Dark Rantings

:: Douglas Rushkoff - Weblog :::


I hope people I've inspired with my work would band together to help me out in my later years if I needed it. Which is at least part of the reason why I'm sending what I can to support cosmic thinking patriarch Robert Anton Wilson, whose infirmity and depleted finances have put him in the precarious position of not being able to meet next month's rent.

In case the name doesn't immediately ring a bell, Bob is the guy who wrote Cosmic Trigger - still the best narrative on how to enter and navigate the psycho-spiritual realm, and co-wrote the Illuminatus Trilogy, an epic work that pushes beyond conspiracy theory into conspiracy practice. Robert Anton Wilson will one day be remembered alongside such literary philosophers as Aldous Huxley and James Joyce.

But right now, Bob is a human being in a rather painful fleshsuit, who needs our help. I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute, for I want future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.

Let me add, on a personal note, that Bob is the only one of my heroes who I was not disappointed to actually meet in person. He was of tremendous support to me along my road, and I'm honored to have the opportunity to be of some support on his.

Any donations can be made to Bob directly to the Paypal account olgaceline@gmail.com.
You can also send a check payable to Robert Anton Wilson to
Dennis Berry c/o Futique Trust
P.O. Box 3561
Santa Cruz, CA 95063.

Posted by mikki at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally, someone who is not a "shill" for the ISPs or for those insane free speech weirdos with something interesting to say about Net neutrality. Gaige is a cool guy so you really oughta read this :-).

Gaige's Pages - Network neutrality is about control:


Whereas the rhetoric is certainly intended to incite and not to inform (I don't believe that either side of any argument uses a slogan to inform, by the way), it isn't just empty fluff. In particular, as you noted earlier in the piece, the costs for services will eventually be borne by the customers regardless of who they pay for them and how they're provided. The purpose of the net neutrality folks is to put the control of paying for service in the hands of the consumers, where a customer who wants to use any number of services that consume large amounts of bandwidth pays for a higher quality, higher bandwidth, and probably higher-priced connection. This does two things: first, it makes the payments transparent, since the users know they are using bandwidth to watch television or movies, or other things that either take a long time or involve a high level of interactivity; second, it provides an avenue for innovative, high bandwidth services to get a start in the world.

Posted by mikki at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, I decided to check to see how many spams I got in a 24 hour period. 626 were filtered by my junkmail filter. 236 were not. 862 spams in 24 hours = approximately 1 spam every 2 minutes. Every two minutes some idiot is using my resources to send me crap about prescription drugs, penis enlargements, and how to give money to all of these people dying of horrible diseases.

And what has "Can Spam" done about this? Not a damned thing. So instead, AOL wants to charge businesses .01 for every single commercial email sent to AOL members while AOL members can spam at will for free. AOL doesn't differentiate between DESIRED commercial emails for which their members sign up, and unsolicited mail. So how is AOL going to figure out what email is commercial and which is some get rich quick scumbag claiming fatal disease to glom money off of well meaning individuals who want to help?

AOL's "solution" is just as bad as the "Can Spam" act, except that legitimate businesses will pay, and spammer twits will continue their free ride off of the rest of us.

Posted by mikki at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the "old days" when the Internet was the arpanet, uucp and bitnet, and a few crazed individuals trying to be big fish in small ponds, and gain fame in the world of miscreants, there existed an environment that cannot ever be recreated. Those were the innocent days of flame wars with no prisoners, top 25 most voluminous lists, and Rich Rosen. Back then, the concept of a "computer lawyer" was ludicrous. The idea of suing people for libel based on Usenet postings was unthinkable. And just about anyone with a Sun in their basement could and did become an ISP.

For better or for worse, those ranters of old are forever archived (at least back til about 1985) on Google Groups. As I am proud to have been one of those early Dark Ranters, I am picking out some of my favorite rants from self and others, in order to 1) prove I was actually there, and 2) that this was actually FUN! In a way, I miss it. In another way... well, I have a lot of other stuff I can do with the time :-)

So just scroll on over to the "historical" category and have a look. Presented for your amusement :-)

Posted by mikki at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Take a look at THIS story. How could the USPTO be lame enough to grant a patent like this? What's next?

Two Web entrepreneurs accuse Network Solutions and Register.com of selling e-mail addresses and URLs that infringe on their naming method patent. [CNET News.com]

Posted by mikki at 05:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our friendly Dell interns and their lovely tech support people aren't only afraid of the dark. They're afraid of spyware. Or at least, they won't tell you how to get RID of spyware because of some obscure fear of lawyers or violations of some sort of licensing agreements that I can't fathom. Yes, that's right....you buy a Dell, and you can't expect them to help you remove spy software viruses or worms. Isn't that special? A computer company that won't tell you how to put your computer back to the state in which you purchased it.

