The Navy will acquire only systems based on open technologies and standards.

Vice Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy chief of naval operations for communications, broke the news March 5 to a Navy IT Day audience in Vienna, Va., sponsored by AFCEA International.

“The days of proprietary technology must come to an end,” he said. “We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data

Listen up Sam... Fed take note!

Navy to focus only on open systems

I suspect an Apple-Google partnership could outfox the Microsoft-Yahoo hairball, and that the Safari-iTunes-Android trifecta looks pretty interesting as the new client platform. What do you think?

iPhone: Are iPhone and Air the Beginning of the End?

Congressional Quarterly (03/09/08); Harkness, Peter

Governing magazine Editor and Publisher Peter Harkness reports there is concern that the federal government is attempting to dictate what policies states, counties, and cities must follow to meet national challenges rather than letting lower-level governments pursue such goals independently. "The White House intergovernmental office is a sham--a purely political operation manned by junior aides whose sole interest is promoting the administration's policies, and not at all about working with state or local officials to solve problems," Harkness writes. "Washington lobbyists now are working for more centralization, with the idea that their industries can cut a better deal at the federal level and avoid a patchwork of statutes and regulations." National League of Cities Director Don Borut calls this trend a move toward "coercive federalism," while the federal government also desires more authority but less responsibility for covering the bill. But Harkness says states are fighting back, and federal officials have been yielding on many key issues mainly because the states have the political imperative. For example, the U.S. Education Department has become more flexible in dealing with the No Child Left Behind law because a lawsuit from school districts claiming that states cannot be forced to do all the required testing unless Washington pays for it has been revived by a federal appeals court, and also because more and more of the Republican suburban base is unfavorably disposed toward the law. (www.cq.com)

States and Localities: 'Shift-and-Shaft' Federalism

CQ MoneyLine reports a 17 percentage point decline on average in donations by the top 10 corporate PACs to Republican candidates during the first 11 months of 2007 from the two years prior to the 2004 presidential election. During the previous election cycle, these PACs donated most of their money to Republican candidates. Despite the decline in funding to Republicans, the report indicates that concerns about business issues have prevented most of them from shifting their donations entirely to the Democrats. Only Bank of America Corp., Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc., and General Electric Co.'s PACs have made such a move.(www.cq.com)
This story appeared in a recent issue of Public Affairs News Monitor. Click here to read the entire issue.

REPS get less in '07 ...

Each month a new molecule will be added to the list on this page. The links will take you to a page at one of the Web sites at a University Chemistry Department or commercial site in the UK, the US, or anywhere in the world, where useful (and hopefully entertaining!), information can be found about a particularly interesting molecule.

Molecule of the Month

How do I use it?

Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.
Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You'll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born -- crazy talk.
How does it work?

Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox).
How come I only get ten?

Our researchers have concluded that allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless.

Their findings:
N = Total emails sent
P = Probability that user believes the time stamp
φ = The Golden Ratio
L = Average life expectancy

Apr Fools: Google's approach to email....

ok, i promise not to let this blog devolve into a series of posts about twitter, but i think this is worth mentioning.

We used to play color wars at summer camp. Near the end of the year the entire camp would split up into colors, red, green, black, blue, etc... and compete in a series of events: tug of war, egg toss, basketball - sort of like the movie Meatballs, except all within the same camp.

During the summer we were divided into discreet units, older kids here, younger kids there, Hiawathans by the lake Tawasenthans by the ropes course, etc... But when it came time for color wars you had no idea who would be on your team. It was a release, and it was viciously fun.

So, for a while I've been thinking about how a color war might look online. How would you play tug of war, or other group games that were silly, time limited, and awesome... and more importantly how could you create teams within an already functioning environment to have that same people-mash-up effect that we did at camp.

Twitter seemed perfect. So yesterday AM I posted this tweet, this tweet, and this tweet.

And now it has gone haywire. I regret having caused a day of spam...but...

