Month: May 2006

Keep up with top-rated web sites in one place

I’m not quite sure even how to describe this site, but I’ll try.  There are a number of web sites that track web sites as recommended by surfers like you and me.  You can see the latest hot web topics by watching Digg or Del.icio.us or other such aggregation sites.  If you find all those overwhelming to keep up with, though, you might want to just look into monitoring popurls instead.  Popurls aggregates the aggregation sites, basically.  If you can keep up with the headlines and popurls, you’ll have a pretty good view of the most popular, interesting, and/or useful web sites at a given time.  Of course, you’ll also see a lot of crap, but that’s because most of the web is crap.

[tags]Web aggregators, popurls[/tags]

You just can’t keep up

(via LifeHacker)
This article at headrush really reflects the problem so many folks experience in the internet age.  There’s too much information, and not enough time to keep up with it. I feel the bite of information overload every time I try to catch up with the techie world.  And nearly every day, I find new sources of information to add to my RSS reading list.

Do you have a stack of books, journals, manuals, articles, API docs, and blog printouts that you think you’ll get to? That you think you need to read? Now, based on past experience, what are the odds you’ll get to all of it? Half of it? Any of it? (except for maybe the Wired magazine)

So you let the stack of “things to read” pile up, then eventually when the pile gets to high you end up tossing half of it–or worse, moving it to a deeper “stuff to read someday stack. We have selective amnesia about what we’ll ever get to, but mainly because most of us keep feeling like we have to keep up! Keep up with what?

You can’t keep up. There is no way. And trying to keep up will probably just make you dumber.You can never be current on everything you think you should be. You can’t simultaneously be current on:

It’s lenghty, but well worth reading.  That is, if you can find the time.  🙂
[tags]Information Overload[/tags]

1.21 gigawatt laser?

(via Engadget)

Well, maybe not quite Back to the Future levels of power.  But it looks like the military is trying to get funding a super high powered lasers to destroy enemy satellites:

So far a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee has “shot down” the program, which would build on a 1997 Pentagon study of a two-million-watt laser, although the full committee could reinstate the provision following analysis of the full bill. Although certain military interests have pushed for anti-satellite weapons since the Cold War, concern over the space junk that destroyed sats would create has kept the international community from serious pursuit of any “Star Wars”-like programs.

Got that? Two-million watt lasers.  That’s extreme.  Handy for shooting down all those Al Queda satellites, too, I suppose.

[tags]Lasers, military weapons[/tags]

Portable apps

If you happen to get a hefty USB drive (like the 4 Gig drives for <$100 at newegg I listed a couple days back), you should visit Wikipedia dn get a list of portable apps you can put on this stick to run without install on other systems.  Some of these I already use, but some were new to me.  Here are a few

And tons more.  Check out the full list.

[tags]Portable apps[/tags]

Sony looking for new leader of consumer-hating technology

(via boingboing)

If you are technically skilled, hate people, and want to try creating ways to limit your customers use of your products, then Sony has a job for you.

The New Technology Division is responsible for approving new media and technology, partners, formats, and security methods for distribution of digital content on CD/DVD’s, over the Internet, and mobile networks.

We are seeking a director, focusing on content protection, to join the New Technology Group at Sony BMG Music Entertainment. The candidate will work to provide research, security reviews, and recommendation on new technologies, digital rights management and digital distribution channels for the Global Digital Business Division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

. . .

The following areas of technology proficiency are required:

–Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies and standards on various platforms including PCs (e.g. Wintel, Apple, Open Source), Consumer Electronics Devices and Mobile Devices

–Working knowledge of multimedia file formats and compression including Windows Media (WMA), QuickTime (AAC), MPEG Layer-3 (MP3), WAV, AIFF, etc.

–A working understanding of networking architectures and high-speed data transmission

–A working knowledge of Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX operating systems, PDA/Mobile: Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS

–Hands-on knowledge of Macromedia (Director, Flash, Dreamweaver), Java, HTML, and XML programming languages is of advantage

And no, I didn’t doctor that last line – the job announcement really say that. So if you are capable of coming up with the next great way to limit your customers’ ability to use your product, apply today. Contact information is available as part of the job announcement.
[tags]Sony, job announcement[/tags]

Pr0n industry may be the big provider in HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray

This isn’t some amazing insight.  I’ve told plenty of people I think that winner of the next-gen DVD format wars will most likely be heavily influenced by the providers of adult entertainment.  Now, Computerworld has an article making that same claim.  Suddenly, I feel like a genius.  That might be because I am, but one can never be sure of these things.

MAY 02, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) – Just as in the 1980s, when the Betamax and VHS video formats were battling it out for supremacy, the pornography industry will likely play a major role in determining which of the two blue-laser DVD formats — Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD — will be the winner in the battle to replace DVDs for high-definition content.

[tags]pr0n, next-gen DVD, blu-ray, HD-DVD[/tags]

The state of BlahBlahBlahg

Since I’m getting just a few regular visitors a day right now (yes, I check my logs to get an idea of where my traffic comes from), I thought I’d take a few lines to write about the status of the site.  I am consistently seeing over 100 unique hits a day now.  Unfortunately for me, somewhere around half of those are crawlers.  And let’s face it, around 50 unique hits per day isn’t much.  But it makes me feel good to see incoming traffic from gade.be, forums where I post, the trackbacks from the stories I link, RSS aggregators, and occasional lucky hits to me from search engines.  I’m getting a few regular visitors, too.  So at least a few people re-visit, which makes me think I’m posting something others find interesting.  This has no meaning to anyone but me, but I thought I’d at least say thanks to the few folks that come back occasionally.

What is up with USB flash drives?

Not an interesting read or anything, but I’m really wondering what’s happened to USB flash drives.  Early this year I was looking for a 1-gig drive to replace my wife’s crashed 256 Meg drive.  I found a 2-Gig for $80, and at the time, that was considered quite the deal.  Tonight, while looking for memory for my brother’s computer, I saw half a dozen 4-gig models at newegg for under $100.  There are 1-gig drives for under $30 now.  Prices have plummeted in just a couple of months.  I’m just surprised by how quickly things are coming down.

[tags]USB drives[/tags]

Movie-plot threat contest

I forgot to post this when I first read it, but I find the idea so intriguing that I felt I had to pop it up here now that I’m reading up on it again.  On his blog, Bruce Schneier is running a movie-plot threat contest.  The basic idea is to come up with some potential terrorist threat that is highly unlikely, but sufficiently sensational to capture the attention of security spenders and elevate public fear enough to damage the economy and get public buy-in to bad, stupid, or highly intrusive but ineffective security measures.  As of last week, Bruce reported nearly 600 entries, and I suspect that number will grow for a while yet.

Looking over the different terrorist plots, they seem to fall into several broad categories. The first category consists of attacks against our infrastructure: the food supply, the water supply, the power infrastructure, the telephone system, etc. The idea is to cripple the country by targeting one of the basic systems that make it work.

The second category consists of big-ticket plots. Either they have very public targets — blowing up the Super Bowl, the Oscars, etc. — or they have high-tech components: nuclear waste, anthrax, chlorine gas, a full oil tanker, etc. And they are often complex and hard to pull off. This is the 9/11 idea: a single huge event that affects the entire nation.

The third category consists of low-tech attacks that go on and on. Several people imagined a version of the DC sniper scenario, but with multiple teams. The teams would slowly move around the country, perhaps each team starting up after the previous one was captured or killed. Other people suggested a variant of this with small bombs in random public locations around the country.

There is a lot of meat to this article, so head over to Bruce’s blog and read the entire contest status update.
[tags]Schneier, Movie-plot threats[/tags]