1. Trillian has "emotisounds" enabled by default now. This means that when chatting on IRC or ICQ, or.. whatever, and someone types "OMG LOL!!!1" my computer makes a hideous giggling sound. Gah! I really worry about some people who type "LOL". They seem to do it a hell of a lot, and I can't help but wonder if they really are "laughing out loud" or just sniggering and stuffing more lard and coke down their throats. People who express their emotions with acronyms scare me. Actually no, they piss me off; it highlights an increasing inability for people to communicate effectively with each other.

"LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!"

A variation on the venerable "hehehehe", which I have loathed with a secret burning passion ever since I first encountered it being spewed by AOLers back in 1994. An abbreviated, iconic shorthand, that form was popularized apparently as some kind of attempt to appear as some kind of technological superstar-- you're playing your keyboard like a guitar! Wheedle on those two keys, and it sounds like you're laughing to the guy on the other end! Boy-howdy, you can sure make that fingerboard sing! Hehehehe!

But somehow it got mated with "LOL"-- an onomatopoeia mingled with an acronym-- to form "LOLOLOLOL", which evidently the same AOLers can read fluently. I don't know-- to me, it can mean only two things:

1. "Laughing out loud out loud out loud out loud"
2. Something that sounds sort of like "Low low low low low low"

Sure, accuse me of being pedantic. But I challenge anyone to read out loud a passage of text containing "LOLOLOL" and not read it as one of the two possibilities above. And then, I further challenge, I dare you to ever attempt to use it again.

"LOOOOOOOOOOL!!!"

This one is just precious. It completely abandons any pretense of being an acronym-- I don't think any AOLer, even, could type this while under the impression that "Laughing out out out out out out out loud!" is a meaningful expression. No, this one is just "LOL" that's been streeeeeeeetched in order to affect more emphasis.

It's silly, it's obvious, it's cheap. But still, I would dare somebody to read it out loud with a straight face.

And for extra credit, immediately follow it with "And DROOOOOOOOOOL!"

2. Microsoft's OLE (and later ActiveX, COM, COM+, etc) gimmick when Win 3 and 3.1 came out was that "Whee! Look, you can put bits of Excel inside Word!" thing... Which was alright for some things I guess: it's convenient to be able to edit some figures in a report document without having to load up Excel and reimport the table. They overstepped the line when Outbreak Outlook Express used this same functionality to show HTML in email using Internet Explorer's rendering engine though. Aside from the whole huge virus/trojan/worm issues that this caused, I'm pissed off that advertising companies can send me mail that requests images from their servers which allows them to set cookies that link my email address to the web pages I visit (and thereby allows them to build up a profile on me in order to send me more unwanted advertising). And the virus issue just will not go away. The only way this will stop is if Microsoft rewrites Outhouse Outlook Express from scratch and makes some fundamentally different design decisions about what their product should and shouldn't be able to do.

The possibility of DOOM III coming to the Mac seems almost a sure bet, considering the facts that id Software founder John Carmack has on multiple occasions publicly embraced the platform and every recent title from the company has been ported. More importantly though is the fact that Carmack himself first unveiled the new DOOM III engine on a Mac at last year's MacWorld Tokyo, which is also the one and only time the game has been publicly displayed since. For many the remaining days till DOOM III's next and official showing at E3 will seem like months, but you can be sure MacGamer will be among those attending to provide coverage of the title when the time comes.

Unfortunately, the RioRiot lacks the iPod's elegant design and glistening good looks. It has the feel of a prototype that was rushed into production, with control buttons that aren't as intuitive as the iPod's wheel-and-button combination. The Rio-Riot's power and earphone jacks look so much alike and are placed so close together that I nearly shorted out the device.

The company says the rechargeable lithium-ion battery is good for more than 10 hours, but mine conked out at closer to seven. Still, more than enough for jogging or most flights.

James Lileks has a fine rant today. But one of his points is a criticism of Arab nations for not contributing to improve conditions in Palestinian refugee camps.

Actually, the squalidness of the refugee camps is intentionally maintained by the PA and the UN Relief Works Agency. When the PA was established in 1994 it decided not to aid the refugee camps because if their residents became too comfortable, they might abandon their dreams of returning to their grandparents' homes inside Israel's pre-1967 borders.

There is a camp called Shuafat which now falls within the boundaries of Jerusalem, but UNRWA etc. have steadfastly opposed efforts by the municipality to pave streets and install a modern sewage system.

Someone living in Shuafat found my cellphone which I had dropped, but I declined to go and collect it.

This just in: Arafat has backtracked on his agreement to jail Tourism-Minister-assassination-planner Ahmed Saadat and heavy-arms-and-explosives-smuggler Fuad Shubeiki in Jericho with British/American guards. Jailing them was part of the deal made with Israel for releasing Arafat from house arrest.

There is one Afghani thing everyone should see before their country becomes a smoldering terrorist paste-filled crater, or at least a deeper terrorist paste-filled crater: their insane goat-slinging national sport, Buzkashi. Buzkashi was started in the time of Genghis Kahn, but unlike other sports started in the time of Genghis Kahn like Synchronized Impale the Villager, Horseback Crotch Kick, and Female Horseback Crotch Kick, Buzkashi survived relatively unchanged all the way to modern day, give or take a few million tons of anti-personnel explosives.

The first thing you need for Buzkashi, besides a warrior soul prepared for death, is the game ball or "boz." To prepare it, find a goat. Now chop off its head and most of its legs. This probably won't finish it off... Afghani goats are raised on soil composed of 80 percent land mine and require either intense persistence or voodoo to kill. So after the chopping, you need to submerge it in cold water for 24 hours. This helps toughen it up so the corpse doesn't fall apart during gameplay. And before you ask, yes, this is the exact same technique that Joseph Stalin and Hitler would have invented if they dictated the policy of sporting goods manufacturing and were goats.

But consider this: the Decepticons were a short-sighted race that wanted to rule the universe by controlling its energy resources. They were proud, vicious, and specialized in sneak attacks. They had no compunctions about using us miserable fleshlings as human shields. Eventually they were reduced to cowering in caves on a remote asteroid that no one really cared about. Do they remind you of anybody?

The Autobot/Decepticon war spanned millions of years without any clear victor. In its wake countless planets were devastated by giant robots bent on violence. It is a grim lesson that we should take to heart, as we embark on what could be the longest, bitterest war of all time.

Until relatively recently, Peter Cullen didn't know people like Weiner existed.

But now the veteran voice-over actor, who supplied the voice of heroic Optimus Prime in "The Transformers" cartoon, has met hundreds of admirers and attended a fan convention.

