Did you know that Déjà Vu can be chronic? I didn't until this week's Quirks & Quarks. That has got to be such a drag, having everything seem like it has already happened. One gentleman described in this story was withdrawing from activities because he was convinced he'd already done them and at the same time was willing to trust strangers because he was convinced he'd already met them. Wow.... Definitely worth a listen if you find this sort of thing interesting.

Speaking of Quirks & Quarks, they should definitely get the most-accommodating-podcast award. They were distributing their weekly podcast in 4-5 separate files, one for each segment. Then people complained, so they distributed it in a single file (which I like much better). Then different people complained. So now they have two feeds: one for the segment fans and one for the single-file fans. Thanks Quirks & Quarks!

Yesterday: 50-car pile up on I-93. Today: Pretty snow on the ground and just the right amount of sun to make it a nice day without being blindingly bright.

It's not a widely-advertised policy, but the brick-and-mortar CompUSA stores will match competitors' prices. If you can prove that an item they carry is on sale for less (and in stock) at another brick-and-mortar store in town, CompUSA will sell that item to you for the lower price. And they don't make you jump through hoops to prove it either; just provide reasonable evidence. In this case a print out of 2 pages from BestBuy.com showing the sale price and my ability to add it to my cart for local pick up was sufficient.

I learned about this policy years ago, back when they were advertising it, and was pleased to discover today that it was still in effect. I wound up saving $30 AND didn't have to deal with the Best Buy sales staff -- a group of folks who manage to be both unavailable (when you need them) and pushy (as they try to get you to buy a bunch of other stuff you neither need nor want). And when I left the store, I didn't have to prove to anyone that I wasn't stealing merchandise -- one of Best Buy's practices that I find offensive, though admittedly not worth the trouble of fighting like this guy did. In fact, when I left the store, the alarm went off because the customer service desk had forgotten to deactivate the security strip. As I was digging in my wallet for the receipt, a nice woman came over, told me I didn't need to worry about that, and promptly deactivated the strip.

What a difference! And, no, I do not work for CompUSA.

EFF's Breaking News:

This Tuesday, an unlikely coalition of left and right, non-profits and small businesses, and Internet advocacy groups will hold a national telephone news conference call to announce an unprecedented combined campaign against AOL's new "pay-to-send" email proposal - which amounts to an "email tax."

To RSVP for the call, please email Alex@Fenton.com. Space is limited.

Under AOL's recently announced "certified email" proposal, large emailers willing to pay an "email tax" can bypass spam filters and get guaranteed access to people's inboxes - with their messages having a preferential high-priority designation. Charities, small businesses, civic organizing groups, and even families with mailing lists will have no guarantee that their email will be delivered unless they are willing to pay the "email tax" to AOL. AOL's proposed pay-to-send system is the first step down the slippery slope toward dividing the Internet into two classes of users - those who get preferential treatment and those who are left behind. The Internet is a force for democracy and economic innovation because it is open to all Internet users equally - AOL's "email tax" would create an unlevel playing field and harm the Internet forever.

Go get 'em guys!

Check out the Association of International Glaucoma Societies site. They have a "Glaucoma Hymn" -- not to mention some bouncing heads in the upper left corner of the page. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is an attempt at viral marketing for the purpose of glaucoma awareness and/or fundraising. The alternative is just sad....

Via Boing Boing.

I just installed a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro SP2. The first thing I did, of course, was to run Windows Update. There are 38, count 'em 38, high-priority security updates that have come out since SP2. Wow. On a cup-half-full day, I'd say "Thanks Microsoft for staying on top of things." Today, however, is a cup-half-empty day. With this many (known) vulnerabilities available for exploit, what is the record time for getting your new, unpatched system compromised? Hours? Minutes?? If I had a spare Windows box and more free time, it would make for an interesting experiment.

I went to another beer tasting at Wine Society on Friday. The eight offerings were all from Avery Brewing in Colorado. I wasn't jazzed by most of them. But one stood out as being exceptionally good, The Czar:

Behold the stunning crimson hues through the inky blackness. Inhale the noble Hallertau hops, spicy and floral. Savor the flavors redolent of English toffee, rich mocha, sweet molasses, candied currants and a hint of anise. We highly recommend cellaring additional bottles, as the Czar will continue to mature and become denser and more complex with age.

2003 - Gold Medal - US Beer Tasting Championship - Imperial Stout

And one stood out as being exceptionally bad, Hog Heaven:

This dangerously drinkable garnet beauty is a hop lover's delight. The intense dry-hop nose and the alcohol content are perfectly balanced for a caramel candy-like malt finish. This is a serious beer for serious beer afficianados (sic) and it only gets better with age. Cellarable for 3 years.

