HolyMoly

It's just a shame that someone without "baggage" (other problems) can't do something like this. For starters, the car had a busted tail light (strike one). Then, the lady was driving the car with a suspended license (strike two). Finally, she used the car to pick up a child from an "after school" program, guaranteeing the artwork an audience of minor children (strike three). I wonder what would have happened if a "legal" driver was driving a car without a damaged "safety device" to a place where only adults would see it? The ACLU would have probably defended the driver. But, the way things are, I don't think too many attorneys would touch this case with a ten-meter cattle-prod, hehe.

Now, hehe, personally, I think the reason why Microsoft decided to continue support for Win98 until 2006 is because they realize WinXP hasn't "taken off" as quickly as they wanted it to (except with owners of newer computers where it was pre-installed). But, Microsoft has their own version of why they extended support. Following that, read a ZD-net article that suggests another reason: Microsoft to Extend Support for Windows REDMOND, Wash. (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. will extend support for Windows 98, Windows 98 S.E. and Windows Millennium Edition through June 30, 2006, the company said Monday, reversing a decision from last month. Support for Windows 98 and Windows 98 S.E. had been scheduled to expire on Friday, and for Windows Me on Dec. 31, but the software giant decided to keep supporting those systems in large part because some customers in developing countries were not aware it was ending. "While we've done an excellent job communicating our life cycle policy for most of our products, we have found that we could use more time to communicate those guidelines in a handful of smaller markets," including Kazakhstan, the Ivory Coast and Slovenia, Microsoft spokesman Matt Pilla said. During the extended support period, the company will offer paid phone support and review security threats to determine whether it will provide customers with security patches. About 20 percent of all Windows-based computers still run Windows 95 or 98, according to International Data Corp., a technology market research firm. Support for Windows 95 ended Dec. 31, 2001. Since Oct. 15, 2002, Microsoft has offered seven years of support for its new products. Before that, it offered four. ___________________________________________________________ ...now...the ZD-Net version... ___________________________________________________________ Linux threat behind Microsoft reversal By Munir Kotadia (ZD-Net UK) The growing threat from Linux is responsible for Microsoft's last-minute decision to extend the life of Windows 98. Analysts say there has never been a better time to try and negotiate a deal on the company's software. Various research indicates that Windows 98 is still installed on about a quarter of all PCs, meaning that if Microsoft had stopped supporting the operating system as planned, the next time that a security bug was discovered, millions of PCs would be left vulnerable and users would be left with the option of either upgrading to a newer version of Windows, or looking for an alternative. Although many companies would upgrade because their applications or hardware require Windows, a significant chunk would be free to consider alternatives, such as Linux. Lars Ahlgren, a senior marketing manager at Microsoft, told ZDNet UK that although Microsoft has not made any money from Windows 98 for some time, the company is keen to hold onto its customers and is hoping another couple of years getting used to the Windows look and feel will tie them in for life. "The more they are used to working one way, the more [it is] likely they will want to continue working that way, so it plays to our advantage. If they move to another operating system, they will need to rethink and relearn. For some people, that is painful. This is also why so many people are resisting an upgrade from Windows 98," he said. James Governor, a principal analyst at RedMonk, said Microsoft didn't have much choice but to extend support for Windows 98, for two reasons. First, he said, Linux has become a real threat, and although it wouldn't have swallowed up all the old Windows 98 users, it would make a difference. "I'm not going to say a large chunk of the install base would have moved to Linux, but certainly there is an alternative there--but I don't want to overstate that," he said. Governor also pointed out that unlike the dot-com boom years, companies simply can't afford to invest in new hardware in order to upgrade their operating system: "Given the terrible state that budgets have been in over the past few years and continue to be in, we are not seeing a lot of money being freed up. Companies are saying 'this is good enough so why should we change?'," he said. Gary Barnett, research director at Ovum, said that although Linux is not a viable alternative for mainstream users at the moment, he expects that it will be in a year's time. This means, according to Barnett, that Microsoft is going to find it increasingly difficult to maintain its unfeasibly high profit margins. "Microsoft has always publicly said it does not negotiate or do special deals on price, but the truth is that Microsoft is going to be obliged to do an increasing number of them. We have already seen it in the Asia-Pacific region, where they hugely discounted Office. Linux has a crucial role in giving people choice and also [in] curbing the incredible margins Microsoft has been making out of Office," he said. Governor agrees that Microsoft is going to take a hit when it comes to profit margins and advises firms to start negotiating: "With licensing issues, there is no way Microsoft is going to have its own way at the moment. Microsoft is and will respond to user pressure around software pricing. If users have felt in the past that they can't negotiate, now is the time because there is some real competition in desktops and that can only be good for customers," he said. However, Annette Jump, analyst at Gartner said Microsoft will continue to have a huge advantage over Linux because so many companies have long term commitments to Windows-based applications, meaning the cost of migrating those applications would overshadow any Microsoft licensing fees: "When companies start seriously thinking about Linux, they quickly realize that it is not simple. Generally, a company or department with 1,000 PCs will have around 100 applications that would need to be moved over to Linux. They would immediately save on the cost of operating system license but they will have to spend money on educating their users and migrating their systems," she said.

