How big are we?

Not very as it were…

Hattip: Bad Astronomy Blog

Richard Dawkins on TED

I’m trying out TED. What better way to do it than to post this great talk by Richard Dawkins: An atheist’s call to arms.

“Going Galt” On Tobacco Taxes With E-Cigarettes

I’m not the only one, Ace of Spades HQ says:

“Going Galt” On S-CHIP [Komrad Vinnieovich]?

Thanks to President Barack Hussein Oteleprompter’s promise to not raise taxes on any family making under $250,000 a year (or $200,000 as an individual), some friends and I have decided that it’s a good time to quit using tobacco products. Because, after all, the new tobacco taxes only affect the rich. Or at least they will, because now only the rich can afford them.

Senator Lautenberg has $128,250 reasons to request the FDA halt e-cig sales and protect pharmaceutical companies and their gum, patches, and pills.

We switched to e-cigarettes three weeks ago and have not looked back. Technology trumps the taxman!

We like smoking, We refuse to quit, and the e-cigarettes are not taxed as a tobacco product. Plus they actually taste and feel like smoking even though the “Smoke” is only vapor.

Naturally there are already efforts to make the e-cigarettes illegal, so anyone interested in e-smoking had best get one while they still can.

You can still get NJoy e-Cigarettes at Costco’s web site. Just search for “NJoy”.

There is also a good forum with just about everything you need to know regarding e-cigarettes at the e-cigarette-forum. . Lots of information there about brands, form factor, refills, etc.

So far within the last three weeks … Politech, Idiocracy, several co-workers (5 actually!) and a brother-in-law have all made the switch. (Tobacco taxes in our state are already high and when combined with the new fed tax … suffice to say that tobacco prices are simply out of control)

Politech smoked one analog cigarette two weeks ago and found that he prefers the e-cig now.

Politech said that it tastes … cleaner. (plus he liked some of the other flavors available, like apple and banana)

Bush/Obama photo-morph

Judging by the current President’s decisions to continue with the many of the previous President’s policies , there is more truth to this photo series than some would be comfortable admitting.

ShrubMorph

Hattip: idiocracy

Also a housekeeping announcement, I have turned off comments for posts older than 240 days. I am doing this to control the endless spam, not to mention some trolls who have been commenting on really old posts lately. The troll brigade must hope that I’ll allow their crying, ranting and gnashing of teeth to go unchallenged if they comment on an old enough post. It was becoming tiresome.

Great Cartoon …

An important message from the entertainment industry

EA “Spore” forum mod confirms Spore kill switch?

Spore DRM

An Electronic Arts “Spore” forum moderator threatens to disable the entire game for a user’s simply having asked about SecuROM in EA’s forums. This would seem to confirm that Spore does in fact have a kill switch built in, which is something that the EA apologists have continually dismissed.

“SecuROM as [sic] been discussed and discussed so much and it causes arguments in threads. If you want to talk about DRM SecuROM then please use another fansite forum. If there is any change you will be able to read it on the official Spore site.

Please do not continue to post theses [sic] thread or you [sic] account may be at risk of banning which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore.”(emphasis mine)

The admission of the existence of some type of “Kill Switch” is very interesting. EA seems to say that you must conform your speech to only what they want you to say … or else.

Quite a revelation!

I’d love to see them do it actually, as it would place an exclamation point onto the Spore class action suit. That we talked about on SlashDot last week. Not only mislabeling, deceitful practices and hidden malware, but threats, intimidation and possibly a total loss of the use of the game if you say something that may irritate EA.

Over at the Spore forum, it seems like anything even remotely speaking ill of the game is now immediately locked, not just discussion of DRM. Look here and here and here and here.

Anything negative about the game is being locked and/or tossed.

Wow … way to stay classy EA!

Update: It looks like some of those locked threads have now been flushed down the memory hole entirely!

With the above in mind, here is a screenshot of the EA forum entry under discussion…

(click to view in full screen)

MS Blog Announces Windows 7 Plans for New and Improved Bloat

Talk about not learning from one’s mistakes…

The Windows 7 Team

There’s a lot to building an org structure for a large team, but the most important part is planning the work of the team. This planning is integral to realizing our goal of improving the overall consistency and “togetherness” for Windows 7. So rather than think of one big org, or two teams, we say that the Windows 7 engineering team is made up of about 25 different feature teams.

