On today's bike ride to work, I went through some mud.. and was wearing white pants. I now look a bit like a clown, the mud looking remarkably like polka dots.. Speaking of which, I wonder what the origin of that word is.

Sun is making some pretty stupid grumbles. Basically they're criticizing Microsoft for discontinuing Win98, saying that customers are learning a lesson for trusting Microsoft, and that people should not migrate. My response? SIX YEARS. Should Microsoft really be expected to maintain such an ancient codebase? For that matter, does Sun support SunOS? I remember it being dropped like a dead rat not long after Solaris came out. It's basically business as usual for software companies, and while I like Sun and dislike Microsoft, this is clearly a case of excessive spin.

As for now, let's look at an area where Microsoft really did mess up.. Microsoft has the problem that practically every piece of software they've written has ended up being a potential security hole. In this case, the culprit is their Messager client. Actually, it might not be entirely reprehensible -- if it's just a buffer overflow, it's understandable (although it's a shame that in this age that people arn't using the safe, length-bounded string functions... practically all security problems in C are the result of the way strings work). If, instead, it's because they added some kind of an interpreter into the application that runs client-chosen code, it's bloody stupid, although it's not the first time....

I came across another info site for TMBG that I might frequent.. They had some MP3s of rare materials that never made it to one of their CDs.

Oh, in the future, you're supposed to keep flammable people away from fire.

Aerogel is the result of a lot of research in materials science -- it's a foam that's only slightly more dense than air, but is pretty resistant to compression for that density. Here's some pictures NASA took. It's really cool stuff, but unless one has a very large frivolty budget, out of range for most people.

Since falling from power in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev has kept busy on some fairly high-profile things. It's impressive that, considering that he was bitten by the results of Perestroika and Glasnost, both from the Soviet old guard and then from the masses, he's still putting in efforts towards liberalism. Like Trotsky, it's a philosophical shame that Communism in Russia was not led more by such people, instead of people like Mao Tse-Tsung and Stalin. I find myself wondering if a system of checks and balances in liberal democracies would be possible in a single-party system.. Would it have been different under the Mensheviks?

Brazil's not happy about discriminatory security measures the U.S. has put into place, and is retaliating. Seems fair, although the judge who made the order to retaliate (interesting that a judge, in whatever system they have there, can set policy like that) compared the American system to "the worst horrors committed by the Nazis". That's mind-bogglingly stupid -- not only did he bump up against Godwin's law, it's completely off base to compare selective photography/fingerprinting when people immigrate/visit from certain countries to confescating property, sending people to concentration camps, and putting them in gas chambers because they belong to a few "undesirable" groups.

A conservative writer has an analysis on Dean being pretty quiet on the religion issue. I'm going to bite the writer's bullet -- yes, I think that the south, conservative as it is, is very fixated on their god, guns, and persecuting gays, and considers jobs, education, and health care to (mostly) be good things that come after the necessities (above) are met. I do find myself wondering if Dean's really religious at all -- he's an educated guy, and there's a negative correlation between education and religiosity. At the end of this article is another statistic that's interesting -- 63% of people who attend religious services regularly support republicans, and 62% of those who very rarely or do not attend services support democrats.

Speaking of undereducated conservatives, check out this column by a conservative whose only understanding of Communism is fixated on Stalin's Russia. He's either ignorant of history, or he's really grasping for something bad to say about liberals to his readers.

The British government, like the American government, eventually releases documents that were once secret. Take a look. Much of my cynicism WRT honesty of the government comes from reading such things our government has put out.

This is really cute. I wonder if a certain cat or two I know could be taught to do the same... If so, I think I know a certain word they'd like to write ;)

We'll end this with a pointer to an article by RMS. Both it and the comments are interesting reading.