This article, on Ars Technica was incredibly positive about “Universal Music, the largest of the world’s big five record labels, [releasing] about 1,000 of its hard-to-find back catalog albums through its online music subscription subsidiary, EMusic.com”. They refer to an article on SFGate that first broke the news, Universal Music provides alternative to file sharing…

For those of you that are into music and are having trouble finding good-quality music on Gnutella, this looks like a viable,... [More]

A Guide To Metric Time… seen on Slashdot in Isn’t it Time for Metric Time? discusses a proposed system for converting to base-ten time. As if the U.S. doesn’t have enough problems converting to metric measurement, except curiously for soda containers, here comes a new proposal sure not to be adopted.

“Metric Time (MT) is an attempt to create a decimalized time system for our modern base-10 using world. This is a neglected part of the Metric System (or SI) which has created a whole measuring... [More]”

US To UN: We Won’t See You In Court on Plastic mentions recent U.S. moves to pull out of U.N. peacekeeping missions if their soldiers are not granted immunity from prosecution. The expressed reason is to avoid “politically motivated prosecutions of its officials or soldiers.” The real reason is probably the oft-mentioned ‘sometimes war just isn’t pretty’ mantra.

The express purpose of the ICC is a noble enough goal:

“…to help put an end to the past century’s cycle of impunity for the most... [More]”

Serious Lego is dedicated to inventions using the “Lego Mindstorms” robot-building kits. This person, JP Brown has built the most incredible creatures using just Legos and the Mindstorms kits. One of the more impressive ones is the CubeSolver, which uses a WebCam and custom color-recognition software written in C++ and VB5 that solves a standard 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube by itself!

There are a lot of other models on this site, including K9, a dog that plays fetch, HanoiSolver, a robot that solves the... [More]

Serious LegoAndrew Lipson has a site of Lego sculptures, of which some are Mathematical Lego (TM) Sculptures. It’s pretty stunning what people do with Legos out there, and there are a lot of fan sites. Henry Lim’s Lego Sculptures has a Stegosaurus that stands about 5 feet high. Another guy, Eric Harshbarger, built a desk out of legos. A lot of these guys use the tools and community found at LDraw, where you can find CAD-like tools for designing LEGO structure without the bricks.

It becomes increasingly obvious that the current state of the U.S. economy is so bad largely because the sensibilities of the average U.S. citizen, though previously thought infinitely malleable, have finally been stretched to the breaking point. Even satire and comedic places of refuge that ordinarily hide their opinions behind jokes are applying a thinner veneer to their feelings these days.

Two articles by some oft-quoted (at least here) satire sites come extremely close to simply... [More]

There’s a lot of it about these days, as top administrations officials fall, predictably, under the mildly scrutinous eye of a vaguely interested press. There’s plenty of it from two different directions: one is spreading it around about attacking Iraq, which is apparently a gateway to Hell, and the other is spreading more rumors of terrorist attacks that never happen and/or are completely made up, with no facts to support them, but which a pretty large part of the American populace still lends... [More]

Received through email.

A friend told me the following story about a former Enron accountant who gave up his CPA position to become a farmer. The first thing he decided to do was to buy a mule.

He dickers with a local farmer at the general store, and they agree that the local will sell the accountant a mule for $100. The Enron accountant gives the man $100 cash, and the man agrees to deliver the mule the next day.

Next morning, the man shows up at the Enron accountant’s place without the... [More]

I just read “True Cause of World Hunger”, an interview with Anuradha Mittal of Food First. http://www.foodfirst.org/media/interviews/2002/amittalsun.html

Why do people go hungry? Because they don’t have food. Why don’t they have food? Because they cant afford it. “Hunger is a social disease linked to poverty, and thus any discussion of hunger is incomplete without a discussion of economics.” It is estimated that 830 million go hungry. Yet, the world food supply produces an adundant and more... [More]

They Might Be Giants has a web site promoting their new album, No!, The First Album for the Whole Family. It has 30 seconds of each track on the album, 4 of which are accompanied by very cute little joyful games to play along with the music. The robot one is my favorite. Pass the mouse over the little ones and they wave their flags; click on them and they take off and land with parachutes. Click on the big robot to make him do stuff; his armpits shoot off fireworks. The No! one is pretty good... [More]

The Register has Corporates! Give your PCs to Africa, a drive by Computer Aid International to get corporations to donate their “end-of-life PCs” to a good cause.

