Tuesday, 28 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Editorial Note
Sorry, phone camera really doesn't do it justice.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶STS-121 Update
Per Spaceflight Now:
The shuttle Discovery's modified external tank may arrive at the Kennedy Space Center Wednesday, a day early, to kick off the final push toward launch of the second post-Columbia shuttle mission. But agency officials say unfinished foam work, testing and resolution of other on-going issues will make it extremely difficult for NASA to meet its May target launch date.
Even so, shuttle program manager Wayne Hale, chairing an external tank shipment review last week at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., opted to stick with a May 10 target date pending additional discussions at this Thursday's program requirements control board - PRCB - meeting in Houston.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶iMouse Update
I'm not willing to sign up for e-mail from them so that I can read the full article, but from MacNN's summary of this
Motley Fool article about the Apple/Disney buy-out rumors, it sounds like they agree with my take on the situation -- it's just not a good idea.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Today
This is just a reminder that Apple's "fun new products" announcement will be today at, as best I can tell, noon CST.
Monday, 27 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Quantum Computer Works When Off
Per New Scientist:
With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a non-running quantum computer that really works.
Discuss this item in
its thread on the ATW Board.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶iMouse
With the purchase of Pixar by Disney, there was speculation that Steve might consolidate his empire by selling Apple, in turn, to the House of Mouse in a deal that would give him control of the combined entity.
It turn out, though, that those rumors may have had the situation backwards. There are now rumors that Steve may initiate
the purchase of Walt Disney by Apple Computer.
Uh, wow. Regardless of how likely it is or isn't; it apparently is feasible, which is darned impressive.
On the surface, though, not sure whether it would be a good idea or not -- seems like there would be more disadvantages than advantages. Running a studio/theme park/entertainment company doesn't really seem to be in Apple's core competencies, and it seems like it could put Apple in an awkward position in dealing with other companies regarding content for iTMS.
Friday, 24 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Editorial Note
I'm leaving in a few hours for Jackson for the weekend, then down to the Ala. coast with Nicole for her conference through Wed. Blogging/boarding will depend on access during that time.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶STS-121 Update
Yet another step towards launch -- the first external tank without PAL ramps, which will fuel Discovery on its next launch, should be
on its way to Florida by now.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Picture Of The Day
New Hubble pic of Pluto and its three moons.. Image courtesy NASA.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Rumor Watch Thread
Since the board is really more conducive to this sort of thing, I've created a thread over there for
sharing and discussing rumors about Tuesday's Apple new products announcement.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Remember What Woz
Per MacNN:
Woz--who is still on the Apple payroll "just out of loyalty" (and health insurance)--is quoted as being somewhat apprehensive about the iPod and Apple's recent switch to Intel processors. "It's like consorting with the enemy. We've had this long history of saying the enemy is the big black-hatted guys, and they kind of represent evil. We are different, and by being different we're better," says Wozniak. "All of a sudden we're the same in this hardware regard, so it's a little hard to swallow your words from the past."
Wozniak admitted that the switch was necessary from an engineering veiwpoint, as Apple needed to find a way to increase performance per watt, but he reportedly still has "some questions as to how much it's needed."
Arguably, though, that boat kinda sailed over a decade ago when Apple switched from Motorola to IBM processors.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶Mementos of Batman
Yeah, more Batman movie news.
Apparently Warner isn't even waiting to see how the movie does this summer, but is
already working on sequels to both the Batman and Superman movies. Not really news in the case of the former, and not terribly surprising in the case of the latter, but there you have it. The sequels are being planned for '08 and '09 respectively.
A bit more interesting is that they've hired to write the second Batman movie Jonah Nolan, director Christopher Nolan's brother who wrote the original short story that Memento was based on.
Thursday, 23 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶SimBag
Yay! Things are finally restored enough, for the first time in two weeks, for me to post on the blog that there's a
new Hatbag online at the Hatbag site.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Gown V. Gown
Per Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to decide whether university administrators can censor campus newspapers by insisting they be approved before publication.
The justices refused to hear an appeal by three students in a case involving the scope of First Amendment free speech protection for college and university newspaper editors and reporters.
