Well, guess what?  X3D Fritz defeated Garry Kasparov in game 2 of their match, after they drew game 1.  But Fritz creator Frans Morsch was disappointed about the way his brainchild won.  "You don't want to win this way, after a simple mistake by a great player after a great game."  Chess experts are surprised by the liveliness of the games; apparently Fritz is more "human" than previous strong chess programs.  Garry himself seems pleased in his remarks on game 1...

Remember J. Craig Ventor?  This remarkable scientist lead the team at Celera genomics which helped sequence the human genome.  Now he's leading a group which has synthesized an artificial virus which can reproduce!  Some would say this is playing with fire, and indeed it is; but where would we be without fire?

I'm sure someday there will be "programmers" creating "life" which runs in the "real world", just as we presently create programs which run on computers.  Maybe sooner than you'd think!

This is fascinating; Second Life (which is one of these multiplayer virtual worlds) has announced that it has changed its terms of use "to allow users to retain real world property rights in the virtual world products they produce."  The line between the real world and others keeps getting blurrier...  [ via Cory Doctorow ]

"Hello, World" in various esoteric languages.  I love it.  [ via Jeremy Smith ]
Do you know this one?

++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<
+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.

What language will we use for programming DNA? I bet it won't be XAML :)

Are you an engineer, or perhaps married to one?  Then you may find all about engineers useful.  "If there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the ability to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of everything else in the environment.  This sometimes causes engineers to be pronounced dead prematurely."  [ via BigWig ]

Medscape reports Paperless, Wireless, and Almost no Typing; is this a killer app for Tablet PCs?  Now if they could just increase the screen resolution to make them useful for virtual microscopy!

So I got it to work; streaming MP3s via Shoutcast to my Treo 600.  This is definitely in the "bear dancing" category.  (It is cool that it works at all, but it doesn't work well.  Actually I think a $5 transistor radio from 1965 works better.  But this is progress, you know, in 1965 there were no cell phones, and no PDAs!)

And now we get news that MobiTV will be offering TV over the Sprint network.  More dancing bears?  Probably.  But Russell Beattie is so excited he thinks we'll need Tivo on our Treos!  [ via Matt Haughey ]

CNet reports CNet has bought MP3.com.  This is practically a yawn.