It's been known for a while that some terms listed as interests on LiveJournal cannot be searched for using LiveJournal's own search system. Tonight the LiveJournal folks posted a bit about that, but frustratingly didn't really say anything other than admit that the blocking existed and that the blocking system would be tweaked to be more specific and less likely to block untargeted terms. Naturally, they were called on this and asked what the reason for the blocking was. The responses have been "We can't say." or "We can't answer those questions right now."

I haven't heard of this happening with any other journaling site, and I suspect if it did that news that such blocking was happening at multiple sites would spread rapidly. It'd likely hit Slashdot and Fark pretty fast. So, as that has not happened, it seems to be LiveJournal specific. If it was simply LJ policy, they could talk about - they might not want to, but they could. So, suppose they're actually being truthful when they say they can't give details. What could explain that?

The only thing I can come up with, and I admit this pure speculation on my part, is some sort of settlement (threatened lawsuit based on "hate speech" perhaps?) that had provisions that LiveJournal would have to block some terms, and that LiveJournal could not reveal the instigators of the blocking.

Assuming there is a genuine reason for the blocking, and that LiveJournal truly cannot talk about it, is there any other explanation?

Current Mood: curious

Arriving in today's mail was a set of Orvan icons from Jim Groat. That was good, as was discovering that in one update or another, PCLinuxOS is now capable of dealing with a flatbed scanner so I could scan the icons.

I had asked for three different moods or emotions and had specified two of them well. The puzzled or bewildered icon is obvious, with Orvan scratching his head. The anger/angry icon is obvious as well. But this one I'm not really sure about. It's certainly a good icon, I just don't know quite how to describe it.

So I ask you. What mood or emotion does that image convey? Or, how would you label that icon?

Current Mood: curious

I have the option set on LJ to send me copies of followups to my posts and comments. I do this mainly so I am aware of new comments to older posts and also so if someone not on my friends list comments it won't sit just too long waiting for me to make it visible if it deserves to be. Recently I've noticed a comment to a post of mine didn't get emailed to me. A little while ago I also found that one person's followups to my comments didn't get emailed. This bothers me. I set things to be informed and either LJ's code has a bug (and LJ wasn't being otherwise flaky that I could tell either time) or else it's possible for someone to override my choices about getting informed of replies, which seems to be a Very Bad Idea. If I don't get any email commentary about a followup, it's possible I'll miss it entirely if it's to something that isn't either very recent or so interesting I keep going back to it.

Has anyone noticed this going? Is this something that some consider a feature, "stealth" commenting?

[Yes, some have. LJ was just glitchy.]

Current Mood: irritated
Current Music: My Back Yard - Harry Young

On the cover of Looney Tunes for April 2005 is a mobile little red schoolhouse labelled "P.S. 123." Now I am wondering what places have numbered, rather than named (Lincoln, Franklin, etc.) schools. Looking around with Google, I've not found anything really definitive. I know New York City has numbered schools, but does anywhere else?

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Cosmic Radio Show - The Chromatics

"The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways.
The following sentence contains them all: A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

But I must be missing something or not speaking in the required dialect. I only count eight different pronunciations:

1. rough - uff
2. dough - oh
3. thought - aw
4. plough - ow
5. through - oo
6. Scarborough -ah/uh
7. slough - oo (uff?)
8. cough - off
9. hiccough - up

So, what am I missing, or is the quoted text wrong? For the record my dialect would be either (Northern) Midwest or maybe Great Lakes if that is at all helpful in this.

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Current Mood: curious

So.. what's a Klondike bar ever done for you?

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Current Mood: silly

There's likely a simple, though maybe not easy, answer that I've just plain missed. One of the things I've wondered about is what could be called the bootstrap problem. How can crude tools be used to make less crude tools?

That is, you start with sticks and stones, and you eventually end up with precision machined parts accurate to tolerances that may be too small to see. It can be done. That much is plain since humanity did it. But although it's been proven possible, it seems counter-intuitive. It requires crude things to make finer things, repeatedly.

