xpda: April 2009

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Model Rocket

If you happen to wandering around Price, Maryland next Saturday, stop in at Higgs Farm and you might be able to see a model rocket launch. This model is 1,600 lbs and 36 feet tall. It will go 3,000 to 4,000 feet, hopefully up.

http://www.rocketryplanet.com/.../2829/38/1/0/

JPG and Raw Photos

Most digital photo files are stored in .jpg format, also called .jpeg. It stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, which is not important, but jpg is the most commonly used image file format on this end of the universe.

Jpg files are compressed, which makes them convenient to store and transmit. A jpg photo from a digital camera may be 8 or 10 times smaller than it would be if it were uncompressed.

Jpg compression is lossy compression. That means that some of the color and clarity of a photo is lost whenever it is saved. How much? It depends on the amount of compression used when the file is saved. The smaller the file, the lower the quality.

I ran a few tests with this 3648x2736 picture. The small rectangle is the area I zoomed in on in the following examples. These thumbnail images link to .png files, which have lossless compression, so you can see it exactly how it was in the camera.

Here's the sample from the original file from the camera. It was 4,757 KB in size, taken with the highest quality option on the camera, a jpg compression value of 2.

One interesting thing in this photo is the lighter green line against the left edge of the red petals. This was added by the internal camera software as part of the "normal" level of sharpening.

Saving at a compression value of 15 (range: 2-255) shows no visible change, but the size on the hard drive went down to 2,567 KB.

These photos saved with a compression of 100, 200, and 255 show some picture quality degradation. The sizes on the hard drive is down to 450 KB, 345 KB, and 316 KB.

Why not use jpg compression 15 all the time for all photos? It's usually not a problem, but each time you save and reload a photo, you lose just a little bit of quality. You can load a photo as much as you want, of course, but if you save, load, save, load, etc., the error compounds, like interest on investments once did.

Here is a photo I took in Panama with my baby daughter Melinda. This is not Melinda. Melinda doesn't dress that well.

Using jpg compression of 15, I saved and reloaded this file 50 times...

and 100 times:

You can see some color loss and some square pixelation in the results.

What if you don't want any loss of quality? A lot of cameras can save in Raw format in addition to jpg. Back in the stone age of digital imaging, raw images contained pixels and nothing else. Today, most camera manufacturers refer to their own proprietary formats with lossless or nearly lossless compression as the raw image format. Nikon's raw format uses lossy compression, but it apparently loses very little.

In addition to the better photo quality, the raw images are generally not processed to add things like contrast, sharpness, or saturation.

Raw image files are about 7 to 10 times larger than the highest quality jpg files available on a digital camera. This makes it slower for the camera to save to your flash card, and slower to copy onto your computer.

How much better are they? Here are some examples from a Panasonic FZ-50. (They're saved as .png files here, but they came from .jpg file and .raw files.) This is the photo. The samples are taken from near the bottom center.

First, a .jpg file using the "normal" settings for enhancing the contrast, sharpness, and saturation. I zoomed this in 2x before saving it, so each pixel from the photo will take up 4 pixels on your screen now (after you double click on the photo below). You can see some irregularities along the edges of the blue and the black. At the bottom is a ruler with 1/16" marks. I took these indoors without a flash, and I took a picture of printed material. Both of those should make it easier to see jpg artifacts and other quality flaws.

I changed the camera settings to low sharpness, contrast, and saturation adjustments. The noise level was already on low, the minimum. You can see that this sample is a little clearer, especially if you look at the letter o's.

The raw image is quite a bit brighter (or the .jpg images are darker?). This is caused by some weirdness in the camera and shouldn't normally happen. The clarity is better in the raw photo, which does normally happen. The colors are also supposed to be more "true," but I can't really tell. You can see a little bit of random noise on white part -- the small colored specs. I guess the noise reduction gets rid of this in jpg images at the cost of a little clarity. You would never see this noise at a normal size.

What's the result? These variations are almost imperceptible when you look at the entire photo (except for the brightness difference in the raw image, which shouldn't really be there.)

I use jpg, highest quality, and lowest possible settings for adjustments such as sharpening, contrast, saturation, and noise reduction. I can always make those changes on the computer if I want them, but I can't undo them if the camera did it.

If you plan to sell your photos for publication, publishers might prefer raw images, or a tiff or png derivation. If you plan to print your own photos or put them on the web, jpg format should be fine.

What about 35mm vs. point and shoot? What's the best camera to get? That changes almost daily. A very informative web site with unbiased, detailed reviews and lots of sample photos is http://dpreview.com. I always spend some time there before I buy a camera. And my FZ50 is almost three years old -- maybe it's time to go read some reviews.

Car Tracking

I have just about decided against going on a nationwide bank-robbing spree, primarily because I don't like to wait in line. But if I did, the FBI might be tracking my car. How? There are several interesting ways.

A method commonly used in novels and movies is cell phone triangulation. Police and other law enforcement people can find out from a cell phone company which cell towers a phone is communicating with, and using that information they can get a rough idea of the phone's location.

A variation on this theme is to use the GPS receiver that is embedded in the phone for 911. The police can get a phone's precise location from the cell phone company. I believe they can also lock a phone into "emergency mode" so it continues transmitting its location even after it's turned off. So after you rob a bank, you might want to toss your cell phone onto a passing freight train or remove the battery.

A third way to track a cell phone is a little more original, and the police don't have to bother with cell phone companies, search warrants, or claim "threat to national security." They use a "triggerfish."

A triggerfish is a device that they place along side a road, temporarily or permanently. It sends a request for acknowledgement to passing cell phones. The cell phones reply with their identification, as they normally do when a cell tower makes the same request. The triggerfish then logs all active cell phones that pass it on the highway.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081116-foia-docs...

Another way to track a car is using the license tag. If you were to place traffic cameras that can recognize tag numbers at most major intersections in the country, then connect them in a large computer network (such as the internet), you could track almost any car whose tag number is not covered with mud.

Some privacy fans consider these techniques a violation of their rights to privacy on public roads, but I think they're all pretty good ideas. I consider cameras that issue speeding tickets quite rude, however.

