OK, ICANN has finally approved the “porn friendly” (CNET’s phrase) .xxx TLD (top-level domain, such as .com, .net and so on).

Wow, that’ll do nothing except line the coffers of domain registrars.

This decision – which does not require porn purveyors to move to this domain – is essentially meaningless.

Here’s why:

• There is no rule for porn purveyors to move to this TLD. So concerned parents who set up (whatever currently non-exisitent) tools to block this domain will not block sex.com, only sex.xxx, for example.
• There is no rule for porn purveyors to move to this TLD. So concerned parents who (try to) teach their kids to avoid .xxx domains will still not prevent those kids from visting, for example, sex.com, only sex.xxx
• There is no rule for porn purveyors to move to this TLD. So what are those porn purveyors going to do? Yeah, register [my porn site].xxx in addition to [my porn site].com, [my port site].net, [my porn site].tv and so on.
• There is no rule that says you can’t have a NON-porn site that’s with a .xxx TLD. Why is this bad? Why would someone want to pick this TLD for a non-porn site? You really think someone is NOT goning to try to register CNN.xxx or google.xxx? Come on, it’ll happen. OK, what about big sites without deep pockets (CNN and Google will destroy you….)? I like the site by Jason Kottke, kottke.org. He’s a single person, only known for his blog, really. Think if some offshore company registered kottke.xxx it would be hard to get back? Probably, and expensive. While there is the whole (slowww…..ineffectual….) ICANN process to combat such attempts, they happen and it can be painful for the affected party.

Those are the practical reasons.

The others are philosophical.

I don’t disagree with porn. In the biggest-picture-possible type of way, why not? I don’t like much modern art either, should that be banned? If an adult voluntarily wants to see porn without affecting others [don’t play it on your car TV in traffic you f***ing idiot…], uh, so what?

And what is porn? Since no one – even the Supreme Court pretty much left it as “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it” – can define it, how you ban it?

What is porn?

• Showing actual sex?
• Showing fully naked and exposed whatevers and simulated or “almost” sex (no penetration, for example)?
• Showing naughty bits?
• What are “naughty bits”? Are the nudes of Georgia O’Keeffe by her husband, Afred Steiglitz, obscene because you can see nipples and pubic hair?

OK, I get at drawing the line at involving porn with kids or showing porn to kids (gee, how generous of me. I didn’t mean it that way), and if – for whatever reason – the porn was of adults who were not fully agreeable with such events (i.e. crack heads, forced prostitution etc), that should be a bad thing.

But it’s drawing that line and enforcing same that’s incredibly difficult. That’s why the .xxx TLD is a joke: Too late, dude! If things had been set up earlier to put porn (whatever porn is) in a .xxx TLD earlier, things would have been easier. Sure, some sites (Georgia O’Keeffe photos) may have been forced there, but the ICANN process should have then allowed for a “.com” address for same after petition and so on.

That might have helped, but … not totally.

Let’s take this blog. I’ve written it for four years. Let’s say I posted a picture of something pornish/randy during that time.

Does the whole blog have to move to “.xxx”?

Does my whole domain (the blog is just part of littleghost.com) have to move to “.xxx”?

Porn is not easy, but – here’s just my take – the “.xxx” TLD is not really going to help much to corrale the Internet porn issue. I can see it helping if there are (whatever) incentives for clearly “we let you view naked chicks or folks having sex” site to move to this domain – and begin advertising same (so it’s a cache thing that begins to make sense: you will type in “sex.xxx” instead of “sex.com” for the first try if you’re porn-diving).

Beyond that – and that is really feeble – “.xxx” means squat.

But I could be wrong. And that happens a lot.

We’ll, it’s been an eventful day for only being 2pm.

Got up early (well, regular time for a work day, but it’s Saturday) and took the cats into the vet for the annual checkup. They just don’t like that, but they are all vaccinated up and so on.

Then took in the annual Arlington Height (IL) art fair. We’ve gone the last three or so years; it’s usually a good fair.

I dunno – maybe it’s just because we just got back from Santa Fe (where the whole town is somewhat like an art fair), but this year’s event as pretty much “so what?”

Sure, there were some things worth looking at, some good, some bad, some just plain butt ugly – but nothing that grabbed us like the in the past few years. Oh well, that’s how art fairs seem to run: hit or miss. Maybe we were just cranky today.

Came home and – since it was supposed to rain – I thought it would be a good idea to cut the lawn. Got the front and our slivers of a side done, but it was getting black as I began the back. Did the edging, and a couple of large cracks of thunder later, I thought it would be a good idea to head in.

Just as I turned the corner out the backyard – dump city! Just poured like someone turned on a faucet.

So, I still have the most of the backyard to do. Oh well, maybe tomorrow. And we do need the rain.

