Slashdot News 2005.08.29

Boot loader showdown - LILO vs. GRUB
Free Wi-Fi? Get Ready for GoogleNet. - An article from Business 2.0 on Google's purchases of "dark fiber".
Xtreme Defense - Lightning guns?
Plasma Displays: An Overview
How Much Does iTunes Like My Five-Star Songs? - The statistics behind iTunes playlist randomization.

An article on Slashdot on Uneducated IT Managers, and How to Deal? Ah yes, that is the question. Some good quotes:

Engineers:
The A students go into teaching/academia
The B students get most of the jobs.
The C students go into / switch to management.

Well, by GPA I was an A student, but by my core classes alone, I was more like a B student. But now I'm thinking of going into business for myself, so things are getting progressively worse! Then there's this:

I was self-employed for two years, and boy was my boss a turkey! :-)

That's what I'm afraid of :-D

He had it easy. He was sleeping with the boss.

...Unfortunately, in that situation, that won't really get you anywhere ;-)

The Peter Principle would have a competent tech promoted to management, and being unable to manage his department because he's only good at being a tech. This is more like the Dilbert Principle, wherein incompetent workers are promoted to management because the competent ones are needed at the bottom to do the actual work.

That's deep work philosophy.

So the question is, is it better to have a manager who knows more about your job than you do (or did at one point), or less about tech and more about managing?

飲ま飲まイェーイ

さっちゃんが今日テレビ見たらある番組に出たPV。本当はデンマーク語の歌だけど、日本語で空耳性がすごくて誰かが勝手にアニメーションを作ったらしい！超おかしいんだよ！！

「マイアヒ、マイアフ、マイアホ、マイアハッハ！」

iSuppli dissects the Mac mini

C|net has an article about how much the Mac mini parts really cost. The report from iSuppli is available on their website. Geez, can they really make money doing competitive analysis teardowns?

Coral CDN

Interesting. I have yet to try it out, but it sounds good.

Schliff, one better

Gizmodo has an article on a sliding door that conforms to the shape of the person passing through the doorway. Pretty sweet, but it seems like there'll be issues, like how does the system react if you turn suddenly while walking through the door? Crunch. I'd like to see someone going through the door walking on their hands.

Japanese wood planes

I stumbled on the Higa Tool site when looking for tips on how to use a Japanese wood plane.

This is what I was looking for (カンナの使い方). A good reference from the pictures alone, and even better when one can read the text.

Yamato Toys

I know Yamato Toys for their PVC figure collections. They typically are of higher quality than some of the other manufacturers (although their stuff is still made in China). Here's their Japanese site and the English version. Turns out they sell some of this stuff in the U.S. too—at how much of a markup, I wonder.

Geothermal Energy Links

Lately, I've had an interest.

Geothermal Education Office Geothermal Energy Facts: Introductory, Advanced, Glossary.
The World Bank's page on geothermal energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Geothermal Technologies Program, GeoPowering the West, geothermal information.
Geothermal Energy Association
National Renewal Energy Laboratory (NREL)'s page on geothermal energy.
Lastly, the Idaho National Laboratory's Geothermal Program.

WebDAV

Apparently OS X's Calendar application can publish one's calendar using .Mac or WebDAV. So I did a search, and found the spec, RFC 2518. Further, I found a list of resources and a tool to view WebDAV servers.

Toonopedia & BCBD

While discussing Apple's Mighty Mouse, my latest object of desire, with Nakao-san, he mentioned the cartoon series. Thus, I googled it and came up with a link to Toonpedia. There are other historical entries, including He-Man—and the Masters of the Universe!! On a cursory check of cartoons I know, Toonopedia doesn't list The Mighty Orbots or Robotix, but Big Cartoon Database does. Sort of.

Buy silver?

After reading about Peak Oil, I started contemplating buying more precious metals for survival purposes. Never mind that I'm in Japan and thousands of miles away from my hedge (which is under lock and key and guarded under arms).

CMI has an article on gold and silver for survival purposes.
Another article (which I linked to from Border Gold) claims that silver is in short supply relative to gold, and is a prime investment. The biggest thing that this has for it is that Warren Buffet has in the past 10 years bought 25% of the world's silver stock. Here's an article about Buffet's opinions about the U.S. Dollar, mentioning silver, and here's another piece bullish on silver.

