1 in 220
         [Net hacker] gains control of computer, 1 in 540
         Chance of death in car wreck, 1 in 6,250
         Chance of death in fire (NYC), 1 in 40,000

Dillinger prison records evoke nostalgia: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/074455.htm

I'm really enjoying Art Kleiner's "Age of Heretics" about 60s experiments in corporate reform. His webpage is here but this page gives a more interesting snapshot of how he thinks: http://www.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~futinfra/scenarios.html

Bleak House [scenario]: #5, Polarization; #7, Fully gated societies; #13, Hate Nets; #17, Cyberbankruptcy; #18, revolt against digital cash

An absurdly brilliant memoir of Wendy O. making "Reform School Girls": http://lonestar.texas.net/~triske/plasmatics/texts/rsg.txt

When we actually did the stunt the bus was going approximately 40 miles per hour and she did the windshield bit in one glorious take, smashing, kicking and getting through it without a scratch. Then, wearing heavy leather boots, with no safety wires or harnesses (couldn't hide them) she managed to climb up on the top of the bus from the hood all while it was moving at a rapid speed and get into her final triumphant pose. It was a glorious thing to witness.....and we all did! [pic source]

Interesting review of a novel condemning St Augustine: http://www.csmonitor.com/todays_paper/reduced/today/feat/books.1.html

What is Domino? http://www.scripting.com/98/04/stories/moreCommentsOnNotes.html [SN]

If you're trying to learn about Notes, definitely pay attention to Domino. It's a form of content-driven web publishing that some people are going bonkers over.

Lotus Domino FAQ: [unreadable #-ToC!] http://domino.lotus.com/domfaq.nsf?OpenDatabase

Once I have Domino, can I immediately post my Notes databases to the Web? Yes, but some of the Notes functionality may not work immediately on the Web, and your database design may not translate well.

Women-who-like-sex, on circumcision: http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/weav/1998/04/nc_08weav2.html

An author who's glad he published his email address on his novel: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/04/08feature.html

A radio format devoted to positive thinking: http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/1998/04/08media.html

Realtime statistics on netnews society: http://netscan.sscnet.ucla.edu/ [artnetweb]

Plasmatics' Wendy O. Williams suicide at 48: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/007711.htm

Martin Scorsese to create tv series: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/028046.htm

This Day in Joyce History: In 1860, Heenan boxed Sayers (U10.831)

Supposedly fake Seinfeld finale synopsis: (it's dull!) http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=335330831

Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic game finally arrives: http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/adams_19980404.html [YMMV]

Adams, a chicken-shed cleaner turned best-selling comedic sci-fi writer-- Hitchhiker's Guide sold more than 15 million copies-- says he thought the games industry had gone downhill, toward graphics-intensive monstrosities. With the rise of Myst and Riven, he decided he could make a game with a strong story. "Let's take those graphics," he says, "but go to work on the things I can do such as strong character interaction."

The creators expect even successful players to spend 60-80 hours aboard Titanic trying to get home. He says militant Adams lovers will spend even more time trying to milk all 14 hours of robot dialogue out of the game. "You can ask the robots whatever you want," says Gordon. "You type in your questions and they speak their responses."

Now that the game is out, Adams is getting ready to work on another book and a movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy. "I've been working on this for two years and I'm ready to do something else," he says.

Forbes on industrial espionage: [multipage with badly behaved frames] http://www.forbes.com/asp/redir.asp?/tool/html/98/apr/0403/feat.htm [YMMV]

A fascinating glimpse of urban ecology: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/4_4_98/bob2.htm

"That's the kind of opportunity we have presented to us now. It's really hard to say exactly how it's going to look ... to combine with the economists and social scientists and civil engineers and ask not just How does it affect the green spots? but How does the whole thing work?"

'Sax Therapy' in chi.general, on the Windy City Hemp Fest:

BTW last year when we took the city to federal court just to be able to hold the event, the federal judge didn't know what hemp is.

Clive Barnes on Tarantino's Broadway debut: (agc)

"He was far better than I had been led to expect - in fact, he was merely terrible"

New Village Voice uncovers Coke's rules for print advertising: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/columns/15ledbetter.shtml

"We ... require that our ads are not placed adjacent to articles discussing the following issues: Hard News; Sex related issues; Drugs (Prescription or Illegal); Medicine (e.g., chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, AIDS, etc.); Health (e.g. mental or physical medical conditions); Negative Diet Information (e.g. bulimia, anorexia, quick weight loss, etc.); Food; Political issues; Environmental issues; Articles containing vulgar language; Religion."