Despite the program's low-production values and cynical marketing purpose (even fans acknowledge it's something of a glorified toy commercial) Cullen said he and other actors took pride in making the stories wholesome.

Prime, who transformed into a big-rig truck, led the good-guy Autobot robots in war against the resource-depleting Decepticons, led by the sinister Megatron, who changed into a massive silver handgun.

"I wanted Optimus Prime to be strong and just and fair," said Cullen, who now plays Eeyore in Disney's "Winnie the Pooh" cartoons. "I saw him like John Wayne, and did a little of that voice. ... I wanted him to be a super-hero, not stupid or off-the-wall. He never yelled or lost his temper. I think the kids appreciated that."

Meanwhile, bootleg copies of all 98 original cartoon episodes proliferated for years on the Internet, the complete set selling for $70 to $90. Now Rhino Home Video is releasing the program's first 16-episode season on DVD, which retails for about $60. Other seasons will follow.

A day before its April 23 debut, advance sales of that 17-year-old cartoon show ranked No. 7 on the Amazon.com list of best-selling DVDs.

Transformer fans even posted praise for the discs weeks in advance, rejoicing that they no longer had to pirate the episodes.

"No more downloading, encoding and video CD burning for me!" one fan wrote on the Amazon review section. "I want the real thing!"

One way to understand the conflict between the Content Faction and the Tech Faction is to look at how they describe their customers. For the content industries, they’re "consumers." By contrast, the information technology companies talk about "users."

If you see people as consumers, you control access to what you offer, and you do everything you can to prevent theft, for the same reason supermarkets have cameras by the door and bookstores have electronic theft detectors. Allowing people to take stuff for free is inconsistent with your business model.

But if you see people as users, you want to give them more features and power at cheaper prices. The impulse to empower users was at the heart of the microcomputer revolution: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak wanted to put computing power into ordinary people’s hands, and that’s why they founded Apple Computer. If this is your approach -- enabling people to do new things -- it’s hard to adjust to the idea of building in limitations.

The Content Faction may be right that what people really want is compelling content over broadband. It may even be the case that, if they were asked, most people would be willing to trade the open, robust, relatively simple tools they now have for a more constrained digital world in which they have more content choices. But for now, nobody’s asking ordinary people what they want.

"It's possible that Apple is hoping to totally re-position itself to the PC masses, who all-too-much associate the delicate Apple Garamond font with the old, gay Apple," said Lukas Hauser, the writer of this article.

The iToilet features dual pipe™ technology. This makes the iToilet flush twice as fast as a Pentium-based model!

* Well, if truth be told, Apple has yet to find a way to equal the superiority and speed of the Pentium, but Steve Jobs insists that adding the second pipe does make the iToilet flush twice as fast (Hey, we did it with the G4 and nobody realised!)

Stupid boring idiotic people who choose to use other cheap inferior toilets (such as the ridiculously fast and super-reliable Microsoft "Toilet 2000" or "Loo XP") have to unclog the
old-fashioned way - by pressing the "unclog" button. We laugh in their faces because the procedure is just so much quicker and far more fun with the iToilet! To unclog, follow these simple instructions:

STEP 1: When the message box pops up telling you that the iToilet has clogged, simply click the restart button in the dialogue box. Keep clicking this button until you realise that it won't do anything anyway because the iToilet has totally frozen and is not responding. Proceed to Step 2

STEP 2: Press and hold the following keys on your iToilet keypad: Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Command+Esc.
This doesn't do anything either, so proceed to Step 3.

Honor-shame cultures are culturally incapable of renouncing war unless one of two things happens: Either every other state or culture submits to them ("Islam" means "submission"), or they are defeated so decisively the culture itself is destroyed.

Imperial Japan was an honor-shame culture - and history records how that turned out.

For a while they flew on, motionless against the starry sweep of the Galaxy, itself motionless against the infinite sweep of the Universe. And then they turned around.
"It'll have to go," the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home.

On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.

As for Abdullah's departure from Texas, Pallone said no FAA facilities changed staffing and that in fact a female air traffic controller in Fort Worth directed the prince's flight.

it won't happen, for one very simple reason: steve jobs doesn't like tv

if you understand the man, you understand the plan: jobs believes, rightly, that computers are for turning on the mind, while tv turns off the mind... that's why apple's digital hub is all about creative devices, like digital cameras and camcorders; passive devices, like game consoles and tv tuners don't fit the profile (one could argue that the ipod is a passive device, but music is the perfect background for the creative process)

i could be totally wrong, of course, and apple could announce tomorrow that it's jumping head-first into the "convergence" market, but i'd be willing to bet big money that
(a) they won't
(b) microsoft will
(c) time will show that apple made the right choice

I don't know about you but I know what I am going to do, both personally and professionally. On the personal side it's not much of a risk but on the business side I am about to take a stand against the largest technology company in the world. I don't care about the ramifications of this move either, sometimes you have to take a stand even if you risk losing your audience.

Personally I have removed every piece of Microsoft software on all my Macs. No more Office, no more IE, no more Microsoft of any kind.

Business wise I will no longer accept any Microsoft products for review. I will no longer take a neutral position when it comes to Microsoft. As a matter of fact, every time I get the opportunity to slam Microsoft for its business practices I will do so. I am even considering a new column which will expose the evil that is Microsoft. I'll be looking for writers that want to take this task on.

"Their professionalism was amazing," Lieut. Overbaugh said. "The Canadians were a very large asset to the mission. I would have loved to have 12 Canadian sniper teams out there. I'd have no problems fighting alongside of them again."

He said the Canadian snipers had equipment far superior to theirs. Their rifles had longer range than the U.S. weapons and better high-tech sights. Lieut. Overbaugh said if another mission comes up, he will request the Canadian sniper teams be sent with his unit.

Crawling up into a good position, they set up their .50-calibre rifle -- the MacMillan Tac-50, a weapon the corporal compares to having superhuman power in your hands. "Firing it feels like someone slashing you on the back of your hockey helmet with a hockey stick."

1. The "daily journal" style blog. One post per day, in editorial-column style, with a good neatly-tied-up structure and a point to be made. You know who I'm talking about here.
2. The link blog. Mostly links to articles, some commentary, but the real content is the links. Lots of 'em.
3. The essay blog. Most posts are big, long, and thoughtful.
4. The LiveJournal. I've found these mostly to be what (as den Beste notes) calls itself the A/N crowd-- mostly kids posting injokes, dishing with their friends, posting quiz-meme result graphics, and banging out stream-of-consciousness gibberish loudly trying to prove how weird they are.

But the venerable machine has been giving us a few problems in recent years.

The school group wanted to put the newsletter up on its Internet site, so we put the newsletter on a disk. But no one could open the disk — the conclusion was that our floppy drive was just a tiny bit off, making the disk unreadable except on our machine. We thought it would make a great encryption device, but the market for it would have been small.

