Review: Fuzzy Nation
After reading this book, I’ve very definitely moved from “I’ll read it because it’s from Scalzi” to “I’d definitely recommend this book”. If you’re looking for an entertaining read, pick this up. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Complexity Is a Subsidy
I read this in Jonah Goldberg’s emailed newsletter, the “Goldberg File”, last week. I thought it was really good. The other day Mary Katharine Hamm tweeted a link to one of those utterly predictable stories about how corporations with more lobbyists pay lower taxes or some such. She also remarked “complexity is a subsidy” — [...]
Review: Sir Dominic Flandry
Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra by Poul Anderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book contains three complete Flandry novels. (Books were a lot shorter, in decades past.) Here, collected in one volume for the first time, is The Plague of Masters (aka Earthman, Go Home), Hunters of the Sky Cave [...]
Charlie Stross: More on DRM and ebooks
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SF author Charlie Stross. Last week’s blog entry on Amazon’s ebook strategy went around the net like a dose of rotavirus. And, as we can now see from Tor’s ground-breaking announcement I was only just ahead of the curve: people at executive level inside Macmillan were already asking whether dropping DRM would be a good [...]
Tor Books Goes DRM Free
Yesterday, Tor Books announced that they were going to go entirely DRM-free, by early July, 2012. This is huge news and I’m excited to hear it. “Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.” Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the name for a software lock that publishers apply to movies and e-books that you’ve purchased. When [...]
Too Poor to Marry?
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Heather Mac Donald takes on the ridiculous idea that you can be “too poor to marry”. I’m pretty sure that this take also works for the equally ridiculous idea that “we can’t get married until older and more established”. The most idiotic reason that single mothers give for not marrying is: “I’m too poor to [...]
Super PACs can’t crown a king
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George Will offers a strong defense of campaign funding and points out that spending doesn’t buy elections. The Post, dismayed about super PACs, reports “a rarefied group of millionaires and billionaires acting as kingmakers in the GOP contest, often helping to decide, with a simple transfer of money, which candidate might survive another day.” Kingmakers? [...]
VeinViewer helps IV needles hit the vein the first time
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This is a super cool piece of technology. The instrument uses a near-infrared light that penetrates just below the skin and reflects off blood vessels. VeinViewer senses hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying component in blood, which an onboard computer uses to distinguish veins from arteries. It then projects an image of veins on the skin surface in [...]
Epic Systems’ Tough Billionaire
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Forbes published a pretty decent profile of both Epic (the company I work for) and our CEO, Judy Faulkner. This story, which I hadn’t heard before, is pure Judy. Fantastic. Leonard Mattioli, an Epic board member, recalls chiding Faulkner for driving an old Volvo. “I told her next time you buy a car, take a [...]
Harry Reid Shuts Down Budget Process In Senate
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The Democratic Senate has not adopted a budget in three years. This is not only flagrantly irresponsible, it is a violation of federal law. Outgoing Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, who is retiring at the end of the year, apparently felt pangs of conscience, because he decided it was finally time for his committee to [...]