To read the full text of this week’s issue see
This is True‘s –
weird news stories.

Large portions of True are archived on the web, including the
This is True story archive,
the Honorary Unsubscribe, and
the Bonzer Web Site of the Week.

This is True covers
bizarre-but-true stories from newspapers from around the world. True
is also the source of the (in)famous Get Out
of Hell Free cards, the well-edited humor site
Jumbo Joke, and is the publisher of the
True Stella Awards, featuring case write-ups of
crazy lawsuits.

Special Note from True‘s 13 March 2005 issue:

Bad News, Good News: The bad news is, the RSS feed for
True‘s free edition was being abused: people were using scripts to post
the text to their web sites automatically, despite very clear prohibitions
against that. Since people wouldn’t stop that abuse, I stopped it –
by not putting the full text in the RSS feed anymore. It sucks that a few
idiots spoiled it for everyone, but that’s the way it is. True
depends on its copyright to stay in business, and I just can’t have people
stealing it like that. I offer all sorts of neat things for free, including
the “True-a-Day” service for you to put a story on your own web sites that
automatically changes every day, a free archive of past stories, this free
subscription, and lots more. Yet some just can’t be satisfied with that and
take more than what’s offered. That is indeed stealing, folks, and those of
you who post stories on your web sites, post them to Usenet, print them in
newsletters, and more threaten True‘s very existence. And that
matters to me. It’s not a “victimless crime”! I’m very generous
with my work, but I must draw the line somewhere. The “where” is up to me,
not you, and if you’re one who’s stealing it and can’t deal with that fact,
then stop reading my stuff.

The GOOD news is, I’m very sympathetic to the vast majority — those who
want to stay within the rules, to not cross the line, to not steal. A lot
of you try hard to subscribe and get the issues by e-mail, but have
difficulty, either because you only have a work e-mail address and are not
allowed to subscribe to e-mail publications, or your ISP filters out the
e-mail you asked to get, even while you still get loads of spam.
Thus, as of last week I have started posting the current issue on the
True web site so you can read it via the web. Not only that, but
because very often the letters in the current issue refer to the previous
one, I’m also posting the previous issue on the True web
site. They automatically rotate, and the RSS feed is now a notification of
the new postings, keeping the RSS option a useful feature. To find the
current issue, look in the Navbar on the True site. The previous
issue is linked from the current one’s page. (That Navbar is pretty handy:
it has links to the True-a-Day service, the archive, the Reader Forum, the
Bonzer and Honorary Unsubscribe archives, site search and a lot more. The
site is pretty big, but it’s well organized — if you take the time to
explore it and use the tools provided to find what you want.)

SINCE 1994 and reaching more than 108,000 subscribers in over 200
   countries, this is the 767th weekly issue of...

THIS is TRUE: 22 February 2009        Copyright http://www.thisistrue.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ORDER UP! A man wearing a motorcycle helmet and a leather jacket burst
   into the Williams Supper Club in Waukesha, Wisc., through the back door

To read the full text of this week’s issue see
This is True‘s –
weird news stories.

Large portions of True are archived on the web, including the
This is True story archive,
the Honorary Unsubscribe, and
the Bonzer Web Site of the Week.

This is True covers
bizarre-but-true stories from newspapers from around the world. True
is also the source of the (in)famous Get Out
of Hell Free cards, the well-edited humor site
Jumbo Joke, and is the publisher of the
True Stella Awards, featuring case write-ups of
crazy lawsuits.

Special Note from True‘s 13 March 2005 issue:

Bad News, Good News: The bad news is, the RSS feed for
True‘s free edition was being abused: people were using scripts to post
the text to their web sites automatically, despite very clear prohibitions
against that. Since people wouldn’t stop that abuse, I stopped it –
by not putting the full text in the RSS feed anymore. It sucks that a few
idiots spoiled it for everyone, but that’s the way it is. True
depends on its copyright to stay in business, and I just can’t have people
stealing it like that. I offer all sorts of neat things for free, including
the “True-a-Day” service for you to put a story on your own web sites that
automatically changes every day, a free archive of past stories, this free
subscription, and lots more. Yet some just can’t be satisfied with that and
take more than what’s offered. That is indeed stealing, folks, and those of
you who post stories on your web sites, post them to Usenet, print them in
newsletters, and more threaten True‘s very existence. And that
matters to me. It’s not a “victimless crime”! I’m very generous
with my work, but I must draw the line somewhere. The “where” is up to me,
not you, and if you’re one who’s stealing it and can’t deal with that fact,
then stop reading my stuff.