I'm actually kind of surprised that my broadband ISP (a big one) didn't lock in my territory early on. Vonage has been the only game in town for over a year.

Thank God I have Win98SE as this looks like an "XP" trojan.

Until the origin-source of that DNC contribution from the Buddhist temple is pinned down (probably never will be), I won't know what to believe. The only thing that is known is that the contribution was made and, at the time, Gore was DNC fundraising chair. He claims he doesn't know the origin source. I find that a bit too naive to be believable. Point is, when such a large contribution is made, there's usually a quid pro quo expected ... which is something else we'll probably never know. No evidence of wrongdoing, maybe, but a definite smoking gun.

They lost most of their prop fleet, too. Unfortunately, their prop fleet consisted of old Soviet-era planes. Parts for them had to be "improvised" ... unlike the 727-As for which Ariana had parts. FWIW, India is getting very chummy with Afghanistan. They donated a number of French Airbus jets to them as well. It's good to see them back on their feet again.

P.S. I sent a note to Ted, giving him a link to that article ... and mentioning the paragraph calling him a "big beef eater." According to Ted's own ethos, he only eats "free-range" animals. While it's true he may "raise" cattle on his Texas ranch for sale to grocery stores (and I'm not saying he does), the actual eating of non-free-range animals would make him a hypocrite. FWIW, I checked out articles surrounding his upcoming reality show ... and only that Canoe.ca article discussed the butchering or eating of cattle. One described it as a "survival in the wild" show, another as something similar to the "Osbournes" show ... a "day in the life" type show. Guess we'll all have to wait to see what it really is. And, if Ted writes back, I'll post his reply here.

Hehe. Gotta love Ted Nugent. Once while channel surfing, I caught a bow-hunting show with him in it. As such a visible celebrity, he also has visible foes. During the show, he and his hunting party found themselves being followed into the woods by radical "anti-hunters" ... banging cans, jingling bells, and shouting to scare away any possible hunter's prey. Nugent's solution? He figured (correctly so) that these people, due to their diets and attitudes, were probably not as "healthy" as he and his fellow hunters were. So, after leading them into the deep woods, Nugent and his friends took off running. With their bells and cans tinkling behind them, the position of the anti-hunters was easy to determine. And, after they got far enough away and out of sight, they did a 90-degree change of direction, covering their tracks as they did, and effectively lost their pursuers, hehe. Nugent grinned for the camera, suggesting that there were some hungry animals in the forest that might be "attracted" by the noises of cans and bells ... and relished in the thought that the anti-hunters might not make it out of the forest alive. Later, he and his hunters came across a group of wild pigs. Nugent shot an arrow one of them (it must have been over a hundred feet away, too). And when he and his group got to the pig, it was still squealing and thrashing about on the ground with an arrow still sticking out of its midsection. Nugent laughed and said, "Look at that son-of-a-bitch, hehe." Then, at close range, he shot another arrow into the pig ... killing it instantly. BTW, I was unaware that Nugent ate "beef." According to what I've heard, he only eats animals he kills (deer, elk, moose, etc., etc.). READ THIS P.S. Here's a quote from the 2nd paragraph of his book, "Kill It & Grill It": "Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians - except for the occasional mountain lion steak."

