Wired is reporting that Tennessee will be launching a $2.5M pilot program to track sex offenders with GPS bracelets. Authorized by Tennessee HB3182, the bill applies to people convicted after July 1, 2004 of a "violent sexual offense". Interestingly, it also provides for the offender to pay for their …

An upbeat article from Wired today recounts the throngs of people crowding Boston's new Convention Center. According to some reports, the crowd is standing room only and some vendors are pleasantly surprised at the turnout.

OK, this is just plain spiffy. T-Mobile is providing the GPRS data service, for the Saeco/Cannondale Pro Cycling Team to send telemetry data in real time from their bikes and riders. You can check it out on 2Peak's site (providers of the gizmo to measure the data).

According to an article from Wired, Apple's success with the iPod has pushed MacroVision and SunnComm (the leading producers of audio CD copy protection) to get rid of their Microsoft Windows Audio (MWA) format songs on the current crop of copy protected CDs. What's in the cards is not entirely …

No, I'm not talking about my "honeymoon weight", I'm talking about our new nephew, Griffith James Paulsen, son of Derek and Stacey Paulsen, born on July 9th, 2004. Mother and child are doing well (as are father, and all of the assorted grandparents). I'll post a link to Derek's web …

So, what makes one developer (NetNewsWire's Brent Simmons) so different in attitude from another (Konfabulator's Arlo Rose? Is it just basic bent? Viability of their idea? Or a lack of understanding of the creative and industrial processes. What's the deal? At Apple's World-Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) this week, Apple announced …

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has proposed the INDUCE act of 2004 (originally the Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation Act of 2004, but retitled Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004). The act would potentially outlaw anything that anybody could do that would conceivably be considered by any reasonable person …

In another interesting demonstration of open protocols and open source, Apple's grid computing initiative, XGrid, has been ported to generic Unix (including, especially, Linux and Solaris). Code, instructions, and details can be found at the XGrid for Linux web site.

In its first week of operation, Apple's iTunes Music Store has sold 800,000 songs. According to Apple, their closest competitor (OD2) has sold just 1/16th the number songs last week in the UK as Apple, who sold 450,000. OD2 appears to operate: MyCokeMusic.com Virgin Music Tiscali …

Apple's Chief Software Technology Officer, Dr. Avie Tevanian, has given testimony (PDF) along with a number of other computer industry executives, about computer security in the home. The testimony basically talks about how building security in from the ground up, providing good security tools, frequent updates, and network diversity all …

The FAA's Office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) has published a bunch of information including a very nice glossy brochure about the launch vehicles and launch sites in the US being used for commercial launches. Find them here.

CNN will have live coverage starting some time before the 0630 PDT launch of the Scaled Composites Space Ship One commercial spacecraft. If you can, keep your eyes on this one. Burt Rutan's engineering funded by Paul Allen's money.

EFF representative Cory Doctorow gave a talk to Microsoft about DRM (Digital Rights Management) on June 17th, 2004. An electronic transcript is available. Not surprisingly, it details why DRM is bad and will lead to no good in technological, social, and business terms. One of the most interesting passages was …

Infoworld's Tom Yager reviews G5 XServe and Opteron servers in comparison to the Intel Xeon offerings. Not surprisingly, the Mac receives high marks for its extraordinary I/O capabilities and the Opteron for its RAM access speeds. No matter how you slice it, it's not coming up Xeon.

OK, I'll admit that this one may be even a bit far fetched for me, but take a look at the information and tell me if it doesn't look like a good deal for Sony. According to reports from a number of locations, including CNet, Sony has settled with European …

Startup company, OQO is showing off their OQO Model 01 hand-held computer. It's a bit larger than an iPod and weighs 14 oz., but runs full-fledged Windows XP on a 1GHz Transmeta CPU with a 20GB hard drive and 256MB of RAM. The machine also packs Bluetooth, WiFi (802.11b …

As I was preparing for the wedding, I finally decided to change my main printer (after 2 mostly happy years with the Xerox 860DP). The 8400 is the first "true Xerox" version of the Phaser product line and I evaluated costs and features of a number of printers before deciding …

Alias, formerly Alias|Wavefront, now owned by SGI (although in the process of being acquired by management) has released SketchBook Pro, a sketching program for free-hand artists. The software has been available for Windows for about a year, but Alias has decided to make it available to Macintosh users. Basically …

We're back from the honeymoon and the pictures aren't ready yet. I need to do some modifications to the server over the next few days, so I likely won't be getting around to posting the travel info for another week or so. Thanks to those of you who sent pictures …

In an effort to bring local channels to another 41 local areas in the US, DirecTV has launched another satellite, this time using the Sea Launch sea-borne commercial launch facility. Sea Launch uses a sea-borne launch facility usually position near the equator in the Pacific Ocean to launch commercial payloads …