Slashdot Mirror
Domain: groksoup.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to groksoup.com.
Stories · 10
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What Bernoulli Missed About Flight
GrokSoup writes: "How come planes can fly upside-down? The Bernoulli principle as applied to flight -- air moves faster over the top of the wing creates low pressure, sucking the plane upward -- always bugged me because it didn't explain inverted flight. Turns out I'm not the only one. The current New Scientist has an entertaining interview with Fermilab physicist David Anderson who explains why the Bernoulli explanation is only partial: lift from wing-shape is the least significant component of lift. Much more important is the wing's angle of attack." -
Eazel: The Honeymoon's Over
OdinHuntr writes: "Newsforge has an article detailing Eazel's layoff of over 50% of its workforce. Quite a day, eh?" And GrokSoup writes: "According to News.com, Eazel laid off 40 employees today -- or more than half of its staff. The company says it is trying to get its "... burn rate and business plan in line with the more sober economic environment," but we all know what that means. Don't we?" Update: 03/14 03:20 AM by T : And on a slightly more positive note, Dan Gillmor writes: "Hey, I stopped by Eazel today and Andy H showed me a nifty (but as yet unreleased) RSS viewer that's an intelligent icon on the Nautilus desktop ... I posted a screen shot in today's weblog." -
High-Speed Wireless LANs Move Forward
GrokSoup writes: "Neat article from the WSJ (free site) about European hackers using 802.11 technology to create limited-range, high-speed outdoor networks. As you might expect, people are messing with directed antennas to send signals up to a kilometer. While I've tried this to get from the house to the pool, the idea of banding together in open-source fashion had never really occurred to me. Nifty!" We've mentioned consume.net before, but this piece mentions some interesting possibilities, like how the same idea may result in an approved-by-the-Man wireless network in Sweden, and the golden hope that multiple connection methods will let us switch handily among several wireless protocols as the occasion merits. -
The Future of Computers
GrokSoup writes: "Great collection of semiconductor where-to-from-here articles in this month's MIT Technology Review. There are articles about molecular computing, quantum computing, DNA computers, and on and on. Fascinating stuff, all pointing to why the current semiconductor hegemony is by no means a "forever thing", as the kids like to say. " -
Seagram Declares War On Napster
GrokSoup writes: "Seagram Chairman Edward Bronfman declared war on online piracy in a speech in San Jose on Friday. While many of his arguments are hard to dispute -- Napster-like music-sharing services have turned a blind eye to theft -- he makes others that are tougher to support. For example, Bronfman said that anonymity isn't privacy, arguing that we have a right to the latter, but not the former: '[online anonymity] is nothing more than the digital equivalent of putting on a ski mask when you rob a bank.'"Apparently some folks have a hard time figuring out that the stuff in quotes and italisced is a quote from the submittor. That's not me writing above - that's GrokSoup. -
Are Freelance Web Sites Useful?
GrokSoup asks: "There is an article [registration required] in a recent Wall Street Journal about the rise of freelance sites like eLance, Guru.com, FreeAgent, and HelloBrain. While I've looked at these things before, I've never used them. Have many Slashdot-ers used them for tech freelance work? What kinds of experiences have you had? Think they're useful? " -
James Fallows on His Brief Microsoft Tenure
GrokSoup writes, "Writer James Fallows spent the first six months of 1999 on an unnnamed project at Microsoft (a word processor for writers). While he says he can't write about the secret project, he has written this lengthy piece for The Atlantic about life at Microsoft. It's spooky. Among other things, Fallows compares Microsoft with its "Up with programming" posters and logo attire to the military; says people pull fewer all-nighters there than he thought they would; and discovers the culture is meeting-centric (no surprise)." -
Michael Lewis Profiles Jim Clark in NY Times
GrokSoup writes "Magnificently loopy -- and spot-on -- profile of Jim Clark in Sunday's NY Times Magazine. In it, writer Michael Lewis manages to make the profoundly unsympathetic multibillionaire Clark at least somewhat sympathetic, while simultaneously dissecting the venture capital food chain, getting inside the Valley culture, describing Clark's many missteps, and generally doing a yeoman job of promoting his upcoming book. Read it." Great stuff! Up there with The Soul of a New Machine, but about the financial side of things. I strongly second GrokSoup's "read it." -
Michael Lewis Profiles Jim Clark in NY Times
GrokSoup writes "Magnificently loopy -- and spot-on -- profile of Jim Clark in Sunday's NY Times Magazine. In it, writer Michael Lewis manages to make the profoundly unsympathetic multibillionaire Clark at least somewhat sympathetic, while simultaneously dissecting the venture capital food chain, getting inside the Valley culture, describing Clark's many missteps, and generally doing a yeoman job of promoting his upcoming book. Read it." Great stuff! Up there with The Soul of a New Machine, but about the financial side of things. I strongly second GrokSoup's "read it." -
Drug Use Among Programmers
GrokSoup sent us a story that talks about Drug use amongst programmers. The article talks about the high tech industry, stress, and stimulants (the big ones like Cocaine and Crack, not the wussy stuff like caffeine :)