Missing Mary Road

so a couple of years ago i wrote a post about how farcical hand sanitizers were as nobody could explain how the damn things work and what good they were?

seems like two years later, they’re more and more pervasive and they’re still full of absolutely  no benefit to us. slate has a fairly in-depth article on whether or not they help protect us from things like the flu and H1N1. seems like for the most part, soap and water works just as well.

scientists were for some reason surprised that giving free hand sanitizers (and, in one case, even clorox wipes) to families and schools failed to cut down on infections.

Our homes and workplaces, we’re told, are trying to kill us. Recently, a University of Arizona microbiologist named Charles Gerba, author of hundreds of scientific papers about household microbes, gave a terrifying lecture at the offices of the Food and Drug Administration. Gerba—who, incidentally, has a child with the middle name Escherichia—that’s what the “E” in E. coli stands for—explained that a kitchen sponge and sink are home to thousands of times more bacteria than a toilet seat. Plus, 10 percent of household dishrags contain salmonella. After playing with other children, toddlers have more fecal bacteria on their hands than does a person exiting a public toilet stall. Those toilets, by the way, aerosolize so many droplets with each flush that Gerba compares their dispersion to “the Fourth of July.” And every public swimming pool he’s ever tested has contained disease-causing viruses.

In response to these kinds of data, more than 700 products promise to help consumers kill bacteria, molds, and viruses in their homes and workplaces, from ultraviolet lights meant to kill toothbrush bacteria, to dishwashers that superheat silverware, to specially treated doormats. Three-quarters of all Americans use six or more antimicrobial products each day.

Keep reading.

Instead of sending people to the Moon, the US space program is sending robots to the Asteroid Belt. When these robots discover metals in the Belt, how will it affect the economy of Earth?

Discovery’s Robert Lamb reports on a lecture given by Vatican astronomer Guy J. Consolmagno, which was in part about the ethics of asteroid mining. Lamb writes:

Can you put a price tag on an asteroid? Sure you can. We know of roughly 750 S-class asteroids with a diameter of at least 1 kilometer. Many of these pass as near to the Earth as our own moon ? close enough to reach via spacecraft. As a typical asteroid is 10 percent metal, Brother Consolmango estimates that such an asteroid would contain 1 billion metric tons of iron. That’s as much as we mine out of the globe every year, a supply worth trillions and trillions of dollars. Subtract the tens of billions it would cost to exploit such a rock, and you still have a serious profit on your hands.

But is this ethical? Brother Consolmango asked us to ponder whether such an asteroid harvest would drastically disrupt the economies of resource-exporting nations. What would happen to most of Africa? What would it do to the cost of iron ore? And what about refining and manufacturing? If we spend the money to harvest iron in space, why not outsource the other related processes as well? Imagine a future in which solar-powered robots toil in lunar or orbital factories.

“On the one hand, it’s great,” Brother Consolmango said. “You’ve now taken all of this dirty industry off the surface of the Earth. On the other hand, you’ve put a whole lot of people out of work. If you’ve got a robot doing the mining, why not another robot doing the manufacturing? And now you’ve just put all of China out of work. What are the ethical implications of this kind of major shift?”

The question is interesting. A number of authors, including Ken MacLeod and Paul McAuley, have suggested that Earth’s future economy may become rigidly environmentalist to preserve the planet’s habitability. Development planetside will grind to a halt, but old-fashioned dirty industry will thrive in space. So you could wind up with two human economies: A controlled, stable-state one on Earth, and a crazily free market one offworld.

A Swiss freediver held his breath underwater for 19 minutes and 21 seconds, according to news reports this week. The gasp-inducing feat beat the previous world record by 19 seconds, and blew away the record of 17 minutes and four seconds that magician David Blaine set on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 2008.

For most ordinary humans, all that breath-holding can be hard to fathom. The feat might also bring up some basic questions about biology. For example: Is it really possible to survive without inhaling for that long? And is it healthy?

“It is, as a matter of fact, possible — with certain tricks,” explained Claes Lundgren, a physiologist at the University of Buffalo School of Medicine in New York.

It is probably not, however, good for you, and consequences can be deadly.

our (new) lords and masters throw a party to open a building.

Excellent commentary from The Register:

As the smoke clears following the case of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the failed Christmas Day “underpants bomber” of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 fame, there are just three simple points for us Westerners to take away.

First: It is completely impossible to prevent terrorists from attacking airliners.

Second: This does not matter. There is no need for greater efforts on security.

