Saturday, January 24, 2004

Inspector Says WMD Are Vaporware. David Kay, the chief arms hunter in Iraq, resigns from his post Friday, saying he does not believe there are any stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in the war-torn country. [Wired News] 2:26:49 PM    comment []

Cory notes the Interactive Zip-code explorer: Darren sez, "Okay, get this: You look at a map of the United States, with each zip code represented as a single white dot. You punch in a zip code - say, your own - and watch as the applet zooms down on that specific location. For example, the entire country is white dots to begni with; then, when you hit '9', only the West Coast lights up; with '0', Los Angeles, and then '210' narrows it down to Beverly Hills in specific. It's frighteningly addictive." 8:16:27 AM    comment []

Microsoft tweaks protocol licensing program. In response to criticism from U.S. government antitrust regulators, Microsoft on Friday detailed additional changes to a licensing program for Windows protocols it created as part of its landmark antitrust settlement with the federal government. [InfoWorld: Top News] See? Everything's fine. 8:13:11 AM    comment []

Inserting RSS Headlines into your weblog. I've posted other means of doing this before, but I wasn't able to get them working...at some point I'll find out if this one works... Blogharbor on Inserting RSS Headlines into a Weblog [Learning the Lessons of Nixon] 8:10:41 AM    comment []

Judge Satisfied With Microsoft's Antitrust Case Compliance. A federal judge said that she was generally satisfied with Microsoft's efforts to comply with the settlement terms in the government's antitrust case. By Steve Lohr. [New York Times: Technology] Well, there you have it, huh? And in a way it makes sense, since MSFT's not doing anything they weren't all along, and didn't get punished for that. 8:04:16 AM    comment []

New England winter, modern sculpture, and Internet. There is an interesting discussion forum thread on Edward Tufte's site right now.  It is inspiring because it shows that good things happen in the New England winter after all and it is also an inspiring use of an Internet discussion forum and photos on the Web. [Philip Greenspun Weblog] 8:01:19 AM    comment []

Elastic Time From an interview with Julian Barbour: I think that our psychological experience of time - our very powerful sense that it flows, and our ability to make clocks and keep appointments and so on - may be distorting our view of the world. The human brain may be the most complicated, intricately ordered part of the universe that there is. And it's particularly slanted towards temporal aspects of things. I think we are projecting our psychological experience out into the external world when it probably isn't there. I think the evidence that there isn't a time out there in the way that we feel it inside ourselves is strong. I always quote the great sentence of Copernicus: "We should be careful not to attribute to the heavens what is really in the observer." He meant the retrograde motions of the planets, which look to all intents and purposes as if they are in the heavens - nothing could be more obvious - and yet Copernicus said, Think about where we stand - that may be influencing things. As regards time, we are looking at the universe through our brains, through our mental capacities, and this could be having a monumentally distorting effect. We have to get everything through our sense perceptions, but we also have to take our sense perceptions into account in interpreting them. Sense data is our only source, but it can be deceiving. [Global Suburb] 7:52:21 AM    comment []

R.I.P., Bob Keeshan. 'Captain Kangaroo' Was Friend To Generations of Youngsters By Patricia Sullivan [Washington Post: Front Page] Bob Keeshan, TV's 'Captain Kangaroo,' Is Dead at 76. Bob Keeshan delighted millions of children and their parents for three decades as television's gentle, patient Captain Kangaroo. By Richard Severo. [New York Times: Business] (To be honest, this is one where I didn't realize he had been living still until an obit crossed my path.) 7:47:52 AM    comment []

Our friends at The Smoking Gun note: Florida prosecutors want Rush Limbaugh to admit he's a felon. The radio host would prefer a slap on the wrist and some continuing drug counseling. No surprise then that plea negotiations appear to have snagged in the "doctor shopping" probe of the radio host. Follow the link for details and documents. 5:21:06 AM    comment []