"Are you the kind of person who presses the "door close" button in the lift, to make it go that little bit faster? I certainly am. If you are, you might enjoy James' Gleick's Faster [buy it from Amazon]. | [link] | [email] | [comment] [17] | " [via not.so.soft » life.unfolding]

This is the second BloggerPro site today that I haven't been able link to.  Must be something up with the 'perma-link' rendering.  I've manually cut-n-pasted this quick quote from not.so.soft  on Gleick's Faster : The Acceleration of Just About Everything.

  10:21:40 PM    

Preinstalled Windows: AARGH! I can't get it off! ~ "If a PC shipped with Windows preinstalled, can you remove the OS and install Linux instead? Well, no, according to Microsoft. A somewhat obscure Microsoft site aimed at helping schools deal with donated computers flatly states: 'It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine.'

If this is intended to mean what it says, then Microsoft is effectively treating the hardware and the software as a single, integrated package that you're not allowed to break up." (The Register via blogdex) [Memo To Myself]

Hmmm....interesting.  I work at a library that has received computers from a Gates Foundation Grant (I know that's not MS officially...), and we have been told we're free to do whatever we please with the PCs - even install an alternate OS if we desire.  Well, actually I think they really mean upgrade to 2000 or XP, but they didn't explicitly state any OS in particular.

  8:23:00 PM    

""Digital technology used in cameras, cell phones and MP3 players will soon make the written word more accessible to the blind, visually impaired and physically handicapped...
Karen A. Keninger of the Iowa Regional Library in Des Moines looks forward to the leap forward, both as a service provider and user. "As a blind person, I'm really excited about it because I'll be able to navigate a book a lot easier," she said.""

I like the part about the digital audio player going through the wash...and still working.  Of course, solid state doesn't mean indestructible, but it does underline the dual nature of the technology.

The bits can flow as easy as water from source to device.  Here today and gone tommorrow at the click of a button, but having no moving parts there is a persistance to the data that makes the it easily accessible with little or no degradation.

  7:58:16 PM