Month: June 2006
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Nokia 770 becomes better, much better….
I’ve been surfing through the maemo catalog for Nokia 770 PDA. I’ve noticed that growing pains have been solved, and a newly released Beta version of the OS promises to greatly improve the PDA’s functionality. On the bulletin board users are estatic about the improvements, although it is still only beta software, so users like…
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Climate Change Links
Gadzooks! I have spent ten minutes going through each of my browser tabs to find this one. (I started this at least 24 hours ago and am only now getting around to finishing it). Storing old global warming links: Greg Easterbrook on Al Gore’s movie: Yet An Inconvenient Truth asserts that a sea-level rise of…
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Great Powerpoint Slides
Speaking of Jaron Lanier, here’s an amazing Power Point presentation “1000 Years–Optimistic Scenario” I’m sure that the actual talk was great too, but look at those slides. Look at slides 4 and 7! His lectures page has videos to other talks he has given. I’m going to watch those! Here’s a link to articles and…
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Bloglines and Long Pages
Up to now I’ve preferred keeping my main weblog page as long as possible, mainly for convenience. That meant I rarely used MORE and kept posts on the main page for about a month. Yes, this increased my bandwidth, but so what? Bandwidth is cheap (although coincidentally, I recently had to upgrade from a $5…
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Evince, Engines of Our Ingenuity, dangerous ideas & digital maoism
Some fast links. Here’s the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) wiki page for ebook implementations. Basically, it will include evince which not only reads PDF but also scanned DJVU files. One hidden treasure from Houston is the podcaster/technologist John Lienhard. For the last 15 years he’s been giving great 3 minute radio talks for his…
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Meme of the Moment: Digital Maoism.
Wow, the hottest meme of the moment is Digital Maoism. It’s an essay by Jaron Lanier. Here are some reactions. This will take a while for me to digest, but there’s a lot of meat here. Here’s a preview: There’s a frantic race taking place online to become the most “Meta” site, to be the…
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Wifi At Hotels & Popcorn
Steven Landsburg explains why sometimes hotels charge for internet access and sometimes they don’t. Answer: they bundle it (and increase the overall price) when the hotel thinks people won’t want to pay. They itemize it when the hotel thinks that a portion of their clientele would pay, but another portion won’t.
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Net Neutrality: Culling Wisdom from Geeks.
Here are some comments I am reposting from slashdot. Lots of wisdom here.
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Christopher Hitchens Goes Down
It’s good to see that Christopher Hitchens has stopped writing bellicose pieces on military interventions and now is writing on nice inoffensive subjects…like the history of the blowjob (published in Vanity Fair magazine).
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Net Neutrality: Don’t Get Congress Involved, Please!
I realize that this is conventional wisdom among geeks, but I remain very skeptical. To summarize: 1)bandwidth is already plentiful; we’re talking about hypothetical harms here. (For the record, I actually downgraded my broadband a few months ago, with absolutely no complaints). 2)companies already pay for ISP’s and webhosting; tiered service is not anything new.…
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Barcamp Houston anyone?
A reminder to would be geeks in Houston. If you have time on Saturday, think about coming to BarCamp Houston, a loose gathering of people who are sharing knowledge and skills (and presumably having fun). I’ll be there.
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Random Stuff
Google ads on Kurt Cobain’s suicide letter. Audio readings of New Yorker articles. How to back up your blog. A longish review of video rental sites Mobile Web best practices Eyder Peralta on playing secondlife: 43 percent of users are women, and the median age is 32. Brenda Brathwaite, game consultant and game-design professor at…
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Best Way to Fight Cockroaches
This entomologist wrote a thorough article on fighting cockroaches. To summarize: boric acid is the most effective and least dangerous technique. The key to success with boric acid is proper application. For best results, the powder should be applied in a very thin layer barely visible to the naked eye. Piles or heavy accumulations will…
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Curing an Addiction
Just on a lark, I decided not to buy any dark chocolate for myself this week. Readers may remember that I regularly take a few ounces of dark chocolate early in the morning as a pick-me-up (along with Diet Coke, a kiwi and shredded wheat cereal). I told myself that I’d do it for a…
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Bill Oreilly makes a fool out of himself: the sequel
Bill Oreilly finally meets a guest more obnoxious (and more intelligent) than he is. On a related note, here’s a bio page for the lawfirm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe.
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Chomsky on Authority
“You know, I remember in high school, already I was pretty old. I suddenly asked myself at one point, why do I care if my high school team wins the football game? I mean, I don’t know anybody on the team, you know? I mean, they have nothing to do with me, I mean, why…