Thursday, March 31, 2005

HOV FAQ

While doing quick research to see if I can drive my hybrid car solo on Virginia's HOV lanes (I can't because my car isn't registered in Virginia), I learned that there's another attempt to get HOV privileges that won't work either:
Q: I'm pregnant. Do I count as one person or two?
A: In the HOV world, you're one person. However, babies of any age count as a person.
(from VDOT's HOV FAQ)

Friday, March 25, 2005

Geeky Friday: Scoring NeXT's Predictions

(Ad images from a gallery of Apple and NeXT ads at macmothership.com)

I first encountered NeXT machines when I was an undergrad and the chair of Vassar's CS department was on NeXT's academic advisory committee and NextStep was at version 0.8 (and before its subsequent case changes to NeXTStep or NeXTSTEP). Around 1989 or 1990 NeXT started promoting their computers with the ads above. They proclaimed "In The 90s, We'll Probably See Only Ten Real Breakthroughs In Computers. Here Are Seven Of Them." Now that about 15 years have passed, how did they do with their prognostication?

Read about the predictions and my analysis of how they stood the test of time.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Destroying the Earth

"This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore."   -- "How to destroy the Earth"

Monday, March 14, 2005

Nifty Firefox trick

Via Lifehacker, in Firefox "Ctrl-Enter when entering web addresses in my browser’s address bar as it automatically adds “www.” to the front and “.com” to the back of whatever I typed in. Saves me at least 1,000 key strokes a week. "

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Geeky Friday: Thinking Music and Creating White Noise

While researching ways to make life in cubicle farm more productive, I found a wiki page about "Good Thinking Music" with links to mp3 streams. Another page on the same site gives arguments against listening to music while trying to think. The geeky part of this all is one proposed method of creating white noise for unix/linux users:
  $ dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/audio # or /dev/dsp on Linux

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Post yourself on the internet

Just like the TRON Guy did.

Bono, World Bank chief?

The L.A. Times has suggested that Bono could be the next head of the World Bank (cnn.com story). What might this mean for Washington? U2 concerts twice each year for the big meetings? Mandatory wrap-around sunglasses for K Street lawyer?

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Bored and broadcasting

Here's what happens when the guy doing the play-by-play for a cricket match really doesn't want to be there. It's pretty humorous and if you know nothing about cricket, you can skip the bits where he actually describes the action and still enjoy. (via Critical Section)

Friday, March 04, 2005

If he were alive today...

On my way to work this morning, I passed a taxicab with the owner's name printed on the door: "A. TILAHUN"