crap. isn’t this one of the signs of the apocalypse?
“The news couldn’t be more shocking if the Catholic church suddenly announced it was embracing contraception: Apple is moving to a two-button mouse.
Sharp-eyed beta testers of Apple’s new operating system, Mac OS X, have noticed that the pre-release software supports mice featuring more than one button.”
i’m betting that tommorrow i walk outside only to run into four pasty-looking guys on horses.
coincidence – or not. mere days after proclamations of the “new semantic music web” we find that a record label signs deal with napster:
“The two companies are developing a new subscription service to let Net users swap songs copyrighted by the recording giant. Members of the proposed service would be able to search and download songs–legally–from Bertelsmann’s entire catalog of artists, including Santana, the Dave Matthews Band, Christina Aguilera and Whitney Houston.
Bertelsmann said it will drop its lawsuit against San Mateo, Calif.-based Napster once the service successfully launches. For now, the company will offer a loan to Napster to create the subscription service.”
great. it seems as if someone has found yet another way to track the unsuspecting online:
“[It] involves sending and receiving homing bits to a user’s PC from multiple locations and then studying them to “triangulate” its geographic location. Quova, based in Redwood City, Calif., is a leader in this approach. It has scattered computers in about 20 cities around the world that are now constantly bouncing bits off of Internet addresses. The computers study both the route those signals take–which servers and where–and how long it takes them to reach their destination. Quova says it can provide a Web surfer’s city in one-fiftieth of a second with 90% accuracy.”
anonymous proxy services are looking more attractive everyday.
so – you might be wondering, just who has the fattest website?
“The heaviest of the 150 sites surveyed was JC Penney, with 451KB. The chubby bubby was more than twice the weight of the second heaviest contender, Spiegel, which weighed in at 216KB.
Scantly-clad Victoria’s Secret models parade on the third fattest site, which weighed in at 173KB.”
actually i’m surprised that they recommend an optimum size of 60kb, which still seems a bit on the plump side.
cool. the folks over at slashdot are discussing an interesting visual analysis of mp3 encoders:
“Chris Johnson writes: “I’ve just finished an interesting scientific analysis of several mp3 encoders and have my findings up on the Web. The process involves differencing a ‘sonogram’ image from an encoded test signal with the image of the original signal, and then producing response curves showing the disparity in direct signal volume, and over time. Umm . . . which is just to say this is probably the most rigorous analysis of any encoders anywhere on the web, and very geeky (in a good way). LAME carries the day, but BladeEnc shows that it has a completely distinctive sonic approach- and Fraunhofer proves unacceptable (in the version I tested) for audiophile use, though it’s unbeatable at very low bit rates.”
oye! truer words have never been spoken.
“”Really, all hell has broken loose,” said Douglas Eymer, the creative director at Partners & Simons, a Boston-based marketing communications firm that works with many startups. “It used to be that designing a business presentation was a slow, deliberate process. Now anyone can create a PowerPoint presentation very quickly, and the design standards have really been dulled down.””
interesting follow-ups to my previous post on the rationality of voting. first, there’s an older article from discover magazine that argues for the benefits of the electoral college:
“When you cast your vote this month, you’re not directly electing the
president–you’re electing members of the electoral college. They
elect the president. An archaic, unnecessary system? Mathematics
shows, says one concerned American, that by giving your vote to
another, you’re ensuring the future of our democracy.”“”Experts, scholars, deep thinkers could make errors on electoral
reform,” Natapoff decided, “but nine-year-olds could explain to a
Martian why the Yankees lost in 1960, and why it was right. And both
have the same underlying abstract principle.””
don’t agree? then check out the center for voting and democracy which “studies how voting systems affect participation, representation and governance and disseminates its findings to civic organizations”. in particular see the section on instant runoff voting:
“Instant Runoff Voting is a winner-take-all system that ensures that a winning candidate will receive a majority of votes rather than a simple plurality. In plurality voting — as used in most U.S. elections —
candidates can win with less than a majority when there are more than two candidates running for the office. In contrast, IRV elects a majority candidate while still allowing voters to support a candidate who is not a front-runner. IRV is a sensible method in single winner elections.IRV allows voters to rank candidates as their first choice, second choice, third, fourth and so on. If a candidate does not receive a clear majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoff counts are
conducted, using each voter’s top choices indicated on the ballot.”
[electoral college article via rc3 | instant runoff voting link e.mailed from kelly at shinybluegrasshopper, but also on rc3 ]