VMware - trading on the NYSE under VMW - looks to ship 33m shares at $29 each. That leaves the sever virtualization maker hoping to bring in $957m. Most indications have the company blowing past that figure and igniting a Silicon Valley boom.

I can't seem to find this on any of the finance sites, but this would be a good one to own.

VMware's IPO - Insanity turns Silicon Valley back to normal | The Register

Shooting stars are set to grace the night sky with a spectacular light display this weekend.

The annual Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak during the early hours of Monday, but it will be visible from Saturday night until Tuesday morning.

well it's gone 2am Sat morning and i've just come in from the garden having spent some time drinking tea (decaff), listening to Joanna Newsom and then some Bach, and watching out for the first few meteors and i did see a couple and i'm hoping for more meteors and beautiful clear skies during the next few nights

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Stargazers set sights on meteors

Hot off the presses: Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most:

[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.

That's Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". That's the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses.

Groklaw - Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights! Novell has right to waive!

Having spent a lot of time in support channels on IRC, I can really, really sympathize with this one.

RTFM, done right on XKCD

DAVID SIMON: My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: f*** the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. F*** him. F*** him to hell.

YAY! F**k the dim!

A Special Way of Being Afraid: David Simon Doesn't Care for Your Lawn Furniture

For thousands of years, most people on earth lived in abject poverty, first as hunters and gatherers, then as peasants or laborers. But with the Industrial Revolution, some societies traded this ancient poverty for amazing affluence.

Historians and economists have long struggled to understand how this transition occurred and why it took place only in some countries. A scholar who has spent the last 20 years scanning medieval English archives has now emerged with startling answers (*) for both questions.

...

The basis of Dr. Clark’s work is his recovery of data from which he can reconstruct many features of the English economy from 1200 to 1800. From this data, he shows, far more clearly than has been possible before, that the economy was locked in a Malthusian trap — each time new technology increased the efficiency of production a little, the population grew, the extra mouths ate up the surplus, and average income fell back to its former level.

'Germs' Debunked? Not Yet, But Another Wrinkle Emerges

Baby Einstein makes you stupid! Science says so.

Buyer beware: Videos aimed at improving infant and toddler language skills are not as beneficial for language learning as they claim to be, according to a new study.

Rather than helping youngsters, such products may actually hurt their vocabularies.

Watch out for sharp edges on DVDs!

Einstein Drains Baby Brains

Posting this here is probably a great way to find out what people should not do with technology, but at any rate it beats the retarded spamming that's being attempted.

This is a remarkable little howto that shows one how to convert a mini-maglite into a burning laser that you can use to light matches, pop balloons, melt candles, and um, other things over a distance. Very, very sweet.

Actually, I wouldn't suggest letting anyone under the age of 14 know about this link. The eyes you save may be your own.

HOWTO: Mini-maglite to *burning* laser conversion

Here's an article by one of the more bizare writers at Wired, discussing several breakfast cereals. Considering that I eat some generics I usually call "Shucky Darns" I find this pretty amusing.

Lore Sjöberg on Movie Cereals

Wow. I don't know whether to be thankful or whether to think kids these days are pansies. I'm pretty sure the heat index at band camp (when I went to high school) was rather regularly at or above 110F.

School Districts Cancel Outdoor Activities Due To Excess Heat