A devastated, but once advanced, civilization should in theory be able to recover faster than it built itself up the first time - if it permits itself that rebuilding. What's needed to do this? A good many things are only "obvious" after the fact. By the time a civilization understands something well enough to bring it to perfection, that civilization has likely discovered something else that even though imperfect is so much better that the first thing is rendered obsolete. But the knowledge of earlier technologies isn't useless - if nothing else, it'd be useful to rebuild fast and skip all the fiddling around between advances.

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Current Mood: pensive

If I've been naughty and I tell Santa Claus I want a lump of coal for Christmas, what does he do?

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Current Mood: silly

( I might have caught something. )

Current Mood: curious

I have some older, slower PCs. There are a couple that still have DOS and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on them that see little use now. One has OS/2 Warp version 3. Another, not just too slow I suppose, has Windows 2000. There are a few machines that aren't really on the network yet - or perhaps I should say not on the network at the moment. A couple have been retired from firewall/NAT service. A Pentium-90, and one or two Pentium-166s are sitting around. I'm wondering what to do with them.

One machine I had planned on using as a Linux distribution testbed. Install some distribution and see if I liked it, and if I did, put that distribution on belgian, my primary computer. Alas, 166 MHz seems to be too slow for almost all distributions nowadays. Or at least the ones I'd care to run as my primary operating system. I looked at upgrading things, but it's actually less expensive to get a new machine outright.

It seems wasteful to just scrap the old machines, though they're now so old nobody else really wants them either. I think even Computer Renaissance stopped taking in first generation Pentiums as trades. What could they do with them? But rather than figure the old machines as junk, I'm willing to at least look at them as toys. There must be something they can do that isn't already being done by the other machines. Perhaps I could play around with some of the truly alternative (pretty much toy) operating systems on them.

A while back there seemed to be a few of these little oddball OSs around. Now that I'm looking for them, they seem to have gone missing. I figure I'm just not looking in the right place(s).

Any suggestions for what to run on a 90 MHz or 166 MHz Pentium?

Current Mood: curious

Tell me something.
Tell me (almost) anything.
It can be true.
It can be a lie.
It can be a damned lie.
It can be a statistic.
It can be an anecdote.
It can be an antidote.
It can be a receipt.
It can be a recipe.
It can be a hope.
It can be a dream.
It can be a nightmare.
It can be a vision.
It can be what you had for breakfast.
It can be what you wish you'd had for breakfast.
It can be a cleaner.
It can be clean.
It can be risque.
It can be a joke.
It can be a disaster.
It can be a comedy.
It can be a tragedy.
It can be serious.
It can be silly.
It can be a euphemism.
It can be a quotation.
It can be a mis-attribution.
It can be one thing.
It can be many things.
It can contain multitudes.
So help me, it can even be a wretched sports score.
Or even country music lyrics.
Or even bad poetry.

BUT... it cannot be political or election related!
Thank you.

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Current Mood: curious

Please do not answer these seriously. Whimsical replies are likely to be more interesting. Well, if you really want to be serious, go ahead, but it'd be nice to have a set of not-serious replies as well.

For easy copying:
<b>1. Who are you?</b>
<b>2. Are we friends?</b>
<b>3. When and how did we meet?</b>
<b>4. Do you have a crush on me?</b>
<b>5. Would you kiss me?</b>
<b>6. Describe me in one word.</b>
<b>7. What was your first impression?</b>
<b>8. Do you still think that way about me now?</b>
<b>9. What reminds you of me?</b>
<b>10. If you could give me anything what would it be?</b>
<b>11. How well do you know me?</b>
<b>12. When's the last time you saw me?</b>
<b>13. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?</b>
<b>14. Are you going to put this on your journal and see what I say about you?</b>

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Current Mood: mischievous

Some time back, I'm not sure when, perhaps it was the 1980s, maybe earlier but I wasn't paying much attention, credit card companies started pushing "Gold" versions of their cards. When that wasn't enough, there came the "Platinum" cards. I'd joked that someday some credit card marketeer should come out with a "Radium" card as a "glowing endorsement of your credit worthiness." (This was before the "Plutonium Card" jokes started.)

