The Russians have dropped a new bomb: AllOfMP3.com. It's an online music store that will definitely change the playing field. They sell music by the megabyte: US$5 for 500 megs of downloads. Also, they encode on the fly. That is, you can have your music digested into your preferred format for downloading: 320k MP3, AAC, WMA, whatever you like. You join, shop, select encoding and drop the tracks in your cart. Check out, and wait for an email telling you your tunes are ready. Go download. That's it.

I haven't tried this. I plan to wait a bit to see whether there are legal or credit fraud problems before I send my AmEx off to a former Soviet-bloc state. I think most people will react this way, which gives iTunes a chance to catch up. If AllOfMP3 is smart, they'll get a British or Australian office open quick and appear to be based there. In any case, the landscape just changed again.

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Disney is expanding a test of self-destructing DVDs into a few Florida markets. The disks cost $5.99 each and become unplayable after 48 hours (however, they contain recent Disney works like "Freaky Friday" and "The Alamo," so they're pretty much unwatchable even before you unwrap them). With the company now unburdened by their relationship with Pixar, ABC drowning, and no CEO, they need to make important, critical changes like this one help ensure the company's future. Yeah.

Just FYI, a self-destructing DVD will work just like a normal one for 48 hours. That means you can copy it. So, if this catches on, I predict a lot of geeks will be getting a lot of DVDs (with cover art, no less) for $6 (+ $1 for a blank) this summer. That ought to help the "struggling" movie industry. Go Disney!

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I want to write like this guy. I first met his work at the Gallery of Regrettable Food, part of the Institute of Official Cheer, which is a gut-wrenching romp whether you find it funny or repulsive. You can (and should!) actually buy his books on Amazon. An excerpt of the web material:

Criminey. Man. Okay, up top we have another entry in the interminable Fun with Molds series, this being “Cottage Cheese – Cranberry Salad.” This dish is useful only if a guest has a sudden attack of hemorrhoids, and needs to lower himself into something that soothes and cools.

I recently found myself reading his Bleat essays (which have nothing much to do with the Regrettable Food), and they're engaging. Really, everything in his site is entertaining. Now, just to get you in the mood, here’s a picture I found in one of my mom’s more disagreeable cookbooks. Panera Bread meets meets Norwegian trawler deck scrapings (and everything's better with bacon!). I'd need at least the two glasses of beer. Bon appetit.

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D&D turns 30 this year
I've seen a this mentioned here and there so I thought I'd post it. I have fond memories of weekends spent eating pizza and gaming in somebody's basement.

If you've ever been involved in RPGs you'll get a kick out of this.

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McDonald's CEO in Japan also dead, also of a heart attack. Bet this is why they were trying to make the menu a little healthier.

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Following up on Ruthie's (always insightful) post on Earth Day, I submit this article by the Institute for Lifecycle Energy Analysis, which sets out to answer the #2 question in the world... "Paper or Plastic".

Many a night have I been up, and many a productive day has been ruined while I pondered this very question. At long last I can sleep easy, knowing full well that science has finally answered it...

Answer: citsalP, by a two to one margin...

PS If Ruthie is the conscience of this blog, and Rob is the political-hack-wanna-be, what does that make Todd and I?

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The U.S. is spending $62 million this year operating a "news outlet" called al-Hurra (Arabic for "the free one"), targeted at changing opinions in the Middle East. Colin Powell sits on the board of directors, and operations are funded from the Congressional budget (ie. you). The channel's site says they're "dedicated to accurate, balanced and comprehensive news." However, they, like Fox News, are widely regarded to be Bush administration propagandists. They're referred to simply as "the American propaganda channel" in Iraq.

They're trying hard, though. They've gone to pains to hire respected journalists with established reputations in the region. This Guardian story suggests that they may even be making a little headway with Arab youth. These efforts notwithstanding, the bottom has clearly dropped out on Middle Eastern public opinion of Americans. It's bad, and we should be doing something serious to fix it

Enter the U.S. Army. If public diplomacy is the PR carrot, the military is the stick. In what looks like an effort to contain negative coverage in Iraq, U.S. troops have started harrassing the competition, al Jazeera, as well as other Arab-language journalists in the area.

