AP: Team Canada skated on to the Bell Centre ice Tuesday night decked out in a replica uniform commemorating the 1920 Winnipeg Falcons, a team that represented Canada in the first-ever Olympic hockey championships. The Falcons went on to win Olympic gold in Antwerp.

AP: Hometown hero Mats Sundin had one goal and two assists, leading Sweden to a 5-2 victory over Germany in their World Cup of Hockey opener Tuesday night.

Randy: To date, all games have been predictable. I see Finland v. Sweden and Canada v. U.S. in the semis. From there, it's luck. But Canada should win and Sweden w/ that goalie from the Leafs finishing second (Salo didn't look good against Germany).

Today, Friendster fired a blogger for blogging. Here's your chance to say NO. Go here and cancel your friendster account and don't forget to put Troutgirl as the reason.

Source: Jeremy Zawodny.

Cory Doctorow: Victoria's Secret has released a line of saucy Disney sleepwear.

Randy: I suspect this'll be one of my more popular pages of all time ;) 

Just a note on the performance of my Google ads. At first, I only put the ads in the right sidebar. Google was reporting a click-thru rate <0.1% on those banners. Then, sometime yesterday, I added the banners on the comments page, between the blog entry and comments. My click-thru rate on these ads is >1%. Performance!

In the first meaningful game of the new hockey season, Finland rolled to a 4-0 victory over the Czech Republic.

Looks like Vokoun held the Czech Republic in the game for the first two periods, trailing only 1-0 even though Finland outshot them 24-9. Vokoun was 1st start of the game. Koivu was 2nd star.

... was the beginning of the end of the Dude.

ZDNet: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates spoke exclusively with CNET News.com on Friday about how Microsoft handles deadlines and new opportunities.

Randy: As usual, Bill gives us some great quotes (in italics).

It's not a tiny download, but it's the kind of download that is not unreasonable in today's world.

WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious.

And so if you want my basic assessment here, the glass is three-quarters full.

Our scheduling and predictability on this project has been better than it was on OS 360.

From: Jim Allchin
Sent: 27 August 2004 19:45
To: Microsoft and Subsidiaries: All FTE [Full-Time Equivalents]
Subject: Longhorn update

I wanted to provide you with an update on our Longhorn progress, and several announcements we are making today that bring us closer to delivering Longhorn.

Today, we're announcing that we are targeting broad availability of the Longhorn "client" OS in 2006 and the Longhorn server in 2007. We also will be making key elements of the Windows WinFX API developer platform that Longhorn provides available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

During this last year, we have been listening closely to our customers and partners as well as our employees. Now that we have completed Windows SP2, it is time to react to that feedback. Customers and partners love our vision – they would like parts of it sooner.

This is what customers have told us they want as soon as possible, and this is what we will deliver in 2006:

• The highest quality OS we have ever shipped

• New information management tools to improve productivity, including fast desktop search and new, intuitive ways to organize files

• Major security advances that build on Windows XP SP2, such as new technologies to make clients more resilient to attack, viruses and malware

• Flexible and powerful tools to reduce deployment costs for enterprise customers, including technologies for image creation, editing and installation; and much simpler upgrades for consumers

• Significant improvements in reliability, including a robust diagnostic infrastructure to detect, analyze and fix problems quickly, and new backup tools to keep data safe

• A platform that creates Developer excitement with the availability of rich APIs [application programming interfaces]

In addition, our intention is to broaden the delivery of the Windows WinFX developer technologies — which include the new presentation subsystem "Avalon" and the new communication subsystem "Indigo" — to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Allowing developers worldwide to target this existing installed base will create huge new opportunities for them and enable exciting new experiences for hundreds of millions of PC users.

To ship the Longhorn client in 2006, we will deliver the new Windows storage sub-system, code-named WinFS, separately from the Longhorn release. The WinFS team has been making great progress and the new storage system will be in beta testing when the Longhorn client becomes available.

We are on track to deliver the Windows Longhorn Server operating system in 2007.

Our commitment to broad availability of the Longhorn client in 2006 and broadening the API set underscores our long-term vision for the Windows platform, and our desire to deliver high-quality innovations that our customers and developers are asking for in a timely fashion.

We will not cut corners on product excellence. Our powerful vision is intact; our shipment plan changes will let customers get access to parts of the vision faster.

With the decisions we are announcing today, I believe we are on a strong path forward to deliver an awesome Longhorn product that will provide incredible value to our customers, partners, developers, and shareholders.

jim

Source: Mary Jo.

