Sophont

Amish Tech Support : "Were you alive when MTV first started? Were you one of the lucky few to actually have cable back then? Most likely you weren't. There were a whole 3 people who had cable when MTV made its debut with the classic choice of 'Video Killed the Radio Star'. Less known is that the second video played on MTV was Jocko Homo, and DEVO dominated MTV for nearly 4 years. After that, the channel became popular, and if you put out an album, you simply had to put out a video as well. Now, fast forward to.. uhhh.. now. Right now. You never hear DEVO on the radio anymore, and I think MTV would rather go off the air than show a DEVO video. Not to worry though, the spirit of DEVO is alive and well. What you say? Take a guess. Noooo. Nope. Ah, good guess you sicko, but not there either. If you have kids, you hear DEVO songs every day. Mr. Mark Mothersbaugh, who is going to be 54 this year, has taken all of his music talent and production know-how, and spun that...

The Register : "When Carly Fiorina took the helm of HP in 1999, the company held the 10th spot on Fortune's annual survey of top corporate cultures. Since 1999, however, HP has slipped down the list every year with the worst setback coming in 2004 as HP failed to make the cut at all. HP appears to have taken the internal criticism to heart by hiring a consultant to review the Fortune results and identify what went wrong." jaynote: she is a consultant to NASA, teaching them how to change their culture

sfgate : "On the first day of class this fall, Hyder Akbar's college literature teacher had an idea for an icebreaking exercise. Students would come up with two truths and one lie about themselves. Then the others would try to guess which was the lie. This is what Akbar wrote: 1) 'Although I am 18, I am often mistaken for someone older; 2) I play guitar in a rock band; 3) Three weeks ago I got ambushed by al Qaeda in Afghanistan.'' Akbar says his friends would have spotted the fabrication immediately. 'Actually,'' he admits, 'I don't even play the guitar.'' But the ambush? Absolutely. He can not only tell you about it, but he also has an audiotape. And you can hear it at noon Saturday on KQED when the Concord teenager makes his second appearance on the award-winning national radio documentary show 'This American Life.'' Akbar won a documentary award for his first audio diary, called 'Come Back to Afghanistan,...

Restaurant confidential : "Locked behind a razor-wire fence, hidden deep within an East Bay industrial zone, lies a secret restaurant where patrons need a golden key. Part diner, part speakeasy, Joe's 'Bustaurant' is an underground boite the Sicilian chef has operated inside a converted 1947 Metro bus for the last six years. You have to know somebody who knows somebody to get in. Joe serves traditional Italian food under the cover of darkness, on Monday nights during winter, to elude busybodies, food snobs and health inspectors. 'This is the kind of place where you walk in, and everyone says hello,' said 41-year-old Joe, a musician who prepares about 35 meals a night. 'In here, that's what it feels like you should do.' Joe couldn't operate legally if he wanted to -- there's no fire or health department around that would allow a chef to cook inside a bus on a gas range with people crammed around five tables. He's checked int...

CNN.com-Jan. 16, 2004 : "ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- A convicted sex offender says he broke out of a sexual-predator unit in 2001 knowing that a legal loophole would prevent Missouri authorities from charging him with escape. Thomas Ingrassia, 47, said he used the library at the Sexually Violent Predator Unit in Farmington to brush up on the law before he cut through a fence. 'Missouri's so quick to make up laws without researching whether it's proper,' Ingrassia said in Friday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 'They're idiots.' Under the civil commitment programs in Missouri and 15 other states, sex offenders who complete their prison sentences can be held indefinitely in a mental hospital if they are deemed likely to commit new sex crimes. But when Missouri enacted the program in 1998, it did not specify that escaping from a civil facility was a crime. As a result, authorities could pursue Ingrassia only on a charge of felony property dama...

LILEKS (James) The Bleat : Patrick Stewart jumped the shark. Snagged his foot caught in the beast’s mouth on he way over, too. Actor Patrick Stewart - better known as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" - says he thinks humans have no business traveling in space. "I'm a bit of a wet blanket when it comes to the whole business of space travel," Stewart said in an interview posted on the BBC Web site. The man whose mission was to "explore strange new worlds" as the captain of the starship Enterprise from 1987 to 1994 thinks space exploration is the height of "arrogance." Great job, Pat! Nice of you to wad up all the goodwill you’ve accumulated and flush it down the toilet. Let’s review: you’re most prominently identified with which character? No, not Ahab. Perhaps Professor Xavier? After 2 more movies and 280 TV episodes, perhaps. No, you’re Jean-Luc Picard. That’s how millions know you; that’s the character t...

