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Apple stock down like $3. He better announce some hardware quick.

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It is an event so large that the best seat in the house is in space: a massive iceberg is on a collision course with a floating glacier near the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. NASA satellites have witnessed the 100-mile-long B-15A iceberg moving steadily towards the Drygalski Ice Tongue. Though the iceberg’s pace has slowed in recent days, NASA scientists expect a collision to occur no later than January 15, 2005.

Now all we need is a martini the size of Poland.

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It was a rare moment of talk-show unanimity. On the set of the Fox News Washington bureau, host Tony Snow, fellow guest Linda Chavez (a conservative pundit), and I were slamming Armstrong Williams, a rightwing columnist and talk show host. USA Today had reported–as you probably know–that Williams had been paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars by the Bush administration to promote its No Child Left Behind education bill. And Williams, who supported the legislation in his column and as a cable news talking head, had not bothered to inform his audiences or the folks who book him at CNN, Fox, and MSNBC that he was a shill on the Bush payroll.

[..]

And then Williams violated a PR rule: he got off-point. “This happens all the time,” he told me. “There are others.” Really? I said. Other conservative commentators accept money from the Bush administration? I asked Williams for names. “I’m not going to defend myself that way,” he said. The issue right now, he explained, was his own mistake. Well, I said, what if I call you up in a few weeks, after this blows over, and then ask you? No, he said.

conclusion: just assume that all commentators are paid cronies.

Apparently the White House ran out of good news to report about Iraq on October 21:

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After reviewing data from four Earth-orbiting radar satellites, NOAA scientists today announced they were able to measure the height of the devastating tsunami that erupted in the Indian Ocean. The ability to make depth surveys from space may lead to improvements in the models that forecast the hazardous effects of tsunamis.

The height goes down over time as the wave spreads over the ocean and the energy is expended on shore. At 2 hours after the quake, it was 60 cm (about 2 feet) high. By 3 hours 15 minutes after the quake, that dropped to around 40 cm (about 16 inches) high. By 8 hours 50 minutes after the quake, the wave spread over most of the Indian Ocean and was quite small in most areas�5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 inches)�about the limit of the satellite resolution. However, the wave was still large enough after all that elapsed time that it was still bouncing around in the Bay of Bengal still appears about 25 cm high (10 inches) as measured by the satellites.

A boulder some 25 feet high blocks both lanes of the Topanga Caynon Road, Monday, Jan. 10, 2005, as electrical contractors fix broken power and communication lines in Malibu, Calif. No injures where reported, but the road remains closed. The storm system was blamed for at least nine deaths during the weekend in Southern California, including a man killed when his vehicle plunged into the surf off Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, and a homeless man killed when the hillside where his tent was pitched gave way. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

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China has “got to start putting people in jail” to show it is serious about cracking down on widespread counterfeiting and piracy that costs U.S. companies billions of dollars in lost sales every year, a top Bush administration official said.

In an interview before his fourth and final official trip to China, outgoing U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans said he would press Chinese leaders to make sure intellectual property theft of goods ranging from music and films to birth control pills and brake pads is treated as a serious crime.

[..]

Myron Brilliant, vice president for Asia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said China’s new guidelines “are short of what the U.S. government and the private sector wanted.”

emphasis mine

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against – then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens’ What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

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I.B.M. plans to announce today that it is making 500 of its software patents freely available to anyone working on open-source projects, like the popular Linux operating system, on which programmers collaborate and share code.

The new model for I.B.M., analysts say, represents a shift away from the traditional corporate approach to protecting ownership of ideas through patents, copyrights, trademark and trade-secret laws. The conventional practice is to amass as many patents as possible and then charge anyone who wants access to them. I.B.M. has long been the champion of that formula. The company, analysts estimate, collected $1 billion or more last year from licensing its inventions.

The move comes after a lengthy internal review by I.B.M., the world’s largest patent holder, of its strategy toward intellectual property. I.B.M. executives said the patent donation today would be the first of several such steps.

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I am faced with a modern ethical conundrum. My flat is very long and thin and, frustratingly, my wireless network does not extend from the office at the back to the lounge at the front. My dreams of sofa-surfing have been thwarted. However, my laptop does pick up my neighbour’s Wi-Fi connection. It’s called “belkin54g” after the brand of router he is using. A quick Google revealed the default passwords for this router, and a few security screens later, I’ve hacked into my neighbour’s Wi-Fi. I can now surf on the sofa while watching TV and drinking red wine. Bliss.

Of course, he doesn’t know this, which leaves the conundrum: Should I tell him his network is unprotected and risk losing my convenient living room Wi-Fi? Or should I continue to hijack his connection, risking discovery and a possible neighbourly feud?