Mokka mit Schlag

Joanna Rutkowska rips through Windows Vista “security”. I wonder what she’d do to Mac OS X or Linux?

Amazon’s taking pre-orders for the final volume in Harry Potter septology. (Is that even a word?). It’s $18.89 + shipping. If I were Amazon I’d raise the price a few bucks and offer “free” overnight shipping. For myself, I’ll probably wait till a friend finishes it, and borrow their copy like I have for the last couple of volumes. Probably won’t take any longer than shipping anyway. :-)

Oh, and if you think Dumbledore’s really dead, can I talk to you about this bridge I have for sale down at the end of Adams Street? Cheap.

What misanthropist thought it would be a good idea to put 44th Road, 44th Drive, and 44th Avenue in the same borough? And not only that, but put them one block away from each other running parallel? It’s amazing anyone ever gets their mail in this borough.

Some weirdness at Amazon this morning. The search boxes appear to have vanished from the top of the page and the sidebars. One is still hiding way down at the bottom of the page. This is a very bad change since site-specific search is one of the primary ways users navigate Amazon. I’m not sure if this is a temporary glitch or a rare example of bad Amazon design. Usually Amazon is one of the more usable and intelligently designed sites, so this comes as a bit of a shock.
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A lot of old fogies are getting bent out of shape over the idea that 20 or 30 years from now today’s teenagers are going to get hammered by random screeds and bad dating habits they posted on blogs or MySpace. Can I chime in and say I really don’t think it’s all that big a deal? By the time any of this becomes relevant, the electorate will have matured enough that they really don’t care about this.
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Either Silicon Valley is declining in importance or New York City is or both. Used to be there were flights between the two every couple of hours. However, I just made my reservations to fly out for SD West and couldn’t get a direct flight out until 5:00 in the afternoon. There was one flight that left at 5:30 A.M., changed planes in Houston, and got there by noon. Otherwise, the earliest I could arrive was 5:00 in the afternoon.

Oh well, at least there’s still a direct red-eye home Friday night. (For a couple of years there wasn’t even that.)