Agricultural Alternatives - Penn State Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! As the subtitle indicates, Prof. Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), Nobel Prize laureate for physics in 1965 for "... fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles", was a most curious character indeed. After all, have you ever heard of another professor of physics that is an expert in lockpicking and safe cracking, had Playboy Playmates pose nude for his paintings, and played in the Carnival in Rio?
Slashdot | AT&T Identifies Widespread Security Hole - In Locks
Slashdot | AT&T Identifies Widespread Security Hole - In Locks Here's the method in a nutshell.
1) get a normal key that opens a lock.
2)count the notches, if its a 5 pin tumbler, then buy 6 more blank keys. ($2.00)
3) cut 5 keys to be identical to the original except at one of the pin position, let it be full height. SO that you now have 5 keys each with a full height blank at a different pin postion.
3.b) reducing the complexity. it's not physically possible to have a full height position adjacent to a deeply cut position. No problem, just cut it as high a possible, the master key suffers the same limits too, and this reduces the complexity of the pattern.
4) insert the first key. does it turn? No then file off 0.010" of metal and try again. within 7 tries, usually only one or 2 it will turn. congatulation you now know the pin 1 master height.(duh: ignore the turning at the original height.)
5) insert key2, rinse, lather repeat.
the beauty of this crack twofold. first, you are discovering the master heights of each pin independently, so the combinatorics is just linear in the number of resolvable pin heights not the product of pin-positions times pin heights. Second, you are also simultaneously factoring the ordinary key out of the master key combination, thus only discovering the master key not some useless key that is part paster and part ordinary key (that would only owrk on that particular lock).
6) Exception: if you cannot find the a pin height that opens one of the tumblers (ignoring the obvious one for the original key) then the original key height is the one for the master too.
New Scientist
New Scientist Fancy a beefburger, but want to spare the cow? Tissue engineers experimenting with ways of growing meat in a lab dish could soon provide a solution.
The aim of the work is to develop food for astronauts on long space journeys, such as a mission to Mars. But like much other space research, what happens up there could one day become commonplace down here too - just look what happened to Velcro.
New Scientist
New Scientist Three-dimensional tubes of living tissue have been printed using modified desktop printers filled with suspensions of cells instead of ink. The work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire organs.
"This could have the same kind of impact that Gutenberg's press did," claims tissue engineer Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina.
Many labs can now print arrays of DNA, proteins or even cells. But for tissue engineers, the big challenge is creating three-dimensional structures. Mironov became interested when Thomas Boland of Clemson University, also in South Carolina, told Mironov how he could print biomaterials using modified ink-jet printers.
The printers are adapted by washing out the ink cartridges and refilling them with suspensions of, say, cells. The software that controls the viscosity, electrical resistances and temperature of the printing fluids is reprogrammed and the feed systems altered.
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
The Register
The Register A new theory emerged today to rebuff the "Astroturf" scandal that's the talk of the web. A week ago a weblogger who calls himself Atrios discovered that identical letters praising "the leadership of President Bush" had appeared in dozens of local American newspapers.
Before Christmas, Mr.Atrios - whoever he is - had done much enterprising research to discomfort, and eventually help depose the Republican Senate Leader Trent Lott, after Lott's wistful, pro-segregation remarks at a birthday dinner for centurion racist Strom Thurmond went unnoticed by the poodle mainstream press, here.
2CPU.com - The one stop source for everything SMP!
2CPU.com - The one stop source for everything SMP! It's hard to believe that our first look at a dual Athlon 760MP based motherboard was so long ago. June 5, 2001 was the day that the NDA expired on Tyan's Thunder K7, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now, over a year and a half later, the dual Athlon is giving way to newer and better things (Opteron anyone?). Since this is likely our last dual Athlon motherboard review (unless the rumors are true and we do get an updated chipset for Barton), it only seems fitting that we're looking at Tyan's Thunder K7X Pro. This review is making me feel nostalgic, so I'm going to crank-up the "Way Back Machine
Broken Newz - Danish Government Wants to Ban
Broken Newz - Danish Government Wants to Ban "Deep-Linking" Copenhagen - It looks like the party is over in this tiny Scandinavian country noted for its tolerance of the unusual and the eccentric. Wim Bjernstrom, Danish Minister of Public Health, announced today that he is going to seek a total ban on "deep-linking," the practice whereby HTML links are embedded into another website in order to establish "immediate and direct contact."
