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April 29, 2005

The MPAA made Miramax digitally change the blood on Uma's yellow jumpsuit into mud in the Kill Bill trailer

Apparently the Least Necessary of All Lobbying Organizations doesn't like blood, or guns, in trailers or posters, over which they have an effective veto. The link is to an unpleasant poster for "Saw 2", a good candidate for Least Necessary Sequel. http://www.posterwire.com/archives/2005/04/27/saw-2-teaser-poster/

Posted by irons at 05:59 PM

Dantz announces Retrospect updates for Tiger

Free 10.4-compatible updates next week, relatively mild list of known issues with 6.0.204 today. http://kb.dantz.com/display/2n/articleDirect/index.asp?aid=7971&r=0.3576166

Posted by irons at 08:02 AM

April 26, 2005

Do not call them "Anzac Cookies"

http://shauny.org/pussycat/2005/04/spirit_of_anzac.php

Posted by irons at 10:37 PM

April 25, 2005

The Great Ichiro

Commenting on Bob Sherwin's paean to Ichiro in the NYT, Jeff Shaw notes a startling statistic: "In the 480 at bats he's recorded since moving his front leg a few inches, Ichiro has 191 hits. That's a significant hunk of time -- a little over two-thirds of an average season -- at a .398 clip, folks." (Sorry, I should have warned you that it's only startling if you enjoy baseball.) http://ussmariner.com/?p=2482

Posted by irons at 10:55 PM

Gen. Tommy Franks is giving management seminars on "How To Get Results"

"Local business leaders have apparently been sitting around in their chambers of commerce wondering, 'How can I make my business more of an insoluble quagmire?'" http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2005/04/get_motivated.html

Posted by irons at 09:22 AM

April 23, 2005

Got a -11995 error in Mailsmith?

Because the Mailsmith error message is unhelpfully terse, I'm hereby informing Google that this means your copy of PGP is fresh outta entropy. Mailsmith can't make more, but PGP will, as soon as you encrypt something using the application, after which the Mailsmith error will go away. This has been a public service announcement for people experiencing -11995 errors in Mailsmith.

Posted by irons at 11:25 PM

April 22, 2005

Circuit City selling free-after-rebate 40-hour Tivos

http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2005/04/free_after_reba.html

Posted by irons at 12:05 PM

Xyle Scope, a Webkit-based X/HTML DOM inspector, in beta

It's *so pretty*. Mostly localized to English, but the documentation and most of the PR is in German. [via] http://www.culturedcode.com/xyle/index.html

Posted by irons at 11:00 AM

Pleasantly absurd Oakland A's commercial

"Good Samaritan", WMV format. The Mariners' ads this year are unwatchably pathetic parodies of QVC sales pitches. http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/oak/fan_forum/commercials_2005.jsp

Posted by irons at 09:55 AM

April 21, 2005

This fetus ornament supports the troops

[via] http://www.misspoppy.com/catalog/xcart/customer/product.php?productid=16346&cat=283&page=1

Posted by irons at 11:41 PM

Michael Aldrete also a convert to Dell LCD displays

http://aldoblog.com/blog/465

Posted by irons at 10:56 PM

Kentucky soldiers' wives who hate Steven Bochco

Several wives of active-duty US soldiers are protesting the idea of FX's new Iraq War drama; see especially the astonishing statement by Robin Butts of Paducah. [via] http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/state/11453612.htm

Posted by irons at 02:23 PM

RFC 3834: Recommendations for Automatic Responses to Electronic Mail

From August 2004. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3834.html

Posted by irons at 12:56 PM

April 20, 2005

Powerbook RAM price falling

The cost of a 1GB SODIMM for my 12" aluminum powerbook has fallen by 27% in the last couple of months, finally getting underneath $200. http://dealram.com/prices/systems/23074/1GB.html

Posted by irons at 07:04 AM

April 18, 2005

Unlikely to be ripped from the headlines

Wherein Jon Carroll, World's Most Perfect Columnist, poses a novel criminal-justice question. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/14/DDGQQBO7S01.DTL

Posted by irons at 11:22 PM

Graylisting, a new-to-me anti-spam tactic

Clever notion -- reject a message once, non-permanently, and wait for a responsible MTA to attempt to send it again. http://www.pair.com/support/knowledge_base/e-mail/enhanced_junk_e-mail_filtering_system_faqs.html#9

Posted by irons at 10:38 PM

William Saletan asks: if steroids, why not LASIK?