Arabs working for other media outlets have also been harassed by US troops. Mazen Dana of Reuters was shot and killed by an American soldier outside Abu Ghraib prison in August. Then, in January, elements of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Falluja jailed and allegedly beat a three-man Arab-language crew, also from Reuters.

Now, if we're blowing millions on trying to sway public opinion, does it make any sense to assault, harrass and kill the other people in the area who a) speak the native language and b) have satellite uplinks and microphones all their own? The Pentagon has rules and doctrines for managing the media, ours and the enemy's, during a conflict. Has the command structure gotten so out of whack that the troops on the ground just won't follow procedure? Or is the Bush administration moving beyond "managing the information flow" to censorship by gunshot?

It doesn't make sense investing so much money in good will only to allow the Army to undermine any success we may have had. Unless perhaps al-Hurra is just another war-profiteering outlet. I wonder whether Halliburton is selling them microphones or something...

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I have a Whole Foods Market addiction. If you're lucky enough to have one near you, go! Our grocery bill went up marginally, but in exchange we got much healthier, tastier food choices. The store was attractive (look, a wall of veggies!) and clean. The selections were abundant. The huge bakery and deli areas are delightful. Some of the products I've only previously seen in catalogs. Although not all of their products are organic, everything is labeled as to type of agriculture, origin and nutritional data. Afraid of Mad Cow disease? Buy organic American beef!

Whole Foods carries Horizon Dairy’s products; I recommend them. You may have seen their “happy cow” milk at other grocers. I find it's actually a bit cheaper to buy it from Whole Foods. Not only is this stuff yummy, the cartons keep well in the frig without the plastic bottle taste and nutrient loss. Horizon boasts over 200,000 cooperative organic acres and humanely handled animals. They even have a line of UHT, single-serving milk that can store indefinitely at room temperature (great for bag lunches). It comes in outstanding chocolate, strawberry and orange creme flavors.

If tasting how good fruit, veggies, and, really, everything else can be isn't enough (I had no idea that celery actually tasted that good), I’ll give you more reasons to try Whole Foods:

• Organic foods give you better control over the chemicals and contaminants you consume. Omitting genetically modified, highly-refined, antibiotic, hormone and pesticide-laden foods can only be good for your health. It probably reduces allergies, too.


• Organic foods give you plenty of low-fat and low-carbohydrate diet choices.


• When you buy organic from a vendor who specializes in knowing organic, you support real (often American) family farms. Farms like these sustain the land and participate materially in their communities.


• Organic farms have naturally-derived crops with more diverse genetics, including heirloom species that aren't profitable enough to be produced by big agribusiness farms.


• Organic vendors like Whole Foods Market buy locally when they can, support sustainable practices in fishing/agriculture, and lobby for better environmental controls.

See you in the bulk foods aisle...

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I'm running an Apple Power Macintosh G3 minitower I bought back in the 90's as a 2nd machine. It's been upgraded to the point that I'm out of places to put new stuff. Sonnet Encore ZIF G4, ATI Radeon, memory, hard drives, and a FireWire card. I'm even running Mac OS X 10.3.3 Panther, courtesy of Ryan Rempel's excellent XPostFacto.

Which brings me to this: Apple's latest update, 10.3.3, changed their storage drivers, making OS X much more sensitive to timing and signaling issues on the FireWire bus. While this isn't a problem with their own hardware (of course), a lot of users who upgraded with third-party cards are suddenly getting system freezes and disks that fail under normal use.

Fortunately, there's a workaround. Unfortunately, it's not free. The problem stems from the block transfer (or "packet") size on the FireWire bus. Older Macs can handle smaller packet sizes, but the new Apple storage driver raises the default size to take advantage of faster modern hardware. To make your FireWire drives stable again, you need to lower this setting. Intech makes a product called SpeedTools that will accomplish this, but they're getting about $90 for it. So, spend it on old hardware, or just grab something new?

