I think everybody knows who they r going to vote for. More evidence of Bush's corruption isn't going to convince anybody else to swing their votes. In other words, it's time to change from convincing people who to vote for to convincing people who will vote for Kerry to vote and convincing the stupid people who would otherwise vote for Bush that there really isn't an election next week.

Focus on getting Kerry supporters to the voting booth. Find people, who will vote for Kerry and need help getting to the voting booth and arrange rides for them, offer them rides. Start arranging vote for Kerry outtings (that day), but don't exclude people who want to vote for Bush, that's just plain wrong. Get 2-3 people in your neighbourhood clic together and arrange a time to vote. In fact, create 2-3 clics at home, work, etc and go many times. But vote only once, please. Further, if you know your community is pro-Kerry, then encourage others to vote by making certain voting doesn't slip their minds. A nice PLEASE VOTE sign on your front lawn would do the trick.

By the way, I hate voting, am CDNian and not allowed to vote.

Update: I'm putting Oleg in charge of winning New York and New Jersey states. Mike Ackers is responsible for Florida. Damian for Texas. d.w. for Michigan. Good luck. I'll handle the CDNian vote ;)

The CIA and FBI late Wednesday authenticated a disturbing new al Qaeda videotape which warns the next terror attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead, a man claims on the video. Further claims on the video: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda.

• Evanescence: Bring Me To Life (MTV2 Video Mod from the Dusk and Dawn video game)

Source: Wong Dude.

BBC: Queen of the Sky, otherwise known as Ellen Simonetti, evolved into an anonymous semi-fictional account of life in the sky. But after she posted pictures of herself in uniform, Delta Airlines suspended her indefinitely without pay.

Link: Queen of the Sky's Diary of a grounded Flight Attendant.

Randy: The Blog is currently not responding for obvious reasons; DDoS, blogosphere style. This is an opportunity for the blogosphere to unite against blog censorship. Go here, fill out the form and tell Delta what you think.

Source: WongDude.

Highlights: 724 Solutions’ total revenue in the third quarter was $3.5 million, compared to $3.0 million last quarter and $3.1 million in the same period last year. The net loss for the third quarter of 2004, computed using United States generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”), was $1.5 million, or $0.25 per share.

Randy: Another $1.5m of the $200m IPO, down the drain.

Steve Balmer: There is no question that customers are benefiting today from a healthy, competitive IT industry. Competition requires companies to really focus in on what customers want and need.

Forrester: The allure of free software is accelerating the deployment of open source platforms, but open source is not free and may actually increase financial and business risks.

Randy: Excerpts from Balmer's latest executive email.

Salon: Download "Mosh," the most powerful broadside against the administration since "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Source: StuffAndThings.

Slashdot is reporting that Verizon is accepting FIOS customers. FIOS is Verizon's FTTH/FTTP (Fiber to the premises) service.

"Several people in Keller, Texas have posted pictures and reported 14,679 kbps download and 1,794 kbps download speeds."

Source: Smartpatrol.

Ok, here is my latest eval of Gmail. Point form.

• Gmail notifier is cool :)
• Gmail shell integration is cleaner and less obstructive than Yahoo! mail :)
• Lack of WML support :(
• Lack of HTML authoring support :(
• Less false positive in SPAM filtering :)
• Less postives in SPAM filtering :(
• Gmail interfact is very responsive :)
• Gmail threading is pretty cool :)
• Gmail search is totally fast and accurate :)

Overall, I'm gonna switch permanently from Yahoo! mail to Gmail. Well, at least until I need WML support again. I'll continue to use Yahoo! mail for rich content emails.

Globe Technology: To obtain a Dexit account, consumers simply sign up for the service.

Randy: Simply is the wrong word. You have to fill out multiple forms w/ mostly required fields. I gave up after the first few forms. MHO. And yes, iM a hypocrite.

