Greg In The Desert

• Ford Ranger sales are up for June – New Mexico Business Weekly: – The Ford Motor Co. sold 8.8 percent more Ford Ranger pickup trucks in June than in the same month a year ago, according to data released by the automobile manufacturer Wednesday.
• ‘Asteroids’ lands at Universal – Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids." Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
• www.KOB.com – Naked man diverts flight to Sunport – ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A US Airways flight to Los Angeles was diverted to Albuquerque after a passenger removed all of his clothing mid-flight, forcing flight attendants to cover him with a blanket before he was arrested.
• Revenge of the Fallen is messy, unfunny, and way too long – Ars Technica – The story makes very little sense, and introduces so many strands and subplots that by the end it's nearly impossible to care about anything. The humans pepper everyone with machine gun rounds for very little reason, as it never seems to do anything to anyone. The human characters have very little to do, and no reason to be near each other; there isn't a single relationship that is used for dramatic purposes in a believable way. Megan Fox reprises her role so she can stand around and look hot, jiggling in the appropriate ways when she runs endlessly in slow motion. During one scene, her new pet Decepticon humps her leg as she smiles at him. I guess we know where those egg sacs come from now.
• Intel China fab to use 65nm process, produce notebook chips – Ars Technica – Now, Intel has announced that by a rule change, it will be allowed to produce 65nm silicon at Fab 68, and will abandon the 90nm process. This makes a qualitative difference in the meaning of the new fab, since 65nm will be only two nodes behind the cutting edge in 2010. Current chipsets are produced at the 65nm node, and 65nm processors included the first generation of Core 2 processors, Merom, Conroe, and Kentsfield. If Intel continues to be allowed to produce 2-nodes-behind silicon in China, Santa Clara may drastically expand fab activity in China. Earlier this month, the Taiwanese government announced it was considering allowing TSMC and UMC to operate more sophisticated fabs in mainland China.
• Meltdown 101: Where are the renewable energy jobs? – The Denver Post – Everywhere you turn there is talk of a shift to renewable energy, of building wind farms and solar plants, of making buildings more efficient, of developing biofuels. And of billions in federal funding to help make it all happen. This should mean a whole lot of new energy jobs. So where are they—and how do I get one?
• NM woman hoards 334 hopping bunnies – Rio Rancho Police Officer and Spokesperson John Francis said Monday the county's animal control division discovered 334 hopping bunnies in one woman's backyard.

  Nancy Haseman has been cited for violating a city ordinance that allows five pets per household, and for failing to restrain her animals.

• ABQNews: Some Bad Apples Have Impact on N.M. Film Industry – Film crews are jerks, and small towns are saying, "Enough already, go back to L.A. – we don't want you here anymore."First, it was a moratorium on filming in the village of Los Ranchos that's been going on for a year. Then later this week, the Las Vegas, N.M. City Council passed new restrictions on filming that could seriously impact movies there.
• The Official Site of Rio Rancho, NM – Stimulus Funding for Rio Rancho – Via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the city of Rio Rancho has received confirmation that it will receive the following either directly from the federal government or other government agencies that have received stimulus funding.
• News : Scorpions still looking for owner – Rio Rancho Observer – Will the New Mexico Scorpions play at Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho next season? That question still hasn’t been answered. The hockey club is still searching for a new owner, after claiming a $1 million loss in its first three seasons of playing in Rio Rancho. The Central Hockey League gave the New Mexico Scorpions until Friday to find a new owner, but as of press time the team hadn’t been sold.

• Buyers flock to cheap foreclosed homes – A Glendale home that sold less than two years ago for $259,000 sold again three months ago for $113,000. A Phoenix home that fetched $190,000 two years ago just went for $45,900. A Queen Creek home sold for nearly $275,000 when it was built in 2005. Last month's price: $78,000.
• Bomb threat prompts search at Dobson High – Police searched the school buildings and fields this morning before students arrived for school. Bareiss said the school day proceeded as usual.

  "I think this is a time of year when students get spring fever and may think this is a joke," Bareiss said. "It's not a joke, and as a district it's our responsibility to take every threat as real."

• Costco Homes in Tempe to close – Costco Homes in south Tempe will close July 3.

  ]The Tempe home store, which sells furniture and appliances, is one of just two Costco Homes in the nation. The other one, in Kirkland, Wash., also is closing.

  "Costco Home has been a valuable experiment for us," Costco's CEO, Jim Sinegal, said in a news release.

