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November 19 2009
Academia vs. Business
Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
There's not even time to know that something new and improved was just created.
November 18 2009
Barack Obama, Federalist?
Writing in the DC Examiner, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy cautions against getting too excited about President Barack Obama’s alleged commitment to federalism:
Friends of federalism cheered last month when the Obama administration reversed the Bush policy of prosecuting medical marijuana cases in states that have legalized the practice. Welcome though that change was, let's hold the applause.
Not yet a year into his administration, Obama's record on 10th Amendment issues is already clear: He'll let the states have their way when their policies please blue team sensibilities and he'll call in the feds when they don't. Thus, he'll grant California a waiver to allow it to raise auto emissions standards, but he'll bring the hammer down when the state tries to cut payments to unionized health care workers....
Our federal system shouldn't be a red team/blue team issue, respected or flouted depending on who's up and who's down. Conservatives are learning to rue their abandonment of federalist principles during the last administration; liberals may come to regret their rush toward centralization during the next.
Read the whole thing here. Reason’s Jacob Sullum on Obama and medical marijuana here.
November 15 2009
99 Bottles of Beer | Language LOLCODE
99 bottles of beer written in LOL CodeHackers Fail To Crack Brazilian Voting Machines
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
November 13 2009
It may be a fundamentally empty experience, but holy crap the Droid's 265 ppi screen is amazing.
November 10 2009
November 09 2009
November 07 2009
October 28 2009
October 26 2009
"2012" a Miscalculation; Actual Calendar Ends 2220
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Save the Planet, Eat Your Dog
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Netflix Streaming on PS3: Coming Soon
Uh, holy crap? As prayed/predicated, Netflix streaming will be available "later this year" on the PS3. Like the Xbox 360, it'll be free with the $8.99-a-month plan. Unlike the 360, you'll enable Netflix via an "instant streaming Blu-ray disc."
Apparently, the free disc activates the Netflix mojo via BD-Live, in what must be the best use of BD-Live ever. At least until the next major system update, you'll have to load up the disc every time you want to use Netflix. But you'll be able to pick out movies or throw stuff into your queue using an onscreen interface, so there's no going back to the old-school days where you had to add stuff to your queue on your computer before strolling over to your Xbox and TV.
Pop on over to Netflix to reserve the disc now—I have a feeling there's gonna be a huge demand crush for them. [Netflix, Sony, Thanks Kyle B!]
October 25 2009
Ryan Gordon Wants To Bring Universal Binaries To Linux
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
October 24 2009
Universal Phone Charger Approved By UN Body
Shared by Kaleb Hornsbyandylim writes "Plans for a universal mobile phone charger have been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body. The charger has a micro-USB port at the connecting end, using technology similar to what is commonly used with digital cameras. It is not compulsory for manufacturers to adopt the new chargers, but the ITU says that some have already signed up to it. 'We are planning to launch the universal charger internationally during the first half of 2010,' Aldo Liguori, spokesperson for Sony Ericsson told the BBC."
Why micro??? Everything uses mini-usb now? Why change all this compatibility progress? I only own one thing that uses micro!!! I have 9 that use mini.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Empty a file
$ truncate -s0 file
The downside of output redirection is that you need permissions. So something like
> file
won't play nicely w/ sudo. You'd need to do something like
bash -c '> file'
instead, you could go w/
sudo truncate -s0 file
by David Winterbottom (codeinthehole.com)
gruntle
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 24, 2009 is:
gruntle \GRUN-tul\ verb
: to put in a good humor
Example sentence:
The hour wait irked us, but once we were seated, we were immediately gruntled by an amiable waiter.
Did you know?
The verb "disgruntle," which has been around since 1682, means "to make ill-humored or discontented." The prefix "dis-" often means "to do the opposite of," so people might naturally assume that if there is a "disgruntle," there must have first been a "gruntle" with exactly the opposite meaning. But actually, "dis-" doesnt always work that way -- in some rare cases it functions instead as an intensifier. "Disgruntle" developed from this intensifying sense of "dis-" plus "gruntle," an old word meaning "to grumble." In the 1920s, a writer humorously used "gruntle" to mean "to make happy" -- in other words, as an antonym of "disgruntle." The use caught on. At first "gruntle" was used only in humorous ways, but people eventually began to use it seriously as well.
October 23 2009
8 Reasons You Can Finally Love Ebook Readers (Thanks to Nook)
Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
Jessica, I thought you might like this.
