Status-Q

[Original Link] This is another of those good ideas that I also thought of but never got around to implementing. There are lots of these. I’m better at the inspiration than the perspiration, which means, in Edison’s terms, that I’m 1% of a genius where Russell is 100%. 🙁

Anyway, the reason I wanted to do this was because it would have been another excuse to buy an iPod. Imagine an audio news aggregator, which would dump the audioblogs you’d subscribed to onto your iPod whenever you synched it. You could then peruse them using the nice iPod interface. A build-your-own radio station. And yes, it would be even better if real radio stations incorporated RSS-type subscription mechanisms. They should be less concerned about syndication than other online publications, because they would still be able to embed advertisments and jingles in the audio.

I’ll get around to it one day. The same goes for that wheel thing I invented a while back…

[thanks to John for the link]

[Original Link] “The free software that found its way into the big league” and “Microsoft Threatened by Alternative Ways”.

“Bill [Gates] isn’t afraid of taking long-term chances. He also understands that you have to try everything, because the real secret to innovation is failing fast.” – Gary Starkweather quoted in a Fortune article by Brent Schendler. Good point.

Rose has just noticed that one of the cardboard boxes we used when moving house recently has a label on the side:
“Made from at least 100% recycled paper. Fully recyclable.”
At least?

[Original Link] “A new study compares Mac-using Web surfers with their PC-wielding counterparts. If you’re reading this on Windows, feel free to take your time on the big words.” [from CNET News.com]

[Original Link] Clay Shirky has written a splendid article, discussing this well-known maxim, which teaches us something about statistics, something about catchphrases, and quite a bit about telecoms. [Found on Michael Gilbert’s excellent Nonprofit Online News.]

Update, twenty years later: Clay’s article is no longer at its original location but can be found on the Internet Archive here.

[Original Link] I’m a bit concerned about my weight and my cholesterol level, both of which are rather higher than they should be. I also enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. This combination makes me interested in this well-written New York Times article in which Gary Taubes asks whether the dramatic rise in obesity recently has come about because of, rather than in spite of, the received wisdom on how to tackle it. Could the Atkins diet live again?

I like the banner on Ximian’s site:

A good friend of mine told me a nice story. The poet W.H.Auden once asked him, “Don’t you think Tolkien is a wonderful writer?” To which my friend replied that no, he didn’t really think so. “I respect you for saying that”, said Auden, “but I’ll never trust your opinion again.”

[Original Link] Ross Anderson has written a very good FAQ about the Intel/Microsoft plans for control/protection of digital content. I’m worried about this stuff, but I was worried about .NET and Passport/Hailstorm. Still, that was just Microsoft, and however big they were, you could choose to ignore them; enough people did, fortunately.

If the motherboard manufacturers adopt TCPA/Palladium, on the other hand, it may be rather harder. It has potentially worrying implications for Linux, Mac and other platforms. If somebody sends you a Word document in future, you might not only need a Microsoft software package to read it, you might also need an Intel motherboard. It’s a good thing there’s all this anti-monopoly legislation around, isn’t it?

(About a year ago, Microsoft even wanted me to change my name!)