  "The current economic slowdown and resulting weakness in the home furnishings business in particular have led us to conclude that the single-format Costco Home concept does not fit into our long-term expansion plans."

• Whole Health Source: Reversing Tooth Decay – What about humans? Drs. Mellanby set out to see if they could use their dietary principles to cure tooth decay that was already established. They divided 62 children with cavities into three different diet groups for 6 months. Group 1 ate their normal diet plus oatmeal (rich in phytic acid). Group 2 ate their normal diet plus vitamin D. Group 3 ate a grain-free diet and took vitamin D.
• The Pragmatic Studio | iPhone Developer’s Roadmap – So where do you start on the path to learning how to create iPhone applications? Well, that depends. There's no single book, screencast, or training course that suits everyone. You'll need to take honest stock of your current skills and choose the appropriate resources. Here are some pointers to help you get started:
• Hulu tries HTML encoding trick to protect streaming content – Ars Technica – The discovery was made by TunerFreeMCE's Martin Millmore, whose media center software makes it possible for users to watch video feeds from a variety of sources in one application (similar to Boxee). Millmore noted on his website that new Hulu content contained a string of URL-encoded characters that are byte shifted from the original characters. "They then run the character stream through a series of JavaScript functions to convert it back in to plain text before pushing it in to your browser using DHTML," Millmore wrote. "That's quite a lot of effort just for fun, so I assume that is to stop screen scrapers from parsing content."
• GE and Intel to unveil health care partnership| Reuters – U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co and Intel Corp, the world's largest chip maker, have scheduled a joint press conference for Thursday, and are expected to discuss an alliance in health care, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.

  The companies' respective chief executives, Jeff Immelt and Paul Otellini, are scheduled to discuss their tie up at an event in New York.

• Windows 95 almost had floppy insertion detection but the training cost was prohibitive – One feature which Windows 95 almost had was floppy disk insertion detection. In other words, Windows 95 almost had the ability to detect when a floppy disk was present in the drive without spinning up the drive.

  The person responsible for Windows 95's 32-bit floppy driver studied the floppy drive hardware specification and spotted an opportunity. Working through the details of the specification revealed that, yes, if you issued just the right extremely clever sequence of commands, you could determine whether a disk was in the floppy drive without spinning up the drive. But there was a catch.

• Local Pistachio Farmers React To Recall – Albuquerque News Story – KOAT Albuquerque – Pistachio farmers in southeast New Mexico are angry over the Food and Drug Administration's warning that people should stay away from the nut.
  The warning comes after a salmonella scare at a pistachio plant in California, which accounts for about 99 percent of all pistachio harvesting in the U.S.
  Marianne and George Schweers own Eagle Ranch Pistachio Grove in Alamogordo.
  They said they have been busy doing damage control since the FDA's general warning to stay away from all pistachios.
  "We are not involved at all," Marianne Schweers said. "By painting with that big broad brush then people are really not looking to see the address on the bag."
• Current affairs, future outcomes? – t seems the real cost of building the [Eclipse] FPJ never dropped below $2.3 million dollars, even during the 'volume' days last summer. Current best estimates are that the bird will cost something like $2.5 million to build in low (1 per week) numbers, possibly dropping a little if the rate rises. The killer appears to have been the totally unrealistic number of build hours being spent on each one. Consensus is about 4,000 hours per aircraft, without fixing squawks. No matter which way you try to do this, you need to sell FPJ's at something north of $2.5 million to make a profit, and closer to $3 million to offer an ROI to the moneymen.

• Review: NeatReceipts for Mac Review | Scanners | Macworld – NeatReceipts ships with a small portable scanner that you use to scan documents into the NeatWorks application. (NeatWorks works with several other scanners and is available for purchase separately from the NeatReceipts package. The Neat Company has a list of scanners that work with the program.) When a scan is complete, NeatWorks begins performing optical character recognition (OCR) on your documents; depending on the size of and amount of information on your document, this can take anywhere from a few seconds to just under a minute to complete. When the OCR is done, NeatWorks does two things: it tries to determine the type of document you’ve scanned (text document, receipt, or business card), and then populates data fields with information it finds on your document based on the document type it has selected.
• New gel is stronger than steel – Latest News – MSN Tech – Scientists have created a gel that acts like muscle when charged with electricity but is far more powerful.
  The "aerogel" is almost as light as air, as stretchy as rubber, and stiffer than steel by weight.
  Made with ribbons of carbon "nanotubes" – tiny hollow tubes of carbon – the material can expand to 220% of its original length or width in milliseconds when electrically charged.
• Apartment Therapy The Kitchn | How To Make Finger-Licking Fried Chicken It’s Not As Scary As It Seems – After getting married, one of the first things we learned to make was fried chicken. With a husband whose Grandmother had award-winning chicken frying skills, it was a quick realization that we too would soon be learning the trade. Even though a fryer lives in our pantry, we don't bother. With techniques that are simple and are sure to produce perfect results each time…just make sure to lock the front door so you don't have neighbors following their noses into your kitchen!