And Karen Finley meets the (judicial) Supremes: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/15carr.shtml

Over in the crowded press section, I heard one reporter ask another: "Do you have any file footage of the artist covered with chocolate?" That was a clue. The discourse would not be moving to a higher plane any time soon.

She's just been doing her job, Finley said, and [Jesse] Helms eroticized it: "He sexually harassed me."

A slighty clearer story on the Mars face: http://www.abcnews.com/sections/science/DailyNews/marsface0403.html

The editor of Windows magazine takes on OS-bloat: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/980403/cmp_media_1.html [OS]

Here's my advice: Make the next version of Windows truly innovative. Rather than adding every feature you can think of and saddling customers with unwanted complexity, make features and applications available as free or for-pay add-ons.

Microsoft takes on Lotus Notes (already struggling to compete with the net): http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20812,00.html [SN]

Tori Amos opens her own site April 10 (also on Letterman that night): http://www.tori.com/

XML takes shape: http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/interviews/980325bosworth.htm [SN]

The key thing behind XML-Data is that the program will not only know that a stock has a price and a ticker and a date when I bought it, but it knows the price is a number, so it will know what it means to add up prices or do averages. It will know that the date when I bought it is a date, and it can automatically enforce that this thing is a date or a number.

NY Post on Clinton's communion gaffe:

Asked if the president felt he was in a "state of grace," McCurry replied: "I think that's an argumentative question."

Salon thinks Random House was bought as an Amazon-killer: http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/1998/04/07media.html

And amusing bashing of Microsoft's non-interactive PR movie: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/04/07feature.html

This Day in Joyce History: In 1893, James and Stannie entered Belvedere. In 1923, as he was facing extensive dental surgery, James heard a banshee.

Are old programmers victims of age discrimination? http://www.talentscout.com/tsdocs/docs/work040598.htm [YMMV]

X-Nico on a.s.g:

BTW, did you know Paramount was set to do a sequel, "Barbarella Goes Down", right after the first one? (Apparently, it was to have been based on the underwater adventure in J.-C. Forest's original strip, but the Vadim/Fonda split and poor reviews of the first one nixed it.)

John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar on a fine (if somewhat wimpy) Frontline: [multipage] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/

Elaine Pagels, too

And a newly discovered urban center four miles from Nazareth: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/sepphoris.html

And grisly archeological evidence for crucifixion: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/crucifixion.html

New PC Magazine includes Dvorak's analysis of the sub-$1000 trend: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/dvorak/jd.htm

The underlying helpmate for this sub-$1,000 computer is the fact that processor speed and hard disk capacity have finally left software in the dust. There are no new killer applications on the horizon, and Microsoft-- as hard as it tries-- cannot bloat its code much more than it already has.

Dvorak also claims Asian woes will produce a paradoxical chip shortage: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/inside_track/it_p.htm

Fox fires whistleblowers? http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/025581.htm

A funny 1976 prophecy re the state of the economy in 1998, with corrections: [multipage] http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/fortune500/tob.html

Microsoft as insatiable: [6 long pages] http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/fortune500/mic.html [SN]

Bob Ingle, president of new media for Knight-Ridder, says: "They may screw up, but they're like Godzilla. They keep coming."

"Microsoft has acted as a stimulant to our industry to move more quickly than we would have without their involvement. They've had a galvanizing effect, both because of what they're doing and out of fear of what they're doing."

Smart tip from Paul Vader on mcs.general: unsubscribing from email requires the exact From-address you subscribed with, so "always CC yourself when sending a subscribe message, and save it."

A nice short tribute to the first lesbian poet, Sappho: http://www.nervemag.com/JacksNaughtyBits/Sappho/

The infamous Face-on-Mars may get conclusively debunked here tomorrow: http://mars.sgi.com/mgs/index.html

Dave Winer offers a very powerful perspective on Netscape: http://www.scripting.com/davenet/98/04/ohNetscape.html

Netscape's purpose is to serve the web developer community. They did that for a few months at the end of 1994, the beginning of 1995, and then, ever since, they've been lost.

