...more recent posts
"Why: Why not?"
Indeed.
Floppy disk drive RAID.
I'm not saying they are there yet, but Apple seems to have gotten something right with the latest iTunes (as well as breaking some stuff and going further down the DRM blackhole.) I think the iMix thing could be potentially huge. See this post for more:
Gyford writes, "It's kind of a social networking tool without really trying. With music as the social lubricant, you have something by which to gauge other people. Never mind those dumb lists of 'My Favourite Music' that Friendster et al suggest you populate. You can see which bands someone actually listens to. After browsing to, say, mechajesus's page, I'm almost interested in getting in touch simply because we share lots of tastes and he also listens to things I've never heard of. For anyone who's all High Fidelity-esque about judging people by their musical tastes (and, let's face it, you can't take anyone seriously who isn't), this is like the proverbial crack cocaine. Well, maybe if you could just download an MP3 with a click ... then I'd have problems leaving my computer to take care of essential bodily functions."
Interesting beta app for the Treo 600 (download link in first post) which gives you lots more control over the camera (can increase the factor set quality level from 65 to 99) plus it sort of deals with the low light blue dot problem. With a small amount of testing I can say that the pictures do look a little better.
Open-Source Mesh Group Releases Software:
The CUWiN project wants to allow self-forming, noncentralized, mesh-based Wi-Fi networks using standard, old PCs with no configuration. Slightly more advanced units could be ruggedized boxes using Compact Flash, but the basic unit would be a 486 or later PC with a bootable CD-ROM or bootable floppy that bootstraps a CD-ROM. Once booted, a unit finds other similar units without any other configuration or control and forms a mesh.
“We’ve been developing software now since about 2000, and our idea is to build software that is super user friendly, super easy for someone who doesn’t understand the nuances of the technology or community wireless networking to set up their own system,” said Meinrath. It’s an attempt to enable community networking to spread beyond the folks who are self-starters.
Here is a post with lots of links to very serious deep thinking on this subject. I should have some more to say, and some more specific pointers when I get done plowing through this fascinating stuff.
A completely killer 2 MP camera phone from Samsung that, if the past is any indication, will never ever be released in the U.S.
Okay, I know I have no pull. But can't someone hook me up with a gmail account?
Basic ran on the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, a network of multiple simple terminals connected to a large computer, Kurtz explained. "The development of Basic was a natural step in a whole progression of computer activities that began when I arrived at Dartmouth in 1956," he said. "The whole thrust was to try to make computing easier for people, particularly nonscience and nonengineering people."My first experience with computer programming was using basic on a TRS-80 computer at my Junior High School.
Around 1960 or so, Kurtz said, he and Kemeny realized that the only way to do that was to develop a time-sharing system that would be especially geared toward small student jobs rather than the "big research stuff."
"The idea was that a time-sharing system made it easy for students or anybody else to get to the computer," Kurtz said. "The user interface to the time-sharing system was very simple. Instead of using things like 'log in' and 'log out,' we used [simple English-language functions] like 'hello' and 'goodbye.'
"We needed a simple language, and that's how Basic got developed," he said. "The languages that were around in those days were just not suitable, so we had to develop one from scratch -- [though] it derived from the existing languages, there's no question about that -- and we also wanted a computing environment where people could use it without having to take a course."
I wish there was a way to notify google when their index is incorrect. I get hundreds of hits a day from google image searches for John Lennon (I'm the 4th result of searching for "john lennon".) But the picture they think is on my site is not on my site! And they link to the entire month of September, 2001 so the bandwidth is not inconsequential. Shouldn't I be able to ask their robots to check a particular result in such a case. Like, "hey google, you got this one wrong - you don't have to believe me, but send a robot to check it out."
Note to self: make sure you use the "one time" alarm and not the "daily" alarm when you set your cell phone to go off at 4:30 am.
Related query: does anyone have a clock anymore? I mean one not on your cellphone or computer?
This seems like a sensible compromise: serving google ads only when the referrer is a search engine.