The above text is followed by quotes taken from the emails of happy Hog Heaven drinkers. I had to chuckle when I saw them. The presence of these testimonials (which are noticeably absent from the majority of Avery's beer pages) seems to embody the motto of the best defense being a good offense: "Look at all of these people who say this beer is superb," the page seems to say. "If you don't like it then you are clearly NOT a serious beer afficianado (sic)." Okay, so maybe I'm not a serious beer aficionado, regardless of how you want to spell it. The beer still strikes me as having the flavor of grass and my friend as being reminiscent of his grandmother's cough medicine. I saw one girl pour her sample out rather than drink the remainder. You can drink it if you want. But if you do and regret it, don't come back here and tell me that I didn't warn you.

If you like stouts, go for the Czar.

I had so much fun (read: It took my mind off of how cold my condo is) coming up with anagrams for "Whirlpool Furnace" that I decided to come up with some for an equally loathsome entity. Rearrange all of the letters in "Recording Industry Association of America" and see what you get. So far I have:

Satan's demonic, sour, idiotic, angry air force
Antagonistic raiders of music. "O dear no!" I cry.
I, odious, contrary, Draconian, fascist regime

In the third one, the "I" is used like the "I" in I, Claudius. Or it could be the Roman numeral 1. Sure it's a stretch, but it just seemed wrong to dismiss such an otherwise beautiful -- not to mention, apropos -- anagram.

UPDATE:

Oi! It is acrimony o' arrogant, accursed fiends
Courts: I'm a card-carrying idiot. No one is safe.
Coercion, ransom, ado. Artistic fair use: dying.

I'm glad you asked. With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, here's a little poem I composed for my furnace:

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
I hate thee to the depth and breadth and height
Of the blankets I cling to in the night
For the ends of Patience I fear I face.
I hate thee to the level of everyday's
Most basic need, the heat for which I fight.
I hate thee freely, you I strive to smite;
I hate thee purely, no it's not a phase.
I hate thee with a passion put to use
In my cold grief, and with a seething rage.
I hate thee with a fire I seemed to lose
With my lost heat, -- I hate thee as I pray,
Hope, wish, the flame will light! -- and, if I choose,
I shall but hate thee better every day.

Okay, so sonnets aren't my thing. I am admittedly more of a "There Once was a Furnace from Nantucket" kinda gal. I also played around with some anagrams. Rearrange all of the letters in "Whirlpool Furnace" and you will get:

Ow! Hell! Panic! Furor!
Fuc* no! Who'll repair?
Fie! Hollow crap urn!
I reproachfull now.

Yes, I know there should only be one "l" at the end of "reproachful." It's currently 25° F outside with a windchill of 9°, tonight it's going to get down to 2° with an ungodly windchill, and for the past two weeks my 2-year-old, still shiny and new, furnace has behaved like a petulant child (and an enigma to the repairman). So cut me some slack in the spelling department, will ya?

I have mixed feelings about the notion of gatekeepers. On the one hand, I don't blog to get noticed by the masses. I blog for myself, for any friends and acquaintances who might be interested, and for the people who stumble across my humble little blog via search or accident. As I learned through my work blog, actively trying to gain an audience takes all the fun out of blogging and diverts your attention away from your original intent. That doesn't mean that I don't want to be a part of the conversation. I claimed my blog and I tag my entries in the hopes that what I have to say doesn't go completely unnoticed. But beyond that, I'm quite content to read the A-Listers and hang out with the Z-Listers.

Then I happened upon Kent Newsome's Second Opinion in which he proposes widening the gates by linking to someone he doesn't know and who doesn't have many links. Guess who he picked for his inaugural second opinion post. Me! What thought immediately struck my mind? "Cool, more authority on Technorati!!" Okay, so I'm a hypocrite. Who cares? Y-List here I come!

Kent, in all seriousness, thank you very much for the helping hand. Your "second opinion" proposal is a good one, and I'm honored to have been chosen as the first.

According to this story:

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced sweeping plans to fight the war on terror in the media with information campaigns that target Internet blogs as well as traditional news outlets.

[...]

Communications planning at all levels of government must be "a central component of every aspect of this struggle," (Rumsfeld) said.

Somewhat ironic in light of this fact:

Congressional investigations of government responses to Hurricane Katrina have revealed that two of the nation's key crisis managers, the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, do not use e-mail.