DNA Database

The FBI is expanding their DNA database to include people who have been arrested but not convicted. Some privacy fans don't like this. It seems to me like a good way to make law enforcement more efficient and accurate. But, like the car tracking, I can see where it could be abused. Hopefully those privacy fans will keep everybody in line. If not, there might be a lawsuit concerning DNA records.

There are now 6.7 million DNA samples in the FBI's database; 6,700,001 if you include O.J. Simpson. In two or three years they expect to be adding 1.2 million new samples per year, about 15 times more than they do now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19DNA.html

The Road to Nowhere

Some politicians had plans to build a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska to the Ketchikan airport. It was not such a big deal, as it cost well under half a billion dollars. $398,000,000, to be exact. Sometime during the last presidential campaign, some of the same politicians decided that it would be a good idea not to build that bridge, and they cancelled the project.

I think it might have been cheaper to move the airport to Ketchikan's island than to build a giant bridge. They might be able to fit it in southwest of Settler's Cove, up toward Connell Lake, or north of Herring Bay. But strangely enough, nobody asked what I thought. That was all right with me because I really don't care whether Ketchikanians (and I, when I visit) take the ferry between the airport and town.

So the infamous bridge to nowhere was cancelled, but the road from the airport to the bridge that isn't wasn't. The road only cost $26,000,000, mere pocket change by today's standards. Since nobody needs to go to a bridge that isn't, and very few, if any, live near that road, it doesn't see a lot of traffic. That's good, because the $26 million wasn't enough for a paved road. They only managed to build 3.2 miles of gravel road with that much money. I think somebody made some profit on on that deal.

http://www.propublica.org/special/map-palin-admin-overs...

But I am happy to report that the $26 million was not wasted. Ketchikan Parks and Recreation is planning a bike race on August 22, tentatively on the road to nowhere. Be there!

http://www.ketchikanrunningclub.org/pages/calendar.html

Cyber Attack!

The headlines read like Chinese hackers broke into computers in the Pentagon and stole complete plans for the F-35 Strike Fighter. I wondered what the military was doing putting stuff like that on a computer connected to the internet. In fact, they weren't.

The facts are that some computers in Turkey and one other unnamed NATO member were accessed, and a bunch of classified material was copied. As far as I can tell, no military computers inside the U.S. were accessed. It seems to me that if all the NATO countries had the design specifications, it couldn't be too long before Russia and China managed to get their hands on a copy.

      http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html

Another popular worry about cyber attacks is that foreign countries will hack into the power grid and turn off the electricity. I suspect people who manage that sort of thing are smart enough isolate computers that switch electrical service from the internet. If not, they will probably learn a valuable lesson before very long.

Either way, worrying about the Chinese turning off my electricity does not take up a lot of my time. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is a lot more likely to have an adverse effect on my lifestyle than anyone in China. It looks like I could be thrown in jail before long for going to an airport to fly my airplane without a Homeland Security ID Badge and FBI background check. I wonder if I'll have to take my shoes off in order to get a badge.

      http://www.aopa.org/advocacy/articles/2009/090490tsa.ht...

      http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_12079380

      http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/region/2009/090416montana.html

UAV

Homeland Security has been flying Predator UAVs along the Mexican border for a while. That program has been so successful in stopping illegal immigration that they're using them along the Canadian border now. They've had some in North Dakota, where they helped out with the Red River flooding this year, and have begun using them out of Alpena Michigan.

Some people don't like this. I'm undecided. I don't like too much surveillance, but a UAV will get out of my way a lot better than one of the tethered blimps they use in Florida.

http://www.freep.com/article/20090401/COL27/90401135/

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are coming to a location near you! I talked to an A-10 pilot a few years ago, and he told me the A-10s and most fighters would be replaced by UAVs in the future. It made sense, but at the time it was hard to see that much change coming.

Now, the Department of Defense official policy is moving in that direction. They've decided to stop production on the F-22 after 187 have been built. UAVs will be used on some of the missions that F-18s, F16s, and F-15s have been used for in the past.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53831

The Predator UAV has been around for a few years. The MQ-9 Reaper is a larger, more powerful version of the Predator, in operation since 2007. The Predator was designed for surveillance, and the Reaper was designed for shooting things. I guess that's why Homeland Security is using Reapers instead of Predators over Detroit. Make sure you get the frequency right when they tell you to contact Cleveland Center. It would be embarrassing to be shot down by a machine.

The MQ-9 is a single-engine turboprop, just like the PC12. Beyond that, there's not much similarity.

The MQ-9 Reapers are available for the low, low price of 4 for $53.5 million, plus a little for inflation, design changes, and cost overruns.

Reaper Specifications:

Wingspan	66 feet
Max Takeoff Weight	10,500 lbs
Range	3,200 nautical miles
Cruise Speed	200 knots
Ceiling	50,000 feet
Payload	3,750 lbs

http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet_print.asp?fsID=6...

Turing Test

Go for the extra points.

Google Machines

Where do your bits go when you do a Google search?

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/04/the-beast-...

Low Power CPUs

Here's an interesting article about a company that makes low power CPUs for handheld devices and small, cheap laptops. These people are abusing Moore's law!

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=...

Google Tax

YouTube had some music videos on its U.K. site. The people who owned the videos said they wanted to be paid each time someone viewed one. That's reasonable. YouTube said they couldn't make money doing that, so the took down the videos. That's reasonable too.

But now, the people are claiming that Google, who owns YouTube, is obligated to host their videos and to pay royalties on them. That makes no sense to me. Why should Google be forced to lose money?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/05/so-now-everything-...

But wait. Maybe I could video myself playing the piano and demand royalties. If I practice, I might be able to do something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b......

Blast Off

Some good Mount Redoubt eruption photos.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/alaskas_mount_...

Save the Cows!

Did you know you can protect your cows from nuclear attack using hay bales?

http://www.archive.org/details/rural_civil_defense_tv_s...

Bogus Numbers and Copyrights

Howard Berman, MPAA, and the RIAA are pushing for new regulations on the internet and DVD players. They are using blatantly false statistics to support their cause.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/rep-how...

One of the common "facts" publicized by the recording industry is that they have lost X billion dollars due to illegal downloads. They estimate the number of downloads, which is a wild guess in itself, and then they multiply that number by the retail price of a CD. There are several things very wrong with this.

