Archives for March 2004

Whaa?!

So you thought that the current gas prices were the highest ever? Technically, they are the highest dollar amount, but people seem to have forgotten about inflation and the increase in fuel efficiency.

Waldo Jaquith, who is a distant cousin of mine (as far as we can tell), has again stepped on some rather big toes. This time, instead of pissing off Mattel, he got some special attention from Microsoft.

State agencies largely use commercialy availible software products, at a huge expense to taxpayers. This seemed rather piggish to Waldo, who wondered why they didn’t consider using open source software, which is availble free of charge. So he did something. In January, a bill was introduced in Virginia that would have encouraged the Virginia Information Technologies Agency to consider open source software. Microsoft flew in a representative and some lobbyists, and the bill was squashed.

Go check out The HooK’s story, or read Waldo’s post.

The FDA just approved a new HIV test using saliva that generates results in 20 minutes. OraSure Technologies Inc. claims that the results are 99 percent accurate. There have been other fast tests for HIV, but they worked using a blood sample.

WashingtonPost.com: Rapid Oral HIV Test Approved

…if France becomes the victim of a terror attack, as was threatened, they will blame it on the United States’ proactive approach to terrorism, rather than their anti-religious rulings that have so righteously enraged the country’s large Muslim population.

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen today:

Terror Alert Level

http://www.geekandproud.net/terror/

Seen on: Not So Fast