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Old pond leap - splash a frog --Basho   |
Thursday, July 25, 2002
Here's An Uplifting Set Of Stats - Gleaned from Metafilter the other day, this list of Mortality Statistics tells you the odds of succumbing, in a given year or 'til your clock runs out, from all the common, and some uncommon, accidental causes. Likely a few of the numbers will surprise you, they did me. A Very Funny Thread - Metafilter had a link to this Long and Funny thread on a British soccer site. The exchanges are between the lady damaged, fair Susan, The rotter who did her wrong, boo - Brian, one of his purported shagettes, Emma the clerk, and many folks cheering them on in their mutually assured destruction. Read the first two pages or so and you'll likely be hooked for a while, but it does go on and on ;-) Some Very Discouraging Numbers - On the AIDS Pandemic. They say that it would take at least $10B a year to fight this scourge, but that the first world nations foolishly feel neither threatened nor very compassionate and collectively contribute only 1/3 of that amount. That would be a pittance for this country alone to fund, roughly $35 a person or 7 less tubs of overpriced, greasy and salty popcorn a year at the movies. Think how small that is in relation to the 10% that organized religion tries to squeeze out of the faithful. Even a small percentage added to our income tax would not be a substantial burden, but could you trust Congress to use it for the intended purpose? - I suspect not. Deep Linking Takes A Low Blow - It seems that news gathering web sites aren't looked upon with favor, and more importantly, any sense of reason, in several European courts. First the Danes and now this "decision". In what sense is Linking To A Story a violation of copyright, especially if the site presenting the source story they are putting on the web don't own the copyright to it themselves?! Yet another verification of Dickens' famous "The law is a ass..." line. Wednesday, July 24, 2002
I Scream, You Scream, We All... - Hey, I'm as big a fan of ice cream as anyone, but these Japanese Flavors are truly bizarre, each one seems to be even stranger than the previous. Are you ready for tuna ice cream, or squid, or wasabi? I thought not ;-) Quite An Image - From APOD a few days ago of the often mentioned Crab Nebula. Beautiful to look at, but the explanation of the various colors we see is what really made this image interesting. Possibly Useful, But Likely Discouraging - RefDesk had a link the other day to ratings of US Hospitals. If you're lucky enough to live near, and can afford, one of the few good ones, and they are few, this list may please you. Surprising to me was the vast difference in ratings across even the top few - 100% from #8 at 16 to #1 at 32. Take A Virtual Trek - To the Star Trek Convention coming up next month in Las Vegas. It appears as though someone besides e-Bay and the porn sites are poised to make some money on the net. It's really not a bad idea either, not just for the legions of folks who are still in thrall to Star Trek, but consider the cost savings to businesses who could afford to have many of their employees attend trade shows at a fraction of the usual cost with travel, lodging and lost productive hours. At $9.95 for a one-day pass it doesn't sound like a bad deal for a fan (but of course they have offerings that go substantially higher.) Tuesday, July 23, 2002
Two Things Amaze Me - In this story about the Drunken America West Pilots: One is their colossal stupidity and the other that there exists any limit other than zero for a pilot in charge of a commercial passenger flight?! - not necessarily in that order ;-) I'm pissed that Nancy and I just flew across the country and back on America West (booked some time before the incident) - I won't try them again. Count Me Among The Folks - Who were sucked in by his book, Telecosm. As bright as he is it sounds as though George Gilder is still a true believer, but then he was also a big fan of Ken Lay - I wonder how that's holding up ;-) Political Duplicity Redux - Both parties are shamelessly throwing away national sovereignty in a blatent attempt to win votes from Illegal Aliens and they'll force the border states to pick up the tab (as they have for years.) They refuse to guard our borders, even after 911 (yes, I know, it wasn't Hispanics flying those planes), won't allow the border states to pick up their abrogated responsibility and worse yet, won't fund the social services the border states incur as a result. Now "Dick" (yet another but from the other side) Gephardt has picked up the banner and is marching alongside the Bushlet on this one. Both sides have lost my vote, and any shred of respect I may have had in the past :-( NB - the NY Times article may require a painless one-time registration. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - It was well advised, in my opinion, for the aptly named "Dick" Armey to come out against the Hitler Youth and Red Guard inspired TIPS program. However, being against a National ID card doesn't make much sense and an indefinite delay on x-ray screening of ALL checked luggage, something that should have been implemented well before 911, is simply ugly. To allow security providers exemption from being sued for their mistakes (some past examples would more accurately be termed malfeasance,) would lead to the obvious question of whose pockets in this arena his hands are in. An Awesome View From Mt. Everest! - Today APOD did something a bit different and offered us a spectacular Panoramic Vista from the top of Mount Everest. Don't miss this one, it's stunning. Monday, July 22, 2002
Ouch! - I've Been Pelted By The Light - With apologies to Bruce Springsteen (but nobody ever understood those lyrics anyway.) This story on Liquid Light raised more questions in my mind than it answered. For example: if the "droplets" kept moving at light speed then how were the physicists able to make those various physical measurements?! Something Neat For Comics Lovers - Most of us have never seen the first issue of the Superman Comic Books, but here's your chance to step backwards in time. I saw the link to this very nice set of scans of the entire comic book, page-by-page, on Metafilter - it's worth a look. Thinking Of A Roadtrip? - This site, recommended by RefDesk.com, is a great idea and hopefully will grow. It currently lists many of the great Backroad Drives as I verified by looking at the CA listings. Unfortunately, they haven't yet populated it with much detail about views and stopovers along the way, maps and etc. The Story Doesn't Quite Match The Title - In my opinion the heading should be more on the lines of What Science Can Learn From Buddhism, but it is interesting. Sunday, July 21, 2002
An Amazing Look Backwards - From APOD recently, this great shot from Mariner 10 looking back at the planet Mercury after a close flyby. You Have To Admire Those Linux Guys - They seem able to make just about anything do their bidding, even The Xbox. One might ask though, when are they ever going to find a workaround for winmodems, or get the somewhat universal tulip ethernet driver capable of being installed on the newer distributions? They clearly have great technical skills, as a group, but seem to lack clear focus ;-) A Bit Of Self-Congratulation - RefDesk.com has been noting daily that they were selected in Yahoo's collection of 50 Most Useful Web Sites. Well, they do have a right to be proud of themselves, they are a great site, but judge for yourself how many of the selections are really noteworthy. Saturday, July 20, 2002
This Article Doesn't Really Surprise Me - I never expected much more from my Yahoo.Com e-Mail account than what it provides, mainly remote access to my other POP3 accounts. Still, I did find it interesting that they claim academic papers have been altered by the filter. Huh! - what college, and/or academic, would rely upon Yahoo to transport their papers?! Is There No Respect For The Law? - I always thought of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as inviolate, but now it seems that at some scales of size and time the entropy of a closed system can actually decrease. Sheesh: cold fusion, slowing & even halting a beam of light, anti-gravity and now violations of the 2nd Law - is nothing sacred? ;-) This Is A Very Odd Story - As I read it there are only 46 residents on Pitcairn Island, but as many as 20 of the "men" are being charged with molesting an unspecified number of the girls and young women. Damn, so much for the theories that large urban settings are breeding grounds for this sort of thing or that people in small, insular communities enjoy a more peaceful lifestyle. Well Worth Revisiting - Most of us have seen this Great Picture and many of us are old enough to remember seeing the first Moon landing on TV. It's certainly worth revisiting, but I wish APOD had chosen to run it on the 4th of July. Friday, July 19, 2002
