Category Archives: Technology, science, and math

In 1900, the great mathematician David Hilbert listed 23 outstanding problems in mathematics and challenged his colleagues to solve them. Three of those problems remain unsolved today, but according to this report, one of them may have been conquered. Elin … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Via Joanne McNeil comes this Wired article about electronic voting in Australia and why their system is more robust, more secure, and way less controversial. Although a private Australian company designed the system, it was based on specifications set by … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Here’s a cute site for people who like numbers and random odd facts about them. Clearly, the author missed an opportunity here – what’s special about the number 138 is that it’s the smallest number about which there is nothing … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Harris County has had electronic voting machines for some time now. Not the crappy Diebold machines, but that doesn’t mean that people haven’t been voicing concerns about them since before their adoption. Recent events have not done anything to change … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The title to this post is cribbed from Angry Bear, who reminds me that the forces of darkness are gathering again in Texas for the annual vote on textbook purchases. From Bob Park’s What’s New newsletter. 3. INTELLIGENT DESIGN: URGENT … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Meet Phoberomys pattersoni, a nine-foot-long, four-foot-tall rodent of yesteryear. If the artist’s rendition of what this sucker may have looked like doesn’t make you want to buy some bigger mousetraps, I don’t know what will. As an extra added bonus, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Seems that Sen. Orrin “I’ll kill you and burn your computer, vile filesharer!” Hatch is getting a little worried about the RIAA’s subpoena fetish. Hatch says he agrees with many of the concerns raised in a Tuesday committee hearing by … Continue reading → Continue reading →

So my mother forwarded me an email yesterday that contained a warning from the Petroleum Equipment Institute about using cellphones while gassing up one’s vehicle. According to the email, some form of electrical charge from cellphones had ignited fumes at … Continue reading → Continue reading →

San Antonio is the latest city to adopt electronic voting, and the latest city to feel a bit queasy about doing so. With Bexar County’s first fully electronic election less than three weeks away, some are raising red flags about … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The designers of the new Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test have admitted that they screwed up on one of the 10th grade math tests, though it appears from their explanation that they still don’t fully grasp the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Stephen Bates, in the comments to this post, asks a couple of darned good questions about electronic voting machines: [W]hat compelling argument can any corporation offer that its vote-counting software should be proprietary? What gives any nonpublic entity the right … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’ve not really covered the subject of electronic voting and the problems that are inherent to its implementations – several other bloggers have done yeoman’s work on the topic – but I’d still like to point out the newfound interest … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’ve never been tempted to get text messaging on my cell phone, and after reading this story, I’m even less inclined to do so. Although few customers are receiving cell phone spam now, experts predict the onslaught will multiply to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

One of the things I missed while out of town was Larry Simon catching Sen. Orrin Hatch using unlicensed software on his Senate web page. The story was widely picked up (see Wired’s coverage, for example, which notes that Continental … Continue reading → Continue reading →

You know, I just haven’t been getting enough hits off of search engine queries lately. This ought to help. Seeking to maximize its “Double Your Pleasure” slogan, gum maker Wrigley has filed for a patent to cover gum that contains … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Earthlink is preparing to roll out a new spam blocking service that requires mail senders to verify their identity for mail to be delivered. Known as “challenge-response” technology, the system thwarts the ability of spammers to reach their intended audience … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Now that we all know more than we ever thought we’d know about Bill Bennett’s love of slot machines, let’s talk numbers. What are the odds that you can actually break even or come out ahead when playing the slot … Continue reading → Continue reading →

There’s a spam summit going on in DC right now as the powers that be grapple with The Scourge Of The Internet ™. On the first day of the Federal Trade Commission’s “spam summit,” participants could not even agree on … Continue reading → Continue reading →

A year ago I blogged about the Clay Mathematics Institute and its million dollar prize for solving one of seven longstanding problems. One of those problems is the Poincare Conjecture, which is a statement about how shapes and surfaces can … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’m on a mailing list for a local pub. Apparently, the mail they sent out last night tripped a couple of antivirus filters. Unfortunately, the standard behavior of many corporate antivirus software installations is to send a reply to the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Stephen Hawking is in town to give a lecture tonight. He’s spending some time at Texas A&M thanks to some grant money. I hope someone has informed him that driving his wheelchair over the grass outside the Memorial Student Center … Continue reading → Continue reading →

McDonald’s will be offering high speed wireless Internet access with the purchase of a combo meal at select restaurants starting today. That’s pretty cool, though I can’t say it’s something I’d ever take advantage of. Personally, I go to lunch … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Here’s an extended commercial for using Mozilla, both as a blogging tool and as your everyday web browser. I use Mozilla at home and generally love it, mostly for the ability to kill unwanted popup windows. There are some links … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Uh oh, telemarketers now have a way to defeat privacy tools like the TeleZapper and SBC’s Privacy Manager. Castel, a maker of automated dialing technology, boasts that its DirectQuest software is immune to the TeleZapper, a $40 gadget designed to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Hmmm. Google has bought Pyra Labs, the company that created Blogger and Blogspot. “I couldn’t be more excited about this,” said Evan Williams, founder of Pyra, a company that has had its share of struggles. He wouldn’t discuss terms of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I spent several years doing help desk work, first for a small software company, and then here for the large multinational where I now work. I’ve always been suspicious of supposedly true help desk war stories involving users who asked … Continue reading → Continue reading →

One more point that needs to be made about SUVs is that there’s no technical reason why they don’t have better fuel economy. MIT’s Technology Review magazine did an article in November pn this topic. You can only get an … Continue reading → Continue reading →

File this one under When Good Things Happen To Bad People: SLIDELL, La. — He’s a 30-year-old self-taught computer programmer and electronics repairman with a fondness for Scooby-Doo, cars and camping. He’s also one of the country’s better-known spammers, one … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Brigitte Boisselier, the scary-looking woman from the group that claims to have cloned human babies, was a graduate student in chemistry at the University of Houston. Her thesis advisor remembers her as a good student and a non-whacko. Not anymore, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Or something like that, according to this story: A member of a sect that believes life on Earth was created by extraterrestrials claimed Friday to have produced the world’s first human clone, a baby girl. The 7-pound baby was born … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The Swedish National Road Administration is testing customized GPS receivers in about 1000 cars, according to this article in Technology Review. You can only see a brief excerpt right now, though the full article should be online eventually. I’ll quote … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The TNR blog &c recently referred to squaring the circle in reference to Team Bush’s new economic advisors. The point they were making was that the nominees, who have a history of advocating fiscal discipline and balanced budgets, will have … Continue reading → Continue reading →

A new study says that email overload is mostly a myth: A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that overwhelming levels of e-mail are quite atypical, an outcome that surprised even the researchers. “All of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Botox injections have been linked to Immobile Eyebrow Syndrome: In the new study, published last week in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, researchers from the Indiana University Medical Center examined 29 patients who had received Botox injections in their … Continue reading → Continue reading →