Since RageBoy is posting pics of sunsets, and other metaphorical things, I figure I'd post something metaphorical about how I feel right now. How about a sharp flower? Heh. I know someone I'd like to give this to. Phhhhhhhtttt! Yeah, I took this with my new Nikon 5700. Pretty sharp, huh? :-)

A guy I know is running his car on cooking oil. Wacky.

Ahh, the folks who keep calling me a thief are still at it, this time by standing behind the Berman/Coble bill. They think I'm stealing. What I really am doing is trying before I buy and I do buy. If they kill off all the P2P networks, then I'm less likely to buy music in the future. I can do other things with my $500 a year that I spend on music. As to the charges in the article: yeah, it's really smart to give superhuge corporations the ability to poke around inside everyone's computers. Last time I remember, Target or Macys isn't allowed to break down the door to my house to check for stolen property unless they have a court order first. What the music industry wants is to assume I'm stealing music and go and do nasty things to my hard drive with no assurances that the industry won't take advantage of this bill.

Michael writes me to tell me that .NET My Services and MSN Communities are from two separate groups that have nothing to do with each other. Heh. I'll go for that. But, I had evidence that the two groups were working together and sharing a lot of the same technology.

JD has some interesting stuff, including egg on his face because he questioned the validity of a Hilary Rosen email. Sometimes what you read on the Internet +is+ true, even when it seems like it's a hoax. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Dan says MP3!=Stealing. (That's code for "does not equal").

Isn't Microsoft a member of the W3C? Well, why aren't MSN's coders being forced to learn about Web standards? Look at the MSN Groups Web site. The HTML there doesn't have a Doctype. They are using upper case in all their code. And then Microsoft wonders why MVP's don't have a good community to use. I can't use MSN's Groups anymore to put my communities cause many of my friends give me shit whenever I don't support Web standards (that serves me right for counting Zeldman and Molly among friends. :-). By the way, you do realize that .NET My Services were built by the group that built this stuff, right? Any wonder why it failed in the marketplace? If they can't do HTML right, what makes us believe they'll do Web services right?

Fuck Flash. I visit Lego's Spybotics page and it says I need Flash 5. I already have the Flash 6 player. So the site doesn't work. And people say Flash can be made accessible? Seems pretty inaccessible to me. What happened to forward compatibility? Sorry for the Christopher Locke-influenced language. But this stuff pisses me off. Anyway, Ralph Hempel wrote a manual for Spybotics. I can't wait to see it and play with this stuff with my son Patrick.

Update, if you just visit the base URL you'll get in. Ralph pointed out that they must have a redirector that checks for the latest version of Flash.

Oh, Chris Locke loses it on Gary Turner. Chris is out of his fucking mind. That's a direct quote. Heh.

Here's your damn mail (replacements for AOL's "you've got mail" voice). Thanks Faisal for that one.

Mike is right, it's fun living life and reading about others doing the same on their weblogs. Although, sorry, I won't be putting up a webcam of my bedroom anytime soon! Even if I did, you all might really be bored anyway. Heh.

Oh, and Marc, .NET My Services was always MSN Communities with SOAP interfaces added on. Nothing more. I love how Microsoft's marketing tried to make it sound so fabulous. Most if its customers figured it out. Now Microsoft is saying that no one bought. Well, duh. Has any corporation used MSN Communities (now known as MSN Groups)? Why would we use a technology that makes non-standards-based Web sites that sit on Microsoft's own servers? Yeah, that sounds like a great enterprise solution. Not.

I like comments. I know why some people like Dave eschew them, but then I'm a wacko and am used to the flames. Hell, I'll be the first to call myself a fucking idiot. It's hard to flame someone who flames himself, no? But, it's interesting to see Marc Canter's POV on the issue. Personally I learn more from my comments than from my spouting. I already know what I think, I wanna hear from all of you too. And, it often is easier to add my two cents via a comment link than to put it on my weblog.

Doc says he tried Cocaine and nothing happened. Hmmm. The topic of drugs. Have you ever noticed that most people still don't talk about their drug use online? We're all scared about what will be done with such information in the future. Maybe George Bush will round us all up and send us all to Iraq. I suspect, though, that what we're really scared about is our kids or wives finding our weblogs. Yeah, I've done quite a few things in experiencing life. :-)

Speaking of which, RageBoy (aka Christopher Locke) is fucking marvelous (if you read RageBoy, you'll understand why he inspires me to use profanity). Chris, anytime you're in Silicon Valley, I'll take you out to a five-star dinner. I have a nice French place over in New Almaden (which is really one of the oldest places in Silicon Valley, go figure) where we can eat snails and other shit. I won't even ask you to pontificate to a crowd. Or do anything illegal. Although those French mushrooms are awfully strange. Heh.

Ahh, Britney and other stars are telling us that stealing is stealing. Cool. What about using P2P networks to find out what kind of music you'd like to buy? I don't want to buy music until I try it out. I get sold too much shit by this industry. I'm planning on spending $500 on this industry in the next year. I won't spend that money on music I can't try first. Not to mention that once I buy a CD or a DVD, why shouldn't I be able to put that on all the computers in my home, car, and work?

I'll let you in on another secret: sales are down cause your music sucks, not cause I can get your stuff for free on P2P networks. Hell, I always can get music for free. Anyone hear of the radio? Britney, Elton John, and Eminem. Yeah, those are three artists I won't buy this year. Clueless you all are.

So, with help of a few people I figured out you need a special satellite dish to get a lot of the International channels on Telstar 5. Oh well. I was hoping I could buy a Dish-compatible system, but it doesn't look like that'll get Telstar 5. Crud.

Once in a while Microsoft publishes tips that are actually useful. Here's one that'll make a shortcut on your Windows XP desktop that'll lock your system. If you work at a cube farm, like I do, this is great cause when you leave your desk you can quickly lock your system which protects you against security troubles.