The GOOD news is, I’m very sympathetic to the vast majority — those who
want to stay within the rules, to not cross the line, to not steal. A lot
of you try hard to subscribe and get the issues by e-mail, but have
difficulty, either because you only have a work e-mail address and are not
allowed to subscribe to e-mail publications, or your ISP filters out the
e-mail you asked to get, even while you still get loads of spam.
Thus, as of last week I have started posting the current issue on the
True web site so you can read it via the web. Not only that, but
because very often the letters in the current issue refer to the previous
one, I’m also posting the previous issue on the True web
site. They automatically rotate, and the RSS feed is now a notification of
the new postings, keeping the RSS option a useful feature. To find the
current issue, look in the Navbar on the True site. The previous
issue is linked from the current one’s page. (That Navbar is pretty handy:
it has links to the True-a-Day service, the archive, the Reader Forum, the
Bonzer and Honorary Unsubscribe archives, site search and a lot more. The
site is pretty big, but it’s well organized — if you take the time to
explore it and use the tools provided to find what you want.)

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To read the full text of this week’s issue see
This is True‘s –
weird news stories.

Large portions of True are archived on the web, including the
This is True story archive,
the Honorary Unsubscribe, and
the Bonzer Web Site of the Week.

This is True covers
bizarre-but-true stories from newspapers from around the world. True
is also the source of the (in)famous Get Out
of Hell Free cards, the well-edited humor site
Jumbo Joke, and is the publisher of the
True Stella Awards, featuring case write-ups of
crazy lawsuits.

Special Note from True‘s 13 March 2005 issue:

Bad News, Good News: The bad news is, the RSS feed for
True‘s free edition was being abused: people were using scripts to post
the text to their web sites automatically, despite very clear prohibitions
against that. Since people wouldn’t stop that abuse, I stopped it –
by not putting the full text in the RSS feed anymore. It sucks that a few
idiots spoiled it for everyone, but that’s the way it is. True
depends on its copyright to stay in business, and I just can’t have people
stealing it like that. I offer all sorts of neat things for free, including
the “True-a-Day” service for you to put a story on your own web sites that
automatically changes every day, a free archive of past stories, this free
subscription, and lots more. Yet some just can’t be satisfied with that and
take more than what’s offered. That is indeed stealing, folks, and those of
you who post stories on your web sites, post them to Usenet, print them in
newsletters, and more threaten True‘s very existence. And that
matters to me. It’s not a “victimless crime”! I’m very generous
with my work, but I must draw the line somewhere. The “where” is up to me,
not you, and if you’re one who’s stealing it and can’t deal with that fact,
then stop reading my stuff.

The GOOD news is, I’m very sympathetic to the vast majority — those who
want to stay within the rules, to not cross the line, to not steal. A lot
of you try hard to subscribe and get the issues by e-mail, but have
difficulty, either because you only have a work e-mail address and are not
allowed to subscribe to e-mail publications, or your ISP filters out the
e-mail you asked to get, even while you still get loads of spam.
Thus, as of last week I have started posting the current issue on the
True web site so you can read it via the web. Not only that, but
because very often the letters in the current issue refer to the previous
one, I’m also posting the previous issue on the True web
site. They automatically rotate, and the RSS feed is now a notification of
the new postings, keeping the RSS option a useful feature. To find the
current issue, look in the Navbar on the True site. The previous
issue is linked from the current one’s page. (That Navbar is pretty handy:
it has links to the True-a-Day service, the archive, the Reader Forum, the
Bonzer and Honorary Unsubscribe archives, site search and a lot more. The
site is pretty big, but it’s well organized — if you take the time to
explore it and use the tools provided to find what you want.)

To read the full text of this week’s issue see
This is True‘s –
weird news stories.

Large portions of True are archived on the web, including the
This is True story archive,
the Honorary Unsubscribe, and
the Bonzer Web Site of the Week.

This is True covers
bizarre-but-true stories from newspapers from around the world. True
is also the source of the (in)famous Get Out
of Hell Free cards, the well-edited humor site
Jumbo Joke, and is the publisher of the
True Stella Awards, featuring case write-ups of
crazy lawsuits.

Special Note from True‘s 13 March 2005 issue:

Bad News, Good News: The bad news is, the RSS feed for
True‘s free edition was being abused: people were using scripts to post
the text to their web sites automatically, despite very clear prohibitions
against that. Since people wouldn’t stop that abuse, I stopped it –
by not putting the full text in the RSS feed anymore. It sucks that a few
idiots spoiled it for everyone, but that’s the way it is. True
depends on its copyright to stay in business, and I just can’t have people
stealing it like that. I offer all sorts of neat things for free, including
the “True-a-Day” service for you to put a story on your own web sites that
automatically changes every day, a free archive of past stories, this free
subscription, and lots more. Yet some just can’t be satisfied with that and
take more than what’s offered. That is indeed stealing, folks, and those of
you who post stories on your web sites, post them to Usenet, print them in
newsletters, and more threaten True‘s very existence. And that
matters to me. It’s not a “victimless crime”! I’m very generous
with my work, but I must draw the line somewhere. The “where” is up to me,
not you, and if you’re one who’s stealing it and can’t deal with that fact,
then stop reading my stuff.