First story via Micro Persuasion; second story via digg.

Archie McPhee, purveyors of all things cool and whacky, just announced their New Product RSS feed. I'm so excited! They also announced a blog contest:

Just link to Archie McPhee on your blog or website and send us an email, to contest@mcphee.com, with a link to your link. We'll randomly select 5 random entries and send them a Gift Certificate for $100 to use on the McPhee website. That's right, $100 worth of Gummy Bacon, Corn Dog Air Fresheners or whatever combination of products strikes your fancy.

I wonder if I'll get extra points for having blogged about them 2 months ago, motivated solely by my pure adoration for their products. Probably not. But it doesn't hurt to ask, which I just did in my contest entry to them. After all, 100 bucks buys a lot of devil duckies!

Interesting video at ZDNet's At The Whiteboard: David Berlind explains why DRM is a load of C.R.A.P.

Via boycott-riaa.com.

This week I was hit by the itsok spammers. Apparently they grew bored playing with the popular blogs and have moved into the more rural parts of the blogosphere. I'm not sure what the purpose of this type of comment spam is. GearHack suggests wearing admins down; Concurring Opinions theorizes corrupting blacklists; and Website Self Help thinks tracking which blogs are spammable and when. I'm leaning towards the tracking theory. Search the web for "itsok" and you'll see where the spammers were successful. Plus this spam was spaced out over time -- not a brute force attempt like I have received in the past, but instead a constant trickle. It was as if the spammer wanted to discover the best time for getting a comment past me. (Answer: It doesn't matter. All comments must be manually approved before appearing.) But what do I know? It would be nice to have a definitive answer so that I stand a better chance at counteracting it.

Mind you, by "counteract" I don't mean merely stop it from appearing here. I've got that under control through manual moderation. I suppose what I really mean is "counterstrike." That's my latest plan. The other day I joined Project Honey Pot. If you have a blog, I encourage you to do the same. In addition, I was especially inspired by the troll currently hiding behind 61.99.35.113. His comment helped me realize just how important Levitra is, so to help spread the word I created my own Levitra page with 10 links to recognized sites which contain valid news and medical information on that topic. My theory is that we can negate each link a spammer attempts to add to our comments with 10 links of our own tucked away in the corner of our sites. Manipulating page rank can go both ways, folks. Toward that end, feel free to copy the links I used on my page so that you don't have to search for valid ED drug information yourself. My ISP (and the NSA) are undoubtedly going to wonder what I'm up to these days.

According to this article at EFF's DeepLinks, the RIAA is now trying to claim that "format shifting" is not a "noninfringing use." In other words, if you rip a CD that you own so that you -- and only you -- can listen to it on your MP3 player instead, you are violating copyright. Not only is that the most ridiculous thing I've heard (so far) out of these bozos, it also completely contradicts what they say on their website:

What is your stand on MP3?
This is one of those urban myths like alligators in the toilet. MP3 is just a technology and the technology itself never did anything wrong! There are lots of legal MP3s from great artists on many, many online sites. The problem is that some people use MP3 to take one copy of an album and make that copy available on the Internet for hundreds of thousands of people. That's not fair. If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail. But the fact that technology exists to enable unlimited Internet distribution of music copies doesn't make it right.

(my emphasis added)

Compare that with this statement from the joint filing submitted by the RIAA and others to the U.S. Copyright Office regarding circumventing DRM:

Furthermore, as documented in Section III of this Joint Reply Comment, consumers can and increasingly do use online services to listen to sound recordings - and to download copies for their use, including by playing them on the CD drives of their computers, precisely the use they wish to make of the access-controlled CDs. Virtually all titles that are initially released in CD format in the U.S. market today are also available through authorized download services and can be listened to in this manner. The submitters have made no attempt to demonstrate that this is not the case for the titles that fall within the "particular class of works" they describe.

So now the RIAA expects us all to pay double -- once for the CD and once for the privilege of listening to the music we purchased in an alternative format -- otherwise we're infringing on their rights. I wonder what position they're hiding behind door number 3....

Boycott the music industry and support independent artists and the EFF.

Enter some basic info about the person of your choice on ths page and you'll be given a CNN story describing how Cheney shot that individual. Too funny.... Via Boing Boing (which displays an amusing image of its own).

David Cagle, MSNBC's cartoonist, has created a Cheney Cartoon Roundup.

The AP has been so kind as to provide a Cheney joke roundup. Still, my favorite two lines have been Jeff Jarvis' "Guns don't hurt people, vice presidents do" and Keith Olbermann's "Shoot first and ask questions later -- much, much later."

