Total Eclipse of the Sun

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Astronomers Studying an Eclipse painted by Antoine Caron in 1571

My Jim and I were talking about Total Eclipses of the Sun and when we saw one as a child. He remembered that he was about 7 years old and that it was in the afternoon and he was in the Solarium in his house when it happened; I remembered that it was when I was with my Dad making his rounds in the dry cleaning delivery truck on a Saturday and knew I had to be about 8 years old or so and remembered it being in the afternoon (I thought). But neither of us could be sure what year for sure it was.

We wanted to nail it down, since we both saw it together in two different states together. So, I went to the NASA Solar Eclipse page and started looking in the early 60s for a Total Eclipse. Sure enough, there it was July 20, 1963 (here‘s the page where we found it).

All these years later, we both remembered quite a bit about it … and the deepest part of the eclipse only lasted about 1 minute 40 seconds.

Eclipses can be exciting, maybe even a little bit scary, or may cause some measure of anxiety for a child because they have never seen such a thing happen before in their little lives. Giving them as much information as possible, especially for a curious child, can be a great defense against such anxiety. We loved it. Both of us did, even as children. But both of us had some knowledge of what was going on. Science fascinated us both. I remember a woman from the West Indies who was with me when it happened (we stopped at a Judge’s house at the Jersey Shore on my Dad’s rounds noted earlier, and this woman and her husband worked in the house and were good friends of my Dad), and she said that this could be a once in a lifetime thing. She had only seen one once before in her life.

The next Total Eclipse of the Sun for our area in the United States won’t happen again until 2017 (August 21). Hard to say whether we both will still be here then. But I think it will be really interesting if we could share it together this time, instead of seeing it separately in two different states together like last time. Jim in Ohio and me at the Jersey Shore. We didn’t even know each other back then.

It is on my calendar for August 21, 2017 just in case. 😉

Solar eclipse of July 20, 1963 (Wikipedia)

According to Wikipedia, the next Total Solar Eclipse of the Sun after the one August 21, 2017, (that we could see here in the continental United States) won’t occur again until September 23, 2071.

I am pretty certain we won’t be here for that one, but our grandchildren will be.

Information on Solar Eclipses:

Solar eclipse (Wikipedia)

There are some very good external links on that page as well.

You can even listen to the article in .ogg format in two parts from Wikimedia linked on that page or click on the links below:

Solar Eclipses article in audio format from Wikimedia:

Part 1
Part 2

Solar Eclipses have been interpreted as all kinds of omens, portents, etc. in history; particularly related to battle.

In addition, there are some really interesting observations made including some cool scientific observations, as well as some anomalies as well, such as this from the Wikipedia article:

Gravity anomalies

There is a long history of observations of gravity-related phenomena during solar eclipses, especially around totality. In 1954 and again in 1959, Maurice Allais reported observations of strange and unexplained movement during solar eclipses. This phenomenon is now called the Allais Effect. Similarly, Saxl and Allen in 1970 observed sudden change in motion of a torsion pendulum, and this phenomenon is called the Saxl effect.

A recent published observation during the 1997 solar eclipse by Wang et al. suggested a possible gravitational shielding effect, though there is some serious debate. Later in 2002, Yang and Wang published detailed data analysis which suggested that the phenomenon still remains unexplained. More studies are being planned by NASA and ESA over the next decade.

Very interesting stuff!

Technorati NEW Look and How to be Safer While Banking Online

Technorati is welcoming readers to a new look and new addition to it’s already great content while continuing to keep a pulse on the blogosphere.

Technorati has added a new section of writer generated content. Matt Sussman writes, “…While we’ll still track and link to the top blogs, posts, and tags, the unique content written by hundreds of bloggers will complement what the rest of [what] the world is saying.”

I am one of the people who are writing content for Technorati’s new blogger contributed content. There are quite a few of us so you will see articles in various channels: Blogging Channel, Lifestyle Channel, Sports Channel, Business Channel, Entertainment Channel, Videos Channel, and of course the Technology Channel.

The New Technorati Technology Channel

For the new launch, my first contribution is highlighted in Technorati’s new Technology Channel: How to be Safer While Banking Online.

As most of my blog readers (and listeners of our JimmyLee and Bambi Show on CNIRadio.com) know, technology is one of the things that interests me very much; particularly in the areas of security, innovation and gadgets. I look forward to writing more in the new Technorati Technology Channel. My articles will be found here. I will also be contributing in other areas like I do on Blogcritics.

Internet Speed Test | Speed Matters

Sigh…
And we have to pay as much or more than Cox and Charter Cable’s biggest pipe, and WAY more than Verizon ADSL (no matter what speed you get — except FiOS which will not be here till h*ll freezes over) to get that speed on Cellular Wireless and be limited monthly to a 5GB per month Cap. 😦

But at least it’s better than Dialup at 3.6kbps-4.4kbps, eh?