The GOOD news is, I’m very sympathetic to the vast majority — those who
want to stay within the rules, to not cross the line, to not steal. A lot
of you try hard to subscribe and get the issues by e-mail, but have
difficulty, either because you only have a work e-mail address and are not
allowed to subscribe to e-mail publications, or your ISP filters out the
e-mail you asked to get, even while you still get loads of spam.
Thus, as of last week I have started posting the current issue on the
True web site so you can read it via the web. Not only that, but
because very often the letters in the current issue refer to the previous
one, I’m also posting the previous issue on the True web
site. They automatically rotate, and the RSS feed is now a notification of
the new postings, keeping the RSS option a useful feature. To find the
current issue, look in the Navbar on the True site. The previous
issue is linked from the current one’s page. (That Navbar is pretty handy:
it has links to the True-a-Day service, the archive, the Reader Forum, the
Bonzer and Honorary Unsubscribe archives, site search and a lot more. The
site is pretty big, but it’s well organized — if you take the time to
explore it and use the tools provided to find what you want.)

I’ll admit it. I still run Windows on a few machines–mostly because I have software that needs it (like flight planning or my scanner tools). And it’s good on a notebook where drivers are tricky in Ubuntu at times.

But I’ve also been using Windows XP Professional on all my Windows boxes (one desktop, one laptop, and one HTPC) for a long time now. However, as of a couple days ago I’m running the Windows 7 Beta on my Thinkpad T61. And you know what?

I completely agree with the reviews I’ve seen. It’s good. I basically never touched Vista (since it was teh suck) but Windows 7 is snappy, easier to use, and the transition from XP isn’t that hard at all. Plus it has drivers for everything.

This definitely doesn’t feel like a beta at all. In fact, it reminds me of the Windows NT 4.0 beta days. I ran the beta as my desktop operating system for quite some time and loved it.

For a long time I believed that nothing produced by Microsoft would displace Windows XP Professional, but I’m really starting to think they’ve got a starting chance. And if it’s even a bit faster and leaner when the full release comes, that’s all the better.

I just hope there’s an in-place upgrade option for those of us using the beta. And I hope they’re smart about the pricing–especially if they really want to get folks off of XP.

(comments)

Over on the Sunlight Foundation blog, Ellen Miller asks White House: Where is the CTO?. Pardon my bluntness, Ellen, but what are you smoking? Don’t you think there are higher priorities right now?

It seems to me that Obama and his administration have their hands more than full working on the economic problems we’re facing along with rebuilding some of our important international relationships. I’m as much of a technology geek as the next guy, but it really won’t bother me if the punt on the whole CTO thing for a few months while some of the bigger fish are fried.

I can’t say quite why, but this call for immediate action on a CTO feels like a bit of headline grabbing and irresponsibility at the same time. Sure, they could come out and name a CTO tomorrow and I’d applaud the move. But I really hope they’re keeping their priorities in check. Part of being a good leader is deciding what can wait and what cannot. Appointing a CTO can wait. Fixing our economy cannot.

Update: It looks like Kara has jumped on this too.

(comments)

About a week ago, Nat
posted Open
Source NG Databases on O’Reilly Radar. That caught my interest
because I’m playing with some “alternative” databases for some of our
data at Craigslist. Don’t get me wrong, MySQL is great. But MySQL
isn’t well suited to every use case out there either. (I’ll talk more
about
this at
the MySQL Conference.)

Meanwhile, I
left a
comment on that posting about CouchDB and have been playing with
it a bit more since then–mostly loading in test data, figuring out
the data footprint, performance, etc.

Overall, I’m impressed and encouraged. I agree with
what Ben
Bangert said. The simple API is great but the lack of a schema to
worry about really makes my life simple in this application. I don’t
have any initial plans for views, but writing them in Javascript is an
interesting idea. I can definitely appreciate the flexibility there.
And having good replication built-in solves one of my big needs.

I’m sure my thinking will have evolve after I’ve loaded a few
hundred million documents in, but so far I’m really liking it. The
CPAN modules
in Net::CouchDb
do a pretty good job and get you up and running quickly. I had a
knee-jerk response to tweak a few things there but quickly realize
that they’re far from being the bottleneck anyway.

It seems that without any tuning or fancy work, I can get about
75-100 inerts/sec on my desktop class Ubuntu box (Intel Core 2 Duo,
2.66GHz, 1GB RAM, single 80GB SATA disk). That’s not bad for
out-of-the-box performance. And doing the math on space used for a
document set (after compaction), I’m seeing roughly ~3KB/doc. That’s
a bit more than I expected but really not bad at all.

I wonder if there’s a future for gzip compression in CouchDB. Or
maybe we should just use ZFS…

(comments)