Scripting News

Fri, 07 Feb 2003 04:13:34 GMT

Is That Legal: "North Carolina congressman Howard Coble has gone public with his support for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II." Ed Cone is calling this Coblegate. Coble is chairing a House subcommittee on crime and terrorism. Coble was one of the supporters of Howard Berman's bill that would make hacking users' computers legal for the entertainment industry. Tara Sue ran against Coble.

Fri, 07 Feb 2003 04:52:11 GMT

Ooooh ooooh hot product alert. According to Gordon Mohr, Sony is coming out with a 20GB hand-held WiFi file server. Think about it. Hehe. Hey that's awesome.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 19:15:49 GMT

John Palfrey: "Harvard has always operated as a bunch of highly productive but rarely well-integrated stove-pipes."

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 23:41:23 GMT

I'm in New York now. Just had a visit with my dad, and surprise surprise, he's all the way back. He's really skinny, and looks old and white (lots of blood loss), I didn't recognize him at first, and he's still bound to a wheelchair, but we had a long conversation about everything that happened, and he's all there. He even cracked a couple of jokes. Excellent.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 21:44:46 GMT

Mark Woods discovers that Radio on Windows can display Web pages on its enclosing window. Mark, you can get the plain display to come back -- you don't have to restart Radio -- just right click on the background and choose Back. The "normal" background is also a Web page. It's in a file named background.html in the Appearance sub-folder of the Radio folder. You can edit that file, of course. (But keep a copy so you can restore it. Mark is right, it can get awkward, but it's lots of fun to play with.)

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 21:36:13 GMT

Morbus shows how to get AmphetaDesk to display RSS 2.0 comments. I added it to the sub-directory of aggregators with support for 2.0.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 18:52:57 GMT

People have asked how I sold a house in a down market in California, as I did, earlier this week. Pure luck. There was a ready buyer. We came to terms quickly, without brokers. California isn't putting up a fight. "Go East Young Man" the state seems to be saying to me.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 18:51:43 GMT

On this day two years ago, My Handsome Radio Blog was born. Not hugely significant. The weblog tool in Radio is approximately two years old now.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 18:39:32 GMT

BTW, totally by coincidence, my old friend Adam Green, the dBASE guru, and CTO at Andover, retired rich from the software industry, is now taking classes at Harvard to learn how be scholarly about the history of science. His aim is to be the first software historian. Adam is uniquely qualified to do that. He was doing his work, reading the ancient scientists, on his own, when people asked what he's doing, he'd tell them and they would look at him weirdly. Now he says he's studying the same stuff at Harvard and people's eyes bug out. I've noticed the same thing. Synchronicity.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 18:35:44 GMT

More on the purplish bolt of lightning that may have hit the Columbia over California, thanks to Morbus Iff for the pointer.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 17:17:00 GMT

News.Com: Patent scare hits streaming industry.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 22:05:05 GMT

On this day in Y2K: Amsterdam. Boston.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 17:26:57 GMT

Washington Post: New Kids on the Blog. Another "gee aren't they neat" piece. Anyway, if the pros are so good at "established principles of fairness, accuracy and truth" why do they get the facts wrong, and skim the surface and repeat what has already said so many times? These pieces always set up the same question -- will weblogs replace traditional media, and they always conclude that it'll never happen. Somehow I wonder if that's not the purpose of these pieces. Don't the editorial people at the Washington Post care about this clear conflict of interest? It's like asking a Republican to review a Democrat, and passing it off as non-partisan. Still waiting for a professional review that treats our work seriously. Read Chris's story below. We're piecing together a new publishing medium. Someday you'll use it too Leslie as will the Washington Post. I'm sorry I did the interview.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 17:05:27 GMT

Chris Gulker: "Locke and Galileo and Descartes began writing each other about their discoveries, and then scientific academies formed, where these letters would be read aloud to others who shared an interest."

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 17:18:50 GMT

Afterlife Programs: "With the help of terminally ill volunteers, our service is sending telegrams to people who have passed away."