Aimless Wandering

I was eating lunch and reading an old magazine that was lying around.  There was an article talking about the digital picture frames infected with a virus that Best Buy was selling a few months ago, and a reminder about the iPods that were sold last year with a virus on them…

It got me wondering - we all assume that the electronics we purchase and rely on are “clean” and don’t come infected with malware out of the box.  More than that, these same electronics that we rely on are typically manufactured overseas… 

This got me wondering - Would it be all that hard for a government or organization to insert some sort of malicious code into the equipment used in the manufacturing process?  In particular how hard would it be for that code to be injected at a point in the process that would cause it to be replicated onto every device produced?

Think about it - by injecting a malicious program into a device, especially if it’s a sophisticated and difficult to detect program - a hostile government or organization could cause havoc with the devices that we rely on and even gain access to all kinds of sensative or private data… 

So I’m watching the coverage of the Olympic Torch “Run” in San Francisco.  So far it’s been more of a torch drive with the torch packed on to a bus and driven to a point in downtown San Francisco where it appears that folks will get to run with the torch.

Thanks to the protests the route has been cut short and the route has been altered so that nobody really knows where they are going.

Now, I don’t begrudge people’s right to protest, and I agree that the subject of the protest is just…  But I don’t agree with the protestors trying to disrupt the torch run or attacking the runners.

I like the Olympics - I prefer the Winter Olympics to the Summer Olympics, but I like the Olympics.  I think it would be pretty neat to get the opportunity to be a Torch Bearer.  I don’t think that being a Torch Bearer is a sign of political support for the policies of the host nation for the games, and I don’t think that it’s right that the Torch Bearers are being in a sense victimized by the protesters.    If I was a Torch Bearer taking part in this once in a lifetime event I would be very upset if gangs of protesters interfered with and/or obstructed with my chance to be a Torch Bearer.

The protesters at this point have turned the entire event into a sham.  The symbolism of the Torch being the beacon of the games traveling to the event has been destroyed.  Now it’s more like a sad game, the protesters are trying to disrupt the Torch Run and the Chinese are insistent on the run progressing to essentially thumb their noses at the protesters…

As I took inventory today of all the clocks that I need to adjust for daylight savings time i started wondering why is it car manufacturers can’t make a few simple changes that would make life a little easier and safer for drivers…

We had a car that would turn your headlights off when you turned the car off  unlike the two cars we have now that will leave the parking lights on when you turn the ignition off.   But with all the states that have laws that require you to have your headlights on when you have your wipers on, why don’t manufacturers make it so that your headlights turn on automatically when you turn on your wipers?

The other feature is related to all of the clock setting I had to do today.  Why don’t manufacturers add a wireless time synchronization feature on the clocks they put in their cars?  You can buy an alarm clock that does this for less than $30, how hard could it be to incorporate this into a car?  Instead of having to repeatedly mash buttons to set the time there could be 1 button to turn daylight savings on or off and one to select your time zone…  Quick, easy, and cheap.

Cars that can park themselves or being able to control your stereo by talking to it is great, but those features are really expensive and can be very complex.  On the other hand  these two features have got to be pretty cheap and simple to incorporate into new cars…

Maybe it’s just me - but I think John McCain’s wife looks a lot like a Barbie Doll…

Either she is significantly pulled, stretched, and Botoxed, or McCain married somebody siginificantly younger, or both…

Either way though she strikes me as rather - plastic.

So in case you didn’t hear about it, the US Navy had a minor run-in with some speedboats belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.  Thankfully no shots were fired, however the involved US Navy ships were preparing to fire on the Iranian boats.  I think the Iranians are pretty lucky because based on the reports the Iranians weren’t exactly behaving in a neighborly manner.

The Iranians explain the incident as something that:

…happens for the two sides every once in a while and, after the identification of the two sides, the issue is resolved…

You know I could see the confusion.  US Navy destroyers aren’t very distinctive looking at all.  It’s pretty easy to see how the Iranians might have mistaken them for a fishing boat, or a super tanker, or even a cruise ship!!!

