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The Disposable Techno Lusts Of Hypocrisy
Just a mere few days after slagging iPhone-queuing losers, I've been re-acquainted with my own techno-lust:
Yep, I'm still lusting over a USD$100,000 fully electric car. Still, while I would shell out for one, I wouldn't queue for it ;)
I think the kids could fit in the boot and my servants could bring my surfboards.
Categories: Planet Cat
Inanity
It's a phone for fucks sake.
You type numbers into it and it rings people.
Hardly revolutionary technology.
I hereby declare anyone who lined up for an iPhone to be the "Arseclown of the Month of June", every single last one of you. With any luck the iPhone has sterilising properties preventing any of you breeding, vastly improving our gene pool.
Categories: Planet Cat
Why are worm farms so expensive?
Worms farms are pretty simple pieces of equipment. You have a few layers of trays where you put your veggie scraps and worms, separated by a perforated mesh that the worms can move through. The top and bottom are sealed to keep the worms in and insects out, while collecting (very fertile) liquid at the very bottom. You fill the bottom tray with scraps, then move on to the next tray up. When the worms are done with the bottom tray, you empty it into your garden as wonderful compost and soil improver, move that tray to the top and continue.
Most worm farms are made out of molded plastic. The structures are very simple. The material is cheap. The Chinese manufacturing miracle should be able to churn these things almost for free.
Thing is, the cheapest I've been able to find is $65 from The Watershed, run by Marrickville and Sydney councils. At Bunnings the cheapest is about $80, yet you can buy a Mitre Saw, full of complex machinery and electronics, for $30. Someone, somewhere is making a lot of profit on these worm farms.
If anyone out there has any expertise in plastics moulding and mass manufacturing, there's a lot of money to be made undercutting these price gougers.
One option is to make your own, but it shouldn't be so hard!
Categories: Planet Cat
J2ME Jabber client that doesn't suck?
Now that I can do GPRS at only mildly extortionate rates ($0.0058 per kb from Exetel, thanks to Graeme's tip) I've been playing with Jabber clients on my mobile. It can be kinda handy, and it's kinda cool. Problem is, all the clients I've found are either seriously crap or lilwannabebillgatesware.
So does anyone know of a Jabber client for J2ME (or native Symbian) that is free/libre and doesn't suck?
I also wonder if you can get one that gzip compresses the Jabber stream. The Jabber protocol is _incredibly_ verbose XML, which means it could cost quite a bit uncompressed but would be easily compressed.
Categories: Planet Cat
Safari for Windows: that didn't last long
I just downloaded Safari, Apple's web browser, and installed it on the Windows machine here at work. It didn't stay on my hard drive long.
First problem is it doesn't support proxy servers. Presumably this is a beta "feature" which will be fixed soon. Second thing is it refuses to act in a Windows-ish way, instead having all the sizzle and CPU-burning features of OSX. Bollocks to that! If I wanted all that crap, I'd run OSX.
This is a pretty common thing for Apple to do. It's also the reason I don't have Quicktime installed. I can't stand applications that unilaterally decide to ignore all the UI standards of the host OS. Imagine how rabid the Apple fanbois would be if a Windows application didn't do things in an OSX-ish way?
Regardless, all I wanted to do is be able to test sites in Safari. It'll have to wait until proxies work.
Categories: Planet Cat
A lesson on why you should use free software
Much of my work uses Skype for instant messaging and since the development is in completely the wrong timezone, I have to run it. This meant I installed it on my laptop at home. Recently though it's been crashing my entire machine. Full, hard lockup. Not sure what freaky stuff they're doing, but it's a good reminder to stick with free software.
Looks like I'm not the only one too.
