Robotic Freedom
Marshall Brain has a long but interesting article about what might happen when robotics and automation become as cheap as computers did in the late 1990s….
Niall Kennedy's Weblog
Page 69 of 72, covering posts published in August 2003.
AppleLore
The Computer History Museum is hosting an event to celebrate Apple Computer's historical contribution to the computer industry. The event is named AppleLore….
Location based services
MIT's Technology review profiles some interesting location based devices and their use….
Tethered by a high-tech leash
MSNBC has a series of articles on "punching the clock in the new economy." Especially interesting to me is Tethered by a high-tech leash. "[P]eople with Web access at home log in and work an extra 5.9 hours per week on average." What causes someone to stay constantly connected? Fear of losing their job? A hope that doing so might single them out as an exceptional employee and get them the bonus, raise, promotion they desire?…
O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
I would love to go to the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I downloaded most of the audience videos I could find last year and read the write-ups of the speeches. Now to actually place myself in the room and have some great ideas. Call for Participation proposals are due September 24. I will aim towards social software and see where it leads….
Did Blaster Cause the Blackout?
Did Blaster Cause the Blackout? "there is a very good plausibility that the recent East Coast power outage was due to an attack by an MSBlaster variant on the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system at the power plant master terminal, or more likely at several of the remote terminal units (RTUs). SCADA runs under Win2000 / XP and the telemetry to the RTU is accessible via the Internet."…
Irish Fat Tax
Reuters covers a move by some to cut down on obesity in Ireland. Cutting Irish alcohol and happy hours seems like a very dangerous endeavour for any politician….
Microsoft’s Big Role on Campus
Washington Post covers the molding of campus curriculum by Microsoft. Any language where the IDE is not free or relatively cheap to students will stifle learning. In one of my econometrics classes at UCLA students were offered scaled down versions of Stata for $50. I do not know one person who purchased the program for use at home. The professors were bound by lab hours and available workstations and their curriculum suffered as a result. Visual Studio .Net 2003 Academic is $100 at the UCLA Store. Visual C# .Net is $60. Yes, you could have students write in Notepad, vi,…
Java is a language, .NET is not
Philip Brittan writes that Java is a language, .NET is not….
Soccer Conditioning
I just bought Sigi Schmid's book on soccer conditioning. Looks like I will have to wait until October 25 until I get it autographed. It should come in handy as a refresher as I work towards my coaching license….
The Ghost in Your Machine
Business Week interview with Chris Forsythe of Sandia about cognitive machines. The Sandia news release is pretty interesting as well….
Community Books
There is a local San Francisco project where people can share books and videos. "The Distributed Library Project is an experiment in sharing information and building community in the San Francisco Bay Area." Seems interesting and worth checking out. I posted most of my books online tonight. It was pretty simple to enter a ISBN and have the author, genre, and even a review from Amazon filled out for you….
WiFi in retail business
Today's New York Times covers the use of wireless technology to improve retail experiences….
Toyota Prius parks itself
Toyota plans to release an optional feature for its Prius cars sold in Japan, according to Wired coverage. "A car will probably always require a driver for liability reasons." A lot of people are uncomfortable with parallel parking, especially in tight spots, or a spot on the driver's side. Although the article mentions the price tag as a downfall, I know some people who pay for a parking spot just so they do not have to parallel park….
FeedDemon gets top mark
ExtremeTech reviewed 6 RSS readers and gave FeedDemon the top mark (8 out of 10). "the Cadillac of RSS readers." Congrats Nick! I am a regular user and even mentioned the product in Spider Hacks. I should participate more in the newsgroups to make this a really good app….
James Gosling: on the Java road…
James Gosling : One of the nice things about developing in Java on the MAC is that you get to develop on a lovely machine. I thought James would be using something like the SPARCLE….
Henry Hunan Weblogger Dinner
Anyone for a Chinese dinner at Henry Hunan's next Saturday? So far it looks like at least Dave Winer and Scoble will be there….
Career Calculus
Eric Sink has some really good analysis of looking at acquired knowledge over a career span. I agree that learning over time is vitally important, there needs to be someone there to realize the value of your cluefulness. There are also free ways to increase cluefulness. I look to user groups and their SIGs. Java user group, Microsoft regional site. If you are interested in more San Francisco Bay area resources let me know. I check out conferences in the area I may be able to browse during a lunch break or an evening. Exhibition passes and keynotes are usually…
Motion Hardtop Keyboard
Motion Computing has a new keyboard available that allows for a docked slate. Looks more flimsy than my Compaq dock, but much better than the standalone keyboard. Last month on a flight from Chicago I sat next to someone with an M1300. We compared Tablets, what we look for in a notebook, and our frustrations with the first generation technology. He was playing a balancing act with his keyboard propping up his slate as it moved around. I envied his 12.1″ screen and he envied my battery life and dock. I just lost my dock edge….
Higher level programming
Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about the current state of programming. Languages seem to be more and more designed for high level interaction with the heavy lifting done at the compiler level. This allows for bad programmers to not do things that will be too harmful. At the same time it allows for sloppy and imprecise code. Most people do not consider clock cycles, memory usage, or disc usage writing code or designing a database. Embedded systems like a cell phone may be different. The use of an int to store a Gregorian year value. String…
Secret blog
Chris Pirillo has a secret section of his site up. Same content as his normal weblog, just with a different background….
Heather Mitts
Heather Mitts has a pictorial in this month's FHM magazine. For those of you not keeping track, last year the WUSA put together modelling packages for a select few women and shopped them around to men's magazines. Although none of the women were featured in Playboy, Heather won the Playboy Online poll for sexiest WUSA player. The FHM shots look mostly the same, just with different outfits. I think Heather looks more sexy in her soccer gear, but that must just be my weird fetish….
Crash Different
I found an Apple testimonial video that had me rolling in my cube. If you are a member of the Mac cult, you may be offended. Otherwise, laugh your ass off….
Spidering Hacks
I have been busy over the past week writing for a new O'Reilly book. Look for me in chapter 4 a to be released book named Spidering Hacks, part of the O'Reilly Hack Series. Interestingly enough I was the only person to author to use Java. I have a feeling this is going to be a book full of a lot of Perl. There is only one Python example. I wrote a hack that gathers data about Alexa toolbar users traffic to your Web property on a daily basis. Alexa collects subdomain information as well as property rankings, and I…
Blog from a Smartphone
News.com reports that the new Mio 8380 phone from Mitac will "keep a diary." Sounds like a blog to me!…