November, 30, 2002 archives

a poster on kuro5hin complains about the unwanted mail solicitations generated by donating to charity. it’s easy enough to see that the charities are not losing money at this by looking at reports from sites like the better business bureau’s give.org, but it can be frustrating to get off the list of some charities, usually the larger ones. the problem could be that it is cheaper, in the short term, to just keep sending you solicitations than deal with pruning the mailing list.

there's a new cable network called trio (tagline: popular arts television) that looks interesting. in december they'll be running brilliant, but cancelled series, including gun and profit. i don't get the network, but i wish i did. it looks like they fill their schedule with old episodes of late night with david letterman right now.

(via an article by brian lowry of the los angeles times.)

the los angeles times is a little late to the party with its article about the use of shoulder-mounted missiles against commercial aircraft, but it's a good one. interesting info: the black-market price of a stinger rocket is $200,000, which is up from $30,000—a government program to buy the rockets off the black market is credited for the increase.

the comment from the boeing spokesman is that the government should focus on any underlying causes of the attacks instead of forcing the commercial airlines to install defense systems (which are expensive, and of dubious value). isn't that the sort of comment that causes much raising of hackles when said by a liberal?

i'm amazed that there does not appear to be an open-source http (or even just tcp) proxy that will throttle connections so you can simulate a slow connection (modem) over a fast one (broadband). it seems like it should be a total no-brainer to write. charles is the closest thing i've found.