Since then I've seen the gold, the platinum, and when metals weren't enough, "Diamond Preferred" (what do diamonds prefer, anyway?) and things that are simply "elite" which I suppose is to work on snob-appeal.

Today I saw another one, "Double Platinum." I mused for a moment on the number of albums that would be, then looked it over a bit. A platinum card but with a "double" point (2 micropoints per dollar spent rather than one micropoint per dollar spent). The offer got shredded: Rate above 10%, and variable. The micropoints aren't worth the hassle. Besides, I don't use a card that often. I cancelled a card recently as, among other things, I hadn't seen fit to use it since January.

Classic. Gold. Platinum. Diamond. Double Platinum. Elite. What's next? Or what's missing? Silver seems to be. Well, silver tarnishes.

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Current Mood: nominal

In an earlier post I mentioned that bigger is not always better. In a followup comment Brody asks how an event can grow and still retain what is desirable about smaller gatherings. My answer, that I simply don't know, is admittedly rather lacking. While I'm not sure I buy into the idea that growth is a proper measure of success, he does have a good question and I do not have a good answer.

I know that those who find a problem or have a problem with something are not always those who have or can implement a solution to that problem or even see a solution. So now I'm asking folks reading if they have any answers to Brody's question. Folks, not just myself, have noticed that size can be a problem. Anyone have an answer to Brody's question?

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Current Mood: curious

Assuming unlimited or at least sufficient current, how much voltage has to be applied across a Twinkie to make it detonate?

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Current Mood: weird

One of these things is not like the other.
One of these things does not belong.

Corrected version...
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others...

                    _______
                   |   |   |
                   | 1 | 2 |
                   |___|___|
                   |   |   |
                   | 3 | 4 |
                   |___|___|

Maybe this isn't the best combination as I can see at least two answers to this.

Current Mood: mischievous

This is an "ask me anything" post, only without the poll and form setup. I won't guarantee an answer, just that I will see the question. Any answers will appear in another post (or posts).

All followups to this post, even by folks on my friends list, will be screened. I will only unscreen a followup to this post if the person making the followup says they want it public. For any answers I will repeat the question, but will not identify the questioner without the questioner's consent.

( Fiddly example if anyone needs it. )

Here goes...

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Current Mood: nervous

For the last few months I've been reading the various books in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. They're rather entertaining and Pratchett manages to make a few points that apply to the real world. I've finished with all the Discworld books so far published, as far as I know. Right now I'm going through Good Omens, a book co-authored by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I'm taking my time about it, but expect I'll finish it in a week or so and then I'll be done with Pratchett for a while.

I also want to get away from fiction for a bit. Any recommendations for non-fiction? The one big restriction is that I will be specifically avoiding any overtly political text, at least anything within the last decade or so. I know I'm leaving the field fairly wide open, that's intentional.

So, what book(s) should I look into and why?

( Recommendations. )

Current Mood: curious

Possibly not an actually missing genre, just one with a name I don't happen to know. I find I like the style, the neat use of voice(s), of "gospel music." I just don't care much for the lyrics themselves. Does this style of singing show up in music that isn't religious?

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Swift Song - The Chromatics

Rather than ask everyone on my friends list, and perhaps any lurkers if there are any, to think of something to post about themselves here, I have something else in mind. I do ask that folk kindly post a followup, however I won't ask for some obscure or trivial fact. Instead, here's your chance to tell a whopper about yourself. No need to limit yourself to a mere fib or untruth, go for a whopper.

Have fun!

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Current Mood: mischievous