Today's Interesting Links

Wired, new and vastly improved Lego Mindstorms ($249--gah!). The new software is from National Instruments, makers of LabView--should be worth seeing, since LabView is a really cool visual programming language for scientific instruments.

The ruling that kicked so-called intelligent design's sorry ass out of Dover, Pennsylvania, in all its PDF glory. Go Judge Jones!

Exceedingly profane and obscene, but hilarious: The Pirate Bay, a Swedish piracy site, responds to a letter from DreamWorks about copyright infringement. Their legal theory: Their movie and other ripoffs are not illegal in Sweden.

Ocean Thermal Gradient energy conversion is still ticking. No comment in this article about the environmental consequences of pumping heat into the ocean deeps in order to generate power, but they do link here, which explores the consquences in fairly alarming fashion.

Go Badgers! Lead the way! Wisconsin Technology Network describes here a new bill (passed 91-4 and 29-2!) that will require touch-screen voting machines to (a) open their source to the public and (b) provide an immediate paper record to the voter. (PDF of the bill's language)


New item on a hybrid blimp/airplane heavy-lifter project; they've built a 2-person prototype, and they (Ohio Airships) are planning a version almost 1,000 feet long!