Even if this number were correct, which it is not, it would represent lost sales, not lost money. Since record companies do not make 100% profit, their loss is the profit they would have made on the CD sales, NOT the entire retail price of the CDs. Those pesky expenses such as packaging, distribution, store expenses, and taxes make up the majority of the price of a CD.
The recording industry did not lose this money, since they never had it in the first place. They lost potential profits instead.
People who download movies or music illegally would not have bought a copy of everything they downloaded if they couldn't have downloaded it. The recording industry assumes this to be the case when they do their estimates of loss due to piracy. Most people I know who download a lot of movies don't even watch them all. They certainly would never buy a copy of all of them. They just download the files because they are available and they're free.

Some people who download files illegally buy a legitimate copy of a movie or CD if they like what they see. Many people who download files illegally will pass recommendations by word of mouth about music or movies they like, and their friends and acquaintances may buy legitimage copies. Illegal downloads provide some value in free advertising.

Movie theater revenue has been going up over the past two years. CD sales have gone down. Online music purchases have gone way up. The music, TV, and movie markets are changing, largely due to digital content. The music and movie companies are positioning themselves to get the most out of the change, even if it means suing their customers and blocking new technology.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090414/1750504513.shtml

It irritates me enough that I won't even buy a CD anymore. That is, unless I like the music.

Associated Press

I read in an AP article that the Associated Press going to a crack down on "misappropriated" content. That means you aren't supposed to summarize a news article without their permission. Oops. That legal argument is a little weak anyway.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/ap-laun...

AP puts videos on YouTube. They include embed codes so people can embed the videos in their web sites. A small AP affiliated radio station embedded some of the videos in their web site. But AP told the radio station to remove the links from their web site. AP wouldn't say why everybody in the world except the small radio station (who is a paying AP customer) is allowed to link to the AP videos.

http://leftofdial.com/?p=1016

I usually avoid linking to AP stuff in Junkmail because they tend to take it down after a couple of weeks.

Retail Scales

New York Times Headline: "Retail Chains Report Further Drop in Sales in March."

Let's see... Wal-Mart's sales were up. Costco's sales were up. BJ's Wholesale Club sales were up. TJX sales were up. Ross Stores sales were up. Buckle sales were up. Hot Topic sales were up. Aeropostale sales were up.

Several other stores had drops in sales, but the headlines didn't quite tell the whole story.

Threat to National Security

Don't send any teabags politicians, in case your tea is deadly.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_12100982

You should send powdered donuts instead.

Spring Break

It's those derned Reeses and Bachmans again! (My cousins' kids.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBqyccRoCR8

Conficker II

Here is a good, detailed article on the Conficker worm.

http://www.honeynet.org/files/KYE-Conficker.pdf

Marathon

I entered the New York Marathon several years ago, but I haven't finished yet. Maybe I should try the North Pole marathon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7995748.stm

Creative Commons

Some people don't like to worry about copyrights so much, like me, for example. Creative Commons makes it easy for you to share your photos, writings, and etc., with certain strings attached. You can pick and choose any of these four conditions in a Creative Commons License:

Attribution -- The copier agrees to tell where he got the stuff.e got the stuff.
Share Alike -- The copier agrees to share the stuff under identical terms.
Noncommercial -- The copier agrees not to sell the stuff.
No Derivative Works -- The copier agrees not to modify the stuff.

If you don't want any of these restrictions, you can just say your photo or writing or whatever is in the public domain. Then anybody can copy it for any purpose. If, for example, you want to let people copy a photo as long as they put your name with it and share it under the same terms, you can use the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license here:

      http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

How do you use this license? Basically, just post it with your photo to tell people that's the way it is.

Wikimedia Commons is a collection of shareable photos, books, and other copyrightable work. Most of them are shared under a Creative Commons License or are in the public domain. Flickr has a section of photos you can search for under Creative Commons sharing.

The BBS has released a program under Creative Commons licensing called R&D TV. You can download it here:

      http://ftp.kw.bbc.co.uk/backstage/rdtv/

      http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/bbc-launches-...

Oxford University recently released the book Lessons from the Identity Trail, a collection of essays about computer privacy and anonymity.

     http://www.idtrail.org/content/view/799

If you intend to make money selling photos, books, TV programs, etc., then you might want to consider something other than a Creative Commons license. If you think all this is license stuff is not worth the trouble, then you could use the Junkmail approach:  "Copy the heck out of it!"

Tail Strike

If you fly certain airliners and pull up too hard on takeoff, you can hit the tail of the plane on the ground. If you do a good enough job, you can destroy an Airbus A340.

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/1350-full...

Not Lightning

This hole in a plane has been flying around the internet with a caption saying it was caused by lightning thousands of feet in the sky. In fact, it was caused by an electrical fire on the ground.

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/1350-fu...

Spammin'

According to Symantec, the amount of spam sent grew from 119.6 billion messages in 2007 to 349.6 billion in 2008. I got most of it.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_12134686

Improv Everywhere

Improv Everywhere is a group in New York City that collects people and "causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places."

Last year they got 207 people together, went to Grand Central Station, and they all froze at the same time for five minutes.

      http://improveverywhere.com/2008/01/31/frozen-grand-central/

Sixteen of them did a short musical at a mall food court.

      http://improveverywhere.com/2008/03/09/food-court-musical/

Since 2001, Improv Everywhere has done over 80 "missions." On April 1, 2009, which happened to come on April Fools Day this year, Improv Everywhere released a fake video on YouTube of a couple dozen people or so crashing a funeral. Lots of people on YouTube were appropriately offended -- those who forgot what day it was.

The TV station got ahold of the funeral video and broadcast a somewhat derogatory news story on it. The people at the TV station fell for the April Fool joke!

Improv Everywhere couldn't resist, and they added the news footage to their YouTube site. When the TV station learned they were stupid, they contacted YouTube and demand that they remove the news clip, claiming violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1803 (or something like that). YouTube pulled it, without further investigation.

After the news clip was banned from YouTube, it became an overnight hit on the internet. This is called the Streisand effect, and seems to be adhered to more closely thanMoore's Law.

