Dowbrigade

Dave doesn’t
like the way Google
handles RSS, compared to Yahoo and MSN. That
may be true, but we remain muy impresionado with the
new satelite photo map service. You can see your own house! (go to http://maps.google.com/ and
click on satelite). Anyway, here’s what Dave says:

In my mind, the three top Internet application companies are Yahoo,
Google and Microsoft, in no special order.

Of the three Yahoo and Microsoft are aggressively moving forward in deploying
RSS, Yahoo more than all three, and Google is doing absolutely nothing,
at least nothing that’s visible.

from the Really
Simple Syndication blog

How
many of the rest of you Firefox users never knew about all of the ‘secret’
configurable controls you can access via the
about:config URL? There’s all sorts of cool stuff you
can do, just by typing about:config in the address box, although if you’re
not a true geek, you might end up, like the Dowbrigade, with
all your New Windows opening the size of a postage stamp and the browser
reading each and every page in an annoying southern drawl.

If you’d like to take a look, a quick guided tour, and get some comprehensible
explications of some of the most useful secret settings, check out Ten
Mysteries of about:config by Nigel McFarlane in Linux Journal

The Firefox Web browser, built by the Mozilla Foundation and friends
is a complicated piece of technology-if you care to look under the
hood. It’s not obvious where the hood catch is, because the surface
of Firefox (its user interface) is polished up to appeal to ordinary,
nontechnical end users. This article gives you a glimpse of the engine.
It explains how the Mozilla about:config URL opens up a world of obscure
preferences that can be used to tweak the default setup. They’re an
improbable collection and therein lies the beauty of Firefox if you’re
a grease monkey or otherwise technical. At the end you’ll know a little
more about Firefox, but only enough to be dangerous.

from Linux Journal

Collect the Entire Set

from CodeMonkeys

After
a lapse of over two months, one it took me to become aware of the problem
and another it took me to do something about it, our own personal domain,
dowbrigade.com, is back up and running.

As well as using this server space to host the shortcut to the Dowbrigade
News via dowbrigade.com, we store images, slide shows, subsidiary pages
(see Hire the Dowbrigade) there and it processes several emails, including
contact@dowbrigade.com and kvetch@dowbrigade.com.

Apropos to nothing, but too trivial to merit it’s own posting, an anecdote
from the Real Life (such as it is) of the Dowbrigade.

This is why we love sports talk radio (WEEI).
While watching the 8th
inning confrontation between New York Yankees outfielder Gary Sheffield
and a Boston Red Sox fan who may or may not have slugged him in the jaw
as Sheff went to pick up a live ball near the wall live on TV last night,
we were immediately relishing the low-rent trash-talking radio theater
which we knew would blanket the airwaves in Boston today.  As it
has.

The only time we listen to sports talk radio is in our car, the White
Whale.  Well, we were just out there, checking on something in the
ashtray, and we got to listen to an irate female caller from Braintree:

"Gentlemen, if I could please make on point that I haven’t heard anyone
else make and that I think is highly prutinent."

Many guffaws ensued among the ex-jock hosts over the nervous caller’s
melding of prudent and pertinent. Finally she caught on they were laughing
at her and got hot.

"Are you going to let me make my point?"

They told her to go ahead.

"Well, I just got the local paper here in Braintree, the Braintree & Witham
Times, and it says right on the front sports page that "Sheffield’s confrontation
with the philistine fan".  What I want to know is this: if
these people want to come to our country, don’t you think they should
learn the proper rules of behavior at sporting events?"

"Ma’am, what do you think a philistine is?"

"Well, someone from Philistinia."

We swear to God……

NEW YORK Many in the industry are dreading the upcoming
Fas-Fax report, and early numbers are slowly starting to emerge. Today
came word that The Boston Globe is expecting steep overall circulation
declines for the six-month period ending March 2005 while The New York
Times and the McClatchy chain experienced slight gains.

During an earnings call with analysts Thursday morning, executives at The
New York Times Co. said that the Globe’s daily circ declined by 17,000
copies, or 3.7%, and Sunday decreased by 15,000 copies, or 2.1%.

The New York Times reported daily circ increased by 2,500 copies, or .2%.
Sunday circ grew 3,500 copies, also .2%. The Times’ daily circulation dropped
2% within New York, though national circulation is up 2%. Sunday circ sank
5% in the New York area while it increased roughly 5% nationally.

Could Blogs be partially responsible?

from Editor
and Publisher

Suffolk County lost 1.5 percent of
its residents between July 1, 2003, and July 1, 2004, the steepest decline
of any county
in
southern New England and the third consecutive year the county’s population
dropped, according to US Census Bureau figures released yesterday.

The county’s population has dropped 3.4 percent since the 2000 Census,
again the largest population decline among Massachusetts counties.

Massachusetts
was the only state in the nation to lose population in 2003-04.

Some state officials and others dispute the numbers,
saying they do not reflect the influx of immigrants coming to Boston
or the college student population.

”Anyone who drives around the city of Boston or its neighborhoods knows
these alleged numbers are not what’s reflected," said Seth Gitell,
spokesman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who has asked the Boston Redevelopment
Authority to examine the numbers.
In the latest data, the population in Suffolk County — which includes
Boston, Winthrop, Revere, and Chelsea — declined by 10,277 in the measured
year.

The population in neighboring Middlesex County, which includes Cambridge
and Lowell, dropped 0.1 percent with the loss of 1,933 residents.

Count the Dowbrigade among the Doubting Thomases. It seems
clear that there are two conflicting tendencies at work here. On the
one hand,
there are undoubtedly numbers of long-time middle-class residents who
are fleeing to greener pastures; either to retirement havens with better
weather and a lower ante for relocation, or young families dismayed by
how much of a hit in standard of living they will need to take to strike
out on their own, buy a home and raise a family in Massachusetts.

The reason is simple economics; for years, housing and real estate
prices in Eastern Mass have been ridiculous and our-of-control. When
the average house price tops half a million dollars, and a simple two-bedroom
apartment can’t be found for less than $1,500, a significant percentage
of the population will start looking to relocate.

But on the other hand, the past decade has clearly seen an influx
of new immigrants, principally from Latin America and Asia, attracted
by
the jobs, the schools, the relative lack of anti-foreign foaming-at-the-mouth
quickly becoming widespread in many other regions, and the existing welcoming
base of immigrant communities in cities and town around the area. 

Some
of these new arrivals are here legally, and others operate semi-openly with tourist
visas or fake green cards and Social Security numbers, but a LOT of them
are petrified of being discovered, arrested, and deported. They live five
or six to a room in tenements and flophouses, rarely leave their sleeping
quarters except to go to work, often in the dead of night, and avoid any
contact with the authorities which could blow the horrific lifestyle that
they still consider a good deal when compared to the hell-holes and backwaters
they have fled.

Of course they aren’t being counted.  If this means the state
is loosing out on Federal assistance, some difficult choices need to
be
made. Personally, and as hard as it is to admit it, the Dowbrigade has
finally found a policy initiative by the Bush junta that we can sort
of agree with. The concept of a "Guest worker" visa allowing these
people limited stays in the US and legal, tax-paying status could go
a long way towards solving the problem of unskilled illegal foreign workers.
If they prove to be good workers, solid citizens and stay out of trouble,
they should be allowed to stay.

article from the Boston Globe