In general a feature team encompasses ownership of combination of architectural components and scenarios across Windows. “Feature” is always a tricky word since some folks think of feature as one element in the user-interface and others think of the feature as a traditional architectural component (say TCP/IP). Our approach is to balance across scenarios and architecture such that we have the right level of end-to-end coverage and the right parts of the architecture. One thing we do try to avoid is separating the “plumbing” from the “user interface” so that teams do have end-to-end ownership of work (as an example of that, “Find and Organize” builds both the indexer and the user interface for search). Some of the main feature teams for Windows 7 include (alphabetically):

Applets and Gadgets
Assistance and Support Technologies
Core User Experience
Customer Engineering and Telemetry
Deployment and Component Platform
Desktop Graphics
Devices and Media
Devices and Storage
Documents and Printing
Engineering System and Tools
File System
Find and Organize
Fundamentals
Internet Explorer (including IE 8 down-level)
International
Kernel & VM
Media Center
Networking – Core
Networking – Enterprise
Networking – Wireless
Security
User Interface Platform
Windows App Platform

Though it’s fascinating to watch Microsoft alienate IT professionals by using such terms as “Plumbing” when describing operating system functionality, and yet still expect to be taken seriously, it’s really just a shame.

Microsoft’s Marketing people can keep assuming that IT folks are idiots who will buy into such nonsense and the IT folks will just keep using Windows XP for their current Desktop OS needs, all the while slowly migrating users to purely Linux, BSD or Apple Desktop environments (though the migration will go faster and faster as application developers catch on to the changing market). The IT folks will also likely keep pressuring the companies that they work with to follow their lead … just as when those same IT folks were alienated by, and migrated away from the Notes, Novell, and IBM-OS2 guys. Good luck with that Microsoft!

For those of you interested in a well performing version of Windows, take a good look at Tiny XP. It’s fast, it works, it’s bare minimum, and when you need a feature you can add it from your license copy of XP Pro. How is it that only the Windows user community can significantly “Improve” Microsoft’s OS?

Will Microsoft wait until Open Source OS’s have captured 20 percent of the market before actually engineering something new?

Windows must embrace true 64 bit, Multithreading, and need only run legacy applications in a Virtualized environment (Thinstall and VMWare are proof that this can be done, and done well).

MS needs to make optional such things as Internet Explorer, Media Player, and rid the OS entirely of all of the useless hidden DRM subsystems that eat away at Vista’s system performance (These hidden DRM processes do not serve Microsoft’s customers … you know, the people and organizations who actually PAY Microsoft’s bills).

Windows desperately needs “root” style user account and permission management (No! UAC security “theater” is not enough security).

I could go on all day, but it looks like running a copy of Windows Server 2008 is going to get you 90 percent of the way to “Windows 7″, and that all that this team seems intent on doing is re-adding the missing bloat.

Funny thing when reading the comments on the Team Blog, the MS team are currently being “gamed” into believing that perfecting Vista’s bloat is what the user community actually “wants”. These comments are obviously written by astroturfing stealth Apple and Linux commentors. It’s quite amusing really.

This would make a great T-Shirt!

Thanks to
idiocracy for the heads up. Though this poster is not yet “officially” endorsed by B.H.O.’s campaign, the art is being pushed as their own “symbol” by some off his strongest supporters. The poster itself remains really funny in either case.

One Nation, Under a New Obama Salute

If a Los Angeles creative agency gets its way, Sen. Barack Obama will see fans meet him with his own salute like the one above. “Our goal is to see a crowd of 75,000 people at Obama’s nomination speech holding their hands above their heads, fingers laced together in support of a new direction for this country…

Idiocracy would like to see that too! We wonder if The Loyalty Inc. marketing company was involved with Microsoft’s Zune advertising!

Yahoo! Taking DRM Servers Offline … No Music For You!

You know, somehow, “We told you so” just doesn’t quite say it…

Yahoo! Music Store taking DRM servers offline, freezing out customers

In a move which at best could be described as unsurprising, Yahoo! has announced that it’s taking its Music Store DRM license key servers offline come September 30th… and freezing customers from ever registering their music with another computer. Ever.