Andy Bradford Christopher Elizabeth Ivana Jennifer C. Jennifer M. John Kelly Kevin Maria Pamela Raj Rob Sandy Stacie J. Stacy R. Wes

AP: An Islamist women's group has launched an Internet magazine aimed at recruiting Arab women to fight holy wars against non-Muslims.

Randy: I assume W's war against Muslims is not to blame.

AP: Small toys showing an airplane flying into the World Trade Center were packed inside more than 14,000 bags of candy and sent to small groceries around the country before being recalled.

Source: BoingBoing.

Register: Microsoft project managers have demanded that features be jettisoned in order for the next major version of Windows to ship as projected by 2006, and the major loser is the new GUI, codenamed Avalon, according to multiple sources who spoke to The Register on condition of anonymity. Features are being "decoupled", according to current Redmond jargon, meaning they may be introduced at a later date. Or not. [cut] Another feature likely to be "decoupled" is WinFS, or Windows Future Storage.

Randy: Big projects are a thing of the past. The common theme is constant missed deadlines, high programmer turnover and de-scoping. The solution is Baby Steps, Spiral Development and eXtremely Programming. Wake up the giant!

Guardian: Our expert panel votes for the top 10 sci-fi films.

1. Blade Runner - Randy: I always forget that Harrison Ford was the star of this film.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Randy: Too slow.
3. Star Wars - Randy: My favorite sci-fi film was Empire Strikes Back.
4. Alien - Randy: iM not much into horrors.
5. Solaris - Randy: Huh?
6. Terminator - Randy: Overrated.
7. The Day the Earth Stood Still
8. War of the Worlds
9. The Matrix - Randy: Top 3.
10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Randy: First hardcover book I ever read.

Reuters: Democrat John Kerry on Thursday challenged Republican President Bush, to weekly debates from now until the Nov. 2 presidential election.

Source: Drudge.

The Amazon ads don't seem to be paying their weight. I'm getting between 50-100 click thrus per day on 7000 impressions per day, but I haven't converted a click thru to a sale in nearly 2 weeks. I think I might make the leap to Blogsense in the next week.

CJay92: Shewfelt finished fourth in the vault even though Dragulescu muffed the landing on his second of two vaults. Canadian gymnastics officials argue the mistakes Dragulescu made on his final vault make it mathematically impossible for him to receive the score he did.

Randy: I assume the CDNian gymnastics officials can't count. Take whatever score Dragulescu got and add in the typical cheating involved in Olympic sports and you get whatever medal standings you want. Dragulescu is Romanian. Adrian Stoica, the president of the men's technical committee is ???

CJay92: Shewfelt isn't the only Canadian involved in an Olympic gymnastics controversy. A Canadian judge says Stoica urged him to increase the score he gave to the high-bar performance by Russia's Alexei Nemov.

Slashdot: In a follow-up to Microsoft Leaves U.N. Standards Group, it appears that it may have been in reaction to the UN's sponsorship of the 1st annual Software Freedom Day in which its International Open Source Network (IOSN) will educate Asian users on the benefits of Free and Open source Software (FOSS). FOSS promotes several high-profile applications including OpenOffice, Mozilla, MySQL, and Apache.

Randy: I have to wonder, where in the U.N. charter, they justify the promotion of free software.

NEAsia: The Cmo2 can offer more convenience for the purchaser to obtain a product by a shortened delivery from selecting the merchandise, settling the payment to receiving the merchandise in 0.5 seconds. The purchaser can also play video game after the purchase using the LCD on the vending machine. With the new vending machine, the machine owner can set automatic discount sales during any designated time hours, automatic notification function when the products are sold out, the machine goes out of order, and so on. This will provide the owners with high added-value, the company explained.

Randy: A great IBM commercial come to life.

Today I received six more gmail invites. Send me an email w/ first name, last name and email address, if you want one. I'll pick the six names I know best.

Update: Steve has some invites too. First come, first serve.

Update: Three down. Three to go.

Dick Cheney: [My wife] Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue our family is very familiar with. With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone ... people ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.

Source: Oleg Dulin.

Randy: This is for the red states.

Got some. The great thing is that I can just delete the comment. It takes 1 minute to find and delete these comments. It takes 5 minutes to write a post about how it only takes 1 minute. I must be bored.

Update: SPAM taken care of. I think it took more than a minute, but definately less than two.

Update: Got some more the next day. Deleted it in 10 seconds of effort and 1 minutes to add this blog update :)

Did you know you can write SWF in C#? The C# to SWF compiler.

Source: Robin Debreuil.

