Have you noticed how most mail readers stink? After a KMail frustration today, here’s a comparison to help you choose your next mail reader.

• Outlook: Always looks normal, then suddenly e-mails your 6GB PST file to Russian spammers or Microsft and deletes it
• Thunderbird: Your choice of 42 fully themable crash messages in 30 languages
• Gnus: Crashes, after first consuming 2GB of system RAM
• Lotus Notus: Makes you wander through virtual filing cabinets for 2 hours to find your e-mail, *THEN* crashes.
• Pine: Sends a satisfaction survey to the University of Washington every time it crashes
• Elm: Impossible to distinguish a crash from regular usage
• Eudora: Crashing the same way since 1985
• Mac Mail.App: Can handle up to 5 simultaneous animated segfaults at once
• Evolution: Crashes, but never really dies…. or does it???
• Hotmail: Crashes are “to serve you better”
• GMail: You must receive an invitation before we prevent you from deleting your mail… and no, that is not Mr. Ashcroft at the keyboard.
• KMail: Pops up a new dialog box every 5 minutes to inform you that it’s crashing again, “just in case you didn’t know”
• Mutt: Crashes can be removed by just the right .muttrc
• MH: Crashes, then presents the core file as new mail

The Register has a funny article about things that British spy agency MI5 is telling people to be wary of when they travel abroad. Two favorite quotes:

In a blow for the traditional holiday romance business travellers are also reminded: “If you are required to report intimate relationships with the nationals of certain countries to your Security Co-ordinator, make sure you do so promptly and honestly.”

And:

Travelers should also look out for lavish hospitality . . . Presumably you will know if you are being recruited by British or American intelligence services because they will tie you to the ceiling and deprive you of sleep rather than seduce you with such luxuries.

Found on a mailing list:

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marks four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye striks a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me a strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My checker tolled me sew.

It had to happen sometime.

Darth Vader has a blog — The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster. Here’s an excerpt from Parenting 101 from May 6:

Okay, I admit it. I cut off the kid’s hand. Everything went downhill after that.

Blast! Blast! Blast! I am such an idiot.

A must-read.

Thanks, Thom May, for the link.

Some fun reflections from Marty.

Just when you thought ethnic Mennonite food was boring, somebody has to go and do a technical analysis of it.

It was funny for me, anyway. :-)

It must hurt when you have this and this in the same season.

The headline of this BBC story is: Experts to repair ‘faeces fossil’ and it just gets better from there.

Apparently it is a 1000-year-old bit of fossilized Viking excrement. And a University of Bradford student gets to restore it “to its former glory”. She says that she has “never done anything quite like this before”, but added that “it doesn’t smell and it’ certainly not squishy.”

Apparently it’s somewhat of a highlight for schoolchildren. “We’ve even had thank you letters saying ‘thank you for showing us the poo’.”