Blog to the wall

2003-05-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

Phil Windley (who I'm going to have to add to my aggregator) reports that he has a feed for his class syllabus either daily, weekly or monthly depending on his student's needs. Now I know this is a college setting and that logistically there may not be a need for this in a k-12 setting. I guess I'm still amazed at the concept of supplying the information in a number of forms to a larger audience in they need or desire it.

In a meeting yesterday the supervisors were lamenting the fact that we have a couple of dozen committees running here dealing with "critical issues" that rarely communicate with each other. When I proposed the solution of creating a Committee Web log where minutes and notes for all the committees were posted that could be sortable by department AND, just for the heck of it, could also be pushed to individuals via e-mail if they so desired, everyone was like "We can do that?" and then "When can we do that?" It's on the list for May 20, the day after the release of the new and improved Frontier/Manila product. [weblogged News][[it's interesting one ofthe things that is in process is the integration of the Hotlyn plugin with the rss feeds...]]

2003-05-08T21:48:00.000-07:00

Starry Night Backyard

Product Description:

Starry Night Backyard is perfect for learning your way around the night sky. With it you can view the sky as it will appear from your very backyard or from any planet. See the sky tonight, the sky last week, next year, or when you were born. Have Starry Night Backyard automatically identify constellations as you look at them. Use Starry Night's exclusive LiveSky.com connection to bring up more information from the web on thousands of objects.

2001-05-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

BLOGGER If you're one of the people who received the dreaded input/output stream error when publishing with Blogger, please try publishing again. I believe we have fixed it.

Am I testing.... Yes, back? maybe

2001-03-13T09:15:00.000-08:00

News 'n Stuff And now a word from the Education President:

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning."

"You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."

"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis."

2001-02-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

test

2001-01-22T18:07:00.000-08:00

sam -the dad's Radio Blog Experimenting with a new blogging solution. See current ramblings at the above link....

2001-01-18T18:38:00.000-08:00

ZDNet: News: Filter THIS! Librarians to sue over new law The American Library Association has decided to file a lawsuit challenging a new federal law that would require filtering in public schools and libraries.

The ALA's executive board voted on Wednesday to pursue legal action and is still working out the details of the brief and the timing of the filing.

2001-01-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

Joel on Software Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef Mystery: why is it that some of the biggest IT consulting companies in the world do the worst work?

Why is it that the cool upstart consulting companies start out with a string of spectacular successes, meteoric growth, and rapidly degenerate into mediocrity?

Read this if you are starting out

2001-01-18T14:55:00.000-08:00

Digital Theatre [dtheatre.com] - Bill Clinton asked to star in next Bond film According to Sky News, Bond's producers have offered the US President a cameo role when he leaves office in a few days' time.

2001-01-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

iWon - News Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White testified on Thursday that John Ashcroft, the nominee for U.S. attorney general, distorted White's record when he blocked the Missouri man's appointment to the federal bench.

"I believe that (former) Sen. John Ashcroft seriously distorted my record," White told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee which is considering Ashcroft's appointment.

2001-01-18T08:42:00.000-08:00

New Scientist: A clear winner IN THE movie Superman, the Man of Steel discovers why he was jettisoned from the doomed planet Krypton by watching a video message stored on a transparent crystal. Now, more than 20 years on, Japanese scientists are working on a revolutionary new semiconductor that might one day be turned into just this kind of gadget.

2001-01-18T07:49:00.000-08:00

Space.app: virtual workspaces for Mac OS X Space.app provides "virtual workspaces" to help you to organize your use of the desktop. When you open Space.app, any non-hidden applications will be added to the first desktop. Switch to other desktops by clicking on the corresponding buttons. Any applications that you open or switch to (e.g. using the dock or command-tab) will become associated with the desktop that you are using.

cool for X

2001-01-17T09:17:00.000-08:00

blog*spot Blog*Spot is a free hosting service for Blogger?-powered blogs.

Blogger is the easy (non-tedious!) way to update your home page. Keeping a journal, what's new page, weblog, project page, or any other type of frequently updated web page with Blogger is as easy as typing in a form.

