Festering Articles

Some stuff that's been stuck in my browser lately....

• Solar plant to store energy in molten salt [c|net]
• A review of the weirdest shoe ever [barefootrunner]
• Scientists create artificial meat [/.]
• Lotus Omnivore engine [autoblog] (so...can I piss in the gas tank for fuel?)

4A & The Cloud

How does the 4th Amendment apply to cloud computing? The law ought to err on the side of privacy. And I just had to make a comment:

@Demerit

Re automatic weapons v. the 2nd Amendment, it is very cut and dried. The people were intended to have access to the same weapons as the military, because the people themselves were intended to be the country's defense. The only fuzzy category of weapons is of the nuclear type -- most people couldn't afford those anyway, though. Hell, I don't trust the government to have military weapons! They have a monopoly of force. Things would be much better off if the thugs in charge couldn't muscle the people around so much.

Re Roe v. Wade: the issue is if the unborn infant is a full-fledged human or not, with all the rights and privileges thereof, because if it were, terminating it is malum in se. And since there's no practical difference between a child just before and just after birth, nor is there a logical and consistent way to delineate a clear point in gestation where one's humanity begins, it must in fact be at conception. However, as a society we make trade-offs: for example, we execute criminals who are a quantifiable threat to society (for non-supporters of capital punishment, an executed life sentence is virtually the same effect). Most of us do not consider that malum in se. If there's any argument for abortion it must be a rationale for trading an infant's life for a comparable objective (such as saving the life of the mother).

TED

I saw reference to this device called TED on c|net, and it looks pretty interesting. The Google PowerMeter software may or may not be good: if they're logging my consumption patterns, that could be unpleasant. ("At 2 AM power demand at his house spikes 150W, so he must be in the bathroom taking a whiz before he goes to sleep.") I'd rather keep some information off the Net, thank you very much. Still, it's an intriguing product.

News Dump

• Google hacked, may leave China [Google, CNN, c|net]
• Wi-Fi powered gadget charger @CES [c|net] - I had an idea a few years back on how to monetize wireless power...this is getting too close for comfort
• LPD displays [xconomy linked from /.] - seems like the phosphor-zapping technology found in CRTs just won't die?
• Genetically modified corn is bad for you [International Journal of Biological Sciences] - the paleos say plain corn ain't good for you, but then again the good stuff made from corn, bourbon whiskey, ain't good for you either

Government Intrusion

The difficulty with being a libertarian is that it's really neither traditional conservative nor liberal. Case in point, I find myself having to agree with ACLU types regarding government intrusion, which is more often than I'd care to based on some of their other positions.

From a c|net article:

"Who wants to live in a world where the government can listen in on every communication without any evidence of crime?" he said. "The consequences of that are that people won't communicate freely and the country would be very different as a result. Imagine how your conversation with a close personal friend would change if you knew someone else was listening. That's what is at stake. That's what needs to be protected."

Caroline McCarthy

After reading an article by Caroline McCarthy that was above the typical c|net blog-type posts, I felt the need to google her for profile pictures bigger than the c|net bio thumbnail. Yeah, I e-stalked her for five minutes, haha.

Magazine.org has a bigger version of the bio thumbnail
ValleyWag, circa June 2008
Daily Style Phile, circa October 2008

McCarthy's also on Twitter, as one might expect.

Is it just me, or is she fairly stacked? Well, um, I read her for the articles.

GoodGuide

Hmm, maybe my idea is a bit late. GoodGuide is getting close....

Microdonations

Well, I'd been looking at doing an automatic donation NPO since United Way stopped hosting HGST's charitable donations for free. Maybe I don't need to?

HDD v. SSD: If v. When

Another link in my Firefox tab stack that I need to clear.... It's been present through about four browser restarts, so it's about time. This article on C|net talks about the reliability issues of SSD, and how they're actually less reliable than HDDs.

Op-Ed on Obama's First 200 Days

Comment on an opinion piece by Michael Steele.

Mr. Steele hit the nail on the head.

To "bob", there are times when doing "something" is worse than doing "nothing": if the plan is completely wrong. It is very worthwhile to provide feedback to let our representatives know that their constituents aren't happy with the way things are going.

