FUD: /fuhd/, n.

Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: “FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products.” The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. See IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.

[In 2003, SCO sued IBM in an action which, among other things, alleged SCO's proprietary control of Linux. The SCO suit rapidly became infamous for the number and magnitude of falsehoods alleged in SCO's filings. In October 2003, SCO's lawyers filed a memorandum in which they actually had the temerity to link to the web version of this entry in furtherance of their claims. Whilst we appreciate the compliment of being treated as an authority, we can return it only by observing that SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves compared to which IBM at its historic worst looked positively angelic. Any judge or law clerk reading this should surf through to my collected resources on this topic for the appalling details.—ESR]

hahaha

FUD

It's the astronomers forecast. At a glance, it shows when it will be cloudy or clear for up to the next two days. It's a prediction of when Pleasant Hill Starlight Observatory, TN, will have good weather for astronomical observing.

The forecast data comes from those very cool guys at the Canadian Meteorological Center. CMC's numerical weather forecasts are unique because they are specifically designed for astronomers. But they have 763 forecast maps. It can be a chore to find the one you want.

So, I (Attilla Danko) wrote a script to generate the images like the one above which summarizes CMC's forecast images just for Pleasant Hill Starlight Observatory and the surroundings out to about 10 miles.

There are also clocks for 3308 other locations.

This is one of the net oddities that might be useful...

Pleasant Hill Starlight Observatory Clear Sky Clock

Officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the satellite had lost power and propulsion, and could contain hazardous materials.

The White House said it was monitoring the situation.

A spokesman said "numerous" satellites had come out of orbit and fallen back to Earth harmlessly over the years.

"We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause," said Gordon Johndroe, who speaks for the US National Security Council.

Questioned by The Associated Press, he would not be drawn on whether the US would try to destroy the satellite, perhaps with a missile.

An unnamed official quoted by AP said the US government was keeping lawmakers and other countries abreast of the situation.

Fuel hazard

The satellite contains the rocket fuel hydrazine, a government official told AP on condition of anonymity.

A colourless liquid with an ammonia-like odour, the fuel is a toxic chemical and can cause harm to anyone who comes in contact with it.

John Pike, director of the defence research group GlobalSecurity.org, said an uncontrolled re-entry could risk exposure of US secrets.

Spy satellites typically are disposed of through a controlled re-entry into the ocean so that no one else can access the spacecraft, he was quoted by AP as saying.

The military expert believes that shooting the satellite down would create debris that would then re-enter the atmosphere and burn up or hit the ground.

In his estimate, the satellite weighs about 20,000 pounds (9,072kg) and is the size of a small bus.

It is possible, he adds, that this one died as long as a year ago and is just now getting ready to re-enter the atmosphere.

Another expert, Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive, said the satellite is probably a photo reconnaissance satellite.

Into the ocean

AP notes that the largest uncontrolled re-entry by a US space agency (Nasa) craft was Skylab.

The 78-tonne abandoned space station fell from orbit in 1979.

Its debris dropped harmlessly into the Indian Ocean and across a remote section of western Australia, the US news agency says.

In 2002, officials believe debris from a 7,000-pound (3,175-kg) science satellite hit the Earth's atmosphere.

It rained down over the Gulf, a few thousand miles from where they first predicted it would crash.

Lookout!

US Satellite could plummet to Earth

For several years, marketers have been transfixed by the possibilities of influencing and engaging large audiences via the Internet. While it's true that the use of Internet marketing has skyrocketed, it still remains (for the most part) a one-way pipe. Email marketing, paid search, banner advertising and other online derivatives of one-way, offline techniques lead the way.

New research by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann identifies that this may be changing. This report, the second in a series of studies looking at the impact emerging online applications have on B2B technology marketing, finds that blogs and Real Simple Syndication (RSS) are catching on more quickly than previously thought. This year, for the first time, blogs have joined top-rated communication tactics such as free-trial demos, Webcasts, and white papers as successful means for attracting high-quality technology prospects, according to MarketingSherpa's 2006 Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide.

The rising importance of blogs - and to a lesser extent RSS - cannot be understated, and is significant because these technologies are inherently bi-directional. They represent the core and spirit of the Web 2.0 ethos whereby millions of daily peer-to-peer conversations and dialogs occur throughout the Web. Now, instead of these conversations simply pertaining to politics or world events, they are also coalescing around topics such as CRM software and network intrusion detection and other B2B technology topics. Indeed, this report finds that the blogosphere is making inronull

How Blogs & Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Impact B2B Technology Purchase Decisions

For months, Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 3 video game console has seemed like a high-profile boondoggle for the Japanese giant. While Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox 360 took an early lead that it later forfeited to Nintendo's Wii machine, the PS3 always lagged behind. Worse, the machine's next-generation Blu-ray DVD player and other pricey high-tech parts, which pinched Sony's profits last fiscal year, look likely to weigh on earnings again this year and next. And analysts are skeptical as to whether Sony can meet its sales forecasts for the console this year.

