Seem to be getting a little more consistent.

August 1st, 2002 In a truly ironic turn. Our government, which was recently considering sending "hackers" away for life, has decided that Media Conglomerates should be given immunity from prosecution for hacking. And the insanity continues...

August 5th, 2002 WOW! Bruce Sterling hits the nail on the head with: A Contrarian View of Open Source.

I was meaning to put up some information on the software industry, but the government thing got me so whacked out... So today we have two articles on the software industry. The first is from Joel on Software, and covers the economics behind the strategy. The second is by Neal Stephenson, and covers the software industry from an interface standpoint. In the Beginning was the Command Line, is one of the greatest essays I've read. I liked it so much I bought the book.

August 6th, 2002 While checking my e-mail I collected a newsletter from Lindows. The following left me incredulous:

"Can you imagine getting such a letter from the music industry about your CD collection? Or how about from the movie industry inquiring about video tapes you might have made or possess? No other industry I can think of treats their customers as criminals by default."

-Michael Robertson

"Well... Yes, yes I can."

"I must say that you are obviously out of touch with what is happening in the Music and Movie industry. In fact both of those industries are actively harrasing congress to pass more legislation to protect them from criminals (customers). The software industry at least had the decency to spend it's own money creating a watch dog group (the BSA) and not come crying to the government/taxpayers to foot the bill."

"I see your OS as a great thing, and your licence agreement as an encouragement, but this difference to the enterntainment industry is frightening."

"We're not out of touch at all. While the music industry is breathing down the necks of many mp3 sites or file sharing programs, at least they haven't gone as far as to send out letters to every person who owns a cd player saying they must prove they own all their music. Michael knows the battle against the recording industry well, as the founder of and former CEO of mp3.com he's had his fair share of time in court against the RIAA. But we appreciate your sentiment and know how you feel."

Best Regards,
The Lindows.com Support Team

August 7th, 2002 A school going paperless, why collaboration, windows is flawed! and finally Fallout a follow up to an article I linked earlier that gives some insight into the Music Industry. Which come from blogdex. I'm outta here for today... hopefully tomorrow I'll get around to putting in the reading section.

August 8th, 2002 More people are getting it that the media industry is merely protecting their profits, and not saving the free world. This article about TiVo and DTV provides another example of what ills will come from further restrictions on fair use.

I'm a happily married man, but this was just too funny not to post. From the inbox:

Hi,

Here I like to find nice American or West Europeon man to be friend with
and maybe come there.

Most Men here not well with women and winters not very much warm.

http://www.paradisedate.com/?oc=5027
			

August 9th, 2002 Music as a debugging tool seems to have some potential. (from GirlHacker's Random Log)

August 13th, 2002 I just found out about GRACE (Graduated Robot Attending Conference) from my father-in-law.

Three links from my boss: An article about electromagnetic radiation standards. Another governmental blunder regarding technology legislation, this time at the state level. And finally a very interesting article about improving P2P networks.

August 15th, 2002 Found WinRAR. An excellent archival tool. I especially like the Background capability.

Also downloaded MySQL and PHP today.

August 16th, 2002 WOW! Wired has this article on Artificial Vision. I had no idea that the system was so advanced. The Star Trek character Geordi. Just another place were Science meets Fiction.

August 19th, 2002 Discussion of a spam filtering technique. (from blogdex) It includes an explanation of the method. I think that this is likely an excellent approach, based on a paper I read on a statistical method for disambiguating sentences. That method allowed a computer to properly assign the direct object in sentences such as: "The sailor hit the postman with the bottle."

While reading an old issue of Information Week I came across an article on an attempt at a standard robot operating system. (online version of the article)

And for those of you interested in fuel cell technology for either technological or environmental reasons I'm including a Google search on, Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cell.

August 20th, 2002 I need to send out Birthday Greetings to my little sis. Aloha! Karli and I love you. Happy Birthday Princess.

I knew that the idea was not original to me, but I've never seen it expressed so elegantly: IBM's page on autonomic computing. The sad part is that I didn't patent it when I wanted to do this back in the early 90's, and combine it with genetic algorithms to evolve better operating systems.

The universal translator now sounds like another point where science meets fiction.
(found by way of Gizmodo)

Don't listen to these people. I certainly doubt that they ever contributed much to my education anyway.

Support these people anyway you can. They understand the machinations of the world.

And you have to wonder why the movie industry did it anyway.

August 22nd, 2002 Sad, sad sad... Lindows turns out to be a doze. All I can say is that OS X already does what they want to do, only better. OS X is the first commercial version of BSD, in my opinion. And much more user friendly. If I want an easy to use version of Linux I'll just download Red Hat. I lost some hope in Lindoze when they refused to recognize the Media Industry as being more evil than the BSA. Sad, sad, sad...

August 23rd, 2002 A droll product from radio shack: The TV PicShare.

August 26th, 2002 Thought I was done for the day, but I had to bring you these two: Cell phone hurling
(from Jim, who we should all shame into starting a blog)

Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments which came up as No. 1 in a google search for "microwave oven" (unquoted). I had to post it just for the site name. However, since my wife and I are moving into our first house, and are getting a new microwave to replace our ailing one... Now where did I put my argon?

A link to Law Blogs, for Kevin.

A very cool concept for a piecemeal pda.

An excellent article about fair use, and links that you can use to do something about it. Activists take on Hollywood cartel. Which is what they should be called, as in Drug, Mob, ...
(above from blogdex)

Thank you Ubersoft for this look at just how silly the copyright law has become.

August 27th, 2002 I'm coining a phrase: "Tuesday Retread". All of todays links are from blogdex.

One reason I blog is to find things like this: Satellite tracker finds goose in freezer.

And I always like to hear reinforcement for my own views: The Environmentalists Are Wrong

But not everyday can be an epiphany: Internet addicts surf on work time.

August 28th, 2002 I don't like Microsoft. However, I respect their business acumen. I have to applaud their marketing department for clipping Clippy.

Don't know if the link will still work, but Info week has a boo-boo.

Another internet oddity: Save Karyn

August 30th, 2002 First a Hooray! Jim has a blog! (I'll take down the mailto now dude.) Go, read, surf.

There seems to be support for the ideas presented in "The Environmentalists Are Wrong", since the PEOPLE of South Africa have just dissed Greenpeace. (Warning, the name of the award involves profanity!)

I was googling for some information on Heirloom plants and Heirloom apples came up near the top.

MSN had a little headline on some evidence that the US shot first at Pearl Harbor. Ever since I read Cryptonomicon I've been more interested in WWII. Not just the codes and technology, but also the places and general history. It probably doesn't hurt that both my Grandfathers served during the war, one even being in an early wave hitting the beach on D-Day.

I'm rehasing the 'dex... again... I know, I know, <whine>but they just have such cool stuff</whine>.
Music of the brain, is for my wife, she has considered doing research into the fields of the Cognitive Science and Music Theory. Although I'm also interested in Cog Sci (as the link shows) and Music, the study showing that Ignorance Is Bliss is more my style.