Anti-Privacy Article

What a dumb article. My retort:

Ah, how naive. When your plans are widely known, bad people can take advantage of those plans. Going to London? How about a bunch of guys clean out your house for you while you're out? Could be an employee of one of the corporations with access to your data, or maybe they got hacked. Either way, you're screwed. But you'd only have yourself to blame. Ignore the warnings about intrusive surveillance to your peril.

Smarter folks are buying more things with cash to avoid tracking, and even bypassing increasingly worthless Federal Reserve notes with other intermediates, or bartering. The government hates that because then they can't track what you're doing. Suck it, Big Brother!

DIY Home Surveillance

Something I've been thinking about lately, via c|net.

Guide to YouTube

Hmm, I've had this tab open in Firefox for a month now and I'd like to close it.... C|net's An Expert's Guide to YouTube has some interesting tips and tricks that may or may not be useful.

'Social media is like teen sex'

I just couldn't resist commenting.

Even better said than Mr. Kaushik, who must be from an era gone by. As for the metaphor (well, this commentary is over-analysis for sure), my generation was well-steeped in "pr0n", and I think pretty much everyone who was inclined to do it knew how. Of course, Mr. Kaushik meant "no one knows how to do it right" -- the efforts we see are stab-in-the-dark attempts to gain experience to do it right.

That "everyone claims to be an expert" seems to represent well the typical American characteristic of thinking too highly of their ability to get things done, hence much of the overconfidence and hype. (Disclaimer: I'm American, and while I eschew egotistic behavior, I imagine I'm guilty of it from time to time.) Conversely, my experience in the said metaphor wasn't that it was sub-par relative to expectations, but rather that everything else that went along with the relationship was hard to deal with. For me, social media is similar: the cost of the desired result in work involved isn't a good tradeoff.

Depending on one's temperament, it may be better to pass over quick gratification for a more mature "user experience" a couple years down the road that may be less emotionally scarring ;-)

c|net commentary

Remarks to a c|net article on international SNSes:

mixi also now requires a Japanese cell-phone email address to confirm registration. This may not be too terribly effective in controlling one person having multiple accounts, since one could change one's email address and register again, but it certainly limits people who don't live in Japan from joining.

And another on DHS requiring fingerprints and photographs for permanent residents:

Japan does the same thing already. Even if you have a long-term or permanent visa, you get your fingerprints taken (just index fingers, though) and photo snapped. I think it sucks and does nothing to provide extra security, but who in the government is going to listen to foreigners' complaints? Resident aliens are pretty much 2nd-class citizens in Japan. Tourists are ok because they spend money then leave, but tourists don't have special visas.

This gripes me off, though. So why would DHS do this if the borders aren't sealed anyway? They're going to inconvenience people who enter via legal means, and ignore people who sneak in illegally? Brilliant. I feel safer already (that's sarcasm, in case you didn't catch it). The less government invasiveness the better.

Fujitsu to sell to WD?

CNET had an article relaying the Nikkei report from last night.

Here's my commentary:

Fujitsu only makes mobile (2.5") and server HDDs. The 2.5" space has been getting crowded lately: HGST, Toshiba, Fujitsu were the main players, but now Seagate, WD, and Samsung have joined in and snapped up market share. It's inevitable that one would have to bow out.

WD doesn't really make server-class drives -- although they claim to, they're still 7200 RPM SATA, which is decidedly NOT a real enterprise model -- so acquiring Fujitsu would bolster their efforts in enterprise and eliminate a competitor in mobile. Sounds like a good strategy to me as long as they can capitalize on the server business.

However, merging corporate cultures is painful, as survivors of the HGST/IBM and Seagate/Maxtor acquisitions can attest to.

Incidentally, Fujitsu is denying the Nikkei rumor...for now:
http://pr.fujitsu.com/jp/news/2008/10/2.html

Name Tools

My cnet RSS feed pointed me to an article on Usernamecheck, which tipped me off to a service called BustAName. The latter takes several keywords, generates various combinations of the words, and looks up domain name availability. Could be useful.

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