This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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Over the weekend Apple released a new firmware upgrade to the Airport Extreme. I eagerly downloaded it and tried it out last night. Once again, my troubles getting to ares from zeus were instantly solved…. but once again the connection kept dropping every 15 to 20 minutes. So I reverted again to an older firmware… several versions old. And once again things do not drop, but the connection to ares will only work over the internal IP, not the external default host route. Oh well. Maybe the next firmware upgrade.
And just at lunch today I was talking to some folks about dropping a couple of my season passes (including this one) in favor of some other things. Given this, perhaps I will wait. Hopefully it will air in the US too! And hopefully it will not suck!
Doctor Who ready to come out of the Tardis for Saturday TV series (Tom Leonard, Daily Telegraph)
After aeons drifting hopelessly lost in the space/time continuum, Doctor Who is finally coming back to Earth. In a move that heralds the most eagerly anticipated comeback in television history, BBC1 said yesterday that it is developing a new series of the sci-fi classic.
(via SlashDot)
This is a very good read. Kinda long. I admit toward the end I started skimming. But good stuff. It lays out a very plausible development path attempting to solve current Internet problems, which results in an end-state that, at least to me, is scary and unfriendly, with constraints and controls everywhere. I’m sure steps in these directions will happen. Hopefully good ways to undermine them will pop up as quickly as they are developed.
The Digital Imprimatur (John Walker, fourmilab.ch)
Over the last two years I have become deeply and increasingly pessimistic about the future of liberty and freedom of speech, particularly in regard to the Internet. This a complete reversal of the almost unbounded optimism I felt during the 1994-1999 period when public access to the Internet burgeoned and innovative new forms of communication appeared in rapid succession. In that epoch I was firmly convinced that universal access to the Internet would provide a countervailing force against the centralisation and concentration in government and the mass media which act to constrain freedom of expression and unrestricted access to information. Further, the Internet, properly used, could actually roll back government and corporate encroachment on individual freedom by allowing information to flow past the barriers erected by totalitarian or authoritarian governments and around the gatekeepers of the mainstream media.
…
This is how I saw things at the euphoric peak of my recent optimism. Like the transition between expansion and contraction in a universe with [Omega] greater than 1, evidence that the Big Bang was turning the corner toward a Big Crunch was slow to develop, but increasingly compelling as events played out. Earlier I believed there was no way to put the Internet genie back into the bottle. In this document I will provide a road map of precisely how I believe that could be done, potentially setting the stage for an authoritarian political and intellectual dark age global in scope and self-perpetuating, a disempowerment of the individual which extinguishes the very innovation and diversity of thought which have brought down so many tyrannies in the past.
(via Doc Searls)
It’s probably stress induced, but I think I am getting sick. Energy levels have been ebbing for the last three days or so, and today I wake up with a nice hacking cough. . And a headache. Goodie. Oh well, gotta keep pushing through anyway. Bleh.
I was complaining about all the backed up traffic coming into work this morning. This is why.
Severe Weather Hits Delaware Valley (kyw.com)
Meteorologist Paul Deanno says damaging winds and torrential downpours hit the region beginning around 7 a.m., quickly moving north. The National Weather Service says one tornado touched down in Ewing Township, Mercer County, while the other tornado touched down in Flemington, Hunterdon County.
Yup. That’s right where I was driving though on the way to work. (Ewing Township that is.) Probably explains all the broken trees too. The tornado had passed by there probably an hour before I was driving to work.
The damage in the whole area last night was worse than anything from Isabel. I still have water and electric though. :-)
Well, the 2003 Emmy results came out, so that means last night I adjusted my Tivo Wishlists accordingly. I have a system for these things of course. As a result, I will be watching two new shows this season… Everybody Loves Raymond and The Daily Show. I will be dropping one show, Will and Grace.
The full current list is below. The three years of Emmy’s are fixed by the Emmy winners, everything below I can and do change at will within the categories as I feel like it.
First I have all of these categories, in this order, with wishlists (not season passes!) set to record only new episodes and keep until I explicitly delete them:
#1) 3 years of Emmys for Drama, Comedy, NonFic, Animated, Variety
#2) 5 other shows
#3) 4 keyword searches
#4) 3 actor/actress searches
2003 Emmys:
* The West Wing
* Everybody Loves Raymond
* American Masters
* The Simpsons
* The Daily Show
2002 Emmys:
* Friends
* Biography
* Futurama
* Late Show
2001 Emmys:
* Sex and the City
5 Other Shows:
* Doctor Who
* Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
* Frontline
* Angel
* Enterprise
4 Keyword Searches:
* Egypt*
* Iran*
* Syria*
* Photo*
3 Actor/Actress Searches:
* Reese Witherspoon
* Amy Sedaris
* Drew Barrymore
Then after that I have three “limited” wishlists, where I have it set to only keep the X most recent or what not.
3 Limited:
* BBC News (keep 1 most recent at all times)
* Director’s Cut (keep 5 until I delete, get a new one when I delete one)
* Action News (keep 1 most recent at all times)
Then after that, I reverse the entire list (except the limited ones) and have a second wishlist for each show, this time set to get ALL episodes, but to only save them until I need the space for soemthing else. I have them in reverse order, on the theory that if the show is at the top of the list for new episodes, I am more likely to have already seen it, so I don’t need to catch the reruns, while shows at the bottom of the new list may have gotten bumped by conflicts, so I catching the reruns is a higher priority.
