The Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0. Yeap, they may sell a whole lot of crappy software products, but this is one they really got right.

Best mouse I ever had. Before the optical age, mice would clog up with dirt and wear out. Well not anymore. I've had this one for a great many years, the longest lifespan for a mouse yet.

It's so ergonomic that any other mouse feels totally alien and awkward. The only problem is that the wheel scrolls so softly that the threshold for scrolling a bit too low, and sometimes it skips on its own. So when watching a movie in mplayer, it will seek forward without being asked to.

But otherwise it's perfect. Up to now. It seems the buttons are getting worn out by now, and sometimes one click registers as two. This isn't uncommon with crappy mice, I've seen it before. But in this case a sure sign of old age. It's time to replace this old trooper.

Any recommendations?

The terrible sociological experiment that never should have left the lab, Nazism. Here is an exerpt from a book on the subject that describes how society changed gradually, imperceptibly, until it was too late.

It's a stunning piece of psychological experimentation.

Monotheism is the canon that there is only one god. You see, before monotheism was "in", people had differnet gods for different things, a god for good health, a god for battle and so on. And whichever it was they needed help with at that moment, that's the god they would pray to. But monotheism is very strict on this, only one go-to-guy.

If you consider the implications, they would have to be wide ranging. First of all, from an administration point of view, it's a lot easier to send all your mail to the same guy, regardless of your case. Secondly, you don't have to worry that some gods would feel slighted because you constantly do business with others.

Since there is only one god, however many "religions" you could invent, they would always address the same guy. And indeed, this is something the major religions accept, that through Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is the same god you worship. This is a very troubling truth, for several reasons.

If there are several paths to god, several ways to reach him, which is the best one? Which is the way that given a lifetime of deeds based on those "guidelines" gives you the highest "score" with god? What is the best way to ace the test? Is god going to reward followers of one religion higher than followers of another? That doesn't seem fair, does it?

I think intuitively we tend to believe that god *is* fair. It *does* pay off to be a good person, god will reward those who are good and punish those who are bad. Isn't that what we believe? So he shouldn't treat you better for picking one religion over another, should he? Because they are all ways of reaching him.

But if all [monotheistic] religions are equally good, it means that they are instances of one another, that they are redundant. Consider the following illustration from mathematics.

f(x, y) = x * 2 + y * 2

g(x, y) = (x + y) * 2

f and g are functions. In fact, they are equal, because they produce the same output for the same input. As long as this condition holds, it doesn't matter what happens inside, it doesn't matter how the output is computed. All that matters is what the result it. It may be that g is more "clever" in computing the result than f, but both do the job just as well. What it boils down to is that you only need one of f and g.

This is a mathematical illustration of what we've already established about religions. All are ways of reaching god, equally good ways. However it is you go about reaching god through these different paths, ultimately gives you the same outcome. And that means.. one is as good as the other. There may be one that is more "clever" or "efficient" or "easier", than another. And if so, why wouldn't you pick the most "clever" way, just like a mathematician would use the function that gives him less work?

If two religions don't specify that you must be a lifelong follower to be worthy of god, we can consider them interchangeable. In Christianity, you can become a follower at any point in your life, and god won't reject you. If that's also the case with Islam, then you can switch between them.

In particular, this gives you flexibility. If as a Christian you move to a country where Islam is the standard, you can switch and not "miss a step". Or if you don't like praying as much as you should in Islam, you can become Christian and pray less.

You are...Nurse Laverne Roberts
A.K.A. "The Gossip"

Mmm! Honey, you've got it all together! Whatever you do, you do it well. You're helpful to a point, and those close to you feel they can count on you. But you're not a doormat! The only problem is, with all those good qualities, you tend to be a bit judgmental of others...and you tend to share that judgment way too easily.
>Take the test<

J.D.Honest, cheerful, hallucinating.

6166 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 23528 times.
34% of people had this result.
>Take the test<

Very disparate results. Almost as if these tests were complete hogwash. :/ And here I was dying to know :(

Recall the last time you were impressed by a Yahoo! website, product, or service. Okay, that was fast. Why is it that these guys are so hooked on being mediocre? Not bad, mind you, or evil, just sub standard. So that almost everytime you use one of their services it pains you that there are glaring bugs they could have fixed.

I already reviewed once how they are destroying Yahoo! Mail, which is actually one of their very best services, in favor of a new version of the service that's much worse. But that's just the top of the iceberg.

Today I was watching an interesting talk about javascript on Yahoo! Video, and I soon realized that Yahoo!'s flash video player is the worst one I've ever seen. When I watch it, the play button gets stuck so I can't pause and none of the maximize/minimize controls seem to work either. And if you think it's Adobe's linux flash plugin that's buggy, I'm happy to say that I can watch flash movies without a hitch on any number of other sites.

And that made me think back on various times I've used Yahoo! services in the past. Many years ago, I was trying pretty hard to promote Juventuz, my football fansite. Back then, the surest way of getting good traffic was to be in Yahoo!'s directory. Their directory was very exclusive and very hard to get into. As one of the leading fansites in my particular category, I think I waited about 2 years for my site to be added. Meanwhile, the category listed a couple of sites that were either almost dead or completely 404. After Juventuz finally got added it didn't make a big difference anymore, by that time I had built up good traffic through other means.

Of course, the reason Yahoo!'s directory was important was that they were a force in web search, long before the Google revolution. But if you look at their search right now, it's hard to be impressed by it. It's only a single input box, there's no advanced options to filter on language or whatever. Compare that to Google's advanced search that has lots of options.

So what else does Yahoo! do? Flickr. It wasn't built by Yahoo!, but they own it now. And it's a successful site, probably the most popular photo sharing site, and might be Yahoo!'s more successful venture right now. But the navigation is horrible. Once you zoom in on a picture, there's no way to navigate, you have to go back. And the way albums are presented, it's awful. The best photo site I think is Zoomr (unfortuantely they are in the middle of a redesign right now), although there seems to be little competition in this space.

Yahoo! is a veteran internet company, and one of the major players. But is there anything they are leading at? Their search is far inferior and always has been to Google. Their messenger service is basically irrelevant. Their map service I think was launced after Google's, and I don't know anyone who uses it. Yahoo! Groups is decent and pretty popular, but if you actually need to set up a group it's quite a pain to use and very limited. And, of course, their video is fairly irrelevant to Youtube. For an internet company, they don't seem to have much of a talent for internet products.