UPDATE: Okay, well, then again... perhaps BBB doesn't so much attempt to define the San Francisco experience as... uh, as just do a bunch of stuff with really huge elaborate hats. Fair enough... now I know better. And I've also got a better idea of the geography of North Beach/Little Italy... which I'm sure will stand me in good stead should I have a need to show someone around.

Uh oh... I just received a "Notice of Breach and Termination of License" letter from Apple, stating that I violated my license to the Device Plug-in API which iCommune uses. For the time being, I'm making the download unavailable, while I try to sort things out with Apple. Sorry about this folks. Any good lawyers in the house?

A Religious Injunction Regarding Football Given by a Particular Jurist

This is an extremely fine matter to comment on. Many jurists, such as Mufti-e-Azam of Pakistan, Moulana Rashid Ahmed Ludhyanwi have gone to the extreme. His point of view is as follows:
Firstly, he defines the words `physical exercise' into two.
a) One which is apparently linked with jihad.
b) And one which has no apparent link.
Mufti Rashid Saheb places football in the latter category. He then goes on to state, "For football to be permissible, due to it being linked with the latter group of physical activities, there are many pre-requital conditions, which need to be studied.
Firstly, there are three conditions:
1. There should be no physical or financial loss.
2. The person who takes part in such activities, himself, should not be encountering any loss, nor those who are participating with him.
3. The aspect of futile entertainment should not be dominant.
For the former two conditions he puts forward two ahaadith from which he puts forward his deductions.
The Holy Prophet has stated:
"Every play from which pleasure is gained is baseless (impermissible) apart from the practicing of bows and the training of horses or playing with his wife. Verily, these are permissible."

UPDATE: Ayn Rand wouldn't make a very good mufti. (Thanks to Josh Ellison for the link!)

"Under the SDMA, in the event of a Sendo bankruptcy, Microsoft would obtain an irrevocable, royalty free license to use Sendo's Z100 intellectual property, including rights to make, use, or copy the Sendo Smartphone to create other to create other Smartphones and to, most importantly for Microsoft, sublicense those rights to third parties."

IE sucks. It has none of the standard features that I like (pop-up blockers, for instance), encourages some sort of lame-ass I-can’t-believe-its-not-HTML that other browsers can not learn to read, has 2 settings for cookies (on and off) and seems to just beg for security holes to be exploited. On the other wrist: It does file-management. File management is one of the most unsexy things software can do, and it is only a browser function because MS was trying to evade the law, BUT it is just about the most important thing one can do with one’s computer. IE does it, nothing else does. And for that reason alone, it stays on my hard drive.

UPDATE: Kris forwards me a CNET story on Safari and the reasoning behind using KHTML instead of Gecko for the rendering engine. It's a great read, full of little details that CNET seems to have done a good job in getting right. Sounds as though Apple's choice of KHTML was the right one, considering the reaction of some of the Gecko team members:

"I guess I'm supposed to be mortally offended--or at least embarrassed--that they went with KHTML instead of our Gecko engine, but I'm having trouble working up the indignation," wrote Mike Shaver in a Web log posting. "We've all known forever that Gecko missed its 'small-and-lean' target by an area code, and we've been slogging back towards the goal, dragging our profilers and benchmarks behind us, for years."

Shaver, who left Netscape three years ago but retained his position on the small Mozilla staff, said that in Apple's shoes he might have made a similar decision.

"If I had to write a new browser, and I was going to have to touch the layout code in a serious way, I would think about Mozilla alternatives," Shaver wrote. "I really, really hope that Mozilla will learn from Safari/KHTML, because they've done a lot of great work in about a tenth of the code."

That's certainly forthright. And it's further proof, to me at least, that Apple has its head screwed on straight when making sure that its technical decisions are the right ones rather than whatever's politically most expedient.

UPDATE: On second thought, maybe the article isn't as responsible a piece of journalism as it seemed; MozillaZine has the scoop on cheesed-off and misquoted developers.

If Apple is indeed on a backslide, I have to say that it doesn´t amuse me as a pc user, because the tough competition they put up is one reason for the incredible personal computer development we have seen in these past 15 years.

UPDATE: Den Beste has some appropriately depressing facts and figures. I still say they don't tell the whole story, but then, neither does a lit candle outside Infinite Loop.

I'll say this for his machine, though: if he ever wants to back up that 3.3 GB movie file on floppy disks, he's all set.

Gays: Ignore the guy that was snap-kicked out of the picture and think about this: New York and San Francisco have the largest homosexual populations as percentage in the country. Where are the Macworld Expos held? The truth will finally be out of the closet should Macworld pull out of New York, so to speak, and, rather than return to Boston, move to the third gayest city: Lakewood, Ohio. Strange, but true, the North Coast burb is the best kept secret in the bath house. How do I know? I was born there. And what's wrong with being gay? It's the ultimate juvenile PC slur, so why not embrace it? By the way, though the guy in the picture might look gay, he is obviously not...powder blue and primary colors, I think not, and leotards and boxers?shudder. The gay Mac user is about as harmless as you can get and should be treated with respect, while avoiding discussion of sexual practices...unless we are talking lesbians like in Mulholland Drive. Those chicks should have a booth and a QT streaming setup.

I both watched the keynote and did not watch the keynote, and by that I mean I watched other attendees like myself, too poor or too cheap for an auditorium seat, watching The Steve on a QT stream and wondering what next. They cheered Safari. We cheered the PowerBooks. It was strange. A very great human being, Clive Staples Lewis, once posited that, at best, culture should do no harm. He looked very suspiciously upon those activities and diversions by which we while away the hours of our days, and yet he was not so sure of the place of culture, and its bastard pop-culture, to reason them utterly destructive. I liked being with all these people who liked the same thing I did, who waited with anticipation for one more thing, and did it really hurt anyone? I think not. That is why Mac, too.

