My laptop is slowly inching its way to New Mexico!

I ordered it July 2, it shipped on the 11th from Shanghai! Apparently demand for the latest generation of 15" MacBook Pros has been huge: BTW, Chirssly, they're throwing in a $200 rebate if you buy and iPod, so you can get a 4gig Nano for free or a 30gig for $50 effectively. No idea yet if I'll get 10.5 when it ships, I'll ask the Apple geeks at the store tomorrow -- Russet and I are going to Santa Fe this weekend!


Jul 13, 2007 12:36 AM
Int'l shipment release
INDIANAPOLIS, IN

Jul 12, 2007 11:51 PM
Departed FedEx location
INDIANAPOLIS, IN

3:01 PM
Departed FedEx location
ANCHORAGE, AK

11:58 AM
Arrived at FedEx location
ANCHORAGE, AK

2:20 PM
In transit
SHANGHAI CN

Jul 11, 2007 4:36 PM
Picked up
SHANGHAI CN
Package received after FedEx cutoff

4:36 PM
Left origin
SHANGHAI CN

2:27 PM
Package data transmitted to FedEx

The evolutionary brain glitch that makes terrorism fail

Nice article by Bruce Schneier.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/07/securitymatters_0712

Our government just doesn't take data security seriously

Several military documents that should not be available online have been found by writers for Associated Press, including the plans for a military prison and new fuel depot in Iraq. This rates right up there with their bollixing up the intelligence budget by including actual dollar amounts. Considering how poorly most agencies rate with computer security, I suppose one should not be surprised.

Pretty long article.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_hi_te/military_online_insecurity

A century's worth of glass astronomical photo plates to be digitized!

This is a very cool project. If I won a lottery I'd gladly give them money for this!

For most of the history of astronomy from when photography came around up to and including today, glass plates and film have been used to record observations. Pluto was discovered by using a device called a blink comparator where you mount two glass plates taken of the same star field a few months (or years) apart, look through one eyepiece, and press a button. Every time you press it, it flips a mirror between the plates. If you see any movemement, it might be a planet. Black & white photography is a great way to do this: you develop the film, and the bright things that you shot are black, so it's quite easy to see what represents stars and what is just empty space.

(the blink comparator, the Pluto plates, and the telescope used by Clyde Tombaugh are on display at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ)

This project is especially cool because it includes sky surveys from both the northern and southern hemispheres for over a century!

The collection weighs 165 TONS and contains more than a petabyte of data (a petabyte is the next increment above terabyte which is the increment above gigabyte). And it's an original with no backups. I hope they get fundage soon!

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/11/217218 It's really amazing how they're going about doing this, I would love to see the camera and software that they're using! And I think Russet worked at the observatory mentioned in the article, but I'm not sure.

(try http:/www.bugmenot.com for an already registered free NYT login)