When you call Earthlink to cancel an account that you’ve had for years, but haven’t used for years, and for which they’ve been getting hundreds of dollars per year forever, they put you on hold forever.
Guess I should have chosen another option…
More ASAT Commentary
Jeff Foust has a roundup. With (so far) one idiotic comment.
The Most Depressing Day Of The Year?
I dunno. To me, they all suck.
Left Hand, Right Hand
Is China in control of its own military?
In interviews over the past two days, American officials with access to the intelligence on the test said the United States kept mum about it in hopes that China would come forth with an explanation.
It was more than a week before the intelligence leaked out: a Chinese missile had been launched and an aging weather satellite in its path, more than 500 miles above the earth, had been reduced to rubble. But protests filed by the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, among others, were met with silence
A New Space Blog
New to me, anyway. Edward Ellegood, up at Embry-Riddle, maintains a list of links to interesting space articles (particularly as they relate to space in Florida). I’ve been receiving his emails for a while, but didn’t realize that he also has a blog. I’ll be adding it to the blogroll.
Sobering
Everyone else has been linking to this piece, so I might as well, too. This holocaust will be different. But we continue to sleepwalk toward it.
One-Sided Space Race
My TCSDaily piece on the Chinese ASAT test is up now.
Over at The Space Review, Christopher Stone agrees that the notion of space as a sanctuary from military activity in the twenty-first century is a fantasy.
There’s a lot of other good stuff over there, including some ideas on non-debris-causing ASATs from Taylor Dinerman, a brief history of space-based radar from Dwayne Day, and Paul Spudis’ take on why we go to the moon. Not to mention why so many young people believe in the Apollo Hoax.
I’ll probably have some further thoughts on better ASAT techniques later this week, if I get time.
Something Missing
Quine or no quine, Will Wilkinson seems to be unable to make a distinction between not believing in something and believing in not something.
I don’t believe in God, and have no need for one, but that’s not the same things as believing there is no God. I remain a skeptic.
Not A Dog
There’s an old saying that, on the Internet, no one can tell you’re a dog. It turns out that that’s probably not true. In fact, anonymity is going to be getting hard with this kind of analysis.
…differences remain in the way that people tap out their electronic secrets. Internet users have characteristic patterns of how they time their keystrokes, browse Web sites, and write messages for posting on online bulletin boards. Scientists are learning to use these typeprints, clickprints, and writeprints, respectively, as digital forms of fingerprints.
While the aims of this research are to strengthen password security, reduce online fraud, identify online pornographers, and catch terrorists, the technology is raising some troubling possibilities. “It’s a bit scary,” says Jaideep Srivastava, a Web researcher at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “The privacy implications are huge.”
[Via Geek Press]
Selective Outrage
Don’t hold your breath, Thomas. He has a smarter (or at least more comprehensible and grammatical) Bruce Gagnon rant:
I