Sometimes when you complain, the Fates listen and come through for you -- and then they laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Winter is back in New Hampshire (22° F currently with snow on the way for Sunday) which would be great were it not for the fact that my 2-year-old furnace has just gone south (so to speak). I've managed to get the home office up to a toasty 65° F thanks to a space heater. The rest of the condo is at around 60°. Grrrrrr -- or make that burrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I hope the repairman gets here soon.

On a related note, what is it about the human mind that forces our bodies to interpret temperature based on location? If I were outside and it were 65°, I'd be quite comfortable -- heck, with the sweater I have on, I'd be complaining that it was too warm. But because I'm inside, I'm positively freezing. Why?

According to Cory Doctorow:

The Canadian Red Cross, having eliminated all pain and suffering in Canada, has set its sights on video games that use red crosses to denote in-game health-packs. They've sent lawyer-letters to game-makers telling them that marking health-packs with red crosses is illegal and will damage the Canadian Red Cross.

The recent claim made by the For Dummies folks is silly and annoying, but if they want to waste their time and throw their money away, I suppose that's their prerogative. I think it's different with a charity. Is the money I give to the Red Cross going to be used to help people in need, or to pursue completely ludicrous trademark infringement cases?

From EFF's Breaking News:

Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.

[...]

The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers -- much less privacy than the legal protections for the same information when it's on your computer at home. And even that lower level of legal protection could disappear if Google uses your data for marketing purposes. Google says it is not yet scanning the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve targeted advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility, and Google's current privacy policy appears to allow it.

Read the full article.

Today I finished reading Stephen King's Cell. If you're into technology and the twisted, I highly recommend it. Right now I'm feeling too lazy to write a review. If you don't want to just trust me that it's worth reading, there are reviews at Barnes & Noble.com, the New York Times, and Blogcritics.org.

John Wiley & Sons sent a letter to Jason Calacanis suggesting that using "For Dummies" in blog headlines without attribution was an infringement of their trademark "because of the potential for confusion or dilution." The offending entry? Super Bowl guide for dummies at tvsquad.com.

Go take a look for yourself, and then please explain to me how this entry is causing confusion or dilution? Might someone conclude from the headline (or anything else for that matter) that tvsquad is in any way connected with Wiley and/or the For Dummies® product line? I think not. If the potential for confusion is nil, what about dilution? That seems like a hard sell as well, but not being a lawyer, I figured I should look it up. Here's what I found at BitLaw:

Proving dilution of a mark:

Under the Dilution Act, famous marks are protected against the dilution of the distinctive nature of the mark. There is no need to prove a likelihood of confusion, nor is there any need to show competition between the goods of the plaintiff and the defendant. Therefore, it is possible to use a dilution cause of action against users of the same mark even when the defendant's goods and services bears no relation to the goods or services of the famous mark.

Dilution causes of action are normally brought when the defendant's use of the mark causes either

• "Blurring", by which the connection in consumers' minds between the plaintiff's mark and the plaintiff's goods or services is weakened; or
• "Tarnishment", which means that the defendant's use is unsavory or unwholesome, or the mark is used in connection with inferior products.

The entry in question in no way tarnishes the reputation of the For Dummies® product line or Wiley, and I think one would be hard pressed to make a convincing argument that visitors to tvsquad.com have a weakened association between the name and product as a result of reading that article.

BitLaw continues:

However, the Act makes clear that certain actions will not be subject to the provisions of the Act. Specifically, the Act states that fair use (such as comparative advertising), noncommercial use (such as noncommercial web pages), and all forms of news reporting and news commentary (which would apparently include reporting and commentary appearing on the Internet) would not constitute dilution under the Act.

I assume tvsquad.com is a non-commercial site....

So if I am reading all of this correctly and not missing some finer point of trademark law, all I can conclude is what Jason concluded: Wiley is just another of the "chilling effects bozos."

You know, I just don't get it. If I had come up with a product so popular that my trademark had entered common parlance in a positive (or at least non-negative) light, I'd be thrilled. I'd even encourage it because the more people know about my product, the more likely they are to actually purchase it. And while I don't know a thing about AdSense, based on what I have seen, a blog entry with the words "for dummies" would be more likely to have an ad for the Wiley product displayed on the same page. The sorts of folks who click on ads might then be motivated to click on one to learn more about -- and potentially buy -- a For Dummies® book. Again, were it my product, I would want that to happen.

