In reference to the MT Blacklist thread over at NSLog:

It seems to me that the better way of blocking comment spam would be to use a modified version of Realtime Blackhole Lists.

The downside of RBLs for email have been the fact that if you use them, you must rely solely upon the judgement of their maintainers. There is an implicit trust in the maintainers of the RBL, that they won’t block the entire continent of Asia just because of a few Tawainese spammers. Unfortunately, many RBL maintainers have, in the past, blocked whole major networks, just to “get attention”. This had the effect of wiping out email for enormous chunks of the Internet. Since most webloggers want to encourage commenting, this is not the result we want.

Windows users, listen up:

iTunes for Windows is free. It doesn’t cost anything. It will play your existing MP3 files just fine. It will rip your CDs just fine, and you still don’t have to pay a dime to Apple. It’ll keep your MP3s organized, and you still don’t have to pay any money to anyone.

It can also show trippy visual effects when you play your MP3s, and yeah, those effects are free, too.

Battlefield 1942 is yet another example of why I hate buying video games.

My PC isn’t high-end, but an AMD 2600+ with 1GB RAM isn’t too shabby for most games.

Unfortunately, processor speed doesn’t mean so much for a game like BF1942.

Here’s how an average game goes:

“I think I’ll play BF1942.”

Time passes.

“Oh look, Here’s the game startup screen!”

Time passes.

“The unescapable intro movies are over. Now I get to choose a map!”

Since nobody tells me anything, I wasn’t aware that Gaim had been ported to Win32.

Gaim rocks far harder than Trillian, and truly shows what a bloated, worthless chunk of adware the real Aim client is.

Woohoo! KBToys got sued –and lost— regarding some unsavory sales tactics.

The punishment? They have to hold a “30% off” sale on October 8-14. Note that the sale is unadvertised and the sales clerks won’t say anything about it, although there may be signs posted in the stores.

I think I’ll be doing some early holiday shopping…

Per Rod, this is the most “powerful diesel engine in the world”.

At 108,920 HP, I think it’d make a great replacement for my pool pump.

While searching for a tiny, non-intensive CPU load monitor for WinXP, I discovered Glint.

Glint rocks. It’s freeware, tiny, and stupidly configurable. Get it now.

Needing tires, we stopped at Pep-Boys on Cobb Parkway. We went in through the service entrance, and stood in line for ten minutes. When we finally got to the counter, the desk clerk said, “We can’t do tires here. You have to go into the store and go all the way to the back.” Great.

We went to the back of the store, and waited at the counter for several minutes. An employee saw us and said, “You’re here for tires? You can’t get tires here. You have to go to that counter over there.” So we walked to the next counter. And waited. A few minutes later, a guy who had been chatting with one of one of the employees noticed us standing at the counter, and nudged the employee. The employee, “Jon”, came over to the desk.

Hooray for Horseshoe Crabs!

After a few months of dealing with the enormous suckage that is Outlook Express, I’ve discovered a reason to install Linux: the Ximian Evolution Email client.

The key useful feature, for me, are vFolders (virtual folders), which are customized views of your email based on rulesets. You want a folder that shows you all the email from Jim? Create a vFolder rule based on his address. How about a vFolder that contains all the email from the people in Hosting? Create a vFolder rule that includes all of their addresses. Better yet, emails can exist in multiple folders at once.