New Fast Company on PR sets a record for most linkable articles... including this very short, weird glimpse of their mindset: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/futurist.html

The minute I see a hit TV show where male and female lawyers converse at the bathroom sink, I think, Don't invest in urinals.

And a fascinating behind-the-scenes-er about designer perfumes: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/smell.html

"You had to learn to identify about 2,800 synthetic materials and about 140 natural materials. The only way I could do it was by association: One smell would make me think of a color, another would remind me of an experience, a third would represent a simple flavor, such as a raw peanut."

The machine's clear plastic globe surrounds a flower for 24 hours, and the device takes measurements every 2 hours, using 12 filters-- without touching the plant.

And a superb long piece on Yoyodyne's very sensible permission model for advertising: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/permission.html

"The interruption model is extremely effective when there's not an overflow of interruptions," Godin says. "But there's too much going on in our lives for us to enjoy being interrupted anymore."

Do you know how much it costs America Online to attract one new customer? Something like $98.

You will pay for things you don't have to pay for today, because interruption-based advertising will not be able to subsidize them anymore. And if you're not willing to pay for content, you'll have to put up with a world filled with even more interruptions.

I guarantee you that by the year 2000, Internet banner ads will be gone. They don't work. ...The real killer app for marketers isn't the Web -- it's email.

(When they figure out it's netnews is when I'll be really impressed!)

And the latest trends in market research: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/zaltman.html

To test Green's suspicions, Zaltman selected 20 panty-hose-wearing women to be "Z-metted." The process began, as always, with a question: "What are your thoughts and feelings about buying and wearing panty hose?"

The villagers snapped their photos. Then the Zaltmans developed them and showed them to the "photographers." Then, Zaltman explains, "We had people talk to us through an interpreter about what these photographs meant."

In particular, Kosslyn says, descriptions of the sleazy car dealership excited the subjects' right frontal lobe -- the area of the brain associated with the primitive instinct of withdrawal.

Fast Company's five rules of office politics: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/politics.html

Rule 1: Nobody wins unless everybody wins.
Rule 2: Don't just ask for opinions -- change them.
Rule 3: Everyone expects to be paid back.
Rule 4: Success can create opposition.
Rule 5: Don't ignore the aftermath of success.

[#2] "He had his 'elevator speech' ready at all times," Krzywicki reports. "If he met the president of the company on the elevator, he would have made his point by the time they got off."

And a long weird glimpse of a very-high-powered tech PR group: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/womenofpr.html

It maintains a database with active records on more than 25,000 people at more than 6,800 organizations: market analysts, online publishers, financial analysts, venture capitalists, industry pundits, and business journalists. The Alexander intranet makes these data available to the firm's people everywhere...

And four tricks that save time: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/4tricks.html

1.Make (certain kinds of) lists: Projects - Next Actions - Waiting For - Calendar - Someday/Maybe
2.Don't let your inbox box you in.
3.Remember the two-minute rule.
4.Always do a weekly review.

And another very weird, scary look at high-powered telecommuting: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/homework.html

Two years ago, Merrill Lynch sent out inspectors to check each home office; these days, telecommuters take photographs of their office and submit them for approval. Furniture must meet strict ergonomic standards. And there's no arguing about technology. The company spends about $7,000 per person to equip telecommuters with a state-of-the-art laptop, printer, and fax machine.

And a not-very-enlightening piece on the forthcoming discipline of content management: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/wastenot.html

And a good piece on spying on your competitors via net search engines, etc: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/intelligence.html

But often the best sources of information on a competitor are the most local--the community newspaper in the town where a company is headquartered or has a big plant.

And an interesting glimpse of PalmPilot add-ons: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/ingear.html

This Day in Joyce History: In 1880, Jack Joyce helped Brooks and Lyons get elected. In 1895, Oscar Wilde was arrested for 'indecent acts'.

LONDON, April 5 (AFP):

The heir to the British throne is to sell organically-grown carrots and potatoes from his kitchen garden to neighbours of his Highgrove estate in southwestern England, The Observer said Sunday. The vegetables will be grown without chemical fertilisers or insecticides, in line with the prince's commonly-expressed criticism of intensive food production.