A Taste of Omar (The Good One) I Guess It Doesn't Really Matter - Playing music off a Pair Of Ipods seems an odd choice, even if the songs are ripped at 128 kbs the quality isn't CD or even LP. Still, in a noisy club, especially playing Hip-Hop, quality isn't likely an issue ;-) It May Be Wise To Check Again - I've been hit 3 times in the past two weeks by e-mail attachments infected with Klez. If you have any concerns, or if a virus scan detects Klez, this Symantec Site has a tool to remove it, but pay attention to the OS Specific Instructions. Intellectual Property Or Simply Greed? - The way the story reads to me the current Patent Holders didn't create the software their claims on JPEG are based upon, then simply acquired it. To my mind that really seems lame. If anyone should derive benefits from this 16 year old patent it should be the folks who developed the algorithm, not another company that acquired it along with other assets, had no part in the development and didn't even realize the potential worth until years later. So much for their claims of intellectual property rights. Now That's A Spot! - This time the solar erruptions occurred on the side facing away from Earth, but the Resulting Sunspots had rotated into view when these shots taken between July 15 and 17. Pretty amazing, it says their total area is approximately 10X the size of our planet. Thursday, July 18, 2002
Why Am I Not Surprised - In an all too common story these days yet another big company is under suspicion of Accounting Irregularities. Pittman resigned today as COO of AOL-Time Warner (a nice way of saying he was fired) and there's apt to be more thrown out the door, but it likely should be straight to prison. Nice News Resource - This was posted on RefDesk.com and is a pretty nice gauge of what the Hot News Items of the day are as evidenced by headlines from a wide variety of sources. You also can select specific items of interest such as Finance, Sports and etc. Why Do We Need Them? - It's not as if we had any shortage of people, and we clearly have enough morons to fill Congress and the White House; why don't we just do ourselves a favor and eliminate this type of Sociopath? The animal abusers and child molesters often go on to ever worse crimes and yet we remain under the delusion that their lives are in some sense precious. The only possible good they could serve would be as organ donors or medical research subjects - short of that I would strongly favor euthanizing them, and not by the painless means of lethal injection. Color Me Pissed - Perhaps the ACLU has its moments, but most days they simply act like confused adolescents. It seems this country has far more concern for our convicted felons in prison than it does for their victims, the poor in our wealthy society, the physically and mentally challenged and our failing schools. Perhaps I would favor Net Access For Prisoners, but only after those other issues had been fully addressed. Oh, and I would screen their outbound mail, just as their snail mail is now, and not condone mail to anyone not on an approved list or the establishment of self-promoting web sites, that's inane. Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Pretty Funny If True - I saw this story shortly before we went back east and hadn't gotten around to posting it yet. We all know about, and have our opinions regarding, open source, but OpenCola? What a wild idea, I still haven't seen any so am not convinced this is for real, but it should be ;-) An APOD Image Not To Be Missed! - I've been out of town for a week, but a friend e-mailed a recommendation for this beautiful picture of Interacting Galaxies. His suggestion was spot on, not to be missed. Yet Another Recipe Resource - I wasn't thrilled with their search mechanism, but they claim over 14,000 Recipes and I did find several for chili that sound interesting. Give it a try, you're bound to find some ideas to try. Is This Positive Or Negative For Students? - As long as there have been exams and term papers students have found ways around the system, ie They Cheated. But in the past they often simply cheated themselves by not really acquiring the knowledge and/or skills offered in the classroom. Today that may not really be the case as proficiency using the web is not simply an asset, it's often a job requirement. I can see some virtue to what this student was doing, how about you? Such A Deal They Have For You - Well, likely not for you, but for the 34 million or so Chinese who have e-mail capability and would like to correspond with one of the majority who don't. I think I would just go ahead and use snail mail myself and not put the process in the hands of Big Brother directly. Monday, July 08, 2002
Great Photo Collection - And he says he took The Pictures with a Nikon Coolpix 990, 3 mpel digital camera. Damn, I have its little brother, the Coolpix 885, and I sure haven't managed any shots that look this good, color me envious ;-) A Fascinating Article - Was linked to today on RefDesk.com. It gives very interesting details on the Origins of Modern Languages and examples of commonalities that are quite surprising. Well worth reading to the end. Supercomputers Redux - I wonder who's actually keeping score? This story from Wired.com claims that NEC Holds The Record with a rating of 35 Teraflops while IBM is second at a mere 7 Teraflops. Odd, I posted this story on June 25th that says "Q" At Los Alamos is currently rated at 30 Teraops (their term for the same thing) and is scheduled to ramp up to 100 Teraops in one year's time. Perhaps "Q" isn't yet fully operational, the story from the NY Times (requires a painless registration) is somewhat ambiguous on that point. A Touching Story - Actually a touching Re-touching Story from Wired.com. I suppose these people are doing good work, but what a morbid job - I don't think I could deal with it. Sunday, July 07, 2002
Just For The Geek In You - Rather uneven in chuckle factor, but the Cartoons are well done and some are pretty sure to resonate with you. Evolution Or Simply Overfishing? - The article suggests that overfishing will cause an evolutionary change to Smaller Fish in just 4 generations, does that sound credible? Perhaps it's simply the case that overfishing of the subject species has virtually eliminated the larger fish as the fishermen continue to set their size cutoff, if they even have one, lower and lower. Science In Its Neverending Quest - To better our lives has hit upon a research topic that many folks would dearly love to participate in, the search for the Elusive G Spot. Now that should make for an interesting conversation at the Thanksgiving family dinner when your mother, or your maiden aunt asks: "How are things are at the office and just what is it that you do there, dear?" ;-) Dumb Danish Decision? - Well, the courts have "ruled" and Netbooster Is SOL. At first glance this seems like a very stupid, or at minimum Luddite-like decision. All that it has going for it is that Netbooster is a for fee site with links to online news items, so they are profiting off the efforts of others and bypassing their only revenue stream, advertising fees based on clicks to their entry page. Still, a link isn't plagiarism, the material is posted for free access and if the story is good and well written it seems likely viewers will return to the home site. This ruling seems to fall in the same camp as the inane sputterings of the TV Exec who claimed that people who use such things as VCRs or TiVo to bypass ads are thieves. Mars By 2015 Or Bust - Thank goodness for the Russians and their urge to regain their space program's early glories. Left to its own devices NASA would keep throwing money into their stale Shuttle missions, although they do continue with some very interesting unmanned probes. Now Russia proposes a joint Manned Mars Mission - that rocks! I hope they can get some funding support, they can't bear the cost on their own. An Interesting Link I was Led To From APOD - One could spend a lot of time with this site, literally so if their server bogs down as it did a few times this morning. It's the Visible Human Project. With this applet, which requires Java, you can choose either a male or female body, different orientations of the slice and cutting planes from head to toe. At high resolution, if you have the bandwidth, the image quality is great. Eventually they will have MRI or CT scan as an option, but right now it's limited to photo images. Saturday, July 06, 2002
