After seeing the teaser trailer twice now, I figured I’d make an LJ userpic from the Transformers movie. Yes, it doesn’t come out until next July.
Dear people who change the resolution at work:
LCD monitors have one resolution. That is all. It is not debatable. There is no judgement call, no opinion, no possibility of misunderstanding. LCD panels have one fixed resolution. Yes, they will sync up at lower resolutions (and sometimes higher, which must be seen to be believed). But they will look like crap at anything but their native resolution or an even divisor thereof. So, a panel of 1600×1200 resolution could look decent at 800×600. But, a panel with resolution of 1280×1024 will not look good at 1152×864, no matter how much you may wish it to be so.
Thank you for not being a tool.
So, anyone else see the slightest bit of similarity between the new ABC Family show Kyle XY and the dearly-missed Fox show John Doe? They both have no memory of themselves, fantastic abilities, woke up in the forest, set in Seattle but probably shot in Vancouver… Of course, in keeping with the usual way of doing things lately, ABC had to slap together a viral marketing campaign too. Like the Hanso Foundation from Lost, we have the Mada Corp, a shadowy group that claims to be all about doing good and yet has a secret blog hidden in the job search link where someone writes that “they” are coming to get him. With the implication of freaky experimentation, maybe there’s a dash of Dark Angel in there too.
My point? I don’t have one, just thought that Kyle XY was strangely reminiscent of other shows.
Anyone else watching the BBC Series Two Doctor Who episodes? Yeah, Usenet is a wonderful thing.
Could the foreshadowing have been any heavier at the end of “Fear Her” yesterday? Dayum.
Because Perich and Visgoth did it and I’m a geeky sheep.
Every Hugo-winning novel since the dawn of the Hugo Award. The ones I’ve read are bolded.
Ah, the most surprising news from Microsoft since removing PC Sync or removing EFI support came today. WinFS is dead. Really, this time. Previously, they removed WinFS from the Vista release, but promised it would be available separately soon after Vista was released in 2005. Since the 2005 date for Vista has slipped to 2007, you’d think they’d have enough time to get WinFS working, but apparently not.
Windows Vista had three major innovations as of its original release announcement: WinFS, Avalon graphics engine, and a technology for communication between devices and applications. Since everyone realizes that the prettier graphics are just eye candy, we can throw that one out and say there were two innovations announced. One was thrown out years ago, so then we have the Indigo system as the sole remaining innovation in Vista, and it still is three years later than originally announced. At least we’ll have integrated DRM and Trusted Computing so that Hollywood can control our computers. yay
Yet another attempt to get broadcast flags enshrined in law is coming up this week. Take action to stop them, please.
What is the problem with the broadcast flag and audio flag, you ask? Simple – they don’t do anything worthwhile and are an obstruction to technological progress. If you’re a Republican, do you believe in more governmental regulation or do you believe in letting the market decide? Well, broadcast flag legislation protects one business model to the exlusion of letting the market decide. If you’re a Democrat, do you believe in the government bowing to the orders of large corporations? Well, the broadcast flag legislation exists only because of the efforts of the entertainment industry, not due to any grassroots campaign from actual individual citizens.
All these flags and the PERFORM Act do is stop innovation. They make it so that the United States will remain the technology ghetto of the world. We keep our recording devices at the same technological level as analog cassette tape in the 21st Century. What the hell? Read Engadget sometime – every day there is some new piece of audio or video gadgetry that will never arrive in the United States, because the Asians don’t have retarded laws protecting the RIAA and MPAA from competition. It’s like we went back in time and killed the Ford automobile because buggy whip makers were pissed off. Absurd now, isn’t it? Yet you know that the buggy whip makers were campaigning for just such a thing at the time. Why let the RIAA and MPAA tell you that you can’t record what you want on your stereo or television? Why let the recording industry control your electronics? Do your elected representatives represent you or Hollywood?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new approach to consumer activism: The Corruptibles. The cartoon is pretty cool, and gives a reasonably simple overview of what the entertainment industry would like to have Congress give them. So far, the congresscritters have given them pretty much everything the industry has paid for wanted, so there’s a great deal of confidence that they’ll get everything else they’ve bought asked for as well.
I’m sure some people don’t care that their iPod only works with music they buy from Apple, and that Sony enjoys building virus-like rootkit hacking tools into music CDs, and the industry wanting to halt all technology at the level of analog cassette tapes, but maybe some of you realize that giving one business model special protection is a bad thing.
Only we can stop…The Corruptibles!
It’s been a couple months since Microsoft announced it was removing EFI boot capability from Windows Vista. Now, they’ve announced they’re removing a feature called PC Sync, which was meant to keep documents consistent between two or more computers. Yet another feature (dubious though it may be) that has been sacrificed to the almighty “Ship It By January” gods. At this rate, they’ll release Vista as XP Service Pack 3.
The local Circuit City, like all other “big box” stores in this town, is more of a “not so big box” store. They’ve been here for about a year now, but seem to be in a constant state of stocking the shelves as if for the first time. Today, I went to the store to try to touch a Sansa e200, which I will probably end up buying as a replacement for my broken Karma. I went to the part of the store marked “Portable Audio” – that was where I’d seen MP3 players in the past, and the name seems to be apropos. The aisles were filled with telephones and CD cases. OK, so where might the portable audio be? After several attempts, I finally found a salesperson who pointed out the sign hanging above the computer section, “iPods and MP3.” A new sign, it is literally a section carved out of the middle of the computer section. There are hard drives on the left and laptops on the right. What the hell?
