Need a Tuneup? Become a Hacker
[New York Times]
Brawn beat brains in the old days of automobiles. To make cars faster, people bolted bigger air intakes, carburetors and exhaust pipes onto giant muscle car engines. Tuning adjustments were simple, requiring only screwdrivers and wrenches.In the mid-1980’s, control of the engine slipped out of the average mechanic’s hands and into the so-called black boxes housing onboard computers.
[Read the rest of Need a Tuneup? Become a Hacker]Get Your Daily Plague Forecast
The new Healthmap website digests information from a variety of sources ranging from the World Health Organization to Google News and plots the spread of about 50 diseases on a continually updated global map. It was developed as a side project by two staffers at the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program in Boston — physician John Brownstein and software developer Clark Freifeld. (Wired)
Picking a Picture
[New York Times]
In the old days of digital television, a year or two ago, choices were simple. If the screen measured under 37 inches diagonally, it would be a liquid-crystal-display panel. From about 37 to 43 inches, it would probably be a plasma panel. And larger sizes would be rear- or front-projection sets.
[Read the rest of Picking a Picture]Dell’s Quest for Cool
[Slate]
Before last month, Dell had made only one attempt to look cool in its 22-year history. I don’t need to tell you that the “Dell dude” wasn’t the coolest guy on the planet. Dell’s second attempt to win street cred, its recent acquisition of the hip, gamer-friendly computer manufacturer Alienware, will probably prove more successful. That’s because Dell has accepted the fact that it simply is not cool, and the only way for it to get a cool brand is to buy one.
[Read the rest of Dell’s Quest for Cool]Is It Time to Upgrade?
[New York Times]
A new study by the Consumer Electronics Association shows that American homes spent $1,250, on average, for electronics last year. Though it may sound like a lot, that is barely enough for a medium-size flat-screen TV. So even gadget-crazy Americans have to weigh priorities – deciding what older gear they can still live with and what demands an upgrade. For shoppers, it can be a difficult decision: buy products on sale that have last year’s technology, or get the latest even if it means paying more. (Or perhaps wait even longer, for the next generation.)
[Read the rest of Is It Time to Upgrade?]Proud Bachelor Turned Marrying Man-Sort of
Helping gay couples get hitched gave me a new respect for a tradition I’ve been happy to escape
[Newsweek]
I’m a straight, single man, who, during Valentine’s weekend and for several days that followed, performed weddings as a deputized marriage commissioner for the city and county of San Francisco. “I’m surprised that you are doing it,” my mother said when I called her from my cell phone, between weddings. An ex-girlfriend expressed similar amazement, clearly alluding to my own reluctance to get hitched. I may or may not gel married some day, but that’s a decision for me-and my potential partner-to make. I have the freedom to choose, and I can’t understand why any of my fellow citizens would be denied that same freedom.…
Jumping In to Wed the Masses
[New York Times]
WHILE Carrie Bradshaw in ”Sex and the City” agonizes over settling down, at least 3,000 couples jumped at the chance to marry during the frenzied first eight days that San Francisco allowed gay marriages.And I, a straight bachelor, have happily performed about 60 of the ceremonies, in the cavernous rotunda of City Hall. My unexpected role at this great moment in the struggle for gay rights is only one of the surprising, spontaneous events that took place over Valentine’s weekend and last week.
[Read the Rest of Jumping in to Wed the Masses]The L.C.D. Screen Wins Color-Obsessed Converts
[New York Times]
IN the tech world, the slender liquid crystal display monitor has become synonymous with cool, making steady inroads against its rotund predecessor, the cathode ray tube. By the fall of 2002, sales of flat-panel L.C.D. monitors in the United States had exceeded those of C.R.T.’s in terms of dollars spent, and by the end of this year L.C.D.’s should surpass C.R.T.’s in units sold, according to the research firm iSuppli/Stanford Resources.
[Read the rest of The L.C.D. Screen Wins Color-Obsessed Converts]Redneck Environmentalism
The farmers and ranchers of the Dakotas are ahead of environmentalists on preserving the prairie and fighting global warming.
The first night of my visit to North Dakota Brad Crabtree fed me a hearty steak dinner-courtesy of a steer he’d recently sent to the butcher. In later days, we feasted on hamburgers, sausage, and leg of lamb. Brad had killed and butchered the lamb himself a few weeks earlier, chopping it up on the same kitchen table where we later had dinner.…
Will you be assimilated?
Future of tech will make you look like the Borg
“You look like a Borg,” people told me as I tried out head-mounted video displays for this month’s column.
It wasn’t just an objective observation, like saying “You look like Tom Hanks”. It was a judgment on what I’d become, or was in danger of becoming: a real-life equivalent of the hapless victims from Star Trek lore whose bodies are taken over by machines.
[Read the rest of Will You Be Assimilated? Reprinted in PC Advisor]