TechDirt asks:

Did Yahoo Not Pay Attention To What Happened When Microsoft Pulled The Plug On Its DRM Server?
Yahoo! sent out an email to users noting that its DRM server will be shut down, preventing the “buyers” from moving the songs to new computers. This seems doubly ironic, given that Yahoo’s last two music bosses, David Goldberg and Ian Rogers had spoken out against DRM. While neither is still with the company, it’s rather amusing that Yahoo is now helping to prove the point.

Even the L.A. Times has some Opinion about this move:

Yahoo pulls an MSN Music (only faster)

This afternoon, Yahoo alerted customers of its erstwhile downloadable music store that it would no longer provide support after Sept. 30 (download the cheerful e-mail here).

Update: Yahoo tells Information Week it will reimburse users on a “case-by-case” basis, (so you may have to grovel, plead and beg them a little to continue to exercise your usage rights … but that’s ok, because you’re not really a Yahoo! customer anymore, you’re just another dried up revenue stream)

Yahoo! may possibly offer reimbursements or MP3 versions … or not … depending on Yahoo!’s latest whim (and whomever you happen deal with if and when you contact them). The FAQ is here.

If you were foolish enough to buy into DRM encumbered media, Yahoo!’s screwing you out of your music is really your own fault. DRM is simply bad juju all around that only hurts “Paying” customers.

Even though you may lose a track or two because of Yahoo!’s DRM we really should all be happy that Yahoo!’s music is finally being sold DRM-free on Rhapsody. (Hint: If you don’t want to grovel and beg Yahoo to keep that which you already paid for, rip your Yahoo! DRM encumbered media onto CD and then convert the CD to flak or a high bit-rate lossy format)

Update 2:

Yahoo! has announced what you can expect when you grovel, plead and beg them to continue to exercise your music usage rights…

Yahoo offers coupons for music that stops working

Yahoo Inc. is offering coupons or refunds to users who find songs they bought inaccessible after Sept. 30, when the company shuts its music-download service.

The company said Wednesday it is offering coupons on request for people to buy songs again through Yahoo’s new partner, RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody. Those songs will be in the MP3 format, free of copy protection. Refunds are available for users who “have serious problems with this arrangement,” Yahoo said.

Yahoo opted to shut down its system to avoid “delaying the inevitable.”

You can get to your music, but only if you do a few tricks first…………..I do that to my dog.

First I show him a doggy treat. Then I tell him to “Sit”. Then I place the doggy treat on top of his nose … then I wait … and wait … until I see he starts to drool, then I let him actually eat the treat.

“Good dog!”

Great Fun!

Next Generation SSDs Delayed Due to Vista

Vista is the gift that just keeps on giving …

Speaking during SanDisk’s second-quarter earnings conference call, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eli Harari said that Windows Vista will present a special challenge for solid state drive makers. “As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk,” he said.

This is due to Vista’s design. “The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls,” he said.

“Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we’ll start sampling end of this year, early next year,” Harari said.

Harari said this challenge alone is putting SanDisk behind schedule. “We have very good internal controller technology, as you know…That said, I’d say that we are now behind because we did not fully understand, frankly, the limitations in the Vista environment,” he added.

Read the whole story on C|Net

Lively discussion for this post over at SlashDot

The largest collection of Darwin’s work in history, now on the web!

This is awsome!

Darwin’s private papers online – the largest publication of Darwin’s papers in history. Read about it here. Browse the papers here.

This site contains Darwin’s complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.

Almost all is online only here: such as 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of Species (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th & 6th); important manuscripts: Beagle Diary & field notebooks, Journal, transmutation notebooks and Autobiography.

I know I know … “Darwin’s work is just a bunch of THEORIES!”
UPDATE:
Yep, Evolution sure is a theroy … and sound scientific theory can be used to predict things … like this: Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island

In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a harder bite, researchers say.

If Darwin’s work is inaccurate about anything, it seems that the speed of the Evolution process may be somewhat underestimated.

If an island full of lizards can evolve so drastically in a mere thirty years, with what mankind is currently doing to itself, just how drastically are we affecting our own evolution?

Microsoft sees future IT workers as simple “truckers and longshoremen”

In an article describing Microsoft’s mainstream containerized data centers (named “C-Blox”) Microsoft general manager of data center services Michael Manos says his vision of the future of IT is IT workers who look more like “truckers and longshoremen than traditional IT workers”.