It could no longer be used for even simple things like e-mail on the Internet. And when you turned it on, you got the unhappy Mac face, but if you turned it off and then on again quickly, the happy Mac face appeared.

But Schumacher isn't worrying about whether the show's technical considerations will prove daunting on the road. "Julie has said that you could do The Lion King on the back of a flatbed truck — because what really transports you is the mythic nature of the story and its wonderful music," he says.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who handled the original liability case, found that Microsoft retaliated against other companies many times.

When Apple Computer chose a rival Web browser over Microsoft's, Gates called Apple's chief executive to ask him "how we should announce the cancellation of" Microsoft's translation of the Office business suite for Apple's Macintosh computers.

STILL MORE ON CANADIAN ANTHEM-BOOING: Reader Evan McElravy writes:

It gets uglier. In the past when relations between the "two solitudes" have been tense, as happens from time to time, there are periodic episodes of hockey fans in English cities booing the French verses of "O Canada." There was one game in particular a few years ago, in Calgary I think, where some Canadiens players refused to go back out on the ice after. So Canadians boo their own national anthem too, though I'm not sure that excuses the Detroit fans I've been to a fair number of U.S.-Canada sporting events (baseball and hockey, on both sides of the border) over the years and can't remember it ever having happened, but I suspect it isn't that uncommon. Given that Detroit has a closer intimacy with Canada than any other American city (well, Buffalo), I suspect that there aren't any real hard feelings though. Imagine if individual cities in the U.S. had their own "civic anthems" that played before games. I suspect there would be plenty of booing then and nobody would think twice about; would that really be any better than doing it to another country, though?

I was brought up to believe that booing was generally rude. Of course, we didn't go to many hockey games, either.

UPDATE: Reader Tom Milway writes:

I'm in Montreal right now, and I am a huge hockey fan. Last night at the Molson Centre more than a few idiots booed the Star Spangled Banner. The same thing happened Sunday night in Vancouver, the same night that the Pistons fans booed O Canada. Classless behaviour in cities that benefit extraordinarily from American patronage.

Hmm. You think that sports fans are just idiots? No, that would be too harsh.

STILL MORE ON THE CANADA-BOOING INCIDENT -- Dan Hartung writes:

I recently went to a Blackhawks game and some jerk behind us was constantly yelling "DETROIT SUCKS!"

Except the other team was Pittsburgh.

Don't think a lot of thought goes into this ...

Meanwhile, if you took a lot of guff from Gateway fans back in 1997 or thereabouts because Apple was "going out of business," feel free to call them up and gloat unattractively; not only is Gateway still copying Apple's designs, but the company is also now losing money (while Apple's making a profit) and shipping fewer systems than Apple is. No joke; Apple says it sold 813,000 Macs last quarter, while Gateway only shipped 645,000 cowboxes. Of course, there's the fact that Apple's 813,000 Macs were sold worldwide, while Gateway's 645,000 number is for U.S. sales only-- but considering that Gateway pretty much shut down its overseas operations last August and claims that it's "no longer actively selling its products" in the UK, Australia, Japan, etc., we figure those 645,000 domestic systems basically do represent the company's total units sold worldwide.

In other words, yes, Apple appears to be kicking Gateway's flank steaks up one wall and down the other. Yeah, who's beleaguered now, punk?

You may remember Stewart Alsop as the man who ranted and raved with great gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair when Apple bought NeXT, Inc. in 1997. He wanted the company to buy Be, Inc. instead, a company in which his own venture capital company had a large interest. Later, he predicted the death of Apple, as so many other people have done from about 1982 until last week. In recent months, Mr. Also has changed his tune considerably, starting when he came back to the Mac platform in June of 2001. In any event, it's a very pleasant change to read Mr. Alsop speaking so highly of the Mac platform today, especially considering the heapin' helping of Humble Pie (mixed with a tasty side order of crow) he had to eat in order to do so.

Under the watchful eyes of Secret Service experts, according to his spokesman, Mr Bush backed a 2002 Chevrolet Camaro down a practice track and spun 180 degrees at 65 kmh.

The car continued front-end-first in the same direction - an evasive manoeuvre known as the 'J turn' that Secret Service drivers might make if they came under attack.

The co-creator of the Xbox has resigned days after Microsoft conceded the unit was struggling internationally and would miss its initial sales targets.

Seamus Blackley, a physicist by training who also worked in Hollywood before joining Microsoft (MSFT), plans to start a new venture, the details of which he will begin discussing in the next few weeks, said his spokeswoman, Susan Lusty.

News of Blackley's departure comes just days after Microsoft said it would miss its fiscal year-end sales target for the Xbox by as much as 40 percent, a shortfall it blamed on weak international sales. Those weak sales led to price cuts in Europe and Australia last week.

The console has also struggled in Japan, selling just over 190,000 units in its first six weeks there, according to Japanese game magazine publisher Enterbrain. By comparison, the console sold nearly 1.5 million units in its first six weeks in the United States last year.

"The tendency to homosexuality is a disorder, not a sin," he said. "But the practice of homosexuality is truly sinful."

Some parishioners in the packed pews shifted uneasily, others nodded in agreement and a few walked out. But Clark continued, arguing that it was a "grave mistake" to allow gays in the priesthood. He blamed American society for being "very protective" of homosexuality.

"Homosexuality became in the American exchange of views a protected area," he said. "And unfortunately ... homosexual students were allowed to pass through seminaries. Grave mistake. Not because homosexuals in anyway tend to criminality, but because it is a disorder."

"We know — we won't mention it outside the cathedral — we are probably the most immoral country certainly in the Western hemisphere and maybe the larger circle because of the entertainment we suffer and what it's done to our [country's] morals ...," Clark said.

But Catholic League President William Donohue praised Clark. "He makes a great deal of sense and to have this said so articulately by one of the brighter priests in the New York area is very encouraging," Donohue said.

"The internal problem in the church is a lack of governance and due to diligence," he added. "But there is no question about it — this is a societywide problem that goes way beyond the Catholic Church."

Dear Teacher of Divinity and Theobiology, or Dungeon Master, or Grand Dragon, or Whatever You Call Yourself,

(I know you probably won't even bother reading this, but that's fine-- I'll be posting it publicly so the rest of the Internet can read it instead.)

Did you know that Microsoft runs its Hotmail service using BSD Unix (because it's a lot more capable and modern and a lot less "obsolete" than Windows 2000, which couldn't handle the load when they tried it)? Did you know that about 90% of the e-mail sent over the Internet is transported using software written by gays and lesbians? Did you know that Linux, the biggest "communist" open-source operating system, is what runs about 50% of the servers on the Internet (and rising), and the market share of the Apache web server (another open-source software package) is about 70% of the Internet and rising?

