The US government is attempting to block Creekstone Farms Premium Beef from testing all of its cattle for Mad Cow Disease (BSE), using the very same test that the USDA uses on only 1% of cattle, because other meatpackers are worried that consumers might actually show a preference for meat that has been tested.  A [...]

Hanford Lemoore points out that not all DRM is bad.  Specifically, takes the position that DRM for trial software (try-before-you-buy) is good.   I’ll have to admit that until now I’ve been vehemently opposed to all DRM.  I had not even considered the TBYB model.
Most software trial versions I’ve used did not have DRM, but were [...]

Steve Johnson of the San Jose Mercury News writes about recent advances in stem cell research, which have opened the possiblity of converting normal differentiated cells into stem cells.  This is obviously a very significant development, and if it can be replicated with human cells, will simplify further research and reduce the cost of both [...]

Yet another great xkcd strip.

A high school physics teacher in the UK explains why their new physics syllabus is not actually physics (or even science), but rather what I would describe as an assortment of politically correct bullshit.
I don’t know how this compares to the current physics curriculum in US high schools; as far as I know, we don’t [...]

Ralph Griswold invented the SNOBOL and Icon programming languages.

I use Skype for telephony, and Teamspeak for some online games (mostly Ticket to Ride). Until now, I’ve never gotten them to peacefully coexist on my 64-bit Linux system, despite the use of the ALSA OSS emulation library.
Now, with Fedora 7, it finally works, though I’m not sure what changed. I use this [...]

The update to Fedora 7 installed Rhythmbox.  Perhaps it was already installed with Fedora Core 6, but I didn’t use it, and it hadn’t caused me any grief.  But in Fedora 7, Rhythmbox registered itself as the default player for mp3 files.  That would be fine, except that it won’t actually play mp3 files.  It [...]

My wife, son, and I were going on vacation, driving to an island just off the coast. The freeway went over a bridge, through one island, and over another bridge to our destination. (Similar to taking the Bay Bridge through Yerba Buena Island in the San Francisco Bay.)
However, once we drove into the [...]

The needle was on E again, so I stopped at my usual gas station, around 9:30 PM. My only means of payment was a hundred dollar bill, but I was going to buy over 24 gallons of regular (87 octane) at $3.419 per gallon, so I didn’t expect that would be a problem.  The [...]