Mirza's background necessitates finding new ground - after all, you can't do many gags about being drunk and stoned when your religion demands abstention - and the material based on that culture is easily the strongest. She does have other gags that do not rely on her faith, but these are not always as assured.

By the by.. I recall you wondering why firewire 800 needs a different connector. It does because there are nine pins, and it uses an optical interface.

Biggest difference: Cable ranges over 100 meters.

It was designed primarily to fill the need of producers who run digital studios, and need cable runs longer than 5 meters, with no signal degradation.

It also has double the usable bandwidth of USB2, with no cable EM noise. Aaah, elegance.

It's quite surreal to plug a FireWire hard drive into a FireWire video camera and have it download it's data. What computer? :)

The word terrorism came into wide usage only a few decades ago. One of the unfortunate results of this new terminology is that it limits the definition of terrorism to that perpetrated by small groups or individuals. Terrorism, in fact, spans the entire world, and manifests itself in various forms. Its perpetrators do not fit any stereotype. Those who hold human lives cheap, and have the power to expend human lives, appear at different levels in our societies. The frustrated employee who kills his colleagues in cold-blood or the oppressed citizen of an occupied land who vents his anger by blowing up a school bus are terrorists who provoke our anger and revulsion. Ironically however, the politician who uses age-old ethnic animosities between peoples to consolidate his position, the head of state who orders “carpet bombing” of entire cities, the exalted councils that choke millions of civilians to death by wielding the insidious weapon of sanctions, are rarely punished for their crimes against humanity.

A number of people have commented on Safari's UA string, which is as follows:

Netscape 5.0 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/48 (like Gecko) Safari/48

The portion of the UA string that seems to be stirring up controversy is the portion that says (like Gecko). The reason it is there is that in order to work with real-world DHTML sites you have essentially two options: you can claim to be MSIE or you can claim to be Gecko. We found that any other choice that we tried led to a significant portion of DHTML malfunctioning. You would not believe (well, maybe you would) how much DHTML exists out there that works only with MSIE or Gecko, and that uses proprietary extensions of each to accomplish the DHTML effects.

Had we released a browser with a UA string that did not superficially match either MSIE or Gecko, users would have downloaded Safari and experienced many malfunctioning Web sites. If anyone thinks that would have been a good idea, please step forward in your blog and explain why. I'm willing to listen.

Our solution was a compromise. We produced a user agent string that is different from Gecko's and easily distinguishable if you choose to sniff for it, but that at this time will pass most UA checks that sniff for Gecko. It may be that enough sites will start sniffing directly for our string that we can drop the "(like Gecko)" from our user agent string, but I'm not optimistic.

We chose to be more like Gecko than like MSIE because we wanted to be lumped into the standards compliant category, because fundamentally we are committed to supporting DOM 1&2, CSS1&2, and enough proprietary MSIE extensions and Gecko extensions (innerHTML, createContextualFragment, offsetWidth/Height, etc.) that we could be placed in a similar category.

BY THE WAY: Safari is fully AppleScriptable, as J Greely points out.

Apple came out with a batch of apps today, and they’re all niftily spiffy, but the company is doomed because the computers aren’t fast enough, and people will always prefer PCs which let them do Apple-type things half as well but twice as fast, and besides, there are no games for the Apple, which is why I threw out my camcorder because it couldn’t play chess.

There. I think that covers it.

I'm the engineering manager of Safari, Apple Computer's new web browser
built upon KHTML and KJS. I'm sending you this email to thank you for
making such a great open source project and introduce myself and my
development team. I also wish to explain why and how we've used your
excellent technology. It's important that you know we're committed to
open source and contributing our changes, now and in the future, back
to you, the original developers. Hopefully this will begin a dialogue
among ourselves for the benefit of both of our projects.

Wellington, New Zealand - A recently leaked trailer for The Return of the King has Tolkien fans outraged over the apparent addition of a new character - Jar-Jaromir. The scene depicted in the trailer shows Jar-Jaromir shouting, "Gondora gonna fallsa";
he then trips over a corpse and knocks down a couple of Uruk-hai.

UPDATE: Stefan Sharkansky has posted photos.

The primary proponents of this new way of doing things are Europeans (and sympathetic academics), who believe that they have now transcended the brutal international order of the past, where all nations were armed to the teeth and where negotiations often involved the threat of war, or happened over the sound of battle. European diplomats believe that there should be an international court where nations could take their grievances for binding arbitration, and hope to institute an international system where all nations feel as if they should actually concede their grievances if arbitration goes against them. The idea is that nations would cede considerable amounts of sovereignty to some international authority, and live as "citizens of the world".

It is a worthwhile dream. It represents a better way. If it were in effect, far fewer people would suffer. Unfortunately, though I wish it could be made to happen, I don't believe it can be. It is inherently unstable; even if it could be instituted, it would fall apart.

It discounts the possibility of bad faith; it ignores both the "Prisoner's dilemma" and "the Tragedy of the Commons". If a cheater ends up in conflict with an honorable nation, the cheater may agree to arbitration. If the arbitrator rules in favor of the cheater, the honorable nation will concede and the cheater wins. But if the arbitrator rules the other way, the cheater can ignore him and continue to pursue the point. There's everything to be gained from arbitration, but nothing whatever to lose. And thus cheating is an advantage when most of the world is honorable, leading directly to the tragedy of the commons. Even if such a system could be established, there would be an incentive for at least some to break the rules, for doing so would be to their advantage.

Europe has been trying to set an example by being internationally active in diplomacy, while at the same time having no ability to project military force. And it hasn't been working at all well. As a general principle, if all you have are carrots, or only feeble and laughable sticks, then you don't have any way to make "reject" unpalatable, so the only way you can make "accept" more palatable is to pile lots more carrots on the scale than you would really like to, and in fact in some cases the Europeans have found themselves having to give away the farm in order to get an agreement.

