Thursday, September 30, 2004
2nd SpaceShipOne Launch is GO FOR OCTOBER 4th:Burt Rutan's Mojave Aerospace Ventures Team successfully reached an altitude of 337,500 feet with Mike Melvill (the pilot) onboard plus ballast (approx. 180 Kg). This flight was deemed by the Judges as a successful first flight for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. The X PRIZE has just received official notice from Burt Rutan that SpaceShipOne's second flight (X2) will take place Monday morning, October 4th(from X Prize).
posted by David August at 11:51 PM - 0 comments - 
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Wednesday, September 29, 2004
US Economic Growth Better Than Thought:The U.S. economy grew faster in the second quarter than previously thought as business inventories rose at the strongest rate in four years, the government said on Wednesday, a sign the soft patch was not as soft as feared(from Reuters, via Yahoo News).
posted by David August at 12:40 PM - 0 comments -
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SpaceShipOne landed safely on Wednesday in the California desert after a wild corkscrew-like ascent into space in a shot for a $10 million prize offered to the first privately funded, manned craft to reach beyond the atmosphere(from Reuters, via Yahoo News).
posted by David August at 12:34 PM - 0 comments -
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Tuesday, September 28, 2004
New $50 bill begins circulating, a new $10 bill is in the works (from Associated Press).posted by David August at 4:00 PM - 0 comments -
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Monday, September 27, 2004
Online Video: LA to New York in four mintues - time lapse film of a cross country drive (family friendly). Quite cool.posted by David August at 11:30 PM - 0 comments -
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This e-mail filter thing may sound all fine and dandy, but it can interfere with getting the news out, especially when the big news is boobies. And I don't mean Janet Jackson, I mean the blue-footed booby which might now be found in the Chattahoochee Valley after hitching a ride with Hurricane Ivan. You may get lucky and see one, even without Justin Timberlake's help(from Ledger-Enquirer).
posted by David August at 1:10 AM - 0 comments -
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Friday, September 24, 2004
The trinity of net annoyance: Spam, Spim and SPIT:A new plague of unwanted messages threatens internet users, according to a US company. Spam and spim - spam by instant messenger - are about to be joined by "spit" - spam over internet telephony. Qovia, based in Frederick, Maryland, have recently filed two patent applications for technology to thwart spit(from NewScientist.com).
posted by David August at 1:52 PM - 0 comments -
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Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Dan Rather has apologized for the use of unreal 'memos' on the CBS program '60 mintues.' If you give them 60 mintues, they'll give you an hour.posted by David August at 2:21 AM - 0 comments -
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Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Sept. 2004 campaign newsletters usability:Both candidates for president of the United States offer email newsletters with much good content to excite supporters, but miserable subscription interfaces and several other usability problems(from useit.com). A few percentage points in newsletter ease of use could become a few percentage points at the polls on election day.
posted by David August at 1:42 AM - 0 comments -
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Monday, September 20, 2004
Rather Odd:Of all the loopy statements made by Dan Rather in the 10 days since he decided to throw his career away, my favorite is this, from Dan's interview with the Washington Post on Thursday:
"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story."
Hel-looooo? Earth to the Lost Planet of Ratheria: You can't '"break that story." A guy called "Buckhead" did that, on the Free Republic Web site a couple of hours after you and your money-no-object resources-a-go-go "60 Minutes" crew attempted to pass off four obvious Microsoft Word documents as authentic 1972 typewritten memos about Bush's skipping latrine duty in the Spanish-American War, or whatever it was(from Chicago Sun-Times).
posted by David August at 9:44 PM - 0 comments -
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India's space agency said it successfully launched the nation's first satellite for educational services on Monday, which is expected to boost distance learning in a country with a huge rural population(from Reuters, via Yahoo News).
posted by David August at 9:37 PM - 0 comments -
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Thursday, September 16, 2004
Cell Phone for Vision-Impaired:A new cellular application promises to help vision-impaired people who can't read the screen of a mobile phone. It responds to spoken commands with voice recognition technology and reads back menu options, text messages, and other information to the user(from Associated Press, via Yahoo News).
posted by David August at 5:14 PM - 0 comments -
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CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush's National Guard record last week on "60 Minutes"(from The Washington Post).
posted by David August at 1:13 PM - 0 comments -
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Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Regarding the likely forged National Guard memos, The New York Times' William Safire says that Dan Rather should call "for a panel of old CBS hands and independent editors to re-examine sources and papers."posted by David August at 1:14 PM - 0 comments -
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Tuesday, September 14, 2004
The Washington Post pokes holes in the veracity of the CBS memos.posted by David August at 1:21 PM - 0 comments -
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Sunday, September 12, 2004
More on CBS and 60 minutes' bad journalism:The only problem was the memo. Amazingly, this guy at the Air National Guard base, Lt. Col. Killian, had the only typewriter in Texas in 1973 using a prototype version of the default letter writing program of Microsoft Word, complete with the tiny little superscript thingy that automatically changes July 4th to July 4th. To do that on most 1973 typewriters, you had to unscrew the keys, grab a hammer and give them a couple of thwacks to make the ''t'' and ''h'' squish up all tiny, and even think it looked a bit wonky. You'd think having such a unique typewriter Killian would have used a less easily traceable model for his devastating ''CYA'' memo. Also, he might have chosen a font other than Times New Roman, designed for the Times of London in the 1930s and not licensed to Microsoft by Rupert Murdoch (the Times' owner) until the 1980s(from Chicago Sun-Times).
posted by David August at 5:59 PM - 0 comments -
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Saturday, September 11, 2004
60 minutes may have either fallen for, or made up, a hoax:Marjorie Connell - widow of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the reported author of memos suggesting that Bush did not meet the standards for the Texas Air National Guard - questioned whether the documents were real.
Questions are also being raised about the memos by document experts, who say they appear to have been written on a computer, not a typewriter.
"These documents do not appear to have been the result of technology that was available in 1972 and 1973," said Bill Flynn, one of country's top authorities on document authentication. "The cumulative evidence that's available... indicates that these documents were produced on a computer, not a typewriter."
Among the points Flynn and other experts noted:(from ABC news). CBS, which produces 60 mintues, has put a PDF of the document online.
- The memos were written using a proportional typeface, where letters take up variable space according to their size, rather than fixed-pitch typeface used on typewriters, where each letter is allotted the same space. Proportional typefaces are available only on computers or on very high-end typewriters that were unlikely to be used by the National Guard.
- The memos include superscript, i.e., the "th" in "187th" appears above the line in a smaller font. Superscript was not available on typewriters.
- The memos included "curly" apostrophes rather than straight apostrophes found on typewriters.
- The font used in the memos is Times Roman, which was in use for printing but not in typewriters. The Haas Atlas - the bible of fonts - does not list Times Roman as an available font for typewriters.
- The vertical spacing used in the memos, measured at 13 points, was not available in typewriters, and only became possible with the advent of computers.
posted by David August at 1:49 PM - 0 comments -
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Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Presidential hopeful John Kerry was seen this weekend waving a gun which he tried to ban (from Drudge Report).posted by David August at 6:35 PM - 0 comments -
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