Project Insomnia

The original idea was simply to reset early PCs without turning them off. Microsoft adopted control-alt-delete to help ensure people powered down correctly, then to handle "administrative functions" such as the vital "end task" feature for computer software that crashes or otherwise gets stuck.

Bradley chose the control and alt keys because he needed two shift keys to make the operation work, and he chose the delete key because it was on the opposite side of the keyboard. He didn't want people to hit control-alt-delete by accident.

Thank you, Major League Baseball, for ruining my week.

I spend thousands of dollars on tickets, invest hundreds of hours at the ballpark, listen to a month of games that don't mean a thing and now I can't go see the Giants in the playoffs.

Some pinhead, suck-up, yes-man TV moron in a bad suit decides that the Giants-Marlins series is the least interesting of them all and so we get day baseball in San Francisco this week.

Marlins-Giants: 1 p.m. Tuesday, 5 p.m. Wednesday and either 1 or 5 p.m. Friday. The games will air on KTVU (Channel 2) and ESPN, with ESPN2 a possibility for Friday.

Red Sox-A's: 1 p.m. Wednesday and 1 p.m. Thursday. KTVU has both games, with ESPN carrying Wednesday's game and ESPN2 doing Thursday's.

The last time the Oakland A's had a reason to grouse about the Boston Red Sox, it was because they were waving the kind of money at Billy Beane that the A's wouldn't think to wave at Miguel Tejada.
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The last time the San Francisco Giants had any kind of mad-on for the Florida Marlins, it was because the Marlins speed-bagged them through the 1997 playoffs. The Giants won the NL West, and what it got them was Kevin Brown, Robb Nen, Devon White, Gary Sheffield, Moises Alou, Livan Hernandez, Edgar Renteria and a three-and-out they still haven't figured out six years later.

Doctor Who will return to TV

Doctor Who is returning to the nation's TV screens in 2005, the BBC said today.

Laid to rest in 1989 - though re-animated in 1996 in a rather naff, 'we don't get it' US TV movie, not considered by many fans to be part of the Who canon - the series still has legions of fans around the world.

Lorraine Heggessey, Controller of the BBC's main channel, BBC One, said a few years back that she would like to bring the family-oriented series back. However, it is believed that contentions over broadcast and other rights were preventing the BBC from making such a move. The rights are thought to centre on the deal struck with Universal Studios to produce the 1996 TV movie, which starred the rather good Paul Withnail and I McGann.

Today, however, Heggessey said all such issues had been resolved and that a series of scripts written by Queer as Folk scriptwriter Russell T Davies had been given the green light.

A cat locked in a house for two months without food or water was rescued after concerned citizens searched the home one last time.

Cecil the cat was "nothing but skin and bones" when rescuers found him hiding under a chair last month.

"He was so little and weak," said Elizabeth Hollenberg.

Cecil was treated at a veterinarian's office, where he was weighed at five pounds.

Chris Inglis took Wednesday off so he could hang around the house and play with his cat. After all, the cat had come back -- 10 years later.

Ted, the feline Inglis named after a character in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," completed an amazing adventure of his own when he was reunited with his owner a decade after vanishing from his Burlingame home.

Someone found Ted last week on El Camino Real in Atherton, about 13 miles south of where he used to live. The cat was brought to the Peninsula Humane Society's animal shelter, which tracked down his owner using a microchip that Inglis had gotten implanted in Ted.

Taking a page from cable news shout-fests -- but looking like guests on a cheap cable-access program -- five of the candidates in the California recall campaign staged a "debate" that turned into a childish but entertaining brawl.

Pundits may be parsing over who won this debate right up to election day, but it was clear that throwing haymakers and not shutting up was the only way to stand out -- good or bad -- in a forum that looked as if it were staged at a high school and moderated by your doddering uncle. The acoustics were horrendous, the visuals amateurish (a dull green-gray background and cheap curtain on the table) -- so much for slick California entertainment -- but the end result was a surprisingly lively exchange.

Not deep, not focused, maybe not even fair, but lively.

The bold experiment to fight the barrage of electronic junk mail enables California residents, the state attorney general and Internet providers to seek civil damages against spammers amounting to $1,000 per e-mail and $1 million per incident.

Athletics 4, Rangers 3, 10 innings

The Oakland Athletics have said all season long they have the talent to reach the World Series.

They took the first step Tuesday night, clinching their second straight AL West title as they beat the Texas Rangers 4-3 in 10 innings.

The division was wrapped up about 20 minutes later when second-place Seattle lost 2-1 in 11 innings at Anaheim.

The nonprofit library cooperative that owns the Dewey Decimal system has filed suit against a library-themed luxury hotel in Manhattan for trademark infringement.

The Library Hotel, which overlooks the New York Public Library, is divided according to the classification system, with each floor dedicated to one of Dewey's 10 categories.

Room 700.003 includes books on the performing arts, for example, while room 800.001 has a collection of erotic literature.

