pieslinger.net

Bloomba™: Media-Hype or Reality?

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 02:10:39 GMT

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

The New Road to the White House

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 02:07:18 GMT

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]

China Locks Up Net Dissident

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 02:05:33 GMT

. 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]

Time-Travel Spammer Strikes Back

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 02:03:55 GMT

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]

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:21:08 GMT

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

Processing at the Speed of Light

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:18:52 GMT

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]

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:07:36 GMT

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

Time for a Cosmic Reality Check

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:04:35 GMT

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]

Avalon isn't about Web/GUI convergence

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:00:25 GMT

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]

The Last Flight of Concorde

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 03:00:04 GMT

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]

Sherlock, Look for the Bugs

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:56:04 GMT

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]

Post Office Wants to ID the Mail

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:53:59 GMT

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]

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 02:41:11 GMT

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

space!

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 02:37:58 GMT

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]

Future Is Now for Green Cars

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 02:33:47 GMT

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]

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 20:02:29 GMT

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

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 19:49:20 GMT

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]

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 16:02:50 GMT

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

Chandler 0.2

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 16:00:56 GMT

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]

iCal explorations

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 15:59:14 GMT

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]

catch-22

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 15:56:51 GMT

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]

Segway Pulls Scooters Off Street

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 15:54:27 GMT

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]

JetBlue Customers Feel the Pain

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 15:53:02 GMT

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]

Sun, 21 Sep 2003 16:20:09 GMT

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]

Sun, 21 Sep 2003 16:13:51 GMT

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]