Posts from — November 2006

Virginia Tech | Invent the Future :
Virginia Tech ranks #1 (again) in college and university vanity license plates
Hokie Nation has taken to Virginia’s highways. . . and they have the license plates to prove it.

——

this is sort of like “we’ll always have paris” where… you’ve never been to paris.

The Claremont Institute: The Era of Big Ideas is Over:
Do liberals think that conservatives’ fundamental ideas are wrong? Or do they think that having fundamental ideas is wrong? In the intramural debate over liberalism’s meaning and future these questions have become contentious. But whether this is a real debate between distinct alternatives or just much ado about nothing remains to be seen.

Certainly, the liberal world is abuzz with the idea that it needs Big Ideas. Kenneth Baer and Andrei Cherny, the editors of the new quarterly Democracy, seek to revive liberalism by “grappling with essential questions about how the world works and how it should work.” According to Michael Tomasky, writing in The American Prospect, “What the Democrats still don’t have is a philosophy, a big idea that unites their proposals and converts them from a hodgepodge of narrow and specific fixes into a vision for society.” He calls this “the crucial ingredient of politics, the factor that helps unite a party (always a coalition of warring interests), create majorities, and force the sort of paradigm shifts that happened in 1932 and 1980.”

=====

of course, one of the problems is that rhetoric has pushed politics back into an either-or situation. people think you need to vote or you don’t have democracy, you can be free or not free, etc. all of those binary structures limit the compositional freedom of thought.

RIAA wants the Internet shut down:
RIAA wants the Internet shut down

ONE OF THE lawyers involved in defending cases bought against people by the RIAA claims that if the music industry wins a crucial case, the Internet will have to be switched off.

——-

switched off? hah!

Reforming U.S. Patent Policy – Council on Foreign Relations:
The conversation on American competitiveness is often intertwined with the conversation on innovation. The liberalization of trade and the increasing influence of emerging markets such as China and India have meant that U.S. innovation is now competing globally. This global competition has raised awareness and concerns not only that our trading partners are lax on patent enforcement, but also that our patent system may not be optimally suited to compete on the global economic stage.

——-

This is one of the most important debates going on in our world and this report makes a substantive contribution.

Doom on the $100 Laptop:
Who needs textbooks when it’ll run Doom? Engineers from the One Laptop Per Child Project have posted videos of themselves playing the videogame Doom on the new children’s laptop.

Up next: the Darfur game?
========

had to see this coming…. from education project to edutainment project to…..

Ride that Line:
There’s cool little app that seems to have invaded office cubicles everywhere – Linerider. It’s incredibly simple to use but the results can get as complicated as the limits of your imagination – and the physics of the thing is what really makes it a fun toy.

—–

I’ve posted it before, but now I’m reposting it from gga, line rider is nifty.

games1.org has other cool games.

Step-by-Step IPP based Print Server using CUPS:
This tutorial describes how to install a Linux print server with CUPS.
Read More

——-

Handy

Imperial History:

——
middle east history by maps and empires.

Half million Chinese now make a living from the acquisition and sale of WoW gold:
Inside World of Warkcraft Gold Farm, Future of Work. Amazing. And don’t miss the video below if you have not seen it.

“an astounding half million Chinese now make a living – about $100 a month – from the acquisition and sale of WoW gold to US and EU gamers. Why is this is the future of work online? Consider the numbers, youth, and low wages of the gold farmers, and the growing interest in outsourcing tasks online.

——

wow, that is quite a lot of people.