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Hey! We got found by an online game called @Delphi. Users "vent their natural instinct to predict" by guessing the outcome of events tied to another web site. Questions can be about the site's content, user's behavior, or whatever. Picture a cross between a blog and a game show: you get to see an interesting link, and play a little game, too. This is one of those things where you wonder why it wasn't done sooner; it has the same stealth-addiction quality that I remember from Tetris. There are even prizes. Go play!

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Finally a new version. Go get it and see what the neighbors are up to.

Here's the Readme...

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I do not really know what to say about this site... other than too many people have too much time on their hands (as I obviously do, since I scrolled all the way down this one =;-)
Loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one, and even the Matrix one made me chuckle...

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A dozen or so UK club mix artists have re-digested The Clash's seminal "London Calling" into a shiny new remix collection to draw donations for cancer research, children hurt in war, and planet maintenance. Donate or not, as you prefer (charity is good, in case you need some guidance here), and then download MP3s of all the stuff for free. There's some junk, but a couple of tracks really lend themselves well to the mash-up treatment. My iTunes has McSleazy's haunting "Lost Souls in the Supermarket" on repeat...

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It makes me tired every time I hear someone ask something like, “How could Mr. Bush go into that classroom when he knew about the terrorist attacks?” or, really, how could he have done anything insensitive or stupid? Why do people think he would have done anything else? The answer is: Because he is a mouth-breathing idiot. He surrounds himself with yes-men and stumbles blindly through every decision. He's not the brightest bulb ever screwed into the Oval Socket. He is the tool by which his "Friends & Family" machine makes money. Persistent marketing has told the American people to think he's capable of being in charge despite the fact that he walks, talks and looks vacant. Dubya is unable to answer an unscripted question without stumbling or lying. Most of the time he can’t read the teleprompter. I want to cry every time I hear him carefully say "nook-yoo-lahr weapons" like some brain-damaged hick. It is pronounced "nuke-clear," Mr. Pres-i-dent. Why can’t he at least do something interesting like barf on a Japanese diplomat?

This video got my blood boiling again, probably the third time this week. It is disturbing and not for sensitive audiences, not that any 9/11 footage is. Flame away.

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Hey ya!

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Care for some cute and fuzzy diseases?

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The skilled researchers over at Pork Tornado (good name, no?) have assembled this list of the 10 Worst Album Covers of All Time. Here's a sample, depicting Rory Gilmore getting, umm, romantic(?) with Merle Haggard's manager. They get even better from here, I promise.

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You'll want to know how to make the license plates. I realize this seems dull, but you'll be amazed at how much effort this poor bastard has put into the obsessive documentation of, that's right, license plates. (At least it's not something really dull, like pay phones.)

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Is it kosher to bash someone else's blog on your own blog? Not that I care, but am curious about the ever-evolving netiquette game everyone seems to want to play...
But blog sites like this one make me wanna poke out my eyeballs... (and yes, I do realize that 96% of all blogs are meaningless drivel)

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...and ran into Quentin Tarentino? This article hit a weirdly familiar tone for me, as I've also unexpectedly run into stars that I wound up spending the day with. I found myself torn between feelings of surprisingly normal social interaction and passively watching TV (I kept forgetting to reply when they spoke...). Odd when someone turns out to be normal.

(Post ripped off [again] from my blog hero, Mike Daisey. "Standing on the shoulders of giants...")

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I love BBspot. Go answer the questions and find out which one you are.


Which Nigerian spammer are You?

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Condi Rice is putting out word that the November elections might be "too good to pass up" for terrorists. Call me a cynic, but I can't help but recall that poor election turnouts have historically been good for the Repulicans. Wouldn't a scary-but-vague warning of some kind be outstanding in that capacity? Ah! Here's one now:

"Ms. Rice was not specific about the kind of election-year threat that she is concerned about. But senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said some of the "chatter" picked up by the National Security Agency and foreign intelligence services in the past six months has included references to the presidential election."

There's nothing in the world that will keep me from voting this time around. I can't imagine terrorism making more difference to me than four more years of brutal unemployment, insane gas prices and needless war.

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Been reading the news and feeling grim, and this popped into my head:

"Life is like a box of chocolates.

