Just in time for Halloween, the shifted librarian has some links about Nosferatu and which was almost lost to copyright law.
Also just in time for halloween, Apple haunted hard drive icons
The blog of death
OS X delivers treats and tricks A few CNET articles on Panther glitches, OS X refunds and security.
Higher Fidelity MP3 Vs. MP3Pro "The rule of thumb, according to MP3Pro's marketing mavens, is that an MP3Pro file encoded at 64 kilobits per second will sound identical to an MP3 at 128 kbps."
Just because it rhymes with KIPlog - bIPlog Berkeley intellectual property weblog. Somebody should start a list of blogs that ryhme.
diveintoOSX A Wiki "repository of information for Mac OS X and OS X Server administrators".
Why the Web will look better in Safari 1.1 "Without compromising the structural markup or the accessibility they now can create with a simple line of CSS code what until then was only possible with Photoshop crafted images."
Lots of new stuff I need to read at A List Apart's new sparkly site, including Starting a Business: Advice from the Trenches
Size Matters Effects of the physical size of digicam sensors on performance.
Enormous X-ray solar flare seen by SOHO "The third most powerful solar X-ray flare on record, a remarkable X17.2 category explosion, erupted from sunspot 10486 on Tuesday, 28 October 2003." There's a short list of other links at that site.
The Great Storm: Solar Tempest of 1859 Revealed
Exoctic Entomology "Provided for your delight are a small number of the world's butterflies and moths, taken from Dru Drury's three-volume monograph entitled Illustrations of Exotic Entomology."
The Elusive Butterfly The word for "butterfly" is different in every European language, including those most closely related, such as Spanish and Portuguese.
Beetle Science " 'We live in the age of beetles,' claims a group of scientists devoted to the study of this diverse and abundant insect order." Some amazing carbon dust illustrations, 3D images of beetles and a nice illustration of the relative abundances of various life forms.
ICANN tells Verisign to drop Sitefinder, or else. "Given the magnitude of the issues that have been raised, and their potential impact on the security and stability of the Internet, the DNS and the .com and .net top level domains, VeriSign must suspend the changes to the .com and .net top-level domains introduced on 15 September 2003 by 6:00 PM PDT on 4 October 2003. Failure to comply with this demand by that time will leave ICANN with no choice but to seek promptly to enforce VeriSign's contractual obligations."
Here's a good synopsis of Why Verisign's Wildcard DNS is a Bad Idea
The more complex problems are outlined and linked here at: Verisign Corrupts DNS; Abuses its Trusted Status
Fortunately, there are Countermeasures
A great explanation of how many blocks are in a mile in Chicago "A standard city block in Chicago has 100 potential address numbers. Following the grid system, then, one mile equals 800 numbers"
How to sharpen a photo correctly - (Almost) Everything You Wanted to Know about Sharpening in Photoshop but Were Afraid to Ask
Need to call someone overseas and want to know if its dark or cloudy first? See the World Sunlight Map A rectangular projection of the Earth showing current sunlight and cloud cover. Still not impressed by this combination of global data? Then try Weather as a blog, which adds realtime updating of weblog postings to the map.
The A to Z of BMW Think you know what BMW stands for?
The American Philosophical Society has some very interesting online exhibits including Southern Nature, Scientific Views of the Colonial South. Why is this in the useful knowledge category? Because the APS's goal is all about "promoting useful knowledge," "Franklin's influence and the needs of American settlements led the Society in its early days to pursue equally 'all philosophical Experiments that let Light into the Nature of Things, tend to increase the Power of Man over Matter, and multiply the Conveniencies or Pleasures of Life.' " In other words - knowledge is power.