Glasses are dumb.

So I was thinking about glasses this morning, technology that hasn't changed in several hundred years, and I thought... why hasn't somebody updated these?

Leaving contacts and eye surgery aside, lenses made of relatively high refractive index solids, ground to a static lens shape... Can't we do better?


A simple google of refractive indexes tells me that polycarbonate lenses top out at about 1.63 (ok, they go higher, but that's roughly what I'm seeing.)

In contrast non toxic high refractive liquids seem to top out at the same place...

So, why not put a highly refractive liquid sealed between two thin durable flexible discs, and then have a ring surrounding it apply pressure to adjust the lens shape, the ring could even have a clicky locky thing on it.

And presto, an adjustable eyeglass lens, and no more going to the eyeglass store to get a new prescription...

Ok, maybe frames.

WIndows Media DRM 10 & 11 Cracked

This took longer than expected, but once again, giving somebody a lock and a key, and then expecting them not to open the lock (that's essentially what DRM is), is pretty stupid.

Purportedly Via engadget.com:

FairUse4WM strips Windows Media DRM!: "

Filed under: Portable Audio

So far as the yet very quiet forums are claiming, a new app called FairUse4WM can be used to strip Windows Media DRM 10 and 11 (i.e. PlaysForSure, but not WM DRM 9). Yes, yes, we know, we've heard this song and dance before. But before we proceed, let's just be totally clear on how the system works, providers like Napster and Yahoo Music Unlimited provide subscription service for unlimited access to Windows Media DRMed files; stop paying the fee, stop getting access to the files -- but you already knew all this. We tried FairUse4WM and we can verify that it quickly and easily stripped the DRM from our Napster To Go tracks, and made them freely available to play on our Mac (which, of course, has Flip4Mac installed). In other words, it's a simple, apparently lossless, one-step method for making your files playable after you're no longer paying fees on your subscription service. Didn't work on our Vongo videos, but we can verify with all certainty that yes, Windows Media DRM can now be easily and quickly stripped from PlaysForSure media services. Now watch as Microsoft shuts down the forums and runs damage control in order to prevent an digital media entire platform from collapsing. Click on for a couple more pics of the app in action!

Some links to the app (no, we can't verify their validity, and yes, we take absolutely zero accountability for what you may do with it): here, here, and here.

[Thanks, Frank]




Now here's that same track we just downloaded from Napster playing on Quicktime (with Flip4Mac, which, of cousre, doesn't support WM DRM.)

Read | Permalink |>

"

NASA Ignores GAO, Plans CEV Announcement

If NASA weren't in the human space-flight business, how would they waste our money?

Purportedly Via NASA Watch:

NASA Ignores GAO, Plans CEV Announcement: "

NASA Announces Contractor for Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle

'NASA Exploration Systems' managers will host a press conference at 4 p.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 31, to announce the prime contractor to design, develop, and build Orion, America's next human spacecraft.'

GAO Report: NASA: Long-Term Commitment to and Investment in Space Exploration Requires More Knowledge

'NASA's current acquisition strategy for the CEV places the project at risk of significant cost overruns, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls because it commits the government to a long-term product development effort before establishing a sound business case. NASA plans to award a contract for the design, development, production, and sustainment of the CEV in September 2006-before it has developed key elements of a sound business case, including well-defined requirements, a preliminary design, mature technology, and firm cost estimates.'

"

You’ll Have To Pry Pluto Out Of My Cold Dead Education

I'm with Warren on this.

We're going to have to take this outside. Now.

Purportedly Via Warrenellis.com:

You’ll Have To Pry Pluto Out Of My Cold Dead Education: "

I will fight anyone who tells me that Pluto is not a planet.

"

OSI Layer 8: "The hardest layer to debug"

Re:Still not buying the KillerNIC story.

(Score:5, Funny)

by Trogre (513942) on Wednesday August 23, @08:52PM (#15966779)

(http://slashdot.org/)

You forgot the top layer in the OSI stack:

8: Operator

So many network problems I've had to troubleshoot have been tracked to layer 8.

Unfortunately it's also the hardest layer to debug.

Bullshit

Pluto is no longer a planet?

Please...

Planet membership is like being a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

You add members, not take them out...

Anybody who says that Pluto takes "the magic out of the solar system" is a damned fool.

I for one look forward to having a summer cottage on the planet Ceres some day...

Best Episode Ever

I just saw the Buffy episode Once More, With Feeling.



Now officially my favorite hour of television ever.



Does Joss Whedon nail whatever he touches? Shows? Genres? Actors?



An all musical episode of Buffy... absolute genius.



"She needs backup, Anya, Tara..."

STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM - SUPPORT A CALIPHATE

That's what the idiot holding the banner in this London protest mentioned in the NYT is holding.

Solar System 2.0

Awesome.




If you haven't noticed, Charon has also been upgraded from a moon, as it is now the Pluto/Charon system.

Purportedly Via Warrenellis.com:

Solar System 2.0: "

"

BaBoom - Fill the Explosion

BaBoom - Fill the Explosion
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Your Engrish for the day...

Economists talk about sex. (always fun)

Purportedly Via Marginal Revolution:

Should prostitution be cartelized?

...snip...

Second, prostitution as an occupation, might be subject to crowding costs.' In that case a tax or quantity restriction can improve matters, just as a toll on a busy road might decrease congestion by pushing people toward less crowded routes (average vs. marginal values).

...snip...

