Category Archives: technology

wonders of the past and future

I was reading The Spike by Damien Broderick (I’m up to the part about the complexity of controlling zillions of nanomachines) and a fellow passenger asked what it’s about. People are paid to summarize books better than I can, so … Continue reading

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Alan, meet John

Too cool! A Turing Machine in Conway’s Game Life, extendable to a Universal Turing Machine. Thanks to Andre Uratsuka Manoel for the link. (Link corrected 2004 Oct 6.) 2006: And the newer link is now dead. Never mind, just search … Continue reading

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save time in the morning

What a concept: Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap. I’ve hardly touched caffeine in twenty years, partly because I flatter myself that I don’t need it, but mainly because I don’t need the sugar that often comes with it. But, y’know, I’m … Continue reading

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is shareware still infected?

Heather Madrone has an interesting question. My 13-year-old daughter downloaded some software this week. I asked her to check with me next time, so I could show her how to scan it for viruses before she installs it. Then I … Continue reading

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stream of pseudothought

Columbia Newsblaster cobbles together phrases from various news sources to generate summaries of top stories. The result can be surreal: . . . Congressional Republicans are using a government – paid videotaped message from President Bush to parry Democratic attacks against them … Continue reading

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“a final thought about October”

Libertarian Rant doesn’t exactly hear voices: I’d be interested to see if other folks are getting cryptic messages from their voice recognition software. There may be something larger at work.

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power through the people

Mesh Radio. The idea is to link subscribers to each other with multiple tiny dishes, rather than all to a central station. I hope it works: existing schemes lack redundancy at the consumer end. Later: It has been pointed out … Continue reading

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