Welcome to the 22 May - 09 Jun archive of Stream - you can click the planet to the left to get back to Jimbo's World if you're lost.

An open standard is one in which programs from different vendors which do the same task - like email, for example - may all be different, but they all adhere to the same protocol.  Using the example I mentioned above - email - you know that you can send and receive email to any system, from any system.  People using hotmail can send/receive to/from people using Outlook Express or Eudora, etc, etc.  This is a very good thing.  How useful would email be if you could only use it to communicate with people using the same ISP and the same client?  Not very.

Well, AOL is attempting to sabotage the formation of a unified standard for instant messaging protocols, so that they can keep things as they stand now - the ICQ service, which AOL bought, is sucking hardcore for lack of server resources.  This leaves the only real competitor for AOL's IM to be the Yahoo Messenger... and it's not a whole lot of competition.

But why does AOL want to keep a monopoly on a free service, you ask?  Because, like everything AOL does, it's not truly free.  AOL's Instant Messenger client bombards you with advertising - and if an accepted standard for instant messaging were to evolve out of the current conference which is supposed to do precisely that, AOL would lose a lot of banner impressions.  That's why AOL has deliberately blocked MSN's Messenger client from interoperability with their own IM network - regardless of the fact that it would be good for their customers, AOL worries that if people have the choice, they will choose a truly free client that does not bombard the user with AOL's advertising.  And AOL wants you to look at the ads like a good little consumer.

I mean, come on folks - hasn't anybody noticed that even though AOL provides poorer service and poorer technical support than any other major ISP, and charges more per month for access than any other ISP, they still bombard their hapless users with advertisements throughout the course of their use of the service?  The entire reason that AOL uses a proprietary browser and a proprietary email client is that they don't want you to be able to avoid their constant gaudy advertisement.  No, it's not enough that they charge more for poorer service: they want ad revenue, too.

So here's your chance to Fight The Man™: go to www.freeIM.org to sign the petition for AOL to open up their Instant Messaging standard...  I did.

As for Theatre For The Jaded - this is quite possibly the mildest Theatre for the Jaded I've ever run... but it's pretty damn entertaining nonetheless, in a sophomoric fart humor sort of way. (mpeg, 248k)

And in unrelated news, check out Saddam's wack-ass "music video" propaganda that he pimps out on Iraqi TV every single night.  Man, this was a good thing - I've gotten so depressed lately about how corrupt our own government is, and just how low an IQ it panders its propaganda to (successfully!) that it's one hell of a great big Ex-Lax relief to see that, no matter how bad it is here... it's still considerably better here than it is in a lot of the world.  Props to Stile for this one... and Stile, man, that "100% Pure Evil" video you went on and on about in your newsletter was nowhere near as bad as the shit torture one.  That shit torture one disturbed me... bad.

Oh yeah, and by the way, mp3 of the week changed - it's now MC 900 Ft Jesus - If I Only Had A Brain... oldskool goodness, and the bassline kicks serious ass.

OK, on the one hand, it's definitely not cool that lightning struck Kathy's house.

But on the other hand... welllll... how cool is that?

credit for this abomination goes to zenfnord, who posted it at the Stile Project forum.
  

I think somebody needs to clue this poor sod in on the fact that none of his imaginary power blocs are "recognised"... and that "Negroland" is often neglected because it doesn't fucking exist.  Why the hell is it that so many people can seem to find nothing to base their life on other than their race?   Am I the only one astonished to see people attempt to remake an entire fucking planet just to map out their own paranoid fantasies of race warfare?

All this pitiable "movement" really is is proof positive - once again - that racism is not a "white" problem.   Racism exists in people of every complexion, goddammit... and the modern "politically correct" idea that racism is a "white" phenomenon only exacerbates the real problem.  There was a day when racism was tolerated among white people - and, predicably, white assholes everywhere got way out of hand with it, and used other races and ethnicities as scapegoats for their own inadequacies.  These days, however, racism is a "hot-button" amongst white people... and as a result, overt white racism is largely confined to the ranks of the chronically unemployed and un(der)educated.  But racism among black people is currently tolerated, and often even encouraged, by established society... and unsurprisingly, the result is that the outspokenness and general lack of connection to reality amongst overt black racists is growing by leaps and bounds.

God damn it, folks, people are people.  There are no "blacks" and "whites" - there are black people and white people and plenty of shades in between.  And there are assholes a-plenty in every possible shade of skin tone and variety of ethnicity... so for crying out loud can we just all quit encouraging any of them?

</rant>

This is another of Mom's infamous "random small Midwestern town" vacation pix.
(Don't you wish your mother sent you pictures to post on your E/N site?)

The long and the short of it is, while I didn't really come up with what I was looking for as regards the tapeworms, I did find some of the most vile still images I've seen in quite some time.  Hungry?  On a diet, and don't want to break it?   Then mouseover the links under the box below... and trust me, your appetite will instantly diminish.

prolapsed hemorrhoids  -  obesity (cadaver)  -  non-specific penile inflammation (cadaver)

beautiful, beautiful blank space

By the way, if you want to learn some entertainingly horrifying things about human parasite infestations, check this out.  No repulsive pictures, but believe you me, your imagination will run wild!