The Null Device

2000/12/27

WIRED have posted their roundup of 2000's vaporware, i.e., hyped products which failed to show up:

"I've been hearing about [Intel's Itanium CPU] since 1997 and I actually think new, whole Amigas are going to ship before this ever sees the light of day,"

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Kibo isn't the only one to have a Christmas special: Tanya has one as well, and a most mean-spiritedly entertaining one at that.

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A lot of people give and receive books at Xmas. However, one of the great unspoken truths of our day is that a lot of these books are never read; some are ponderous, impressive tomes, chosen to reflect well on the giver and receiver (Joyce, Rushdie and Stephen Hawking are favourites for this); and others are opened but never finished, victims of declining attention spans and the age of multitasking:

In America, efforts have been made to measure the unread book phenomenon. In 1985, Michael Kinsley, then editor of New Republic magazine, hit upon the idea of slipping coupons redeemable for $5 in the back pages of 70 selected books in Washington bookstores... It could have been a costly experiment, but thankfully for Kinsley not one coupon was returned.

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Increasing numbers of those of the Christian faith are adopting the "consecrated single life", the calling of devout hermits. However, rather than sitting in caves in hair shirts or balancing on the tops of poles, these latter-day hermits are sequestering themselves in their suburban homes, giving away belongings and avoiding secular pursuits, whilst not joining convents or monasteries. (via Leviathan)

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More on the CPRM hard-disk copy control spectre: now Sun veteran and known cyber-libertarian activist and free software stalwart John Gilmore has posted a rousing email calling for a boycott of hardware that is not certified free of such copy control mechanisms. His letter also mentions encrypted video displays (think of what that will do to your laptop's battery life) and BIOSes, and other scary stuff that's probably just over the horizon.

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