In the news clip, the TV station used Improv Everywhere's video, without permission. Improv Everywhere now has the TV news clip on their web site. I think that's really funny. But I'm easy to amuse.

      http://improveverywhere.com/

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090414/2105504516.shtml

Search and Seizure

One more reason to keep a current backup: FBI Raids!

Core IP Networks provides web and email servers to about 50 companies. Earlier this month, the FBI shut them down and took their computers. As near as I can tell, Core IP Networks had their computers seized by the FBI when one of their customers was operating a scam to steal bandwidth from ATT and Verizon.

Their 50 customers lost their web sites and email for a few days, even though they were not involved with the scam. I think Core IP Networks was not involved either, but they FBI hasn't said that in so many words.

      http://cbs11tv.com/technology/Core.IP.Networks.2.975776.html

Sometime around April Fools Day, the Boston police came to visit a computer science student named Riccardo at Boston College. They took his computer, cell phone, and iPod. They kept them for at least two weeks. Riccardo's roommate had told the police that Riccardo was involved in some computer hacking incidents.

Riccardo supposedly hacked into Boston University's records and changed grades, which is very unlikely, and sent out mass emails which linked to a fake profile of Riccardo's roommate on a gay web site, which is more likely and kind of funny.

      http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10218460-38.html

What do you do when seizing computers gets boring? Seize the whole internet! Anew law, if passed, will allow the President to declare a Cyber Emergency and seize control of any "critical infrastructure information system or network." Of course, that would only happen in the event of an "imminent threat."

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090403/1346154383.shtml

Science and Technology

In their continuing effort to get me to stop watching their channel and keep me off their website, CNN has fired their entire science, technology, and environment news staff. They will now rely on The Onion for their science and technology news.

      http://www.theonion.com/content/scitech

      http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/cnn_cuts_entire_scie...

CNN, to the relief of millions around the world, will be able to continue their in-depth coverage of Susan Boyle's attire.

      http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20274069,00.html

      http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/04/social-medi...

Touring Cuba

In 1962, the Soviet Union built some nuclear missile sites in Cuba. There was some serious fussing between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and that was just about as close as the earth has ever been to a major nuclear war.

Part of the repercussions of the Cuban Missile Crisis was a trade embargo with Cuba, implemented shortly after Pierre Salinger bought 1,200 Cuban cigars for President Kennedy. Cuba, as a Communist ally of the Soviet Union, was considered a threat to the United States. That was pretty accurate, considering that Cuba had been pointing nuclear missiles north.

Today, the most of the Soviet Union is now Russia. Russia is more friendly and open with the U.S. than the Soviet Union was in 1962, despite a few Bear flyovers.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/03/19/us.russia.p...

(I guess CNN hasn't run me completely off yet.)

Cuba's military threat to the U.S. is now somewhere near zero, and has been for years. But for tradition's sake (it must be tradition, there is no other reason) the U.S. keeps the trade embargo with Cuba alive and well. In fact, in 2005-2006 they tightened the rules.

I tried to sail The Minnow to Cuba in 2006. Since I preferred not to have the boat seized by the Coast Guard, I applied officially with the Commerce Department (after going through the State Department, Customs, and some other agencies) for authorization to go to Cuba. Among other things, I had to write (not call or email) to get an application. I was required to type the application on a typewriter. It was a long application, and it used carbon paper duplicates that are hard to correct.

Eventually I completed the application and jumped through some other hoops, only to be rejected. I was spurned by the Commerce Department! They said that they were not allowing any private boats to go to Cuba, even if the people on the boat spent no money. This new rule had been implemented a few months earlier.

Quite a few people go to Cuba now. Cuba is happy to receive visitors. The U.S. prohibits its citizens from visiting Cuba, however, except under special circumstances.

You can go to Cuba for an educational institution, for government business, or on a religious mission. You can fly from the U.S. to Mexico or the Bahamas, then fly to Cuba and vacation, but that is a little illegal. Under no circumstances, however, will the U.S. government allow me to fly my plane or sail my boat to Cuba. The U.S. Coast Guard seizes U.S. boats it finds headed for Cuba. I have flown OVER Cuba before, but the U.S. would not allow me to land.

I think the U.S. government is exhibiting very bad manners in prohibiting my trip to Cuba. I can go to China and spend all the money I want. I can sail my own boat or fly my own plane there. China is a Communist country with a totalitarian government. Why not Cuba? I believe I should have the freedom to visit any place I can get to, on or off earth.

With all this in mind, I was very happy to hear the President say he would improve relations with Cuba. I think they should change the cold-war relationship and abolish the 1962 trade embargo. Cuba is certainly no longer a threat to the United States, except possibly in baseball.

Earmarks

Weren't they going to stop this sort of thing?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

Office 2007 Documents

Microsoft Office 2007 uses some new file formats (xlsx, docx and pptx) that are incompatible with earlier versions. These file formats are xml based.

If you're using an earlier version of Office and someone emails you an Office document that won't open, it's probably because of the new file formats. I use Office 97. It's a lot faster than the newer versions. It opens everything up to but not including Office 2007 documents.

Office 2007 users can save files in older formats, but that's not the default option so it rarely happens.

What to do? Google Docs can read the new Office formats and save them in something more reasonable for the rest of us.

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/20/google-docs-adds-offic...

Google Docs is kind of like a web-based version of Microsoft Office. It saves your documents to Google's hard drive instead of your own, unless you ask for a download. You can access your Google Docs docs from just about any computer on the internet.

Not Torture

There is a lot of talk lately about torture, aggressive interrogation, and other party games. About a half-dozen years ago I mentioned that this would become a big deal.

http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk128/junk128.htm#detainees

There are a lot of politicians who say there is nothing wrong with "aggressive interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding. But none of them has offered to demonstrate this on themselves. That seems odd.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html

Online Magazines

There are a lot of online magazines, but this one looks like a paper magazine. I really like this format, even though most of their fish don't live in Oklahoma.

http://www.simplyfishingmagazine.com/pages/april-may-20...

Pictures of Today!

Last summer Josh, Melinda, and I hiked up Kasatochi Volcano in the Aleutians.