Did you know that members.truepath.com, the server running your own website, is using Linux and Apache and running DAEEEEEMONS?

(How did I find that out? Must have used black magic or hexes or something. WoooOOooOoooo.)

Did you know that approximately 0% of the cutting-edge and inventive software in the computer industry was written by humorless religious people like yourself-- and about 100% of it was written by people who have a sense of humor and a much more realistic idea than you do of what is important in life?

I won't even begin to address the other inaccuracies in your article, because there are so many of them that it's clear you never intended to be accurate. You just wanted a convenient soapbox from which to shout about your ridiculous little conspiracy theory. What scares me is that people are probably going to think you're a computer expert and know what you're talking about. If only they knew.

I know it must really be threatening to you that the people you consider so "evil" are the ones making all the contributions to society and technology, and all you're doing is telling everybody whom to hate and fear. WE'RE busy making the world a better place, and YOU'RE busy making people's lives tedious and hateful and spiteful. Which of us is helping humanity and which of us is just being malevolently paranoid and bitter?

I know you think that as long as you spend your life being miserable and making sure everybody with whom you have contact is miserable too, you will get to go to Heaven-- and everybody who's spending their lives being happier than you are right now will go to Hell. I'm sure that makes you feel very special.

But making other people unhappy because it will benefit YOU in the end-- you know what I call that? Selfishness. And more and more people are realizing that that's a terrible way to go about interacting with the world. I'm sure that scares the hell out of you.

You look fairly old. You'll probably die before you wake up to this fact, but future generations won't be so deluded: Your little role-playing game that you call "religion" is what's obsolete.

Brian

I agree with the reviewers. There's nothing in Windows XP to cause anyone to go out of his way to get it. In fact, I wonder why such an amazing giant of technology as Microsoft--which argues vociferously for its right to integrate new technology into its operating system--can't do better than this. XP was supposed to finally replace old-world MS-DOS with a modern, stable platform that can be modified for new technologies without the pain and suffering we all experienced in the past. So why doesn't XP work a whole lot better?

XP really isn't all that new or stable. XP is based on what used to be called Windows NT, which Microsoft developed over many years as a competitive response to Unix. Yet XP requires you to do things Unix doesn't require, like restart your machine when you install a new application. That's the Windows legacy: XP has to work with software designed for previous versions of Windows, and programmers know that with Windows software, it's safer to tell users to restart the PC after a program is installed. This reflects the design of the core of the operating system, called the kernel. The kernel in XP is not fully protected against what application programs might do; the kernel in Unix is. So for all the hoopla about stability, XP still puts an extra burden on the user.

As many readers know, I've been using the Macintosh more and more at home. Apple recently upgraded its operating system to what's known as OS X. That is based on Unix. You don't have to restart your computer all the time. Managing programs and data is even easier than before. Of course, Apple is still the same old company too. But I'm beginning to think that Apple might actually be able to use such advantages to compete effectively. And I'm beginning to think that Microsoft looks like a company too wedded to past practices to keep up. Heck, what do they need to worry about with $38 billion in cash and net profits close to 30% on every dollar they collect? Yes, indeed, what does Microsoft have to worry about?

Hypnotically encased iMacs trick unsuspecting computer users into accepting Darwinism

However, these propagandists aren't just targeting the young. Take for example Apple Computers, makers of the popular Macintosh line of computers. The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don't advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.

But is this really such a shock? Lets look for a moment at Apple Computers. Founded by long haired hippies, this company has consistently supported 60's counter-cultural "values". But there are even darker undertones to this company than most are aware of. Consider the name of the company and its logo: an apple with a bite taken out of it. This is clearly a reference to the Fall, when Adam and Eve were tempted with an apple2 by the serpent. It is now Apple Computers offering us temptation, thereby aligning themselves with the forces of darkness3.

This company is well known for its cult-like following. It isn't much of a stretch to say that it is a cult. Consider co-founder and leader Steve Jobs' constant exhortation through advertising (i.e. mind control) that its followers should "think different". We have to ask ourselves: "think different than whom or what?" The disturbing answer is that they want us to think different than our Christian upbringing, to reject all the values that we have been taught and to heed not the message of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Given the now obvious anti-Christian and cultish nature of Apple Computers, is it any wonder that they have decided to base their newest operating system on Darwinism? This just reaffirms the position that Darwinism is an inherently anti-Christian philosophy spread through propaganda and subliminal trickery, not a science as its brainwashed followers would have us believe.

ADDENDUM: It has been brought to my attention that the Darwin OS mentioned above now has a cartoon mascot (no doubt to influence children) named Hexley (pictured above) -- a platypus dressed as a devil who performs occult magic, i.e. hexes. They're not doing a very good job keeping their ties to the forces of darkness a secret, are they?

This OS -- and its Darwin offspring -- extensively use what are called "daemons" (which is how Pagans write "demon" -- they are notoriously poor spellers: magick, vampyre, etc.) which is a program that hides in the background, doing things without the user's notice.

Carney said the popular youth clothing maker had believed the shirts might appeal to Asian-American consumers, and was surprised by the hostile reception they received.

"The thought was that everyone would love them, especially the Asian community. We thought they were cheeky, irreverent and funny and everyone would love them. But that has not been the case."

“Now that humanity completely dominates and influences the natural environment, my vision is to use QuickTime as an artform in the 2000s to help preserve what precious little wilderness is still left.”

So says Erik Goetze, publisher of Virtual Parks, a website with hundreds of incredibly photographed, large-scale QuickTime VR panoramas of North American wilderness.

Let Erik take you from ghost towns to lighthouses, from fields of wildflowers bursting with life, to the eerie, desolate landscape of California’s Mono Lake. Explore the John Muir Trail, or witness the first sunset of the new millennium off Point Lobos at California’s Big Sur.

Browse panoramas by geography, visual theme, best-of-site, or by alphabetic index.

The culprit, it turns out, isn't the new iMac's hardware, but its operating system, which Apple focused on getting to market first and bringing up to speed later. In order to let OS X support as many existing software applications as possible, "Apple supported a number of legacy technologies designed to ease their transition to the new operating system," said Nathalie Welch, the company's public relations manager for hardware.

As a result, Welch said, "We are merely at the beginning of the performance opportunities in Mac OS X."

"Originally, I was only able to produce the same result when the user pressed the refresh button," Sandblad said in an e-mail. "I contacted Microsoft about it in November and they confirmed the problem. On Feb. 28, I received mail from them saying that they didn't think the problem was serious enough to fix."