I'm an avid reader, studied literature in school, and nerd out over tech, yet past ebook readers have left me cold. The Nook is the first reader I really want, and I won't be alone. Here's why.
It's cost-effective. Yeah, at $260 it's the same price as the Kindle 2, but you're getting so much more for your money: Wi-Fi, native PDF support, an SD slot and that crazy second screen makes it seem out of the Kindle's league. It makes the Sony Reader and iRex look absurdly overpriced and the Plastic Logic Que look like a shot in the dark.
Lending and Sharing. One of my main objections to the Kindle and other readers is that most of my books come from friends, rather than bookstores. The Nook realizes that and integrates a 2-week lending period—plenty of time for a quick read. Plus, you can lend to tons of different devices: Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod Touch, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile (soon).
Sharing is also done really well: As opposed to the Kindle, which only lets you read purchased ebooks on a same-account iPhone or iPod Touch, the Nook lets you read on any device supported, the most important of which are PC and Mac. So you and your significant other could read the same book at the same time, on whatever devices you each prefer. The Kindle, in contrast, doesn't support PC and Mac at all—but we'd be willing to bet Amazon is rethinking that decision right about now. Plus, the Nook syncs both your place in the book and any highlights or annotations you've made, which could be great for students.
Free in-store reading. You'll be able to take the Nook to any of Barnes & Noble's gajillion stores and read one ebook, for free, each time—the same way you might wander into the store, pick up a book and read it for an hour or two. Barnes & Noble is really thinking about how people actually read, which is a great sign: This kind of feature makes the Kindle feel like it's forcing you to change your reading habits rather than adapting to them.
And potential Nook customers will be able to go into a retail store with which they're comfortable and play around with the actual device, an advantage not shared by the Kindle. Given Matt's impressions of the Nook, I think seeing the hardware in person will convince a lot of people to buy it.
Head-turning looks. The Kindle 1 was, um, distinctive, and the Kindle 2 is inoffensive and sleek enough, but the Nook has legitimate style. As Matt said, "it makes even the relatively benign-looking Kindle 2 seem like it was beaten with an ugly stick." It was clear from the first leak that we were dealing with something very different.
Android. There are two things to be excited about when it comes to Android. First is the legit apps, which B&N seems open to—in today's presentation, John wrote "They, ahem, 'haven't announced' anything about app development, but they're comfortable using the phrase "when we do," which is veeeery promising." My personal most-wanted app? Pandora (or Slacker, or Last.FM).
Secondly, there's the more, well, illicit possibilities: The Nook both runs Android (which we already know is easily and enthusiastically modified) and has a microUSB jack, which should make for easy hacking. Imagine user-created skins, apps, games (in case reading gets boring)—the possibilities are just about endless. The Nook already supports PDF natively (yes!) but we could definitely see it hacked to embrace other formats like Word docs.
The second screen. Yeah, it's weird, and we wouldn't have believed it if it didn't, you know, exist, but it just makes so much sense: Browsing for books on e-ink is an exercise in frustration, and touchscreen e-ink is even worse. With its capacitive touchscreen, the Nook offers a keyboard and Cover-Flow-esque browsing without the awkwardness and lethargy of e-ink, but it also opens the door for multitasking. You'll be able to read a book and control your music at the same time, and because the music browser will be on the LCD screen, it won't look like e-inked crap. It should also support photo browsing and the ability to set your own wallpaper.
Battery life. The Nook's 10-day battery life may not be quite as long as the Kindle 2's 14 days, but 10 days is still insane—especially if we think about the tablets that will vie to make ebook readers obsolete. Whenever the Apple tablet is announced, you can bet its battery life will be measured in hours, not days. Plus, the Nook's battery is replaceable, always a welcome decision (you could have a spare battery, and when yours does eventually die, it's easy to replace).
Both 3G and Wi-Fi. I'm not exactly sure about the benefits of Wi-Fi right now (besides international travel, where AT&T may not work), but given the possibilities of Android, it's essential that the Nook includes it. In the future, we may want to download files bigger than ebooks—apps, games, videos, whatever—and Wi-Fi will be vital once the potential of the Nook is unlocked. Plus, there could well be Wi-Fi-only features of the kind AT&T wouldn't support: Streaming content, web browsing, VoIP, whatever. Wi-Fi is a killer feature not for what it does right now, but for what it could allow the Nook could do in the future.
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