"A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So you're stuck with this undefineable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down because there's nothing else left to eat.

"Sure, once in a while there's a peanut butter cup or an English toffee, but they're gone too fast. The taste is... fleeting.

"They end up in nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts. You're desperate enough to eat those and all you've got left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers."

(No, William Davis isn't dead. But when he is, I'll have my whole tribute already worked out...)

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Here at Chaos Digest, we like Open Source. Today, we like SmoothWall Express 2.0. "Smoothie" is a free(!), effective firewall solution that includes Squid cacheing, Snort intrusion detection and an awesome web-based management interface. It's easy to set up: download the ISO, burn a CD, and run the installer on pretty much any old PC (we repurpose a lot of Pentium III's as routers lately).

It can act as a modem-sharing device for home dialup networks, as well as a full-on firewall/router in small- and mid-sized business settings. There's even a huge support community at SmoothWall's site, populated with uber-geeks who really know networking and happily mingle with the newbies.

The whole gist of this is that, while wonderful, I've found a serious bug: as shipped, SmoothWall Express 2.0 will often fail to route packets when you restart it. I've managed to resolve this by shutting down Squid before restarting, and then bringing it back online after the router is up again. Seems there's a glitch in Squid (that, by the way, is not a sentence I'd whip out while on a date). People on the support forum are saying that there's a new version of Squid available, if you have the wherewithall to install an update on your own. Otherwise, the workaround works.

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Right now, 35 million Americans aren't even sure where or when they will get their next meal. Thirteen million of these are starving children. Job and income losses are forcing even more Americans into soup kitchens, pantries and shelters. It's time to pay attention and solve this growing problem.

The time has come to create a hunger-free America and you can help. Find a drive in your area, or encourage your employer or local grocer to participate. If you can spare even a can of food, especially protein-rich foods, bring it to a collection site. For more ideas on what you can do on June 3rd and further information about National Hunger Awareness Day, please visit HungerDay.org.

For our readers in Illinois:
On June 3 throughout Illinois, Chipotle Mexican Grill will offer customers a free burrito if they bring at least 2 non-perishable food items or a minimum $5 donation to their local Chipotle. Volunteers from the Greater Chicago Food Depository and Northern Illinois Food Bank will be collecting the food and cash donations. Customers who make donations between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. will receive a free burrito. Chipotle will generously match customer donations up to $25,000, so why not consider a gourmet burrito for lunch or dinner on June 3? Find your nearest Chipotle at their web site.

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It is not overly nice to make fun of people when it involves a serious, life-threatening disease, but honestly, it is hard [no bad pun intended] to manage much sympathy for people whose job qualifications include silicone injections, Brazilian waxes, penile implants and Viagra.

Looking at the positive side [I am ever the optimist], at least Bush can't be blamed for the huge financial loss the porn industry will suffer... although I suspect that John Snow would say that this is a good time to 'outsource' the porno industry overseas (might bring a whole new meaning to Bollywood!)...

Adult film actress Carmen Luvana has a routine HIV blood test. (Reuters photo)

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Franz Ferdinand is the first major U.S. import from Britain's new "Art Wave" school of cerebral dance rock. Imbue The White Stripes with a late-70's New Wave vibe and you'd capture their sound perfectly. I can easily picture these guys taking the stage at CBGB's just after an early Talking Heads set. Striding rhythms and hot guitar licks meet surprisingly deep ideas shouted by determined young British men. It's good. Their self-titled new album is available now. This ought to keep you in thoughtful lyrics until Garbage pops their upcoming release.

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Again, words fail me. (Growling karaoke, however, seems to be okay.) [Note: This, ummm, might be bad at work. Start with low volume and work up to your preferred level.]

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Tell him what to do. He does it. He's The Subservient Chicken. (Try telling him to turn off the lights.)

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The small Italian town of Canneto di Caronia keeps bursting into flames, for no particularly good reason. Several verifiable reports of appliances violently self-combusting have yielded no explanations, as yet. Scientists have some theories, as do the local religious leaders. I'm betting it's either the righteously upset ghost of Nikola Tesla, or possibly some side effect of "exotic technologies" research somewhere.

