Idealist Under Fire

2005-09-13T06:16:00.000-04:00

Behold - The Television Wiki

Titled TV IV, and apparently birthed from SomethingAwful, we have another genre being covered by all the powerful and truly peer-reviewed database known as the wiki. From the Hawaiian term wiki wiki, for "quick" or "informal" (Wikipedia) wikis as most of you assuredly know have covered unexpected gaps in our knowledge. For example, various sports figures and leagues now have all of their rules and reigonal customs collated under wikis, as are the myriad of comic book story arcs and continuities. Due to the nature of storage media and it's predominantly text-based format, it is truly limitless.

Given the nature and familiarity of people with web-based forums, I can imagine that this new site will very, very quickly be up to date. The article on Slashdot recognizes that it can be a perfect place for people to spring spoilers on casual viewers, but I suspect that such a manner of provision or probation will keep this to a minimum after a few initial bad runs. Never truly safe, but then again when are you?

I do anticipate the rise of more genre-specific wikipedias, but then an eventual collpase back to a few solid databases. Anyway, that's just my hunch. I'm all for the growth of freely accessible knowledge.

2005-09-13T03:20:00.000-04:00

Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com

Bruce Lee - Uniting Muslims, Serbs, and Croats

2005-09-09T07:52:00.000-04:00

A new twist on power walking | Science Blog

I'm pretty exhausted right now, but this seems a far more logical step than fragile, expensive, and fairly weak solar cell packs. I've always been a fan of human power, be it those cheap near-novelty "Russian" flashlights, crank radios, or dynamo powered lights for your bike. I've been interested in finding a good cheap crank radio, or basically anything with a crank attatched over batteries. The other big thing on my wish-list is a dynamo-powered flashlight, which is nothing more than a free-sliding magnet amongst a copper-wire tube with an LED light and a small capacitor. I'm pretty sure those are commercially viable products, I just haven't bothered to look.

Now that I think about it, most things on my wish-list are in fact, theory-based items than physical products. Whatever

2005-09-08T19:34:00.000-04:00

Coastal Areas of Louisiana - get this - were NOT covered under the declaration of emergency on August 26th.

Well, they're just making it entirely too easy. Amazing. Simply amazing.

2005-09-08T19:28:00.000-04:00

Wired News: Vint Cerf: Google's New Idea Man

Without any doubt in my mind, Google has the means and knowhow to be one white cat away from a Bond supervillain. This is the second article I've read today concerning their recent hires, but Vint Cerf is a name I recognize already. I don't have anything to really say at this point, other than the fact that it's going to be very interesting to see what this brain trust comes up with. If you look at the amount of scientists, engineers, and scholars working together, combined with the bankroll involved, this is akin to the Manhattan Project for the internet.

Speculation previously has concerned possible efforts of a Google OS, a network-ready system that would conceivably provide universally accessibly desktops with remotely-downloadable software applications. Perhaps even, it would do most of the processing offsite, and have, if not a dummy/blind terminal, then at least one that doesn't have to crunch all the numbers in the world; ie something akin to a PDA or Smart Phone processor. More speculation includes a single, coherent use of labels via XML to handle documents; something we're seeing Microsoft implement with the newest build of Office. With this push from propreitary to openly accessible formats, it's unlikely that a company such as Google would have failed to take notice. The interface of their applications GMail and Fusion both occur on the browser level, not desktop app, and by giving POP3 access and utilizing the free storage provided by utilities like Blogger, well, you really can take or leave as much as you want.
Although everything Google touches does not necessarily turn to gold, such as the currently-limited Talk program, which appears to be referencing a conference server that is at the least currently disabled, but then again it clearly says "Beta." I for one am thankful for these free options, but remain someone cautious, albeit optimistic, about trusting Google for most everything. They haven't given me a reason not to trust them yet, but it almost seems too good to be true.

2005-09-08T03:01:00.000-04:00

Well, here goes nothin'