brainwagon

San Jose Mercury News - Google unveils mobile-phone software strategy

the big news is that Google has gone generic, offering free software to anyone who wants it under the relaxed terms of an open-source license, which will allow developers to view the source code for that software. This also means there will not be a “gPhone,” or any sort of phone with the Google brand on it.

“Today’s announcement is more ambitious than any single ‘Google Phone’ that the press has been speculating about,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement. “Our vision is that the powerful platform we’re unveiling will power thousands of different phone models.”

Phil Plait’s blog is the first mention I’ve read that actor Darren McGavin had passed away. Phil and I must have been watching the same TV shows as kids, because I loved Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and have recently found through the miracle of TIVO that the episodes still hold up fairly well, which can hardly be said of most of the television produced in the 1970s.

The thing that I found most remarkable about the show is just how unheroic Kolchak really was. He wasn’t Clark Kent, secretly fighting crime with superpowers at night. He was just an average, middle age reporter, whose only talent seemed the ability to irritate everyone he came into contact with. It was a great character, and a great set of performances by McGavin. Lots of fun, and well worth watching on DVD.

[tags]Darren McGavin,Kolchak,Night Stalker[/tags]

I usually don’t post links to Boing Boing stuff, since everybody in the known universe already reads Boing Boing, but I thought this logo design for Google by the Students for a Free Tibet warranted a bit wider distribution.

Sorry Google, but if your motto is to “don’t be evil”, you are seriously off course. If your motto is “don’t be evil, except when there is a large, potentially lucrative market for us to exploit as long as we hold our noses and pretend that we aren’t evil”, then you are a lot closer.

Boing Boing: Google logo redesigned by Students for Free Tibet

[tags]Google,Don’t Be Evil[/tags]

In another one of those “close, but no cigar” moments, Bill Joy remarks about the recent switch of Apple to Intel processors:

“We got very close to having Apple use Sparc. That almost happened,” Joy said at a panel discussion featuring reminiscences by Sun’s four cofounders at the Computer History Museum here.

I’ll hazard a guess as to why it didn’t happen: because Apple isn’t stark raving mad.

Sun: Apple nearly moved to Sparc chips | News.blog | CNET News.com

[tags]Sun,Bill Joy,Intel,Apple[/tags]

To all the readers of my little experiment in self-therapy, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Dan Kaminsky has been trying to figure out how many sites have been infected by the Sony DRM rootkit. He found that over half a million DNS servers have received queries for the “phone home” address that the Sony code uses to squeal on users. It’s a cool research project, and spells troubling times for Sony in the not-too-distant future.

Panda’s Thumb reports on the ties between Supreme Court Nominee Harriet Miers and creationism. The Valley View Christian Church that she attends apparently has a webpage which links to The Creation Evidence Museum, run by Carl Baugh, a creationist so absurd that even Answers In Genesis can’t accept his conclusions.

Apparently it’s not just Roe v. Wade that we have to worry about, but perhaps Epperson v. Arkansas or Lemon v. Kurtzman.

Get two industry giants to call a huge press conference to announce something which can only be classified as “beyond trivial.”

Way to go Google! Keepin’ it real…

Nola.com: NewsFlash - Poor New Orleans neighborhood floods again

As many as 500,000 people in southwestern Louisiana, many of them already displaced by Hurricane Katrina, were told to evacuate. And for those who refused to leave, Gov. Kathleen Blanco advised: “Perhaps they should write their Social Security numbers on their arms with indelible ink.”

That’s not a comforting thought.

Seriously people, stay safe.

This news item caught my eye:

Intel claims ultra low power breakthrough

Mmmm. Moore’s law continues it’s march to the future.

Rumors have been flying around lately that Google will introduce some kind of wireless service, but now Google itself seems to be nearing some kind of release. Betcha Microsoft wishes they could buy this kind of buzz.

Oh dear lord. President Arrives in Alabama, Briefed on Hurricane Katrina

We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we’re going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we’re going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is — and it’s hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.

Copied from Flutterby.

NASA has released some of the Earth Observatory images of the flooding in New Orleans. Ouch.

Holy crap, they are evacuating the Big Easy because of uncontrolled flooding.

Not good, folks not good folks. To anyone in the affected areas, stay safe, and keep your loved ones close.

As I awaken, news reports are coming in from Lousiana and Mississippi regarding hurricaine Katrina. It doesn’t sound too good. They lowered the storm swell expectation in New Orleans from 28 feet to 15, but it still sounds dangerous. Winds have been clocked at 135 mph. I hope that everyone (including any Brainwagon readers) are sheltering in safe locations.

Update: Boing Boing has this link to the New Orleans metblog.