The talk around the blogosphere "Why doesn't Google write their own browser?"

• Anil Dash
• Jason Kottke
• Flex-mx

Or for that matter, buy Moz or Opera? AOL spun off Moz for a reason. They couldn't compete w/ IE. Their own products used IE rather than Moz. Could this have changed? Should AOL have stuck w/ Moz?

AOL: An amazing 48 percent of those aged 55+ now use instant messaging, with photo sharing their favorite feature. [cut] Photo-Sharing Leads Features: The most important IM features nationwide are photo sharing (39 percent).

Randy: Is this about IM or Photo-Sharing?

Michael Bond: How did you end up working at Chernobyl?

Alexander Yuvchenko: I was on the night shift. When I turned up I found out that the safety test that had been planned for the day had been put off until the evening. The reactor had already been powered down and so we would just be overseeing its cooling, which is a very easy job. I was thinking that I wouldn't have much to do that night.

Randy: And then?

David Corn: In 1978, Bush, while running for Congress in West Texas, produced campaign literature that claimed he had served in the US Air Force. [cut] Bush had never served in the Air Force.

Randy: Lies, more lies and W.

StuffThatIsAwesome: Yes, if you were to plot the level of Hottness of Asian Women, you would get an INDC (Inverted Normal Distribution Curve). That's Amazing. Truly, there are no average looking Asian Women.

Source: Malakasis.

Chuck Allen: A new release of the HR-XML Consortium's library of specifications is now available for download.

Randy: If you received the announcement letter, you can scan it to find the following.

Chuck Allen: THANKS TO Randy Charles Morin, KBCafe.com, for bringing these two problems to our attention.

Randy: And scanning the resume.html file, you'll also find they've acknowledged myself as a contributor to the Resume schema. Thanks Chuck!

Applet-X.net: Jabber, and it is an open-source messaging protocol that can do basically everything that AIM can do, except that no large companies have really endorsed it yet, so it hasn't caught on that much (a mixed blessing). Enter Google.

Star Wars Fan: You didn't hear this from me, but you might be curious as to why everyone at ILM just signed NDA's saying that they will not discuss Star Wars episodes 7, 8, or 9.

Randy: Mmmm! Episode VII.

Last week, we (the company I currently work for) had a sign put up on the building telling all you 401 travellers that we are here. South side of the 401, between Renforth and Dixie. Look for us!

OnStar: Hello, OnStar.
Customer: My ice cream, it’s locked in the car, and it’s melting.
OnStar: Your ice cream is melting?
Customer: Yes, please hurry! It’s like 200 degrees in there!
OnStar: I’m unlocking the vehicle now, ma’am.
Customer: Hurry! My three-year-old is in the car, too! I’m worried he’s going to eat the ice cream!
OnStar: OK, the vehicle should be unlocked now, ma’am, and I’m just going to go ahead and notify child protective services right now, too.

Source: BoingBoing.

Randy: Read all three, they are funny! Especially, the D&D playing 37 yr old. I'm only 35, so it can't be me. Yet.

Reuters: Kennedy -- one of the most recognizable figures in American politics -- told a Senate committee hearing on Thursday he had been blocked several times from boarding commercial airline flights because his name was on a "no-fly" list intended to exclude potential terrorists.

Souce: John Robb.

Admin for Bugmenot: Our host pulled the plug.

Bryan Swain: I don't have the inside scoop on what happened to BugMeNot, but thought you might find this interesting. I've used the site in the past from work with no trouble, but as of today, it is blocked (our company uses WebSense filtering). I get a message saying that the site is blocked by the "Racism and Hate" category... figure that one out!

Source: BoingBoing.

BoingBoing reader: Dungeons & Dragons turns 30 this year.

Randy: I was a big D&D player as a teenager. Some attribute my creativity to D&D. I was more often than not the Dungeon Master and I never ran the players thru a staged module. I always invented my own stories. I created a planet called MiddleWorld and Keil (Kayne), Eudon (Eric), Thor (Dave) and the Ranger whom I can't remember his name (Todd) were the heroes of the land. I expedited their rise to 20th level thief, warrior, warrior and ranger. Later, Todd and I use to play Shadowrun and Rift w/ Jake and Skully. To think, it was 15 years ago. I saw Todd, chance encounter, in Kitchener last year.  Haven't seen Kayne, Eric, Dave, Jake and Skully in some 10+ years. Those were great days, playing RPGs till 3AM or later during exams.

this evening. I'll pay for it tonight and tomorrow. No more walking till 6PM tomorrow, when I arrive at Emerald Lake.

