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• "Romantic art"

  
  Since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into our orbit in 1989 and completed in 1993 it has provided us with the most amazing photographs that we could only imagine. The telescope has taken more than 140,000 pictures in that time and has let us observe galaxies far from our own solar system. The photo above is the most recently snapped photo of gas pillars, which is being called "like romantic art." Repairs have been made to the 1.5 billion dollar telescope through out the years, but is to be terminated when it's pointing gyroscopes cease to work. The Bush administration has cut the funding for Hubble due to "budget concerns" and has told NASA to focus on deorbiting the telescope at the end of its life. This telescope is an amazing piece of machinery and is one of the telescopes I would prefer to stay in orbit, let alone all the cellphone and spy satellites. It's a shame that it's to be destroyed.

  


• "Snowzilla"

  Hey kids I got an outstanding idea, lets make a really big snow man this winter and name it "Snowzilla."

  


• "SuitSat"

  
  Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are preparing for the launch of their most complex satellite yet, a space suit.

  http://suitsat.org/

  


• 2006 Olympic Winter Games

  
  Let the games begin!

  


• 3, 2, 1, take off!

  A Japanese rocket succeeded to take off today after it had to be rescheduled three times due to mechanical problems and bad weather. The H-2A rocket is the holder of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite or better known as the ALOS. The ALOS has three earth sensors that can obtain terrain data for maps and make all-weather observations of the Asia-Pacific region. The success of this mission will clear the way for the launching of two spy satellites by March 2007 to monitor North Korea and other trouble spots.

  


• 4 Made-for-DVD Futurama Movies

  Good news everyone

  Things are looking up for nerds like me. Looks like there's a good chance we'll have 4 full-length Futurama movies in the future. Voice recording is to start in July or August, but no release dates or official Fox confirmation yet. But I generally trust people actually connected to the show.

  


• a little service to find contact info for folks you have lost


• Add a touch of earth to your computing?


• Andy Folds Web Designs

  The link above is to a web designer, oh man this guy makes amazing flash web designs, check it out. There are also cool little games to fool around with if you're board.

  


• Best inventions of 05'

  

  


• Better think twice about parking illegally.

  Watch your neck if you do!

  


• Bodies exhibit

  
  Though this has been around for awhile I have heard many people have yet to see this amazing exhibit. If you like to see the way the body is constructed and or just interested, you should really check it out. All the bodies are of people who authorized the use of their bodies after their deaths for the educational benefit. The specimens are preserved by plastination, which is an impregnational technique carried out in a vacuum where the body tissue is saturated with special plastics. Plastination lends a high degree of rigidity to the tissue, enabling bodies to be displayed in upright, lifelike poses. As for all you people near the tampa area the exhibit is now being featured at the science museum, Mosi.

  


• Bombs in Bangladesh

  [REQUEST: If you have access to the American news media, please let them know about the JMB bombing story (it hasn’t hit outside of Bangladesh yet)]

  Bombs in Bangladesh, who cares? Me. Why? Because while as I'm in law school, and a software architect for a company in China, my fiancé is a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Bangladesh. There's going to be some background information and then I'll get on with my griping.

  So back to the point, Bombs in Bangladesh, who cares? People with fiancés in the Peace Corps who live in Bangladesh, that's who. Apparently, last week an article came out about how the JMB (a militant group on Bangladesh) attempted to bomb the Peace Corps training facility and kill the 60 new volunteers when they arrived approx. 6 months ago (read: my fiancé). They wanted to ward off NGOs from assisting the governments, so they tried to gather some extra suicide bombers to hit the Peace Corps training office in Gazipur.

  What has the Peace Corps done about this? Nothing, not a damn thing. What about world media? Nothing, not a damn thing. Why? Because just about no one cares about Bombs in Bangladesh, except those of us with loved ones there.

  The Peace Corps has offered its volunteers what is known as "Interrupted Service", basically they're allowed to leave Bangladesh and try to find another country to work in with the Peace Corps. Sound nice, right? Well, it would be except that the 6 months of time + 3 months of training my fiancé has put in doesn't transfer to the new project. That means that she would have to spend another 27 months to get her benefits and a proper discharge from the Peace Corps.