There are dozens of teams, some of which are hundreds of players deep. Many of the players don't really know what they joined or why, but for me and the wonderful coders that are working on this, it is a perfect implicit structure that can be used to start setting up the colorwar events. And beyond this, it is an idiom that can be used to create rapid affiliation and action models in the future.

let the games begin.

"And beyond this, it is an idiom that can be used to create rapid affiliation and action models in the future."

Boo Ya!

Colorwar 2008 (Best Web Site Abuse!)

ok, i promise not to let this blog devolve into a series of posts about twitter, but i think this is worth mentioning.

We used to play color wars at summer camp. Near the end of the year the entire camp would split up into colors, red, green, black, blue, etc... and compete in a series of events: tug of war, egg toss, basketball - sort of like the movie Meatballs, except all within the same camp.

During the summer we were divided into discreet units, older kids here, younger kids there, Hiawathans by the lake Tawasenthans by the ropes course, etc... But when it came time for color wars you had no idea who would be on your team. It was a release, and it was viciously fun.

So, for a while I've been thinking about how a color war might look online. How would you play tug of war, or other group games that were silly, time limited, and awesome... and more importantly how could you create teams within an already functioning environment to have that same people-mash-up effect that we did at camp.

Twitter seemed perfect. So yesterday AM I posted this tweet, this tweet, and this tweet.

And now it has gone haywire. I regret having caused a day of spam...but...

There are dozens of teams, some of which are hundreds of players deep. Many of the players don't really know what they joined or why, but for me and the wonderful coders that are working on this, it is a perfect implicit structure that can be used to start setting up the colorwar events. And beyond this, it is an idiom that can be used to create rapid affiliation and action models in the future.

let the games begin.

"And beyond this, it is an idiom that can be used to create rapid affiliation and action models in the future."

Boo Ya!

Colorwar 2008 (Best Web Site Abuse!)

The Thingamagoops are really just simple, analog type synthesizers that you control in a different way.

The Thingamagoops have oscillators just like any synth. On analog synths the oscillator that creates the actual tone you hear is called a VCO or voltage controlled oscillator. The Bleeps work a little differently so we'll just call it the main oscillator. Instead of using a keyboard, the main oscillator in the Thingamas is controlled by a photocell. Here's what the waveform from the main oscillator looks like.

When there is a lot of light hitting it, the resistance across the photocell goes up and the oscillator yields a higher pitch. Less light lowers the resistance and pitch. When the switch on the right is up, the oscillator is in a high range and when it's down it's in a lower range.
One neat thing about the photocell is that it reacts to different kinds of light. Florescent lamps and TV screens give the Thingamagoops a harsher tone while natural and incandescent light produce a cleaner one.

Just like any analog synthesizer, the thing-a-ma-s have another oscillator that effects some variable. This is usually called a modulator or LFO. Here the modulator's waveform is pretty close to a square wave.

$100 ducks for VCO Synth Fun! Check the video on the jump...

Thingamagoops!

The expected release of the Mac OS X version of “PwnageTool” has been delayed until sometime next week.

Legal enquiries were made to the DevTeam about the validity and legality of the contents of the tools, we would like to stress that no third-party copyrighted software will ever be released by the DevTeam.

Also, initial feedback from Beta testers has indicated that a few small changes and additional features should be developed.

Another major request from the Beta testers and demo viewers is that the team brings forward the release of the Windows version, with the feedback that has been received the team has decided to expedite the release of the Windows tool for a dual platform release sometime next week, iPod touch support will also be finalized.

The DevTeam would like to thank the users for being patient and waiting for the upcoming release.

The video presentation that was released yesterday has been viewed over 100,000 times in 24 hours proving the overwhelming demand for the application.

To summarize :-

*
Pwnage Tool Application releases _sometime_ in the next week for Mac OS X 10.4.x, 10.5.x and Windows.

*
The tool contains revised logos and icons.

*
PwnageTool does NOT ship with any Apple licensed software, Intellectual Property, trademarks, logos or images.

*
As my Mother would say “If you are going to be late, arrive with flowers”.

pwnage delay [iPhone Dev Team]