Ramblings & ephemera
From The Washington Post:
And so it has come to this: Americans buy the most sophisticated computers, the coolest digital cameras, the most advanced automobiles, the most versatile cell phones and handheld organizers, and then . . . and then we forget, or decline, or flat out refuse, to read the directions.
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Zombie ships [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology | Comments Off
From The Age:
Scientists running a pioneering experiment with “living robots” which think for themselves said they were amazed to find one escaping from the centre where it “lives”.
The small unit, called Gaak, was one of 12 taking part in a “survival of the fittest” test at the Magna science centre in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Cool Stuff, Technology, science | Comments Off
From BBC News:
In fact, it turns out that images stored electronically just 15 years ago are already becoming difficult to access. The Domesday Project, a multimedia archive of British life in 1986 designed as a digital counterpart to the original Domesday Book compiled by monks in 1086, was stored on laser discs.
The equipment needed to [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, history | Comments Off
From Ask Yahoo!:
According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July, 2005, there were approximately 6,446,131,400 people on the planet, and the death rate was approximately 8.78 deaths per 1,000 people a year. According to our nifty desktop calculator, that works out to roughly 56,597,034 people leaving us every year. That’s about a 155,000 a [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book | Comments Off
From Reuters’ “Cybercrime yields more cash than drugs: expert“:
Global cybercrime generated a higher turnover than drug trafficking in 2004 and is set to grow even further with the wider use of technology in developing countries, a top expert said on Monday.
No country is immune from cybercrime, which includes corporate espionage, child pornography, stock manipulation, extortion [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business, politics, security | Comments Off
From Tim O’Reilly’s “Lessons from open source software development”, Communications of the ACM 41 (4): 33-7:
Open source is a term that has recently gained currency as a way to describe the tradition of open standards, shared source code, and collaborative development behind software such as the Linux and FreeBSD operating systems, the Apache Web server, [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology | Comments Off
From Giampaolo Garzarelli’s Open Source Software and the Economics of Organization:
Whenever organizational forms present rapid change because of their strong ties to technology, public policy issues are always thornier than usual. Indeed, historically, it seems that every time that there’s the development of a new technology or production process, the government has to intervene in [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, overheard, politics, science | Comments Off
From Giampaolo Garzarelli’s Open Source Software and the Economics of Organization:
Deborah Savage, in an innovative piece, proposes the following economic definition of a profession: a ‘profession is a network of strategic alliances across ownership boundaries among practitioners who share a core competence’ [Savage, D. A. (1994) "The Professions in theory and history: the case of [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, business, politics | Comments Off
From Network Magazine:
Ken Thompson, a designer of the Unix OS, explained his magic password, a password that once allowed him to log in as any user on any Unix system, during his award acceptance speech at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) meeting in 1984. Thompson had included a backdoor in the password checking function [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, history, security | Comments Off
From InfoWorld:
In chapter 4 of Klaus Kaasgaard’s Software Design and Usability, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) alumnus Austin Henderson says that “one of the most brilliant inventions of the paper bureaucracy was the idea of the margin.” There was always space for unofficial data, which traveled with the official data, and everybody knew about [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature, On Writing, Technology, history | Comments Off
From Salon:
Robert O. Paxton, a former professor of social sciences at Columbia University and longtime historian of the political movement, sets out to formulate a working definition in his new book, The Anatomy of Fascism. … Only at the end does Paxton reveal what he’s settled on as an acceptable definition. Here it is:
“… a [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: politics | Comments Off
This was written 15 January 2002, & the Hungry Buddha is gone now, but this is still an interesting description.
Just got back from lunch at the Hungry Buddha. Man, that was good. It’s a small place on Washington Street in downtown St. Louis. There are signs all along the walls: “Buddha would bus his own [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Musings, True Stories, business, history | Comments Off
From The Sun:
SHOCKED six-year-old Leah Lowland checked out a mystery bulge on her Incredible Hulk doll — and uncovered a giant green WILLY.
Curious Leah noticed a lump after winning the monster, catchphrase “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” at a seaside fair.
And when she peeled off the green comic-book character’s ripped purple shorts, [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, True Stories, weird | Comments Off
From Yahoo! News (March 2004):
Andy Rooney certainly knows how to stir the passion in his viewers. The ‘60 Minutes’ curmudgeon said Sunday he got 30,000 pieces of mail and e-mail in response to his Feb. 22 commentary, in which he called ‘The Passion of the Christ’ filmmaker Mel Gibson a ‘wacko.’
It’s the biggest viewer response [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, On Writing, True Stories | Comments Off
From Yahoo! News (March 2004):
Zombies Push Jesus from Top of North American Box Office
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Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, True Stories, weird | Comments Off
From BBC News:
A man lay dead in his flat for 15 months before his body was found.
Recording an open verdict into the death of Derek Perkins, 63, coroner Dr Nigel Chapman said he had never known a body to be undiscovered for so long.
The exact date of Mr Perkins’ death is unknown, but a [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, weird | Comments Off
From sleazy and how!:
I’m a sucker for a sleazy mystery or a trampy romance novel from the 1950’s-60’s. I usually buy these silly books more for the covers than the stories, but sometimes both are equally bizarre.
This is a gallery of some of the better books I’ve come across. Some have book summaries, others [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Cool Stuff, Language & Literature, history | Comments Off
From The Invisible Library:
The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library’s catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.
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Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Cool Stuff, Language & Literature | Comments Off
From John Baez:
The Voynich manuscript is by far the most mysterious of all texts. It is seven by ten inches in size, and about 200 pages long. It is made of soft, light-brown vellum. It is written in a flowing cursive script in alphabet that has never been seen elsewhere. Nobody knows what it means. [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Cool Stuff, Language & Literature, history, security | Comments Off
From The Honolulu Advertiser:
Health experts are not sure what is causing Mantis Shrimp found in the muck of the Ala Wai Canal to grow larger than their normal size, but one thing is clear, they say: You shouldn’t eat anything out of the canal.
State Department of Health signs posted along the canal warn people [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: weird | Comments Off
Stayed up late finished Charlie Huston's vampire noir Half the Blood of Brooklyn. Highly recommended ... but not for the kiddies.
Yep - The Dark Knight is as good as everyone says it is. Easily the best comic book movie I've ever seen. And Ledger is Oscar material.
Drum solo. Hopefully he won't explode, a la Spinal Tap. Dave Grohl is funny, a good guitar player, & quite the rock 'n roll screamer.
Arrghh! Does anyone know if the Windows desktop client of Google Talk interops with any other IM networks? Besides Jabber? Tks!
Bookmarked 3 links
At a party where we really only know 2 people. Been doing crosswords on my iPhone. Time to go!
Bookmarked 3 links
I think I found the house I'm going to buy. 125 years old in downtown St. Louis, but very modern on the inside. Wish me luck!
Added 2 products to their wishlist:
