28 Feb 2010
The Future of Money

I have a bit of experience in this arena, and I can tell you right now, these folks only have half the equation. Take a look at the conversion chart with it's multiplicity of online "currencies" and ask yourself how conversions between them, much less handling processing of payments, can ever possibly be free...

The short answer is they can't. The real answer is another question: free to whom?

A generation ago, when people made the choice to switch to plastic, credit cards did not just replicate cash; they fundamentally changed how we used money. The ease with which people could make purchases encouraged them to buy much more than they had in the past. Entrepreneurs suddenly had access to easy — though high-interest — loans, providing a spark to the economy. Now, while it may be hard to predict what innovations PayPal’s platform will enable, it’s safe to say that the payment industry is going to change dramatically. As money becomes completely digitized, infinitely transferable, and friction-free, it will again revolutionize how we think about our economy.

(link) [Wired]

12:20 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

America, the Fragile Empire

Very interesting read ...

It is historians who retrospectively portray the process of imperial dissolution as slow-acting. Rather, empires behave like all complex adaptive systems. They function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse.

(link) [Los Angles Times]

12:09 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

27 Feb 2010
Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage

Truth will always out - and you can cast the "we don't want to jail women" rhetoric of the "right to life" movement on the dustbin of history ...

The bill passed by legislators amends Utah's criminal statute to allow the state to charge a woman with criminal homicide for inducing a miscarriage or obtaining an illegal abortion.

(link) [Reality Check]

11:25 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

The Future Won’t Be Free

Ah, yes, we took the digital acid. Anything free is by definition bad, so much so that using free software could get you declared an enemy of the state. (Sign me up for that!)

These folks seem to think that we shouldn't have a right to read, that history should be locked down and doled out, and that knowledge must be controlled. They long for the Middle Ages, before the printing press, when human knowledge was their exclusive province, and those questioning their authority could be inquired after.

Pardon my Anglo-Saxon, but fuck them ... information not only wants to be free, it will be. And there's no power in heaven or on earth that can stop it now. The future will be free, one way or another.

In the long run, the first decade of the Web could come to be seen as a momentary aberration—an echo of '60s free culture when we all took the bad, digital acid. So, media companies, on behalf of all misdirected Internet visionaries, I'm sorry. We like you—we really do—and we don't want a world without you. If you can hold on until we all have new kinds of screens, and new sets of expectations, you'll be fine. You'll be different, but fine. Just, please, don't take my word for it this time. Ask around.

(link) [Newsweek]

11:20 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

26 Feb 2010
Sucked In

Years ago, it was pretty easy for me to get sucked into a book. That's becoming increasingly rare, perhaps due to a lack of good books, but more likely due to simple laziness on my part. However, this week was different - we happened to catch a movie that we'd both heard about, but had both pretty much ignored, assuming it was a play to cash in on the popularity of the Harry Potter and Narnia movies, none of which particularly excited us. The Golden Compass kept our undivided attention for all 113 minutes - I was absolutely intrigued, so much so that I went out and got the books - His Dark Materials and a DVD of the movie at a used bookstore a couple of days after we watched it. That was last weekend, and explains my lack of blogging for the week - about a thousand pages.

We liked the movie a lot - the books are even better. There's so much more you can do in the way of back (and side) stories in a book than in a movie. And what a story! Phillip Pullman is a master storyteller, and an excellent writer. If you're like us, and either never heard of these tales or blew them off as child's play, think again. I cannot recommend this series highly enough.

20:21 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

21 Feb 2010
School Officials Likened to Peeping Toms

Paging Mr. Orwell...

The family that sued to get a suburban Pennsylvania school district to stop secretly viewing students at home via webcams on school-issued laptops is blasting the practice, though it's been halted.

(link) [CBS News]

16:40 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Who's Platform?

Obama? Clinton? Dennis Kucinich?

  • We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people.
  • In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human.
  • We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.
  • Further reductions in taxes with particular consideration for low and middle income families.
  • Procedural changes in the antitrust laws to facilitate their enforcement.
  • Revise and improve the Taft-Hartley Act so as to protect more effectively the rights of labor unions, management, the individual worker, and the public.
  • We favor a comprehensive study of the effect upon wildlife of the drainage of our wetlands.
  • We favor self-government, national suffrage and representation in the Congress of the United States for residents of the District of Columbia.

Nope. We've come a long way, eh?

via DailyKOS

13:47 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Old Trick Threatens the Newest Weapons

CNN ran a special tonight on a wargame held recently called cyber.shockwave. A group of hackers (state organized or not) had managed to take down the telecom and power grids in the US ... pretty ridiculous scenerio, really. I think they've completely missed the point of cyberwar. The real dangers of a war in cyberspace was covered by the New York Times last October. Read it below.

