January 2001
Wednesday, 31 January 2001
Science Says Women Dig Fast Cars
Marc Andreessen: Act II: “the hidden danger in startups is not hiring bad people; it’s hiring good people instead of great people. Competent managers can usually screen out bad people, but they have a hard time screening out good people.”
Rolling Stone, 7 December 1972: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums.
Tuesday, 30 January 2001
Cloned human planned ‘by 2003’
Search engine veteran poo-poos AltaVista patent claims
Monday, 29 January 2001
Exporting Japan’s Revolution: “Turn on the phone and you are instantly connected to the Net; and you can stay connected without racking up per-minute charges. Consumers pay approximately $2.75 a month, plus a usage fee based on the amount of data downloaded and uploaded. I-mode’s advertising never mentions the Internet, focusing instead on specific applications: Check your bank balance, read your fortune, get the latest news ñ anywhere, anytime.”
Walker tries to stay on his feet: “A company insider contends that when and if Mr. Walker extricates himself from his current troubles, General Atlantic is waiting in the wings with more venture capital to fund Mr. Walker’s next endeavor. After all, Mr. Walker made quite a bit of money for the VC firm with Priceline.com. Mark Dziagla, a general partner at General Atlantic who sits on Walker Digital’s board, hung up the phone when asked to comment.”
US wireless auction ends: “Which says to us is that the US hasn’t learnt from our stupidity and has grossly overpaid for the licences, but there you go.”
WAP, Bam, No Thank You, Ma’am: “WAP apologists compare the state of the service today with the Internet-at-large in 1994. But the Internet-at-large in 1994 was a smallish lab experiment, a physicist-ruled backwater inhabited by people willing to wear hip-waders to get around. WAP - in all its awful glory - is being offered up as a mainstream consumer service, something that grandma can use, by providers too stupid or greedy to know they’re gibbering incompetents.”
Napster confirms membership charge
Laser-equipped 747 designed to blast ballistic missiles
Friday, 26 January 2001
European art group files suit in U.S against eToys
The Iteration Trap: “The biggest drawback of this process, of course, is that you frustrate your users and customers, and given the shift in the marketplace to customers who are more demanding, educated, and far less loyal, experimenting on them is not something you can afford to do.”
Japanese ‘Akira’ gets U.S. re-release
Bigger Babies May Be Bigger Brains Later in Life
Supreme Court to Consider Digital Images: “To pass a new law that essentially relieves the government of its burden of proof on the theory that they are unable to meet it is unconstitutional”
Ericsson to stop making mobile phones
Thursday, 25 January 2001
DirecTV’s Secret War On Hackers: “Some estimate that in one evening, 100,000 smart cards were destroyed, removing 98% of the hacking communities’ ability to steal their signal.”
Web war rages over DVD-cracking site: “In its letter to Verio, the MPAA demanded that the ISP remove the code, citing DMCA violations. Instead of following the MPAA’s wishes, Verio sent a letter to Young asking him to answer the charges.”
How the ax falls: “The human resources director sends a list of the people that are to be canned within the next few weeks to the CEO. All e-mails to the CEO first go through his personal assistant. The personal assistant’s name happens to be on the list of layoffs”
Wednesday, 24 January 2001
Tech workers confront life in the axed lane: “Even though the economy has turned, many still insist that finding a new job is as easy as ever. But what they don’t know is that they only have part of the picture. For every engineer or ace software developer who can toss out a resume and get 30 offers overnight, there are three or four more technology company workers – business development executives, marketers, salespeople, and administrators – who are having a much harder landing.”
Tuesday, 23 January 2001
What now?: Moving past the correction: “That no one found it odd that the Nasdaq averaged a 42 percent annual return is likely the most important ex post facto discovery. The true rarity of what occurred was the wholesale and widespread belief that ‘it really was different this time.’ And now that the party is over, blame is certainly in the air. The fund managers blame the investment bankers, the venture capitalists blame the markets, the bankers blame the day traders, and the media blame everyone. But no one should cast stones, for everyone’s house is made of glass. Valuation bubbles occur when everyone accepts the new reality, and for the most part, everyone did.”
Fiat considers future of Ferrari, Maserati: “Shares in the new company could be used to help retain talent – such as Chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo and Formula One champion Michael Schumacher – with the use of stock options.”
Monday, 22 January 2001
House of Lords OKs embryo cloning
FCC votes down dual carriage of analog, digital TV: “The FCC is anxious for stations to move from the analog band to digital because it plans to begin auctioning off the airwaves to wireless communications companies in a couple of months.”
What’s Wrong With Content Protection
Sunday, 21 January 2001
Italy AIDS Vaccine at Human Testing Stage
Abstinence Minded: “there’s something perfect about the recent news that Madonna, the poster girl for sexual adventurousness who sang coyly about her first time, and Britney Spears, the most celebrated virgin since Joan of Arc who sings coyly that she ‘did it again,’ may go on tour together.”
Friday, 19 January 2001
Finishing last in the race for dot-com riches: “Aspatore will forever be known as the author of a book titled ‘Digital Rush: Nine Internet Start-ups in the Race for Dot-Com Riches’ that was published in 2001.”
