|
Tuesday, 1999 November 1
Be looks at US v MSFTA casual survey of feelings in Silicon Valley toward the Microsoft antitrust case, mainly centering around Be's Jean-Louis Gassee. I like his attitude, which has none of the rapid MS-hating. Personally I prefer unix; don't like MS' business practices, but will not join the jihad. I see how hating MS blinds someone like Larry Ellison, who hates Bill Gates simply because Gates is richer than him. Who could care less? Thursday,
1999 October 28
Smith withdraws, astonishing allBob Smith has withdrawn from the 2000 presidental race, causing widespread astonishment: who knew he was running? He also is making overtures about returning to the Republican party. Hopefully, they know he left and want him back. I imagine he got tired of people asking whether he was from Anytown, USA. Women on the web Kind of a tired theme, isn't it? I'm not sure that this article proves anything. It just talks about two women who were successful by working through the web rather than face to face. Egg auction a hoax Feed thinks it's just a way of selling porn on the web. Taxing inactive money Wild proposal by a Federal Reserve official: put tracking devices into US currency so that it expires (loses its value) if you hang onto it too long. That is, if you keep it at home, or buried in a box, your money would become worthless after a while. Luckily no one else seems to think the idea makes sense. But in the world of economics, you never know when a wacky unworkable idea will take hold. By the way, the official is with one of the state branches of the Fed; he's not in Washington or with Greenspan. Neural nets tutorial Some days back I wondered "what the heck are neural nets?" and found that Kevin Gurney has put the notes for his book Neural Nets on the web. So far, I'm liking it. Pretty clear, and it assumes you don't know a thing about the subject, which is my exact case. Paul Krassner interview Sixties nostalgia with real content. Krassner is closing his counter-cultural magazine The Realist after six more issues. He started out at Mad magazine, edited Lenny Bruce's autobio, and so on. Has a book coming out soon called Pot Stories for the Soul. Snippet: "somebody smoked marijuana for the first time at a rock concert, and her friend asked why she kept pinching his knee. She was much relieved because she thought her own knee had gone numb." Huge xray jets in space Article is a little vague in the particulars. Apparently there are these superhuge xray jets in a nearby galaxy, and xray sources clustered around a black hole, but the article doesn't say whether the one thing has anything to do with the other. I get the impression that the writer didn't really have a grasp of the subject and didn't bother to get it. Interesting, but incomplete. |