Cool Stuff – Page 18 – Blah, Blah, Blahg

IP Radio

Since I’ve recently posted something about the online radio service Pandora, I figured why not post another online radio “thing” here (where “thing” is a highly technical industry term). The Phoenix IP Radio, highlighted in the latest issue of Computer Power User magazine (one of the few geek magazines I find valuable enough to actually pay for), provides IP access to online radio stations, playlists, and RSS feeds (think podcast here) over 802.11b/g connections. It’s battery operated, so you won’t be running a wireless network connection while being required to have a wall-plug to power it (except when charging the batteries, which are supposed to run 4 hours per charge).

From the recent press release with some details on the radio

Features of The Phoenix radio include

alarm clock

eight preset radio station buttons and search mode

rechargeable batteries and integrated internal charger for portability

lightweight – under two pounds

integrated stereo speakers and spatialization enhancer technology for digital sound quality

can plug into any hi-fi stereo system or headphones with analog outputs

connects to any 802.11b/g wireless network with its easy Wi-Fi connection

no computer interface necessary

allows for BluetoothÃ‚Â¨ connectivity with adapter offered through Com One

bookmark favorite stations and songs for instant access

listen to missed shows with radio-on-demand or podcasts

embedded software for easy connection to the Internet-based service distribution platform, content & service customization, firmware upgrade over the air, push & pull interactivity and management of subscription or click & buy functions

lets you listen to MP3, WMA or uncompressed audio (WAV and AIFF) and supports Real Audio

[tags]Wifi IP radio, Take the online radio experience anywhere you have wifi[/tags]

Pandora adds audio ads

If you aren’t already familiar with it, you should check out Pandora. It’s a Flash-based free online music site that tailors a play list to what you like already. Start a personal radio station with three or four songs or artists you like and the site starts streaming songs with similar characteristics to you. As you listen, you can indicate songs you don’t like which should never be played again and songs you like enough to want to hear more like them. I’ve used the site off and on for a while (ever since reading about it over at Bill’s place) and have found a lot of music I really like this way. I’ve been remiss in not pointing any of my 6 regular visitors to Pandora before, but I’ve rectified that now.

With that all out of the way, news is out now that Pandora is testing out audio ads as part of the radio stream.

What formats for ads are you trying? (lengths, styles)

The only ad style we’re testing is NPR-style (“this station brought to you buy…”) The ad we’re running right now is 9 seconds. There are no current plans to test other styles or lengths.

How will Pandora make the final decision about how/how long/what type/which companies any eventual ad system will serve?

By listening to our listeners via support, our blog, and forums like the Digital Music Weblog. We pay a lot of attention to what our listeners have to say about all our decisions.

And I’ve found that to be true. Pandora seems very attuned to their customers. I’m sure there will be some uproar somewhere over this, but honestly I think it is good for companies providing great products (and believe me, I think Pandora really is excellent) to try finding ways to keep end-user costs down. This service has been free for a long time, does a great job of providing good music to listen to, has an easy to use interface, and very low personal information requirement to get started. I almost bought a paid subscription when Pandora first launched, because I think it is good enough a service to pay for. If the providers want to keep it free by running occasional ads, I’m all for that. I’m not like many ‘net-heads who believe everything should be free (as in beer).

[tags]Pandora online radio now streaming ads, Pandora testing ads to maintain free online radio service[/tags]

15 milestones to modern medicine

Because you never know when you will end up on Jeopardy, I like to point out the things I find which can fill your head with the useless trivia you need to succeed. The latest of these findings is this write-up on The Guardian of the British Medical Journal’s top 15 milestones on the path to modern medicine.

1 Anaesthesia

Revolutionised surgery. By the end of the 19th century, anaesthesia had become a symbol for the wider humanitarian movement. It remains the most vivid example of medicine’s capacity to diminish human suffering.

Unfortunately, it has no lasting effect on diminishing human suffering due to marriage.

7 Germ theory

Realisation that germs carried on the hands of doctors could transmit lethal infections to women in labour by Ignaz Semmelweis in Vienna in 1847 became the accepted germ theory of disease. At the end of the 19th century, infection caused 30% of deaths. By the end of the 20th century it caused less than 4%.

I just thought that was a pretty cool statistic.