First time I've seen this question posed outside of the baseball stat-head community. Effective punchline at the end. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116858/

Posted by irons at 01:20 PM

April 17, 2005

Matt Haughey deeply smitten by Dell's $1000, 24" LCD display

Same price as Apple's 20" display; Apple's 23" model (with the Dell's 1920x1200 resolution) is $1800. http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2005/04/best_monitor_ev.html

Posted by irons at 05:52 PM

Verizon's CEO is Monty Burns

Ivan Seidenberg's interview with the SF Chronicle displays unbelievable chutzpah, and makes me sorry I do not have any Verizon service to immediately cancel. [via] http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/16/BUGJ1C9R091.DTL

Posted by irons at 11:52 AM

April 16, 2005

Can T-shirts win design awards?

[via] http://www.johnnycupcakes.com/store/blackonblack.html

Posted by irons at 02:56 PM

April 15, 2005

Flickr users puzzle over tattoo typography

Leading candidates are "Faith", "Julie", and "Shite" (I thought the latter). http://www.flickr.com/photos/esthet/6718167/

Posted by irons at 11:30 AM

Get ready for an onslaught of apocalyptic-religious TV dramas

I was really hoping NBC's "Revelations" premiere would tank, but it did well, even against tough competition from some Fox show about singers. It's NBC's biggest success of the year after "Medium", whose success I attribute more to Glenn Gordon Caron (who also created "Moonlighting" and "Once and Again") and the fact that Patricia Arquette is adorable. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55100-2005Apr14.html?nav=rss_style/columns/tvcolumn

Posted by irons at 10:02 AM

April 14, 2005

Tivo's CFO tells Mac users to drop dead

I fucking hate DRM. Update: Now they're backing off that statement. http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2005/04/tivo_cfo_no_tiv.html

Posted by irons at 02:18 PM

April 13, 2005

How snails reproduce

I love Carl Zimmer's blog and I had been failing to keep up with it. http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/03/30/love_darts_in_the_backyard.php

Posted by irons at 08:51 PM

Bloomberg News on DeLay

"Eleven lobbyists who once worked for the Texas Republican and House majority leader helped bring in at least $45 million in fees for their firms in the past two years. By comparison, former aides of House Speaker Dennis Hastert lobbying during that period helped bring in about $2.1 million." http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=a43_xFicYl_0

Posted by irons at 03:56 PM

The President steals music

At least, to the extent that everyone does. http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/13/bushs_ipod_filled_wi.html

Posted by irons at 12:37 PM

April 11, 2005

That's a big banner

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/photo?slug=bxf12204112245.yankees_red_sox_bxf122&prov=ap

Posted by irons at 06:09 PM

Clear-cutting in British Columbia, vividly illustrated by Google Maps

http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/04/07/google_maps_/index.php

Posted by irons at 02:17 PM

April 10, 2005

Cookie Monster to eat fewer cookies

Out of concern for childhood obesity. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050407/D89APUP00.html

Posted by irons at 10:17 PM

April 09, 2005

NYT exposes farmed salmon advertised as wild

The remarkable thing about the story is the uniformity of the implausible explanations from the stores that got caught (6 of 8 tested). This seems to be the key difference in tone between the librul media and cable-news blowhards -- in print, they highlight the lie only implicitly. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/dining/10salmon.html?ei=5094&en=a6dd6b37958ee97c&hp=&ex=1113105600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=

Posted by irons at 01:43 PM

April 07, 2005

Clever, severe OS X root-compromise bug

Apple's response, that administrator users shouldn't be running "arbitrary software", is rubbish. Most Mac OS X machines don't have any non-administrator users. The article provides good advice for closing the hole. [via] http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/395107

Posted by irons at 12:21 PM

April 06, 2005

Reasons to suspect Mariner Moose is not actually a moose at all

It's going to be a long season for the Ms if Matt Thornton is representative of relief pitching. Madritsch left the game today after the fourth inning with a strained shoulder. http://ussmariner.com/?p=2398

Posted by irons at 06:46 PM

April 05, 2005

High-quality spamusement

http://spamusement.com/view.php?id=223

Posted by irons at 05:42 PM

April 04, 2005

Digital Forest ships its diesel backup generator

They moved into a new datacenter, and sold off their old backup generator on eBay. My UPS fits under my desk, but it only gives me about two minutes of juice for one computer. http://www.forest.net/support/archives/2005/03/000563.php#000563

Posted by irons at 10:31 AM

April 03, 2005

Netcraft tracking access times to the Vatican

The site's taking quite a pounding. Who knew there were so many of these Cath-o-lics? [via my dad] http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/04/01/surge_of_traffic_slows_vatican_web_site.html

Posted by irons at 12:04 PM