Despite a six-year effort to build trusted computer chips for military systems, the Pentagon now manufactures in secure facilities run by American companies only about 2 percent of the more than $3.5 billion of integrated circuits bought annually for use in military gear.

(link) [New York Times]

02:10 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

19 Feb 2010
Short Term Bottle Baby

If you recall our recent Snow Day Surprise, you'll no doubt recall my quip that if there'd been a twin ram lamb he would've been called Clyde... well ...

Tim called up a week ago Wednesday, when I was so sick, and asked if we'd like a bottle baby. A ewe of his, a North Country Cheviot, who had been bred to a Blue Face Leicester, had dried up just after throwing twins. The ewe lamb was already gone, but the little ram lamb was hangin' on by the skin of his teeth. Tim's just got too many irons in the fire right now to deal with a bottle baby, and he figured if anybody could get the little fellow healthy we could. So Lorraine said sure.

And of course we called him Clyde.

He really does look like Bonnie's twin, eh? And is he ever active - it didn't take us long to get him back to peak condition. But we've got a lot of irons in the fire right now, too, and despite the fact that he'll have a beautiful fleece, it's just not the kind of fleece we want to concentrate on in our breeding program. So we found Clyde a new home, with Amber Meadow Farm in Shelby County (website not available), and Roxa came and got him today. He'll pretty much complete her spinners flock, and she was just delighted with him. Of course she brought some friends along for the ride, and before they'd left we'd taken orders for five fleeces! So it all worked out in the end for everybody. Especially Clyde. Who will no doubt be renamed. I hope.

19:56 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

17 Feb 2010
Gallery of Processor Cache Effects

There's more to technical brilliance than, well, technical brilliance. Clear exposition helps, and this is the clearest exposition of processor cache operations I've ever read.

Most of my readers will understand that cache is a fast but small type of memory that stores recently accessed memory locations. This description is reasonably accurate, but the "boring" details of how processor caches work can help a lot when trying to understand program performance.

(link) [Igor Ostrovsky Blogging]

via Sutter's Mill

23:41 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

How Christian Were the Founders?

It seems as though the Christian Right never tires of trotting out the Founding Christian Fathers. Except, well, they really weren't. Religion in 18th century America is a lot more complicated than most people are willing to admit - this is a reasonably balanced overview of the topic.

Last month, a week before the Senate seat of the liberal icon Edward M. Kennedy fell into Republican hands, his legacy suffered another blow that was perhaps just as damaging, if less noticed. It happened during what has become an annual spectacle in the culture wars.

(link) [New York Times]

23:36 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

16 Feb 2010
A Choice to Compute

This is a vital essay - vital to understanding why we in the West are in deep danger of losing our grip completely on the Information Economy. Read it and buy a kid a Commodore ...

Programming doesn't happen by mistake, it take people. People that know it exists, people that know they can do it, ultimately people who have managed to catch the bug. In a world where computing is ever more commodified, I take great joy in introducing schools and young students to the simple accessible wonders of programming outside the box.

(link) [GamePeople]

22:38 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Science Fair Bans Most Science

This is an unbelievable list: I never would've had a science fair project if these had been in force 40 years ago. But that's when our national goal was the Moon, not Starbucks and MSN Online ...

So I guess if you are doing a science experiment involving the effect of dust on a desk, you’re ok. But beyond that, it gets very tricky. And, worse, interesting. And so it is verboten. All for the safety of the kids, of course.

(link) [Free Range Kids]

22:30 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

15 Feb 2010
Virgin's Richard Branson takes on peak oil

I can't for the life of me figure out what's controversial about the idea of peak oil. The timing can be argued about somewhat, but the notion that fossil fuels are a finite natural resource seems as obvious as the nose on my face. It's equally obvious that we've found the easy oil - new finds are going to be (besides scarce) deeper and harder to get to or refine. Which means more expensive.

A report out of Britain funded by Virgin Airlines owner Richard Branson and other British business leaders warns that peak oil is looming in 2015. The controversial idea that growing oil demand will soon outstrip more finds is capturing the attention of governments.

(link) [Christian Science Monitor]

22:17 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

14 Feb 2010
Remembering the Frisbee Inventor

I daresay there are few left on Planet Earth who have not seen or thrown a Frisbee or one of it's many knockoffs... how many inventors can claim this kind of impact? Offhand I can think of Edison, Westinghouse, Ford, Kilby and a few others... that's pretty august company for a toymaker. RIP

Walter Fredrick Morrison, the Frisbee inventor, died this week. His simple sports innovation – a plastic, aerodynamic disc – has become one of the most popular toys in American history, uniting beachgoers, college kids, and competitive teams for half a century.

(link) [Christian Science Monitor]

20:41 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link