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Peter Nixon
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Wednesday, 30 June 2004
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Bob Bemer, inventor of the escape key and co-inventor of ASCII has died of cancer at 84.
[More importantly for me is the ASCII connection]
Link
(Thanks, Jeremy!) [Boing Boing]
11:36:16 PM 
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With Orrin Hatch's nation-destroying Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act headed for law, EFF has decided to create a real example of just what kind of "piracy" Hatch is targetting. Here's EFF's hypothetical complaint against Apple (for making the iPod) C|Net (for reviewing the iPod), and Toshiba (for supplying hard drives for iPods). All three of these activities fall within the scope of activity that Hatch's bill seeks to end:
As detailed further in Professor Expert’s report, the iPod would have been much less attractive to consumers had it been incompatible with the music files downloaded from P2P networks and had it not allowed consumer-to-consumer transfers. Professor Expert’s report also makes it clear that the iPod, in turn, enhanced the attractiveness of P2P networks by offering iPod owners expansive storage capability and lightning-fast data transfer, allowing them to listen to any number of infringing music files when away from the computer.
Surveys conducted by Professor Expert establish that a majority of iPod owners have used at least some significant portion of their iPods to store and play infringing music files, whether derived from P2P networks or promiscuous hand-to-hand copying. Upon information and belief, Apple was certainly aware of this fact from its own internal marketing research.
Link
(Thanks, Jason (and good work!)) [Boing Boing]
11:24:35 PM
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This is not a reason to cheer. Years ago they bought out a very friendly, Mac/PC outfit called CPM&S (I think) and immediately turned into donkeys.
[Australian IT: Business]
11:09:31 PM
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BoingBoing reader Cliff Van Eaton of New Zealand says:
The New Zealand postal service just introduced a scratch n' sniff postage stamp (although they call it a scratch and "smell" stamp, since I guess they've decided us Kiwis don't "sniff"). It's a 45 cent stamp (the normal rate for sending a letter) that gives off the scent of New Zealand-bred magnolia when it's scratched.
The only draw back is that it's only available as part of a presentation pack of all 5 flower stamps. I've had a good go at a normal over-the-counter book of ten 45 cents stamps, and I'll I get is the faint aroma of offset lithography.
Link,
scroll halfway down the page to find the special "smellies" gift pack.
[Boing Boing]
12:51:45 AM
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 Super-cool Space Invader stickers with which to plaster your walls. Link (Thanks, Damon) [Boing Boing]
12:29:01 AM
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Here's a great printable one-pager that describes what you're legally allowed to take pictures of, and what to do if someone tries to bust you for it.
148K PDF Link
(Thanks, Tom!)
[Boing Boing]
12:17:41 AM
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An interesting story at PhysicsWeb
describes how it seems dark energy has been constant throughout time,
consistent with Einstein's idea of a cosmological constant.
Cosmologists in the US have made the most accurate measurements ever
of how dark energy varies with time -- and found that it remains
perfectly constant. Yun Wang at the University of Oklahoma and Max
Tegmark at the University of Pennsylvania performed numerical
simulations on observational data from supernovae, the cosmic microwave
background and galaxy clusters. The results, which agree with
Einstein's predictions for a non-varying cosmological constant, lend
further support to the existence of dark energy (Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 241302).
| Full paper |
[David Harris: Science news]
12:12:03 AM
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This piece is a great example of how to concisely explain the difference between correlation and causation.
[David Harris: Science news]
12:05:10 AM
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Tuesday, 29 June 2004
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I have a new article online at TheFeature.com about a 60-year-old ham radio head who may have revolutionized antenna design:
Rob Vincent couldn't let anything interfere with love, even interference itself. In 1995, the ham radio buff moved in to his girlfriend's small Rhode Island house to live happily ever after. But there was a hitch. Her small piece of property wasn't big enough for Vincent, his significant other, and the 140-foot antenna he needed to reach his wireless buddies around the world.
Dedicated to both his future wife and his hobby, Vincent spent nearly a decade designing the antenna now standing in his backyard. The 40-foot-high pole bests conventional antennas three times taller. This week, the inventor and his employer, the University of Rhode Island, are filing a patent on the technology...
"The people saying that I'm a snake oil salesman... will have to order a great big plate of crow very soon," Vincent says.
Link
[Boing Boing]
12:29:47 AM
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So what are they going to do with them now they've found them
?
[Scientific American]
12:25:43 AM
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Monday, 28 June 2004
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Today, the U.S. Senate approved a proposal that will give federal prosecutors the power to file civil lawsuits against suspected copyright infringers -- penalties include fines up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The so-called Pirate Act has raised alarms among copyright lawyers and lobbyists for peer-to-peer companies, who have been eyeing the recording industry's lawsuits against thousands of peer-to-peer users with trepidation. They worry that the Department of Justice could be even more ambitious.
