Month: November 2003

The astronauts on the space station heard a weird “”crunching”” noise tonight. That’s not good…]]>

The Register is reporting that RIAA and the MPAA want a permanent exemption from the US anti-trust rules. WTF?!?! The gall of these two players is absolutely insane. If you haven’t written your Congressman to complain about this horrendous inside-the-Beltway move by their lobbyists, you should pick up the phone and scream at them. To listen to the RIAA and MPAA demand, insist and cajole every 12-year-old in the country to obey this country’s copyright rules, and then have them turn around and say that other laws shouldn’t apply to them is simply ridiculous. (202) 224-3121 to complain.]]>

Just Another Soldier is a great blog about getting ready for service in Iraq. This soldier is a NY National Guardsmen who is battling a lack of supplies, warm weather, and crazy colleagues. His writing is very funny, for example the other day he described the downpour of .50 calibur shells on his head as a “”Skittles commercial for the Infantry”” which was a very interesting visual. Worth a read.]]>

Slimdevices has a really great looking Mp3 player they are going to be releasing soon, but it might not be soon enough for my trip to London. This is an 802.11b radio but it requires a PC to operate, something I’ve been trying to avoid with PenguinRadio. It also only (technically) supports Mp3 broadcasts (though if you have a PC attached you can do some weird stuff with other formats). $299 though, which is a bit higher than I think the average consumer wants to pay, especially when an FM radio is about $10. Still more work to do, but things are moving forward.]]>

Friendster.com link awhile ago, but it was pretty hard to convince my friends to join as most hadn’t even heard of it or what it was about. Thus my list of friends was basically some of my wife’s friends who needed a husband, and they weren’t really the most technologically savy people I’ve ever met. That changed today when I added a friend of mine who is still in college. Liana is attending Cambridge getting her PhD in pubs or something. I added her and BLAM! The power of friendster took off. Linana has 11 friends.
Those 11 have between 40 and 200 friends each
who have between 40 and 200 friends each. I now have 25,500 people in my “”personal”” network. There are 25,000 people usually about three steps removed from me now. A friend of Liana’s friends friend or something like that. However, they’re all about college age. It really seems that my generation is too busy, too settled too whatever to join up. This is one of those things that is hip, current and cool, but too “”young”” for most of my friends. God forbid if I should get that way soon. Anyway, do you want to be my friend? I’m still taking offers…]]>

SlimDevices is a really sexy product that runs on a simple perl script to find playlists and mp3s. I think I can rewrite our database so people can tune in over their slimdevice to our station. More work for no pay. Life of a startup….]]>

The Moscow Times reports that a government run entity Sistema will likely not be able to control the Shermatevo airport contract after a new tender bid. Although the Sistema met the requirements of $2 billion pounds in assets, the terms of the contract said the $2 billion had to be audited by one of the “”Big 4″” accounting groups. In international business parlance, the Big Four designates accounting firms Deloitte & Touche, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young. The tender, however, leaves out Deloitte, which audits Sistema, and lists Baker McKenzie, a law firm, in its place. Just in case you were wondering how corruption works, here is a good example.]]>