MSN has a column describing how foreign investors are starting to own more and more of the U.S. debt. The scary thing is that Japan is one of the biggest buyers, and so if the oil apocalypse happens, their economy will be just as trashed as ours! (Although their transportation systems are better, the fact that they import so many essentials means that Japan will likely fare much, much worse than the U.S. Unless, perhaps, they can convince China and Korea to ship them goods—note the hint of sarcasm.)

Hmm, CMI sells American Silver Eagles for $1.75 over spot in quantities of 500 or more....

Large Wooden A-to-D "iPod"

That's a guy with lots of time, money, and hardware on his hands....

Link Flow: Make to Peak Oil

So I was checking out Make (eventually ended up subscribing), which has a blog. On this blog, there was a link to Extreme Craft, which has an article that mentions Peak Oil. The site linked to was Life After the Oil Crash, which is seriously depressing, which is how I got here.

This was actually last Friday, but I put my machine to suspend mode and was only blogging it now....

Wired News and other, 2005.08.08

The Reality Behind Reality TV is that "In [David's] admittedly limited experience, people who look for love online "either have 'junk in the trunk,' or they're a little crazy, socially inept or intensely frustrated with the opposite sex." Now there's a bit of wisdom.
Rivers of Coke - Those Italians seem to like their cocaine, "runnin' all 'round my brain".
An Insider's View of 'Ciscogate' - This is actually a great article. This lawyer seems to have a head on her shoulders, and from face value, the text of her blog, seems to be decent. For a lawyer. I may have to check out her blog.
Bridging the Google Ad Gap - Google's search results seem to have gotten a lot worse these days: too many sites selling crap come up in the top results.
Waiting for the "Eye"-Pod - I'm waiting for my video iPod, ok?
Why flying is safer now - Well, it sure as hell isn't because we're using Airbuses....
Hiroshima survivors: 'never forget' - Never forget. But there will always be wars—it's human nature—and when the technology exists, it will be used. Nuclear weapons will be used again, someday, and there's not a damn thing anyone in the world can do to stop it.

Painting Models

And I don't mean applying makeup to hot chicks.

How to Paint
rec.models.scale FAQ, part 17
Another painting models guide.

A couple of interesting detailed descriptions:
Syreen Exo-Armor
Various high-level detailing

Life After the Oil Crash

I think sensible people should at least take notice of this. Running out of oil to sustain the economy is a certainty; the uncertainty is when. With this in mind, it's a matter of getting in a position to weather the coming changes.

Make: Blog

Make looks interesting, like my kind of 'zine.

Dragon Optical Illusion

Download the printable version here.

Weird cases from Slashdot

Someone's "parabolic heat sink case mod", which is actually a half-pipe-like mini ramp for skateboarding....
And some guy who built a Mac mini into his parents' kitchen: iKitchen....

Random Ham

From this Slashdot article:

I've been watching the shuttle mission on the K6BEN [qrz.com] amateur TV repeater near San Jose, which is on 421.25Mhz, the same as cable (not broadcast) channel 57, through my VCR and with a Yagi I made [wa5znu.org] from a magazine article. The NASA Ames Amateur Radio Club is providing the feed [nasa.gov] with a 1.2GHz uplink to the repeater. They also have shuttle audio [nasa.gov] on two meters, and I can receive that with my VX-2R HT [universal-radio.com].

スタパブログと変なキーボード

中尾さんが教えてくれたスタパブログに、このキーボードの話が載ってた。値段不明だけど、価格に関わらずほしいかも。

Top 100 Global Brands

おもろいゲーム

塊魂
脳を鍛える大人のDSトレーニング

Wired News, slightly dated (7/27)

Mars Plan Envisions Comfy Colony - Where do I sign up?
In Japan, Summer Is for Games - Hmm...Katamari Damashii is on my buy list....

And from Furthermore: "Did a dehydrated art thief drink a watery artistic statement about global warming? That's one theory behind the mystifying disappearance of Weapon of Mass Destruction, a 2-liter clear plastic bottle filled with melted Antarctic ice and valued at $74,137, according to Scotsman.com." What the hell? Sounds like a nice racket. Somebody tell me how that's a work of art. Moreover, where's the idiot who would pay $74k for a bottle of water? I have a few things to sell him....