Recently in the technology section:

The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives, from homotron.net. I looked through the list and saw a few that I could use. I switched to Firefox a while back and found it much better than the IE of the time (and even the new one, which I really dislike because everything is placed horribly).

At the end of last semester I switched over from Microsoft Office 2000 to OpenOffice, and I just switched my e-mail client from Microsoft Outlook 2000 (I didn't uninstall Office yet) to Mozilla Thunderbird, and, even though I have to learn everything for these kinds of programs all over again, I'm finding them easy enough to use. I've used some other free open-source programs, like NetBeans and Praat, and found them very easy to use, as well as some that weren't that I hated and consequently don't remember. I hope the former true for some of these other popular ones because I'll probably download something for a web editor and a graphics program, mostly because I want to make some mind maps for some things in my field, like language history and typology (though I may end up trying to figure out more Java stuff to make an applet). Thoughts? Criticism?

Polaroid, known for their "instant" developing cameras, is getting out of the instant photography business:

It was a wonder in its time: A camera that spat out photos that developed themselves in a few minutes as you watched. You got to see them where and when you took them, not a week later when the prints came back from the drugstore.

But in a day when nearly every cellphone has a digital camera in it, “instant” photography long ago stopped being instant enough for most people. So today, the inevitable end of an era came: Polaroid is getting out of the Polaroid business.

Polaroid had already stopped production of the cameras last year, and will make enough film to last them through 2009. They are willing to license the technology, if some company wishes to supply the now niche market.

Polaroid will now be focusing on its line of digital cameras and photo printers.

Guess the lyric "shake it like a Polaroid picture" will now soon become an anachronism.

Via kottke.

A great new technique for creating the illusion of 3D on a 2D display using current console technology has been developed for the Nintendo Wii by the famous Johnny Lee.

The technique uses the infrared sensors in the wii-mote to track the movement of your head (with the help of some infrared LEDs) and adjust the display in real time so that the perspective changes. This creates the illusion of seeing a truly 3D image without the headache inducing stereoscopic techniques used in 3D IMAX theatres.

You can see Johnny Lee demonstrating the technology in the video below. It's very impressive:

Thomas Miller at Sony also was impressed and ported the technique to the PlayStation 3 and has released the code for free to all PS3 developers:

I'm actually excited about these techniques because they require a minimum amount of fuss from a development and materials stand point, and produce very impressive results. I can't wait for a game that uses this!

BBC's TIMEWATCH: Bloody Omaha recreated the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan using only 3 people, 4 days, and a shoe string budget. The results are amazing:

The whole program is supposed to be airing on the Smithsonian Channel here in the US.

Take note, Hollywood.

Why do people think cars will save the world? In the past month, there has been news that the Smart car will be coming out locally, that India is planning to release a small $2.5k car, and that a presidential candidate has promised to revive the domestic automotive industry. Yeah, just what we need: more cars. It's good that the smart car and the new car in India will be more fuel efficient than a lot of the vehicles on the road, but really, how much of an effect will good fuel efficiency have when, in India's case, there are that many more cars on the road? I know that where I live, if people were willing to give up their SUVs and trucks--which at first glance while riding my bike (and avoiding getting hit) seem to make up at least 2/5ths of the vehicles on the road--then there would be a definitive impact on air quality. We're talking about a jump to 40mpg city up from -5--I kid, of course. The number of people who'd drive the Smart car over SUVs won't be that large, though, since they'd only be the people who can actually afford having two vehicles (though I'd be curious to know how many people who own SUVs have another vehicle) unless they trade in their current vehicles towards a Smart Car, and on top of that the cost is prohibitive ($28k was it?).

On the more socially and globally responsible note, Planetizen makes a good point about people like me commenting on developments in "developing" countries:

Of course there is deep hypocrisy in developed countries criticizing the driving habits of the developing world. Developed countries’ environmental critiques and campaigns need to start at home. Politicians, labor unions and environmental activists have a responsibility not to brandish global warming as a stick to bash workers and consumers in India or China. Instead the argument for progressive global warming policy must begin with the acknowledgment of the destructive policies of our home governments and corporations; this includes taking responsibility for developed countries majority contribution to the climate crisis.

