The 2005 Mustang is absolutely beautiful. Old school styling inside and out. Really a sea change for Ford. This is a menacing automobile. I can't wait to see one.

TheMustangSource.com | 2005 Mustang Pictures

On May 4th, the Gumball 3000 will rally in Europe.
The event follows a 3000 mile route that begins in romantic Paris
(France), and travels south via Biarritz (France) and the Pyrenees
mountain range to Madrid (Spain) (see David Beckham), en route
to Marbella’s Golden Mile (Spain) before crossing the Mediterranean
Sea into Africa to Marrakech (Morocco). After partying with the
King of Morocco and negotiating the Sahara Desert the route then
returns to Europe heading to Barcelona (Spain) to catch the Formula
One Grand Prix before finishing with a major party in Cannes
back in the South of France. For those of you wishing to party
for another week the famous Cannes film festival begins the following day.

What is in store for the 2004 Gumball 3000

] Teckademics believes the Aftermarket Industry has a closed door
] approach to the Import Culture and tends to shy away from the culture
] when bad or controversial things happen. Movies like "The Fast And
] The Furious" have put a Hollywood image on the lifestyle. We do
] not think this image is correct. We want to show the real lifestyle.
] We are proud of the underground do-it-yourself attitude and we embrace
] it. We are not scared to show what really goes down. The Import Culture is
] like the underground skate culture in the early nineties. The big skateboard
] industry was doing nothing to expose the true lifestyle and was very
] corporate. Skate boarders were treated like outlaws and were hassled
] wherever they went. Sound familiar? It was small start up companies
] like World Industries who were owned and run by skaters that broke
] the door down to how skateboarding is today. I give this
] example because the import lifestyle directly crosses over to the
] skate market. I personally know tons of skate pros who drive their
] slammed imports to the skate parks and pro racers
] like Jeremy Lookofsky that skate around at drag events.

These guys make kick ass films. Mischief 3000 is my official pick for movie of the year.

Teckademics

] NEW YORK (Reuters) - Although the Dow has closed above
] 10,000 11 times so far this month, it's likely to be
] years before the oldest and most widely watched U.S.
] market measure stays over the mark without falling back.
]
] "If there is a possible correlation, we can expect
] essentially a trading-range bound progression that could
] indeed last up to 20 years, or toward the years 2015-20,"
] said Alan Shaw, a technical analyst at Smith Barney, in a
] recent study.

Get ready for a boring economy.

Dow 10,000 May Be Ceiling for Years, Patterns Show

Microsoft is a company that got its start writing software for personal computers. The personal computer revolution was a wonderous thing and no one provided a better platform for personal computer software then Microsoft did. But this is almost 2004, and not 1988, and Microsoft is still making software for personal computers, but people are using personal computers in new ways. People are doing things with their personal computers that used to be the exclusive domain of servers, an entirely different class of computers that used to run an entirely different kind of software. People are building infrastructure with their personal computers, and in that light Microsoft isn't looking as good as they used to.

You see, there are really two classes of people who use personal computers. Producers, and consumers; Developers, and Users. Microsoft has built its entire software platform to suit these two classes of users, and this makes sense as these are the people who have traditionally purchased Microsoft products. However, as Microsoft makes the move into the world of infrastructure; into the world of servers; they are entering an area where there are three classes of people who use their products: Developers, Users, and Systems Administrators.

Infrastructures are made of systems of systems that interact in very complex ways, and there is an entire class of professionals who make their living making infrastructures work. Microsoft's platform doesn't anticipate the existence of this class of professionals, and doesn't provide them with tools that are well suited to their jobs, because Microsoft's platform is designed for personal computers, and personal computers do not have Systems Administrators.

For the past decade or so Microsoft has been pushing their platform, designed for Developers and Users, into a world populated by Systems Administrators. They have tried to jam their personal computer software into the world of infrastructure the way you hammer a square peg into a round hole. They've met with constant resistance over the years and yet they have kept hammering away. Every once in a while they've changed something due to the complaints of Systems Administrators. For example, I no longer have to reboot when I change my IP address. But for the most part, they've attempted to route around the entire profession of Systems Administrators through every business and marketing trick in the book, including leveraging proprietary technology. (Of course TCO for a NBT file server IS cheaper with XP then with UNIX; Microsoft controls the protocol!)

The fact is that this strategy is doomed to failure. The fact is that Microsoft doesn't get it. Infrastructure must be reliable. Software systems are complex. Software has bugs, and will always have bugs. Systems Administrators will always be needed to reliably operate infrastructure which interacts in complex ways in spite of software bugs. There is absolutely no getting around this... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

] Friends say the roots of his success lie in his lateral
] thinking - finding the true appeal of an object, often
] ignoring the traditional approach to design. Inspiration
] comes from almost anywhere. The original candy-coloured
] iMac had its roots in gumdrops. The popular transparent
] Apple mouse came from thinking about how drops of water
] sit on a flat surface. An angle-poise desk lamp helped
] inspire the new iMac. The see-through outer casing of
] recent iBooks came from the look that food has when
] wrapped in clingfilm. The iPod is like a cigarette pack
] for those addicted to music instead of tobacco.

Jonathan Ive is a bad ass.

Who is Jonathan Ive and what kind of car does he drive

] So if jobs are scarce and wages are flat, who's
] benefiting from the economy's expansion? The direct gains
] are going largely to corporate profits, which rose at an
] annual rate of more than 40 percent in the third quarter.
] Indirectly, that means that gains are going to
] stockholders, who are the ultimate owners of corporate
] profits. (That is, if the gains don't go to self-dealing
] executives, but let's save that topic for another day.)

Here's our so-called recovery. Paul Krugman is like smart or something. END My So-Called Life Reference.

Op-Ed Columnist: Our So-Called Boom

] FedEx Corp. said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire
] Kinko's, the business services retailer, for $2.4 billion
] in cash.

Holy @$*&(@^#*! And I thought the UPS Store deal was big!

FedEx to buy Kinko's for $2.4 B in cash - Dec. 30, 2003

Here is a direct link to the recent Gallup results on American opinions about the Iraq war. What you think of those opinions probably has a lot to do with how closely they resemble your opinions. The exception is the one Ryan pointed out... Do you think Sadam was involved with the 911 attacks? He wasn't and this is a simple factual measure of how confused you are about what is going on.

The rate is as high now as it has ever been. A slight decrease in the number occurred in September when Bush said he wasn't involved, but now its right back up again, proving that the only thing worse then our grasp of the facts is our attention span.

Campaign finance reform attacks the symptom and not the disease. We don't need campaign finance reform, we need voter clue reform. As long as so many people remain completely incapable of independent thought they will always be the victims of big marketing budgets.

Gallup Poll Analyses - Americans are clueless

] So we asked a dozen experts in fields that are apt to
] touch all our lives this year -- privacy, defense, spam,
] security, open source, technology development, life
] online and human rights -- to answer this question: "What
] do you wish would happen in 2004, and what do you think
] will actually happen?"

Wired News: The Fantasy and Reality of 2004