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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. |
