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Week of 24 May 2004

Latest Update : Tuesday, 01 June 2004 15:18 -0400


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Monday, 24 May 2004

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8:39 - There won't be much here for the next week or two. I'm struggling mightily to get the last chapter and the Preface written. Barbara and I are taking a well-deserved break over the holiday, so I'll get as much done as I can between now and Friday, and then knock off for the long weekend. Next week, it'll be back to work for me until I finish the final draft. At that point, it'll be all over except the minor stuff--answering queries from copy editors and production, reviewing the final galleys, etc.

I'm hoping the book will hit the stores in August. O'Reilly is making a major promotional push on this one, so I'm hoping it sells a large number of copies. We'll see.

8:57 - Oops. I meant to post a couple of interesting emails.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: The war on terrorism explained.
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 21:35:06 -0400
From: Bob Sprowl

The following link will take you to the best article I have seen on this subject. It isn't short but it is well worth the time to read.

http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000099.html

He misses the point. He warns of the danger of radical Islam, when the real threat is Islam, period. The people who were dancing in the streets following 9/11 were not radical Islamists. They were just ordinary Islamics, and they were as happy to see American citizens slaughtered as were Osama bin Laden and the other radicals.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Email Tracking?
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 22:08:32 -0500
From: Rob Clay
To: Robert Bruce Thompson

http://www.didtheyreadit.com

and <here>

This may be old news to you. It appears that "read receipts" have been taken to a new level......

It's snake oil. All they're doing is using web bugs, which spammers have used for years to determine if an email address is active. They embed a small graphic, typically only one pixel, in an email message, and link that graphic back to their server. When you open the message, your mail client goes out to the web to retrieve the graphic and they know you've opened it.

Their method doesn't work at all for people who use a text-mode mail client, for those who read HTML mail in text mode, or for those who have image retrieval disabled in their mail clients. For example, I use Mozilla Mail, and I've told it not to retrieve images in email messages. Even recent versions of Outlook allow you to disable image loading in email.

 

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Tuesday, 25 May 2004

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No post. My day was eaten by a hoard of lemmings.

 

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Wednesday, 26 May 2004

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9:33 - I have only one chapter and the Preface left to finish for the new book. Both are well in progress and my goal was to have them finished by tomorrow, but that isn't going to happen. I told my editor at O'Reilly that I'd have them to him by next Friday, 4 June. I'm tempted to continue working on them over the holiday, of course, but that isn't going to happen. Barbara and I are taking a four-day weekend come hell or high water. Friday morning, I'm going to shut down our network and walk away. I won't turn them back on until Tuesday, no matter what.

I was talking to one of my friends at O'Reilly the other day, and he mentioned that O'Reilly was distributing Mandrakelinux in the US, which I hadn't realized. I asked him to send me a copy of Mandrake 10, and UPS just showed up with it yesterday evening. I don't have time to mess with it now, but as soon as I finish the current book I'll load it on a decent desktop system and see what it'll do.

Literally the moment I finish the current book, I'll be starting on the next edition of PC Hardware in a Nutshell. Well, that makes it sound like more of an absolute cutover than it really is. What will happen is that I'll send in the final draft manuscript of the book I'm working on now and then start work on the new edition of PCHiaN. From time to time, I'll get queries from copy editors, production people, and so on about the current book. Usually, the queries will be simple things that it'll take only a few minutes to deal with. Sometimes, it'll be stuff that'll take me a day or two to deal with. Eventually, the final galleys will show up, and I'll spend a hectic couple of days proofing them before they go to the printer. But, in essence, I'll shift from spending 100% of my time on the current book to spending 100% of my time on the new edition of PCHiaN, with occasional timeouts for work on the galleys and so on.

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Thursday, 27 May 2004

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9:36 - From Brian Cheesman over on the messageboard:

"My day was eaten by a hoard of lemmings."

Why are you hoarding lemmings?

Because otherwise the stupid little rodents are always jumping in the bathtub and drowning themselves, and I never have any left in inventory when I need them.

Still hard at work on the Preface and Chapter 1. I keep both open so that I can jump back and forth when I get bored working on one or the other, or when I have a thought I don't want to lose. Today is it for me and Barbara. Starting tomorrow, we're taking the holiday off. See you next Tuesday.

17:53 - Doc Searls attempts a Dorothy Parker quote, but alas he mangles it. The actual quote, which Parker delivered at the Algonquin when challenged to use the word "horticulture" in a witty sentence, was "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

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Friday, 28 May 2004

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No post.

 

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Saturday, 29 May 2004

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No post.

 

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Sunday, 30 May 2004

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No post.

 

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