Friday, January 17, 2003
The Paradox of Bread Basket Starving Ethiopia
The Paradox of Bread Basket Starving Ethiopia Six months after Chodussovsky published his article on Globalresearch.ca, it became public knowledge that the unique Ethiopian barley was benefiting many nations although Ethiopians were kept in the dark about their own resource. On February 8, 2001, the PanAfrican News Agency (PANA) from Dakar tells the world that "seeds from starving Ethiopia give America abundant yields." PANA reports: "It may sound paradoxical, as informed sources at the Global Environment Facility (GEF) assert, starving Ethiopia could well pass for the worlds seeds basket."
Ethiopian scientists including Girma Hailu and Awegechew Teshome have concurred with Chodussovsky on the enigma of the Ethiopian barley. As per PANA, "according to Girma Hailu, a former US State Department Regional Environmental Specialist for East Africa, germ plasma capable of resisting the gene of the Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV) is thought to have been collected from the Ethiopian collection and introduced into the genetic material of California in the 1960s
HEALTH FOR YOU: THE DIMENSION 2000 KITCHEN CENTER!
HEALTH FOR YOU: THE DIMENSION 2000 KITCHEN CENTER! the best Kitchen Center Machine. The D2000 has a powerful 800 Watt motor that keeps it from overheating - and that's important since I make 6 loaves of bread at a time, at least once a week. It has three speeds for all my kneading and mixing needs, and the new built in timer is an added bonus. One of the most amazing things about the D2000 is the Lifetime Warranty
JTIC exclusive - Colombian car bomb tactics take a new twist - Jane's International Security News
JTIC exclusive - Colombian car bomb tactics take a new twist - Jane's International Security News Three vehicles with explosives have been detonated in five days in the eastern province of Arauca, Colombia, killing six and injuring more than 20. Arauca is the province that the Colombian government, with the support of the US, has chosen as the test case for the reconquest of the country.
In a new twist to the 38-year rebel campaign, the drivers of the car bombs were still in the vehicles when the explosives were detonated. But they were not suicide bombers, nor did they have anything to do with the Marxist guerrillas - rather they were civilians intimidated and misled by the rebels.
In the third incident on January 11, the driver, Mauricio Avendaño Camargo, survived the explosion and explained to authorities that he had been told by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to drive the vehicle to a location then get out. Two of his brothers were held hostage to ensure he complied. Except the bomb was detonated by remote control when the car arrived at a military checkpoint and a soldier was also injured in the blast.
What Avendaño did not realise was that the two previous car bombs had been driven by his two brothers who had been told the same thing and had died in the explosions.
Strikes target Bin Laden networks in Europe - Jane's Europe News
Strikes target Bin Laden networks in Europe - Jane's Europe News Over the last week a series of strikes have been carried out in European cities as activity is stepped up against a suspected terrorist network linked to the Saudi billionaire Usama Bin Ladin.
Last Thursday (April 5), five members suspected of being part of an extremist Islamist cell were arrested in Milan, in an operation that coincided with the arrest at Frankfurt of a suspected Islamist operative and an investigation on the island of Cyprus for suspected bank accounts intended to finance the purchase and transportation of weaponry for terrorist activity on the European mainland.
Of course, you know this means WAR
Of course, you know this means WAR Propose "use or lose" laws to require rightsholders to return the copyright to the artists if the material goes out of print - reversion rights clauses are standard in book publishing (though under threat from just-in-time printing) but in general completely unavailable to filmmakers and musicians. Start lobbying now. Mickey got a reprieve from falling into the public domain; he didn't avoid the prospect altogether. There will be a next time.