Here are some photos from the volcano:

http://xpda.com/aleutians/kasatochi

Three weeks later, the volcano erupted in a big way. Here is an "after" photo, taken by Jerry Morris on October 23, 2008. The change is unbelievable.

hi-res Kasatochi

A combine ran over a truck...

The tracks:

The birds, west of Pryor on 9th Street:

An Oil Well:

A giant anchor, outside Helena, Oklahoma:

The End

Friday, April 03, 2009

Bob's Junknail, Number 206

Economic Comics

Warning: This section might be boring, so here's a picture that has nothing to do with Economics. Maybe it will alleviate some of the tedium. I met this lady when I was driving down a dirt road in Ecuador. We talked for a while, but she spoke something other than Spanish and I spoke my rough approximation of English, so neither of us understood a word. It was just like home.

CNN Headline:  Banks Must Start Lending. And all along I thought the problem was that they made too many loans too people who didn't repay. If banks are loaning money to X number of people, they generally pick the X people most likely to repay the loans. That's because when a bank makes a bad loan, the bank usually loses money, and businesses should make money, not lose money.

If, all of a sudden, banks start loaning money to twice as many people, then the new loans will be riskier because, on average, the best borrowers have already borrowed. So when Congress yells at banks to make more loans, they're yelling at the banks to take more risk on questionable loans. Isn't that what started all these economic problems in the first place?

The U.S. Government is spending a lot of money it doesn't have. This is not new, although the amount of spending and the deficit are very high. The budget deficit is, in theory, the amount of additional debt the country incurs in a given year. However, politicians like to cheat on the numbers. For example, George Bush always left the cost of the Iraq War out of the budget, listing it as an "emergency." Obama is including that in the 2009 budget.

A good way to measure the federal budget deficit is as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This takes into account the effects of inflation, the economy, and the results of the NCAA basketball tournament.

The 2009 U.S. budget deficit is a little over 12% of the projected GDP. This is the highest it's been since World War II, when it hit 28%, 22%, and 24%. In 1918 and 1919, around the end of the first World War, the U.S. budget deficit was just under 12% and 17%.

      http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_cha...

How does the government borrow money? They issue Treasury securities (bonds, etc.) and sell them at auction. If I buy a 5-year Treasury bond, the government may pay me interest every six months and then will pay principal amount back after five years. This is considered the safest investment on earth, even better than gold, commodities, or Citibank stock (of which I am a proud owner).

Who buys these bonds? I've heard a lot about China financing the U.S. National Debt. In fact, China (government plus private companies) owns more U.S. Treasury securities than any other country, about $522 billion last June, and around twice that if you include other government debt. This is about 1/6 of the total owed by the U.S. to other countries. In January, China had increased its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities to $729 billion, or 11 percent of the total amount outstanding.

      http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/shlptab2.html

The stock market has gone down a lot in the past year or so, but what about the U.S. Economy? The U.S. GDP increased 1.1 percent in 2008, compared to 2.0 percent in 2007. But in the last quarter of 2008, the GDP dropped 1.6 percent (6.3 percent annual rate). Even so, that doesn't seem so bad. Why did the stock market go down by 50%? I can't answer that. I guess it's a combination of downward trend, lower projections, higher budget deficit, higher unemployment, and a little hysteria.

      http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrel...

The U.S. GPD is around $14 trillion, about three times larger than any other country, followed by Japan, China, Germany, the U.K., and France. China's GDP was about $4.2 trillion in 2008.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(...

Unemployment is up, but the constant news about it seems disproportional to the problem. Three states are at their highest unemployment since before 1976 (Georgia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island), but all the other states had higher unemployment in the late 1970's and 1980's. Michigan, the state we hear about most, hit 16.9% unemployment in 1982, compared to 12.0% in February. Oklahoma is at 5.5% unemployment, up from 2.1% in 2001 but down from 9.4% in 1986.

      http://www.bls.gov/web/lauhsthl.htm

If I were going to bet on it, I'd say the current recession is not the end of civilization as we know it. In fact, it's not even the end of Google, Microsoft, or Intel (which some equate to civilization as we know it). People are still living their lives. I still have to wait in line at the Arby's drive-thru. There may be a lower demand for houses, cars, airplanes, and boats, but I'm pretty sure there will still be plenty of houses, cars, airplanes, and boats around in the future.

Be Original!

It is rewarding and effective to use novel phrases in the English language. I believe this is also true of the Georgian language, but I'm not certain so I'll stick with English for the moment.

Take, for example, "worm brained gooberhead." You will not find this term anywhere else on the entire internet (as of today). It works quite well as a replacement for the ubiquitous profane term of maternal incest, and clearly outshines any reference to a canine of the female gender.

Furthermore, "worm brained gooberhead," merely combining the characteristics of a worm, a peanut, and a brain with its container, is not considered foul language. It is equally useful in communicating with people, animals, and inanimate objects, and can be used in the presence children without fear of being labeled a sex offender for life. I find this term particularly useful when referring to my children or conversing with telephone solicitors.

If everybody would come up with eloquent terms of endearment such as this, the world would be a much more interesting and entertaining place.

Fun in Financial America

Merrill Lynch former boss John paid $1.2 million to decorate his office last year. I may be a bit uncultured, but I can not imagine a time when I would ever consider spending $1.2 million dollars to decorate an office. Even if the money is not my own.

John, the brilliant executive, was fired when his failing company was bought by Bank of America. Maybe he should have spent less time decorating.

      http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid...

Banks are conservative institutions, with enough experience, knowledge, and business savvy to avoid wasting money on things like $1.2 office redecorations. Well, sort of. Citibank is now planning to spend $10 million on new offices for their boss Vikram and his assistants.

      http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive...

When asked about the lavish offices, Citibank said, "No problem!  The government just gave us 4,500 times that much. $10 million is nothing." (I might have paraphrased that quote.)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

An airliner from Mexico City took off last January for Seattle. When they neared Seattle, the airport was foggy. They couldn't land or even attempt an approach because of low visibility. So they landed at an alternate airport, Portland, Oregon. It was the closest international airport they could land at.

In Portland, the plane waited on the ground for four hours. The police threatened to arrest anybody trying to get off. U.S. Customs would not process the passengers, because they "didn't have enough customs agents." Finally, the plane returned to Mexico City with all the passengers.

