Watching football, I noticed that Crucial.com has its own bowl game. I've been buying memory from them for the past couple of years, and they've always given me good service. I'm glad they're doing well enough to sponsor a bowl.

Google: The year according to searches.

Dexter Filkins: The Legacy of the Taliban Is a Sad and Broken Land. No doubt. I hope the new regime will do better (it almost has to, really), but unfortunately, failure won't surprise me. It's not just the legacy of the Taliban that is at issue, but the legacy of the Soviet invasion, the civil war afterwards, and everything else in this country's tragic history. It's easy to point fingers at the Taliban, but they were only the latest incarnation of Afghanistan in crisis.

Rob Pegararo: 2 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back In 2001. The good: MacOS X and digital devices. The bad: Windows XP and high-speed internet access.

The Nature Conservancy needs to de-dupe its mailing list. I've recieved three copies of the same direct mail appeal. Of course, each address is slightly different (5 digit vs. 9 digit zip, for example), but a little hygiene should fix that and save them some money in the long run. I'm hesitant to give to any organization that can't manage their lists well.

Washington Post: Redistricting Rattles In-House Hopes.

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

Mary McGrory: He's Been Working on the Railroad. "He" is Michael Dukakis. I was wondering what he was up to.

Fimoculous has an interesting list of 2001 lists.

I'm writing this now from my Dad's new PC. Buying this thing at Best Buy was a complete nightmare, but now that it's at home and set up, the Vaio isn't half bad.

Thomas Frank: Totally Extreme Taliban. I'm not sure I buy the conclusion, but the premise is dead-on: the right is firing up the culture-war rhetoric and blaming "liberalism" for the John Walker thing. Reminds me of that time, back in the day, when Newt Gingrich held liberal Democrats responsible for the woman who killed her kids by driving them into that lake. It's sad that we haven't made more progress in the last decade or so.

ZDNet: Microsoft plugs XP security hole. But of course, most people won't do what is necessary to secure their machines, especially on the consumer front. Zombie XP machines being driven by script kiddies are going to be with us for a long, long time. MS isn't being very helpful, either: they won't release stats on how many people have actually downloaded the patch, and they won't send a reminder email to their customers on the importance of installing it.

What kills me is this bug is yet another buffer overrun. Microsoft has been burned by this same issue so many times in the past, you'd think they would actually do something serious to stop them. It's not that hard, really. But sadly, security on the front end does not appear to be a high priority issue.

ABCNews: Tape Missing Subtleties. Apparently, the translation of the bin Laden video released by the US government is missing some bits, like those where Saudi Arabia is acknowledged for the help it provides to bin Laden's movement. Funny, though, I don't hear anyone in the Administration suggesting that we make Saudi Arabia the war on terrorism's next stop.

Colbert King: Saudi Arabia's Apartheid. "McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and other U.S. firms, for instance, maintain strictly segregated eating zones in their restaurants. The men's sections are typically lavish, comfortable and up to Western standards, whereas the women's or families' sections are often run-down, neglected and, in the case of Starbucks, have no seats. Worse, these firms will bar entrance to Western women who show up without their husbands."

You know it's Chrismas when: after a year of hemming and hawing over $10 here and $20 there, you go out and spend $800 in a single day, and none of it is for yourself. Scratch that: you did rent "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" for tonight's viewing pleasure.

Happy Birthday Sarah!

The National Journal has published it's "Quotes of the Year." My favorites:

"It'll be hard to articulate." — George W. Bush, anticipating how he'll feel upon assuming the presidency, USA Today, 1/12.

"He's got the best nursing home in the world — the Senate." — Commentator Armstrong Williams on Strom Thurmond, Washington Post, 4/26.

"It is white." — Pres. Bush, asked by a child what the WH was like, Times of London, 7/20.

"Your guy's acting like he's king." — House Gov't Reform chair Dan Burton (R-IN), to a DoJ official, on Pres. Bush's use of executive privilege, Boston Globe, 12/14.

John has seen Fellowship of the Ring and has a review.

I'm spending more and more time on the command line these days, getting more comfortable with linux. Today, another milestone reached, as I successfully updated this blog using lynx.

Washington Post: Attacks Shelve GOP Effort to Woo Hispanics.

Washington Post: Anthrax Vaccine Plan Sows Confusion. "'First it was Cipro; then it was the other pill. Now it's this,' said Willard Tucker, an employee at the Brentwood postal facility. 'Why do we have to be guinea pigs for them? They don't even know what's going on.'"

Newsbytes: Suspect Claims Al Qaeda Hacked Microsoft. Probably not true, but it would explain a lot.

For some unknown reason, my ISP's mail servers seemed to have been down for the last four days. They're back up now, but if you sent mail to my dshome-dot-net address, it's lost in the ether, I'm afraid.

Washington Post: National ID Card Gaining Support. I don't know what's more frightening: the fact that a greater number of citizens seem anxious to trade the reality of liberty for the promise of safety, or that people like Alan Dershowitz, who we look to to protect our civil liberties, are now endorsing Big Brother.

John is becoming a curmudgeon. And John, just so you know, I'm almost 37, and I remember Duck Tales just fine, thank you very much.

Fred Hiatt is on the mark: security is an important value, but it is not the only important value. This applies not only to the issue he points to — the increasing ugliness of Washington, DC — but to a lot of other ugliness as well.

An interview with Zeldman, who is an inspiration to web hackers everywhere (in this particular case, of course, unrealized inspiration, judging from my lousy design skills).

Washington Post: Bombing Raises Question of Al Qaeda Fate. "U.S. military advisers in eastern Afghanistan worked to scuttle a possible surrender deal yesterday, local Afghan leaders reported. There was some indication that the al Qaeda members wanted to set conditions for their surrender, such as being allowed to surrender to someone other than the U.S. government. But one Afghan leader, after emerging from negotiations with U.S. advisers, said flatly, 'They just want to kill them.'"

Welcome back to the blog world, John! Glad you're posting again.

A new site I just finished yesterday for my day job: SaveOurSecurity.org.

Washington Post: House Majority Leader Dick Armey Retiring. That's the good news. The bad news? He's going to serve out the rest of his term.

John Dvorak has an intriguing tale to tell about why MS might be reconsidering its position on bundling anti-virus software with the OS.

I think this is the longest I've gone without updating this site since I moved it over to the new format. Good thing I did, too, otherwise, it probably would have been even longer. I'm now in a rush to ramp up my linux/perl/apache skills, so my laptop will be booting into linux instead of Win2K most of the time now. But with a web interface, I don't have to care that I won't be running Windows, because I don't need the app anymore. Cooooool. I do miss the JS editing toolbar in MSIE, though. Userland needs to update their browser sniffing code to serve this up to the newer non-MS browsers that can support it.

At my day job, I've been crunching on a couple of new projects. One was completed just last week: FreeDem.com 2.0. The DNC's new community website offers more features, has a better a better user and admin UI, and looks a lot better, IMHO. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to play directly with the code, something I couldn't do when we outsourced this. So this week, I'm a developer again!