David Mertz: The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) has developed many XML standards in use within government, law, and business. Election Markup Language (EML) is OASIS' foray into the world of elections -- with an emphasis on voting within governmental jurisdictions. In this installment, David gives readers an introductory look at the structure and purpose of EML, with an eye toward how this standard, which is now used largely in Europe, will substantially influence future data standards in the United States.

Randy: The question is "Will it help elect Kerry?" :)

SeattlePI: Classmates Online founder Randy Conrads was feeling good yesterday after the company he started nine years ago in the basement of his Kent home was sold for $100 million in cash to United Online Inc.

Randy: Validating the social Website business model.

on bitTorrent

• high quality
• faster download

I don't watch movies or do the bitTorrent thingy, so maybe it's good, maybe it's bad.

Source: Alec.

a-sdf: iBLOGthere4iM is written by someone who is against the re-election of George W. Bush. I have to compliment him on being even-minded and fair in his analysis (even though I personally think they are flawed)- he is most definitely not a member of the "radical" left, and doesn't allow his criticism to be couched in the vehement hatred that I see from sites like the Daily Kos.

Randy: Awesome, the Bushbangers has changed their opinion of iBLOGthere4iM from Resolutely Clueless Moron to even-minded and fair in his analysis.

click to enlarge

Note the sky really is purple in TO. When the clouds are lower than the CN Tower lookout platform, the purple lights from the Sky dome light up the clouds w/ purple. All the pics were taken near Spadina/Adelaide, where I workey.

Slate: The Bush tax cuts (which Congress just voted to extend) are an affront to the most fundamental principles of fairness. They are skewed in favor of those who already pay less than their rightful share of taxes and shift the burden even farther onto the shoulders of the most overtaxed. In other words, the Bush tax cuts are unfair to the rich.

Source: Wizbang.

Randy: What the author fails to mention is that the dividend tax rate reduction eliminates taxes to the rich. Conveniently not mentionned. So,  yes, a stupid rich person who continues to pay himself a salary will still get taxed. Unfortunately, rich people are generally not that stupid. They'll switch to a dividend-based income and pay no taxes.

MSN Web Messenger lets you talk online and in real-time with friends and family using just a web browser! Use it on any shared computer - at school, at work, at a friend's house or anywhere you can't install the MSN Messenger software.

Randy: Another firewall buster.

The Geek Dinner tonight was an overwhelming success. We had 2 Floridians, 1 New Yorker and 9 CDNians enjoying two pitchers or 280 ounces of Waterloo Dark. Sorry, and vodka coolers for Alex. What a blast! More to come (pics).

Mike Akers moblogged it first.

Roll call, counter clockwise around the table: Lucius, Oleg, Mike, Damian, Jeff, Terry, Alex, Calvin, Peter, Peter, Cathy and the Real Geek.

I find it quite funny the stupid reasons people are given in some attempt to get people to vote left or right in the upcoming elections. I'll recount some here. With pointers ;)

• Laura Bush, wife of the president, killed someone in a car accident when she was 17 yrs old. OK, I've already mentionned this one.
• W (that's George Bush) was wired during the first debate.
• Kerry (the Ketchup man) brought a foreign object, maybe notes, into the first debate.
• Kerry may not have received his honorable discharge.

Whatever happened to Iraq, the War on Terror, the economy, jobs, health of the poor and elderly? I'm not hearing too much round the blogosphere 'bout such issues. Lucky for W. Or, if you want skeletons in the closet, then try something proven in the courts. Here's someone denying Bush's DUI, even though Bush has already admitted it.

I've decided to prepare a test for people who can't grasp what the real issues of the election are. Answer these questions and it'll tell you who to vote for.

1. Are you better off today than 4 years ago?
2. Where is Osama bin Laden?
3. Did Iraq have WMD (definition) or were they connected to al-Qaeda and 9/11?
4. Should gays be allowed to marry?
5. Is there a flu vaccine crisis?
6. Was al-Qaeda behind the recent hotel bombings in Egypt?
7. Did Cheney give no-bid contracts to his own company?
8. Will Bush be the first president in 70 yrs to preside over an economy that loses jobs?
9. Did Bush cut taxes to the middle class or the really rich?
10. Was Bush's inaction partly to blame for 9/11?

