Apparently, elephants in India are getting drunk, and Paris Hilton wants us all to do something about it.

Apparently the idea of not giving the elephants any alcohol never occurred to anyone. I suppose I can forgive Paris for not thinking of this- she is, after all, a complete moron. But I’ve generally thought Indians were at least marginally smarter than the average American hotel heiress…

I have talked here recently about my difficulty resisting the left over halloween candy. But for those who have no such concerns, and for whom money is no object, there is the world’s most expensive dessert.

$25,000 for a snack. This is almost as inconceivable to me as the $100,000 bottles of wine some people consume. It really puts things like $50,000 watches and $250,000 cars in perspective: if you drop $25k on dessert, spending a quarter million on something you drive around in for several years seems downright economical.

Bon appetit!

Every year we buy more halloween candy than we give out. That’s great: I like the little snacks.

And every year I grab a handful (or two, or three…) of the stuff every time I sit down in front of the TV. So, there I am, feeling overweight and lazy, eating hundreds of totally empty calories. I feel this strange compulsion to eat the stuff as fast as possible, so it is gone and no longer a temptation. But wait a sec- whether I eat it in one week, or eat it in six months, I’m still ingesting the same calories.

The secret to losing weight and increasing physical well being starts with moderating calorie intake and increasing the rate of calorie consumption. That is, eat less and exercise more. Yes, there is obviously more to it: things like distributing your eating over the day in smaller meals rather than one or two really big meals, and engaging in certain types of exercise more attuned to burning fat. But at the root of the thing, health and weight is really simple mathematics.

I generally consider myself a reasonably smart guy. But when it comes to my own thinking, what drives me to do patently dumb things, I’m…well, I’m really, really dumb. Want a tiny crispy crunch? Or maybe a little Wunderbar…they are small, have two…or five.

I believe in the importance of copyright.  I also firmly believe in “fair use”: that is, if I pay for the right to use your content, I have the right to use it for my own personal use on any platform I choose.  Thus I am totally against abusive DRM systems that (for example) prevent me from watching a movie on my computer, and later watching it on my TV.  

My position puts me in a bit of a sticky position when it comes to “file sharing” and peer to peer (p2p) software.  If a person has a collection of music they have digitized from properly licensed CDs for their own personal playback on their computer or portable music device, that’s cool.  If they then install some sort of file sharing program to make their music collection available for anyone to download…that’s not cool. 

But the music and video/movie industry is being incredibly stupid.  They don’t just want to stop folks from sharing files, they want to force people who buy a CD to pay again when they want to listen to that same music on their computer, and again to listen to that same music on their iPod, and again….  They also want to have legislation that would allow them to illegally search and seize your home/computer to “prove” you are violating their laws.  They want people to believe that file sharing is so important, such a huge crime, that wire taps, keyboard/data logging, and prison terms are the norm.

They spend tens of millions of dollars a year, lining the pockets of government officials all over the world.  And money talks: witness the recent report from the U.S. patent office / Commerce and Intellectual Property Office that tells us that file sharing turns children into criminals and provides classified information to terrorists. 

If you want to read the entire 80 page government report, go here (pdf file).  Technologically, installing a peer to peer file sharing program (as the report indicates) has risks for home users.  It is often not well understood by users that, when they download something using a p2p program, they usually immediately “open up” that file for download from *their* computer as well.  In a corporate / government environment, use of peer to peer file sharing programs should be controlled if not outright forbidden.  There is no place for uncontrolled Internet based peer to peer file sharing in the office (although arguably bittorrent is used for some important/necessary purposes, there are “safe” bittorrent clients available).  That much is true, and where I work, the traffic from common file share programs like Kazaa is blocked on the network.  

But some of the conclusions and/or emphasis within the document is outright ludicrous.   Don’t share files: think of the children!  Don’t share files: you are supporting terrorism if you do!!  Man, those RIAA / MPAA goons must have really put on a niiice party for Under Secretary Jon W. Dudas….

Someone has been submitting about five “Viagra!” news items to one of my websites every day now for about six months.   Such news items are moderated, and never appear on the site since I delete them.  That’s dumb.

But that’s not the dumbest spam I’ve ever seen.  This is…

From: %CUSTOM_FROMS

Subject: Your approval is waiting! 

Dear %CUSTOM_HOMEOWNER%CUSTOM_7. %CUSTOM_8

You can receive %CUSTOM_3 for
%CUSTOM_4 per month.

Please respond %MTG_TODAY.
http://someURL.com

Bert Gipson
%CUSTOM_FROMS

%QUOTES

I received this email in my inbox a couple of days ago.  Apparently, this genious acquired a mailing list, installed some sort of automatic spam generator, then forgot to actually enter any of the configuration settings that would have given their message …well, a message. 

