Consider this a heads-up if you live in an area where Bob Edwards Weekend is played; Bob’s interview with Norman Corwin is scheduled for the upcoming weekend on the PRI-distributed program (don’t know which hour, and some areas only play one of the two hours distributed).

If you missed the interview last July, though, here’s your chance.

Steve Johnson’s article Jeeves? Ask him not cracked me up, primarily because of the first paragraph where he says, “though it strikes me as shortsighted to strip your site of its best-known personality, sort of like NPR dumping Bob Edwards.”

Yup.

From the Wall Street Journal: ‘Worms’ Turn on Apple Macs, Bigger Target as Sales Boom

From the article: “Users of Apple Computer Inc.’s Macintosh computers have long enjoyed the technology equivalent of a safe neighborhood, where the viruses and security nuisances that bedevil far more common Windows PCs are practically nonexistent. Now, as the Mac is seeing some of its best sales in years, bad guys appear to be casing the joint.”

Well, of course; while OS9 was relatively safe from viruses (they could crash the machine, but couldn’t do much else - with no underlying command-line interface, it’s much more difficult to run arbitrary code, and even if you did, it was more difficult to exploit that overflow), once Jobs took over, scrapped the existing OS 10 code and decided to use unix (a la NeXT) as the basis of OSX, it was obvious this system could suffwer from exactly the same problems as Windows. Even Microsoft moved away from the underlying command-line interface (way too late, of course), while Apple took a giant leap backwards.

From AP via CNN: Don Knotts, who kept generations of TV audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show” has died.

From the obit: “‘I went to New York cold. On a $100 bill. Bummed a ride,’ he recalled in a visit to his hometown of Morgantown, where city officials renamed a street for him in 1998.

Within six months, Knotts had taken a job on a radio Western called ‘Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders,’ playing a wisecracking, know-it-all handyman. He stayed with it for five years, then came his series TV debut on ‘The Steve Allen Show.’”

From TheDenverChannel.com: Strange-Looking Car Leads To Explosives Charges

I don’t know how the heck I missed this earlier…

No, really. Visit http://www.lastbestchance.org/, pick up a free copy of the film Last Best Chance starring Fred Dalton Thompson (Law and Order) and Jon Gries (The Pretender), and watch it. You’ll quickly discover this is not a conservative thing or a liberal thing, it’s a human thing. And after you watch it, give it to a friend to watch.

From News.com: Yahoo exec: Labels should sell music without DRM

Finally, a sensible voice in the debate. Too bad the poor guy will be shouted down by the music industry executives who want to sell you the same song over and over and over…

From the Oshkosh Northwestern: Amish teen fined for wiretapping

The kid claimed he didn’t know the neighbor would be charged for the calls he made to relatives in Indiana.

Following successful demonstrations by Free Culture NYU, Swarthmore Students will stand up for the rights of music consumers in a protest on February 25th at the Tower Records store on South Street: DRM Protest at Tower Records on Saturday Feb 25th at noon

Should be interesting, and I’d love to hear from anyone who’s in the Philadelphia area who goes down to the event - pictures earn an extra thanks.

Hum…I wonder, though, how many kids are protesting CD DRM who pay iTunes for music protected by DRM who think that’s ok…

From Boing Boing: Copyright office head denounces “big mistake” of extending copyright

Watch the video…if even the US Register of Copyrights thinks Congress screwed up by cowtowing to the Mouse, why can’t we all get our representatives’ attention by pointing them to the comment?

From USA TODAY: Legendary sportscaster Curt Gowdy dies at age 86

The most recent flyer for the Cincinnatti Nostalgia Convention is available in Adobe Acrobat format, direct from Bob Burchett himself.

A few weeks ago, during a family discussion, we realized that our daughter had never seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit, that classic animation/live action film. Just as anyone over twenty should be required to see Casablanca, everyone young (or young at heart) should see this charming little film.

We looked around at a few local stores to see if the film was around on DVD, and didn’t find it. But I had purchased the film years ago on Beta (yes, Beta), and a search of the “black hole” we laughingly refer to as a basement produced, surprisingly, the video tape. As I have a working Beta deck in my office (old technology never dies, it just moves into my office), a few patch cables and voila, her own DVD of the film. With microwave popcorn in hand we sat down and enjoyed again that great film. And everything I did to allow her to watch the film is perfectly legal.

