The Big Think

…current estimates of the number of political prisoners in the lifetime camps alone, run to between 150,000 and 200,000.
I had the pleasure of spending 9 days in Seoul about fifteen years ago and found South Koreans to be a happy, hospitable, open people. Spending just a small amount of time as a cultural minority was a great experience for me, and I look back on it with wider eyes and mind. South Korea was a wonderful place when I was there.
Contrast this with the atrocities we are only now finding out are happening under Kim Jong IL’s leadership in North Korea, and some things become clear. Among them is this: The global community cannot allow this brutal leader, this dictator, this Pol Pot/Saddam Hussein/Hitler clone to continue to develop nuclear weapons. The global community. Not America. Not “the Western World”. Not even “the first world”. Everybody. The possibility that this nutcase will control the means to reign down apocalyptic destruction on any one of his neighbors (or anyone anywhere period), and thus trigger Much Worse Things should finally- finally - get us all into the same freaking boat already.

*kwan-li-so: Korean word “which translates as “political penal-labor colonies”–to which political offenders are sentenced for life, without recourse, sometimes with three generations of their families, without even the show of a trial, and sometimes without even knowing why they are there.” . Not for felons, not for murderers or rapists, but for ordinary citizens, and their families, who anger Kim.

Wikipedia. Remember that word. My money is on it becoming as common a term as blog or email.
Wired mag had a great article this month about the Open Source movement. More than just a new way of developing software, Open Source methodology has recently broken out into the world of ideas and products. Wikipeda is an open source encyclopedia of everything.

Their words: Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate free content encyclopedia.

Here’s the idea. If you have any kind of knowledge of a specific subject, say, mufflers, you are invited to submit an essay to the Wikipedia. They’ll post your entry under “mufflers” and link to related topics. If someone comes along and has anything to add to your post, they edit your entry. Over time a vast collection of topics can be covered, because the work is being done by a volunteer army of writers - and one’s that are “experts” in the appropriate fields.
This idea has been applied to great success over at epinions.
Ultimately, Wikipedia’s creators want to publish the whole “encylopedia Wiki” on CD (DVD?) ROM.

Today Apple released specs on their new iBooks:

12&14″ displays
Airport Extreme/Bluetooth
256DDR RAM
Combo Drive (Burn CD, Watch DVD)
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200/32 AGP 4X
4.9lbs
$1099/$1299

Sounds like these specs fit somebody’s requirements pretty closely. Heh.
Seriously, while Macs are rarely more expensive than PC’s on a feature-by-feature basis (spec out a similarly equipped Dell and see for yourself), the price difference where they are different is now so little that it hardly bears mentioning. The difference use to be a grand plus. Now you might have to pay 10-15% - certainly an acceptable spread in any industry between a “value” item and a “premium” item. Glad to see Pat at least considering one…

Okay, it’s not really a toy. I went to Fry’s tonight because I was going stir crazy working at home the last 4 days without getting away (and mowing the grass doesn’t count). I originally went to start pricing replacements for my dearly departed PalmPilot and I ended up buying a laser printer. The Samsung ML-1710:

Pros:
It works on PC and Mac, OS 9 and X.
Prints WAY faster than my old Ti Microlaser Pro,
4x as much memory (8meg instead of 2) as the Ti
prints 17 pages per minute (the Ti did 6… maybe).
Energy Star so I can leave it on all the time (or maybe just plug it into an X-10 module and cue it when I need to)
New ink carts are only $80
250 sheet feeder, all types of paper (even card stock!)

Downsides:
it’s USB only. I can’t network it, but I can printer share when the main machine is booted into OS X
It’s loud when it runs, but quiet when it doesn’t
lightweight. It’s easy to push around when you load up the paper tray and getting the tray door closed is a pain
The ink cart it comes with is only 1/3 filled 1000 pages max. Then 3K when I get a new cart. (Those wiley buggers)

The old Ti has been a workhorse for 10 years. I’ve run approximately 17,000 pages through it in that time and only replaced the ink cartridge once (but for $189!!!). A couple of years ago it began streaking pretty badly and lost its networking ability, so it was time to retire it. I could have fixed it, but it would have cost more than it was worth. The $1100 I paid for it was more than made up for in the thousands I made printing music.

The new printer? $97 after rebate. I just got a new color inkjet with my G4, but wasn’t happy with the quality of the BW prints, plus, the new black ink carts are expensive (approx $20 for 250 or so pages). My cost per page on the new printer is around .03. It was .11 in the inkjet. At that rate, I only have to put a dozen reams or so through the new laser and it’ll pay for itself. Plus I can still use the inkjet for color letterhead.

I’m still playing around with it, but so far I’m pretty happy. I thought a new laser printer was going to cost me $500. Good to see low cost lasers coming out.