Senate leaders scheduled Friday's vote under a procedure that required the unanimous consent of all members present. Now the Pirate Act, along with a related bill that criminalizes using camcorders in movie theaters, will be forwarded to the House of Representatives for approval.
Link to Declan McCullagh's story on News.com.
[Boing Boing]
12:20:41 AM
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Sunday, 27 June 2004
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Little lemurs in that primate paradise of Madagascar find sub 30 degrees Celsius worth sleeping through for seven months or so.
[Scientific American]
11:27:07 PM
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The latest results from a group doing fun work. I've interviewed them
previously and always been fascinated by what you can achieve with
"toy" experiments.
Extraterrestrial impact created in the lab.
Scientists in the Netherlands have successfully recreated a small-scale
meteoritic impact in the laboratory for the first time. The novel yet
simple experiment, devised by Detlef Lohse and colleagues at the
University of Twente, involves dropping a small steel ball onto the
surface of a sand bed. The results could shed more light on the
processes occurring during large-scale impacts on Earth and other
planets in the solar system (arXiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0406368). [ PhysicsWeb News]
| Preprint |
[David Harris: Science news]
4:05:27 PM
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[UPDATE: "After receiving a complaint from the publisher that (the article) infringed on the book's copyright, Slate removed the piece on the advice of counsel."]
The Juicy Bits in My Life. "It took him 957 pages. We do it in one."
[Paul Boutin]
3:59:20 PM
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It's always good to see the Hindustan Times's take on Australian cycling.
Hindustan Times Jun 23 2004 6:46AM GMT [Moreover - Sports: cycling news]
3:32:48 PM
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Moore's latest has some powerful images that are invariably overwhelmed by his jokey, faux-populist self-righteousness.
[Salon.com]
3:26:37 PM
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Moore is not just a traditional muckracker, but a crusading artist -- like Dickens, Solzhenitsyn and Springsteen -- and has become a signal artist of our time.
[Salon.com]
3:16:14 PM
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Monogamy may be traced to a gene.
Emory University scientists may have tracked a man's cheating
heart to a neurological level. Using rodents, prairie voles,
who are monogamous, and meadow voles, who are polygamous, they
tracked the differences in brain chemistry. After
discovering...
[morons.org headlines]
2:41:03 PM
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Saturday, 26 June 2004
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I am so ambivalent about this program! I have found BiaB so useful, but so unusual in its interface!
Its Mac versions have been very tardy, and not entirely up to the Windows versions in terms of function as a rule, but perhaps we see a change here. I hope so.
[The Macintosh News Network]
2:56:55 AM
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It's amazing what we find when we look hard enough. So many of the things we try to engineer already exist somewhere in nature.
[David Harris: Science news]
2:47:41 AM
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Mind-blowing article about the European and Chinese challenges to the received wisdom on traffic planning and calming, arguing that the separation of peds and cars leads to less-safe streets:
"The more you post the evidence of legislative control, such as traffic signs, the less the driver is trying to use his or her own senses," says Hamilton-Baillie, noting he has a habit of walking randomly across roads -- much to his wife's consternation. "So the less you can advertise the presence of the state in terms of authority, the more effective this approach can be." This, of course, is the exact opposite of the "Triple E" traffic-calming approach, which seeks to control the driver through the use of speed bumps, photo radar, crosswalks and other engineering and enforcement mechanisms.
The "self-reading street" has its roots in the Dutch "woonerf" design principles that emerged in the 1970s. Blurring the boundary between street and sidewalk, woonerfs combine innovative paving, landscaping and other urban designs to allow for the integration of multiple functions in a single street, so that pedestrians, cyclists and children playing share the road with slow-moving cars. The pilot projects were so successful in fostering better urban environments that the ideas spread rapidly to Belgium, France, Denmark and Germany. In 1998, the British government adopted a "Home Zones" initiative -- the woonerf equivalent -- as part of its national transportation policy.
"What the early woonerf principles realized," says Hamilton-Baillie, "was that there was a two-way interaction between people and traffic. It was a vicious or, rather, a virtuous circle: The busier the streets are, the safer they become. So once you drive people off the street, they become less safe."
Salon Link (Reg/Ads Req'd)
(via Kottke) [Boing Boing]
12:40:21 AM
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Thursday, 24 June 2004
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<a
href="http://www.blognewsnetwork.com/members/0000001/2004/06/19.html#a5852">June
19 2004.</a> <a
href="http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Arthur_Schopenhauer">Arthur
Schopenhauer</a>: "Talent hits a target no one else can hit;
Genius hits a target no one else can see."<br><br> [<a
href="http://www.blognewsnetwork.com/members/0000001/">Adam Curry:
Adam Curry's Weblog</a>]
9:43:50 PM
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Wednesday, 23 June 2004
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Reader-Submitted: Seven of Nine Vaporizes Republican Senate Candidate. Yet another God-fearing straight-arrow family-values Republican
caught being rather naughty. And with actress Jeri Ryan, no
less.