  There is a fear of frying. We know… and it's ok, we're here to help you overcome just in time for picnic season!

• Identity Theft and the Economy – After four years of steady declines in identity theft cases, the new report found a 22% increase in the past 12 months. This adds up to 1.8 million more victims in 2008 than 2007. Identity theft is making a comeback.
• News : Rio Rancho trying to get share of federal stimulus money – Rio Rancho Observer – Rio Rancho officials are making sure their city gets its piece of the pie.

  Earlier this month, the city got news from the Mid Region Council of Governments that it would receive $14 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to extend Paseo del Volcan from Iris Road to US 550.

• News : Presbyterian still on hold – Rio Rancho Observer – The construction of Presbyterian Hospital in Rio Rancho is still on hold, but Elizabeth Brophy, a spokesperson for Presbyterian Healthcare Services, said the company is still committed to building a hospital in Rio Rancho.

  “We are very committed to Rio Rancho and the residents of Rio Rancho,” Brophy said. “We want to be able to provide services needed in that community and we will continue to focus very hard on that.”

  The construction of the $230 million hospital is on hold because of the bad economy. Presbyterian Health Services’ board of directors decided last year to hold off on issuing $200 million in bonds until the economy improves and there’s more clarity in the economy.

  “It’s frustrating for all of us on every level,” Brophy said. “We want to fulfill our promise but we are still coming to Rio Rancho, it’s just frustrating.”

• News : Secret bases and UFOs on Rio Rancho man’s mind – Rio Rancho Observer – The Northern New Mexico town of Dulce has long been associated with rumors of UFO sightings and an alleged secret military base underneath a mesa, but Rio Rancho resident Norio Hayakawa is hoping to provide the town’s residents with an opportunity to dispel those rumors, or perpetuate them.

  For a one-day conference, Hayakawa is bringing together residents, former police officers and Jicarilla Apache (Dulce is on a reservation) officials to discuss the rumors and to give people an opportunity to come forward with new information

• Mexico’s woes draw renewed focus now by the United States – A maelstrom of drug-related violence. A brewing trade war. A wheezing economy.

  The United States has sometimes treated its southern neighbor like an afterthought, but Mexico's growing problems are taking center stage now as a parade of U.S. Cabinet members descends on Mexico City ahead of an April 16-17 visit by President Barack Obama.

  This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit, trying to find common ground on contentious issues such as border violence and trade rules before Obama's trip.

• Land use may have been responsible for the 1930s dust bowl – Ars Technica – The dust bowl can be attributed in part to natural climatic patterns such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation; however, a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science suggests that the agricultural expansion of the 1920s my have played an important role in amplifying the drought.
• 10 business lessons from ‘Battlestar Galactica’ | Topics | Macworld – You think your business has it rough? The people of Battlestar Galactica have lived through a recession you wouldn't believe. With dwindling resources, a skeleton crew, enemies constantly lurking out of view, and a pervasive threat of annihilation, Admiral Adama navigates the vast unknown. Like any leader, he makes his share of mistakes–sometimes with devastating consequences. But regardless of the fate of that ragtag fleet, the tale of Galactica is rife with lessons that can benefit any business leader.