  It really ticks me off that they would take my fiancé, who just wanted to help people, send her to a country where they KNEW their was trouble, knew an election was coming up next year, figured that they'd have to close the program down and evacuate the volunteers, at some point, and offer her no other option than "start over and get nothing." She's promised them two years of her life and the best they gave her back is placing her in harms way. It is disgusting that the Peace Corps would treat their volunteers this way.

  I understand that training from one country to another isn't transferable, but 1) they NEVER should have sent her to a country they didn't have full confidence for her safety and where she couldn’t finish her two year commitment or at least; 2) the time she's spent should count towards her two year commitment.

  I've been to Bangladesh and the people are lovely, kind, caring, and completely against this kind of violence. The news media seems to forget to say that out of the 150 million people in Bangladesh there are probably 5,000 militant Islamists and the "average" people of Bangladesh detest them. Honestly, if you have a chance to visit Bangladesh I'd definitely suggest it. Leave Dhaka and spend some time in one of the countryside towns, it's beautiful and the people are very kind. Honestly, I've traveled all over the world and Bangladesh was one of my favorite places.

  In conclusion boo the Peace Corps, boo the JMB, yay Bangladesh.

  


• Bureaucracy knows no bounds

  Link to paperwork filled out to join terrorists

  


• Cheat codes for your car

  Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, B, A to activate those fifth and sixth cylinders on your 80's Mazda 323. A guy can dream.

  


• Check out Matt Furie's Images

  Link Via Fecalface

  


• chipping away Roe v wade

  Slow and steady undermining of Roe v Wade on Frontline. This video traces the history of a legal battle to chip away at abortion in Mississippi.

  


• Closed source might keep you out of jail

  The choice of Closed vs. Open source can keep you out of jail. Florida recently decided that evidence from a Breathalyzer test could not be introduced because the source code was closed. The court found that the lack of source code, denied the accused the right to determine if the machine accurately calculated his Alcohol levels. I found it an extremely interesting issue and I figured others might too.

  If you've read my Blog you know I'm a law student and software designer. I'm probably best known for being the co-founder of the Azureus, an open-source bit torrent client. I'd consider myself an open source proponent, but by no means am I an open source zealot, though I think I may be changing. What interested me about this case is the conflict between Open vs. Closed source and it's impact on a humans freedom. No freedom to get a job, freedom to information, but literally the possibility of someone going to jail. This is about a person’s right to confront their accuser. As we've privatized the justice system, we seem to have forgotten that these machines, radar guns, breathalyzers, DNA analysis, etc. are used to convict people of crimes, serious crimes. These people have the right to confront their accusers, but if they're not made of Silicon.

  In a normal case a lot of evidence is established by witnesses. Witnesses may have a bias, but they are subject to cross examination and that bias can be exposed to the jury. In the case of a breathalyzer machine, both sides have access to the machine, access to the results, access to the person who administered the test, but neither side has access to the source code. The microchips and code that runs the machine is not available to anyone except the machine's manufacturer. Neither side has access to the source code, so there's no problem, right? No. The Prosecution is relying on this evidence for a conviction, but the Defense has no means of arguing against it. For example:

  The prosecution presents evidence to a Jury. They say "we ran a breathalyzer test on Mr. Jones and it showed he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.10." They then explain to the jury that this conclusively proves that Mr. Jones was legally over the limit and should not have been driving his car. Then Mr. Jones stands up and tells the jury, "I wasn't drunk, that machine is lying." Unfortunately, that's all Mr. Jones gets to say, because he can't show anything else. He had been at the bar, he can't deny that. He drove the car, he can't deny that. He was arrested properly; the police followed the proper procedure, no acquittal there. "That damn little machine, that's the liar here! It's making this all up!" That's all the Jury hears from Mr. Jones. We all know a machine doesn't lie; they're just machines, they don't think. We're correct, as far as I know a machine has never lied, but several machines have made mistakes.

  As developers know, the average user (read: jury member) thinks a computer is a magical box. They know that things called "bugs" exist, but would never be in something important. Obviously, the bugs would be removed before a piece of hardware was released. So when poor Mr. Jones makes his plea to the Jury, they simply explain it away as crazy talk, this man is only trying to confuse us. The magic box could never lie, no one would ever release something with a flaw in it.