2001-01-17T08:23:00.000-08:00

MacWEEK: Microsoft on the Mac While Microsoft has frequently been cast in the role of Apple Computer's archrival, its productivity applications remain vital to the Mac platform -- and a lucrative business for Microsoft itself.

After describing his company's plans to bring its Office suite to Apple's next-generation Mac OS X during a speech at Macworld Expo here (see "Microsoft keynote highlights Outlook and Office"), Kevin Browne, manager of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, discussed the past, present and future of the company's Mac operation with ZDNet News.

2001-01-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

Fight Rages Over Digital Rights Critics say content owners and digital rights management companies are discouraging the growth of digital music by taking liberties with their control of copyrights.

2001-01-16T19:59:00.000-08:00

Schoolhouse Rot Schoolhouse Rot

New research is showing that soft drinks are even worse for kids' health than previously thought. So why are a growing number of public schools signing deals giving soda companies exclusive marketing rights to their students?

2001-01-16T19:31:00.000-08:00

NewsIsFree.com - free news personalized on your desktop Welcome to your personal newsportal!
This site collects headlines from 1143 sources around the web and lets you manage them in new ways.

The appearance of the site is very customizable (skins, language, pages etc.).

Please register (free) to receive full access to all news sources and start custumizing the site to fit your needs!

2001-01-15T21:15:00.000-08:00

index Windows is a good system if you live somewhere with 24-hour technical support, he said. But if you live in the bush, you want a computer you can troubleshoot.

2001-01-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

The News-Gazette Online: A stellar discovery Bob Holmes never got to study astronomy in college, but that didn't stop him from spotting a supernova, the explosion of a dying star.
???He spent an inordinately cold December with a 16-inch telescope east of Charleston taking star images with a digital camera. It paid off Dec. 17, with a supernova spotting that has been confirmed by Harvard astronomers and designated "2000fn" by the International Astronomical Union.

2001-01-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

Yahoo - Company to put ads on first down stripe at Super Bowl A small company that made big news last year by inserting digital ads on television shows is at it again with plans to put ads on the superimposed yellow first down stripe in foreign broadcasts of the Super Bowl on Jan. 28.

2001-01-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

Pulse of the Planet @ nationalgeographic.com

2001-01-15T15:57:00.000-08:00

TopoZone - The Web's Topographic Map The TopoZone is the Web's center for recreational and professional topographic map users. We've worked with the USGS to create the Web's first interactive topo map of the entire United States.

2001-01-15T09:50:00.000-08:00

The Nando Times: Science textbooks flunk accuracy test, study finds Twelve of the most popular science textbooks used at middle schools across the country are riddled with errors, a new study has found.

Researchers compiled 500 pages of errors, ranging from maps depicting the equator passing through the southern United States to a photo of singer Linda Ronstadt labeled as a silicon crystal.
and again....

2001-01-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

ABCNEWS.com : Science Textbooks Full of Errors The errors range from maps depicting the equator passing through the southern United States to a photo of singer Linda Ronstadt labeled as a silicon crystal.

None of the 12 textbooks has an acceptable level of accuracy, according to N.C. State physics professor John Hubisz, the report's author.

"These are terrible books, and they're probably a strong component of why we do so poorly in science," on standardized tests, he said.

"The books have a very large number of errors, many irrelevant photographs, complicated illustrations, experiments that could not possibly work, and drawings that represented impossible situations."
is this different from any text book, mike and I found tons of errors in our science books, heck we used them to have the students find the mistakes. And my math teachers edition had so many errors that my students thought I was at a disadvantage.

2001-01-15T09:46:00.000-08:00

EPAA Vol. 9 No. 2 Goodson & Foote: Testing Times--A School Case Study A highly successful, innovative and creative alternative to traditional education is confronted by the demands of contemporary standardized accountability. The account here is a chronicle of the resistance of a particular school, the Durant School, to the global changes that would destroy its local ecology?a school whose fight against the imposition of state standards and mandated tests has been a fight to preserve its integrity, its mission, and its autonomy.

2001-01-15T09:03:00.000-08:00

Cache at the End of His Rainbow Google's search engine may be good for searches, but it's useful in other ways, too.

