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16. november 2002
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Out of Work - And Good Riddance
 I don't think many wept over Microsoft's decision to fire Clippy, the annoying paperclip 'office assistant' before the release of Office XP.
Clippy, however, still has a home page on Microsoft's website, where he is whining about his lonely fate and applying for a job as a web designer. In the meantime he's been using his creative powers instead of harassing millions of Office users, and is now a movie star (sort of) and even has his own song, of course titled "It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter."
Even the die-hard M$ haters out there will have to admit that someone, somewhere, on Microsoft has a sense of humour.
8:41:50 PM 
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Headline of the Day
"Passengers getting heads examined" (CNN)
This story is really about an initiative to place officers trained to recognise "suspicious behaviour" in passengers at Logan Airport in Boston, where the two planes that crashed into the WTC originated. My question is if there is really empirical evidence that would-be terrorists have a different body language than normal passengers. ACLU is only worried that it may lead to 'racial profiling.'
7:52:55 PM
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Senior Al Qaeda Leader Taken
According to American officials, a senior leader in the Al Qaeda network is captured. Still no details of who, where, when or how, and it is not one of the the top four, but it is, apparently, "a big deal."
In a way, the hunt for Al Qaeda members does remind me about the Israeli hunt for the Black September terrorists after Munchen 1972. It took time, but one by one they were hunted down. And the whole western world has far more resources than Israel.
5:50:08 AM
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 Local Band Wins Best Video at MTV Awards
The dance/ambient band Röyksopp from Bergen won the Best Video award at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2002.
The British press as usual ignore acts from this country, but the band, despite its distinctly Norwegian name (Röyksopp means "fuz ball"), has enjoyed great success in the dance market.
You can download and listen samples of their music here.
2:18:15 AM
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Nice Words, Wrong Author
 If you have never received an email with containing "Instructions for Life" that "The Dalai Lama has to say on the millennium" you are probably part of a dwindling minority. The chain email has been passed back and forth on the Net since the early days of 2000, and I recently encountered it on yet another message board. It has been put on hundreds of web sites, e.g. here or here.
The ending of the chain email should really give away the game. Promising lucky rewards for forwarding a chain mail does not really sound like the style of the highly respected 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, and of course he has nothing to do with it.
And, indeed, this nice list of advice for a better life comes from a more secular source, as the Snopes Urban Legends archive reveals, namely Life's Little Instruction Book, by Jackson Brown and H. Jackson Brown, Jr. It has been passed around on the Net for a long time, in various versions.
Those who want to read some words from the real Dalai Lama, can visit this site. I just hope nobody puts them into a chain mail.
1:56:48 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.12.02; 02:51:02.
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