back on a mac

back to my mac.
Blogged yesterday from my pc and it sucked, was missing my tool for handling links... tried to move it to my mac to finish... never did... might post it anyway....

Egyptologists find really old tomb.... that was raided a long time ago so its unclear what is inside of it. ie. are the contents the original or was it reused for burial of later peoples.... unknown.

A nice look at innovation on the NYTimes web site, most of it is obvious to people who are in the business of innovation, but a good read anyway.

This blurb is little more than an unpaid advertisement for Adobe Photoshop CS2, however it mentions vanishing point, which would seem to be a VERY impressive tool added to the new version.

the good news: oil companies cannot pollute without fear of litigation. The bad news, that litigation will be paid for at the pump by each and every one of us.

This kind of thing always makes me laugh. I mean, 50 years ago they expected personal flying machines by the turn of the century and underwater and moon dwellings to be the norm. Making predictions about the future is harmless fun, but investing money into designs for something more than ten years away, especially something as mutable and ephemeral as the design tastes of future consumers as it applies to car interiors and technology...... now thats just a waste. Anything you come up with will be either woefully inadequate, ridiculously unattainable, or so far off the mark no-one will remember it in 5 years let alone twenty. Let me explain what I just said. Inadequate: the tech the person uses or envisions will be nothing compared to what exists and will not work well with any of it. Example: The computer of the future (not the one faked out of old nuclear sub parts, but the real deal made by GE and IBM YEARS ago) looked nothing like todays home OR super computers, and every part of it was an extension of the tech of that day, and has been leapfrogged by the tech of today. Ridiculously unattainable: the objects envisioned by the designer are beyond anything that will actually be available at the expected time of manufacture. Example: flying cars, personal robots, moon bases, undersea cities.... all these are technically attainable but only by the barest thread. None of these were available at the turn of the century, as was expected. Off the mark: think just about any design for the future that came out of the 1970s. These were.... interesting, but these days they laughably un-hip/un-cool/un-marketable. Result, if you tried to make a marketing plan based on them you would go bankrupt.

A nice article on those home-made fan movies of the star wars genre.

Nice discussion of inventions and inventiveness, worth a read.

Now lets take technology that is ubiquitous and mix in a good amount of bureaucracy and then add a dollop of politics. yup, i'm talking about Cable/broadcast/phone company bru-ha-ha on the subject of TV over fiber. Basically the local chanels want the government to impede the whole thing cause it is unfair competition. The cable companies want to impede the whole thing because it IS competition. The phone companies want it because it lets them finally compete. Ok, so why is it unfair? thats simple, its better and costs less to run. So why should the broadcasters be protected? Because this is america and they paid for those congressmen and they expect to see something for their money. Seriously folks, its called free market, the broadcasters do not give us ANYTHING anymore that we can't do without, and if they do, it will be reason enough for them to continue existence. Let the competition begin. Maybe then we can finally get some decent service/prices fromt he cable companies.

The tests are in, if your paranoid, the only way to ensure data security on a hard drive being thrown away is to physically destroy it.... after wiping it.... and maybe praying.

The 'No Child Left Behind' program is being tested in court because of the really terrible funding scheme it has. About time, that thing sucks.

This is a wonderful article on tea, which you know I love, but have no time to do properly.

As it turns out, old stem cells can turn cancerous. This makes total sense to me, and even makes me wonder if the source of some cancers normally found int he body are old stem cells gone rouge.

Great article on tree ants the amazon that use some pretty neat tactics to bring down larger prey. Though in actuality its kinds gruesome for the prey, its still pretty damn cool. (Nature is rarely soft and fuzzy, and when it is, its cause its been dead for a while.)

I wonder if this actually works, its anti thermal imaging creme.... but if you blocked all thermal energy from dissipating off your body, wouldn't you overheat and die real quick?

This is a great idea, but doomed to failure unless they can totally rework their pricing scheme.

Why societies and startups collapse.... or so this author says.

DNS Cache poisoning is back with a vengeance.

bdya bdya byda thats all folks