I have had discussions with Plurk many-a-times about how time should be handled. I am still in favour of no daylight savings time and a standardized time… While not perfect yet, internet time/BMT seems to just makes sense….

Internet Time is a “new” way to tell time, invented and marketed by the Swiss watch company Swatch. The current Internet Time is the same all over the World (no time zones or daylight saving time adjustments).

BMT, another invention of Swatch, Biel Mean Time, which is linked up to the Central European Winter/Standard time - which is UTC + 1 hour. When it is Midnight in BMT, the Internet Time is @000 beats, Noon is @500 beats.

Time and Date’s BMT/Internet Time Page

On the same day the interview with Linus Torvalds occured, O’Reilly was interviewing Richard Stallman on roughly the same set of topics: The Past (proprietary software for development of linux kernel), The Present (Sun Solaris 10 open source), and The Future (GNU HURD). I personally find RMS a little hard to stomach because I believe what he preaches verges on the edge of fanaticism, but I do respect the man and what he has done so I’m interested in what he has to say. Mind, the interview is littered with things like: “There are already free programs that do the same basic job. Linus Torvalds feels they are not convenient enough, and he values convenience more than he values standing firm for freedom.” and “It is unfortunate when anyone uses proprietary software … Proprietary software is unethical.” On the other hand, he has valid points. Linux kernel development really shouldn’t be using a proprietary software package. If no open source software existed, someone should have written it. Stallman brings up GNU Arch. The most interesting part of the interview is on page discussing BSD-style licenses and GPL-styled. And, of course, the 50k offer to convert the linux kernel to a BSD-style license. All in all, an interesting read.

Mediatinker: Gingerbread CPU

An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two US rovers probing the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine said.

It said something - or someone - had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night.

ABC News: Mystery Martian cleans US space buggy

C|Net is carrying a great interview with Linus Torvalds. It touches everything from Sun’s recent announcement that it is considering open sourcing Solaris 10 to his opinions on the GNU Foundation to kernel development. In response to whether he considered Solaris a threat to Linux, replied: “Solaris/x86 is a joke, last I heard … If you thought Linux had issues with driver availability for some things, let’s see you try Solaris/x86.” I particularly like the part where they guy asks why Linux isn’t charting its own course (instead of following UNIX) and Linus replied with a great comparison between open source, science, and Newton’s great quote: “If I have been able to see farther, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” One of the greatest lines was “To invent something totally new and different just because you want to do something new and different is in my opinion, the height of stupidity.”

On a side note about Solaris 10, I’m most curious what license Sun will release it under. If they GPL’ed it, they’d torpedo SCO’s claims of copyright infringement since IIRC, Sun owns the rights to their code base and if the GPL’ed the code then the base of UNIX core would also open-sourced. The one saving grace to SCO is Sun will likely release it under the same licence as OpenOffice.org. Hmmm, maybe SCO would also sue Sun … that’d be interesting.

Our life, as it has been, is over. Corporations rule the world, governments are privatized, and human life is only valuable if it is a consumer of your products, and then only maginally. There are always more consumers. Coldhearted marketing whiz John Nike has a plan. By refusing to sell more than two hundred pairs of Nike Mercurys over the last couple of months, Nike has created a artifical frenzy for these “elite” shoes. Now is the time to cash in and flood the market with Nike Mercurys at $2k a pair. Nike stands to make a quick billion.

The problem?

[I]f people realize every mall in the country’s got Mercurys, we’ll lose all that demand we’ve worked so hard to build up

The solution?

We’re going to shoot them … We’re going to kill anyone who buys a pair … Well, not everyone, obviously … We take out ten customers, make it look like ghetto kids, and we’ve got street cred coming out our asses. I bet we shift our inventory within 24 hours.

Welcome to paradise. Welcome to Max Berry’s Jennifer Government.

“Um…” Hack said. He swallowed. “Isn’t this kind of… illegal?”

“He wants to know if it’s illegal,” the John said, amused. “You’re a funny guy, Hack. Yes, it’s illegal, killing people without their consent, that’s very illegal.”

A flawless plan until Jennifer Government, a rogue federal agent and a consumer watchdog from hell, gets involved. Then things go awry.

“TV Guide has learned …”

TV Guide’s Mike Ausiello appears to confirm Monday the rumor we reported last Tuesday regarding Joss Whedon being close to a deal to write and direct a “Wonder Woman” feature for Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver.

(Hey, I just remembered something. On a visit to the fabulous “Serenity” set last summer, Ain’t It Cool asked Whedon what his favorite movie was, and the Buffiverse mastermind said it was probably Warner Bros. and Joel Silver’s “The Matrix.” Hey now.)

“Meanwhile, there’s no word on who Whedon may tap to fill Lynda Carter’s satin tights,” continues Ausiello, “but I’m going to go out on a limb and throw Sarah Michelle Gellar’s name into the mix.”

