eWeek -- Internet Explorer Is Too Dangerous to Keep Using

Internet Explorer Is Too Dangerous to Keep Using: "The bottom line is that for all practical purposes for today, open-source browsers are inherently more secure than Internet Explorer, and I still have half a dozen more workstations to switch over to Firefox. Go ahead, stick with Internet Explorer for everyday use. It's your funeral."

the Domino's Pizza of Liberation

Just in time for your Iraqi Sovereignty Party, get your war on -- page thirty-seven.

All we are is Dust in the Wind.

I am normally not the sentimental type, but I can't tearing up when I hear "Dust in the Wind." I don't get the opportunity to watch many movies. Old School made me laugh so hard I almost threw up.

CNN.com - Earthquake rattles Midwest

You know how whenever somebody's trailer get hurled by a tornado, they always say "it sounded just like a freight train." I hope that "It was like somebody shot off dynamite" or "I thought maybe a tree hit my trailer" becomes the tagline for earthquake victims in the MW. Here's a proper usage example from CNN.com

'It was like somebody shot off dynamite,' said Spaulding, who added that his cat leaped out of his lap and would still not come near him two hours later. 'I thought maybe a tree hit my trailer.'

Web browser flaw prompts warning

BBC News: "Users are being told to avoid using Internet Explorer until Microsoft patches a serious security hole in it."

That's when Cheney unloaded with the 'F-bomb'

Cheney Utters 'F-Word' in Senate - Aides: "Cheney, who is president of the Senate, then ripped into Leahy for the Democratic senator's criticism this week of alleged war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran.
Leahy and other Democrats have called for congressional hearings into whether the vice president helped the firm win lucrative contracts in Iraq after the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein.
During their exchange, Leahy noted that Republicans had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic because they are opposed to some of President Bush's anti-abortion judges, the aides said.
That's when Cheney unloaded with the 'F-bomb,' aides said."

So what can you take away from this exchange?

• Dick is definitely a little touchy about people cracking Halliburton.
• Your stance on abortion is the only reliable litmus test of your Christian faith.
• Dick Cheney will be replacing Howard Stern on many Clear Channel radio stations next January, when he re-enters the job market.

Today's Time Warp -- a dotcom IPO

What a jaunty little time-travel opportunity. salesforce.com's IPO ran from $11 to $17.20 today. I got 100 shares at $15 just for the nostalgia value of buying a dotcom IPO on the issue date, so I feel pretty good.

After accepting that Zimmer will probably stay over $85 for a while, I hopped back in there and added even lots of AMZN, HMC, MACR, NKE, NUE and 1,000 SIRI shares to keep things hopping. It must have been a Zoloft-day across the board -- 7 of the 7 that I picked this morning were up overall for the day.

Enriched Uranium: What Every Parent Should Know.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Enriched Uranium: What Every Parent Should Know.: "Parents, if the answer to one or more of the following questions is 'yes,' your child may be experimenting with enriched uranium."

PBS - frontline: l.a.p.d. blues: scandal

PBS - frontline: l.a.p.d. blues: scandal -- one of my favorite frontline episodes covering the Rampart CRASH unit. Portrait of an organization in decay that only gets juicier when some of the same characters end up as potential characters in the "assassination" of 2Pac.

WSJ: Christian Coalition Working for a Revival

Thanks to the "issue" of Gay Marriage", "Christian Coalition stalwarts are seeking political revival," according to the WSJ...

Rev. Dallas Billington at the Akron Baptist Temple in Akron, Ohio. "It's a crucial time in the cultural war, and I'm telling people to 'Vote your Bible.'"

Oversimplification, powered by Anti-Intellectualism.

Only slighly less predictable than an episode of Law and Order, Michael Schumacher took home first place. 

Friends John and Susan joined us for 4 laps before beating the traffic.  

Dad and Paula pose on 16th Street.  

Sarah enjoyed the race.  

The family spent the day at the U.S. Grand Prix in Indy. Jonathan and his friend Suzanne joined us from Chicago.  

Cory Doctorow's DRM talk at MSFT Research

If you read, listen to music or watch movies Cory Doctorow's DRM talk is both a handy primer to Digital Rights Management and a comprehensive argument for the abortion of the concept it serves to explain. If you've tried to play your .WMA files on a non-WMA MP3 player, you've seen the blunt end of DRM already and you know DRM sucks. Cory provides a sharp, witty history (and future) lesson that explains how and why it sucks so much.

Sarah and Maddie head out to breakfast with friends.  

My frustration has been building with my new ViviCam -- I couldn't seem to get many good pictures of people. As it turns out, the lens rotates on the front of the camera -- there are settings for people and mountains. Apparently, the factory default is mountains. Even my most beautiful Madeline was blurry before, but with my change of focus, I am hoping for a quick turnaround. 

It would seem so simple to keep gallons of 1% milk on the shelf on a Monday night, but as this shot demonstrates, that was not the case at Owen's on 6/7... 

GMail will be open publicly soon, I'd bet...

I've been issued 14 invitiations to pass out in the past 3 days. I've run through most of the family, friends and acquaintances I can think of. Anybody else need one?

Jon Stewart's Commencement Address

If you didn't see Jon Stewart's Commencement Address at William and Mary, a transcript is now on their web site... "As a freshman I was quite a catch. Less than five feet tall, yet my head is the same size it is now. Didn’t even really look like a head, it looked more like a container for a head. I looked like a Peanuts character. Peanuts characters had terrible acne. But what I lacked in looks I made up for with a repugnant personality."