I've never voted for the "lesser of two evils" before. Either my chosen candidate makes it past the primary and I vote for him (or her) ... or I end up writing in my own name (grin) or casting a protest vote. When George Bush Sr. ran against Clinton, I wrote in the name of Lyndon LaRouche. One one hand, I saw Bush as having a part in the Iran-Contra scandal. On the other hand, I saw Gore as having a smoking gun in his own closet ... namely, the soft-money scandal involving Buddhist monks donating to the DNC ... followed closely by the transfer of sensitive technology to the Chinese. I looked at it this way. LaRouche admitted to his crimes before he spent time in prison ... and, if you're going to have a crook in office, you might as well have an honest crook (snicker). For fun, visit the Skeleton Closet website.

Perhaps ... but his Gulf War victory (for a far more legitimate reason) didn't help his father a year later. The economy may be doing better ... but a lot of economists have referred to it as a "jobless recovery." Unemployed people vote, too ... and so do underemployed people (laid off tech workers working at Burger King). The economy did in his father ... and may do him in as well. But, I suspect that if Howard Dean is the Democratic candidate, Bush will be a shoe-in. It will take someone more centrist to topple Bush.

Great page, Method77. Incidentally, shortly after Karzai took power, I saw an article about Ariana Afghan Airlines. They apparently lost about 3/4 of their entire fleet due to hostilities near the airport in Kabul. However, the article also indicated that their lost jet aircraft were of the old 727-A design ... and that they were able to reclaim brand new (still in carton) parts for their aircraft siezed earlier by the Taliban. At that time, I wrote to my Senators and Congressmen (and the CEO of Boeing) about this. There are two "airplane graveyards" in the US, one for military aircraft and one for civilian. Boeing owns the civilian graveyard ... in which, at the time, they had over a dozen 727-A's in mothballs. I suggested that the US government give Boeing a grant to bring the 727-A's out of mothballs, restore them, and give them to Ariana (since they already had a storehouse of parts for them). It would have been a win-win situation since Boeing would be paid to restore them (at a time when they were laying off employees) and could take a tax writeoff for the donation. And, Ariana would have a fleet of planes they already had parts for. I did get a positive response from Senator Gordon Smith at the time but am unsure if anything transpired. However, I did notice something on Ariana's website ... saying their Boeing fleet was "expanded" (grin). Who knows ... maybe my suggestion helped change the fate of Ariana and put laid-off Boeing workers back on the payroll as part of the bargain. Ariana Afghan Airlines website

My former landlord got one of the last free versions of iMovie. I think Mac is on the right track and may be "ahead" of the "convergence" foreseen by Bill Gates in that respect. Could be that Mac may evolve into a digital developer platform "standard." Boy, that would frost Gates, hehe.

Hmm. Such an alliance could come in handy later on if they decide to put out a Linux-friendly Mac ... and HP got into the "Mac-PC" distribution biz. This isn't what they're doing right now but is something they could be positioned for in the future.

That's what he keeps saying about Microsoft Internet Explorer (patch after patch after patch) and why I use Netscape, hehe. BTW, below is a standalone game called "BillKill." It's a shooting-gallery type game. Gates' face goes across the screen. Click on it and his head explodes. Speed can be adjusted. Scoring at the end. Sorry, no Mac version ... but Mac users are daily exploding his head anyway, hehe. billkill.zip

I realize it's still early in the Presidential campaign ... but I'd be interested in knowing what other people's preferences are. Sadly, the people I prefer never seem to make it past the primaries ... so maybe I'm a curse (grin). But, so far in this campaign, I'm a supporter of General Wesley Clark ... even though his most prominent celebrity supporter is (ahem) Madonna.