Oppose further lmitations on the public domain, such as the US broadcast flag and the WIPO broadcast treaty that may work to limit the public's ability to time-shift or record TV. Continue to oppose existing bad law, such as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (and its prospective European counterpart), and the Copyright Extension Act (a law to protect a Mouse championed by Sonny Buono???!). We can't outcompete the copyright industries' funding, but millions of us sure can make ourselves a pain in the ass if we try.
MI.S.N.A.
MI.S.N.A. Saddam however did nothing to defuse the tension, but in the contrary launched war proclamations in occasion of the 12th anniversary of the first Gulf War: if the American troops attack Iraq, they will be defeated at the doors of the capital. Another factor that added to the already building tension, on a day that the hypothesis of war in Iraq plunged markets around the world, was an article of the Arab international Asharq al- Awsat newspaper. According to anonymous
stocks, shares, news, FTSE, online trading - Ample
stocks, shares, news, FTSE, online trading - Ample
ROME (AFX) - Police have arrested 18 executives of the chemical company Enichem SpA on the Mediterranean island of Sicily for allegedly dumping toxic mercury into the Mediterranean, judicial sources said.
Eight of the suspects have been taken into custody, while 10 others were placed under house arrest. All are accused of conspiracy and "trafficking in dangerous deposits."
EE Times UK - Intel delays 64-bit processor to re-engineer part
EE Times UK - Intel delays 64-bit processor to re-engineer part SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Intel Corp. here today confirmed it has delayed a next-generation, 64-bit microprocessor line by one year, after the company decided to re-engineer the product. The company also announced a new 64-bit processor in its roadmap to fill the gap for the delayed chip, code-named Montecito.
Intel was originally supposed to roll out the Montecito processor in 2004, but it will now delay the 64-bit product until 2005, according to a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara-based company.
US intelligence officials claim that a group of Algerians in London have direct links to the al Qaeda terrorist network.
They believe the men are "associates" schooled by Osama bin Laden's top biowarfare expert, Abu Mussab al Zarqawi.
Washington officials told news network CNN they have intelligence evidence that ties the Algerians to Zarqawi, a one-legged Jordanian who commanded an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and is now at large.
lectmay4
The Cenozoic has been called the Age
of Mammals, probably because the name was given by mammals. It might have been called the Age of Insects, or the Age of Birds. If we want to ,get out of that emphasis on land organisms (after all, there is more ocean than land), we could call it the Age of Teleost Fish (modern fish), all of which groups showed major increases in number of species. If we want to pay attention to the organisms that form the base of the food chain on land, we could call it as well the Age of Angiosperms. In the beginning of the Cenozoic the overall global diversity was relatively low, because of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. Particularly the niche for 'large animals on land' was empty after the demise of the dinosaurs. Into this open niche birds and mammals diversified rapidly.
McClamrock: Functional Analysis and Etiology
McClamrock: Functional Analysis and Etiology Cummins [1982] argues that etiological considerations are not only insufficient but irrelevant for the determination of function. I argue that his claim of irrelevance rests on a misrepresentation of the use of functions in evolutionary explanations. I go on to suggest how accepting an etiological constraint on functional analysis might help resolve some problems involving the use of functional explanations.
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
Preach on brotha Motz! Microsoft was ordered to ship Java with their OS on December 23 of last year. The judge had decided that the safest thing to do would be to have Microsoft start shipping Java now, and deal with the aftermath should Microsoft prevail (which seems rather unlikely at this stage) many months from now. The other options were to do nothing (which would be typical for US Federal Court), or grant an injunction against Microsoft, which would have been a Bad Idea
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource Follow-up on Eldred case
Posted 1/15/2003 - 10:54PM, by Hannibal
Caesar beat me to a post on the recent news of the public's great loss in the recent Supreme Court case of Disney v. the Public Domain... er, I mean, Eldred v. Ashcroft. You guys probably can guess what I think of the result without me saying anything, but I will note that I do understand the Court's reasoning in this instance. It's congress's place to set policy on this matter, and it's congress that has really failed us by taking to Big Content's big payouts in exchange for the public interest.
