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We're dogsitting a little black pug. You know, the ones with the bulging eyes and the smooshed in face. Of Men in Black fame? Anyway, her name is supposedly Fury. But that's just not right so we have taken to calling her Snorty. She's definitely a Snorty. So far no one has seen her and not been reduced to blubbering baby talking "oh you're so cute - yes you are" hysterics. It's amazing. People absolutely love her. Snort. Drool. It's like a law of physics or something.
Single guys should get this dog. I mean if you don't want to be single anymore. Who knew?
Maybe they haven't heard of blogs?
The Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting proposals to develop an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person's experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities. The objective of this "LifeLog" concept is to be able to trace the "threads" of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships.(via MeFi)
J. just got us tickets to the Matrix for Friday at 5:00 at 2nd ave and 12th street. Call now and get one if you want to join us.
WFMU broadcasts to the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area and beyond over 91.1 and WXHD 90.1 FM and Internet streaming. Their studio signal reaches their 90.1 transmitter in New York's lower Hudson Valley via satellite feed.
Station manager Ken Freedman installed a 5GB iPod at the transmitter in Mount Hope to cope with the inevitable loss of the satellite feed during the thunderstorm season. By using a phone to dial in to a remote control unit at the transmitter site, station staff can switch to the iPod instead of satellite audio. The Apple device is set on continuous random play from a playlist containing the extensive collection of "Live at WFMU" CDs (live music recorded at the radio station's studios).
David Weinberger takes an impassioned look at the digital rights management (DRM) mess we are getting ourselves into.
We're screwed. Not because we MP3 cowboys and cowgirls will not have to pay for content we've been "stealing." No, we're screwed because we're undercutting the basis of our shared intellectual and creative lives. For us to talk, argue, try out ideas, tear down and build up thoughts, assimilate and appropriate concepts - heck, just to be together in public - we have to grant all sorts of leeway. That's how ideas breed, how cultures get built. If any public space needs plenty of light, air, and room to play, it's the marketplace of ideas.As usual, extremely well written.
There are times when rules need to be imposed within that marketplace, whether they're international laws against bootleg CDs or the right of someone to sue for libel. But the fact that sometimes we resort to rules shouldn't lead us to think that they are the norm. In fact, leeway is the default and rules are the exception.
Fairness means knowing when to make exceptions. After all, applying rules equally is easy. Any bureaucrat can do it. It's far harder to know when to bend or even ignore the rules. That requires being sensitive to individual needs, understanding the larger context, balancing competing values, and forgiving transgressions when appropriate.
And on my favorite topic, which with great effort I don't mention every day, Ars Technica's Hannibal has posted the second part (the good part) of his IBM PowerPC 970 article. This is going to be the new brain in high end Apple machines. Should show up sometime between late June and September. Needs to be a home run, and it looks like it might be.
Finally, turning once again to Apple's use of the 970, I believe that Apple is poised for a huge overhaul of its hardware line based on this processor and a renewed relationship with IBM. I'm finally convinced that Apple's days of wandering in the wilderness with Motorola are over, and that personal computer users will be able to see the Mac as a real option again in terms of desktop, and not just portable, performance.
Bunch of interesting stuff today.
LanLink is an all volunteer project to create a coast to coast (U.S.) wireless network.
A project of this magnitude will undoubtedly take on new meanings and visions as hurdles are passed and obstacles are overcome, but today, the purpose of LL is to setup a wireless lan infrastructure in the homes of average people that spiderwebs and interconnects coast to coast using store bought wifi equipment and not at any point connect to the real Internet. A successful test of this experiment will be to ping remote hosts the farthest that is possible.5 out of 4 stars cool.
Unimportant statistic of the day: the last post I made was the 22,222 post on this site (not just my page, the whole site.) That's not counting comments.
Trepia has a new Wi-Fi instant messanger program for windows that works like Apple's rendezvous enabled iChat instant messanger in that it will allow you to connect to other Wi-Fi users in your immediate vicinity.
While programs like ICQ and AIM will show you a static list of friends, Trepia shows you a list of people who are currently in your area -- people who you most likely didn't know before! You can check out their profile and picture and strike up a conversation, knowing that if you actually want to meet them, they are never more than a few minutes away.As public Wi-Fi nodes proliferate this sort of thing is going to become very cool.
I also like Trepia's copy under the download button: "Trepia is free to use and contains no spyware or ads." Amen.
Vanu shows off software defined radio prototype running on the iPaq. Here's all the +3 slashdot comments, including this representative overview:
...What this means (in the future, with 2.4GHz+ capable devices) is that one device (be it your PDA, mobile phone, PCMCIA card) can be a GSM phone, can be a CDMA phone, can be a 3G phone, can be a CB/commercial/police radio receiver, it could even be used for 802.11b or Bluetooth. The possibilities for software radio are mind boggling. Linux is really irrelevant in the scheme of things, it's essentially just used to bolt the stuff together - it's the underlying technology that is impressive.Bring on the uber communicator. Converge damn it.