But you won't hear Chairman and Chief Executive Sir Howard Stringer badmouthing the gaming machine. That's because the millions of PS3s the company has sold since late in 2006 likely clinched Warner Bros. Entertainment's (TWX) exclusive support for the Blu-ray format.

Blu-ray takes a market jump... What make it better over HD-DVD...

Sony's Blu-Ray Breakthrough

Nikita Ivanov and his 14 employees are working on an application that would harness the processing power within millions of cell phones to create one big supercomputer. The idea is to enable companies and government agencies to exploit all the idle computing power in their employees' mobile phones and perhaps even handsets belonging to non-employees who have agreed to lease that spare capacity.

To create this "grid" computing application, Ivanov's startup firm has chosen a mobile software platform that doesn't yet run on a single commercially available phone. Rather than Windows Mobile or the Symbian operating system, GridGain is using Android, a platform spearheaded by Google (GOOG) that has drawn scores of software developers with its promise of flexibility to create unusual applications.

GridGain is one of thousands of Android-based projects in the works. Another would enable users to record and share audio tours of museums or galleries. One is a music player that can connect a cell-phone user with people who have similar musical tastes and happen to be nearby. All underscore the ways that developers hope to use Android to take phones in new directions with greater ease than today's prominent wireless platforms. To succeed, though, they, along with Google and its partners, will need to work some kinks out of the system.

Read on... Shows some highs and lows of this new phone OS... Like NO Bluetooth!?

A Warm Welcome for Android

BusinessWeek apparently doesn't need anyone to help it boost its Web traffic.

According to a blog post on Gawker, BusinessWeek not only asks people not to link to its site, it specifically directs them to its user agreement that prohibits the practice of "deep linking."

Gawker points to the example of SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill, who writes in his blog that after being interviewed for a feature story in BusinessWeek, he was expressly told not to link to the story. "Yes, that's right, an ad-driven publication doesn't want us to drive traffic to them," he says in his blog. In addition, he was urged to review the company's user agreement.

According to the user agreement on BusinessWeek's Web site, a user may not:

"use or attempt to use any 'deep-link,' 'scraper,' 'robot,' 'bot,' 'spider,' 'data mining,' 'computer code' or any other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, process or methodology or manual process having similar processes or functionality, to access, acquire, copy, or monitor any portion of BW.com, any data or content found on or accessed through BW.com, or any other BW.com information without prior express written consent of BW."

While some online publications have a policy on deep linking, it's pretty unusual to enforce it. Most sites obviously consider it a boon for page views and look on it favorably, as long as the content is credited to the correct source.

MacAskill speculates that BusinessWeek's stance is the result of corporate red tape, and not something that would be embraced by its reporters and editors. "To spend all of this time and energy on their articles, only to have the crazy business people make it impossible for people to read their work, must be incredibly trying," he says in his blog.

hmm...

'BusinessWeek': Don't link to us

Anheuser-Busch , which brews Budweiser, Busch and Michelob, is the longtime U.S. market leader with just under half of all U.S. beer sales. Miller holds 18.7 percent of the market and Coors 11 percent, according to Michael Scherer, who teaches management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The rest of the market is shared by imports and microbrewed beers.

The proposed merger would give Anheuser-Busch and the new MillerCoors joint venture control over nearly 80 percent of the U.S. beer market.

The deal could hurt Pabst Brewing Co, which has 3.38 percent of the U.S. beer market, since Miller brews most of Pabst's beer and could opt to shut down that plant, said Scherer. "This could put them in a very squeezed position," he said.

Hey I like PBR and other 'imports', I see this as a risk to the small guys...

:(

U.S. antitrust officials seen swallowing beer deal

plus D have dropped their monthly best of, Bootie Top 10, capturing the best in the world of mashups for the month of January, 2008. The mix offers a pretty good selection, but I think that the best of the bunch is actually the duo’s contribution.

Look about 1/2 way down for 'ComaR “Shut Up on a Blue Monday” (Rihanna vs. New Order)!!!

I almost LMAO ... some are not as good as this one but hay...

This Week in Mashups - 01/26/2008

After Velvet Revolver wraps a spring tour in support of its second album, "Libertad," frontman Scott Weiland will rejoin his former bandmates in Stone Temple Pilots for a handful of summer reunion shows, guitarist Slash tells Billboard.com.

STP broke up in late 2002; the band's last album was the previous year's "Shangri-La Dee Da." No other details have yet been revealed about STP's plans.

I really liked this band, hope to see them in the 'ville.

Weiland Playing With STP This Summer