Archeological tidbits from Arizona: [Deja URL]

...sometimes it looks as if people from Romania searched systematically for good agricultural soil up to the Netherlands, and settled it, thus starting the neolithic revolution in Central Europe.

Dave Winer offers a nice overview of Frontier as a universal net glue: http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/code/rpc.html [SN]

Having a hierarchic, disk-based persistent storage system accessible to your code will change the way you work forever. The object database is Frontier's killer feature, our secret sauce.

Jakob Nielsen names a law after himself: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980405.html

Looking even further ahead, Nielsen's Law does predict that the Web will be 57 times faster in ten years.

(Barger's Law of Internet Bandwidth states: the more interesting your life becomes, the less you post... and vice versa.)

This Day in Joyce History: In 1942, Joyce's secretary Paul Leon was executed by the Germans.

A very modern sort of software tragedy-- mTropolis: http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=352286b90 [SN]

Apple acting like Microsoft, wrt Quicktime pricing: http://www.zdnet.com/macweek/mw_1214/nw_licensing.html [SN]

My Geek Code: http://www.geekcode.com/

     d-- s+:++ a+ C+++ UL P+ E+@ W+++ N+++ K+++ M+ PS+++
     PE-- Y+ t--- X+ tv++>- b+++ DI>+ e+ h+ r- y++>+++

(I just posted about this on rec.arts.books.) [Deja URL]

In a new The Nation, a superb piece by Susan Faludi on Abe Rosenthal on Gloria Steinem on Bill Clinton: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980420/0420falu.htm

"I understood that by standing there exposing himself, that man had killed her as surely as if he had stabbed her," Rosenthal wrote, "and that God would certainly find him guilty when He captured him at last."

...in the case of sexual harassment, the response should be nuanced and in scale to the offense.

A lively flame by Gore Vidal, defending affirmative action: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980420/0420vida.htm

[quoting the flamed authors] "...the socioeconomic gap between Jews and Christians today is greater than the gap between blacks and whites. Jewish per capita incomes are nearly double those of non-Jews, a bigger difference than the black-white income gap. Although Jews make up less than 3 percent of the population, they constitute more than a quarter of the people on the Forbes magazine list of the richest four hundred Americans."

And a well-written reminder that education can be important: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980420/0420will.htm

And a readable hatchet-job on Mr Sylvia Plath: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980420/0420bedi.htm

This Day in Joyce History: In 1904 it was Easter Sunday, Joyce teaching at the Clifton School around this time.

First it was dropping sperm counts, then mutant frogs, now spontaneous abortion of males: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/4_4_98/fob1.htm

Have you noticed extra spam on netnews today? (Nope.) http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/11427.html [YMMV]

An Internet constitutional (freeware) convention? http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/press/freeware.html [SN]

Lotsa love at the Wrigley opener

Math Markup Language: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980404/nmaths.html

Feed has a fascinating piece on Mexican telenovelas, and their success around the world: http://www.feedmag.com/html/feedline/98.04quinones/98.04quinones_master.html

Veronica Castro, the show's star and reigning diva of telenovelas, visited Russia in 1993. Thousands of fans invaded the runway and prevented her plane from taxiing.

Andreessen thinks Netscape can become Linux's GUI: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980402S0013 [OS]

Business Week has an okay very long look at Netscape: [multipage] http://www.businessweek.com/premium/15/b3573001.htm [SN]

This Day in Joyce History: In 1857, Oscar Wilde's sister Isola was born. In 1899, in Ulysses, Bloom saved a pink ribbon off an Easter egg (probably a clue to his birthday, possibly forgotten the day before? U17.1803). In 1904, randy ex-mayor Val Dillon was buried. In 1985, Kidd's Wash. Post article opened the Ulysses wars.

Search-engine study guestimates 320M pages: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/053572.htm

HotBot had the most comprehensive index of the Web, the researchers said, but it only covers about 34 percent of the indexable pages. At the bottom of the search engine list was Lycos, with 3 percent coverage. The study said that of the other three engines, AltaVista had 28 percent coverage; Northern Light about 20 percent and Excite about 14 percent.

Ana is a cutie!

