East of the Sun, West of the Moon

I couldn’t resist. The more people see this, the better.

How to build your own Sputnik:

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you could build one in a container smaller than a matchbox, weighing about as much as a wristwatch. The components, including a transmitter, battery and the sensors you’d need would probably cost less than £50,” he says.

That’s progress.

Stellarium:

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

Looks pretty cool!

Comcast traffic blocking: even more apps, groupware clients affected:

So far, Comcast has been extremely tight-lipped about what’s going on here. The only thing Comcast will admit to is using “the latest technologies to manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers.” From the look of things, that quality experience doesn’t extend to BitTorrent, Gnutella, and Lotus Notes—and we wouldn’t be surprised to see more applications added to that list.

What was that about net neutrality again? Ugh.

The Evolution of Yahoo! 360:

On Yahoo!’s Q3 Earnings call today, it was announced that we intend to transition Yahoo! 360 to a more integrated Yahoo! experience in early 2008. I want to provide additional information on this news and assure you that we will minimize any disruption to you and our valued Yahoo! 360 community. I also want to assure you that you can still use all the features of Yahoo! 360 until this transition takes place in early 2008.

Translation: We’re shutting down Y!360. This was posted there a week ago and only today I hear about it through TechCrunch. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, did it really happen? Or something like that.

Verizon Wireless: If you don’t opt-out, we get to share your CPNI call data:

Verizon Wireless has been contacting its customers via mail to inform them of their intent to share CPNI [Customer Proprietary Network Information] data with “our affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries.” The company says that customers who do not want their CPNI data shared need to call 1-800-333-9956 to “opt-out.” Upon dialing the opt-out number, Verizon customers will be prompted for their phone number, billing ZIP code, and last four digits of their Social Security Numbers (in the case of businesses, their Employer ID numbers).

Whatever happened to opt-in? Anyway, if you’re with Verizon Wireless I recommend you do this.

Cold weather really does spread flu:

At room temperature, they found flu transmission peaks at low relative humidity (20-35%) and again at 65%. It spread less well at around 50% humidity, and not at all over 80%. This parallels the stability of flu virus in aerosol droplets at different humidities, and also the droplets’ ability to remain airborne. At over 80% humidity, droplets containing flu virus themselves fall out of the air.

The effect also happened too quickly to be due to dry air damaging nasal tissue so that it is not as effective a barrier to viruses, which has been suggested as a factor in humans.

But temperature trumped humidity: at 5 °C animals caught flu at humidities that stopped the virus when it was warmer, possibly because sick animals’ noses shed virus two days longer at cooler temperatures.

Record labels to ditch CD singles for USB flash drives:

Universal told The Times this week that by the end of this month it will release USB singles holding several songs, videos and multimedia content. However, it’ll charge around £5 (€7/$10) per stick – around £2 more than CD singles currently cost.

Read the comments for added fun.

US lawmakers’ apology to Canadian:

Members of Congress have apologised to a Canadian who was seized in New York in 2002 by US officials and sent to Syria, where he says he was tortured.

But then… that’s apparently all they did, while Canada (which also apologized, although I’m not sure what they did wrong, given that the guy was grabbed at New York’s JFK) has offered him $10M (Canadian dollars, which is $10.2M US dollars at the moment, ahem).

Yesterday Apple finally announced when the next version of OS X (10.5, also known as Leopard) will be released, Friday October 26, and within an hour of finding out I’d pre-ordered a so-called family-pack (since we have 4 machines running OS X in the house). Nothing stops anyone from installing the single user version on multiple machines, Apple didn’t put checks in their code to stop you from that as far as I know (and have noticed, ahem), but I guess I wanted to do The Right Thing ™

When the previous version came out I waited much longer with the switch, I was holding out on 10.3.9 while Apple was already at 10.4.6, but this time I’m eager to try out things like the built-in backup software, proper support for the iPhone Notes and various other of the 300 new features (obviously not all of them as exciting as that). I’m also curious to try out the improved Parental Controls on the family Mac and hope the Guest Log-In Accounts will be useful for the occasional visitor (right now I have an account that’s locked down using parental controls for that). Browsing through that list I also notice that Terminal finally has tabs! Not that I expect to be convinced to give up my iTerm just yet.

On a related note: Apple announced that it will have an actual iPhone (and iPod Touch, or iTouch as I see it being called) SDK in February 2008. Were they just waiting to see how easily hackers would break through their defenses first, or are they really not quite ready? Having seen the things that developers created without an SDK, I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ll come up with with one.

Counting down now, 9 more days until Leopard…

A little bit of everything.

Amp’d Mobile’s Sordid Remains:

As Hamilton was cleaning out the desks and filing cabinets, he came across some of those excesses in the form of marketing schwag—like condoms stamped with the unfortunate tagline, “Try not to die.” Little did the Amp’d marketing genius who came up with that line know that the expiration dates on the condoms would outlast the company.

Windows Update Brings Down Newscast:

A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania television station was forced to broadcast its noon newscast from its parking lot on Wednesday because this month’s Windows update wasn’t installed in time. The “major meltdown” occurred during a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate Channel 11’s new facility, attended by executives from Cox Broadcasting, the station’s parent company.

