The Null Device
2000/10/31
The shape of things to come: In an effort to fend off cloners and prevent a recurrence of what happened with their x86 line (i.e., someone like AMD coming along and wiping the floor with them), Intel are patenting the IA-64 instruction set; more specifically, they're patenting the mechanics behind the architecture. Then again, there's no guarantee that IA-64 will be the Next Big Thing; there's no hardware-compatibility inertia (as there is with the x86), and everyone may just jump to PowerPC, Alpha or ARM or somesuch.
The 10 scariest things that could happen to the Net:
5) Yahoo, Amazon and eBay all suddenly go bankrupt, because of a complicated series of accounting errors and unpaid advertising bills. Investors panic, and the NASDAQ plummets to 300. The Second Great Depression starts. The Internet becomes a ghost town where all you can do is visit bankrupt Web zines and navel-gazing online diaries.
Salon has a recipe for chai tea. Looks more or less right (though perhaps a bit more minimal than some other recipes); I'd leave out the sugar and sweeten it with honey though.
Analysts are panning Universal's much-hyped music-by-subscription service, which doesn't let one download or save tracks, but merely allows you to listen to streamed music from a selection for a fee, calling it "half-hearted". And not surprisingly. If Universal offered something like what 4AD have done, allowing users to download high-quality MP3s from the PolyGram back-catalogue for a reasonable fee, I'd sign up for it. Though somehow I suspect it'll be a pleasantly temperate day in Hell before Edgar Bronfman Jr. (of war on anonymity fame) signs off on something like that. (via realkosh)
It turns out that Nick Hornby doesn't like Kid A at all. [scroll down]
Calling the album "self-indulgent" and close to "teeth-grindingly tedious," he writes: "You have to work at an album like Kid A. You have to sit at home night after night and give yourself over to the paranoid millennial atmosphere as you try to decipher elliptical snatches of lyrics and puzzle out how the title might refer to the songs. In other words, you have to be 16."
(via Pearls)