Doubt's Log

WSJ.com - If TiVo Thinks You Are Gay, Here's How to Set It Straight [lnk.to]

Caution: These Words Could End a Perfectly Good Scrabble Game. A selection of words obscure and fanciful from "A Word a Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English" (John Wiley & Sons):. [New York Times: Technology]

MPEG-4 licences go live. Like it and lump it [The Register]

This Modern World. A rainy day "War on Terror" fun game! [Salon.com]

what fire looks like in freefall [jwz]

engineering pornography [jwz]

File swap nets will win, DRM and lawyers lose, say MS researchers. No, we are not making this up... [The Register]

MS paper touts Unix in Hotmail's Win2k switch. But concludes 'we should eat our own dog food' [The Register]

Kerberos bug bites. Authentication system in stack buffer overflow risk [The Register]

Interoperability is long-term goal - IM vendors. Don't hold your breath [The Register]

Apple 'It' Girl Breaks Silence. Ellen Feiss talks to a college newspaper about her surprising fame after being featured in an Apple ad. Among the revelations: she was on drugs, the infamous advert was a lucky accident and Hollywood is keen to make her a star. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

fun facts about solar system simulation [jwz]

Islamists riot over Miss World report. Muslim radicals in northern Nigeria burn down the offices of a newspaper which referred to the Prophet in an article on the Miss World contest. [BBC News | WORLD]

At a stroke, MS cuts critical vuln reports. It's easy [The Register]

Microsoft Spills Customer Data. A server glitch makes internal Microsoft documents, including a massive database of customer names and addresses, accessible online. By Brian McWilliams. [Wired News]

Secret U.S. court OKs electronic spying. A secretive federal court grants police broad authority to monitor Internet usage, record keystrokes and employ other surveillance methods against terror and espionage suspects. [CNET News.com]

Fiorina echoes Gates' optimism. In her Comdex keynote, the Hewlett-Packard CEO picks up where Bill Gates left off, saying that in spite of current woes, the tech industry still has plenty of forward momentum. [CNET News.com]

For W3C, it's a question of semantics. The influential Web standards group upgrades its Semantic Web activity, a push to make the Web a little more intelligent. But don't call it AI. [CNET News.com]

MS exec rattles sabre, suggests Linux could infringe patents. Whose patents he doesn't say... [The Register]

Segways go on sale. No need to walk ever again. Sidewalk interloper [The Register]

MS accused of banning mod chip Xbox from Live service. Have they got a little list? [The Register]

Cheap is in at Comdex. The convention, once the pinnacle of corporate ostentation, has decidedly gone downscale. If IBM announced it were throwing a kegger in a parking lot, it wouldn't raise an eyebrow. [CNET News.com]

Two Washington Post articles I found from Joe Conason's Journal:
CIA Led Way With Cash Handouts
CIA's Cash Toppled Taliban

Xbox Live Goes Online. abhikhurana writes " Internetnews is reporting that Microsoft has launched Xbox Live broadband gaming service. To access Microsoft's service, Xbox gamers have ... [Slashdot]

Notes to Self: Microsoft Makes Note-Taking, Organizing a Snap.  Microsoft OneNote, a new application in the Microsoft Office family unveiled by Bill Gates at COMDEX Fall 2002, makes taking notes more flexible, turning yesterday's scrap paper into powerful, searchable data. [Microsoft Press Pass]

Movielink Snubs DRM-less Macs. mcwetboy writes "CNET reports that the Macintosh is being shut out of online movie services like Movielink, and connects it to the Mac's lack of digital-rights ... [Slashdot]

Iraq 'breaching UN resolution'. The US says Iraq has broken a United Nations resolution by firing on allied warplanes¸ just hours after weapons inspectors arrive in Baghdad. [BBC News | WORLD]

iPulse is a modern-art-inspired system monitor for OS X. [Hack the Planet]
Direct to the screenshot.

Paul Boutin: "Steve Jobs understands the iPod’s potential for grand theft audio." [Scripting News]
Wired Viewpoint is that sneakernet of burned cdrs and ipod type devices are a worse threat then napster.