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Tony Blair's Email - Phase 4
Tony Blair's Email - Phase 4 After Tony Blair promised to deliver a publicly available email address 'in the new year,' Bloggerheads went on strike for a week in early January (with no bloggage bar constant repeats of this same damn picture), and urged its readers to send a letter or facsimile to 10 Downing St asking exactly when this email address would be ready.
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Waveguide Antenna 2.4 GHz
Waveguide Antenna 2.4 GHz We have been experimenting with waveguide antenna, made from old food cans, to massively extend the range of 802.11b wireless networks. All that was required was fitting, in the correct place, a driven element consisting of a short piece of copper wire soldered into the centre of an N-type connector.
Geek.com Geek News - Robot servants--sooner than you think
Geek.com Geek News - Robot servants--sooner than you think PaPeRo's "eyes" consist of two CCD cameras, and with them PaPeRo can recognize up to ten faces. Four microphones--three to detect the direction from which a sound came and one for speech recognition of up to 650 words--act as PaPeRo's "ears."
Monday, January 13, 2003
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Internet helps write the book of life A hugely ambitious project to find and name every species on Earth within the next 25 years has been launched by scientists.
The internet and the development of DNA sequencing technology make the goal achievable
Friday, January 10, 2003
No TCPA!
No TCPA! Now we're getting to the part,
where Microsoft takes control of your PC. After the booting process, Fritz hands over the control to the
software part of TCPA: Palladium.
This piece of Operating-System-Integrated software is going to determine what you are allowed to do with "your" PC.
Let's say: What you are not allowed to do with. Before you can start an application or open a document,
it checks wether it thinks you are allowed to or not. No, that's no joke. It really does. Via the Internet, Palladium
keeps an up-to-date list of software (the blacklist), you can't start. One can imagine what's on that list.
e.g: every kind of cracking / hacking software, illegal copies and so on. Sounds like Microsoft installed a DRM
via the backdoor? And that's not even all it is. Every PC with a Fritz chip has an unique ID. Only
the software you bought for THIS ID (means: your PC) would be able to run. There's not even the chance
to sell software you don't use anymore. Palladium / Fritz won't allow it to run on ANY other machine.
There's also a blacklist for documents. Imagine: You're not able to play one of your thousand MP3's anymore,
because they don't have a valid certificate, even though the original CD sits in your rack. Not one of your Movies.
You also gave Microsoft the permission to delete all the files, once it has found them. You don't believe me?
Read the last EULA of your Media Player. Whoa, surprised? I was.
No problem for me, you might think. Everything got hacked 'til now. Believe me, just one more time please.
This chipset / software combination will be different.
Reasons:
* It's an onboard chip, there's no way to "plug it off".
* This chip will get integrated into the processors. (just read the member list: AMD, Intel)
And there's more. Every program you want to execute has to be certified.
So, you're a developer and want to create your own programs? Of course,
with a certified IDE you're able to write your own source code. But it's not
possible to execute your programs you just developed - unless you're going
to certify them (which costs about $100.000!).
"What the heck, I'll switch to linux when TCPA is reality!"
Now we're getting to the point where you could imagine what happens to the GPL
and linux. First of all: It's no longer possible to install linux, because this Operating
System is not certified by the TCPA. No, that's not a joke. Okay, imagine there
would be a certified Linux. (HP creates one, btw). What's happening to OpenSource
development, then? Every open source developer would need to certify his program,
before he can distribute them. But how should he pay that certification?
What happens to quick bugfixes? And what happens to all the guys who want
to compile the software on their own. There is NO chance to do all that stuff.
Disapointed? I am.
Thursday, January 09, 2003
A resolution greatly to be wished
A resolution greatly to be wished
First, of course, is GWB, Shrubya himself, for whom the year starts on January 20, the anniversary of his inauguration, a date followed in a month, give or take, by the State of the Union address. It's hard to pick a single New Year's resolution I'd like to see Bush adopt when there are so many, but if I'm picking one, it's to stop saying, "God bless America" every time he announces yet another tax cut that is going to benefit rich people at the expense of the rest of the country for the rest of the century, or when he wants to destroy the ecology of places like Alaska. It's just that it's so damn hypocritical. Can't he just say, "Screw you, America, except for my friends" and be honest about it?
