Quantum Mechanics tomfoolery.

Posted by on October 10, 2008 No comments

Quantum mechanics is weird. One of the attempts at explaining how come it is so weird is the Many Worlds Interpretation, which states that every possible way history could have turned out, actually has in seperate parallel universes.

The problem between all the interpretations of quantum mechanics is that no one has been able to determine which one reflects what actually happens.

Now Frank Tipler, a physicist at Tulane University in New Orleans says he has hit upon a way in which these interpretations must produce different experimental results.

Thanks, Phil.

Embryo development video

Posted by on October 9, 2008 No comments

Wired has a neat time-lapse video showing a fish embryo developing during it’s first 24 hours. I’ll post the video below.  If you want to read more about what’s actually happening head on over to the brief description they provide.

With a newly developed microscope that uses a sheet of light to scan a living organism from many different dimensions, scientists were able to track the complex cellular organization of a zebrafish embryo as it grows from a single cell to 20,000 cells.

Time-Lapse: Zebrafish Embryos Developing

User Account Control

Posted by on October 8, 2008 No comments

I’ve really been enjoying the Engineering Windows 7 blog. The latest post is by Ben Fathi, the VP of core OS development for Microsoft. He talks about all the reasons the much-maligned User Account Control of Vista is the way it is, and what they’ve taken away from the tons of feedback they’ve gotten on it.

In the first several months after Vista was available for use, people were experiencing a UAC prompt in 50% of their “sessions” – a session is everything that happens from logon to logoff or within 24 hours. Furthermore, there were 775,312 unique applications (note: this shows the volume of unique software that Windows supports!) producing prompts (note that installers and the application itself are not counted as the same program.) This seems large, and it is since much of the software ecosystem unnecessarily required admin privileges to run. As the ecosystem has updated their software, far fewer applications are requiring admin privileges. Customer Experience Improvement Program data from August 2008 indicates the number of applications and tasks generating a prompt has declined from 775,312 to 168,149.

eSkeptic: Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Posted by on October 8, 2008 No comments

Acupuncture. Ha. (Scroll down a bit for the acupuncture article.)

In this week’s eSkeptic, Skeptic magazine’s very own Skepdoc, Harriet Hall M.D., punctures the acupuncture myth and tells you why “almost everything you’ve heard about acupuncture is wrong.”

DNA could reveal your surname

Posted by on October 8, 2008 No comments

This seems quite crazy, but if it works it seems like it would be quite a tool for law enforcement.

Scientists at the world-leading Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester – where the revolutionary technique of genetic fingerprinting was invented by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys- are developing techniques which may one day allow police to work out someone’s surname from the DNA alone.

The Cold, Hard Data of Soda Ice

Posted by on October 8, 2008 No comments

I’m a cup-1/4-full-of-ice kinda man myself, and the data shows I’m right!

Depending on whom you ask, either ice-fiends are suckers who pay for frozen water or ice-avoiders are cheapskates with a perverse attachment to warm fountain syrup. To settle this once and for all, we went to a local cineplex and bought three Cokes with varying amounts of cubes at 4 smackaroos each. Then we broke out our thermometers and measuring cups. The cold, hard data says it all.

The Ridiculous History Of The Job And Dollar Loss Numbers Cited By IP Proponents

Posted by on October 8, 2008 No comments

The industries throwing hissy-fits about intellectual property (software industry and record industry, mainly) have managed to get multiple laws passed in their favor. When they’re out fighting their favorite fight, one number brandished about quite often is that IP theft costs 750,000 jobs. This number is apparently gospel not only to these industries, but now to various government agencies as well. Where did this number come from? Ars Technica did some research on this magical number.

The 750,000 job number actually dates back to 1986, when then-Commerce Secretary Malcom Baldridge, in promoting a stronger copyright bill from the Reagan era

Fix pen not working on waking from sleep on a TC4200 running Vista

Posted by on March 30, 2007 5 comments

 

Ok, so this isn’t really a fix.  It’s more of a work around.  First of all you need to obtain devcon.exe.  This is basically a command-line Device Manager provided by MS.

Drop devcon in c:\Windows\System32.  I chose this directoy only because it’s in the path.

Create a batch file with the following commands in it:

devcon disable ACPI\WACF006
devcon enable ACPI\WACF006
exit

Use Task Scheduler to create a new scheduled task.  The trigger for this task should be set as in the following screenshot.

The set the “Action” to start the batch file created above.

Now, when your tablet is woken from sleep it will run the batch file which disables and then re-enables the Wacom driver.  This takes probably 15 seconds so you still can’t use your pen immediately, but it’s much better than having to open the tablet so you can use the keyboard.

Precision Computing – Getting Started with PowerShell

Posted by on January 4, 2007 No comments

Want to learn PowerShell (formerly codenamed Monad)? Go here and commence the learning. 

No One Cares About HD?

Posted by on December 10, 2006 No comments

Despite Scoble’s love of HD, I see the reality as being a bit closer to this survey that Gizmodo reports on.

While most people I know really like it when they see HD on their new HDTV set, it’s just too complicated to figure out how to get HD programming, and often they don’t even realize they are watching standard def!

I don’t know how many people I’ve seen buying HD sets without knowing what they were doing.  A plasma or LCD set is just cool to have.  A status symbol. 

I recently found out that my wife’s boss bought some plasma screen TV awhile back because they’re cool basically.  He’s been watching standard def on it because he had no idea that he had to subscribe to HD programming from his satellite provider.

Currently, HD is too complicated for most people.