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| 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. |
| Crafting the free-software future |
| 1:50:24 am mst / 6 March 2001 found by paul / filed in software / source Salon 73 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Good article on VA Linux's SourceForge.net, a site which helps coordinate thousands of open source programming projects. The article discusses its philosophy and methodology, including some of the tensions between it and the more radical Free Software Foundation. |
| Interesting tidbit -- "[O]ne spokesperson noted that the site consumes bandwidth equal to 60 T-1 lines." |
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| Hard stuff |
| 5:06:37 am mst / 6 March 2001 found by paul / filed in inventions / source Nature 83 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Ukrainian scientists at the "Institute for Superhard Materials" (love that name!) have created a new compound that is "about midway between diamond and the current 'second hardest material known', cubic boron nitride" (cBN). |
| Given that cBN is described as being "about half as hard as diamond", I assume that the new stuff is approximately 75% as hard as diamond. |
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| Stock market planetarium |
| 8:35:31 am mst / 6 March 2001 found by paul / filed in culture / source BBC News 52 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| The Tate Britain museum has a cool new exhibit called the "Stock Market Planetarium" in which the "stars" represent companies whose shares are being actively traded, with their brightness in proportion to their market activity. The software will take live market data to generate the display, causing stars from similarly traded companies to drift together to form "constellations". More information is available here. |
| The best part is the artificial life forms that congregate and feed off of the energy generated by the hot companies. "Why are they all fleeing from that star? Oh, that must be Priceline..." |
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| Lab squeezes HDTV into standard TV channel |
| 10:09:44 am mst / 6 March 2001 found by paul / filed in digital media / source EE Times 78 hits / 3 comments / 3 e-mails |
| From the article: "Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced an encoding algorithm that squeezes a high-definition television signal into the existing 6-MHz bands already allocated to TV broadcasters. Existing analog TVs can receive the broadcast as usual, but HDTVs will be able to decode the embedded digital information for rendering on progressively scanned, 1,280- x 720-pixel displays." |
| This could make the eventual transition to HDTV considerably easier. |
| read 3 comments |
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| Virtual sex sustains relationships |
| 12:40:05 pm mst / 6 March 2001 found by paul / filed in internet / source AFP 76 hits / 0 comments / 3 e-mails |
| German sex researchers have found that couples in long distance relationships do better if they engage in "virtual sex" via e-mail or telephone on a regular basis (i.e., at least 3 times a week). |
| I don't doubt the study's conclusions. (ObEuroFlameBait) I just never thought I'd ever use the words "German" and "sex researchers" in the same sentence... |
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| Hotmail Users Must Opt Out of Spam |
| 1:29:03 pm mst / 6 March 2001 found by diana / filed in internet / source ABC News 70 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Hotmail is divulging users' e-mail addresses in Infospace's Internet White Pages as a default preference, even though it is very easy for spammers to get 100 addresses at a time from the listings. |
| With all the spam, downtime, and security holes in HotMail, I wonder why anyone uses it! |
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| TiVo for Music |
| 3:36:07 pm mst / 6 March 2001 found by diana / filed in digital media / source ZDNet 46 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Alice Hill reviews the AudioReQuest, a digital jukebox that does all manner of cool stuff with audio, despite its confusing interface. |
| Seems like it connects to just about anything... Very cool! |
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| How Fusion Propulsion Will Work |
| 7:15:44 pm mst / 6 March 2001 found by MysteriousStranger / filed in space / source How Stuff Works 102 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| In order to go to Mars and other planets that are out of the reach of conventional rocket engines, NASA is developing several advanced propulsion systems, including harnessing the power of the sun. Fusion-powered spacecraft are designed to recreate the same types of high-temperature reactions that occur in the core of the sun. Using this type of propulsion system, a spacecraft could speed to Mars in just about three months. |
| diana's favorite quote: "The building of a fusion-powered spacecraft would be the equivalent of developing a car on Earth that can travel twice as fast as any car with a fuel efficiency of 7,000 miles per gallon." |
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| Prisoners Dictionary |
| 9:51:00 pm mst / 6 March 2001 found by paul / filed in culture / source Memepool 228 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| As Memepool says, "If you go to jail and haven't studied the Prisoners Dictionary, the other inmates will make fun of you for learning your lingo from Oz." |
| Prison does not sound at all glamorous... |
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