Microsoft To Mainstream Containerized Data Centers With C-Blox

Microsoft has developed its own specifications that include, for example, configuration for electrical components and the layout of physical servers, for its containers. Those specs make Microsoft’s containers different from anything on the market today, and a potential opportunity for future Microsoft products. The containers, which Microsoft calls C-blox, are largely self-contained and will require very little hands-on maintenance.

“The doors are closed, and because of the level of automation in our systems, we can run it and accept a certain amount of failure over time,” Manos said. Manos argues that it is more cost effective to build redundancy and automation into Microsoft’s data center applications and allow some hardware to fail than it would be to physically manage such a large data center. The hands-off approach also means design can be tweaked to allow for maximum cooling and energy efficiency without worrying about how accessible the systems are to human hands. Of course, Microsoft also builds backbones that link power, cooling, and bandwidth among the containers.

In the C-blox world, a truck drops off a data center container and then picks it up again in a few years when Microsoft is ready to switch over to new hardware. Administrators will only enter the physical C-blox in the rarest of occasions. “In that sense, your IT workers look more like truckers and longshoremen than traditional IT workers,” Manos said. It will also allow Microsoft to run the entire Northlake facility with a continuous staff of little more than 20 or 30 employees.

So are we now to believe that a “truckers and longshoremen” skills shortage shows need for an increase of the 85,000 H-1B visas already available? A related question; is Microsoft’s Michael Manos merely arrogant or is he simply stupid?

Thanks to Corbis for the image.

Blu-ray BD+ Cracked as Expected

In July 2007, Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group (BD+ Standards Board) claimed that ‘BD+, won’t likely be breached for 10 years.

BD+ Unbreakable for 10 Years says Richard Doherty of Envisioneering Group

Richard Doherty a Media analyist with Envisioneering Group says ” BD +, Unlike AACS, Which suffered a partial Hack Last Year, Won’t likely be breached for 10 years.” Doherty said “and if so The damage would effect one film and one player.”

He also said BD + Offers 4 time the safeguards on top of aacs against piracy. All Blu-Ray Players are equipped with BD +.

In today’s AnyDVD Press release:

Press Release: AnyDVD HD now with BD+ support

Film studios that have switched to Blu-ray may have crowed a little
too early because the much-praised BD+ copy protection is an ad
absurdum affair now, too. With today’s release of version 6.4.0.0 of
AnyDVD HD it is now also possible to make backup security copies of
Blu-ray discs protected with BD+.

Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group will have to revise his
statement from July, 2007 regarding BD+: “BD+, unlike AACS which
suffered a partial hack last year, won’t likely be breached for 10
years”. It is worth mentioning that since he made that statement only eight months have gone by.

AACS marketers should however be heartily congratulated for harvesting millions from their “marks” (the stupid media companies). AACS always was and still is a masterful example of the big con.

Meanwhile it looks as if Sony may have incoroporated stolen technology for their Blu-ray system; Sony Blu-ray Under Patent Infringement Probe

Travel Inside the Nucleus to See How DNA Replicates

Via the Biosingularity Blog: In this video see an animation of DNA Wrapping and also a neat visualization of how DNA is actually copied in living cells.

Hattip Snowcrash

Also look for more Free Science Videos and Lectures Online at YouTube. Take a look at theFree Science Videos and Lectures website.

Thousands of Library of Congress Photos Now Available on Flickr

Photoshoppers rejoice!

Offering historical photograph collections through Flickr gives the Library of Congress a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images with a new visual community.

We invite you to tag and comment on the photos, and we also welcome identifying information—many of these old photos came to us with scanty descriptions!

To view the photos on Flickr, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/Library_of_Congress. You do not need a Flickr account to view the images; you would need to sign up for a free account to add comments or tags.

We are offering two sets of digitized photos: the 1,600 color images from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and about 1,500 images from the George Grantham Bain News Service.

Hattip: JoeDuck

Senate Report Debunks “Consensus” on Man-Made Global Warming.

Good news for those of us interested in putting the “Science” back into “Scientific Debate”

U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new “consensus busters” report is poised to redefine the debate.

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.

This new report details how teams of international scientists are dissenting from the UN IPCC’s view of climate science. In such nations as Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Russia, New Zealand and France, scientists banded together in 2007 to oppose climate alarmism.
(Emphasis added by PoliTech)

Read the whole U.S. Senate Article here. I will try to post a link to the report in it’s entireity when it becomes available.

