FCS is starting to take some serious heat.

Mr. Rumsfeld needs to recognize that the Future Combat Systems must be radically scaled back. That will provoke howls from the Army brass and companies like Boeing. If Mr. Rumsfeld is reluctant to take them on, Congress needs to stiffen his spine.

The New York Times | Editorial: A Science-Fiction Army

Did I mention that fat people hate music?

The obvious follow-up question is: does music hate them back? (Boy, that one practically answers itself!)

And with the cycle thus established, the equally obvious follow-up to that one is clearly: which came first?

It's a classic bacon, egg, and cheese question. (I mean, "chicken-egg.") Mmmm, croissan'wiches.

You know, my wooden coasters are way too tiny for my Big Gulp. But these round silver things are working out great!

Fat people hate music.

This section presents statistics on the various information and communications media: publishing, including newspapers, periodicals, books, and software; motion pictures, sound recordings, broadcasting, and telecommunications; and information services, such as libraries. Statistics on computer use and Internet access are also included. Data on the usage, finances, and operations of the Postal Service previously shown in this section are now presented in Section 23, Transportation.

This is the source referenced by The Big Picture. There is a lot of interesting data here.

If you look at the Bureau's projections for Table 1125, you'll see that recorded music is expected to continue its decline:

Recorded music: 238 in 2001 (actual); 228 in 2002; 219 in 2003; 211 in 2004; 203 in 2005; 195 in 2006 (projections)

Video games, Internet, and home video are rapidly on the rise. Television, radio, and box office are expected to hold steady. Newspapers, books, and magazines are on a slow, modest decline far less dramatic than that of recorded music.

It's no surprise that Internet use is still in a growth period. But to see usage of recorded music drop by 20 percent in the span of 5 years, after decades of accumulated consumer experience with the medium -- that's something that should be a serious concern to those in the industry and to musicians especially.

For the fatsos^h^h^h^h^h^hskeptics out there, consider this alternate theory to explain the decline of recorded music: the "on-air personalities" of broadcast radio are downright awesome! (The census numbers do support this theory. In fact, the increase in radio exceeds the decrease in recorded music.) Think about it -- the ever-expanding blight of heavy traffic, the outrageously funny antics of middle-aged people, insufficiently attractive for the much-vaunted career in movies, who majored in "communications" and labored unjustly through so many unremembered years as the graveyard shift 'jockey' (read: IT administrator/mouse clicker) at that stupid station no one listened to. What's not to love? They deserve your affection, your admiration, and your unbounded gratitude!

Nobody needs those cocky rockers, what with their beautiful bodies, great hair, fine fashions, and craptacular cribs!

Support your local on air personalities! They're Ordinary Americans, just like you. Except they have hugely successful radio shows, and, um, well, you don't.

US Census Bureau | Information and Communications [PDF]

Fat people hate music.

The average amount of time that Americans spend listening to recorded music annually has dropped significantly over the past 7 years.

... not to mention the appalling decline in the quality of said popular music. I wish I could see the breakdown by artist, across the population. To think of the cumulative lifetimes spent listening to Britney Spears, Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Ashlee Simpson, and the rest ...

However, I disagree with the assertion that the quality of "recorded music" has decreased in any meaningful way. The fact that lots of crap is being generated is distinct from the ongoing (but proportionally much smaller) production of excellent music. The disparity should not require explanation; it should be obvious even to the casual observer that it is far easier to churn out crap than to produce great art, regardless of the medium.

Honestly I am surprised by the average figure of 13 hours for "box office." If you go to the PDF source file from the Census Bureau -- which I highly recommend, by the way -- it's quite clear that this refers to "movies in theaters." So this means that the "average American" (NOT to be confused with the "ordinary American") goes to the movie theater only six times a year. How does Hollywood generate the numbers they do? With 55 billion in revenues for 2001, there must be a really long tail on that distribution ...

You'd think that, in addition to all of the gloriously lazy prolonged sitting that's involved, the fat people would be drawn to the super-sized jug of soda and barrel of low-grade popcorn with the "movie theater butter." But the available data seem to show them dining at McDonald's far more often than at the movie theater.

Of course, in a few years, McDonald's will buy Sony, and all will be well again in this world. Just wait for the synergy! The value propositions are outstanding! Why hasn't this happened already? It's crazy!

Recall that total revenues for the entire motion picture industry were at 55 billion. Compare that to these figures, courtesy of supersizeme.com:

* Americans spend more than 110 billion a year on fast food.
* McDonald's represents 43% of the total US fast food market.

So McDonald's alone has annual revenues that rival those of the entire motion picture industry.

Americans tuning out recorded music

Download the PowerPoint briefing! The trends are quite dramatic. (Despite what this page says, it's only 1 MByte.)

During the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States. In 1985 only a few states were participating in CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and providing obesity data. In 1991, four states had obesity prevalence rates of 15–19 percent and no states had rates at or above 20 percent. In 2003, 15 states had obesity prevalence rates of 15–19 percent; 31 states had rates of 20–24 percent; and 4 states had rates more than 25 percent.

Keep in mind: this data is limited to obesity. If you broaden the scope just slightly, you'll find that 60% of all Americans are either overweight or obese. (Did you know that, "left unabated, obesity will surpass smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in America?" Did you also know that "One in every three children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime", and that "Diabetes will cut 17-27 years off your life"?)

The simplest explanation for the downward trend in music?

Fat people hate music.

Isn't it obvious? Think about it. (Forget about what Queen said; that was decades ago. Of course, there is Jennifer Lopez ...) Think about MTV and how it has changed the face (and body) of popular music. Seriously, think about it.

What explains the Government's failure to respond? (Answer: the Fat Lobby is very strong -- even if they do have to outsource their Muscle.)

End the War on Drugs! Begin the War on Fat!

Forget about the balanced budget amendment. Pass a balanced diet amendment! The lives of Ordinary Americans are at stake here!

Ask yourself how many Americans dropped dead within 4 hours of eating at McDonald's while Congress piddled around in Playland over the Schiavo case. The truth may shock you.

US Obesity Trends 1985 to 2000

Immersion Corporation of San Jose, CA holds 142 US patents, nearly all of which are related to haptic human-computer interfaces.

From a conference call for Immersion shareholders: The case involved Immersion's allegation that Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (SCEA) and Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. (SCEI, the Japanese parent of SCEA) infringed 16 claims in
two of our patents, U.S. Patent Number 6,275,213 and 6,424,333, relating to vibro-tactile technologies. The case was filed on February 11, 2002 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case has been pending before United States District Judge Claudia Wilken.

It is worth noting that Microsoft was also named in this case on claims that the Xbox also infringed; they settled out of court.

Here's 6,275,213. It's interesting to note that this isn't even their patent, originally. It was assigned to a company named Virtual Technologies, out of Palo Alto.

Tactile feedback man-machine interface device

Abstract: A man-machine interface which provides tactile feedback to various sensing body parts is disclosed. The device employs one or more vibrotactile units, where each unit comprises a mass and a mass-moving actuator. As the mass is accelerated by the mass-moving actuator, the entire vibrotactile unit vibrates. Thus, the vibrotactile unit transmits a vibratory stimulus to the sensing body part to which it is affixed. The vibrotactile unit may be used in conjunction with a spatial placement sensing device which measures the spatial placement of a measured body part. A computing device uses the spatial placement of the measured body part to determine the desired vibratory stimulus to be provided by the vibrotactile unit. In this manner, the computing device may control the level of vibratory feedback perceived by the corresponding sensing body part in response to the motion of the measured body part. The sensing body part and the measured body part may be separate or the same body part.

U.S. Patent 6,424,333 is a continuation application of prior U.S. application Ser. No. 09/561,782, filed on May 1, 2000 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,275,213, in the name of Marc Tremblay, et al., which is a continuation of prior U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/066,608, filed on Apr. 24, 1998 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,017, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/565,102, filed Nov. 30, 1995, abandoned; and all of which are incorporated herein by reference.

From a law.com article in September 2004, here's a description of the alleged infringement:

He said the PlayStation technology in dispute "is a very small subset of vibrations" that occur in a joystick during a small number of events per game.

For example, he said, in "A Bug's Life," the ant in the game must jump first on an acorn, which then turns into a mushroom.

Powers said the vibration in question occurs only when t... [ Read More (1.6k in body) ]

Rattle wrote:
] Apply Achem's Razor. Which one is the simplest option?

Google will tell you that by far the most widely accepted spellings are Occam's Razor, with 160,000 hits, and Ockham's Razor, with 128,000 hits. Occham's has only 980 hits. Your spelling gets only 78. (Wikipedia files under Occam's.)

] Wait! There is something more to this.. Its Hollywood. Out
] in LA, porn runs through the streets like the stories of gold
] told to the immigrants. Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. LA is
] also home to the same people causing issues for the technology
] folks creating new ways to distribute content.

Interesting you should characterize it as such; that's one contemporary interpretation. Perhaps you might be interested in some Los Angeles history. I refer you to "Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology", at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1931082278/

"Here are fascinating strata of Los Angeles history, from the 1920s oil boom to 1980s graffiti art, from flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson to surf music genius Brian Wilson, from German emigré intellectuals to hard-bitten homicide cops. Here are fragile ecosystems, architectural splendors, and social chasms."

You can read the book at Amazon. Search for Iowa, Baptist, and so on. A few choice excerpts:

The osteopaths, chiropractors and other such quacks had long marked and occupied it. It swarmed with swamis, spiritualists, Christian Scientists, crystal-gazers and the allied necromancers.

They ranged from melancholy High Church Episcopals, laboriously trying to interest retired Iowa alfafa kings in ritualism, down to struggling Methodists and Baptists, as earnestly seeking to inflame the wives of the same monarchs with the crimes of the Pope.

The Iowans longed for something that they could get their teeth into. They wanted magic and noise. They wanted an excuse to whoop.

Of the three million population of Southern California, at least half come from the Middle-Western farming states: Iowa leads with 400,000, but Illinois and Missouri are not far behind with 350,000 and 300,000.

Do a Google search for Aimee Semple MacPherson. From a Library Journal review of a biography about her, courtesy of Amazon: "Once considered the premier evangelist and faith healer of her day, Sister Aimee built a church in Los Angeles called The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. A mixture of evangelism and the cult of personality, the church is today valued at over $300 million."

RE: Under New Chief, FCC Considers Widening Its Reach

Well, if Esther Dyson says so, then it must be true.

Another path for technology can be seen in the proliferation of new services and networks on the Web that are being built, largely from the ground up, by ordinary people.

"Ordinary people", and it's not even an election year!

There is mounting evidence that this grass-roots media hybrid is moving into the mainstream. Last week, Yahoo announced that it had bought Flickr.

Jerry Yang, a Yahoo founder, said candidly, "We are venturing boldly, and somewhat blindly, into this world of user-generated content."

So when is Jerry going to buy MemeStreams? Has he even called yet?

Is Silicon Valley Similar to Detroit?

Think of the children!

Leading lawmakers and the new leader of the FCC have proposed a broad expansion of indecency rules, which were significantly toughened just last year. They are also looking for significant increases in the size of fines and new procedures that could jeopardize the licenses of stations that repeatedly violate the rules.

Some senior lawmakers have suggested it may be time to extend the indecency and profanity rules to cable and satellite television providers. Lawyers for cable companies say any effort to impose indecency standards on paid programming would violate the First Amendment.

"I would welcome voluntary actions by the industry to address both indecency and gratuitous violence, but they aren't stepping up to the plate, and that's why Congress cannot wait any longer to protect our communities and our families," Mr. Rockefeller said when he introduced the measure. "If the industry won't protect our children from gratuitous violence and indecency, then we must act."

Under New Chief, FCC Considers Widening Its Reach

It's the 21st century version of "guns or butter?"

The project would determine the sequence of the DNA in at least 12,500 tumor samples, 250 samples from each of 50 major types of cancer. By comparing the order of the letters of the genetic code in the tumor samples with one another and with sequences in healthy tissue, it should be possible to pinpoint mutations responsible for cancer.

But the proposition is extremely daunting. In general, each tumor cell holds a full panoply of human DNA, a string of three billion letters of the genetic code. So determining the full sequence of all the tumors would be the equivalent of 12,500 human genome projects. At a cost of many millions of dollars for one genome, the full project would be out of the question for now.

So the cancer proposal for now is to sequence only the active genes in tumors, which make up 1 percent to 2 percent of the DNA. Even that would require at least 100 times as much sequencing as the Human Genome Project.

In Battling Cancer, a Genome Project Is Proposed