Last night, my boss called me to let me know that Harry was a victim in the 12/27/01 NYC van accident. Harry (Harsharn liked to go by 'Harry') was a fantastic guy. He took his work seriously, and was committed to making the best of difficult things, even when others around him had given up. My condolences to his family and his wife, Payal, who is expecting in June. My heart goes out to her especially. I hope there is something that we can do ...
Holiday Rush on Streets Takes Swift, Deadly Turn "In the hurly-burly of Herald Square on Thursday night, Harsharn Singh was rushing from his job as a vice president for a computer company to the PATH train that would take him home to Jersey City and his pregnant wife."
7 Killed in Herald Square by Out-of-Control Van
Police Release Driver of Van as a 7th Accident Victim Dies
I think Hiawatha gets it right on the money this time. With each step the music industry takes, it just shoots itself in the foot one more time. Something makes me wonder if they're hiring software development firms that have the hidden agenda of bringing them down. It sure seems like it.
digitalMass at Boston.com "The recording industry has spent millions of dollars to devise these clever tools. It's probably the most any industry has ever spent to make its product harder and less convenient to use. So far they're succeeding, the fools. Their victory will cripple legitimate music distribution over the Internet, while ensuring that online music piracy remains as popular as ever."
Windows XP security risk: digitalMass at Boston.com. There are two contrary ideas expressed by M$ in this one article.
"This is the first network-based, remote compromise that I'm aware of for Windows desktop systems," said Scott Culp, manager of Microsoft's security response center. "Every Windows XP user needs to immediately take action." He called it a "very serious vulnerability."And then, this:
"This is the most secure version of Windows we have ever released," said Culp, adding that complex software "will always fall short of perfection."How can XP be both the most secure version of Windows and also have one of the worst types of security flaws (remote access to absolutely everything on your machine)? This is a 100 mph spin if I've ever seen one.
This is precious: Your Own O'Reilly Book Cover. Take a screen shot and start your own technical library.
More DnD stuff from Dan...
We left off with an undead attack last episode so the party decided to stay an extra night to heal up. We have 5 days of travel left to get off the glacier. Its starting to snow but its not to bad out. The next few days are uneventful and the party is feeling pretty good. On the third night last watch a Snow Worm pops out of the ground and eats Thracks horse. Everyone wakes up and the fight insues. Fengs monastery fights these creatures so he knows enough not to touch it with his hands. The worm kills Cerebus, Fengs mule. Thrack attacks with his magic axe, Feng uses his heavy crossbow for one shot. This things very tuff it takes a 20 to hit it. Every time you hit the worm you have to make a saving throw or your weapon is destroyed. Feng loses his Orc double axe and his quarter staff to the creatures heat. Mantrias and Anachron don't have any luck hitting it. Willie casts Cats grace on himself to get a better AC before he tries and attacks. The Worm misses Feng on an attack but its next attack hits little Willie. Willie takes the damage from the bite and is then swallowed taking additional damage. End result is Willie is negative 88 HP. (Lowest in history of our group playing in almost 16 years). Thrack makes a final attack killing the worm but fails his saving throw and is beautiful axe is destroyed. [ editor's note, this was a +2 axe made by the famous Dwarven master weaponsmith Durgeddin (sp?). Poor Thrack, he was so proud of that axe! ]
The Wanderer's make it to the little monk outpost at the end of the Glacier. We trade in the furs for 1500 gp. We head out to the port city to find transport south. (I can't remember the city's name but it is predominatly evil). On the way to the city we are attacked by highwaymen: 6 men 3 fighters 3 rogues and a wizard. Anachron webs three of the men Thrack kills one. Feng kills one, Tally is blinded by the wizard and Mantrias kills one. Their wizard casts invisibility on himself and tries to run away. Poor silly bastard, the group points out to Feng to follow the foot prints in the snow and then attack. Feng kills the wizard. theres a trail that the wizard was following but the party has to make it to Moog's first before taking on new threats, so we set out on the road again. (we ended up skipping an adventure Ed had for us because we are already a month late getting to Moogs / we were sopoosed to follow the trail the wizard was on ... ooopss) At the city gates Feng Tally and Thrack pay 100gp to get in but Mantrias and Anachron refuse to pay and ride down the road to try another gate to get into the city [ editor's note gain: my character, Mantrias is most likely being played by the player who owns Anachron. He happens to be very chea... um, I mean, ...concerned about money, so it's no surprise that my character won't pay the 100g ] . While in the city Feng and Thrack replace there lost weapons. Tally secures transport with Admiral Fred for the group. Eventually Mantrias and Anachron make it into the city by only paying 50 gp apiece. the party meets up and stays out of trouble long enough to get an board the ship and set sail. If we make it to land we plan to get supplies and remount the party. I believe Mantrias will be taking Willies Light war horse. (War horse has 25HP 13AC and a speed of 60)
Thats all for now...