"Later, I e-mailed Microsoft with additional information, describing how it was possible to trigger the same flaw with the back button. A couple of days later I received a mail explaining that they might fix the problem in a future service pack. I told them that I was planning to go public with the vulnerability but that I could wait if they could convince me that they were going to fix the issue in reasonable time. They didn't respond at all."

...

"Why the hell did they put a back button into the browser toolbar if they didn't want me to use it?" Martin Montez, a stockbroker, wondered. "I'm one of the few people in the world who actually reads the manuals and there's no warning anywhere that using the back button could compromise your system."

Microsoft's spokesman said that the company "remains vigilant in our commitment to keeping users information safe and will be addressing this issue in an upcoming release."

We still have a lot of bombs to build before we take out Iraq.

At the end of last year, people noticed that we had greatly diminished our stockpiles of smart bombs and non-nuclear cruise missles in Afghanistan. I recall (but do not have a citation) that the general guestimate was Sept/Oct of this year to build enough ordinance to drop on Saddam.

In the mean time, the US is playing the Israel/Palestinian game to make the rest of the Arab world go nuts. The US supports Israel, plays with Arafat, and hopes to rope a bunch of dopes into our sights when the bombs start dropping. Until we have the bombs we need to end this quickly, we're going to do what it takes to keep the Middle East and the numerous maniacs that inhabit it looking like the evil idiots that they are.

Once we have enough bombs, we'll know who to drop them on and this will come to an end.

President BUSH (FROM TAPE): Yeah. I – uh – heh – yes. There needs to be balance when it comes to freedom of information laws. There are some things that when I discuss in the privacy of the Oval Office – or national security matters – that should just not be in the national arena. I'll give you one area, though, where I'm very cautious and that's about e-mailing. I used to be an avid e-mailer. And I e-mailed to my daughters or e-mailed to my father. And I don't want those e-mails to be in the public domain. So I don't e-mail any more. Out of concern for freedom of information laws, but also concern for my privacy. And, uh, but we'll cooperate with the press unless we think it's a matter of national security or something that's entirely private.

A developer-level solution, MacDX furnishes an application with DirectX- interfaces and functionality, so the product runs as it would on a Windows PC. Thomas explains: “The MacDX interface provides a development path to the Mac OS platform, which gets the most out of your existing development investment with minimum development-time required.”

No-one I know defends anyone who gets off on child porn. Neither do I. But that's not the issue involved. The point is that this particular kind of material can be produced without children being harmed. Given that, the Court just decided that Congress could not ban it.

The government's argument, which the Court rejected, was that the existence of this kind of material was a danger to children anyway because it might induce those who viewed it to go out and molest real children. But as soon as you accept that argument, you've opened the flood gates. Does that mean you should be able to ban racist hate speech because someone who hears it might later go out on a lynching expedition? Or ban books about jewel thieves because those who read them might become thieves? Indeed, for almost any kind of expression, popular or unpopular, can't you produce a plausible reason why letting it be expressed might cause someone to commit a crime of some kind?

Anyway, when I did teach morality - and even in the other subjects, since morality came up all the time - I always got very tired of the constant student refrain, "Why should we (fill in the blank)? Why be honest? Why wait until marriage? Why be pro-life? Why care about the poor?

And then one day, I shot back another question in response to theirs:

Why not?

And ever since, it's become my handiest moral decision-making tool, for myself and to share. Try it. Think of your most pressing current moral dilemma or even spiritual growth issues and apply that question. And see if the only answers you come up with don't make you feel like the biggest snake in the grass ever, and move you a couple of feet closer to doing the right thing.

Why not give more to the poor?

Why not tell the truth?

Why not address your children with a little more patience?

Why not apologize?

Why not go to Mass this morning?

Why not pray tonight?

Honestly - aren't the answers coming into your head along the lines of, Because I want more stuff. Because I'll be embarrassed. Because I don't want to make the effort. Because it will wound my pride. Because I don't feel like it. Because I'd rather watch television. Because I'm afraid of what I'll lose.

Sheesh. Can I feel any more selfish? Can I be any more convinced of my need for God's grace to overcome these stupid reasons not to act out of love?

This card has it all, really: a grim joke about murdering your children, frightening cartoon characters, and (just in case you couldn't picture it on your own) a drawing of a boy blowing up.
To anyone who complains that our society has become too desensitized to violence in recent times because images in TV and movies, I urge you to take a close look at the exploding boy in this vintage postcard and ask you to never raise the argument again.

It's finally here.

With a sleek, aerodynamic design, state-of-the-art navigation system, and the most powerful engines in its class; the most-anticipated vehicle of the year is now available... with Force Powers.

HIM: You should join my religion, because it is the One True Way to salvation.

ME: Okay, tell me: Why are you trying to get me to join?

HIM: Well, because only those souls who accept <SAVIOR> will receive eternal reward in Paradise.

ME: In other words, if you do what your religion says, and make sure other people do too, you get to go to Heaven.

HIM: Er, yes.

ME: So what you're saying is, the human motivation to which religion appeals is... selfishness?

Khaled, a hotel worker, spoke in wonderment of a martyr's encounter at the gates of heaven as someone having their file checked: "There will be blessings for 70 of his family and friends. The 72 virgins are real -- their skin is so pale and beautiful that you can see the blood in their veins. If one of these virgins spits in the ocean, the seawater becomes sweet. The martyr is so special he does not feel the pain of being in the grave and all that his family has to do to cleanse his file thoroughly, is to repay his outstanding debts."

Surely, we ask, this view of the Koran should be seen as philosophical? As a parable? But no, there was a chorus of disagreement from a gathering of his friends in the teeming Jabalya refugee camp near Gaza City: "No. This is real . . . this is as it will be," said Khaled, as much for himself as on behalf of younger Palestinians who now talk endlessly of the benefits of death over life in a bombing campaign that has killed more than 200 Israelis in 18 months.

But Dr Rabah Mohanna, whose Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has claimed its own share of the violence - including last year's assassination of a minister in the Israeli Government -- is confounded by youth's lunge for the grave: "Thousands of young men and women are ready to be blown up. It is a new phenomenon -- you have no idea how big it is."

Baby Bottle Pops were launched in 1998, and have already become one of the top selling lollipop products in the U.S.. Kids love dunking the delicious candy nipple into the powdered candy for a burst of flavor. Sour Baby Bottle Pops were introduced in 1999 to add pucker power to the line.

