A 1961 episode of Route 66 has a fascinating side detail. Martin Milner's character Tod is taking a UCLA course in programming "electronic digital computers"!

"It's the latest thing," says his driving partner Buzz sardonically, though Tod worries that he's not cut out for "business machines." And on the very day I was studying the history of Java, I heard this 1961 dialogue from Tod's computer science instructor.

"Segmentation is the partitioning of the object program into memory loads in those cases where the memory is too small to contain all of the object coding. Now fully automatic segmentation occurs only when the compiler itself determines the size of each memory load without indication by the user. Semi-automatic segmentation occurs when the compiler uses programmer-supplied information to determine memory loads and provides for automatic reloading when necessary. Any questions...?

Tomorrow we'll start on segment points and work on the preservation of loops and tack. In the meantime, remember today's lesson. Each implementer has the option of providing some type of segmentation for files and for working storage...

Class dismissed.

6:15 PM

At last! I found a Firefox search keyword that actually works for Google Maps!

I'd loved typing "map" and then a real-world address (instead of a URL) into Firefox's address bar. Boom! Firefox would instantly pull up a map of that location. But for some reason, that stopped working with later versions of Firefox. Fortunately, a Google search turned up a blogger who'd found a way to fix it.

Firefox will automatically create a bookmark for the search keyword, but its URL "will not work and returns a blank page," the blogger notes. "However, if you edit the bookmark manually and change it to the following URL, then your keyword search will return a useful result:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en&iwloc=addr&q=%s

"Thanks to Kareeser from the Ubuntu forums for posting this workaround (see his original post)."

10:27 AM

This is the greatest day of my life...

I got to level four -- where the "Stray Comet" missions are worth 1,000,000 points!

1:45 AM

"It was never intended to be pornography. It was about the human life, completely unedited."

Jennifer Ringley -- of Jennicam -- pulled the plug in 2003. But four years later, she gave an interview to WebJunk TV.

I never expected the kind of attention the web site got. In fact, if I had known when I started, I probably would've screamed and unplugged it.

She also describes her boyfriend as "really less than enthusiastic" about appearing on camera. (And PayPal had also made it more difficult for her to accept payments from her subscribers.) "For this and other reasons," Jenni pulled the plug in 2003. She works in Sacramento as a computer programmer now.

After being so overexposed for some many years, I really am enjoying my privacy now.... It's a completely different feeling, and I think I'm enjoying it.

Read my tribute to JenniCam (as one of the 100 Greatest Internet Moments)

7:37 PM

Things to remember for calculating taxes when you're unemployed...

6:15 PM

My CPU would freeze periodically. And it's all Google's fault...

When I installed Google's Chrome browser, Google snuck onto my hard drive and installed a stealth program that runs in the background and calls back to the "mother ship."

Seriously! Without me knowing it!

The program is called "Google Update," and it's only checking for updates to the software. "This is becoming standard fare with much software these days," wrote a C|Net reporter, warning that it's "worth noting." If you've installed Google's Chrome browser, you've agreed to let it run a secret second "updater" program on your hard drive on their own schedule.

And getting rid of it isn't easy. Here's instructions on deleting GoogleUpdate from your system. Apparently it requires running MS Config!

3:51 PM

I finally got a check from Google AdSense -- after three and a half years.

See, Google has a minimum payout of $100. So until your blog reaches that magical threshhold, Google keeps all the money. (Unless you close your account in frustration -- in which case Google gives you what you've earned.) I'm talking about my other blog, which has never been hugely popular. But one geek estimates Google has amassed $400 million in unpaid Google AdSense money.

If his assumptions are correct, that's nearly half a billion dollars in advertising money from bloggers that still sitting cozily at Google's headquarters.

How did I do it?

By adding my AdSense code to another site that's even more popular...

3:21 PM

What's the longest word you can type using only the left side of the keyboard?

Bonus articles: English words that don't rhyme with anything
and the longest word whose letters appear in alphabetical order.

7:35 AM

OurSignal.com is a really cool "aggregator" for the top URLs on voting sites. (Digg, Reddit, and del.icio.us)

It measures the "velocity" of their popularity (which you can see when mousing over the headlines). And they display this visually, with both the size of the headlines and the background color for each box.

The bigger the box, the more relative votes a story has.

The warmer the color, the quicker the story is on the rise. Cooler colors denote negative velocity.