Green power in the red: “the current electricity disaster in California is fueling a rush to build new plants – which could effectively short-circuit the green power movement”
Thursday, 18 January 2001
Scientists Bring Light to Full Stop, Hold It, Then Send It on Its Way
Wednesday, 17 January 2001
The Onion: Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’
Tuning In to the Microwave Frequency
Tuesday, 16 January 2001
Monday, 15 January 2001
Group Says It Beat Music Security but Can’t Reveal How: “he had never been threatened with a lawsuit by Secure Digital officials, although he had been asked by one of them in a telephone conversation whether he was fully aware of the anticircumvention provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. “
General Electric’s Spin Machine: “For a company to cut costs by moving business processes online, it must eliminate ? or redeploy ? a significant number of employees. GE hasn’t. And for productivity gains to reach the bottom line, a company must show it’s using the Web to substantially cut overhead. GE hasn’t.”
Dean Kamen, Creator of Mysterious ‘IT’ Device, Seeks to Dampen Expectations for Invention
Saturday, 13 January 2001
Instant Message Still AOL’s Deal: “According to the (FCC’s ruling,), AOL is only mandated to open up IM if it decides to offer what the FCC calls ‘advanced, IM-based high-speed services.’ The FCC defines this advanced service as one that may transmit or receive video images; in other words, video conferencing. AOL (AOL) says it doesn’t plan to offer these features any time soon.”
Scientists link eye cancer to mobile phones
Friday, 12 January 2001
The military get mightier: “The powered suits will help soldiers carry and use larger weapons and to take heavier loads into battle.”
Sizing up the Internet economy
Beware of Content Staff Bloat: “content, with a few exceptions, tends to have a short shelf life and quickly goes stale. A big investment in content today will produce returns immediately - or not at all. It’s more important to keep a steady stream of fresh content appearing on your site than it is to have a large archive or many separately staffed channels. Fresh information will keep users coming back; a large archive appeals only to the occasional visitor. It’s a lesson that’s as applicable to e-commerce sites and clicks-and-mortar ventures as it is to pure content publishers.”
UUNET goes public with ISP peering policy
Lessons Learned from the Dot.Com Crash: A Passenger’s Story: “a small cadre of adrenalin junkies will bide their time, waiting for the next Big Thing. At this point, I’m not sure whether that’s depressing or inspiring. After all, exuberance is exuberance, even if it’s irrational. You might think about it sometime, when you’re lying in bed, counting sheep.”
Napster Makes Music-Shopping Easier: “The controversial deal provoked an internal dilemma at BMG, one of the record labels suing Napster. After the deal was announced, BMG CEO and President Strauss Zelnick resigned, as did several other executives, including the chairman and the CFO. BMG’s Internet architect, Kevin Conroy, also announced his resignation.”
The Feds’ll Come A-Snoopin’: “Anyone who’s arrested will likely be patted down for guns, contraband and electronic devices.”
Scientists Create First Genetically Altered Monkey
Lab Rat: Carnegie Mellon India
Thursday, 11 January 2001
New Solar Energy Cells: “the future of power being sunlight, which is free, and sand, which is probably the most prevalent material on the planet.”
Wednesday, 10 January 2001
Aussie scientists stumble across the Doomsday Bug: “Co-researcher Ron Jackson, of the Canberra-based institute CSIRO, said the discovery was a frightening indicator of what could happen if the human smallpox virus was similarly modified.”
Found: 2 Planetary Systems. Result: Astronomers Stunned. -“We thought we understood the mass ranges of planets of other stars. We thought we understood the full diversity of planets.”
Tuesday, 9 January 2001
Buy the Vatican’s treasures online
Majestic: “Instead of playing in some virtual world with a character, like you would in a traditional adventure game, you’ll live your own life, and tools you use every day will deliver the clues. For instance, one evening you may get an email from one of the game’s characters. The next day a mysterious letter may arrive in the mail (as in the old-fashioned snail mail). Another day you may receive a phone call with yet another message, or perhaps a threat on your life.”
Monday, 8 January 2001
Pursuing venture capital: “Remember that you are asking to play with their money”
Side Splitting: “No one knows very precisely what a good guffaw does to the brain. But long bouts can cause weakness, lack of coordination, difficulty breathing, and even embarrassing wetness. Those afflicted with cataplexy, a form of narcolepsy, sometimes suffer partial or complete paralysis for several minutes after a good laugh.”
The virginity hoax: “when pledgers break their pledges they have a tendency to have unsafe sex”
MacCPU café: Newer TECH has closed the doors: “That was such a stupid decision that surely business schools will be using Apple as a case study for the next hundred years.”
Sunday, 7 January 2001
Couple held for human organ sales
Friday, 5 January 2001
3G trigger pulled on mobile phone firms
Thursday, 4 January 2001
Wary of a Video Napster, Hollywood Plots a TV Crackdown: “control wasn’t a prime issue months ago because the entertainment companies had pledged that the only things that would be designated ‘copy never’ would be pay-per-view or video-on-demand movies, the bar has since moved”
Millions Pay Not to Log On: “People aren’t finding anything of extreme value”
Wednesday, 3 January 2001
The death penalty’s other victims: “You end up with a group of people who evaluate … generally don’t even understand or accept the concept of presumption of innocence.”
Cult Attempts to Regenerate Deceased Girl “Both ethically and medically, there’s no reason for it ? it’s pointless. There are plenty of reproductive methods that are far easier and more viable.”
Tuesday, 2 January 2001
Associated Press Photo - Tuesday 2 January 2001: “The unmarked sculpture appears to have been put in place on New Year’s Eve. There is no plaque or other clue to the sculptor.”
Everything you ever wanted to know about CPRM, but ZDNet wouldn’t tell you…: “But unforeseen or not - and despite public protestations of their good intentions - the 4C Entity is delivering a solution tailor-made for fixed disk ATA drives, and building right into the specification for industry standard fixed drives. This is indisputable. Now ask yourself, why is it there?”
Templar Treasures Hidden on Baltic Sea Island?