This really belongs on Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. The United States has been airdropping food over Afghanistan. The food comes in a plastic-wrapped square yellow container. Guess what else comes in yellow? That’s right, unexploded cluster bombs. So now, the United States is broadcasting warnings over radio trying to teach illiterate Afghanis the difference…
October, 2001
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Gamespot has a detailed review of Civilization III. I was really hyped about the game until I got to this part, Also, as the game neared completion, Firaxis decided not to ship with multiplayer support. It has suggested that multiplayer features might be added later, but if you’re looking for a multiplayer grand-strategy game, then…
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ZDNET has a story about Amazon.Com’s use of Linux which the companys says saves it a lot of money. If you read the fine print, though, the main reason it saves them money is because the OS is free in dollar terms — they claim it costs them about as much to administer as Windows…
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While searching for resources on print-on-demand publishing I ran across an excellent article putting into context potential lost e-book sales due to unauthorized copying. In an article on the web site of the Publisher’s Marketing Association, Danny O. Snow writes, As “brick and mortar” bookstores know, a small number of consumers have always stolen books.…
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This really belongs on Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. The United States has been airdropping food over Afghanistan. The food comes in a plastic-wrapped square yellow container. Guess what else comes in yellow? That’s right, unexploded cluster bombs. So now, the United States is broadcasting warnings over radio trying to teach illiterate Afghanis the difference…
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For the past several years AIDS activists have charged that patents on HIV antivirals has significantly harmed the ability of African nations to respond to the AIDS crisis. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, however, suggests that this is simply not the case. Researcher Amir Attaran, an adjunct lecturer…
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The Independent (London) has a good summary of what should be obvious to anyone reading between the lines of the various statements made by the Pentagon about that much-hyped Ranger raid into Afghanistan — it was almost a disaster. Lisa and I were talking about this on Friday, concluding that U.S. military policy often seems…
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I live about halfway between Chicago and Detroit, but unfortunately because I’m still in Michigan, Fox and CBS always serve up Detroit Lions games if that pathetic excuse for a football team happens to be playing. On the other hand although their games aren’t very fun to watch, there has to be something to an…
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I’m not sure why, but John Edward, the psychic featured on the SciFi channel’s “Crossing Over with John Edward” is someone who I can’t watch without experiencing intense feelings of disgust. So I was not surprised at all when his publicity people announced yesterday that Edward would attempt to contact the dead victims of the…
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Via ArsTechnica comes an interesting paper (PDF) from Seth Lloyd attempting to estimate the maximum number of bits that could possibly be stored in the universe. The answer? Either 10^90 bits if you don’t take gravity into account, and 10^120 if you do take gravity into account. Don’t worry though, I’m sure at some point…