Of course, it's not my product, and I'm neither a lawyer nor a marketer. But from my admittedly naïve vantage point, it seems that all Wiley has accomplished is to encourage prominent bloggers like Jason and Jeff Jarvis to highlight their legal bullying.

It's 54° F outside. 54 balmy degrees. That's just not right for February in New Hampshire. And it's been this way most of the "winter." What is going on?

Recently I have gotten into the habit of checking that my blog entries have been properly indexed by Technorati because my experience is that sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't. When I clicked on the "extortion" tag associated with my previous entry, I had to chuckle at the related tags:

I wonder if Verizon knows about this? And it also makes me question the origin of related tags. While I can see the advantage using an automated process to generate related tags, it seems there may be some room for improvement such as including synonyms and other words that are more closely related (e.g. blackmail) and trying to prevent accidental or intentional "Technorati Bombing."

According to an article at NYTimes.com, Yahoo! will be joining AOL in the use of the Goodmail service which "gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered."

Believe you me, I completely understand the need to stop spam, but this is definitely NOT the way to go about doing so. This is penalizing the senders of legitimate email when the people who really should be penalized are the spammers -- and perhaps all of the morons out there who click on the links in spam messages and purchase whatever the spammers have to sell. If it weren't for those "customers," we wouldn't have the spammers in the first place, now would we? Why should I, or my ISP, have to pay a fee in order to ensure that my mail is accepted by the provider of its recipient? By signing up with Goodmail, AOL and Yahoo are in essence stating that the sender is guilty of sending spam until proven innocent -- and the way you prove your innocence is by anteing up. That is just plain wrong.

Comcast, if you're reading this, please, please, please do NOT give in and pay this fee extortion. I am a long-time, happy, loyal customer of your television and internet access services, and I fully support your taking a stand against this nonsense. If the users of AOL and Yahoo don't see fit to accept my mail because it doesn't come from a provider who paid for the privilege of having it delivered, then those users are just out of luck. They can switch providers, find some other way to communicate with me, or not communicate with me at all.

AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they will go straight to users' main mailboxes, and will not have to pass the gantlet of spam filters that could divert them to a special bulk e-mail box or strip them of images and Web links.

Oh, that's good. My legitimate mail to AOL and Yahoo users won't be completely denied from the recipients; it will just be stripped of some of its content and hidden where they'll never find it.... Am I the only one picturing a protection-selling Mafioso leaning over and saying, "It would be a real shame if something bad accidentally happened to these messages you want to send."?

Yahoo, this is the kind of thing I'd expect from AOL, but not from you. How could you do this???

Via Boing Boing

This just in at Recording Industry vs The People:

Marie Lindor, a home health aide who has never bought, used, or even turned on a computer in her life, but was nevertheless sued by the RIAA in Brooklyn federal court for using an "online distribution system" to "download, distribute, and/or make available for distribution" plaintiff's music files, has requested a pre-motion conference in anticipation of making a summary judgment motion dismissing the complaint and awarding her attorneys fees under the Copyright Act.

Sheesh...

Boycott the music industry and support independent artists and the EFF.

Yesterday and today my inbox was filled with notifications of comments in need of approval -- all of which turned out to be spam. It admittedly wasn't much effort to delete these comments from the queue and ban the IP addresses in question. Nonetheless, it seems to me that we're working hard to fight comment spam, and all it has done is make it a bit more inconvenient for the spammer. We're treating the symptoms -- or at least trying to -- without curing the disease.

Why do we have comment spam? And wiki spam? And splogs? Because spammers know that if they can get links to their sites in enough places, their sites will rise to the top of the search results. This motivates them to find ways around the obstacles we throw in their path because they're convinced that in the end they will succeed. It seems to me, therefore, that the way to permanently eliminate this crap is to make it impossible for the spammers' sites to rise anywhere near the top. But how, given that we cannot count on Google, Yahoo, and MSN to help us out?

What if we created competing pages of links on our own sites? These pages wouldn't even have to be seen by anyone; they'd just need to be crawl-able by GYM's bots. We could start with a page about the various E.D. drugs which would link to information provided by the FDA, NIH, WebMD, Yahoo! Health, and news sites. (If we're going to manipulate the search results through page rank, we should probably use our powers for good. ) As long as we're all reasonably consistent with what we link to, WE can dictate what rises to the top and thus eliminate the spammers' motivation for spamming us. And placing such a page in some dark corner of our individual sites would be less work than it is to manually approve comments, implement some form of CAPTCHA, force users to register, watch for and delete spam, etc., etc., etc.