Worse, they're finding that in some cases they have no carrots to offer, and also have no sticks, and as a result their intended negotiating partner refuses to even talk to them. (EU's Solana believes he knows how to settle the problem between the Israelis and Palestinians, but the solution he proposes involves major concessions by Israel. Solana has nothing to offer Israel which it thinks would offset that cost, so quite naturally Israel refuses to deal with him.)

When Europe has faced cases where it has no adequate carrots with which it is willing to part, and no sticks to apply, and wants an agreement anyway, the only remaining solution is whining, which has been notably unsuccessful.

Thirty days in the hole
Thirty days in the hole
Thirty days in the hole
Thirty days in the hole

There's a saying, "Failure: Perhaps your only purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others." It seems that has been PowerSchool's purpose. There are many roads to success, and while a single thing can lead to failure, usually it requires many things coming together to fail spectacularly. Every company has elements of PowerSchool's failure in them, PowerSchool just managed to bring them all together in one place. But even in failure, there were many "how not to" lessons that can be learned. PowerSchool showed us all how not to put marketing and sales above sanity and engineering, how not to over-hire and over-fire, how not to treat people or customers, how not to manage an organization or people, how not to act in an irresponsible manner to your investors or employees, and how not to finance or run a business.

6. Microsoft donates $2.3 million to Canada's premier Computer Science program at the University of Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, Waterloo announces that it is requiring all students in the engineering program to take a course using Microsoft's propietary .net language, C#.

Some of his reviewer/fans share Moore's accuracy problems. Bunbury claimed that "he bails up the entire management of Kmart and confronts Charlton Heston on his own front veranda" although he meets only a few Kmart management types and interviews Heston inside his house; and The Australian's Jane Cornwell wrote that Columbine's vile three-minute cartoon history of the US, written by Moore and made by animators FlickerLab, was produced "by the guys from South Park".

Everquest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much time you put into it. This is the core design philosophy behind the game, since they charge you by the month and make more money the longer you stick around. What they don’t tell you is that taking your money is about all they’re interested in. They care little for player complaints, and less about player suggestions and requests. They’re in this to milk you for all you’re worth, and that’s the first thing you have to know.

The second thing you have to know is that the game stops being fun. By that time though, you’re so “addicted” to the game, you don’t realize it. The game becomes a source of frustration and anger instead of a source of entertainment and fun. It becomes a chore. It becomes a job. You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consumed with getting that new item, or finishing that last quest, and while so consumed you begin to hate the game. Vehemently. It’s a game that goes on forever, and one that you can never win.

You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consumed with getting that new item, or finishing that last quest, and while so consumed you begin to hate the game. Vehemently. It’s a game that goes on forever, and one that you can never win.

"He loves and hates the ring, as he loves and hates himself."
-Gandalf in the first LOTR movie, referring to Gollum.

Specific Bashing: Apple. I resolve to go an entire year without making critical comments about some Apple computer or some Apple strategy. I visited one of the Apple stores here in California and found a packed store full of happy people. I would love to have a smile on my face just like theirs! Oh joy! Life is good.

Specific Bashing: Microsoft. All my complaining about various Microsoft strategies and certain defective products has accomplished nothing. Maybe looking at the positive side of things would be a better idea! Microsoft, you go girl!

Specific Bashing: Bloggers. I made a huge mistake by mildly criticizing the blogging community and got my comeuppance in the form of hateful blog entries all over blogdom. Blogs provide a unique insight into our culture and picking on bloggers is a waste of my time. I shall cease even thinking about it.

Neave and a team of researchers started with an Israeli skull dating back to the 1st century. They then used computer programs, clay, simulated skin and their knowledge about the Jewish people of the time to determine the shape of the face, and color of eyes and skin.

They turned to the Bible to determine the length of his hair. In the New Testament, "would Paul (one of the apostles) have written, 'If a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him' if Jesus Christ had had long hair?" the article speculates.

The magazine's editors admit that they cannot be certain of the accuracy of this facial representation.

UPDATE: Kris has pawed around and discovered that most of the built-in "brushed metal" theme apps have the new look, like Calculator and Address Book; but not iTunes or iPhoto. The theory is that Apple has updated the default "brushed metal" theme and all the utilities that use it have implicitly been updated; but iTunes and iPhoto "roll their own" interface widgetry, so they don't look any different yet.

Oh, and Mike has a peal of wisdom from the hot-rodder community. Thanks!

4) "These people are poor and helpless, and that's why they're angry at us."

Uh-huh, and Jeffrey Dahmer's frozen head collection was just a desperate cry for help. The terrorists and their backers are richer than Elton John and, ironically, a good deal less annoying. The poor helpless people, you see, are the villagers they tortured and murdered to stay in power. Mohamed Atta, one of the evil scumbags who steered those planes into the killing grounds (I'm sorry, one of the "alleged hijackers," according to CNN-they stopped using the word "terrorist," you know), is the son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew this, too. In the sixties and seventies, all the pinheads marching against the war were upper-middle-class college kids who grabbed any cause they could think of to get out of their final papers and spend more time drinking. At least, that was my excuse. It's the same today. Take the Anti-Global-Warming (or is it World Trade? Oh-who-knows-what-the-hell-they-want demonstrators) They all charged their black outfits and plane tickets on dad's credit card(!) before driving to the airport in their SUV's.

What we have here is the Rohanian version of Books 3 and 4.

Faramir loses his nobility because, well, he's Gondorian, and even the best of them isn't entirely right, is he?

The Ents are removed from Helm's Deep and reduced elsewhere to a reactive role because, well, having the battle decided by big walking trees would undercut the glory of the Rohirrim.

• As many have noted, Jackson has taken many more liberties with the storyline in TTT than he did in FotR. This one is definitely his own story, rather than the one in the book; it follows the same framework, but so many of the little events that flesh out that framework are different-- even radically so-- that the movie and the book, this time, won't in any way each spoil the other. Most of Jackson's changes I think are positive ones, but many I'm ambivalent about-- they're things I'll grant him in the interest of understanding what kind of story he wants to tell, but I don't necessarily think they improve the story per se.
  
