Just Got To Work!!!!

Sitting in my Chair Now!!!

You're right! We've wasted out lives!

YouTube - Twouble with Twitters: SuperNews!

Just wanted to give Decius and Acidus a thumbs up on vastly improving the load time of Memestreams. I especially notice a difference with an embedded video; front pages with those used to take forever to load. Kudos!

-janelane

I'm lame. I just started using Pandora. But, it kicks ass, and now I'm spreading the gospel.

-janelane

Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music

Your favorite sites. Full-screen. 3D.

You need this. It kicks ass. It even works on Smug Mug!

-janelane

Cooliris, Inc. | Beyond the Browser

As Idoya walked, CB walked at exactly the same pace. Recordings from Idoya’s brain revealed that her neurons fired each time she took a step and each time the robot took a step.

“It’s walking!” Dr. Nicolelis said. “That’s one small step for a robot and one giant leap for a primate.”

The signals from Idoya’s brain sent to the robot, and the video of the robot sent back to Idoya, were relayed in less than a quarter of a second, he said. That was so fast that the robot’s movements meshed with the monkey’s experience.

An hour into the experiment, the researchers pulled a trick on Idoya. They stopped her treadmill. Everyone held their breath. What would Idoya do?

“Her eyes remained focused like crazy on CB’s legs,” Dr. Nicolelis said.

She got treats galore. The robot kept walking. And the researchers were jubilant.

Cool! Probably will eventually lead to a superhuman robot army someday, but cool!

-janelane

Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans - New York Times

After talking with Acidus the other day about Napster's revamped format, it occured to me that some common misgivings are present where their download policy is concerned. I present them for your review because I have found their service to be useful and more content-rich than iTunes in addition to having some interesting features.

Background: I skipped downloading more than about 10 songs a quarter because I hardly ever found what I wanted on the "Top 40" flavor of iTunes. I asked around about Napster, and most everyone was under the impression that the monthly fee only allows you to rent songs playable only on your PC, after cessation of which your access to the music ends. This is true, but this is only one method of accessing Napster's motley library and you are actually allowed to access your account and downloaded tracks on up to 3 PCs w/ Napster's software.

The Rest of the Story: The other two ways you can access music include a non-monthly fee, $.99 download service similar to iTunes or a slightly higher monthly fee ($14.95 vs $9.95) which allows you all the comforts of regular Napster plus unlimited downloading to a Napster approved player of which my H320 iRiver just happens to be. If you want to burn the songs to CD, however, you have to pay $.99/song no matter which of the three versions you have. It just depends on if you want to listen to full-length tracks before downloading and access downloaded tracks on up to 3 PCs (Napster), that plus transfer to portable players (Napster To Go), or just buy music for your library to keep forever (Napster Light).

Cool Stuff: The coolest thing about Napster is the ease of use. The GUI is clean and intuitive and you can easily access other users' libraries and find stuff that "you will like if you like Band X". Also, Napster's built-in recommendation agent seems pretty on target.

Unclear: I can't tell yet whether tracks downloaded through Napster To Go and transferred to my iRiver will remain playable after my membership ends. They secretively allude to expiration software built into the tracks, but I'm curious if it goes so far as to expire in a Mission Impossible this-message-will-self-destruct-in-five-seconds takeoff. I also am suspicious that not all songs will be transferrable and that I will have to pay in addition to the higher monthly fee in order to transfer songs to my iRiver.

Conclusion: The whole thing is damn well complicated and exaccerbated by the horrible explanation on Napster's FAQ. What few gritty details they provide are on the FAQ which is passably organized at best. I am also angered by the fact that you pay a monthly fee for the priveledge of basically listening to a full track before downloading. Otherwise, to play it on your PC, transfer to MP3 players or CDs, or just to keep the songs forever, you [seemingly] have to pay $.99/song regardless of your membership type.

Verdict: Membership on Napster is only really worth it if tracks transferred through Napster To Go are available to you forever on your MP3 player as an unprotected song that you can play in Winamp later on. I'll know soon enough when I cancel my one week free trial tomorrow. Even if they aren't available on your portable player, I may just switch to the $9.95 version if I determine that browsing member's collections turns out to be an efficient way to find stuff I haven't heard before. All in all, membership seems like an awfully expensive way of finding something that hasn't been Clear Channel sanitized.

-janelane, fuzzily

] CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) -- Vikram Kumar is hardly
] your typical tech chief executive. He shares a
] two-bedroom apartment with a sister and a nephew and gets
] around town by bicycle or in a 20-year-old Mercedes Benz.
]
] The 28-year-old MIT graduate works days as a pathology
] resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital across the
] Charles River in Boston and only turns his energies at
] night to his business: improving rural health care in the
] developing world with handheld computer technology.

This is really damn cool. Bringing technology to rural and often impoverished areas is something I've dealt with in Engineering Students Without Borders at Tech. It's like my mother always said, "Share with your sister."

CNN.com - Humanitarian's tech for health care - Oct 28, 2004

] People who know they're being watched, and that their
] innocent actions can result in police scrutiny, are
] people who become scared to step out of line. They know
] that they can be put on a "bad list" at any time. People
] living in this kind of society are not free, despite any
] illusionary security they receive. It's contrary to all
] the ideals that went into founding the United States.

A fairly good article on why profiling doesn't work.

How We Are Fighting the War on Terrorism / IDs and the illusion of security