Current Opening: C++ Developer
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Travel: 15-25%
Required Skills:

• Solid C++ experience
• Exposure to RogueWave API would be a benefit
• Experience working with XML technologies(parsing, generation, object serialization)

Send current CV, salary expectations and availability to Matt Zweig.

Don't know. Don't care. Find out anyway. Click here and vote.

Mike: Michael Bryant, the Attorney General of Ontario is considering toying with legislation that will ban vicious and deadly breeds of animal that poses lethal danger to all who cross their paths. I’m talking specifically about lawyers and Jewish mothers!

Randy: Edge funny!

Grad spots another half-hour of fun, Prison Bitch Names. And for good measure, Grad also blogged this great showing of the power of the SUV.

- 3 Dollar Bill

HttpDetect is a HTTP packet sniffer, protocol analyzer and file reassembly software based on windows platform.

Randy: Testing out new software. I'm doing a lot of SOAP and haven't re-enabled by HttpSpy utility, so here comes the trival ware. I checked out a few HTTP sniffers and this was the first one that looked reasonable.

Remember, most of Germany supported Hitler in the early days. They did so, because no matter how stupid Hitler's policies were, they justified them. The same is true of Bush, but too a lesser extent. The same is also true of Kerry, but too a much lesser extent. Some people are willing to say the stupidest things in support of those candidates.

One such things is the bringing up of the fact that Laura Bush was responsible for her boyfriend's death many decades ago when she was a young teenager. Bringing stupid points up like this in a political forum, makes you an idiot. The same kind of idiot that created Hitler.

Of late, maybe 10-20% of the time I post/mail on Tribe, I get the following error message.

ERROR: No message id to look up

The post/mail usually succeeds, but the error has caused me and others to double post.

Today, at work, discussing how we should move our Web development testing forward, we came to realize that re-use of NUnit tests via inheritance causes an undesirable problem. Assuming a Class1 w/ a Test1 method and a Class2 w/ a Test2 method. If you wanted Test2 to reuse the test code in Test1, you could inherit Class1 and call the method.

Sample code

Unfortunately, this code will cause Class1.Test1 to be executed twice by the NUnit framework. The solution is to either use containment instead of inheritance or to use the [NUnit.Framework.Explicit] attribute on the parent class. The explicit attribute will only work if one class inherits the base class. The containment solution should work everywhere.

[NUnit.Framework.TestFixture]
public class Class2
{
   Class1 x = new Class1();
   [NUnit.Framework.Test]
   public void Test2()
   {
      x.Test1();
   }
}

I've been blogging w/ just one of those Bush believers. He's raised some points that make it much easier for me to understand why he believes in Bush. Let's examine those items. He believes...

1. Censorship is a government action. His words exactly. Well, I'm not aware of this definition of censorship. Obviously, he must speak an English that most of us are not familiar w/ or have a dictionary for.
2. By all acceptable rules of logic, it is considered impossible to prove a negative. Again, his words exactly. He believes in myths too.
3. I have frequently stated that I, essentially have no life. His words exactly again. Self explanatory.

So, here we have it. A Bush believer, a.k.a. Bushbanger, must speak a dialect of English unknown to most, believe in myths and have no life. There we have it. Unfortunately, there are a hundred million of said people to the south.

The Christian Science Monitor: Say goodbye to the American software programmer. Once the symbols of hope as the nation shifted from manufacturing to service jobs, programmers today are an endangered species. They face a challenge similar to that which shrank the ranks of steelworkers and autoworkers a quarter century ago: competition from foreigners.

Source: Malakasis.

Randy: Thanks Tom!

Joi Ito: William Gibson is blogging again. Yay! Welcome back.

Randy: William Gibson has some great remarks on Bush.

Adam Curry: Videos you aren't going to see on tv anytime soon.

undergroundclips: Paul O'Neil was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasure Secretary. At cabinet meetings, [O'Neil] says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."