Mike, if you’re reading this (and something tells me you might be), I’ll bet you $200 Gellar’s dainty toes do not find their way into Princess Diana’s big-screen boots. I could be wrong, but I think fans might be skittish if the actress playing the famed Amazon warrior weighed less than 99 pounds.

5’8” “Serenity” star Summer Glau, 23, seemed less than shocked to hear word of Whedon Wonder Woman when the folks at Inland Empire Strikes Back interviewed her last week at Universal’s “Meet the Fockers” premiere. Glau even came prepared to name her choice to play WW: her 5’10” 35-year-old “Serenity” co-star Gina Torres. Another veteran of that “Matrix” trilogy. Hey now. I could spend the rest of the day imagining hot actresses doing one-footed spins.

Those latter-day “Matrix” movies also co-starred 5’10” 40-year-old Italian hottie Monica Bellucci.

5’11” Netherlands native Famke Janssen just turned 39, but she got away with playing the girlfriend of James “Cyclops” Marsden, who’s eight years younger.

5’10” Charlize Theron (29) and 5’11” Nicole Kidman (36) are also bona fide foreigners, but expensive bona fide foreigners.

Charisma Carpenter (34), the tallest of the Scooby girls at 5’7 and change, has big American breasts, and to me looks more like Wonder Woman than any of these movie actresses.

Speaking of Americans, 6’ Uma Thurman (34) and 5’9” Jennifer Garner (32) have been depicted beating up boys in the past.

Brazilian “Serenity” star Morena Baccarin (25) also looks perfect for role, save for being maybe a little shrimpy.

Does Canadian Evangeline Lilly (25) have any plans for her “Lost” hiatus? She’s only 5’6” - but there was that bathing scene in the pilot that convinces me she’d fit the role.

I’ll be in my bunk.

Ain’t It Cool News: Whedon WONDER WOMAN A Weality??

So those of you who are not aware, Fyn has returned to the nest and with him he has dragged books by Mark Leyner, which I can only hope were selected while high on something like absynthe. Mark Leyner’s writing is … well … this person said it better:

“… people either love Mark Leyner or hate him … He’s different, what can I tell you? If you’re a traditionalist who demands plot, theme and some semblence character development, you’ll do better to move on past.”

Amazon: A Customer from Somerville, MA USA

As you can tell from the quote, I decided to do a quick search for the book he provided me last night, “My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist.” A description of the book, which does not come close to describing it, goes as such:

Welcome to Mark Leyner’s America, where you can order gallium arsenide sushi at a roadside diner, get loaded on a cocktail of growth hormones and steroids, and support your habit by appearing on TV game shows. Welcome to a wildly post-Einsteinian fictional universe where the locals include a speech pathologist with a waterbug fetish, a kamikaze airline pilot, and the lead singer for Brazil’s most notoriously nihilistic samba band.

Back Cover

Gallium arsenide (GaAs), iirc, is a semi-conductor … but why one would want it in sushi is beyond me. Ah, it is semiconductor! Hmm, that is an interesting side note:

Cray Research attempted to make a GaAs-based supercomputer, the Cray-3, in the early 1990s. The venture failed, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1995.

Wikepedia

“My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist” was first published as a book in 1990 and the current reprint was in 1995.

In any case, see the previous post for a quote from the book.

Muriel got the TV Guide, flipped to Tuesday 8 P.M., and read aloud: “The Making of Jeanne d’Arc II” chronicles the abortive attempt by a pair of Israeli sleaze merchants to produce a sequel to the 1431 original which catapulted the amenorrheic daughter of a Domrémy farmer into international superstardom.

Mark Leyner, “My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist,” p. 98

Steming from the conversation tonight, none of us were even close at guessing what amenorrheic meant.

amenorrheic adj.: 1. related to the suppression of normal menstruation for any reason other than pregnancy.

Prince Roger MacClintock was an heir to the galaxy’s Throne of Man-and a self-obsessed spoiled young brat . . . until he and the Royal Marines sent to protect him were stranded on Marduk with only their feet to get them half way around the entire planet. So far, they’ve crossed a continent, crossed a sea full of ship-eating monsters, taken over an enemy spaceport, and hijacked a starship. But they’re not home-free yet, because home is no longer free. In Roger’s absence, a palace coup by enemies of the MacClintock family have seized control of the Empire. His mother the Empress is a captive in the palace and even in her own body, drugged so that her will is not her own. Roger’s bother, the heir to the throne, is dead. And Roger himself has been branded an outlaw and traitor. Roger and his faithful band of human marines and native alien warriors have beaten the barbarian planet Marduk, and now they must re-conquer an interstellar empire. But they aren’t about to give up, and with the help of those on the throne planet who are still loyal to the Empress they will infiltrate (under cover of a restaurant specializing in exotic Mardukan dishes, no less), they will make anyone who gets in their way (such as local mobsters who make the mistake of kidnapping Roger’s fiancé) very sorry that they did, and they will not rest until the rightful ruler has been restored. Once again, a lot of power-hungry people are going to learn a hard lesson: You do not, ever, mess with a MacClintock!