Or you could go the route of AFS Trinity and get 150mpg (and potentially unlimited). According to the Salon article I heard about the company from, it does it with technology that's available to us now (and was available years ago):

Instead of waiting for a battery that can deliver both energy and power cheaply, it uses current lithium-ion batteries for energy, and then adds something called an ultracapacitor for rapid discharge during acceleration.

Ultracaps have 10 to 100 times the power density of typical batteries, but only one-tenth the energy density, so this is a marriage made in heaven, or at least Silicon Valley. The ultracap is the electrical equivalent of the shaken champagne bottle -- although even that analogy is flawed since ultracaps do not just discharge quickly, they also charge quickly. That's another benefit that ultracaps bring to hybrids.

Regular hybrids get much of their efficiency gains from their ability to capture the energy normally lost during braking and convert it to electricity. Current hybrid batteries take up only about half of this electricity, but fast-acting ultracaps can take up much more.

ForeignPolicy.com has a list of the top 10 foreign policy stories you may have missed (if you're not a foreign policy nut like some of us.)

Number 1? The beginning of the cyberwars:

The year 2007 will be remembered as the beginning of the cyberwars. In late April, Western experts were caught off guard when a barrage of cyberattacks emanating from Russia crippled the banking, police, and government offices of Estonia. Many called it the world's first full-scale cyberinvasion. Then in June, Pentagon officials accused the Chinese military of hacking into a computer network used by top aides to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Near the end of the year, Britain's MI5 intelligence service sent a confidential letter to the CEOs of major multinationals warning them that the Chinese army was probing the cyberdefenses of their companies.

This emerging threat may explain why in September the U.S. Air Force quietly decided to form a Cyberspace Command. The new Cyberspace Command, due to become fully operational by October 2009, will be charged with helping to guard against such threats.

Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long for the US Military to form a command centre to take care of cyber-threats. So far, such defense had lain in the hands of intelligence gathering agencies like the NSA or CIA, that, while they have expertise in security issues, don't have the resources needed for full on network and computer infrastructure maintenance and defence. They're intelligence gathering services, after all, not defence agencies.

The questions that comes up is: will the Air Force seek to recruit some of the best qualified people to work as these cyberwarriors? I ask this because some of the best people are former black-hat hackers (black-hat refers to malicious hackers) that have turned their knowledge of systems penetration tactics into a skill set in the securities consulting business. Somehow, I think the Air Force would find that pill a little hard to swallow with their attitude tests and psychological profiling.

Update: I forgot the link to the ForeignPolicy.com article. It's now been added. Way to forget the basic premise, Ed.

I apologise for the lack of updates recently. I was unable to log into the administration area of the blog for a couple of days, and I spent a good amount of time trying to resolve that issue myself.

I found out today that it was caused by my web hosts upgrading their server software. Since Movable Type isn't completely portable to all OS's, this broke the administration scripts.

Luckily, my web hosting company, Total Choice Hosting, has a great tech support department, so they got my blog back up and running with a few code modifications within a couple of hours after I told them of the issue.

In case any of you out there run into the same issue with your hosts, I'm told the solution is to add the following code into /lib/MT/Bootstrap.pm:

$ENV{'MT_HOME'} = '/home/username/path-to/cgi-bin/mt';

I had tried a similar solution, but apparently in the wrong cgi files. Thanks, Total Choice. I've gotten nothing but good service from them, and they have active MT users among the administration, so it helps a great deal that they know how to help us MT users.

I should be back to my regular posting schedule by tomorrow.

AOL News has come up with a really funny commercial that shows us YouTube celebrities as they would appear in the real world:

Nice job, AOL.

