Category Archives: Technology, science, and math

Headline in today’s Yahoo News: Gay Sheep May Help Explain Biology of Homosexuals: WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Gay sheep that mate only with other rams have different brain structures from “straight” sheep, a finding that may shed light on human sexuality, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I received this in a Windows 2000 tech newsletter today. It’s amazingly sleazy. Don’t fall for it. * SNEAK ATTACK THROUGH A LICENSE AGREEMENT Have you ever received a Web-based greeting card from a friend or relative? They’re common these … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Scott points me to some cool news: Seattle-based computer maker Cray is collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories here on a new, faster supercomputer – Red Storm – that will be seven times more powerful than the federal weapons lab’s current … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Today is International Powers of Ten Day, fitting enough for 10/10/02. Larry pointed it out to me and also got into the spirit of things as only he can. Here’s a fun fact about the number one billion, which is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

MEC 2002 officially begins today. After attending two of these things, I know enough to bag the morning keynote addresses – the marketing to technology ratio is always dangerously out of whack. There are a few like-minded souls here in … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The MIT Technology Review has a look back at instant messaging in its regular Trailing Edge feature this month. The technology dates back to the 1980s, when MIT implemented a system that was designed to send notifications about things like … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Kevin points me to this WaPo opinion piece which heralds the coming end of the Oil Era. Kevin quotes the following paragraphs to note the differences in direction of the EU and the US: The sun is setting on the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Three computer scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology have discovered an algorithm for determining if a number is prime which is both deterministic and relatively fast. This is a very cool result, one that is likely to help cryptographers … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I work as an email administrator. Today my boss forwarded this link about HP dealing with employee email abuse in Britain and Ireland to our team as an FYI. What’s surprising about this is not that a company might take … Continue reading → Continue reading →

My dad sent me word about this recent decision by the NY State Appellate Court, in which the “single publication” provision of libel law was upheld. “Single publication” means “the publication of a defamatory statement in single issue of a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Following the brilliantly successful and customer-endearing strategy of the RIAA, the MPAA is taking steps to crack down on those who swap digital movie files online. Look, I’m not going to defend piracy. Maybe the recording industry really has been … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’d been meaning to blog this article from the MIT Technology Review magazine which describes why software is so bloated and buggy for awhile now. Among other things, they quoted my buddy Dan Wallach. Unfortunately, it seems they’ve gone to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Apple has found the perfect spokesperson for their Switch campaign. Continue reading →

Spam news An interesting article on the proliferation of blocklists, which are used to filter out spam by ISPs. Blocklist admins have gotten more aggressive in their filtering, which has led to an increase in false positives: Magdalena Donea, a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

By now you’ve probably read that big NYT magazine article about the dawning realization that a low-fat diet may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. Of course, if you’re a longtime reader of Off the Kuff, this … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Alert reader (I’ve always wanted to say that) Frank writes in to say that he recalled seeing news articles about bacteria being a cause of the rash of deformed frogs. I did a little more Googling, and found that bacteria … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Mac recently had some fun with this article about giant bullfrogs which are terrorizing Germany. Mac notes that these are introduced species. As funny as a plague of frogs in Germany is, it’s unfortunately the case that bullfrogs are causing … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Here’s a good post on the costs of nuclear power by J Bowen of No Watermelons. Via Ted Barlow. Continue reading →

The Poor Man points me to this post in Quark Soup which discusses why you shouldn’t rely too strongly on political writers for environmental policy: “There is no democracy in physics,” the physicist Luis Alvarez once said. “We can’t say … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Ken Layne, Max Power, Tim Blair, and VodkaPundit have lined up to praise Mark Steyn for his smackdown on the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook. Steyn turns his usual witty phrase in mocking this latest doomsday report, which like most … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Here’s an article my dad needs to read: A scientist at North Dakota State University is working on ways to reduce bean-induced flatulence. And they say there’s no good news nowadays. Continue reading →

Max Power writes about a case in Australia where a tobacco company was held liable to a plaintiff because “the company had destroyed decades-old documents”. Says Max: Document destruction when there’s an outstanding subpoena calling for the documents is one … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Speaking of the Technology Review, it’s just loaded with great stuff this month. Here’s an article that argues that human cloning, like all other advances in reproductive technology, is inevitable. I have to say that I think author Daniel Kevles … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Using Gummi Bears, PhotoShop, and ingenuity, a Japanese cryptographer was able to create fake fingerprints that fooled fingerprint recognition systems 80% of the time. Guess maybe I’ll keep paying cash at Kroger for awhile longer. Thanks to Michael for pointing … Continue reading → Continue reading →

A new breakthrough in video technology at MIT can realistically alter video images to make it appear that someone is saying something else. Read it and worry. Continue reading →

Shoppers can now pay for groceries at some area Kroger stores with a new point-of-sale system that uses fingerprints to associate a customer with an account. This came out of a since-abandoned pilot program in Texas to use fingerprint identification … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Would you believe bomb-sniffing bees? No, really, it sounds cool. Go check it out. (Link via Little Green Footballs.) Continue reading →

Sometime over the weekend I got added to a massive CC list on a moronic chain letter that’s currently making the rounds at work. It’s one of those brain-dead notes that claims you’ll get paid by Microsoft/AOL/Disney/the Illuminati for forwarding … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Today’s literally cool science news: The coldest place in Houston isn’t the Galleria ice rink, it’s physicist Randall Hulet’s lab. The temperature inside a small tube there isn’t absolute zero — at minus 459 Fahrenheit, the lowest possible temperature — … Continue reading → Continue reading →

From Salon comes this story about a “family entertainment portal” called Flowgo and how a pop-up ad that ran on Flowgo’s server installed a nasty piece of spyware on many user’s computers. The ad, purchased by a Los Angeles Internet … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’m posting this CNN story because I want to see how many Google hits I can get for saying “remote controlled rats”. Continue reading →

Mike points me to this article by Robert X. Cringely, who lost his infant son to SIDS last week, and what he hopes to do about it. There ought to be a monitor, I thought, that could tell when a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Well, this was a fun afternoon at work. The comm group booted my port off the network because I have a Win2K server which wasn’t properly secured. Today it became one of many machines across our enterprise that came down … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Mark Evanier points to this page which has the slot machine payout at various Vegas casinos. My statement of 97% payout was too much. All I can say is that I have seen such advertisements, but I haven’t been to … Continue reading → Continue reading →