“In the West, organisations consign millions of usable PCs to the scrap heap each year. … End-of-life PCs are worthless to most companies − but invaluable to school children. Companies have written down the value of their redundant computers to nil, and all they see is a headache in getting rid of their old kit. We can take care of... [More]”

AIDS Will Cut Life Expectancy Below 40 In 11 African Countries is a discussion on Plastic about the article Africans ‘faced with extinction’… on the National Post (Canada). One comment in the discussion, But How Many Of Them Actually Have AIDS??? points out that the World Health Organization’s definition of AIDS is the “Bangui definition”, which can often diagnose AIDS where it is probably, in fact, Dysentary, Turburculosis, Malaria, generalized Kaposi sarcoma or cryptococcal meningitis.
... [More]

Opera Software has a recent press announcement, Opera strikes accord with Macromedia…, which announces that future Macromedia products for the MacOS will use the embedded Opera engine to render pages.

“Opera will deliver a full-featured, embeddable version of its desktop browser to be integrated into a wide range of Macromedia Web development products. … Opera and Macromedia will work together to develop and maintain an application programming interface (API) for an embedded browser on the... [More]”

Chris Floyd, on Counterpunch, recently wrote Global Eye — Jungle Fever that the “Bush Regime is paying — lock, stock and barrel — for a band of local mercenaries taking part in Bolivia’s campaign to eradicate coca production in the jungle region of Chapare”. This was reported in the Washington Post in US Role in Coca War Draws Fire at the end of June.

This “Expeditionary Task Force” is just another feature of the last unending war the U.S. engaged in, the Drug War. The Drug War started in... [More]

Here’s a humorous Flash film by Bruno Bozzetto in english and italian showing the pitfalls of driving by the rules. It’s called Yes & No, a dyseducational road movie. It shows several common driving situations with an aggressive solution (Yes) and a defensive solution (No!). It ends with the epithet: “Tell me how you drive and I’ll tell you what kind of idiot you are”.

Another blow for corporate America on the Christian Science Monitor has an overview of the recent explosion of bad accounting and fraud in large American corporations.

“More broadly, it threatens to undermine the fragile economic recovery and is further eroding public confidence in corporate America. It is calling into question some of the most sacred principles of American capitalism. If last decade was the Roaring ‘90s, this one is starting out as the Odious OOs.”

Worldcom is only the latest... [More]

Wired.com has an article that teaches you How to Disappear. If you’re like me and get about 150 junk mails over a long weekend, you may want to read this article on how to opt-out for good. The article gives a “three-tiered guide to pick a level of solitude”.

At the intro level, they suggest to just write to large name-database clearinghouses and demand to be expunged, anonymize your web access by surfing by proxy or using an anonymous remailer (which aren’t illegal in the U.S. yet).

The next... [More]

AlterNet has an article about religious fundamentalism right here in the good ‘ol US of A called Pledging Allegiance To Fundamentalism about the recent Pledge of Allegiance uproar. The pledge has been used as a fundamentalist ploy before, when the words ‘under God’:

“… were added in 1954, when Congress, reacting to a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, inserted those two words and turned the pledge into a public prayer of sorts. (The point was to contrast the godly United States of America... [More]”

I got this in email the other day. It seems like a good one that’s been around for a while, but the names are pretty interchangeable (depending on your affiliation, of course). I was too lazy to choose more neutral names, though; with this group, there’s no way to twist it my liking.

Given that Al Gore has no job, he decided to take a sightseeing vacation to Europe.