A $5000 flame-lawsuit gets overturned on appeal: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20608,00.html

Paul Snively wrote Dave Winer a brainy letter about XML and semantics: http://www.scripting.com/mail/mail980402.html

In the context of the slew of stuff coming out of the W3C, this is where DSSSL sits: one of its goals is to be the syntactic rubber meeting the semantic road. It does this, for better or for worse, by being a derivative of one of the only languages in the world to have a formal semantics, which is typically specified in the denotational semantics of Strachy, namely, Scheme.

Progressive Review sees Clinton as a Virginia tidewater elitist

Added a new Joycepage today on the riddles of Ulysses

A very optimistic rave for MacOS 8.2 (?), aka Allegro: http://www.macosrumors.com/allegro.html

More on DIY MacMozilla5: http://www.macosrumors.com/moz5peek.html

Mickey Mouse gets nervous: http://www.tvgen.com/dish/0402d.htm (agc)

"Our focus groups told us that these characters did not have enough attitude," said Roberts Gannaway, the executive producer in charge of the makeover.

Salon has a pretty hip look at subversive sampling: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/reviews/1998/04/02review.html (The only downloadables are hidden here:) http://www.detritus.net/archive/

A terrifyingly honest look at dishonesty about VD, by Doug Rushkoff: http://www.nervemag.com/Rushkoff/std/

But, like many of us who have turned to the pen, I find I can be more honest in public print than in person. Thus this little essay: a confession of sorts -- and a plea for understanding. I hope I can summon the courage to read it to her before it goes on the Web.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1900, the Fortnightly Review essay on Ibsen was published. In 1915, Exiles was completed.

...but maybe I just needed a decent joke: http://www.chaser.com/april1.htm [OS]

New Mexico's 81yo yippie: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/035687.htm

More goodies at Progressive Review

A sweet sad Ana-pic from Abe Jones: [173k] http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/1469/loss.JPG

Francis Ford Coppola is looking for stories! Business Week report: http://www.businessweek.com/1998/14/b3572138.htm and FFC's own page: http://workshop.lather.com/terms.html

Alt.gossip.celebrity:

Former Hollywood wild-child Drew Barrymore is to take the role made famous by Janet Leigh in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's thriller PSYCHO. ... The new version, to be directed by Gus Van Sant, will have the same dialogue and shots as the 1960 original, including the shower scene.

New Boardwatch includes: Dvorak hacking into unannounced MS web-content: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/apr/bwm33.html

While the company has done a credible job with sites such as Expedia and Cartalk, this new batch looks like a big waste of money. While Microsoft scares the bejiggers out of software companies, it sure isn't scaring any media companies with this crap.

And an MS Word virus catastrophe: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/apr/bwm7.html

And a rambling editorial about the state of ISPs: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/apr/bwm1.html

...the companies playing this game need to start thinking of themselves as communication SERVICE companies. They need to think outside the box of just "Internet Access" and start thinking about specialized communications products and markets, and building relationships with customers they know and understand. The barriers to entry will remain very small.

And on a dumb Lycos spinoff called "The Password" (and MS FrontPage bugs): http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/apr/bwm27.html

And a good brief technical history of netnews: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/apr/bwm47.html

And a somewhat hairy technical explanation of Web-caching: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/apr/bwm46.html

One of my fave writers was on "Internet Cafe" tonight. See Dec97 log below, and order her zines via: http://thetransom.com/chip/zines/noframes/interv/sidney.html or http://www.du.edu/~szerobni/candi.html and http://thetransom.com/chip/zines/noframes/interv/wonder.html

Z Magazine (awful site-design!) has a 1st-person account of the Columbus-Ohio CNN war protest: http://www.zmag.org/ohioevent.htm

Don't just have people willing to play the game and look nice for the reporters, have people who are ready to be loud, shout, look scary, and get in the way of the process.

More sex-club nostalgia in the new Village Voice: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/14hart.shtml

Sell your soul to Microsoft for $15/year? http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/11336.html [OS]

An unfocused piece from Dvorak about the PalmPilot as Mac-like, vis-a-vis Microsoft: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/dvorak/jd980323.htm

From another great Progressive Review (that also offers the top ten censored stories of 1997):

About 65 million years ago, around the time when dinosaurs became extinct, it is thought that one species died out roughly every 1,000 years. Between 1600 and 1900, one species became extinct every four years. But, since 1975, it is estimated that 1,000 species die out every year.

