Links April 2009Links April 2009
P. W. Singer gave an interesting TED talk about the use of robots in war [1]. He briefly covered some of the ethical and social issues related to robot soldiers[...]
Vibration and Strange SATA PerformanceVibration and Strange SATA Performance
Almost two years ago I blogged about a strange performance problem with SATA disks [1]. The problem was that certain regions of a disk gave poor linear read performance on[...]
Mo RewardsMo Rewards
While shopping at Highpoint [1] today I noticed that they had a new loyalty system. It’s called Mo Rewards [2] (for which the real web site is at MoCoMedia.net [3][...]
Amusing Thanks.txt EntryAmusing Thanks.txt Entry
My SE Linux Play Machine [1] has a file named thanks.txt for users to send messages to me [2]. On a number of occasions people have offered to give me[...]
The Future of Electric CarsThe Future of Electric Cars
TED published an interesting interview with Shai Agassi about electric cars [1]. One idea that I hadn’t heard before is that of moving car batteries between regions as they lose[...]
The AP and Copyright on the WebThe AP and Copyright on the Web
The New York Times has an article about the Associated Press (AP) trying to gain more control over material that it distributes [1]. The article is not clear on the[...]
Fixing the Correct Network BottleneckFixing the Correct Network Bottleneck
The latest news in the Australian IT industry is the new National Broadband Network (NBN) plan [1]. It will involve rolling out Fiber To The Home for 90% of the[...]
Australian Democracy is “Microsoft Compatible”Australian Democracy is “Microsoft Compatible”
Here is the Australian Electoral Commission documentation on how to register a political party [1]. It includes the requirement for “A Microsoft compatible electronic membership list (and paper copy) providing[...]
Fads and Internet ServicesFads and Internet Services
Richard Glover has written a polemic about fads on the net [1]. His points are essentially good, but he does over-reach them a bit (which is part of the polemic[...]
Real-World Car Safety TestsReal-World Car Safety Tests
The car safety tests that are required for every new mass-market passenger vehicle are flawed in many ways. Here is a list of the most obvious flaws (please point out[...]