How HP wastes energy to save energy
File this under "Only in California." The Los Angeles Times reports:
The fluorescent lights are burning bright on the top floor of a Hewlett-Packard Co. office building here, even as sunlight streams in from skylights and windows, and it pains HP electricity conservation czar Erik Andres.
Although the Silicon Valley computer firm has spent more than $1 million on the latest conservation software and gadgetry and has cut electricity consumption by 12% from a year ago, Andres won't switch off any more lights.
The problem is that when the power companies send out one of their calls to cut power immediately, energy-conscious companies don't have any power left to cut. So in a bizarre twist, companies like HP that have energy-conservation programs are forced to use more energy than they would otherwise during "good" times to comply with those sudden requests.
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New toy for the bored and lonely
Don't have enough time on your hands? Get to ActiveBuddy and begin using your AOL Instant Messenger to chat with a computer. Yeeha! Sure, sure, IRC has had bots for years, but IRC is so geeky and flakey. Besides, IRC doesn't volunteer to send ads right to your chat client! How passe.
07/05/01
Weird programming languages
Some programmers don't kick back by watching TV or going white-water rafting or something. Instead, they write new programming languages. Some of the more, um, esoteric ones are catalogued on Weird Programming Languages:
OISC
One Instruction Set Computer. ... The only instruction is Subtract and Branch if Negative. Its operands are three addresses, X, Y, and Z. This instruction subtracts the number at address Y from the number at address X, stores the result at address X, and if the result is negative, branches to address Z.
Via MetaFilter.
When sponsors are speakers
Gary Bolles takes a look at how the ranks of conference speakers are often drawn from the ranks of sponsors of the conferences.
The major issue is "tying", the practice -- or perception -- of sponsorships being linked to on-the-dais visibility that may edge into the editorial integrity of an event. Do the producers of an event connect paid sponsorships with any kind of promotion on the dais, or in other areas where attendees will automatically assume that no such relationship exists? Do sponsors know when opportunities for visibility are tied to a requirement that they pony up? And do producers tell attendees know what's going on?
Via Scripting News.
The case of the disturbing backwards monitor
Speaking of programming, I cut an ad out of some high-tech trade pub (no, not this one) the other day that still bothers me. It's for some company that sells intrusion-detection software and shows the somewhat cliched closeup of a guy's face, bathed in green phosphor light and with ASCII characters floating across his face. You can read the characters (meaningless stuff such as "f0d6 36c7 916f").
A couple of problems here: The guy must be about three inches from the monitor, because the characters are gigantic (and never mind how bright the monitor must be to imprint things on his face). More important, if we really are seeing him from the perspective of, say, a QuickCam on his monitor, wouldn't the characters be backwards?
Yes, yes, I realize I must be truly fortunate if this is all I have to worry about ...
07/03/01
Congress to ICANN: Drop dead
ICANN is supposed to be an independent, international body overseeing domain names. Congress, though, may show those pointy heads who's really boss.
U.S. representatives John Shimkus, a conservative Republican from Illinois, and Rep. Edward Markey, a sort-of liberal from Massachusetts, are upset that ICANN didn't create a .kids global top-level domain name.
How upset are they? So upset that they've introduced a bill that would prohibit the Commerce Department from adding ICANN-approved global top-level domains to Internet root servers until ICANN creates a .kds gTLD.
Yet another video game made into a movie
Well, or into a trailer, at any rate. Tetris: The Movie has everything you'd want in a trailer, and more.
Via /usr/bin/girl.
Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera
Tampa police are experimenting with a system to have face-recognition software monitor 36 live video feeds from a downtown mall to see if they can pick up the criminal element wandering in and around the good burghers."If there's a hit -- boom, we'll send an officer to confirm or deny who it is," said Tampa police Detective Bill Todd, who helped implement the system after being approached by its owner, Visionics Corp. of New Jersey.
It's similar to the system used to monitor every single person entering the Super Bowl last year, the one that picked up 17 "hits," none of which ultimately turned out to be members of the criminal class.
07/02/01
High-speed hotels
Finally, the online directory you've been waiting for. Geektels is a listing of hotels (organized by destination) that have high-speed Internet connections. Hmm, wonder if the boss'll approve a site visit to the Wyndham Aruba Beach Resort & Casino? Hey, they even have wireless Ethernet! Pleeze? What? You'll pay for a trip to the Travelodge in Natick, Mass.? Oh, never mind.