  As a friend notes, however, the changes in this movie seem designed more for storytelling purposes and pacing than for expedience and time-saving, as was a sporadic issue with the first movie; so in many ways this movie is more successful, even with all the extreme changes.
  
  
• Whereas the book was divided into "Book III" (with Merry and Pippin and the Rohan story) and "Book IV" (with Frodo and Sam), the movie interleaves them together, as I suspected it would. This is definitely more successful from a moviemaking standpoint than it would have been if this had really been "two movies in one", back-to-back.
  
  
• Even so, it looks as though Jackson intends to cover less story in Return of the King overall than is in the book, because TTT cuts off well before the book version does, in both storylines. No Shelob, no Minas Morgul, no confrontation at Isengard. These things will presumably be moved forward into RotK, which-- if it's as long a movie as this one is-- certainly won't feel lacking in material (even if they skip the Scouring of the Shire, as it has been suggested that it will).
  
  
• Starting the movie with Gandalf's battle with the Balrog-- and framing it as a dream Frodo is having-- does a good job of reintroducing the previous movie's salient plot point, without a cheesy Trekkish "summary" run-through at the beginning. Plus it did an excellent job of realizing the otherwise difficult-to-picture "Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him" narrative.
  
  
• "Well, we have lembas bread. ...Oh, and look! more lembas bread." Cute. Likewise with Sam's crack about "foreign food".
  
  
• Gollum's design was jarring at first, but grew on me. Especially the face. Very expressive... and even lovable, in the "Slinker" mode. Speaking of which-- the scene in which he argues with himself, which Jackson has treated as the occasion where he quite literally banishes the "Stinker" side of himself from his psyche (not exactly permanently, though), was an unexpected comedic gem. The way Jackson jumped the camera back and forth was certainly something I didn't expect in this kind of movie; it's a very comedy-film kind of trick, and it reminded me very strongly of the Pixar short "Geri's Game", which I suspect was among Jackson's inspirations for the scene. I half expected one of the Stinker jump-cuts to consist entirely of him leering at Slinker, before jumping back-- which in itself is one of the best bits of physical and situational humor in "Geri's Game", and the basis for the gag. Nice homage, Peter, if that's what it was.
  
  
• The Dead Marshes worked well. Especially the close-up on the Nazgûl, and the pull-back to show the whole winged creature-- I saw it coming, but it worked well.
  
  
• When Saruman was rallying the Dunlendings-- his language: "The Rohirrim drove you out from their lands, forcing you to scratch out a living in the mountains. Now those dirty peasants are living in your country-- it is now time to fight to take it back!" Hmm... where have we heard this before?
  
  Also, I just remembered-- in his first scene, Gríma maintains that Saruman is a friend of Rohan, that he'd never do anything to hurt his neighbors-- but then he's caught in a lie outright by Éomer's report of the skirmish on the outskirts. Gríma then changes his tactic, accusing Éomer of "warmongering". Hmmmmm.
  
  
• One of the women in Rohan was named Haleth. That's a name out of The Silmarillion. Good research-- it's even appropriate.
  
  
• Gandalf's wink when he's allowed to keep his staff as they enter Meduseld-- great. Gríma was extremely effective, as were all his extra oily lines that were added in order to intensify how gross a guy he is, and the terrifying implications of the importance of his position. (The decayed, desiccated old Théoden under Saruman's spell-- wow, what a mess. Almost as impressive as the subtlety of the transformation after Gandalf exorcises him.) But one thing I thought was missing was any of the "mystery story" about Gríma-- whether he was an agent of Saruman was never in any doubt; Éomer called him out in the very first scene. Not a bad omission, but it seemed a bit rushed.
  
  
• There was one weird moment of directorial bobbling that confused me: right at the moment when Gandalf drives out Saruman's spell from Théoden and is knocked headlong on the floor in reaction. Now, maybe it's just me, but... my interpretation, for several weird seconds, was that Gandalf had quite literally driven out Saruman from Théoden's body, and that was Saruman that got flung on the floor. I half expected him to jump up, look around wildly, hiss, and raise his arms and go flying out the window, wailing and screeching his way back to Isengard. And of course the guards would all yell, "Quick-- he's getting away!"
  
  
• Treebeard and the Ents work, I think. I buy it. Certainly a better interpretation of Ents than I've seen before.
  
  
• Speaking of which, good misdirection on the "white wizard" bit-- though the explicitude of Merry and Pippin meeting Gandalf the White before he reveals himself to the other three is an interesting plot simplification. Not sure if it'll have repercussions later.
  
  
• And speaking of relevant-to-these-times dialogue, how about Éowyn when she's practicing with her sword? "The women of this land learned long ago that even those who do not live by the sword can still die upon them." As good a literary distillation of the Rachel Lucas/Bill Whittle gun-rights argument as I've seen.
  
  
• Gandalf, when describing his battle with the Balrog, said he "smote his ruin upon the mountain", instead of the original implication (perpetuated by Bakshi) that casting down the Balrog onto the side of Caradhras caused the mountain to collapse or something ("broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin"). A little verbal massaging that did wonders for plausibility.
  
  
• Random note: This movie wasn't very green, was it? Especially compared to the first movie, and especially compared to how I expected places like Rohan to look. I was thinking "Irish countryside" or "Dances With Wolves". Instead we get this rocky, hillocky wasteland that I can't imagine would be a good place to run horses; can you imagine how many wombat holes there would be to trip them up and break their legs? On the plus side, though, beautiful cinematography, especially in those long, wide pans across the White Mountains with Edoras in the foreground and the peaks off the top of the screen. Fantastic use of telephoto.
  