Another Important Anniversary Is Approaching - While the Revolutionary War was still being waged the founding fathers worked for 9 months crafting our first constitution, The Articles of Confederation. Signed and adopted on November 15, 1777 by the Continental Congress, it served us for 10 years until it was replaced by our current Constitution. An Attitude Ajustment May Be In Order - An alert for all anglophiles: your much admired "true" Brits Were Actually Welsh and they were pushed into Wales by a large invasion of Anglo-Saxons from the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons now represent almost the entire indigenous population of England. These Pictures Made Me Thirsty ;-) - The next time some wise guy tries to tell you that all beers taste alike just show him these Amazing Photomicrographs of various beers from around the world. It's pretty interesting how very different they look, one from another. In fact, I didn't spot any two that look that much alike. NB: Be sure to browse the rest of the site, they have many other subject types for their photomicrographs. A Passing That Deserved More Notice - Count me among the folks who had never heard of Robert Friedman while he was still with us, I wish that I had. The obit above tells some of the story, but take a look here for more of his Amazing Vita. It's Worth A Second Look IMO - And APOD obviously feels so since they first posted this beautiful image of Io Over Jupiter in April of last year. Io is roughly the same size as our own Moon and is similarly distant from Jupiter. This photo gives one an idea of the size of Jupiter which is more than 10 times the diameter of Earth and even though its average density is 1/4 that of Earth's is still has almost 320 times the mass of our home planet. Burp! - It seems as though this fellow simply didn't know When To Quit. Clearly he far outclassed the competition, if it's permissible to refer to "class" in the context of these silly contests; still, it does sound as though they had the right to scream foul. But then, the entire event sounds rather foul ;-) Dammit, I Know My Rights - It seems that these days all people can talk about is either their rights or their opinion that something they disfavor is unconstitutional. It's rather entertaing that this little survey by Columbia Law School demonstrates how uninformed so many people are About The Constitution itself. Friday, July 05, 2002
And These Fools Are Our "Allies"? - This story is unbelievable, in fact I choose not to believe it in the hope that I don't dream about it tonight. My God, the girl was sentenced to suffer a Gang Rape for something her brother did, and even he did not commit a crime by any rational definition. In what sense are these people any better than the Taliban? In fact, in what sense are they even human? Are We Crazy, Self-Destructive Or Simply Stupid? - According to their story about the plans for Attacking Iraq the NY Times says the document is "highly classified". Damn, one simply has to ask: what level of classification would have kept the "secret plans" off the front page of the NY Times? I don't know why our enemies go to the bother & expense of planting spies here - surely a subscription to our venerable newspapers would be far cheaper and likely more effective :-( The Real Titanic People, Not The So-So Movie Folk - If you want to learn a little about the poor souls on the Real Titanic disaster this site has passenger and crew lists with 2100+ biographies (some quite sparse) and some first hand accounts by survivors. Thursday, July 04, 2002
More Troubling Thoughts Re The Demise Of WorldCom - the crisis of confidence that it caused the stock market seems to be bleeding over into concerns about Internet Performance since WorldCom's pipes carry a huge portion of the Internet traffic, including about 70% of the e-mail in the US. Well, there is an upside, nothing else has slowed down SPAM, but shutting off 70% of the flow sure could ;-) Lawyers With A Sense Of Humor? - I saw this on Memepool yesterday and had to laugh. It's a bit too lighthearted to seem real, but who knows, perhaps there really are Lawyers With A Sense Of Humor. If not, it still is pretty funny; if for real, there actually may be some likable lawyers and I wish them well ;-) Uh Oh - Now The SUV Owners Are Mad - It's bad enough sharing the roads with these moving barricades, it's not good to see them pissed ;-) Actually, the CO2 Emissions Bill is a much watered down version of the previous assault. CO2, it would seem, is relatively benign so I don't really see the point here. What I would favor are measures to dramatically reduce our reliance on oil imports. At the current, unreasonably low by world standards, level gasoline prices do nothing to encourage conservation. I know I'm lonely in this, but I would favor raising the price of gasoline to at least European levels, putting heavy excise taxes on new/used gas guzzlers, similarly raising their annual license fees by as much as an order of magnitude and imposing the same safety standards on trucks & SUVs as are applied to passenger vehicles. Oh, a side issue: uninsured motorists. I would turn the insurance concept on its head and require people to buy insurance to cover their own lives and property - no insurance, no one to collect from and no right to sue. Then it wouldn't really matter that border states are inundated with uninsured, unlicensed and often unskilled drivers, at least in terms of collecting for losses. A Game With A Mission - Literally - It actually seems rather innovative of the Army to develop its own Shoot 'Em Up Game for the express purpose of encouraging the young gamesters to give the real army a try. The word in this Wired.com article is that the game is actually rather good, guess I'll have to give it a try. Wednesday, July 03, 2002
At The RIAA It Seems Resumes Are Only Accepted From Congenital Idiots - These folks truly don't get it, but they do seem to be backing off from their Latest Dumb Decision so I guess they did hear the boos & hisses. But with both Napster and AudioGalaxy poleaxed, those still inclined to download mp3s should start looking at the alternatives; a pretty nice assessment of the Leading Contenders is presented here. What Do You Mean My Kid Has to Pass An F****** Test?! - Pretty funny piece by Jonah Goldberg (Editor of NRO and Luciane's son) on the Debasement Of The SAT. The sad thing is, in today's P.C. climate, it's likely more akin to reality than the intended satire. What Could Be More American Than Junk Mail? - Yet another article on Spam By Damn. Perhaps more than you really wanted to know, including a link to a huge graphic showing how it gets collectected/passed around. The odd thing is: I have one e-mail ID I've never used to post, subscribe or any of the obvious vulnerabilities and yet the vast majority of my spam hits that ID?! Almost seems as though my ISP must have released a list ;-) Damn, That's Really Slick! - First we had the NY Bloggers associated with subway stops, now the same thing has been done for London Bloggers and is keyed to stops on the Underground System. Truly a nice implementation - I wonder if some enterprising soul will do a similar linkage to the greater Los Angeles area freeway off-ramps? An Intriguing Story You likely Won't Understand - Unless you were a math major chances are you never even heard of The Riemann Hypothesis, but this little story from yesterday's NY Times is still a fascinating read about the sort of Grail mathematicians spend their lives chasing. Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Some Really Sad And Frightening Numbers - AIDS may not have invaded your immediate circle, yet, but these figures paint a Very Bleak Picture for the years ahead of us. The numbers make the antics of the terrorists sound like pretty small potatoes :-( You Know That You're A Clever Rascal - But are you of Mensa Caliber? This little test won't really answer that question, or qualify you to join, but it is supposed to reflect the flavor of their testing process. A Web Accessible Learning Tool In The Guise Of A Game - This is supposed to display some of the considerations in Orbital Mechanics, but it's actually a fun little game. Some of the "challenges" are pretty tough, but you get to keep whacking away until you get it right. It's Summer, Does That Spell Road Trip In Your House? - If you're firing up the car for a family vacation you might consult this site for offbeat Roadside Attractions. Open the map to states you plan to visit, you may find something quirky enough to be worth a pit stop along your route. Monday, July 01, 2002