Categories: Planet Cat
YouTube to Host Presidential Debate
skotte writes "Wired is reporting that July 23 at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, Anderson Cooper will host presidential debates in which debaters are asked 20-30 questions culled from a specially designated section of YouTube, where the voting populace can post questions directly. You and I (assuming you're American, probably) can ask questions ourselves, not just a reporter in a crowd. Candidates won't know which questions they are being asked, and the video selection process will remain a complete secret. Interesting, but also the slightest bit scary."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Intel V8 Octa-Core System, Full Performance Tests
MojoKid writes "In the April time frame, details of Intel's dual-socket 8-core system dubbed "V8" became available but only preliminary performance numbers were shown. The platform consists of quad-core Xeon processors in an Intel 5000X chipset-based motherboard, along with FBDIMM (Fully Buffered DIMM) serial memory. A follow-on article at HotHardWare goes into significantly more detail on the platform and showcases many more performance metrics on a Windows Vista 64-bit installation. The POV-Ray and Cinebench 95 benchmark numbers alone are something to smile about. 'Intel's V8 isn't about promoting a platform as much as it is a show of strength and a glimpse of things to come. What V8 and QuadFX show is that both Intel and AMD are on a path to offering true, enthusiast-class, dual-socket platforms. And that's a good thing. Perhaps AMD is a little further down the path thanks to a more tweaker-friendly motherboard in the QuadFX-compatible Asus L1N64-SLI WS, but until consumers have more motherboards to choose from and perhaps quad-core processors from AMD, we can't very well declare that the time for QuadFX has arrived. One motherboard does not a platform make.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Weapon Found in Whale Dated From the 1800s
LABarr writes "AP and CNN are carrying a story that has forced scientists to re-evaluate the longevity of mammals. A bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt over a century ago. 'Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3½-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old. The bomb lance fragment, lodged in a bone between the whale's neck and shoulder blade, was likely manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time. It was probably shot at the whale from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890.' "
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Hilarious Antique IT Advertisements
PetManimal writes "Computerworld has gone back through forty years worth of magazines, and came up with some entertaining IT-related advertising gems from decades past. Highlights include The Personal Mainframe, an image of the earliest screenless briefcase portables, and Elvira hawking engineering software. From the article: 'Remember Elvira, Mistress of the Dark? Besides appearing on TV in features like Elvira's Movie Macabre Halloween Special, Elvira also invited Computerworld readers to "cut through paper-based CASE [computer-aided software engineering] methods with LBMS" software. "The scariest thing about CASE is the several hundred pounds of books that land on your desk and for which you've paid fifteen gazillion dollars, when you buy off on a CASE development methodology," she writes. Can you guess what year Elvira appeared in this Computerworld ad? Headline hint: "IBM delays notebook arrival in U.S."'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
The Future of Intel Processors
madison writes to mention coverage at ZDNet on the future of Intel technology. Multicore chips are their focus for the future, and researchers at the company are working on methods to adapt them for specific uses. The article cites an example were the majority of the cores are x86, with some accelerators and embedded graphics cores added on for added functionality. "Intel is also tinkering with ways to let multicore chips share caches, pools of memory embedded in processors for rapid data access. Cores on many dual- and quad-core chips on the market today share caches, but it's a somewhat manageable problem. "When you get to eight and 16 cores, it can get pretty complicated," Bautista said. The technology would prioritize operations. Early indications show that improved cache management could improve overall chip performance by 10 percent to 20 percent, according to Intel." madison also writes, "In another development news Intel has updated its Itanium roadmap to include a new chip dubbed 'Kittson' to follow the release of Poulson. That chip will be based on a new microarchitecture that provides higher levels of parallelism."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Scientists Attempt to Replace Crude Oil With Sugars
amigoro writes with a link to the Press Esc blog, discussing a possible replacement for crude oil in plastics, fuels, and other industrial uses. The post outlines findings to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Science. Essentially, researchers at the Institute for Interfacial Catalysis are attempting to process the sugars in plant matter into an oil-like compound, a daunting challenge. "Glucose, in plant starch and cellulose, is nature's most abundant sugar. 'But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF from glucose has been very challenging,' Zhang said. 'In addition to low yield until now, we always generate many different byproducts,' including levulinic acid, making product purification expensive and uncompetitive with petroleum-based chemicals. Zhang, lead author and former post doc Haibo Zhao, and colleagues John Holladay and Heather Brown, all from PNNL, were able to coax HMF yields upward of 70 percent from glucose and nearly 90 percent from fructose while leaving only traces of acid impurities."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Bones Could Become Conduits For Data Swaps