Via Boing Boing
Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
Interesting post in the Interesting People list about problems people are having transferring domain names from NSI to another registrar. NSI used to transfer names unless they heard otherwise from the other registrar. Now it *doesn't* transfer names unless the other registrar responds to NSI's request for acknowledgement.
Something to get up in arms about? Or a good way to prevent domain-name hijacking? Wasn't all that long ago that somebody managed to convince NSI to transfer something like 1,000 domains owned by Mecklermedia to another company...
Via CamWorld.
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Compendium archive: Week of 01/21/02 Week of 01/14/02 Week of 01/07/02 Week of 01/02/02 Week of 12/03/01 Week of 11/26/01 Week of 11/19/01 Week of 11/12/01 Week of 11/05/01 Week of 10/29/01 Week of 10/22/01 Week of 10/15/01 Week of 10/08/01 Week of 10/01/01 Week of 9/24/01 Weeks of 9/10/01 - 9/17/01 Week of 9/3/01 Week of 8/27/01 Week of 8/20/01 Week of 8/13/01 Week of 8/6/01 Note: Compendium's entire staff took the week of 7/30 off. Week of 7/23/01 Week of 7/16/01 Week of 7/9/01 Week of 7/2/01 Week of 6/25/01 Week of 6/18/01 Week of 6/11/01 Week of 6/4/01
Tracking down a stolen Mac; Dead C Scrolls; Googlewhacking; How bad is it in the Valley?; Storage lessons from the Wayback Machine; The pub-seeking handheld; Internet gang wars; Outlook XP breaks MIME.
Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?; Luxo Redux; So you think your job is bad; Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast; Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal; The tragedy of the .coms; The Google parlor game; Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy; Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Dot-com to bare all; iMac Dance; Wendy's remembers Dave; Search engine bites the dust; Wendy's Web site ignores Dave's death; Geek comic strip; Youngest security expert ever; Spam poetry; Confessions of a hacker; Breathless Apple; Dave Barry does Windows XP.
Dropping everything to vote; The best Apple rumors, ever; Guess Steve Case isn't getting into Harvard; Make your own O'Reilly cover; Boosting your wireless juice; Telnet lives!
This space intentionally left blank (vacation).
The most useless software ever; Is Microsoft getting ready to squash PC vendors?; Excite@Home: The Watergate of the New Economy?; No more 3Com Park. Is CMGI Field next?; Are you an e-bore?; This site'll have you coming and going; Entertainment Weekly's loss of innocence; Ensign Crusher as Entertainer of the Year; Oh, for the old days.
The Museum of Broken Packets; Just in time for Thanksgiving; Tourist Guy found; Why virtual offices suck; A domain ruling that sucks; Hacking the iPod.
Why you shouldn't ship computers via UPS; When .Net requires Java; High-tech grafitti artists; Spam from beyond the grave; New group tries to oversee the whole Internet; Paging Dick Tracy; Students use PDAs to cheat; Windaz for Aussies, Newfies; Another alternative to Passport; A virtual honeynet
Bill Gates: Father of open source; Verizon exec: Monopoly is good; Weird molecule names; E-mail: too much of a good thing?; A cluster of one; More woes for dot-bombers; Spam as weapon in the war on crime; Just when you think the Web can't get any better; Just when you think the Web can't get any worse; More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass; Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks; Help save the FAQs; Who do you trust, baby?; Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus; Big IP pipe between US, Europe.
The profit of turning thugs into programmers; Work Name Generator; A programmer's lament; The world's best ATM; Are anti-spammers killing people?; Web services and storage; Get your Aerons here; Perl for the XXI-imum century; Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers.
Government info taken off the Web since 9/11; Beware hackers who talk too much; A contest you can enter sitting down; Now don't try this in the office; Bob Patterson must die; Finally, a useful 404 page; Tech calls from hell; Teletubbies XP; More XP fun; Anthrax and e-mail; Larry's ID card; World's longest gum-wrapper chain.
Let's drop PDAs on Afghanistan; Voice control? Try grunt control; Spam gets back to business; A content-management portal; Share your system tray with the world; Would you let the recording industry onto your network?; Al Queda's low-tech high tech; 9/11 archive; Shoe company gets open source after all; Pod people, coming soon to a cube near you.
Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards; Cringely: Broadband is dead; The dangers of Photoshop; The dangers of copy protection; Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?; How to REALLY throw a LAN party; Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors; How Google adapted to 9/11 news; Web services as over-hyped hooey; Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source; Online air hockey.