Wizbang has now stooped to posting anti-RCM comments on other blogs in order to try and discredit this anti-Bush blogger. Unfortunately, the comments are simply a litter of namecalling w/ no substance :(

I'm going to add Wizbang as a topic at our Toronto Geek/Blogger's Dinner on the 20th. Along w/ when to have the GTA BloggerCon.

CNet: Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer will announce a new start-up on Wednesday geared toward letting developers build Web applications using a shared online template. Called JotSpot, the company uses "wiki" technology, essentially Web pages designed to let people edit and contribute to projects on a common interface.

Source: Mike Glass.

Washington Post: Google Inc. released a free tool today that lets people simultaneously search the Web and their personal computers for information, a move analysts described as a potential blow to rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. in the race to woo searchers and dominate the hottest area of online advertising. Google's new "desktop search" software offers what Microsoft has been trying to develop for more than a year -- the ability to let people enter one search term and see files relevant to that topic from both their computers and the Web displayed together.

Source: HumbleOpinion.

Dave Winer: The excitement about Google Desktop Search is giving way to the reality. Their choice of file formats they will index is weird. And I don't care what everyone else uses, most of my valuable content is in the CMS I use to edit my blog, and they don't index that, and I doubt if they ever will.

Randy: Disappointing. If it doesn't search my .cs files, then it's pretty useless. I also tried to find a utility by filename, "wsdl.exe", another miss.

Erik Speckman: GDS only indexes history on IE, and only indexes e-mail in Outlook and Outlook Express. I don't use IE, and I don't use Outlook or Outlook express.

Randy: Just a thought? How hard would it be to index Gmail as part of this service? So they index the competitors database, but not their own?

Yahoo! always puts together amazing slideshows. Here's one of pics of last nights debate. Pick your favorite and blog it.

In this picture, I believe Kerry was asking the president, "How many times have you been arrested, Mr. President?"

W3Report: Between Aug 04, 2003 and Aug 25, 2003 (just 21 days), Google added a little over 1.2 billion Web pages to their index. But since Aug 25, 2003 and today, Google hasn't added one single Web page to their index (at least according to Google they haven't). 2004 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages.

Randy: 2^32 = 4,294,967,296. The problem is common in computer science. The solution is to move from a 4-byte id to an 8-byte id. It's a simple solution. I wonder why Google hasn't implemented it.

Li'l Engine: I wrote about this topic last year, but it seems to have come to surface - the fact the Google may have hit their limit on the number of pages they can index.

Eric Norlin: Ping Identity Corporation (www.pingidentity.com) today pre-announced a comprehensive four-step plan for a hostile takeover of Microsoft in the year 2050.

Source: Scobleizer.

NASA: World Wind allows any user to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution LandSat imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data to experience Earth terrain (or any planet with the data) in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there.

Source: Scobleizer, Sudhakar Sadasivuni.

Randy: The 250Meg download is discouraging, but someday, maybe next month, I'll have downloaded it and I'll have a review for you.

Rank Your Agent:  Special thanks to Randy Morin for all his help. Visit his blogging site at: www.kbcafe.com/iBLOGthere4iM.

Randy: Thanks Martin (no relation to Dave) Winer.

Steve Jenson: My favorite: "Bush Calls Incumbency Key Issue Of Campaign"

Randy: Bush is funny, if not a complete idiot. I wonder, if Bush was the challenger and Kerry was the incumbent, would he say the same?

Trying to keep up w/ his mentor George W Bush, Jay Tea of Wizbang posted the following ridiculous statement in my comments.

Jay Tea: By all acceptable rules of logic, it is considered impossible to prove a negative.

W/ logic like that, it's no wonder he's a Bush supporter.

25. This isn't an office. It's Hell with fluorescent lighting.

Source: Steve's No Direction.

Joey deVilla: Wendy and I are engaged! We just told our parents.