On this date in 1853, Vincent van Gogh was born: http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~baker/van_gogh.html

New The Nation doesn't do much for me.

The Progressive Review is the best, though:

Asked,"What specifically do you believe is untrue and that you would take back this morning?" [Troopergate recanter David] Brock replied: "There is nothing specific in the piece that I know is wrong..."

Dept. of Colorful Speech: (asg)

...I sell the dish to the rags and laugh all the way to the bank.

I miss Debbie Harry: [multipage] http://www3.primenet.com/~lab/DHDeborahHarry.html

Recently she's been doing shows in the US, Canada and Europe with the Jazz Passengers, promoting her new movie "Heavy" (with Liv Tyler and Shelley Winters), and topping the dance charts with four newly remixed Blondie singles...

Count me in: TV Turnoff Week is April 22-28 (That's not sweeps week, is it? ;^) http://www.ucaqld.com.au/news/oldnews/tvfree.html

Feed has an interesting look at panic among the print media: http://www.feedmag.com/html/feeddaily/98.03.30feeddaily_master.html

Envisioning a content juggernaut, they wound up instead performing a cross-branding rain dance that delivered only puddles.

Sounds effective:

LONDON (AFP) - John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono plans a few surprise calls at an exhibition she's holding in Edinburgh. According to The Times, visitors to the exhibition of wishing trees, beams of light and other mystic displays may speak to the woman herself, on a video telephone link. "She plans just to ring up at random regularly through the day and explain to people about the works," an organiser told the paper.

Christian journalism divided revealingly against itself: http://www.newslink.org/ajrfishermar98.html

The notion that objectivity is a false god, that bias cannot be eradicated from a journalist's brain but should be embraced in each reporter's own style, is the essence of the critique of journalism that has emerged from the left over the past generation. Now it's at the heart of conservative Christian journalism, too.

Nostalgia for NCSA's 1993 "What's New" page: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/03/30feature.html

Project-of-the-day:

Idealism at a NeXT group meeting: http://www.bang.org/recap.html [SN]

What was refreshing was the lack of immature, unconscionable, mentally-base male attributes of control, domination, and greed. What was present was technical excellence, heart, humanity, desire to both serve and make a profit, etc.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1904 in Ulysses, Gerty buys stockings at Sparrow's.

James Cameron flames a critic: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/CALENDAR/UPDATES/lat_cameron980328.htm

Nobody's interested in the vitriolic ravings of a bitter man who attacks and rips apart movies that the great majority of viewers find well worth their time and money.

Tori Amos lists her ten fave CDs: (Sort of bland!) [Deja URL]

Led Zeppelin - Box Set
Marvin Gaye - Greatest Hits
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
The Beatles - White Album
Janis Joplin - Pearl
Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love: "I left the man I was living with because of this record."
The Cure - Mixed Up
Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden
The Pretenders - Pretenders
Stevie Wonder - Inner Visions

It's really starting to look like website management is the new killer-app category (how unexpected!): http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/reviews/0323/23wallop.html [SN]

Our external tools complemented Build-IT's internal logic for parsing content files of various types and recognizing derivative connections, such as the relationship between a Java source code file and the class file that results from its compilation. Build-IT then gave us appropriate warnings when we manipulated files in ways that were not consistent with those parent/child associations.

Artsy GifBuilder experiment:

In sci.cognitive, Rushtown observes:

It seems that a lot of people are getting much psychic enjoyment out of the Jonesboro, Arkansas, shooting. Oh, they won't admit it-- not even to themselves. But I saw people buying three papers to read about it. And everyone enjoys talking about it. It gives everyone a sense of community. If you were to add up the psychic harm, to the family and friends of those killed, and compare it to the psychic enjoyment (of a sort) of the millions reading a fascinating story---the good feelings would in total, outweigh the bad.

YAY! Big profits in whistleblowing: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/066912.htm

The whistle-blowers contend they are entitled to between 15 percent and 25 percent of the $325 million. So far, they have received $9.7 million.

Documenting Israel's dark past: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/064902.htm

"I don't identify with the aims of these terrorists, but I do want to understand them like human beings, to interview them for the first time on Israeli television and to understand why a young man is taking a bomb and coming to kill my children," she said.