coming soon to a DSL connection near you

So true. And hilarious!

more on input methods

Chris commented on my previous entry on my views on using input methods properly. Interesting read, since his background is on speech technologies, with which I've had my share of experience but not anywhere near the level that Chris has.

cristian's spaces logo

I can't believe I forgot to blog about this. About two weeks ago Cristian created the following icon and added it to his weblog:

It was really great of him to do this. Cristian has also been of great help in reporting problems and sending suggestions for spaces. Many, many thanks!

essential books

Patrick (who started his blog a couple of days ago and sent many great suggestions and bug reports for spaces) has posted his list of "Essential Books". Great idea. Most of the books on Patrick's list are favorites of mine. I would add Design Patterns by the Gang of Four, Peopleware, and The Mythical Man-Month. Maybe once I make enough time to redesign my blog I'll add a list like that too. :-)

the power of propaganda

Now, this article is a bit scary:

At the end of the first week of January, the Princeton Survey Research Associates polled more than 1,200 Americans on behalf of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain. They asked a very simple question: "To the best of your knowledge, how many of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens?"

It should be impossible for a person who has lived through the last 16 months not to know the name and face of Mohamed Atta, believed to be the lead hijacker, and to have at least some nebulous sense of the identity of the hijackers. For much of this time, the nation in toto was umbilically joined to the media's saturation coverage, with hourly "terror alerts," scrolling "terror" news tickers, and panoplies of talking heads sprouting a confetti of 10-second sound bites. Surely some information must have been imparted.

The Knight Ridder survey appears to reveal a quite different reality. Of those surveyed, only 17 percent knew the correct answer: that none of the hijackers were Iraqi. Forty-four percent of Americans believe that most or some of the hijackers were Iraqi; another 6 percent believe that one of the hijackers was a citizen of that most notorious node in the axis of evil. That leaves 33 percent who did not know enough to offer an answer.

Big Brother would be proud: Doublethink is among us.