If any significant percentage of spammers are this dumb, I have hope…

I was reading one of my news feeds the other day and came across this gem about a woman who beat a dog breeder with a dead chihuahua. Apparently, the dog breeder sold the puppy when it was too young. The purchaser took the puppy to a vet who told her it needed to be returned to its mother, but the puppy died while in transit. The puppy’s purchaser then proceeded to assault the dog breeder using the dead chihuahua as a weapon.

I suppose the woman who bought the puppy was distraught. But I find it really, really hard to believe that she gave a rats ass about the poor little dog, and was more concerned about getting her money’s worth. And using the dead dog as a weapon does nothing to build up my sympathy for her. WHat the heck is wrong with people?

That said…am I some sort of disgusting freak for finding it hard not to laugh at the image of a woman using a chihuahua to smack around another woman? For some reason, all I can see in my mind’s eye is a strange combination of Paris Hilton and her weird looking rat dog with Monty Python and the dead parrot sketch.

I spent a few minutes the other day following a series of threads about a disagreement between a website designer and a “famous” blogger. In summary: a guy paid for someone to re-design their website. Some people criticized the design, and the guy who paid said “anything that’s wrong here is my fault”. Someone sent him a
of a different way the site could have been done, and he posted it saying “there are some good ideas here, I think we might use some”. Then the designer resigned, and some people went ballistic.

Firstly, none of us really know what went on behind the scenes between the designer and their employer. Maybe he said nasty things to her, or used all sorts of double-edged compliments. To be honest, I don’t care much about the specific incident. What I do care about is the discussion regarding the relationship between a designer (any designer, whether for a website or for a house) and the client.

Good designers have artistic vision: the client pays them to use their talent to create something better than the client alone might be able to. However, it is the client who lives with the result…and it is the client who pays the bills. So, in any client - designer relationship, in my opinion, the designer must always accept the will of the client. I don’t care how “artistic” a design might be, if it isn’t fully and entirely comfortable for the client, the designer must willingly make changes until it is.

If the designer builds something to suit themselves and just wants the client to be a bag of money to fund the effort, then they aren’t a designer- they are an artist. Or at least they think they are. Sometimes they will find a client who says “build whatever you want, I trust your vision, here’s a big bag of money”. To me, that client is either a moron, or an artistic patron- they aren’t asking for something to be created that is “for them” or “theirs”, they are asking for the designer to have fun and spend their money. That’s great, but you better get that in writing at the outset.

In reality, if you are an artist, the only way to truly remain “independent” and “fully in control” of your vision is to pay for your own work. If someone is paying you money, you really are beholden to them- what they want takes precedence even if it flies in the face of your “vision”. If you don’t like that, you walk away with a smile on your face and your artistic integrity intact…and your pockets slightly more empty.

I remember watching a home design program on TV years ago. There was a husband and wife team, and they showed all these somewhat (to me) far out home designs. During the show they were interviewed, and the topic of the client’s preferences came up. What they said more or less sent chills up and down my spine: paraphrasing, it was something like “Our clients have no input into what we design- if they don’t like the result, they obviously lack taste and shouldn’t have gone for the best to begin with”. The arrogance fairly dripped from the screen as these two prima donnas pranced about pointing out the total lack of flat wall space or how the angled walls and crushed gravel flooring in the living room echoed the shape of the hills outside. If a designer ever acted that way with me, I’d punt them so fast it would make your head spin. Its *my* house (or blog, or what have you), *my* money- your job, Mr. or Mrs. designer, is to hear my desires and apply your artistic skills to realizing it more fully, correctly, and elegantly than I could by myself.

Unfortunately, there are endless examples of ad campaigns that say nothing with great style and cost millions, houses that can’t be lived in and which make their owners uncomfortable at every turn but which win design awards and websites that present elegant vistas that speak of nothing the user cares about. This tells me that there are enough people out there willing to bow to the “designer’s vision” without speaking up for what *they* want (despite being the ones that pay the bills) to convince at least some designers that this is the way it’s meant to be.

I was reading a disclaimer today regarding the Internet that was written in response to/was inspired by an equally thorough disclaimer written for a rock preserve (whatever that is).

I love the following bits (emphasis mine)

The other people in the preserve, including other visitors, our employees, agents, and guests, and anyone else who might sneak in, may be stupid, reckless, or otherwise dangerous. They may be mentally ill, criminally insane, drunk, using illegal drugs and/or armed with deadly weapons and ready to use them. We aren’t necessarily going to do anything about it. We refuse to take responsibility.

I love it

Apparently Google is taking Microsoft to task over the new search bar built in to Internet Explorer 7. The Googleheads are upset over the fact that this search bar defaults to using Microsoft’s own MSN search.

First let’s set aside the obvious fact that Firefox “defaults” to using Google, and no one complains about that. And then we can ignore the fact that Microsoft is the manufacturer of IE 7 and therefore somewhat entitled to give precedence to their own products. That leaves us with one slim thread holding up any credibility to Google’s concerns: that somehow, Microsoft is taking away a user’s “freedom of choice”.

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