Fresh from the Who’da Thunk It Department: Bigfoot story a hoax. The “body” in the freezer is just a rubber Halloween costume and equally unsurprising is that the two perpetrators have disappeared with the money they were paid.
On Technium, Kevin Kelly takes a hard look at the Fate of the Book through a distributed conversation with Sven Birkerts, Mark Slouka and John Perry Barlow. It’s long, rambling, and covers a lot of ground but worth reading if you love books.
Serious dedication to steam
0 Comments Published by Tom August 18th, 2008 in Awesome, Misc, TechnologyIn the UK, the The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust has done something amazing, they’ve built a brand new Pacific class steam locomotive. It’s taken them 18 years and they still need to run tests and trials so that it can run on the mainlines, but it’s real. This is an 11 on the Awesome-meter.
Judge rejects student visa injunction sought by H-1B opponents
0 Comments Published by Tom August 17th, 2008 in Fail, Government, SoftwareAn attempt to stop a move by DHS to extend student visas from one year to two and a half years has been rejected by a Federal Judge in New Jersey. She claims the opponents were unable to show how having more low-wage foreign workers in the US would have a negative effects on wages and available jobs.
In my front yard.
Love it or hate it, Google is absolutely trouncing all of its search rivals. It’s going to take Microsoft more than paying users or buying Yahoo to even get close. Which is not to say there won’t eventually be a serious alternative to Google because that’s inevitable, it’s just going to take a new approach to search to do it.
I suspect that most people don’t care about this but a recent experiment showed David Bohm’s wave theory needs 10,000x light speed to work. In other words, highly unlikely.
Bohm was trying to explain quantum entanglement using frames of reference, which are required for the wave theory to not violate Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. The experiment, using optical fiber and photodetectors, showed that if quantum entanglement was actually caused by a wave, that wave would have to travel 10,000 times faster than light. It also showed that no effects attributable to the frames could be detected. Quantum entanglement, like all of quantum mechanics, still remains bizarre, of course.
The city water department was digging a hole today on Court Street. I counted one guy operating the backhoe and nine watching him (along with three guys from Xerox).
It’s almost election time
0 Comments Published by Tom August 12th, 2008 in Fail, Gadgets, Government, Privacy, SecurityNo stranger to electronic voting machine problems, Ohio is once again suing Dieblold over faulty voting machines. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brenner is telling Ohio voters not to worry but not everyone is as sure.
Carousel animals from the Dentzel Carousel in Charlotte. I got a kick out of the tongue sticking out on this goat.
Computer beats pro at U.S. Go Congress
0 Comments Published by Tom August 8th, 2008 in Software, TechnologyThe Japanese game of Go has long been considered the most difficult board game for a computer to play (even more so than chess). That is, until now. The MoGo computer program defeated Myungwan Kim (8th professional Dan) Thursday by 1.5 points in a 9-stone handicap game. Kim estimates MoGo to be a 2 or 3 amateur Dan, by far the strongest showing for a computer Go program ever. MoGo relies on an algorithm that is readily adaptable to parallel architectures. It currently is running on 800 cores but can easily be expanded beyond this. Eventually computers will be playing even with humans.
