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June 29, 2004
BBC's William Horsley on Leadership
He has suddenly emerged from the wings to centre stage. There had been whispers that he would be "only second-best" or "the lowest common denominator".
But at his first news conference in Brussels after being unanimously chosen for the job by his fellow heads of government, he showed a firm grasp of EU policies and the sensitive issues of the day, as well as a streak of humour.
Asked which of his four names journalists could drop for brevity, he replied: "Just call me Barroso - pleased to meet you!"
That sense of humour, and ability to keep things in perspective, could be a saving grace.
BBC NEWS | Europe | Barroso offers EU a fresh lead
Posted by thdyck at June 29, 2004 | Comments (0)
History of chain letters
While my email-tracer hoax lacks that particular coda, it shares a remarkable number of attributes with paper chain letters. In them, we find testimonials from experts and beneficiaries. ("Mr. Frankling D. Roosavelt [sic] was elected for the third term as president of the United States 52 hours after he mailed this letter," claims one piece from 1949. In fact, Roosevelt was elected to a third term in 1940, and by 1949 he was dead.) We find the age-old promise that "this is not a junk letter" and the perennial threat of bad luck for breaking the chain ("If you ignore this, you will repent later"). And then there's the long list of addresses, the last one belonging to a friend: the altruism of the gesture, the expectation of reciprocation.
...
Years passed. His email-tracing hoax became notorious, one of the top 10 of all time, according to antivirus firm Sophos. Mack remained anonymous. I asked him why he didn't lay claim to his creation. With just a couple sentences, he'd launched one of the greatest social critiques of our age. He'd shown that when it comes to technology, people believe that anything can happen - that invasion of privacy is inevitable - and that even those who don't like it are willing to benefit from it.
Wired 12.07: Copy This Article & Win Quick Cash! (from Slashdot)
Posted by thdyck at June 29, 2004 | Comments (0)
BBC's charter under review
"The essence of successful public service broadcasting is that it never patronises its audience, never offers them cynical, derivative, exploitative programming," said Mr Grade.
Mr Thompson also wanted the BBC's journalism to be at the forefront of global news.
'National debate'
"The BBC aims to support civic life and national debate by providing trusted and impartial news and information of the highest quality, to help everyone to make sense of the world and to engage with it."
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | BBC outlines 'radical' manifesto
Posted by thdyck at June 29, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 25, 2004
IE continues to be a security risk
The Internet Storm Center, which monitors Net threats, confirmed that the list of infected sites included some large Web properties.
"We won't list the sites that are reported to be infected in order to prevent further abuse, but the list is long and includes businesses that we presume would normally be keeping their sites fully patched," the group stated on its Web site.
The group also pointed out that the malicious program uploaded to a victim's computer is not currently detected as a virus by most antivirus software. With no patch from Microsoft, that leaves Internet Explorer users vulnerable. A representative of the software giant was not immediately available for comment on when a patch might be available.
Researchers warn of infectious Web sites - News - ZDNet
Posted by thdyck at June 25, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 23, 2004
RIAA unloads warehouse filler on libraries as part of settlement
The public library in Worcester, Mass., with a main library and two branches, received 150 copies of "Nastradamus," a 1999 album by the rapper Nas, and 148 copies of "Entertainment Weekly's Greatest Hits of 1971."
(Computer error is blamed.)
MSNBC - Librarians: Free CDs too much of a good thing (from BoingBoing)
Posted by thdyck at June 23, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 22, 2004
Mike Melvill on being in space
But it was the sublime view that affected him the most. "The sky was jet black, with light blue along the horizon - it was really an awesome sight," he said. "You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God."
'Anomalies' in first private spaceflight revealed
Posted by thdyck at June 22, 2004 | Comments (0)
Oxfam: Arms trade 'hurting development'
Many countries have signed up to voluntary agreements drawn up the European Union or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), committing themselves to assessing arms sales against their impact on sustainable development.But these agreements are not legally binding and therefore rarely adhered to, Oxfam says.
The net result is developing nations whose health and education budgets are spent on weapons caches.
Pakistan's total defence expenditure in 2002, it says, consumed half of the country's GDP.
And in 1999 South Africa purchased $6bn worth of aircraft, helicopters and submarines whose value would have covered the cost of treatment with combination therapy for all five million Aids sufferers for two years.
Very few countries have a policy of consulting the government's development department in the decision making process, Oxfam found.And only four countries - Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK - had ever denied a sale on the grounds of its damage to sustainable development.
BBC NEWS | Africa | Arms trade 'hurting development'
Posted by thdyck at June 22, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 16, 2004
Joel Spolsky on productivity
Maybe this is the key to productivity: just getting started. Maybe when pair programming works it works because when you schedule a pair programming session with your buddy, you force each other to get started.
When I was an Israeli paratrooper a general stopped by to give us a little speech about strategy. In infantry battles, he told us, there is only one strategy: Fire and Motion. You move towards the enemy while firing your weapon. The firing forces him to keep his head down so he can't fire at you. (That's what the soldiers mean when they shout "cover me." It means, "fire at our enemy so he has to duck and can't fire at me while I run across this street, here." It works.) The motion allows you to conquer territory and get closer to your enemy, where your shots are much more likely to hit their target. If you're not moving, the enemy gets to decide what happens, which is not a good thing. If you're not firing, the enemy will fire at you, pinning you down.