New Scientist
New Scientist The idea was revealed at a December workshop on robotic algorithms in Nice. Instead of creating a casing and then laboriously filling it with electronic circuit boards, components and switches, the plan is to print a complete and fully assembled device.
The trick is to print layer upon layer of conducting and semiconducting polymers in such a way that the circuitry the device requires is built up as part of the bodywork
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Purdue researchers discover basis for biological clock The husband and wife team of D. James and Dorothy Morré has discovered this protein, which is responsible for setting the length of periods of activity and inactivity within cells. If the protein is altered, an organism's body will experience "days" of different length – ranging from 22 to 42 hours in length in some cases. The discovery could have far-reaching implications for medicine.
Distant Ring of Stars Found Around the Milky Way Hidden from view behind stars and gas on the same visual plane as the Milky Way, this ring of stars is approximately 120,000 light years in diameter, says Heidi Newberg, associate professor of physics and astronomy at Rensselaer and a co-lead investigator on the project. Traveling from Earth at the speed of light, it would take 40,000 light years to reach the ring.
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Astronomy
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The University of Melbourne - News Release - 6 January 2003 An Australian geologist has identified what could be the first ever active flow of fluids through gullies on Mars.
University of Melbourne geologist, Dr Nick Hoffman, identified recent gully and channel development near the polar regions of Mars from images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. But contrary to the majority of scientific opinion which suggests that such features were carved by liquid water, Hoffman says the flow is most likely frozen carbon dioxide.
NASA is desperate to find signs of liquid water on Mars so they have a target for the next generation of Mars landers and rovers to go and search for life, but their search could prove fruitless if Hoffman's analysis of the images is correct.
CSIRO - World-first Australian truffle find An Australian scientist has made a discovery which is electrifying world fungal biology - a new truffle genus related to the famous Amanita family, or fairy toadstools.
The Amanita family is famed worldwide for the red and white-spotted toadstools beloved of children's fairy tales, the lethal Death Cap beloved of tabloid media, and a range of delicious edible fungi beloved of gourmets.
Monday, January 06, 2003
Central Texas PC User's Group
Central Texas PC User's Group Microsoft Tablet PC, New Star Of Portable Computing Scene? Chris Tom Tells All. Chris was the audience member at December's Meeting taking notes on his TabletPC, a Factory Prototype according to Tom.
The Tablet PC was introduced at Comdex to mixed reviews. The Official Microsoft Website says: Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Microsoft's masterplan to screw phone partner Sendo's 27-page filing in a Texas court - disclosed here for the first time - is a rich litany of double dealing, betrayal and larceny - if the dramatic (and at times apoplectic) allegations can be believed.
Until November, Sendo was Microsoft's flagship phone OEM. It then announced that its four-times-delayed Z100 Stinger phone would be canned, and threw its lot in with Nokia, terminating the Microsoft agreement.
Formally, Sendo is throwing the book at Microsoft. The handset manufacturer, created in 1999 with some of the best Philips and Motorola talent, was to be Microsoft's "go to market partner" for the Stinger smartphone platform, and even received an equity investment from Redmond, and it's now very, very angry.
The claim alleges - are you ready to start counting? - misappropriation of trade secrets, common law misappropriation, conversion, unfair competition, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, two counts of negligent misrepresentation, two counts of breach of contract, fraudulent inducement and tortious interference. Phew.
Tuesday, December 31, 2002
Monday, December 23, 2002
digitalMass at Boston.com
digitalMass at Boston.com Mitch Kapor uses his personal fortune to create free software he says will outdo Microsoft Outlook
By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 12/20/2002
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Outlook
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DMCA comments published
DMCA comments published The DMCA, one might recall, is that draconian law purchased by the major media conglomerates to extend their monopolies on music and movies right into your personal life, a step on the path to universal pay-per-use.
