I’ll get us started…

AS: So, dis is de phone, yah?

GD: Yep, yep! That’s the phone.

I’ll admit that I’ve become a huge fan of my Mac. And the number of viruses I’ve had since switching has been exactly 0, as opposed to the two or three my antivirus software caught each month when I pulled e-mail down onto my Win2K box.

But Mossberg’s recent article in that right-wing rag, the WSJ (I’m having fun as a Democrat), seems not a whole lot more than a gauntlet thrown down for an intrepid virus writer. (Not that I’d condone anything like that)

In addition, Macs constitute such a tiny share of the world’s computers that they just aren’t an attractive target for virus writers and hackers. You can’t take down many computers, so you won’t get much publicity.

To do damage to a Mac, virus writers have to construct viruses that are specific to the Mac. The Windows viruses they churn out can’t run on a Mac, even if they are received in e-mail by a Mac user. Neither can spyware or Trojan horse programs written for Windows.

How does this help educate folks about how to make their systems more secure?

If it’s anatomically correct, you can settle the question the Boondocks posed a while ago. Go here to get one to bookend the Bush doll on your mantle!

Getting Cheney to interpret your statistics is like getting Ron Popeil to review your gadgets.

For example, while Cheney noted that when asked what kind of government they would like, Iraqis chose “the US… hands down,” in fact, the results of the poll are actually quite different. Twenty-three percent of Iraqis say that they would like to model their new government after the US; 17.5 percent would like their model to be Saudi Arabia; 12 percent say Syria, 7 percent say Egypt and 37 percent say “none of the above.” That’s hardly “winning hands down.”

When asked whether over the next five years, they felt that the “US would help or hurt Iraq,” 50 percent said that the US would hurt Iraq, while only 35.5 percent felt the US would help the country. On the other hand, 61 percent of Iraqis felt that Saudi Arabia would help Iraq in the next five years, as opposed to only 7.5 percent, who felt Saudi Arabia would hurt their country.

Bah! Why would we ask these people what they think? We should give them what they need, and ask forgiveness later!

For anti-spam software. Wouldn’t this qualify as blackmail in a just world? Why does the Senate need to pass a new law while there’s plenty of old ones that haven’t been tried by prosecutors?

Spam is below the break.

At le Tour’s site.

Looks like Jean Marie’s trying to make it much harder for Lance to hit number six- Only one individual time trial, ending on top of L’Alpe D’Huez, in the last week. Wow. No, scratch that – TWO individual time trials in the last week. The one up L’Alpe is 15 km, about 10 miles, but it’s straight the heck up the beast.

Starts in Liege, an ancient Belgain town with absolutely great waffles (I kid you not). Stage 3 leaves from Waterloo, pretty neat town, wonder if it’ll go past the lion statue. Route map is here# I gotta get back on my bike…

“The photographs of that second awakening, and other images from robotic space probes, were the subject of a panel discussion at the American Museum of Natural History titled “Far Out: Space Probes as Landscape Photographers.”

(From Wired )

But the best part is “And while NASA scientists and engineers strive to produce accurate photographic representation from the binary bits that arrive back home by radio signal, the transformation of images into art comes when someone like Benson frames and edits them.”

Luckily, NASA’s got tons of groovy shots available for free. And, to be fair, NASA doesn’t prohibit use for profit. So there’s some credit to be given for seeing an opportunity and seizing it.

My beef is the arrogance that stems from the idea that the engineers and scientists who built the probes, wrote the code, and did the heavy lifting to get the pixels back to earth, aren’t given credit for creating the images. But someone with a computer and connections to a publisher – Now, that’s an artist.

Fred “Rerun” Berry died in bed= at the age of 52 on Tuesday.

Fred Berry was well into his 20s when he was cast as a high-schooler on the 1970s sitcom What’s Happening!! Well into middle age, he was still playing the role.

Almost 60% of them want to continue killing Jews even if they were immediately granted statehood, and an unconditional withdrawl of Israelis from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, says a new survey in the Jerusalem Post.

Nintey-six percent of Israeli Jews say the people who piloted the planes on September 11 were terrorists, while 37 percent of Palestinians share that view.

Penis enlargment spam – Hate it.
Porn Spam – Hate it.
Spam offering low mortgage rates – already got one.

But I really dig the various scam e-mails, such as this one:

Dear , (Yep, no name mentioned – this guy’s a pro…) Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that everything will be well at the end of the day. We have decided to contact you due to the urgency of this transaction. I got your email address while searching for trustworthy individual.