Designer Damien Grossemy has a wonderful vision for how flying might look like in the future.
To Believe or Not to Believe
March 5th, 2010 § 0
Penn Jillette is not only one of the funniest guys in America, he is also a very well verse, none-bullshit guy. He comedic routines alone with his Showtime Show Bullshit, are a refreshing does of sanity and common sense.
Back in November of 2005, Penn was asked to contribute to National Public Radio’s series, This I Believe. Below is his piece on God and life. Five years later I still find this inspiring and truthful to the spirit of what it means to be a human.
When the Republic Died
March 5th, 2010 § 0
I have often wondered where the Presidents got the notion that they could ignore the Constitution’s directive of War Powers, specifically that only Congress could declare war. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 is the source. So read on and see when our republic died.
I came across this bit of information via the video below. It is a conversation with Garry Wills on his new book, Bomb Power.
Related articles by Zemanta
- The Atomic Energy Act of 1946: The Genesis of the Imperial Presidency (mydd.com)
- 8 reviews of Restoration of war powers to congress (rateitall.com)
- Bill Moyers on Constitutional Law; How Far We’ve Come (seminal.firedoglake.com)
- Will The Republic Hold? (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- Nuclear Warfare and the American Presidency (usnews.com)
Hitler’s Ipad Rant
January 30th, 2010 § 0
The use of clips from the movie Downfall (which is an excellent film about Hitlers last days in the bunker) never gets old. But this one probably takes the proverbial cake. I have had one of the best laughs in a while with this.
Fourth Amendment in the Cloud
January 21st, 2010 § 0

- Image by Subliminati via Flickr
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Do the above words apply to your content on the cloud? That is the question posed by cnet’s James Urquhart in his blog The Wisdom of the Clouds.
Urquhart points to a note he has read by Minnesota Law School student David A. Couillard, titled Defogging the Cloud: Applying the Fourth Amendment Principles to Evolving Privacy Expectations in Cloud Computing. I have not read the document (though I intend to do so in the coming days) but found Urquhart’s summary helpful and found myself in agreement with the overall thesis: that digital assets be treated stored in a third-party site be treated as physical property and not as a transaction.
However, with digital property stored with host like Salesforce there is little by way of encryption which the owner of the content can deploy. So if someone at the hosting facility stores illegal material within the content or the organization gets compromised and the perpetrators insert or hind their contraband within customers data; is the Fourth Amendment still valid?
Related articles by Zemanta
- Does the Fourth Amendment cover ‘the cloud’? (news.cnet.com)
- The Fourth Amendment and the Cloud (yro.slashdot.org)
- Who Exactly Owns Your Data in the Cloud? (gigaom.com)
- Do You Have Any Legal Right To Privacy For Information Stored Online? (techdirt.com)
Cloud Computing’s Back End
January 21st, 2010 § 0

- Image via Wikipedia
Revuen Cohen from ElasticVapor has a great post “Oversubscribing the Cloud” the allegations that Amazon is over subscribing its EC2 product. The implications of such a practice, should it be true, can impact smaller organizations decisions on weather to use products like EC2.
I am a proponent of cloud based computing, especially when it comes to the advantages to small or medium size organizations. But there are still issues to be resolved.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Amazon S3 Hosts 82 Billion Objects (centernetworks.com)
- When the Clouds break; Risks in the Public Cloud (brilliantthinking.net)
- Amazon EC2 Latency: The Pretty Graphs (alan.blog-city.com)
Programming Via Screen Shots
January 21st, 2010 § 0
The folks at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a programmed call Sikuli that allows users to program with no need to know a programming language.
The program uses screen shots to execute commands. This kind of advancement will continue to drive the democratization of technology. It reminds me of how in Star Trek: the Next Generation people would speak into the computer what they wanted it to do and the computer would figure out the program.
For more information visit Project Sikuli.org
Related articles by Zemanta
- MIT project lets you author code with screenshots, pictures (digital.venturebeat.com)
On China’s Terms
January 20th, 2010 § 0
Are we ready for a future where the global agenda is set by the Chinese government? If we do not raise our standards for education and health care we might just have to do so.
China Rising - The Long Now Blog
Related articles by Zemanta
- Tearing Down Old Kashgar: Another Blow to the Uighurs (time.com)
- Law Firm Suing Chinese Government Gets Attacked By China (thenextweb.com)
- Obsessed With the Internet: A Tale From China (wired.com)
- Google v. China: the Chinese government reacts (arstechnica.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5915f546-9480-4077-9241-58aca689bb12)

![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=dc1e35a6-96d3-4eb9-b905-59eb5f4d9553)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=36025b98-044d-4f53-8b28-6c6551cedf79)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1acd5b64-f889-48cb-87ad-a31b864c8266)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e6253941-d644-46c4-9a2e-5800afb649d5)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ad2c5536-d341-4901-b2e5-3be38d7c2841)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a70ec9ca-4b72-4eb3-ad6a-150d018a2233)