Lets see how much media-hype Bloomba™ la Bomba can take ;) [Zoë]  

The blog may be the first innovation from the Internet to make a real difference in election politics. But to see just why requires a bit of careful attention. By Lawrence Lessig from Wired magazine. [Wired News]  

. Chinese security agents have detained civil servant Du Daobin, whose essays are banned by Beijing on the Internet, for 'subverting state power.' It's all part of China's intensified crackdown on online dissent. [Wired News]  

Former fans of Robby Todino's bizarre mass e-mails say they're the victims of a malicious 'Joe-job' attack. Does the time-travel spammer have a mean streak? By Brian McWilliams. [Wired News]  

Yogi Berra. "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."  

Israeli startup Lenslet has built a computer processor that uses optics instead of silicon, enabling it to perform 8 trillion operations per second, equivalent to a supercomputer and 1,000 times faster than standard processors. [Wired News]  

Future Car: Toyota Fine-N Full-Cell Car goes 500km [I4U News]  

Surprise! Thanks to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, we now know our little corner of the universe is even smaller than we thought. A commentary by Bruce Sterling from Wired magazine. [Wired News]  

Edwin Khodabakchian echoes what seems to be a common -- but I think incorrect -- perception that XAML, the XUL-like layout language revealed this week to be a building block of Longhorn's Avalon presentation subsystem, heralds some kind of Web/GUI convergence: ... [Jon's Radio]  

Later today the last scheduled Concorde flight is due to take off from London-Heathrow to New York-JFK, returning tomorrow. There's a good article about it in last week's Economist titled "the less beautiful future of international business travel" and I agree. Too expensive? Sure, completely out of my bugdet (and most of the planet's too :)). But so what? Concorde is a fascinating piece of engineering and its beautifully designed. Sometimes I find it good to know that certain things exist. They provide a yardstick: "Here's what we're doing now, you go further". We seem to be losing a lot of those these days. [d2r]  

A graphic new science exhibit uses a model crime scene to show visitors how insects help crack murder cases. CSI: Crime Scene Insects opens at the Science Museum of Minnesota, calling attention to the rapidly growing field of forensic entomology. [Wired News]  

As a security measure, U.S. bulk mailers are being told to identify themselves on all outgoing mail. Civil libertarians fear the loss of anonymity could result in an invasion of privacy. By Ryan Singel. [Wired News]  

Mark Twain. "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."  

China succeeds in sending a man into space, the third country to do so. Yeah! A Chinese manned mission to the moon in a few years has been rumored for a while now. Will this wake up ESA? (Sending satellites or unmanned probes only gets you so far, you know). And how about NASA? Am I the only one left on Earth that wants a manned mission to Mars like, yesterday? Politicians (theoretically reflecting what their constituents think) say that it's too expensive, too dangerous. People might die, you know. Does it matter that the astronauts would gladly give their lives for the chance of succeeding? (Heck, I'm not an astronaut, but I would too). No. They have to be protected from themselves it seems. Oh, and money is a problem? A mission to Mars could cost 20, 30 billion. I mean, that's too expensive right? Right... How much is the war in Irag going to cost? Isn't the US paying 4 billion a month for it already?

And, sending toy cars that run Java and take measurements and pictures of rocks is to me as interesting as reading a Microsoft press release. Sure, there is some information, but it's all distant and sanitized and in the end it doesn't do anything for you.

If Europe, Russia, the US, Japan and China get together, 30 billion is a drop in the bucket. The US could do the propulsion and vehicle design and construction, Europe and Russia could deal with science and probe design, and China and Japan could design the Mars habitat for the astronauts (No, I didn't choose randomly who was doing what).

Every time I watch a space launch of anything the haird on the back of my neck stand up. I am lifted up with that rocket, I imagine the unseen vistas of Alien landscapes. I feel inspired. But it's inspiration for our potential and what we have achieved in the past, rather than for the reality of a mission. The Apollo missions barely scratched the surface. We have gotten too used to CGI and thinking that a walking carpet (as Princess Leia put it) like Chewbacca is actually an Alien lifeform. Movies and books are great, but there's no replacement for the real thing.

I want to feel inspired by space exploration again. Don't you?

[d2r]  

Environmentally sensitive drivers can take their pick of a variety of low-emission vehicles already on dealers' lots. The new breed of peppy PZEVs helps pave the way to fuel-cell cars. By David Snow. [Wired News]  

R. Buckminster Fuller. "Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."  

Serendipity Server. What I have in mind for my next big project after IdeaGraph. A server-side tools that combines Semantic Web and... [Development Notebook]  

Martin Luther King Jr.. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."  