I’m not sure which is dumber - the Iranians playing chicken with three Navy warships - or the lame excuse they gave for why they were playing chicken with three Navy warships…

… I’d be pretty pissed today…

In case you didn’t hear it, Steve Jobs hosted a new round of Apple product announcements - and one of the things he did was announced that they were cutting the cost of the 8GB iPhone by $200! The folks I really want to see smacking their heads are the ones who WAITED ON LINE for 12 or more hours to get the phone for $599 a little more than 60 days ago… Now not only did they not have to wait in line in the first place - put apparently their device also manage to depreciate at the staggering rate of $2.99 a day! Heck for $399 it almost makes sense to me to buy one… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an Apple device get such a drastic price cut period - let alone less than three months after release….

The device I have been waiting for - the one I decided would replace my iPod (which has been giving me grief for months anyway) has also been announced… The iPod Touch aka the phoneless iPhone will be shipping on September 28 in 8 and 16GB varieties. Take the phone out of the iPhone and you have an iPod Touch - and I hope to get one before our trip next month.

While the display and WiFi have me excited, I’m not too thrilled about the storage space… Granted I only have about 9GB of stuff on my 80GB iPod, but considering that I a)currently have an 80GB iPod and b) the new “iPod Classic” comes in 80GB and 160GB stepping down to 16GB seems a little daunting…. Especially since I would now own an iPod that could play video…

What I won’t be getting though is a new iPod Nano- or as engadget has been calling it the iPod Phatty…

Finally, on this iPod day - I bring you an old video that you may have seen - how Microsoft would have designed the iPod packaging…

While I’m hardly a road warrior, I do travel quite a bit.  A few years ago I found a great little program that I use to track my itineraries called Trip Tracker.  It was a great application that allows me to enter flight reservations, hotel reservations, car rental information and much much more in it.  It’s actually two applications, one that runs on the desktop and another that’s supposed to run on a Windows Mobile device.

Now you might be thinking “why do you need this program? Just enter the information in you calendar in Outlook…”  What makes Trip Tracker so valuable to me is that it syncs with Outlook, not only that but it handles multiple time zones with ease.  Just enter the information in the local time that it occurs in, and Trip Tracker makes the necessary adjustments so that it is entered into Outlook correctly.

The trouble is the manufacturer hasn’t updated it in years, and as a result it no longer runs on most Windows Mobile devices.  Since it places entries in Outlook it isn’t too much of a problem, but it would be nice to have something that had been updated.

Anybody seen something like this?  Even if it’s just a PC program and not a Windows Mobile program I would be really happy…

So if you’re a reader of The Wife’s blog then you probably know we have an issue with cat puke in our house.

So picture if you will our living room. Two super comfy recliners which the wife and I were doing our best to be absorbed in. At the other end of the room, our 7 foot tall, multi-level cat tree on which our youngest cat is lounging at the top most level, and our middle cat the next level down. Keep in mind these are two cats who tolerate each other at best.

Youngest cat all of a sudden sits up and makes that wonderful kitty retching sound – and leans over the side of where he is to aim his open gagging mouth right at middle cat below him…

Now our normal reaction when a cat starts yakking in this house is to curse a lot – but this time just the very thought that one cat might puke ON the other already had us giggling.

After a second or two of gagging, middle cat looks up at youngest cat and then after another second or two decides that maybe being in the target area for youngest cat’s hairball isn’t a good idea and slowly gets up and leaves.

Middle cat then hacks up the cause of his problem, launching it a good six inches and causing it to land on the arm of the sofa below with a distinct and resounding PLOP!

Is it wrong that we were laughing so hard at the flying cat puke that it hurt? Or that I looked at the wife , tears streaming down my eyes, and said “we should blog about that!”

In case you missed it, this past week several men were arrested in connection with a plot to blow up fuel tanks at New York’s Kennedy Airport.  If the plot went as they expected by blowing up the fuel tanks they would have triggered some sort of chain reaction that would have caused explosions to spread throughout the airport’s fuel pipelines blowing up aircraft at the gates and destroying much of the airport. Additional explosions would have also damaged nearby neighborhoods as well… Sounds pretty scary… Too bad it never could have happened the way these folks could have envisioned it.

