Ramblings of a Technology Addict

Friday, May 2, 2003

All Hands Lost

A Chinese diesel submarine sunk this week in Chinese territorial waters. All hands were lost. They are reporting 70 dead in this accident. News like this always scares the crap out of me. My brother Erik serves aboard the USS LOUISIANA and my father served aboard USS PARCHE. The men of the Silent Service are rarely heralded for their bravery, which I believe is a travesty. These are men who volunteer for their duty stations. Who choose live beneath the watery deep, knowing that the slightest failure will indeed kill them. There are no survivors in submarine accidents. When a boat goes down, the only phrase the Navy uses is "All Hands Lost" which is the most horrifying sounds anyone with family aboard a boat can hear.
My heart goes out the families of those who died in this tragedy, for the world is poorer for the loss of those men.
12:22:49 PM  comment []

Oh my.

Best Comment Ever: It's like pr0n for music lovers -- Tiffany
12:02:53 PM  comment []

Some linky goodness.

Welcome to May! Sorry I was so quiet, but between work and the impending concert, my priorities were otherwise occupied. I promise to return you to reading about random crap about which you have little care or comment, but that I like to write about.
...Frank is trying to decide which character deserves more screen time in his In My World posts. I liked the Fox News reporter. He's a great piece of parody. He also wrote about SARS.
...Wired talks about iTunes, and the new Music Store, which I like to the tune of $20 this week.
...Wired also reports on four college students who are forking over a collective $48-70k for creating a P2P network for Princeton students to swap music. I think they should have sued the students trading the music, not the ones responsible for creating a service that could be used legally, but wasn't.
...Boing Boing has noted that Bling Bling is now recognized by the OED
...TechTV is apparently running a 13 episode show on the sex industry driving technology.
...Dave Winer apparently doesn't like the Winer Number.
...Antipixel has some links on how to link to the iTunes Music Store.
...Since this is a Music-centric entry, Steven Frank had a piece the other day on a good FOAF system for sharing music tastes.
...Thoughts on how Apple handles the micropayment charges from rentzsch.com". I use my Check Card to pay for my songs, what I noticed were single dollar transactions that were starred in my register (Chevy Chase Bank has great online banking that updates within seconds of transactions) to denote that they were not final, and in fact, pending confirmation of the vendor. The first day I bought two songs in a short period of time. Both transactions fell under different $1 authorizations of my card. But when I got the bill that night, it was one transaction for $2.10 (and was reflected in my updated register) which is the price of two songs, plus sales taxes. Now, the next day, I bought an album and some songs, the total came to $17-something. There was only one charge made against my account for the whole day. Later it was updated to the proper amount. When I bought just one song, they waited two days to see if they could lump in a second or third song to group the payments.
...Kevin Smith's got an article up called "The Superhero" Thanks Josh
...Attention Newshounds: a new public beta of NNW Pro is out
...Three Strikes for Businesses. Only in California, God Bless 'em. If we're going to allow corporations the right to free non-commercial speech, like Nike is arguing for, then we should hold them equally responsible under the law. That means three felonies, and you can't do business here. Just like we tell criminals they're in for life after three felonies, we should tell businesses that too. None of this nickel and dime fine shit.
...I love this story I hate telemarketers SO much. (Sorry cousin Mark.)
...Daring Fireball covers iTunes vs. Safari in a steel cage match to the death.
Okay, enough random drivel.
10:55:01 AM  comment []