“I’ll Gladly Pay You Tuesday…”. Robert Cringely on how PayPal has won the battle to be the Internet’s payment system. And if you sign up on my referral, I get $5 in my PayPal account.

Space Scientists are on the Case. Law enforcement authorities have been collaborating with NASA to use image enhancement technology originally developed for the analysis of satellite video to dramatically improve the information yield from surveillance videos here on earth.

Coming back from vacation without my finger on the pulse, it’s hard to know if this is already old hat to everybody. It’s certainly important and sensational enough that it bears repeating. “The late Richard Nixon was under the influence of psychotic drugs for at least part of his presidency, to the point where his defence

secretary warned military commanders not to take his orders without

endorsement from another senior minister. The claim, supported by

the doctor who prescribed the drugs, is made in a new Nixon

biography…” They’re talking about Dilantin (phenytoin), which, to be sure, is not a “psychotic” drug (nor, more properly, an “antipsychotic”, which is what I think they were driving at) but an anti-epileptic medication that some used for mood stabilization, even though there is little evidence it is good for that and it has serious side effects, sometimes mind-altering ones. the Independent

The Emergency Email Network is a free public service that will notify you of natural disasters, other emergencies, organ and blood donation needs in your local area.

The hundred greatest pieces of 20th Century music, as NPR’s All Things Considered is profiling this year. Links to Real Audio files of the shows that have already aired. I’m listening to Louis Armstrong’s West End Blues as I type this…

Document Web Bugs Privacy Advisory: ‘The Privacy Foundation has discovered that it is possible to add

“Web bugs” to Microsoft Word documents. A “Web bug” could

allow an author to track where a document is being read and how

often. In addition, the author can watch how a “bugged” document

is passed from one person to another or from one organization to

another.’

Will Pseudo-Scandals Decide the

Election? The American Prospect

This bottom-feeding monstrosity of

a comedy

“…conjures more leering

euphemisms for male body

parts and sexual acts than any

film in recent memory.” New York Times

A fascinating-sounding new black-and-white documentary, Dark Days, just opened in New York. Stephen Holden reviews: “Most of this unforgettable

movie was filmed below

the streets of Midtown

Manhattan in a dank

Amtrak railway tunnel where a colony of around 75 homeless

put down roots, some for as long as 25 years, among the rats

and the garbage.” New York Times

Is there anyone out there not yet familiar with the Darwin Awards? “Darwin Awards celebrate Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

by commemorating the remains of those who contribute to the

improvement of our gene pool by removing themselves from it

in really stupid ways.” One reader-submitted vignette describes “Why I’m the Last of Nine Children”.

After the venerable Tom’s Hardware Guide and others wrote of the new chip’s instability and their inability to get it to perform in benchmarking tests on any platform, Intel Admits Problems With 1.13 GHz Pentium III and recalls the chips. They’re not commenting on how many had been shipped already. Haste makes waste, and this feud with AMD to be the fastest surely makes haste.

Tne New York Times reviewer doesn’t like Margaret Atwood’s new novel, The Blind Assassin. But it’s an opportunity for the Times to pull together an anthology page of reviews of all of Atwood’s earlier work. One of her earliest, Surfacing, remains my favorite.

From the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Star TV CEO James Murdoch’s thoughts about how Anglo-American broadcasting misses the boat on how to grapple with a global market:

If I have to read another article about “Threats and Opportunities,” “Surviving in the Digital

Era,” “The New Realities of the New Economy,” or some such other angst-ridden twaddle,

I’ll just have to shoot myself. Americans are worrying about declining standards.

Europeans are worrying about their standards becoming American, and everyone is

worried about the Internet.

But the obsession with the above comes at the expense of a broader discussion that

shouldn’t be given such short shrift. Modern, so-called “Big Media” needs to grapple with

the basic worldwide demographic trends that will shape our industry, and all others, over

the next century, and indeed, well beyond it.

The pressing problem, as I would like to argue this evening, is that most media companies

have failed to understand what it means to be a global company. No where is this more

true than in the Anglo and American countries that have assumed that simply

broadcasting around the world, CNN-style, or exporting English language films, is a

sufficient global strategy.

Is there anyone out there not yet familiar with the Darwin Awards? “Darwin Awards celebrate Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

by commemorating the remains of those who contribute to the

improvement of our gene pool by removing themselves from it

in really stupid ways.” One reader-submitted vignette describes “Why I’m the Last of Nine Children”.