Posted on by lhl

Root Blog is an interesting blog aggregator that I noticed in my logs. It does what I assume to be automatic extraction of posts in one column, and recent updates in another. Good stuff.

About the “Third Wave” experiment – a writeup of about the first person account of an experiment that a High School teacher inadvertently carried out. Shades of Milgram.

We were studying Nazi Germany and in the middle of a lecture I was interrupted by the question. How could the German populace claim ignorance of the slaughter of the Jewish people. How could the townspeople, railroad conductors, teachers, doctors, claim they knew nothing about concentration camps and human carnage. How can people who were neighbors and maybe even friends of the Jewish citizen say they weren’t there when it happened. it was a good question. I didn’t know the answer.

In as such as there were several months still to go in the school year and I was already at World War II, I decided to take a week and explore the question.

[Hmm (the rest of the site seems interesting… [not necessarily in a good way]), is it real?] I’m tending to give it credence. It’s certainly completely plausible on the psychological/sociological level (just flip on the news, if you don’t believe that)… Still, it would be nice to track down some of the students I suppose…

  • The original story was written w/ a fictional frame (Mr. Frank vs Mr. Jones), so that can’t really be held against it
  • A recent Stanford grad teaching in Palo Alto, I’d hope he could find some friends on short notice
  • They were in the middle of studying WW2 Germany, I don’t think it’s out of the question having film reels on hand

Related: The Stanford Prison Experiment

Posted on by lhl

So, this company called Portelligent takes aparts devices and creates detailed (80pg) reports, which include full components lists/BOM, measurements, etc. Reports are about $2K a pop. I wonder if could make sense for an open-hardware type project for a communicator device?

Posted on by lhl

More spirited Danger discussion. Wes has some good links, especially to this EE Times article:

Danger’s Hiptop: ‘Arm’ed and dangerous

The estimated cost of goods sold for the Hiptop is well below $150, suggesting a small net profit given a $200 post-rebate hardware price via T-Mobile. But it remains to be seen whether a device like the Sidekick-aimed at a youth market but service-priced for adults-hits its target.

I paid $273 (after tax, never got my $50 rebate) for mine. And I still can’t even install my own applications on the device. Weee. Here’s a quote from last June:

“We’re not so arrogant to say that we know what all of the killer applications are going to be in the future, so we want to start with a platform that is sustainable.”

–Andy Rubin, CEO, Danger

Posted on by lhl

Let the humor begin:

Hussein was baffled by the accusation that he possessed WMD. “I can understand your accusation that we violated international law by breaking the terms of surrender, even though that accusation is false. But accusing us of violating natural law by possessing weapons that violate conservation of mass? That just makes you look like an idiot.”

Or for more sobering satire, try The Onion: Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’ (January 18, 2001), Military Promises ‘Huge Numbers’ For Gulf War II: The Vengeance (March 13, 2002)

[the NYTimes has an Op-Ed referencing the first article today.]