2:44 PM

"Comcast was delaying subscribers' downloads and blocking their uploads. It was doing so 24/7, regardless of the amount of congestion on the network or how small the file might be...

"Even worse, Comcast was hiding that fact by making affected users think there was a problem with their Internet connection or the application.

"Today, the FCC tells Comcast to stop."

12:45 PM

Cuil is a new search engine that wants to compete with Google. And according to access logs I've seen, Cuil is also badly behaved.

> grep 'cuil' access_log | wc
     72    1008   13480

> grep 'cuil' access_log | grep -v 'robot' | wc
      0       0       0

For those of you who don't speak geek, today Cuil sent it's robots to ping one site 72 times today. (The second line shows that filtering out the robot leaves no organic traffic from the actual Cuil search engine.)

That's the log for my friends at 10 Zen Monkeys. But here at AOL Watch, the logs tell a similar story.

> grep 'cuil' access.log | wc
      8     122    1295

> grep 'cuil' * | grep -v 'robot' | wc
      1      24     242

So what was the one (and only) page that actually came up in a real Cuil search?

It's a 2002 web quiz I wrote comparing Aimee Mann's lyrics to Annette Funicello's. It's one of Cuil's top matches for the phrase Aimee Mann.

And what's this?

I hope they're not selling their automatic "suggestions" off to the highest bidder. (And considering that it's the internet's most popular search term -- I'm surprised they only had one suggestion!)

Good luck, Cuil. I think you're going to need it!

6:16 PM

Attention, obsessive gaming geeks...

Here's some tips and strategy for how to finally win at Spider Solitaire.

And also: FreeCell

10:45 AM

Weezer's "Pork and Beans" video is great.

It's a time capsule of our time. An open embrace of the internet community by a major label band hungry for real indie cred.

And a chance for Miss Teen South Carolina to finally, finally, be cool.

"I'm gonna do the things
 that I want to do,
 I ain't got a thing to prove to you..."

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the web, someone has created their own music video time capsule from 1983.

7:35 AM

AOL remained an albatross around the neck of Time Warner during the first quarter as profits from the Internet-access business plummeted a ghastly 73 percent versus the same quarter a year ago

The company's decision to drop its subscription model and provide AOL free in the hope of expanding the user base and thereby attract more advertiser dollars appeared doomed. AOL's advertising dollars did rise in the quarter -- but by only one percent, while much of its subscription revenue disappeared.

:)

From the article: "You've Got Loss"

"AOL increased advertising revenue 1 percent, or $3 million, in the quarter.
Subscription revenue fell 38 percent, or $334 million."

11:07 AM

While you're waiting for the new weblog, to tide you over here's a funny story about the old weblog and its adventure with Google AdSense.

4:37 PM

A fierce comment at Webmaster World. Google AdSense began displaying a new screen that urges users to switch to a new Google-owned ID instead.

"I see it, I hate it, and I always skip it.

I'll merge my accounts when I'm forced to..."

And this user was even angrier.

"If you understood how inconvenient it was you wouldn't put me through it. Don't for a moment believe you can assuage me with corporate style platitudes."

11:54 AM

Devo's Gerald Casale plays a prank on MySpace's ubiquitous image of founder Tom Anderson.

Casale created a MySpace page for his new solo project, "Jihad Jerry and the Evildoers."

But on the page, Tom's picture appears next to Jihad Jerry — wearing a turban.

1:53 PM

It works!

I only get to test this code once every four years...

if ($month eq "Feb"){
if (($year % 4) == 0){$yesterday = 29}
else {
$yesterday=28}};

8:34 AM

"Anger, greed, laziness, impulsivity, as well as jealousy, lust, anguish, and so on, are simply part of the human predicament. They are not medical conditions."

So says Charles Barber, author of "Comfortably Numb," arguing that mood medications are over-prescribed in the February issue of Wired.

I didn't know the DSM classified "social anxiety" as a medical disorder.

6:18 PM

Jason Fortuny did the same thing with his bank that he did to Craigslist -- he pretended to be something he wasn't, and then published the results.

In an earlier post, he points out that banks make an astonishing $50 billion a year by whacking their customers with overdraft fees.

But he also seems to have uncovered a little-known provision in U.S. banking law -- that you can opt out of this automatic "overdraft protection," avoiding the threat of these fees altogether!

Using his asshole-ery for good instead of evil?

And here's a review of Craigslist by my friend "Moe Zilla"

11:08 AM