UPDATE: Complete Report: (LINK) Complete Report without Introduction: (LINK)

UPDATE 2: In answer to some heated messages recieved regarding this post:

The excitement in science comes from exploring a topic from every possible angle and to try to comprehend how things function. To adhere to the scientific method, a scientist must be open-minded, and not be influenced by preconceptions and prejudices that exist because of political, religious, or other predispositions.

Science can only thrive on the repeated challenge of every explanation, where a scientist may even take particular satisfaction in finding something wrong with a traditional or time-honored theory. Such scientific challenges allow for strengthened scientific understanding. By this process new answers can raise additional questions, thus further refining our knowledge.

Skepticism is essential to good scientific research, and rather than trying to silence skeptics, serious science invites skepticism as contributory. So the global warming debate can only benefit from traditional scientific skepticism.

I have posited many times that many Global Warming zealots as well as many Global Warming skeptics actually subvert the scientific process, by ceasing to think objectively, and choose to concentrate on only presenting one side of the equation, like lawyers defending a viewpoint on trial.

Nonetheless some of the topics focused on, by the skeptics and zealots alike, are indeed acknowledged as legitimate research subjects.

However it’s reasonable to point out that the accumulation of environmental, political and religious perspectives in the midst of the actual science and research has occurred from both sides in the global warming debate, and has reached the point where the noise of zealotry is drowning out the music of science.

The point of this post (and others like it) is to illustrate this fact. We need much more hard science and much less heated hyperbole in this discussion. Unfortunately the political players on the left and right are using climate change science as some kind of political bludgeon, causing the layman to gravitate to one extreme side or the other, while purposely muzzling, or otherwise hindering the actual science of the subject.

The news here is that over 400 distinguished scientists have expressed a dissenting view of climate change data to the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis.

The existence of this much scientific dissent indicates that the so-called “consensus” about AGW does not in fact exist.

For if there exists significant “dissent” then there can by definition be no “consensus”, can there?

Wall-Mart Puts the Muscle on Warner and BMG to Ditch DRM

You all know those stories we hear about the E-v-i-l Wal-Mart muscling the poor manufacturers and distributors to lower prices. Well this time Wally World is using its power for the forces of Good!

A Tipping Point For MP3s

(waaaay down the article we find this little nugget of good news)

… mass merchant Wal-Mart [is] alerting WMG and Sony BMG that it will pull their music files in the Windows Media Audio format from walmart.com some time between mid-December and mid-January, if the labels haven’t yet provided the music in MP3 format.

Good news!

Update: Wal-Mart … Wall-Mart … what can I say? I’m not fixing it, go ahead and laugh all you want.

Update: This post was picked up by SlashDot. Quite a discussion went on over there.

Safe Portable Nuclear Battery on the Horizon

Like DDT, and anthropomorphic global warming, the exaggeration about the dangers of nuclear energy have been driven by the media and extremist political groups to the point of the ridiculous.
One would think that in a free society you would find at least some factual reporting regarding science. Unfortunately it seems to ever be the case that when given the choice of reporting actual facts or instead publishing breathless Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, the FUD always seems to be the choice … FUD simply sells more advertising.

As with other overly exaggerated fears from the past the fear of nuclear energy may one day seem as silly to people in the future, as the fear of sailing off the edge of the world seems to people of today.

Nuke’s tells us some News about a Safe Portable Nuclear Battery that is the size of a hot tub.

Nuke to the Future

New technology takes on energy crisis.
The portable nuclear reactor is the size of a hot tub. It’s shaped like a sake cup, filled with a uranium hydride core and surrounded by a hydrogen

Invented by scientist Otis Peterson, Hyperion’s patent for a hydride reactor is still pending.
atmosphere. Encase it in concrete, truck it to a site, bury it underground, hook it up to a steam turbine and, viola, one would generate enough electricity to power a 25,000-home community for at least five years.

Combine that news with this report which describes several studies that suggest Media and extremist fringe-group driven fears about radiation and nuclear energy are proving to be grossly exaggerated.

That darned Scientific Method destroys yet another crackpot consensus hypothesis. (extremists please take the time to click and read that link)

Is Atomic Radiation as Dangerous as We Thought?

A mounting number of studies are coming to some surprising conclusions about the dangers of nuclear radiation. It might not be as deadly as is widely believed.

