Views Archive
A Little Insurance Problem for Nanotech
Several recent research studies have highlighted the uncertainties about the health and environmental risks associated with nanotechnology. Now the insurance industry is taking notice of those uncertainties: major Swiss reinsurer (insurance for the insurance companies) Swiss Re has issued a…
Is Blogging the New Crack?
You might think so if you saw a piece in today’s New York Times entitled “For Some, the Blogging Never Stops.” Technology reporter Katie Hafner talked with one gung-ho blogger whose wife was not amused when he spent most of…
Text Me On Election Day
Political action groups have begun collecting the cell phone numbers of voters so that they can be sent a text message on election day, reminding them to vote. Mark Walsh reports on this in today’s New York Times, while another…
First 64-bit Virus Trapped
W64.Rugrat.3344, the first 64-bit computer virus for Windows, has been trapped and identified by Symantec, according to CIO Today (also reported in SMH.AU.COM).Just the thing for your 64-bit computer….
Let's Kill Them All and Let God Figure it Out
Steven E. Landsburg argues in Slate that we should execute computer hackers–or at least the hackers who are writing computer worms.One of Landsburg’s many errors is his assertion that the death penalty is a deterrent against other murders. “A high-end…
Nintendo's Woes
According to BBC News Online, Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo games, is worried about the future of his industry. He bemoaned the prevailing attitude among game developers that “as long as we could beef up the processing power, as…
Write Like a Lobotomized Weasel
The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen. The square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square of the two sides. And a persuasive essay has exactly 5 paragraphs: one to…
Jockeying for Gmail Addresses
Usually, the Internet takes information that once was costly or difficult to find and makes it free. But once in while, netizens find a way to take something free and convince other users to pay for it. That’s what’s happening…
Nano Boom--Or Bust?
High-flying IPOs from companies with no profits and no products characterized the dot-com boom of the 90s. Are we on the verge of revisiting those days thanks to, of all things, nanotechnology?That’s the question asked in today’s New York Times….
FBI Investigating Cisco Source Code Leak
Computerworld continues its reporting of Cisco’s source code leak, which has many ISPs and major companies re-examining their access control lists. The problem, apparently, is that 800MB of Cisco source code for the Internetworking Operating System 12.3 and 12.3T systems…