Wednesday, March 27, 2002

Broadcasters Don't Crave This TV. ICraveTV.biz, a site named after the defunct Canadian company that put TV shows online, is launching a new service to put programs on the Internet. But broadcasters successfully sued to stop this service before. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News] What could these guys possibly be thinking? Talk about an inability to learn from the experiences of others…   Cheers,   Dusty 11:18:48 PM

Tech group backs MPEG-4 audio license. An Internet streaming group including Apple and Cisco throws its support behind a licensing model for MPEG-4 audio compression. [CNET News.com] Just the facts, Jack.   Cheers,   Dusty 11:17:28 PM

Web radio's last stand. A new ruling involving the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is set to wipe out independent online music stations. [Salon.com] Sure looks that way. For those few of you too slow to understand why 90% of the Net music market is dead and gone before there even is a Net music market, don’t bother reading this. You won’t understand it, anyway.   Cheers,   Dusty 11:15:50 PM

Arctic ice 'melting from below'. Research suggests the Arctic ice is melting because of warmer sea water as well as rising air temperatures. [BBC News: sci/tech] It simply amazes me that any biped capable of finding his/her mouth with food often enough to stay alive could possibly believe global warming isn’t happening. What’s it gonna take, losing Florida?   Cheers,   Dusty 11:13:40 PM

Bombs and Quakes. This week's question: Could the bombing of Afghanistan have resulted in recent earthquakes there? By C. Claiborne Ray. [New York Times: Science] Probably not, but it's not impossible. Find out why. Cheers, Dusty 11:11:06 PM

Discussing the Nature of Reality, Between Buffets. Participants in the "Science and Ultimate Reality" symposium debated Really Big Questions about the nature of existence and consciousness. By Dennis Overbye. [New York Times: Science] It can be a lot of fun to discuss the Really Big Questions, especially with a cadre of the finest scientific and philosophical minds on the planet. See what they had to say and take a whack at the answers yourself.   Cheers,   Dusty 11:09:28 PM

Outfitting nano soldiers. Flush with a $50 million federal grant to create an Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Ned Thomas plans to tap this esoteric science to clad a breed of warriors "endowed with superhuman capabilities." [CNET News.com] Nanotech to give us RoboGrunt? What happened to robotic soldiers?   Cheers,   Dusty 11:06:58 PM

Morons in the News: Christian Terrorist Attacks Florida Mosque. A Christian extremist has driven a truck equipped with a Bible and "holy water" into a Florida mosque... [Morons Dot Org] Religious extremist bungles terror attack on religious extremists. Didn’t they get the memo? Irony is dead.   Cheers,   Dusty 11:02:35 PM

High Court Considers Census Suit. WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court justices struggled Wednesday with whether to reopen the 2000 census two years after the fact, and whether they could even force Congress and the president to go along. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Politics] We’ve come to expect nothing less from our Commander In Thief than sudden 180 U-turns in policy. Israel, nation building, arsenic in water, to name but a few, and now this. Suddenly sampling, which the GOP and the Bush administration fought long and hard against, is a *good* thing.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:59:33 PM

D.C. anti-piracy plans fuel culture clash. The media industry is painting tech executives as uncooperative and uncommitted to the cause of copy protection, a charge that has drawn protests--and now action--from device manufacturers. [CNET News.com] No matter which side of the raging intellectual property debate you’re on, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the days of the free wheeling, do what you want, anarchic Web are coming to a close. Every time an embedded culture tries to fight money and power, the culture loses.   Tough issue. Obviously artists need to be protected, but it’s hard to have a lot of sympathy for the major labels. Still, stealing is stealing. Your thoughts?   Cheers,   Dusty 10:54:13 PM