Update: 5:10: After about 45 minutes of torrential rain, the sun came out and there’s not a cloud in the sky. A nice breeze is even keeping climbing humidity at bay. Gotta love (why??) the vague structre of Chicago weather.

Inspired by Bill Mon, a collection of quotations:

President Bush called a human rights report “absurd” for criticizing the United States’ detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said Tuesday the allegations were made by “people who hate America.”

“It’s absurd. It’s an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world,” Bush said of the Amnesty International report that compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.
  Bush: Amnesty report ‘absurd’

On another foreign policy issue, Bush said he expressed concerns with Russian President Vladimir Putin about legal proceedings against former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Once the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky was convicted Tuesday of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison following a trial widely denounced as politically motivated.

Bush did not comment directly on the verdict, but said, “it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial.”
  Bush: Amnesty report ‘absurd’

“All the rules in the United States and in the world, the person is innocent until you prove he is guilty, not innocent. But here, with Americans, the detainees are guilty until proven innocent, one [Guantanamo] detainee complained.
  Tales of abuse in Guantanamo testimony

So it’s Memorial Day and the weather is cooperating. It’s beautiful outside.

Time for some gardening – power gardening.

Shovels, rakes and hoes? Girly gardening.

So I’m out there in the new bed created by losing a tree. There is still one huge root left – buried about six inches below the surface – that’s creating problems for the plantings.

Problem: Root.

Solution: Power tools!

I’m out there with a circular saw, Saws-All, drill with speed-bore bits and various other pieces of hardware. An hour later I call it quits, dripping wet with sweat. (Just got out of the shower; I feel almost human again.)

Who won? A draw. I got a bunch of the root out, but not as much as I would have liked to have removed. My kingdom for a chain saw…

As noted in the previous entry, I’ve been to Santa Fe (and back). And the Santa Fe gallery is starting to fill up. Fun to peruse the pics.

What follows are some thoughts on Santa Fe.

• It wasn’t what I expected. While I really went into Santa Fe with no expections per se, I guess I had a feeling that the town would have spectacular scenery (it doesn’t) and the town would have an authentic flavor to it (it doesn’t). It’s almost like a faux town, a reconstruction (in the last 20 or so years) of what the town should look like.
• This is not to say I was disappointed – after the initial WTF?, there was much to enjoy: Great food, great art (galleries galore…) and it’s a great base camp for day trips. (More on restaurants and travel to follow).
• The trumpeted in-town tourist attractions are shit: St. Francis (brand new inside; but nice exterior); Loretto Chapel and the famous staircase…yeah, got a picture of it. Big whoop. Santa Fe is not a historic town in terms of what’s there now as other towns (Charleston, SC; New Orleans, LA) are. Not a ding; just reality.
• Would I go back? I dunno. I’d love to do some more shooting around there, but maybe stay in Taos instead, to catch a different experience and be more in the mountains (I think Taos is higher than Santa Fe, but I could well be wrong).
• This is not – like New Orleans – a party town. Virtually no live music, and the bars were – for the most part – pretty pedestrian. Somewhat surprising.
• Very laid back Santa Fe is, as are its residents. And friendly. No snarky/bitchy waitresses, crazy drivers such as sometimes appear to be the norm in big cities. Civility rules.
• Slower pace: I was able to (easily) run in the middle of a downtown street to take pics. In Chicago, I’d be dodging or road kill.

What is there to do in Santa Fe? Well – to me – there is not much of anything beyond shopping (think turquoise, Indian pottery and other arts) and eating. I like eating, but not shopping, so it’s a wash there. The city does have the outside opera house (which I did not attend) and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (small, kinda oddball but recommended).

The rest of the interest in Santa Fe – to me – are the places near the town: The day trips.

So, in no particular order or grouping, here are some of the places I was glad to have seen in the Santa Fe area.

Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu
To me, this was the highlight of the trip. While Ghost Ranch is embedded in my mind with Georgia O’Keeffe (which is the reason we checked it out), the scenery there is spectacular from the point of view of one who likes rocks and so on.

It was a beautiful day when we drove out there, big puffy clouds in the sky but full sun and a nice breeze to keep the 80-degree temps at bay. We did the easiest(!) hike, up Chimney Rocks. Three miles, going up 600 feet – and you’re starting at approximately 6500 ft – not what a Midwesterner is used to. You arrive on top of the mesa opposite the Chimney Rocks, and the view – the whole way up – is breathtaking. Soft rock, hard rock, red rock, yellow rock, white rock, layered rock, rounded rock….get the gist?

The odd thing – to me – was the lack of wildlife. I saw some crows and some ants, and that’s it. No other birds, no lizards (but it was noonish when we climbed; high sun, we are Midwestern idiots). Just different from the deciduous forest conditioning I’ve had.

