This kind of news puts everything else into perspective
Cassini Spots Water Geysers on Saturn Moon: The orbiting Cassini spacecraft has spotted what appear to be water geysers on one of Saturn’s icy moons, raising the tantalizing possibility that the celestial object harbors life. Today’s body count in Iraq, muslims burning buildings and killing people because of cartoons, more UN corruption, the latest American [...]
Ecto and Endo
I’ve never used a newsreader… never really could see the benefit. Lately though, as my consumption of blog content as increased, I’ve noticed that my browsing habits were just not efficient… too often going to blogs with no new content, or with content that while new, I wasn’t interested in. Yesterday I found out about [...]
Tivo CEO says they may start giving them away
TiVo may give away set-top boxes-CEO Chief Executive Tom Rogers said the company, whose name has become synonymous with the ability to pause live television and skip commercials, was close to offering a range of pricing options, including one plan that would include a free set-top box. “We’re continuing to pursue the prospects of zero [...]
Luddites spring into action at Canadian university
The alumni must be terribly embarrased. Canadian Uni hot under the collar over Wi-Fi safety A Canadian university has limited Wi-Fi networks on campus, not out of information security concerns, but because the long-term safety of the technology is “unproven”. Fred Gilbert, president of Canada’s Lakehead University, made the order on the basis of possible [...]
Chax updated
I’ve previously posted about Chax, a very useful plugin for iChat. Version 1.3.2 has just been released, with these changes: (New) Automatically set status to away when the screen saver is activated (New) Basic Growl notifications for text invitation and text message received (Feature improvemet) Set custom font for group separators (Bugfix) Joining a new [...]
Computer operating systems and choice
My friend Willie notes that he won’t use Windows. He’s a smart fellow, and intuitively knows about the choices you have when selecting an operating system: Easy Secure Windows Pick Any Two.
How the Internet is forcing change in China
The Washington Post has a fascinating account of a failed attempt at censorship in China. The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances. Colleagues [...]
The High-Definition Olympics
All our family has been enjoying the Olympics this year on the new HDTV. While there are some occasional problems with the video and audio, on the whole the high-def broadcasts have been a huge improvement over the old SD we’ve been used to. One of the many hundreds of engineers NBC has employed to [...]
Space ladder moves closer to reality
Robert Heinlein popularized the idea of a space ladder in his 1978 novel The Fountains of Paradise. The concept is fascinating — through the use of very high-tech carbon nanotube technology, create a thin yet super-strong ribbon structure that is connected at one end to the earth, and the other end in geosynchronous orbit. Specially [...]
More about Chax
A few days ago I briefly mentioned a plugin for iChat called Chax. I’ve now had a few days with it, and installed the latest update, 1.3.1 today. Lots of useful features, here are a few of my favorites: built-in chat log viewer send away auto-reply only once per conversation option to auto-accept text chats, [...]
Chax – plugin for iChat
Just found this new plugin today for iChat. It’s very cool. And free. Chax
TNT-HD coming to DirecTV
This just in: Turner Network Television (TNT) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with DIRECTV, Inc. to provide customers with the high-definition (HD) feed of TNT. The service will launch on DIRECTV on Friday, Feb. 17 and will be available on DIRECTV channel 75. The 24/7 HD presentation of the TNT East [...]
Know your neighbors
This site will tell you who the registered sex offenders are who live in your neighborhood, and even show you on a map where they live, and their photo. http://www12.familywatchdog.us/ Fortunately our immediate neighborhood doesn’t show any threats. How about yours?
A brief history of hard disk drives
In college, around 1982, I was taking a graduate-level computer graphics software programming class, and we were using an expensive minicomputer that was considered advanced for its time (I don’t remember the brand or model though). The system had a large cabinet on the side for the hard disk system, and there were removable packs [...]
Disney’s purchase of Pixar is deja vu all over again
Lots of folks are weighing in on the prospects for Disney following the purchase of Pixar. I think the deal could be hugely successful for several reasons, most of them have been discussed ad infinitum by many analysts and bloggers, so I won’t repeat them here. One point that hasn’t been made is that Steve [...]