Who wants to own
an aircraft carrier? Possibly the best geek gift ever, if you're Bill Gates or someone. Note especially the *category*...
posted by baylink
on Dec 29, 2003 -
20 comments
Last week, we got news of new.net, who decided to make a big splash in the alternative Top Level Domain (.com/.net/etc) game, with some moronic, un-coordinated with the other people scheme including some "patented new technology" that amounted to 'set new.net as the search path in your DNS setup'.
Well, apparently they've started a trend, as
now there's another player in the market...
posted by baylink
on Mar 8, 2001 -
1 comment
See? Y'all sent me off to TVTechnology, and I found something interesting... Remember a couple years ago -- The Day The Pagers Died? They died because Galaxy 4 fell over, which in turn was because its Satellite Control Processors broke.
Both of them.
4 other birds are down one processor; a total of 25 are in danger -- all built on the Hughes HM-601 satellite 'bus'. What is it we always say about genetic diversity being good? Wouldn't you hate to be the engineer on the hook for *this* 12 billion dollars?
posted by baylink
on Jan 29, 2001 -
7 comments
A while back, you'll remember, a professor from Princeton cracked the SDMI watermark, but couldn't publish [
MeFi search], and weren't awarded the prize because they wouldn't NDA. Well, a French team has also cracked it, and not being bound by the US DMCA,
they've published. Good thing? Or bad?
posted by baylink
on Jan 23, 2001 -
3 comments
FLASH: Iridium Saved. I don't get to write too many
two word flashes...
The DoD, specifically DISA, signed an 11th inning 2 year $72 million contract with Iridium LLC, saving them from splashing the constellation. [more...]
posted by baylink
on Dec 7, 2000 -
21 comments
Carnivore sucks. You think so, but did you know that Steve Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Peter G Neumann and Gene Spafford agree with you? Along with David Farber from UPenn, they were asked to identify specific areas of concern by the Chief Scientist at Justice for review by a team from the Illinois Institute or Technology's Research Insititute. They weren't real impressed with the quality of the report that team returned.
posted by baylink
on Dec 5, 2000 -
2 comments
Greenspun on Neilsen. Damn if that don't sound like the Thrilla in Manila. I just stumbled over this piece on ArsDigita's Systems Journal site, formerly Web Tools Review. If you enjoy watching one so-called expert pick apart the opinions of another, you'll probably enjoy this.
If you're sick unto death of both of them... skip it.
posted by baylink
on Nov 29, 2000 -
1 comment
<drool> Oh boy, do I want one of these. Unless, of course, the idiots at Kyocera/Qualcomm blew it again, and *didn't* make it capable of using CDPD to get to the Internet. [calls, gets wrong answer, screeches loudly enough that everyone on MeFi can hear...]
posted by baylink
on Nov 29, 2000 -
17 comments
Some of us made jokes in the days after the election about "Gore stealing votes from Nader", to ape those who said the reverse. But we didn't read
the Libertarian Party's press release, wherein they said the same thing, and they were both serious, and believable. [quote inside]
posted by baylink
on Nov 19, 2000 -
5 comments
When asked, Apple said "Of course we're going to sue
them, what sort of silly question is that?"
posted by baylink
on Nov 18, 2000 -
19 comments
Are taxonomai copyrightable? This topic isn't new; West Publishing stole their legal referencing system from the government, then copyrighted it and successfully sued a couple people out of business. But should it be possible? [Hint: Hell, no!]
posted by baylink
on Oct 26, 2000 -
7 comments
FLASH! Sanity breaks out in Congress! Doesn't sound like grandstanding to me; sounds like these guys have a clue on software and business method patents. "Healthy skepticism" sound like real friendly words to me.
posted by baylink
on Oct 4, 2000 -
0 comments
Convergence. Dave Barry does a bang-up job tying together the recent threads about Harry Potter and Stephen King.
posted by baylink
on Aug 11, 2000 -
4 comments
Excellent. Massachusetts judge allows lesbian couple's names on original birth certificate. One supplied the egg, the other, the womb. The sperm were anonymous.
posted by baylink
on Aug 11, 2000 -
0 comments
Ok, here comes the firestorm.
Joel on Software has some very good things to say -- though, like most user-interface-design mavens, I think about 50% of the time that he hasn't comprehended what the problem really is... but in
this piece, he's wrong.
posted by baylink
on Aug 7, 2000 -
17 comments
Sometimes, I just want to throw my hands up in the air, cry out in disgust, and give up. Apparently,
these people in Britain have never heard of
NTP, the Network Time Protocol, clients for which have been available for Win9X for *years*... and which *works*
Can we *stop* inventing the wheel, now? It rolls, already.
posted by baylink
on Aug 4, 2000 -
2 comments
The flip side of the DejaNews linking fracas. Here's a story about YellowBrix (love that name) who supply a news feed with appropriate words pre-hotlinked to your products. This isn't exactly the same problem as the Deja thing for a couple reasons, but the original newswriters *still* didn't know their words would be linked. It's not as bad... but is it acceptable?
posted by baylink
on Aug 3, 2000 -
4 comments
And now, here's something we hope you'll really like...
Californian David Simon decided that It Would Be Nice If you could use the Internet like your VCR. The MPAA and the Studios disagreed.
Is this guy crazy? Or crazy like a fox?
posted by baylink
on Jun 27, 2000 -
8 comments