Attorneys for the students said in their appeal that a lower-court ruling that dismissed their lawsuit "threatens to restrict substantially the freedom of expression on college and university campuses throughout the nation."
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Weaving For Batman
"Mr. Wayne. It seems you have been living ... two lives.
In one life, you're Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy. You own your own company, you live in a manor, you make appearances at charity functions.
The other life is lived in the streets, where you go by the superhero alias 'Batman,' and have fought virtually every crime we have a law for.
One of these lives has a future, Mr. Wayne. The other ... ow! crap! stop hitting me!"
OK, so I doubt that the rumor that
Hugo Weaving will play the Joker and Hugh Jackman will play Harvey Dent in the next Batman movie is true, and I really hope its not. I just wanted to write that little bit. Sorry.
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶ET Phone Paul Allen
Of course I have to begin by noting that its dirty money, obtained through the amoral commission of pure evil.
That said, I do kinda respect some of the stuff Paul Allen does with his Microsoft billions. His funding of SpaceShipOne is well-known, but it turns out he's also been a
generous donor to the SETI Institute. The money, of course, comes at a price -- if a signal from an alien civilization is confirmed, Allen will be the first VIP SETI calls to tell about it.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶STS-121 Update
Discovery moves closer to a possible May launch after
the repair of engine leaks that showed up in tests last month.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶iTMS One Billion
If you've been buying songs (or entering without buying) trying to win the iTunes Music Store 1 Billion Song Countdown contest, you can relax now.
iTMS has now sold it's billionth song. Not bad, Steve. Not bad at all.
To be honest, I made all of one purchase during the contest, albeit an album, but it was one that I probably would have bought anyway. Did anybody here make a real effort to try and win anything?
Wednesday, 22 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Mouse-Free Computer
From
a lost interview with ENIAC co-inventer Presper Eckert:
What's the zaniest thing you did while developing ENIAC?
The mouse cage was pretty funny. We knew mice would eat the insulation off the wires, so we got samples of all the wires that were available and put them in a cage with a bunch of mice to see which insulation they did not like. We only used wire that passed the mouse test.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Coastal Horizons
Hey, The Clarion Ledger made the Space Politics blog:
I normally don't pay much heed to letters to the editor, but this one from a Mr. Weaver E. Gore, Jr., which appeared in Tuesday's edition of the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, caught my eye:
I notice that the government is sending a probe to Pluto at a cost of $700 million ("Unmanned NASA craft blasts off on mission to Pluto," Jan. 20). Divide that amount by $150,000 and one would be able to build 4,666 houses on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The only reason that I can see why NASA keeps squandering money is to support Boeing, Pratt and Whitney, General Electric and other people who contract with the government at inflated prices.
We have wasted two probes to Mars when the robots would not work. Is that proof there is no intelligent life on Earth?
President Bush is now asking for $150 billion to further put innocent people in danger and getting killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hmmmm… three paragraphs complaining about a $700-million Pluto mission (take that, advocates of robotic missions), and just one sentence tacked on to the end to complain about something that costs more than 200 times as much. But everyone's got their own priorities.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶The Schedule
At this point, any talk of shuttle launch dates is very tentative, since the May launch date for STS-121 is not a sure thing yet, and even if that mission launches during that window, factors during that mission could still affect the schedule for the next one, and even if not, there are any number of other reasons the next mission could be delayed, which would push all of the flights after that back, and even if the first two are both on-time and perfect, if the third one is delayed then the entire schedule after that is no good, etc., etc., etc.
And, on top of that, there's been talk that if even if everything goes perfectly, there still may not be more than two shuttle flights this year.
So, more as a curiosity than anything else, I present the current
planning document shuttle launch schedule.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Bold New Blog/Board
OK, this is the grand experiment.
This may be the single biggest change to ATW ever. While the blog was down, I tried playing around with a message board format. Some people liked the board; some people missed the blog. A majority, it seemed, liked features of both, and were in favor of some kind of hybrid. And thus, this.
I've tried to incorporate elements of both. The ATW blog is at
alltheseworlds.net. (The new address is at a new server, and is an attempt to avoid some of the problems that have shut down the blog.) The ATW board is at the old address,
alltheseworlds.hatbag.net. (Again, keeping them on two different servers means that both should never be down at the same time.)