WSJ.com - Bono Brings Star Power To Silicon Valley Fund

WSJ.com - Bono Brings Star Power To Silicon Valley Fund: "Bono, lead singer for rock band U2 and antipoverty activist, is starting a new gig: media and entertainment investing.

The 44-year-old rock star is joining Elevation Partners, a new Silicon Valley fund set up earlier this year by veteran technology investor Roger McNamee and John Riccitiello, who in April left his post as president of videogame maker Electronic Arts Inc. for Elevation."

Dog Bite Statistics

Dogs, Deer and Mosquitoes could go the way of the Dodo, in my ideal world.

"There is a dog bite epidemic in the United States. In a 10-year period, the number of dogs rose by 2% while the number of bites increased by 37%. There are almost 5 million victims annually -- about 2% of the entire population. 800,000 need medical attention. 1,000 per day need treatment in hospital emergency rooms. Between 15 and 20 die per year. Most of the victims are children, almost always bitten in the face by the family dog or a friend's dog."
-- (via J-Walk)

Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004

Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004: Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for the dead and everything, but zombies always crack me up.

Well-Timed RC for Mozilla Firefox

From CBS Marketwatch: "More 'features' found "Microsoft executives say they are still researching how to fix the latest bugs. (Industry watchers jokingly refer to them as features.) In the meantime, experts suggested using an alternate browser when visiting a site for the first time." -- which makes the timing of the release of the 0.9 Release Candidate Version of Firefox even more apt.

Words For My Enjoyment: Hungry Hungry Hippos (Or, Good Training For Life)

Words For My Enjoyment: Hungry Hungry Hippos (Or, Good Training For Life) -- what a relief. I didn't think there was any education value in HHH.

Will discovers that our tomato plant is infested. With tomatoes. 

free audioblogging on blogger

I'm not sure exactly how I'll use it yet, but the newly free audioblogging on blogger seems pretty intriguing. Road rage rants? I've cooled off over the past couple of years. Political polemics via mobile? We'll have to see.

CNN.com - Reagan services begin with public viewing - Jun 7, 2004

Even though I think you can credit him for building the two-headed monster that saved the republican party by combining the "religious right" and traditional economic conservatives, I don't know if the fundies should get too choked up over losing the father of their movement -- he really never was. Embracing the growing evangelical culture in the early 80's was an atypically pragmatic move by an atypically ideological politician. In the end, he never really delivered the goods for Pat Robertson and his ilk, driving them to stage the state-by-state foot-soldier takeover that put them in the party's driver's seat by the mid-nineties. Great communicator. Absolutely. Historically significant? Unquestionably. Fundamentalist born-again evangelical? By no means.

photojunkie: Boing Boing

Who knew being an A-List Blogger would start to draw stalkers? This just-barely-grainy shot of Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow has an "Oliver Stone's JFK" quality to it that makes it downright creepy.

Mob Experts on the Sopranos

Slate's Mob Experts on the Sopranos has the Monday-morning quarterback view on Tony's crew. I wish I had known about it earlier in the season -- that episode with the 20 minute dream sequence (week 11) really threw me.

McBlog 2.0: Instant Blitz Copy Fight Project

Mark throws a Parisian copythreat into the mix -- McBlog 2.0: Instant Blitz Copy Fight Project: "Here is my submission when I went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban ;)"

Touchpad Cleaner

Kensington Screen Guardian Notebook Cleaner is a four-ounce pump spray of miraculous cleaning power -- yes, as advertised, it will clean your LCD screen. More importantly, it works like a dream on notebook touchpads. Even if you have generally clean hands, the touchpads of Dell notebooks seem to start to get a shiny sheen over 6-9 months, eventually lowering performance. The cleaner, used conservatively, with the power turned off, seems to leech the oils back out of the touchpad, returning it to a state of blissful high-performance matte-ness. I've tried other cleaners with results varying from unsuccessful to downright ugly. Finally, this one works. Oh, and MSRP is $3.50 a bottle -- much cheaper than a new notebook.

Pants-Optional Zone

Sometimes Dilbert hits a little too close to home.

Defamer: The Easiest Blind Item In The World

Defamer: The Easiest Blind Item In The World -- I think the play where you try to trade up from Vanessa Williams is a gutsy move. I wonder if this will be in the Times-Union's Potpurri section this week?

Wired News: The Changing Face of E-Mail

Wired News: The Changing Face of E-Mail -- More riffing on the "E-Mail is Dead" meme. It mentions a conversation grouping function from Outlook 2003 -- what is so transparent in GMail is equally obtuse in Outlook. The thin client is gaining ground. I think e-mail will split in 2 directions -- real interpersonal communications will move to IM with the "allow this person to add you to their contacts list"-style authentication, with some level of web-based social networking intertwined. Newsletters, stock alerts and other desired information resources will move from e-mail to feeds. All that will be left of e-mail is the spam. E-mail is the new gopher -- dead before its time.

Faction

OK, I can't hold it in any longer. I love Sirius Satellite Radio -- The last four songs on Faction (channel 28):

Guided by Voices, Teenage FBI
Andrew W.K., Party Hard
Eminem, Guilty Conscience
The Strokes, Reptilia

CNN.com - 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' clears murder suspect

Curb Your Enthusiasm as a force for justice and social change.

Pros and Cons of John Kerry's Top twenty VP Candidates

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Pros and Cons of John Kerry's Top twenty VP Candidates

14. Ann Coulter, columnist

Pro: Flattering position would silence her exposing of the true evil liberal agenda
Con: Is composed entirely of spiders and deadly snakes writhing beneath a latex "skin"