As for zoning, had I mentioned that in Amsterdam one can find a kindergarten right between two open-window whorehouses?' I was told by one woman that this is 'not a problem.'' She was, however, a former prostitute and perhaps not a credible source; she may have been concerned with the Pigouvian definition of externalities (the externality runs one way only) at the expense of the Coasean definition (consider the effects on all relevant parties).

In Amsterdam (I am told), twenty minutes in the red light district costs 30 to 50 Euros.' I wonder how close that is to an optimal degree of cartelization?

Addendum: How is this for a bizarre sentence?

"

"Dying is unpleasant."

I was reading an excellent piece on death in relation to the British Hospice system, and I remembered this line from Dr. House:

"You can live with dignity, we can't die with it."

That's the basic gist of the piece. I think it is worth a read.

John Bolton: Innocent Lebanese Deaths Matter Less than Innocent Israeli Deaths

Is it bad that I'm becoming a Bolton supporter? Isn't this statement by Bolton just common sense?

Purportedly Via TPMCafe - main:

John Bolton: Innocent Lebanese Deaths Matter Less than Innocent Israeli Deaths: "

An Israeli air strike has killed 54 civilians -- including 37 children. This after the strike against a UN observation facility where UN staff were killed -- and also after hundreds and hundreds of other innocent Lebanese have been killed in the exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli military forces.

Tension is heating up -- finally -- between American negotiators and Israeli, but this is long overdue.

But back to John Bolton, who was part of a UN Security Council statement today expressing 'extreme shock and distress' over the killings.

At his Thursday Senate confirmation hearings, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee majority staff passed out Ambassador Bolton's 'official statement'. In that opening statement, there appeared a controversial and provocative sentence that asserted that Israelis and Lebanese who become innocent casualties in this war are not morally equivalent. His argument is that Israeli innoncents are more important than Lebanese innocent casualties because the Israelis were attacked by Hezbollah.

It was a shocking sentence, and the moment I saw it, I blogged about it directly from the Senate Hearing Room.

The sentence read:

But it is a mistake to ascribe a moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct resulte of malicious terrorist acts, the very purpose of which are to kill civilians, and the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths as a result of military action taken in self-defense.

Now, some have misunderstood what happened next. My surprise did not come when John Bolton read a script that was different than the one in hand. What happened was that just as John Bolton was beginning to read his statement, a new statement was distributed -- with only this line of text removed.

That is important as it highlights something that the Department of State was not ready to clear -- and shows something about John Bolton's views and personality that State was not ready to sign off on.

After this huge tragedy today -- 37 innocent children -- in a crude aerial assault, does John Bolton stand by the statement he wanted to give?

Someone in the press ask him.

-- Steve Clemons

"

Art Buchwald is still around (barely?)

An awesome article about one of the great satirical writers of the twentieth century.

My dad got me a copy of Whose Rose Garden is it Anyway many many years back, and I never looked back.

PalmOS is dead! Long live, umm, umm...

Palm is giving up on Access developing the Linux based PalmOS that is supposed be be a successor to PalmOS 5. Instead, they are doing it themselves.

The Treo700p is at version 5.4.9... which has an end of the line version number feel (If you remember that Other 4.9 piece of software... Windows ME). If Palm does release a linux based OS in early 2007, that might be a viable alternative, but carrying legacy PalmOS overhead might be a royal pain. But I don't see a GSM PalmOS based Treo in sight, and my phone is showing its age.

And thus, I'm hedging my bets by researching alternatives for that inevitable day.

I've been looking at the Nokia E61 as an alternative to the Treo. It isn't available in the US, except at the Nokia store in Chicago, but it does support quad band GSM & UMTS for data. The price, at $400 is competitive with other unlocked phones I've seen. Let's look at the highlights I care about:

• 
  An excellent web browser: The E61 does run Symbian 9.1, which now supports Nokia's KHTML based browser, kin of Apple's Safari, and which from all reports is the hands down best browser available for small devices at the moment. If you have ever used the browser in a Treo, let alone less capable devices, you know how much the inferior browser hampers the capabilities of the device. A workable browser, sitting on the tail of functional desktop browsers, is a notable improvement.
  
  
• Mac Synchronization Support:
  There exists an OS X iSync plugin for the device, so that's good. A phone without synchronization is no go for me at this point. I'm done entering data into a phone. That's what full size keyboards are for.
  
  
• Unfortunately, the Nokia E61 seems to have a very significant bug in accessing mail on an IMAP server. This crosses a red line for me... IMAP mail is essential for any product, and if the product doesn't handle mail reasonably well compared to Chatteremail on my Treo 650, I can't upgrade.
  

Now of course if Apple introduces an iPhone in August... all bets are off.

I am going to assume that any apple phone will be tied to Apple's ecosystem, which I can stomach, since I do happen to be heavily invested in the Apple environment, but imagine a non Apple GSM phone with an excellent browser, and Gdata over the air synchronization, supporting open standards, at least a 320x320 screen (or more) and plenty of on phone storage... maybe in two more years.

The Squeal

The Mac Book Pro started squealing today.

Time to send it back for a replacement... sigh.

Kosher?

Kosher?
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Why can't this administration stop pissing me off.

NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet

The Apocalypse is Here

The Apocalypse is Here
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Cyrus pointed me to this collection of headlines Sunday

Captain Obvious Does it Again

From the Beeb:

Clone 'would feel individuality'

Human reproductive cloning is currently not allowed in the UK
A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests.

Scientists drew their conclusions after interviewing identical twins about their experiences of sharing exactly the same genes with somebody else.

"Duh".