"only the Polytron reduces an entire mouse to a soup-like homogenate in 30 seconds."

[oi. nice... -k]

the Polytron

] WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — President Bush's plan for cars running on
] clean, efficient hydrogen fuel cells is decades away from commercial
] reality, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences.

[ because, as usual, Bush is saying things that sound good, with no hope of fulfilling them. Stupid pandering bullshit should be violently exposed by the media. -k]

Report Questions Bush Plan for Hydrogen-Fueled Cars

] 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.

[ hear hear, bruce. hear hear. -k]

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

3. “Whatever” and “Same as last week” are perfectly acceptable status reports.
2. All technical issues resolved by saying “Well, it works on my PC.”

[ those are the best... it's just so easy to visualize.
PHB :"Hows that project coming, bill?"
Bill :"Whatever."
If only. ]-k

BB Spot | Top 11 Things That Would Happen If Software Engineers Ruled The World

My first sysadmin job was working with SCO, and I replaced it with Linux because SCO sucked so bad.

[ yeah, my last job involved supporting SCO boxes. What a frickin nightmare. Of course, these days, linux pisses me the fuck off too, but SCO went above and beyond the call of duty in retardation. thankfully, i've purged much of what i remember about it.
I expect IBM's FINISH-THEM!-Mortal-Kombat-style-smackdown to occur before anyone catches this virus author, rendering the reward pretty moot. there won't be a lot to DOS when the SCO main page says simply "THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK. -IBM" ]-k

SCO Offers Reward for Arrest and Conviction of Mydoom Virus Author (BallsDeep Declares war on SCO)

] "Two years from now, spam will be solved," he told a
] select group of World Economic Forum participants

[ awesome. can't wait to see what they come up with, and compare it against the proposals already on the table. unnfortunately, most of the proposals require enough modifications that it's gonna take a big market leader to push it. fingers crossed ]-k

Microsoft plans to solve a problem

] "The main issue behind it was a way to connect people
] subtly, without being intrusive," said Bassoli. "And
] music is the way teenagers want to open themselves to
] people around them."

i don't even want to begin to get into the legal smackdown these people are going to get...

it's too bad... this is a truly awesome idea. if allowed to propagate, this could really be a windfall for lots of subtle social interactions.

[edit]
] Technology pundit Andrew Orlowski, on the other hand, is more
] concerned that tunA does not have downloading capabilities.
]
] "I'm not sure that a device that would allow streaming but
] wouldn't allow you to copy would be very popular," he said.

well, since it's conceptually not about trading music as much as sharing (in the proper sense of the word), i'm not sure that's a major issue... but perhaps a solution is to allow the exchange of metadata (the title, artist, etc, or something more sophisticated like the RIAA-proposed metafile for sharing that was memed a few days back)... enough, at least, to allow you to purchase the track you'd been streaming earlier. That sounds like an acceptible compromise to me.

TunA Lets Users Fish for Music

] Autonomous helicopter flight is characterised by
] helicopters that can fly without a human pilot or
] guidance from a remote-controlled device. Although many
] teams worldwide have been working on so-called vertical
] take-off, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the CSIRO
] helicopter is the first to fly completely independent of
] expensive global positioning systems (GPS) guidance.
] Instead it uses its brain to control its balance and
] orientation.

this thing is *damn* cool...

News in Science - New robot brain takes to the skies - 18/12/2003

Yee-ha! I look forward to upgrading, uh, 6 months from now? Maybe?

Linux 2.6 Released

] Asked about the SiteFinder address redirect trick
] Verisign rolled out. A group of "200 technical zealots"
] were against it, and they got all the headlines. Did they
] misinterpret it? Of course. We're not going to let this
] go. It is going to be the point where we answer the
] debate.

Just one flash mob can forever settle that.

] He then goes on to say that we need to move the
] complexity back into the center of the Net! He says
] the edge can't be so complex.

Back? Center? What?!

This is all a ploy to control the net. There is nothing else it can be. There is no way you can understand the Internet and make a statement like that otherwise. Substitute "power" for "complexity" in the paraphrased statement, and you have their motive.

Its not like that's new news, but its still infuriating!

Bring on the alternative naming systems!!

Stratton Sclavos at Red Herring Conference