Here’s another long-delayed scan, from the cover of a holiday baking magazine:
Easy tarts? Apparently, you can have your cake and Edith too.
Author Archives: Kelson
Does this taste funny to you?
(In case you’re wondering, it’s a receipt item for Land O Lakes butter.)
Shuffling across the memetic landscape
Two months later, 12,500 pages mention Apple’s “Do not eat iPod shuffle” joke.
Ironically, one page that doesn’t mention it is the one that started it all. Apple has removed the footnote from its iPod shuffle product page. Sure, the comparison to a pack of gum is still there, but I guess enough people thought it was a stupid-lawyer trick instead of, you know, a joke.
Something I didn’t notice at the time, though: the U.K. version was worded differently: “Do not chew iPod shuffle.” Perhaps reflecting the relative populations, this phrase only pulls 48 hits (soon to be 49, I expect).
Null Notice
When I got in this morning I noticed that Mozilla had announced a Thunderbird 1.0.1 Release Candidate. While I was quite happy in the pre-1.0 days to help out with bug hunting (I can probably claim credit for identifying a number of problems with importing mail from Eudora’s arcane mailbox format, though I wasn’t the one who fixed them), I figured I’d pass on this and wait a few days for the final release.
A few minutes ago, this important notice popped up:
Maybe I should try out that release candidate after all…
Physical proof of spam?
The disclaimers spammers add to their missives are sometimes bizarre, ranging from excuses to nonsensical “word salad” to, in this example found in today’s spamtrap haul, legal threats.
WARNING: ANYONE REPORTING ALLEGED SPAM TO ANY PERSON OR PERSONS, WITH OUT PHYSICAL PROOF OF SUCH A CLAIM IS GUILTY OF BOTH FRAUD & A CIVIL CRIME AND WILL BE PURSUED AND PROSECUTED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW. FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE READ:
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/legislation/spamlaws02.htm
Physical proof? Of something which exists entirely in the virtual realm of bits and bytes? Do you have to submit your hard drive as evidence, or is a paper print-out sufficient? Continue reading
That Annoying Typing Bug
From the Gnome 2.10 release notes:
In the past, while typing something into one application when suddenly your instant messenger offered a chat request from your friend, your words would be typed into the chat window. Imagine if you were typing your password at the time. This should no longer happen in GNOME 2.10.
In addition, if an application takes a long time to start, your work will not be interrupted when it finally opens its window.
About time someone fixed this! The window focus-stealing problem has plagued just about every desktop out there. I think Windows is the first one I noticed that attempted a solution (blinking the taskbar button instead of switching to the dialog box). And since I often fire up several programs at once, it can get really annoying when I start typing my password into one, hoping I’ll finish before the other window appears and drops the last three letters into my web browser or something.
Unfortunately I’ll probably have to wait for Fedora Core 4 to really use it, unless I want to go even more bleeding-edge than I already am.
Judicious Activism?
There’s been a lot of talk on the conservative side of the fence about “activist judges” and “activist courts.” There’ve even been calls to limit the 200-year-old principle of judicial review.
Of course, there’s also been a lot of talk about appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court so that, given a suitable legal challenge, they can overturn Roe vs. Wade and make it possible for Congress to pass laws banning abortion without resorting to a constitutional amendment.
So can someone tell me, how is this not judicial activism?