Sorry for the darkness yesterday.  Hey, I was busy coding!  Didn't seem like much happening in networld, either.

Could this be the final straw?  Iraq has been ordered by the U.N. inspectors to destroy hundreds of missiles by March 1.  This is right before a new moon, too.  And the WP writes about what happens later: Full U.S. Control Planned for Iraq.

Did you know Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster, was part of the Israeli squad that bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981?  I didn't, either.  Quite a guy.

So again no America's Cup, race 4 has been postponed again due to light winds.

Keith Olberman blasts News Corp on Salon; Sandy Koufax has quit as a special instructor for the Dodgers because Dodgers owner News Corp also owns the New York Post, which has run unsubstantiated rumors that he is gay.  I really miss the O'Malleys.

A Business 2.0 article examines Digital Rights: A Thorny Issue.  Interesting because of the examples of unintended consequences associated with the DMCA.  A clear violation of W=UH.  Meanwhile it looks like Office 2003 is going to include DRM.  Terrific, I can see the message now: Outlook blocked an email attachment because you don't have the right to receive it.

The Why Nerds Are Unpopular article I linked the other day remains a strong meme around the web.  Everyone I know who's read it has a take - if you haven't, please do.  I keep thinking about it, not because of nerds, but because of my two older daughters who are not nerds (one's a junior doing battle with high school, the other made it through, though not unscathed).  Related: Eve Tushnet has an interesting take on home schooling.

I'm about ready to stop visiting the L.A.Times website, you get such a blizzard of popup ads on each visit.  No, I'm not linking to them, they don't deserve it.  Maybe the L.A.Examiner, eh?

Looks like Salon is in dire straights (again).  I'll miss them.  Remember when people thought 'zines like Salon and Feed were the future of media?  (The new replacements are blogs - and hey, Salon hosts blogs!).

I've decided ESPN's new ESPN Motion thing is cool, but too intrusive.  I now have a little icon in my taskbar (I hate those), the video launches by itself, the music is loud, and - gasp! - there are commercials.  Just a little too much like TV.  (Probably what they were going for...)  I like the download-in-the-background technique, just not what they did with it.

Web users are amazing, they expect cracks to be available for everything.  I've been watching my referrers and a bunch of people have come by with search strings like "virtual+spectator+crack" and "free+virtual+spectator".  I guess I did enough bragging about Virtual Spectator to make it into the Google-sphere for those strings.  If you're one of those idiots looking for a crack, let me give you a clue; it costs $10.

{ A crack is a hacked version of software which doesn't require a license key. }

Finally, I'm linking to Dave Winer's dumpster watch.  Everybody please click through, I want him to be amazed at the traffic this brilliant and interesting post is generating.