Sometimes, Bush leaves me scratching my head. And frankly, he probably leaves the South Korean government scratching its head, too. He seems to have a penchant for pissing off potential friends ... and ignoring the massive copyright piracy problem in China. I once interviewed mystery author, Mary Higgins-Clark. She told me that 9 (yes, NINE) different publishers issued her books in China ... and none of them are authorized to do so (nor does she see a penny of the profits). She was more puzzled than angry, though. The woman is a millionaire and is legitimately published in a whole host of other countries. Eventually, if China acts more responsibly, she figures there's a much bigger paycheck in her future (smart lady). If those 9 publishers "hook" a large following of fans, the payoff down the road could be substantial. Too bad the RIAA doesn't adopt that attitude toward file-sharing.

That is a hoot, hehe. My 22 year-old son manages a Burger King in SW Washington state. So, I followed a few links and came up with a link to a short RealVideo story (which I captured for posterity) from Detroit's Channel 4 news: RealVideo for 56k modems RealVideo for broadband BTW, a while back, I sent a suggestion to the Candid Camera people for a "constructive" prank. Some fast-food restaurants with drive-thru windows have straight-in approaches with minimal or no overhang near the window. I suggested they find such a restaurant (BK, McDonalds, Jack In The Box, etc.) and fill up a city bus with studio people ... then go through a drive-thru during a "light time" (mid-afternoon on a workday) and order, "I'd like 200 Big Macs, 150 small french fries, 100 Cokes, 100 Sprites, and 2 Filet-o-Fish sandwiches," then set up cameras in the restaurant to record the chaos as they attempted to fill the order, hehehehe.

Just a briefie. My Vonage service is still working great. But, I recently noticed one anomaly. Vonage users have to remember that Vonage is located in New Jersey ... and that their phone calls must first clear their central hub. Consequently, I tried to call Art Bell the other night on the line for "calls West of the Rockies." No go. But when I called the toll-free number for "calls East of the Rockies," the call went through (though I didn't make it on the air). So, even though I'm a West coaster, I have to call in on the East coast line since that is where Vonage's hub is located. Surely, this will affect other "localized toll-free" number calls. Fortunately, toll-free numbers are so cheap now that most entities no longer use localized toll-free service. I suspect Bell is one of the few hangers-on ... partly out of convenience to provide an additional line to choose from on his console.

Agreeing to talk is one thing. Agreeing to do something is something else. There are a lot of fears surrounding Microsoft cornering the market on DRM ... not just because of their control, but because their methods of protecting digital content are not necessarily the best methods. Microsoft's methods presuppose a future dominated by Windows. That could be a devastating presupposition if Linux or another OS becomes popular ... and can't "cash the checks" that Microsoft writes, DRM-wise. I think that DRM proponents are discovering what most people already know ... that innovation is so fast that a proposed policy could become obsolete and downright expensive to upgrade in a very short space of time. This makes them more cautious ... and that caution translates to time (which is their ever-present enemy).

Well, she just "filed" annulment papers. How fast are annulments in Nevada? She might be married for a few more days, legally. Hehe, what if her childhood friend decided to be "difficult" and challenge the annulment?

Amen. Hope his recovery is quick and complete. I still remember hearing "Lola" when it first came out. I was in Hong Kong at the time and heard it over a local station. Of course, at the time, Hong Kong was British ... and any new music from British artists made it to the airwaves quickly (sometimes faster than in the States).

