Technology
gregladen | February 4, 2008Possibly, according to this piece in the New York Times.
Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, pushed by Mr. Ballmer, was hostile. And during a conference call Friday with analysts and in a subsequent interview, he never once uttered the word "Google," referring to the Internet search giant that has humbled Microsoft only as "the leader" in the online world.
Mr. Ballmer, 51, is a famously fierce competitor. To him, failure is never an option. "If we don't get it right at first, we'll just keep coming and coming and coming and coming," he said in an earlier interview.
Microsoft's bid for…
gregladen | February 4, 2008But probably too late for this year's election ...
The controversial decision to implement various types of electronic voting machines in place of paper ballots is garnering little public attention, while many states hastily implement flawed electronic voting machines and related election procedures, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
...
Criticism of the current crop of voting machines focuses mainly on the lack of clear requirements for a paper record of electronic votes. Part of this ongoing dispute is the disagreement between legislators and voting machine vendors on any…
neurophilosophy | February 4, 2008
Technology blogger Robert Scoble attended the World Economic Forum at Davos, and made quite a few video recordings of the conversations he had with various people while he was there, which he has uploaded to Qik.
In this film, Scoble talks to the Brazilian neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, who discussed his recent experiments in which a monkey with a brain-computer interface implanted into its motor cortex controlled the movements of a robot that was located more than 7,000 miles away.
Nicolelis presented his results during a session called Redefining the…
gregladen | February 4, 2008And, why were they cut? An interesting analysis of the effects of the cut or damaged undersea cables is available, and conspiracy theories about the reason for this event begin to emerge.
There is no way that the damage to four undersea cables in the same region of the world is a coincidence. Well, OK, maybe it is a coincidence. But there may be a connection. One suggestion is that these cables were cut in preparation for an invasion of Iran, or at least, the insertion of special forces to carry out some covert activity. What a dumb idea that is. Another possibility is that the weather…
gregladen | February 3, 2008A fourth undersea cable has broken, this one linking Qatar and the UAE. The cause is said to be unknown at this time, but there are reports that it was due to a power breakdown rather than a physical break in the cable. [source]
Meanwhile, the two cables that broke a few days in Egypt may not have been damaged because of ships' anchors, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Transport. [source]
Thanks to commenter David for the tip.
gregladen | February 3, 2008What does the undersea world of the internet look like? This:
Click the image to see the full size version at The Guardian.
gregladen | February 2, 2008
"all human beings would like to be able to fly--not by plane or helicopter or oversize cannon, but strapped to a thunderous gadget with intuitive controls"
So, what's the problem with getting a functioning jet back off the ground? According a recent piece in Popular Mechanics, "everything."
First, let's get one thing straight. Most of these devices are not jet packs. They are rocket belts. The distinction is important. Rocket belts are gimmicks that emit steam (or whatever) at a high velocity for a few seconds so you fly around a little. This is essentially the humanoid equivalent of…
gregladen | February 2, 2008In two apparently independent events, a total of three undersea cables normally carrying a large amount of data, including Internet and Telephone signals, have been cut. The first two cables were in the Eastern Mediterranean offshore from Egypt, and the third cut, apparently a day later, is between Dubai and Muscat
There are conflicting reports of how the two Alexandria cables were cut. Oman's largest telecom, Omantel, said a tropical storm caused the damage while ...the United Arab Emirates' second largest telecom, said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.
Iran is said…
gregladen | February 1, 2008
... and some goggles.
But I don't want to be a rocket man if I have to do this:
(oh, the trans-vestism thing does not bother me. It's the paint and flour and stuff that I would find terribly annoying. Oh, and I don't really like to wear lipstick either.)
gregladen | February 1, 2008Linux Installed Base will Double This Year
The success of consumer IT products like the ASUS Eee PC will help provide the leverage needed to get hardware vendors on board with open source, according to Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief technologist for open source.
He believes the install base of Linux-based desktops could potentially double this year, based just on Eee PC sales..
Speaking at open source conference Linux.conf.au in Melbourne yesterday, Hohndel said commercial pressure will be the incentive for traditionally Windows-centric hardware vendors to begin offering open source drivers and…
gregladen | February 1, 2008An increasingly large number of K through 12 students (in the tens of thousands or more) are getting some or all of their education on line. Typically, the on line resources are provided by private corporate vendors contracting to individuals or in some cases school districts, and the target audience tends to be middle school or high school.
School districts and teachers (including unions) are typically reticent to support this shift. While such groups may be resisting online offerings because it constitutes direct competition, they also have valid complaints that online learning, like…
gregladen | January 29, 2008The Torch is the world's brightest and most powerful flashlight.
It is capable of melting plastic, lighting paper on fire within seconds, and if you like, fry an egg or a marshmallow on a stick.
[source]
gregladen | January 29, 2008And neither does a lot of proprietary technology. But the possibility that ads will show up on either type of technology is obviously very different.
Now, we are about to see add supported P2P services.
At the Midem conference in Cannes, France, Qtrax and its parent company Brilliant Technologies Corp. announced deals on Sunday with all four major labels that would make it the first free and legal ad-supported P2P service with major label music.
By allowing users to share DRM-protected files with label approval, Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz said he expected the service to offer over 25…
gregladen | January 29, 2008You've probably already heard that a US spy satellite known as USA-193 is no longer able to keep itself up because the software on board has failed. This is a secret spy satellite so we don't at present know what the software was (any guesses?). It is big enough to not totally burn up in the atmosphere, and there are concerns that the satellite has nasty toxins on board. But again, since it is a secret spy satellite we can't know this either.
The expected date of entry is late February or early March.
Here is a source of info and a picture of the satellite.
omnibrain | January 25, 2008Via Modern Mechanix:
Reading Thoughts by Radio
Can thoughts be read by radio? "Madam Radora" seems to prove that they can. Madam is not a human being, but a life-size automaton shown at the Permanent Radio Fair in New York. Her "thoughts" and movements are controlled entirely by wireless; no wires of any kind are attached to the table whereon she rests, and a liberal reward is promised the person who can prove that this is not true. Persons desiring to ask questions simply stand before "Madam Radora" with their hands resting on a special pedestal carrying a number of electrical contacts.…
revere | January 23, 2008This week sees the tenth anniversary of an important event in the American environmental movement, although few people know it (even some who were there had forgotten the date). In late January, 1998, a group of 32 environmental scientists, activists and scholars sat down together at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin to hash out a consensus statement on The Precautionary Principle. After a grueling three days, the statement was put into final form on January 25 (just in time to see my beloved Green Bay Packers lose the Superbowl. Is history repeating itself? Aargh!).
In…