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Tuesday, June 10, 2003
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This was mentioned a few days ago, but the link disappeared in yesterday's blog accident ...
Nearly perfect!
6:40:47 PM 
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Lisa just sent this note
Quark just announced that QuarkXpress 6 for OS X goes on sale next week. This doesn't do much for us - we moved to Adobe InDesign 2 six months ago and are not looking back. Our Adobe workflows are much more manageable than what we had with Quark.
Quark is used for medium and high end publishing and the fact that it has taken so long to create an OS X port is often cited as a reason for the slow acceptance of OS X in the publishing industry (which is dominated by Mac OS 9).
I helped a small magazine out several years ago and spent quite a bit of time with an earlier version of the product. You could do quite a bit with it, but the learning curve was awful and the program design was byzantine. Hopefully it has improved over the years.
My guess is that many people are staying with Quark simply because the learning effort to do it well is so high. This, coupled with the soon to be announced (at least the rumor mill claims) 970 Macintoshes, may create a burst of sales for Apple in its professional markets.
2:39:32 PM
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Steve points out a discussion on the role of basic and applied science noted on the PBS show Closer to Truth.
Science has always been divided between basic science, which may or may not have application to the world we live in and applied science, which directly feeds us useful products and services. But with the scientific spirit of discovery tempered by the past half-century's practicality, we've increasingly had to justify expenditures on basic science, whether by the need for national defense or other "useful" scientific endeavors.
Although largely focused on defense, it is interesting and relevant.
7:22:27 AM
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A huge solar flare (X2) occured at 2135UT on June 9 that produced a large coronal mass ejection. Determining the direction of CMEs is not something we have a handle on until they are about a hour from the Earth, but this one may be headed in our direction. If it strikes the Earth beautiful auroral displays are likely even at the middle latitudes over North America. Watch the skies on June 11 ...
6:46:29 AM
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Salon is running a piece by Paul Caffera that goes after the Bush Administration for their position on shoulder launched missiles. It seems the administration has chosen to study the probem rather than implement a $9 billion plan to equip passenger jets with anti missile capabilities.
My view is that a $9 billion program is a waste. There are a huge number of ways a terrorist attack might be mounted and this probably isn't a cost effective use of money.
The plan proposed by Congress assumes heat seeking missiles and off the shelf sensor technology allows advanced amateurs to build guidance systems that could make it through the defenses. We seem to have this assumption that we are the only people with technology.
Perhaps the thing to do is fund some amateurs at a very modest level to build prototype attack systems as a way to (a) see what is possible and (b) study how to deal with diverse threats. Already an amateur in New Zealand is building a cruise missile to show it can be done (I've seen his proposal and can think of ways to do a better job, but getting attention like this is probably a good thing).
6:38:04 AM
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