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This report from the federal General Accounting Office says that, between 1996 and 2000, about 60% of U.S. corporations paid no taxes at all. This, and they're still complaining that it's essential to send your jobs overseas to remain "competitive." What a load of nonsense. The truth is they're able to pad the bottom line even more by cutting labor costs, and all they have to do is screw the American citizenry. It's a no-brainer! (And "good business," too!)

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Here's a shock: the Bush administration is in the process of screwing up in Iraq. Don Rumsfeld has insisted for months that we've got enough military resources in Iraq to accomplish the "mission" there (a mission, as I write this, I find I cannot name from memory). This article (sadly, we had to get this from a UK paper) seems to indicate that the commanding general on the scene thinks differently.

Gen John Abizaid, commander of Central Command, told his political masters earlier this week that he would ask for reinforcements if requested by the generals under him. His words overrode months of public assurances from the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other civilian chiefs that more troops are not necessary.

If our forces don't get the backup they need in order to take overwhelming and decisive action, they will, slowly but at an increasing pace, be killed in dribs and drabs until there's no way for them to accomplish any mission but retreat and regroup. We are setting ourselves up to lose a war, and this general knows it, and is trying like hell to either fix it or let people know he thinks it's wrong. This will probably get him blamed for our lack of progress and relieved. Why on earth are we here?

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Bunny Survival Tests documents the ongoing hostilities between marshmallow Bunnies and their rivals, the nefarious Evil Peeps. Explosions, firehoses, and bunnies in Ziploc bags: comedy ensues. (Peeps, er, props to Diane for pointing this out.)

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There's really nothing useful I can add here. (On an unrelated note, all I have in the fridge is a big, floppy, thawed corned beef.)

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Apparently, there are some churchgoers who are really, really upset about the easter bunny cutting in on their holiday action. Honestly, they're so worked up they even made a little kid cry, the bastards.

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Audio products manufacturer Royal Device has built the world's largest subwoofer. It's a huge, specially-shaped chamber 1 meter under the stage in their showroom. This is located way over in Italy, but if you listen carefully you'll hear the distant "thud thud whack" of their demo tape (I think it's Cameo's "Word Up").

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...then what in the world could these people be thinking? Eye jewelry. Gaaaah.

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You probably don't know it, but the military is increasingly relying on mercenaries to defend Americans. This was highlighted last week when it was revealed that four "civilian" contractors killed last week in Iraq were U.S. special forces veterans who had left Army service for much more lucrative positions with a private security firm. The incentive to join the private sector is strong: many contracts can bring over $100,000 a year, a tidy salary in any case and certainly well above the average soldier's pay.

Today, the White House released this statement:

President Bush said the June 30th date for transfer of power to Iraqis "remains firm," and sources said the head of U.S. Central Command is asking about options for sending more troops to Iraq.

Given that a duty rotation in Iraq has increased to a year or more, reservists are being deployed into active combat roles, and the new Federal budget dramatically increases military spending I can only conclude that we're running low on military resources, and it looks like we're planning to take up the slack by outsourcing to these private security firms. It seems Donald Rumsfeld wants to run your military like a Wal-Mart: cost-efficient, scalable as our demand to "project power" rises and falls, and highly modular.

Outsourcing looks good on paper, but what happens when "real" soldiers start bumping into temp agencies with rifles? Furthermore, how do they reconcile the fact that a mercenary gets paid four to five times as much as an army soldier (who has to buy his own flak jacket, no less)? Isn't this just money down a fox-hole? The Pentagon isn't a corporation; it's a branch of government with a rich tradition of public service, deep ethical obligations to America's citizens, and a combat doctrine refined by decades of drill and training. Mercenaries are in it for the cash.

Additionally, the ethical questions are staggering. Is it acceptable for a special forces soldier to take millions of dollars of training and then abandon the army for personal financial gain? What happens to our edge when anyone can buy special forces training in the private sector? Does the Rangers' famous "No Man Left Behind" apply if the "man" is a hired gun from Chile? How is discipline maintained when the mercs don't answer to courts martial? Does the Geneva convention apply to a mercenary? What happens when the White House has access to a cash-money army that's not accountable to Congress?

