] White House and Pentagon officials are closely monitoring
] a recent stream of satellite photographs of North Korea
] that appear to show rapid, extensive preparations for a
] nuclear weapons test, including the construction of a
] reviewing stand, presumably for dignitaries, according to
] American and foreign officials who have been briefed on
] the imagery.

U.S. Cites Signs of Korean Preparations for Nuclear Test

] Best web site: Groklaw

I have to take issue with "Pointless transition of the year:
PCI Express," however. Its PCI only in name and makes board designers happy because they can have 8 traces where they used to have 80. Shared media and parallel data are the way of the past; point-to-point differential/full-duplex serial is the Way. Turn everything into networking.

The Inquirer presents gongs of the year

] PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. - First light revealed that the "Dome Home"
] made it through the night and did exactly what it was designed to do
] -- survive even the worst hurricane.

Smart!

MSNBC - 'Dome Home' weathers storm

] Radio host Bob Edwards, who drew millions of listeners to
] National Public Radio for three decades but was demoted
] earlier this year, is taking his signature voice to a
] competing radio universe, according to Edwards and
] executives of Washington-based XM Satellite Radio.

Former NPR Host Bob Edwards To Be XM's New Morning Star (washingtonpost.com)

Here are some pics from SummerCon 2004; the first few are of me,
Andrew Widdowson (TIA's producer), and Lord Isildur doing our
TIA brodcast.

The show went really well -- WRCT has recently gotten a badass
digital codec that transmits over a 28.8k modem, which was how we
were linked back to the station. We made a recording at the
station and I'll try to get it online soon.

I ended up missing most of the sessions on Saturday except for
Lazlo Harz' talk on random numbers. I think the Wardriving contest was not as successful as last year.

The only major run in with the law was when Mark (one of the organizers) fell down in the street at about 2am on Friday and then
Mr. Mansfield jumped on him, pretending to shag him... they ended
up with disorderly conduct citations for "simulated sex act." And then Chris Tracy fell off a 6 foot wall in the parking lot Saturday night, landing more-or-less headfirst on the pavement. He got taken to UPMC Presbyterian to be checked out but I think he wasn't seriously injured.

I think they've decided with pretty high certainty that they're going to try have SummerCon in San Francisco next year.

U: Chris Tracy broke his collarbone and bled in his brain
slightly and was kept in the hospital for an extra day or two for
observation but is OK.

Pictures From SummerCon 2004

We're doing a live broadcast of Total Information Awareness
live at Summercon at 1800EDT. Tune in at www.wrct.org.

A friend of mine has totally drunk the kool-aid on this one and basically asserts that we should just give up and start
dismantling industrial civilization. I think this is utterly wrong
for several reasons:

1. Noone really knows how much oil there is. As Decius points out,
everyone who ventures to make a prediction has an agenda. The
supply will contract as existing fields dry up but that will
just raise the ante to develop e.g. Siberia and better
technology to explore and tap other resources.
1b. We won't run out of oil overnight.
1c. There's also the matter of coal which I think is generally
agreed to be much more plentiful than petroleum.

2. *right now*, fuel cells/solar/wind/nuke/... is more expensive
than oil but its only a matter of time that tech improvements
vs oil supply contraction cause the curves to cross. Gas
is going to have to cost a lot more than $2/gallon for people
to quit driving huge SUVs.

And then there's fusion power... everyone seems to have forgotton about that one. I have a great deal of confidence that sooner or later, it will be made practical. It may be the case that you have to have a plant the size of Rhode Island for it to be economical and then ship the energy around as Hydrogen or something.

I think the key is that none of these changes are going to
happen overnight. People will change their behavior as energy
prices rise. I think this will be a gradual process.

If the oil's there in the ground, why not use it? We're going
to have to cope with running out of it sooner or later so why
not sooner?

At the end of the day, the assertion that the end of petroleum
will predicate the fall of industrial civilization is just another
crackpot doomsday theory. Humanity will show unbeilevable
ingenuity in the face of the prospect of reversion to
a pre-industrial state.

RE: Observations and the State of Affairs - Peak Oil

] What is clear is that al Qaeda is at a crossroads and --
] like the United States in the spring of 2002 -- it does
] not have really good choices, and therefore, must choose
] the best of a bad lot. Al Qaeda's original war plan is
] obsolete. The straight line it drew from Sept. 11 to the
] Caliphate has hit a wall. Bin Laden knows it. He doesn't
] have a good Plan B, but he will have to cook one up
] anyway. The war is not over, but for the moment, it is al
] Qaeda's turn to sweat out a solution to a difficult
] strategic problem. If they can't do that, then the war
] could very well be over, at least for this generation.

!!!

Al Q might be cooked...

] The estimate is given on the fourth page of an eight-page
] table, in the third chapter of an 11-chapter first volume
] of the environmental impact statement for the plant, the
] Modern Pit Facility. The Energy Department is considering
] building the plant to make smaller nuclear bombs and
] bombs to replace old ones that it says may become
] unreliable.

Sheesh ... they really seem to want to make more small bombs...

U.S. Predicts Cancer Deaths at Proposed Plutonium Plant

] I'm starting to wonder if were aren't watching something
] like the same strategy again. In other words, it's
] possible Cheney and company are actually bluffing. This
] time, instead of trying to terrify the Soviets into
] collapse, the objective is even grander. If I'm right
] about this, they have two goals. Neither involves actual
] war, any more than the MX missile did.

The thought had occurred...

John Perry Barlow provides a personal perspective on Dick Cheney