Linux server shipments to double next year. As x86 overtakes RISC [The Register]

Due Diligence?. ekr writes "The OpenSSL remote buffer overflows discovered at the end of July got a lot of press here on /. But how many people actually fixed their machines? ... [Slashdot]

Grounded. A federal agency confirms that it maintains an air-travel blacklist of 1,000 people. Peace activists and civil libertarians fear they're on it. [Salon.com]

US loves broadband. Untapped demand [The Register]

HIV vaccine goes to trials [lnk.to]

Microsoft SEC filing shows hideous losses except for Windows. Where - surprise - it shows hideous profits [The Register]

No more oil aid for N Korea. South Korea presses North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons programme¸ as it backs a decision to stop fuel aid to its neighbour. [BBC News | WORLD]

China hands power to 'new generation'. Hu Jintao is the new Communist Party chief but Jiang Zemin retains far-reaching influence¸ in a sweeping leadership shake-up. [BBC News | WORLD]

PC upgrade cycle on hold, report says. There will mostly be coal in PC makers' stockings for the fourth quarter because consumers and businesses are squeezing more out of their old computers, according to Gartner. [CNET News.com]

Must-read Fortune article on venture capital in 2002. [Scripting News]

I picked up Shemmue II at the company store yesterday, and then headed down to the local game store at crossroads to see if Unreal Championship had shown up yet. It hadn't, but will be there today. So there I was, xbox live was active and waiting for a fun game at home, with no shooter (wacked just doesn't count, man). I knew MechAssault would be in the company store eventually, but I had needs now dammit! I tried to offset the burning desire with some used game cheap, I knew at that point that I wasn't going to leave the store empty-handed. I took a brief look at the $15 Wild Arms 1 for the playstation, but eventually I gave up, put my credit card on the counter and told them to give me the mech. The damn thing taunted me the rest of the half an hour drive home. My first impressions of it is that the single player is fun, but I'm not so sure that the multiplayer is all that good. I think it might get better once I've done the single player more, and have gotten better. However tonight is Unreal Championship, and it should be a bloody good time :)

Linux, Open Source have 'more security problems than Windows'. Aberdeen Group report [The Register]

Intel server sales to outpace rivals. In 2003, sales of servers built on Intel processors will for the first time exceed sales of more customized Unix systems built on RISC processors, analysts say. [CNET News.com]

US gov's 'ultimate database' run by a felon. 300 million ghosts in the machine [The Register]

Sprint PCS to lay off 1,660. The wireless carrier announces companywide changes that will thin management ranks by 1,660 and expand the availability of the company's business-focused services. [CNET News.com]

Dan Bricklin reviews the TabletPC. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
The review is his first experiences in getting the device and the basic idea that this isn't a pen device, it's a Tablet. Both Scobble and Dan Bricklin have stated that they won't buy a laptop with out the tablet abilty.

Incredible Images of the Sun. shelterit writes "A new swedish telescope facility in La Palma uses a new technology to remove the blurriness of the atmosphere to snap new and astonishingly ... [Slashdot]

a vast number of cute monsters [jwz]
Direct link here. Mabye worthy of a rss file itself.

Mad Magazine on The Onion [jwz]
Direct link here.

Is TI's "turbo Wi-Fi" losing steam?. Texas Instruments' turbo Wi-Fi technology makes for the speediest wireless networks around. But analysts think it may only have a short shelf life. [CNET News.com]
802.1g is expected to replace it.

Delta gets it.  [Jon's Radio]
Jon describes deltas information displays that show things that people used to spend time asking a desk person for; how many seats are open where, what's the estimated boarding time for a given seat set, who is where in line for standby seats, etc. The point he makes is that it's about more transparency.

'Beltway Sniper' Video-Game Release Delayed Out Of Respect For Victims [The Onion]

Last night was the semimonthly tuez anime night, where I saw the first few episodes of Kurogane Communications. Kurogane Communications takes place after an apocalypse that has apparently killed all humans, except for the way too cheerful main character. The author uses extreme contrasts to define the tone of the anime. Extremely perky music is overlaid on scene after scene of destruction. One of the robots looks like a terminator but wears a cute little circle gold earring. The contrast turned my stomach in some of the ways Series 7: The Contenders did (just not as consistently or as violently).

Corporate Leaders Are More Pessimistic Than the Fed. Federal Reserve officials expect the economy to improve soon, but C.E.O.'s plan to cut jobs to respond to growth that they predict will remain meager. By David Leonhardt. [New York Times: Politics]