Saturday, September 28, 2002

So Windows is too easy to hack ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/27320.html I can't believe statements like that should be comforting to people who rely on MS for their operating system and application suites. 9:07:51 AM     What if there are more bubbles to burst in the US economy? Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley suggests that housing and consumer-spending bubbles might exist and that bubbles have a tendency to burst. Deflation is a rather chilling scenario to consider and a war combined with tax breaks for the wealthy may not be the best ways to fight it, A return to the US of the thirties or the Japan of the nineties is not something many would appreciate. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/opinion/22ROAC.html The owner of a local car dealership noted that unsustainable promotions are the only reason cars have been selling well for the past year. He notes that the last few weeks have seen a drop in showroom traffic and a larger drop in sales. This may well be an artifact of his location (white collar unemployment is increasing in this part of New Jersey) or it may be an aberration. One wonders what happens to consumer sales if we have greater unemployment, a 6000 DOW, a spike in gas prices, a terrorist act or a war that doesn't go like clockwork... Is a two party legislative/executive best to handle it or does one require something more dictatorial like a single party "solution"? What are the consequences of a single party solution on an economy in flux? One hopes that these are only theoretical questions. 8:08:34 AM     Failure, but space is hard and this was a fine try! There is an interesting competition to get an amateur rocket into space (more than 50 miles by some definitions) and CSXT made an attempt a few days ago. No cigar this time, but someone will get it. http://www.civilianspace.com/ There is an informal competition to orbit an amateur payload - I would consider this to be an order of magnitude more impressive than someone flying around the world in a balloon. One of the movers on CSXT is Rocketman Michaelson http://www.the-rocketman.com/ Years ago the first surf report visited his site, but you should have a look if you haven't been recently. He is mostly into high powered rocketry (one level below the amateur machines of CSXT and the Reaction Research Society, but has some cute links. The rocket powered snowmobiles are complete insanity only exceeded by the rocket snowmobile with the hang glider wing. 7:20:43 AM     Robotic Rubik's Cube solvers were an academic rage over a decade ago. This one is new and amazingly cool - it seems it is a Lego project! Rather than showing off the finished device, the author presents solutions to some interesting problems. http://jpbrown.i8.com/cubesolver.html 7:20:29 AM

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