Dave Winer: Wendy and the Accordion Guy are engaged. Holy guacamole! (They met at BloggerCon I, I was there the fateful night. I actually saw it happen with my own two eyes.)

Randy: Congrats to Accordion Husband and Wife.

I haven't been able to log onto MSN MSGer in more than 12 hours. It reports that the service is too busy. Anybody else struggling w/ this?

Update: I'm logged on now.

Update: Down for maintenance.

R.I.P.

Source: McKenzee.

More: BBC, Rene Garcia jr, Wizbang, NYTimes, Tribe, Eonline, USA Today, Oliver Willis, Daily Thing, Salt Water Pizza, John Robb, Blog Critics, Dave Winer, Jason Kottke.

Patent: A method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person's head. The hair styling requires dividing a person's hair into three sections and carefully folding one section over another.

Souce: Groovy Links.

Randy: I'm thinking about patenting the goatee, or even better, brushing your teeth, or wait, the best, I'm going to patent having sex :)

One of my readers has pointed out that my comments on Wizband are being deleted and that the term kbcafe is no longer considered acceptable content in any comments.

Update: It would seem, Wizbang has undeleted my posts and removed the kbcafe content filter. I guess this post scared them into backing off on their new censorship policy.

A very attractive blonde woman arrived and bet $20,000 on a single roll of the dice. She said, "I hope you don't mind, but I feel much luckier when I'm completely nude. With that, she stripped from the neck down, rolled the dice and yelled, "Come on, baby, Mama needs new clothes!" As the dice came to a stop she jumped up and down and squealed..."YES! YES! I WON, I  WON!" She hugged each of the dealers and then picked up her winnings and her clothes and quickly departed. The dealers stared at each other dumfounded. Finally, one of them asked, "What did she roll?" The other answered, "I don't know - I thought you were watching."

Source: George B.

A couple more Bush questions.

1. What's a hydrogen-generated car?
2. How many Internet(s) are there?
3. Do you own a timber company?

Scobleizer: I believe Steve Rubel, our favorite PR blogger, is getting married this weekend (or is it next weekend?).

Randy: Congrats and all the best.

Here's a full transcript of the debate. My comments follow.

• What's a hydrogen-generated car? Bush is an idiot.
• Kerry didn't mention Egypt and al-Qaeda. That was an easy knockout blow. Or maybe, he's saving it, for the last debate?
• Bush lied again. He does own a timber company.
• There's only on Internet. There's no Internets. Bush is an idiot.

IEBlog: One thing that bothers me with IE in XPSP2 is the amount of hoops you need to click through to set Google or some other search engine as your autosearch provider.  A quick way to set Google is to use the reg file up on http://www.google.com/google.reg or to install the Google toolbar.

Randy: Better than a setup program.

Chris Pirillo: The Channel 9 Guy asked me to help him on a project today. Since I was tired of working (after doing it for eighteen hours straight), I decided to take a break and offer some assistance. I'm proud to present his completely unofficial autobiography.

Source: Scobleizer.

Dave Winer: Can you believe it, the hotel I checked into doesn't allow you to send email via SMTP.

Randy: What's SMTP? Oh, I remember..., that ancient email protocol for sending SPAM. Get Webmail Dude. Email sucks!

• Interactive Shaped Forms (crap)
• System.Drawing.Region
• Shaped WinForm  (crap)
• Shaped Forms  (crap)
• Creating Shaped Form in C# (ok)
• Non-Rectangular Form (awesome)

Reuters: Bomb blasts hit three Egyptian Red Sea resorts used by vacationing Israelis and at least 30 people were feared dead in attacks that Israeli security sources said bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.

Source: Drudge Retort.

Washington Post: But now urban legends have become cyberlegends, and suspicions speed their way globally not over months and weeks but within days and hours on the Web. [cut] "Pentagon Strike" is just the latest and flashiest example of a growing number of Web sites, books and videos contending that something other than a commercial airliner hit the Pentagon.

