| Thursday,
March 31, 2005 Subject: Denied.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/31/schiavo/index.html
-----
The Schindlers and their other two children earlier
requested permission to be with Schiavo during her last moments at a hospice
in Pinellas Park, Florida. Police barred them from being with her, O'Donnell
said.
O'Donnell, one of the family's spiritual advisers,
said Schiavo's family was "begging to be at her bedside...but are being
denied."
Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband and guardian,
controlled who could visit her and when.
--- Roland Dobbins
RIP
=========
Subject: Metallic glass.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624931.000&feedId=mech-tech_rss20
"IN THE movie Terminator 2, the villain is a robot
made of liquid metal. He morphs from human form to helicopter and back again
with ease, moulds himself into any shape without breaking, and can even flow
under doorways.
"Now a similar-sounding futuristic material is about
to turn up everywhere. It is called metallic glass. In the past year,
researchers have made metallic glass three times stronger than the best
industrial steel and 10 times springier. Almost a match for the Terminator,
in other words. " <snip>
--- Roland Dobbins
=======
Subj: Prof. Ruth Wisse on Sexual Correctness at
Harvard
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/production/files/wisseadvance.html
=Urging women into difficult careers is all well and
good; extending them equal opportunity is a matter of law; but the society
that does not counsel early marriage and children is far crueler to women
than the “sexist” one it replaced.=
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
From a Darwinian point of view
intelligence and education are clearly counter=productive. Marching morons,
anyone?
===
Subject: Alternatives.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14232-2005Mar30?language=printer
-- Roland Dobbins
Unlikely partners, perhaps, but so long as
we begin to look at alternatives to fossil fuels as the mainstay of our
economy...
We once could trust our engineers far more
than we could trust our diplomats when it came to securing vital necessities
for us.
Of course the
Technocracy people have
been saying that for a while. But I don't suppose we will see The Technate
of North America.
==
Subject: 'Game theft' led to fatal attack
I've heard of virtual murder, but this is a bit much:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4397159.stm
A Chinese man has been stabbed to death in a row over
a sword in online game Legends of Mir 3, say reports.
Shanghai gamer Qiu Chengwei killed player Zhu Caoyuan
when he discovered he had sold a "dragon sabre" he had been loaned, said the
China Daily.
Robert Shepherd
Well I knew people took on-line games
seriously...
====
Subject: Frogs
Sitting In Boiling Water: And No One Even Twitches
From Slashdot . . .
Posted by
timothy on Wednesday March 30, @04:28PM
from the notoriety dept.
sunbird writes "The details are as yet unclear due to a gag order,
but apparently the FBI is once again demanding IP logs from dissident
webservers. The
sysadmin for
flag.blackened.net, best known for hosting
infoshop.org and the
Anarchist FAQ has responded to an FBI request for server logs. Although
he cannot reveal the details of the request due to the gag order, the
sysadmin has issued an
informal press release discussing his reasons for turning over the
information. Slashdot articles on similar topics: (1)
(2)
(3)"
DC
But Information Wants To Be Free
===============
Subject: We knew it all along . . .
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1300033,00050003.htm
--- Roland Dobbins
Well some of us knew it all along. Others
protested loudly at the injustice of the accusations.
====
Subject: The Law of Unintended (?) Consequences, Part
XXVIII.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/02/288.asp
- Roland Dobbins
Astonising!
=========
In mail 355, you asked
What is the decay mechanism for, say, DVD-RAM disks?
(Other than the readers vanishing and not being replaced with backward
compatible devices.)
I was interested in this at one point (I was building
a system for archiving air traffic radar data on MO disks).
Dye-based CDR and DVDR systems are vulnerable to
bleaching of the dyes, in much the same way that color photographic prints
fade over time. The timescale can be as short as a few years.
Factory-pressed CDs and CDROMs should be stable over
fairly long times but are vulnerable to destruction of the aluminum layer by
oxygen, because the polycarbonate of the disk is not impermeable to gasses.
This is a hard type of failure to simulate. The best guesses I know of say
to expect about 30 years from this kind of media.
Phase-change MO seems likely to have the longest shelf
life, but again there are issues with O2 eventually seeping through the
plastic.
A bigger problem than any of these issues is, as you
note, ensuring the existence of a reader that works. Also software that
understands the data format, btw.
For real archival storage (100s of years or more)
nothing beats finely-ground black iron oxide or lampblack in a drying oil on
acid-free paper or parchment.
Wade Scholine
And one assumes we will always have some kind
of OCR system...
Subject: CD and DVD Deterioration
The surface of a CD or DVD that actually holds the
data is a metal. It is sealed within the clear (on the reading side) and
labeled (on the back side) jacket. That metal is in many disks made of a
cheap material that will oxidize (dissolve, in effect) when exposed to air.
If the disk is also cheaply made so that it is not completely sealed and
stays that way through handling, air gets to the metal and in a little
while, you don't have your disk any more (it looks like it was nibbled by
rats). The spec should require a non-oxidizing metal and a heavy,
carefully-applied sealing jacket. Otherwise, you will lose everything
eventually (and, by Murphy's Law, at the worst possible time in the worst
possible way). Lowest bidder is NOT the way to go here!!
Nathan Okun
======
Subject: What not to do when Federal Investigators
come knocking
I don't know if you've seen this piece. Seems to me
that at least once I've sent an item to you and then come to realize that
I'd gotten it from your site in the first place.
You've spoken about the Martha Stewart case and how
what it really teaches us is to keep our mouths shut to Federal Officials.
Seems others think the same way:
http://www.sierratimes.com/05/03/27/carlworden.htm
David L. Burkhead Advanced Surface Microscopy, Inc.
Well I said that; alas it is true. I see
others are figuring it out also.
I was brought up to believe we ought to
cooperate with the authorities. Silly way to be brought up.
============
Subject: COMDEX cancelled again.
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159908066
---- Roland Dobbins
Subject: Comdex cancelled again
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story
&cid=74&e=1&u=/cmp/20050330/tc_cmp/159908031
My guess is, it's been cancelled for the last time
unless the name is applied to some new show.
. png
I actually miss COMDEX. I even miss giving the
Show Awards. It was a frantic time, and trying to pick the best technology
introduced at COMDEW was a strain (at least it was if you took that
seriously) but I used to learn more in those editorial meetings than at any
other time of the year, and COMDEX brought out both products and technology
to put them all in one place. We do not have its like now.
===============
Subject: More unintended consequences.
HOV lanes cause accidents. Oops!
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/02/292.asp
-- Richard Washington, D.C.
We have known this in California for some
time. But they are popular with someone, because we keep building them.
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