(Via Slashdot) There’s a new version of spyware coming to town, and it’ll be nearly invisible and practically impossible to get rid of. The “kernel rootkit” can modify the system kernel and intercept system calls. Here’s the kicker to the article in The Inquirer:

...the only way to be sure that you have killed a kernel rootkit is to completely erase an infected hard drive and reinstall the operating system from scratch.

Even The Great One couldn’t save hockey this season. The NHL and the NHLPA have now confirmed that hockey is done for the year.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why this has happened. It’s doubtful that hockey will ever make much more progress than Fourth-Best-Loved-Sport in America, but the hole that the league is in now is a hell of a lot deeper than the one it faced at the end of last season.

I got interested in hockey about the time that Tampa got a team, so I’ve been a Lightning fan since they started, and last year was a big fat thrill of lifetime. I’m sorry they’ve been robbed of their follow-up season and a chance to prove that the Cup win wasn’t a fluke. Ticket sales in Tampa were finally starting to turn around, and the community was really rallying around the team. It’s a crying shame that the Lightning and other teams in struggling markets are going to have such a mountain to climb back to profitability and respect from the fans.

Michael Bérubé speculates on the reasons for the disaster. Me, I’m just going to pop my Lightning 2003-2004 Championship Season commemorative DVD into the player and watch Game Seven one more time.

Via MacFixIt, we find that Walt Mossberg’s new column points out that the Mac isn’t for everybody. While I’d certainly grant that gamers and folks who use proprietary accounting or business software aren’t the most likely switchers, I’d argue that many of the groups Mossberg claims wouldn’t be happy with Macs actually might be if they were willing to make a few small compromises and learn a few new tricks.

I live without Microsoft Office for example, and I don’t miss Outlook for a minute. Instead, Neo Office, Aquamind’s Notetaker, and Apple’s built-in productivity tools take up the slack.

I’ve had to learn some new ways of doing things on the Mac—like using the Apple key instead of Ctrl, and understanding that closing a window doesn’t exit the program—but I’ve found that the Mac way actually makes more sense.

The only reasons I still have a PC are that a) there’s no cross-platform upgrade price for programs like Photoshop and Dreamweaver; and b) some websites, like the one my wife needs to use for her real estate business, absolutely refuse to work properly in any browser available for the Mac.

Still, I spend 90% of my time on my Powerbook, and I love it. The biggest benefit for me of the Mac over the PC is that I spend more time actually using my computer, and far less time fixing things. Wouldn’t you be willing to trade your need for an ultralight laptop or your addiction to Napster for more time to use and enjoy your computer?

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Dude, it’s got Sam Rockwell. And John Malkovich. And the guy from The Office. I mean, I don’t want to get my hopes up, but… I’ve got my hopes up.

I somehow think this hasn’t actually been authored by John Cleese, but the spirit rings true, anyhow.

To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a Minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

Read the full “Notice of Revocation of Independence.” (Thanks to Cousin Stef for the tip.)

My good friend Cliff McCloe has swept into Seattle and taken the local improv theatre scene by storm. Through sheer hustle and talent, he’s landed job after job as an interactive actor. Yesterday, he got his picture in the Seattle Times...twice!

Rock on, mah brothah!

JIM BATES / THE SEATTLE TIMES

JIM BATES / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Given that today is Valentine’s Day, it seems appropriate to post a little something about keeping the passion alive all year long. No, not that way… though that’s nice, too. I mean keeping passion as a user and as a creator.

My new favorite blog for business and creativity is Creating Passionate Users, (CPU) a group effort by the authors of the Head First book series. The posts are just absolutely stocked to the gills with great ways to look at creating relationships between users and companies. Here are a few that I picked out recently:

• Doing a 180 – about changing your perspective on suckiness. How to get better at the things you don’t do as well as you’d like, and how can you think differently at your level of achievement in a particular skill.

• Creating Playful Users – about how playfulness and fun are essential to creating peak user experiences.

• Cognitive bandwidth is like dial-up – give your users an experience that helps them think about the right things. In other words, don’t load them up with information they don’t need.

• The WTF learning principle – learn, and help others learn, by mixing in FERN the unexpected.

• Creative workouts for your brain &ndash points to some websites that’ll help you kickstart your motorbike. If you know what I mean.

• Sentimental Moonshine – about balancing common sense with play.

• How to break through – about… how to break through. Advertising is dead, folks. It just doesn’t know it yet.

• The future is in not learning – being nimble requires unlearning what you know. This may be the big one, the unappreciated essential skill. Think of almost any breakthrough, and chances are it required forgetting the rules.

Read these and others at the Creating Passionate Users site. This is good, good stuff.

CPU has my antennae tuned to more tips and tricks for creating cool user experiences. Here’s a few others from ‘round the blogosphere:

• Teresa Nielsen Hayden has compiled a list of tips for moderating online communities. (Via Boing Boing)

• There’s also this post about passion from Evelyn Rodriguez, who reminds us that sticking to your passion and sharing it wholeheartedly is the key to blogging… and everything else, too.

The Battle for America.

Sure, it’s a big file, but you’ll want to suck down every last megabyte.

Boy, have I been wanting to refresh the look of my site for a long time. Since I’ve been digging in to CSS and site design more lately anyway, this weekend just seemed to work out. Elise Bauer’s Learning Movable Type site has been an invaluable resource, as have the various and sundry Good Samaritans who’ve been kind enough to post their tutorials and tips online. Thanks to you all!

I’m still tweaking and touching up the site here and there, but I think the look is about 80% there. One major thing I want to look at is the right-hand column. The links have been far more static than I would like, in part due to the fact that I really didn’t enjoy dealing with tweaking Movable Type’s Main Index through the web interface. Now, though, I’ve linked the index to an outside template, which should make re-writing it much easier.

I designed the logo in the banner a couple of years ago for my freelance business. Since I’ve recently updated my personal style, I figured the old logo would do just fine for Stumax.com.

Speaking of which, I’m looking for gainful employment, and as this blog doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic anyway, I suppose a bleg wouldn’t be too out of line. If you know of anyone who could use a copywriter, graphics assistance, or technical advice, send them to my online portfolio, would you? Full-time work in Seattle would be most welcome, as would tele-commuting freelance gigs anywhere.

More to come soon, I hope. The job hunt and other projects have slowed down my time for blogging, but I’m still committed to refining both the site and my contributions to the Noise Machine, if only for my own learning and enjoyment.

Hope your Sunday is peaceful and that you didn’t forget to get a little something for your sweetie for tomorrow. (It’s Valentine’s, don’t you know!)

First Draft noted tonight that actor Ossie Davis has died. In addition to being a leader in the civil rights movement, he was a great actor, who lent every role he played his immense heart and soul. He’ll be deeply missed.

(Blogcritics has a nice remembrance, as well.)