Chris Gulker: Text

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 03:26:50 GMT

Moving day: so, XO, our service provider of almost 5 years, are being such idots that I will be moving gulker.com much sooner than planned. As a result, the Herald Examiner message board and comments server will be down until I figure out technologies that will run on the new, hosted service. BTW. if you own XO stock, dump it. They're hopeless, with clueless, unempowered customer service people. These guys are unlikely to survive... expensive service that's bad...

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:54:26 GMT

Congress to criminalize P2P: Senators introduce legislation to impose jail time for sharing as little as one file, while the House may consider a bill lowering the bar for taking people to court. Entertainment lobbyists appear to be winning their war against peer-to-peer networks. By Xeni Jardin in Wired News...

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:46:28 GMT

gulker.com will be moving servers sometime in the next couple of days: there will likely be some DNS weirdness as we go from our 144K IDSL line to a managed hosting facility. We'll leave both sites up until the DNS changes propagate.

Main advantages should be much better response times: www.gulker.com is slow for people using broadband connections (like our new 3 mbps Comcast ADSL line), and our vendor, XO, won't match SBC and other competitors' rates (XO charges $150 month/ SBC wants $54).

I'd be happy to give SBC a try (especially for $100/month savings), but we'd still be on a slow link - we're just too far from the switch to get fast DSL service. I'd like to use more pictures and multimedia in the future, so we're going to try hosting www.gulker.com and related domains on an Xserve on a fast network at Server Logistics. Still not sure how I'll migrate the comments server...

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 04:36:53 GMT

Methane has been found on Mars by 2 independent groups, according to a report in the Independent. Living organisms are one of the ways methane is produced...

Wed, 24 Mar 2004 06:50:14 GMT

Jack Valenti to retire: check the very last line of this Eonline report. I guess I'd say yay, except that the people mentioned to replace him are pretty grim...

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 17:26:10 GMT

Hmmmm... may be time for a gulker.com overhaul... stay tuned...

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 16:40:12 GMT

Music Makers: the Music Maker Foundation helps blues artists with everything from recording to finding living quarters. Founded by Tim Duffy 20 years ago, the foundation is described as "part recording company, part artist management service and part social welfare agency."

And, the Foundation's music is available on iTunes! 2 volumes of Songs from the Roots of America are available for $9.99 each, with more than 20 songs per album. Artists like Whistling Britches Thompson, Cootie Stark, Willa Mae Buckner and Beverly "Guitar" Watkins can't be found anywhere else - real deal blues performed by living artists. Highly recommended... I bought 'em both...

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 05:29:41 GMT

Telling words: "Many in the church had hoped to avoid a confrontation on homosexuality, one of the most contentious issues facing the church since the Methodist split over slavery in 1844." From the New York Times.

The reference is to the current controversy in the Methodist Church. Bretheren in Christ, do we not see the comparison? Some Methodists supported slavery, upon a time. Had those people spent the time to ask Christ, in their prayers, what their path forward should be?

Please, if you feel strongly that homosexuality is somehow "wrong", ask yourself the same question, and pray. Those who supported slavery, did they walk in Christ's footsteps? Do you who now deny children of God, walk in Christ's footsteps?

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 03:23:48 GMT

Guy's night in: with spouse out of town, I'm free to experiment with culinary tastes - and a price point - that don't normally fly hereabouts. Tonight's dinner was turkey sausage (Jodi Maroni's Yucatan) sauteed with peppers, onions, okra, corn and tomatoes. A little dry white wine was the only other ingredient, other than a touch of brine from the Bruce Foods canned okra. The ingredients, from Trader Joe's and Safeway, came in under $3... delicious, if you ask me, and easy to make...

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 19:41:05 GMT

Prejudice and faith: regular readers know that I have made it my Lenten mission to learn more about fellow Christians who oppose homosexuality on religious grounds. I have been grateful for those who have reached out and tried to help me understand what I see as bigotry.

Thank you. The dialog has been welcome.

But, I keep coming back to a basic tension. During the 60s, when some groups cited religion as a justification for racial discrimination, I came to the conclusion that you can't be a racist and truly be a Christian: as Martin Luther King famously said "It's a strange thing, when people want to justify a prejudice, they turn to religion."

So, I ask my fellow Christians, do you really believe that Jesus calls us to discriminate against brothers and sisters who happen to be gay? Isn't the example of Christ's life one of love for all, even the most wretched among us? No matter where you come down on the issue of the science of being gay and lesbian (the 'nature or nurture' argument), if you are a Christian, are you not called to try to understand, and failing that, to love? It seems to me that, if one is truly a Christian, the default has to be understanding and tolerance, not prejudice and rejection...

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 18:58:52 GMT

Methodists acquit Karen Dammann, a minister and lesbian charged with breaking a 1972 church law that holds homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching." The Methodists join the Episcopalians in wrestling with the issue... good!

