One thing I'm beginning to hate is some Americans' attitudes about free speech. First they cut down your opinion calling it stupid and "Liberal" (with a bunch of other stereotypes). Then they will go on to say something about how you should feel lucky not to live in Iraq where you would be killed for expressing your opinion. Then they tell you to shut up.

They are violating their own principles. Are people only allowed to speak out if they agree with you? Speaking out is the American way! Thats how things get done in democracies. If it weren't for people who disagreed, we wouldn't be living in a democracy now. Freedom of speech doesn't mean anything if you are pressured, insulted and told to leave when you say anything against the grain.

If that idea is logical then I'm George Bush.

I rarely praise boxy PC companies for their innovation and initiative to stand up to the big guys, but in this case I have to hand it to Gateway. They are launching a new advertising campaign that will educate consumers that they are allowed under "fair use" to rip their CDs to their computer and burn songs they own on other CDs for personal use. I have found that the RIAA is using the guise of piracy to try and stop any copying at all onto a computer, it's good that a computer company is standing up for the consumer's rights. From the article:

"Our concern is that some in the recording industry have created a real sense of ambiguity and confusion among consumers as a consequence of (the industry's) antipiracy efforts," said Gateway spokesman Brad Williams. "We agree that piracy is a major problem. But we're very concerned that consumers' fair use rights can be swept up and lost in the antipiracy debates."

Dave Winer writes:

"Later today Macromedia will announce a new product, one I've been wanting for seven years. I'll wait until the press release runs before explaining why it is so important, why it will be controversial, and why the controversy won't matter."

Sounds interesting. I wonder what it could be? Maybe something to do with Flash.

This is one of the most (if not the most) brilliant Onion article of all time.

Although it is refering to September 11th and is shrouded in humor, I think the message is timeless and true. Everyone in the world should understand this.

The Onion presents, Point-Counterpoint:

Point: This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism

Counterpoint: No It Won't

Well once again Mr. John C. Dvorak (pronounced "dork") has published yet another article about his favorite subject - Apple Computer! Miraculously, he is not predicting their imminent demise! Instead he is making another prediction - Apple will switch to Intel. The tone of this article is rather strange, it seems almost positive compared to his articles that predicted a brutal death to Apple a million times over.

Despite the new tone, this new John C. Dvorak's article is no better than before. Similar articles have been written many times over in many different publications, online or offline. This is not a new radical prediction, instead it is simply copying another's prediction. If this does come true, and Apple switches to Intel, Dvorak will probably come out with a collective "I told you so". Don't humor him.

In an odd development Al Gore is now on Apple's board of directors.

I guess Apple now owns the Internet. :)

Well I survived today without getting sick! If I can stay healthy tomorrow I may be in the clear.

Scott Rosenberg of Salon wrote a great essay on the seemingly inevitable upcoming conflict with Iraq. Although nothing is inevitable it seems that the people in power in the states want this war to go ahead unless Saddam and his sons in Iraq flee the country. This doesn't seem likely. Here's a great passage from Scott's essay:

The president's speech tonight, full of the rhetoric of "liberty and peace," was suffused with an almost millenarian triumphalism, an attitude of certainty in U.S. victory that is no doubt borne out by the superiority of American weaponry and power and that, yet, to anyone with a sense of the twists of history, seems fatuously arrogant. War is rarely easy; the speed of the victories in 1991 Kuwait or 2001 Afghanistan was, historically, the exception, and there is no guarantee that every future American campaign will be as fast or as painless to Americans. Overconfidence breeds disaster.

Any leader who predicts certainty of victory is asking for it. War isn't predictable, especially with people like Saddam involved. If he is faced with his own destruction who knows what he'll do.

Mike Pinkerton asks one of the great questions of our time:

"Why does bottled water have an expiration date?"

This puzzle must be resolved! Along with:

What is the air-speed velocity of an un-laden swallow?

Puzzling.

Well my friends, it seems that the original iMac design has finally come to an end. As of today Apple is no longer selling it on their online store.

I'm not really sure why Apple continued to sell them up to this point since they were just marginally less expensive than the eMac and their specs were much less.

The end of an era I suppose.

There is a high possibility I'll be sick today. I was exposed to a flu type thing two days ago. All of those who had been exposed to it 2 days before that got sick that day. So it seems the incubation period is 2 days. My Mom and Sister have already got sick today, I suppose I might be next.

Wish me luck, I have a 10+ year vomit-free record. :)

Erik over at NSLog has posted a great article with tips about starting up a weblog. It's a really great read and it is really useful. I used his tip about archive paths in Movable Type.

In the world today you want to be able to trust those who have influence and power. You want to be able to think that they are above petty insults and bad diplomacy, then you read something like this and you realize that the people running the show are complete idiots.