Good News For Dieters - Maybe - It seems strange, but your scale actually will register as much as 10% More Weight if you place it on a carpet rather than on a hard surface. So, for that instant reduction, if you happen to have had yours on the carpet, simply move it. Of course, if it was already on that solid surface, well, just leave it there and keep on exercising ;-) Catching Up With McDonald's? - That's rather an amazing number, One Billion PCs sold. I wonder how many are still in use, or better question yet, useful? Think of the latent computing capacity of 1B computers of any size. Too bad that there's no effective way to harness it all. Amazing Penetration If True - Please don't get the wrong idea, I'm referring to the Broadband Installation figures from PEW. They're quite a bit higher than any I've seen elsewhere. Useful Information - It's good to know, but it may be a bit discouraging to learn the Crash Test Rating of your car or truck. It's a lot of data so be sure to read the explanation of the ratings, especially what they say about vehicle weight. A Name From The Past - Years ago I ran a majordomo list devoted to mysteries. A membership requirement involved submitting a minimum number of reviews, but one member, Harriet Klausner, always produced more reviews than everyone else combined. As she explained to me, she was a speed reader who operated a small bookstore in Georgia and had the time, ability and access to run through a huge number of books, at least 5 a day. Looks like Harriet hasn't slowed down ;-) Sunday, June 30, 2002
One For Your Calendar - Each month a dozen Did You Ever Wonder type questions are addressed by scientists from the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Whew, that's quite a mouthful. Take a look, there's likely an area or two you will find of interest, and don't forget to look back monthly for the new set of topics. Froth On The Gene Pool - Stories Such As This really make one wonder if the planet wouldn't be better off without certain people. Perhaps public opinion and/or the courts are turning from capital punishment, which may be too harsh, and may not be a deterrent (although it does a fine job on recidivism.) Still, we all would be better off without certain people roaming freely among us again, ever, and if there's anything at all to genetics I'd really rather that they didn't propagate. Probably Not A Good Idea - Flashing one of These Babies at the airport security check may get you a laugh, but it's more likely you would get pulled aside for a strip search. Don't try this unless you really enjoy rectal probes ;-) A Different Moon View - Literally - In this spectacular photo from APOD we're treated to a view of an asteroid orbiting Jupiter named Ida, and Dactyl, it's own moon. Great picture and Ida is only 36 miles long by 14 wide - not to be missed! Dactyl by the way is only 1 mile in diameter. The Possibilities Are Mind-Boggling - Just imagine what it would mean for encryption possibilities alone if they could atcually decipher a photon's Quantum State. Zowie, the ability to lay almost an infinite number of distinct states on a given photon and downstream to determine it will change everything. Saturday, June 29, 2002
My God, What A Concept! - I don't really think it means anything, but what a fantastic presentation! Spend a little time with this applet, learning about which are the Most Popular Numbers in the range 0 - 100000. Don't miss the little associations window - this thing is fascinating IMHO. Take This Simple Little Test - To measure your Political Compass. I saw this mentioned at Rebecca's Pocket and thought it was entertaining - I came out almost on center. If You Want Something Done Right, Should You Call On The Government? - In the case of the Postal Service I think the answer is starting to look like no. With this latest Rate Increase they only exacerbate what was already a serious problem. Why, one might ask, should the rates for necessary mail, the first class things we need to mail to one another and to pay our bills, go straight up (an increase of 50% over the past 10 years) while junk mail costs less than a third. I received one such this week, a sealed, odd sized envelope (for which you or I would pay an off-size surcharge) and the postage was only $0.08! We don't want the damn stuff, it costs real money in manpower & equipment to deliver it and yet they essentially get franking rights to bombard us with dreck that goes directly from the mailbox to the trash can. If junk mail is so necessary then why not charge twice the "first class" rate to distribute it? I suggest that we'd all be better off and it would save a few trees ;-) Friday, June 28, 2002
A Taste of Omar (The Good One) They're Singing A New Song At NPR - In honor of NPR Recanting on their dumb no link policy, here is one to an 8 minute audio clip about an all time, kick ass song by Tina Turner, River Deep-Mountain High. Really worth listening to and a shame that it was a bit ahead of its time. Too bad that they use the proprietary RealAudio format, but it's worth the hassle to listen to their story. Not Exactly Proof - This wouldn't satisfy the folks who don't believe we ever made it to the Moon, but this photo of the Lunar module, Challenger, is pretty cool (not that you or I could actually discern what it purports to show.) Two Good Stories For The Price Of One - High Tech rivalries can be entertaining and it isn't always clear who the guys in the white hats are. Wired.com ran a neat story about a Microsoft Requested raid on pay-for-play game rival MindArk that caught the dreaded Swedes with 600 or so unlicensed copies of software - dumb, but not unusual in business. But even more interesting to me was the side issue of MindArc's Project Entropia game. That sounds as though using illegal copies of software is the least of MindArc's scams. Thursday, June 27, 2002
Let's Do A Big BOO! For Brazil - No, I'm not exercised about their soccer prowess, I actually couldn't care less about that. But whoever is responsible for this Idiotic Decision should be deported to Afghanistan, or some such garden spot. No, wait, given that we have our own set of morons "controlling" immigration those fools would probably be invited here ;-) The 5K Contest - Was mentioned on Metafilter the other day. This site has the 366 final entries for 2002 available to Test Drive. Some are sort of lame, some are actually entertaining and a few are even useful in one sense or another. Say Cheese - A nice story about the legitimacy of the Photomontage As Art on Wired.com. Be sure to visit their link to Cut & Paste, an interesting little site devoted to the history of the photomontage, then fire up your copy of Photoshop and get to work ;-) Now You See 'Em, Now You Don't - An odd little article on Wired.com the other day on How To Disappear. Some rather trite & puerile tips on reducing one's tracks and then the strange suggestion that one can use a 50 year old SSN (078-05-1120) with 99% success - bizarre. It Seems Like Only Yesterday - On Mars, a mere 3.5 billion years ago, a large river may have fed this lake complex and carved out the Ma'adim Vallis Canyon, as dipicted in this APOD false color image. Wednesday, June 26, 2002
