When IBM chief maintenance engineer J�hann Gunnarsson started tinkering with the IBM 1401 Data Processing System, believed to have been the first computer to arrive in his native Iceland in 1964, he noticed an electromagnetic leak from the machine's memory caused a deep, cellolike hum to come from nearby AM radios.

It was a production defect but, captivated, amateur musician Gunnarson and his colleagues soon learned how to reprogram the room-size business workhorse's innards to emit melodies that rank amongst the earliest in a long line of Scandinavian digital music.

IBM 1401 Mainframe, the Musical

Just a reminder that FSF will stream live footage of Richard Stallman announcing GPLv3 at noon (EDT) at www.fsf.org so if you are a tech history buff, this is for you.

If you need to get a converter to run Ogg Theora, you can here. For the Mac OSX here.

And here it is, along with LGPLv3.

Groklaw - GPLV3 - Live at Noon

I'm here because his defense lawyer thinks I will understand Reiser. The accused is a 43-year-old geek — he lives in his own world of computer code, videogames, and science fiction books. He spent his early twenties developing a role-playing game to compete with Dungeons & Dragons while writing a novel about aliens invading Earth. By age 30, he'd decided that his talents would be better applied to recrafting overlooked aspects of the Linux operating system. As a technology writer, I frequently meet people like this. Just because he doesn't behave like the rest of us — and just because he evaded police surveillance and bought a book titled Masterpieces of Murder shortly after his wife's disappearance — doesn't mean he's guilty. I have been asked to try to understand this, to try to understand the man.

Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder

I.B.M. is introducing a high-performance computer system that is intended to rapidly analyze data as it streams in from many sources, increasing the speed and accuracy of decision making in fields as diverse as security surveillance and Wall Street trading.

I.B.M. to Show Stream Computing System Tuesday - New York Times

The bottom line: I have decided to shift my academic work, and soon, my activism, away from the issues that have consumed me for the last 10 years, towards a new set of issues. Why and what are explained in the extended entry below.

Whoa!

Lessig blog: Required Reading: the next 10 years

Terry S. Semel ended his six-year stint as chief executive of Yahoo today and will hand over the reins to co-founder Jerry Yang in the Internet icon’s latest attempt to regain investor confidence.

Terry Semel Will Step Down as Yahoo C.E.O. - New York Times

Hyperion Resources, a closely held Dallas investment firm, said it might build an oil refinery in South Dakota to capitalize on record gasoline prices.

Refinery Considered for South Dakota - New York Times

The eviction of a newspaper reporter from a baseball press box for blogging about a game while it was in progress has stirred a debate about First Amendment rights, intellectual property rights and contract law.

Blogger’s Ejection May Mean Suit for N.C.A.A. - New York Times

Lolcats, a compound of lol and cat,[1][2] are photos of cats with humorous captions. They are a type of image macro, and are thus also referred to as cat macros. Lolcats are created for the purpose of sharing them with others on imageboards and other internet forums, especially on Saturdays ("Caturdays").[3]

Lolcat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most major Internet companies use captchas to keep the automated programs of spammers from infiltrating their sites.

There is only one problem. As online mischief makers design better ways to circumvent or defeat captchas, Web companies are responding by making the puzzles more challenging to solve — even for people.

A Dog or a Cat? New Tests to Fool Automated Spammers - New York Times