In case you think I'm joking, check out www.spywareinfo.com for more information on this "interesting" phenomenon.

Posted by mikki at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am SO disappointed with Apple's Mail. Since Panther came out, I have been getting serious crashes and otherwise nasty difficulties with. Anyone who knows me knows that I've used Macs since 1984, and have basically been an Apple apologist for ages. I WANT to use Apple's Mail. I REALLY REALLY DO.

So it pains me to say that Mail SUCKS. Truly SUCKS. I've posted to Apple's discussion lists and have received NO useful feedback. I've tried and tried, but still have no real hope that Mail will ever be fixed to the point where it will work properly with large IMAP mailboxes.

So I started looking for an alternate mail client. Oh what a PAINFUL HEADACHE that is. Eudora - significant difficulties in setting it up to work properly. It still does not pick up one of my accounts. I sent email to tech support and have received NO response. PowerMail. Same issue. Mulberry - UGLIEST UI in existence, same issue, but I JUST sent them a support request. Let's see if it helps. Entourage - same issue but I don't think I can take the time to wait for Microsoft to talk to me. Feh.

Now I must scream :-)

Posted by mikki at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This could be an interesting fight between the judicial and executive branches of our government. It will be quite interesting to watch Ashcroft attempt to wiggle out of this one.

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it wants the Bush administration to defend the secrecy that enveloped lower federal courts' proceedings involving one of the 1,200 Arab and Muslim men detained by federal authorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. [Washington Post: Nation and Politics]

Posted by mikki at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"When called by a panther, don't anther" - Ogden Nash

Maybe I should have listened. As wonderful as the new Panther operating system is for macs, the server version should come with a big warning label that says "Caution - This Product Could Blow Away All Of Your Server Configurations - Leading to heart palpitations, dangerous behavior, and sleep disorders."

The plan - replace ancient G3 server technology with a nice G4. Implementation was to include a low, careful progression of steps, mapping out exactly where things should be, carefully copying things from one machine to another, leaving the G3 in place until completion, testing each piece as I went along, etc. I prepared the G4 by putting in SCSI cards so I could add tape backup, replacing one of the hard drives to a much bigger one, adding some memory, and basically making it a kick ass server. Then I read that Panther Server has a wonderful new feature that allows you to export all of your server settings in one fell swoop. Well gee, I thought....why not upgrade the G3 to panther, then export all of the settings to the G4. What a time saver! Yeah, great idea.

Except for one thing.....upgrading to Panther caused EVERYTHING to stop working. Everything. All virtual hosts were gone. All server administration settings were gone. Attempting to connect to the administration functions failed. Attempting to rebuild the virtual hosts in the web server configurations would not save, and gave a strange dialog box about bugs I should report to Apple. This was all, obviously, not good joss.

After planning ritual sepiku, a much more rational friend told me that perhaps I should just restore the boot disk from the backup I had made the week before. Wow, what a concept! :-) So I prepared to do this by installing a new bootable version of the operating system on another disk, which I would then tell the machine was the boot disk, so I could wipe the original boot disk and bring it up via restore. Well, that didn't work either. Try as I might, the machine outright refused to boot off of any other disk but the boot disk or the CD for the OS, which immediately wants you to install the new OS. I was too tired to fight with it anymore, and was about to just toss it all out the window, when I figured, why not check the G4 and see if it behaves in a rational manner. After all, I could just move most of the files over there in one fell swoop, and cross my fingers, cast a few spells, and see if it works.

It did work. After a few fits and starts, and the time ticking closer and closer to dawn when I turn into a pumpkin, I actually seem to have gotten most things to work. I'm sure it will need some tweaks, and the slow careful configuration I wanted to do is history, but things I think MOSTLY work. Once I wake up, maybe a few more spells will be in order.

Posted by mikki at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, we just had to go and do it. Tired of the silly long URL, I registered darkrantings.com with my favorite ISP. Therefore, all you need to do is type in http://www.darkrantings.com to get to this, your absolute FAVORITE ranting website in the whole ranting world.

Posted by mikki at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently, our T1 cable has been deteriorating over time, causing a complete failure yesterday. A temporary fix is installed. Apparently the big guns will come "real soon now" and give us a new cable. Due to the tenacity of the RS, Verizon did indeed show up on Sunday and did indeed trace down the problem and fix it. For this, we are pleased.

Posted by mikki at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)