a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
Google recently began meeting with bankers to prepare for its initial public offering as it was still exploring a merger with Microsoft. [New York Times: Technology]
Say it ain’t so… As if Microsoft needs more control and power in our connected world.
VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos explains why he thinks it’s time for infrastructure governing the Internet to go commercial. [CNET News.com]
No holds barred for VeriSign… it’s all business
Google News launches alerts… I love it!
Thanks to Up2Speed for the tip…
In the NYT Business Section, page C4 there is a picture of an iBook running Safari with the Intel centrino page open. The caption reads, ” A customer at McDonald’s in Times Square takes advantage of the Wi-Fi capabilities there with a laptop that uses Intel’s Centrino chip” Aside for the fact that you can read the word iBook at the base of the screen, the guy is sitting on the other side of the machine — facing the back of the laptop…
If they wanted to use Intel Centrino, why not just place a PC machine in the photo? Is this laziness or ignornace?
Britain is pushing for a huge expansion of offshore wind farms. Inviting companies to bid on building new farms, the government aims to supply green power to more than 3 million households and create 20,000 jobs. [Wired News]
Cool clean energy…
Sixty-eight new feeds from BBC News Interactive. [Scripting News]
Just a few more…
Seven new feeds from BBC News Interactive. [Scripting News]
Lawmakers question ICANN decision to give secondary market for .com and .net names exclusively to VeriSign. [internetnews.com]
Rival domain registrars across the country have expressed concern over the ICANN effort to implement an exclusive Wait List Service (WLS) to be maintained by VeriSign for customers interested in registering domain names that are in use by others. Currently, customers may purchase expired domain names through a number of registrar firms.
If the WLS becomes reality, VeriSign’s competitors will be eliminated from the secondary market for .com and .net domain names.
I had the FCC press broadcast on today in the background while doing some emails and noticed that both before and after the press conference they played some pretty lively jazz music. Is this music that was licensed for broadcast or just something they felt like sharing I wonder…
Turner has a great piece in the Post about the dangers in Michael Powell’s June 2 proposal.
So much for accuracy in blogging, I mean journalism.
Bret Fausett: “It seems that an article making the rounds on Googlenews — ‘.org Registry Vanishes Into Thin Air’ — has no merit whatsoever. [Scripting News]
This is some bad news… Certainly confirms keeping major technical issues in the hands of those with experience! [The Register]
From a trusted correspondent, talking with a contact who works at the Netscape part of AOL/Time Warner. “He said they had decided that weblogs are the next killer app, and that most of the work at the Mountain View office was going into building a weblog component for AOL. He also mentioned that about 400 people are working on that software. This is in constrast to about 20 who are working on Mozilla.”
A judge ordered Philip Morris to pay $10.1 billion in a class-action consumer fraud suit for failing to inform consumers of the dangers of “light” and “low-tar” cigarettes. [New York Times: Business]
It is pretty bizarre to see cars driving around in Iraq as if just going about their daily business. I have no idea what the usual traffic levels are, but there are and have been cars traveling about since the coverage started. Hardly seems like a place under attack…
Just received the ICANN announcement making it official: “Australian Dr. Paul Twomey has been appointed by the Board of Directors as the new President and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).” The announcement came via e-mail. I expect to have something to link to on the ICANN web site soon. UPDATE (19 March): Link to announcement here. [icann.Blog]
an obvious (Men at Work) headline, but come on – so fitting given what lies ahead.
The media giant intends to spin off its cable unit in an initial public offering by the end of the quarter or late summer, CEO Richard Parsons tells an investment conference. [CNET News.com Entertainment & Media]
Overture Services plans to acquire search technology company AltaVista for $140 million, the latest sign of consolidation in the resurgent search business. [CNET News.com (20 stories)]
Interesting…
Animation showing how the structure of the universe evolved from WMAP’s “baby picture” of the Big Bang. Matter clumps under the force of gravity, then the first stars ignite, and finally the structures of galaxies form. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team /WMAP Science Team (5 Mb QuickTime file)
NASA today released the best “baby picture” of the Universe ever taken, containing such stunning detail that it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years.
The new cosmic portrait — capturing the afterglow of the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background — was taken by scientists using NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) during a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky.
“We’ve captured the infant Universe in sharp focus, and from this portrait we can now describe the Universe with unprecedented accuracy,” said Dr. Charles L. Bennett of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Md., and the WMAP Principal Investigator. “The data are solid, a real gold mine.”
One of the biggest surprises revealed in the data is that the first generation of stars to shine in the Universe ignited only 200 million years after the Big Bang, much earlier than many scientists had expected.
In addition, the new portrait precisely pegs the age of the Universe at 13.7 billion years old, with a remarkably small 1 percent margin of error.
[NASA]