Randy: Two stories. How the blogosphere spreads ideas like never before. And the conspiracy thing. I'm on the fence of the conspiracy issue. The conspiracy is plausible and clearly the American government has done little to investigate 9/11. On the other, lack of a viable explanation isn't an explanation.

For Dad. This is what you need. Click here.

Function: To contribute to the development, maintenance and improvement
of software and services. Base Salary is 60-70k.

Position Summary:
•Develop C++ programs, using VC++
•Maintain, test and debug existing software modules
•Design, code and test large components that meet business requirements
•Investigate new technologies and architectures

Required Qualifications:
•Minimum 5 years hands-on experience with Microsoft Visual Studio
•Minimum 5 years experience with MFC and ATL
•Minimum 2 years experience with COM / DCOM / COM+
•Solid understanding of XML and STL
•Minimum 3 years experience in maintaining/debugging existing C++ code.
•Minimum 2 years experience developing multi-threaded components
•Worked on a minimum of 5 large projects (at least 4 team members, at least 4 months in duration), as a senior team member making technical decisions
•Excellent written and verbal communication skills
•University degree in Computer Science or related field, and/or equivalent experience required

Submit resumes to me, w/ strong references. Preferably somebody that I've worked w/.

I had my first look at Wallop last night. This is Microsoft's version of the social networking app. It's, well, umm, awesome! It's built as a Flash applet and is very photo centric. The best looking Flash applet I've ever seen. Wallop is the validation of Flash as an application framework. The mouse seems to jerk around a bit, but WOW this is amazing! I think it's a threat to the entire social networking space. A friend, who I previewed it with, thinks it's a better Flickr. Either way, when Microsoft releases Wallop, they will become the Microsoft of photo-centric social networking. Everybody else can pack there bags and go home.

Update: I got my invitation the next day. See Randy on Wallop.

Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush's campaign manager, sent out an e-mail message to supporters early this morning: Immediately after the debate, visit online polls, chat rooms, and discussion boards and make your voice heard. People's perceptions are shaped as much by their conversations around the water cooler as by the debates themselves.

Source: Daily Thing.

Randy: Very clever. The left is calling this asking people to flood sites with disinformation. I couldn't disagree more. It's called campaigning. If the left wanted to win, they'd do the same.

Don Park: I hate Google, but I am addicted to it. Can the MSN Search team break my Google addiction?  Not if they keep looking at Google as a service instead of a highly addictive drug.  Google is worse than heroin because it's free and always available.  It's so bad that it's part of my daily language and I often find myself pushing it to family and friends.

Randy: Ya, just when I'm done kicking the cigarettes addiction and on the way to kicking alcoholism, I get this new addiction called Googlelism.

I think we're coming to concensus that the next Geek Dinner is Wednesday, October 20th at 7PM, Peel Pub. This is just a two week warning, but I might change my mind on dates in the next few days, but the date will be finalized by next Tuesday.

If you like, don't, have alternates dates, then please response in the comments or send me an email. This is your last week to suggest alternatives. If you don't reply and are a geek in TO, then you are expected to show up.

Cheney: I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.

Here's some previous quotes from Cheney...

• Cheney: I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.
• Cheney: We learn more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s, that it involved training, for example, on [biological and chemical weapons], that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems.

My question now is, if there are no WMD and Iraq is not linked to 9/11, then WHY DID the U.S. attack Iraq?

Scobleizer: My favorite new question for product teams at Microsoft: what is your philosophy?

Mozilla [cut] does provide low and high level APIs ( SOAP and WSDL, respectively ) to communicate with other services. There are a number of publicly available services, listed by XMethods website, which the Mozilla implementation has used for some tests and use cases.

Source: manalang.

Randy: This looks pretty awesome. I'm going to try out some of the samples.

My eBay experiment is not going very well. I have no bids after four days and only three more before I lose 30 cents on nothing. I'm guessing the real bidding occurs near the end of week. Or, I hope it does ;)

Drudge Retort: Caddyshack star Rodney Dangerfield, the bug-eyed comic who built a career on his trademark lament of "I don't get no respect," died today, his publicist said. He was 82.