• Naked corporate FUD-wrestling: Intel, NVIDIA hit the pit – Ars Technica – The fact that Intel wrote a confidential Ion-smashing document for internal use is scarcely surprising; the company prefers to sell an entire Intel solution rather than just an Atom processor. Rather than assaulting Ion with a strong, product-centric argument, however, Intel chose instead to ladle enormous amounts of FUD over the entire document and goes as far as to borrow quotes from other tech sites that were arguably pulled out of context. I won't belabor that point—it's up to the sites involved to decide whether or not their own quotes were misused—but it's fair to say that Intel did some extremely selective quoting.
• Los Angeles Music – Google’s New Killer App? Why Are Music Bloggers’ Posts Disappearing, and Who Is Deleting Them? - – But in November, some of Spaulding’s posts, both recent and older, long-forgotten ones, started disappearing from his site. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. One moment they were there, the next they were gone. Confused, he started comparing notes with other music bloggers, and they noticed a trend. A lot of posts across the Web, on everything from Abba to Zappa, had vanished.
• ATP GPS PhotoFinder Mini Review — NaviGadget – Have you ever looked through old photos and wondered, “Where did I take this picture again?” If the answer is yes, then allow me to introduce you to the GPS PhotoFinder mini, the latest geotagging gadget from ATP Electronics. This handy little device will record your GPS position and with the help of a standalone docking station, add it to the image’s EXIF metadata. No need to remember where you shot that photo. After matching the GPS coordinates to the photo’s date and time stamp, your pictures can then be copied from the memory card to a PC and used with a geotagging compatible website such as Flickr. The PhotoFinder mini can also create ‘KML’ route files that are exportable to Google Maps and Google Earth – no computer required.
• Urine-Fertilizer DIY Kit – We all think of human pee as gross and something that ought to be vigorously “cleaned up” or sanitized. However, human urine is actually sterile (unlike faeces, urine is bacteria-free). This liquid by product of our daily lives can be a rich food source if it gets into the RIGHT part of the right ecosystem. Now, most human urine travels untreated into the waterways and is a significant cause of eutrophication, a toxic condition caused by harmful algae blooms, in the oceans. The excess Nitrogen and Phosphorus in our urine overfeeds algae (like Red Tide) and effectively suffocates fish. However, a pioneering biological waste treament process being used in Switzerland can extract this phosphorus & nitrogen for use as a fertilizer, leaving the rest of urine almost harmless to aquatic life. This kit gives users the opportunity to replicate the new technique at home and fertilize their plants with their own pee.
• Atlanta police look to restore trust after drug raid killing | ajc.com – The federal sentencing of three ex-Atlanta police officers for the illegal drug raid that left a 92-year-old woman dead closes only one chapter in the tragic case, the Atlanta Police Department said Wednesday.

  “Restoring trust and confidence as well as healing the communities we serve are paramount in our efforts to rebuild a positive relationship with citizens of Atlanta,” the department said in a statement.

• The Navy Has a Top-Secret Vessel It Wants to Put on Display – WSJ.com – One is called Sea Shadow. It's big, black and looks like a cross between a Stealth fighter and a Batmobile. It was made to escape detection on the open sea. The other is known as the Hughes (as in Howard Hughes) Mining Barge. It looks like a floating field house, with an arching roof and a door that is 76 feet wide and 72 feet high. Sea Shadow berths inside the barge, which keeps it safely hidden from spy satellites.
• What should government do? A Jindal meditation – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com – But both sides, I thought, agreed that the government should provide public goods — goods that are nonrival (they benefit everyone) and nonexcludable (there’s no way to restrict the benefits to people who pay.) The classic examples are things like lighthouses and national defense, but there are many others. For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

  So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

• Amazon.com: Clear Butter Gadget – Maxspace: Kitchen & Dining – If you're the type who struggles when trying to spread cold butter on toast, this is just the gadget you need. My father-in-law loves kitchen gadgets, but this is his very favorite. Simply turning the handle forces a thin ribbon of butter to be extruded from a slot in the end of the dispenser. Even straight out of the refrigerator, the ribbon of butter is soft enough to spread with ease. The handle is big enough that it doubles as a stand, allowing you to store the dispenser in the fridge standing on a shelf. The dispenser is easily washed in the dishwasher.
• Ergen: Must-Carry Is Due for a ‘Tweak’ – 2009-02-25 15:52:43 – Multichannel News – Armed with market-coverage maps, Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen sat down with reporters last week for a breakfast briefing here before his testimony on reauthorization of the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act, the bill that sets the rules of the road for satellite carriage of local TV stations.
• Kindle 2 Rips Off Authors And Publishers, Says Authors Guild – "Audio rights" should not encompass technologies that convert text to audio on the fly. The audio book industry is about hiring actors and paying them to "act" out books. When you buy an audio book, you don't get the actual book–you get a recording of the actor reading it. When you buy a Kindle book, meanwhile, you get the actual book…and then you ask your computer to read it to you. You're paying for the book–so the author and publisher already get paid. But now they want a double-dip!

• When Consumers Cut Back – An Object Lesson From Japan – NYTimes.com – The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.

  Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.

