This is just unbelievable!

A local cemetery received a phone bill last week for David Towles at his correct address Hillside Cemetery, Evergreen Section, Auburn, Mass. 01501.

Towles was buried there in December 1997. He died at age 60.

Beurocracies are a beautiful thing!

Microsoft says that the new versions of Office will use an XML file format.

“…it does look as though XP XML has been so seriously crippled as to be useless to anyone but the big content management and collaboration system providers.” Apparently, all formatting and presentation information is removed from the XML.

In other words, it’s a standards based way to enforce proprietary file formats, which defeats the whole purpose.

Interesting how few times we’ve asked the UN before.

Since the founding of the UN, the United States has participated in 53 military actions. In only three:

* Korea
* The Gulf War (part I)
* Panama

did the US ask for and receive UN support. In all other cases, we acted alone. The world did not ostracize us then, and it won’t now.

Wouldn’t that be a great thing!

My grandfather is the president of a well-known undergraduate-only college of about 7,000 students. He tells me that an alumnus has agreed to donate $2.4 million initially (and up to $800,000 each succeeding year for 10 years) to the school for computer equipment and staff if the school agrees not to renew any contract and to buy no products or services (either directly or through an intermediary like Gateway) from Microsoft.

I wonder who the alumnus is?

Now that the Mac is built on Unix, hardcore geeks are flocking to the platform.

A promising young computer operating system that’s luring some hard-core geeks emanates from a seemingly unlikely source: Apple Computer.

Excellent Smithers 🙂

I wish I could draw.

Remember the old Looney Tunes episode where Yosemite Sam is daring Bugs Bunny to cross a line he’s drawn in the dirt. Bugs smirks and steps over the line which forces Sam to back up and draw another. This continues until Sam falls off a cliff.

If I could draw, that would be the political cartoon I would create, with Yosemite Sam as the UN and a smirking Bugs Bunny as Iraq.

McDonalds is starting a pilot program to allow wireless internet access with the purchase of a combo meal!

Would you like super-sized Internet access with that burger and fries?

In a further sign of the spread of wireless Internet technology, McDonald’s restaurants in three U.S. cities will offer one hour of free high-speed access to anyone who buys a combination meal.

Damn. Now I may **have** to take the kids there on road trips!!!

The MA department of revenue is considering Linux as an alternative to upgrading its installed base of Windows 95 desktop machines.

…Akers is advocating a DOR switch to open source/Linux, and he speaks of the possibility with the fervor of an activist. Charged with the technical direction of DOR, he talks about ?altruistic decisions that have to be made? and the fiscal need to ?embrace the open source solution.?

This has gotta be driving some of my more liberal friends that are also [[M$]] haters a bit schizo [[:-)]]!!!

I hope that Romney is up to the challenge!

Well, Gartner is finally backing up what I’ve known for years.

This study is about **Total Cost of Ownership**. Is there any other way to think about the cost of something?

Total cost of ownership is the cost of the OS, plus the cost of the hardware, plus the cost of support, divided by the number of years that you own the machine.

Noted research analyst Gartner found Macs are up to 36 per cent more cost- effective than competing PC products…. [they] found that Macs cost $1,114 to support per year, while PC-based systems cost $1,438. Macs also needed less technical support and hardware and software costs were lower, the report explains.

Well… there it is. [[:-)]].

Afghanistan, where the Internet was banned during the rule of the Taliban, will formally launch its .af domain for Afghani Web sites and e-mail addresses on Monday, the United Nations said.

In case you’re wondering whether this has anything to do with why the US acts the way it does sometimes,

All nongovernmental use of e-mail services and Web sites was punishable by death during the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban.

‘Nuff said. I don’t care what anybody says. Our way is better. Sometimes there is an absolute good, and taking out that government was such a case, just as it is in Iraq.