DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Jon Carroll’s column on the asteroid thread is a sarcastic treat, demonstrating why he’s a world-famous journalist.

(In contrast, the only things people pay me to write begin with <?php and have lots of semicolons in them.)

In a literal twist on meteorology, NASA now offers an asteroid-impact forecast.

The Chronicle offers some background info in NASA ‘asteroid-casting’ out of this world.

According to news.com:

The “We have the way out” campaign describes Unix as an expensive trap. One ad reads: “No wonder Unix makes you feel boxed in. It ties you to an inflexible system. It requires you to pay for expensive experts. It makes you struggle daily with a server environment that’s more complex than ever.”

Microsoft and Unisys launched a website to promote this anti-Unix campaign. Problem was, the website was running on FreeBSD — one of the Unix OSes Microsoft would have you believe is too inflexible, too expensive, and too complex to use.

So on the 2nd of April, Unisys changed the site (http://www.wehavethewayout.com/) from Unix to Windows 2000, but couldn’t make it work!

You have to assume that any high-end webserver requires experts to keep it running. This is true whether the server runs a Microsoft OS or anything else. And you also have to assume that the one place you’re sure to find lots of experts on Microsoft’s OSes is Microsoft.

So, imagine the irony — not even Microsoft can keep this Windows 2000 machine running. Compound the irony: the site they can’t keep running is one that claims that Unix is too complex. I have to laugh.

As of this writing, http://www.wehavethewayout.com/ is still not working:

shell> lynx -mime_header http://www.wehavethewayout.com/ | head -3
HTTP/1.1 404 Object Not Found
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 14:52:36 GMT

1. Microsoft, Unisys announce anti-Unix website
2. Anti-Unix site revealed to rely on Unix
3. Anti-Unix site moved to Windows 2000, spews errors for 2 days

The campaign didn’t name the evil from which users should flee, but the graphic showed a floor almost entirely covered in mauve paint, mauve being the color of Sun Microsystems. So far, so good: but the alternative on offer was to jump through a window, which literate readers will know as defenestration, a popular way of inviting kings to commit suicide in 17th century Europe.

More than you ever wanted to know about Daylight Saving Time. Thanks to Jeremy for the link.

I had no idea that the California State Legislature had requested federal approval to extend Daylight Saving Time permanently. CA Senate Joint Resolution No. 1 states, in part:

• California is experiencing an energy crisis
• DST is a “widely used 20th century energy reduction tool” (!)
• DST also provides safer commuting, saving lives
• DST also reduces crime

and therefore requests that Congress “approve legislation that allows a state to uniformly apply daylight saving time year round”.

Atlantic Records announced on March 19 that the new RUSH album, Vapor Trails, will be released on May 14. The first single (a RUSH single?!) was scheduled to be released to radio stations on the 29th.

See the Atlantic Records press release archive for RUSH.