Just ask Jave Savin, a San Francisco programmer who recently lost an entire website -- and three years' hard work -- but found a copy of his entire site in Google's online archive.

2001-01-14T19:31:00.000-08:00

MacWEEK: Reality distortion is optional
From a network manager's perspective, Tuesday's Macworld keynote was a mixed bag. The new products are all good. We finally see the Power Mac G4 go past 500MHz, thanks to the new MPC 7450 CPU, with four Altivec units, more integer units and so on. But for my purposes, the CPU isn't the cool part of the new machines. These towers also have 133MHz buses, and four PCI slots, and finally, 4x AGP capabilities. And Apple announced a redesign of its PCI components that gives the PCI system better throughput. For the network manager, this means that servers speed up all the way around, not just in CPU-intensive areas. So you get better performance on external RAID arrays, because the PCI card connecting your box to that array can pump data at a higher rate, and video-intensive tasks will also have more bandwidth. Jobs also announced that the only multiprocessing model will be the 533MHz configuration, due to availability constraints on the 667MHz and 733MHz chips.

2001-01-14T19:30:00.000-08:00

Jobs Tells It Like It Is In fact, fans at this year's Macworld were more optimistic than any in recent memory. Many Macophiles expect to see an avalanche of amazing new technology in the coming year, especially fantastic new software. And they expect to see things get better very quickly

2001-01-14T13:26:00.000-08:00

CNET.com - News - Enterprise Computing - Netscape looks to Apple technology That's just one of many applications for the Meta Content Format (MCF), a technology originally developed by Apple Computer but for which Netscape is gradually becoming the key advocate. Netscape has already hired away one of the chief architects behind MCF from Apple, Ramanathan Guha, and earlier this month the company submitted the technology to the World Wide Web Consortium, the arbiter of Web standards

2001-01-13T09:55:00.000-08:00

History of Mathematics The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

2001-01-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

PC World.com | Wireless Sound for Your MP3s Turtle Beach, a popular purveyor of sound cards, has a cool solution in its $139 Sonic Link sender and receiver system, which can transmit sounds from your PC over radio frequencies to any standard audio receiver. With the included AudioStation 4 Digital Music & Media Control Center software and 2.4-GHz universal remote, you have the tools to navigate through MP3, WMA, or .wav file playlists, even if you're several rooms away from your computer.

2001-01-12T21:32:00.000-08:00

APOD: 2001 January 12 - NGC 1410/1409: Intergalactic Pipeline These two galaxies are interacting in a surprising way, connected by a "pipeline" of obscuring material that runs between them over 20,000 light-years of intergalactic space

2001-01-12T17:38:00.000-08:00

mcdonalds trivia and facts The second kosher McDonald's to open in the world was in Raanana Israel after the one in Mivaseres Zion. I think there are only two others: Rechovos, Israel and Buenos Aires

2001-01-12T17:36:00.001-08:00

The Complete Bushisms - Updated frequently. by Jacob Weisberg The Complete Bushisms

2001-01-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

Bushism of the Day by Jacob Weisberg "I want it to be said that the Bush administration was a results-oriented administration, because I believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that's responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be--a more literate country and a hopefuller country."--Washington, D.C., Jan. 11, 2001

2001-01-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush or Chimpanzee? Welcome to the "George W. Bush or Chimpanzee" webpage. This is a little project I decided to start once I realized how much George W. Bush looks like a chimpanzee. I'm not a member of any political party, and I have nothing in particular against the man. I just think he kind of looks like a chimpanzee

2001-01-12T17:31:00.000-08:00

Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good - 01.01 (Part Two) A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found in a Burger King strawberry milk shake, contains the following ingredients: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.

2001-01-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good - 01.01 The taste of a french fry is largely determined by the cooking oil. For decades McDonald's cooked its french fries in a mixture of about seven percent cottonseed oil and 93 percent beef tallow. The mixture gave the fries their unique flavor -- and more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald's hamburge

2001-01-11T15:23:00.000-08:00

Sanity Test The following test will provide you with an evaluation of your sanity

I was 61.8181818181818 insane

2001-01-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary Airline Cartel

The Bush administration will undoubtedly look kindly on American Airlines' buyout of TWA and some of US Airways' assets (AP), but the deal would be a giant ripoff of the traveling public.