It's like something you would find in fiction or in tabloids,
but apparently it's legit. Republican Jack Ryan (no relation to
the Tom Clancy character) is now running for a Senate seat to
replace retiring Republican Senator Fitzgerald. But he might... [morons.org headlines]
10:57:31 PM
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"When he wasn't experimenting with lightning or overthrowing the British
Empire, Benjamin Franklin found time to fool around with mathematics,
inventing a variant of the magic square called Franklin's squares. Now
Maya Ahmed, a mathematics graduate student at UC Davis, has come up
with a way to construct both Franklin's own squares and others of the
same type. The methods could have applications in computer programming
for business."
The full release
[David Harris: Science news]
9:14:50 PM
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Introducing the ratfish. I love any sort of animal that has a name consisting of the
juxaposition of two other animal names. It's pretty common among fish,
because fish is a more generic descriptor than most species names (e.g.
catfish, dogfish, sharkfish, cowfish, mousefish, frogfish, horsefish,
etc.) Right at the moment, I can't think of any other conjunction of
animal names not involving a fish. Leave examples in the comments
below...
Brazil Scientists Discover Prehistoric Ratfish (Reuters). Reuters - Brazilian scientists have
discovered a species of fish, related to sharks, that has been
swimming the seas since dinosaurs walked the Earth, a
researcher involved in the project said on Thursday.
The fish, which is a kind of chimaera, or ratfish, is about 12
inches to 16 inches long, has large, wing-like fins, a
whip-like tail and exposed nerves along its body that help it
navigate in the deep, dark waters where it lives. [ Yahoo! News - Science]
[David Harris: Science news]
12:13:04 AM
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Tuesday, 22 June 2004
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Monday, 21 June 2004
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A Planetoid Colliding With Critics. An amusing piece about the status of Sedna as a planet or planetoid
mixed in with a little astrology bashing for good measure.
Coincidentally Neil Tyson is quoted making comments I heard him say in
person last week at the Beyond Einstein conference at Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center. (I really should write about that meeting some
time...)
[David Harris: Science news]
10:25:13 PM
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Sunday, 20 June 2004
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Saturday, 19 June 2004
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Thursday, 17 June 2004
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I've been very interested lately about the apparent intelligence gap in the story of humanity. Our species seems to have sat around for hundreds of thousands of years not inventing digital watches. Suddenly there was a burst of creativity which has had hiccoughs and interruptions, but on the whole has continued. Something about the human brain made it go from smart animal to thinking, creative, speculative animal. Colin Wilson thinks it may have been the discovery of alcohol, which allows for a relaxed contemplation and speculation. Maybe.
I'm not sure what this has to do with this story about dogs, but I guess I think of early humans as like dogs - smart but not really with anything to think about.
Fido Found to Be Wiz with Words [Scientific American]
12:11:29 AM
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Wednesday, 16 June 2004
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3 hour tour. The producers of "Gilligan's Island" are teaming with the producers of the "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette" to bring you The Real Gilligan's Island.
This all-new version of the classic sitcom will feature real life versions of the original show's characters: a real-life skipper, first mate, millionaire couple, movie star, professor and Kansas farm girl. And one of them could be you!
Life imitates art imitates life.
[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
8:45:16 AM
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Tuesday, 15 June 2004
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Monday, 14 June 2004
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PC protection made easy. 
Slate: Virus-proof your PC in 20 minutes, for free
Figuring out how to secure your PC from these threats can be daunting even for serious gear-heads. Magazine articles like "78 Ways To Bulletproof Your PC" are 75 more than you should have to deal with. The costs add up fast, too ... it's easy to spend more than $100 on second-rate software and still get infected. So I whittled the world of options down to three free steps that, on most PCs, can be done in less than 20 minutes. Do all three, and you'll be protected against the most common infections and still be left with time and money for lunch.
Thanks to blog buddy Dave Winer for admitting he zapped himself with spyware, and then detailing what a mess it was to clean up. That made it easy for me to pitch the issue as one that affects tech-savvy Slate readers, not just newbies and novices. Is anyone really a newbie anymore?
[Paul Boutin]
10:26:07 PM
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I'm back. Brother Stephen has shamed me into motion.
9:48:32 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Peter Nixon.
Last update: 27/9/05; 9:32:36 PM.
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