archive
index
gp originals
google i
google ii
celebrating porn
idiot voters
| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| A Claim-Buster by Calling |
| 9:46:23 am mdt / 29 April 2000 found by paul / filed in education / source NY Times 22 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| A profile of physicist Robert Park, who also spends his free time debunking pseudo-science like UFO's, perpetual motion machines, and fraudulent medicines. Described as energetic and truculent, his friend James Randi said that, "You have to hose him down every two hours just to keep him cool." |
| According to the story, he believes there are five concepts that every educated person should be familiar with: "Darwinian evolution, the Copernican solar system, the size of the universe, the laws governing the conservation of energy (that way people would know that infinite energy sources and perpetual motion machines are impossible) and ratios (so people would have a sense of scale)." That's an interesting list. I wonder how he came up with it? |
 |
| Access Excess |
| 7:07:36 pm mdt / 29 April 2000 found by diana / filed in legal / source Reason 34 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Applying the Americans with Disabilities Act to websites is "a nearly perfect way to stifle creative freedom and slam the brakes on the Internet's expansion," contrary to the claims of some disability advocates. |
| A nice summary of the pernicious effect the law would have from someone who understands both web development and the ADA. |
|
| Net Downloads: Song Remains the Same |
| 7:31:04 pm mdt / 29 April 2000 found by paul / filed in digital media / source NY Post 9 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Although MP3.com has lost the first round of its legal battle, this won't change the fact that digital music is here to stay. Several analysts make the excellent point that the music industry should be finding ways to encourage customers to download songs for a small fee, instead of trying to suppress the technology altogether. |
| MP3's could be the biggest boon to the music industry. Rather than short-sightedly suing MP3 and Napster, the industry should be using them as marketing tools. As an example, Napster's database of which fans like which songs could potentially be worth billions to artists and studios. Instead, the industry's current strategy merely alienates fans and will drive them to further "piracy" using tools like Gnutella and FreeNet. |
|
| Yournamehere.com |
| 7:59:06 pm mdt / 29 April 2000 found by paul / filed in humor / source Industry Standard 26 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| How to pick the perfect domain name! |
| If you don't like their Name-O-Matic, you can instead try the free Startup Name Generator. |
|
| Government Wants Control of MS |
| 11:48:54 pm mdt / 29 April 2000 found by diana / filed in legal / source Wired 36 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| The article says: "If Bill Gates was unhappy with early reports of the government's antitrust punishments, he's going to be plenty steamed when he reads the fine print this weekend." This article details some of that onerous fine print. |
| I'm no fan of MS, but I have even less love of anti-trust law. And these remedies seem to be a particularly unjust application of an unjust law. |
| read 1 comment |
|