Nielsen//NetRatings: Sixty-three million Web users connected to the Internet via broadband during July 2004 as compared to 61.3 million accessing the Internet through narrowband. Overall growth for broadband connections rose 47 percent year-over-year, while narrowband dropped 13 percent annually.

Source: Searchblog.

BBC: Shares in Google have shot up 18% on its first day of trading, marking a dramatic comeback from the humiliation of its cut-price public offering. Google shares - whose offer price had been set at $85 - ended their market debut up $15.33 at $100.33. The price had been cut from an initial estimate of $108-135, in the face of weakness in the tech sector and several stumbles during the offer process.

Randy: After a rocky week or two leading up to the IPO, everything is now happy-happy.

News.com: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has handed Microsoft a second victory in its dispute with Eolas, rejecting browser patent claims that could roil the Web if upheld.

Forbes: Google's initial stock price was set at $85 and its market value calculated at $23 billion - less than originally expected, but still impressive for a 6-year-old dot-com dreamed up in a garage. The final initial public offering price, set through an unorthodox auction that alienated many on Wall Street, means the stock will likely debut Thursday under the symbol "GOOG" on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Randy: The biggest .COM IPO EVAR! Congrats to everybody involved, especially are Blogger friends Steve Jenson and Evan Williams.

A great article that describes some of the alternate banking solutions in the pipeline. Quotes from the article are in italics.

Scotiabank has just announced that in October or November, it will invade the United States with our Canadian version of the debit card.

iDebit, which allows buyers to make secure Internet purchases using the Debit-Interac system.

MasterCard PayPass, uses embedded chips in a card or a fob, and it accesses your MasterCard credit account. It has passed testing with flying colours in the United States; on Wednesday, McDonald's Restaurants announced it would roll out PayPass in select locations around Dallas and New York.

This is where I conspired to take over the world 8 hours per day, every weekday.

GlobeAndMail: Air cooled by the frigid waters deep in Lake Ontario started bringing relief to buildings in downtown Toronto on Tuesday after the valves were symbolically opened on the multi-million-dollar project. [cut] Brought to the John St. Pumping Station, the water's cold will be extracted and used to lower the temperature in downtown buildings. The water will then be treated and enter the city's drinking supply.

Randy: Refreshing ideas make Toronto my home. Ok, I live in Toronto suburbia.

BBC: The new range is $85-95 a share - a reduction of about a quarter from the previous level of $108-135, which valued the company at $36bn (£19bn). With the rewards set to be less, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are selling a smaller part of their stake. Other executives have also decided to hold on to more of their stocks and the total number of shares on offer has dropped to 19.6 million from an initial 25.7 million. That will cut the market value of Google to about $26bn and generate just $1.9bn instead of the previously forecast $3.6bn.

Randy: Google's IPO experiment is turning into a royal bust.

CNN: Security has been tightened at the Athens Games after a man in a tutu jumped into the pool from the diving board during the men's synchronized three-meter springboard event. He stayed in the pool for several minutes Monday before officials realized he was not supposed to be there and pulled him out of the water.

Randy: Only a crazy canuk could pull of the biggest splash (pun intended) at the Olympics.

Here's an interesting article by our friends at O'Reilly. The premise of the article is that PHP scales. The author seems to give two reasons for this perceived scalability versus JSP.

1. PHP doesn't provide session or state storage and therefor programmers using PHP don't use it and session and state storage don't scale.
2. PHP runs on Apache and HTTP and they scale, so therefor PHP scales.

I assume then, that if a programmer using JSP didn't use session or state storage and ran his JSP application on Apache, then it would scale just as well as PHP.

The author errors when he translates "performance != scalability" into "scalability is not associated w/ performance". Although, it is true that performance != scalability, it is absolutely true that scalability is a function of performance and they are surely associated. Don't get me wrong, performance is not the only variable in the function, but it is surely one of the weightiest.

Quote: Here is a simple icon you can put on any web page. When the page is loaded, the browser goes to this site to fetch and display the icon with the current electoral college score. Clicking on the icon takes you to this site. The icon is a .png image file, which all modern browsers understand. At the right is an example of what it looks like.

To install it on a web page, just include the following HTML code at the place you want it to appear.

<a href="http://www.electoral-vote.com">
      <img src="http://www.electoral-vote.com/ev.png" alt="EV">
</a>

Source: dw.

NY Times: A small group of countries, led by Japan, Norway and Iceland, says some stocks have recovered sufficiently that they can be both protected and eaten.

