If you are one of many who receives “The Paradox of Our Time” email this holiday season, and it’s attributed to George Carlin after 9/11/01, or a Columbine High student, it was written by Jeff Dickson in May 1998. Just so you don’t embarrass yourself.
It is a fabulous piece of writing, however.
Grant mentions purchasing a Marathon Deskmount for his G4. I downloaded the Deskmount installation instructions (PDF), and had a good chuckle. These guys have a great sense of humor, and this has to be the funniest product manual I’ve read in a while. Give it a read, it’s only 8 pages and 2 of those are the cover and the legalese.
We had a similar product in use in our graphics lab, but it’s not nearly as elegant as the Marathon Deskmount, though it doesn’t require modification to the G3/G4 case. I decided that I bang my knees into the G4s we do have mounted this way too much for my liking.
Ever been shopping and when you check out they ask you for your zip code? That make you feel even the least bit uncomfortable? Well, here’s an idea for the next time that happens, courtesy of the latest Dilbert newsletter (and yes, the spelling of Induhvidual is correct—if you get it):
“A store clerk asked for my zip code, apparently as part of their market research. Rather than just saying, ‘No,’ I told the young Induhvidual at the cash register that it was unlisted. The Induhvidual looked at me with obvious confusion and said, ‘I didn’t know that you could do that.’
“I replied, ‘Of course, but like telephone numbers, it costs extra.’ I looked back as I was leaving, and observed the Induhvidual still lost in thought, and the next customer impatiently waiting for service.”
“A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn’t own.” —Frank Dane
“Every day you meet a delegation going to some convention to try and change the way of somebody else’s life.” —Will Rogers
Digital “rights” management company Macrovision has completed its acquisition of Israeli-based Midbar Technologies, and will now take its copy-protection experience into the audio space. For those of you who may not have paid attention to any DRM stuff to this point, this is a bad thing. Fellow ATPM staffer Eric Blair, during a staff discussion, summed up my sentiments perfectly:
“The music industry continually finds new and interesting (or, in this case, warmed over and old hat) ways to shoot itself in the foot. It just kills me to watch the record companies take steps that actively push people towards piracy.
“…If the record companies actually look at the source of their problems, they’d see that costs are too high and most of the crap out there is, well, crap.
“…Honestly, I think the only solution is to embrace the Internet. Make the CDs reasonably priced. Make singles available for download at a small cost. Accept the fact that some people are never going to pay for what you’re selling if they don’t have to, but the majority of people will if you’re not actively trying to hose them.”
(Thanks, Lee)
For all of you who think the federal government doesn’t focus enough on domestic issues:
“[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore…never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.” –Thomas Jefferson
As a warning to Gummi Bears everywhere. . .
Ok, so I work with odd people. And who is more odd—those who perpetuate such acts, or those who capture them for posterity. . . ?
Watch the boundaries of the U.S. and the individual states change from colonization to the modern age. (Thanks, Rick!)
Speaking of QuickTime, Apple is hosting the teaser trailer for X-Men 2 that was shown at ComicCon 2002.