And that Sansa e200? Not on display. Best Buy has one on display, but it’s broken. I hate this town some days.
The fact that this article is not accessible on-base is probably just a remarkable coincidence regarding AETC-mandated proxy-server updates or something. Right.
Built one of Yamaha’s papercraft animals this weekend: a macaw. Now to let my hand uncramp from the knife-clenching. Of course, Alex now wants me to build a motorcycle. The macaw took three pieces of card stock; the motorcycles are over a dozen sheets each. Ouch.
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For you LJ users, a pack of new userpics. Go for it, Mike!
Taking a cue from Bob Cringely, I have tweaked my site’s CSS pages so they now are automagically “printable” when used with any sort of modern browser. I rock.
It’s important to avoid licensing problems with potential illegal copies of Microsoft products. Billy Gates has acquired a company named AssetMetrix, which keeps track of your installed programs and snitches on you to the home office (Redmond?). The new version of Microsoft Office (2007, 2008, Vista, whatever) has a completely different interface than has ever been used before, and a new file format. Well, shoot – if you’re going to learn a new piece of software, why not the one that costs you bupkis?
There is no need to risk getting audited by the Business Software Alliance – just say NO to Microsoft.
I can quit any time I want. It’s a good thing most of the programs on my MythTV box are set for “autoexpire when the drive gets full.” Here’s the latest status line.
297 programs, using 242 GB (246 hrs 31 mins) out of 345 GB.
Now, to be fair, I have a truly stupendous number of cartoons for the Boy, as well as a significant number of DVDs ripped to the hard drive (no need to mess with the disks, which is good if you’re six years old).
This week, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was shown driving off in a hydrogen-powered vehicle, and two blocks later hopping out and getting into his gigantic gas-guzzling SUV. Politicians being mendacious and venal is not news. But, the news continues to refer to the hydrogen “energy source” of the future.
Hydrogen is not and will never be an energy source. It is an energy storage system, like a battery that you can charge with a hose instead of an outlet. And, it’s not a very good replacement for gasoline anyway.
Gasoline stores nearly 10 killowatt-hours worth of power in a liter of space. Liquid hydrogen can only store one quarter that density. What’s amusing is that gasoline actually has more hydrogen embedded in it chemically per liter than liquid hydrogen does. Yes, gasoline is a way to store and transport hydrogen that is more efficient than the raw hydrogen. Brain hurt yet?
If you were wondering about the other alternate fuel vehicles, liquid natural gas (which is an energy source) holds about 75% of the energy per liter as gasoline; liquid propane holds about the same.
So, why do I say hydrogen is not an energy source? Because, unlike natural gas or petroleum or coal, we don’t harvest or discover hydrogen. The way we produce hydrogen today is to create it from other molecules, through electrolysis (splitting water molecules), or microbes exhaling it, or gasification of peanut shells and the like. Regardless, the difference between making gasoline and making hydrogen is pretty stark. We drill for oil, and refine it to make gasoline. This wastes a little energy in the process, but is necessary because crude oil doesn’t explode very well (gasoline does explode under pressure very nicely). Assuming we use natural-gas fired electrical generators to make hydrogen, we would use the entirety of our current natural gas consumption to make the hydrogen to power the current level of transportation that uses gasoline. Shoot, that leaves no electricity for keeping our houses lit and comfortable. Well, whatever shall we do?
Current nuclear reactors are considered low-temperature reactors, and produce mostly hot water as waste. These reactors can produce electricity approximately four times more expensively as natural gas (which explains why nukes are so rare still). A new direct thermodynamic conversion can produce hydrogen with only a 30% penalty compared to natural gas (at least with today’s prices for natural gas – as NG becomes more expensive, nukes become more attractive). Japan, Korea, and China are all working on these and also on pebble-bed reactors. The Japanese estimate they’ll have an operational high-temperature reactor producing somewhere around 100-200 tons of hydrogen per day.
So, those hydrogen-powered cars are actually electric cars with hydrogen fuel-cells storing the energy which was originally produced by burning natural gas or oil, more likely than not. Any time you see “hydrogen-powered” in the news, think “hydrogen-battery electric” instead.
The recording industry mafia have gotten a new one – they are suing a family for filesharing when the family doesn’t even own a computer. I believe it is quite difficult to infringe copyrights (not steal any darned thing) the way the RIAA accuses them of without at least some kind of computer to use.
So, the morons have shaken down little old ladies, small children, dead people, families without computers…how many cases has the RIAA won? Not a single one. That’s right; no matter how much they bully people, not a single case has been decided in their favor. Of course, almost no cases have been decided at all. The strongarm tactics and extortion that the cartel has used are effective. People know they have no reasonable chance of fighting the RIAA in court because the RIAA can afford better lawyers, and in the modern judicial system money talks. So, when the mob boss industry lawyer offers people a way out of the multi-million dollar suit, they tend to take it. Unsurprisingly, the amount of money the RIAA settles for varies from case to case – it is generally defined as, “what do you have?” One college student was told to max out his student loans to maximize the industry profit. Think this will encourage that student to buy more CDs next year? Yeah, me neither.