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Sunday, March 14, 2004 |
Grand Challenge finish: not so grand?.
Looks like our autonomously war-waging robotic overlords won't be
taking over any time soon. A little over two hours and about seven
miles into the DARPA Grand Challenge race
in the California desert, all vehicles were either withdrawn or
disabled. But oragnizers say just because no competitor finished the
race -- leaving the $1MM prize unclaimed -- doesn't mean the event was
a flop. Link to status board, Link to CNN story. [Boing Boing] 
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Bringing recruiting into the 21st century. Microsoft's blogging recruiters: Introducing recruiting to the 21st century.
OK, is there any other large company. Heck, any other company at all,
that is letting their recruiters post to the web with no prior
restraint?
This is great info! I wish these two were blogging back before I had my job interview.
Speaking of which, if anyone sees a good event planning job, let me
know. My wife is still looking. Hey, networking is the best way to get
a job!
Wouldn't it be interesting if they pointed at the best "begging" on
blog sites to get hired by Microsoft? It'd be like "Bill Gates meets
the Apprentice." The person who does the best job gets an interview. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
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The Mind of Microsoft from the Microsoft Monitor weblog. Joe Wilcox, who does most of the blogging over on the interesting Microsoft Monitor weblog: the Mind of Microsoft.
Yeah, Joe's right. And he knows Microsoft better than I do. He's
been covering the company for quite a few years now (used to write for
CNET news.com).
You'll really get a good idea how Microsoft works when all 55,000
employees write a blog. Yeah, I do dream about a day like that.
Probably won't happen in my lifetime, though. But, in 1976 a couple of
kids were sitting in a garage in Cupertino imagining the day they'd
have their own cool personal computers. And look what happened.
Dream big. Who knows? [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
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PC-bots (like the one below) are really interesting. Adding mobility to
a PC chassis makes it possible to replace lots of dedicated devices.
Functionality can be added just by loading software and attaching
peripherals (that plug into the system usign PC standard connections).
Some applications: litterbox cleaning ($250 for a dedicated system),
medical reminders and pill delivery, security and alert notification,
mobile music, household inventory control, cleaning, etc. It will also
be interesting to see how the "embedded" vision competes with the
personal PC bot. I think PC bots will win in the home given they are
much less expensive and much more flexible. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Why RSS is more productive than Web. I've
written about this one before, but thought it might add something to
the mix. It's my ideas on why RSS is better than reading in the Web
browser.
My goal is to use IE (or any browser, really) as little as possible?
Why? Because it is FAR LESS productive to read information in a browser
than it is in a news aggregator. Keep in mind, I'm watching 1353 feeds
right now. Every night I read all my feeds. That'd be impossible to do
in a browser. Here's why:
1) It is 10 times more productive to read RSS than HTML.
If you want to read, in a browser, all 1353 of my information sources,
which include not only blogs, but MSDN, and BBC, and New York Times,
you'd need to visit every single one of those every 24 hours to see if
they posted something new. But I DO NOT NEED TO DO THAT. Instead, I
only need to look at the sites that have actually posted something. In
the past 24 hours only 189 feeds have actually posted something. So,
right there I'm 10 times more productive than you are!
2) No wait for browser loading. The average weblog
takes 10 to 15 seconds to get to a readable state in the browser. But,
my RSS feeds are downloaded ahead of time for me, and when I click on
them they load instantly. 15x1353=20295 seconds/60=338.25
minutes/60=5.6375 hours. Am I doing the math right here? If you wanted
to pull up 1353 weblogs/websites in your browser you'd be waiting 5.675
hours just to have them load?
3) No looking for "what's new." When you visit a
site like CNET you need to do a lot of mental work to see what was
different from yesterday when you read the site. In NewsGator new
things are bold. I don't need to do any work and I don't need to pay
any attention to old things.
4) No distractions. If you do eyetrak research
you'll see that the average human eye spends a lot of time looking at
blinking stuff and color stuff (er, advertising on a page and design on
a page). In RSS, I only get the content. That means that I can read
that content far faster than you can and provably so.