Randy: Rodney was one of the great comedians of my teenage years. He'll be well remembered by me and this blog.

AFP: Concerned by a loss of momentum after his debate with John Kerry, US President George W. Bush has abruptly scheduled a major speech for Wednesday in hopes of halting the erosion of his lead in the polls.

Randy: I don't think presidential speeches were intended as campaigning tools. I wonder if this speech is paid for by Bush's campaign team or the presidential budget. As Bush has shown, he's got the balls to bend the rules to win this campaign. The networks should give Kerry equal time. We'll know their true leanings, if they don't.

Update: Wow! Bush really deceived the media on this one. Effectively, he got free coverage by the networks on a regular mill campaign speech.

Toronto Star: Will that be cash or Dexit? [cut] The target market is retailers with price tags in the $25-and-under area where transaction speed is integral to the business.

Randy: From someone who actually works downtown TO, the major hurdle for Dexit is getting people to use it. There's plenty of places to use it, but nobody seems willing to forgo cash at a 1.5% premium.

Atrios: According to the most recent Gallup poll, 62% of Republicans think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Randy: I guess you'd have to believe a lot of lies to vote a second time for W.

Dave Winer: And now, for the first time, I'm ready to unveil the preliminary grid for BloggerCon III.

Randy: If I had my pick, I'd attend Mobile Blogging, Overload and Emotional Life (but Law and Making Money look like great sessions too). Now, how can I schedule myself to be in the right place at the right time?

Jeff Sandquist: It turns out our team had an opening for a Group Manager leading the Tools and Components Evangelism Team reporting to Steve Cellini. So after some thought knowing that I love Developer Tools and had worked for Steve during the PDC and enjoyed it, it was time to make the move and build a team again. I am now leading an Evangelism Team where we work with early adopters for Visual Studio Tools for Office and Visual Studio Team System.

Source: Scobleizer.

Randy: I met Jeff last summer when I visited some friends at Microsoft. If I remember he's a CDNian prairie cowboy. When our demo hit the fan, everybody turned to Jeff to figure out what was up. When these guys turn to you for technical leadership, you must be amazing.

Evan Williams: As of this Friday, I will no longer be employed by Google.

Source: Joi Ito.

Tom Brokaw: What I think is highly inappropriate is what's going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad. It is certainly an attempt to demonize CBS News, and it goes well beyond any factual information a lot of them has, the kind of demagoguery that is unleashed out there.

Source Steve Rubel.

Thousand Robots: Friday night was the final round of Jeopardy's Tournament of Champions. I was surprised to see that one of the categories for Double Jeopardy was "Blogs." Here are screen caps of each of the "answers"...read it, think of the correct question ("Who is...", etc.) and then click to see if you are correct.

Source: Joi Ito.

BoingBoing: No site with a linking policy (other than a policy such as this one, created to deride and undermine the idea of linking policies) may link to Boing Boing. Ever.

Randy: Cool idea! I think my blog needs a few policies of its own.

A foursome is waiting on the men's tee while another foursome of ladies is hitting from the ladies' tee. The ladies are taking their time, when finally the last lady is ready to hit the ball. She hacks it 10 feet; goes over and hacks it another 10 feet, then hacks it another 10 feet. She looks up at the men who are watching and says apologetically, "I guess all those f ***ing lessons I took this winter didn't help." One of the men immediately replied, "Well, you know, that's your problem. You should have taken golf lessons instead."

Movalog: That script will print a list of all Movable Type and WordPress installations including usernames and passwords to databases on the entire server. This is a security flaw with web hosts and not any blogging application.

Randy: Oops sorry! That's a LAMP vulnerability :)

A city cop was on his horse waiting to cross the street when a little girl named Mary stopped beside him on her new shiny bike.

"Nice bike" the cop said "did Santa bring it to you?"

"Yep," the little girl said, "he sure did!"

