] Whatever happened to good old-fashioned courting?

] I'm talking about nervous invitations, being picked up at
] the front door, giggling over Blizzards and accidentally
] touching hands and embarrassing sideways glances.
]
] Complete with polite small talk, pleasantries and most
] importantly, a thing we used to call manners.

Oregon State Daily Barometer Online - Hooking up has taken over

] "There is no intention to spare anyone's embarrassment.
] We have been under no pressure to do so," said Deputy
] Assistant Commissioner Andy Trotter on Wednesday. "There
] will be no exclusion zones. He (Bush) could quite easily
] come into contact with demonstrators."

so i guess you have to go to england in order to protest outside of the designated "free speech zone"...

the irony is crushing me.

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

] Despite the rivalry, Microsoft is keen to talk up its
] love for the competition, One Microsoft employee even
] went so far as to say Linux having a 50 percent market
] share would be good for Microsoft. "At least if Linux
] takes off, their viruses will propagate and we won't
] be seen as the bad guys any more," he said. Tipp
] equally sees advantages to Linux taking off. "We think
] Linux is great," he said, adding that competition from
] the penguin and associates keeps the Microsoft on its
] toes.
]
]
] Open-source users, however, aren't quite so overflowing
] with praise, he said. "We haven't talked to a single user
] who has said they're using [open source] because it's
] better."

hm, thoughts on this?

what products are actually better in OSS than their proprietary counterparts? does it all come down to price/performance?

i certainly believe that OSS is better insofar as it provides variety and choice, among other reasons, but is an OSS database system ever gonna truly compete with Oracle, DB2, or Sybase, for example? (I'm not indicating that they don't -- i know nothing about dbase performance rankings -- it's a real question).

Presumably it all comes down to your definition of better. Price/performance is one factor. as i've aged and spent days and years of my life with computers of all kinds, i've reached a point where ease and reliability are more critical than cost, motivating me away from linux for day-to-day activity. but i won't be buying an XServe for my mp3 collection anytime soon, which i guess puts me into the class of user where linux is a development and lightweight server platform.

anyone else have thoughts on this? or on what microsoft can learn from OSS?

ZDNet UK - News - Microsoft: 'We should learn from open source'

] Pornographer Larry Flynt says he bought nude photos of
] Pfc. Jessica Lynch to publish in Hustler magazine, but
] changed his mind because she's a "good kid" who became "a
] pawn for the government."

People don't give Flynt enough credit (sometimes). Is it funny to anyone else that "Pornographer" is a title used by the media?

CNN.com - Flynt won't publish topless Lynch photos - Nov. 11, 2003

Looks like all the pseudo-legitimate zines are wrapping up the year's cool techmology... here's popsci's take.

Popular Science | Best of What's New 2003

another short article describing some neat tech...

Ananova - Fingerprint technology developed for police

interesting physics, if light on details.

Scientist opens gate to new elements

huh. looks like maybe this isn't an issue for the federal government, at least according to these judges...

2nd Judge Blocks Abortion Ban (washingtonpost.com)

[edit] i'll leave my original post below, but take w/ grain of salt. this is the NY Post after all, and i've seen no corroboration yet. perhaps i got over excited
[/edit]

man. looks like i'll be ordering me some mcflurry's.

and also, holy shit !

" Both Pepsi and McDonald's are paying Apple's retail price of 99 cents per song, sources say. And McDonald's has arranged to buy up to a billion songs to meet customer demand."

That's some nice extra revenue, even if reality pushes the number down to, say, 300 million. that's amazing that they're paying full price, AND paying marketing. it's almost like, McD's and Pepsi are acting like Apple is a stronger trademark to capitalize on. or, at least, that iTunes/online music offers them some special benefits. Damn.

New York Post Online Edition: business

] Microsoft was busy covering up an almighty cock-up last
] night after forgetting to renew its hotmail.co.uk domain
] name.

what the fuck! again!? you'd think after screwing up the hotmail.com previously, they'd be paying more attention...

guess not.

The Register