5) Same font for easier reading. Because all RSS is
presented in the same font (unless the feed producer is an idiot), your
eye can read more without getting tired (imagine if USA Today ran each
story in a different font, how hard would that be to read?).
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
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Why RSS is better than email. Internally
at Microsoft I've been getting a ton of questions about RSS. I figure
I'd just post my emails here too so you can see why I like RSS so much.
The first one is what is better about RSS than email.
1) RSS is easier to have search bots visit.
2) RSS is easier to link to (at least if it also spits out an HTML page, like all weblogging software does).
3) RSS won't get mixed in with other email (SPAM, other DL traffic, and
other email types). I've been looking at Microsoft employees inboxes,
and many people here don't setup rules to filter their email into
separate buckets.
4) RSS is easier to subscribe and unsubscribe from.
5) RSS doesn't use up any of my Outlook rules spaces (some of my coworkers have so many rules that they can't add anymore).
6) RSS is usable not just in an email client (Bloglines, other weblogs,
even other Sharepoint sites can subscribe and aggregate it). [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
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SemText.  Anything Danny Ayers likes - I check out.
So I just signed up for SemText.
Here we go - I wonder if it gets all hung up in Semantic kind of things
- and misses teh 80'20 rule for portals, CMSs and end-user experience.
If it can get the balance right - there's no limit how far it can go.
This is kind of what I was hoping Nova Spivack was doing and what Haystack was. Well we'll see soon enough. [Marc's Voice]
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More on Mono.
Mono, an open source project (sponsored by Novell these days) to create
a free implementation of Microsoft's .Net Framework, still isn't soup
yet. But the Mono backers are promising to deliver the 1.0 release by
June, and an update that will add .Net 1.2 and C# 2.0 support by year
end. The Mono 1.4 release, due in August 2005 will include "previews of
Longhorn technologies Indigo and Avalon," the report adds. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]
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White Box Robotics. Making robots inexpensive, simple to modify, and powerful.
Our platform, or "rig" as we call it, is based off of standard
PC architecture. Similar to an industry standard PC case in
construction, almost any off-the-shelf PC hardware can be used on the
912 platform with little or no modification.
HMV security robot (with the same paint as the Hummer). [John Robb's Weblog]
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Kim Stanley Robinson on what Martian water means for science fiction. Kim Stanley Robinson, who is, on the one hand, the author of a brilliant, seminal series
of novels about terraforming Mars has written a grand, overarching
survey of the speculative literature of the Red Planet for the NYT, in
the wake of the discovery of Mars's aquaeous history.Meanwhile,
the feedback loop between science and science fiction continues to
flow. It is, as we have seen, an elliptical loop, like the orbit of a
comet. Science-fiction writers seize on new scientific findings and
immediately leap to conclusions, in the form of stories. Then these
stories dive into young minds and percolate there, shaping future
scientists and giving them dreams, visions, plans.Leap and
percolate. These days I sometimes hear from young people who tell me
they are studying some kind of science because of my Mars books. ("But
you forgot to mention the math.") I feel like part of the
science-fiction loop. I still follow the latest Mars news, and
sometimes I wonder what the next wave of Mars stories will be like. It
seems awkward. I suppose the thing to do would be to tell the story of
the robot rovers, because that's what we're going to have for a while.
Maybe rovers much more powerful than Spirit and Opportunity --
artificial intelligences, in fact, and happy to be on Mars, because
it's the world they were designed for, and they're protecting an
indigenous cryptoendolithic, or hidden in rock, bacterial culture they
have discovered. So that when humans finally arrive in person, it's a
disaster in the making for all concerned, and the rover artificial
intelligences and little red people have to play dumb and play ghost
and change humanity for the good of all, and . . . Link (via Nelson) [Boing Boing]
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Binary LED watch from TokyoFlash.  New
from TokyoFlash, purveyors of fine and impractical Japanese hipster
novelty watches: the LED by Binary. It's a watch with a naked printed
circuit board, on which are situated 10 LEDs, which glow to display the
time in binary notation. ¥8900.00 -- about $80. Link
[Boing Boing]
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Free and unencumbered exotica.
