Val Kilmer to be... blah, blah, blah

I don't care so much about this article itself; I focused more on the accompanying photograph. Is that seriously the guy who played The Saint? I know that was 12 years ago, but he seems to have aged nearly twice that.

Kilmer to be king of Bacchus in New Orleans parade - Yahoo! News

Today's xkcd

With a reference to Calvin & Hobbes... fantastic!

Windows is officially irrelevant

In a NYT piece this morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer argues that the upcoming "Windows 7" will be important. However, this paragraph from the article just made me laugh:

He added, however, that Windows 7 should not have the same sort of problems with compatibility with devices and programs that Vista did. While some of underlying architecture of Vista changed from earlier versions of Windows, Windows 7 is built on Vista’s underlying structure.

That means that users upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 won't experience any problems. However, anyone that didn't upgrade to Vista because of the compatibility problems will still face the exact same roadblocks if they try to use Windows 7.

He's assuming that all his customers are using the latest version and just might just have had some problems getting it to work. But in my lab, I still have all the workstations running Windows XP. I was hoping the next version of Windows would respond to criticism from the cautious and provide a cleaner upgrade path from XP, but based on this report of Ballmer's CES keynote I'm no longer optimistic.

Thankfully, our use of XP is just a fallback measure for a few pieces of software that aren't cross-platform; Linux is our main operating system and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Ballmer: Windows Is Still Relevant - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

That book thing

So, I've seen this a bunch of places now, and I decided to finally do it.


Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

---

So, the closest book to my chair at work is the Unix System Administration Handbook. Unfortunately, page 56 has no sentences as it's a bunch of charts and tables. However, from A Practical Guide to the Unix System (the next closest volume):

Refer to grep in Part II and to Appendix A, "Regular Expressions," for more information.

Purchasing Gift Cards?

If you're intending to buy gift cards this Christmas (or anytime, really), go to this site to purchase them. Not only is there a huge selection, they ship quickly and up to 8% of the proceeds go to support my friends who are missionaries in Germany with Greater Europe Mission.

With the holiday rush, you need to order them by the 17th if you want to get them by Christmas.

Thadd and Laura Davis Gift Card Center

Dr. Fun

I was poking around some of my old bookmarks today and ran across the following comic. It's over 14 years old now, but it's still great (and probably my favorite from the entire run of Doctor Fun).

Dr. Fun - The shocking truth behind zucchini nut bread

Today's Wondermark

Good stuff.

Wondermark #463; In which the Future is Saved

Today's Dilbert

Heuristics!

In the wake of recent events

As is often the case, Dave Barry's humor column makes an important point.

You know what I miss? I miss 1960. Not the part about my face turning overnight into the world's most productive zit farm. What I miss is the way the grown-ups acted about the Kennedy-Nixon race. Like the McCain-Obama race, that was a big historic deal that aroused strong feelings in the voters. This included my parents and their friends, who were fairly evenly divided, and very passionate. They'd have these major honking arguments at their cocktail parties. But unlike today, when people wear out their upper lips sneering at those who disagree with them, the 1960s grown-ups of my memory, whoever they voted for, continued to respect each other and remain good friends.

What was their secret? Gin. On any given Saturday night they consumed enough martinis to fuel an assault helicopter. But also they were capable of understanding a concept that we seem to have lost, which is that people who disagree with you politically are not necessarily evil or stupid. My parents and their friends took it for granted that most people were fundamentally decent and wanted the best for the country. So they argued by sincerely (if loudly) trying to persuade each other. They did not argue by calling each other names, which is pointless and childish, and which constitutes I would estimate 97 percent of what passes for political debate today.

The rest of the column is good and funny, but this bit struck me as immensely poignant.

(hat tip to Doc Searls)

Dave Barry: And the winner is . . . the man with the martini | MiamiHerald.com

Have you heard the new piece by W. A. Mozart?

I haven't either, but a fragment at a library in Nantes, France, was recently confirmed as being written in Mozart's hand.

Unknown Mozart fragment found in French library - Yahoo! News