Kevin Lynch has started a weblog. Kevin is one of the few people who can lay claim to be a true software designer or architect. A Brunel of software design.
Read More
Jack Schofield writes about Dell’s latest attempt to ditch the floppy drive. A five year old article from CNET on a previous attempt at standardization gives some insight as to the problem: New floppy drive announced – Tech News – CNET.com “The other problem is history. Weilerstein says that when the 3.5-inch floppy became a standard years ago, there were only two companies of significance in the PC industry–Apple and IBM. After these two companies adopted the drives, everyone else followed.” The mere existence of the anachronistic floppy drive is a testament to a fragmented industry that cannot agree on standards. The only thing approaching a standard to compare with the floppy is the CD-R which is an inconvenient form factor and scores low on ease of use.
Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors Take 10 minutes and read this in full.
Today was supposed to be the ‘Adlai Stevenson’ moment when Powell showed conclusive evidence to the UN about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, this was no Adlai Stevenson revelation of deception, rather a series of fragmentary evidence which has done nothing to change the mind of those who are against the war, France in particular. If it is obvious that Iraq has a weapons of mass destruction program, why dilute the argument with spin about Al Qaeda? “There must be a temptation for London and Washington to exaggerate intelligence that fits their view of Iraq. That is not to say they have given in to it. But perceived exaggeration or spin would be counter-productive.” BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Analysis: Danger of spinning Iraqi case
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music producer held in fatal shooting
Imagine looking at earth from space. For the last few million years nothing happens, then in 1969, a small blip as a tiny spec leaves earth, touches the moon and then, blip, back again. This happens a few more times and then nothing. People complain about costly things such as space exploration and high energy physics experiments. Why spend money on these things when we have issues like poverty? This argument is nihilistic. Why do we build monuments, paint, make films, write music, when there is still poverty all around? There is enough food in the world; poverty is the result of politics, exploitation and war above all. Human space exploration is one of our greatest achievements. To try and rationalize unmanned space flight on the grounds of practicality misses the point, it is like saying that the Sistine Chapel would be brighter if it were whitewashed. As a byproduct,…
Jon Udell writes about the architecture of data rich spaces Modernism removed decoration from architecture. Or so the perceived wisdom goes. But few could argue that Times square, triumphantly modern, is not decorative. Robert Venturi, the father of post modernist architectural criticism used Vegas as his model but the decoration here was a throwback, Egyptian or Classical pastiche. What is going on at times square is something new, its influences are from Archigram to Bladerunner. More importantly it is a continuation of what has happened throughout the capitalist world, where neon and billboard advertising have kept decoration alive and well. The difference is that the advertising is part of the architecture and now, part of the network. Media architecture is just beginning.
Sony are about to release the gadget I have been dreaming of. The size of an iPod (that great form factor that fits in your pocket), the ‘PacketPC is basically a WiFi enabled portable bootable drive. Plug this into any computer and use it as if it were your own. With 60GB internal storage this can hold most of your applications and important data. Lets face it, although many people use more disk space, the critical stuff like email and applications account for far less space than replaceable items such as MP3’s. The PacketPC has a screen and Palm Pilot style text entry capability, but is primarily designed for read only (I always used to update my palm from scraps of paper when I had it connected to my PC anyway). The built in GPS chip will make use of location aware mapping services and entertainment/travel guides. Without hooking up…
Doc asks if Google takes advantage of RSS to aggregate news and if not why not. The answer is no, and for two reasons: 1. Few RSS feeds contain the full text of the article and a search engine needs this to index. Sure, you could harvest the headlines and then index the site URL for the full text, some sites do this, but this approach is not reliable. Headlines are very dynamic and you increase the risk of synch. problems if you pull headlines from one URL and pull content from another. Google scrapes headlines and indexes articles from the same URL. With RSS 1.0 and 2.0 it is possible to put full text in an item, but commercial publishers are loathed to do this, and even webloggers like myself like the traffic to the original article, where I can deliver the message as I want it to be…
Peter O’Toole turns down an honorary Oscar. “O’Toole sent a handwritten open letter to the academy saying he was ‘enchanted’ by the gesture, but insisting that he is ‘still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright.’” O’Toole certainly has a way with words. A friend at high school dated Peter O’Toole’s daughter. O’Toole had a nickname for him: ‘the C**t.’, he would open the door and wave him in with ‘ah, its the C**t’. United Press International: Peter O’Toole: Not time for Honorary Oscar
Meg Hourihan: “I tried to watch the State of the Union last night. I even thought about blogging as it happened, but I realized the post would be a reactionary, emotional tirade short on insight and reflection.” Nah Meg, I’d be listening, and isn’t the ‘a reactionary, emotional tirade short on insight and reflection’ what we normally get from the other side of the fence. megnut.com – a weblog by meg hourihan
via Kevin Werbach, who is blogging like he’s eaten a whole bag of those coffee bean candies today. Tony Perkins, publisher of Red Herring has launched a commercial weblog, ‘Always On’. It looks good, but I am already irritated about the spin. This is an online magazine with permalinks. If people milk the whole commercial weblog thing for magazine sites they will only accelerate a weblog backlash. AlwaysOn Home