Karu’s blog

You can listen to all of last.fm’s 3.5 million songs which includes the big 4 record labels.

http://www.cbscorporation.com/news/prdetails.php?id=2943

This will likely soon replace Hollywood! A well packaged client and website for sharing video of videogames.

http://wegame.com/
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9847826-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1035_3-0-5

One of the designers of the classic BBC Micro computer, Steve Furber, of the University of Manchester, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7162935.stm

The BBC Micro was the first computer I ever used – hence this post

The National Academies has just released a short book (88 pages) on evolution and creationism, documenting the science behind evolution and commenting on the creationism “debate”.

…a book designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom.

URL: http://nationalacademies.org/morenews/20080104.html

I had a $250 American Airlines voucher I got about a year ago for a flight that got cancelled. Finally I decided to use it and called AA on the phone to make a reservations. The agent made the reservation and gave me instructions on how to redeem the voucher. She said I should simply mail the voucher to the following address: “American Airlines, BOX 1096223, Highway 90, Milton, FL 32570-1708″. And said I should include my name, flight #, and dept date below the return address on the envelope. I was a little confused about the BOX ###, so I went to google and searched for : “american airlines box 1096223″. Google gave nonsensical links and said, Did you mean: “american airlines box 109 6223″. I clicked on that link and got this page: www.flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php/Vouchers_(AA)

The page has line by line instructions on redeeming the voucher and the address to send to!!!

Joost now open to everyone. Just downloaded and installed on my machine. It is totally kickass – the interface is amazingly simple and slick. Easily in my top-5 most favorite software.

This rant is a long time coming. Before I begin, I think Apple sucks as does most of its “CLOSED” products.  This was the last straw – itunes update download is 54MB! WTF!

Amazing numbers and this slightly older Wall street journal article has data on growth in game sales and Holloywood movie sales.

Filmed entertainment, which includes box office and DVD sales, took in $81.2 billion in revenue last year, dwarfing the haul for game sales, which grossed $31.6 billion in revenue last year. But game sales grew 14.3% in 2006 from the previous year, compared with 2.9% for movies, according to estimates by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Generally, far more people attend movies than purchase typical games, but games cost between $50 and $60, far more than movie ticket prices.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118662363769092549-rzvX5I5krFTML7QqeGfA5gI1BJ8_20070907.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

Extrapolating, games will overtake Hollywood by 2014 and then the gap will begin to widen dramatically.

I was never a big fan of the one laptop per child. But the hardware in the laptop was just too cool. Now I can legally and without ethical qualms buy one. There is a “give 1 get 1 free” program – neat concept just philanthropy wise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/worldbusiness/24laptop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

 The marketing program, to be announced today, is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.

One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. The program will run for two weeks, with orders accepted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26.

Everyone must have seen the news of Apple’s Safari for Windows. And the news of the security bugs: According to David Maynor’s blog:

In a blog entry, Maynor explains, “I’d like to note that we found a totl [sic] of 6 bugs in an afternoon, 4 DoS and 2 remote code execution bugs. We have weaponized one of those to be reliable and its diffrent [sic] that what Thor has found.”

Digg has an entry also: http://digg.com/software/Windows_Safari_bugs_and_exploits_popping_up_like_hotcakes

It is so far not clear if these bugs are found in Safari for MacOS. My hypothesis: Apple is intentionally releasing a security bug ridden version of Safari. I expect Apple to soon make the claim/observation that Safari for Mac does not have these bugs and blame the bugs on the Windows platform and not on Safari. And back up this claim by saying Safari for MacOS does not have these bugs. While in reality the Windows version of Safari is probably intentionally bug ridden!

How does this help Apple? Perpetuates the myth that MacOS is less succeptible to virus and security attacks. I think perpetuating this myth and thus getting some customers to cross over is more valuable than browser market share.