It runs slowly but it runs. With the right software, and a lot of patience and time, you can do it, too.
Month: May 2004
He’s covered in lube, but can’t slip away.
He covered the entire hotel room — mattresses, pillows, sheets, furniture, TV, blankets, carpets, etc…– at the Motel 6 he was staying at with Vaseline. Apparently he had done it to a couple of other hotels’ rooms as well. He was arrested at a neighboring Econo Lodge.
American Idol Pisses me Off
I’m sure I’m not the only one that is dumbfounded as to why this woman is still on American Idol, while this woman, this woman or even this guy are not? That’s because the system is flawed. Quoting the article:
Interviews with telephone companies, data consultants, federal agencies, and fans expose a flawed system in which tens of millions of votes are potentially lost. Indeed, evidence shows that the only people choosing the next American Idol are the ones lucky enough to get through–or skilled enough to get around–tremendously overtaxed phone lines. While overzealous fans have accused Fox of tampering with results, one fact is indisputable: Technology is thwarting democracy on American Idol. Power-dialers can skew the vote. Text-messagers have an unfair advantage. And potential hackers have a powerful new incentive to alter the vote tallies: betting on the outcome through Internet gambling sites. Despite fans’ repeated accusations of inaccurate results, Fox is sticking with a voting system vulnerable to serious manipulation and tampering.
On top of this, Jasmine is from Hawaii, where, by the time the viewers there see the show and start voting, the phone lines are much less busy and easier to get through on.
Yes, I know, I’m weird for watching American Idol, but at least the folks on there have some friggin’ talent while the morons on all those other reality show don’t.
Every Played those Whack a Mole Games?
This is like that, but with your keyboard and some one-eyed aliens. Note that this game is far easier if you use the number pad on your keyboard — it’s a royal pain if you use the number row on your keyboard (which I’m stuck with as I’m on my laptop).
I hate both Rap and Country Music
But what it were combined into one music style? Would I be able to tolerate Country Rap? I doubt it, but it’d be an interesting genre.
New MovableType Plugins Hidden in MT 3.0
Despite the rants about the new version, there are some great new plugins that are hidden in the latest version of MT 3.0 including “Babelteen: Converts teenspeak (u r 2 kewl) into English.” and “Pundit-bust: Converts all of Jakob Nielsen’s inane rants into a Buju Banton rap song.”
You Mean You Have to Have Sex to Have a Baby?
A German married couple was wondering why they weren’t having kids, after years of marriage. After tests at a fertility clinic showed they were both fertile and more than ready, the doctor asked how often they had sex.
And the couple had no idea what he was talking about.
“We are not talking retarded people here, but a couple who were brought up in a religious environment who were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate.”
Oh my. Full Story. Link via Ken.
A former Bend blogger
He lived in Bend from January 2004 up until last week, and is now in North Carolina, but mountaintop.be was, at one point, a Bend blog. I won’t be adding it to the Bend BlogRoll, but I did want to at least mention it.
The Whole MovableType Mess
I’m a MovableType user. Version 2.661 powers this site. The software is great, powerful, and has worked well for quite a while. I, like most of the world, have been waiting patiently for version 3.0 to be released. I was part of the beta team, though I didn’t have time to test it like I wanted (nor did I feel comfortable testing it on this site because of all the trouble people were having installing the beta). The beta process as a whole wasn’t handled too well, either, with numerous bugs, poor communication, and other problems.
Then came a simple announcement that nobody in the community expected. Version 3.0 will, for the most part, be a paid product. Yes, there is a free version, but it limits a great deal of people’s usage of things. And the pricing structure and licensing of things made a bunch of folks angry, though SixApart answered and addressed most of the questions in a follow-up post.
MovableType is great software, there is no doubt about that. And, I agree with Ken (partially) that MT should cost money. My gripe is two-fold:
- The lack of communication from SixApart. There was no rumors, no hints, no nothing that this was coming. Beta testers and long-time users were completely thrown for a loop with this.
- Better care of the community by SixApart. There are hundreds of developers out there writing wonderful plug-ins for MT, many that have been folded in as native code to the distribution. And there were probably thousands that donated to the project as well. In my opinion, a personal license should have been giving free to all donators of $20 or more, period — not a discount, but a full personal-edition license. Folks like use have kept this project going because of our donations, and I feel like we’re now asked to pay more for a project that we’re responsible for keeping alive. This is what the folks at Trillian did, and I think it would’ve been appropriate here.
But, again, they have that right. Why? MT is not free software. It never has been. It’s distributed for free, and came with source code, but it wasn’t free. The project survived and thrived in the blogging community because Movable Type was free enough. It wasn’t GPL or anything like that, so Six Apart had every right to do what they did. I guess it just pisses me off how they’ve alienated their loyal users.
Obviously, this has sparked quite the debate in blogging circles. Everybody was debating the issue all over the frickin’ web, and a bunch of people leaving, many of them moving to WordPress using some of the ideas at these sites (though there are some problems with MT 3.0’s export routine), or they’re trying out Expression Engine.
Here’s my conundrum: I’m running ads on this site — they’re small, they’re at the bottom of pages, and they’re non-intrusive. I’m in violation of MovableType’s licenses because of those ads. I put them up so I could pay the hosting bill for this site, and it’s done that and to work on knocking down some of my medical bills. So I’m already screwed in that regard, because I don’t have the $195 to buy a commercial license. Heck, even if I got rid of the ads, I’d still be in violation because I occasionally link to Amazon using my affiliate tags — and I’ve probably made a whopping 12 cents on that.
Secondly, Perl is not my specialty. If I could call any language my specialty, it would be PHP (and I’m not a super-whiz at that, but at least I know what I’m doing). I’d rather be using a PHP-powered system.
Lastly, I don’t like being limited by the license of a product, and that’s what I am right now. A “free” product should be free to do whatever you want — commercial, personal, or otherwise. Thank goodness for the GPL.
So far, WordPress meets all those criteria.
SixApart distributes a free version of MT, but it truly isn’t free. Don’t be surprised to see this site move to another system at some point. I’m probably going to upgrading to MT 3.0’s Free edition in the meantime until I find something that will work out dandy for me.
On a side note, I’m sure this entry will take a while to upload as it tries to ping all the sites I’ve linked to.
Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is putting a recall on matches because they “may ignite upon impact, posing a fire hazard to consumers.” I only wish this was a joke.
And to top it all off, they’re Martha Stewart matches.
Thanks Barney for the link.