Sunday, August 04, 2002

Aha! I knew I recognized the name Lee Felsenstein from somewhere. He's blogging here at Salon at Lee Felsenstein ad seriatim, but where I remember him from is Stephen Levy's book 'Hackers'. Lee's the major focus of one of the three sections of the book...a major figure in the Homebrew Computer Club, designer of the Osborne-1, which I played some great games on at my mom's best friend's place, and more. I know nothing of his life post-1984, but there's just something about having a blog at the same site as him that churns a little cool feeling in my stomach, the same kind I got when my dad was telling me about what hanging out with Bill Gosper in the MIT computer labs in the early '70s. I have an amazing respect and fascination with the driving figures behind modern computing, and Lee Felsenstein is without question one of them.

1:03:47 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Oh yeah - to the guy who described my writing as fucking boring - it's not for your benefit that I do this, it's for mine. As I've said, I like the idea of being read, but I really don't care if I'm not. Writing this makes me feel better - about what, I don't know for sure, but I do feel better after a good entry. I'm not trying to rival journalism, and I'm sure as hell not trying to write a novel - I don't have the chops for that. I'm just writing because there's a certain personal sense of satisfaction I get out of writing here. So there. =P Now I'm off to have breakfast with my ex. I'll explain the context later - somehow, the whole thing revolves around David Bowie. Honestly.

9:39:30 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

80% Of Incoming E-mail At Hotmail Is Spam [Slashdot] This actually supports my own theories. The corporation I work for (which you could figure out pretty easily, but I'm not gonna tell you - hah!) has a nifty little trick they pull on our incoming mail - they've got a network of servers all incoming mail gets filtered through. If the headers on incoming mail matches their spam detection rules, the subject of the email is changed to '[SPAM]: (old subject)'. This makes things a LOT easier, when it comes to filtering spam into the trash. Considering I've got not just my current address but my 4 year old college computer science account forwarding to my corporate email, I get a LOT of spam. Even after the detected spam, a good 50% of the email that reaches my inbox is spam. It's astounding. I remember when there was no spam...but now I just sound like either an old man talking about the good old days, or a reasonably young man trying to sound like he's cool because he's been online a long time. So I'll just stop. =)

9:24:31 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Bus Bombing in Northern Israel Kills at Least 10 [New York Times: International News] Weird thing happened when I first read this headline...I could have sworn it said 'Northern Ireland', not Israel. I've been reading a lot lately on Irish history - a great book on Irish nationalism from Henry VIII to de Valera, and now Tim Pat Coogan's definitive book on the Troubles through '94. So I guess I'm unusually sensitive to the idea of terrorism making a return in Northern Ireland. (the only good thing to come out of Sept. 11 was that the IRA agreed to decomissioning of their arms...) Now I feel guilty - I should be just as concerned about Israel. I am, after all, part Jewish and part Irish. The problem is that with Northern Ireland, I can identify with the Nationalist point of view, and the British point of view (though the Ulster Unionist point of view completely eludes me), and I can see how they got from point A to point B...doesn't mean I like the process, but I can understand it. On the other hand, I can identify with your average Israeli, and I have a lot of sympathy for your average Palestinian (though I'll be honest - it's hard for me to identify with them, per se. It's a completely different reality they're in than any I can imagine.) but while I can at least figure out how the IRA felt they had a right to blow shit up, and the British the right to suppress the terror, the absolute insanity of Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli atrocities in the West Bank and Gaza completely elude me. It's like something out of a movie, or some awful Tom Clancy novel. The IRA were monsters, and the British reactions were at times horrible, but neither one of them got within miles of their Middle Eastern equivalent. It's just impossible for me to quite comprehend Israel and Palestine as reality, I guess. Interesting bit I hear about a few weeks ago on NPR - there was a furor in Northern Ireland because Sinn Fein's Belfast office was flying a Palestinian flag, while their extremist Unionist counterparts were flying Israeli flags. The Palestinian flags are not a strange sight to see in Catholic Nationalist neighborhoods in Ulster - there's a (semi)logical connection between the two causes, and in the past they've received military support from the same sources (namely Libya) and operatives have trained together in places like the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. The weirdness is Ian Paisley and his crew flying the Israeli flag. This may be even more nutty than the Christian freaky right in the US supporting Israel for end-times reasons. The extreme Unionists are often virulently anti-Semite - in many ways, the most similar political movement to extreme Unionism was the old apartheid gang in South Africa...who, in point of fact, were also quite anti-Semitic - and worked on nuclear arms research with Israel. Huh. Anyway - got derailed there. Paisley and his fruitcakes are waving the Star of David not from some altruistic love for their fellow man, but to piss off the Catholic supporters of the Palestinians. All told, just a pleasant situation. ack - I've gotta stop thinknig about this. It'll derail my morning completely. At least they're not blowing up cars in Belfast any more...Clinton may not have succeeded in the Middle East (thank YOU, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat. Good job.) but he sure as hell succeeded in Northern Ireland. For that alone, he's got my eternal support.

9:18:07 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Hyper intelligent robot god damn escapes. [FARK] They're going to destroy us all.
8:59:21 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []