US Navy Prepares To Navigate With Wireless Lans. Wireless LANs are being installed on Navy warships to free up manpower, reduce crew sizes, and improve monitoring of a range of mechanical and electrical systems. The installation effort, dubbed Total Ship Monitoring, lets Navy crew members check and control systems from computers anywhere on board. It's [...]

Why everything goes wrong. Joel Spolsky offers an insightful sermon that explains why everything goes wrong at once. [Mark Bernstein]

Welcome to the Word Police Academy. – “The Word Police are looking for a few good people. As a certified Word Police officer, you will be entitled to issue Grammar Citations when you see or hear crimes against the language. To be inducted into the force, you must pass a Word Police Academy exam.” “The [...]

Any Text. Anytime. Anywhere. (Any Volunteers?). – “It's a bad day in the stacks.” “I go three for seven: three books found, one that should be there but isn't, one recorded lost, and one checked out that will have to be recalled. The seventh is the one I really want: QB54.C661. There's no copy in [...]

Is this mob just too smart?. Collective Detective, www.collectivedetective.org, is an online community dedicated to Collective Gaming and Immersive Entertainment. Collective Detective members who joined together to play Terraquest, www.terraquest1.com, an online game by MindQuest Entertainment, solved the first phase of the game only Three days after Terraquest's launch. Phase One, offering a $25,000 prize [...]

The Economist on the future of the internet. Far from being over, the computer and telecoms revolution that created the internet has barely begun. These technologies will change almost every aspect of our lives—private, social, cultural, economic and political. In some areas, the changes may be marginal, but in most they will be profound, and [...]

HTML's Time is Over. Let's Move On.. By David Heller in Boxes and Arrows. As users and builders demand more and more richness from the Web, we need to re-evaluate the technology that 99% of it is built on. It seems no matter how sophisticated our back ends get, the front ends remain stagnant. What [...]

NY Times: Sifting Through the Online Medical Jumble. Now there are a few services that, for a fee, promise to take over that work, to weed through the deluge of information, selecting effective treatments and trashing fakes. The conundrum is no longer evaluating health advice, but evaluating the evaluators. [Tomalak's Realm]

CNET NEWS.COM – Senate limits Pentagon 'snooping' plan. The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted unanimously to slap restrictions on a controversial Pentagon data-mining program that critics say would amount to a domestic spying apparatus. By unanimous consent, the Senate inserted a moratorium on the program into a massive spending bill, which is expected to receive [...]

Cold. Once in every generation, Boston Harbor freezes. Boston Harbor is frozen today. [Mark Bernstein]