A Nice Concept - I heard mention this morning, on that radio station that apparently shuns web exposure, about this homespun little charity site, Modest Needs. Dickens Had It Nailed - With this phrase from Oliver Twist: "The Law is a ass, a idiot." Well, not the law per se, but certainly some clowns better suited for lesser duties are sitting (perhaps that should be spelled with an "H") on the Bench In San Francisco. Certainly makes one proud to be an "Amorican", as one of our brighter lights used to pronounce it. Moral Relativism Goes High Tech - It's one thing to feel that P2P music sharing is wrong, it's another entirely to suggest, as Rep. Berman seems to, that illegal means to stop it are good if they're employed by the folks who contribute to his campaign (that being the Entertainment Industry.) Hmm, I wonder how he would feel about people taking down His Website with DoS attacks? ;-) Who Will Police The Police? - Here's one view of Microsoft's "vision" for Secure Systems as described in NewScientist. After their abysmal record in this arena with OSs, Browsers and e-mail clients just how much credibility do they have left? A bit More Of The Same from Wired.com. I don't know about you, but I'm still trying to learn more about Linux ;-) Something Beautiful To Look At - From APOD, this stunning photo of the Trifid Nebula, to keep your thoughts focused upwards while the stock market lies in ruins at your feet. Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Imagine That, Trouble Recruiting - A Scarcity Of Good Professors and all they need to do is live in New Delhi with the munificent salary of $674 monthly. Damn, I can't imagine why people aren't clamoring for the opportunity. Wait a second, I've been to New Delhi, I think I know ;-) Whole Lotta Flopping - Giant Strides In Supercomputing are being made at Los Alamos, and on two different fronts. For raw power the clear winner is "Q", clocking in today at 30 Teraops, and scheduled to hit 100 in its next incarnation! But also of interest is "Green Destiny" (love these names) which is predicated on efficiency and a much lower price point with a "Bladed Beowulf" architecture. Either way you slice it, it's exciting stuff. I Guess I Don't Get It - Perhaps Wireless Games will be the next big thing, as this article from TechnologyReview would have us believe, but frankly, I just don't see it. Perhaps if one had hundreds of "free minutes" to burn up, but why pay wireless rates for mediocre games on an inferior platform? NB - the fact that I don't buy in almost guarantees their success, better invest now ;-) You Talking To Me? - No, it's not about Taxi Driver, but it is all about entertainment, of sorts. From day one, the folks who have made money on the net have been those in the seamier corners of commerce; now get ready for the new Porn Innovators. Seems that they're ready to go high tech with voice controled interactive DVD - can't wait 'til it spills over to the game industry. Monday, June 24, 2002
YIKES!!! - How would you like to be known as an asshole everywhere the net is accessible (which means pretty much everywhere on the planet)? If anyone deserves that Dubious Distinction then this piece of crap does (go ahead Dave, tell us waht you really think ;-)) Thanks to Metafilter for providing yet one more reason for never visiting Florida. Be Careful What You Read ;-) Well, well, well - something else for the "right to privacy" crowd to get exercised about. I'm not clear on exactly which books the library might have that would be of Intererst To The FBI. Heck, they never seem to have the latest Grafton, Grisham or Sandford, perhaps it's one of theirs ;-) Seriously, I can't think of any book that I've read, ever, that I would mind anyone knowing I'd had my hands on. Well, perhaps Candy ;-) A Budding Career In Advertising? - I was perusing older posts in BoingBoing and came across this: Haiku Licensing statements - gotta love that RIAA ;-) Good News For The D&D Fans - The fan base for the traditional Dungeons and Dragons game has been hoping for a "true" port to the PC (it seems like a natural, doesn't it?) and from the early hype, perhaps Neverwinter Nights is the answer to their prayers. It sounds good enough that I'm tempted myself even though I never got into the D&D craze. Sunday, June 23, 2002
The Perils Of P2P - Well, they've effectively killed Napster and neutered AudioGalaxy - who's left to pick on? According to HP Labs, it's the very popular, but they say Dangerous, Kazaa. Not dangerous exactly, but through poor interface design subject to grievious user misconfiguration. Whoa, I don't think I really buy all that, do you? If anything I think it's an inherent weakness in the GUI paradigm as much as Kazaa. But then, to see their study you need to pull down the pdf file and it's not really worth the effort. After all, you aren't using Kazaa, right? ;-) Mildly Entertaining Even If You're Not Single - Not too long ago Forbes ran another of their many lists, this one supposedly the Best Cities For Singles. One could question their criteria, but it was fun to guess how various cities would fare One Of The Things We Take For Granted Is the Calendar System we happen to use. But they're certainly not an absolute, they go through revisions, and there's certainly more than one way to apportion the year. This very nicely executed site will give you some insight into the underlying requirements for a "good" calendar and several approaches that have been taken. Saturday, June 22, 2002
Now That's Active! - An interesting entry on APOD today, not so much for the composite shot of Io, but for the other images linked and background info on the Prometheus Plume. They have photographic evidence that the volcano feeding it may have been active for at least 18 years. For Those Who Simply Must Know Where They Are - Not just a high tech toy for the military anymore, the GPS has fallen into the average person's price range and new ideas for Using Your GPS come out almost daily it seems. This article from Wired.com describes one such, but you really wouldn't know what you had seen unless you brought the data up on your PC ;-) Definitely Over The Top - But hey, that's what makes the latest Screed From The Bleat a fun read. However, the topic, the recent poll of college students by "Americans For Victory Over Terrorism", isn't fun at all, it's depressing. I'd like to post a link to the poll (there are some excerpts in Lilek's story), but it seems to have been yanked from the net. Bill Bennett, who apparently fathered the thing, doesn't even mention it on his web site - wonder what that's all about? Refrigerator Art - No, I don't mean pictures of food, or clever Sub-Zero ads. I'm actually referring to an exciting, but mainly ignored, legitimate genre: Children's Art. Do yourself a favor and spend a little time looking around; you're almost certain to find some things you like and equally certain to be surprised and/or touched by some of the creations. Friday, June 21, 2002
A Taste of Omar (The Good One) A Different Take On Connecting The Dots - This month's Crypto-Gram has an interesting article by Bruce Schneier about our much discussed "Intelligence Breakdown". As opposed to most of what we've seen, his 7 points seem both reasonable and rational. Taking A Very Close Look - Chances are that you've seen the short feature, Powers Of 10. If not, or even if you have, this applet does a very nice job of presenting the concept and is well worth watching. Nice Little Research Tool - For source material, it's nice to hone in on exact hits rather than wade through all the dross Google can spew out. RefDesk.com came up with a Promising Tool the other day. I've only tried xrefer a few times so far, but it's done a credible job. 09-01-02 Is This The Day The Music Dies? - Wired.com seems not to be overly concerned about the resolution to CARP's Demands for royalties (but of course, they're not webcasters.) Yes, the Librarian of Congress has settled on Lower Fees in some categories, but I think it will still kill off many webcasters. It's not right IMHO, these people are actually doing the artists a favor in a sense. If one can't hear the music then how does one select which CD to buy? Thursday, June 20, 2002
Far Too Close For Comfort! - Whoosh, not Too Much Closer or quite a few of us might have found out what the end looked like to the poor dinosaurs. Seriously, that was pretty damn close, wonder why there wasn't more said about it? Captain Outrageous Strikes Again - Perhaps one of these days Ted Turner Will Learn to simply keep his big mouth shut, but don't hold your breath. One news commentator on the radio had a good suggestion this morning: he should follow every public pronouncement with an immediate apology while he still has the microphone in front of him ;-) A Real Ding-a-Ling Story - Drudge had a link to this weird Molar Phone story, which one can only hope is in jest. A friend questioned where they would put the antenna, but my mind skipped right on past to the answering machine. The answer: same place I bet ;-) If You Missed It Yesterday On APOD - Here's your chance to see their beautiful shot of the Moon & Venus over Geneva. Say It Isn't So - It seems to me that the whole brouhaha about deep links was born out of an unsightly combination of greed and ignorance, but This Silliness takes it to a new level. I'm a big fan of National Public Radio, they carry many stories every week that are interesting and their web site provides nice background material, but no more links I guess (and no more donations either ;-)) For Your Added Amusement: Wired.com has added a funny Companion Piece to the above NPR story. Wednesday, June 19, 2002