Now don’t get me wrong, the arrest of this group of folks is without a doubt a score for the good guys. Even if they had managed to try and put this plan into action they would have done some serious damage… just not the apocalyptic scenario that they dreamed of.

While the newsreaders on your favorite media outlet are breathlessly reciting the details of what these guys wanted to happen, most of them are forgetting what would have actually happened if they had pulled this off. Thanks to the safeguards that are pretty much standard in fuel tank farms like the one these guys were targeting, they would have caused a big boom. If they had managed to blow up one or more of these tanks there would have been a large fire in the tank farm, the airport might even have closed for a bit while the fire raged. However, thanks to the fire suppression and leak prevention systems in place that fire would be contained to the tank farm. It wouldn’t go traveling along the pipeline causing horrific damage, it wouldn’t have been the flaming wall of destruction that these guys thought they would create.

Heck back in the ’80s there was an event similar to what they were trying to cause. A train derailed outside a Southern California neighborhood, as the train derailed it ruptured a pressurized gasoline pipeline that ran along the tracks. The gasoline spewing from the pipe ignited - initially causing a huge fireball. The rupture though was detected by pressure sensors in the pipeline which automatically closed valves shutting off the flow of gas. The residual gas in the pipe quickly burned off, and starved of fuel the fire went out.

If there was an explosion in one of these tanks, pressure sensors in the pipelines would close cutting off the fire (and fuel) and preventing the fire from spreading along the pipes to the airport.

This is the second group in the last few months that was arrested for plotting these grandiose plots that in reality don’t have a chance working as envisioned. How about the guys who thought that they could cause mass death and destruction on Fort Dix in NJ. I have no doubt they they could figure out a way to slip past security and get a few shot off, maybe get into a building… From the time that they fired their first shot I’d give them a life expectancy of 5 minutes tops. By then if the MP’s didn’t get them, one of the thousands of soldiers on that base with access to a wide assortment of weapons probably would. It would be an attack that would get tons of media attention for it’s boldness - and tons of ridicule for it’s outright stupidity.

However, morons like these folks are probably great for law enforcement folks. If they are plotting stupid attacks like these then they probably aren’t very bright to begin with and as a result probably make stupid mistakes that make it easy for them to be caught…

In this era of aggressive copy protection, restrictive digital rights management, it’s always nice to see a content provider that is encouraging that users share their content.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not a fan of copyright infringement or piracy, but I think that when folks share quality content with their friends that it’s a good thing.  Personally, I think that TV clips up on YouTube is a good thing.  While yes, the content creators aren’t getting paid for the content, they are getting hype.  Folks are noticing their work, and that in turn makes them more popular.  However, there have been plenty of stories recently of media companies serving YouTube and other similar services with copyright infringement notices and getting clips removed.  I just don’t think these “old media” companies understand or recognize the potential of “new media.”

So imagine my surprise to encounter an old media company that seems to get it, or at least a show that seems to get it.  I got an e-mail last week from NPR’s On The Media, which besides having the notes from the week’s show  had a little blurb buried at the bottom of the message.  “Got a blog or a website?  Did you know you can embed OTM audio segments just like YouTube?”

If you’re not familiar with OTM, as the name suggests it reports on the media and for years they have been talking about the clash between old media and new media.  They’ve been very conscious of the impact (and potential impact) of podcasts, blogs, video sharing and all of the other ways the people can get news and information besides from the television or radio.  If they’re anybody out there that has heard both sides of the story about sharing content on the internet, it’s definately the folks at OTM.

I have to commend them for taking the plunge and allowing folks on the iternet to share pieces of their show.  While I admit, OTM isn’t for everyone - if you see a site that has linked up to NPR’s Flash Player click on it.  Show the folks at OTM and NPR that there is a demand and value to this service.  Maybe then other shows (and networks) will get the message…

And to help it along, here’s a clip from this week’s edition of On The Media.  In it host Brooke Gladstone talks with Jonathan Gold the first food critic to win a Pulitzer Prize.