News

I am amused. The Isthmus Daily Page, which is the digital version of one of Madison’s free weekly newpapers cited my entry where I wrote about my short trip to the Taste of Madison.

I am on Google IM as we speak. Google is just using the Jabber protocol and you use your gmail account username. For detailed info on how to get on go here.

I was just perusing the articles on Slashdot and I came across a link to a project whose intention is to create an open source DRM standard. Started by the folks as Sun Microsystems you can read about the project here.

Australian scientists have discovered that crocodiles are capable of fighting off HIV as well as bacteria that are resistant to penicillin. Currently they are collecting blood from crocodiles to isolate the antibodies involved in order to fine tune their “crocodile-serum.

Well, it has finally happened, someone has used their iPod to kill someone else in a domestic dispute. Apparently, the woman in question killed her boyfriend after he deleted the contents of her MP3 player.

I just read an article I found through Boing Boing about a young man in South Korea that died of exhaustion after playing a FPS game for 50 hours straight. All I have to say is wow, man.

I highly recommend you go read Cory Doctorow’s article on Apple embedding Trusted Computing technology into their OS kernel in an attempt to prevent circumvention of DRM. By extension, this technology can also have the result that if you are using proprietary applications, you will not be able to open files created on those programs in another piece of software even if the file format is supported.

Yet another link I found through Boing Boing to an open letter addressed to Hillary Clinton regarding the whole GTA controversy. The letter is written by Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, and I think he puts the whole issue into perspective quite nicely.

“Can’t you see? He has the mind of a child!” Or rather, the RIAA does. Seriously, this is just getting ridiculous. The RIAA has done it again, and yes, they made bunny cry.

Seriously, a group of young gentlemen have developed a recipie for beer incorporating guarana which counters the drowsiness you feel when you drink beer. They have released the recipie under the Creative Commons license as an experiment to discover what happens when you use the open-source model on a real-world product like beer.

I know I have posting a lot of links lately, and I do promise more actual content soon, but I can not resist directing your attention to this one. Apparently, a man has fallen afoul of a revenge plot aimed at discrediting him.

I found this link on Robot Wisdom, about a different way of looking at evolution. (I even used a variation on Jorn Barger’s entry title for this entry.) Scientists are attempting to map evolution as a virtual tree.

Finally, people in the movie industry are starting to think about combatting piracy in an effective way. Morgan Freeman (yes, that Morgan Freeman) is teaming up with Intel to form a company that will make it easier to buy movies than to pirate them, even while they are still in the theatre.

I recently found this article through Robot Wisdom about a 15 year old girl who sleepwalked out onto 130 foot crane. What a way to wake up! Read about it here.

I survived my weekend at work and I am totally burned out. I plan on having a beer and crashing until tomorrow, but in the meantime you should read about the research that I am sure will someday evolve into our cybernetic overlords.

It appears that a group of mad scientists have taken advantage of Australia’s scenic beauty and set up their labs there. First project, bring life to the dead.

I bet you never thought this would happen in your neighborhood.

It is nice to see a lawmaker with the consumers of digital media forefront in his mind, rather than the entertainment industry’s lawyers and lobbyists. Read about it in Wired here.