DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

One of the neat ideas in Po Bronson’s novel The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest is a software “hypnotizer” that allows many types of hardware to run the same piece of software. You can think of this as the Java VM, except in the book, the “hypnotizer” isn’t slow, nor saddled with unfamiliar UI widgets, nor will it crash your web browser. Ahem.

The promise is huge — imagine if you could really run Windows apps on your Mac (without the kludginess of an OS emulator like Virtual PC), or vice-versa. Imagine the money software developers could save, not having to port apps any more: Mac developers would suddenly have access to the other 95% of the market… Windows developers would suddenly have access to the 30 or 40 of us who haven’t yet sold out to the Man.

A company called Transitive may have finally found the Universal Computing grail. According to Wired,

A Silicon Valley startup claims to have cracked one of most elusive goals of the software industry: a near-universal emulator that allows software developed for one platform to run on any other, with almost no performance hit.

Transitive Corp. of Los Gatos, California, claims its QuickTransit software allows applications to run “transparently” on multiple hardware platforms, including Macs, PCs, and numerous servers and mainframes.

The vendor, according to Wired, claims “100 percent functionality,” including “accelerated 3-D graphics and about 80 percent computational performance.”

This could be amazing.

I’ve been looking for a directory like this for a long time… How to recycle almost everything. Type in your ZIP code and away you go… everything from dirt to CDs, packing peanuts to mattresses to eyeglasses.

dec·a·dence [n]

1. turning on the iTunes “Visualizer” when spinning MP3s on the laptop during a barbecue just in case someone happens to glance at the screen when passing through the living room, even though doing fractal math for this graphics display causes the laptop’s fan to run for the entire duration of the party to keep the CPU from melting.
2. loading up the leftover focaccia into a monster Tupperware at 9:30 PM, after the BBQ guests had gone home, and driving to a friend’s to catch the last half-case of a “30-bottle wine tasting.”

Do mp3 users belong in jail? Is your TiVo illegal? How about your DVD burner?

Should Hollywood campaign donors have their way, the answers would be “yes.”

Two great sites will tell you all you want to know — enough to make you drive to southern California (or maybe Japan) and kick some serious copyright-holding ass.

• savebetamax.org
• savethe[iPod].org

The SaveBetamax team is organizing a national call-in day on Tuesday, September 14. Sign up now and they’ll send you an email with your congressperson’s phone number. All you have to do is make one phone call.

The personal computer, the recordable CD, the TiVo, the iPod, and the Internet itself are innovations that came about because technological innovators didn’t have to ask copyright holders for permission before marketing a new product.

The Induce Act will reverse this trend. Any advertising that hints at infringing uses of a product could make the product illegal. Any device that doesn’t include crippling copy-protection measures could cost its creator millions in damages. Companies in the United States will no longer be able to produce the most innovative entertainment and information technologies, since every new development will, in practice, have to be approved by Hollywood and the RIAA.

We Rhine countries make our potato fritters without flour and call them then stop potato pancake.
But our potato pancakes are also not sticky then so and fad.
For lack of flour we need also fewer eggs - on 500 gram 1 egg hands potatoes.

One takes:

• 500 gram of potatoes
• 1 bulb
• 1 egg
• Oel/Schweineschmalz

The potatoes rub and the water out thoroughly squeeze. Eggs and the finely gewuerfelte bulb unteruehren, then the mass in oil or Schweineschmalz out-roast.

(Found poetry courtesy Google’s translator)