Science is all about making proposals that can be tested (especially after Karl Popper's formulation of the Falsifiability Criterion), and then undergoing the experience of having that proposal rejected.  This is the essence of any successful process -- not that it eliminates errors altogether, but rather that it is able to make corrections despite these errors so that the target need never shift.

Professor Alain Connes recently gave his opinion of Xin-Jing Li's proof for the Riemann Hypothesis -- a proof which relies in part on Professor Connes' work ...

Nancy Davolio was a fictitious employee in the Microsoft Access 97 Northwind sample database. Many office workers became smitten with her furtive smile and stylish hair, and while she continued to exist as an employee in later releases of the Northwind database, her employee photo changed, leading many to suspect that something untoward had happened to the real Nancy. As most people know, "Nancy Davolio" is an anagram for "A Navy Cod Loin" ...

Ajax, the fleet son of Oileus, commanded the Locrians. He was not so great, nor nearly so great, as Ajax the son of Telamon. He was a little man, and his breastplate was made of linen, but in use of the spear he excelled all the Hellenes and the Achaeans. --The Iliad

Ajax son of Oileus is traditionally called Ajax the Lesser, while Ajax Telamon's son is Ajax the Greater.  The Trojan War  is often portrayed as a battle between the national heroes of two great armies, Hector on one side, and Achilles on the other.  What makes the arraying of the sides peculiar is that, in fact, the Achaeans have two heroes that can defeat the war chief of the Trojans.  Both Achilles and Ajax the Greater are superior warriors to Hector.  This feature was actually a giveaway to many classicists back in 1959 that the newly released western Warlock was based on The Iliad.

Two years ago Microsoft began a campaign to carve out a niche in the Ajax world...

Joe DeCarlo, a colleague from my Turner Broadcasting days, was recently awarded the MCA.  That is, he is now a Microsoft Certified Architect.  Kirk Evans posted an interview with him about the program here.  It is a difficult program to get into, and requires a recommendation from at least one MCA, as well as vetting by other MCA's.  They are a rather elite circle of professionals with a strong interest in maintaining the high standards of excellence of their self-selecting club.   Hats off to Joe for making it.

While articulating what an architect's specific role in a company actually is can be difficult -- which is one of the reasons Microsoft began this program -- the outlines are fairly simple.  The architect is there to make sure that the contractors don't screw you when you need some work done on your house, or when you need a new enterprise application built for your company.  Anything beyond that, like making sure the roof doesn't fall in once you start running a million transactions a day through your new edifice, is gravy.

Microsoft has a technology called Media Center Extender that basically allows you to use your XBOX 360 as a media center.  All that's required is that you have a computer connected to your XBOX over a network with the Media Center software installed (it comes standard with Vista Premier) and turned on.  The XBOX can then be used to play movies and music files located on your harddrive.

I haven't looked at this much until recently, when I found out about vmcNetFlix.  vmcNetFlix is one of those great ideas.  The developer saw that NetFlix was allowing subscribers to download movies to their desktops, and that Microsoft was allowing people to stream movies to their TV's through an XBOX, and he put in the final pieces to connect all of this together.  vmcNetFlix has its issues at times, but hey, it's one guy providing a solution on his own time and it's free.

Before I could get any of this working, however, I had to get my very sweet HP entertainment laptop to talk to my XBOX, and kept running into the same issues with the XBOX complaining that it could not connect the media center extender to my laptop, despite my repeated attempts to reboot both systems and clear out caches and certificates and blowing on both ends of my ethernet cable for no particular reason except that some guy on some newsgroup told me to.

Finally, based on another internet tip, I uninstalled the nice biometric software that came with my laptop and everything started working.  For whatever reason, every piece of biometric software, which allows you to scan in your fingerprint to identify yourself to the operating system rather than type in a password, interferes with Media Center.  I was using DigitalPersona, but it appears that the problem is not unique to them.

So now the fingerprint scanner on my laptop doesn't do anything.  This is because it turned out to be a technological bottleneck.  On the other hand, I can now stream movies, including BlueRay movies, to my HD TV anytime I want using free technology built in someone's basement that removes bottlenecks.  Is it worth it?

Well, yes. Not only can I watch any episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th century whenever I want, but I've also got most of the Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder catalogs ready for instant streaming.  That's hot.  That's Erin Grey hot.