  
• Something odd I noticed: Jackson seems to be deliberately setting up the entire bloody world to be unhelpful, cynical, disinterested, provincial... first Rivendell, then Lórien, now Théoden, Gondor, and even the Ents. Merry and Pippin have to trick Treebeard into attacking Isengard. World in decay, indeed...
  
  
• After the Entmoot, when Merry says "How can that be your decision?", the camera does this weird jump-cut-- from behind Merry, to close-up on his face, then straight back to the aerial shot behind Treebeard, all before he's done with the sentence. Looks like a sloppy editing job to me; here's hoping it looks better on the DVD.
  
  
• Jackson combined Dunharrow and Helm's Deep in this movie-- probably a good move, for simplification purposes, and it was one of the things that I thought was a little needlessly confusing about the book: if the Orcs were interested in attacking the women and children and destroying Rohan through that ruthless route (as was indicated by the Warg-riders' attack on the refugee train), they could have simply ridden on by the warriors in Helm's Deep, waved, and gone on to slaughter. This way is more direct and understandable, and concentrates all the more urgency into Helm's Deep itself. (I wonder how much screen-time the Paths of the Dead thing will get; in the book it's all handled in a very offhand, high-style aside, with some of the book's most Biblical language; it's a confusing plot point to all but the most hard-core fans.)
  
  
• Speaking of Helm's Deep-- all I'm going to say about it is that it's one helluva battle. Someone was really doing his homework about how a siege of this type would work. Beautiful work.
  
  
• Still no mention of Andúril, even though there was a prime opportunity for it that was added explicitly-- Haldir's robot archers. (Seriously-- robots or Vulcans. Jeebus.) Haldir specifically said he'd come from Elrond; and Elrond, in the preceding Arwen scene, had flashbacked to the painting on the wall of the chamber in Rivendell where the shards of Narsil were. It seems the time was ripe for Elrond to have had the sword reforged and sent to Aragorn as a token. But then, this whole new subplot with Aragorn's near-death after the Warg attack seemed designed to show that Elrond is still one tight-assed, bitter old Half-Elf, and Arwen isn't improving his mood any. My suspicion is that he'll eventually come around, in RotK, and Andúril will appear then, on the Pelennor, or in front of the Morannon, or somewhere-- or not at all. (Or maybe at the coronation. Elrond will come riding up, panting: "Aragorn! Your Majesty! Here you go-- I believed in you all along! Good on ya, kid!")
  
  
• That whole "Aragorn fake death" sequence... it seemed awfully weird, and the Elvish platitudes between him and Arwen were meaningless, saccharine, and took too long, giving the audience time to lose interest, giggle and talk amongst themselves, and call each other on their %^$#%$@#@%@ cellphones-- but it did give Jackson an opportunity to cover a number of things about Rohan-- for instance, how "special" the horses are. The horse that comes to rescue Aragorn, that turns him over and bends down to let Aragorn hoist himself up... very cool scene, but at first I couldn't tell if Jackson was actually going to play it bizarrely comedic-- I was all set up to laugh my ass off as his imagined kiss with Arwen melted into a tongue-wrestling match with the horse, his hands in the horse's mane accompanied by an "Ohhh... Arwen..."
  
  
• Gimli was certainly converted into this movie's comic relief, instead of Merry and Pippin-- and I think that's fine, considering how much fun we know John Rhys-Davies has been having with the role. It was cool to see the "dwarf-tossing" joke come back around again; that was one I'd never expected to see again. But Gimli and Legolas are what adds a "buddy movie" line to the story, even in the book; and the whole "kill tally" business, which is the source of a lot of the book's humor, is only part of the set of gags Gimli gets this time. (The riffs on his height, especially right before the Orcs attack Helm's Deep, were like arrows to the mark: "Shall I get you a box?") However, I'm bummed that the "kill tally" line never really had a resolution, like in the book; it just sort of petered out. Perhaps in the long-version DVD...
  
  
• The arrival-of-the-cavalry at the end-- damn, those are some good horses, if they can come down that steep-ass mountainside under control and at a run.
  
  
• Throughout the movie-- the orcs get a whole lot more lines and interaction with the regular characters than I expected. Makes them seem more real and "human"... but it was surprising how it worked, the texture it added. They aren't monsters, anymore-- just really ugly dudes. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.
  
  
• So, then, turning to Frodo and Sam... I thought the Black Gate scene was outstanding. Great tech on the gate, with the trolls and the machinery (fits in nicely with Saruman's crack about the old order "burning in the fires of industry"-- and McDonald's, and Levi's, and Barbie, and Coca-Cola, right?). Excellent armor design on those Easterlings or Southrons or whoever that army was that was entering via the gate. And the bit with the cloak, and the pretending to be a rock-- that worked surprisingly well, especially with the whipping it off at the end. Except it would have been nice if they'd foreshadowed what the cloaks could do, a little bit, beforehand. Otherwise this looks like just a stupid happy accident.
  
  
• So then there's this whole side story with Faramir and Osgiliath. Frodo gives him the by-now-familiar "Here's the Ring; what are you gonna do about it?" temptation, but Faramir actually says I'm taking it. It's like I was watching some kind of Choose Your Own Adventure, and I'd taken a wrong turn here. What, Peter, did you get hold of the infamous "alternate ending" version of the book, where Faramir took the ring and used it to defend Gondor? But it did eventually resolve itself fairly well, with the battle in Osgiliath and Frodo's attacking Sam, which were pretty cool; still, the movie wasn't kind to Faramir at all. Which I didn't like very much. Faramir was always one of my favorite characters-- the put-upon "wussy younger brother" who did everything right and made all the honorable choices, but was still spat on by Denethor, who could never see beyond his love for Boromir. Faramir was the Harry Potter to Boromir's Dudley Dursley. So far, Boromir's come off as a much cooler character-- much more of a badass, looks better in armor, has a better beard, has a much more direct and convincing redemption scene. There's plenty of time left for Faramir, yes, but... so far I don't like him one bit. Pity.
  
