SJ Mercury: Government, Big Business battling another foe: liberty. Dan Gillmor. That was before Sept. 11, when so many Americans decided that liberty mattered far less than safety. Since then, Big Brother has reasserted his increasingly absolute right to snoop and pry and invade the deepest recesses of our bank accounts and private lives. [Tomalak’s Realm]
General
14300 ª January 30 7:46 AM. John Ashcroft is a-skeered of kitty-cats. Laughs like Nelson [MetaFilter]
What would he think of Cody? I’m sometimes afraid of Cody – he loves to pounce & attack me and he does the arched back ‘scaredy cat’ thing at the slightest provocation
14293 ª January 30 5:26 AM. Florida town casts out Satan If he’s thinking of visiting Florida’s west coast, Satan might want to steer clear of Inglis. The mayor of this small fishing village in Florida has declared the Prince of Darkness persona non grata — in essence, telling him to go to the devil. ROLF. [MetaFilter]
I'm getting so nervous about
I’m getting so nervous about the move. I got the paperwork for my mortgage today and it’s sinking in just how much I’m going to pay over the next 30 years (assuming I live to be 70). I just barely scraped by with the downpayment and I still have the expense of actually moving.
On the other hand, I really hate paying over $800/month for a tiny apartment and not owning anything.
SyncML is an XML-based, up-and-coming
SyncML is an XML-based, up-and-coming standard for synchronizing contact/calendar information across device types. Currently supported by a smattering of phone manufacturers (and others), on a smattering of their offerings.
I don’t see any mention of Palm at their site. Maybe their technology & data formats can solve my pet peeve of not being able to share data between my Visor (and Palm Desktop), Entourage X, and FaxSTF (which MacOS X’s built-in addressbook). If each of those applications can import & export in a standard XML format, they can all share data.Israeli army reservists just say
Israeli army reservists just say no. A bunch (more than 60) Israeli army reservists, half of whom are officers, are refusing to serve any longer in the occupied territories, because they believe that the Palestinians are being abused and humiliated. [kuro5hin.org]
the Reg revisits Microsoft's plans
the Reg revisits Microsoft’s plans to have a database at the heart of Windows’ filesystem. readers with sharp minds will recall that they’ve touched on the topic before. in general, it sounds like the right direction to take — it reminds me of the Newton OS’s “soup” — but there are interesting questions about the underlying technology. David Winer’s notso-hotso for the relational database that’s purported to be at the heart of this thing and suggests a heirarchical, web-like store would a much better idea. [Radio blogaritaville@scriban.com]I’m a former Newton developer, and the Newton’s “soup” was one of the coolest storage systems I’ve ever used. On the Newton, everything is stored as a ‘frame’, including NewtonScript code. Each frame conists of any number of named bits of data called ‘slots’, and there can be a _parent and/or _proto slot which define inheritance. In most cases, when you access a slot, if it isn’t present in the frame itself, it will look at the frames referenced by the _parent & _proto slots. A ‘soup’ basically consists of a collection of frames, which don’t have to contain the same data. Query functions make it very easy to get the data you want from a soup. The Newton was a fantastic developer’s machine. The development environment was one of the best I’ve ever used, and the NewtonScript language is still one of my favorites. However, the Newton wasn’t as pleasant for users. it was too big, tried to do too much, and always seemed sluggish. Palm devices are generally more useful because they try to do less, but do those few things much better.
kidnapperguy\@hotmail.com. A WSJ reporter has
kidnapperguy\@hotmail.com. A WSJ reporter has been taken hostage according to the BBC. The kidnappers want better treatment of the prisoners at camp X-ray and the release of Pakistani inmates. Intrestingly, the BBC article gives the email address used by the kidnappers, kidnapperguy\@hotmail.com. Giving you a chance to flame (and/or congratulate) the kidnappers directly. A great way to get an FBI file started! [kuro5hin.org]If that isn’t a bogus address, it should be possible to locate them very easily. Hotmail isn’t very anonymous – it includes the IP address used to send the message in the headers. Where I used to work, a former employee used hotmail to send a tasteless joke email to the entire company from his own computer. Since we used static IP addresses, it was very easy to see what computer it was sent from. Needless to say, his last day of work was cut short by several hours.