Employees Must Wipe Hands on Pants

This story makes me laugh.

Apparently, Apple wants to apple Digital Rights Management to tennis shoes. Seriously.

Wow. If I weren’t so afraid that they would actually find some deviously Draconian legal means to accomplish it, I’d be rolling on the floor. Fortunately, the technology for getting a pair of shoes to identify itself electronically (without just installing a second, easily removable RFID tag of some such nonsense) is pretty much not possible with modern technology.

And I don’t think even our government is preparred to endorse arresting people for wearing the “wrong” brand of shoes.

…oh, and there’s also this new billion-dollar science laboratory. But nobody really cares about that, do they?

Article is here.

The International Space Station is probably the greatest unified human endeavor in our entire history as a species. Never before have so many different nations come together and joined resources to create a single project with such a massive expenditure of funds, engineering know-how, and raw determination. All for the peaceful goal of increasing scientific knowledge for the human race as a species. Completely independent of nationality, creed, religion, race, gender, or any other imaginary dividing line.

If our race wants to take pride in any single accomplishment that we can truly say we did TOGETHER, without ulterior motive, without posturing, without war, or greed, or to allow one subset of humans to dominate and control another, this project is really the poster child for such a feat.

And all the press seems to care about is that the bathroom works.

Seriously, every single mention, every story written about the ISS in the months since the toilet developed a problem has been sure to wedge that fact into the first two or three sentences. Do they think the human race, engaged in the greatest endeavor of all time, is nothing more than a pack of scatalogically-minded perverts? WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ASTRONAUT’S POOPIES?

So, I won a brand new 8GB iPod Touch from this thing we have at work.

Haven’t received it yet, but should only be a few more days.

I went online to the Apple website to look at the features, and MAN those things look cool.

Given that my existing iPod is an old 4th generation 20GB classic style, the ones before they even had a color screen, this new one is going to be a whole new experience.

It makes me think back to the mid-1980’s, when you’d read articles about all the amazing new gadgets and gizmos that people were predicting we’d have going into the 21st century. (Which seemed like forever in the future back at the time.) Well, guess what? We’re there. And yes, the gadgets and technology that are coming along lately is getting pretty impressive. I saw this laptop yesterday, and man, this has got to be the sexiest computer I have ever seen.

What amazing things does the future have in store? And will these new gadgets be used for good, or evil?

Sigh. I guess the likely answer is probably “both”.

Interesting post on Ubuntu Linux prematurely wearing out laptop HDDs.

I have toyed with Ubuntu Linux on one of my desktop systems, but use Windows XP on my laptop, so it looks like my Hard Drives are safe.

50 years ago today, humanity began the so-called Space Age, when Russia launched Sputnik.

I’ve read a ton of articles on this recently, and think that it’s pretty cool that we can finally talk about this event without the nationalistic fervor of the Cold War coloring our perceptions about it.

At the end of the day, we humans are pretty clever monkeys. Putting an object in orbit, launching the advent of the space science that has evolved in fits and starts over the last half-decade, is a milestone for human development that shouldn’t really be tied to any one nation or culture, but celebrated as an achievement of our species.

I really think we need more of those if we’re going to continue to develop as beings.

By popular demand (well, by special request of Patrick, really) here is a link to a nifty article comparing DirectX 10 video display performance to that of the older DirectX 9.0.

It’s an interesting read, but extremely geeky, so be warned.

I watched a show on the History Channel over the weekend, spreading the latest propaganda from the scientific community who are trying to redefine what a planet is.

Here’s my beef with them:

They want to say “These are planets” and include Earth in that definition.

But they don’t want to see scientists constantly discovering new “planets” out in the Kuiper Belt for the next few decades (as, with the discovery of Sedna and Eris, seems likely to happen) .

Neither of these is for any kind of scientific reason.

If you want to define a planet in terms of “significance” within the solar system, there’s really only ONE planet that qualifies (Jupiter). Possibly as many as four if you include the three other gas giants. But Earth and the other terrestial planets really don’t measure up to this standard, so why include them?

Well, the answer here, I’m afraid, is pride. Humans want to live on a full-fledged planet. Not a “Dwarf” planet, or “pigmy” planet, or “Micro” planet. Even though that’s really what Earth actually is.

So, why are they so insistent that the definition exclude the newly found KBOs (Kupier Belt Objects)?

Again, the answer is pride. There’s a great deal of prestige in the scientific community about discovering a new planet. Scientists have realized that there’s likely a great many more KBOs to find. Their jealousy over the upcoming discoveries of these objects have prompted them to preemptively diminish these accomplishments by redefining the words to describe them. (Who cares if you discovered a “Dwarf Planet”, anyway? Big deal.)

Really, we live in a solar system with all different sizes of objects. If one of them is a “Dwarf” planet, don’t the other classes of “planet” now need modifiers as well?

That would mean we’d have to end up living on a Micro-planet Earth… But at least we wouldn’t be living with the hypocrisy of a “scientific” standard that has nothing at all to do with science, and everything to do with egos that put Jupiter to shame.