• EU denies Intel an oral hearing in ongoing antitrust case – Ars Technica – The court sided entirely with DG-COMP and dismissed Intel's argument on January 28; Intel's formal response to the EU was sent on February 5. The EU's investigatory process is much less transparent than the US model, as a result we do not know the contents of the original SSO nor do we have information on how Intel responded. One point of interest, however, is that the DG-COMP has denied Intel an oral hearing. Normally Intel would have the right to such a hearing; DG-COMP may be censuring the company for taking seven months to respond to an original two-week deadline.
• KOB.com – Jimmy Carter writes to NM gov about death penalty – As Governor Richardson weighs his position on death penalty repeal, he's getting prodded by a former president.
  Jimmy Carter sent a letter to the governor Monday. In it, he praised bills pending in the state Legislature that would abolish the death penalty and help crime victims.
• AT&T Feeling Pressure To Lower iPhone Plan Pricing – On Monday, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu said the price of carrier data plans, not iPhone hardware, has caused a slowdown in iPhone sales, opening the door for Sprint and T-Mobile to gain a foothold in the smartphone market.
• Hands on with Microsoft My Phone: pretty neat, actually – Ars Technica – My Phone can sync pretty much all the data on a phone. The full list is: Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, Text messages, Photos, Videos, Music, and Documents. For phones with memory cards, My Phone can be used to sync the photos, videos, music, and documents on the cards, as well as those in the phone's main memory.
• Safari 4 UI breakdown – Using it casually, I found there’s also some other, more subtle changes and additions that made me really enjoy giving this beta a spin, and perhaps will sway me into using Safari a lot more (provided I can find a working Adblock extension).

  Safari is representative of a ‘smooth’ browsing experience; it starts up quickly, and presents you a very Apple-like intro movie (yes, an intro movie, with a fancy animated Safari icon, and I’ve heard that it seems the intro is largely composed using images and CSS. Very neat).

• NASA Baffled by Failure of Straw Shuttle | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source – Toshikima does not believe such a small imperfection could have caused the massive explosion. "We are still trying to determine why it suddenly burst into flames," he said. "In all the pre-fueling tests, the procedure went perfectly, but as soon as we ignited the fuel, it exploded. Why?"
• No longer a gray area: Our hair bleaches itself as we grow older | Science Blog – Wash away your gray? Maybe. A team of European scientists have finally solved a mystery that has perplexed humans throughout the ages: why we turn gray. Despite the notion that gray hair is a sign of wisdom, these researchers show in a research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) that wisdom has nothing to do with it. Going gray is caused by a massive build up of hydrogen peroxide due to wear and tear of our hair follicles. The peroxide winds up blocking the normal synthesis of melanin, our hair's natural pigment.
• Idaho Press-Tribune Micron slashes more Idaho jobs – BOISE — Micron Technology, the state's largest employer, announced Monday it will make up to 2,000 more layoffs.

  Already reeling from decreased demand for its specialty DRAM products and from a 15 percent companywide workforce reduction announcement in October, Micron officials said the company will soon cut about 500 jobs and another possible 1,500 positions by the end of the company's fiscal year. The cuts will affect workers in the company's wafer manufacturing operations at its Boise facility.

• Father/daughter relationships lead to more girls following dad’s career path | Science Blog – Good news, dad! All those times your daughter appeared to be tuning you out? She was probably paying more attention than you thought. In fact, a new study co-authored by a researcher from North Carolina State University says the relationship between fathers and daughters is leading to an increase in the number of daughters who are pursuing careers in the same field as their dads.

Intel reported earnings yesterday, record earnings. Because Intel did not meet the expectations of analysts the stock is getting hammered.

Joel Hruska at Ars Technica has a great commentary on why they are expecting too much from a good thing.

Instead of considering Intel’s Q4 2007 and projected Q1 2008 performance as proof of any weakness in the tech industry, financial analysts should step back and consider that they, themselves may have been irrationally exuberant. Intel’s quarterly report and balance sheet reveal no pressing weaknesses. Business is strong across the entire globe, operating income and gross margins both rose significantly, and the company’s lower-than-expected first quarter revenue projection is lower than analysts would like precisely because Intel chose to err on the side of caution.

Disclaimer: I work for Intel.

Ars Technica has a look at Windows XP Service Pack 2, which translates to Windows XP.2 for us Mac users. It’s worth taking a look at if you use Windows XP or even if your a Mac User and want to see what Microsoft is copying from Apple this time around.