The cop looked the bike over and handed the girl a $20 ticket for a safety violation, saying "Next year tell Santa to put a reflector light on the back of it."

The young girl looked up at the cop and said, "Nice horse you got there sir, did Santa bring it to you?"

"Yes, he sure did," chuckled the cop.

The little girl looked up at the cop and said, "Next year tell Santa the dick goes underneath the horse, not on top."

Source: Uncle Frank.

I've always hated compiling my classes.

namespace ns
{
   public class Class1
   { 
      static public int x = 5;
   }
}

Couldn't the framework do it for me? Guess what? It can. Use the Assembly ASPX directive.

<%@ Page language="c#" %>
<%@ Assembly src="Class1.cs" %>
<html>
<body > <%=ns.Class1.x%> </body>
</html>

Don Box: After months of procrastination, I've finally moved my blogging home to Pluralsight.

Randy: Subscribed.

HNR: a Star Wars television series is coming to your screens after Episode III—Revenge of the Sith completes its run in theaters.

Source: The Movie Blog.

Space.com: The first X Prize flight of SpaceShipOne prompted concern on the ground Wednesday morning -- followed quickly by rumors in the news and on the Internet -- as observers watched the rocketplane repeatedly roll as it sped toward the fringes of space. [cut] Meanwhile, work is underway at the Mojave Spaceport in readying SpaceShipOne for Monday’s X2 flight – the second of the two space shots required to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. A full inspection of the vessel after its X1 flight last week has been completed, Rutan told SPACE.com, with no problems in readying the craft for another rendezvous with history. [cut] Target time for rolling down the runway is 6:30 AM local time Monday.

Source: TonyTalksTech.

Om Malik: I stumbled onto a rather obscure patent: US patent # 6,704,727 awarded to Overture Services on March 9, 2004. [cut] The patent which was filed on January 31, 2000 could turn out to be yet another migraine for the company of the moment - Google. Why? After going through the entire patent, I realized that this is a patent that covers displaying paid and unpaid listings on the results page after a search term is input. Extrapolating a bit, what this means, is that those blue and green paid listings and all those text ads that show up on the Google page after you search for “Paris Hilton Video” and how they are displayed could now very well be under a Yahoo patent! 

Randy: Might be time to move your stock from GOOG to YHOO.

Another great W video. Funny!

Source: Joi Ito (also has mirror).

On eBay. This is the first time I sell something on eBay. If things go well, then I've got 000s more.

click to enlarge

Al Lorentz, reservist currently serving with the US Army in Iraq: It is all the more ironic that this un-Constitutional mission is being performed by citizen soldiers such as myself who swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, the same oath that the commander in chief himself has sworn.

Source: Joi Ito, HumbleOpinion.

Use this class instead of System.Xml.XmlTextWriter.

public class MyXmlTextWriter : System.Xml.XmlTextWriter
{
   public MyXmlTextWriter(System.IO.TextWriter w) : base(w) {}
   public override void WriteStartDocument() {}
   public override void WriteStartDocument(bool standalone) {}
}

Sample usage.

System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(typeof(myType));
System.IO.TextWriter stream = new System.IO.StringWriter();
System.Xml.XmlTextWriter writer = new MyXmlTextWriter(stream);
serializer.Serialize(writer, obj);

Well today, I got rear-ended by an golden-aged (about 55 yrs old) lady. Not her falt, she was slammed into me by a taxi. I can't believe how well she did. Her car was nearly totalled. She pushed me a good 30 feet up the road after the collision, even though we were both stopped when the taxi hit her. Fortunately, I leave 20+ feet in front of me, even when stopped, or somebody else would surely have been involved in front of me. A lesson to all you drivers. Leave 20+ feet, you never know.

My Saturn's bumper bounced back into form immediately, with a small crack. But she hit me so hard that the frame of my trunk is heavily damaged. I've got aches and pains, but still drove a rented Windstar minivan to work after I dropped off the car at the collision repair shop. I'll pay tomorrow.