I remembered this for a long time. I noticed how almost every kind of military strategy, from air force dogfights to large scale naval maneuvers, is based on the idea of Fire and Motion. It took me another fifteen years to realize that the principle of Fire and Motion is how you get things done in life. You have to move forward a little bit, every day. It doesn't matter if your code is lame and buggy and nobody wants it. If you are moving forward, writing code and fixing bugs constantly, time is on your side. Watch out when your competition fires at you. Do they just want to force you to keep busy reacting to their volleys, so you can't move forward?
Joel on Software - Fire And Motion
Posted by thdyck at June 16, 2004 | Comments (0)
Bird flies like brick
This just made me laugh. Poor dove!
The Sri Lankan authorities have ordered an inquiry after a dove freeing ceremony intended to symbolise peace went disastrously wrong.
One bird was dead before take-off and "dropped like a brick" soon after it left the hands of the public security minister at a ceremony last weekend.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Dead dove prompts Sri Lanka probe
Posted by thdyck at June 16, 2004 | Comments (0)
Teleportation breakthrough made
How often will you see that headline? (It's an advance in controlled quantum entanglement.)
Scientists have performed successful teleportation on atoms for the first time, the journal Nature reports.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Teleportation breakthrough made
Posted by thdyck at June 16, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 14, 2004
International Association of Pallbearers
The lodges reflected the influential role of the church in the black community of the time. Ms Walker says her fondest memories of being president of the Pallbearers before Mr Ralph come from the fellowship of shared worship.
"We gave thanks to the Lord," she says, "for the love and the luck he gave us, even while we prayed for the departed at the funerals."
BBC NEWS | Americas | Miami's pallbearers: A dying breed
Posted by thdyck at June 14, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 11, 2004
Ron and Nancy Regan's marriage story
Movie star match
Ron and Nancy were in "the biz" when they first met - but their date was politically motivated.
As a 26-year-old starlet in Hollywood, Nancy was aghast to find that there was another Nancy Davis on a list of communist sympathisers.
She knew that Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, was a staunch anti-communist who could help her out, and she sought a meeting with him.
Still getting over his divorce from actress Jane Wyman, with whom he had two children, the actor agreed to meet, but said he could not have a late night as he had a pre-dawn call. At 3am on that first date, they were already planning their next.
"I don't know if it was exactly love at first sight, but it was pretty close," Nancy said.
When he said "let's get married" one night over dinner in their favourite restaurant, she simply replied, "let's". It, too, was a simple affair - a secret ceremony on 4 March, 1952 at the Little Brown Church just out of Los Angeles.
Their daughter Patti was born seven months later, and Ron followed in 1958.
...
At the White House, they always walked hand in hand, and the couple would leave love notes around their residence which multiplied ten-fold on birthdays and anniversaries.
BBC NEWS | Americas | End of a love story
Posted by thdyck at June 11, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 10, 2004
US miltary spending almost equals all countries' spending combined
The U.S. accounted for 47 per cent of the total as it paid for military missions around the globe, with the biggest "war on terrorism"-related actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Japan followed with five per cent, and Britain, France and China with four per cent each.
CBC News:World military spending close to $1 trillion in 2003
Posted by thdyck at June 10, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 9, 2004
Married sex provides the most happiness
Research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States has found a strong link between people's happiness and the amount of sex they have.
Although the research also shows that people with high incomes are happier than people with low incomes, it found that there is no relationship between people's earnings and the amount of sex they have.
It is not money but quantity that counts. Happiest are those who have sex more than four times a week. They are about 6 per cent of the population. Unhappiest are the 22 per cent of people in the study of 16,000 Americans who didn't have sex at all in the previous year.
However, the relationship between sex and happiness does not extend to the number of sexual partners a person has a year.
The more sexual partners one has (several respondents to the survey reported more than 100 in the past year), the unhappier.
People on high incomes are no more likely to have more than one sexual partner in the past year than people on low incomes.
People who have paid for sex are considerably less happy than others, as are those who have had sex outside their marriage.
NEWS.com.au | Shock research: sex makes us happy (May 29, 2004)
Posted by thdyck at June 9, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 8, 2004
Book-A-Minute SF/F
The High King
By Lloyd Alexander
Ultra-Condensed by Samuel Stoddard
(ALL the characters come back and do something, except for Glew, who comes back and does nothing.)
Gwydion
Taran, now that evil is defeated, would you like to go to paradise and spend forever in eternal ecstasy?
Taran
Nah.
THE END
Posted by thdyck at June 8, 2004 | Comments (0)
June 5, 2004
English 3020 course on Science Fiction and Fantasy
The University of Minnesota has posted the audio from 20 lectures from its "Studies in Narrative: Science Fiction and Fantasy" distance-ed course.
(from BoingBoing)
Posted by thdyck at June 5, 2004 | Comments (0)