It's the law Russian programmer Dimitri Sklyarov was arrested for having allegedly broken -- even though he wrote his program in Russia, where it was perfectly legal. His employer, Elcomsoft, was recently tried instead under the criminal provisions of the DMCA and... they were acquitted.
Labels:
Bad Laws,
DMCA
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Friday, December 20, 2002
A drop of ocean water tells a story About ten thousand bacterioplankton of the type SAR 11 are found in every drop of seawater. And yet, as explained in the article, which gives the first accurate quantitative assessment of SAR 11, scientists are only beginning to understand what these organisms do.
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Biology
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The Register
The Register Prices of printer cartridges look set to drop thanks to a new EU law that will ban printer firms from forcing consumers to buy their own-brand refills.
The European Parliament voted unanimously on Wednesday in favour of a new EU "electroscrap" recycling law, which includes a ruling directing manufacturers of printers to no longer incorporate chips into their own-brand ink refill cartridges. These chips prevent cartridges produced by other manufacturers from being used in many printers.
In addition, proponents of the measure say the chips prevent them from being refilled -- a feature on many cartridges made by printer manufacturers.
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Computing
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News
News Teams of researchers from around the world have shown that tiny strands of RNA possess incredible powers of control over genes by shutting them off like a light switch, effectively rendering them impotent by interference. Small strands of RNA can even chop into the DNA of the genes directly to rearrange large pieces of the chromosomes. "Remarkably, in some species, truncated RNA molecules literally shape genomes, carving out chunks to keep and discarding others," Science says. "There are even hints that certain small RNAs might help chart a cell's destiny by directing genes to turn on or off during development, which could have profound implications for coaxing cells to form one type of tissue or another."
Labels:
Biology,
DNA,
Genes
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Thursday, December 19, 2002
160 mm for a Hub
Dead link seems to be about hubs for tandem bicyle.
160 mm for a Hub
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Bicycle,
Dead Link,
Tandem
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Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Friday, December 13, 2002
American Scientist - Computing Science
American Scientist - Computing Science
In my hand I hold a metal box, festooned with labels, serial numbers, bar codes and tamperproof seals. Inside the box is everything I have written over the past 10 years—articles, a book, memos, notes, programs, letters, e-mail, shopping lists. And there’s still plenty of room left for everything I might hope to write in the next 10 years. For an author, it’s a little humbling to see so much of a life’s work encompassed in a tin box just big enough for a couple dozen pencils.
The metal box, of course, is a disk drive. And it’s not even the latest model. This one is a decade old and has a capacity of 120 megabytes, roughly equivalent to 120 million characters of unformatted text. The new disk that will replace it looks much the same—just a little slimmer and sleeker—but it holds a thousand times as much: 120 gigabytes, or 1.2 x 1011 characters of text. That’s room enough not only for everything I’ve ever written but also for everything I’ve ever read. Here in the palm of one hand is space for a whole intellectual universe—all the words that enter a human mind in a lifetime of reading.
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Computing,
Hard Drive
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Thursday, December 12, 2002
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource In a rather interesting development in the world of distributed computing, Gateway has moved into a market segment traditionally dominated by the likes of IBM and Sun Microsystems. Gateway is offering their own version of grid computing called Processing on Demand, utilizing the combined processing power of their nearly 8,000 PCs scattered throughout their 272 Gateway Country stores. Capable of 14 TFLOPs, the combined power of their PCs outranks the world's most powerful supercomputer as ranked by top500.org.