  
• Much less "mysticism" about the Ring this time around; it didn't seem to be "calling out" to Faramir, the way it did to everybody in the first movie.
  
  
• Gollum gets an overall thumbs-up. Great animation, especially on his face. I was a little worried at first, having seen only the trailers, that he'd look too jerky and crude. But now that I've seen the whole thing, it all looked very convincing. And the Ents, by the way-- their smooth movements from stock-still to stock-still worked extremely well. Cool... very good job by all the animators.
  
  
• Interesting how they spent a fair amount of time poring over a map on-screen this time. It was one thing I think the first movie was lacking, and could have benefited from; this time, the geography of Rohan and Gondor is much more clear. And that's all to the good. It even worked as a plot point.
  
  
• Good choice of where to end the two storylines; the Rohan story ends right where Bakshi ended it ("The forces of evil were banished forever from Middle-Earth"-- oh really?), and Frodo and Sam's story ends right after the Osgiliath thing. I guess Jackson wanted to end both storylines right after a big decisive battle scene; putting in Shelob or Isengard would have been very anticlimactic places to end. This works, I think-- though RotK will be the touchstone for the success of that move.
  
  
• By the same token, one friend noted that one purpose of the Osgiliath subplot might have been to keep the movie from being four separate plotlines: two big army ones, and two with a couple of hobbits sneaking around in the background. This way, the hobbits-sneaking-around storylines get interwoven with the big-army storylines, which keeps the audience interested.
  
  
• "The Two Towers" was supposed to refer to Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul, according to the original punditry on the book. But in the movie's interpretation, the "two towers" are Isengard and Barad-dûr, with the explicit "alliance of evil industry" between Saruman and Sauron. Interesting twist, but it works.
  
  
• The destruction of Isengard: excellent. Especially that one Ent, on fire, ducking into the water.
  

UPDATE: Robert Lloyd mails to tell me that Windows can do direct IP-based file-sharing now. Well, that's good-- I figured they'd get to it eventually.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told the Guardian that budgetary priorities meant her department could not provide anti-retrovirals to the estimated 4.5m South Africans with HIV. "We don't have the money for that. Where would it come from?"

Asked if it could come from defence savings from leaving out the submarines which formed part of a £4bn arms deal, the minister said that South Africa needed to deter aggressors: "Look at what Bush is doing. He could invade."

President Bush is expected to visit South Africa in January although only as part of a diplomatic tour of several African countries.

Forget print, go to film. Put together a handsome documentary with an original musical score that presents Islam's prophet Muhammad in the most glowing manner, indeed, as a model of perfection. Round up Muslim and non-Muslim enthusiasts to endorse the nobility and truth of his message. Splice in vignettes of winsome American Muslims testifying to the justice and beauty of their Islamic faith. Then get the U.S. taxpayer to help pay for it.

Show it at prime time on the most high-minded TV network. Oh, and screen it at least once during the holidays, when anyone out of synch with Christmas might be especially susceptible to another religion's appeal.

. . .

* PBS has betrayed its viewers by presenting an airbrushed and uncritical documentary of a topic that has both world historical and contemporary significance. Its patronizing film might be fine for an Islamic Sunday school class, but not for a national audience.

For example, PBS ignores an ongoing scholarly reassessment of Muhammad's life that disputes every detail - down to the century and region Muhammad lived in - of its film. This is especially odd when contrasted with the 1998 PBS documentary, "From Jesus to Christ," which focuses almost exclusively on the work of cutting-edge scholars and presents the latest in critical thinking on Jesus.

* The U.S. government should never fund a documentary whose obvious intent is to glorify a religion and proselytize for it. Doing so flies in the face of American tradition and law. On behalf of taxpayers, a public-interest law firm should bring suit against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, both to address this week's travesty and to win an injunction against any possible repetitions.

"Why, for example, is their $269,700 Rockville, Md., house covered with artificial siding, according to Maryland tax records? Shouldn't a Reagan conspirator be able to afford repainting every seven years? Is the Donald Douglas Poindexter listed in Maryland sex-offender records any relation to the good admiral? What do Tom Maxwell, at 8 Barrington Fare, and James Galvin, at 12 Barrington Fare, think of their spooky neighbor?"

. . .

What Smith didn't realize was that Poindexter's phone number and other information would end up on more than 100 Web pages a week later as others took up the cause.

Phone-phreaking hackers supplied details on the Verizon switch serving the admiral's home. The popular Cryptome privacy-issues website posted satellite photos of the house.

Poindexter could not be reached for comment for this story, and calls to his home phone now reach a recording: "The party you are calling is not available at this time."

This ought to be made into a major project. We should all get some dirt on him,his extended family, reading habits, and post it all to the Internet. Let's see how *he* likes it.

P.S. And maybe also do the same for whoever came up with that creepy-ass logo.

UPDATE: And now it's hailing.


Good thing we're moving out of this building with its glass roof...

UPDATE: John Poole provides evidence that this particular specimen is not, in fact, the best Windows can do. I kinda figured as much. This is 2002, for crying-out-loud.

UPDATE: And I am, according to Joshua Micah Marshall, via Judson. Though this viewpoint isn't exactly at odds with what I've said.

UPDATE: Since this post got Slashdotted, I've been getting a pretty fair amount of e-mail, suggesting that the behavior we observed here might be anything from T/TCP to HTTP/1.1 pipelining to delirium tremens. Well, I should point out that this phenomenon was something we observed in 1997, before HTTP/1.1 was in wide use; both the client and server were using vanilla HTTP/1.0. As it turned out, it was actually the NT stack that was causing this to happen-- it didn't matter what client or server software you used. It even happened with our home-grown network test tools.