An Interesting Picture Was posted on APOD the other day, an apparently Square Nebula. It's actually a composite of two Hubble shots, one from a year ago and one taken this past January - a fascinating image. What's In A Name? - I'm not too exercised about what they call it, but I'll defer to Peggy Noonan on the "Heartland" issue, as a wordsmith she has had a pretty decent track record. I'll also go along with her vote for Rudy Giuliani to lead whatever they call the new combination, Tom Ridge simply doesn't inspire much confidence. However, he wouldn't seem to be the consensus choice. Recently Vote.com queried their users on the two and out of 18K votes cast, it was 52% to 48% for Ridge over Giuliani. Still, they tend to gather a pretty conservative crowd there; perhaps that's simply affirmation for Bush's presumptive choice. Damn, I guess I Didn't Hit The Jackpot After All ;-) - Lest you thought this crap was only coming from Con Artists In Nigeria, be wary of any deal that sounds far too good to be true, it probably is. Odd though that they can find so many people with such a disproportionate allocation of greed and gullibility. Ouch! - I Missed My DSL - Well, that was painful, and still smarts a bit. The phone service has been down for about 26 hours and they just got it back, sort of. My DSL is now maxing out at ~560 Kbs, whereas it used to run between 700 Kbs & 1.0 Mbs+. Update: I take it all back, the PacBell guys worked all day and finally got my line back up to a consistent 1 Mbs+ - color me happy ;-) Tuesday, June 18, 2002
A Real Treat - We can thank the Library of Congress for a first rate collection of the political Cartoons Of Herblock. Not to be missed, one of our all time greats very nicely presented. The Devil Made Him Do It - For some reason, John Rennie, the editor in chief of Scientific American, saw fit to write a 15 point Screed Against Creationism. This is bound to draw criticism from both sides: the defenders of Darwin are damning it with less than faint praise and I'm certain the creationists are hurling their 5000 year old rocks. One commentor on Metafilter suggested the Long FAQ at Talk.Origins as being better informed. Well, it certainly does seem longer ;-) In any event, it's interesting that a magazine of Scientific American's stature would choose to do this. So far God hasn't said who has the better case. Monday, June 17, 2002
An Honest Open Question: If you had a project that was far enough beyond inhouse capacity as to require hiring overseas programming support, would you really want/hire folks who would Heed This Call? Seriously, if they are that careless with their own lives, for no more compelling reason than working in India of all places, how much care/caution should you expect in their coding efforts? ;-) Like To Listen To The Radio? - Whether you listen to an actual radio, or to those that stream on the web, this Radio Station locator is a handy reference. It's really an old resource, but RefDesk.com just listed it the other day. In any event, it's worth having in your bag of tricks. I Imagine That It's Inevitable That we will have to either Start Paying for many of the privileges we've enjoyed for free on the net or forgo them. It's true that we're spoiled, but it's equally true that it's difficult to accept the idea that what we got for free before we may now have to pay for. But say, isn't that the major flaw of all our government's many "entitlement" programs? Give Your Heart A Break - We know that we're eating too much, but not all that well, here in America. The obvious result is an overweight population and the irrefutable medical consequences that go with the territory. All we really need to do is look at the bathroom scale, if it's visible past that bulging waistline, or look in the mirror, but this Simple Calculator will also tell the hard truth about that "not so hard" body. Give it a spin, look at the 3 categories to see where you fit, and then do something about it. Sunday, June 16, 2002
Shhh, Don't Tell Anyone - Damn, not only do we not seem to be able to figure out what the other guys are up to, neither can we keep our mouths shut about our own Covert Operations. Color Me Happy - Years ago in my AppleII days There were a number of games I really enjoyed. Oh Happy day, one of favorites, Taipan, has been ported to windows (and a very nice job of it.) I got that tip from the Lockergnome Digest, which comes up with a number of good recommendations. Now, if only someone would redo Nasir Gebelli's Space Eggs ;-) Did You Enjoy The Movie Pitch Black? - If so, or even if not, you should enjoy this eerie picture of Jupiter's Rings which certainly evokes the mood of that movie. Saturday, June 15, 2002
Just About Anything You Want To Know About how Countries Compare can be found here. Broken down into more than 140 categories, it's more data than you can digest at one sitting and some of the numbers are sure to surprise you. Tooting Their Own Horn A Bit - Lest you're unaware of what goes on at The Library Of Congress, they've put up a page with some brief facts about themselves. Better yet though to visit their Home Page and begin to use some of their services, but best of all would be to take a trip to our Capital and tour the facility. Friday, June 14, 2002
High Tech Version Of The Purloined Letter: A great little Story On Kottke's Site the other day. I won't give it away, read it for yourself - it's just one short paragraph. Shades Of Captain Nemo - That's how it started in a lot of those old B movies, An Eerie Noise, an excited scientist or two and pretty soon Godzilla, or some such, emerged from the ground, sea or sky and was wreaking havoc. Still, one would think they could have come up with a more fearsome name than "The Bloop" ;-) Does Gresham's Law Apply To Music? - The record companies are still whining about Napster, even though it's been irrelevant for some time. Now an economics professor examines the Evils Of File Sharing and concludes it may not have done as much harm to the record companies as they claim - yet. I wonder if it's really a case of apples & oranges? MP3s are not CDs, in quality or usage, and vice versa. Oh, and all those "lost sales" - how many of those songs that were downloaded for free turned out to be worth just about that much? To argue that even a large percentage represent lost sales seems delusional at best. The New Economy Redux In this piece from Wired.com, James Surowiecki argues that despite the frequently described, and deservedly burst, Stock Market Bubble things really are much better today. Largely driven by technology innovations brought into play from '95 forward, businesses in the main, not just the few success stories we all know, likely will make effective use of the opportunities technology can afford. One can only hope, but in the interim I have a number of stocks that I wish James had bought instead of myself ;-) Thursday, June 13, 2002
Now That's A Pair To Draw To - Egads, if there's any female existent that I'd care less to have as the first Madam President than Hillary Clinton it would have to be Laura Schlessinger! Just one more reason to hope that Hillary never gets the opportunity to run; a year or so of those two campaigning would be too painful to bear ;-) It's Starting To Sound Like A Bad News Day - The implications of this "Proof Of Concept" alert seem disheartening. We all know full well that most things coming out of Redmond are suspect, and we recently heard about using MP3 files to carry a virus. Now it seems we'll have to be on the lookout for infected JPGs (and the rogue support routine that would have to be resident to activate them) - I think I need a new hobby :-(. Ouch! - This Sounds Bad - Although the article's focus is on Tiered Pricing For Cable I expect we may see more of the same for DSL too. Rather than choking the service all of the time, if we must end up paying more for higher bandwidth, I would prefer metered access, or bandwidth on demand. I wonder if that's feasible? Does The Idea Of A Collaborative Mystery Appeal? - If it does you might find M Is For Nottingham to be of interest. I haven't wandered around the site enough yet to decide if I want to devote the time to it, but it is a neat idea and seems to be nicely executed, so to speak. Listen, They're Playing Our Song Again - Is it true that any publicity is good publicity? If so, then the myriad of Flaws In Microsoft products must be doing them a world of good. This time it's their Internet server software specific to Windows 2000 and Windows NT. Whoever first said caveat emptor knew whereof he spoke ;-) Wednesday, June 12, 2002