Sat, 20 Mar 2004 20:34:55 GMT

Chicago peace march: Linda just called - her cab couldn't get through the peace march in downtown Chicago, so she walked with the marchers to her hotel. Said it felt just like the old days - and it sure sounded like the 60s over her cell phone. Big marches in San Francisco, New York etc. today, too...

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 21:16:46 GMT

Bogus? Degree mills are thought to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually, according to an article in Wired. Hamilton University, Columbus University, University of Palmers Green are among those noted in the Wired article as not meeting federal and/or private guidelines for accreditation.

Here's a timeline of events surrounding the closure of author John Gray's alma mater Columbia Pacific University by the California's Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education.

After 4 years of law suits and appeals, Columbia Pacific was shut down in 2000 only to reappear in 2002 (according to degree.net) as Columbia Commonwealth University, first in Montana and now in Wyoming, where the school claims "recognition" by the State of Wyoming. Stranger and stranger...

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 06:57:58 GMT

Diploma mills: a parade of busted government officials shows that websites offering bogus credentials are proliferating. Low cost of goods, high margin...

Thu, 18 Mar 2004 15:47:58 GMT

Gavin got a nastygram from local attorney David Given. At issue is Gavin's characterization of John Gray as a "fraud" - Gray is author of the Venus and Mars books.

According to Deborah Branscum's blog, Gray's PhD is from Columbia Pacific University, which has been called a "degree mill" by the State Attorney and which was shut down by the State of California in 1999. His MA and BA come from Maharishi European Research University. Personally, I think Gavin's characterization is reasonable. Given is a lecturer at Berkeley's Boalt Hall: you don't usually associate Cal profs with stifling free speech...

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 15:45:49 GMT

Siemens unwraps 1.3 megapixel camera phone with 32MB memory, Bluetooth. Whoa... my first Mac's hard drive was smaller than the phone's RAM...

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 15:35:53 GMT

iPods are selling well, but the G5 is coming up short, according to an analyst. Apple has had only a skeleton crew on publishing marketing for almost 5 years now, and made some gaffs in education marketing as well. Gotta take care of those pesky customers, guys...

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 15:23:38 GMT

Google goes local: Google just launched it's local service, that let's you, say, find WiFi hotspots in Menlo Park. Local search is one of the holy grails - and potentially very profitable ad venues - of the search biz. The WiFi search isn't bad...

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 04:09:06 GMT

Continuing my Lenten mission: I've been reading Leviticus, the Old Testament author who is often quoted as a Biblical authority against homosexuality by right-wing, evangelical groups.

There is one line in Leviticus about homosexuality: he disapproves. There are hundreds of lines about how to prepare oxen (and sheep and dove) entrails for burnt sacrifice.

Leviticus also says that women are unclean for seven days after menstruation, and seven days after the birth of a male child, and 2 weeks after the birth of a female child. He also holds that anything a woman touches or sits on while menstruating is unclean.

So, do those congregations who cite Leviticus' writing as Biblical authority that homosexulaity is wrong, also ban menstruating women from church? The pews would be unclean, if you hold to his teaching.

Do they forbid the congregation (husband and siblings included, presumably) from visiting women who've give birth for 7 or 14 days depending on the sex of the child? Those women and their children are likewise unclean. Just curious... please, if you can help me understand this, I will willingly listen...

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 23:18:15 GMT

The new chaos: "Clearly, the United State must adapt its military to "nation-building" if the war on terrorism is to leave in its wake decent government instead of a new chaos." Quote is from an e-newsletter authored by Harvey Sicherman, director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, which is largely funded by private, conservative foundations. Interesting that even the right wing sees that the current administration's penchant for starting wars is creating a big problem...

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 16:29:00 GMT

Madrid: Awful. Cowardly. Yet again, I am hard pressed to understand why. Is it just hate? The victims and their families are in my thoughts and prayers...

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 04:54:20 GMT

Hollywood got started by pirating Edison's inventions, and later received congressional OK to use other copyright holder's work - at a fee set by Congress, not the market. Lawrence Lessig writing in Wired. Duh... Disney ripped off dozens of authors who worked before copyright law existed...

Mon, 08 Mar 2004 05:34:30 GMT

Cool and raining in NYC this PM. I'm here for a conference and to meet with prospective users of Atmosphere. Look forward to running in Central Park tomorrow AM...

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 00:46:48 GMT

Confirming what many have suspected, a study finds that the most popular bloggers aren't the most original. But they do have a knack for swiping material from other, lesser-known blogs. Amit Asaravala reports for Wired News. Shocking... :-)...

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 00:36:08 GMT

Apple stock rallies to highest price since '02. Hmmm... wonder why...