Billosaur writes "New Scientist Tech has an intriguing article about researchers at Rice University in Houston, TX who are looking at ways to use the human skeleton to transmit data. The idea is to use bones to conduct sound waves, with 0's and 1's being represented by different frequencies. Preliminary results, shared with a conference on body networks in Florence, Italy, this week, show that bones can conduct even low-power vibrations with few errors. The idea is that the conduction of sound along bone would be more secure that via radio waves, leading to the possibility of swapping data with someone by shaking their hand."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Kodak Unveils Brighter CMOS Color Filters
brownsteve writes "Eastman Kodak Co. has unveiled what it says are 'next-generation color filter patterns' designed to more than double the light sensitivity of CMOS or CCD image sensors used in camera phones or digital still cameras. The new color filter system is a departure from the widely used standard Bayer pattern — an arrangement of red, green and blue pixels — also created by Kodak. While building on the Bayer pattern, the new technology adds a 'fourth pixel, which has no pigment on top,' said Michael DeLuca, market segment manager responsible for image sensor solutions at Eastman Kodak. Such 'transparent' pixels — sensitive to all visible wavelengths — are designed to absorb light. DeLuca claimed the invention is 'the next milestone' in digital photography, likening its significance to ISO 400 color film introduced in the mid-1980's."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Identity Thief Apprehended by Victim
ewhac writes "Karen Lodrick was entering her sixth month of hell dealing with the repercussions of having her identity stolen and used to loot her accounts. But while she was waiting for a beverage, there standing in line was the woman who appeared on Wells Fargo security video emptying her accounts. What followed was a 45 minute chase through San Francisco streets that ended with the thief being taken into custody by police."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
China Taking on U.S. in Cyber Arms Race
Pabugs writes with a CNN story about an uncomfortable development in world politics and information technology. According to General Robert Elder, an Air Force military man setting up a 'cyber command' in Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base, the nation of China is already in the process of developing their own 'cyber warfare' techniques. While Elder described the bulk of China's operations as focusing on espionage, they and others around the world have more serious goals in mind. "The Defense Department said in its annual report on China's military power last month that China regarded computer network operations -- attacks, defense and exploitation -- as critical to achieving "electromagnetic dominance" early in a conflict. China's People's Liberation Army has established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, the Pentagon said. China also was investing in electronic countermeasures and defenses against electronic attack, including infrared decoys, angle reflectors and false-target generators, it said."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
eBay Pulls Google Ads Over Marketing Stunt
odoketa writes "According to the BBC, it seems Google scheduled a party to promote their payment system (Google Checkout) on the same day as a big eBay meeting, and this made eBay mad enough to pull their ads with Google. According to the story, eBay says it's merely an 'ongoing experiment' on their marketing. 'Google hoped to alert PayPal users who would have been in Boston attending the eBay Live annual seller event to its own service, according to market experts. It could also have been seen as part of an effort to get eBay to accept Google Checkout, currently banned on the online auctioneer's site. But in a contrite manner, Google cancelled its rival function a day before it was due to happen.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Perfect Silicon Sphere to Redefine the Kilogram
MrCreosote writes "The Age reports optical specialists at CSIRO are helping create a new standard for the kilogram, based on a precise number of atoms in a perfect sphere of silicon. This will replace the International Prototype, a lump of metal alloy in a vault in Paris."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
Jeff Waugh: GNOME goes WordPress MU
Last Friday I completed the migration of GNOME Blogs (nicknamed ‘blogo’) to WordPress MU with an announcement to the GNOME community and a thank you to the WordPress community a couple of days later. The first post details some of the features we launched with.
But the best feature…?
Now anyone with a gnome.org, gtk.org or gimp.org email address can set up a delicious, prêt-à-porter, WordPress-powered blog for personal or project use in 30 seconds flat.
Thus far, all the feedback from GNOME bloggers has been positive, and there are a bunch of folks in the process of migrating from old pyblosxom installs, Advogato, self-hosted blogs, and abominations hacked up in emacs.
Oh, okay, I was lying about the last bit… none of those folks are going to kick their emacs habit any time soon. 
WordPress folks have been very supportive, too:
Ryan Boren, a WordPress core developer, said: “I used to contribute bits and pieces to GNOME before being consumed by WordPress full time. I found out about WordPress through some GNOME developers. I took some of the GNOME philosophy with me to WordPress and found that Matt shared much of it. So I’m glad to see GNOME using WP and hope they will be as happy with it as I have been with GNOME.”
Lloyd Budd, WordPress hacker, and apparently a big fan (!), said: “This is awesome! I extensively and passionately use Ubuntu GNOME! […] Is there a higher compliment than experience-oriented, open-source-for-everyone participants using the software that you care about?”
I’ll quit with the quoting, because this is starting to sound like a press release. 
To cap it off, we’ve already managed to complete the virtuous circle: WordPress MU bug #352 was filed, fixed and shipped with WordPress MU 1.2.2 as a result of work on GNOME Blogs.
Tastes like freedom — and there’s more on the way!
Categories: Technology
