Listics

This from engadget… a little local-yokel color:

Tommy Thompson, the former Governor of Wisconsin and Health and Human Services Secretary during Bush’s first term, is now on the board of directors of Applied Digital, the company that owns VeriChip — makers of subcutaneous RFID tags…

Thompson intends to have an implant.  They have a lot of benefits, like your bodyguard could track you down after an all night bender; or, critical medical information could be stored there for emergency medical personnel to access if you fell unconscious after an all night bender.

At gizmodo they point out that this is probably just a Satanic plan to mark us all with the number of the beast.  Which, I suppose, would make the VeriChip board Satan’s co-conspirators…  I’m not sure whether Tommy would consider this a promotion or a lateral transfer after serving in the Bush cabinet.

NASA engineers - practicing what I can only assume is some kind of postmodern approach to their discipline - admitted that they have learned a lot about the systems on the shuttle in the past few weeks since the faulty sensor caused a launch delay. 

NASA workers rewired some of the sensors and made other electrical repairs after the failure, and Nickolenko said that after extensive troubleshooting, “I think we’re smarter in understanding exactly what we have.”

The plane is 30 years old and they are just learning "what they have?"  Didn’t they read the frickin’ manual?  Don’t they have some… I dunno… like, "as-built" drawings?  Glad I’m not riding in that unit.

Jack Hodgson is blogging the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual fly-in at Oshkosh this week. Stu, will you be there?   

Oh, the EAA "Airventure Today" daily newspaper has an RSS feed.

From Rodney King to the London tube, people have the means to record and share the record of tragic events.  What do we give up by turning these tools and these records to the cause of justice?  What do we gain?

Gary Turner and Euan Semple discuss the potential of grass roots digital vigilance.  Euan says, "…what if we spent less time on setting up social networking tools
targeted at getting inside each other’s knickers or selling drugs and
more time on working out ways to create real networks… in support of finding
peace, understanding and a way of living together."  In a typical Turner rare coinage, Gary says in Euan’s comments: "What we don’t want is a grass roots ‘digilante’ version of Flickr."

"…thousand webcams in the street"

Looking around for wiki tools I found the robust Media-wiki, a tool that loads like a champ and appears infinitely extensible.  Some downsides include the quasi arcane wiki mark-up language that is just different enough from HTML to be really annoying, and a lack of security.  (I haven’t figured out how to front-end it with a password secured log-on, which may just be my own inadequacy in the face of .htaccess and php scripting skills). 

Then along came little JotSpot (thanks for the pointer Dean!)  JotSpot reminds me of the good old days selling candy to the kids in the schoolyard.  JotSpot will start you out for free, but they seem to have set their upper bound for free service about at the serious jones level.  User interface is easy.  Security seems to be there.  You can upload to it or email to it.  I’m liking it so far.

OS2 WARP support being withdrawn?  Already?  Those guys at IBM are VISIONARY!!!

The nasty little secret of so many bloggers is that we do it for the traffic.  There are some people who, in the first four or five years that they have a computer in front of them, never play anything but solitaire.  That’s how I’ve been with Site Meter.  I’ve been hooked up to NZ Bear’s ecosystem and was proud to break into the ranks of the warm blooded, (I was a "Marauding Marsupial" before my template broke and I lost all connection to the bear’s lair); but, my bottom line daily stats experience has been filtered through Site Meter because it’s free and it’s easy.

Recently I was tripping through Judith Donath’s realm and discovered that (on that day at least) she was using a traffic monitor from CounterCentral.  I thought I’d give it a try too, and I must say I’ve been pleased.

For example, here is some data on a visitor from Fiji.  Wouldn’t you think there would be better things to do in Fiji than surf the net in search of info on the loudest car in the world?  Whoa!  Maybe that’s why the guy is in Fiji!  Maybe he HAS the loudest car and he’s banished from his neighborhood.

This kind of detail is just one cool facet of the product.  The maps are fun too… (see the guy from Fiji down there in the bottom right, just above the Kiwi?)

"The Net grew like a weed between the cracks in the monolithic
steel-and-glass empire of traditional commerce. It was technically
obscure, impenetrable, populated by geeks and wizards, loners, misfits.
When I started using the Internet, nobody gave a damn about it outside
of a few big universities and the military-industrial complex they
served. In fact, if you were outside that favored circle, you couldn’t
even log on. The idea that the Internet would someday constitute the
world’s largest marketplace would have been laughable if anyone was
entertaining such delusions back then…"

Okay boys and girls…  who said it and when did they say it and where?