A Nice Little Presentation On Teaching Mathematics - Prepared by the National Museum of American History. It may be a bit on the light side, but it does give a nice overview of how the tools & techniques for Teaching Math have evolved since the 1800s. The Resources page includes links to interactive learning aids geared for K-12 on to college level (or so they say.) It's Important To Remember Our Past - Especially when some of it's architects are still pointing to what may become our future. For Internet users, one such case in point is Tim Berners-Lee. Sure, had he not envisioned what has become the web, certainly someone else would have - eventually. But we likely would have spent a lot more time dinking around with gopher and the like in the interim. The Eclipse We Didn't Really See - Annular eclipses are somewhat special, but here in California we were too far north to see it quite that way. This nice Time Lapse Sequence from APOD shows what you could have seen in San Francisco had you watched through the entire perfomance, but it appears as a partial eclipse. A Match Not Made In Heaven What a frightening thought This Matchup is. It's a tossup whether the world would be worse served if they just keep focused on their anti-social computing or if they actually, shudder, breed. We'll Always Have Paris No surprise that Casablanca topped the AFI's list of Top 100 Romantic Films. That likely won't generate much controversy, but I can almost hear the quibbling start about many of the other inclusions, exclusions and rankings. I actually found the list linked at the bottom, the top 400 Nominees By Decade, more interesting. Tuesday, June 11, 2002
Now That's Dense! - Big Blue Indeed I can see it all now, the tech head fumbling through his pockets, looking for his Multi-Millipede Drive and mumbling to himself, "Now where the Hell did I put my copy of the Library of Congress?!" ;-) Now That Sounds Like A Neat Deal Generous of HP To Supply The PDAs. An interesting study and a sweet deal for the students who get to participate - I'm envious. I think the security advantages outweigh the potential security risks, but I guess time will tell. Perhaps It's A Good Thing That I Moved To RedHat 7.3 Early Otherwise I might be tempted to give SELinux a try. There is a version for RedHat 7.2, but the article makes the whole thing sound rather daunting. Darn, I guess they figured plain old Linux wasn't challenge enough ;-) In The Event That You're Counting On Them This site will help you calculate what, if any, your Social Security Benefits will be. Hopefully this isn't the only egg you plan to have in your retirement basket. Just Like The Coasters, He's Been Searching Kottke had an interesting idea for Comparing Search Engines, he turned them loose on the term "search". No big surprise here, by just about any measure Google was the winner. It's Truly A Shame That we need to be thinking in terms of the damage potential of a "Dirty Bomb", but clearly that's what life in this new millennium has brought us to. There's certainly much more about it to consider, but this short piece in Wired.com was all I could handle early in the morning. Monday, June 10, 2002
It's Always A Moving Target So to speak, but RefDesk.com recommended another of those lists of Best Places To Retire, this one abstracted from Money Magazine. I'm sure they each have their own virtues, but for my money, simply retiring has a Hell of a lot going for it ;-) Sometimes It Really Means It - I wonder how many folks believed that John Gotti's Life Sentence would truly turn out to be exactly that? Damn, now and then they actually get it right ;-) Comparison Shopping For Blog Features - Chances are that if you're looking at this you either already have a weblog or are considering starting one. In either case, this is a pretty nice Feature Comparison chart that you likely will find to be of interest. Another Reminder That Today Is Your Chance To view a somewhat infrequent Annular Eclipse. Even if you're fortunate enough to live in the viewing path, it won't be as spectacular as this Great Image from APOD, but it should be well worth looking at. Caution: don't forget to protect your eyes! India & Pakistan May Be Calming - Is This The Next Hot Zone? An article in the NY Times (painless registration required) suggests that not all the kids are Playing Nice In The Blogosphere. It's an entertaining read and, as one might expect, one of the few voices of reason mentioned was Jason Kottke. Sunday, June 09, 2002
Oh, My God! - God's Journal, really (well, that's what it said ;-)) Pretty darn funny, but I did feel a twinge, first finding and then recommending it, on a Sunday no less. Damn, He IS Good! The last day of May I mentioned Stott's Handicapping program and wondered somewhat facetiously what kind of chance it had given Senegal over France. The joke's on me, the computer picked Senegal. Nothing But The Blues This morning NPR discussed the Blues Festivals still slated for some time this year. Check out the list, you may be lucky enough to have one that appeals coming your way. The Dark Cloud With NO Silver Lining With the missles poised on the launch pads in India and Pakistan perhaps it's not unrealistic to see what the effects would be from a Nuclear Burst at a location near or dear to you. Saturday, June 08, 2002
Yes, But Can It Play Soccer? An interesting AI Initiative was mentioned on Metafilter today, a $60M effort to teach a computer common sense. A good thing I say, there hasn't been much of that in evidence since Thomas Paine ;-) It's Their Nature I Guess To Mark Their Territory This is a great searchable collection of Nature Pictures. It seems a shame though that they felt compelled to slather their name across each one. With A Little Bit Of Luck You may enjoy a view of the annular eclipse which will occur on Monday, June 10. This Eerie Image from APOD shows an annular eclipse from 1995. With the surreal sky and ominous bird captured in flight, to my eye it evokes thoughts of Vincent Van Gogh. Caution: Don't forget to protect your eyes! Render Unto Caesar This is an interesting, but not particularly heartening, presentation of the 2001 State Taxes Collected, both total and per capita. The data is selectable by state and broken down into collection categories. Not as much fun for those of us in high tax rate states ;-) Friday, June 07, 2002
A Taste of Omar (The Good One) Are You Harboring Adware On Your PC? - If so, should you care? Another interesting little Fight Is Brewing, but who is wearing the white hat and who the black? Personally, I don't want Adware on my PC, so I suggest you take a look at AD-Aware By Lavasoft. NB - Exercise some caution in what you allow it to remove, I had a serious problem once. It may be preferable to handle the cleanup on your own. Wasn't One Of The FBI's Complaints The Archaic Systems they had to work with? Perhaps there was method to their management's penny-pinching ways, Nah ;-) As Far As I'm Concerned, Chemistry Is Black Magic - Yet, I think I would like to have one of these Periodic Table Tables. If you don't have room in your house, or it doesn't match the decor, the web presentation is pretty nice. My Greatest Fear Wouldn't Be That this is a step towards becoming a Police State, especially given that the seemingly likely first person for the post would be Tom Ridge. First, I can't imagine much synergy in "linking" agencies that are clearly gridlocked by inept management and historically opposed to cooperating with each other. Second, and even more troublesome, can you really envision Governor Ridge having the strength of character, leadership, charisma or even the intellect to pull it off? This sounds more like wrapping last week's bad fish in clean tissue paper than an proactive assault on terrorism, let alone an evil plot against our liberties. Thursday, June 06, 2002
Think Big, REALLY Big: Say What?! - To accurately Model The Universe the professor postulates (I don't see how we can legitimately say calculates) that it would take 10 Billion times as many bits of information as the total number of fundamental particles in the Universe itself. Damn, does that model take itself into account? ;-) A Good Decision? - The Boston Phoenix makes their case for linking to the Daniel Pearl execution tape. Is this journalism at its finest, exercising legitimate 1st Amendment rights or blatant bad taste trolling for eyeballs? In a society which seems incapable of self-restraint and seems increasingly focused on rights, wouldn't it be helpful if there were a corollary set of Amendments we could call the Bill of Requirements, spelling out the broad behavior norms expected for a civil society? Probably not: I don't think we can legislate decency and sadly, we clearly can't expect it from everyone. All It's Cracked Up To Be? - I guess I vote yes, You Be The Judge. Guess I'll have to go back to reading Salon.com after all ;-) The Name Says It All - This site is devoted to Useless Information and that's pretty much what it's all about. An eclectic collection of trivia, some of which you've likely heard of, well presented and told in an entertaining way. Wednesday, June 05, 2002