  Sadly developers also know, there are numerous examples of when something has gone wrong with a piece of Silicon. Sometimes, really wrong. Cancer patients irradiated to death by a mistaken computer, planes inverting in mid-flight, cars shutting down on the highway, and I think everyone has watched some hand held device randomly reboot at some point in their lives. These machines must go through major testing and use the best tools then right? No.

  Most software that resides on a microchip is written in very "low-level" languages. Commonly Assembler is used or if you're fortunate C. In general, these languages are not used by "modern" software developers. I'm in no way saying that they are never used, but they have for the most part been abandoned in major software development projects. These languages were abandoned because they are hard to maintain, difficult to work with, and prone to more bugs. For example, the last time C in a work setting was... never, the last time I used assembler in a work setting was... that's right never. There are many good assembler and C developers about there, but they are getting hard to find and management doesn't always like to pay a premium for the best. Let's look at another example:

  The company started with a graduate research, extremely skilled, but he's taken the role as the front man. He explains how the machine is the best at analyzing drunkards. He gets investment. The sales team decides they need him fulltime out their pushing the product and giving speeches at conventions about why his Breathalyzer is the best. He no longer has time to work on the soon to be released product. A younger inexperienced and most importantly cheap developer is hired out of school to work on the micro code for the Breathalyzer. He is the only one working on the machine's code, because all the other resources have been placed into a sales force. He's a good programmer, but there's no one reviewing his work. Sure they test the breathalyzer machine at the annual Christmas party and it shows that a third of the office is legally drunk, a third is sober, and the final third shouldn't be breathing. Must be working then, right?

  I know I've worked in companies where the setup was very similar. Reflecting on it, thank god none of my work in those early years was ever used for a criminal conviction. Not sure I'd be comfortable with any of my software being used for a criminal conviction, but that's another story. When I think back at some of the code I produced when I was starting out, I know I made mistakes, I know there were design issues, and I know there were bugs. Is it right to rely on these little machines at a trial? Should we allow private companies to build the machines that decide our fate? The government pays for a lot of the research that fuels these machines, but they don't have access to the source code, should they? I've read the debates on public funds for private ventures, but this is beyond that. This is at the core of what our Constitution stands for, our liberty is truly at issue here, and it's all because of Closed source. I never realized how much of an impact Closed vs. Open source really can have on our lives. I always looked at it as a way to save money, but it really could save lives. One day, we may find ourselves in a court room saying "That damn little machine, that's the liar here!" Sadly, for now that's about all we'll be able to say.

  Cheers

  


• Computers hate the blind

  Why do computers make life for blind living hell? Most major databases, when they generate a PDF file for download store the file as unsearchable images in a PDF. The result, screen readers for the blind don't work.

  Why does this matter? Well a year ago I would have said it really didn't, but living next to a blind L.L.M. candidate made me think differently. I spent 4+ hours converting PDFs for him to a readable format so his screen reader would read the text to him. It ended up costing him $60.00 in software, 4+ hours of both of our time, and he now gets OCR'd text formats that a sighted person gets to read for free. However, $60.00 later there's still some major problems.

  If you've ever read a legal treatise there's about half a page of text and then half a page of cites. The normal reader skips over the cites, but for my neighbor they get read to him by his screen reader and throw his comprehension off. The other big problem? The OCR software (the only one sub $500.00) didn't structure their menus to be navigated by keyboard, so the screen reader can't read off the menu items. The result, a sighted person has to convert all of the documents, because the blind can't use the software. Argh.

  Over the years he's learned to kind of block out the citations, but it's a sad state of affairs. You honestly never consider how a blind person deals with software or data until you spend your entire night helping them out. No Superbowl, No homework done, No coding done, nothing... just 4+ hours spend making something readable for a friend. Seriously, for everyone who hates XML take a lesson from this. If the documents were sent out in a well formatted XML, the reader could be configured to ignore cites while reading, not generate UNREADABLE images (or at least provide text descriptions), and a billion other formats.

  Software developers really need to put more time into accessibility planning. I know it's a seemingly small percentage of users, but for the ones it impacts it really makes a huge difference. So in the future, turn off your screen, turn on a screen reader and see if you can navigate your software, read the data you’re pumping out, get around your website, if you can smile. If not, try again.

  


• Cuban literacy reaches Venezuela