And it was nice to see the formations Georgia O’Keeffe saw. I’m not a painter, but I would see the rock formations and see a painting. An incredible experience, about 50 miles north of Santa Fe.

We did the ranch on a whim, and there was no charge, no crowds. That works.

Bandelier National Monument
A huge chunk of real estate roughly 30 miles west of Santa Fe, Bandelier is most noted for a huge sweep of cliff where exist dozens (hundreds?) of former Indian cliff dwellings.

It’s an impressive experience, one that I had not run across before. Both cliff dwellings (in massive, pourous sandstone cliffs) and village remnants. The area is also rich in Douglas Fir and Ponderosa Pine, and it would have been fun to hike a billion miles into the wilderness, but, hey, reality happens. Recommended, but not highly.

Georgia O’Keeffe Musuem
Picture stolen from the museum site, as no photography allowed inside (I get that…)

Not too extensive, and the one part that I really enjoyed – the photographs of O’Keeffe – were too few. I recommend the Art Institute of Chicago, which boasts a rich selection of O’Keeffe paintings and Stieglitz’s photos. Why Chicago? Because that’s where O’Keeffe went to art school, at the Art Institute. I know a woman who was a classmate of O’Keeffe, and she remarked, “No one understood what Georgia was doing…”. It just wasn’t traditional. Interesting. And telling.

Downtown Santa Fe, takes about a half-hour to coast through, $8 or so per person

Eats: Coyote Cafe
A trio of restaurants, including the indoor Coyote Cafe, an upscale, high-ticket restaurant that is – to me – a little overpriced but worth the experience. (Meal, no soup or salad, two glasses of wine ~$60.)

I had a great meal there (I had lamb, which were like lamb medallions, let’s say, cooked perfectly for me [medium rare] ). Service was good, but we were early and we were the first customers for the evening, so it’s hard to judge.

Bottom line: Expect to drop at least $75/per person (including tip etc). Expect good service, very nice presentation – but not huge servings, and a pleasant (but not overly impressive) environment. This is a place to eat slowly, enjoy the wine, food and company. High-ticket, but I’d eat there again.

Eats: Cafe Pasqual
A small cafe at the corner of Water and Gaspar, Pasqual’s serves up incredible breakfasts for more like lunch prices, but I’ve no complaint.

This is a cafe that hustles. Yet the service is solid, informal and the food rocks. Different stuff to choose from, a lot homemade or organic. Look at the picture. You’re looking at – among other things – feta cheese, red chile sauce, bananas (bananas!? Yep, worked), peas, cilantro, black beans and eggs. I want more!!!

Small place; big impact. We at breakfast there both days we had breakfast in Santa Fe.

Eats: Dinner for Two
Out of the action area of downtown Santa Fe, Dinner for Two caught our eye because it was right across the street from our hotel (Hilton) and had an interesting hook: Two person dinner – including wine, appetizer and choice of entre is flat fee for (duh!) party of two.

White tablecloths; great service. Wine sucked (my bad; I should have upgraded), but we got (excellent!!!!!) soup, salad, appetizer, wine and entre (veal for each of us) for about $30/per person, with tip. We were too full for desert.

Interesting restaurant that one should check out, just to scope out the menu to see if there is any interest. Very romantic after dusk, as well. West Alameda and San Francisco.

If you do know the way to Santa Fe, please let me know. Because I just got back from a too-short vacation (is there such a thing as a too-long vacation??) in Santa Fe and it was great.

Perfect weather, great food, off the grid.

I have begun a gallery of images the this trip, which I’m (slowwwwly…) populating as I process stuff. First trip with a digital camera! Whoo hooo! Worked well.

Now back to our regularly scheduled reality….

Beginning what will be a full week (with the Memorial Day day off) of vacation.

Huh. So this is vacation. Kinda boring so far.

Now what do I do???

It appears that it’s the fourth B-day of this blog. Fired up May 17, 2001.

Four years and almost 300 posts of unread drivel.

Let’s celebrate!

Actually, four years is a significant for a blog by a nobody; I was an early adopter, I guess.

While I had no real expectations going into this grand experiment, I have accomplished the following blog-worthy events over the past 1000+ days:

• Added on-the-fly skinning for the site (see the Theme links in side rail)
• Built my own RSS feed (scrapes the site on regular interval via my home Linux box)
• Built and incorporated a picture gallery, including a picture of the day (see side rail)
• Built and incorporated a Top Ten list (hey, everyone loves lists…)
• Built and incorporated a Reviews section
• Built and incorporated a RSS aggregator on the site

Could I have done more? Sure.

Could I have done stuff better? Absolutely.

But this has all been a great learning experience; building all these tools in PHP/Perl/mySQL/cron and so on. This blog is a great platform to learn.

