Big wheel keep on turning, proud Mary keep on burning, rolling, rolling, rolling on the internets...

So today I was inundated with spam.  I don't mean I received a few hundred, no, in the space of two hours I received over 4,500 spams.  All were rejects bounced from other servers that had been sent from fake addresses on my w-uh.com domain (if these were the rejects, can you imagine how many got through!)  It was a load test on SpamBayes, but kind of sobering; for a while there it amounted to a DOS attack.  Worryingly there is no barrier at all to this stuff increasing by orders of magnitude.  Someday someone will fix email, and they will make $BIG.

Powerline notes a McCain endorsement worth paying attention to.  (John Bolton!) 

Netflix picks Blu-Ray.  Well, that should cook HD-DVD's goose, but the victory will be short lived, as iTunes is on deck.  In a few years we'll be saying "remember Blu-Ray?"  Think it won't happen?  Remember laser discs? 

P.S. Have you voted in our wither DVD survey?  Just a few days left!

We had a nice day out here in So Cal, but it was a bit chillier in International Falls.  40 below zero.  That is serious. 

GNXP notes Richard Dawkins is retiring.  One of my all time intellectual heroes.  His work will last many lifetimes, and I suspect will be increasingly appreciated for its singular greatness as time passes.  The Selfish Gene was first published thirty years ago, yet it remains as accurate and relevant as ever. 

Everyone is talking about the Microsoft response to the Yahoo "no".  I like Tim Oren's take: What about the customers?  Oh, yeah, them.  "It's incumbent on management to offer some clear way ahead to restore shareholder value.  If it's not forthcoming, tired investors in YHOO will be justified in selling their shares to Microsoft.  The result will be a disaster to both companies and their customers."  Ouch. 

Meanwhile Apple has brought out an update to Leopard.  John Gruber: "Unless I’m missing something, 10.5.2 addresses all of the top 'WTF?' UI complaints about Leopard."  Contrast to Microsoft's tin ear regarding Vista, and then ask yourself if Tim Oren isn't right about Yahoo customers' fate. 

So this is completely awesome, check out this site.  HEMA is a Dutch department store.  The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam.  Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands.  HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany.  Take a look at HEMA's product page.  You can't order anything and it's in Dutch but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens.  This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer. 

The Windows Firewall.  Now that's funny :) 

As a sometime car buff I love Winding Road magazine; in the latest issue they have the best possible picture as an endleaf.  (Please click to enlarge.)  I love it.