It's entirely possible that Microsoft has changed the NT stack in recent iterations so that this doesn't happen anymore. But if you're trying to reproduce the behavior, use NT 4.0 machines for worst results.

The ultimate goal is to prevent you from having to learn entire new programs to interact with your mail messages, your contacts, and your home movies—to ensure that each data type doesn't become the exclusive province of a specific application. (To take an example from the iApps, iPhoto is great at organizing your photos, but it's useless if you're trying to figure out which snapshot you e-mailed to your mother last week.) Think about searching for text strings in four different contexts: in a Word document, in your inbox, on the Web, and in your hard drive. There are four distinct search tools for those four tasks, each with its own interface, each "belonging" to a different application. But in each case, you're just searching for text. Why use a Swiss army knife when one blade will do? As Bill Gates put it on Charlie Rose last month, "Right now when you use Windows, the way that you step through your photos, the way you step through your music, the way you step through e-mail or files, they're all different. You have to learn different user interfaces, different search commands. ... The idea of Longhorn is to have one approach, one set of commands that work for everything, including all of those things. And so the number of concepts you have to learn is dramatically less."

This particular rhetorical point, that the US claims to be trying to prevent Iraq from getting what the US already has, ignores the critical difference between capabilities and intentions. It is true that the US has the capabilities he claims, but there's no indication that we intend to do what he fears we will, and unleash WMDs out of spite. Saddam, on the other hand, has actually used chemical weapons in large quantities, and in fact is responsible for virtually every death caused with such weapons that have taken place in the entire world since the armistice was signed in Europe in 1919. So far as we know, in the last 80 years only one nation has ever used chemical weapons on the battlefield, and that's Iraq.

And though the Germans developed nerve gas in World War II, and many nations since then have also developed them (including more advanced forms) there is only one nation which has actually used them, and that is Iraq. It's not just that Iraq is the only nation in recent memory to use chemical weapons, the ones it used are far more deadly than the ones which caused so much death and destruction in Europe during the Great War.

A rifle is a deadly weapon, but it's a lot more deadly in the hands of a lunatic than in the hands of a police officer. You have to consider not just what the weapons can do, but also who is holding it.

Running circles around the UN arms inspection headed by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, the Iraqi government dropped a massive pile of documents – its reply to the UN Security Council demand for a full accounting of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – in the laps of the international media Saturday, December 7, before allowing Blix a peek. The presentation was accompanied by yet another formal denial that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

The 11,880 pages on CD-Rom, landing with a thud in Baghdad, will not reach UN Headquarters in New York before late Sunday, exactly on the dot of the Security Council deadline.

Washington in any case had no expectation of substance from the UN inspectors.
Thursday, December 5, the White House declared it already had “solid evidence” that Iraq does indeed have weapons of mass destruction. Where did that evidence come from?

. . .

This project is in the hands of a special multinational task force made up of special elite units and armed with combat helicopters and aircraft, spy-planes and satellites. Unlike the Blix outfit, which is based in Baghdad, the alternative investigators are fanned out across the country. One well-placed source disclosed: “Our men in the field know where 90 percent of Saddam’s missiles and unconventional weapons systems are located, even the mobile ones that are moved from place to place every hour. We are keeping them under tight, on-site observation because when the war begins we want to be there before Saddam orders his men to hit the triggers.”

According to our sources, this highly sensitive, elaborate and secret inspection project has been going for more than three months. Its success could pre-determine the course of the war before it begins. Its members are drawn from the United States, Britain, Jordan and Turkey and possibly Israel. They operate under the Special Forces command at Al Udeid in Qatar and its sub-command in the Jordanian base of Mafraq.

For the purpose of the search, Iraq has been divided into 16 squares, each the province of an elite unit for a set period. The Talil air base complex in north Iraq, for instance, with its air fields, missile bases and air defense batteries, was assigned for the first three weeks of December to US special forces.

The story going around the Gulf, according to DEBKAfile’s sources, is that in the week since the UN inspection team started work, it has been well penetrated by Iraqi agents.The most disturbing aspect of this - and the reason for the sharp responses coming from the White House - is that the spies have managed to fit "electronic jackets" on the UN measuring instruments, which throw them off and make them emit false data. The technical assistants, some from Arab countries, are also thoroughly infiltrated by Iraqi intelligence.

Looks like this is shaping up to happen rather quickly, and it also looks like we'll have bombs for Christmas, but the troops will be back for New Years.

Once again, Dubya has been underestimated and will probably pull another of his trademark I'm a lot smarter than that, stupid moments soon. I love when that happens.

"There are many 'Chinglish' words on road signs, public notices, menus and signs describing scenic spots, which often puzzle foreigners," Xiong Yumei, vice director of the Beijing Tourism Bureau, was quoted as saying.

The signs feature misspellings, obscure abbreviations and jarring word-for-word translations of Chinese characters into English.
Some examples: "Collecting Money Toilet" for a public toilet, and "To take notice of safe, the slippery are very crafty" on a sign warning that roads are slippery.

In contrast, a group of Islamic academics recently met at a conference in Cairo entitled "Why do they hate us?" The symposium sought to examine Muslim culpability for the latest outbreak of Western terrorism against Islam.

"One could argue that we simply asked for it," the chairperson of the American Studies Department of Cairo University remarked. "I can envision a scenario in which we deserve all we get from America. In some sense, I'm ashamed to be from the Middle East. It is humiliating really. And unless we go to the root causes of Western hostility, there may well never be peace. We should examine very carefully our construction of the Western "other," and our culpability for the attendant frustration and sense of helplessness that drives an angry young L.A. surfer dude, a Texas ranch-hand, or a bare-naveled Miami skateboarder to blow themselves up along with Middle Easterners across the globe — and then rethink what the Egyptian or Saudi regime really stands for in the world today. They see our gender apartheid, our religious discrimination, our racial castes, tribalism, and autocracy — and then all that sexism, racism, and homophobia just overwhelms these idealistic-but-impotent American kids, causing them to strap on some bombs and strike a blow in anguish, as it were, against the patriarchy of imams, mullahs, and sheiks."