Part of this deal, if you look closely, is to give cover for United Airlines' buyout of the rest of US Airways. Guess what that suggests?

The bottom line is simple. The U.S. airline industry is settling into a cartel. When this is all over, barring successful intervention by other parties, we'll have three major airlines and a few smaller, regional carriers. That's it. If you believe this will spur competition or be good for consumers you are indulging in the most wishful kind of thinking.

2001-01-09T18:49:00.000-08:00

CNN, other news organizations back Florida ballot inventory - January 9, 2001 A coalition of large news organizations, including CNN, has retained a nonprofit research firm to conduct an inventory of Florida's uncounted presidential ballots, Tom Johnson, chairman and CEO of the CNN News Group, said Tuesday.

"The Florida presidential election was one of the most important news stories of 2000, and we believe the story is incomplete without a deliberate and thorough examination of all the ballots," Johnson said in a news release.

2001-01-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

Pigdog Journal (Mr. Bad's List) -- Things to Say When You're Losing a Technical Argument Things to Say When You're Losing a Technical Argument

2001-01-09T08:20:00.000-08:00

Fool.com: Apple [Post of the Day] January 9, 2001 Recently, much has been made of Apple's Cash ($1.191B) and Short Term Investments ($2.836B). The $300 Million in Long Term Debt sometimes gets ignored, but that still leaves a net of $3.727 Billion that guarantees Apple will be able to survive any prolonged economic downturn. Best of all, it currently generates a net $62 million per quarter in interest income, no matter how well computer sales go. It doesn't, however, mean that Apple can't trade below $12 per share. Any stock can trade at any price. When Wall Street takes a stock down, there will invariably be more sellers than buyers because most people are stupid, and there will be more people who panic and take losses than there will who have the guts to buy at the bottom. Likewise there will always be plenty of suckers willing to buy a "hot" stock at the top.

2001-01-09T08:03:00.000-08:00

DaveNet : What is Integrity? Like a boat, a human being has integrity if he or she is what he or she appears to be. That's why integrity commands us to disclose conflicts, so that what we say, and who we appear to be, are in synch. Change the appearance if necessary.

2001-01-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

Weird Science (Bill Beaty's Homepages) Weird Research, Anomalous Physics

2001-01-08T19:24:00.000-08:00

CFO.com - The Greatest Thing that Apple Has Ever Done The week at hand brings two highlights of the annual technology calendar ? the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

2001-01-08T19:22:00.000-08:00

iRoom if life were as easy as a macintosh.

2001-01-08T15:13:00.000-08:00

Tipping the Playing Field/On The Internet, Patents Have The Weight Of Gold The implication: That in the age of the Internet you don't need to be a millionaire tycoon before you start your business. Anyone with enough know-how and elbow grease can set up shop and, potentially, become the next great American success story.

2001-01-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

DaveNet : What if technologists had integrity? Same with cops, even lawyers have rules of ethics, and politicians, but.. not technologists. Perhaps because our profession is so new, there are few groundrules, so those of us who try to coax the truth out of ones and zeros have some ad hoc rules that seem to work most of the time.

2001-01-08T15:10:00.000-08:00

Free Speech on trial Saying that programs are free speech doesn't immunize them from the law. It just means they're speech.

2001-01-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

I Can't Stop Thinking! #5 Funny look at micro payment, very easy read

2001-01-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

seclipse_rau3_full.jpg 750x750 pixels">

2001-01-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

Funny look at advertising

Funny ha ha

2001-01-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

sunspot.net - nation/world NSA abandons wondrous stuff
Surprises: Astronomers who took over an abandoned spy base find remarkable, expensive and often incomprehensible stuff at every turn.

2001-01-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

Graphical User Interface Timeline This timeline lists all of the graphical user interface environments that I have been able to find information about through my own research and on the Internet. I want to be as historically accurate as I can, however due to limited available information there may be some mistakes. See my notes section at the bottom of this page for known inaccuracies. If you see an error and have additional information about it please e-mail me.

