Spanish police force motorcyclist to crash

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Just saw this on CBS’s “Eye on America.” A guy who was robbing a bank in Spain made a deal with the police. In exchange for a motorcycle to drive away on, he would release two hostages. He had told the police that he had a hand grenade so they gave him the motorcycle. As he was making his getaway, an unmarked police car pulled out directly in front of him and causing him to crash. He did three flips in the air before landing. Police were immediately on the scene to arrest him and send him on an ambulance to the hospital. Seems kind of drastic, but Spanish authorities said that with the terrorist threats they are not going to take anything to lightly.

Scrambled word mistake

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Someone came to my website searching for “monlita.” (I assume he/she means Minolta, as in Minolta digital cameras). The funny thing is that on my news page, I have a link to a site that scrambles the inside of words. It just so happens that the word scrambler had scrambed “minolta” to “monlita.” The Yahoo searchbot went to the scrambled website. I guess in a way the scramblizer acts as a safeguard in case people misspell certain words.

Google Offers Email!

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Google Offers Email! (Click for Reuters link)

From http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gmail.html

Google Gets the Message, Launches Gmail

User Complaint About Existing Services Leads Google to Create Search-Based Webmail

Search is Number Two Online Activity – Email is Number One; “Heck, Yeah,” Say Google Founders

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – April 1, 2004 UTC – Amidst rampant media speculation, Google Inc. today announced it is testing a preview release of Gmail – a free search-based webmail service with a storage capacity of up to eight billion bits of information, the equivalent of 500,000 pages of email. Per user.

The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. “She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them,” Page said. “And when she’s not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, ‘Can’t you people fix this?'”

The idea that there could be a better way to handle email caught the attention of a Google engineer who thought it might be a good “20 percent time” project. (Google requires engineers to spend a day a week on projects that interest them, unrelated to their day jobs). Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born.
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Sure sounds like an April Fool’s Day joke to me. According to one slashdotter: “Hmmm… unless the joke is that everyone thinks it’s a joke but they’re really doing it. Ha ha!” But search google news and you get a ton of respectable sources that document Google’s press release, including Reuters, Infoworld, and Wired News.

If this is true, I’ll definitely give it a try when it comes out in the next weeks or months.

As gas prices approach $2.50 — Think We Have High Gas Prices?

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We don’t. First of all, in an article entitled: Voters Aren’t Energy Dummies, we are reminded that though gas may seem expensive as it approaches $2.50 in some places, “a quick reminder about past inflation usually enlightens them that gas prices haven’t been this low in two decades – in real dollars. And the percentage of average income spent on gasoline also remains low.” They argue that, if anything, gas should be priced higher. Higher priced gas would “force a shift to other types of energy and transport…and might lead to better conservation.” Perhaps better conservation in the form of the newly redesigned Toyota Prius, the slow-to-arrive Ford Hybrid (built using the Hybrid Synergy System on license from Toyota ), or the Honda Civic Hybrid. Or, just ride a bike. (I love Trek personally!)

But if you still think gas prices are expensive, did you know that in….

Most Expensive
Hong Kong: $5.38
London, England: $5.05
Oslo, Norway: $4.54
Seoul, South Korea: $4.52
Paris, France: $4.28

Least Expensive
Caracas, Venezuela: $0.40
Jakarta, Indonesia: $0.45
Kuwait City, Kuwait: $0.76
Manama, Bahrain: $0.82
Abu Dhabi, UAE: $0.92

Source: http://money.howstuffworks.com/gas-price2.htm

The United States doesn’t make the list of the least expensive, but it certainly is lower than the most expensive prices.

Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales

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Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales

From the Washington Post article:
Internet music piracy has no negative effect on legitimate music sales, according to a study released today by two university researchers that contradicts the music industry’s assertion that the illegal downloading of music online is taking a big bite out of its bottom line.

Songs that were heavily downloaded showed no measurable drop in sales, the researchers found after tracking sales of 680 albums over the course of 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. Matching that data with activity on the OpenNap file-sharing network, they concluded that file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy, the researchers found.

Oberholzer-Gee and his colleague, University of North Carolina’s Koleman Strumpf, also said that their “most pessimistic” statistical model showed that illegal file sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.

From a statistical point of view, what this means is that there is no effect between downloading and sales,” said Oberholzer-Gee.

[A] 2002 Jupiter study showed that people who traded files for more than six months were 75 percent more likely than average online music fans to spend more money on music.

The RIAA has cited other sources that say the opposite — downloading adversely affects music sales. They concede that music downloading might increase the popularity of some music, but they contend that the overall effect is still negative. Continue reading →

Fusion power

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Fusion power, the Holy Grail of the scientific community, is predicted to operational (at least operational for their experiments) by the year 2014 (though it might be earlier if all the lasers do not need to be built).