So that is the TV list for the moment. Queer Eye and Doctor Who may have limited lives left on the “5 other shows” category. There may be some others I want to check out instead. I also rotate the actresses every month or so.
But this will do for now.
OK, found the source of the report. The Sunday Mirror in London from their reporter in Baghdad. Looks legit. The story has lots of interesting details. Check it out. The administration is probably going to be annoyed this leaked early, especially the “It is just a ruse to find his location” spin on part of it. If this is actually the case, the next few days may be interesting.
Desperate Saddam Offers Americans Deal (Paul Martin, Sunday Mirror)
SADDAM Hussein has been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, we can reveal.
The Iraqi dictator is demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus. In exchange, he has vowed to provide information on weapons of mass destruction and disclose bank accounts where he siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in plundered cash.
President Bush is being kept abreast of the extraordinary talks by his National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice. She is co-ordinating negotiations in Baghdad which are led by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of American forces in Iraq.
(via The Agonist)
Haven’t seent this anywhere else yet, and the guy doesn’t even provide a link to his source. So I’m pretty dubious. But passing it a long because it is a cool rumor. :-)
Saddam in Secret Talks with US Forces (Aquafire, AppleInsider)
According to AFP sources..
Saddam has been in secret negotiations with US forces for the last few days..
He is seeking safe passage out of Iraq to a third country in exchange for imformation pertainng to WOMD and to his personal bank accounts…
President Bush is said to be fully aware of these developments..
Drat the current budgetary constraints! I so want this! It will be available next month here in the US, it started being available last week in Europe. Of course I’d like to buy it right away. But even without the budget issues, I’m thinking I should wait until November when number portability happens, so I can keep the number I already have.
On the other hand, since my cell is a 609 number and I live in 215, every single time I call for pizza, the delivery people get all confused and I have to explain. So maybe I just want to forget about that and get a 215 number.
Anyway, this phone is cool.
New Treo 600 Rules (Walter Mossberg, Wall Street Journal)
I’ve been carrying a Sprint Treo 600 around for a couple of weeks and I love it. It’s a great phone, an excellent mobile e-mail terminal and a full-fledged Palm-compatible PDA. I prefer it to any RIM BlackBerry model I have tested, and it blows away any of the PDA/phones based on Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system.
(via TreoCentral)
I’ve been meaning for awhile to post something about Clark entering the democratic race, but I’ve been kind of distracted by other things lately. Today, at my Dad’s doing the birthday thing, I have a little time.
I don’t really have a strong opinion about Clark (or any of the rest) yet. I’ll start paying more attention over the next few months. We are still a year away from the election people! But in any case, the biggest thing I have noticed since Clark announced is just the absolutely heavy volume of strong negative comments about him all over the place since the announcement.
I flipped the radio past Rush the other day… non-stop Clark bashing. Checking various blogs, all sorts of negative stuff on his flip flop on the war. There was one article full of quotes from co-workers in the military slamming him for various things, etc. I was seeing very little positive comments.
From the Republican leaning sources, the negativity might indicate they think he would be a real threat if nominated, thus he needed to be slapped down quickly. From the Democrat leaning places, it is people who already have their favorite horse trying to make sure his impact isn’t that high. I mean, if either of the two really thought he had no chance and was irrelevant, wouldn’t they just mostly ignore him?
Anyway I notice today some polls are showing him right near the top of the Democratic pack already. This could get interesting.
Oh, and I’ve seen a variety of places posting conspiracy theories about the role of Bill and Hillary in this, and how it might be related to Hillary’s own plans for the Presidency. Here is one of those…
More Stupid White Men (William Grider)
Clark’s much bigger problem is that he is the Clintons’ candidate — Bill and Hillary’s pick to stop Howard Dean and keep warm the leader’s chair until ’08 when the stars are supposed to align for Hillary’s candidacy. If Clark wins the nomination and loses the election, that’s fully compatible with the Clinton restoration plan (and maybe would increase Dems’ hunger for the re-ascendancy).
If it looked as though the General was actually going to beat Dubya, you will hear a mighty clamoring next spring that he must put her on the ticket for Veep. This “grassroots” yearning for Hillary will be orchestrated by the same Washington political whisperers who whipped up enthusiasm for Clark’s entry.
(via MaxSpeak)
Yeah. OK. Maybe. If Hillary really wants to be Prez, I’m not sure this would be the most sensible strategy. But I’ll withold judgement for now. I’m not saying this sort of thing isn’t possible, it very well could be.
I was not a Bill and Hillary fan when Bill was in office. The disaster of W has made me miss them though. They were horrible in many ways, but nowhere near as horrible as W and his entourage. And I’d take Bill back in a heartbeat over W. However, both Bill and Hillary *are* scheming slimeballs. So I could see them thinking like this.
But for now, lets go with Occam’s razor, and just assume Hillary means what she says about the presidency and Clark is in it for himself and is not just a puppet of the Clintons, OK?
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