netbits x 3

2001.06.06
  1. My friend Kim sent me a note that some of these photos are helping her and her husband (Mots the Giant Swede) convince the INS that theirs is not a 'greencard marriage' (other regular photos from the same time had been discarded by INS when Kim forgot to include the fee.) Three cheers for cheap digital phtography!
  2. Dang, what is it with this popup ad? It seems to appear at the most random times. One of the sites I frequent must be putting it on some kind of time delay thing. How very annoying! ("Have fun / Feel safe"... I can think of the type of fun they're really trying to sell.) Follow-up: this page claims to have a link that lets you disable the ads: http://www.x10.com/x10ads.htm
  3. I wrote the guy who runs bar.com if he gets tons of mail for "foo@bar.com"-- ("foo" and "bar" and "foobar" are special words for the geekily inclined). The owner Mike O'Connor puts it at "about 500 spam-o-grams a day"- I'm almost surprised it's not more. This NY Times article talks about it as well.

Quote of the Moment
The purpose of conversation isn't to demonstrate one's glib intelligence; it's how we stumble and grope our way through the mists and arrive at something like intelligence.
This is actually a profound insight into cognitive science. Actually, this week's column seemed to have more than its fair share of really smart thoughts and well turned phrases.