Are you kidding? Dracula?

Nothing proves more how the mainstream media has gone off their collective rocker than the fact that this week, ABC’s 20/20 is devoted to the myth of Dracula.

We should stay in Iraq — for decades…

So sayeth the editors in this past Friday’s Federalist Patriot (link is a PDF):
The usual Demo-gogue suspects — Kennedy, Kerry and company — are increasing the tenor of their demands that the Bush administration commit to a timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. A few misguided Republicans have even signed on to this legislative folly. Insisting that we cap our military support for the new Iraqi government is a dangerous political ploy intended to help Demos rally their peacenik constituency in the run-up to next year’s midterm elections. Dangerous, because challenging the administration to agree to a timetable only emboldens Jihadis, who would very much like to move the frontlines of the Long War from their turf to ours.
The Demos know President George Bush will not agree to such a timetable. As the president has said repeatedly, “Our exit strategy is to exit when our mission is complete.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld protests that any such deadline for withdrawal would “throw a lifeline to terrorists.” Indeed, but it is always easier to sell anti-war rhetoric like “give peace a chance” than it is to advocate peace through superior firepower, and to use force in defense of critical U.S. national interests.

This is science fiction?

Since when does Liar, Liar qualify as science fiction? I just saw an advertisement on SciFi declaring they will be showing it next week. I didn’t realize they were so desperate for time fillers…

ClamXav

MacDevCenter recently featured an article about ClamXav, a free virus scanner for Mac OS X. ClamXav is based on the open-source, antivirus engine ClamAV.
With the loss of Virex as an incentive for purchasing .Mac, François Joseph de Kermadec’s article convinced me to download ClamXav and give it a whirl. I now have it configured to automatically scan my home account every night at 3 AM, after it checks for the latest updates. It also will scan, in the background, any file that ends up in my downloads folder.
The app is Java-based, so it’s a little slower than I’d like on my 1 GHz PowerBook, but hey, it’s free. It does appear to be put together well, otherwise.
We have very few virii to worry about on the Macintosh side of the fence, but it never hurts to be prepared.

In search of a good web whacker

That’s web whacker, not weed whacker. The latter is taken care of by our Black & Decker Grass Hog.
A friend is looking for a Mac- or Java-based web whacker/sucker program for a project. According to what he’s tried so far:
+ Web Dumper doesn’t work
+ PageSucker stops working while in use
+ Site Orbiter doesn’t save files for browsing offline properly
+ Safari’s Web Archive feature isn’t cutting the mustard, either
The project in question is taking a dynamically-generated web site (which does not output HTML files), whacking/sucking it to a local machine in HTML format, then moving it offsite to another web server.
Please leave suggestions in the comments. Thanks!

The NCAA Football Championship BS has already begun

No, that is not a typo in the title. I mean “BS,” not “BCS,” though some would argue they have become one and the same.
I mention this because a few moments ago I flipped on the idiot box to channel surf while relaxing for a few minutes. The satellite receiver had been left on NBC, which is showing the AVP Nissan Manhattan Beach Open, the women’s final, to be specific. They were just coming back from commercial, and noted that in attendance was a large portion of the USC Trojan football team. Then there was the magical BS moment:
“It’s hard enough for a team to win a national title, much less three, which no team has ever done before…” said spokesbabe to Trojan quarterback Matt Leinart.
She was, of course, referring to the fact that USC is ranked #1 in the pre-season polls, and the Trojans will be the frontrunners for another national title in NCAA football. She is, of course, wrong, as is any other sports broadcaster, to suggest that USC may become the first team to win three in a row.
USC did not win the national championship in 2003.
Let me say that again, for the many Trojan worshippers out there, including those infesting sports broadcasting.
USC did not win the national championship in 2003.
That honor went to LSU, which defeated Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl to win the BCS National Championship.
The whole point of the BCS, despite its myriad shortcomings, is to have a clear national champion at the end of the college football season. The whole point of the BCS is that there will no longer be a shared national title. One champion. One.
LSU was the national championship team for 2003. USC was the national championship team for 2004. USC will not become the first team to win three national titles in a row, should they prevail in 2005.
Was USC denied this opportunity, by virtue of Oklahoma being ranked higher in the standings at the end of the year, and getting the shot against LSU in the Sugar Bowl? Undoubtedly. Just as Auburn was denied the opportunity of a national title by virtue of Oklahoma being ranked higher at the end of the 2004 season. Chalk it up to a bias toward Oklahoma in the poll voters. (I note with amusement that now, having gotten it wrong two years in a row, Oklahoma doesn’t even break the Top 5 in any of the preseason polls.)
I’ve said it before and it bears repeating: If USC and its worshippers want LSU to share the national title with them for 2003, then USC must share the 2004 title with Auburn. Leinart and Co. will be going for their second title in a row this year, not their third.

You learn something new every day

John Gruber, via GUIdebook:

…[Y]ou can use Command-Tab switching when you’re in the middle of a drag. So you can start dragging something in one app, then use Command-Tab to switch to another app, and then complete the drop in the new app. I don’t even know when this happened – it might have been like this on Mac OS X all along, but I don’t think I noticed until sometime during the 10.2 era. This also works with things like Exposé and Dashboard.

It sounds obvious, but doing something like that was completely unheard of on the old Mac OS.

Strongspace™

Secure online storage and file sharing. Eight bucks a month gets you 4 gigs. No bandwidth charges, no contract. Nifty.
[Via Todd Dominey.]

ChillyDog

I have a soft spot for working dogs; I’ve always told my wife that if I were in law enforcement, I’d want to be a K-9 cop.
It’s important for working dogs to keep cool, as it is much harder for dogs to cool down than it is for humans. Military working dogs in Afghanistan and Iraq are especially at risk, but the Space Coast War Dog Association is working with Glacier Tek to provide Glacier’s ChillyDog cooling vest to dogs in those theaters of operation.
Regardless of how you feel about the politics of our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, remember these dogs have no say, and are just happy to do the job they were trained to do. If you can support the effort to get as many vests as possible to the dogs that need them, stop by the SCWDA web site and learn how to donate.

Buy your books like you buy your music

At least that’s what VitalSource is hoping you’ll do: buy eBooks from them in the same way people buy music from the iTunes Music Store. James Duncan Davidson just finished the new version of their client application, which looks pretty nice.
I, for one, cannot get in to the whole eBook thing. I have a few PDF-based books that I use for reference material, and I’ve read Cory Doctorow’s books in electronic format, but the latter is really because I’m unemployed and have to do what I can on the cheap. I much prefer the dead-tree edition of literature still.