Charging fifteen cents per individual CPU hour for as much CPU power that is needed, Gateway's solution will enable many corporations to more cost-effectively do large computations. Rather than purchasing large quantities of hardware that quickly become outdated
Labels:
Computing
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Tuesday, December 10, 2002
OpenBeOS Project
My first glimpse of BeOS came in college (no surprise). After the death of the Amiga, I sketched out an operating system design and took classes to learn how to implement it. In one of those classes, I met Scott. I showed him my sketches (object hierarchies) and he told me to look at the BeBook. I was shocked - it was 95% the same as what I had sketched out! When I saw the BeBox (Scott had one), I was immediately taken with it. I started saving money to buy one. Scott went on vacation and I borrowed his for a couple of weeks. It was pure heaven! Right around the time that I had the money to buy the BeBox, the Mac port came out. I decided to put the money toward a Power Computing Mac Clone. Right around the time that I had the money for the Power machine that I was looking at, Steve Jobs shut down the clone companies. So I sat tight.
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Computing,
Hakiu
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Monday, December 09, 2002
OpenBeOS Project - Displaying Newsletter
OpenBeOS Project - Displaying Newsletter For those of you who may not be so "enlightened" as to the purpose and concept of .Net, let me attempt to explain from a high-level perspective. The concept, at least as far as I have seen, is that web pages can be authored using an object hierarchy. This object hierarchy uses JavaScript as its basis for client-side interactions. You can derive from a standard object and build a new object which other .Net programmers can use. These objects can have two different types of interactions - server-side and client-side. Client-side interactions are typical JavaScript callbacks (mouse over, etc). Server-side interactions are what we used to call "Submits" - so named after the concept that the end user would fill in some data on a web form and press the submit button. The page's information, including object states is sent back to the web server where it is processed.
The clever part of this, on the business side of things is that, of course, you need a web server. And guess who makes the only web server that handles .Net objects? Yes, surprise, it is IIS. Microsoft sells updates to Visual Studio to developers, and more web server licenses.
The clever side of this on the technical end of things is that developers are being pressed to make everything a "web application". Much of this perspective relates to the poor way that Windows (even the vaunted XP) deals with the installation of software. You have to be an administrator to install a good deal of software. Since IT staff can't/shouldn't/won't give that right to everyone, IT staff has to install all of the software, which makes every upgrade that a company goes through costly (overtime, etc). Compare this to installing the software once, on the web server, and letting everyone access it - no licensing issues, no dll misery - just apps. Reminds me of my mainframe days.
Thursday, December 05, 2002
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource Posted 12/4/2002 - 10:30PM, by zAmboni
In news that rivals the completion of the Human Genome Project, researchers have revealed the first high quality public sequence of the mouse genome. Some researchers believe the mouse genome is more exciting than the human genome. Why? Mainly because libraries full of research have been conducted with mice, and mice are currently being used to study human diseases and basic biology. Needless to say, it is a bit tougher to do the same experimentation on humans.
Early analyses confirm preliminary estimates on the similarity between the mouse and human genomes. Ninety-nine percent of human DNA matches that of mice, and the two genomes both contain an estimated 30,000 genes. Only 300 of the mice genes have no counterpart in the human genome and vice versa.
Probably the most interesting finding, to me at least, is that many non-coding regions of DNA (what many news outlets like to erroneously call "junk DNA"), are conserved between humans and mice. I personally think the non-coding regions are very important in gene regulation, and contain the information on what makes mice, mice and men, men. The journal Nature has put together information on the arrival of the mouse genome here.
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
CRN: Daily Archives
CRN: Daily Archives By Paula Rooney, CRN
Boston
5:17 PM EST Tues., Dec. 03, 2002
Red Hat Chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik said Microsoft's legal efforts to challenge open source by employing patent infringement law represent a big threat.
"It's a credible threat, no doubt about it," said Szulik, a native son of Massachusetts who returned to deliver the keynote at Enterprise Linux Forum here. "We see the threat of costs of litigation could be harmful, cause a disenfranchisement of the global collaborative [development] community and disrupt the speed of innovation. Yes, I think it's quite credible."
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Computing,
Linux,
Open Source,
Patent
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Hezbollah calls for global attacks -- The Washington Times
Hezbollah calls for global attacks -- The Washington Times Two recent speeches by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, have raised the specter of attacks outside the region by a powerful and well-organized military force
Labels:
Hezbollah,
Terrorists
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• Key Players in the Plame Affair
