Vista Update is cheaper than the full version but requires a) a legit copy of XP and b) that you forever forfeit the XP license. What a great deal! Now there is a workaround for it, but it involves installing Vista twice. Even better deal! Still, you get to keep your XP license key.

He really was a genius. Anyway this story is dated but still enjoyable.

Very interesting Wired interview with David Thomas here

This is an incredibly detailed expose about the 'dark side'. When I was younger and stupider I drifted towards the dark side, almost exclusively dealing with pirating games. But the modus operandi is almost identical; the handles (nom de plume), the elite websites, the gatekeepers, etc. And it was a very fast paced and heady world; sites would go up and down in a matter of days, and it was common to use hacked sites for storing games/applications for high-speed downloading. I relate to Thomas who mentions that he would sit in the bathtub for hours to 'wash away' all the cyber-chatter; doing it for 12 hours a day 7 days a week would pretty much drive anyone insane, as it almost did me. Anyway, those days are behind, and you wise up about the monsters lurking in the dark.

Now MS is revving up the pressure on consumers by inhibiting software transfer and all sorts of crazy notions. Specifically: 1) You can't upgrade your motherboard if you buy an OEM version of Vista. (you may be able to do this with the retail version, it's not clear). 2) You can not do a 'clean install' of an upgrade version of Vista, even if you have the old system (Win XP) CD. Essentially MS really really wants you to shell out $200-$400 for every copy of Vista, on every machine you have, and when you want to upgrade, you get to shell out even more money.

This was tried originally with Win3, and WinXP, with various success. I think really it just lengthened the time to upgrade, since people aren't willing to deal with these ridiculous schemes. And, with strong competition from Apple and Linux (which hasn't happened before, ever), MS better wise up if they want to continue the dominance of the PC market. I think honestly it will be a very long time before people upgrade, (years), and the only reason would be that they bought a new PC and Vista came pre-installed. It's very hard to get enthusiastic about this OS when there are so many DRM and other strangle issues.

(story here). One MD (Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack) suggests a number of 40% of users are addicted to Worlds of Warcraft. I am not sure that's right, but as she points out, if the number is even 10%, and there are millions of users, then WOW addiction is a huge problem. Some may argue that if it replaces drinking and drug use to get a high, then isn't that a good thing? I counter that the social harm is similar, but really who knows, there are no studies I know of examining this issue.

The constitutional debate rages, with huge ramifications. I submit that although Congress has power of the purse and the ability to declare war, the President has the authority to command troops, not Congress.

Then there's this:

Congress used its war powers to cut off or put conditions on funding for the Vietnam war and conflicts in Cambodia, Somalia and Bosnia.

Yeah, and that worked out so well. If congress didn't cut the funding for Vietnam, it's possible South Vietnam could have survived the assault from North Vietnam, and the result was different. We lost Vietnam because of a lack of political will and social will to send troops into harms way. Will we do the same for Iraq?

Finally, a use for all that firewood/books.

From Guy Kawasaki. All of these are so true, especially this bit used by Yahoo quite extensively (it's now gotten to the point that if you want to send another yahoo user an email, you have to type in the confirmation codes.

Unreadable confirmation codes. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t support spam or robots creating accounts. A visual confirmation graphic system is a good thing, but many are too difficult to read. For example, this is what I got when trying to create a Yahoo! account. Is that an uppercase “X”? Is the last character an “s,” “5,” or “S”? Maybe this only affects old people like me, but it seems that all one merely has to prove is that you’re not a robot so a little bit of fuzziness should be good enough. For example, if the code is “ghj1lK” and someone who enters “ghj11K” is close enough.

Ed Felton reports:

Had the industry embraced the Internet early and added MP3 sales to its already DRM-free CDA (Compact Disc Audio format) sales, they would not have reached this sad point. Now, they have to overcome history, their own pride, and years of their own rhetoric.

How is music and movies different from books? Well, its easier to copy, for sure. But, really, the copyright law is applied the same way. You don't see people checking books out from the library, photocopying them, and returning them. Either you trust the public, or you don't. I think getting rid of DRM won't be a bad thing really, and might entice more people to buy music since its an implicit trust relationship (the current model is far from trustworthy, really).

(link here, HT: Prof. Reynolds) He argues that the 'War on Terror' is overblown because Islamic radicals are not a direct threat to our existence (neither was Saddam). I disagree. There is doing what needs to be done in order to survive, and doing what needs to be done to elevate the world to a higher standard, and suppress those who think otherwise. That, to me, is what this war is about. We didn't go into Iraq because we needed to, but because it was the right thing to do on a variety of levels (a) oil (b) Saddam being the worst dictator since Hitler, yes, Hitler (c) To produce a democratic, free nation in the heart of the enemies stronghold, to give freedom a chance, and destroy those who would wage war on the U.S. on our soil (bring em on, says Bush). Even though the Bush admin is hopelessly inept, I admire the moralism of W, and the inequivatlbe rightness and wrong he separates the world (too conveniently) into.

Story here. Sad day for horse lovers everywhere.

J & I went to a Wii party on Wednesday, it was alot of fun. Most of the wii games so far (that i've seen) are actually collections of very small games. For example, one game, Raving Rabbits (i think?), has probably 50 little games in there that last a few minutes each. What was interesting to me is that everyone picked up on it right away, and also everyone had a game they were particularly good at. I was good at games requiring a point and shoot interface, J was good at timing, I was good at dancing (somehow). So just like in real life, everyone has their 'strong' games.

Anyway, this review talks about the Wii two months later. Is it as good as it was hyped to be? Here's a clue, now the PS3 is available on half the stores, but almost all stores are sold out of the Wii, and you can't find it online anywhere (unless you are willing to pay several hundred above retail). I want one, my friend IK wants one. Two issues for me: 1) there actually aren't alot of good games out for it, but i'd kill to play COD3 and Zelda on it. 2) There is almost no online interaction to speak of, let alone online games. Games for the Wii somewhat have to be designed for teh Wii specifically. When developers figure out that it's realitively easy to make good Wii games we'll see a flood of them, I think. The online stuff can also be added, but i don't think that is the compelling issue for most of Wii gamers. The compelling thing is the totally cool interface, the wacky minigames that are available, and the fact that there is no barrier to play; you can figure out the simple game in seconds. Anyway, yeah i want one, so maybe by my birthday it will be out.

Surprising study here.

I have been reading and watching Iraq since the invasion; and its always been a down-spiral of violence. Recent events give hope, however; the famous troop surge from Bush, which isn't as much an increase in troop levels as it is a new strategy in the war, and the recent speachs from Al Maliki. Here and now is the precipice in which Iraq stands; either it will decent into civil war and chaos, or it will emerge as a haven of freedom in the mid-east. There will be no middle ground here. Mike Yon reports that things are still quite bad and perhaps worse than before. However, the recent targetting of all militias and insurgents gives hope that the spiral of violence will end. But the recent events in Lebanon point out that the mid-east is now in a very real religious war, sunni against shiite, with major powers on both sides weighing in. The battlegrounds are where these two populations coincide; Lebanon and Iraq, and the enabling agents are Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria. It is hard to phantom peace in Iraq without stability of the shiite-sunni war. Knowing this though, makes me realize that the Isreali-Palestine conflict is just a footnote, the US invasion of Iraq an excuse. This is a battle for Iranian hegemony, and honestly I'm not sure we can do much about it.

Stories like this one make the same point with perhaps more eloquence and facts. Although, after reading the article, Kazimi hold to the 'kill the killers' theory which may be working, but I hold to the 'pacify the land' multi-pronged huminitarian, diplomatic, political, and military efforts. Its easy to be a rebel when you have no other economic choice, and when nations like Iran are willing to shell out huge amounts of dough. Its less clear when you are a) likely to be killed quickly and b) you have a better future doing real work.

Combine them, with Just One Card.

An excellent series on the Simple Dollar

Mike Totten has a whole series of excellent posts on modern Lebanon and the direction the country is going, as well as lots of picts. Very interesting read.

Stoat. It's a common European weasel, looks just like a ferret from the pictures. (not surprising, they are in the same family, and probably very closely related) Cute!

Wo is me. The issue is that the sound on the left is completely blocked. Apparently this is a manufacturing defect (in the Creative forum, there have been 1000 posts on the subject, that's alot! And the player is out of warrantee. Its a good player though, i've dropped it several times and it's still intact. Anyway there is a guide here i will try out.

Update: Got it to work. I ended up desolder and resoldering it. I really need a new solder pen though, the one i have is always too big. And if it dies again, it goes on ebay (for parts) or in the trash; i don't think i'll be able to revive it again.

Now with the 'turning the corner' spiel about the cancer deaths dropping this year (they've been declining per capita for quite some time), some are thinking the NIH budget should be cut (the blogfather quotes a reader, not clear if he shares the reader's views). Here is what I wrote to the instapundit.

Hi Glenn,

I just wanted to point out that the NIH funding cut is real, and alarming. Consider: a) The number of scientists in the US has gone up substantially (mostly scientists from other countries). b) The amount of real funding has stayed the same since the doubling of the budget and c) the expense of science has gone way up. At ASCB this year, the NIH director Dr. Zerhouni said c) was the greatest threat. Real life example: my PI had his R01 reduced in funding even before he got it, and they are removing money from it every year. Further, the cost of research continues to climb. We just spend 400k on a mass spectrometer, and 30k on a nuclear poration machine. Director Zerhouni estimated that the cost of science has gone up 70% in the last decade (i may not be quoting this number accurately, its from memory).

Here are some numbers from Orac (see link below). The number of new grant submissions from 1999 to 2005 has gone up 18%, while the success rate has dropped in half, from almost 20% to 9.1%. That's real, and that's a cut for the real research. Much of the new funds being spent at the NIH are for either big projects (ie the cancer genome) or for homeland security. I think the NIH is doing what they can to support science, but they don't get that the pivital mechanism, the R01, is dangerously underfunded. The worst thing is for the public to think that science is actually well funded, where this is far from the truth (the total NIH budget for 2006 was only 26 billion, and the US has the best funded research in the world) (budget here). This is chump change for saving thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives every year.

Orac has some numbers here:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/09/nih_funding.php

My blog chain on the subject is here:

http://gibbie.powerblogs.com/posts/1158798979.shtml

(story here) Also calls for more guns. First, if his govt is indeed cracking down on the Sadr militia, this would be a huge step in restoring law and order, since Sadr is a backer of the govt, and is a Shiite, the majority religion in Iraq. Second, the 'more guns' comment is wistful thinking. They have as much weaponry as militias, and they have the full power of the US army to call upon. The reason why our guys are not giving them more weapons is that they inevitably end up in the hands of the bad guys. Would you want them with even more weaponry? There is a hell of alot of weapons, explosives, etc. left over from Saddam, weaponry is not the issue. In fact, if Iraq was any other 3rd world hell hole (if it didn't have huge oil reserves to get rich off), Iraq would have very little in the way of weaponry, and of course we wouldn't be there now. Kinda a catch-22.

The DJs who thought up the contest have been fired, and there is a criminal investigation in progress. Fox's Dr. Manny Alvarez has more on the medical aspects. Here's the wikipedia reference. As a (sometimes) athlete I have to be somewhat concerned about this (also dehydration too). Essentially as long as you are drinking gatorade you'll be okay, unless you try to drink 7 liters in a sitting. (although the woman who died may still be alive if she was drinking gatorade). Incidentally, a UT physician came up with hydration therapy that lead to the development of sports drinks. (link to the Pollin prize is here, i swear one of the awardees is a UT person currently, it was in the UT paper yesterday).

Here's a user report of his experience. He said it was great, the quality was very good; and you get roughly the amount you pay per month in hours of playback time on stuff you download. So if you pay $10/month, you'll get 10 hours of movies. Smart, very smart. But, so far the selection is small. I talk about the service more here.

Scientists reformulate the 1918 spanish flu (from the lungs of flu victim cadavers), and inject it into monkeys, just to see what would happen (sound eerie music here). Really the point of this is to determine how a bug managed to kill more people than World War I, and the research can go a long way towards current flu problems (and Avian Flu). The reconstitution of the virus was published in 2005 in Nature if I'm not mistaken. This work shows the pathogenic mechanism of action. If true, then Avian Flu may be treatable with steroids (or maybe not) I blogged it here. (Also see this excellent commentary from Charles Krauthammer)

In voice only. Plus, a secret suprise...Thanks to digg for the tip.

This is very good news, and a weird case. The House passed earmarks reform in their '100 hour' marathon (has that ended yet?). The senate was slated to do a similiar thing, but Harry Reid (Dem leader) got in the way, and offered a watered down version. Then, Republicans DeMint and Tom Coburn (who is the champ of the anti-pork crowd) proposed other amendments to strength the senate bill. Long story short, this passed today, accoridng to CNN. (I don't see this story yet in the anti-pork blogosphere, which is strange!)

Like a rock. According to the travel prediction site, Farecast, in a month airfares will substantially decrease for flights from Houston to St. Louis ($220 average), Houston to Phoenix ($200 average), and Houston to Honolulu ($440 average). Probably b/c nobody wants to fly in February; i sure don't (nor do i have vacation time). And Phoenix to Honolulu is forecasted to be only $330, man that is cheap!

Compare and contrast with december, when airfares were about double this price. Also see my previous post on the fare prediction site Kayak.

Hydrogen could be the next best thing. Solar power has been around a while but the startup costs are high and the amount of energy generated can be low. However, the Hopewell project (site here) hopes to combine the two, and this has been done successfully for one home. The idea is brilliant; solar power for this setup was more than enough to satisfy the home's electricity needs in the summer, but not the winter. So, they coupled solar power to hydrolysis, converting the excess solar energy generated in the summer to make hydrogen, which is stored in tanks nearby. Then, in the winter, hydrogen power is used to operate everything. I'm sure the setup is expensive but think if every home had this; we wouldn't need fossil fuels (or any external fuels) at all; this is all solar generated. Think about the fact that the technology exists today, and is only likely to get better and cheaper. If you could power your home for life for $100k, would you do it? We spend about $2000/year in electricity bills, and we have a small condo. If we have a large home, it may be double or triple that. And think what the cost would be in 10, 20, 30 years. The time is coming where self-generated electricity is a real cost saver (not to mention environment saver).

For example, Sweden is phasing out oil completely, the first country to set this ambitious goal.

This seems like good news. I like the fact that supposedly it's free for subscribers, and amount of material is proportional to your monthly fee. But, its on your PC, and not easy to get it to your TV. I've done alot of research over just this type of device and conclude that the one worth buying isn't out yet. THe Apple TV should make strides, but I just ordered this device, which doesn't stream content but allows you to first copy it to a hard disk, then bring the HD over to the TV and plug it in. Not as elegant as a wireless stream, but there you go.

Happened to a woman in a water-drinking contest. Essentially your electrolites and red blood cells become so dilute, you can't function any more. She complained of a headache before she died, so she probably died due to lack of oxygen (my guess of course). Anyway this was criminally stupid for the radio station which sponsored the contest. Did they even think to consult a doctor before they did this? My advice to the widow - sue their butts off.

Adjust the dose! Medicine dosages are given in gram weights, but the critical factor is the bioavailability in moles (ie the number of the drug available per volume of blood). For example, don't give 2 year olds adult strength suda-fed, since that's way more than they can handle (o.d. leads to cardiac events). J went under the knife for wisdom teeth yesterday; they gave her a injectable form of anasthesia. She was very groggy for a long time when she woke up; whereas when I was under the knife, i woke up readily. I don't know the drug used, nor the dosage, but our guess is that they gave her too much (which is often lethal in anasthesia), since they didn't bother to adjust for her small weight. Most drugs are made for people my size (and my sex, and my race). Lucky me. But for non-white middle age men, you should consider changing the dose.

This is a cool project showing the location in the brain of many different proteins. Our protein Alix is in there. I don't know what it really means though, since i'm not a brain expert.

Reluctant Gourmet Looks cool!

Yea for him. He's right, funding is bad, and will remain bad. HOpefully the new congress will restore the NIH budget and increase the amount of funding for R01s, the basic grant and the one that the majority of researchers do their work with. The issue is that a) the budget has remained static, b) the NIH budget is now going to big ticket items such as genomics projects c) the average cost of science has gone way up (70% in the last decade), and d) there are many more researchers in the field now. Combine all that and you have e) a whole bunch of grants, and decreasing payline (the cutoff for determining which grants get funded or not). Thus for new investigators, times will be very tough indeed. For established investigators, it's not so bad, since they have the track record and enough projects to make sure at least one gets funded.

Update: Here are a set of letters CNN got due to the above mentioned article, dealing with the cost of cancer. It's a must read.

Is called the iPhone. This is a revolutionary product, where we should have been 5 years ago, until Steve Jobs came around and fixed everything that was wrong with cell phones. My only gripe: it looks too big. If it does blackberry as well as blackberry, can load any real app (such as MS Word), has an Ipod built, and oh yeah, can answer the phone, this will devastate the blackberry market.

As always, this is riviting stuff, content you sure as heck won't see on the news, anywhere. To me, the simple power of going to people stuck in the middle of a conflict, and asking what is going on, is so powerful. Of course they have a very good idea of what is really happening. Here in the west there is so much spin and bias, it's hard to tell what is true and what is just hype. Bloggers have the ability to cut through all that; their bias is much less obvious and good articles like Totten's are full of facts & real 'man on the street' reporting, not opinions, or repeats of what some spokesperson said three days ago.

Everyone knows its bad and getting worse. Catherine Weiss, who has advanced lung cancer, discusses her situation. Very interesting read.

But I can't run it. You need a HDTV to run it; oddly they didn't include support for the majority of older model TVs. This really sucks!

Why the heck not, i say. I think the spin is that if Muslims are allowed to use spanish cathedrals that were formerly mosques, it would 'send a dangerous precident'. On the other hand, if catholics took the lead in promoting religious tolerance, it may encourage muslims to also be more tolerant. Of course there is a fine line between tolerance and giving in. And the Pope has refused to allow the co-use; so it's a moot point.

How hard can it be? PC World has an excellent article that everyone who is thinking of using fee-based internet services, ala AOL, NetZero, should read.

Wow, this is wierd (and works). Must be some sorta bug?

Saturn has a bunch of new cars out, including the Aura, which just won the 'new car of the year' award at the NA car show in Detroit. Frank Washington says that Saturn is ready for a great year, and will be one of GMs best brands. A few years ago, GM was talking about closing Saturn for good. I have a Saturn, but am unsure i'll get another one. The experience has been so-so, with a new transmission at 60k, new linkage belt at 40k, etc. Now at 65k, it sounds like a geriatric, and my wife nicknames it 'old geezer'.

Still, the Sky roadster looks exciting, and the Aura Green, which isn't on sale yet, would be a great hybrid sedan.

Great tips here. Makes the subject somewhat less appetizing.

Thats the US-Mexico border, not the Iraq-Syria border. Amazing. Either our military has to take these things seriously and seek and destroy these bandits, or things will get worse (since there is no reprisal).

How stupid do you have to be?

Lessons learned: Field drug tests aren't accurate at all (why didn't they just taste teh damn thing like they do on cop shows?

In, what else, a new book . (Seriously, is every politician in america now writing books?) The story has lots of tidbits, including the fact that Terry McAuliffe (the ex-chair) was never invited to Kerry campaign meetings, and the Kerry campaign ended with 15 million in their war chest, with the election down to the wire (think if they called 2000 dems in Florida and got them to vote, Kerry would have won). I think if anyone but Kerry was nominated the dems would have won.

This poor guy has insects in his LCD

here.

It's pretty disappointing. It looks very similiar to Tiberian Sun, which was released 6 years ago now. The original game was released 10 years ago, and was an instant classic (still is a great game). But, the story got old and jaded, like everything else. Anyway, here's hoping the trailer doesn't show the full glory of C&C 3, but the graphics look very bad, the models look poorly rendered, the terrain is not noteworthy. Essentially it looks just like they redrew the object models for C&C 2 and re-released the game.

Gamespot actually saw the game at E3 '06, and said this:

Though we've seen precious little of the game, what we have seen looks absolutely fantastic and should easily pull in both C&C veterans and beginners who just want to see tanks, choppers, and gunboats blow stuff up real good.

So, maybe the trailer was just not that good.

Update: I just saw this trailer on gamespot, in hi-res. It looks better, definitely better. But i'm struck with the 'same old shit' feeling. Really not much new; there are tanks, there are planes, there are infantry, there is the nod laser cannon. Maybe the game will be fun, but it definitely lacks, from what I can see, compelling new content.

All picts from 2006 are at my google web album. Pretty cool!

St. Louis Zoo

St. Louis Xmas

San Diego ASCB

Lab xmas party

New Jersey


Houston Airshow


Tiff's Wedding

Bandera


Ferret Picts!

Jen's Defense!

I got a bunch of new toys for xmas (actually post xmas).

1) A enclosure (Ximeta NDAS enclosure) for the hard disk i bought on black friday. Its supposed to be for network attached storage (NAS), but the driver isn't available for win64. So i installed the driver on jens computer, and shared the disk. Cumbersome, but it works. Apparently a beta for win64 is available. I must say this really sucks though, this isn't what i bought the enclosure for. But for $30 (after rebate, i can't complain)

2) A simple XD card reader (actually it reads all sorts of stuff). I can't find my cable, so until i find it, i'll use this. Bonus: Don't have to worry about losing cables, and if i need to read other types of flash memory i'm all set. This was also painful to install, i had to download a working driver from the website (the ones from the CD just wouldn't work), maybe its a win64 issue again).

3) A joystick and memory for jen, so she can play games on her PC. I stole her 512 MB ram stick to get around mine not working (still no word from RMA on my 1 gig stick from OCZ, supposedly it has a lifetime warrantee, and i didn't do anything like overclock or whatever.

Anyway back to picassa. Wonderful program, everyone should use it. It's here.. Took me just a few minutes to retouch dozens of pictures (thanks to my less than stellar photography skills.)