Randy: This article has a lot of great sound bytes, or rather word bytes. In italics.

But even as whales have faded as a resource and cemented their status as an environmental icon, with whale watching now a billion-dollar business, pressure is building to end the 18-year moratorium on commercial whaling.

It is hard to find a whale biologist who, in terms of numbers alone, disagrees with the contention that some whale stocks are, in theory, harvestable now.

But in countries like Japan, where the only meat in school lunches after World War II was fried whale and parboiled blubber, the right to go whaling has become an issue of national pride.

Even so, every year it is clearer that the 1986 moratorium will not prevent rising numbers of whales from being hunted and eaten. Growing numbers of scientists say the only way to see this resumed whaling happen in a controlled way is for anti-whaling countries and groups to concede that the blanket ban must be replaced by a stock-by-stock management plan.

Randy: I don't understand man's need to hunt wild animal. We've domesticated enough of them to live on. And I'm no tree hugger. Cut trees. And when you learn to grow more whales, then you can harvest them too! But, that said, a stock-by-stock management plan, just might be the compromise that keeps some whale species alive.

Register: An government-funded study into porn consumption Down Under has concluded that a little of what you fancy might do you good - and may even make users "more relaxed about their sexuality" and lead to healthier marriages.

Randy: I guess it wouldn't hurt if I posted a few more pics of Paris Hilton.

see right sidebar of blog. A few notes about that picture. I normally do not wear white collar shirts anymore. The pic was taken last Thursday, where I travelled back in time back from this Monday, at the EI launch party.

Personal note: I drank 25 beer last week :)

My latest attempts to reduce bandwidth have paid in big dividends. Total hits and visitors are up over last week, but total bytes is down almost 50%. I actually implemented many tactics.

• No archive, except on homepages,
• No referrers, except on homepages,
• No blogroll, except on homepages,
• Removed banner,
• No Yahoo! presence,
• Fixed up that Paris Hilton referring page from Google Image Search.

Yes, I'm an uncle! For the seventh time. My sister had a baby on Saturday. A girl! Her second. Her second girl. My fifth niece. Counting my own kids, that's seven girls and only three boys. The boys in the class of 2025 are the lucky ones.

Update: Her name is Elizabeth Mary. 7 lbs 14 ozs.

I was quoted on XML.com this week. Likely cause of my previous criticism, I don't think XML.com likes me very much. Excerpt follows in italics.

Back on Nottingham's site, Randy Charles Morin speaks up for W3C XML Schema:

XML Schema hits the 80-20 mark. End of story.

Nottingham politely rebuts Morin:

Sorry, I need more convincing than you saying it's good enough. Lots of people -- including myself -- have done the work and found XML Schema lacking, so much so that they're looking for something better.

Slashdot: The news out today morning is that eBay has bought a minority stake in Craigslist. Here's Craig's take on the whole issue.

eBay Acquires Minority Interest in craiglist: The World's Online Marketplace eBay, and craigslist, an online community featuring classifieds and forums, announced today that eBay has acquired a preexisting minority ownership interest in craigslist of approximately 25%.

Randy: And here's Craig's version of how this came to be.

Craig: So, with the idea of establishing checks and balances, mostly on myself, I made a gift of some equity in craigslist to a guy who was working with me at the time. (I won't name him, out of respect for his privacy). I figured it didn't matter, since everyone agreed that the equity had only symbolic value, not dollar value. Well, the guy later left the company, and decided to sell his equity, which i learned he had every legal right to do. He met with eBay, and eBay in turn approached us to see how we would feel about them getting involved with us.

Just an update on my Amazon Ads, the ads in the right pane. I've had 3 purchases already. In my experience, I get slightly over $1 USD per purchase in referral fees. The best part of Amazon is that earnings tend to compound w/ time, so that as I get more and more people to sign-up thru my site, I get an increasing amount of money thru repeat business. Overall, I'd rate the ads as a big success in its first week. Thanks to my readers!

I'm trying to figure out how to make this service available to friends, so that others can benefit in a blog based ad service that pays well. If you want to guinea pig, then please contact me (email, Yahoo! MSGer, MSN MSGer is randy@kbcafe.com) and we can discuss. Looks like the Yahoo! presence links are failing. My Yahoo! ID is randymorin.

Lou Dobbs: Here is a list of companies we've confirmed are "Exporting America." These are U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers.

Randy: Would it be illegal, if someone created a list of email addresses for these companies? Would it be illegal, if someone created a form to send messages to this list of emails? Would it be illegal, if that form was made public for all of us to use? Consider this a challenge! Who is bored?