Both the board and the blog will function completely independently. So if you like only one or the other, just use that one. The blog will be the primary place for my posting. If all you care about, for some weird reason, is reading what I have to write, then just come to the blog. (Though there may be some changes. If I have something substantial to write about, for example, an episode of Lost, I may post it on the blog, but if I just want to start a discussion thread, that most likely will go straight to the board). The board will be the primary place for discussion. If you're only interest in the community part, then just come to the board.
However, I am working to integrate the two together as much as possible. The Last Comments box on the blog now shows the last posts on the board. The comments on the blog have been disabled, and the links now take you to the board. (I did make it possible to read the old comments, just not to post new ones.) To be sure, the new interface pays a price of clunkiness in order to try and do what as many people as possible wanted it to do.
This is very much a work in progress. I considered waiting to get it completely up and running before announcing the changes, but, since all of the changes are intended to make things easier for the community, I thought it would make more sense to pull back the curtain now, so you can give feedback as the changes are being made.
So, there you go: The new ATW.
Please let me know what you think.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶iTab
Despite constant rumors over the past few years that they're just right over the horizon, Apple is not selling a tablet computer yet.
But that doesn't mean you can't buy one.
A group calling itself iTab has started
modifying iBooks into tablets and selling them on eBay. These machines are compelling enough for me to actually want one (for the price, I expect decent handwriting recognition), but they give you a taste of how cool an actual Apple tablet would be.
Sunday, 19 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Happy Anniversary
Today marks three years since the beginning of the first incarnation of this blog. Thanks to all the readers -- and, better yet, commenters, who have made it three great years!
And I promise to have some form of the blog going again as soon as possible. In the meantime, though, be sure to visit the
official ATW Stopgap Message Board that's filling in for the blog.
Wednesday, 8 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Lost Dog Blues
Per The AP (and with thanks to Jonathan for pointing it out to me):
B.B. King's dog, Lucille, has disappeared, and the legendary bluesman is offering an autographed copy of one of his signature "Lucille" guitars in an effort to get her back.
The 2-year-old white female Maltese, named after King's signature guitar, went missing about 10 days ago in West Hollywood while she was under the care of his co-manager, Matthew Lieberman.
"We're not sure how she got out of the yard, perhaps a gate was ajar," Lieberman said in a statement Monday.
Canvassing nearby animal shelters and putting up some 500 signs failed to turn up any trace of Lucille so the 80-year-old musician decided to offer a signed guitar as a reward.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Regular Richie Feature
A
recent post on the Tutor blog reminded me that I hadn't posted the Regular Richie Feature for this month yet. So, with no further ado, here are some of the top search strings on Hatbag.net for the first week or so of February 2006:
- funny kitten (this was number one last month, also)
- barefoot and pregnant
- funny fight
- kittens with swords (If it's still available, I should totally register that domain)
- SpaceShipOne rocket plane
- huntsville high school
- all space probe
- funny k-
- hippie
- kicked in the face
- Bloom County Comics
- Cat with Sword
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶To The Moon!
Per Space.com:
NASA’s back to the Moon adventure is being kick-started by the building of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. That probe is the opening volley of spacecraft in response to President George W. Bush’s multi-billion dollar Vision for Space Exploration that he outlined in January 2004.
...
To make that happen, starting no later than 2008, a series of robotic missions will be sent to the lunar surface "to research and prepare for future human exploration," Bush proclaimed.
This week, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) begins a preliminary design review. A process that is sure to reflect the financial stress and strain status of NASA’s newly issued budget for fiscal year 2007.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Thank You, Steve
The countdown to the 30th anniversary of Apple is underway at
ThankYouSteve.com, where you can read the Daily Stevequote, order your anniversary T-shirt, download anniversary widgets and more.
By the way, since April 1 is a Saturday, would there be interest in having some sort of ATW Apple Anniversary event? If so, what?
Tuesday, 7 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶LutherCorp
This is the first of what may be a few posts about my trip.
During my last several jaunts to Houston, I've tried to get someone to point me toward a good Texas barbecue place. Not necessarily the place with the best barbecue, but the place that has the barbecue that is the most Texan. This trip, finally, someone gave me an answer, and I went to
Luther's Barbecue, a Houston-area chain, and has some Texas barbecue, to wit: chopped beef and baby-back ribs (Though I don't know that the latter, while good, where really particularly Texas-y).
