Believe it or not, the point of a patent, to secure an entire set of ideas, can make you rich deep into the future. This story about Ampex's Old Patents shows how powerful patent law can be, even for unforeseen technologies. Pretty amazing.
March 2005 Archives
Luxtera is making moves in the optical chip market. This is a company worth watching. Read this: Photonics Startup Pegs Q2'06 Production Date
Battery technology is about to take a big bounce up! This is a big deal, because batteries represent the portability of power, which does for the electrical grid what wireless wifi does for the network. Read about it in this article: Toshiba : Press Releases 29 March, 2005
It's the littlest things that serve as indicators -- a canary in a coal mine, the silence of birds, a quick change in the weather. But while we all learn to watch for the small signs that point to bad things, for some reason the good ones are harder to see. This is one such indicator.
Computing is headed to optical processing -- someday. It's a "long way off, far away" conversation usually. Yes, we have fiber optic communications on networks, but the concept of computers doing their processing using light has been theoretical and otherworldly.
The article listed about talks about a company, Luxtera, that has announced the first all-in-one combined silicon/optics chip. This is the first step -- the first snowflake -- the first proof that we're eventually going to have computers that make everything we use these days seem slow and sad in comparison. Tell all your friends.
It's Easter!!! He is Risen!
It's simple -- the tomb was empty. You can argue about everything else... you can wonder about whether He was married (ala the DaVinci Code), or whether Islam recognizes Christ (which they don't), or whether Frank Griswold is a loop...
But nobody can deny -- the tomb was empty.
The Sanhedrin would have presented His body if they'd have taken Him.
The Roman Guard put in front of the tomb was surely not overwhelmed by a bunch of women.
If the Apostles had wanted to fabricate the story, they surely wouldn't have used the testimony of a bunch of women, who at that time didn't have any social status (sad, but true).
The tomb was empty. Still is.
Happy Easter.
So, it's official. Something's The New York Times > Opinion >happening in Africa and the rest of the world is noticing. We Christians already know that the 2/3rds world (formerly known as the Third World) constitute the majority of Christianity these days. It's heartening to be watching the affect of Christ's motion on the world. Things are getting better. Slowly, but surely.
In an unprecendented display of having way too much fear of organized religion, the folks in Florida are now Whacking the Easter Bunny. I think I remember someone somewhere saying something out loud like, "What's next? Down with the Easter Bunny?" Well, folks ... that time has arrived. I am very glad that God left me a little cynicism to protect myself from this sort of junk.
Well, it's official. The folks at Pez are getting into the music business. Hmmm... what's wrong with this picture? Can you say core business competence? Oh well ... here's the mention in Slashdot.
This is cool. You set up a cool multimedia source online. Then you associate it to a word at grafedia.net and underline it while you're writing it on the wall or something less illegal. Then, when people see it, they can send a text message to that word @grafedia.net and they get a link that leads to the media. Check out all the details at Grafedia.
Ok -- I've always wondered about this, but I guess that playing songs backwards actually does reveal the evil plans of satan... just check this out: Stairway to Heaven Backwards. And for those of you who can't read sarcasm -- yes, I'm being sarcastic -- I do have to admit that this is wierd -- but well ... we all must calm down sometimes.
These guys have way too much time on their hands. Don't college students ever sleep?
Take a look at this seemingly silly article about a PEZ MP3 player. Yes -- it's silly, very manga, very wasted time. Until you start thinking about what it's pointing at.
No doubt, in the next five to ten years, music/data storage is going to become ubiqitous. We already have limited magnetic bar strips printed onto cheap paper for things like tickets and metro cards.
You know what paper is? It's a visual data storage system -- with pretty small capacity per page. Given the higher density available for things like this Pez dispenser idea, it's trending towards a time when anybody will be able to lay their hands on cheap storage being thrown around like paper.
From there, it's a small step to the level that people are using anything nearby to "jot down" information -- in the same way you write a phone number on the corner of a newspaper.
If this Pez thing is any indicator -- the goal is to attach functionality to this future storage as well -- so your newspaper comes with an embedded copy of all the videos for the day, plus some sort of means for watching them. But that's a bit too future trippy for now... high volume magnetic printed storage isn't.
So - on top of everything else, I'm the boss at work. That's a lot to write about, but for now -- I'm just gonna start by saying it's a challenge. I'm glad I'm a Christian, because He makes it easier to cope and figure stuff out than anything I used to do on my own.
I'm glad that things are getting better for the company, but I'm sad that Mark, my senior developer, has decided to leave. I can understand his choice, it was really tough to be him in the company for a long time, thanks in no small part to the bull in the china shop process of leadership I drove everybody through for over a year while I "figured stuff out". Now that his daughter, Cordelia, has been born, it's time to focus on her and his family's needs.
I wish him the best and really am grateful for the work he did in the company for so long, holding the line while I did some heavy spiritual chiropractics.
We're ramping up to good stuff, new work for God, and overall an exciting time. Thanks, Jesus -- you rock. And Mark... Godspeed in all you do.
While not necessarily a bunch of books that I'm gonna go out and read any time soon, I'm totally psyched about this article: MSNBC - Female readers flock to Christian chick lit. A shift is definitely happening -- folks are just getting tired of the puke-stained floor of hedonism.
I love little stories like this that show how a little creativity way below the hood shows the triumph of the human spirit over the stupidity of things like lawyers and businessmen.
Seems at one time the Beatles were suing Apple -- something about not being able to call themselves Apple (the Beatles' recording label was Apple) and do things with music at the same time. So the programmers working on all the music tools on the Mac were being chewed up between the wheels. This is a little protest article is all... and funny because it survived all these years.
There is nothing quite as satisfying as applying engineering or science to hack the physical world ... except maybe applying engineering or scient to make a statement regarding a stupid request from customer support.
Jurassic Park may not be on the way tomorrow, but this article shows us that with the finding of actual, real dinosaur "soft tissue", we may be able to answer some cool questions; like are they related to birds, were they warm blooded, etc. Pretty Cool
As much as I love Boing Boing (I disable their graphics), I'm less than happy with this: Boing Boing: Terri Schiavo status Firefox extension.
This family has touched my heart deeply. Working together with Chris Hondros and some of the military stationed in Tall Afar, I've set up the Hassan Family Fund website. Please visit it and tell your friends.
I used to joke that the Pacific Rim invented the snooze bar in order to destroy America. This clock is our answer to that threat.
Yes -- Nature reports that they crawl around pretending to be other stuff -- what many people don't know is that for many crustaceans in the sea, the octopus is as scary as a shark or tiger would be to us.
