Tonight, thrill to the excitement of:

• An amazing size, style, and suckiness curtain-jerking mismatch: Rey Mysterio vs. Chuck Palumbo
• The one good match on the show, in the two-spot: Tajiri vs. Kidman
• An amazing size, style, and suckiness mismatch: Shannon Moore vs. A-Train
• The first crummy handicap match of the night: Chris Benoit & John Cena vs. Rhyno & Matt Morgan & Brock Lesnar & Big Show (Suggested chant: “WHO’S MATT MORGAN?”)
• The second crummy handicap match of the night: Bradshaw vs. Akio & Sakoda
• Your “one of these things is not like the others” main event: Chavo Guerrero Jr. & Chavo Guerrero Sr. vs. Eddie Guerrero & Kurt Angle

Tune in or do something productive with your life!

The Register offers a light piece about the oldest microcomputers still in use. I love the idea of some guy buying a VAX for personal use in 1987.

I also love the idea of someone scavenging a bunch of old Commodore 64 units just to tear out the old SID synthesizer chip, then building a new device to hook three or four of them up to modern equipment. Check out a near-pornographic photo of one of these boxes. I can understand nostalgia for the kind of sounds old vacuum tubes or analog synths produce, but old digital synth chips from consumer-grade hardware? Wow. Not that I didn’t love listening to my C-64 playing “The Entertainer” back in the day.

CNet runs a story earlier this week on the Democratic challengers for President, and their respective stances on various tech issues. Sadly, this article was written mainly from the perspective of tech industry groups, and had very little to say from the perspective of tech industry employees or internet users.

For instance, on the concern over the off-shoring of white-collar tech industry jobs:

“One of the concerns I have is what happens in this situation when, in their eagerness to create a policy issue, some of them have engaged in a lot of antitrade rhetoric and antiglobalization rhetoric,” said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). “From the association’s perspective, it will be an ongoing concern if it turns into a hard-and-fast policy concern in the general election.”

I just now scoffed. The article then goes on to extol the virtues (as the suits in Sillicon Valley see them) of Sour Joe Lieberman, who is happy to both help ship American programming jobs overseas and to ban the sale of some violent video games. Thank god he’s almost out of the race.

Near the bottom, they get around to a consumer-advocate from EPIC, who mentions that Edwards is better than the (abysmal) average on privacy. As the capper, they call the Cato Institute “nonpartisan”. I’m scoffing again, because Dr. Lessig totally demolished this conceit this week.

Can someone explain why hardly anyone wants to do this? It seems sensible enough to me. I’m looking at some whiz-bang candidate finder, and of all the candidates in the race (including Bush) only Kerry and Sharpton favor the idea, and that only “somewhat”.

I heard on NPR Monday night that turnout at the Iowa caucuses wasn’t up to expectations, but I’m reading now that turnout may have been an all time record. Does this bode well? Iowa has open caucuses, that is, voters can declare party affiliation at the time they show up to caucus. How many of these caucus-goers were first-timers or usually unaffiliated voters? Let’s look at the poll results:

19% “independents” and 45% first-time caucus goers. Is this a nationwide trend, or just an Iowa thing? New Hampshire won’t really be a guide, since it requires voters to declare party affiliation at the time of registration. South Carolina has an open primary. Let’s hope for high turnout there.