The 2007 Merriam-Webster "Word of the Year" is (drum roll please):

w00t.

That's right folks, a l337 speak word has made it into the Word of the Year list. For those that are technology or l337 deficient, I'll let CBS explain:

"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness.

I never thought "w00t" could sound so sterile.

Guilty admission: I've been known to exclaim "w00t!" out loud in real life when happy. Yes, I know I'm a dork, thank you very much.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007 [Merriam-Webster]

Verizon Wireless has pledged that it will open up its network and let any device and any application operate within it, as long as you pay for the bandwidth.

Hell has frozen over.

A UN committee of experts has declared that tasers are a deadly form of torture:

The UN committee made its comments in recommendations to Portugal, which has bought the newest Taser X26 stun gun for use by police.

Portugal "should consider giving up the use of the Taser X26,'' as its use can have a grave physical and mental impact on those targeted, which violates the UN's Convention against Torture, the experts said.

Via: Engadget.

The MPAA comments on the previously reported bill now in Congress that would threaten federal financial aid to a college if they did not police copyrighted works for the MPAA and the RIAA:

"When the government is subsidizing universities...and it discovers that those universities are spending a lot of taxpayers' money to build digital networks that are being used primarily to allow college students to traffic in infringing content, I think it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say, wait a minute, if we're giving you money, we don't want it to be used to help college kids infringe copyright,"

Oh great, it's that stupid argument: "They have the fast Internets! They must be using it solely to infringe on our copyrights!"

Again, please tell your local Congressman to vote against this bill.

As a follow up to yesterday's The Daily Show writers post, today we have writers from The Colbert Report chiming in:

Wil Wheaton has brought a wonderful and funny video, made by one of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart writers, explaning the writer's strike in the style of The Daily Show:

With guest appearance by John Oliver.

In case you missed the news all over the Internet regarding the ridiculous bill introduced by House Democrats on Friday, CNET News has a recap of the idiocy:

New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.

The U.S. House of Representatives bill, which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill. "We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing," said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

If colleges don't comply by testing "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity," they risk losing all federal financial aid. Not only that, but they're forced to provide alternatives to downloading, basically making all colleges sign up for music services. What kind of demented lobbying happened to put that in? No wonder the MPAA loves the bill.

Please tell your local representative this bill is a stupid idea that is just meant to divert money from education and into the music and movie companies' hands.

The full text of the bill can be found here.

College Humor posts what T.V. series 24 would look like if aired in 1994.

Ah, memories of Lycos search, Prodigy, AOL 3.0, and Windows 3.1. The college freshmen around me kept asking why I was laughing so hard, and then I realised they were at most 5 years old in 1994 and wouldn't understand the references in the movie. I was using the internet when they were 5... it made me feel a little older:

For those that have iPhones, the new software update v1.1.2 is out; bringing international keyboard support with it. I've acquired and installed the update on my iPhone in order to report what's new.

You can find a detailed break down of the changes on my post at Homotron.net.

Kottke has an interview with the father of blog culture Cory Doctorow, who was forever immortalised as the hero of blogging by the hilarious XKCD in this comic. He speaks on his method of giving away free copies of his writing while still maintaining a profit:

I can't think of anyone better suited to answering questions about the state of culture in the Age of the Blog than Cory Doctorow. Whether it's running Boing Boing, writing (and giving away—while still profiting from—his novels and short-story collections), or speaking out for our electronic rights, Cory is a ubiquitous presence on every vector of this discussion. I caught up with him by phone at his London flat.

A nice, relatively quick read for all fans of the blogging world.

An independent, government commissioned study in Canada has found out what many of us who keep up with technology know intuitively - people who share and download music using P2P services are more likely to buy CDs than the general public:

When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was "a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases." The study estimates that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.

Jack Kapica provides a more in depth analysis of the government report, including this statement, which is obvious to anyone in the P2P scene, but it's nice to have an independent study confirm:

The study concluded that about half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs. Another quarter were downloaded because they were just not available in music stores.