There's a bigger fault than that. This wasn't just a survey ... it was a survey of people "being monitored" by comScore or other monitoring services. How many people who post to ZeroPaid (or here) would "voluntarily" submit to computer activity monitoring? I suspect that this survey was made up of people like that family mentioned earlier in that NYT article ... the clueless kid who used Kazaa instead of Kazaalite until his younger brother said, "Hey, there's naked people on the computer," ... not the diehards who run anti-spyware programs consistently to check for ANY sort of data-mining activity comScore tallies up. Even then, survey people could have lied as the article suggested. I think that most intelligent file-sharers don't go public about their file-sharing activities except to those they feel trusted. Or if they do go more public, they tend to do so behind the relative anonimity of a "handle" as opposed to using their real names. This doesn't mean I think the entire survey is skewed. I think most people would prefer a legal means to acquire their music. Going back to that story of the kid who used Kazaa, he mentioned not being able to find a few songs he was looking for. It's possible he has other P2P software on his system that his dad doesn't know about (grin) ... and uses the legal service to download what he can ... and P2P software to download the rest. By and large, I think the legit services have done a lot to appease the musical tastes of "John Q. Public" ... the mainstream consumer. But that's it. People looking for music from alternatives to RIAA labels ... or music the RIAA won't provide access to ... will still be left out in the cold and will continue to use P2P to fill in gaps. That's where I'm at. Most of the music I look for is old and obscure. Hehe, try to find "Children of St. Monica" by Don Grady & his Windupwatchspring Band. Very rare ... but I found it on KLite.

Verses From the Book of CompuGenesis: 01. In the beginning GOD created the Bit and the Byte. And from those he created the Word. 02. And there were two Bytes in the Word; and nothing else existed And God separated the One from the Zero; and he saw it was good. 03. And God said - Let the Data be; And so it happened. And God said Let the Data go to their proper places. And he created floppy disks and hard disks and compact disks. 04. And God said - Let the computers be, so there would be a place to put floppy disks and hard disks and compact disks. Thus God created computers and called them hardware. 05. And there was no Software yet. But God created programs; small and big And told them - Go and multiply yourselves and fill all the Memory. 06. And God said -I will create the Programmer; And the Programmer will make new programs and govern over the computers and programs and Data. 07. And God created the Programmer; and put him at Data Center; And God showed the Programmer the Catalog Tree and said You can use all the volumes and subvolumes but DO NOT USE Windows. 08. And God said - It is not Good for the programmer to be alone. He took a bone from the Programmer's body and created a creature that would look up at the Programmer; and admire the Programmer; and love the things the Programmer does; And God called the creature: the User. 09. And the Programmer and the User were left under the naked DOS and it was Good. 10. But Bill was smarter than all the other creatures of God. And Bill said to the User - Did God really tell you not to run any programs? 11. And the User answered - God told us that we can use every program and every piece of Data but told us not to run Windows or we will die. 12. And Bill said to the User - How can you talk about something you did not even try. The moment you run Windows you will become equal to God. You will be able to create anything you like by a simple click of your mouse. 13. And the User saw that the fruits of the Windows were nicer and easier to use. And the User saw that any knowledge was useless- since Windows could replace it. 14. So the User installed the Windows on his computer; and said to the Programmer that it was good. 15. And the Programmer immediately started to look for new drivers. And God asked him - What are you looking for? And the Programmer answered I am looking for new drivers because I cannot find them in the DOS. And God said - Who told you need drivers? Did you run Windows? And the Programmer said - It was Bill who told us to! 16. And God said to Bill - Because of what you did you will be hated by all the creatures. And the User will always be unhappy with you. And you will always sell Windows. 17. And God said to the User - Because of what you did, the Windows will disappoint you and eat up all your Resources; and you will have to use lousy programs; and you will always rely on the Programmers help. 18. And God said to the Programmer - Because you listened to the User you will never be happy. All your programs will have errors and you will have to fix them and fix them to the end of time. 19. And God threw them out of the Data Center and locked the door and secured it with a password. 20. GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT

Saddam Hussein is just as "political" as any other world leader ... making him fair game for the pundit.

An inconclusive survey, perhaps.