The 0.2 release, now available, contains more of the Chandler's underlying infrastructure but little in the way of end-user features. We're making progress, even though there's little visible evidence of it. That will start happening after the .3 release around in early 2004. Data Model and Repository: a very flexible... [Mitch Kapor's Weblog]  

A couple of people wrote to point out that I'd given the impression that iCal was an Apple-only thing. Not so, of course. iCal is a standard with many implementations. One that I hadn't tried until yesterday is Mozilla Calendar -- it's available as an XPI-style extension and works, for me, with Windows and Mac versions of Firebird. (I had to also use the QuickTools extension in order to get Calendar to show up on the menu.) ... [Jon's Radio]  

The novel catch-22 by Joseph Heller is a masterpiece of literature, funny, and simply a great piece of writing. It's also about a concept that, sooner or later, we all encounter in our daily lives. The concept of catch-22 is,... [d2r]  

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says the motorized scooters are dangerous when batteries are low. The company agrees to recall them, but offers a software upgrade as well. [Wired News]  

The decision by JetBlue to hand over millions of passenger records to a firm doing a government terrorist-screening study comes as a blow to the airline's loyal customers. By Noah Shachtman. [Wired News]  

The Trademark Blog reports that the owners of the Dewey Decimal System are suing a NYC hotel for trademark infringement. A must-read. [Scripting News]  

Dr. Thomas Fuller. "Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get you wrong." [Quotes of the Day]  

Chandra Solves Mystery of Moon's Dark Side [Scientific American]  

xslt as a programming language. Martin Fowler has a laundry list of complaints regarding XSLT. Therefore, he's parsing the XML with Ruby directly.... [techno weenie]  

The airline admits it gave 5 million itineraries to a defense contractor last year without passengers' consent. The contractor bought more personal information on the passengers, including Social Security numbers -- for what purpose? By Ryan Singel. [Wired News]  

The patent meltdown we've been warning about is coming home to Web designers. It's virtually impossible to work with patent-holders like Eolas who don't market products and don't have customers, but we can hit other patent abusers in the pocket-book, and not let up until they use their power in Washington to change the law about software and business process patents. In other words, we are not powerless. [Scripting News]  

Future Cars: Audi Le Mans and Porsche Carrera GT [I4U :: Future Technology News]  

Salvador Dalí, the outrageous Spanish artist, considered Walt Disney a compatriot in subversive art. They tried to make a film together but shelved the project. Now, the Disney studio is reviving the very un-Disneyesque work 57 years later. By Jason Silverman. [Wired News]  

I've never spent much time tethered to an Exchange Server, other than on an experimental basis, so I'd forgotten -- or never knew -- that Outlook contacts Exchange on TCP port 135. That is, of course, the same port that Blaster has lately been partying on with wild abandon. I'd also heard that some ISPs had begun blocking 135, on the grounds that it's more trouble than it's worth. As this document from Cox High Speed Internet notes: ... [Jon's Radio]  

FeedMe is a new centralized aggregator, reviewed by Library Stuff. [Scripting News]  

spam gets weird.

Received today:

Dimensional Warp Generator Needed

Hello,
I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Since nobody here seems to be able to get me what I need (safely here to me), I will have to build a simple time travel circuit to get where I need myself. I am going to need an easy to follow picture diagram for a simple time travel circut, which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003. Please email me any schematics you have. I will pay good money for anything you send me I can use. Or if you have the rechargeable AMD dimensional warp generator wrist watch unit available, and are 100% certain you have a (secure) means of delivering it to me please also reply. Send a separate email to me at: [someemailaddress].
Do not reply back directly to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.

Thank You

LOL! I had received this once before a while ago. I assume that the purpose of this is to add your email address to a list for selling it later... but if they already have the email to send it to me... what are they doing? Confirming it? Who knows. Anyway. Definitely a weird and quirky spam-meme. Even weirded than the infamous Nigerian scam!

Ok back to work.

[d2r]  

Security Holes Vex Web Host Firm. More than a thousand websites hosted by Interland, a leading Web-hosting company, appear to have been hacked in the last week, according to a security expert. But Interland denies there's a problem. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News]  

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties (of America) than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." [Samuel Adams] Don't cry for me Argentina  

Eugene McCarthy. "It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember."  

The Minnesota teen who confessed to coding a variant of the Blaster worm has been apprehended, but for those still struggling to clear the intruder from their computers, the worst isn't over. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]  

A Brazilian rocket due to blast off in coming days exploded at its jungle launch site, destroying Brazil's third attempt to fulfill a long-held dream of sending its own rocket into space. The $6.5 million, 65-foot rocket was to have placed two satellites into orbit.

"The rocket is destroyed," a Brazilian Space Agency representative said, adding that the explosion killed approximately 20 people. Officials said the accident did not happen during an attempted launch. [Wired News]  

The Breast Cancer 3-Day is a 60-mile walk from San Jose to San Francisco, taking place November 7-9, 2003. Net proceeds benefit the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the National Philanthropic Trust, funding important breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment.