Greg In The Desert

• 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!

For years I have subscribed to a Spy Numbers mailing list. Spy numbers are these voices located on radio stations that just speak numbers. Some are human some are machine. Some are suspected of being messages to government agents here and abroad. Now Ars Technica has a story on using your PC as a shortwave radio receiver.

They basically review the Ten Tec RX-320 , a short-wave radio box that hooks up to your PC that you control completely with your PC. This might be another gadget I will want, if they come up with MacOS X software for ti. Since they have Windows and Linux versions of the software for it I suspect if wont be long.