In fact, there were not enough customs agents at the airport at that time. But why didn't they call some? U.S. Customs and Border Protection has 56,000 employees and a budget over $10,000,000,000 per year. I'm surprised they couldn't find anybody to clear that airplane into the U.S. Maybe they were redecorating.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/01/22/us.mexico.flight/i...

Elementary Geography

Where are these places? There are some new countries since I took fourth grade Geography.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/just_fun/games/mapgame.html

Conficker

What is a Conficker and where can you find one? Conficker is a relatively new computer virus / worm. Hopefully you'll have to look somewhere other than your own computer to find one. An easy way to check is to visit http://microsoft.com. If you can get there (or to most virus protection sites), then Conficker is not on your computer.

The reason Conficker has been in the news is that the date April 1, 2009 is hard-coded in the program, spawning a lot of news articles telling people to "be afraid!"

In addition to being afraid of your computer dying, you should be afraid that the duct tape holding the plastic sheets over your windows and doors will leak when terrorists release poison gas. You should be afraid that you'll run out of tuna and powdered milk under your bed. And you should worry about the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow. But I digress.

April Fool's day came, and my computer did not spontaneously combust at 4:03 a.m. Even if your computer was nice enough to host a copy of Conficker, it probably didn't melt down into a lump of molten silicon. This is good because silicon melts at around 1414°C.

If we'd think just a little bit, we'd figure out that the most likely reason for April 1 to be coded in a worm / virus / trojan / malware is indicated by the date -- it's a joke!  If the Conficker people really wanted to do some damage, they would do it when the rest of us were not expecting it so it would be more effective.

For example, in January Conficker version B installed itself on over a million computers in less than 10 days. They didn't announce the date because it would not have been possible to spread in such unprecedented numbers if they had. Today, there are about 10 million copies of Conficker residing on generous hard drives around the world.

      http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090116-conficker...

Conficker initially spreads using a bug in the Windows Remote Procedure Call function -- the bug that should have been resolved when you installed the Windows Security Patch from last October. You did update Windows since then, didn't you?

Conficker scans the internet looking for computers without that fix. When it finds one, it installs itself and uses a fake Windows patch to make it look like the computer is secure. Then it puts itself on all shared drives it has access to, and all removable writeable drives. Then, it tries to login to all the computers on the local network using a bunch of common usernames and passwords.

This site has a list of the passwords it checks, under the Analysis tab. It also has an interesting writeup of how Conficker works:

      http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Entry.aspx?Nam...

After Conficker is on a computer, it can do essentially anything it is told buy the people behind Conficker. Who are they? I'm not sure, but Microsoft has offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to their arrest and conviction.

      http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/feb09/02-...

Every day or so, each copy of Conficker (the latest version, anyway) generates about 50,000 pseudo-random domain names and tries to download a file from 500 of them. The people in charge of Conficker can register one of these domains and put a payload file there that will then be downloaded to some of the 10,000,000 copies of Conficker that currently reside on unsuspecting computers. The payload file will then be passed to other Conficker computers on the local network.

The payload file is a program to run on these computers. It can do anything a program can do -- send spam, conduct a DoS attack, collect passwords, record keystrokes and forward them to the former CEO of General Motors, or format the hard drive.

Microsoft and some other companies have taken unprecedented steps to combat Conficker. I think this is because it's so successful in infiltrating corporate networks it could make Windows look bad. Or it already has.

      https://forums2.symantec.com/t5/Malicious-Code/Coalitio...

Maybe those companies could stop Spam while they're at it.

How do you keep from acquiring Conficker and similar programs? Update Windows regularly. A firewall and/or antivirus software can help. AVG is a good free antivirus program. And don't click on executable email attachments!!!!

I use Zone Alarm firewall. I like it because, in addition to limiting incoming internet traffic, it tells me when a program on my computer tries to access the internet. Then I can prevent it if I want to.

A lot of applications try to check for updates whenever the computer boots or the application runs, and some access the internet periodically for no apparent reason. This can really slow things down if I'm on a slow connection such as a dialup, satphone, or semiphore.

Spamming

Who sends out all this spam, anyway? Millions of people who host computer viruses. Some viruses install remote-control spamming software. Some people at Berkeley (Chris, Christian, Kirill, Brandon, Geoffrey, Vern, and Stefen) managed to get control of about 1.5 percent of the Storm Botnet. They intercepted a few hundred million spam emails and inserted some fake web sites and other information for analysis.

The paper they wrote is really interesting. It explains just how the botnet operates, including the command and control, redundant redundancy, and getting a new "worker" bot up and running. In the three examples they tested, they recorded results that are not overly surprising, except that there are still a few idiots around who will give up their credit card info to someone spamming pharmaceuticals. At least nobody falls for the Nigerian 409 scams any more. Or do they?

      http://www.katu.com/news/34292654.html

Well, at least a bank could never be suckered into a Nigerian scam. Or could it? Surely not Citibank?

      http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/02/online-thi...

The economics of the results imply that the spammers operate most of the sites advertised in the spam. You probably won't get rich spamming people unless you control the botnet, and even then the profit margins might be a little thin by U.S. standards.

Here's the paper on spam:

      2008-ccs-spamalytics.pdf

It seems to me that it should be easy to shut down most spam -- just shut down the people advertising in the spam email. It's already against the law, but the federal government does not enforce the Can-Spam legislation that was so highly publicized when it was enacted in 2003.

Actually, the government does enforce Can-Spam, but very selectively. Last November they fined a Facebook user named Adam $873,277,200 for advertising on Facebook. I don't think Adam has that much money.

Last year McColo, a major ISP hosting spammers, was shut down. Spam levels dropped significantly. For about a week.

      http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081112-spam-sees...

Open Source Voting Software

A lot of people think it would be a good idea to use public source code for voting machine software. Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold, apparently thought this was a good idea. They used some open-source software in their systems. However, the GPL license requires users to only use the open source software in other open source software.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20081104/1621182738.shtml

Antimatter

They're making Antimatter in California. At Lawrence Livermore Labs, they're shooting really short (picosecond) really intense (10²⁰ watts per cm²) laser pulses into a sheet of gold. This produces a bunch of positrons, antimatter electrons. So far we don't have a matter-antimatter reactor for space travel or power generation. I guess that will have to wait for their new laser.

http://focus.aps.org/story/v23/st8

https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2008/...

