10.5.7 is here
Apple have just released the 10.5.7 update to Leopard. I can’t grab it right away because I’m finishing off some scheduled tasks in my Boot camp partition. Cruel world.
I’m quite excited to find out if the development of Snow Leopard has had any affect on this update.
Super slow motion reveals complexity and beauty in simple things
I am still in awe of the things I’ve just seen in super slow motion. I used to think that action replays in cricket and football games were impressive. But at 4000 frames per second (and more!), I’m completely blown away.
I’m still trying to investigate the price tag on such a camera. Here’s a collection of what YouTube has to offer at incredibly high FPS.
Water Balloon Pops in slow motion
Golf swing in slow motion
Lightning in slow motion
There’s lots of other interesting videos on youtube, especially by a user called UltraSlo. Search for things such as “3000 fps”, “3500 fps” and “4000 fps” and you’ll find lots of videos that will take your breath away!
Attack of the Ebook readers
Following an interesting conversation at dinner last night, I’m interested to find out if and when Ebook readers will replace old fashioned paper. It will be difficult as books have been at the heart of learning and leisure for centuries. Motivating people to consider an alternative will be challenging.
A fellow guest at the dinner holds the opinion that people will never accept electronics as replacement for books. The current situation seems to confirm this opinion. But we are missing a trend-setting device in the Ebook playground. Mp3 players had been out and about for years before Apple finally sealed the deal with its revolutionary iPod. Until then, it was impossible to discount CD’s as the primary mode of distributing music. Similarly, all we might need for Ebooks to enter the mainstream is a product marketed well enough and in the right places.
A few devices have been out and about for quite some time now. Amazon’s Kindle created a lot of buzz which died down quickly mainly due to its steep price.
With the launch of Kindle, e-paper (designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper) was thrust into the spotlight. But its inability to display colors turned out to be a downside that customers were not ready to overlook. But it would be safe to assume that many people will have their eyes set on a future version of the Kindle that does a bit more than connect to the web only to display in black and white.
Other companies have been cautious with making advances in the field. Sony and Waterstones have collaborated on their own reader which, so far, hasn’t fared much better than the Kindle.
A few days ago, the Kindle was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. Amazon is hoping that this will finally carry it to the limelight. But will customers think it a worthy investment?
University and high school students will surely be delighted at the prospect of carrying a single, lightweight reader instead of half a dozens textbooks. Purchasing e-books will also be simpler than scanning the bookstore shelves for hard copies. But at $400, the Kindle will struggle to fully convince this demographic.
Many issues need to be addressed if Ebooks want to carve a niche in Education. Will most course books have readily available electronic versions? The Kindle doesn’t let you purchase books outside of Amazon.com. Will this lead to a format war? It’d be a pity if cash-deprived students were forced to carry 3 different readers because a single one was unable to support all required course books.
Some additional features that might enhance the appeal of an Ebook reader:
- highlighting and bookmarking
- note-taking software
- touch-based drawing
- sharing and collaboration with others
Breaking News: LHC creates small black holes in Switzerland
GENEVE (1ED) – At 0600 hrs yesterday, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider announced that their worst fears were realized when the collission of sub-atomic particles just shy of the speed of light resulted in the creation of several blackholes at different scales. Following a plea by scientists, major news corporations and newspapers have decided to not publish the news so as to not create havoc amongst the concerned masses.
“We do not know how many black holes have formed,” says a scientist at the LHC on the condition of anonymity, “but we believe there to be more than one”. Top sources at the LHC claim that the scale of the black holes poses no credible threat. But as the energy of the colliding particles increases, the size of the possible black holes will increase exponentially, threatening the safety of the entire world.
The chances of this happening were reported to be one in 5 million before the experiments began. But the odds had been going up ever since the Collidor began operation. “We realized early on that our calculations on how the apparatus should behave were off,” says the scientist, “and we had to revise the estimates almost every hour due to the unpredictable manner in which the LHC was operating”. When asked why the potentially dangerous experiment was allowed to continue, a spokesman for the LHC said that the huge sum of money invested into the idea could not be forsaken “at the slightest dab of concern”.
Conception and construction of the LHC cost approximately £3.5 billion over nearly a decade. Scientists are hoping to find the ellusive Higgs Boson particle by colliding sub-atomic particles at very high speeds. The Higgs Boson is the particle which physicists believe to be responsible for the mass of things. It has never been observed although the framework of modern physics rests upon its shoulders. Conditions were set-up at the LHC that replicate the state of the universe when the big-bang had just occured. The LHC was cooled down for weeks to transform it into one of the coldest places in the universe and subatomic particles raced along its 27 km circumference, accelerating towards the speed of light.