11 The pill

The oral contraceptive brought about a social as well as a medical revolution and had huge benefits for women. It was the first potent drug to be taken by millions of healthy people and the active ingredient is virtually unchanged.

Thanks to the pill, both times my wife and I have sex (with each other) every year, her chances of pregnancy are less. Cool. (via Sigma Xi’s Science in the news newsletter – subscribe and you can smartify yourself like I have)

[tags]Modern medicine milestones[/tags]

A visual history of home consoles

A friend sent me this link to a history of home consoles via images.Ã‚Â I’m managed to pick a few of the losing consoles in that history – in particular, the TurboGraphx-16, the TurboDuo, and the Dreamcast.Ã‚Â All systems I liked, and which I believe were the best available at the time, but which failed commercially.Ã‚Â If you aren’t familiar with the TurboGraphx-16 and TurboDuo, check out what they were like via the MagicEngine emulator.

[tags]A history of consoles, Console evolution[/tags]

Traitors to humanity get to work

Ahhhh, when shall I ever tire of highlighting the robot uprising moments as they play out? Never. Because I’ll never stop working to serve you, the nearly perfect specimens of humanity which visit virtual me to gain my brilliant insights on life, and protect you from being replaced by robots. It’s all about you, baby. Remember that when you see such offenses against humanity as the people who are working to improve robots.

A whole bunch of Japanese “robot-related companies and organizations, including manufacturers, universities and local governments,” have banded together to create an organization to examine how robots can be better used in “welfare and care services” and spread throughout the land.

Beware. Stock up on ammo and build your zombie army so you can repel the mechanical beasts on the day of their uprising. Soon, I tell you! Sooooooon! (insert spooky music with a mechanical beat)

[tags]Humans turn traitor – work to improve robots, Making robots better overlords[/tags]

Why Queen mama bee gets around

I’m sure you’re sitting there, pondering questions of cosmic importance, just musing what is, was, can be, and such. And while you are doing that, probably one of the questions which often consumes your thoughts is “Why do queen bees mate with multiple males?” especially since you know one male produces enough sperm for all the baby bees the queen can produce in a single gestational period (yup – big word there – we like to educate while distributing trivial and worthless knowledge).

Seeking extra mates costs a promiscuous queen honeybee energy and time, and it puts her at greater risk of predation and catching venereal diseases. But it doesn’t stop her.

I’m going to offer up my guess here. Mama queen is just a horny slut. Of the extreme nymphomaniac persuasion. That’s not a judgement, mind you – I love horny sluts, and wish I knew more of them. Let’s read on and see if I am correct.

Continue reading “Why Queen mama bee gets around”

Magnet therapy is good for something

In case you were considering it for your aches, you should find out what Magnet therapy is good for before spending too much (hint: The answer begins with “N” ends with “g” and has an “othin” in between).

Magnet therapy got a huge kick in the 1990s with a string of sports celebrity endorsements, such as one from the injured Miami Dolphin’s quarterback Dan Marino. Marino no doubt knows pain: The Hall-of-Fame passer lost nearly a dozen playoff games, never won a Super Bowl, and now toils as a spokesperson for such contradicting entities as Papa John’s and NutriSystem. What reduced his pain, if anything, was likely the million-dollar around-the-clock care he received as a professional athlete.

A few small studies have found marginal benefits, such as a 1997 study from Baylor College of Medicine involving 50 patients with knee pain. This is the study most cited by purveyors of magnetic goods.

Conversely, the dozen or so larger studies since 1997 finding no benefit from magnets are the least likely to be cited. The Baylor study has never been replicated, which in the world of medical studies can mean that a study’s methods were flawed or that the results for some reason simply don’t stick in the real world.

Don’t confuse static magnets, however, with electromagnets, devices used in hospitals and involving pulses of electricity shown to help heal bone fractures. While experimental, the therapy is promising and likely relies on the “electric” part of electromagnetism affecting cell membranes or nerve cells.

The author also points out that if magnet therapy were actually capable of doing anything its proponents claim, then an MRI would kill you, since it is thousands of times stronger than the magnets used in magnet therapy. It would literally pull all your blood out of you. Pretty much, you would explodificate in a spectaulationistical way.

[tags]What Magnet therapy is good for, Magnet therapy’s health benefits[/tags]

Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia

That subject line is high on the lame-o-meter, even for this site. Anyway, today in history, in 1924, King Tut’s sarcophagus is uncovered, leading to a travelling history show and a silly song.

