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I just deleted a draft of a post because it was related to my job. Yes, this is my personnel space and yes, I should feel open to say what I want.

But I didn’t. I had a long, well-linked post about a vendor related to my current work. It’s not the vendor we work with, it’s not even a company my group officially has a relationship with. But, and here’s what stopped me, people at my institution do have relationships with the company. I may cross paths with these people. The grants world isn’t that small. You see where this could lead.

I hate that I deleted it, even though it was probably the smart thing to do. Best case, I was on record with a flamer of a post. Worst case, I’d have dealt with that post for years.

God I hate politics.

Synopsis: Researcher claims to have created a proof-of-concept worm for OS X. Posts this nugget to his anonymous blog. Apple zealots begin ad hominem attacks, insults, etc.

Now, it seems, the blog has been receiving death threats, been hacked, and the hunt for the identity of the poster is in full swing.

The best part? The comments on the Slashdot article.

Does this mean I should end my genetic experiment to cross-pollinate a Mac fanboy with a Scientologist to produce the world’s most pompous asshole? [#]

He would have been better off picking a weaker target such Islam. You don’t want to mess with those Mac zealots. [#]

Ah, ye olde flamewar… Repeat after me… it’s just a computer. It’s just a computer.

Woot! Art Fair Bingo returns for the Ann Arbor Art Fair(s). ($DEITY forbid it be one, unified art fair.)

Art Fair Bingo is a wonderful tradition wherein you, the discerning resident/exile/art-lover voluntarily go to Art Fair and photograph people or things on the bingo card. There are no prizes aside from the admiration of those of us who couldn’t be paid enough to trudge through that idiotic soup of people. Or soup of idiot people.. I forget.

You know, being from Holland, you think I’d be used to huge festivals. Tulip Time was (or is) one of the largest festivals in the country and frankly makes Art Fair look like a cute bongo festival, except one where the bongos have been replaced by iPhones broadcasting Jack Costanzo tracks over $300 speakers.

If you’d like to play Art Fair Bingo and relish your schadenfreude as you watch the usual suspects waddle around downtown Ann Arbor, go nuts.

Art Fair Bingo

Amazing goal from Lionel Messi of Argentina against Mexico. The definition of “touch”.

I have finally broke (broken?) down and bought a new computer. Yes, I bought. Frankly, I can’t build the machine for the price and, damn it, immediate gratification is so nice. Not that I haven’t been looking for a month now but it feels immediate.

Anyway, I took the plunge and came up with an HP a6120n. (Note to self, here is the mobo spec sheet for later.) Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz, 2 GB of RAM, 320 GB 7200 rpm hard drive.. it hums. Literally. After years of sitting next to my previous homebrewed machine (soon to be for sale, BTW), this new machine makes almost no noise. It’s so quiet, I can hear the hard drive crunching during installs. My last machine was probably clocking in around 60 decibels… way too loud (ask J–).

I also came up from this dive with Windows Vista Home Premium. Yeah, I know. I’ve only spent a day with it so far, so my impressions are minimal. I will say that the UAC (User Account Control) is an abysmal thing to use. Uninstalling all the crapware that comes preloaded on a machine took at least twice as long as before Vista simply because I had to click no fewer than 3 and up to 6 confirmation dialog boxes just to uninstall software as an administrator. That’s BS. I know Microsoft is the biggest target for malware, but how does this help combat that? After the 4th uninstall, I wasn’t even reading the dialogs anymore, just skimming for “Continue”, “Yes”, or “OK”.

That said, Vista is nothing if not pretty. The look is very shiny, and after adding an nVidia 8600 GT, it bops along just fine. The Start menu is so-so. I don’t like it, but I haven’t given up yet. I’ll see how it goes for the rest of the week as I get over the language barrier from XP, but so far it’s looking like OS X has come to Windows (and that’s a good thing, mostly). We’ll see how network configuration goes tonight.

Yes, LOLCATS is played out. Yes, they’re likely cliche at this point. But this made me chuckle and that’s good enough to post.

It’s unlikely this Congress will ever impeach George Bush because his people – some of who were close at hand during Watergate – didn’t make any Watergate-like tactical errors: no tapes, no smoking gun, no hard evidence of deliberate wrongdoing. That doesn’t make them any less guilty of what Theodore H. White described as the underlying deed that undid Nixon:

“The true crime of Richard Nixon was simple: he destroyed the myth that binds America together, and for this he was driven from power.

“The myth he broke was critical – that somewhere in American life there is at least one man who stands for the law, the President . . . That faith holds that all men are equal before the law and protected by it; and that no matter how the faith may be betrayed elsewhere, at one particular point – the Presidency – justice will done beyond prejudice, beyond rancor, beyond the possibility of a fix.”

Cops will continue to do their duty, prosecutors will continue to do theirs and judges will do likewise, but guilty men everywhere will find comfort in knowing that the justice system can be treated like a whore, if you have enough money or clout or both. Mob bosses will admire Bush’s loyalty to a closed-mouth soldier and petty criminals may well want to do better than small crime because they’ll realize that big crime pays big dividends.

Resign, Mr. President. Resign.

Lake Expo Online – Lake News

Hilarious!

Today is a day of silence for Internet radio. Small broadcasters all the way up to Yahoo are shutting down in protest over the outrageous royalty rates approved by the Copyright Royalty Board. Who’s the CRB? Essentially, they are an arm of Congress, tasked with reviewing and setting royalty rates.

How bad are the rates? Instead of a flat fee, broadcasters will have to pay a per performance, per listener rate with a minimum of $500 per channel per year. Of course, they don’t define a channel in terms of the internet, so no one knows what that clause means. Internet broadcasters had proposed a fee structure that allowed for their continued existence and it was soundly rejected in favor of a proposal from SoundExchange, a fee collection body created by, guess who, the RIAA.

What’s the math on this?

Because a typical Internet radio station plays about 16 songs an hour, that’s a royalty obligation in 2006 of about 1.28 cents per listener-hour.

In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour. [source]

Effectively, the CRB has adopted a proposal that makes it cost at least twice as much to run an Internet radio station as what you could conceivably make in ad revenue. Oh, and satellite and terrestrial radio don’t pay this rate. Note that this has nothing to do with RIAA-member bands or acts; this is a fee you have to pay if all you did was broadcast music you created yourself. It’s a hit job by the RIAA, plain and simple.

So, what can you do? Call your representative, write a letter (not an email), urging them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act introduced in both the House and Senate. Internet Radio is not dead yet, but today is a preview of what it will be like come July 15th unless something changes.  

Savenetradio.org

I’ve seen, at a minimum, four posts in the last week about people complaining about people not “conversing” on their blogs. As a member of the sub-M level of bloggers, let me posit this.

It’s not that no one cares, it’s that they’re really not into conversing. The Internet is passive on its prima facie. If you can induce one, maybe two, people to comment on your site, $DEITY bless you.

That said, to those that (hopefully) have sub’d to this minor corner of the ‘nets, keep blogging; I’m reading. Especially you in NOLA.