Yahoo! News - Cubans in Car-Boat Are Stopped at Sea : "Eleven Cubans trying to sail to Florida in a 1950s Buick converted into a tailfinned boat were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard and will be sent back to their homeland, exile activists said Wednesday. Marciel Basanta Lopez and Luis Grass Rodriguez, the two men who turned the classic car into a floating vessel, tried a similar stunt last summer and got caught: They set out for Florida in a 1951 Chevy pickup with pontoons made out of empty 55-gallon drums and a propeller that pushed it along at about 8 mph. On Monday, the men set out again, with four other adults and five children, relatives said. The Coast Guard intercepted the group late Tuesday en route to the Florida Keys, picking them up off Marathon, about 90 miles southwest of Miami, activist Arturo Cobo said. Coast Guard officials refused to confirm the floating car's status, but Cobo said the Buick sank. 'My uncle is very brave. He is not ir...

Listening to Grokster : "Still wondering what happened during yesterday's oral argument in MGM v. Grokster? Bypass the spin, listen to the hearing [MP3 file, public domain], and decide for yourself. My favorite bit: when Judge Noonan calls Mr. Ramos on his use of overheated rhetoric--e.g., piracy talk: 'Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new, and the question is, does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new. And that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it 'theft.' You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. Address that if you would. And curtail the use of abusive language.' Later: Wendy Seltzer, urging unrestricted swapping of the oral argument MP3: 'It's public domain, so share freely on the peer-to-peer networks whose legalit...

Guardian Unlimited : "I call back Robert Spitzer at Columbia's Institute for Biometrics. 'So what do you predict would happen if a researcher were to repeat the Rosenhan experiment in this day and age?' I ask him. 'The researcher would not be admitted,' Spitzer replies. 'But would they be diagnosed? What would the doctors do about that?' 'If they only said what Rosenhan and his confederates said?' he asks. 'Yeah,' I say. 'They would be given a diagnosis of deferred.' 'OK,' I say. 'Let me tell you, I tried this experiment. I actually did it.' 'You?' he says, and pauses. 'You're kidding me.' I wonder if I hear defensiveness edging into his voice. 'And what happened?' he says. I tell him. I tell him I was not given a deferred diagnosis, but almost every time I was given a diagnosis of psychotic depression plus a pouch of pills. 'What kind of pills?' he...

by Spider Robinson very good SF story which deal with copyright issues. Nicely illustrates why the Sony Bono act iwas a bad idea.

'Where do microprocessors come from, Daddy?' That's an awkward question we all must answer at some stage in our careers. What mysterious process converts elemental silicon into elemental forces like Intel's Itanium or Motorola's PowerPC? Let us explore the wonder that is semiconductor creation. 'When a customer and a vendor love each other very much . . .' they make a commitment to produce new chips. It's a big commitment, too. New chips generally cost a few million dollars to design, but that's small beer compared to what it costs to build a new chip-making factory. Fabs or foundries, as they're called, cost upwards of $2 billion to build. You could buy a lot of cruise missiles for that kind of money or several small Caribbean republics (island not included). The amortization sucks, too. That $2 billion foundry will be obsolete in less than five years, so you're looking at more than $1 million of depreciation every single day. Very li...

News :By Steve Connor, Science Editor 04 February 2004 A collision between Earth and a passing comet in the 6th century AD may have caused the collapse of agriculture, mass famine and indirectly led to the bubonic plague in Europe, a study has suggested. Scientists have calculated that a relatively small comet, or fragment of a comet, could have caused huge amounts of dust and debris to be ejected into the atmosphere, blocking the sun for months at a time. The resulting crop failures and famine would have allowed bubonic plague to spread easily among a physically weakened population. Studies of tree rings - from preserved oaks retrieved from Irish bogs to ancient American pine trees - have shown that plant growth around the world almost stopped between about 536AD to 545AD. Chinese records from this time refer to a "dust veil" obscuring the skies. Mediterranean historians record a "dry fog" that blocked out much of the sun's heat for more than a year...

LA Weekly : When Jesica Santillan died of a botched heart-lung transplant, Nancy Rommelmann was nearly swallowed by the story.

