Good note from Steve Gillmor about what the Sun-Microsoft detente means. I also agree that it’s a win-win, but don’t look for them to buddy up. Scott understands what it means to own and control critical IP and technology, and he’s not going to let himself get caught in a situation like HP’s software and chip strategy. Link
This is a very cool idea - on the order of Brewster’s Internet Book Mobile. It’s always more impactful when someone can make this stuff feel tangible to folks.
The next ish of Reason magazine will be mailed out to 40,000 subscribers, with 40,000 custom covers, each bearing a satellite photo of the individual subscriber’s neighborhood, with the subscriber’s house circled. The point? “Everybody, including our magazine, has been harping on the erosion of privacy and the fears of a database nation.
I recently sent the following letter to SI Kids. It speaks for itself.
_
Dear SI Kids,
I came home from work yesterday to the following question from my 8-year old: “How come Barry Bonds is on the cover of SI Kids? I thought he was in trouble for drugs.”
As you may or may not have heard, drugs, in general, are a big issue for parents and kids these days.
Cool folding paper projects, including the White House and Wrigley Field.
Very cool PC case.
Article by Kevin and Gregory Staple on “The End of Spectrum Scarcity”
Switching over to NetNewsWire for aggregation (at least trying it out). Need to work on multi-site sync, but other than that I’m very happy with it. Posting from it right now!
A NYTimes article reports that MIT has 1/3 less computer science majors compared to a year ago. It then goes farther to report that comp sci majors aren’t even looking for comp sci jobs (though that’s been happening for awhile). Is Computer Science going the way of the Automotive Engineering Department? I think there’s some real parallels to draw…
Unfortunately I don’t think Bill G is the man to get people excited…
Good article about the state and promise of Zigbee.
Some good posts at isen.blog about the Hubbert curve and the decline of oil usage:
News from the Oil Patch
Phase Changes in Oil and Telecom
Lots of great analysis on this topic in Vaclav Smil’s book Energy at a Crossroads.