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I almost feel like a traitor for doing this, but I'm moving my weblog and switching to Blogger. The new site (with a radically new design) is located at http://www.io.com/%7Ebmokeefe/harmful/. I still think Pitas is pretty awesome, and may use it for some other projects down the road.
Added Sunday, June 11, 2000
We all read Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" in high school, didn't we? The short story about a world in which all the smart, strong, or good-looking people were deliberately handicapped so that everyone would be "equal"? A naturally dim-bulb character in the story thinks that she should be president, because she knew so much about being a "normal" person. Is that really what we are looking for in a chief of state?
Added Friday, June 9, 2000
This looks like a pretty nice program: a "universal gaming engine" that allows you to play any of hundreds of board games, download new games, or roll your own. I wonder if games fanatic Scott has tried this beast out. There's a limited (but still pretty varied) demo available for download, so I may have to check it out.
Added Friday, June 9, 2000
Aren't you happy to know that those wonderful people at Disney have come up with a way to save the American economy from those awful pirates? All we have to do is force OEM's to install only "authorized" media players, and to put spyware on all ISP's.
I am sick of this. I blew up yesterday when I learned [via MeFi] that Microsoft is forcing OEM's to distribute new computers with only a recovery version of Windows, entirely dependent on the hardware with which it ships. I am disgusted with all the extreme piracy "solutions" that cause more headaches for the legitimate consumer. DVD/CCA. Surcharges on recordable media. Processor ID's. Specialized, proprietary digital music formats. The list goes on.
Have any of these companies considered the possibility that if they showed some respect for the consumer, the consumer might show some respect for them? Instead, media corporations seem to be treating their customers with complete and utter contempt by basing their distribution systems on the idea that all of said customers are potential crooks.
Added Friday, June 9, 2000
The Register appears to be getting some grief over its new design, though not quite as negative as the response to Salon's recent redesign. I'm not that thrilled with the Register redesign myself; more appears to have been lost than gained.
Another, less common concern raised was the inclusion of an extra column on the left hand of the screen for graphics. Our design goal here was to provide space for more images and page elements, with the aim of making the site look busier.
They say that like it's a good thing. I find the animated gifs on three sides of the actual content both distracting and annoying. It appears that they have fixed one of my pet peeves: the all-encompassing full-browser frame that served no purpose but to make it a nuisance to link individual stories.
All the negative reaction to site redesigns makes me pensive about the upcoming (and fairly radical) changes I'm planning. The few people to whom I've shown a new Considered Harmful design have been pretty positive about it, and this existing page is pretty bland, but I still worry. I'm trying to develop some artistic sensibilities, and feel the need to experiment, so I'm still willing to move ahead.
Added Thursday, June 8, 2000
[via Hoboken] A nice piece on the true costs of our current era of "prosperity".
At a time when more people than ever have the opportunity to do what they want in life, many lack the imagination to do anything but accumulate possessions. Freedom is losing market share to stuff.
I wish I could pretend that I'm better than this, but I'm not.
Added Wednesday, June 7, 2000
[via MeFi and /.] I see from my referrer logs that I get a lot of hits from people searching for Iron Chef info, especially through AOL search. (I'll reserve my comments on the efficacy, or lack thereof, of AOL's search engine for another post.) I'm a big fan of the show, or I wouldn't mention it so much in my weblog. Which is why I'm so saddened by the news that Fuji TV, the Japanese creators of the show, are issuing Cease & Desist orders left and right to several fansites. Particularly surprising is that these orders are being issued from the law firm of Morrison and Foerster. I've seen "the Mighty MoFo" fighting for internet freedom on a number of occasions (including definding a number of Scientology critics). To see them attacking sites which serve only to promote the program is highly disappointing. (It looks like the Illuminati are being Slashdotted right now, which may be why my logo, along with certain other projects, is so slow to load at the moment.)
Added Wednesday, June 7, 2000
Over at Queso, Jason wants to know how the Xenote iTag works. Unfortunately, the article I blogged many moons ago has gone away, so I'll have to rely on memory. The keychain-sized iTag essentially records what time its button was pressed, and what station the nearest radio was playing. If I remember my long-ago electrical engineering classes, a circuit that can receive radio signals also transmits them to some degree; the iTag somehow picks up on those RF emissions. A Xenote-enabled radio station is simply one which supplies a time-stamped feed of its broadcasts to Xenote. When you hook up the iTag to your computer, it just queries the company's database to find out what was playing on that station at that time. IIRC, the iTag is simply Xenote's first consumer product; they were also working on a GPS-based device to record time and location for later lookups about real-world locations. Could have some nifty applications. (And I'm working on permanent links! Real soon now!)
Added Tuesday, June 6, 2000
My parents are going to West Virginia on an upcoming trip, so I'm trying to find any links on the ancient Celtic artifacts found there. As I learned while reading up on St. Brendan the Navigator, archaeologists in West Virginia have found stones engraved with Irish Gaelic text written in Ogham runes, apparently predating even Leif Ericson's voyage. Irish voyagers may have spent at least one Christmas in north America between 500 and 800 AD. I'm finding some decent links via Google, and may post more later. Too bad a recent puzzle in Games still credits Ericson with the "discovery". Bloody Vikings!
Added Tuesday, June 6, 2000
[via LarkFarm] I'm fairly interested in the Celtic parts of my heritage, so this listing of sites looks fairly promising for future reading. While it focuses on net resources for the ancient Ogham alphabet, it appears to link to lots of good general Celtic resources as well. What amuses me is the ISO encoding for a centuries-old alphabet; I'd seen some notes about encoding Ogham character sets before, while looking up some other spec on the web. The Ogham encoding didn't disturb me as much as the reservation of encodings for Aztec pictograms. As a fan of the Shadowrun role-playing game, I'm familiar with a future history involving the Aztechnology corporation, a high-tech multinational which often discusses hostile takeovers and blood sacrifice in the same breath.
Added Monday, June 5, 2000
I saw two movies over the past week: Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible 2 and Jackie Chan's Shanghai Noon. I'd have to say I enjoyed Noon more than Mission. The first contast I thought of were the stunts: Jackie left me wondering, "How'd he do that?" while Tom had me asking "How'd the special effects crew do that?" I think I've become jaded enough with special effects to prefer believable choreographed stunt work over virtual violations of the basic laws of physics. What really surprised me, though, was that Chan is really becoming a good actor, and had fantastic chemistry with his costar, Owen Wilson. Much more fun than the generally stony performances of Cruise and the rest of the M:I cast. Both were worth going to, but Noon is the one I'd most like to see again.
Added Monday, June 5, 2000
[via MeFi] Last week, I mentioned punk-pop band The Offspring and their offering of bootleg Napster t-shirts. Well, it turns out that Napster isn't quite as cool as the band was hoping, and have asked them to "cease and desist" selling Napster-logo merchandise. Update: Looks like they've decided to play nice together after all.
Added Monday, June 5, 2000
I've moved the last couple of weeks' (rather sparse) entries into the archive. I'll admit things have been kind of slow the last couple of weeks, but there are some major changes in the works. As a side note, I'm calling off the Riddler Project because someone needs the computer I was going to use more than I need a Linux box right now. I do have another Diaryland site that I'm planning to start up in a couple of weeks as a supplement to Weblogging Considered Harmful. I'll post details here when I'm ready.
Added Monday, June 5, 2000
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