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@ianb: Dear Firefox: Please stop crashing. mmmkaythanksbye. -Ian. 19 hrs ago

The Yellow Pages: Adapt or die?

February 23, 2009

While there is much kvetching and hand-wringing of late regarding impending demise of the dead-tree business (sic) that is the newspaper industry, there is another dead-tree business that is descending quickly toward irrelevance:  The Yellow Pages.
Every year, beginning around this time, trucks shunt around cities and visit every household in North America, and indeed most [...]

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Ethanol is Sparking an Agribubble

July 5, 2007

The law of unintended consequences can be a bitch. When you meddle with the natural order of things, imbalances inevitably occur. Regulators (because that’s what they do) observe the imbalances and add more meddling regulations in an attempt to counteract them — creating yet further imbalances. The end result is what you [...]

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Ethanol is an addiction we can do without…

May 25, 2007

I am reading with increasing dismay about the steady march of Ethanol into the North American psyche as an alternative to buying fuel in the form of light, sweet crude oil from those mean, nasty Arabs. On the surface the idea behind biodiesel and ethanol is appealing and touches all of the perceived pain [...]

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Warning Labels on Fat Kids

July 14, 2005

Some folks wanna put warning labels on Soft Drinks.
I think that, just to be sure, the US should install warning labels
on all fingers indicating that putting them in proximity to one’s
mouth while holding food could result in dire obesity, particularly in North America. But does
anyone really think that Warning Labels are meaningful anymore, after
decades [...]

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Cable Industry Sees VoIP Looming…

September 3, 2003

http://news.com.com/2100-1033-982130.html
By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com January 27, 2003, 4:00 AM PT
Read more about VoIP
A group of telecommunications giants is quietly pushing a proposal that could create hang-ups for up-and-coming Internet-telephone rivals.
At stake are rules used to divvy up the 5.2 billion unassigned phone numbers set aside for use in [...]

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NYTimes: The Wi-Fi Boom…

December 13, 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/12/technology/circuits/12wifi.html?8ict
December 12, 2002 The Wi-Fi Boom By ADAM BAER
ON a brisk autumn day in Portland, Ore., Paul van Veen was soaking up some sun as he logged on to the Internet – from a spot in bustling Pioneer Courthouse Square. Mr. van Veen was looking for a job, and he was surfing the [...]

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What Does The World Think Of America?

December 9, 2002

Is the widespread growth of anti-Americanism throughout the world a reaction to misuse of America’s cultural. economic, and political hegemony, or is it merely a natural consequence of being the world’s only true superpower?
Whatever the reasons, it is clear that this trend is growing. A government that doesn’t heed these warnings runs the [...]

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We Don’t Need Carriers..

November 25, 2002

What if we had our own spectrum and every new cellular phone added to that network increased its capacity, rather than diminished it? If 802.11 is any benchmark, grass roots decentralized technologies can grow quickly, especially when you take the Service Provider OUT of the loop.
Service Providers suck. They hire guys like [...]

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Enron (Actually Worth Reading)..

November 4, 2002

http://www.guardian.co.uk/enron/story/0,11337,825401,00.html Bad company
Its testosterone-fuelled traders were fixtures in Houston’s strip clubs. One division of the company spent $2m a year on flowers alone. And its executives used the firm’s corporate jets as taxis. In the first extract from his remarkable new book on the rise and fall of Enron, Robert Bryce describes the heady [...]

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The Golden Age of Hacking?

October 28, 2002

I would imagine the real golden age was when you needed to be more than just a script kiddie to hack into a network. Back in the day, hacking was one part social engineering, one part software engineering, and one part magic.
-Ian.
—– http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,106352,00.asp Are We Living in the Golden Age of Hacking?
[...]

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