Zune-Phone

Here is some inside information on the Microsoft Zune-Phone. from the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

iWar v1.0

In the article Five years later: Iraq war goes online Chris Tomlinson (Associated Press) says:

Wars have often been defined by the new technologies that shaped them. The Civil War was the first photographed conflict in U.S. history, news of World War II was delivered by movie news reels, television made Vietnam the living room war and Desert Storm was the first war broadcast live by satellite.

Historians will likely remember Operation Iraqi Freedom as iWar v1.0. The Web has done more than quicken reporting from the battlefield; it has made war interactive.

The article mentions several iWar blogs including:

"I blog for the same reasons soldiers wrote letters and diaries during previous wars: to communicate with family and friends, (and) to maintain an honest record of our daily existence," wrote 1st Lt. Matt Gallagher, in response to an e-mail about his blog http://kaboomwarjournal.blogspot.com. "Blogging is simply a 21st century tool for a new generation of soldiers to utilize."

The military itself, he said, has found the Internet to be an extremely effective way to deliver its message on Iraq and has its own sophisticated website, http://www.mnf-iraq.com/

The Islamic Army of Iraq, however, maintains an English website http://iaisite-eng.org/ where it assesses daily attacks on U.S. forces and encourages recruits for a regional Holy War that stretches across the Middle East.

The article also points to a list of soldiers' blogs which includes deployed, veteran, and even a few fallen soldiers.

The whole article is interesting starting from individual solders blogs, moving to blogs for the US Military and the Islamic Army of Iraq, and ending with a quick discussion of counter-cyber-terrorism by individuals and the US government.

Put your money where your money is

I have said that when I buy a product from some company (like an iPod from Apple) then I should also buy some stock in that comapany because if I am buying products from them then there are other fools like me who are doing the same thing.

I can sum up this investment strategy as:

"Put your money where your money is."

Lunchtime Chat: Wafa Sultan on Al-Jazeera

Today one of our Lunchtime Chatters sent this email:

For anyone who may be interested, here are the links to the controversial Al-Jazeera show that I mentioned yesterday.
It's got English sub-title.The topic is the Danish cartoons about prophet Mohammad.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1704.htm

Or on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvNujdkOew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwzwGjWb890

Wafa Sultan is an Arab-American anti-Islam activist who lives in LA, CA.
Here is her Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafa_Sultan

Paul Rothemund: Casting spells with DNA

Paul Rothemund is the guy who created the DNA smiley faces using what he calls "scaffolded DNA origami". He introduces this in his TED talk Casting spells with DNA. Perhaps this method can be used to shape Carbon Nanotubes into tiny nano-computers.

The current Intel Penryn processor like the one in the Apple MacBook Pro is using 45 nanometer semiconductor fabrication process. The 32 nm process is due to arrive in the 2009-2010 time frame, with the 22 nm process expected around 2010-2011. Conservative estimates put the 16 nm process arriving in 2018, but Moore's Law would like to see it happen sooner, like 2013.

DNA origami creates structures around 2 nanometers (billionths of a meter). Carbon Nanotubes can be made down to 1 nm. Perhaps using DNA origami to form carbon nanotubes into nano-computers would enable computing devices of the size and speed to continue to meet Moore's Law.

Batman and Robin patent

Batman, and Robin, and Alfred too...

Check out the inventors of the latest Batman and Robin patent by searching for "Batman" and "Robin" on the US Patent and Trademark Office Quick Search site.

DNA smiley faces

This is an amazing image!

Paul W. K. Rothemund manipulated molecules of DNA to create smiley faces that are one one-thousandth the width of a human hair.

Photo: Museum of Modern Art

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/02/26/science/0226-ELAS_4.html

Lunch Chat: racist jokes and discrimanation

[UPDATE: I was asked to add that we did not actually "tell racist jokes" at lunch but we were "discussing racist jokes and brought up a couple as examples".]

At lunch today someone told a racist joke. Or is it "racist joke" if you tell a joke about your own race?

I was brought up in the time of Martin Luther King, JFK, Bobby Kennedy, the Summer of Love, Woodstock, and the Moon Landing. We lived on the Stanford University campus and I remember student anti-war protests against the the Vietnam War. In this environment my parents taught me, and I feel it in bones, that racist jokes are wrong, harmful, disgusting, disgraceful, and grow from ignorance, intolerance and injustice.

So, what was I doing at lunch with people who tell racist jokes!?! :) Well, to put it in perspective, I was the only person born and raised in the USA at our table. Everyone else was born somewhere else (India, China, Palestine, Jordan, etc...). They are all my friends and colleagues, and most of them have told me stories of their hometown, family, childhood, school, higher education, or work experiences. We have a wide variety of experiences among us.

Well, the joke was a reference to engineer from India who blogged something like "WWID" which stood for "What Would Indians Do?". And so the question came up:

Is it racist for someone to make fun of their own race?

The discussion ranged from the Civil Rights movement, to affirmative action, to reverse discrimination, to discrimination in the US and the world today...and tomorrow...

We talked about how young the USA is when compared to the civilizations of China, India, Egypt, and Europe. And how perhaps the USA could learn from it's elders. That discrimination has been institutionalized in different cultures in many different ways (like the caste system and slavery) as a means of power and control using fear and distrust of "others" to control people and resources. And so we asked:

Will there always be discrimination?

Even in the short history of the USA we have had slavery, and discrimination against different groups of immigrants (the Chinese, Irish, Japanese,...). There has been religious persecution, gender and sexual preference bias, and don't get me started about the Democrats or Republicans! :) Many types of discrimination have bloomed, and faded. There are always differences that can be exploited to divide and separate people.

Finally is all discrimination created equal?

Is discrimination based on things that can not be changed (like skin color, height, age, gender,...) worse than discrimination based on things that can be changed (like hair color, clothing, musical preference, hobbies,...). Can people really change their musical preference? Or sexual preference? Or religion? Or gender?

What other interesting points did we talk about?
And...what do you think?

Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Feb 26, 2008.

Here are a few quotes from Part 1 of her interview:

"We are going to face the most difficult presidency in a long time.
"I have never seen the world in such a mess.
"The next President will have to deal with how to end the War in Iraq.
"I think [the War in Iraq] will go down in history as the greatest disaster in American Foreign Policy.
"It is going to be very important that the next president systematically gets the troops out and actually has a surge in diplomacy.

In Part 2 Madeleine Albright disputes the term "Islamic Terrorists" and then she states clearly who she supports for President.

Here is Part 1 (the interesting political stuff starts about halfway around the 3 minute mark):



Here is Part 2:



I agree with almost everything she says in this interview.