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The Conjecturer 2004 March

The Conjecturer 2004 March
Steven Bridge  |  by www.conjecturer.com. All rights reserved. 16.07 | 23:24

Filed under: , at 7:30 am on Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Because he s a better information aggregate, I m linking all of Glenn Reynolds posts on free information. His wife s book is out of print but available for free online, yet it for $100 on Amazon. Yesterday, he linked to from Harvard and USC demonstrating that free downloads do not have a negative impact on music sales.

In addition, Larry Lessig has been finding that have been increasing his book sales as well.
In other words, it s what I ve been saying for years: allowing free, digital copies does little to negatively affect tangible media. If anything, it s a good thing, allowing less-than-perfect total copies as a warm up for the real thing.

Which makes the RIAA s positions even less rational. Filed under: at 7:23 am on Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Saturday, NASA its Hyper-XX-43A hypersonic aircraft. It was the second successful test of the Scramjet engine (in which fuel combusts at supersonic speeds), and the first successful American test.

It hit mach 7, a new speed record for any non-rocket plane, and hopefully will pave the way for SSTO (single stage to orbit) spacecraft.
Or will it? says hypersonic flight is over-hyped, and its technology misunderstood.

He s right. Filed under: at 4:45 pm on Sunday, March 28, 2004

Just saw this, and it was incredible. I won t do any kind of an in depth review or plot synopsis ( did a well enough job), but I will say it was incredible.

Truly thought provoking, touching on betrayals and hurt and violation along with the standard canards of lost love and pain. Jim Carrey, contrary to my previous assumption, is an incredible dramatic actor, and Kate Winslet finally has lived up to her Oscar. Kirsten Dunst nearly makes up for her abominable performance in Spider man, and Frodo is downright creepy.


It s mislabeled as sci-fi. There is so much more here, it is so much more human than sci-fi ever can be. Go and see it right away (movie website ).

Filed under: , at 12:06 pm on Sunday, March 28, 2004

I guess we all know and love porn. Maybe not , but the fact remains that porn is a huge industry in this country (and in most countries, as a matter of fact). A few years back William F.

Buckley addressed the issue of the , and though his solution was unworkable, he was one of the first to start addressing the serious nature of porn s invasion of private life. It s a fairly serious issue - though right now porn spam has the spotlight, deceptive porn sites are everywhere, popping up on Google when a completely unrelated search is made. I can remember way back in the fall of 1998, my senior year in high school, when my government teacher asked me to bring up the white house s webpage on the computer (it was hooked up to the TV).

I made the mistake of typing in , which was much pornier back then. An innocent enough mistake, but totally embarassing for an awkward nerd. It did point to a deeper issue, however - porn, even way the hell back in the 20th century, was slowly taking over the cultural lexicon.


Fast forward to 2004. Michelle Cottle now has an on the porn wars that are currently waging just under the election-frenzied radar, and points to a fascinating solution: an Internet red-light district. It seems a well-reasoned compromise, but will anyone, especially , have the guts to go through with it?

dc:title="Porn in the U.S.A.

" Filed under: , at 11:18 am on Sunday, March 28, 2004

It s simple, and I m running out of different ways of expressing this: he has absolutely no case for his self-righteousness. Besides promoting his book, that is. Mark Steyn has the :
Except for his suggestion to send in a team of ninjas to take out Osama, Clinton had virtually no interest in the subject.


In October 2000, Clarke and Special Forces Colonel Mike Sheehan leave the White House after a meeting to discuss al-Qa eda s attack on the USS Cole: What s it gonna take, Dick? Sheehan demanded. Who the s*** do they think attacked the Cole, f****** Martians?

The Pentagon brass won t let Delta go get bin Laden. Does al-Qa eda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?
Apparently so.

The attack, on the Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, was deemed by Clinton s Defence Secretary Bill Cohen as not sufficiently provocative to warrant a response. You ll have to do better than that, Osama! So he did.

And now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be pre-emptive about Iraq insist he should have been about September 11.

There s a bit of Clarke s jilted termination as a terrorism expert thrown in for good measure, as well. Why does he continue to get so much media attention, with fawning coverage on various analysis programs and the Daily Show?

Because he s out to get Bush, and he needs attention. Simple, superficial, shallow, seen through, and alarmingly easy. dc:title="Why is Clarke Wrong?

