Category: outside

A New York Times article reports that the widespread use of PowerPoint is making us dumber than we already are. I knew there was something I didn’t like about PowerPoint…

The Register is reporting that PortalPlayer, the company behind most of the iPod’s technology, has come up with a new version of their chipset that includes photo and video capabilities in addition to playing music. Unless Apple has something exciting to announce in January at Macworld SF, this could spell problems for the iPod’s dominance. I bet Apple’s on top of it, though.

I saw this weblog mentioned on another weblog I check out from time to time (strangely, he finds some interesting stuff sometimes). Anyway, the Belle de Jour weblog claims to be the personal journal of a London call girl. She’s of the more high-end appointment only type rather than the more stereotypical street walker type. The writing is quite good and the subject matter is unique and thought-provoking, not to mention sexy. It doesn’t really matter if you believe it to be true, but I think it has me fooled at the moment.

JenniCam, the webcam site of a girl named Jenni that has inexplicably been an Internet phenomenon for 7 or so years is closing down at the end of the month, according to this notice. I have never been a regular ‘viewer’ of the site, but I checked in on it from time to time whenver it crossed my mind. I don’t know if Jenni has plans for another kind of web project or if it has just become time to move on. Either way, good luck Jenni!

A New York Times editorial entitled Hack the Vote reveals more information about Diebold, a company that makes electronic voting machines. They were in the news recently when their software was discovered on an insecure ftp site, free for all to download. From the sound of it, things are even worse than they seemed.

According to this Pitchfork article, the highly influential Warp Records will be releasing their entire catalog of releases in high-quality mp3 format via their Bleep.com website. All tracks will be available for $0.99 each. Maybe some big labels will follow suit, but I doubt it.

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that will make it illegal to do many of the things common to spamming. It also legalizes some spam email, which will no doubt make geeks everywhere froth at the mouth. Overall, the description in the article seems pretty reasonable to me. The most important part in my mind is making it illegal to send spam with a misleading subject or falsified headers. That always seemed like it should be illegal to me.

In this Wired interview Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, says some pretty insightful things about the nature of science and technology and some hard choices we all might have to make in the decades to come. He also goes on to talk about his ‘meditation wall’ being designed by world-class engineers for his New York apartment (he lives in Aspen, CO). Interesting fellow.

According to this message on the mp3.com site, they have been consumed by CNET and will be taking their site offline on Dec 2. They will be destroying all content so all people with mp3.com sites will need to find alternative hosting. MP3.com will return in another format at a later time. Man, the Internet’s growing up, and I don’t like it one bit.

BBC Article
Some researchers have figured out how to make small amounts (very small) of electricity by simply passing water through very small channels cut into a hunk of glass. It’s not even close to being commercially viable now, but the possibility of being able to power small electronic devices with water is very exciting.