I'll be the first to admit that some of the music I look for, most recently some Tegan and Sara albums, are very rare and not found either in iTunes or in record stores. There's no other recourse but downloading their music via P2P services. Via boingboing.

More good promises from the Obama camp, this time dealing with net neutrality:

Affixing his signature to federal Net neutrality rules would be high on the list during his first year in the Oval Office, the junior senator from Illinois said during an interactive forum Monday afternoon with the popular contender put on by MTV and MySpace at Coe College in Iowa.

Net neutrality, of course, is the idea that broadband operators shouldn't be allowed to block or degrade Internet content and services--or charge content providers an extra fee for speedier delivery or more favorable placement.

Obama's endearing himself to me more and more with these announcements as of late. Net neutrality is an extremely important issue for the survival of the Internet as a whole. The existence of my own site would be threatened without it. Via boingboing.

Professor Orzel of Uncertain Principles writes on the difficulties faced by solar energy production:

As best I can reconstruct it, the argument went like this: In order to meet the energy needs of the US entirely with solar power, we would need to cover 0.2% of the land area of the United States with photovoltaic cells, roughly equal to the area of paved roads in the US. And that's using solar cells with an efficiency of 50%, not too far below the theoretical maximum for a single-layer device.

To give even more context, researchers at the moment are aiming for producing a solar panel with 20% efficiency. Even worse are the production problems faced with providing that many solar panels to feed the energy needs of the US. Solar energy just isn't economically feasible by any stretch of the imagination as an overall solution.

Ars Technica has posted their review of Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X.

They give it their usual thorough review, with both geeky and non-geeky sections of the review to appeal to everyone. Their conclusions:

I started this review talking about expectations. As I've learned more about Leopard, it's become increasingly clear where, exactly, those two-and-a-half years of development time went. Leopard is absolutely packed with improvements. It seems that not a corner of the OS has gone untouched.

Perhaps that's not as clear to the casual user who just sees the surface changes and the major new features in Leopard. But even in that case, there's more than enough to recommend it. if you're wondering whether you should upgrade to Leopard, the answer, as it's been for every major revision of Mac OS X, is yes.

The result is a 17 page long review that points to some of the great under the hood improvements to Leopard casual users will miss, but developers will love (and eventually users will greatly benefit from.) Ars Technica's comprehensive reviews are pieces of writing I always enjoy reading.

AT&T is giving free access to its Wi-Fi hotspots located in an around the areas affected by the California fires. AT&T says this will allow displaced residents to more easily communicate with family and loved ones.

I'm sure this is a move designed to garner positive public attention after their earliler deplorable actions.

Valleywag reports on some terrifying behaviour perpetrated by Facebook employees, who have access to tons of private data and consider the ability to look at this user data a "job perk:"

"My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile," says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone's profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed -- a major privacy violation. If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.

With its growth as a public networking community, and self professed privacy activism, Facebook needs to address these glaring privacy concerns quickly if it intends to remain in the good graces of the fickle online community.

What do you do when you've got a great museum design for Mercedes, but those pesky fire code regulations want you to put in unsightly doors? Why, create the world's most powerful artificial tornado system to suck out all the smoke so you can avoid putting the doors in all together, of course!

Following Apple's record setting quarterly financial results, Apple's market cap has exceeded those of IBM and Intel, now making it the fourth largest computer company behind Microsoft, Google, and Cisco.

This has set off another round of "is Apple becoming the new Microsoft?" discussions on the Internet. I myself fear all this success may go to Apple's head and lead to a breakdown of its excellent customer service.

David Pogue of The New York Times has posted his review of Apple's new Leopard operating system.

The Internet is exploding with the news: Google is rolling out free IMAP support for Gmail accounts.

Finally, I can stop deleting e-mails twice on my iPhone.

Note: it's being rolled out in stages, so if it's not under your settings page, you'll have to wait.