“When the experiment first began,” says the scientist, “the odds of finding the Higgs Boson were considerably higher than those of creating a black hole. But the revised odds after only a day of operation made the creation of black holes more likely. Many mathematicians expressed their concern and wanted the LHC to be shut down until the calculations were reviewed”. Despite the concern, the LHC was allowed to operate further due to two major reasons.
“If we were to stop operations, the hysteria would make it unlikely for the LHC to resume atleast in the near future. Also, there was no contingency plan to halt the operations. Thats the one thing that we didn’t plan”.
Frankie Boyle, a regular contributor to BBC’s Channel 2 recently said, “These black holes are the worst possible kind of black holes. Everybody is going to slowly move towards Switzerland”. To make his point in a debate about the importance of new discoveries promised by the LHC, Mr. Boyle said, “I’m sure they’ll find some interesting things about protons. But I may add, I don’t give a shit”.
Our newsteam has promised to pass on any comments to our scientist at the Large Hadron Collider. Please keep your messages short. Also, this is (obvious) satire against the prepostorous “end of the world” drama. Stop if you’re sweating and hope you enjoyed the read.
Microsoft Windows Flight Edition
- Colin King
Kerner engineer at Canonical Ltd (Ubuntu)
Aircraft normally triple redundancy, so Microsoft would probably cobble together Vista, Windows 98SE and XP.
- Jessica Gray
Software engineer at Google.
None of those systems is designed for that sort of operation and I know Mac and MS specifically list several things their software should be used for. IE and Safari don’t need to have the fail safes a flight control systems needs and would be prohibitively expense if they did.
- Benjamin Myers
Software Design Engineer at Microsoft.
Yes, even back when I hated Microsoft, my stuff worked at first and died later after I abused it.Mac, no. I’ve never worked on any Mac anything that didn’t need a lot of hand holding when asked to really grind. It’d give you a pretty death and then email your friends and relatives a catchy funeral march that Apple would own the rights to.Ashamed to say I’ve never heard of Ubuntu. I would trust Unix and Sun (at least the ones I worked on in late 1980s/early 1990s), but not Linux.
- Gary Clarke
Senior Manager at Amazon Kindle.
Are you kidding me? Someone would connect their seat-belt and cause a device-driver conflict. Flush the toilet and the flaps will extend in mid-flight.
- Chris Gamble
President of CRG Media. Former System Administrator at JPMorgan and Chase.
Windows: As long as its XP, and not an OEM install.
Mac: I’m sure it would be a nice ride, but you would spend all of the money you earn on in-flight upgrades.
Linux: I know I would get there safely, but all the money would be spent on Chiropractor bills.
- Abhinav Mishra
Programmer at Infosys (India’s largest software company).
If I have a Unix based parachute, I won’t mind.
- Robert Lindsley
Executive Producer at Atari
No, yes and no.
- Craig Muth
Former Sr. Systems Engineer at Lockheed Martin.
Not if its the initial release! If it is SP2 or later,Yes!
- Joe Wlad
Former Staff Engineer at United Airlines.Yes. As one who has worked in both aircraft flight testing and software certification to meet FAA requirements, all systems and software approved for airborne use must go through a rigorous development, testing and verification process.So the question is what systems would Windows be demonstrated on? If it’s passenger entertainment, the level of rigor involved to verify the software is more focused on quality (from a user point of view) than safety. If the OS supports flight-critical functions, then the level of rigor (and cost to certify) is much higher.If one just wanted to demonstrate the feasibility of using MS Windows on a display system during a flight test, you’d have to ensure that the secondary systems were using previously-certified software so that in case of any failure or malfunction the flight-test crew could shut down the Windows-based system and rely on the certified system to get back home.As an aside, certification of software to meet safety-critical requirements for commercial aviation is rather expensive. Experience has shown that it costs about $50 per line to certify software to the highest level of safety. For this reason, the operating systems used in these systems are usually small in size when compared to Windows.
- John Gilman
Former Business & Technology Consultant at Microsoft.
Of course, I would prefer Windows embedded over any OS for stability…I just to make sure the hardware drivers and other applications are written up to snuff.