• The computer has to "boot" each time you turn it on, so that it can copy the operating system from the disk into memory.
• When you run programs, the computer has to copy the programs from the disk into memory before they can do anything. When you quit programs, they are deleted from RAM, but remain on the disk.
• When you work on documents in applications, the data exists only in RAM, until you explicitly "save" it-- tell the program to copy it from RAM onto the disk.
• Each time you turn the computer off, everything in the RAM is deleted-- any data in documents you haven't saved, any programs that are running, the whole active copy of the operating system. This means that when you turn it back on, you have to wait while the computer boots, copying it all back into memory again.

In the episode, bumbling family head Homer Simpson is robbed by street kids and kidnapped by an unlicensed taxi driver after his family ventures to Rio to find a missing orphan that daughter Lisa sponsored.

The family runs across rats and monkeys while looking for the orphan. When they find him, he has grown rich working on a television show and pays for Homer's release in gratitude for shoes Lisa had bought him to escape monkeys at the orphanage.

Rio tourism board president Jose Eduardo Guinle asked the board's legal team to look into what action could be taken.

"He understands it is a satire," tourism board spokesman Sergio Cavalcanti said at the time. "What really hurt was the idea of the monkeys, the image that Rio de Janeiro was a jungle. ... It's a completely unreal image of the city."

The big launch finally arrived. On November 14 at 12:01 a.m., Mr. Gates handed over the first Xbox to a dedicated gamer who had waited for hours at the Toys 'R' Us store in New York City's Times Square. Mr. Blackley and his new girlfriend, Vanessa Burnham, were at the scene. He introduced her to Mr. Gates.


"You know, Seamus, I think she could help you get your act together," Mr. Gates said.

"You think so?" Mr. Blackley asked. "Something has to."

"You ought to marry her," Mr. Gates said.

"You think so?" Mr. Blackley replied.

"Yeah, absolutely," Mr. Gates said. "Here's a ring."

"I'll give it a shot, OK, cool," Mr. Blackley said. He got down on one knee.

"Vanessa, will you marry me?"

She laughed, then answered, "Yes."

"Thank you," Mr. Blackley said.

He rose and they kissed. Everyone in the store applauded. Mr. Blackley put the ring on Ms. Burnham's finger. John Eyler, CEO of Toys 'R' Us, presented a stuffed animal to her. Mr. Gates had been briefed, but he had ad-libbed the part about Mr. Blackley getting his act together.

There were plenty of other moments when Mr. Blackley's flair for "morale building" activities got him into trouble. At one internal meeting, he showed an animation dubbed "Survival of the Fittest." It sported a couple of Microsoft's mascot characters at a shooting range. They fired weapons and eviscerated mascots like Sega's Sonic, Nintendo's Mario, and Sony's Crash Bandicoot. He was quoted in a newspaper as saying, "Playing video games is like masturbation; everyone does it but no one wants to admit it."

Mostly, what one hears from those who shared his company in New Zealand are testaments to Wood's maturity. It is Wood who describes a rare exception to this - a night out in Wellington drinking vodka and cranberry juice that ended with Wood and fellow hobbit Dominic Monaghan climbing up a fountain statue that had been annoying Wood and pissing in it as Liv Tyler, cast as Arwen the elf princess, looked on and said (Wood does a high-pitched Tyler impression), "Guys, what are you doing? Did you just piss in the fountain?" He enjoys this story. "Funny though," he says. "Good memories."

Elijah Wood has the ring. There were other rings, used for different shots, but he has the ring he wore: the ring that was the ring. Jackson gave it to him in a wooden box as he left New Zealand at the end of filming. "It is the one ring," he says, "which is a pretty great thing to have."

He keeps the ring in his office. It's put away, out of sight.

I ask Wood whether he often takes it out and fondles it.


"No," he says. "I haven't taken it out in quite some time. I'd rather just keep it hidden away for now."

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Homer: Donut?
 Lisa: No, thanks.  Do you have any fruit?
Homer: [offers some of the donut he's eating] This has purple stuff
       inside.  Purple is a fruit.
-- Mmm, purple, "Bart on the Road"

Bart: [sighs] I wasted five bucks on these.
Lisa: Where'd you get five bucks?  I want five bucks.
Bart: Aw, I sold my soul to Milhouse?
Lisa: [incredulous] What?  How could you _do_ that?  Your soul is the
      most valuable part of you.
Bart: You believe in that junk?
Lisa: Well, whether or not the soul is physically real, Bart, it's the
      symbol of everything fine inside us.
Bart: [tsking sadly] Poor, gullible Lisa.  I'll keep my crappy sponges,
      thanks.
Lisa: Bart, your soul is the only part of you that lasts forever.  For
      five dollars, Milhouse could own you for a zillion years!
Bart: Well, if you think he got such a good deal, I'll sell you my
      conscience for $4.50.
       [Lisa starts to walk off]
      I'll throw in my sense of decency too.  It's a Bart sales event!
      Everything about me must go!
-- Great selection and rock-bottom prices, but where is the soul?, "Bart
    Sells His Soul"

We have a government that values tolerance, understanding and sensitivity over justice. They value multiculturalism and diversity over prosperity, patriotism and national pride.

Our Prime Minister and government left most Canadians ashamed in the wake of 9/11. Canadians once fought valiantly for the cause of freedom. Two generations have passed since then. Our current government has no such morality, no such courage. Our government's response to September's tragedy sullied the memory of those who sacrificed their very lives to provide the basis for freedom. They provided the basis for freedom, but could not ensure it. Freedom must be earned each day. Our government, and many foolish Canadians, balk at the price (like the rest of the world, we prefer to let you pay for it). Today's government - although not just Canada's in this case - would gladly devalue to meaningless the sacrifice of our veterans when threatened by something as mildly evil and threatening as the Durban conference, never mind something so morally unequivocal as the World Trade Center bombings or Israel's war against those who wish it annihilated.

Were I Prime Minister in September I would have been in New York the next day - serving coffee if need be - but doing something to help. Our Prime Minister waited weeks and lied by saying that Guiliani's office had told him not to come! Can you imagine the shame of being represented in such a way? You are our very generous neighbour, for which I am ever-thankful. If my neighbour's house burnt down tonight, I would be there immediately to offer whatever help I could. True, most days we barely exchange a nod. I have never had them in my home. But there are times where being a neighbour takes on a different meaning. Canada's response to 9/11 was the equivalent of me standing over the ashes of their home and saying "that'll teach you to play with matches". That you are so forgiving of such "friends" as Canada is one of the reasons American culture is so much sought after, and is one of the reasons it will prevail.

We have a government still trying a dozen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall to show that socialism works, and that government has the answers. We face an incredible tax burden due to a redistributive policy that, if not reversed, will see Canada become another Argentina in a generation. Our government is acutely averse to any policy that de-centralizes governmental power, or reduces their influence on the daily lives of people. They believe that charity does not start at home - it starts with the Prime Minister. Government largesse is doled out - in wildly disproportionate amounts to Quebec and other regions that continue to re-elect the ruling Liberals - with little regard for taxpayers and a belief that individuals cannot make a just society, only government can.

