D’oh! Are ‘The Simpsons’ leaving soon?

Could the end be near for cult television cartoon family “The Simpsons”?

“I think we are closer to winding it up,” the television show’s creator, Matt Groening, told the Financial Times in an interview published Tuesday.

“Although what happens generally if we win the Emmy for best animation show is that that gives us another couple of years to run it into the ground,” he said.

Groening has earned millions for media baron Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network since the series featuring Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and baby Maggie first entered the lives of television viewers in 1989.

The Holiday Inn sign

The American South likes to sequester its vice, tucking away temptation on barge-casinos or inside the lap-dance palaces out on the strip leading to the airport. As for roadside attractions, there’s nothing that gets the blood racing like a motor court on the other side of the state line. As a Tennessee debutante of my acquaintance once explained, “Mississippi motels are where Memphis goes to sin.” Could anything be more wicked than Magic Fingers and rates by the hour?

Apparently not in the Bible Belt. Yet it was a Memphis company named Holiday Inn that became a global brand by polishing the roadside hostel’s image as a place where one got a good night’s sleep and not a right good rogering. The company’s mission was embodied by its “Great Sign,” a glowing, exploding supernova of light and neon built to draw drivers off the highway and into its rooms while spelling out the purity of both its ideals and its bed sheets.

Looking for a debate or a discussion? Check out The Great Debate

Hollywood vs. the Internet

If you have a fast computer and a fast Internet connection, you make Hollywood nervous. Movie and TV studios are worried not because of what you’re doing now, but because of what you might do in the near future: grab digital content with your computer and rebroadcast it online.

Which is why the studios, along with other content providers, have begun a campaign to stop you from ever being able to do such a thing. As music software designer Selene Makarios puts it, this effort represents “little less than an attempt to outlaw general-purpose computers.”

Spanish Web Law Sparks Debate

A law pending in Spain’s Congress has sparked a national debate over how far the government should go in regulating websites.

Critics charge that the LSSI bill (La Ley de Servicios de la Sociedad de la Informacion y de Comercio Electronico) would allow a “competent administrative authority” in government to shut down websites unilaterally — a power that now requires court approval.

Site Barks About Deep Link

By his own proud admission, Avi Adelman is an irrepressible muckraker.

As the proprietor of BarkingDogs.org, a “proactive” news website that unearths political malfeasance in and around Dallas, Texas, Adelman has been, as he loves to say, “a thorn in the side of a lot of people out here.”

And for all his digging, he has faced more than a few scrapes. Once, the city actually tried to shut down his site. They failed.

Now Adelman is locked in a battle against the Belo media corporation, owner of The Dallas Morning News, which sent him a legalistic letter this week demanding that BarkingDogs.org remove all “deep links” to the DallasNews.com site.

“Deep links” point to specific content within a site, allowing readers to bypass the site’s front page. Instead of linking to a specific article within The Dallas Morning News’s site, Belo wants Adelman to only link to the site’s main page.

“As you may know, the Belo content (various news articles) is protected by copyright laws of the United States,” the company’s legal letter states. “Accordingly, we must request that you cease and desist from any unauthorized use of the Belo content, including without limitation, allowing users of BarkingDogs.org to deep link directly to the Belo content or from posting, without prior written permission, any other Belo content on BarkingDogs.org.

“Any proper links to the Belo content should be directly hyperlinked to The Dallas Morning News homepage located at www.dallasnews.com.”

Employees seen as computer saboteurs

Digital cameras, MP3 players and handheld computers could be the tools that disgruntled UK employees use to sabotage computer systems or steal vital data, warn security experts.

The removable memory cards inside the devices could be used to bring in software that looks for vulnerabilities on a company’s internal network.

The innocent-looking devices could also be used to smuggle out confidential or sensitive information.

The dangers disgruntled employees posed was highlighted by a survey showing that almost half of the most serious security incidents businesses suffered last year were caused by company workers.

And after I did all that work yesterday, I find a link to The Slackers Guide to HTML.

Crazy Drunk Guy

Starting around January 11th, 1999, I began receiving a number of very strange phone calls at work. Typically, the phone would ring around nine o’clock in the morning. I would answer it with my usual greeting: “Web Design, this is Jeff”.

What usually followed was weird gibberish, animal noises, shrieking, laughter, or a combination of all four. At first, we all thought it was most likely some stupid kid. We were all pretty busy, and didn’t give the calls much thought.

After several of these bizarre calls, whoever it was began to have actual conversations with me. He never identified himself, but it was apparent by the sound of his voice that this was no little kid. This was a grown man, probably in his forties or fifties, who was quite likely completely insane. By the manner in which he spoke, he also seemed to be intoxicated most of the times he called. The general consensus around the office is that he is probably a bum who is just getting his kicks by calling here.

He has become slightly more cordial each time he’s called; sometimes he will even say he is simply “checking in” to see how we’re doing. Sometimes he remains polite, yet nothing he says makes any sense whatsoever. He usually says something about Jack Webb a few times, and then goes off on some weird tangent (or two or three or four).

Judge declares terrorism detainments unconstitutional

The government’s jailing of material witnesses for a grand jury investigation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in throwing out a perjury case against a Jordanian college student.

The ruling, if upheld, could have far-reaching implications for the government’s crackdown on terrorism.

Dozens of people have been jailed as material witnesses since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In a rebuke of Attorney General John Ashcroft, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said: “Relying on the material-witness statute to detain people who are presumed innocent under our Constitution in order to prevent potential crimes is an illegitimate use of the statute.”

Scheindlin threw out perjury charges against Osama Awadallah, 21, a Grossmont College student in El Cajon, Calif., who was accused of lying about his associations with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

At a news conference in Washington, Ashcroft defended the roundup of material witnesses after Sept. 11, saying the opinion of “one trial judge in New York represents an anomaly.”

“The department’s use of material witness warrants is fully consistent with the law and long-standing practice. Numerous other judges have authorized the use of material witness warrants in the settings that we have been using them, and the use of such warrants has been validated at the appellate level,” he said.

In New York, U.S. Attorney James B. Comey said: “We believe the court’s opinions are wrong on the fact and the law and we are reviewing our appellate options.”

My Web Server This looks like it lets you use your comptuer as a webserver. Ooooo…. My main concern is the security, though.

May 1st, 2002 at 7:24 am | Tags: Uncategorized