That deserves an honerary award for stupidity. Why does everyone have to agree with the Americans? France can still be an ally and not have the same view-point on everything. Why must they resort to pathetic name calling (or changing) like that. How incredibly stupid can you get.

I dearly hope next election the Americans elect competent representatives.

Well, well, well, the Leafs have been busy at this years NHL trade deadline. Not only did we get Owen Nolan a few days ago, we also got Glen Wesley from Carolina, Phil Housely from Chicago, and Doug Gilmour from Montreal! Gilmour is a Leaf once again! I can't wait to see him play on Thursday.

These deals have really given the Leafs a lot of depth. I just hope they can use their talent in the playoffs. GO LEAFS GO!

I'm doing more template work today. The main page should now work properly in IE. I have fixed the category and montly archives. I still need to fix The permalink pages, comments, trackback, search and maybe more that I haven't remembered yet.

Yes, I have a new design! I spent tonight creating it and making it into a MT template. All that is working right now is the main page, all the archives, search pages, category pages, comments, trackback, etc. are broken. I'll fix those tomorrow, but now I must sleep.

It has come to my attention that some browsers might not display this properly. Internet Explorer has a couple bugs that I need to work out. Mozilla/Camino/Gecko Browsers display it great and Safari does as well. I haven't had a chance to try it out on windows and any browsers there. I'll figure out later.

Mozilla.org's Mitchell Baker has posted an article about Browser innovation and their future. One part deals with Safari and Camino:

"In addition to the Mozilla-based browsers, Apple has recently launched its own browser for Mac OS X, known as Safari. It may be that the majority of Mac end users will end up using Safari because it comes with the OS, just as many people end up using IE because it comes with the Windows distribution. Some see this as traumatic or as a mark of doom. But the Mozilla project understands that almost everyone in the US market (and a substantial percentage of the international market) receives Internet Explorer when they acquire a computer, and our job is to provide an alternative. We would have preferred to have Apple use Gecko or collaborate with us on the development of the Camino browser, but providing an alternative to an OS-sponsored browser is nothing new to us. The key goal of the Mozilla project is to help keep content on the web open and help keep access to that content from being controlled by a single source. Apple's decision to ship a browser based on an open source rendering engine, with a focus on standards compliance, is a good thing for the big picture goal"

This is a good attitude they are taking. I've seen some people around the Mozillazine forums and even other developers taking a reall negative attitude about it (often because they are anti-apple trolls anyways). The big thing here is that both Safari and Camino are great browsers using great open source engines (kHTML and Gecko). IE will be eliminated on the Mac platform and the majority of people will start using open source rendering engines.

I picked up a copy of Beowulf today, translated by Seamus Heaney. I haven't started reading yet, just the introduction. From what I've read about it, it should be really interesting. It's strange, however, seeing the Anglo-Saxon on one side of the page and then English on the other. There are some similarities that you can definately see, yet it is different.

Dave Hyatt writes about tabbed browsing. Here's just the beginning:

"I've seen a lot of comments in various Mac forums where people have claimed that "Dave Hyatt said he doesn't like tabbed browsing!" or "Dave Hyatt hates tabbed browsing!" I find these posts perplexing, because I never said any such thing, and of course the opposite is true. I love tabbed browsing. I implemented tabbrowser in the Mozilla trunk. I implemented tabbed browsing in Chimera. I implemented the version used in Phoenix. Given how many times I've implemented it, I'm amazed that people would think that I am not a tabbed browsing devotee"

This is interesting. Its kind of a tip off about tabbed browsing in Safari. I'm sure Dave's opinions would have some influence or he wouldn't say an opinion like this on tabbed browsing then have it implemented a different way by the other Safari engineers. That would make itl ook like they don't have a common goal. Most of this has already come to pass with the cough hypothetical v62. One thing I really want in tabbed browsing is opening tabs from other apps such as Mail or NetNewsWire. I can't stand having a bunch of windows open when I open things from either of those programs. That is one of the reasons why I use the freshly re-named, Camino

Interesting. MacSlash has an article pointing to an LA Time article (which needs registration) about Apple launching a music service integrated with iTunes. This would be great if they could keep the price low enough and give us the freedom to burn to CDs and play in different locations.

This looks pretty official.

So I was away on the weekend camping again. I was at the same place I went two weekends ago with the same friend. It was at his family's farm. We went to help out with a Cub camp that was being held there in addition to going just for fun. I took the camera along and took a bunch of pictures. I've posted them here

There are some good ones in there and some that aren't so good. I didn't include a few as well, since a lot were repeats or weren't good at all.

We finished off the quinzee (snow shelter) from two weekends ago. It really was big. We estimate it was about 5 feet high inside and quite wide. We fit 11 Cubs and the two of us in it with lots of room to spare.