Monthly Archives: March 2004

VoIP Links

March 31, 2004 – 12:59 pm

Vonage is starting to look like the ma-bell of VoIP. It’s not that there isn’t competition — there is, but they just don’t have the profile that Vonage has. It looks like Vonage has picked up the early adopters, now they have to start converting others.
The market seems to have three fields: computer-to-computer only, software [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)



Richard Clarke’s Insider Tell-All

March 31, 2004 – 10:24 am

Tom Maertens Speaks on Richard Clarke’s insider story in a Star Tribune article dated Sunday 28 March 2004.
The troops who could have been used in Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaida were instead held back for the planned invasion of Iraq. In contrast to the 150,000 men sent to Iraq, only about 11,500 [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy | Comments (1)

Copyright War

March 31, 2004 – 2:43 am

Something doesn’t add up. ARIA, Australia’s version of our RIAA recently announced that sales continued to slide there this past year, while critics pointed out that they really had a record-breaking year with 50 million album sales. Thank ArsTechnica for the link. This matches news from the UK this past summer. So why is the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Copyrights & Intellectual Property | Comments (1)

Why Music Biz Loves P2P

March 30, 2004 – 12:34 pm

Jason Shultz over at CopyFight just posted this story about The Mercury News’ story about how record labels use P2P stats to boost sales.
Record Labels Using “Pirate” Data to sell more CDs (posted by Jason Schultz)
The Merc has a great article on how the RIAA bashes P2P out of one side of their mouth while [...]

By Casey | Posted in Copyrights & Intellectual Property | Comments (1)

Political Diagramming

March 29, 2004 – 9:19 pm

A graph from Orgnet plots book purchasing patterns by politics.There’s not much middle ground there. “These political books are preaching to the converted. The extreme book titles on both sides reveal a focus on hate, instead of debate. In a year of presidential election, is this the new arms race?”
Could it be that our book [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy | Comments (0)



What is the Simputer?

March 29, 2004 – 8:58 pm

I just saw a pointer to the Amida Simputer, an Indian designed and manufactured PDA. The review at Engadget sounds sort of down, but it comes from a company on a mission. It seems others are fed up with importing (and paying for) US technology, so they’re developing their own.
Take a look-see at the Amida [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Hmmm… Boats

March 29, 2004 – 1:06 pm

It looks like a tug boat, but the Great Harbour 37 could be a lot of fun.
A magazine article talks about bareboat charters in the British Virgin Islands and the pleasures quietly exploring the coves and uninhabited areas on your own.

By Casey | Posted in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles | Comments (0)

NASA’s X43 Flies

March 27, 2004 – 10:42 pm

NASA’s X43 scramjet test plane flew at speeds exceeding mach 7 and altitudes of 100,000 feet today. I believe that’s a new air-breathing speed record. GlobalSecurity.org has a nice wite-up on it.

By Casey | Posted in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles | Comments (1)

American Proprietary Eponyms

March 27, 2004 – 10:34 am

There I was Googling “proprietary” for a story about misuse of the word when I came across this gem from R.Krause:
An eponym is a general term used to describe from what or whom something derived its name. Therefore, a proprietary eponym could be considered a brand name (product or service mark) which has fallen into [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

What Does Proprietary Mean, Anyway?

March 25, 2004 – 8:05 pm

Googling ?proprietary? results in lots of hits, but very few of them use the word in a positive sense. The Webopedia Computer Dictionary offers:
Proprietary
Privately owned and controlled. In the computer industry, proprietary is the opposite of open. A proprietary design or technique is one that is owned by a company. It also implies that the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (4)

Thank Chank

March 25, 2004 – 12:49 pm

The font designing folks at Chank have a nice list of free fonts to pick from. Sure, they’re not the fonts you use to design flyers for the church social or nursing home holiday dinner, but that’s sort of the point. Isn’t it?
Anyway, they also link to nerfect where you’ll find other cool designey [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (10)

Integrating Library Systems in Campus Portals

March 23, 2004 – 12:26 pm

Information about Lamson Library’s portal integration at Plymouth State University. I’ll expand this story later, but I want to put the link here now to get it in Google’s index.

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (1)

Update On Pen Twirling

March 22, 2004 – 6:43 pm

I did a story on the practice of pen twirling in Japan a couple years ago. Since then I have received an email from Pierre Etienne Bastouil who is trying to organize a pen twirling competition in Paris. Despite the popularity of the sport in Japan, he’s having some difficulty finding skilled pen twirlers in [...]

By Casey | Posted in Questionable...funny. Pointless. | Comments (8)

Schlossberg Quote

March 22, 2004 – 7:10 am

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” –Edwin Schlossberg

By Casey | Posted in Books, Movies, Music | Comments (0)

Squirm Squirm Little Man

March 22, 2004 – 7:03 am

Far too often the mainstream press lets politicians get away with revising or misrepresenting their previous positions. Far too often the press is complicit in their lies. Not this time.
Hopefully Quoticus will develop into a very useful historical truth machine to prevent revisionism. Hopefully.

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy | Comments (3)