China joins UN censure of Burmese regime:

China turned against the Burmese government last night and supported a UN security council statement rebuking the military regime for its suppression of peaceful protests, and demanding the release of all political prisoners.

Happy birthday Pär! I promise to catch up with you in about 2 months, as usual.

Case of vodka used to treat poisoned tourist:

Australian doctors used a case of vodka to treat an Italian tourist who poisoned himself with a highly toxic substance found in anti-freeze.

The man was unconscious on arrival at Mackay Base Hospital in Queensland and doctors immediately started treating him with pharmaceutical-grade alcohol, which works as an antidote to the poison.

But the hospital’s alcohol supplies were soon exhausted and staff were forced to buy a case of vodka, which they administered through a drip in his nose.

I Love Mars, and I Vote:

Carberry is the political director of the Mars Society, a nonprofit group that pushes relentlessly for human exploration and settlement of the red planet. He’s the point man for Operation President 2008, in which Mars Society members lie in wait for presidential candidates at campaign stops in the early primary states, then leap out to pop the question: As president, would you send a man to Mars?

Kwik-Fit sued over staff radios:

A car repair firm has been taken to court accused of infringing musical copyright because its employees listen to radios at work.

His silence mistaken, deaf man attacked:

The cashier tried to speak to him but got angry when Goodnight didn’t respond, Goodnight told police. The cashier threw Goodnight’s change at him, scattering it on the floor.

As Goodnight picked it up, the cashier hit him in the side of the head with the crowbar, Goodnight said.

The Inflation Calculator may seem useful but mostly to fuel bogus arguments, I think. After all, your $200 CD player from 1990 didn’t cost $313 in 2006, did it?

Duty Cycle Calculator is a slightly different calculator, one that makes it easier to estimate how much it costs you to leave the television on, leave light bulbs on over night.

Apparently the fans made an impression:

To the Fans of Jericho:

Wow!

Over the past few weeks you have put forth an impressive and probably unprecedented display of passion in support of a prime time television series. You got our attention; your emails and collective voice have been heard.

As a result, CBS has ordered seven episodes of “Jericho” for mid-season next year. In success, there is the potential for more. But, for there to be more “Jericho,” we will need more viewers.

<…>

On behalf of everyone at CBS, thank you for expressing your support of “Jericho” in such an extraordinary manner. Your protest was creative, sustained and very thoughtful and respectful in tone. You made a difference.

Sincerely,

Nina Tassler

President, CBS Entertainment

<…>

P.S. Please stop sending us nuts

Excellent! Now, please CBS, be sure to include in your count the people that watch it online, on TiVo, or that buy episodes on iTunes?

In the it’s a small world category of events, I had ordered a few more bags of oriental mix and when they arrived, I found a free sample of gigundamundo yogurt raisins (that are a hit with everyone here, oh dear), which prompted me to go back to the website to at the details and price, and such.

That’s when I noticed the NUTS for Jericho section on their front page, with the subtitle NUTS! Save Jericho! Jericho fans unite!. Eh. What? Since when does Jericho need saving, I thought they were doing alright?!

Apparently Jericho was canceled about two weeks ago, and because I have other things to do than watch a CBS show about its fall line-up or so, I hadn’t heard or read about it yet. CBS’s excuse appears to be that the ratings dropped. Big shocking surprise:

The ratings were down 25% following the nearly three-month hiatus and subsequent return opposite American Idol.[7] During its one season run, it ranked 48th, with an average of 9.5 million viewers in the United States.

Yeah, I guess nearly 10 million viewers just isn’t enough, these days. Idiots.

Now the fans have taken to sending bags and bags of nuts to CBS executives in NY and LA, a reference to the last aired episode, where Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) calls an offer of surrender “nuts”. Is it going to work? Who knows. But the NutsOnline folks initially just happened to be surprised by the unusual amount and target of bags and bags of nuts being ordered, then stepped in to help the fans pool their resources, saving a bunch on shipping that way.

In the history of television these actions don’t often work, but I’ll cross my fingers that somehow, somewhere, the fans of the series (myself included) can get something better than the collection of cliffhangers that the producers gave us, because they weren’t expecting this cancellation either!

Nuts!

• This doesn’t sound so good. Vonage admits it can’t avoid Verizon patents:
  

  Vonage has admitted that it has no technical work-around to avoid infringing Verizon’s patents on key VoIP techniques, putting the future of the company, and other VoIP providers in the US, in doubt.

  The article suggests that Skype might not be affected, but I can’t imagine that Skype, owned by eBay, does not run anything on servers located in the US? Time will tell.

• US teen jailed for school’s daylight-saving cock-up:
  

  Fifteen-year-old Cody Webb, of Greensburg, “called a school district hot line to listen to a recorded message about school delays at 3:12am EDT on 11 March”, his mobile phone records later revealed. The next morning, school officials discovered said bomb threat logged at 3:17am.
  <…>
  In fact, because the school had not reset the clock on the hot line, which continued to show Eastern Standard Time, officials and police failed to spot that the bomb threat had actually come in at 4:17am - more than an hour after Webb’s innocent call.

  Those who can’t (think logically), teach? Ahem.

• Chimpanzees ‘more evolved’ than humans.:
  

  Zhang’s team found that 233 chimp genes, compared with only 154 human ones, have been changed by selection since chimps and humans split from their common ancestor about 6 million years ago.