Holy Land Foundation

Richardson, TX is in the news (see top item). For those who don’t know, I live and work in Richardson (a northeast suburb of Dallas, home to the Telecom Corridor). The ISP that got hit is just down the street from the offices of a friend of mine, who had the pleasure of watching a swarm of people wearing jackets with ‘FBI’ in loud yellow print on the back descend on the place.

Goner virus

My first virus ever… I had quite a streak going, given that I download stuff all the time (broadband and all, you know). But my wife called me this afternoon to explain that Outlook was freaking out and that when she had opened this particular email from a friend of hers, she’d promptly seen several hundred email show up in the outbox.

Broadband is back

Incredibly, our cable modem service returned around midnight last night. I had heard, from three different sources, that it would take 5/7/14 days to restore service. AT&T Broadband Internet did it in under two. When was the last time you heard of a technology project completing in less than half the projected time?

IT

It’s a bunch of hype… I mean a scooter! Although, if you’ve ever seen Kegan’s wheelchair in action (climbing stairs, etc), you know that the guy can put gyroscopes to good use. Here’s the problem. The scooter is being sold as an auto replacement. But to focus on getting from point A to point B as the only value of autos, and then design an alternative around that analysis is very short-sighted. Autos don’t simply get you there, they get you there comfortably in all sorts of weather. They allow for contingencies, such as taking on passengers, or carrying a bag with a change of clothes.

Kegan’s scooter looks fantastic, but they should be marketing the thing explicitly for the market it is obviously designed to reach, city pedestrians. And even then, at 65 pounds for the consumer model, it won’t be altogether easy to load it in the taxi when it starts to rain.

No cable modem!

I woke up on Saturday morning to a world that had been thrown into turmoil… my cable modem had ceased. Apparently, the judge’s ruling in the Excite@home case on Friday had entailed something along the lines of the whole network being shut down. Of course, I don’t really know much of what happened, since I haven’t had access to the online news on which I depend! Apparently, AT&T Broadband is supposed to restore service in the next couple weeks. I hope to sort out the whole mess tomorrow at work. For now, in desperation, I have dialed into work using my laptop since I don’t even have a modem in my home desktop.

I have a feeling that my entries on c.e.b. may be a bit thinner until this is all resolved.

Public Enemy

I recently put my new CD burner to use and slapped together a CD with tunes that, well, I probably shouldn’t admit I like and that I certainly won’t ever own the full albums from which they were lifted. Anyway, I had to drive over to the hospital last night where a friend was having an emergency appendectomy, and I had the CD playing… man, Public Enemy could jam. Fight the Power is like nothing else. The music, the agenda, the lyrics, the attitude, it all gels into this incredible groove of anger and pride. Now, I’m not saying that everyone out there should like the lyrics/agenda/attitude/music, but it is incredible to behold.

Electronic abacus

What a fun blast from the past. The Economist has posted a 1954 article they published titled Electronic abacus, which examines the possible business uses for these strange new creatures called “computors.” They have some great quotes like, “There are those who do not believe in the desirability of introducing anything as esoteric as electronics into business routine at all,” but they generally demonstrate real insight into the coming revolution.

Russia on the ground

The Russians are now acting like a staunch ally? This is rather incredible, yet I’ve seen nothing in the press admitting bias or error in the early assessments that Bush was stirring up all sorts of trouble with Russia and was doomed on the foreign policy front. Here’s a quote that captures the flavor of what is going on:

Labeling himself “an old Cold Warrior,” one U.S. intelligence source said the transformation of U.S.-Russian cooperation from initial wariness to trusting cooperation “is the most mind-boggling change I’ve seen in my career.”