2001-01-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

WSJ.com - Yahoo Apple Computer Inc. is changing its message.

Since founder Steve Jobs returned to the personal-computer maker in 1997, the Cupertino, Calif., company has risen from the near-dead on the strength of sleekly designed machines and other whiz-bang hardware. But over the past few months, as computer sales have cooled and Apple prepares to report its first quarterly loss in three years, the company has decided to try to remake its image into a purveyor of "killer apps," or groundbreaking software programs that computer users can't live without.

2001-01-04T19:59:00.000-08:00

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary Of course, we in the media have played up clock speed for so long that consumers are forgiven for being somewhat confused. But when someone is buying a new computer, it's mostly the other things that should count -- and we need to make that clearer.

2001-01-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

have browser, will travel "This is based on an actual radio conversation between a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier (U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln) and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. (The radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on 10/10/95 authorized by the Freedom of Information Act.)

Canadians: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid collision.

Americans: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH--I SAY AGAIN, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH---OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call."

2001-01-04T10:56:00.000-08:00

have browser, will travel Countermeasures (archived) 1/4/01; 10:07:58 AM

I got this in an e-mail from a friend today:

"This is based on an actual radio conversation between a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier (U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln) and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. (The radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on 10/10/95 authorized by the Freedom of Information Act.)

Canadians: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid collision.

Americans: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH--I SAY AGAIN, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH---OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call."

2001-01-03T14:04:00.000-08:00

DaveNet : Touch of grey Then, later that day, we did a panel with seven software entreprenuers repping apps that run in a web browser. This piece is largely a review of the panel, what we learned, the questions raised, and suggestions for further exploration.

2000-12-31T19:52:00.000-08:00

NASA's Visible Earth

2000-12-26T21:13:00.000-08:00

JavaScript Source: Navigation: Category Menus Demo locked to the height could be worked with seems fairly cross browser

2000-12-26T21:06:00.000-08:00

Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts- Contractible Headers Script Description: A script that makes selected headers in a page contractible. Contents such as text, graphics, tables etc can be hidden inside the header that will be revealed only when the header is clicked on. All other browsers, including NS 4.x, will simply see the headers uncontracted (degrades well)

2000-12-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts- Smart Folding Menu Tree Description: A folding menu tree that contains links and sublinks. Click on the folder icon to expand it. Browsers apart from IE 4.x will see the tree fully expanded (degrades well). The menu supports arbitrary nesting of sub-lists, and? uses session cookies to give it persistance. In the past, whenever you opened a folder and clicked a link inside, when you returned, the folder reverts back to its initial, closed state. What a waste of time of having to reopen the folder(s) each time you return to view the links inside. Using cookies, this "smart" folder script will actually remember the state of the folder tree when you navigate to another page, so when you come back, it will look just the way you had remembered it to be. If you can't appreciate this feature, you can bet your surfers will!

2000-12-26T21:03:00.000-08:00

Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts- Top Navigational Bar II Description: One of the best of it's kind, this is Mike's two-level menu bar script. Use it to intelligently organize your site's links while adding a touch of DHTML coolness at the same time. Wonderfully useful and cool a creation this is.

2000-12-26T20:57:00.000-08:00

Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts- Slide-In Menu Bar I Description: A cool menu bar that automatically slides open from the left edge of the screen as the surfer moves the mouse over it. Moving the mouse out will cause it the bar to slide back in. Browsers other than NS 4 and IE 4 will simply see nothing.

2000-12-26T20:51:00.000-08:00

Cut & Paste Folding menu tree (Requires IE4 / NS6 ) Description: A folding menu tree that contains links and sublinks. Click on the folder icon to expand it. Requires IE4 or NS6 , although all other browsers will still be able to navigate around.

2000-12-26T20:50:00.000-08:00

EVHEAD! cool nav bar check it out!!

