aviary

Slashdot

• Somehow slashdot posted a hardware article about how to modify an inexpensive DVD player to have much better audio processing components.
• Finally, the US says that all government agencies must implement IPv6 by June 2008. Watch this pushed back…
• A Taiwanese stock trader cost her company $251 million through an error made by a typo. Of course, she got fired, but the company’s keeping the extra stock she brought.
• LiveScience reports that scientists have figured out how ice melts.
• NetCraft is predicting that 2005 may see the greatest increase in internet domain name registration since 2000.
• Science compiled a list of 125 unanswered science questions for their 125th anniversary.
• CNet is reporting that broadband users may have to pay a universal tax.
• BCC reports that China now has 100 million internet users. Wikipedia documents the government’s attempts to censor the internet there.
• Eric S. Raymond (ESR) has been interviewed by ONLamp, discussing why he believes that Linux’s success is not because of the GPL, but becaues of the social structure that Linus was able to create after the advent of cheap internet.
• ZDNet reports that the US Department of Commerence has reversed its decision to hand over control of the internet’s root servers to ICANN.
• Fishermen in northern Thailand caught the largest freshwater fish ever, at 646 pounds.
• David Clark, one of the researchers who worked on the Internet (I’m assuming when it was still ARPAnet), is getting funding from the National Science Foundation to create a ‘clean slate’ internet. Whatever happened with Internet2?
• ZDNet is reporting that Sophos has discovered that it takes an average of 12 minutes for an unsecured Windows client to be compromised over the internet.
• ZDNet interviews James Gosling, one of the creators of Java, about his views on the future of Java.
• Google has released APIs for Google Maps!.
• eWeek published an article about how the built-in RSS feed feature in Longhorn will be abused more than used. Interesting stance, and I think I agree with the notion.
• Reuters reports that AMD files suit against Intel in Japan also, citing Japan’s own anti-trust laws.
• Gamespot reports that Sony will be losing $100 per PS3 unit that they sell for the first year after its introduction.
• An August 1984 BYTE review of the original 128kb Macintosh has been posted.
• Fujitsu announces contact-less vein recognition. This is a good thing, as even IBM’s advanced fingerprint reader does not recognize my fingers all the time because how my finger’s skin changes from day to day.
• AP announces that 8000 Congressional Report Service reports that were written for legislators are not availabe to the public here. Now we can see if Congress had accurate reserach information when they made their decisions.
• AeroVironment has produced the world’s first liquid hyroden powered UAV, capable of “[operating] at 65,000 feet for over a week with a flexible payload-carrying capacity of up to 1,000 pounds”.
• Cornell University researchers have found that our brains are not sequential machines like computers are.
• Sun Microsystems have announced their first laptop, based on Sun’s UltraSparc processor, and will include Solaris 10, 512MB RAM, a 40GB hard drive and WiFi. Prices start at $3,400.
• Anandtech reports that the CPUs of next generation gaming consoles (specifically Xbox 360 and PS3) are not up to hype.
• Home Theatre Magazine reports that it won’t matter that much if analog TV signals are stopped, since most televisions at home are used to play signals generated from recorders.
• ZDNet UK is reporting that Sun is pulling out of their JDS Linux initiative, probably because those units are based on SuSE, which is owned by Novell.
• ZDNet AU says that Microsoft’s Ballmer is promising that they’ll catch up with Google.
• News.com reports that Microsoft is to be releasing an AJAX framework, which can be used from Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005 and ASP .NET 2.0. At the moment, I would prefer if they didn’t.
• The Department of Computer Science at UNC Chapel Hill have benchmarks on GPUSORT, their program to sort using graphics processors. Their distribution is available for download.
• In a recent discovery that Morse coders can send messages faster than the quickest SMS typers, McConnell blogs that cell phone producers should consider adding a Morse code decoder into their models. I’d learn Morse Code if they did that.
• The New York Times reports that France will be the location of the world’s first nuclear fusion reactor power plant.
• Amazon patents user viewing histories. This is getting really annoying.
• Trolltech has released Qt4, along with some promotional videos, the Qt4Dance.
• Sun announces in JavaOne that Java will appear on next generation DVD players. Sun’s original intent for Java was for embedded systems, and they’re finally getting to get it.
• CableVision, with Narad Networks, is going to offer 50mbit cable connections to Long Island custumers. That’s not fair; I’m only 50 meters from the Nassau border!
• o’Reilly has an article on how to build your own MythTV box.
• Carter Aviation Technologies have accomplished mu-1 barrier, where the centripetal velocity is equal to the forward velocity of a helicopter/rotocopter.
• This article writes about the possibility of a 13.1 sound codec, based on Enhanced AC-3, which would allow for home entertainment systems to reproduce movie theatre sound setups.

Misc

• Link to Curt Hibbs’ blog, the person who wrote ONLamp’s Ruby on Rails articles, which I think are very good.
• The longest SQL query I’ve ever seen in my life, though it doesn’t look that interesting as the second longest SQL query I’ve seen (which I wrote).
• The Daily WTF. Literally.