About Thoughts of a TechnoGeek: This is where I'll post my thoughts, interesting articles, or anything else I want to. If you don't like it, don't read it. David L Brenner my email Subscribe Links
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Thu, 17 Feb 2005
A couple of weeks back, I saw this article that was an interesting discussion about human evolution, neanderthals, stem-cell research and how they are all related. It is a fun read. It always stuns me that people still can't come to terms with Evolution even though many aspects of medicine are directly based on the fact that it's true. How else would it be possible to do medical research using non-human animals? Seriously. Sun, 29 Aug 2004
Over at Slashdot someone posted that there is a proposal for a contest to build components for a Space Elevator. That would be fucking awesome. I'm a big fan of the idea. I read this book about a year ago talking about the technical challenges, how to overcome them, and the economics of the project. It was very well thought out and convinced me that this could actually be done. The physics behind it are really cool. Wed, 11 Aug 2004
As a follow up to yesterday's entry about the X-Prize entry that crashed in Seattle, here is a story about Armadillo Aerospace's entry. They managed to destroy their rocket by running out of fuel. Ooops. I still maintain that this is very exciting. These rockets are being built for incredibly small amounts of money. Horray for the .com boom in the 90's to get these folks the capital for this type of effort. Tue, 10 Aug 2004
The old "Apple should have licensed MacOS and crushed Microsoft" bit of conventional wisdom is challenged in this article that was from Slashdot today. It is a very well thought out response and explains, in the author's opinion, why it wouldn't have happened this way. I can't say that I disagree with his logic. He makes a very well considered arguement and takes into account all of the history involved. I found it an interesting read. One of the interesting things that was not brought up for why Windows sucks so bad is that many of it's problems stem directly from the fact that they are on an open platform, so they need to support all of the fucked up peripherals, mother boards and other hardware that people decide to hook up to their machines. It is much harder to define software that supports all options. This is not to say that Microsoft couldn't do a much better job of this, but they in many respects do have a harder job than Apple. Having said that, Xerox has been the innovative force in the industry. Xerox could have been because they invented the GUI interface but since it didn't "put toner on paper" they didn't want to be in the market. They gave away the PC industry. They gave Apple the idea and permission to use the GUI and the mouse. Since then, Apple has been driving all of the really ground breaking work. Microsoft doesn't do innovative work, they just perfected the making of money from copying (imperfectly) other people's innovations. For stockholders, this may be enough.
The BBC has news about TiVo. They apparently have lowered the price of their hardware unit in order to get more users. They still charge the same for a subscription, but you can now purchase the unit itself for $100. TiVo is the best thing that has happened to TV since I can remember. It has completely changed the way I watch television. I no longer run my life around when shows are on. To a large extent I don't even know when things are on. A huge change is that I watch everything without commercials. This means that even if I watched all the same shows that I used to (which I don't) it would take significantly less time. The best part is that I don't watch nearly as many shows, and because I don't need to know when things are on, I watch only the good stuff. I found that because I didn't need to watch things in some semblance of order, like you do with a VCR tape, I accumulated a bunch of episodes of shows that I really didn't want to watch any more. So I just quit recording them. This was much simpler than dealing with a VCR tape. The other thing that has happened is G & I can watch the shows together, when ever we want. It has become part of our morning routine on Saturday and/or Sunday morning to lay on the couch and watch MythBusters together, even though we record it in the middle of the week at something like 1am! If you don't own a TiVo. I would suggest getting one. Even if you don't purchase the service, it is a lot better than a VCR. You need to work harder and you can't search the listings, but the 0.5 hour buffer for live TV is worth it. You don't need to miss anything if the phone rings. And for $100, its as cheap as a decent VCR. The only difference is you can't watch tapes... but why would you need to when you have a DVD player. :-)
This article at spacetoday.net mentioned the fate of one of two failed test launches for X-Prize entries this week. This is one of the smaller contenders and is not anywhere as well funded as the SpaceShipOne team. Its great to see more than just the big contenders entering the contest. I don't think they will win, but they are getting into the spirit of things and are continuing to demonstrate you don't need to be a Government funded program to succeed. What would be really cool is if one of these teams suceeded in winning the prize. That would really show NASA what they seem to have lost. Regardless of who wins, I want this to make it possible for me to get into space. I've been reading science-fiction older than I am my whole life, and I'm ready for it to be science-fact. Mon, 09 Aug 2004
Every once in a while, you find an article that pulls a bunch of data together in interesting ways. This one is very interesting. It talks about a view on Apple's strategy around the iPod and DRM content. The basic premise was intiated by the news that Apple is bent that Real reverse engineered the iPod in order to put their copy proctection software in place. This would allow iPod users to listen to content that is copy protected by someone other than Apple. This would generate more iPod sales, which is good, but the article goes into why they are so worried about other DRM software. It is very long, but it is worth reading. I think there is a very good summary of the multimedia industry, the motivations, the history, and a very plausible hypothosis. Sat, 17 Jul 2004
I don't normally post the results of these quizes but I thought this one was particularly appropriate. It's titles Which Heinlein book should you have been a character in?  You belong in The Man Who Sold The Moon. You are a dreamer. People don't understand you your calling, and often get in your way. Frontiers call to you, and you will breathe your last breath as you gaze back from a distant horizon. Which Heinlein Book Should You Have Been A Character In? brought to you by Quizilla Wed, 14 Jul 2004
I just found out that 97X came back online yesterday morning. This is too cool. I was sad when it went offline earlier in the year. The last transmission was very depressing. I'd been listening to that station for the better part of my life and it was gone. It was the only station worth listening to. The replacement for 97.7 on the airwaves is better than most other stations in the area, but it is pretty close to a knockoff of 97.3. They play cool stuff, but more than anything, they play the corporate "hard" rock. It gets old. The new online-only version is really awesome. The bandwidth is very low, but it is good enough. |