This is Rumour Control: Senior intelligence sources in the U.S., as well as officials in the Middle East, claim that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has made a strategic decision to confront American forces in Iraq's Shi'a heartland.

Source: Dave Winer.

Randy: The anti-American sentiment grows. I guess you could re-elect Bush and continue down this paved path. Or you could elect a more sensitive president.

The bandwidth just kept going up and it's starting to look like I won't be able to aford to blog much longer :(

So, how do you fix? I read thru the server logs and realized that one referrer in particular was getting a lot of hits and dragging a lot of bandwidth. It's not hard to figure out why. View it. So, I put in the ASPX to check for the referrer and page and redirect to a smaller version of the same (1/30th of the original content). This should quell the disturbance in the force.

Another thing you readers could do is stop reading my blog. Wait, no, please read. Ok, maybe not. Ok. I'm poor again :(

Scott Johnson: August 11, 2004, Indianapolis, IN. "She Said Yes!".  The FuzzyBlog is happy, no, delighted, no overjoyed, to announce my engagement to Shelley Johnston of Indianapolis, IN. 

Source: Dave Winer.

Randy: Congrats Scott! I wish you all the happiness of my own 10 yr. marriage (and three kids). Ok, maybe more happiness. No chance! And your new son wants a new daughter.

Samantha Page, left, and Lily Kwan, right, presenters of Naked News, prepare to present in London. Photo: AP.

Source: geek.

Randy: Boys only ;)

You are water. You're not really organic; you're neither acidic nor basic, yet you're an acid and a base at the same time. You're strong willed and opinionated, but relaxed and ready to flow. So while you often seem worthless, without you, everything would just not work. People should definitely drink more of you every day.

Which Biological Molecule Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Source: Danny Ayers.

I hope you don't mind, but I'm working on an Amazon Banner script online. It's cool, check it out, in the right sidebar.

Update: Finished. And hell are they cool. I had Amazon banner on other sites before, but there was always one issue that prevented making any money from them. Bandwidth. These new banners are bandwidth friendly and relevant. Click and buy to support me blog.

Update: I was asked, how I added relevance to the Amazon API w/out big bandwidth. Well, I built my own caching relevance engine.

Update: I'm always amazed at the volumes on my blog. I just put the banner up and I already have 42 clicks and 36 unique visitors :) No sales yet :(

Update (day 1): no sales :(

Netcraft: The www.bcentral.com domain now redirects to the new Microsoft Small Business Center, which offers shared hosting accounts starting at $29.95 a month, with domain names available for $20 a year.

Randy: Not enough bandwidth or bandwidth options.

Quote: As crazy as the title of this news post may sound, it's true to some extent. Mozilla Firefox has managed to rack up 10 security holes in 4 months compared to 7 security holes in Internet Explorer within 4 months.

Randy: Juice has racked up 0 security holes in 4 months :)

A new version of the HR-XML specs are going out soon, w/ changes included from yours truly. In particular, I gave them some better XSD definitions for ISBNType. And supposedly, I get some credit in their somewhere. Thanks Chuck!

Quote: As at June 30, 2004, we had signed up more than 32,000 consumers and deployed to more than 250 merchant locations. [cut] Revenue was $521,400 in the three-month period ended June 30, 2004. [cut] In April 2004, the company signed an exclusive merchant licence agreement with Bell Canada and received a payment of $2 million in licence fees, of which $500,000 was recognized as revenue in the second quarter.

Randy: Revenues from operations were $21,400 for the Q or approximately the salary of one employee.

Charlie Poole: The final release of NUnit 2.2 is now available on Sourceforge and will be on the nunit.org site within the next few days.

Source: Scobleizer.

Randy: Anybody know what's new in 2.2?

Cory: So the folks at Downhill Battle have seized upon this as an opportunity to prove the substantial noninfringing uses of P2P by releasing a .torrent of SP@ (complete with checksum info so that you can verify that this isn't some malware-riddled trojan [cut]).

Randy: A checksum is some kind of guarantee that the download isn't a malware-riddled trojan? Let me question this. If the checksum info doesn't match the delivered package, what happens next? What if the original bitTorrent source (no not Microsoft, rather Downhill Battle or other), is a malware-riddled trojan? How hard would it be for me to provide a link to my own malware-riddled trojan version of XPSP2 and claim it's legit? I'll even provide a checksum. I wonder how many stupid people are right now downloading XPSP2 using bitTorrent? I wonder how many smart people are right now downloading XPSP2 using bitTorrent?

