I Know *I’m* Surprised!!

From RoughlyDrafted Magazine yesterday:

“After dumping its $10 million contract with Jerry Seinfeld after just three ads (only two of which even aired) Microsoft has created new ad copy where regular people and a few celebrities say, “I’m a PC!” One problem with the campaign’s credibility: the ad work was created using Macs.…”

Bumper Snicker

Spotted this morning on the BBEdit-Talk list:

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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on a mailing list?

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Listening to: Los Straitjackets - Here Comes Santa Claus
via FoxyTunes

Chizen is Chizlin’?

I hadn’t run into the phrase “Pot-Kettle-Black Olympics” before, but it certainly seems to apply to Bruce Chizen’s (CEO of Adobe) chiding of Microsoft's less-than-stellar cross-platform “equality”:

Bruce Chizen and Selective Criticism

Why Programmers Should Never Become Ministers

Good joke: Programmer-Turned-Minister FAQ

Ever Wonder Where…

…Montréal got its name?

“The largest city in the Canadian province of Québec and the largest inland port in the world, Montréal takes its name from a distinctive landscape feature at the center of the city. Mont-Royal (“royal mountain” in French) rises to an elevation of 233 meters (about 764 feet) at Colline de la Croix peak. The mountain is sometimes identified in guidebooks as an extinct volcano, but the types of igneous rock found at Mont-Royal suggest the mountain is more likely to be the remnants of magma chambers that once fed surface volcanoes than a surface volcano itself.…”

Fire Alarms from Orbit

NASA’s doing some pretty interesting things with their satellites these days; caught this in the Earth Observatory e-mail today:

““There’s a fire season somewhere in South Africa all the time,” says researcher Philip Frost of the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). During the dry summer, fires sweep over the landscape on the southwest coast, and the warm, dry winters in the northeast spur grass fires that consume the savanna. South Africa also has a subculture that views fire as a tool for everything from hunting and land management to encouraging rain. Fire is a daily problem in South Africa.…”

Who?

From MercuryNews.com today:
Ex-SRI scientist tells institute’s story:

“SRI is known in Silicon Valley mostly as the birthplace of the mouse — as far as it’s known at all.

Most people don’t know that SRI International also developed the first system to electronically sort checks. It created the first fax machine. And it has been responsible for major innovations in everything from less invasive surgery to robotics.…”

Wonder How Long it’ll Take the Airlines to Implement?

From mercuryNews.com this morning:
FCC votes to allow high-speed Web access on flights