You realize, of course, that she won’t be able to do the same thing for her children…
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From KXTV, Sacramento, CA: Man Coughs Up Nail 35 Years After Accident

This guy saved a bunch of money on surgery by coughing up the nail himself.

From Ars Technica: RIAA et al. says CD ripping, backups not fair use

Please considering contacting your elected officials and lettimg them know you are opposed to the entertainment industry taking away your fair-use rights.

Although I’m still not anywhere near caught up (gee, that’s a surprise, isn’t it?), and am right now falling even farther behind because of the relapse of an old back injury (man, getting old is tough), I need to ask you, gentle reader, if you have any interest in this blog hosting OTR-casts. (Hey, if Winer/Curry can make up a goofy name for something that’s almost as old as the Internet to make it sound new, so can I, right?)

I’m not talking about any pretentious pontificating, a la Radio-Mumble-Mumble, understand. I’m talking about occasionally posting an OTR show, with any comments I might have to make made within the post itself - c’mon, admit it, you don’t want to hear my nasal voice cutting into the show anyway. The software used here (WordPress) is supposed to handle these things transparently, so there shouldn’t be a whole lot of effort involved on either of our parts; add the blog’s RSS feed to your favorite podcast client and you should receive the MP3 file.

I have to admit this will be a low-priority item (not like the old days of The Nostalgia Pages’s “Show of the Moment” page which used to update twice a week or more), posted on an irregular basis whenever I get some time and the mood strikes.

Post your thoughts in the comments below, or contact me privately through the contact link in the sidebar. If there’s reasonable interest, we’ll see what we can accomplish. If not, well, that’ll be one less thing I have to do.

From Ed Bott’s Media Central: HBO stops working with Media Center

Yet another example of why DRM is a truly terrible idea.

I mentioned last week that we made a Baltimore run (ok, never really got near the city itself, but I count anything past Timonium as “Baltimore”). The plan was to, on the way home, hit the old Hunt Valley Mall (dunno what they’re calling the yuppy little village now) for dinner, and hit the Krispy Kreme donut shop on York Road in Timonium, hopefully when the hot light is on, for a dozen of the finest donuts known to man, bar none. We routinely hit the place whenever we make a run that direction, usually headed to Best Buy or CompUSA, also on York Rd.

The SOBs closed the York Road store.

You simply cannot imagine my horror…now the closest Krispy Kreme requires a trip partially around the beltway. And the kicker is, they closed this store down right at the time the shopping center behind it is undergoing a renaissance, with a new Staples store literally within spitting distance of the donut shop parking lot. So they closed the store right when traffic to it would dramatically increase.

You know, it’s no wonder their stock is taking such a beating making bone-headed decisions like that one. That it inconveniences me is, of course, only a sidelight.

I think what really makes me angry, though, is that I’ll probably make the trip to the Owings Mills store the next time I’m down that way anyway. We have a “local” donut outfit, Maple Donuts, and they beat up on the Krispy Kreme chain all the time. But let me tell you…a two-day-old Krispy Kreme beats a fresh Maple Donut any day of the week…not that you can find a fresh Maple Donut, since they are no longer made in-store and are trucked in from a central factory where they are made with all the personal attention of a rivet. Their idea of “fresh” is hours old and many bumpy miles on the road. When you get a Krispy made in-store pulled from the conveyor with that little plastic rod, with the glaze still dripping from the hot, soft, melt-in-your-mouth ring of light doughy perfection, anyone else’s is just a flavorless lardball - even if it doesn’t travel half-way across the county to sit in a box getting stale for most of the day.

So next time I’m down that way, I’ll probably drive the extra way around the beltway and pick up a few boxes…but just so you know, I ain’t gonna like it.

From USATODAY: Newly donated papers shed light on Murrow war broadcasts

Very, very cool. This should add a little more humanity to the newscasting icon.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I promised a very kind soul in the Geek.com’s customer service department, living in California where their idea of deep winter is a light sweater, photos of the weekend snowstorm, assuming there was one. And yes, there was one. So I enclose herewith a few pics of snow, and my seven-year-old daughter frolicking.

It’s a little deeper than I originally thought…	Hum…she’s making a snowball and looking at me…	It’s not that deep…she slipped.	She makes another snowball as I retreat to higher ground
Never eat yellow snow