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7.5 reasonably interesting pages last night. Left me wondering where the heck that came from. That's okay. That's usually a sign that I've tapped into something worth pursuing. Even (especially?) if it does make my skin crawl.
posted 14:56 |
All the technology sites are littered with gratuitous Segway references lately. Here's mine just to prove I'm on the leading edge.Segway is the ultra-hyped, ultra-expensive electric scooter from the fertile brain of Dean Kamen. According to the company's FAQ, "We believe that, in time, the Segway HT will lead to a reconfiguration of the way communities are built by significantly extending people's walking zones, thereby enabling better use of space and the transportation infrastructure. The Segway HT will enable people to: make better use of their time, interact with people more easily and ultimately live better lives." Reconfigure communities? At $8000 each? Not a chance. Maybe when Segway's patents run out and the cheap knockoffs emerge, but for now it's strictly a toy for rich people.
posted 17:20 |
Yay! Posting is back! Blogger was having some kind of bandwidth crunch this morning, but seems to be better now.
posted 15:10 |
Mattson, which was in the middle of a complicated three-way merger when the current downturn hit, announced it will cut 30% of its workforce and merge three divisions into two. The cuts follow a previous 20% layoff back in August.
posted 11:26 |
I just stumbled across a site that calls itself the Creativity Portal. It's full to overflowing with links to instructional pages in just about every creative pursuit you can think of. I've only looked at a few of the links, but those few have been pretty good. Definitely worth a look.
posted 23:52 |
Bother. A database glitch on our end resulted in some parts of the site not being indexed by the search engine. Now fixed. If you had trouble finding things recently, please try your search again.
Also, I noticed on my most recent search report that someone was looking for 20september2001, all one word. The convention for dates in all articles is 20 September 2001, with spaces between day, month, and year. You can also find articles listed in date order on the Noteworthy Index and Subscriber Index pages.
posted 23:04 |
Thin Film Manufacturing has reached a milestone. We now have enough content that I can't keep it all in my head and have to use the search engine to find things. Or maybe I'm just getting forgetful.
posted 22:11 |
The Economist has an article about giant magnetoresistance and data storage. It's a good introduction to GMR for laypeople, but ultimately disappointing. The lead promises a case study of the transition from scientific breakthrough to product. All it actually says about the transition is, "Greasing the wheels in all this was a supportive milieu that resulted from a close association between IBM's research and product divisions." Hmmph. Some case study.
posted 16:30 |
A recent article on SEMI's web site talks about applications of supercritical CO2 in cleaning, resist stripping, and other novel applications. Interesting stuff.
posted 11:08 |
From the mailbag:
Applied Materials announced they're cutting another 10 percent of their workforce in light of the continuing industry downturn. That makes it pretty obvious that they don't think we've reached bottom yet. At the same time, they had layoffs very close to the bottom in the last downturn, and paid for it with real problems ramping back up to meet demand. Their crystal ball is no better than anyone else's.In a mildly amusing side note, Applied did not run this particular press release on their home page. It's buried three clicks deep in the investor news section, while the announcements on the home page continue to radiate optimism and growth.
posted 11:02 |
We all treasure certain seasonal touchstones this time of year. The crunch of the first snowfall. The sparkle of Christmas lights. The announcement of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners. The contest honors exceptionally bad opening sentences from (fortunately) imaginary novels.
posted 21:29 |
Most "portable" leak detectors weigh forty pounds or more and travel around the facility on wheels. Yesterday I had a chance to see MKS Instruments' new portable leak detector, the PICO. Very impressive. It weighs only sixteen pounds, thanks to a fully ruggedized turbo pump that isn't much larger than a box of business cards. (But for which MKS declined to provide pictures.) The intuitive interface should be instantly clear to any PDA user, too.The system announced this month sniffs for helium leaks from pressurized lines and operates on wall current. Product Manager Wayne Cole said that other versions are being considered, but declined to comment when I suggested that customers might welcome battery-powered or vacuum-based versions.
posted 14:55 |
Good news for all online journalists! The New York Supreme Court has held that online journalists are entitled to the same libel protections as their old media colleagues: they can only be found guilty of libel if their reporting is both false and malicious. The court dismissed National Bank of Mexico's lawsuit against Narconews, finding that the bank could not meet the tougher standard.
posted 11:53 |
For those addicted to blog surfing, Weblogs.com lists all the weblogs that it knows about that have changed in the last three hours. Only problem is, blog owners have to tell Weblogs.com when they update, and most blogging software doesn't do that automatically. So, along comes a useful bit of Javascript that will automatically ping Weblogs.com for you. Very nifty, and now in use here. (Welcome to any new visitors who found us at Weblogs.)
posted 11:46 |
The first U.S. Web page went up 10 years ago today. It was created at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. What a long strange trip it's been...
posted 09:56 |
The New York Times has announced procedures to sterilize all incoming mail. Stringent and annoying enough to pretty much guarantee that employees will use email for everything they possibly can.http://www.poynter.org/medianews/memos.htm
It's down toward the bottom of the page. Search for "mail sterilization."I'd be very interested to see post-Sept. 11 bandwidth usage numbers. My gut feel is that some of that dark fiber may be lighting up as people avoid travel and unnecessary mail. Which is good for everyone in high tech.
posted 09:24 |
6 (longhand) pages. Nothing spectacular, but it's good to get to work again after writing very little since my trip. A foundation to build on and all that.
posted 23:49 |
Once upon a time, the US government wanted to insist that suppliers of encryption software leave a back door to allow law enforcement to crack encrypted messages. The proposal faded to obscurity after suppliers howled that doing so would cripple their sales outside the US. Like many bad ideas, however, the concept refused to die. The next approach was to ask anti-virus software suppliers to ignore an e-mail borne Trojan horse that would capture all keystrokes. Predictably, antivirus firms declined to cooperate. Back to the drawing board...
posted 10:07 |
Words to the wise:
S.L. Viehl's Star Lines blog offers Ten Things You Should Never Do After You Become a Bestselling Author. My favorite was #4: Openly use hand sanitizer at book signings.
posted 23:18 |
From the mailbag:
Rudolph Technologies reports that it has shipped one 300-mm MetaPULSE tool and five S-300 ellipsometry systems to a "major European chipmaker." Though Rudolph would not identify the customer, only a few European companies are close to volume production on 300-mm wafers. Infineon is one, AMD's Dresden fab is another.
posted 13:56 |
more...
Got back from my trip on Friday. Been shoveling through the inevitable week of accumulation since then, plus sleeping off the inevitable tiredness that comes from keeping weird hours and sleeping in unfamiliar places.It snowed last night, the first of the season. Heavy and wet and already melting into slush and mud, but it sure is pretty when you first look out on it in the morning.
posted 14:00 |
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