If the U.S. would accept Canadians as political refugee claimants you would have a long line at the border. Our country has ceased to be a representative democracy, and is suffering a slow death which the U.S. itself narrowly avoided. The takeover of our educational establishments decades ago has succeeded in destroying most of the characteristics of Canadian society that contributed to its early successes. The politically correct, tolerant-of-all-at-all-costs, multicultural, compassionate collective result is a country that no longer stands for anything. Nor are we against anything, except perhaps the U.S. Canada is a country that would be unable to define itself were there not an America. We cannot say what we are, or what we stand for, but whatever it is, it isn't what you stand for. Such is our anti-identity. What is going on up here is a people constructing a society whose goal is to avoid all that is right with yours.

Most of the authors have not even seen the movies, heard the music CDs, or used the software reviewed; we simply leaf through various online reviews and summarize them while creating grevious typos, factual errors, and outright fallacies in an attempt to shatter the fragile little worlds of people who associate their entire personality and sense of being with a random form of capitalistic media. We plan on continuing to do this until America realizes that we're not defined by the music, movies, and products we buy... so basically, this section will go on for infinity or possibly longer.

Well, whaddaya know about that? In the middle of Day 3 of the "WE HAVE THE WAY OUT" UNIX vs. Windows Saga, Microsoft finally caught a break. To recap, Microsoft and Unisys launched an anti-UNIX site last week-- only word got out on Monday that they were running it on a UNIX server. So, early yesterday, they made a panicked switch to a Windows server to save face... soon after which, the site went completely non-functional, alternating between serving blank pages, "Directory Listing Denied" errors, and, most recently, a cryptic message to the effect that "no web site is configured at this address." One would think that if anyone could get a simple one-page site with a form submission running under Windows 2000 and IIS, it would be the company who wrote the frickin' software. Needless to say, the folks who hustled to launch the pro-UNIX "WE HAVE THE WAY IN" (running flawlessly on UNIX, natch) have probably been giggling nonstop for days.

But Microsoft has finally gotten its page up again after well over a solid day of downtime-- nice illustration of why businesses should switch from UNIX to Windows, guys; bravo-- which means the party's over (at least, until someone hacks the site). And now that the dust is clearing, it appears that the only high-level Microsoft exec to take the fall for the whole fracas was President and COO Rick Belluzzo, who "unexpectedly resigned" today amid a "restructuring," as reported by the Associated Press. (But of course we all know the real reason Belluzzo's walking; HE HAS THE WAY OUT.)

Why do you prefer Macs? With OS X they've now got Doug Wyatt, the guy who wrote OMS, working with them. They're taking music more seriously now. Steve Jobs seems to be running Apple as his hobby and he appears more interested in Pixar, so consequently he's perhaps more interested in visuals - but he may have figured out that music is a good market.

I can take my G4 Titanium laptop with a little Oxygen keyboard that fits in the same bag and I'm pretty much able to do a score anywhere.

Do you use OS X? I feel I can't go near it yet but they seem to be taking their time to really make it work well for musicians. It's changed quite dramatically and I have friends who are switching between OS X and their old system to get used to it. It's taken a long time to get this far but only four years back, everyone was saying Apple was dead and here they are, stronger than ever.

Where do you stand on file-sharing software? The Napster case was fought wrong. Shutting sites down is not the way to go. I earn my living from creating something people can easily rip off - so do the software companies - and there has to be some sort of moral obligation on the part of the user. There are only so many really brilliant people who can write that software. I'm scrupulous about buying all my software to support the companies. I like to meet the people who write the software as, ultimately, what we buy is their personality. These are good times for technology. Grand pianos have been around for 500 years: we've only just started with computers!

In fact, recently I added two more to it, and because it was too long I had to decide to remove one. And it hurt. It really did. Picking someone to take out was hard, and it really came down to a random selection. (I hope he isn't mad at me for it.)

THE trouble with IT is that, like so many other good ideas in life, no sooner have you come up with a wizard field of invention and endeavour than people begin attempting to fix the same ludicrous rules, values and obsessions on to it that they seem determined to attach to every other aspect of life.

Take, if you will, the example of Apple Macintosh users, a body of men and women whose state of computing existence is all too often defined not by utility, but by the colour of their monitor casings. They have hijacked the information revolution and led it blindly down a route mapped out by superficiality and style.

One can only hope the repellent new iMac, resembling a £1380 angle poise lamp with a particularly expansive backside, will bring them to their senses.

For some years now, Apple has managed to divide the computing market with a strategy based on modern good looks blended with historical myth, and it is time the aberration was ended.

There are reasons that Apple owners still recite by rote to defend their choice of system, chief among which is the machine's famously intuitive interface. But while this was once a valid differentiating factor, the fact is all mainstream operating systems have now adopted the principles that made Macs so easy to use in the first place, rendering the point somewhat moot.

Another defence, most often propounded by designers and their ilk, is that the Mac is better suited to creative pursuits. Again, this was true back in the day when Microsoft targeted the business market and Apple concentrated on multimedia applications, but as all major applications will increasingly run on all systems, unless they develop an aesthetic values chip pronto, these days are over.

Apple's only significant difference, as far as we can tell, is that they have condensed the mouse to a single button. Why? Reducing the number of buttons to press might briefly benefit the weak and feeble minded, but in actual fact all that has achieved is to decrease the variety of muscle movements employed and thus increase, in this column's most humble opinion, the risk of repetitive strain injury (RSI).

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you have bought a Mac, then you've bought Betamax. Think of all the justifications for it that you want, but at the end of the day ownership of a fringe product means losing the benefits of ubiquity and adding to the expense, and is thus illogical.

Diversity is good, of course, but pre-OSX, Apples only run one brand of operating system, the Mac OS. PCs will happily accommodate Linux, Unix, or any one of the Microsoft product range. You want to talk about monopolies? Talk to the Mac, man. The PC ain't listening.

Hate Microsoft? Tough, because the Redmond giant owns a percentage of Apple, and every pound spent on a Mac sees a few more pennies poured into the luxurious foundations of Gates's mansions.

If you really believe that the evil empire must be stopped, buy a PC and run Linux as your OS -- it's the only way you'll stop big Bill. Thinking different? Not thinking at all, more like.

Here's the scoop, folks: your computer is not a lifestyle statement. It's a bog-standard machine intended to fulfil an array of user-defined functions, and spending extra to distance yourself from 90% of the evolutionary pool sounds like muddle-headed foolishness to say the least.