2000-12-20T21:42:00.000-08:00

'Human Calculator' Says It's Time for the Human Calendar

Time for Change
'Human calculator' says
It's time for human calendar
Monday, December 18, 2000
By Michael Y. Park?? NEW YORK ? Twenty-eight days hath September, April, June and November. And December, January, February. Heck, throw the rest of the year in there too. Including that 13th month

2000-12-20T10:13:00.000-08:00

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary Housing prices are a trailing economic indicator, based on wealth and perceived wealth and prospects for the future. When Silicon Valley and the Bay Area return to rationality, it's going to be very, very ugly for the people who bought at the top of this insane market.

2000-12-19T11:17:00.000-08:00

Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts In undertaking this comprehensive analysis, the NIC worked actively with a range of nongovernmental institutions and experts. We began the analysis with two workshops focusing on drivers and alternative futures, as the appendix describes. Subsequently, numerous specialists from academia and the private sector contributed to every aspect of the study, from demographics to developments in science and technology, from the global arms market to implications for the United States. Many of the judgments in this paper derive from our efforts to distill the diverse views expressed at these conferences or related workshops. Major conferences cosponsored by the NIC with other government and private centers in support of Global Trends 2015 included:

* Foreign Reactions to the Revolution in Military Affairs (Georgetown University).

* Evolution of the Nation-State (University of Maryland).

* Trends in Democratization (CIA and academic experts).

* American Economic Power (Industry & Trade Strategies, San Francisco, CA).

* Transformation of Defense Industries (International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, UK).

* Alternative Futures in War and Conflict (Defense Intelligence Agency and Naval War College, Newport, RI, and CIA).

2000-12-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | Censorware to be Mandatory in Schools, Libraries It was supposed to be done by September 30, but Congress finally finished its budget for this year. Because it works best with our sometimes-bizarre legislative system, this year, like every year, hundreds of unrelated measures were rolled up into one massive package and crammed through the door. Your grandchildren may look up at you with a puzzled expression, fifty years from now, and say "grampa" (or gramma), "did you really use an unfiltered internet, back in the olden days? Wasn't that scary? How did you ever survive with all that porn jumping out at you?" If that happens, just sigh, and think back to the olden days -- December?2000 -- before censorware became mandatory in public institutions nationwide.

2000-12-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary What AOL is assembling via its instant messaging system is nothing short of a new communications network in which it not only owns the center but the phone book, too. The value of this is incalcuable. And a system of this sort should be open to other players.

2000-12-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary The Federal Communications Commission wanted to open up pieces of the radio spectrum for low-power stations. But the existing broadcasters, increasingly part of massive chains without the least interest in the communities they "serve," loathe the idea of competition from stations that actually care about their back yard. The threat, you see, was that people would actually get a choice instead of the consistent marketing-driven pablum on today's airwaves.

2000-12-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

Internet Wasteland: A to L Internet Wasteland: Companies A to L

2000-12-18T17:12:00.000-08:00

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary One of the most worrisome features of these times is the loss of civility. I deeply regret any contributions I've made to this unfortunate trend. In the heat of the election aftermath, for example, I wrote a piece for my online column containing an unfair historical reference. Several people for whom I have great respect immediately told me I was out of line. They were right. I was wrong. I excised the offending reference. I'll never make that mistake again.

2000-12-18T16:29:00.001-08:00

ZDNet: News: Commentary Nevertheless, the Mac is a vibrant, vital and enduring institution that has played an important role in the often-Darwinian evolution of the personal computer. Its extinction would leave its users poorer in the short run and benefit no one in the long run.

2000-12-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

ZDNet: News: Commentary Whatever its current travails, Apple is sitting on $4 billion (with a "b") in the bank, and the Mac has a fantastically loyal following in the tens of millions. Short of China's Red Army (or the U.S. Supreme Court), there's not a body in the world that could compel this group into a wholesale surrender

2000-12-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

Building a Better Ballot Box On Thursday, professors at MIT and the California Institute of Technology announced that they plan to build a new line of reliable, secure, and modestly priced voting machines they think can become standard equipment for national elections.

2000-12-14T12:21:00.001-08:00

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary Bush's fiscal proposals would abandon responsibility and exacerbate class divisions. His technology policy -- which amounts to asking ""How high?'' when some tech executives say "Jump'' -- ignores a host of deeply troubling issues that will be at the core of the future economy and society.