Life's origins among the stars. Research groups show how the molecular building blocks of life could have formed on ice grains drifting between the stars. [BBC News: sci/tech] The more we discover, the more it looks like we really are all made of the stuff of stars. A new report in ‘Nature,’ reported here by the BBC, shines new light on the age old question, “Where did we come from?”   Cheers,   Dusty 10:49:52 PM

http://www.canada.com/ottawa/story.asp?id={34BE25FA-E628-4547-BDAC-4EF108EBBAC4} Man, can you imagine if they tried this in Austin? Half the kids in AUSD would be suspended, most of them ‘cause of the ‘rent's tokin’.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:47:20 PM

Pretty geeky privacy. More and more people want powerful, easy-to-use encryption software, but the commercial world isn't providing it. Can open source deliver? [Salon.com] This article provides even encryption newbies with some basics about PGP, PGP inventor Phil Zimmerman and the current sad state of affairs.   Network Associates, who bought PGP, Inc. several years ago, no longer supports much of the original program. But the open source community has come through with GnuGP, a free, powerful, easy to use encryption tool for most platforms.   Links to GnuGP are included in the article. Get your copy now, before Uncle Sam changes his mind again.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:44:39 PM

Washington tunes in. Critics accuse Clear Channel of shady radio deals and nasty concert business. Now the government is starting to pay attention. [Salon.com] Interesting take on the thieves at Clear Channel, the same folks that brought you censored play lists after 9/11. Clear Channel also owns Pace Concerts, the largest concert promoter in the US and, if you’re in Austin, perennial bad guys, at least as far as much of the Austin music community goes.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:40:30 PM

A News Cocktail Mixed by a Software Genie. Researchers have created software that can analyze news articles on a particular subject and write a summary. It still has some bugs, still. By Susan E. Reed. [New York Times: Technology] AI as a news reporter? Looks like it works about as well as universal translators. Gimme a real wag any day.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:37:18 PM

A Tracking System That Calls Balls and Strikes. A new system for showing the path of pitches is bringing a bit of military intelligence to the ball field. By David F. Gallagher. [New York Times: Technology] I love baseball. My playing days are long over, but I still dearly love the game.   I’m also a technocrat. I make my living from technology, especially new, cool technology.   I’m not at all sure about mixing the two, at least when it comes to umpires. I like the idea of a tool for performance review, but the umps, and all of their human foibles, are as much a part of the game as sunshine and the smell of the grass.   Uh oh.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:33:59 PM

UN: People Over 60 Will Quadruple. The number of people over 60 years of age will quadruple during the next half century in a worldwide "demographic revolution" that will strain pension and health care systems, U.N. officials and experts on aging said Wednesday. [AP World News] You know, I resemble this story. Do you?   Cheers,   Dusty 10:25:35 PM

World: Scientists take the wind out of eating beans. 21:28 ET - Ananova [NewsBlip.com] Hey, I don’t make this stuff up.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:23:51 PM

Xbox sales seen missing target. Microsoft's sales expectations for the game machine are unlikely to be met, a new report shows. Will it fare any better in Europe than it did in Japan? [CNET News.com: Personal Technology] The giant stumbles. Guess a half billion in advertising doesn’t buy what it used to.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:21:15 PM

Army Secretary Defends Timing of His Sale of Enron Stock. Thomas E. White, a former Enron executive who is now Army secretary, today defended the timing of his sales of millions of dollars in Enron stock late last year. By James Dao. [New York Times: NYT HomePage] Apparently these morons think we actually believe their bullshit. How can this guy keep a straight face while telling us that during his dozens, if not hundreds, of contacts with his ex-crony high level execs, before and during the collapse at Enron, he received no inside information? I guess he was just lucky he sold that $30 mil worth of stock before it was worthless.   Cheers,   Dusty 10:11:09 PM

Wish List: 9 Innovations in Search of Inventors. Could consumer electronics use a dose of innovation? Here are a few proposals for gadgets and services that don't exist, but should. [New York Times: Technology] Strangely enough, some of these ideas actually make sense. Maybe some of you smart guys out there in the embedded tech biz can take a few clues. Cheers, Dusty 10:05:08 PM

© Copyright 2002 Dusty Rhodes. Last update: 3/27/2002; 10:41:09 PM.