“Winds howl through the deserted moonscape behind Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper paywalls”

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If newspapers are relying on paywalls to survive, then they really are the equivalent of walking dead men. Even more so than those of us who have watched this saga from the beginning realized.

As this article points out, there’s no point to putting the papers online if only subscribers can see them or link to them. Why would anyone who’s looking for readers talk to a company that doesn’t provide any? And that goes for advertisers as much as A-list entertainers, which spells doom for the whole idea.

Good luck, Rupert. You’re going to need it.

Natural Lasers!

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From the always-interesting forgetomori site:

[…] But today I discovered at long last that there are natural lasers. This is quite a thing, as even if you already knew about that, I’ll say it also involves Martians! HG Wells! And Alien Abductions! […]

If you’re at all interested in how science and science fiction go hand-in-hand, or just want a good read, take a look.

“Terrorist Sorcerers Are Coming To Rape Our Cars, warns Florida senate candidate”

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If this sort of thing appeared in a science fiction/fantasy novel, people might just blink and accept the premise. If it appeared in a history text, they’d shake their collective head over it and silently thank the deity of their choice that no one is that stupid anymore. But if it’s spouted by a modern-day candidate for senate… well, let’s hope that our descendants don’t have to shake their collective head over the idiocy of the people of their past for electing him.

“Keep Going. Concentrate on Something Useful.”

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The text I quoted above got me thinking.

As many of my readers know, I’ve been working on an extremely difficult programming problem for the last seven years. Many really smart people have attempted to solve it before me, and so far, none have succeeded; many others, equally intelligent, believe that it simply can’t be done. Although I’ve made some progress on it, it has been an uphill struggle all the way, and it’s only in the last couple weeks that I’ve finally seen a hint of a solution.

(When I started it, I told my wife that it may well take ten years to complete, and it looks like that estimate was pretty accurate. She hasn’t been too happy, waiting so long with no visible progress and very little income, but she has backed me all the way. She’s awesome.)

In my younger years, I never would have considered tackling a project that big. But somewhere along the way, I stumbled over this quote:

Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.
— Earl Nightingale

You’re going to get older at the same rate whether you sleep, play games, or work on something useful. Anyone can sleep or play games, and millions do — but I’ve always wanted to accomplish something big. And when people tell me that something can’t be done, I’m driven to prove them wrong. 🙂

I believe that we, the human race, have had the technical ability to solve this problem for the last fifteen years or more. I believe that I have the resources — most importantly, the sheer bull-headed tenacity — to pull it off. The only question in my mind is how long it’s going to take.

There’s another quote I like:

A man’s greatness can be measured by his enemies.
— Don Piatt

So long as the time is going to pass anyway, why not tackle the hardest problem you can find? Identify that problem, make it your enemy, and devote as much time as it takes to defeating it, and you’ll be remembered for it.

What are you waiting for?

“Outwitting Squirrels: one of the funniest books I’ve ever read”

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I’ve long been fascinated with human attempts at protecting bird food from squirrels, ever since seeing one at my grandparents’ place in Pennsylvania. Most such attempts are spectacular failures (as was theirs), though I’ve posted before about a few that work. Apparently there’s an extremely funny book on the subject now too.

Maybe it will have clues to some defense against squirrel espionage, which I understand is a major problem in Iran these days. 😉

“Set Up a Super Simple Evaporative Cooler for Immediate Heat Relief”

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Our new house has no air conditioning, and no ductwork that air conditioning could be vented through. We’ve bought a small air conditioner, but it’s only good for one room (we put it in the bedroom). We spend most of our time in the basement office during daylight hours (where it’s naturally cooler), but in the last couple weeks, even that room has gotten uncomfortably warm.

We do have fans throughout the house, so I think I’ll try this to get the temperature down. As the article notes, it’s cheap enough that even if it doesn’t work, I’m not out much.

“IBM hard disk drive from 1956”

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A whole five megabytes, and I’ve been inside bathrooms that weren’t much larger than that thing. There’s no mention of price, but I’m betting it’s in the six- or seven-figure range. (I didn’t click through to find out; the details of computer artifacts from before I was born just aren’t that interesting to me.)