As to the former, eh, not bad, but in an "Oh, isn't that cute? They made their own kind of barbecue..." kinda way.
(You know, I just noticed that ATW doesn't have any sort of food-related category for posts. Almost surprising. Turns out I talk about food much less on the blog than in real life.)
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Who Watches The Watchmen?
Forget "It's not a bug; it's a feature."
Microsoft has moved on to "It's not a bug; it's a revenue source."
Under a new service,
Windows users can pay Microsoft $50 a year to be protected from problems caused by the flaws in Windows.
Um, is that not, like, a huge conflict of interest? When Microsoft makes money off their security flaws, what incentive, exactly, do they have to prevent them? It's no secret to readers of the this blog that I don't have a high opinion of Microsoft, but resorting to running a mob-style protection scam may well be a new low.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Countdown
Per MacNN:
Apple has launched a new 1 billion song countdown to celebarate the historical digital music milestone. Apple's iTunes Music Store is offering a free 4GB iPod nano and a $100 iTunes gift card to a lucky winner who downloads every 100,000 song as well as a grand prize package that includes a 20-inch iMac, ten 60GB iPods, and a $10,000 iTunes gift certificate. "We’ve got one billion reasons to celebrate, and we’re starting with you. As we mark our way to one billion, the music fans who download every 100,000th song will receive a prize package featuring a black 4GB iPod nano and a $100 iTunes Music Card." In addition, Apple today lowered the price of the 512MB and 1GB Shuffle and debuted a new 1GB iPod nano as well as added Showtime content to iTunes. The website is offering a countdown image that shows a near-realtime count of the number of songs sold through iTunes and Apple said it will create a full-ride scholarship in the winner's name to a world-renowned music school. In addition, iPodNN notes a new utility that conveniently tracks sales of iTunes songs in the menubar.
And, in somewhat-related news, in one market at least,
Dell has decided it can't compete with Apple. On the surface, at least, Dell dropping out of the hard-drive-based mp3 player market is no big deal -- Apple clearly dominates the market Dell's dropping out of, and Dell is still going to try competing in the flash-based player market. Here's the thing, though -- in the computer market, Dell is king. And for years, the computer market has been ruled by companies using market dominance to maintain market dominance. IE rules the browser market, for example, not because it's a great product, but because Windows rules the OS market. This news shows a chink in that -- Despite ruling the computer roost, Dell gave up on trying to leverage that into beating the iPod.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Secret 'Wars'
In the process of reading about some new
Skywalker-family comics set over a century after Return of the Jedi that I may or may not read, I came across info about some
new well-post-OT books coming out this year, which I almost certainly won't read.
In the latter article, though, there was this interesting bit:
They said they are forbidden from covering the Whills or Yoda's race by mandate from Lucas.
There were rumors a while back that Lucas might do some sort of young(er) Yoda project in the future, which this could be seen as supporting. Not sure whether the Whills thing is being protected for future use (as happened with the Sith with the Timothy Zahn novels), or it's just that Lucas wants to keep some secrets.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Survivor Inquirer
I had the chance last night to get caught up on
most of the shows I recorded while I was gone, but the one thing I haven't watched yet is Thursday's premiere of the new season of Survivor.
I was wondering, though, if anybody in the ATW audience is watching the new season, and if there would be any interest in discussion as it progresses.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶Editorial Note
Yeah, I'm back. Had a good trip, all that sort of thing.
Spent yesterday getting caught up at home; have a lot of catching up to do today as well. Will blog when time permits again.
Hope all is well out there in the ATW community.
Thursday, 2 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Those Were The Days
Even if ATW is a bit light while I'm traveling, the
Hatbag site is still posting its weekly new strip full throttle.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Survivor
As a reminder for anyone interested, tonight is the premiere of the new season of Survivor, featuring astronaut Dan Barry (and, for other ATW readers, a teacher and a social worker).
Wednesday, 1 February 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Stopgap
Will blog more when time presents itself, but here's a little something to tide you over until such time comes.
The Comics Doctor