Here's another reason I'm a fan of WW.net:
Salon.com Technology | Where no geek has gone before "I believe very, very strongly in what the Electronic Frontier Foundation does. I am particularly concerned right now with the political climate in this country. Everyone, or at least the vast majority of people, seems to be all too willing to give away the basic rights that separate America from so many other countries."
Is anyone else seeing this? BG should just rename M$ to Cyberdyne Systems and announce the "Skynet" project right now. This, along with Hailstorm and Passport are the underpinnings of big brother.
MS TV: It'll Be Watching You "Some potential users are concerned over the prospect of being observed by their household appliances, and said they would not knowingly purchase a product that tracked their entertainment preferences."
The sonic flashlight popped up on a blog last week, I think. Here's the flashlight's home page, and here is Wired's article on the story:
Body Scanner Sees Like Superman The "sonic flashlight" promises to reveal organs, muscle tissue and blood vessels at any depth in an illusion of actual space without resorting to monitors, goggles, head-mounted cameras or tracking devices.
Here we go! These folks have figured out a win-win situation with digital music recordings. I think this will be the first profitable business model in the new era. It provides money to both the artists (much more than from record lable) and the copyright owners.
A New Industry Threat: CD's Made From Webcasts "Mr. Rasiej said the artists would receive about 25 percent from the sales of each CD sold, which is three to five times the standard royalty rate for studio recordings of new bands. In addition, since there are no advance or marketing costs for artists to pay back, they will see royalties from the live albums much sooner than they will from their record label (that is, if they ever see label royalties). Mr. Rasiej said the club owners would also get royalties, allowing them to have small stakes in the careers of bands that they had helped make successful enough to outgrow their own clubs."
This is why I love the net!
"A few highlights of the day: ...
*Having dinner with Brent.
*Racing about the lot with Jonathan [Frakes] in his golf cart."
Here are some sample house rules for a WoT game that I'm thinking about.
Here is my linking policy. I may make it a permanent page. If not, it will come up in a search.
This site may not impose any restrictions on out-bound, or in-bound hyperlinks. All attempts to impose external restrictions on any linking will be met with maniacal, derisive laughter, as well as a healthy dose of harsh criticism, followed by weeks of public humiliation.
This policy has been drafted after reading an interesting story on Wired about linking to KPMG (go get 'em Tom). There is also a link in there to the court decision that proved the sutpidity of TicketMaster in trying to subvert the web.
Hack the Planet links to the Curl language. Wes couldn't view the code, but I remember reading about this a while back and saw some examples down the page. Here's a quote that I really like from the abstract of the project: "Curl is part of a research effort aimed at eliminating discontinuities from the function/sophistication curve. This yields an authoring environment in which (1) incremental functionality requires incremental skill acquisition, and (2) a consistent semantics avoids communication obstacles between separately encapsulated fragments of content."
Although they do attempt to solve a significant problem in this arena (incremental skill -> incremental functionality), they miss the boat completely on managing the separation of presentation from content.
Via Scripting News: WBUR.ORG "News from Al Jazeera" - in English!
This is too cool! Whil's got his own blog. And, he's moving from GM to MT as a system. We need more folks like this! I had to add a permanent link to his site.
"I read the script for Star Trek X last night.
Holy shit.
Holy, Holy, Holy shit."
This is something that always mystified me. Why would NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) training, the kind most service men and women go through, not be a standard component of medical school. I remember fondly breathing in tear gas and going through mock decontamination procedures back at Camp Lejeune. E.R. Docs Get Bio-War Training "Now that the threat to humans is more visible -- for anthrax or other deadly bio-weapons -- doctors must keep up with the latest bio-terrorism information."
I finally have a name for this, one of my worst pet peeves. Some of these people on cell phones walked around oblivious to the world, completely untinking about those around them. Cell Yell: "In the industry it is called cell yell -- a tendency of many cellphone users to speak into their phones more loudly than necessary, unwittingly involving surrounding strangers in their personal business."