Finally, here's the biggie: Will a foreign mercenary get shot for you? Picture yourself saying, "I'll take a bullet if that Russian can pay me enough." Doesn't seem likely, does it?

Someone needs to get some answers. Get on the phone to your Congresspeople and encourage them to start asking questions. Maybe outsourcing is good, and maybe not. We're relying on our limping economy to fund outsourcing the defense when we might be generating more jobs at home and getting better service from dedicated Americans. How's that for a business decision?

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Then what does that make today?
April 4th, 2004

04/04/04

In the freaky crevices of my mind, I wonder what weird things will happen in about 2 years and two months... on June 6th, 2006...

6/6/6

Yes, this is how my mind wanders aimlessly sometimes...
[Apologies to the Pixies]

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It is clear that the current administration is less "Republican" than it is "war profiteer." They planned to go to Iraq, with or without the public support. Why? They did to so simply to make personal wealth off of the war. After all, it is the true Bush family business.

Remember George W. childishly calling Saddam, “The guy who tried to kill my dad?” George knew that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. He didn’t care. He lied, and he attacked. Now we are even less safe. Soldiers are blown up and Iraqis are screwed. These people have even looted our treasury. This administration got into office touting religion, morality and education reform, and by making villains out of single moms.

All of his basic promises, like no child left behind and not touching social security, were abandoned the moment he took the oath of office. Government got bigger. Where is this liar’s impeachment?

I am ashamed of my president. I am beyond outraged that he had the gall to use 9/11 images in his advertising. Perhaps he is just unable to understand his own responsibility in the tragedy. Here’s hoping he makes more mistakes with his limitless campaign wealth.

I have voted Republican in the past. Some of their platforms fit very well in my plans to keep family assets and business profits. I like small government. I think people should be rewarded for investing. I am not enthusiastic about more taxes to create more entitlement. But, I also think that the way we treat the weakest members of our society defines our civilization and old people should not be relegated to begging. Naturally, the more I earn, the more I enjoy tax breaks for the wealthy. Now I am determined to pay and work to replace any and all Republicans that show the slightest support for this administration.

This administration’s thugs are not denying the data in Richard Clarke's book; they are simply attacking him personally for his appalling disloyalty. This tactic is probably sound in front of the pliable masses, but can you honestly respect them? It is decidedly un-Christian. Hey, he claimed born-again status, so the bar got set higher.

Interesting is also that the data in Clarke’s book about the Clinton administration does not match the spin. He did not particularly criticize this previous administration. He is very critical of Junior Bush, and his apparent disregard of months of desperate warnings that Al-Qaeda was going to attack the U.S. Would 9/11 have been prevented? No one knows. Certainly some of the perpetrators would have been stopped.

I also find it telling that more and more long-time republicans like Richard Clarke and Rand Beers are abandoning this administration, even the party. Me, too. Now it is time for the rest of the deluded public to take notice.

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Wandering around the vast wasteland of the WWW, psuedo-bored, looking to see if there were any new worthwhile iTunes visualizers around, I stumbled across this, a 3-D filesystem browser from the the peeps in the Association for Computing Machinery at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...

3-D browsing is very intriguing, and quite possibly the inevitable future of personal computing, but IMO it needs to be a much more immersive experience than just a flat screen in order to be useful enough to change the the now-entrenched societal mindset of how to use a CPU.
i.e. virtual reality full-surround googles or even direct wires for neural stimulus.

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Overclocked lemons, aliens, chickens from Hell, and slacker barflies. Ahhhhh. Go there. Go now.

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Ahhhh, Scottish: looks like English, sounds like you have a cat stuck in your teeth. In what must be an effort to help people move past sounding like Mike Meyers when speaking of the "bonny highlands," someone has created a definitive Dictionary of the Scots Language. Here's a sample (warning: do not attempt pronunciation unless drunk):

FUNNY, adj., n. Also funnie. Sc. usages:
    I. adj. Cur