August 2001
Thursday, 30 August 2001
Friday, 24 August 2001
Starfish signal optical design breakthrough: “Johnsen said the latest research on the brittlestar’s light-sensing ability helps explain why the creature can move so quickly to evade a threat, unlike other forms of starfish.”
Exodus Looks To Pose A Threat To Security Threats: “security is ubiquitous–it isn’t perimeter security. Perimeter security doesn’t work and hasn’t worked in years”
Wednesday, 22 August 2001
Satellites show L.A. area’s yearly rise, fall: “Now, with the earth’s surface apparently moving for other reasons, advance warnings of some earthquakes may be more difficult to deliver.”
What happened to the bull market?: “The economy and the market are closely connected, making the market?s long-term performance quite predictable?at least at an aggregate level. Given that connection, we can be confident that real long-term returns from stocks won?t exceed about 7 percent a year.”
Making Lemonade: “If Microsoft can’t win the case, they will have to pay damages to Eolas and perhaps pay a license fee, too. But what if Microsoft takes a different route and simply removes from Windows the offending code? That would be unthinkable even months ago. It would require the removal of Java and the abandonment of APPLET and EMBED tags from future versions of Windows. It would require the adoption of an entirely new architecture for modular programs using XML. It would require .NET.”
Judge turns out Morgan Stanley suit: “A complaint is not a vehicle in which to air and put in issue the views of newspapers, magazines, and social engineers and their conclusions”
WildDay-Outdoor Kit@Wild Prices: The K2 Expidtion: “The ancient peoples who lived here believed that gods dwelt in the peaks above. I now know why. As the avalanches surge around us I can here the deity’s roaring ‘Go home. You don’t belong here.’”
Why Austin TX is considering a Microsoft enterprise license: “I didn’t save any money doing it that way, I simply got something for free that I otherwise wouldn’t have had”
Downsizing: E-Biz Is Now Just Biz: “the battle has been won, and the Internet is now central to the vitality of every corporation”
Venture capitalists get innovative to survive: “Eighty percent of the tough decisions have been made. Now 80 percent of what we do is looking ahead.”
Tuesday, 21 August 2001
Professor tears ICANN domain dispute policy to pieces: “those that have often voted against trademark holders are very rarely, if ever, selected to stand as a sole panellist.”
At Last! Silicon Valley Drivers Find the Fast Lane: “If we were smarter we could have used that as an indicator of the stock market”
Tuesday, 14 August 2001
Rather recommends newspapers for information on stem cells: “‘if you’re really interested in this, you’ll want to read in detail one of the better newspapers tomorrow,’ he said. With that, Rather signed off the special report, and CBS began airing the latest edition of ‘Big Brother.’”
Wednesday, 8 August 2001
Brain inspires new memories: “Some scientists have suggested that the brain’s uncanny ability to recall patterns such as faces and scenes implies that it already is a kind of quantum computer.”
Abuse-Proof OxyContin Planned: “if the pill is crushed or chopped up, the coating on the beads would break, releasing the naltrexone and canceling the drug’s effects”
Bell Companies Blamed for D.S.L.‘s Woes -“'They drag their heels when they’re not the primary company selling the service,” he said. Eric Rabe, a Verizon spokesman, countered the critics. 'I’d say we treat these people as customers’“
Monday, 6 August 2001
Electronic Game Maker Lets Kids Do Their Marketing for Them: "Officially, the game was not supposed to be used at school. Unofficially, everyone knew better.”
Sunday, 5 August 2001
Como Se Dice “Realignment”?: “the AFL-CIO, seeing its ranks dwindle and its Latino membership rise, has dropped its longstanding opposition to amnesty.”
Friday, 3 August 2001
Scientists Claim Evidence of Life in Outer Space
System’s Twilight 1.1.0: “This game is a story and a puzzle. The story is made up of several parts, not all of which may be obvious. The puzzle is made up of many puzzles, some of which aren’t obvious at all.”
A Scientist’s Art: Computer Fiction: “‘If it ever happens, there will be a runaway effect, and getting to something a whole lot better than human will happen really fast.’ How fast? ‘Maybe 36 hours’”
US makes ‘weather control powder’: “The company says the gel is completely safe, bio-degradable, and breaks down in seawater - though they refuse to say exactly what is in it.”
Wednesday, 1 August 2001
Taming the Wild, Wild Web: This article is the most ill-informed piece of propaganda I’ve read in ages. The internet has become less reliable because of corporate involvement. Email account outages have nothing to do with the design of the net backbone. The internet backbones are already run by telecommunications carriers, not “hippies”. Internet telephony already exists, and video on demand will never exist with current technology (regardless of design - the amount of bandwidth simply isn’t there, by orders of magnitude). The obstacles to “changes in the network’s basic structure” are not merely “traditonalists”, they are all the issues that come from throwing away a working global communication channel and replacing it with something that cannot and will never be able to provide the same level of functionality.
The debate over distributed computing: “he could have gotten in trouble for installing IM or any other client”