...more recent posts
This is the living and working module for the International Space Station. It's going up on Wednesday to dock with the the other two pieces (the other picture over there on the left.) We are leaving the planet, however tenuously. The BBC has the story.
I think this might work. Pre-paid debit cards for on-line shopping. Sold at 7-11's and backed by Amex, they are good anywhere on the web that a regular American Express card would be. I wonder which on line segment of the market this is going to help out most? (Hint: the only one that makes any money to begin with.) Iis it an irony that 7-11 made a lot of fuss about getting out of that business a few years ago?
Big week for Napster. Probably it will be shut down on Wednesday (although nothing is final at this point.) Dave Winer waxes nostalgic about the little program that changed everything. Sure, he's a little over the top, and a bit of an aging hippy, but is that so bad?
Not sure how I missed the rise of BBSpot, the site some have called, the techie Onion. Anyway, I did, because it's been around for a while, and I've never seen it. Microsoft Alleges US Government is a Monopoly, FTC Approves Crips-Bloods Merger, and Office Jesus Turns Water Into Coffee, plus much much more...
...and if you thought that was at all funny, you probably have low enough standards for The Adventures of Tom Cruise & Spork. (From the always quixotic riothero.)
O.K., I'll stop now.
Here's an article about supersonic submarines. Not too technical. Very interesting. Supercavitation. Mmmm.
I was telling some people about the genetically engineered glow in the dark mice and I don't think they believed me. Here's a story about them (the mice, not the people.) (TBTF has some more links on this, but the URL won't last for long and I can't figure how to link to the archives.) Anyway, not only does this appear to be true, but it's even sort of old news.
Bunch of links for your weekend viewing pleasure. Here is a story about the great Sage synthesizer fraud which might appeal to any budding multi-media product forgers. Here is the scoop on why some numbers are less random than others which is some mind blowing math, although someone else had a good explanation about why it can't be applied to horseracing as is jokingly mentioned. And here is some far out stuff on the biological wireless internet. That reminds me of the amazing sci-fi book I am in the middle of right now, Greg Egan's diaspora. It takes place in a distant future and some of the intelligent life lives inside computers, having put themselves in there centuries before. (Sort of, it's much more complex than that of course.) Others have taken on cyborg bodies, but still inhabit the physical world as we know it. Others have stayed in the flesh. Really interesting so far. If you like that kind of book, then you'll like this book. Sez me.
Here is a brutal appraisal of Microsoft's .NET strategy. "...This stuff is so abstract it's impossible to criticize. Who doesn't want an operating system that supports productivity? Great feature! Get me one of those spiffy new operating systems with the productivity feature!" (via scripting news)
I've been doing so well on my new plan to not get overly agitated by political stories that I clearly am not going to mention that the U.S. government has found that the U.S. government did nothing wrong in Waco. And, according to todays New York Times, they are "100% certain" of their innocence. Oh, you're 100% sure? Why didn't you say so? Good enough for me. I mean, if I was going to comment on the story at all which of course I'm not...
Move along, nothing to see here.
Stephen King has already released one book (albeit quite a short one) over the web. Apparently he was dismayed to find that he could not read it on his own computer. He uses a Mac, and of course the encryption software his publishers used to encode his book only works on Windows machines. So this time around he is releasing his new work on his own site without any of the encryption (or any of the publishers.) He is going to use the honor system, hoping enough people will cough up the $1 per section (released sequentially.) Oh my god. Somebody rich and powerful is doing something reasonable. Has he been talking to that troublemaker Courtney Love or something? The publishing industry must be extruding red rock based rectangular building blocks about now, if they even know what is happening. "This is the end... beautiful friend."