Monthly Archives: December 2004

Last year, Amazon enabled buyers to contribute to presidential campaigns. Today, Amazon and the Red Cross enabled buyers to help with disaster relief. As of 21:57 EST, they have raised Total Collected: $3,264,233.06 # of Payments: 55974

The Associated Press reports that few animals were killed in the tsunami. ALA NATIONAL PARK, Sri Lanka – Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka expressed surprise Wednesday that they found no evidence of large-scale animal deaths from the tsunamis — indicating … Continue reading →

Dear Spammers: I’m getting more than a little annoyed by the comment spam. None of your spams will be permitted, and none will contribute to an increase in PageRank. If you would re-enter civil society, I welcome you. Otherwise, I … Continue reading →

Maybe if setup.exe were a shell script, then the author would have fixed his mistake. Anyway, when one upgrades from a down-level version of Internet Explorer to any version greater than or equal to 4.0, said installer program, or one … Continue reading →

With the great disaster in our minds, and the end of the fiscal year looming, now is a good time to balance our accounts. How much did you spend this year on goods from companies which oppose you? How much … Continue reading →

In response to the error message error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm error: cannot open Packages index using db3 – Invalid argument (22) error: db4 error(22) from dbenv->open: Invalid argument no packages rpmdb: Program version 4.2 doesn’t match environment … Continue reading →

a picture is worth a thousand words Continue reading →

Novarese points to the Department of Justice‘s memorandum on the Second Amendment, “Whether the Second Amendment Secures an Individual Right.” It’s a bit long for reading online.

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens warns to beware Ignorance, for he is the Doom of Man. “They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This … Continue reading →

Amazon needs to integrate with AllConsuming. But the AllConsuming API doesn’t do PUT, and the Amazon webservices don’t permit modification of the wishlist. The desired feature is the addition of an item to “my collection,” and the removal of an … Continue reading →

We all had a merry Christmas, despite some aches and ills. I hope you did too.

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before, but if you don’t want more people living where you live, don’t pretend to be fair-minded and make zoning changes intended to control the population growth by decreasing housing density. Be straightforward … Continue reading →

I picked up Images of America: Putnam County the other day while Christmas shopping. I find this series from Arcadia Publishing both interesting and depressing. Interesting, to see what was, and depressing to consider how things might have developed differently … Continue reading →

Joel Spolsky whips out a copy of Visicalc to demonstrate the economics of pricing, its effect on demand, and price discrimination as the road to profit — or to Hell, as the case may be. Price discrimination involves altering the … Continue reading →

My wife is lost somewhere in Pound Ridge. The cellular service is only good enough for a few seconds of talking. This is not long enough for me to find out where she is, but plenty good enough to transmit … Continue reading →

Comments are enabled, but moderated. I tolerate no spam, and wield a wicked pen.

Merry Yule!

“PLAYING WITH URBAN LIFE: How Simcity Influences Planning Culture,” The Next American City, October 2004 http://www.planetizen.com/news/item.php?id=15294

Chris Gillen reports that Herr Hitler was a tax evader, before suddenly finding himself forgiven in 1935.

When you use something frequently enough, its use becomes autonomic. So-called “muscle memory” causes you to use vi keystrokes in Microsoft Word, for example. Mozilla Firefox takes advantage of this: / will bring up the find function.