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katlalog

020621 21:20 katlalog

over the next couple of months posts to this weblog will be sporadic at best. real life is demanding my full attention. i even had to stop doing my daily round on the internet, stop reading my favorite daily cartoons online and i had to unsubscribe from most mailing lists to add 4 precious hours to my manic days - a drastic step! yes, i'm that busy.

normal services should resume in september, by which time we should finally be surfing the web at dsl speed.

020621 22:38 Ritual warfare

I'm one of those 'No football chat here!' people. However, this is hilarious:

After a 1:0 defeat of the United States by Germany in the World Cup Tournament this morning, Attorney General John Ashcroft made a televised statement declaring Germany to be the newest member of the United States' 'Axis of Evil.'

020621 21:09 Spam

Clever spam:

You are receiving this message because sometime in the past 24 months, you may have submitted your website to our search engine and directory database. [...]

This past weekend, our database was corrupted and we lost your site submission information. You may have noticed a decrease in traffic to your website because of this.

020614 00:14 Weblogs

Bloggus Caesari is not only a brilliant idea for a weblog, or a potentially wonderful way of bringing history to life, it is also a great example of creativity on the Internet.

Envoys have arrived from a tribe in southeastern Britain. They've asked for protection from Cassivellaunus. Finally, some allies on this forsaken island.

020613 23:57 Internet

Keep your fingers off our Internet!

U.S. lawmakers said on Wednesday that they would step up oversight of the nonprofit group that oversees the Internet's domain-name system, but stopped short of saying the United States should run the controversial body.

It's our own fault, you know. When I registered to vote in the ICANN elections years ago, I felt like now I had officially become a citizen of cyberspace. But then, like countless others, I neglected the duties and opportunities of ICANN's At-Large membership. We should have been more involved. We missed a great oppotunity. Is it inertia or the fact that the system wisely keeps us so busy with our own lives?

0206132218 Intellectual property

This article in the Seattle Times clarifies the concept of "public domain".

020613 21:48 Media

Nick Cave is pretty cool. He said 'No' to Gap and MTV because he doesn't want to tarnish his muse with the impurities of advertising and competition.

My relationship with my muse is a delicate one at the best of times and I feel that it is my duty to protect her from influences that may offend her fragile nature. She comes to me with the gift of song and in return I treat her with the respect she deserves [...]

020612 14:26 Culture

60 percent of people lie at least once during a 10-minute conversation. (via robotwisdom)

Women were more likely to lie to make the person they were talking to feel good, while men lied most often to make themselves look better.

020612 10:46 Microsoft vs Linux

Potential Microsoft deserters.

Some countries, such as Germany, have decided to replace Windows and other commercial software products with open source applications.

020611 16:33 Web Development

Dammit! Every time Microsoft comes up with something new, us web developers have to add another meta tag to our pages to disable the stupidity. First smart tags, now image toolbars. As a non-IE user i hadn't come across this yet. If you want to disable the toolbar that pops up on larger images in IE6, use this:

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no" />

020611 13:36 Web Development

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) is back with a new focus. After having successfully lobbied browser makers to drop proprietory tags and listen to the recommendations of the W3C, the WaSP went on hiatus in 2001, the year that finally saw the arrival of standard-compliant browsers (Opera, Mozilla, Netscape 6 and IE 6). The new focus is on convincing web developers and consulting firms to stop producing invalid and inaccessible sites and to update their skills and knowledge.

"I'd like (Web developers) to look at the reality of the modern Web [...] Standards-compliant browsers with beautiful rendering, ADA section 508, the Internet Explorer monoculture under assault from Gecko and non-PC-form-factor devices, Web Services. I'd like them to conclude that the only sane, sensible, affordable way forward is to go standards-based on all their content."

020611 13:16 Media

So much for impartiality of the media. How can this be legal? This almost borders on blackmail.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has said he will use his best-selling UK newspapers to campaign against British euro membership if the government calls a referendum on the single currency.

Personally, I really wish Britain could drop its insular act, or the 'we'd rather be friends with the Americans than with the Europeans' attitude. It would make my life a lot easier.

020606 16:10 Intellectual property

Hahahaha hahaha. Humming is theft, record bosses claim. (via boingboing)

020606 15:23 Health

Mcdonald's fries aren't vegetarian? The other day i discovered that Snickers aren't. I want better and more honest food labelling. Mcdonald's is actually getting sued because of this. (via boingboing)

The company faced lawsuits after it was revealed that the vegetable oil used to prepare the fries and hash browns contained essence of beef for flavouring purposes.

Excuse me??? When i buy vegetable oil i expect it to not contain any animal substances. The same goes for chocolate. Dammit! Here in the UK the beef flavored crisps are vegetarian, the cheese and onion aren't. That's twisted.

Aargh! This makes me so angry. People make a choice for health, political or religious reasons but some companies think they are above that - or they don't think at all... No, they are aware of what they are doing. 'Let's put a bit of flavoring in this.' - 'It's not vegetarian.' - 'So? Who's gonna know.'

So, is anybody still surprised why we don't trust big companies... or governments... or anybody? Because there is always someone who think he's above an individual's choice or decision, always someone who thinks it doesn't matter or nobody is going to find out. Well, let me tell you very clearly: IT DOES MATTER !!!!!!! I made the choice to be a vegetarian and i don't like being tricked into eating meat. And i'm only a political vegetarian. Just imagine how the religious ones feel.

020606 13:32 Browsers

Mozilla 1.0 is officially here. 'nuff said. Get it!

Update 020608 18:16

020604 18:31 Culture

This NYTimes story (free reg. req.) is strange. I wouldn't say it's political correctness gone overboard, because I'm all for political correctness, but this kind of revisionism is inexcusable. Rewriting the past is going to teach us nothing.

...high school English exams from the past three years [...] had been sanitized of virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for some reason. Students had to write essays and answer questions based on these doctored versions - versions that were clearly marked as the work of the widely known authors.

020604 16:27 Culture

This Wired article about why people do or don't read technical documentation is actually an interesting cultural study.

"There is a U.S. software company that once translated its manual into German, only to have it rejected by their local office as its tone was very colloquial and the text included a lot of humor"...

020602 16:45 Weblogs

Cory Doctorow calls himself an 'infovore'. In My Blog, My Outboard Brain he explains how blogging has become an information management tool for him.

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Notepad ??? For web-page design ?? Are you nuts ???
Join the modern world and start using Wordpad.

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