Dave sez, "Hello and welcome to Comfort Stand Recordings, a
not-for-profit community driven label where all releases are free for
download with artwork and liner notes. Having no business model or
profit motive we strive to bring you recordings that we find
interesting, compelling and downright enjoyable. Everybody needs free
music." This is pretty good exotica/tiki tuneage right here.
Link
(Thanks, Dave! [Boing Boing]
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Another nail in the coffin of classic terrorism. The mass protests in Madrid prove yet again that "terrorism" as a method of warfare
is deeply flawed. It doesn't achieve the desired results: to coerce or
delegitimize a nation-state. It does exactly the opposite: it hardens
the policies and increases the popular support of a nation-state. Given
that terrorist organizations are learning organizations run by
educated, sane individuals (almost all the psychological literature on
terrorists points to this), it is only a matter of time before classic
terrorism gives way to something much more effective. [John Robb's Weblog]
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What can we learn from China's success?.
A couple of items. The rapidly rising trade gap due Chinese outsourcing
vastly overshadows offshoring of service jobs to India (there is a gap
in perception). Second, China currently runs only a slight trade
surplus with the rest of the world, which indicates that its currency
is fairly valued (although a free float with the dollar should be a
precondition of trade). So a big fall in the dollar may not occur even
if the currencies floated against each other. What this means is that China represents a trade threat to America
on par with Japan in the eighties. Competition with Japan proved to be
somewhat good for the US. It provided us with inexpensive, high-quality
goods -- and -- it forced US manufacturers to radically improve their
methods (in quality and cost). Unfortunately, the Chinese threat
appears to only provide low cost, high-quality goods. It doesn't offer
any improvement in manufacturing method that the US can match other
than low cost labor. Does anyone else know of any other "secret sauce" in Chinese manufacturing? [John Robb's Weblog]
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Centralizing the Internet??. CNet. The
long-awaited proposal, submitted to the Federal Communications
Commission on Wednesday, has been crafted so broadly that it would
outlaw the introduction of new broadband services that did not support
ready wiretapping access. Companies currently offering broadband would
be given 15 months to comply.
Basically, CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act)
is being used by the Homeland security department to force rewiring of
the Internet. The original act was aimed at forcing open call
forwarding (etc.) enabled phones to wiretaps. It is now being applied
to VoIP (particularly due to Skype, since systems like Vonage route
calls through a central hub and are therefore easily accessed). The
Skype "hole" is being used to force broadband companies to create
central hubs for all Internet traffic (on a per ISP basis) where the
FBI can place Carnivore. It is basically going to turn the Internet on
its head... [John Robb's Weblog]
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Colombia and a new wave of Terrorism. Hallinan (USC) has a couple of telling notes on how we are diving off the deep end in Colombia:
While mass murders and kidnappings
have declined, 20 percent and 32 percent respectively, targeted
killings and disappearances of unionists and left opposition supporters
have increased. Disappearances have increased from 258 in the 1994-95
period, to more than 1,200 a year since 2001. In the past 10 years,
more than 3,000 trade unionists have been murdered, almost all at the
hands of the Colombian Army or the right-wing paramilitary United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). According to Human Rights watch,
"There is detailed, abundant and compelling evidence of continuing
close ties" between the two.
This is reminiscent of the "our" bastard approach to foreign policy during the cold war.
US Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), chair
of the powerful House International Relations Committee, said of
Colombia that "three hours by plane from Miami, we face a potential
breeding ground for international terror equaled perhaps only by
Afghanistan." Former US Ambassador to Colombia, Curtis Kamman, told the
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government
that "The terrorists who operate in Colombia have not explicitly
declared the United States to be their target. But their political and
economic objectives are incompatible with our values, and they could
ultimately represent a force of evil no less troublesome than al Qaeda."
It is only a matter of time, due to
our policies, before that war extends to target us... (note the
potential ties between ETA and al Qaeda). [John Robb's Weblog]
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Wilson on the 4th generation warfare swamp:
The situation is growing more complex resulting
in a pugilistic witch's brew and hurly burly stew in the offing. For
example, it has been reported in the open press that Hamas has an
office in Nasariah, and Hezbollah has offices in Basra and Safwan. The
political wings of both Hamas and Hezbollah are recruiting Iraqi youth
with seminars that embrace their ideology and terrorist nature.