AT&T waives 9/11 wireless charges for some; Shifting gears; Craig Burton on the Novell/Microsoft suit; In search of the post-PC interface; Vibrating PDAs and wearable phones; Gary Condit's Web site; No, that isn't a real photo of a WTC tourist; How to throw a LAN party; How sucky is your intranet?
For grizzled 'Net veterans; UK ISP forced to pull deceptive ads; Pretty Good encryption controversy; Are you as smart as Miss America?; Really securing your computer; Still lots of insecure IIS servers; Kids, don't try this at home; Anthrax Kills; Larry's national database; Nimda hysteria?
Attack and post-attack items.
999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall; Finally, a wind-up cell phone; Enough with the ringing!; The VoIP calculator; 802.11b insecurity; Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP; Is ENUM the mark of the devil?; AOL gives user permanent demerit; The Ballmer music video; Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year.
Re-routing around censorship; Us vs. them in scripting; The boss button; Fighting off the hackers for fun; Peer computing as a weapon of war; Unix poetry; The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder; New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware; The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once; Taleban Web site hacked; Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
On the importance of flame wars; Bill Gates sees dead people?; A markup language for grunts and groans; Is Microsoft leaking those Ballmer dance videos?; Good Samaritan not so good?; Steve Ballmer works up a sweat; Open-source wireless cracking; When technology goes too far; Another dumb computer arrest?; Is Cisco Communist?
Moron marketers threaten 'Net users; Finding free wireless access; Complete wastes of time; OS holy war flares in North Carolina; Are programmers weird?; Somebody actually buys an X10 camera; We're number, uh, two!; Those after-hours computer discussions; An entire city running on Linux; Distributed spam fighter under development; Could a Warhol virus infect the entire 'Net in 15 minutes?; Tell AOL what to do with its CDs.
Fusion shatters a myth; Bridging .Net and Java?; AT&T Broadband cuts off non-IIS servers to fight Code Red; Bluetoothless; Tennessee town bites into Apple; And you thought TI-99/4A fans were over the edge; Biometrics coming to your local supermarket; Steve Ballmer a-hootin' and a-hollerin'; Speaking of Web images; Just how far PC prices have fallen; Does Starbucks' CEO get his own wireless strategy?
Crackers getting more sophisticated; Sex and Microsoft Office; The wonders of science, part MXXII; Finally, a useful virus; A shocking game controller; Big Ball of Mud school of programming; Two vitally important new resources; Adobe: Ooops; Eudora Welty, dead at 92; Centralizing Unix administration in Perl; Spellchecking the entire Web.
Worm turns on Microsoft Web servers; The day the ISP died; Cell-phone users have no shame; Even Internet consultants can screw up the 'Net; Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers; The ultimate cup of coffee; The solar-powered ISP; Everhost; Internet VCer: Oops; The Lego Palm and the pink fuzzy laptop; The Microsoft-English dictionary; Putting a loved one in the home.
Saving those all important VoIP calls; This site is a bright idea; Could wireless end messy divorces?; How much will that software really cost you?; Ghosts of failed dot-coms; The spy's guide to securing your Cisco routers; Oprah for Internet czarina?; What's Microsoft doing at an open-source conference?; Like a big pizza pi; Cyber-bullies; Better check your phone bill; Have some birthday pi.
How HP wastes energy to save energy; New toy for the bored and lonely; Weird programming languages; When sponsors are speakers; The case of the disturbing backwards monitor; Congress to ICANN: Drop dead; Yet another video game made into a movie; Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera; High-speed hotels; Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
One of the fathers of Usenet dead at 45; Are you ready for insta-spam?; Diary of a site collapse; Skirting the issue; Assimiliating the Web; Trolling for help; Software wars; Rating the rater; True tales from the help desk; How about spam embedded in your mail?
Unix diapers; A beautiful waste of time; A P2P taxonomy; This page is too stupid; Homeless dot-commer bogus?; Whee, Linux is fun!; Blue Screens everywhere; Forget viruses: This fungus eats CDs; Microsoft revises Smart Tags a bit; Homeless dot-commers.
Slashdot crashes the NSA; They may be Smart Tags, but they're not Original Tags; What open source and California wines have in common; Jakob Nielsen no tyro; How to make Windows 2000 really, really secure; Where the Internet begins; A useful computer bug; The clothes make the geek; The end of the Internet; Why PDF bites; Novel use of a wireless phone; Hidden info; When Web sites tell too much.
DSL modems are so '90s; Bye-bye Netscape; Get ready to upgrade those mail servers; The anti-.Net; The real reason to buy a Palm; Anatomy of a DDoS attack; Pain is good.
