Liberal Talk Radio

A new software project called the GPU wants to make it easy to do distributed computing (you know, the thing where your screen saver searches for aliens or folds genomes). But the creators want to modify the license so that the military can’t use it: A “patch” apended to the top of the license says [...]

Fascinating to see the techies at Engadget get all weepy over the demise of New Jersey’s Bell Labs. Bell Labs was the host of an amazing array of scientific output in the latter half of the 20th century. But after Ma Bell (AT&T) spun off Lucent Technologies, the R&D department shrunk and shrunk. Now, the [...]

AOL Instant Messenger has been around for what, 5, 10 years? So it’s fascinating that MySpace has more active users: The most notable of the newcomers is AOL’s AIM Pages, which is building upon its already substantial instant-messaging base of 49 million active users worldwide. Still, MySpace’s number is higher — the active subset of [...]

MarsEdit, b*tches!

In case you haven’t been paying attention, you should know that, starting next year, Toyota will begin selling self-parking cars in the U.S. For $700, you can add Intelligent Parking Assist, which uses lasers and other sensors to automatically parallel park the car. Then, in 2008, GM Will introduce a car that drives itself. Of [...]

Michael Crowley talks nukes: On a more serious note, it’s starting to look as though the Yucca Mountain project, already years behind schedule, may never get off the ground. With the spike in oil prices breathing new life into the nuclear-energy movement, someone really needs to square this circle. Indeed. Despite The West Wing‘s anti-nuke [...]

Boing Boing points us to this post from Ralph Koster on medical-based MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games): Picture an MMORPG just like the ones today, but everywhere you see combat, replace it with healing. A six-man encounter would be a surgical operation that required teamwork. Soloing would be a brilliant doctor doing drive-by diagnostics. [...]

Curl up in your leather armchair and enjoy your favorite blogs in hardcover: Though not all blogs may aspire to literary permanence, they can achieve it through the new Book-Smart software from Blurb, a publish-your-own-book service. The software, which is expected to be available free later this month at www.blurb.com, features a “Slurper” tool that [...]

So we all know that there isn’t enough corn on the planet to supply all our ethanol needs. Which is why the Prez talked about switchgrass and other plant waste as possible sources of raw material. The trick is in converting those items into sugar, so they can be fermented into ethanol. It looks like [...]

Just got a great piece of spam advertising illegal software: From: Nikki Sixx Subject: MS 2003 80 % Discount on All Symantec Titles at Sally’s softdeals Date: February 9, 2006 6:24:36 PM PST To: info@brunoandtheprofessor.com Reply-To: SarahColvin@ballstonwalmart.com It’s not every day that former Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx takes the time to tell me about [...]