Third: A terrorist set fire to his own trousers, suffering eyewateringly painful burns to what Australian cricket commentators sometimes refer to as the “groinal area”, and nobody seems to be laughing. What’s wrong with us?

so i suppose i’ve been neglecting posting here. fair enough. let’s try and catch up. from the previous post, you can tell i’ve been playing with my new toy quite a bit and absolutely loving it and the more i use it, the more it rocks. and just a day or two after that, the google nexus one phone was announced so i’ll post more on that in a bit and try and explain why the n900 still rocks more than any other phone out there right now.

in the mean time, here’s a day in the internet.

so after a whole lot of waiting, i got me a new toy. behold. i’d promised hugh i’d write up a review so here goes my attempt at my first review.

first off, let’s begin by saying that this phone is so high in demand right now, that it’s been very hard to get a hold of. most places have been out of stock for about two months which is when it was released. nokia hasn’t made it easy for canadians to buy it either. had to have it shipped from the US and it wasn’t cheap either. the device runs at about $500 USD but it’s well worth the price and i’ll try to explain why below and why it also beats the pants off any iphone or blackberry out there.

first off, the technicals.

Display – 3.5 inch touch-sensitive widescreen display, 800 × 480 pixel resolution (highest i’ve ever seen of any phone)

Connectivity – 3.5mm AV connector, TV out (PAL/NTSC) (how cool is that, another reason not to buy a flat screen tv)
Micro-USB connector - (iPhones now are the ONLY phones that have disagreed to a universal phone charger, sucks to be a mac geek)
Bluetooth v2.1 including support for stereo headsets
Integrated FM transmitter - (superb for road trips, testing it out last weekend on a drive to michigan)
Integrated GPS with A-GPS – (didn’t try this yet, i got a gps in my head)
Battery Life – (sucked at first, after a quick firmware upgrade, battery is rock solid now)

Processor and 3D accelerator – (the accelerator is pretty neat, flip the phone from landscape to portrait and it automatically switches to the phone, i believe nokia has had that going in their N series for a while now)

TI OMAP 3430: ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX with OpenGL ES 2.0 support – (basically it’s faster than your computer from six years ago)
Memory

Up to 1GB of application memory (256 MB RAM, 768 MB virtual memory) – (remember this is a phone!)

Mass memory – 32 GB internal storage : (!!!!) expandable to 48 with microSD !!!!!

Input – Full QWERTY soft and hard keyboard with a stylus (take that you one handed iphone crackberries!)

Operating frequency Quad-band GSM EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 900/1700/2100 MHz – (This sucks for Rogers customers, meaning you can only use EDGE. wind mobile will you give you full 3G support, i use wifi for the most part so don’t matter much to me)

Email & Messaging – Supported protocols: Mail for Exchange, IMAP, POP3, SMTP (IMAP rocks!)
Support for email attachments
Support for rich HTML
SMS and Instant Messages as conversations (This is one of my most favourite features)
Instant messaging and presence enhanced contacts
Multiple number, email and Instant Messaging details per contact, contacts with images (This is my most favourite feature, integration of contacts with skype, googletalk, SIP, jabber, yahoo, aim etc is seamless and can make google talk and skype calls like pure vanilla)
Support for assigning images to contacts

Web browsing – Maemo browser powered by Mozilla technology (i actually was able to setup fennec as well which is basically a variation of the browser that comes with the phone)
Adobe Flash™ 9.4 support – (take that iPhone)
Full screen browsing – (oh yeah did i mention, none of that pinching shit is involved. oh and since the screen is a resistive touch, not capacitative, i actually don’t need to smudge all over the screen with my fingers, thats why the stylus rocks)

5 megapixel camera (2584 × 1938 pixels), Image formats: JPEG CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens 3 × digital zoom Autofocus with assist light and two- stage capture key Dual LED flash Full-screen viewfinder Photo editor on device TV out (PAL/NTSC) with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-75U, included in box) or WLAN/UPnP Landscape (horizontal) orientation Capture modes: Automatic, portrait, video, macro, landscape, action  - (i’ll be honest, i’ve never cared much about camera phones and don’t think they’ll ever take decent photos, but this damn thing keeps testing my stance on it)

Video – Wide aspect ratio 16:9 (WVGA) Video recording file format: .mp4; codec: MPEG-4 Video recording at up to 848 × 480 pixels (WVGA) and up to 25fps Video playback file formats: .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 Music and audio playback Maemo media player  Music playback file formats: .wav, .mp3, .AAC, .eAAC, .wma, .m4a .ogg (basically any format you can throw at it, it will playback. err….iphone, i’m looking at you)

Built-in FM transmitter (i love this thing)

oh err…did i mention it runs linux so has a full ssh server and client setup as well as the fact that you have full root access on the phone and no carrier can actually lock the phone down (one reason why you haven’t heard too much hoopla about the phone, since noone is willing to provide it with a discounted service plan) full root = no lock down.

