Huh. George Takai comes out of the closet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051028/ap_on_en_tv/people_george_takei;_ylt=Alo0bQhfDYdeOVe99.f3T6cDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Good for him if it makes his life more comfortable.

I remember back in the late 70's when I was first attending SF conventions going through a box in a dealer's room. At the time I understood what FanFic was though had no idea about slash and things like it (and now I'm married to a fairly well regarded slash authoress) and came across a Star Trek fanzine. I pulled it out of the box and it had a picture of Sulu stepping out of a shower drying his back with a large towel. That wasn't the only thing that was large. He was, shall we say, endowed. 'Horse Envy' could be another way of putting it. Not rampant, because you'd probably pass out from trying to make that unit stand up. But that was probably my first exposure to erotic fic and what would possibly become slash.

Which brings up the question: when did "slash" become the accepted term for this fic genre, or when was it coined?

And no, I didn't buy the 'zine. I was still more than a little virginal and guilt-ridden at that time, though I bought the occasional Penthouse then.

Microsoft might withdraw Windows from the Korean market

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051028/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_korea

MS is being investigated by the Korean Fair Trade people mainly for their inclusion of a streaming media player into the OS, making it anti-competitive for third-party vendors. Definitely a valid thing, if you're into this crap. So MS is saying that they might have to pull out of Korea, or that it would at the minimum delay the release of new products into the Korean market.

Let's look at this from a slightly different angle. If you look at South Korea from a gaming perspective, things change. (North Korea don't enter into this, they probably don't have more than a half dozen computers and nothing better than 286's) Korea, per capita, is perhaps the largest gaming country in the world in online gaming. Guaranteed that 95%+ of those gamers are running Windows. So what would happen if a whisper campaign started that MS would have to electronicly deactivate all those copies of Windows until they could get out a localized version that would comply with court orders?

Korea used to have some fairly major riots against the government. Who knows, perhaps they still do, and the American Media just can't be bothered with it any more. I think you could see a lot of people die if something like this happened. And if it seems silly, remember: there are Koreans who have died from playing these games, both from exhaustion and from murder when "he stole my enchanted sword!" To say these guys are fanatics when it comes to online gaming is like saying something tremendously understated that doesn't come to mind right now. :p

I just received an email from my employer

(well, technically my work site since I'm a contractor) inviting me to "Family Flu Day."

I think I'll pass. I haven't had my flu shot yet, and I'm pretty susceptible to getting colds. Yeah, I'll give it a miss.

Grrrr

I went to a car parts store and bought some new lightbulbs for my truck, I had two others to replace in addition to the license plate light. It took a bit of work to take apart the license plate light, it was a rather curious assembly. I get the bulbs, reassemble the license plate, and head to school. It was too light out to see if my handiwork had paid off.

It didn't.

When I got out of class, I fired up my Rodeo, turned on the lights, and got out to look at the license plate. No light.

So apparently I have either a bad fuse or a wiring problem. I really don't care, we're going to get rid of the truck in a week or so.

Still, kinda frustrating.