A recent film ignited a new generation of armchair epistemologists when it proposed that we could be living inside an elaborate computer simulation. While your philosophy major friends were quick to point out that thinkers since Descartes have posed the same question, it’s likely that none of them ever considered the converse: what if, unbeknownst […]

In the past 50 years, there haven’t been many features to pick from, and once optional things like UHF tuners, remote controls, color, stereo and cable channel tuning have all become standard. The main constant over the years was a choice of picture size.
Now, there are SIX different decisions to make and the choices within […]

This article by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson, is a very interesting and insightful read on the world of user interfaces. Though a bit dated (covers up through roughly 1999), it is still worth the few hours it will take you to read it, and it is available for free on the internet.
Stephenson on the […]

So did you rip your entire music collection and encode it in MP3, OGG, WMA,
etc? Is all that music just sitting on your hard drive at home? Can’t afford
or don’t want to spend the money on a portable player with a really large hard
drive? Got a broadband connect to the Internet?

Here I present […]

On July 23, 2004, the New York Times had an editorial that puts together a rough set of requirements for E-voting machines:

Physical security for electronic systems
Rigorous testing of electronic machines
Properly trained poll workers, and rapid-response teams on Election Day
Public records at the precinct level
The option to vote non-electronically
Independent security experts
Transparency in electronic voting

Looking at this […]

Off grid means that we are not connected to the electrical grid, water, sewer or gas mains.

Along with that it’s a hourse made out of straw. Looks modern. And was developed by a web designer. Runs its own electricity through solar panels, a wind generator and passive solar heating. Wow.
Thanks to Mark for the link.

Did you know that very soon after you start using your
computer it begins to slow down and loses that responsive,
“fresh out of the box” sort of feel
You’ve just started up your new super-speed, top of the range
computer. You start surfing the internet, downloading
a few new programs to try out and then a few weeks […]

Imagine a computer that never crashes. Or a network immune to attack…
[Few] believe that speed is the only problem of computer hardware and software. Current systems crash and freeze so frequently that people become violent. Fast but flaky should not be our 21st century legacy.
Recovery Oriented Computing (ROC) takes the perspective that hardware faults, software […]

Besides give it to me, this article does a great analysis of the financial situation that Microsoft faces and offers advice on what it can do with all that money. It’s funny because many people tout the cash horde that Microsoft holds, but the article puts this up as a negative. Maybe they are saving […]

Searching from address bar
Did you know that if you entered a search term into the address bar (where you’d normally enter a URL), Firefox does a “I’m Feeling Lucky” search on Google? If you don’t know what that means, try clicking the “I’m Feeling Lucky” search on Google the next time you’re there - basically, […]

Google has a 20 year history of posts on Usenet. The archive dates all the way back to 1981, and covers such interesting topics as Linus Torvald’s announcement of Linux, the first post from an AOL account (N00B!), first post about the show Friends and many other interesting posts. They’ve even singled out the first […]

According to this article at The Register:
The United States continues to lead as the main origin of spam, with nearly 55.69 per cent of all spam being sent from the U.S. South Korea (10.23 per cent), China (6.60 per cent), Brazil (3.35 per cent) and Canada (3.08 per cent) are other common sources of spam.

Well, […]

If you are dying to read a detailed overview of the PCI Express architecture, but just can’t find it, well guess what? I have it for you. Yes after long hard searching *cough* I have found a great overview of PC Express.

In this article, we’ll take a detailed look at the features of PCI Express […]

Gadgetopia has an excellent review of 37Signals’ “The Building of Basecamp” seminar. This was something that I wanted to attend but was unable to for about a million reasons. If you are interested they have announced their next seminar.

All in all, an excellent seminar on two levels: (1) the actual information presented, and (2) the […]

First it was the article on how Microsoft lost the API war and now we have an article on how Microsoft has lost the Joel war. It’s an interesting and well thoughtout take on how developers shouldn’t necessarily fear Microsoft and should not put all of their attention into the browserspace.

The harshest conclusion is that […]

A short and interesting read of how a spammer, dubbed S. Pammer, got started in the wondeful business of spamming. Looks as though he sold cans of SPAM. The irony is definitely not lost here. Anyways, he details how he got start, what software he used, and how successful he was in his attempts.

His estimated […]