- Kurt Brust
Sr Linux Platform Engineer at Wachovia. Former Sr Linux Consultant at IBM.
Maybe if it was running in a virtual session under Linux!
- Tadd Moor
Director, IS&T Infrastructure at Rooney Holdings Inc.
No, I wouldn’t. Partly because I’m burned out on air travel an – even free travel; and partly because you didn’t mention from who Microsoft “liberated” the technology.
- Geoff Beckman
Owner of Beckman & Associates.
No for two reasons:
1. I can’t wait 18 months for it to launch.
2. I bought my flight bag in 1998, and the luggage compartment doesn’t support it anymore.2. Ubuntu isn’t scheduled to add stairs to the plane in the next release (right now you have to climb hand over hand using a rope), and I’m tired of being called a “newbie” or MS-100Z3R when I request that someone look into adding seats and restrooms.No to the others as well:
1. Mac OS X will fly me to San Francisco, Monte Carlo, or Rio, but will not support a return trip, because Steve Jobs doesn’t think it’s a cool experience to fly to Ohi
- John Swanagon
Senior Systems Architect Manager at Avaya. Former Principal Consultant at Lucent technologies. - Absolutely. Let me qualify that by saying that I would as long as the plane, which includes the software, was cleared and certified by the FAA (or in the process of certification). There are varying opinions out there as to Windows’ stability, but I believe that it is a stable product. I would trust it to run the software on a plane.The other thing to remember too is the backup systems. If all else fails, the pilots could land the plane without the software. If the plane was so dependent on the software that a “manual” landing was impossible, then I would say absolutely not.
- Sanjay Vyas
Sr. Vice President at Aptech & Owner of Synergetics India.
Yes… if its version 3.0!
- Jason King
Senior Developer at Optus SingTel Pty Ltd. & Technical Director at Handle IT
Fee for boarding test flight: $10,000,000
Parachute: $2000
Standby recovery team: $10,000
MS Windows plane never getting close to even pushing back from the gate: Priceless!
- Hosun Lee
Former Technical Sales Specialist at IBM
Sure I would.
1) Microsoft makes quality software.
2) The publicity associated with a plane crashing when Windows crashing would be catastrophic enough for Microsoft to want to make sure it works.
3) Microsoft already powers my car, and I have a much greater chance of dying in a car accident than in a plane crash (knock on wood).
- John Ruxlow
Works for Thomson Reuters.
I would be willing to get on it, but I would want the money to go to my family if I didn’t make it. From what I am seeing on the news Microsoft couldn’t screw it up any worse than the FAA and plane maintenance groups already have it.
- Alan Crawford
Former Senior Systems Engineer at Trident Systems Inc.
Board it, yes. However, I’d be sure to get off and take cover before they started the engines, let alone attempted to get airborne.
For the other two – no. I don’t fly on planes running general purpose operating systems. While wild horses wouldn’t get me airborne on even Windows for Airliners (formerly Windows for Warships, previously Windows for Washing Machines, originally Bob), there are already plenty of planes airborne with subsystems that make use of specialized versions of the Linux kernel. Probably a fair number of systems using Window CE based systems too.
- Ray Miller
Former Project Team Leader at GE Aircraft Engines.
Windows: NO (especially Vista). Mac: Yes. Ubuntu: Yes
- Adrian Bugaian
Software Test Engineer at Endava.
Why not? It will be very very scary, but you will have something to tell you grand children.
Regarding the other 2: Mac is just good looking and thats all. Ubuntu… no… for such purpuses open software is really not suitable.
- Adam Dionne
QA Technician at CAPCOM Interactive Canada.
I would do it for free without hesitation.
Keep your secrets off the plane
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that computers are like luggage and subject to searches at national borders and airports. Its only a matter of time before this reasoning is applied to electronic devices such as your Blackberry.
Its time to put an end to the practice of carrying Corporate secrets on board. If you must finish that Powerpoint presentation outlining your company’s brilliant new idea, do invest in some reasonable encryption. Also, you may want to consider grabbing a utility that securely deletes your recycle bin contents by overwriting it multiple times.
If you run Mac OS X, Disk Utility (included in the OS) does all this for you.
The Erase Free Space option overwrites deleted data up to 35 times. This makes it nearly impossible for sinners to recover your corporate secrets.
You can also encrypt folders by creating a new disk image from folder and choosing the 128-bit AES Encryption format. (Remember to uncheck the option that automatically saves your password in keychain)