In the lawsuit filed last week, lawyers for the Online Computer Library Center said the organization acquired the rights to the system in 1988 when it bought Forest Press, which published Dewey Decimal updates. The center charges libraries that use the system at least $500 per year.

"We are going to challenge every single one of these that they file until we are told that our position is wrong as a matter of law," James D. Ellis, general counsel for SBC, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Chips Ahoy! and Oreo cookies, high in fat, topped the list of the worst snacks, followed by Pepsis and Coca-Colas, artificial fruit juices, Hostess snack cakes, and Keebler Club & Cheddar Sandwich Crackers. The group also deemed candy bars like Kit Kat Big Kat and Snickers as bad snacks, along with Starburst Fruit Chews.

Professor Chris Idzikowski, director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service and a visiting professor at the University of Surrey in southern England, has identified six common sleep positions and what they mean.

"We are all aware of our body language when we are awake but this is the first time we have been able to see what our subconscious says about us," he said.

``I've never had writer's block,'' says Hertzfeldt, who compares writing to needing to go to the bathroom. ``You go when you have to go. You hit the desk and let it flow out of you.''

John Ritter, whose portrayal of the bumbling but lovable Jack Tripper helped make the madcap comedy series "Three's Company" a smash hit in the 1970s, has died of a heart problem, his publicist said Friday. He was 54.

Ritter became ill Thursday while working on ABC's "8 Simple Rules ... For Dating My Teenage Daughter," the show that became the actor's big television comeback, said Susan Wilcox, his assistant of 22 years.

The cause of his death was a tear in the aorta, the result of an unrecognized flaw in his heart, said his publicist, Lisa Kasteler. He died at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday. Surgeons unsuccessfully attempted to save him.

Los Angeles, CA - The RIAA announced that they would begin a strategy of profits by lawsuit, which should keep them a viable business indefinitely.

"It's really a bold new idea that really gets back to the roots of the RIAA," said new RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol. "We'll no longer be worried about distributing music. The file sharers will do that for us, but now we'll just make our money from suing them and that's really what we're all about."
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The RIAA could run into trouble with the plan as it is rumored that the SCO Group has already patented the business model of suing customers to stay afloat.

1. There's no "Back" button. If a human cashier scans something twice, he or she can easily reverse the last scan. If I do the same, I have to call for help.
2. There's no "Help" button. When I do need assistance from the overworked "attendant" responsible for four of these blinking monstrosities, I need to go over and attract his/her attention away from the personal conversation or phone call or, more likely, wait for him/her to finish helping the people using the other three machines.
3. The sensors are either oversensitive or not sensitive enough--sometimes both at once. The glass covering the laser scanner is usually coated with a nice thick layer of the glue used to attach UPC labels. A human cashier would be able to clean the glass between customers, but the self-checkout machines are cleaned only once a day (if that). This leads to scanning one item over and over again, trying to get it to register, which invariably leads to scanning it once too often, which leads to points (1) and (2) above. Once I've successfully scanned an item, the machine wants me to put it in the "bagging area" next to the scanner. Apparently there's a pressure sensor there which lets it know I've done so. Unfortunately, many items sold at Home Depot are either of negligible mass (a packet of ten washers, for example, weighs about an ounce) or are far too large to fit into the "bagging area" (a 4'x8' piece of 1/2" plywood, for example). Until and unless you successfully achieve bagging nirvana, a loud male voice (the scanner has a female voice, by the way) rudely announces Item removed from bagging area! Please replace item in bagging area! There's a manual override for oversize or underweight items, but it requires an attendant to enter a passcode; see point (2).
4. There are fewer human cashiers. George Whalin, chief executive of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, has it spot on in the linked article when he disagrees with retailers' insistence that cutting wait times is driving interest in self-checkouts. That's nonsense, he said. It's really to cut their labor costs. It is now common practice at the EPA Home Depot to have only the self-checkout lanes open! Even the "contractor" types with huge loads of building materials often have to use them, as the "Pro" desk is rarely manned anymore.

One killed, ten injured in roller coaster accident

A locomotive broke loose on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster Friday, killing a man and injuring 10 other people, officials said.

TV helicopters showed a triage unit set up near the ride and one person being taken on a stretcher to an ambulance.

The roller coaster takes amusement park visitors on a twisting, turning ride aboard what is supposed to be a runaway train in the Old West. Riders zoom through mineshafts and caverns, past falling rocks and tumbling waterfalls.

The ride opened in 1979, making it one of newer roller coasters at Disneyland. It is computer-operated, said Joe Aguirre, a park spokesman.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Last week, AOL began blocking all HTTP requests with "www.livejournal.com" Referer headers. This is a common practice by image hosting sites to prevent off-site linking of their images and 'bandwidth theft'. However, in AOL's case, they're blocking everything, not just images, effectively breaking all links to any AOL member's site--but only from LiveJournal. To be clear: nobody on LiveJournal can even make a link to any AOL member site without getting a '404 Not Found' error.