...more recent posts
I just found var/system.log! Oh my god this unix stuff is so cool. If I knew what I was doing I could probably solve a lot of problems by looking through these logs. Even without knowing much I think I figured out what was going wrong with my PPP connection today. This makes what I do to troubleshoot older Macs look like a large order of mumbo-jumbo with a side of fuzzy intuition. Throw out the prefs and pray. Check for damaged fonts and pray. Drag the system folder off its drive and back (and pray.) Throw out objectsupportlib (again) and pray. With OS X I can go in and actually see what is happening. Knowing what to do after you see what is happening is another story, of course, but at least we are in the realm of science. Knowing how to keep pre-X Macs running is more like superstition. I know the incantations to chant, and I've got my various rabbits feet at the ready, but knowing that stuff never taught me anything about how the system really works in there. It seems like I won't be able to help learning a lot about how unix works by learning to run the system. Or maybe I'm just carried away by the novelty of it all...
I really like this site. This is the place that had the informative article on space elevators a few weeks (months?) ago. Today /., linked to this great one on using magnetic bubbles for traveling in space.
"Last week's test was a success. We were able to completely fill the vacuum chamber with a magnetic bubble. The only thing that stopped the expansion was the presence of the chamber walls. In space this same experiment might create a mini-magnetosphere 15 km across.I love the artists conception of what such a spacecraft would look like. I wonder if it has anything to do with a scientists conception of how it would look.
Maintaining such a bubble in space would require about 1 kW of power and less than 1 kg per day of helium propellant for the plasma source. In return, the bubble would intercept about 600 kW of solar wind power."
Here is the real audio stream, or downloadable mp3 of J. R. R. Tolkien reading from "The Two Towers."
I used to think he just changed his mind about certain posts. I would go to his site, read a post, then go back later and it would be gone. Now I'm thinking that this is a brilliant new web tactic. I now find myself checking the site multiple times a day, just so I don't miss one of the soon to be retracted posts. Sort of a clever version of the "hurry, this special offer ends soon..." ploy used by some retailers.
When it actually happens, it tends to be a little more subtle than what was imagined (feared, hoped for,) but nonetheless, I think one of those things has happened. We have crossed a line. Not that it is bad necessarily, but we sure aren't going back. Human embryo chosen for its tissue type. From the story submission at /.:
"A couple conceived their son in vitro, no big deal -- but they chose that particular embryo because its tissue type would provide a match for their dying 6-year-old daughter. When their new baby was born, the umbilical cord's blood was transfused into the daughter immediately."I thought it would take longer for this sort of thing to happen. I guess this case is not really such a big deal (when just thinking specifically about this one case - I mean, of course the parents are going to do whatever they can to save the dying daughter,) but the implications of selecting an embryo for certain characteristics are staggering. Seems like we are grabbing a whole bunch of power over the future of our species that is usually assigned to "nature" or "chance" or "god" or whatever you want to call it. I'm all for stealing the fire (so to speak) but I'm having one of those vertigo moments where the boundaries of what is possible (and not possible) are all dissolving. Wow. Just how fast could evolution be accelerated? And in what direction(s)?
Here's the direct link to the NY Times story (with the as of right now still working partners.nytimes.com link trick,) or here is the regular incredibly annoying and un-web like mandatory sign in link.
We were wondering about the seven wonders of the ancient world at dinner. Bruno almost got them all.
Hmmmm, seems there's a new animal leaving tracks around here:
compatible; MSIE 5.5b2; Mac_PowerPC
"So anyway, uh great, now folks are trying to patent simple operations on graph connectivity relations. Lord save us. " Yeah, what he said. Here's a follow up in the same thread. Reading David McCusker comments always makes my day. Now if I could just figure out what exactly he is building.
Here's the best look at OS X Public Beta (from Ars Technica's Mac Wizard John Siracusa.) Listen up Apple. This guy knows what he is talking about. (Long article, with some nice screen shots if you're wondering what the new Mac world is going to look like.)
Space fungus eating Mir. (Well, they are common earth fungi, but they are eating the aging space station.) Here's the slashot thread. My favorite quote is
"...he added that the station had 'a strong smell of fungal contamination' - a smell he called 'mushroomy' in his book - and that 'there were areas you wouldn't want to stick your hand in.'"