Terrorists' tactics and the nature of the
insurgency are changing. This is characteristic of fourth generation
warfare. One striking aspect of these fourth generation terrorist
groups is their ability to adapt, transform and reappear. We must not
lose sight of the fact that our fourth generation adversaries are
constantly adapting changing as Islamic terror networks fan out seeking
fertile new ground to foment discontent in places with weak
authorities, lack of Iraqi security forces, shifting alliances, and
endemic corruption associated with criminal enterprises. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Mobile fiction micropublishing. Interesting Japanese publishing model: send 1.6k of serialized new fiction to subscribers' phones every day.The
bestselling novel Deep Love was self-published in installments by the
author on a website that offers content packaged for users of mobile
phones. The story is about a 17-year-old girl named Ayu, who finds love
through a chance encounter.The author, who calls himself Yoshi,
created a website providing content for mobile phones in May 2000 with
an investment of just ¥100,000 ($909.09 at ¥110 to the dollar). Using a
promotional campaign that consisted of passing out business cards to
about 2,000 high-school girls in front of Tokyo's Shibuya Station (the
center of Tokyo youth culture), Yoshi released The Story of Ayu, the
first installment in the longer novel. News of the novel spread by word
of mouth, and within three years the site had received a total of 20
million hits. Mobile phones can receive e-mail of up to 1,600
characters. While this is more than adequate for most personal use, the
limit presents unique challenges to the author of a novel. Yoshi,
however, not only managed to overcome this challenge but even turned it
to his advantage by keeping the prose concise and fast-paced. The novel
maintains a straightforward, conversational style and avoids the use of
difficult words. Thanks to this quality, the story has found favor even
among people who do not typically read novels. Link(via Engadget) [Boing Boing]
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Everquest widows tell all.
Everquest Daily Grind is a place where video-game widow(er)s post their
personal stories of life with MMO-addicts who ignore spouse, kids, jobs
and life for the game.Last spring my grandmother passed
away, and he was so involved in the game that he wasn't there for me. I
would go to his house when I only had an hour, and the hour would go by
and he would play, and I would sit there, and then I'd have to leave
without so much as a kiss. There would be nights when I'd go to sleep
there, and wake up at 5 or 6am and he'd still be playing because his
guild needed him, or he was retrieving his corpse - which as I'm
reading is a popular line! Link (via evHead) [Boing Boing]
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Picture of orangutan hand and human hand.  Juju
sez: This is a great picture comparing a human and an orangutan hand.
There's also an analysis of the various differences between the two,
and why those differences allow humans to have a precision grip, thus
allowing us domination over the planet. Link
[Boing Boing]
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Howard Lovy's nanotechnology essay on H2O purification. Another essay from the always interesting Howard Lovy:
Carlo Montemagno makes molecular devices that contain “embedded
intelligence,” each molecule working in tandem with another to produce
a desired action. His first application? Yes. Water purification. “We
use membranes incorporated with some molecules that selectively only
transport water molecules through, and with very, very high
efficiencies,” Montemagno said. “The end result is that projected
performance is at least 100 times better, maybe 1,000 times better than
the best … filters.”
Link
[Boing Boing]
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Roll your own pr0n.
A rollicking three-way of ironic, porn-themed fun. A site full of both
Flash and flesh. Here is a DIY centerfold construction kit -- kind of
like Mister Potatohead, but hotter. Link. And here is an ant's eye, interactive, nano-tastic view of a gigantic naked babe. Link. Finally, construct your very own soundtrack to shag by. Link. Nothing is worksafe. (Thanks, Susannah!) [Boing Boing]
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News.Com:
"McDonald's doesn't expect to earn money initially from its Wi-Fi
service. It hopes instead to attract more customers and sell more
burgers and fries." [Scripting News]
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Andrew:
"I've finished an initial version of a RSS+BitTorrent integration tool
for Radio Userland's news aggregator. This is beta software." [Scripting News]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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ClearPC's
"Secret Agent" PC-case is a transparent acrylic PC case shaped like a
briefcase. Great for LAN parties and airport security.
