{"id":217,"date":"2008-12-21T23:28:36","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T03:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=217"},"modified":"2009-01-15T01:06:50","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T05:06:50","slug":"odd-lots-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxitsoftware.com\/\">Foxit Software<\/a> (which                  sells a line of very good PDF-related software, including the                  Foxit Reader, which I use daily) has announced an e-ink based                  ebook reader, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxitsoftware.com\/ebook\/\">eSlick<\/a>.                  The device isn&#8217;t being shipped yet, but there have been some <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wired.com\/gadgets\/2008\/12\/eslick-e-book-r.html\">early                  reactions in Wired<\/a> and other places. I&#8217;m interested because                  Foxit is unlikely to claim (as most ebook enthusiasts do) that                  PDF is the spawn of the devil. Worth watching.<\/li>\n<li>The Loopy Idea of the Month comes from two Ohio academics who                  have recently patented the notion of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2008\/12\/03\/supersonic_storm_squelch\/\">collapsing                  hurricanes by flying around them in supersonic aircraft<\/a> and                  (somehow) using the sonic boom shockwaves to scramble the storm.                  Apart from the fact that supersonic aircraft use fuel at a prodigous                  rate, I still don&#8217;t quite follow the physics of how this is supposed                  to collapse the storm. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Jim Strickland passed a long <a href=\"http:\/\/developing-your-web-presence.blogspot.com\/2008\/10\/on-titanium-thermite-bronze-age-and.html\">a                  detailed how-to for extracting metallic titanium from white pigment<\/a>.                  The process is straightforward, if (as it must be) <em>highly<\/em> energetic. I think the stickier question is working the titanium                  after it&#8217;s been isolated. Titanium is difficult to melt and very                  difficult to machine. I have a piece in my curio cabinet, and                  I&#8217;m <em>very<\/em> glad I don&#8217;t have to make anything from it.<\/li>\n<li>Many people sent me the latest version of the old joke that                  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aegisub.net\/2008\/12\/if-programming-languages-were-religions.html\">&#8220;If                  Programming Languages Were Religions&#8230;&#8221;<\/a> most of them                  lamenting that my favorite language\u2014and my favorite religion\u2014were                  not included. So it goes. I&#8217;m guessing that Pascal, like Catholicism,                  is <em>patient<\/em>: There will be only <em>one<\/em> programming language                  in use in the hereafter, and it will <em>not<\/em> be C++. You&#8217;ll                  have to go somewhere else for that.<\/li>\n<li>The <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> tells me that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/%20http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB122966038836021137.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technology\">the                  RIAA is abandoning its mass-lawsuit strategy of copyright enforcement<\/a>.                  It hasn&#8217;t worked at reducing music piracy, and its sole effect                  was making the music industry bigshots look positively <em>evil<\/em>.                  One can only wonder why it took so long to figure this out, and                  whether the damage can ever really be undone.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahawk.typepad.com\/iowahawk\/2008\/11\/lemon.html\">a                  wry peek at what we may see come out of the Big 3 bailout<\/a>.                  Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link. Have you driven a Pelosi                  lately?<\/li>\n<li>Also from Pete comes word that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0973820330\/ref=nosim\/jeffduntemann-20\">Werner                  Von Braun wrote SF<\/a>. This actually looks pretty good\u2014gotta                  love that cover!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foxit Software (which sells a line of very good PDF-related software, including the Foxit Reader, which I use daily) has announced an e-ink based ebook reader, the eSlick. The device isn&#8217;t being shipped yet, but there have been some early reactions in Wired and other places. I&#8217;m interested because Foxit is unlikely to claim (as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[61,17,15,43],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-aerospace","tag-ebooks","tag-hardware","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}