Dallas Observer : "Policy wank: In case you missed the news last week, The Associated Press reported that the three pharmacists at a Denton Eckerd drugstore who refused to fill a rape victim's prescription for a 'morning after' birth-control pill were fired for violating Eckerd policy (see the January 29 Buzz). As Buzz first reported--that's right, we're bragging--the pharmacists objected that the pill could 'end life,' and they were morally opposed to dispensing it. (In some cases, the pill works by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting itself in the womb.) Pharmacist Gene Herr objected that he wasn't aware that Eckerd had a policy prohibiting its pharmacists from withholding drugs for 'moral' reasons. 'In my mind, if I agree to work for someone knowing that's their policy, then I should submit to that policy. But I didn't even know about it,' Herr told AP writer Liz Austin. Now, Buzz is admittedly weak when i...

optics.org : "Inphase Technologies, a spin-out from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs, US, claims to have developed the world's first holographic storage material that uses blue laser light to store data. The media called 'Tapestry HDS5000' will be used in the Colorado-based firm's first generation of 200 GB holographic drives which are due to hit the market by 2006. The disc material, which is photosensitive to blue light between 400 and 410 nm, is also being offered to other drive developers as a 120 or 130 mm diameter discs or 3x3 / 2x3 inch slides........ ...According to Liz Murphy, director of marketing at InPhase, the firm has a roadmap to develop 130 mm diameter discs that store up to 1.6Tb of data by 2010. She also says the technology will be cost effective. "We aim to reach 25 cents per Gigabyte, that's just $50 for a 200Gb disc." jaynote: current hard drive prices 120 gig = $89 160 gig = $110 200 gig = $150 I could see this bein...

New Zealand's leading news and information website : "Scientists have revived primitive life forms retrieved from frozen ground in the Antarctic and believed to be up to eight million years old. The revival of ancient colonies of bacteria was a significant step in helping develop new methods for investigating whether alien life has existed, or still exists, on other planets, University of Otago geologist Dr Gary Wilson said this week. Dr Wilson has helped lead a 24-member team which has worked on the nine-year project. With Imre Friedmann from Nasa and David Gilichinsky from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr Wilson extracted dormant bacteria from sedimentary layers at several sites beneath frozen ground estimated to be between five and eight million years old. Ensuring the bacteria was not contaminated by other organisms, they placed them in freezers and shipped them to the United States "

Mercury News | 02/18/2004 : TO BIG COMPANIES, IT'S JUST A COMMODITY By Don Henley When I started in the music business, music was important and vital to our culture. Artists connected with their fans. Record labels signed cutting-edge artists, and FM radio offered an incredible variety of music. Music touched fans in a unique and personal way. Our culture was enriched and the music business was healthy and strong. That's all changed. Today the music business is in crisis. Sales have decreased between 20 and 30 percent over the past three years. Record labels are suing children for using unauthorized peer-to-peer file-sharing systems. Only a few artists ever hear their music on the radio, yet radio networks are battling Congress over ownership restrictions. Independent music stores are closing at an unprecedented pace. And the artists seem to be at odds with just about everyone -- even the fans."

What's all this about, then? Well, over a few drinks at the pub, I was approached by two chaps who had made a bet. One had bet the other �10 that I would flash my boobs. I queried the bet, saying that if I did.. the 'loser' of the bet got to see my boobs, but the winner got �10 AND got to see them. They decided that if I did it, they would give me the tenner to give to a charity of my choice. Deal done! I lift my tee shirt. I pocket the tenner and promise that I'll give it to a Multiple Sclerosis charity. When I am next in my local pub, the landlord watches me deposit the �10 note into the collection box on the bar. My partner has a thoughtful look and when I ask why, he tells me that 'We could be on to something with this'. So we decide to raise awareness of this illness (maybe even some people may donate cash?) and have a little fun in doing so.

Ananova - Man drops world's biggest rubber band ball out of a plane : "A Welshman spent five years creating the world's biggest rubber band ball - then dropped it out of a plane to see if it would bounce. Tony Evans, 54, from Swansea, dropped the one-tonne record-breaking ball from a mile up over Arizona. It took 20 seconds to hit the ground and created a 4ft wide crater and a 20ft cloud of dust - but did not bounce. The ball collapsed on impact and the remains stayed firmly in the bottom of the crater, reports the Daily Record. Mr Evans, who earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records with his ball, said: 'It was my pride and joy. 'People were always asking me what would happened if the ball was dropped from a great height. Would it bounce or explode? No one knew. 'I'd have loved to see it bounce up into the sky. But it was an incredible sight.' A TV show paid for the ball to be dropped out of a plane above the Mojave Desert and...

We represent concerned residents of New York's East Village, asking for a complete disclosure of all information related to Jodie Lane's intolerable and unnecessary death on January 16th, 2004. We are asking ConEdison and the government of New York City to permanently eliminate this very real hazard from our city's streets. "