2003 October

Oct 31 2003
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Why Microsoft would be interested in Google

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

Microsoft owns the desktop. At one time it owned the command line, the C:\ prompt, and now it must own the command line that connects away from the desktop to the Internet. This is the core of what Microsoft is about, its unstated mission statement, and this was why Microsoft had to react quickly to the threat posed by Netscape. Google owns the command line to the Internet and Microsoft cannot afford to concede that to them. That is why they may indeed have explored buying Google. Even if the reports of this are not true, as is probably the case, the rumor itself signals a warning shot that Google are on Microsoft’s turf and so perhaps lowers the price that they could buy them for post IPO. Google is set to battle two giants, Microsoft and Yahoo. Google have the brand, Microsoft the ability to put search directly into…

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Oct 30 2003
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The big bang was a whimper

Posted by | science | No Comments

Big Bang was more of a hum “Analysis of radiation left over from the dawn of creation, estimated to be some 14 billion years ago, found the sound generated from shifting matter made a noise like ‘a large jet plane flying 100ft above your house in the middle of the night’… The professor had to scale the frequencies billions of times to make them audible – the frequency of sound waves at that time being too low to be heard.” ” 1. Do jet planes sound different at night? 2. Do jet planes that have their frequency shrunk billions of times sound like jet planes? 3. Do jet planes that are flying in a vacuum or a medium other than air, sound like jet planes?

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Oct 30 2003
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Ancestral maps of the US

Posted by | online genealogy | No Comments

The Land Management Information Center has compiled a series of ancestry maps showing ethnic/national heritage for each US county, based upon data from the 1990 census. via Metafilter via Crabwalk. (Scroll down to “ancestry groups in the United Sates”) The data is not always what you would expect. For instance, the highest concentration of people of English decent is in Utah, and Irish ancestry is highest along the east side of the Mississippi.

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Oct 29 2003
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The origin of one nation under god

Posted by | religion | No Comments

Letter From America, The pledge of allegiance “…such was the fear of the time that from Moscow to Asia “godless Communism” might prevail. President Eisenhower, many public men and women, used that phrase over and over. And it was by executive order on Flag Day 1954 that President Eisenhower ordered the pledge now to read ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag’ and so on, ‘and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible.’”

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Oct 29 2003
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Fairly unbalanced Fox sues itself

Posted by | media | No Comments

Fox’s Simpsons show ran a joke banner at the bottom of the screen: The cartoon ticker read: “Pointless news crawls up 37 per cent … Do Democrats cause cancer? Find out at foxnews.com … Rupert Murdoch: Terrific dancer … Dow down 5000 points … Study: 92 per cent of Democrats are gay … JFK posthumously joins Republican Party … Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple …” But Fox news didn’t get the joke and therefore Fox threatened to sue itself. Doh! Murdoch’s Fox News in a spin over ‘The Simpsons’ lawsuit

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Oct 29 2003
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Why live in the UK?

Posted by | uk | No Comments

The main reason I don’t feel I need to live in the UK is that I can listen to BBC radio 4 all day via the excellent BBC radio website. Currently listening to BBC radio 4 piece on Cuba: “Havana must be a real student town, because there are pictures of Che Guevara everywhere”

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Oct 28 2003
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How not to end an IM conversation

Posted by | diary | No Comments

Why is it that in IM conversations some people stick to you like flies to the proverbial crap? New to IM Person: OK we’ll meet there Other Person: Cool, bye. [conversation is over in theory] New Person: Cheers see you then – its at 6 right?[nope, its started again. Rule 1. do not end with a question] Other Person: Yup, Cheers New Person: what do you think of Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia? [it was over, you should have stopped and you’ve started again. Rule 2. look for hints] Other Person: I think its total bollocks, gotta run New Person: Yeah I guess so, BTW, did we say 6?[GOTO line 2340, please sod off now. Rule 3. don’t ever read philosophers, they can’t write and they create more questions than people can answer – a bit like some people on IM] etc, etc.

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Oct 27 2003
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Atom should be XQuery

Posted by | technology | No Comments

Sam Ruby seems to be having some interesting ideas about how XPath/XQuery fits into the whole Atom equation. I must admit I’m not fully up on what’s happening here (if someone could give me a brief digest I’d be eternally grateful). However, my 2c: An XML database is the logical backend for a weblog publishing or aggregation system. Whatever the back end, XQuery is the logical front end for rendering weblog style content metadata – as XHTML, ATOM, RSS whatever – it can do so on the fly. If you have a weblog application layer written in XQuery it is human readable and extensible. Plus you can have an entire weblog style content management system written in XQuery. If you have XQuery you don’t need SOAP or XML-RPC – or Atom for that matter, unless… the Atom API can be expressed in XQuery directly. So my question is, can Atom,…

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Oct 26 2003
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Intel chips are ten times the price of Apple’s IBM processors

Posted by | technology | No Comments
Low-Cost Supercomputer Is Among World's Fastest It is common wisdom these days that because of economies of scale Linux running on cheap Intel boxes is much cheaper than dot com era Sun Hardware. The Big Mac, clustered Apple G5 supercomputer is the world's third fastest and makes government supercomputers look like a colossal waste of money. But it uses chips that are a tenth of the price of equivalent Intel processors, so doesn't this make those Intel boxes look like a waste of money? Does OS X on PowerPC 970 mean that Apple has a real chance at the server market? "The IBM processors in Apple's G5 Macs cost one-tenth as much as Intel's Itanium 2 processor and also less than a 64-bit chip from Advanced Micro Devices"
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