Posts

Everybody is talking about the general lack of preparedness for a major outbreak of the avian flu among humans. The only drug that’s known to help people fight off the disease is Tamiflu. It’s developed by Swiss company Roche and we don’t have nearly enough of it on hand to deal with a major flu outbreak should one arise. What should we do to obtain enough of it? One obvious answer is violating Roche’s patent on the drug and licensing other companies to produce it as well. Liberal economist Dean Baker over at MaxSpeak recommends doing just that. In fact, he recommends doing away with patents on drugs entirely: ...

Read Mr. Jalopy’s plea for Apple to build computers for hackers: Woz got it. Thirty seconds after unwrapping an Apple II, you were opening the lid and connecting ribbon cables. It was respect. Apple extended respect. And Apple was respected by my rocket scientist buddies and myself. Apple extended the respect through meaningful manuals, a documented architecture and a generally awesome computer. Nothing was hidden. You could POKE and PEEK your way through the whole machine. ...

It’s impossible to overemphasize the need to sanitize user input that will be displayed to users in a Web application. Just ask MySpace.

So, when are we going to be able to get videos from a Tivo to the new video iPod via TiVoToGo? Update: L M Orchard has a post on the economics of buying video from the iTunes Music Store.

I fear RSI the way major league pitchers fear torn elbow ligaments. Paul Bissex has discovered a neat little application that monitors your keyboard and mouse usage and lets you know when you could use a break called AntiRSI. I’m going to give it a shot.

BetaNews reports that Yahoo and MSN are going to announce plans to provide interopability between their instant messenger networks. It remains to be seen whether this is a step toward the one true goal of joining all of the major instant messaging networks. Hopefully this is the first step in an industry-wide move toward interoperability and not just side taking for an impending war. ...

The window for filing for assistance from FEMA after a disaster is 60 days, which certainly doesn’t seem like enough time for the residents of New Orleans who haven’t even been back to see their homes since they evacuated initially. The Center for American Progress has launched extendthedeadline.org to help people to petition FEMA to add another 60 days to the deadline. Seems reasonable enough to me. ...

Could this be the reason why Netflix has done so well and Blockbuster has done so poorly?

I just read that at one time, Blockbuster could have bought out NetFlix for $50 million. They chose to do a deal with Enron to distribute video via broadband instead.

Not sure what to post about the earthquake in south Asia over the weekend. Natural disasters are certainly fresh on my mind, as I just received pictures of fallen trees laying on top of the house where I grew up. As horrible as Katrina and Rita were, these earthquakes were worse. The papers are reporting that in many place, no aid has arrived. Hopefully Americans (and the American government) will be generous in helping Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan cope with the aftermath. Everyone should have their own favorite aid organization by now, and I urge you to give. ...