Bear Flag Republic Radio Weblog

Something funny for your Sunday from Arvin Meyer:

Costello: "Hey Abbott!!!"

Abbott: "Yes, Lou?"

Costello: "I just got my first computer."

Abbott: "That's great Lou. What did you get?"

Costello: "A Pentium III-500, 256 Megs of RAM, 12 Gig hard drive, and a
DVD!"

Abbott: "That's terrific, Lou."

Costello: "But I don't know what any of it means!"

Abbott: "You will in time."

Costello: "That's exactly why I am here to see you."

Abbott: "Oh?"

Costello: "I heard that you are a real computer wiz"

Abbott: "Well, I don't know..."

Costello: "Yes-sir-ee. You know your stuff. And you're going to train me."

Abbott: "Really?"

Costello: "Uh huh. And I am here for my first lesson."

Abbott: "O.K. Lou. What do want to know?"

Costello: "I am having no problem turning it on, but I heard that you should
be very careful how you turn it off."

Abbott: "That's true."

Costello: "So, here I am working on my new computer and I want to turn it
off. What do I do?"

Abbott: "Well, first yo u press the Start button, and then.."

Costello: "No, I told you, I want to turn it off."

Abbott: "I know, you press the Start button.."

Costello: "Wait a second. I want to turn it Off. I know how to start it. So
tell me what to do."

Abbott: "I did."

Costello: "When?"

Abbott: "When I told you to press the Start button!"

Costello: "Why should I press the Start button?"

Abbott: "To shut off the computer."

Costello: "I press Start to stop?"

Abbott: "Well Start doesn't actually stop the computer."

Costello: "I knew it! So what do I press?"

Abbott: "Start."

Costello: "Start what?"

Abbott: "Start button."

Costello: "Start button to do what?"

Abbott: "Shut down."

Costello: "You don't have to get rude!"

Abbott: "No, no, no! That's not what I meant."

Costello: "Then say what you mean."

Abbott: "To shut down the computer, press.."

Costello: "Don't say, "'Start!"'

Abbott: "Then what do you want me to say?"

Costello: "Look, if I want to turn off the computer, I am willing to press
the Stop button, the End button, Cease and Desist button, but no one in
their right mind presses the Start to Stop."

Abbott: "But that's what you do."

Costello: "And you probably Go at Stop signs, and Stop at green lights."

Abbott: "Don't be ridiculous."

Costello: "I'm being ridiculous? Well. I think it's about time we started
this conversation."

Abbott: "What are you talking about?"

Costello: "I am starting this conversation right now. Good-bye."

[Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
comments < 4:12:50 PM        >

The naked and the dead. "Six Feet Under," Alan Ball's mordant, metaphysical and deeply humane soap opera, may just be the best show on TV. [Salon.com]
comments < 7:40:23 AM        >

Sun Sues Microsoft for $1 Billion. On Friday, Sun Microsystems launched a $1 billion lawsuit against Microsoft, citing its dissatisfaction with the government's proposed settlement in Microsoft's antitrust case. The Sun lawsuit is the third such suit to erupt in recent day [Windows Informant]
comments < 7:40:16 AM        >

Are you a Microsoft freak like me who wants to be up to date on every Knowledge Base article that comes out of Redmond? Well, then, check out this Web service: http://www.kbalertz.com/ [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
comments < 7:40:07 AM        >

Michael Fraase says RCS is a "a swing and a miss." Hmm. Well, I sure hope not. It's funny, Michael calls me a sneaky bastard, but the way he does it, I like the way it feels. Sure makes for an interesting discussion over a few days among friends.  [Scripting News]
comments < 6:40:27 AM        >

I wanted to give it some thought before responding to Michael, but then I stumbled across this post on the Blogsisters site that makes an important point. Centralized services go down or get clogged and require a lot of supervision. The design of RCS is part of a bet I made in Y2K that desktop websites were the way of the future, because the users get full control of their data, and they don't have to share a CPU with lots of other users. CPUs are cheap. People cost a lot more. There's a lot of power on today's desktop machines that isn't well-utilized. Anyway, in a perfect world, we wouldn't even need RCS, but net bandwidth being what it is, and NATs and so forth, we need something lightweight that's centralized to glue groups of people together. That's the premise of Radio Community Server.   [Scripting News]
comments < 6:40:16 AM        >

As kind of a demo, here's what the Windows Performance Monitor looks like on a modern $2K machine running Radio 8. Look, it's actually doing some work. (Note: I have a huge www folder and upstreaming is turned on.)  [Scripting News]
comments < 6:40:06 AM        >

Here's the public view of a virtually empty RCS. And here's the very helpful Help page.   [Scripting News]
comments < 6:39:57 AM        >