BASEBALL CHATTER
Hi! You're the guy who sat behind me at my 8-year-old daughter's teeball practice. I thought you'd want to know that you were talking loudly enough for everyone to hear you, including the coaches. I mean, we could all tell that's why you were bitching so loudly the whole time, and I figured you'd be happy that you were heard. Now, I'm sure you're an expert in the game. You definitely sounded like it from 30 feet away!
Read moreIN DEFENSE OF THE MODEL M
There are few joys in life like using something that is the perfect expression of its intent. Each trade has its representative tools, and their common trait is quality, even if it's not obvious to the casual observer, and often counterintuitive. The best tools in a category are almost always the least flashy, and rarely the ones a new practitioner would choose. The Model M keyboard is like that: it's loud, ugly, heavy, and utterly lacking modern niceties like buttons to change your sound volume or check your email.
Read moreSHADES OF GREEN
In Nebraska's May 13 election, two Green Party candidates ran for Douglas County Commissioner, District 3. Between them, they received one vote. How stoned do you have to be before you forget to vote for yourself? At least neither can accuse the other of splitting the election.
SUE FOR MAYOR
I'm voting for Sue Fuchtman for mayor of Norfolk. I know her personally, and she's the sort of intelligent, decent, detail-oriented person we should have making city decisions. The other candidates might be alright, but I'd rather see someone elected that I'm genuinely excited to have in office. Vote for Sue. I will.
FUN WITH SOFTWARE LICENSES
Did you know that you're probably not allowed to make backups of your computer? It's true, if you believe in the legal fiction known as "End User License Agreements" (or EULAs), which are those annoyingly long contracts where you have to click "I Agree" before you're allowed to install some program or another. For example, here's a snippet of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) End User License Agreement: 2.3 Backup Copy.
Read moreHOT ABOUT WARMING
Global warming is real. Forget the arguments about what's causing it. Forget trying to figure out whether it's going to be good or bad. Forget wondering what should be done to stop it. The fact of the matter is that the Earth's atmosphere has been getting measurably warmer for quite a few years and shows every sign of continuing. I don't remember when I first heard of global warming, but I do know that it became a political football soon afterward.
Read moreWHY IS CLONING BAD?
I haven't figured out exactly why human cloning is a bad thing that should be opposed. It intuitively feels wrong, but that's a pretty poor standard to go by. In nature, human clones are all over the place — we just call them twins. But even if someone wants to clone themselves as a way to have children, why not? It doesn't seem inherently different from in vitro fertilization and most people accept that.
Read moreNEBRASKA WANTS TO ADOPT YOUR KIDS
Senator Brad Ashford of Omaha has proposed criminalizing the act of keeping your kids home from school. This is abhorrent for many reasons, and should be withdrawn from consideration immediately. Deputy Douglas County Attorney Kim Hawekotte and Ralston Public Schools social worker Steve Snodgrass, both active in truancy prevention in the Omaha area, said the proposed language change will make it easier for schools to identify students who are being improperly excused.
Read moreYOU WANT HOW MANY?
I used to work near a little restaurant called "Rasta Grill". It was this weird fusion of Italian and Jamaican food, and everything was absolutely delicious. We'd walk down to Rasta at least once a week or so and have giant plates of spaghetti with jerk chicken in the wonderfully bizarre atmosphere. Well, we always suspected that some of the employees perhaps took the Rasta theme a little far, and occasionally partook of Jamaica's other famous export.
Read moreBUFFER OVERRUN IN ANTITRUST
Skip this unless you're really, really geeky. Still with us? OK. In the movie "Antitrust", there's a screenshot of some code that has a possible Denial Of Service vulnerability: /* are we doing a GET or just a HEAD / boolean doingGet; / beginning of file name / int index; if (buf[0] == (byte)'G' && buf[1] == (byte)'E' && buf[2] == (byte)'T' && buf[3] == (byte)' ') { doingGet = true; index = 4; } else if (buf[0] == (byte)'H' && buf[1] == (byte)'E' && buf[2] == (byte)'A' && buf[3] == (byte)'D' && buf[4] == (byte)' ') { doingGet = false; index = 5; } else { / we don't support this method */ ps.
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