* Gearhead: Video fun with avatars and Skype * Backspin: Getting the upper hand on your e-mail * The past 7 days on Gibbsblog
Gearhead: Video fun with avatars and Skype
A couple of weeks ago we stumbled across a very odd video called “Breakup” on YouTube. The video stars a young lady named Melody who is just talking.
To read this week’s Gearhead in its entirety, click here.
Backspin: Getting the upper hand on your e-mail
There was an interesting discussion on one of my favorite mail lists about how people organize their e-mail. What kicked it off was an article on “CNN Money” titled Secrets of greatness: How I work.
To read this week’s Backspin in its entirety, click here.
The past 7 days on Gibbsblog
The Museum of Modern Betas
Heard of “Match My Pet”? matchmypet.com is a Web site currently in beta that aims to help you search for the best match for your pet! What kind of best match? I have no idea as the site appears to be offline at present but as and when I feel the need to match whatever it might be to my pet, I now know where to go …
You may be wondering how I came about this rarified knowledge …
***
Jobs on closed DRM
In my Backspin column this week — “Laws in France kick Apple’s pants” I discussed the French government’s proposed anti-closed DRM legislation and in this blog a couple of items ago we had some discussion on the topic. Well, it turns out that Apple is at least historically in favor of the idea!
***
Open Wi-Fi Stupidity
Last August I wrote about the case of a Florida man who was being prosecuted for using an open Wi-Fi access point without permission (see Open Wi-Fi, a national risk). Ever wondered what happened to the poor guy? Sorry, but I have no idea — search as I might so far — nothing, nyet.
But lest you think that was an isolated incident an Ars Technica item discusses the case of an Illinois man who pleaded guilty to the same “crime” — remotely accessing another computer system without the owner’s approval — and “was handed one year of court supervision and a US$250 fine.”
***
The Answer Really is 42!
There is an important sequence of numbers called “the moments of the Riemann zeta function.” Although we know abstractly how to define it, mathematicians have had great difficulty explicitly calculating the numbers in the sequence. We have known since the 1920s that the first two numbers are 1 and 2, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that mathematicians conjectured that the third number in the sequence may be 42 — a figure greatly significant to those well-versed in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. — Marcus du Sautoy, seedmagazine.com, March 27, 2006