One of my great readers posted a great comment on DoubleClick and Ad/Spyware. It was so good that I'll just copy it verbatim. Some formatting.

I use spy sweeper with good results. Of all the spyware I hate doubleclick the most. I had a telephone conversation with the doubleclick people & they basically told me they were going to install their cookie on my PC and there was nothing I could do about it. Be aware they do offer an opt-out cookie but it doesn't last within two days of installing the opt-out cookie doubleckick spyware was back.

I have resorted to harassment their on a toll-free number 1-800-793-6320 (call them and leave long blank messages as they have to pay for the telephone time).  Another form of harassment I use is to buzz their email and the email of their customers, email addresses are provided below.

Each time I find a copy of doubleclick on my PC I send thirty or forty emails to the addresses and include in the message each time I find doubleclick on my PC I will buzz your email or words to that effect.  Remember to change your sending address each time you send a batch of emails as they can block email by address. Also send a complaint to UCE@FTC.GOV regarding doubleclick and spyware in general. Do not buzz this FTC email address.

One or two people tying up the phone lines and buzzing will be only a minor irritant; on the other hand 100 people will cause quite a problem for doubleclick, so pitch in and help. 

privacy@doubleclick.net, publicrelations@doubleclick.net, webmaster@doubleclick.net, sa@support.doubleclick.net, motif@support.doubleclick.net, sd@support.doubleclick.net, mv@support.doubleclick.net, ensemble@support.doubleclick.net, crf@support.doubleclick.net, dfa@support.doubleclick.net, dfp@support.doubleclick.net, dartmail@support.doubleclick.net.

InformationWeek: 132,000 computer programmers disappeared during that period, falling 17% from 764,000 in the first half of 2000 to 632,000 earlier this year.

Source: Slashdot.

Randy: This period also saw an increase of 132k unemployed computer programmers working on free software. Hey, just maybe the free software is the reason they are unemployed in the first place.

Mark Nottingham: XML Schema falls short of describing what’s really going on; something more is needed. [cut] XML Schema does what it’s supposed to — it describes constraints upon the XML Infoset — with complete coverage, but it misses the boat; by trying to do all things, it makes doing simple things really difficult.

Randy: I take up the argument pro-XML Schema in Marks' comments.

Dave Winer: There's something missing from the search engines. I'd like to give it a name of a thing or a person and have it show me, in reverse chronologic order, what's been said about that thing or person. That would allow me to effectively create a custom weblog about a person or thing, even if there was no weblog about the person or thing.

Randy: What's wrong w/ Feedster and Technorati?

Quote: At least one analyst from The Radicati Group decided to take the battle back to the bloggers, and posted responses intended to discredit their criticisms of the report—under a pseudonym. Once it was revealed that a Radicati employee was actually making the posts, e-mails from recently opened Yahoo and Hotmail accounts—traced back to Radicati by Internet addresses in their header information—were sent to some bloggers' employers, urging that they fire the bloggers.

Source: Steve Rubel.

Randy: Here's a pointer for all you undercover marketers. Do it from an Internet Cafe, so they can't trace it back to you.

Quote: Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, is cruising towards a lesser-known, but very possible business problem - the "all your staff suddenly drive a Ferrari" factor. [cut] But the bigger question for Google is whether the new found super-wealth of all its employees with generous stock options will affect their work ethic.

Source: An x-724 veteran and friend who just became a Daddy.

Randy: The Ferrari factor at 724 Solutions was quite amuzing. The price peaked and tumbled so quickly that most all of the employees were not capable of taking advantage of the high stock price. In fact, many are still left holding the shares today. It currently trades at 1/1000th of its March 2000 high.

Source: BoingBoing.

Quote: My found-through-Craigslist inventory runs deep. My last two apartments. My dining room table. My living room couches. My futon. Red Sox tickets. Freelance writing assignments. I sold my car through the service. Do you Craigslist? OK, it doesn't quite have the ring of the now-classic "Do you Yahoo?" pitch line, but tech investors would do well to keep their eyes on Craigslist.org, the San Francisco-based international swap meet. Craigslist began as a daily e-mail sent out by founder Craig Newmark in 1995 and is now a motley collection of want ads and personals, with a little space left over for rants.

Randy: No flash. No ActiveX controls. No Java applets. It is simply useful. Started simple and grew organically. Now 14 people equate to $25 million in sales.

Henry Blodget: The Google IPO auction process, the market's spectacle du jour, has begun. Should we join in the frenzy? Or just watch?

Source: John Battelle.