I even learn from myself – I’ve built these tools over the course of the last four years, and I’ll occasionally have to pry into the code to tweak this or that. When I do, I invariably think “Damn! I built this? Wow!” And I learn from what I’ve written in the past.

That works for me; that’s what I like.

Happy B-Day blog…

One thing I’ve been noticing this weekend – as part of my weekend troll of web sites I just don’t have time to hit during the work week – is the … well, what is not there to notice.

In other words, items that used to get a lot of press/had a lot of promise and either have cooled off or become mainstream.

Examples? Sure, I gots examples!

• Voice-recognition software: You know, computer dictaphones. Who were the players? ViaVoice, Dragon [something or other]? I just don’t read that much about this anymore. I never bought into it – both because of the technological hurdles and the concept of a cube farm full of people talking to their computers instead of typing – but I’ve been wrong many many times before. But I personally don’t know anyone who uses this type of software.
• Writing-recognition software: Still pops up a bit, but basically has settled into the either MS-tablet software or Palm’s Graffiti (sp?). This seems to be a meme that has become mainstream (in Palm-enabled phones, for example) but not the paradigm shift many predicted in the past. Just another useful, yet limited, tool.
• Tablet computers: While there are rumors that Apple is thinking tablet, there’s no real evidence that it is going to do so. I’ve only seen one person using a tablet over the last couple of years in my business contacts (vendors, clients, contractors and so on); that’s a tiny number. On the other hand, tablets seem to have caught on in the medical profession (which I have no exposure to beyond an annual physical). So there it’s become embedded; otherwise, sorta fizzled. Everyone has either a Palm or a laptop (or both); no one has a tablet.

And what’s hot now? (in no special order)

• Blogs/podcasting
• Music sites (iTunes et al)
• Ajax (fancy name for DHTML with HTTPRequest JS; see Google Maps)
• Games/gaming

Leading potentially disruptive technologies (memes that lead to actually paradigm shifts); again, in no particular order:

• VoIP
• Blogs/podcasting
• Downloads/swapping (i.e. BitTorrent), music and video

This last batch of items is interesting in that each item is anything but new. Has computing reached an equilibrium of sorts, where nothing is currently new? No WWW, Java, GUI and so on?

Food for thought.

At the time of this entry, the host for this blog – and and all of littleghost.com – is XO Communications. Formerly Concentric Communications, a merger/bankruptcy threat/whatever turned Concentric into XO.

This was my first web host; littleghost.com (my first domain) has been parked on their servers for eight or so years. Long time, especially in Internet years.

As an early-adopter Web host, XO has not done the best job on keeping up on with the Jones: Lack of DB support, lack of SSH and PHP support (PHP has been supported for a couple of years, but only as a CGI, IN the CGI directory. Ug.). And this lack of functionality at a relatively high price. The only reason I didn’t leave them is that I didn’t have the time for all that domain transfers may entail. My bad.

Recently, however, they’ve tried to be competitive with other sites. OK.

The bad part is, they never notified existing members.

For example, I used to pay ~$25/mo for hosting, which was 100M storage, no subdomains or database access (can add for $x/mo).

The new plan – named EXACTLY the same – gives an XO hoster 250M, subdomains, free database (mySQL) hosting and so on. For $16/mo.

When I literally stumbled across this and called, the response was, “Well, if existing customers do notice this they can then transfer to this plan.” If I don’t notice? “You’ll be billed at the current rate [$25] and have that [old] plan’s features.” Even the upgraded plans – as embedded in the [logged in as XO user] admin – reflected the OLD plan upgrades/costs. So, if I really needed more this or that, I could upgrade from X-1 to X-2, and never be notitified that the “new” X-1 plan is more than the “old” X-2 plan and costs less. I don’t even know if this is legal (don’t much care); I do believe it’s incredibly unethical (I do much care).

And they admit they never sent out an e-mail about this, and to offer this to all existing customers would “be too expensive.” Huh?

So I, a never-late-paying for eight years client gets the shaft; new members get more functionality and a lower price.

Say NO to XO. Last year, I help host four sites directly; I recommended hosting to over triple that number (most who took my advice). I never recommended XO, as they were too expensive and offered few of the extras other sites did.

Even with the lower prices and better features, I will never recommend them. Because they shafted me and other existing members, and did not apologize for this (no offer for free month of hosting or whatever – which I was not looking for, but … still).

This seems odd to me in many different ways, and it’s not a dollar issue, per se (though I did pay more for less functionality over appox. four months). Their current offer does NOT say “For new members only” – I could understand (to a degree) that pitch.

But when not one but two CSRs tell me that they’ll give the new, low rate to existing customers “who notice it” is just not cricket.

X0 – Welcome to the Corporate Hall Shame!