Blog – Page 114 – Niall Kennedy

NY Times: As Doctors Write Prescriptions, Drug Company Writes a Check

New York Times: “A code of conduct adopted in 1990 by the American Medical Association suggests that doctors should not accept any gift worth more than $100, but the guidelines are widely ignored.”

Tantek is now at Technorati

Tantek Çelik is now working for Technorati. The move means good things for the Web, as Tantek can utilize indexing semantic web data from the Technorati database. He also has a much shorter commute, allowing more time for side projects. Tantek was formerly Microsoft’s Web standards ambassador and responsible for much of the work on CSS.

SpaceShipOne flight a success

Mike Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne to an altitude 100 kilometers, opened a bag of M&Ms, and returned to the Mojave Desert. The first non-governmental rocket ship to reach the edge of space.

An amateur in the New York Philharmonic

Daniel J. Wakin of The New York Times played clarinet with the New York Philharmonic. He had 16 days between receiving the music and stepping on stage to perform but luckily he received help from Stanley Drucker.

“I was told I would be treated like a regular substitute. The brochure for subs that I was given listed payment of $1,980 for a week of rehearsals and concerts, or $198 for a two-and-a-half-hour rehearsal and $396 for a single concert, although alas, I was not to be paid. (The base salary for a regular player is $104,000, though many earn far more than that.)”

Imagination Environment

“Imagination Environment,” created by David Ayman Shamma and Kristian J. Hammond of Northwestern University, reads a television stream’s closed caption feed and displays related images and other media to complement the television feed. Matthew Mirapaul profiles “Imagination Environment” in The New York Times.

IETF Forms New Atom Working Group

IETF Atom working group is now official. “The proposed WG schedule calls for release of initial Internet Drafts for the Atom Feed Format and Atom Editing Protocol in June 2004. These Internet Drafts would be submitted approval as Last Call drafts in March 2005, and would be submitted to the IESG for consideration as Proposed Standards in April 2005.”

Paul Boutin compares movie download services for Slate

Paul Boutin compares RealNetworks’ Starz downloading service to the BitTorrent and DivX solution in an article for Slate. “Starz offers fewer movies than BitTorrent, at lower quality, for a higher price.”

Nick Littlehales, official sleep consultant for England’s Football Association

Nick Littlehales is the official sleep consultant for the English Football Association during the Euro 2004 championships. The Financial Times profiles Nick and his efforts to help the team turn less times per night.

“The England team’s bedrooms were adapted to create Kingsize and Superking sizes providing more room to sleep and relax. A visco-elastic foam pressure relieving layer was added to each mattress to improve comfort and support. The traditional hotel bed coverings were replaced by hypoallergenic pillows and breathable duvets covered in a pure Egyptian white cotton linen to provide coolness.”

Mac DevCenter reviews OS X RSS software

Giles Turnbull of Mac DevCenter reviews three RSS software applications for Mac OS X: NetNewsWire, Pulp Fiction and Shrook. (via Scripting News) I am still waiting on NetNewsWire 2.0, due any day now.

NPR’s On the Media interviews The Wonkette publisher Anna Marie Cox

Bob Garfield of NPR‘s On the Media interviewed Anna Marie Cox, editor of Wonkette.

I think that blogging, as a form of journalism, or as a form of writing doesn’t have a lot of rules yet, and it’s clear that it doesn’t need to try and, and hang, you know, the AP Libel Guide on a blog would be a mistake — to try and, like, apply your standard journalistic kind of ethical code seems too constrictive for what blogs are. There has to be something that you figure out maybe just on a day to day basis.