Bush: Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

Source: Oleg Dulin.

Randy: Now we hear the real truth.

Quote: While it is common practice to catch exceptions to deal with expected failure cases, it is also common for managed applications to encounter errors for which the application is completely unprepared.

Randy: A very complete article on catching those unhandled exceptions.

At the request of a friend, I downloaded Picasa and Hello. Both products are now under Google's umbrella. They are pretty cool. Picasa organizes your photos and Hello allows you to send them to friends on the Hello P2P network. Built in chat. You can also send photos to your blogger.com blog. The user interface is not very intuitive, I don't see my dad and wife using it anytime soon, but I can see this product being upgraded into something interesting in the short-term.

Quote: Google offered to purchase more than 23 million shares sold to 1,105 employees and another 5.6 million stock options held by 301 people, according to the filing. [cut] The company will trade its shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker GOOG.

Randy: iM a little confused. To buy back 23 million shares would cost over $2 billion. The IPO is going to net Google only $1 billion. Where's the math majors? Where's the accountants?

Quote: A US software company that gives its workers free beer on Friday afternoons has been named the "Best Small Company to Work for in America".

Randy: I remember driving the car down to the beer store Friday morning and loading it up w/ a dozen cases (24) of beer. I'd bring them to 724 and we'd pig out on beer, pizza and Half-Life from noon till we were sober enough to drive home. Those were the days. Thanks Greg!

Quote: Emmy Award winner Dennis Miller brings his take-no-prisoners, suffer-no-fools style to CNBC’s prime time lineup.

Randy: IDennis Miller. I wish he had a blog and an RSS feed. I haven't watched TV and liked it this much in many years.

I accepted a full-time positions as a Senior Lead Developer at Opence. Big mistake.

Quote: The Company also announces that its growth continues to accelerate. The company has now passed the 35,000th active member milestone within the first three months of marketing its online dating service. "The continued acceleration of our membership growth is encouraging and timely as we will be launching the public beta test of our Messenger service next week." stated Mark Pavan, CEO of Lemontonic.

Well, here's the OPML that'll go out in the next release (12 feeds included). If you want your feed included in the OPML, then send me a link to your Webpage and RSS feed. Just remember, Juice is experiencing a bit of growth, so don't ask for bandwidth you're not prepared to handle. Thanks!

A few bug I discovered w/ Yahoo! Mail this last weekend.

• Do not move a Yahoo! Mail to another folder from a wireless device. The result is that the message is gone, for life.
• Yahoo! wireless Mail is sllooowwwwiiiiinnnnnnggggggg doowwwnnnn. I can't tolerate the lack of speed anymore. GMail is quickly becoming an option.

POLL

Do you think Microsoft is capable of changing its ways?  77.6% Yes 22.4% No Total Votes: 384

Randy: There's a great poll w/in the article shown to the right. People are starting to believe in Microsoft.

Don Park: "With Bush is doing much of the work of terrorizing this nation for political gain..."

Source: Dave Winer.

Quote: An op-ed in the National Post by Ed Morgan of the Canadian Jewish Congress lauded the CRTC’s restrictions in part because in 2002 the network broadcast an interview with white-supremacist-whacko David Duke. In a few weeks, an application to broadcast Fox News in Canada will go before the very same commission that has effectively shut out Al Jazeera. Will anyone intervene to let them know that Fox has also hosted Duke? Yup, the same year Duke was on Al Jazeera, he also guested on Fox where he spun bizarre conspiracy theories about “the Israeli involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.” Anyone who watches Fox knows by now that its “abusive” content transcends airing the views of obvious nut-bars like Duke.

Randy: This will be fun to watch.

Quote: President Bush declared Monday that "knowing what I know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq," signaling that revelations of flaws in the prewar intelligence had not changed his mind about the wisdom of attacking and removing Saddam Hussein from power. Bush acknowledged that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq, but he said they might still turn up. "We still would have gone to make our country more secure," he said, adding that Hussein "had the capability of making weapons."

Randy: Canada has the capability of making weapons of mass destruction. In fact, I would suggest that almost every country in the world has this capability. I guess Bush has the justification to attack anyone he wants now.

Randy: After raising the level from Yellow to Yellower to Yellowest, we finally make the jump to Yellow? Yes, the DHS Website still indicates the level is Yellow. Should it not be orange? Note that one of the protection measures of the DHS is "Providing the public with any information that would strengthen its ability to act appropriately."

Update: One of my readers has corrected me. It would seem, the terror level was raised again, but does remain Yellow nationwide and orange in the target areas.