Helmet Ears

Yes we’re completely serious. These have been tested to 175mph and will allow you to appear silly whenever you feel like it. The idea of being pulled over and lectured/screamed at by an agitated officer while glumly sitting on your red-hot Blackbird/Hayabusa/ZX12 with droopy bunny ears does admittedly have a sort of humor potential.

Eckhard Bieger, a Roman Catholic priest in Frankfurt, said he is all for the holiday season, gift exchanges and family celebrations. But he believes the twinkly-eyed old man in a red costume is a commercial fraud.

"Santa Claus is a creation of the advertising industry and Coca-Cola to further commercial interests," Bieger told Reuters.

"I don't have anything against Christmas presents and don't want to disappoint children," he said. "My aim is to put St. Nicholas back at the center of attention rather than this Santa Claus figure, which is just an empty shell."

UPDATE: Besides which, as pointed out by Hiker, the whole "Santa Claus was invented by Coca-Cola" thing is a myth anyway.

Visit snopes.com's Cokelore page for this and a bunch more fun stuff, including the full history of the "anti-Islamic message" thing I posted about a while ago. Hey, did you know that that logo not only says "No Muhammad, No Mecca", but also contains a sideways image of a guy snorting coke?

As you already know, products such as the iPod and digital video cameras already use Firewire ports. In the future you may be able to assign future products with an IP address while connected via firewire, opening the door for networking video cameras and other devices. Imagine being at an editing studio, plugging in your DV camera and having it being accessible to every computer on your network in conjunction with Rendezvous. That camera is now accessible at 400 megabits a second anywhere on the network. We are talking about major speed and potential here. Other great advantages for IP over Firewire include the ability for older machines to work on future networks and faster networking with laptops with lower-speed ethernet connections.

“Today, it’s amazing what you can do on a PowerBook,” he says. “It’s a more democratic system again. You don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars. You just need to have some good ideas and be able to put them into action. And you have to have talent and musicianship.”

Whatever it is you think is evil about Microsoft, IBM in the 1950's and 1960's was vastly worse. It's true that Microsoft has done things with its contract negotiations with OEM customers which effectively locked out competitors, but Microsoft's sins pale in comparison to the kind of things IBM used to do.

. . .

Folks, on the "evil computer empire" meter, Microsoft hardly registers.

"Macs and management. Have you ever heard the expression 'like herding cats'?" asks Shane Wilson, coordinator of network services at Centre College in Danville, Ky. "Macs have always been this way."

The advent of Mac OS X 10.2, however, is changing that attitude. Network managers who formerly managed Macs with proprietary software and hardware can now use some of the same software they used for their Intel- or RISC-based servers and workstations to manage Macs. Mac OS X for the first time really supports standards-based enterprise qualities such as security, protocols and tools, which make management easier.

Riddell uses the Mapics ERP application with Windows and Macintosh clients. He explains that even though he has not always been a fan of Macs in his network, he is softening with the advent of Mac OS X.

"Recently with Apple's OS X, I have completely changed my stance, and I am seriously considering the new XServe servers for a few minor Web projects," Riddell says.

Subject: Fw: Idiot relations for you !

1. Identifying Muslims by their religion when they are involved in violent acts = 100
2. Interring [sic] that Islam is intolerant and an extreme religion that teaches, endorses or condones acts of violence = 90
3. Use of the term "Muslim Terrorists" = 80
4. Use of the term "Muslim Militants" = 70
5. Use of the term "Muslim Extremists" = 60
6. Use of the term "Muslim Fundamentalists" = 50
7. Propagating negative stereotypes = 40
8. Being culturally insensitive, for example to religious practices, dress code, food or social customs = 30
9. Selective presentation and analysis of events and the use of popular "experts" = 20
10. Failing to offer a balanced view on political events = 10

Maxtor provided us with two similar 5400 rpm external hard drives, the USB 2.0-based Personal Storage 3000LE and the FireWire-based External Storage 3000XT. With our 1.3-GHz Pentium 4 test system equipped with 1GB of PC800 RDRAM, we loaded up SuperSpeed Software's RamDisk XP Pro and created a 700MB virtual hard drive. The low latency of our RAM disk as well as its solid-state performance allowed us focus on the performance of each interface using the similar external drives.

. . .

While USB 2.0 may not be the ultimate hard drive interface, its ability to read at a rate of 6MB per second matches the maximum write speed of a 40x CD recorder. Focusing on the MP3 transfer rates (Test 2), FireWire offers a significant advantage over USB 2.0, besting it by nearly 48 percent in write speeds and over 70 percent in read speeds. (Yet another (indirect) reason Apple iPod owners are so happy.)

We will soon revisit this particular test with a 7200 rpm hard drive, but the results are likely to remain consistent. In addition, notebook-sized hard drives such as those used in the iPod can be powered by a 6-pin FireWire interface whereas USB 2.0 would require an additional power supply/connection.

UPDATE: Oh, wait. Rabbi Krustovsky actually was played by Jackie Mason. I guess that would explain that.

Well, right there we have a problem. People LIKE epic films, but even with the best editing and animation software, there is no way some kid with a hopped-up Mac or PC is going to make "Terminator 4." One can only guess, then, that people will continue to go to movies and eat popcorn and watch on the big screen despite how many copies of DivX there are in the world.

Peer-to-peer movie piracy is practical only in the manner that any organized crime is practical: It works only as long as the host remains strong enough to support the parasite. Tony Soprano can't run New Jersey because then everyone would be a crook, and there would be nobody to steal from except other crooks. No more innocent victims. Same with movie piracy, which needs a strong movie industry from which to steal. If the industry is weakened too much by piracy, the pirates begin to hurt themselves by dryi