The findings hardly jive with the popular image of the atom as evil incarnate. Nightmarish scenarios of lingering illness and birth defects on an apocalyptic scale populate nightmares.

Welcome to the new nuclear energy age! Now lets make some “glow in the dark jokes”.

Update: Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor

Amusing: Windows XP Outshines Vista in Benchmarking Test

This made me chuckle, (I may have even chortled)

Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test

New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1.

Vista’s first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating system’s performance. However, when Vista with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta was put through benchmark testing by researchers at Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software, the improvement was not overwhelming, leaving the latest Windows iteration outshined by its predecessor.

This is the best part of the article:

Microsoft admits that the launch has not gone as well as the company would have liked. “Frankly, the world wasn’t 100 percent ready for Windows Vista,” corporate vice president Mike Sievert said in a recent interview at Microsoft’s partner conference in Denver.

He reminds me of this Apple ad: Podium

Amusing!

Update: Fun “review” describing … The Advantages of Upgrading From Vista To XP

Challenging the Hypothesis of Man-Made Global Warming

Interesting Article is worth the read.

A Scientific Basis for Doubting Man-made Global Warming

The scientific basis for challenging the theory of man-made global warming is large and expanding. Entire books are being written summarizing the many weaknesses. However, for an excellent 12 page summary of some of these weaknesses a recent paper by Willie Soon, Art Robinson, and Noah Robinson, (SRR) is difficult to match.

link to study…

Most people do not appreciate the simple rules of science, of hypothesizing, predicting outcomes, collecting data, testing hypotheses, replication of findings, discussions, peer reviews, etc. Thus, when an advocate, who in this case is a leading lawyer, (and also a scientific imposter) claims impending doom, huge doubts and red flags are raised. When Mr. Gore says that the scientific debate is over, he is making a statement of uninformed hope that the testing and review will stop. This is not science.

Read it all…

Next is the abstract and a link to the paper mentioned in the article above. Also worth taking the time to read. The summery contains a lot of good factual information, the PDF of the entire paper is chock full of fact based goodness. There’s even a PowerPoint!

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th and early 21st centuries have produced no deleterious effects upon Earth’s weather and climate. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in hydrocarbon use and minor greenhouse gases like CO2 do not conform to current experimental knowledge. The environmental effects of rapid expansion of the nuclear and hydrocarbon energy industries are discussed.

Hattip: Junkscience.com
Image Credit: Thanks to jupiterimages.com!

Nuke is back at WP

Nuke is back at WordPress.

Welcome back Nuke!

Heroes of the Writers Strike

So you are a Hollywood writer, and you find yourself on strike.

What will you do?

LA Times has more

hattip: LGF

Mac OS 10.5 Leopard Hacked to Run on PCs

PC World tell us …

Leopard Hacked to Run on PCs

The OSx86 Scene forum is offering full instructions on how to install the newest Mac OS on Windows PCs.

The cat and mouse game between hackers and Apple takes another move, with news that Apple’s new Leopard operating system has already been successfully installed on Windows PCs.

The OSx86 Scene forum has released details of how Windows users can migrate to Apple’s new OS, without investing in new hardware — even though installing Leopard on an PC may be counter to Apple’s terms and conditions.

The forum is offering full instructions on how to install the system, including screenshots of the installation process.

Not all the features of Leopard function with the patch — Wi-Fi, support, for example, is reportedly inoperable. Historically, Apple’s likely next move will be to track down and act against those behind the hack.

The move to make Leopard work on a PC is just the latest in Apple’s continual struggle with the hacker community.

Read the rest…

I may give this a try on VMWare.

Idiocracy – Tattoo

This was one of the funniest scenes in the movie…

Zhelatin Worm; Botnet Spread to 10 Million PCs, Now Via Automated Blog Postings

ARS Technica tells us that the Zhelatin gang’s “Storm Worm” has now evolved way beyond spam and infected e-card greetings.

The “Zhelatin gang”—named after the trojan it installed—was responsible for what started out as the “storm worm.” First spotted earlier this year, the spread of the “storm worm” started via e-mails purporting to provide information on some dangerous storms in Europe at the close of January.

But the Zhelatin is no longer your typical worm beastie … The worm has now been modified to use an infected users own Blog to spread itself.