I Guess There's An Upside To Everything - To really get The Hacker Community interested they probably should have presented it as a contest, but hopefully they'll get their data back, one way or another ;-) I Can't Believe This One! - Damn, saw this story at BoingBoing, but find it hard to credit. A Vegetarian Eating At McDonald's makes about as much sense as Twiggy applying for a job at Hooters. The story doesn't seem totally clear as to whether MickeyD settled or simply had a judgement placed against them. A Rah Rah Column About Jim Cramer - If you've followed the "career" of Jim Cramer you may find this Salon.com article mildly interesting, otherwise fagedabodit ;-) He's still trying to make a case for The$treet.com (no, I won't put in a link to it) - I tried the free version & didn't find it to be worth the price. Much More Than A Place To Catch A Train - I mentioned the Moscow Metro the other day, but didn't say why it's so special. In a rather drab city their stations really stand out as works of art. At this site you can get a glimpse of how special they are (go to the line links towards the bottom of the page), but much, much more. This amazing site has more detail than one would ever expect on metro stations all over the planet! His Master's Voice - A somewhat lighthearted article about Voice Recognition Software in the current ScientificAmerican.com. Not too sure about it myself; heck, it's difficult to get a PC to do what you really want it to even with explicit keystrokes ;-) Tuesday, June 04, 2002
Can The Folks In Redmond Spell Redundant? - How much would you pay for a version of MSWhatever that wasn't replete with Incessant Flaw Reports?! We hear that Gates is worth $40B or so and that MS has $30B or so in cash reserves, perhaps one of these days they'll see fit to spend a few thousand $s on Quality Control (right!) ;-) The Tour You Don't Want To Take - Thanks to BoingBoing for the link to this weird story about the Moscow You'll Never See. Don't take me wrong, the Metro stations are awesome, and I really wish that I had seen more of them, but this underworld sounds like something from a bad Sci-Fi novel ;-) If You Have Excess Time and/or Bandwidth - Some Interesting Old Photos. I found this link at Craig's Booknotes and was intrigued by it, but it's likely not for everyone ;-) Is It Really Such A Small World? - One wouldn't think so looking at all the information available on Various Nations gathered by the Library of Congress. It's a work in progress, but it's already impressively robust. Can You Guess What It Is? - I doubt that anyone looking at this picture from APOD the other day would take it for Jupiter's Moon Europa. Heck, to me it looks like a closeup of a leaf. The Good Old Days - I gave up on Salon.com when they went schizoid (part for free, part for fee and large ads), but saw this article on the Day Of The BBS referenced in Blogdex and it brought back fond memories. My first modem wasn't that early, I started with a Hayes 1200, but I did spend a lot of time wading around on a variety of BBS sites. Related nostalgia: did you ever own a PC without a HD? I recall my envy when I first met a fellow who had a new 10M HD for his Apple - what could you store on that today? Monday, June 03, 2002
What's A Lophortyx californica? - This neat little site will tell you that, as well as the State Birds for the other 49 states, and even show you a drawing from the Audubon collection - very nice. Check The Guide & Set Your VCR, TiVo or Whatever - This sounds like The TV Show you don't want to miss, I know that I don't. It Sounds Like Awesome Potential, but how do they organize it into focused Processing Power? When you think of all the idle cycles sitting on desktops across the nation the model is compelling. Hey, Look Mom, I'm A Capitalist - Well, sorta. Color me excited because I just sold my second book This Way. No, The Sum of All Fears wasn't it, I just put that page up as a sample of how simple it is to list a book at Amazon.com. Fun actually, but now I have to make a run to the Post Office ;-) Sunday, June 02, 2002
Well Worth A Look - I like the Bookwatch site quite a bit, and added it to my bookmarks list, but thought I would say a few more words about it. It's a cool concept: a search is run on the list of Recently Updated Weblogs looking for books referenced at Amazon.com and lists those with frequent hits and the referer (now how the heck does that info get extracted?) Be sure to check out the weblog and photo section too, it's good stuff. I'll Admit It, I'm A Sucker For Polls So even though this site was put up by old Desenex breath, otherwise known as Dick Morris, I normally visit Vote.com daily just to see what's going on. The voters tend to lean to the right, but now and then they'll surprise you. Great News For Ninjai Fans! - Finally, The Little Ninja is not only back, there are 6 new chapters. If you haven't seen any of these you're in for a treat, but be forewarned: a) it gets a bit, well, bloody in parts and b) it's definitely best for those of us who enjoy broadband connections. Don't be misled by its use of Flash, this is extremely well executed. They're Cheering In Appalachia - According to Discover, the risks of Consanguineous Marriage have been somewhat overstated. Well, that may yield a whole new meaning to family closeness ;-) Saturday, June 01, 2002
NB - There's, Gasp, Nudity Here - OK, I've debated putting up a link to this site, but it is tastefully done and lately The Pictures have been pretty nice. The Good Old Days - Really old: the Los Angeles Public Library put up this collection of images of California In The 20's. Yes, that's even before my time ;-) For All You Music Buffs, and especially my friend, Joe Parker, the Museum of Musical Instruments is really a homage to the guitar. Joe, don't miss the Django tribute ;-) Looking For A Picture? - The web is in great measure a visual experience and here is an Amazing Collection of sites, search strategies and background information devoted to historical photographs on the web. Go ahead and try to look at all of it, I dare you ;-) But be prepared to spend some time, this is LARGE. Friday, May 31, 2002
A Taste of Omar (The Good One) Stretch Your Mind A Bit - There are some interesting little Problems To Ponder in this month's issue of Discover. The one they don't provide an answer to is what happened to the illustration that was supposed to complement the piece on the Golden Ratio ;-) Yes, But Can He Predict The Weather? ;-) - People certainly devote a lot of energy to Handicapping Sporting Events. I wonder what his program had to say about Senegal's chances against France? ;-) Now That's A Canyon! - Today's APOD is a spectacular infrared panaorama of Chandor Chasma which is part of Mars' Valles Marineris canyon complex. This is no run of the mill canyon, it's 5 times as large as our own Grand Canyon - don't miss it. Thursday, May 30, 2002
A Rumor Confirmed: From Open Source to One Source; well, actually, a consistent source. My favorite Linux distribution continues to be RedHat - I hope that they join the UnitedLinux consortium (or that at least it doesn't impair their ability to offer top notch products.) Great Idea, Great Execution! - Darn, I wish they would do Something Similar for the entire country - color me envious ;-) How Do They Know What these Strange Images represent?! I think this is the same picture I saw a week ago on the CalTech web site, but APOD gives more background info. Still, it seems like 90% speculation at best. Just When We Thought It Was Time For Summer Vacation The University of Washington came up with this great offer. Likely the courses are quite abbreviated compared to their for fee Distance Learning program, but it certainly sounds worth a try. Wednesday, May 29, 2002
Why I Try To Avoid The Place - LAX That Is: Another time sink from Metafilter (I'm going to have to stay away for a while ;-)) It's pretty busy, as is LAX, so this Great Visual may take some time to start, but it's worth the wait. Listen To The Music - Damn, I must have spent too many years following The Doobie Brothers' advice, at too high a volume. The Wired.com article says this Music Is Subtle, so subtle in fact one can hardly hear it, and I really couldn't. Or perhaps I'm just a musical philistine: after all, I couldn't be forced to listen to (c)rap either, with or without that silent 'c' ;-) |