okay so i have to admit, i love nokia’s. always have and always will. i’ve always ever owned a nokia phone and i’ve been very happy in their reliability, sturdiness and durability. i’ve actually gone and done a lap in a swimming pool with one in my pocket, and come out the other end and have it working fine. i don’t know any other phone manufacturer that can provide such durability. on top of that, the usability of nokia phones is their biggest selling point in my opinion. the fact that they make using a phone as simple and intuitive as possible is something no other manufacturer has been able to do.

having said that, the n900 initially is extremely confusing to use. but as you use it more and more, after a few hours the usability becomes second nature and you realize why things are the way they are and how customizable the phone is and how superbly designed it is. now i’ve never used a smartphone before either so maybe this was just me. as mentioned before, the phone runs a version of linux developed by nokia called Maemo.  and it’s a geek’s paradise. the apps developed for it are strong and usable. i haven’t had a chance to mess around with the ovi store yet, but i’m sure it’s just as fun.

as far as apps go, the iphone seems to be a winner so far, but if most apps are rendered useless everytime a jailbroken iphone gets a firmware upgrade, doesn’t seem like much awesomeness. with apple, it seems like everything can be awesome and cool, but has to be bought at a price. also i’ve learnt that qik.com is one of the coolest things i’ve seen in a while as well. though in all fairness, ovi is revamping it’s ovi store for the n900 allegedly and giving it a redo making it similar to the app store. but also because maemo is debian based, apt-get has limitless possibilities with repositories popping up everywhere by anyone.

now most people compare this thing to the iphone, the iphone being the most popular phone in north america at the moment. i personally have found the multitasking abilities, the integration of skype, sip, google talk with nokia contacts is seamless and something i am so used to now, i cannot do without. most reviews and comparisons of the phones will tell you similarly.

at the end of the day, the price of the phone is well spent upon this thing, as it’s not a phone that you can do “smartphone” things with like the iphone. it’s essentially a mini computer, that also makes calls. the freedom and choice that nokia has offered is limitless. the build quality and the durability of the phone feels full and solid. the annoying virtual keyboard on the iphone is given an alternative on the nokia, and better yet, because the n900 has a resistive screen rather than capacitative, the n900 works superbly with the stylus that comes with it so if you’re feeling lazy about using the qwerty keyboard, the virtual one works just as efficiently, no fingers too fat for this puppy. (oh yeah, works with winter gloves/mitts on too, take that iphone users!)

also the multidesktop feature is a nice grab from gnome/kde users. and makes usability a lot more feature rich as customizing each desktop individually really enhances the enjoyment of the UI.

the browser that ships with the phone is one of the best mobile browsers out thereas well, but the tips and tricks of the phone are the selling point.

so i recently read an article where people had posted screenshots of their desktops.

here’s mine. post yours in the comments. you’ll be able to learn a lot about a person.

for all my programmer buddies who’ve been avoiding switching to linux because they are “programmers”.

A few weeks ago, I switched my development environment from Windows to Linux, on a project which was developed so far on Windows only. In this post, I want to describe the issues that brought me to this switch, a short overview how I did the actual port, and some observations on Linux for developers. This is the first post in a series of at least two, the second post will describe the tools I use on Linux right now.

it’s a lie, it was ALWAYS A LIE!

more from captain steve.

previous q&a here.

happy independence to ya’ll. read all about how it happened here. hope it was worth it.

so over at the freakonomics blog for a few weeks now captain steve of a major US airline has been answering some FAQ about flying and the stigma and myths associated wth it. it’s fascinating going through the Q&A.

he initially starts off on a rant about airline safety, how and why it has degraded and what the cheap $99 flight means for you in the wake of the new york city water landing.

his first set of answers he goes on about whether turning off ipods and phones actually has any effects on takeoff and landings. whether you’re better off taking the cheap regional charter flight or going with a major airline for a few hundred bucks more,  some information about autopilot, and a bit more about weather delays and refuelling.

the next batch was a bit more interesting for me where he answers a bit more about being a pilot itself. some of the questions answered are how to find out more about the experience of a pilot who is flying your flight, how to get interesting air chatter information from flight control, how good are planes these days, how to become a pilot, more weather, and more.

it’s a fascinating read and an insight into a world where not much is known to the general public.

After 15 years of retreat, a huge sheet of ice is finally crumbling in Antarctica. The Wilkins is the eighth and largest ice shelf to fracture and fall apart in the last two decades along the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The pattern of breakup, where the ice remains stable for centuries or even millennia, then almost over night, shatters into millions of bits like broken glass, is foreshadowing the fate of our northern ice floating in the Arctic.

rss might be broken. actually it is broken. please bear with me while i try and repair and see why it’s broken.

UPDATE: Issue is resolved now. Thanks.