Tales of Hoffman

Finally, a medically-related excuse to keep

Finally, a medically-related excuse to keep my daughter (she's only 6, you know!) from wearing some of those awful new fashions. (from the CMAJ, by way of BoingBoing)

I'm fascinated by what Cory

I'm fascinated by what Cory Doctorow is doing to promote his new book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Yes, it's available at bookstores everywhere, as they say in advertisements (including Amazon, by clicking the link above), but take a look at this entry in his blog, BoingBoing:

As I promised, I've released the complete text of the book (in ASCII text, HTML, and printable PDF) under a Creative Commons license. Download it, share it, email it, post it to your site, drop it in your P2P file-sharing cache!

So, here's a guy who -- through the success of his blog -- commands a lot of "word-of-mouthness," and he's willing to go out on a limb to prove that providing something for free on the Net in bits does not preclude folks from still buying it in book form. I hope it works. I really do.

After all, do I use one of the "file sharing" networks to find music? Yes, I do. (I can hear the sirens approaching already as the RIAA sends out the shock troops.) Has that stopped me from buying CDs? Absolutely not! If I hear something I really like, I go out and buy it. I want to own it. I want to have it in my possession. An image on a hard disk doesn't do it for me.

Good going, Cory. I'm rooting for you and think you (and your incredibly forward looking publisher!) will still make money. Please keep us posted on how this works out.

...as if you the world

...as if you the world needed another one.

Apple has always been great at creating the "Lust Machine" -- that one piece of hardware that makes your pocketbook strain forward in anticipation of cracking open and losing it's lunch. I think they've done it again with this 17" Powerbook. It looks good. It has all the requisite new technologies on board (faster firewire, 802.11g, superdrive). It has the famous Apple eye (i?) candy (fiber optic keyboard backlighting that changes intensity with the brightness of the room, geez!). And most importantly, they've claimed to fix the incredibly stupid problem where the old Ti-Books had seriously deficient Wi-Fi range because of the location of the internal antenna. If you have the money (at $3299, a BIG if), it looks like a buy.

I actually think the more attractive of the two machines may be the 12" "mini-me" model. Smaller than an iBook, packing an 867Mhz G4, and able to burn DVDs...all for under two grand? Now that's a winner. If I get confirmation that the Wi-Fi range is good on this one, my iBook becomes a hand-me-down to the wife as I become the Hoffman Family Mobile Spielberg.

If I have some time later, maybe I can add to the cacophony of commentary about yesterday's software intros.

I love this. Here is

I love this. Here is the ultimate Macworld prediction story, brought to you by CNet: Apple banks on digital media harvest. Basically, they are going way out on a limb and predicting that there's a 50% chance that anything can happen. Somehow, after the announcements tomorrow, we'll see a follow up story on CNet about how they "broke" the big story and got the scoop on everyone. Here's my prediction for tomorrow....a 100% chance of sunrise at some point early in the morning.

When TV Commercials Play the

When TV Commercials Play the Doctor. A Doc's take on the DTC advertising boom from the NY Times Op Ed page. Not much new here and I'm not sure I buy her argument, which boils down to: "DTC is bad because I have to expend effort explaining why a drug is not appropriate for a given patient."

New addition to the Medical

New addition to the Medical Blogroll to the right. @RSK is written by a colleague of mine at Medscape. So far, off to a great start. If you want a super take on the Mental Health issues of the day (and, apparently, what NY City will look like the next time we need to build an Ark), stop by, and tell him Steve sent you!

Pact Lifts an Obstacle to

Pact Lifts an Obstacle to HDTV Transition. Here's an article in the New York Times about the pact finally reached between Consumer Electronics firms and the Cable industry over Plug-n-Play HDTV built in to television sets. Although a very cursory article, on the surface it looks like a winning combination of DVI and Firewire that will allow home recording as well as "grandfather" in those of us with older analog connections on our set top boxes. On second thought, I may be misreading it....given how things have gone in this area, that sounds too good to be true.

Feeling Blue? This Robot Knows

Feeling Blue? This Robot Knows It. An article on Wired about a Robot that can assess your emotional state using sensors attached to your body. My question is... Will it go to Martha's Vinyard every August