The sooner we stop pretending it is anything other than that, the quicker we realise a computer has no value in itself and only in the things it does, the sooner we will get our heads around these things and start making them really work for us humans. So there.

Genndy Tartakovsky is certainly among the very best animators alive today. His first series, Dexter's Laboratory, was a masterpiece. Now his second one, Samurai Jack, is even better and there couldn't be a greater contrast between the two.

It's classic cell animation, and it's being produced by Hanna-Barbera for the Cartoon Network. If you haven't been watching this series, you're missing something special.

The reason the Palestinians have not adopted these alternatives is because they actually want to win their independence in blood and fire. All they can agree on as a community is what they want to destroy, not what they want to build. Have you ever heard Mr. Arafat talk about what sort of education system or economy he would prefer, what sort of constitution he wants? No, because Mr. Arafat is not interested in the content of a Palestinian state, only the contours.

Let's be very clear: Palestinians have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic choice, not out of desperation. This threatens all civilization because if suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, then, like hijacking and airplane bombing, it will be copied and will eventually lead to a bomber strapped with a nuclear device threatening entire nations. That is why the whole world must see this Palestinian suicide strategy defeated. . . .

The Palestinians are so blinded by their narcissistic rage that they have lost sight of the basic truth civilization is built on: the sacredness of every human life, starting with your own. If America, the only reality check left, doesn't use every ounce of energy to halt this madness and call it by its real name, then it will spread. The Devil is dancing in the Middle East, and he's dancing our way.

Brigadier General Sultan Abul Aynayn, the head of Arafat's Fatah movement in Lebanon, who has been accused by Lebanese officials of organizing and arming illegal groups, said in an interview in this coastal camp south of Tyre that ''if a hair of Arafat's head is hurt, the Israelis and the United States will be held responsible.'' . . .

Aynayn added: ''Only the Americans can stop this massacre. They can stop the massacre with one phone call. If there is harm to one hair of the head of Arafat, the United States should protect its interests all over the world. We are not like bin Laden, but we have our own style.''

GRAHAM: A lot of Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me. Because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don't know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country.
NIXON: You must never let them know.

Now allow me to reintroduce my neighbor, Dave (not his real name), whom you first met in my Sept. 22, 2000, column.

When my neighbor saw my iMovies, he immediately ordered a board and software that he said would let him do that on his PC. I told him he should get a Mac. A month ago I asked him how his moviemaking was coming. He looked properly chagrined as he said, "I haven't figured out how to make it work yet."

I lent him the new iMac for a few days and issued a challenge. Since he still, 18 months later, had not completed a single movie project on his Dell, I told him to try making a movie, an audio CD and a DVD on this iMac. And to make things interesting, I offered him no assistance or support -- I told him to look in Mac Help if he had questions.

Three days later I interviewed Dave.

On the first day, he unpacked the iMac, set it up in five minutes and burned two audio CDs with iTunes. He said he never needed to refer to Mac Help and that this whole project was "no problem whatsoever."

On the second day, he used iDVD to create a pair of slide shows using existing digital photos and burned his first DVD. I watched it later, and it didn't stink. In fact, most people would no doubt find it impressive. (I'm so jaded.)

On the third day, he borrowed my Canon ZR-25 camcorder and a tape of my son's last basketball game. I handed him the camera, manual and FireWire cable, and told him he was own his own.

By the end of the day he had imported raw footage into iMovie, edited it, added music and titles, then burned it onto a DVD with iDVD.

As I scribbled furiously, Dave's long-suffering wife added, "He swore less at the Mac than he does at his Dell."

Dave then said he had created more multimedia in three days with the iMac than he had in 18 months with his Dell. He only opened the Help file a couple of times. He concluded, "The hardest part was getting the iMac back in the box."

Before departing I asked if he'd consider a Mac next time. He replied: "Absolutely. In fact, if we hadn't wasted so much money trying to transform that Dell into a multimedia computer, I'd get one today."

The assertion that the State supports marriage through licensing and favourable tax treatment is counterfactual. The assertion that approving same-sex marriage has an adverse impact on traditional marriages is a non-sequitor -- how does it follow that straight people will stop getting married and having children and rasing them in good environments simply because gays and lesbians are allowed to marry and adopt? There's an unstated assumption that homosexuals can't have stable relationships and be good parents, though the assumption comes through very clearly in the argument.

Last November, a Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier, with the support of the RIAA, added a "technical amendment" to a bill that defined recorded music as "works for hire" under the 1978 Copyright Act.

He did this after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. The bill was on its way to the White House for the president's signature.

That subtle change in copyright law will add billions of dollars to record company bank accounts over the next few years -- billions of dollars that rightfully should have been paid to artists. A "work for hire" is now owned in perpetuity by the record company.

Under the 1978 Copyright Act, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. If you wrote and recorded "Everybody Hurts," you at least got it back to as a family legacy after 35 years. But now, because of this corrupt little pisher, "Everybody Hurts" never gets returned to your family, and can now be sold to the highest bidder.

Over the years record companies have tried to put "work for hire" provisions in their contracts, and Mr. Glazier claims that the "work for hire" only "codified" a standard industry practice. But copyright laws didn't identify sound recordings as being eligible to be called "works for hire," so those contracts didn't mean anything. Until now.

Writing and recording "Hey Jude" is now the same thing as writing an English textbook, writing standardized tests, translating a novel from one language to another or making a map. These are the types of things addressed in the "work for hire" act. And writing a standardized test is a work for hire. Not making a record.

So an assistant substantially altered a major law when he only had the authority to make spelling corrections. That's not what I learned about how government works in my high school civics class.

Three months later, the RIAA hired Mr. Glazier to become its top lobbyist at a salary that was obviously much greater than the one he had as the spelling corrector guy.

...

By the way, which bill do you think the recording industry used for this amendment?

The Record Company Redefinition Act? No. The Music Copyright Act? No. The Work for Hire Authorship Act? No.

How about the Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999?

Stealing our copyright reversions in the dead of night while no one was looking, and with no hearings held, is piracy.

The computer whiz then asked the court to identify the plaintiff in the case. Ware explained that the United States was the plaintiff, and was represented by assistant U.S. attorney Ross Nadel. Heckenkamp said he wanted to subpoena Nadel's "client" to appear in court, and Ware asked him who, exactly, he wanted to bring into the courtroom.

When Heckenkamp replied, "The United States of America," Ware ordered him taken into custody.

"The comments that you are making to the court lead me to suspect that either you are playing games with the court, or you're experiencing a serious lack of judgment," said Ware. The judge added that he was no longer satisfied that Heckenkamp would make his future court appearances.

Heckenkamp had been free on $50,000 bail, and livin