Two years after British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen near Luxor, Egypt, they uncover the greatest treasure of the tomb–a stone sarcophagus containing a solid gold coffin that holds the mummy of Tutankhamen.

When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, although the little-known Pharaoh Tutankhamen, who had died when he was a teen, was still unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for “King Tut’s Tomb,” finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb, finding it miraculously intact.

Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over four years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years.

For more useful information in your daily life, check out the rest of today’s history highlights at The History Channel website. Other interesting bits include Jack Ruby’s death (1967), Noriega surrenders to US troops (1990), Tolkien is born (1892), and McCarthy (not the “Red Scare” McCarthy, though) announces a White House run (1968).

[tags]Today in History, Sarcophagus of King Tut uncovered – 1924 news[/tags]

Windows Vista – vulnerable already (permanent activation hack, too)

Well, normal consumers haven’t even received the product and we find industrious types working to show us security flaws in Windows Vista. This should surprise no one, but I guess it does, or news of it wouldn’t be such a big deal. “Complexity = insecurity” generally. Vista is an extremely complex system. There will be lots of security flaws discovered. It is unfortunate, but likely unavoidable in software the size of the latest Microsoft OS release. And yet, here I am posting about it.

Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.

On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. And over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.

In a separate article, elsewhere on the gr3at int4rweb, we find that there is already a permanent activation hack for Windows Vista, too. This allows you to avoid the “must activate within 14 days or functionality will be reduced” problems.

Until now, Microsoft has an upper hand, with no permanent or foolproof ways to crack or bypass Windows Vista activation request emerged. Instead, various workarounds and tricks to bypass, skip, delay, disable or spoof Vista activation has been suggestion, to various degree of success, such as extend evaluation period, rearm method, install Vista in future year, ‘frankenbuild’ Vista by replacing RTM build WPA files with RC build files, activate against spoofed KMS server, or run and activate Vista with own local KMS server and etc. Now, there is new crack method that able to permanently stop the countdown timer of time left to activate Windows Vista, effectively running Vista OS in full functionality evaluation mode forever.

[tags]Windows Vista security vulnerabilities, Windows Vista activation bypass[/tags]

Top 10 Astronomy Images of 2006

Yes, end of the old year/start of the new means time to cover “Best XYZ of 2006” or “Most anticipated QRS of 2007” lists. Expect to see a lot of these over the next few weeks. Unlike many people out there, I don’t get tired of such lists when they are unique. That is – I get tired of the 341^st “10 most anticipated diuretics of 2007” article, but the first time or two I see “Most wished for random star pattern of 2007” I’m all for checking them out. And for the record, I haven’t seen a most anticipated diuretic of 2007 list, so if you happen to find one, send it my way please.

All the blabber done, the Blahg-master gets to the point: Phil, at Bad Astronomy, has posted his “Top 10 astronomy images of 2006” list. By the way, the site is called Bad Astronomy because he works to debunk bad astronomy, not to promote more of it.

Number 9: Painting the eclipse

I thought I’d seen ’em all, but then I saw this one and it floored me:

Number 7: The Face Defaced

Ah, the “Face” on Mars. Where would Richard Hoagland be without it? Shilling some other snake oil, I would guess.

But that’s a dream; people promoting antiscientific garbage always find some way to offload their claptrap. Still, it’s always nice to see them slapped in the face – or the Face – by reality.

This next dose of reality comes courtesy of the European Space Agency, whose Mars Express orbiter took some great high-resolution images of the Cydonia plain on Mars where the face is located. By taking images from different angles and with varying solar illumination, they were able to create a three-dimensional image of the “Face”. Perhaps when this image was released Hoagland waited with bated breath to see his ravings confirmed, but that’ll be a long, long wait:

Number 4: Direct Evidence of Dark Matter

This next picture takes a moment to set up, so please forgive me. Plus, I like to lecture sometimes.

As I was perusing images, I realized I didn’t have many that had strong scientific value, which was ironic. But that happens: most scientific images aren’t published because they’re pretty, and pretty pictures sometimes only get in the news because they’re pretty. But there was one image this year that has both beauty and a far deeper scientific significance.

