Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out - New York Times: "Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out."

Common virus kills cancer, study finds: "'Our results suggest that adeno-associated virus type 2, which infects the majority of the population but has no known ill effects, kills multiple types of cancer cells yet has no effect on healthy cells,' said Craig Meyers, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Penn State College of Medicine in Pennsylvania."

IT Manager's Journal | Apple drops single-processor Power Macs: "Apple did not cite specific reasons for the decision." Firesale!

local6.com - News - Researcher: 'Killer Bees' May Spread Throughout Fla.: "Glenn Hall said African honeybees have been found and stopped at ports in Jacksonville, Miami and Tampa since 1987." People are "importing" bees? Why?

Patent Law Harmonization: "'We are very disappointed with the outcome of last week's Standing Committee meeting,' noted Jon Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property." Well, in that case, I'm thrilled about it!

Microsoft Puts Roadblock in Front of Open-Sourcing Avalon and Indigo: "The Mono group, led by the famous open-source programmer Miguel de Icaza, has been successful in bringing the most important parts of .Net Linux and Mac OS X developers. Since Mono is open-source, it can be moved to other operating systems as well." Wasn't this rather predictable? Seems so to me.

Prank Against Tom Cruise Leads to Arrest - Yahoo! News Flash: Jerk calls jerk a jerk.

The Intellectual ActivistHmmmm

Microsoft Begs To Be Hacked - Yahoo! News: "The engineers realized that hackers are no longer geeky teenagers with nothing better to do, but educated and seasoned technology professionals just like themselves. Likewise, security researchers gained a better perspective of the processes Microsoft engineers must go through when faced with vulnerabilities divulged by the hacking community."

iowahawk: From the Desk of Senator Dick

GAO gives US.gov D- for security | The Register Hmmmm. Sounds like things have improved!

The Proceedings of the Friesian School

Mars Rover looks back at where it got stuck And I'm wondering why it got stuck there. It looks no different from ground it is easily rolling over now. To me the Martian surface looks like my end-tables. Dust on top of dust. Not sand, but dust. Packed tightly in some places, fluffed up in others. The distance between the top of the dust down to solid ground could be inches in some places, or yards in others. Maybe these deep dust areas are going to be harder to drive over. Like my end-tables.

The View From 1776

Ian Murdock?s Weblog - Debian: Where should wewe should go from here? My idea is that Debian should CRUSH APPLE! and CRUSH STEVE JOBS! They must be CRUSHED NOW! Ooops, sorry. I'm still steamed over this whole Apple thing.

Socialism: The Price of Idiot Proofing America by JB Williams - political writer.: "Overseeing our nation's security interests, our infrastructure, protecting and defending our Constitution and way of life, these things do not demand the full-time attention of our elected officials, nor would they suck the lifeblood from an enormously successful capitalist society. Idiot proofing America: Now that's a full-time job and there is no end in sight to the expense of such a proposition."

Sand-box posting... Read in a blog somewhere: "How do you convince a CTO to throw out a DOS app that's working just fine? I haven't found the trick yet." Why on earth would you want to? --- The answer to all such questions is found in Monty Python sketches: Devious: (reading script) 'The vicar sits'. (The vicar sits.) Vicar: It's about this letter you sent me regarding my insurance claim. Devious: Oh, yeah, yeah - well, you see, it's just that we're not... as yet ... totally satisfied with the grounds of your claim. Vicar: But it says something about filling my mouth in with cement. Devious: Oh well, that's just insurance jargon, you know. Vicar: But my car was hit by a lorry while standing in the garage and you refuse to pay my claim. Devious: (rising and crossing to a filing cabinet) Oh well, Reverend Morrison ... in your policy... in your policy... (he opens the drawer of the filing cabins and takes out a shabby old sports jacket; he feels in the pocket and pulls out a crumpled dog-eared piece of paper then puts the coat back and shuts the ftling cabinet).... here we are. It states quite clearly that no claim you make will be paid. Vicar: Oh dear. Devious: You see, you unfortunately plumped for our 'Neverpay' policy, which, you know, if you never claim is very worthwhile ... but you had to claim, and, well, there it is. Vicar: Oh dear, oh dear. Devious: Still, never mind - could be worse. How's the nude lady? Vicar: Oh, she's fine. (he begins to sob) Devious: Look... Rev... I hate to see a man cry, so shove off out' the office. There's a good chap. --- It's hard to find instances when Microsoft risks its bottom line for the welfare of their customers. Oh they give to charities, donate software to libraries and third world counties to get them hooked too, but the notion that "Hey, we have to support DOS ANYWAY, lets just give it away to our old customers that don't need anything else." That ain't gonna happen until (if) Apple or Linux starts to pose a real threat. What I think is more likely to happen is that Microsoft and Intel will take the whole US tech industry down the tubes with themselves. The "bottom" of the food chain is already gone in case you haven't noticed. We don't actually MAKE anything here any more and with fewer and fewer of even the design decisions being made here it's only a matter of time before someone comes up with that $200 machine that Balmer wishes for. Like so many of the gadgets that you have to go to Tokyo to buy, we'll have to clamor for that new laptop with some unheard of processor in it running something that sort of looks like Windows, or Linux or OS X, but it boots out of ROM and is totally impervious to viruses, has connectivity, word processing, the whole works, and will probably let you install another operating system on it too, but why bother, as long as it will do what you are doing, and boot up so fast, and rarely crash, and if you drop it, you get another one, because all your important stuff is on the net anyway. Let's not quibble about inovation. We all know that Microsoft doesn't do the sort of innovation that billions of dollars pay for. Why? Because it's too risky and even when it pays off it doesn't have the profit margins that software does. I'd like to see MS dump tons of money into fabrication research, hardware design, and the sort of things that IBM Research Division still does (even with a decreasing portion of the pie that they have). Hopefully they will hit enough jackpots to keep us in the game. But the future of American technology is for sure not writing software for the rest of the world. Now run along, I hate to see a fading monopolist cry.

Ex-Microsophist My guess is that Microsoft can't REALLY take critisism, at least REAL critisism, from its employees. Empty jabs of the Scoble variety followed by heapings of praise, THAT they can deal with.

CPSC Staff Powered Scooter Study Shows Just 4 in 10 Victims Wore Helmets I call upon the US govermint to just get it over with and require everyone to wear a helmet ALL the time. Maybe they should just be attached at birth. Oh, and knee and elbow pads too. Member of congress are obviously exempted. They must wear Mickey Mouse ears instead.

Should I Be Spanked?: "I won't even broach the issue of whether anyone would suggest a male columnist be 'spanked' for daring to rage against the Microsoft marketing machine. That's the subject for another column. Or 20. Or 50."... "Our takeaway from all of this? Microsoft and its fan boys/girls should stop confusing the message with the messenger. Instead of spanking the folks who are setting the record straight about Longhorn, why not cast blame on those who confused the messaging in the first place?" Sexist? Homophobes? Keep up the good work MS. Time for Balmer to issue some more "clarifying" memos.