Well, everyone knows that in Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles, when the bad guys are signing up folks for their posse, the Mexican bandits knock the badges offered to them aside and say “Badges? We don' need no steenking badges!”. What many folks don't know (and something I personally have known for years) is that the line is a paraphrase of a line from John Houston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I also knew that a mutation of the line appears in 'Weird Al' Yankovic's UHF: “Badgers? We don' need no steenking badgers!”. But I had NO IDEA this many folks had used the line over the years. The complete Stinking Badges Homepage is the definitive and absolute resource on the use of this line and all of it's varients. A great way to waste an hour or two...
[Via the J-Walk Blog]

Patent 6,671,812: “A system, method, and computer program product are provided for cleaning a computer. Initially, a cleaning program is downloaded to a computer. Next, a search for undesired data and software is performed on the computer utilizing the cleaning program. Such undesired data and software is then deleted from the computer utilizing the cleaning program. ” Unbelievable that this patent could be granted on December 30, 2003! Haven't these people at the patent office ever heard of PRIOR ART!?!? There have been programs around for YEARS that do what is described in this patent. Also, things that are OBVIOUS are not supposed to patentable. And finally, IDEAS are not supposed to patentable, only inventions. This is a concept, not an invention! By this patent, Spybot Search and Destroy (for example) would have to pay a license fee to Network Associates because their product does what is described in the patent—even though their product predates the issuance of this patent by a long shot. This is just one example of a patent system that is broken as described in this Wired magazine article. This is the same U.S. Patent Office that patented a method for swinging on a swing, “in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other”, a patent that tells me the examiner never had a childhood, or they would have KNOWN how much prior art existed. It's definately a system in need of fixing.
End rant.

I went this weekend and bought a couple of British PC magazines at a local bookstore. Really big bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble will typically have them. So why British mags? Here's why: PC Software came with CDs; disc one had article content (all in pdf form) and 65 new freeware/sharware utilties, disc two had over 460 freeware and shareware applications and disc three (yes, that's right, disc THREE) had 8 FULL versions of shareware/commercial programs. PC Utilities came with only two discs, one with 512 freeware and shareware programs as well as a full version of Xara Webstyle; the other disk had 100,000 vector graphics clipart images and web images. So for only a buck or two more than you'd pay for Maximum PC you get, oh, 10 to 50 times as much software! PC Software is part of the Future Publishing stable of computing magazines which nearly all come with this level of software; some of, notably PC Plus, come with a DVD full of stuff with each issue. They also typically focus a LOT more on problem solving and helpful information than U.S. mags, who (in my opinion) spend WAY too much space on product reviews. Oddly enough, at $10.95-$12.95, these mags are cheaper on the newsstand than they are by overseas subscription. Take a look at your newstand and see what you think; I think they're worth the money.

OK, every once in a while it's necessary to link to a really usless but fun site. Here mine for today: The Brick Apple, New York City done in Legos.

James Gleick, writing in the New York Times, addresses problems in namespace:

You don't own your name. Just ask any John Smith.
Then again . . .
The Seattle coffee company known as Starbucks owns its name and, maybe, a little more. It has sued to stop a pair of coffee shops in Shanghai from using the name XINGBAKE. This is the age of globalization, after all. In Chinese, star = xing, and in a way Starbucks = Xingbake. “We came first,” Xingbake's general manager said. “We can't lose.” His name is Mao.
An Atlanta music writer known as BILL WYMAN received a cease-and-desist letter from lawyers representing the former Rolling Stones bass player known as Bill Wyman: demanding, that is, that he “cease and desist” using his name. In responding, Bill Wyman No. 1 pointed out that Bill Wyman No. 2 had been born William George Perks.
Read Article...

Gleik's Website, http://around.com/ (a super domain name, BTW) has great articles about technology, spam, the breakdown of the U. S. patent system, Microsoft and much more.
[Via Netsurfer Digest]

OK, I hate spam just as much as the next guy, but there is some spammer out there that at least has a sort of a sense of humor, based on the names used for the sender of their spam. Here's a sampling from just two days of spam:

Duckling S. Cauterizing
Authoritarian S. Chapel
Screech B. Waldheim
Oersted T. Israelite
Mausoleum Q. Dependable
Enriched R. Alyce
Firing L. Geologically
Bookmobile A. Mosaic

Duckling S. Cauterizing? They may be generated by some spam program, but the fact is, they're funny. I guess the end result is that I delete these with a chuckle instead of a curse (I still never look at the message, mind you.) And BTW, I am really tired of being asked if “my bikini line is ready for spring break”.

Well, I don't have all the archived moved yet so there is a link to the old site for archives, but apart from that the new blog (using Movable Type) is now done and is now the destination for the original link. Please note the new address if you link to it: http://www.trygstad.org/blog/. New features: categories (still haven't set up the category archive), comments, search engine, recent entries.

On a slightly sad note, I received an email from Tamas Miklos, developer of Aida32, the best freeware PC diagnosis and auditing tools and perhaps the best tool of its kind, period. Tamas is discontinuing any further development of this truly outstanding product.
The first time I ran it, I was flabbergasted at the level of detail of information it returned about my system--it even reported the serial numbers of the installed RAM modules! It runs on every version of Windows from Windows 95 through Windows 2003 Server and returns reports in a myriad of formats. The discontinuing of the product comes only two days after Aida32 was featured in a very nice NetworkWorldFusion article. Make sure you grab a copy of the final version while it is still posted. I wish Tamas the very best of luck in whatever he moves on to and thank him for having put in so much work on such a great tool.