So I've let myself get caught up in a couple of recent threads.

How depressing.

Go further down in the thread on Purdue and you'll find a few good comments but still.

SPOILERS!!

Saw the latest Wachowski bros. tip a couple days back. Bleagh! Not good. Very not good. It was like a two hour beer ad. A not very original beer ad. No content, slick colors, by-the-numbers directing. A few flashy visual tricks. Several intrusive bits of special effects business. But the thing that got me most is how reliably they didn't even really believe their own shtick.

So back in the day, all these folks came out with web content sites of one sort or another. Online magazines, what we now call blogs, comics, and so on. And damn near all of them built their UIs around a structure that assumed that a neatly matched unit of content, be it a journal entry, a movie review, comic strip, or item of medical advice, would be added to the system on a regular and frequent schedule, just like legacy print media.

Nice little thred developing in Ask /. on VoIP security issues. I figure that I'll wait a few weeks for the posts to stop, drop by, and read it all properly.

Just looked today at the package that Vonage is pushing through (gag) CompUSA. No signup (+$50, get back $50), pretty looking Uniden two line system, supposed discount on rates thoough it didn't sound that great to me.

As most of you know, I'm in the midst of completing my chronology of U.S. warfare and these days my attention is committed to the Civil War. Well, not to sound like a northerner or anything[1], but as far as I can tell, on the large scale, this was truly a war between philosophies and it really came down to self-centered romanticism versus get-the-job-done modern pragmatism.

geek + easily amused + annoying neighbors in endless committee hell = Heh, heh, heh.
(Starting at about 1:30 in the morning for fewer witnesses.)

What does that mean? Well, this neighborhood in specific and New York in general has huge quantities of planters, big 'uns three or four feet to a side, that are, at best planted with some ill-cared for single species or in many cases, simply empty, with the occasional empty bottle, a few cigarrette butts, and the like.

I'm obviously missing something. WTF is going on with these pink bits? I don't come to /. for pink bits. If I want pink bits online I'll go to GBOTW or something.

If I want girly I'll go somewhere like this.

A girly /.? The mind boggles.

-Rustin

There's a nice space travel thred in yesterday's top stories. Actual facts and analysis in the comments, good signal to noise ratio. I've been through the first and third pages so far and plan to go back in a few weeks and save an offline copy of the whole thing.

Evidently an ex-military, right-wing, self-styled "adventurer" by the name of Micheal Yon took some photos in Iraq. A U.S. Army guy got a copy and circulated it worldwide, getting it on the front page of Stars&Stripes and all over the commercial media, all without paying a nickel to Yon.
Yon sued, saying that he never gave reprod

I came across a piece in Foreign Policy Magazine that I think is worth a look.


What's Next For Iraq

A talk with Nir Rosen who just got back from a year there.

-FOREIGN POLICY: What does the current stalemate over the appointment of a prime minister say about the political process in Iraq, and whether the tensions on the ground can be discussed and eased at a political level?