Monday, February 24, 2003

A Radio Chip in Every Consumer Product. Retailers are pioneering radio-frequency identification, in which electronic sensors monitor signals sent by radio chips embedded in products. By Claudia H. Deutsch and Barnaby J. Feder. [New York Times: Technology] 8:53:41 PM

Nanotech to pave way for micro-machines. Disposable satellite transmitters, inexpensive medical testing equipment and other devices will become possible over the next 10 years, thanks to nanotechnology. [CNET News.com] 3:43:00 PM

A drug user's guide to not writing. Essayist Geoff Dyer on the difference between fiction and nonfiction (none), the usefulness of marijuana, and the importance of doing nothing. [Salon.com] 3:42:44 PM

Plone 1.0 installer comes to Mac OS X [MacCentral] Plone is an open source system for managing information and administering content. Plone is designed to "marry design and usability" to Zope, the application server that provides an open source architecture for rich content and rich content services. The combination provides administrative workflow, multimedia, metadata, integrated search and a standards-compliant template system. Other open-source add-ons provide Plone with integration of documents written in Microsoft Word and OpenOffice, PDF generation, versioning, and more. 3:40:58 PM

Newton Predicted End of the World in 2060. The world knows Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) as the father of modern physics. Of his many scientific achievements, he is most remembered for inventing the Laws of Motion and the Law of Universal Gravitation, creating the first reflecting telescope and formulating the mathematical principles of calculus. What the world does not remember him for is the considerable time and effort he also spent on alchemy and theology. In fact, he wrote at great length on prophecies and predictions. Now, as The Telegraph reports, obscure handwritten manuscripts from Newton's hand have recently been discovered and analyzed by Canadian academic Stephen Snobelen of the Newton Project in a library in Jerusalem. The thousands of pages show Newton's attempts to decode the Bible, which he believed contained God's secret laws for the universe. Newton predicted that the Second Coming of Christ would follow plagues and war and would precede a 1000-year reign by the saints on earth--of which he would be one. The most definitive date he set for the apocalypse, scribbled on a scrap of paper, was 2060. [kuro5hin.org] 11:26:25 AM

Internal Safari Build Has Tabs [MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion] 11:25:56 AM

Safari wish list: better bookmarking, more... [The Macintosh News Network] 11:25:30 AM

Interview: Ranchero's Brent Simmons [MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion] 11:24:47 AM