Now I’ve left out a ton of information, especially on the number 4 snip there. The reading of why these pictures made the list are worth it. I’ll also point out the numbers 2 and 1 are exceptional in my eyes. Even if you don’t read the descriptions of everything else, go see those. (via Eric Higgins-Freese, posted at Dubious Quality)

[tags]More top 10 lists, Top 10 astronomy images of 2006[/tags]

More laser advances

There isn’t much in the universe cooler than lasers. Pirates with lasers. Ninjas with lasers. Frikkin sharks with frikkin laser beams on their frikkin heads. Undead killer zombies with lasers. And, of course, undead killer pirate ninja zombie sharks with frikkin lasers on their frikkin heads.

Given the lack of all of the above (with the slight exception of attempts by the military to create some joined sets of the above)in the normal lives of normal (ish) people, we have to settle for cool laser news as it bubbles up to the surface of the intArw3b.

Artemis, the European Space Agency Advanced Relay and Technology Mission Satellite, successfully relayed optical laser links from an aircraft in early December. These airborne laser links, established over a distance of 40 000 km during two flights at altitudes of 6000 and 10 000 metres, represent a world first.

The relay was set up through six two-way optical links between a MystÃƒÂ¨re 20 equipped with the airborne laser optical link LOLA (Liaison Optique Laser AÃƒÂ©roportÃƒÂ©e) and the SILEX laser link payload on board ARTEMIS in its geostationary orbital position at 36 000 kilometres altitude: a feat equivalent to targeting a golf ball over the distance between Paris and Brussels.

These tests were made by Astrium SAS (France), the prime constructor for both LOLA and SILEX, as part of the airborne laser optical link programme conducted by the DGA (French MoD procurement agency) from its Flight Test Centre at Istres, in the south of France. The ESA ground station of Redu, Belgium, also contributed to this success by managing the Artemis SILEX payload operations.

Wow. That is so cool. Laser links between 2 moving airborne craft, bounced between six linking stations. Do the math, and you’ll find that connection runs about 130 ms one-way best case. That means if this system were available all the time, you could Quake in the air at around dial-up ping rates. Not bitchin’ fast, but certainly respectable given the magic necessary to make a link at all. I don’t think that’s what the company is trying to achieve, but pr0n and gaming drive almost all technology advances any more, so that’s probably where the first good use of this technology will show up.

[tags]Airborne craft 40000 km laser connectivity, The light – she moves so fast[/tags]

Light exceeds speed of light

This is old news, but it was new news to me, which makes it news. That whole “If you didn’t know it, it’s news to you” bit applies, I suppose. Anyway – last year, some smarty-pants scientists showed some control over the speed of light in optical fiber. Slowing down light to 1/3 its natural speed was a noteworthy feat. But when the scientists were able to speed to light up to faster than the natural speed of light, well, that was phenomenal.

On the screen, a small pulse shifts back and forth – just a little bit. But this seemingly unremarkable phenomenon could have profound technological consequences. It represents the success of Luc ThÃŠvenaz and his fellow researchers in the Nanophotonics and Metrology laboratory at EPFL in controlling the speed of light in a simple optical fiber. They were able not only to slow light down by a factor of three from its well – established speed c of 300 million meters per second in a vacuum, but they’ve also accomplished the considerable feat of speeding it up – making light go faster than the speed of light.

This is not the first time that scientists have tweaked the speed of a light signal. Even light passing through a window or water is slowed down a fraction as it travels through the medium. In fact, in the right conditions, scientists have been able to slow light down to the speed of a bicycle, or even stop it altogether. In 2003, a group from the University of Rochester made an important advance by slowing down a light signal in a room-temperature solid. But all these methods depend on special media such as cold gases or crystalline solids, and they only work at certain well-defined wavelengths. With the publication of their new method, the EPFL team, made up of Luc ThÃŠvenaz, Miguel GonzalÃŠz Herraez and Kwang-Yong Song, has raised the bar higher still. Their all-optical technique to slow light works in off-the-shelf optical fibers, without requiring costly experimental set-ups or special media. They can easily tune the speed of the light signal, thus achieving a wide range of delays.

The article goes on to explain how this can have an important impact on light-processing systems for network switches and computers. In fact, it is important enough that the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investing heavily into continuing this research. Cool.

[tags]Light goes faster than the speed of light, Controlling the speed of light in optical fiber[/tags]