My fan list is growing apace. But my freak list is stagnating at about 20 names. Unacceptable! Either there aren't any stupid people following Slashdot (demonstrably untrue), or I'm not doing enough to piss them off. Maybe I should start another anti-Sealand flame war?

Given the way native Americans dislike being used as mascots, I've often wondered how Apaches felt about having a web server named after them. Finally thought of a simple way to find out: did a Google search for "Apache nation" (unquoted) and came up with a half-dozen official web sites, belonging to various Apache tribal/national entities. Four used Apache, one used IIS, and one just had a Tripod site. Glad I cleared that up!

Speaking of Apaches, a must read is Geronimo's autobiography. There's some controversy as to how much of this document is Geronimo's own words and not the invention of the anthropologist who interviewed him, but it's still an interesting glimpse into the past.

My demented enthusiasm for Firefly (the first ep wasn't nearly as good as the pilot, but I still enjoyed it) plus Haken's skill at building a fan site, seem to have convinced some people that we're both employed by Fox and probably the same person. All I can say to that, is JOSS, WHERE'S MY CHECK???!!!

Seriously though, if Fox were gonna spend a lot of money on web sites, wouldn't they spend a little of it on the official firefly site? Which is a sad collection of canned javascript and flash, obviously put together by a web newbie.

EDITED 9/28 to correct the fact I seem to have Joss Whedon, the TV mogul, confused with Josh Whedon, a dentist in Fresno.

Here's a really weird "offtopic" mod. Here's another one. They're both in stories edited by Cliff. Do you suppose I pissed him off by pointing out yet another totally lame Ask Slashdot?

Edited to add: more on this breaking controversy in the comments below and in Cliff's Journal.

Stumbled across KBAlertz, a free service that sends you regular updates when MS issues new Knowledge Base articles in your areas of interest. Also has some basic browsing features that really ought to be on the Microsoft site. A nice piece of work. Gonna save me a lot of aggravation!

Just finished watching a bootleg copy of the pilot for the new TV series Firefly. Not a quality copy -- It was an MP2 taken from a second-generation tape dub. And at least one of those generations was on a tape that had been reused way too many times.

Ordinarily, I would have given this a pass and waited for the actual broadcast. But I decided I had to see this before the show actually premiered. You see, the network has decided that the pilot won't do a good job of attracting viewers, and will hold it back to show as an "origin special." Firefly looks to be a complicated, character-driven, and I'd just as soon see the "establishing" episode first.

Short description: It rocks. Not my usual terminology, but that's what the geeks at Mutant Enemy are claiming, and they're actually right. I'll post a proper review on fireflyfans.net when I find the time to write it. For now, suffice to say, it's not like anything you expected. It's a whole lot better.

Well, it happened again. I criticize editorial policy, I get downmodded as "overrated". I can't prove this is the editors abusing their infinite mod points, but I have to suspect it. Rob, IMPs are a bad thing. It doesn't matter what they mod, it's the message it sends.

As always, I'm requesting that moderators not waste their points modding me back up.

Was on deadline and had to stay away from addictive web sites for a while. But I'm back! Hey, who else is psyched about Firefly?

Showed the famoust "Apple Computer is a Pawn of Satan" rant to a friend, who used to work there. And it turns out the fact that the Apple I sold for $666.66 is part of the Satanic Conspiracy -- but has nothing to do with the "number of the beast". No point in adding this to the original discussion, which is at 929 comments and still rising. So I'll share it here.

Apparently Jobs was a fan of the famous conspiracy trilogy Illuminatus!, which was published about the time Apple was founded. There's a lot of numerology in this story — in particular, a lot is made of the number 5. This is a very important number for some reason. Anyway, 5 = 2 + 3, and 2 * 3 = 6. So of course the price of the first Apple product had to be five sixes!

This is mostly surmise. In particular, I can't point at any specific evidence that the price was chosen using numerology. But it does make a silly sort of sense. In those days, Jobs and Wozniak were hippies who never wore socks and had a lot of silly ideas. Their first joint project was an illegal telephone hacking device.

This post on the history of death by impalement generated an unnerving number of responses. Seems to be a lot of interest in the subject. I hope that's not why Stirling's Draka stories are so popular!

Well now, this postprovoked some interesting responses. Well worth the 3 points it cost me. Anyway, I sort of deserved to be modded down -- I should read up on routing before I comment on this issue again.

Still, the moderators were just a little childish. Troll? Well, as slort likes to say, that's subjective. Overrated? We all know what that means. But offtopic??? Jeez, grow up!

Why on earth did a silly ironic reply to a silly ironic post get downmodded? Yes, with the inevitable "overrated". Aside from my usual mystification as to what's offended who, I have to wonder who would waste their mod points on such an unimportant post. Or have I offended an editor?

I thought this rant was pretty good, so I reworded it slightly and submitted it to Amazon as a review, titled "A River in Egypt." They posted it with one change: "sucker" was replaced by "[recorder]" (brackets theirs!). Can anybody explain who is supposed to be offended by the that word?

This post has been repeatedly modded down. The latest was today, 4 days after I posted it! Not that I'm complaining. Offtopic posts should be modded down. Besides which, I got a crucial fact wrong. But I'm rather offended at being labelled a troll.

In any case, I'm rather pround of the resulting thread.

Expected this one to provoke a major flame war and mod storm. So far nothing. Quite disappointing. You never know what posts will attract attention -- or be totally ignored.

"PGP Key. Huh-uh. I no longer have a PGP key, and I disavow any and all uses of any previous PGP keys. More generally, I don't believe that anything on the Internet can be trusted. Get over it."

Borenstein, among other accomplishments, played a key role in creating MIME, and other little toys. Without which email has we know it would not exist! Particularly handy for PGP email.....