Ken Newquist's blog

The net's a big place. Watson helps make it smaller. Produced by a California-based company called Karelia, Waston is a sort of specialized search engine for the Mac OS X operating system that offers 16 tools designed to provide a simpler, more productive interface for the immense treasure trove (and accompanying wasteland) that is the Internet.

Nuketown's new search engine gives folks the ability to search through all of the ol'thermonuclear burg's sections.

iDisk is Apple's net-based disk drive that's mountable to any Mac, and accessible from any computer running Windows 98 or better or Unix. And it rules.

Does the fact that RPG gamers are getting older spell certain doom for the hobby? I don't think so.

I'm disgusted. Pissed off. Angry. Why? Because of an e-mail I received this week alleging that while American car companies have donated millions of dollars in money and equipment to disaster relief to the vicitims of the 9/11 atrocities, foreign companies have failed to back up their sympathetic words with donations. It's simply not true.

During the week of 9/11/2001 I wrote an editorial about the gas spikes taking place in a few towns in the Mid-West. Panicked individuals, shaken by the attacks, were swarming the gas stations for fuel. Gas station owners responded by raising the prices. My point was that this action -- usually called profiteering -- was not immoral, and indeed, was an example of what was, is and hopefully will always be right with America.

A controversial idea, at least in this day and age. I expected some sort of response and I got one, from Mr. Daniel Bishop. (Read the letter). As for my thoughts on his letter...

An overview of my recent roadtrip around the western American states of Idaho, Wyoming and Utah with my trusty Apple iBook

For some reason last month several readers responded to an editorial I wrote this time last year called "Wake Up And Smell The Future!" One asked if my demands for a high-tech future was a little too materialistic -- focused too much on gizmos, and not enough on the Big Issues, like eliminating pollution, global diseases, and poverty.

I figure a little elaboration is in order.

First, perhaps the scope of what I'm talking about is not apparent in the first editorial. I'm not arguing that we return to space to visit -- I'm talking about going there to stay. Not just weekend getaways to the Moon, but exploring, discovering and exploiting the resources we find there and throughout the solar system.

An update about Nuketown's "no snail mail" policy for fiction and non-fiction submissions.

I've been using Mac OS X for about three months straight now, long enough to have experienced the extremes of Apple's next generation operating system. I'm running the 10.1 release on my dual USB iBook (the second generation, white-colored low-end Apple Macs) -- it has a 500 mhtz G3 processor and 384 meg of RAM. What follows is a look at what I like -- and don't like -- about the new OS.