It’s not just blogspam we’re talking about here, the little sucker actually writes a blog post to the victim’s blog all by it’s own bad little self, in order to lure your unsuspecting readers to an infection site. More from ARS Technica:

…the worm has now switched its focus to blogs. Unlike the typical “comment spam” that many of us have grown used to on our personal blogs, the worm is actually getting into people’s Blogspot accounts and creating new blog posts with links to the trojan.

This worm has been reported to find it’s way through multiple hardware email filters and breeze passed almost every AV engine at one time or another in it’s various iterations only to be finally stopped by the firewall (which you should have already set up on workstations and which theoretically should be the last resort). Decent firewall software packages are usually able to stop the actual infected file from performing it’s processing.

The funny part about workstation firewalls catching the worm’s rogue processing is when users inevitably click “Yes” to allow the process and also check the “Do Not Ask Again” check box.

ARS Technica estimates that there could be as many as 10 million Zhelatin gang bots out there:

Just how many computers are part of the botnet is anyone’s guess, but estimates from some security firms are reaching as high as 10 million. Just last June the FBI warned that it had discovered more than a million PCs in a botnet. This looks to be just the tip of the iceberg.

IMHO This is one of the most serious threats to the IT community in a number of years. 10 million bots can do a lot of damage in a lot of ways … in a hurry.

Check out this video showing 24 hours monitoring the initial infection:

* Graphic above from Computer Knowledge’s description of how a botnet works.

Video courtesy of F-Secure Security Labs YouTube account.

One Horsepower Car … Literally One Horse!

By way of idiocracy and AutoBlog: Politech Presents The … Fleethorse!

One Horsepower Car … Literally One Horse!

idiocracy is asking if this idea is serious or satire. PoliTech says it’s seriously stupid!

But funny!

Here is the site: FleetHorse.com

Vista Beta Service Pack 1 “Upgradeable Version” Now Leaked

According to eWeek a new Vista beta service pack is now available. One which can be used as an “Upgradeable Version” for existing Vista installations. eWeek article here:

(yea I know there is one of those “Flash Annoyance” things, just click passed it)

Vista Beta SP1 Leaked

Over the Aug. 24 weekend, a new Vista beta has appeared on the BitTorrent sites.

The first beta SP1 appeared on hacker sites in early August as a 3.2 GB DVD ISO. This version could only be used to install a full version of Windows Vista. As such, it was not so much an SP as a testing platform for some proposed patches. The just-leaked version, however, expands from a compressed file of about 200 MB in size, depending on the system architecture, into an installation program that totals approximately 684 MB. With it, an adventuresome Vista user could use it to update his or her’s Vista-powered system to a beta SP1.

A closer look reveals that, regardless of platform, the beta is named: “Build: 6.0.6001.16633 (longhorn.070803-1655).” When installed, at least one patched version of Vista Ultimate states that the system is running Vista Ultimate, Service Patch 1, v.165.

You can find the upgrade for Vista SP1 here: Thank you Sweeden!

As many IT folks are currently working on (struggling with?) Prototyping Vista in the enterprise, do we really have much of a choice but to be “adventuresome“?

I’ll be giving it a test drive over the holiday weekend, how about you?

UPDATE: It looks like the Service Pack has already been nuked on TPBs tracker. So all you sysadmins will have to do your own Googling from this point on. (Hint: UseNet)

LG DVD Drive: 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-ROM 16X CD-R 16X CD-RW 32X CD-ROM CD, DVD: 2MB BD, HD: 4MB Cache SATA Super Multi Blue BD Burner and HD DVD Reader

Really! Thats the name of the LG Model GGW-H10NI DVD Burner.

What an absolute joke. Not the LG Product, (it’s a nice drive although a little pricey) but this whole Optical Media standards war that has been ongoing for the last ten years or so.

Which technology can use this alphabet soup idiocy to actually win the optical standards war and nuke all of the Optical media and drive competition? The answer is flash memory. If you wonder why Flash media will make ALL optical media obsolete, check out the ease of use, plus continuously plummeting pricing and exponentially increasing capacity.

Plug it in, it just works, no worrying if your media format won’t play nice with your equipment. Because Flash memory actually has a “Standard”. The Standards game being played by the optical media companies will be their undoing.

