Friday, September 6, 2002

Of all the Apple "switch" ads I like Ellen Feiss' best. Of the parody ads my favorite is (drumroll): http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jgg221/ 5:52:39 AM     Last night's All Things Considered had a piece on airline food - specifically a website that featured photos of the stuff. http://www.airlinemeals.net/ Of course you can take your own meals, but (and I note this from a personal experience) you risk the covetous looks of fellow passengers. Each time I've tried this I have had to share. My favorite, by the way, is to manage a quick trip to the Red Iguana near the Salt Lake City airport if time permits. http://rediguana.citysearch.com/10.html If you are going to SLC make a trip. There is a more formal restaurant in the downtown section called the Blue Iguana. http://blueiguana.citysearch.com/1.html I'm a vegetarian and often have problems finding food at US Mexican restaurants. Here they take note, nod and bring back wonderful stuff. I would normally mention Tamale Molly at this point, but you can use the search window and hunt it down for yourself. 5:52:16 AM     Mike commented on my rantings about the lack of accessible amateur science. He points out that Edmund Scientific carries kits and pieces that bridge the gap between amateur and canned. I sent a considerable percentage of my childhood earnings to these folks and it is nice to see that they are getting away from the toy store mode they went into during the 80s. The paper catalog is preferable to their web presence. Ring them up at 800-728-6999 and ask for a copy. They are on the expensive side, but sometimes it is very hard to find things. 5:51:52 AM     The wonderful toy section... I had a chance to play with a prototype of the Estes "Kick Dis Power Puck" yesterday. It is basically a "hoverpuck" that you can kick. We played with it in an office corridor. The claim is that it will work on any "flat surface" I don't know if it would work on asphalt for example. It will probably be available everywhere ... prices run between $32 and $50 .. this is the lowest price I could find. If its rechargeable battery last long enough and if it is somewhat tolerant of gliding surfaces, this will be a killer toy. http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p.pgm?Q=1&I=LXZT21&P=0 5:51:32 AM     In the past few years Microsoft has been aggressively enforcing its licensing. It clearly has a right to do so (it would have been nice if they did this when organizations began to use MS products so they could appreciate the total costs involved, but that may have slowed deployment). Venezeula has decided to help Microsoft by eliminating government software piracy entirely. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26928.html An interesting piece appeared in the NY Times yesterday on the same subject http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/05/technology/05CODE.html It is particularly amusing that Microsoft is backing a group called the Initiative for Software Choice... amusing as federal courts have ruled that restricting choice (illegally) is precisely what Microsoft has been doing for two decades. A local school system that I do a bit of volunteer work for was audited by Microsoft. As one might suspect, they could not show a license for every piece of Microsoft software. The conditions for compliance forced them into a long term license that locks them into Microsoft products for several years and has them paying the license for every computer they acquire - Intel based, Macintosh, Sun or whatever ...It was expensive enough that several extracurricular programs in the school were eliminated (some music, drama and one girl's sport). The school should have complied with the original license requirements of Microsoft, but the fact that this wasn't enforced for so long is interesting. Off the record several school MIS types told me they believed that Microsoft was using the schools to help establish dominance. They were given software and claimed that they didn't realize that moving to a new version number (can one use the word "upgrade" in the case of Microsoft?) required them to purchase a license. At some point I will comment on the use of PCs in schools - I've seen remarkable successes as well as remarkable failures. There is a considerable amount of "fear, uncertainty and doubt" on the part of school administrations and a belief that parents will revolt if their third graders don't know how to master Windows 98 and PowerPoint. 5:51:05 AM

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