One of my esoteric interests is currency systems. For example I wish the feds would stop handing the currency system over to Visa and MasterCard. This posting by Stan Collender provides a treasure trove of insight into how hard it is to understand the forces at work when you try to shift how a currency [...]
Another bad day for Panama, the Northwest passage is open again. The amount of disruption this global warming thing is causing, it just boggles the mind!
I wanted to set up a n2n vpn and the way n2n works at this point participation in any given requires that you configure the three things, one of which is a password. Which means that if you want to ostracize a participant to whom you have previously given these facts you need to change [...]
This quote from Alan Kay is very nice. It explains a lot It’s largely about the enormous difference between “News” and “New” to human minds. Marketing people really want “News” (= a little difference to perk up attention, but on something completely understandable and incremental). This allows News to be told in a minute or [...]
Some notes on the ongoing battle: squirrels v.s. houses. The house should be, to the extent possible, inaccessible to the squirrels. I.e. cut back the trees. It is mandatory that your seal any holes the squirrels create or discover. Squirrels are very territorial. During the spring they fill out the region in a patch [...]
Many many years ago I read in some high end Optics Society journal about what I came to think of as “the white light.” The article argued that if one extrapolated the patterns in communication there would come a time when the cost of routing information around the network vs. the cost of broadcasting everything [...]
When traveling I sign up for Boingo’s wireless access, which later I then cancel. This time I called but they didn’t actually cancel the service so I had to call again when the monthly charge appeared on the credit card. They could see my first cancelation call in their records, and where appropriately apologetic etc. Though [...]
Another entry for the collection of devices to automate guard labor. The folks at Pay Technologies sell widgets that disable stuff if the loan payments are made on time. It’s another good example of how these system are first deployed to control the behavior of weak players in the economy. PaytTech pitches their system to [...]
I’m enjoying this simple SIP phone for the Mac called Telephone. It handles multiple accounts nicely. It has a very discrete UI. I particularly like that for touch tone entry you just type on your keyboard. Works well with Gizmo Project, and hence with Google Voice. As far as I know Google is the only player [...]
Look what I found in the attic! It appears to be a small old book, but actually it’s a game for the 1984 Apple Macintosh. It appears for a moment at time stamp 2:41 in the original Steve Job’s announcement for the Macintosh. Oh dear, he’s wearing a bowtie! The game was written, originally [...]
Fresh Links…