While visiting England, he is invited to tea with the Queen. He asks her what her leadership philosophy is. She says that it... [More]

MS security patch EULA gives Billg admin privileges on your box on The Register talks about the new EULA for the recent patch to Window Media Player. It seems to involve some wording that allows Microsoft to upgrade your machine and software automatically to conform to DRM standards it, and its content providers, have agreed to. Whether you’ve agreed to it doesn’t matter. Your agreement is implicit in your use of the patch for the security holes in their software. That’s right, they ship... [More]

There are 68 pictures and 15 journal entries detailing our journey to Switzerland almost a month ago. If you just want a massive overview, then check out the new print feature here [print] (just click print at the bottom right, after selecting options).

Logitech Pocket Digital Review on Hardward Central reviews the new Logitech digital camera. It’s only 1.3 megapixel, but if you’re looking for a snapshot camera, this one has other statistics that make it more attractive than other alternatives, like the popular Intel Pocket Camera. “[I]t’s no larger than a laptop’s PC Card, half an inch thick and 1.8 ounces … Battery life is ample; controls, including a self-timer, are simple … the Logitech is almost an impulse buy at $130.”.

The battery is... [More]

IBM Research News has recently announced their latest new ‘world record’ for storage density. IBM’s ‘Millipede’ Project Demonstrates Trillion-Bit Data Storage Density says:

“Using an innovative nanotechnology, IBM scientists have demonstrated a data storage density of a trillion bits per square inch — 20 times higher than the densest magnetic storage available today.”

The breakthrough involves a return to mechanical storage, reminiscent of the punchcards of old, but this time, the card is “a... [More]”

When I was younger and still in middle school, as it’s called these days, I began to wonder about the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn’t have well-worked out ideological reasoning for disliking it, it just rubbed my rebellious nature the wrong way. What was this pledge I was forced to take every day in a supposedly free nation? It smacked of a fanatic level of control, though that too was only vaguely expressed or felt at the time, to be honest. Regardless of the vague and unsubstantiated nature of... [More]

Weighing in at 16 journal entries and 157 pictures, the Southwest 2002 is finally finished. It includes over 70 pictures from Gary’s collection as well. The Print Preview alone is over 40 pages and is the best way to check it out offline. However, I highly recommend to browse through the Calendar if you’re looking for something specific.

Xentex Technologies has developed a dual screen laptop called the Xentex Flip-Pad Voyager. Each screen is 13.3" diagonal, but each is also aligned in portrait mode. For presentations, the screens can be swiveled around to face the 180° the other direction (JPG). The start of the tour shows it all folded up and mentions that it sits at 3" high, so it’s more of a slim briefcase than the laptops you’ve become used to. It looks pretty high-tech though, like something out of James Bond or Mission... [More]

ShackNews is reporting that John Carmack has updated his .plan file recently in Carmack On New Cards, Rendering − the actual .plan file is here − Carmack’s 2002/06/28 .plan.

If the other .plan link is broken, then you can get an archived copy here − Carmack’s 2002/06/28 .plan

His latest two updates concern the Matrox Parhelia. The first update pretty much trashes the card, calling it “really disappointing for the first 256 bit DDR card” and that the “[a]nti aliasing features are nice, but it... [More]”

Common Dreams has a very ironic article by Rahul Mahajan called Arafat Calls for Democratic Elections in the United States. In it, he notes that “Arafat, who was elected with 87% of the vote in 1996 elections…[which were] declared to be free and fair by international observers” actually has far more of a mandate than a President elected by a “majority of the Supreme Court”.

This is in response to U.S. President Bush’s speech on Monday in which he called for the Palestinian people to have new... [More]

Beyond3D has some extremely detailed questions with John Carmack in John Carmack on DOOM3 rendering. Of interest is the mention that “[t]he game characters are between 2000 and 6000 polygons”, which makes sense, given the massive number of rendering passes in Doom 3. Since all shading and lighting is done in real-time, the number of polygons becomes a lot more important.

Other engines, like the Unreal engine, boast much higher character-polygon counts, but they use only limited dynamic lighting.... [More]

A long-lost feature from version 1.x has finally been restored to the modern photo albums. Printing is back and enhanced from the original version. Any journal entry can be printed, either by itself or in a hand-selected group from the explorer. Additionally, the entire album can be one-click printed from the album’s home page. Print options include all standard options plus the ability to include thumbnails from that journal day.