Reviving Old PC800 RDRAM PCs

I recently came across an old Gateway Performance 1400 that needed fixing. Generally a PC this old is to be considered “Scrap” and usually I advise the client that it’s time for the dreaded replacement. Then comes the painful process of moving of data, apps, and all of the other nightmarish stuff that comes to the small business owner requiring a computer upgrade.

But this computer was just a bit different, as are many other RDRAM based Pentium 4 computers with a 400mhz Front Side Bus. It came with Windows ME installed originally back in 2000. Over the years the owner upgraded to Windows 2000, and recently upgraded the OS to Windows XP.

Now keep in mind that this box only had 128mb of ram … and XP actually ran on it. It was slow with that 128mb of ram, but still usable for most business tasks. But one particular app was having problems due to the low amount of RAM available to it.

I started pricing a pair of 512 sticks of PC800 RDRAM for it, but the retail price from the bigger internet stores for that type of RDRAM was around four hundred dollars at the time. Since I could buy a cheap Budget business PC with DDR2 ram for a couple of hundred bucks more, it wouldn’t have been worth the upgrade for my client. Thats where ebay comes in.

I found the same 1gb kit on ebay for under two hundred dollars and that included shipping and postal insurance. The seller’s store is “Rambus RDRAM Depot ” and they offer a really great way to get some extra life out of those old RDRAM machines. I also added a salvaged secondary 40 gig hard disk from the junk pile (to help speed up swap-file in-out) and the machine is now as fast if not faster than most new budget priced business PCs but at less than half the cost of buying new and with no included data migration pain.

Here is a list of the RDRAM machines that are salvageable with this simple upgrade:
COMPAQ
Deskpro EN Rambus ;
EXS Desktop, EXS P IV;
Presario 7000T, 7120US, 7126CL;
Workstation 300, AP240, AP250, AP550, SP750;
Evo Workstation W6000, W8000.

DELL
Dimension 8250, 8100, 8200 (both 400FSB and 533MHz FSB);
Dimension XPS B533R, B600R, B667R, B733R, B800R , B866, B866R, B933, B933R, B1000, B1000R, B1130, B1.13R;
OptiPlex GX200, GX300, GX400;
Precision 667, 733, 800, 866, 933;
Precision Online Trading Workstation;
Precision Workstation 220, 330, 340(both 400FSB and 533MHz FSB), 350((both 400FSB and 533MHz FSB), 420, 530, 620.

GATEWAY
GATEWAY 700C, 700L, 700L2, 700S, 700SE, 700X, 700XL.
Performance 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800, 2000;
E Desktop Series E4400, 4400SE, 4600SE, 4600XL, 4650, 4650 Deluxe, 6000 Deluxe, 6000L
Professional S 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600 ,1700.

HP
Pavilion 1G; 7960, 7970, 9795, 9720;
HP Workstation X1100, X2000, X2100, X4000;
Kayak X2000, X4000, XM600, XU700, XU800

IBM
NetVista A60i 6832, A60 6833;
Intellistation M Pro 6229, 6849, 6850, 6866, 6868;
Intellistation Z Pro 6866.

Sony
Vaio PCV-RX66, RX76, RX370, RX380, RX370DS, PCV-RX380DS, RX462, RX462DS, RX463DS
Vaio PCV-RX465DS, RX470DS, RX480DS, RX490TV, PCV-RX500E, RX600E, RX600N, RX790C, RX790G

Thanks to Rambus RDRAM Depot for the above table. (as well as for the excellent deal)

So if you have one of these PC800 RAMBUS RAM machines, or you find one in the bargain bin of your local computer superstore (I see the IBM boxes at Microcenter now and then) bump up the RAM to a gig or two, add a second Disk, and cheaply get another two or three years of life out of equipment you would otherwise retire.

Just a quick disclaimer, We here at PoliTech have no affiliation with the vendor links posted above, We’re simply happy customers, and think the Rambus-RDRAM-Depot folks are still offering some really good deals on RAM that is getting harder and harder to find.

Castro; Dead, Zombie, or Animatronics?

The news is out that “It’s official: we can unequivocally declare that it wouldn’t be inaccurate to assume that there isn’t reason to not believe that Fidel Castro may or may not be dead (maybe)” Which is how the headline was submitted on Fark

If you want to keep up on what’s going on in Cuba and get to the real news from Cuba, check out The Kill Castro Blog.

As for Castro bieng an Animatronic … check out LBJ here and tell me you don’t see the similarities.