From the Times-Herald Online article:
When completed, a 192-beam instrument is expected to be both the world’s largest and its most intense laser, capable of creating temperatures and pressures similar to those inside stars. When all 192 lasers in the NIF are operating, they’ll focus 500 trillion watts – more than 1,000 times the power generated in the United States – on their target, albeit only for a few billionths of a second. But, as Dr. Craig Wuest, NIF assistant project manager, explained on a recent tour, before the beams are powered up by pre-amplifiers and huge main amplifiers, they barely have the power of a spark. “(The pre-amplifiers) take the energy of the very low-energy master oscillator – it’s only about a billionth of a joule – and they amplify it 10 billion times to a few joules … A billionth of a joule is very small; it’s like the amount of energy a fly uses to push off a tabletop.”

The entire project is estimated to cost $3.448 billion, “roughly the initial cost of the Hubble Space Telescope plus a B-2 ‘Stealth’ bomber.”

I believe that research like this, however costly, is necessary for our future energy requirements. Providing that we can produce fusion power that gives off more energy that it can take in, this will be money well spent towards the continuing growth of the world population.

Terraforming Mars?

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NASA is seriously thinking about this: Now Nasa looks to change Mars into a garden of Earthly delights

Within a couple of decades, Mars could be habitable to life. The current idea is to station large mirrors that concentrate sunlight on the polar caps, releasing carbon dioxide, thickening and warming the Martian atmosphere. (Carbon dioxide is a green house gas). The concern that some scientists have is that in terraforming Mars, we would not only be harming our planet but also another planet. Plus they argue that with the recent rover evidence of water and methane (a byproduct of biological life), terraforming Mars would be unethical.

I think life on Mars, even possibly living bacteria (as possibly shown by the methane release), will be discovered this year or the next. This life should thoroughly be classified and categorized to see if and how it fits into Earth’s taxonomy. Will life on Mars have the same genetic makeup, consume the same nutrients, or use the same amino acids? These types of questions should be answered and explored. But then, I would love to see Mars terraformed. Can you imagine in the not-so-distant future, traveling to Mars for vacation?? Humans are rapidly consuming resources and land on Earth. Mars would be a great place to expand humanity.

Currently we (humanity) has all its eggs in one basket. Expanding to another planet would be the smartest way to increase our species chances of survival in the next millenia. If not a habitable destination for a long time, at least it would provide another off earth starting point for space travel. New telescopes orbiting Mars (or on the moon) would provide clearer images of the universe at Creation.

Plus, it would be just plain cool. Imagine having to indicate on the destination of mail, not only the country but the planet as well? I heard somewhere that the gains in the previous century (1900-2000), while great, will be incomparable to the gains made in the next century (2000-2100). My great-grandparents went from horse and buggy to the advent of space travel. I believe that the next century will build off of space travel. The great triumphs of the next century will be huge advances in space travel, medical breakthroughs in cancer and viral diseases (though new treatments will need to be developed to combat increases bacterial resistance to antibiotics), and quantum computing on a level that defies Moore’s Law.

The origin of the Quiznos Subs advertisement

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Just found this site: Rathergood.com

Here’s some of the best (there’s tons more though):

We Like The Moon
Lightsabre Blues
independent women

You will recognize that the Moon Song is very similar to a Quiznos Subs advertisement. That’s because this guy, Joel Veitch, made it!!!

This is taken from his FAQ (Furtively Asked Questions):
Did you make that thing I saw on TV?
Probably. I do broadcast animations as well as web stuff. Currently broadcasting is work for:
Rathergood Videos – Wednesday and Saturday nights, Channel 4 UK
Quiznos Subs (US)
Switch/Maestro (UK)
VH1 (US)

My new MP3/Ogg Vorbis Music Player: iGP-100

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New MP3/Ogg Vorbis Music Player: iGP-100

Features (from above website)
Plays up to 50 hours of music
Supports MP3, WMA, ASF and Ogg Vorbis files
Intuitive one-handed navigation
Integrated FM tuner
Ultra-fast USB 2.0 transfers
Extra-large, backlit LCD
Rechargeable lithium-ion polymer battery
Up to 12 hours of battery life
Skip-free playback
Upgradeable to future formats and features
Enhanced 3D audio
One-year limited warranty
Dimensions: Approx. 80 X 77.5 X 25mm
Weight: Approx. 108g (battery included)

Day 0 – I Ordered from Amazon.Com

Cost: $182 (with $20 mail-in rebate)
Shipping: Chose Two-Day

Purchased yesterday (Thursday) and received today (Friday). I received the equivalent of one day shipping! Luckily, it turned out that Amazon has a distribution center or something in Illinois because it shipped to Wisconsin very, very fast.

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As soon as I get the armstrap I will post an update here. I’ve also ordered the Shure e2c headphones after reading this blog and numerous excellent reviews. Note, the previous three words are each separate links…

There is also a Headphone Review: Shure E2c Vs. Etymotic ER6 for those that are wondering.

Scott