After making millions through inheritance and old-boy cronyism, Bush surely will hum along to the hymn of pure, Darwinistic capitalism. He's a product of it, and has done well by it.

Besides, he's utterly beholden to his backers. They're the business executives and ideologues who virtually appointed him as the GOP nominee, anted up the multi-millions he needed to win the White House and then launched a scorched-earth campaign to prevent a genuine

2000-12-14T12:21:00.000-08:00

News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary AOL's buyout of Time Warner is a net negative for consumers no matter how the Federal Trade Commission and a host of public-relations specialists from the two companies cloak the deal. We're heading toward a time when a tiny number of huge companies control the vast majority of popular culture and information, plus the means of delivering it.

2000-12-13T12:23:00.000-08:00

Gallery of Data Visualization This Gallery of Data Visualization displays some examples of the Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics, with the view that the contrast may be useful, inform current practice, and provide some pointers to both historical and current work. We go from what is arguably the best statistical graphic ever drawn, to the current record-holder for the worst.

2000-12-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee

2000-12-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

Forbes.com: State of the Banner State of the Banner
John C. Dvorak, Forbes Magazine, 12.25.00
One of the Web's cherished myths, that advertising will pay for content, is rapidly crumbling as one ad-supported site after another expires. One handy scapegoat in all this is the ubiquitous "ad banner," which usually appears at the top of a Web page. This form of Web advertising, now seen as ineffective and old-fashioned, may be on its last legs. Nobody likes banners, and the frequency of people clicking on them has fallen off drastically, to 0.5%, indicating that people simply ignore them.

2000-12-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

DaveNet : They all aks'd about you Another common track -- no one wants to challenge Microsoft in desktop apps, even where Microsoft has no software. This is wrong. You don't have to beat Microsoft to have a successful product. Even a niche in one of the Microsoft-dominated categories could be an excellent market. I suggested to Dan Greening of Macromedia a long-time pet idea of mine. I want a Flash word processor. The editor renders in Flash. It's wizzy. It saves in Flash. Since the Flash runtime is so widely deployed there should be no problem rendering the text for the reader. Flash text looks so much better than Microsoft text. This is a no-brainer. Let's do it.

2000-12-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

NASA Contacts Oldest Spacecraft on 35th Anniversary NASA successfully contacted Pioneer 6 on Friday, nearly 35 years to the day after the space agency’s oldest working spacecraft was launched into solar orbit on what was to have been a six-month mission.

2000-12-09T20:51:00.000-08:00

'Free' Wireless Networks? (washingtonpost.com) The wireless Internet antennas sprouting everywhere suggest something else: Today's civilian community is home to a very unregimented attempt to build a homemade wireless Web that seeks to rival the expensive plans of telecommunication conglomerates and other corporations.
About a foot and a half long, the antennas rise from the rooftops of major buildings. The fire station. A white structure that houses a dot-com. A colonel's quarters. The Exploratorium science museum.

2000-12-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

CNET.com - News - E-Business - Defunct ASPs leave customers in the lurch Red Gorilla, which handed off its clients to another ASP, is not the only company in the new and volatile ASP market to shut its doors. On Thursday, HotOffice.com announced that it would close down December 19 because of the harsh market conditions and referred customers to another ASP. In July, Pandesic, an older ASP formed between technology giants Intel and SAP, closed because it was not on a timely road to profitability

This is interesting taint it?

2000-12-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

Internetworld: Daily Internet News and Internet Information I ended my last column in the November 1 issue with a teaser. After bemoaning the sorry state of Internet search engines, I promised to show how peer-to-peer systems and metadata could provide a viable alternative to Web spidering. In the interest of full disclosure, the model I?m outlining here is something I?ve been cobbling together for about 18 months. Like the basic infrastructure of the Web, this is not a commercial technology in and of itself, though there are some obvious commercial applications that could be built on top of it, which I?ll talk about next time.