" Filed under: , at 7:26 am on Friday, March 26, 2004 Yes, those 9/11 hearings were interesting (and John Stewart was hilarious in his coverage). They still have the potential to be very damaging to Bush, especially if he tries to play coy with them. If you want a really good reason, though, why you should totally ignore Dick Clarke s book promotion (sorry, I meant testimony), you should read right now.

Or . Actually, both should be read regularly, because both are brilliant.
Did I mention that Clarke was responsible for after September 11?

Yeah, I m kind of glad he ham-fistedly apologized to the victim s families, now, though they should be offended that some of the very people who should have been investigated were let go by the same man now accusing the White House of not doing enough to thwart terrorism. Bastard. Filed under: at 7:15 am on Friday, March 26, 2004 There s certainly reason for concern in Iraq.

I mean, things are not perfect, there are a lot of problems, and certainly there is that nasty issue with terrorism. But, more than a year down the line from the most successful invasion in history, what has happened is simply stunning. Iraq has a constitution, it has a provisional government that has already begun to ignore some US officials (meaning: independent thought is well on its way), it s gearing up to hold the first real elections ever.

Iraq has the freest press of any Arab nation, and as a whole the infrastructure in Iraq is in better shape than it has been since 1991. People don t walk around in fear of Saddam s henchmen, just some foreigners who may or may not explode their car next to a hospital (the Israelis can relate, I m sure). Overall, the picture is surprisingly rosy.


Makes me wonder why so many people, like Al Franken and Eric Alterman, are so down on it. I mean, we were at a similar point (down to the media skepticism) in . Of course, these people hate George W.

Bush, and wish to see him fail. Guess that makes it hard to be objective, or even to analyze current events through such a distorting prism. Filed under: at 7:54 am on Thursday, March 25, 2004

Police Chief William Dwyer said the woman, whose name was not released, was in the parking lot of a business at 12 Mile and Drake, where she worked in the accounting department, when a man confronted her Friday morning.


When he came within about 10 feet, Dwyer said, the woman calmly pulled the gun out of her purse and pointed it at the man identified as Carl Walker, 21, of Detroit.
Walker did not draw his weapon, police said. Instead, he ran to a nearby car and the woman called 911.

Police later arrested Walker and recovered a pistol. Two companions, Monique Bell, 26, of Detroit and Daphne Patterson, 28, of Southfield, also were arrested.

That s all wrong, of course.

Gun ownership and concealed carry laws are going to increase violent crime, not decrease it! She should have her firearm confiscated, and be fined for pointing a weapon at that poor boy. Filed under: at 1:34 pm on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 Sony is going to release the next month.

It s an e-book reader that can hold 500 books, and the four AAA batteries allow 10,000 pageviews. E-book readers are nothing new, but this stuff is. The main benefit is its ultra-high resolution - 170 pixels per inch.

Most computer monitors only allow 72 pixels per inch, and this technology is thinner even than TFT laptop displays. Cool.
Slightly related: Phillips is working on that use this same E-Ink technology (pictures ).

I first remember seeing them in the terrible movie , and thinking that was what future displays would be (and it was about the only thing right with that abomination of a film). To the future! Filed under: at 7:59 am on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 The RIAA has filed another against college students for daring to try new music.

Wired has . There are now about 2,000 suits filed, averaging $3,000 per settlement (or, $6 million) over the last six months or so. Contrast with what the record industry could have had if they agreed to allow Napster to switch to a $10/mo subscription five years ago - 50 million users, paying $10 every month, or $300,000 million over the last six months (probably more, since more people would have signed on to such a value-added service).


Alas, they consigned themselves to fighting bitter lawsuits in court after court, never to make a profit off any of it. And they wonder why no one likes them? Filed under: at 7:47 am on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 is brilliant today.

So it s Tycho s . Yes, I wish my sense of humor were that developed, but I m too nerdy, I guess (notice: nerdy != geeky):

I honestly don t know what selling out is supposed to mean anymore, the term is leveled with such regularity.

I was under the impression that it meant that your principles were for sale, that an indeterminate sum had changed hands and now you were under command. You can actually be a completely independent webcomic and not pass muster. Now it appears to involve infractions of some impossibly austere, orthodox hipster code, complete with constant play-by-play analysis by psychic forum trolls and betrayed fans who gleefully plot the coordinates of your downward trajectory.


Yeah, it sucks being at the top, right? Filed under: at 6:55 am on Monday, March 22, 2004 James Lileks has a great post on the anti-war rallies that happened this weekend. right away:
This has nothing to do with Iraq.

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Keywords: White House, Al Qa
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