Stupid Patents

Apparently Encyclopaedia Britannica is having problems in the encyclopedia business and they're getting into the legal business. They've sued GPS manufacturers for supposedly violating a 1993 patent concerning multimedia on a CD-ROM.

I'm sure you remember the infamous patent 5,241,671, right? It has been thrown out two or three times, but still keeps coming back. The patent is obvious, competes with prior art, and has nothing to do with GPS systems.

This time, finally, it looks like they drove a wooden stake through its abstract.

      http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/11/en...

      http://www.google.com/patents?id=_9MAAAAAEBAJ&dq=5,...

Here's one way to cut down on people patenting existing ideas:  Post them online and offer bounties for prior art.

      http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081118-startup-c...

Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, 1991: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."

Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, 2007: "Protection for software patents and other intellectual property is essential to maintaining the incentives that encourage and underwrite technological breakthroughs. In every industry, patents provide the legal foundation for innovation. The ensuing legal disputes may be messy, but protection is no less necessary, even so."

      http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/02/microsoft...

This is a copyright controversy, not a patent, but it's just as stupid. The University of the South is threatening to sue the guy behind a one-man play, "Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire."

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090206/1241493676.shtml

Stupid patents are even threatening international cooperation and exploration in Antarctica.

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090206/0931323669.shtml

A good article on software patents and their history:

      http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/resurre...

Mammoth Genes

A team of 21 people led by a guy named Stephan have reconstructed 2/3 of the genome of the Wooly Mammoth. They're using some hair from a Siberian mammoth. I'm waiting for them to finish the other 1/3 and complete the genome synthesizer so I can have a pet mammoth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

Wind Power

Windmills are sprouting everywhere!

There is now more wind power generated in the U.S. than in any other country. The U.S. took the lead from Germany in 2008 with a 50% increase in wind power. I knew I was seeing more and more windmills, but I didn't realize there were more in the U.S. than anywhere else. China more than doubled its wind power capacity last year. Denmark generates 19% of its electricity using wind power; Spain and Portugal 11%; and the U.S. 1.3%. In the U.S. in 2008, 42% of new electrical generation was wind power.

Annual Wind Power Generation(thousand mwh)
	2005	2006	2007	2008
U.S.	9,149	11,603	16,818	25,170
Germany	18,415	20,622	22,247	23,903
Spain	10,028	11,615	15,145	16,740
China	1,260	2,604	6,050	12,210
India	4,430	6,270	8,000	9,587
Italy	1,718	2,123	2,726	3,736
France	757	1,567	2,454	3,404
U.K.	1,332	1,963	2,389	3,288
Denmark	3,136	3,140	3,129	3,160
Portugal	1,022	1,716	2,150	2,862

I've been trying to figure out how many of these giant windmills it takes to equal a power plant, and I think I finally have a good estimate. One popular windmill model is the Suzlon S88-2.1. It's rated at 2.1 megawatts, but I think you can expect more like .5 megawatts generation in actual practice. The S88 has a diameter of 88 meters or 288 feet. That is tall. Duke Energy is using the S88 in one of its new wind farms in Wyoming.

      http://www.duke-energy.com/news/releases/2009040101.asp

In the U.S., windmills generate 24% of their rated capacity on average. This is because the wind doesn't blow hard all the time, except in Washington DC where blowhards abound. The Suzlon S88 generates 2.1 megawatts in wind between 31 mph and 56 mph. (Above 56 mph it turns itself off.) At 15 mph, it generates a little over .5 megawatts. In a year, at 24% capacity, it will generate around 4,418 mwh.

The GRDA coal power plant at Chouteau generates 5,000-5,500 gwh per year. It would take 1,100 Suzlon S88's to match that, and a little over 3,000 of the windmills to generate as much electricity as the Russellville, Arkansas nuclear plant.

Some people think there is a future in nuclear power. I'm one of them. France uses nuclear power plants to generate 87.5% of their electricity, and they haven't melted yet.

      http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/03/nuclear-pow...

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

SpaceX

In 2002, the guy named Elon who founded PayPal started a new company called SpaceX. Last September, SpaceX launched a rocket into orbit. It was their fourth test launch, and first success.

The liquid-fueled rocket was 70 feet tall and 5.5 feet in diameter. The first commercial launch is scheduled for April 21, a satellite for Malaysia.

SpaceX's Falcon I is supposed to be the cheapest way to get your satellite into orbit, but their 2009 price list has not been posted yet. You can check out the Falcon I user's guide here:

      http://www.spacex.com/Falcon1UsersGuide.pdf

The SpaceX Falcon 9 is a larger rocket, 180 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter. Its first test launch was scheduled for last year, but it was apparently delayed. Maybe they had to make some changes for NASA, who awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to resupply the Space Station when the Shuttles are shut down in 2011. Orbital Sciences also got a contract for Space Station missions, for $1.9 billion.

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

In case you're interested in launching a heavier satellite, here's the user guide for the Falcon 9:

      http://www.spacex.com/Falcon9UsersGuide_2009.pdf

If you're building your own rocket, you will be relieved to know you can now use ammonium perchlorate for fuel without treating it as an explosive.

      http://www.rocketryplanet.com/content/view/2788/30/

Skycatcher

Cessna has developed and is testing its Skycatcher 162, a 2-seat light sport aircraft. Both prototypes have gotten into unrecoverable spins, but the test pilots were not hurt.

Last September the pilot was doing a power on, cross-controlled stall (rudder one way and ailerons the other), and the plane entered an unrecoverable spin. He tried to deploy the plane's parachute, but it wouldn't. So he used his own parachute and let the plane make its own way to the ground.

Last month a second Skycatcher prototype crashed, also in an unrecoverable spin. Cessna had made the tail bigger, but apparently that didn't help, or maybe the additional weight in the rear offset the benefits of the increased tail size.