2000-12-01T15:44:00.000-08:00

TechMetrix Research-TrendMarkers e-Newsletter - December 2000 Principles of operation

SOAP is a lightweight specification protocol used to invoke methods on servers, components and objects so as to exchange information in a decentralized, distributed environment. This XML-based protocol, transported by HTTP, can be broken down into three parts:

2000-11-30T13:09:00.000-08:00

BBC News | SCI/TECH | Hubble rings a black hole Thursday, 30 November, 2000, 16:44 GMT
Hubble rings a black hole

At the galaxy's core lies a powerful black hole

By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

The Hubble Space Telescope's latest picture is of swirling gas surrounding a black hole at the core of a distant galaxy.

The spiral galaxy lies 13 million light-years away in the southern constellation Circinus.

2000-11-30T13:00:00.000-08:00

Consumers may find e-books a tough read Will consumers embrace e-books? Not so for the brave new world of e-books, where publishers place complex electronic padlocks on their wares through so-called digital rights management (DRM) technology. The aim is to curtail the threat of Internet piracy, but that protection can come at a significant cost to consumers who play by the rules and buy legitimate products, analysts say.

"Some of the restrictions on the e-book readers are just brutal for consumers," said Gartner analyst P.J. McNealy. "You may see some definite backlash moving forward."

Consumers aren't the only ones who have noticed a potential problem: Regulators are also looking into anti-copying features, which may conflict with long-standing intellectual property laws granting consumers substantial usage rights.

For example, the U.S. Copyright Office held hearings this week on whether digital transmissions of copyright works should fall in the scope of the "first sale doctrine," which gives buyers of copyright works the right to sell them later on. The hearing will also investigate whether the right to make backup copies of digital works should expand beyond computer programs to literary and other works.

2000-11-30T11:57:00.001-08:00

Welcome to Blackboard... Blackboard's flagship Blackboard 5TM software platform allows colleges, universities and other commercial education providers to bring their courses, communities, campus services and total ".edu" Web presence online. Blackboard 5 is seamlessly integrated with Blackboard.comSM, Blackboard"s multi-channel Web exchange, which provides users with access to customizable, subject-specific academic resources, global, interactive communities for students and instructors and more.

2000-11-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Blackboard... Blackboard Inc., the leading Internet e-Learning infrastructure company, is acquiring AT&T CampusWide and CEI SpecialTeams (a division of iCollege), two of the nation?s largest campus transaction and ID platforms.

2000-11-29T12:32:00.000-08:00

MacSlash | Guest Editorial: More On The Business Case for MacOS X So, how do we do it? Well, it would take someone in a bank going to his IT director and that directory taking a chance. A closed meeting with Mr Jobs at Apple that goes along the lines of: "We'll take our simplest business - say Foreign Exchange (FX) - and we'll work with your guys to get that whole are ported to run on OS X exclusively (all the in-house and portable apps only - not market data yet). We will use our prestige to showcase your OS and you products, and the Macintosh Way. In return, you give us the kit to do this cheap and some of your people to work with us on this. You get your showcase, and we stand out for innovation and save a wedge of cash. Oh, and we keep all this strictly under wraps until we are ready to reveal it in

2000-11-28T08:29:00.000-08:00

Science Explorer: Outrageous Ooze--is this stuff a liquid or a solid?

How to make the ooze. Icky sticky fun

2000-11-27T15:58:00.000-08:00

NASA Earth Observatory

This is the earth observatory homepage by nasa. very cool!!!!!!!

2000-11-27T15:56:00.000-08:00

APOD: 2000 November 27 - Earth at Night Explanation: This is what the Earth looks like at night. Can you find your favorite country or city? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth's surface, including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan. Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they can exchange goods cheaply by boat. Particularly dark areas include the central parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The above image is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites.

2000-11-22T10:19:00.000-08:00

Europe Nixes Software Patents Europe will not officially allow developers to own patents on software, at least for the time being.

2000-11-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

Emusic Tracks Napster Naughties Emusic Tracks Napster Naughties
by Brad King
1:35 p.m. Nov. 21, 2000 PST ? ?
Emusic engineers have developed a tracking system that can identify infringing materials on Napster -? something the file-trading company said was impossible.

Digital download retailer Emusic said Napster executives have been disingenuous in their claims that the company couldn't develop a technology to track users on their servers.