This time, the pilot launched the plane's parachute and was floating down. Then he tried to release the parachute, which would allow him to fly away under control, but the parachute wouldn't release like it's supposed to. So he and the plane ended up in a field. The plane didn't have much damage until the parachute caught the wind and dragged the plane more than a half mile into a barbed wire fence.

The Skycatcher is being built for Cessna in China by the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation. Cessna has caught some flack for this because they've laid off a few thousand people lately. But the layoffs are due to customers canceling and delaying orders for new planes. There would be more cancellations and likely more layoffs if they raised the price of the Skycatcher enough to manufacture it in the U.S. Sometimes people forget that if a company doesn't make money, they don't have anything to pay their employees with.

Commas and Decimal Points

Once upon a time, it was a major faux pas to put your decimal point in the wrong place. If I owed someone $0.50, they would not be happy if I paid only $0.05. Except Mike, and he'd never know the difference.

Today I have noticed that there is not much oversight when it comes to comma placement, and a comma is worth three decimal points. There seems to be very little difference in a million, a billion, and a trillion. They're all numbers too big to comprehend unless you're talking about computers or light years.

Take, for example, our illustrious Speaker of the House, Nancy. She promised that 500 million people in the U.S. will lose their jobs each month unless a stimulus package is in place. While it's not unusual for a politician to be slightly out of touch with reality, there aren't 500 million people in the entire country. Maybe she meant 500 people will lose their jobs, or 50. Or maybe she thinks 39.3 percent of us will get a new job and get fired twice each month.

http://xkcd.com/558/

Government Security

I went to the FAA web site not long ago to get Notices to Airmen, or Notams, before I took off to fly somewhere. Maybe those are called Notices to Airhumans now, since "men" can't be used any more.

When I arrived at the proper web site, I was greeted with a message saying "pilotweb.nas.faa.gov uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown."

Those imposters! Wait until the TSA hears about this! I guess they figured out something was wrong, because it's fixed now.

https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/

ACTA Informatica

This ACTA is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, being secretly negotiated between the recording industry and various countries around the world.

Some people are pushing to make information on these negotiations public, claiming secret deals, encroachment of personal privacy and civil rights, and hair loss.

All this is pretty normal and pretty boring, except the part about the U.S.  The U.S. trade representative is refusing to release documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act, claiming it would threaten the national security. That is funny!

      http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10195547-38.html

Elsewhere in the federal government, the FAA is sealing records on bird strikes. This is understandable, as birds are known to gather in flocks and fly out in front of speeding airplanes, clearly a threat to national security. I flew into a goose once myself. The goose died.

      http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-03-26-faa-bird...

Intel Plants

Intel got a lot of press when they closed down 5 older plants and laid off 5,000 people. They didn't make nearly the headlines in February when they announced they'll spend $7 billion on new 32-nanometer manufacturing in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico. They laid off 5,000 people earlier, but it will take around 4,000 people to build the new manufacturing facilities.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_11674924

Satellite Crash

An Iridium satellite crashed into an old Russian military satellite in February. The Russian satellite was effectively dead and couldn't maneuver, but that didn't stop some U.S. politicians from accusing them of bad driving.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7885051.stm

Another Airline in the Water

Pan Am Flight 943 in 1956.

http://www.mercurynews.com/centralcoast/ci_11602402

Submarine Collision

A French submarine and a British submarine collided in the Atlantic last February. I guess they were each quieter than the other expected.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/def...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7892294.stm

Utah Scammed

The state of Utah lost $700,000 to some scammers who forged documents to hijack a state bank account, and then sent fake invoices to collect $2.5 million. The bank seized about $1.8 million, but the crooks got away with the rest. So far.

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/02/online-thi...

Icelandic Economics

Iceland has had some real economic problems lately. Now they may shut down the Iceland Defense Agency. But this might not be such a big deal. The agency has only been operating since June.

http://icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_...

Hiking and Climbing

This is a good site where you can learn what not to do in the backcountry -- a variety of hiking and climbing accidents and incidents.

http://hikerhell.blogspot.com/

I like this lady:

http://hikerhell.blogspot.com/2009/04/90-year-old-woman...

GOCE

The European Space Agency launched a satellite from the Plesetsk cosmodrome...in northern Russia. It will map the earth's gravity in some amazing detail. This will give information on land and sea elevation changes, gain information on ocean heat and mass transfer, and help model underground structures. This is a great simplification of its mission.

http://spacefellowship.com/News/?p=8453

"A few minutes later, the missile will transport a satellite into space:"

Transporting the Soyuz to the launch pad:

Tonga Eruptions

A couple of weeks ago there was a major eruption of an undersea volcano near Tonga. Here are some great photos.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/undersea_erupt...

Ghostnet

Some people ran across a botnet the other day, which is not too unusual. However, this botnet (called Ghostnet) compromised 1295 computers in 103 countries. About 30% of them were "high value" computers, e.g., government, banks, news organizations, etc. The remote control came from China, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Chinese government is behind it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13731776/Tracking-GhostNet-In...

Obligatory RIAA and MPAA Harrassment

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090205/0319043658.shtml

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090206/0916313668.shtml

      http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Arti...

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090206/0858403667.shtml

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090204/1731533649.shtml

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090203/1719013633.shtml

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090202/2234313613.shtml

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090130/0328003585.shtml

      http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/i-thoug...

Miscellany

Gears of War game's copy protection (DRM) protected it from being used at all.

      http://techdirt.com/articles/20090130/0321403584.shtml

The fall of Silicon Graphics.

      http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_12049610

Submersibles are moving a lot of cocaine into the U.S. -- maybe 1/3 of it.

      http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/14/drug.subs/index.html

You mean the wheels go down BEFORE you land?

      http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/C17BellyUpLanding_...

Here's an interesting sailing article. It gets better after the shipwreck.

      http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20051219-99...

Russia knows how to throw a proper election.

      http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/03/26/the_worl...

Photo Mud

You can try out a test version of Photo Mud, if you don't mind being added to the GhostNet. Let me know how to crash it, or what it needs, or what you can't figure out. Did I mention it's a test version? I don't think it will format your hard drive, but there are no guarantees.

This is the only program I'm aware of that can print a calendar, using your own photos, with the birthdays of Turing Award recipients.

http://xpda.com/photomud.msi