Which, until recently, was all there was until the Cell tower was upgraded/added around here.

Speed Test

How fast are you? Take the speed test to see how your connection measures up.

Our 2007 Speed Matters report was a great success. We received front page coverage in USA Today and in publications across the country. We helped launch statewide broadband projects in Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. And the test results helped convice the Federal Communications Commission to change its definition of broadband so that they can collect data that is more meaningful – one of the major goals of our campaign.

Take the test today so that you are included in our 2008 report.

Learn more about the speed test.

Ed Bott breaths life back into a $2500 Sony Vaio “brick”

It takes a big hearted computer technician/journalist, Ed Bott to take this ‘$2500 brick’ (as Jeremy Toeman called it – check out the youtube video) back from the dead. (and how many people will have an “Ed Bott as Jeremy also said in the video on the page).

Ed Bott couldn’t even use the restore disks because of all the crapware that Sony put on it! So, basically he had to use a clean install from a Vista Retail version and then call Microsoft to validate it. And he also had to go looking for drivers for most of the hardware. He couldn’t just use the ones that had come with the Vaio because they were flakey!

And it’s not just this one from 11 months ago. Ed got another one direct from Sony. Thankfully it was more stable with Vista SP1 with all the crapware so he could at least get rid of the crapware and then update the drivers but even that experience wasn’t without incident.

Normal average users would not know how to do this! They will need a technician to do this stuff for them! It’s no wonder Jeremy Toeman and others like him were/are so upset with their new OEM computers running Vista!

From Jeremy’s blog posting: “Until a PC company follows any of this advice, Apple will continue to gain market share, and here’s why: Virtually all MacBook users today are happily recommending others to try MacBooks, with a predictable, reliable recommendation. PC users cannot as easily do the same. I had a great Vaio, then a terrible one. I’ve used Toshibas before (great – in the 90s), a Gateway (wasn’t bad), and 3 Dells now (one good, one bad, one ugly). But they are all vastly different.”

But OEM manufacturers weren’t the only problem from day one with Vista. It’s just the latest to surface. Vista had trouble with upgrades as well and that was uglier than the OEMs. And alot of that had to do with drivers — oh, and non-functional software! And don’t forget many gamers programs!

Even Ballmer recently stated that Vista was not done yet, errr, “A work in progress.” This was much worse than the XP situation when it came out (which was pretty bad in itself). WinXP SP1, actually it was more SP2 that finally corrected things for WinXP. But the problems continue to plague many who try to upgrade to SP1 of Vista. Of course to prevent many of the problems resulting from upgrading to SP1. They are saying it’s best to upgrade FROM a clean install to have the best results.

I sure hope they do a better job with the next one (Windows 7) — but I am not holding my breath.

Rogue Flash ads pushing malware

Sunbelt Blog posted an article entitled Rogue ads pushing malware – how it works. Here’s the video that shows what’s happening:

At Sunbelt Blog’s website, Alex Eckelberry continues to talk about the Flash .swf ads that are being used to push all this malicious content after throwing the user back and forth all over the web utilizing techniques that are big with Web2.0 interactive and mashed up content:

This is not a trivial problem, and the most important thing for publishers to do is to be extremely careful when accepting new advertisers (and be wary of tricks these people use, like giving fake references), and then keep a close eye on the advertising as it’s running (and hopefully some good tools can be developed for publishers to use to check the content of ads for malicious redirects before posting).

Must read for all Web Surfers.

Legitimate sites like the Major League Baseball site that had at one time recently been unknowingly spewing this type of bad content which was infecting visitors’ computers (see the article) were just trying to keep their visitors/users interested using innovative Web 2.0 features — bringing in and displaying, aka Mashup (web application hybrid) content such as articles, news, videos, ads and more from various sources on the Internet. In the process, something occasionally happens on these legitimate sites. Bad things are being injected.

Thanks for the heads up Alex!

Speed DOES MATTER on the Internet!

If you spend time on dialup versus broadband (even at the entry level for throughput and bandwidth limitations that many providers in this country pass off for broadband), you realize very quickly that you forgot how slow it was and you are not going back there!

Well, for many of us in this once great nation, we have no choice but to daily use dialup, or have to spend hundreds of dollars per month on fractional T1s, or full T1s if fractional isn’t available, or two phone lines to the tune of believe it or not with only extended calling (and you really need extended calling to get an ISP that has even a semblance of reasonable rates) which runs about $45-$46/mo PER LINE (because there are no breaks on a second line), just to get a MAXIMUM of 3.6-4.4K+3.6-4.4K or 11.2K analog, not digital.

But wait there’s more. Then you have to pay an ISP for dual line dialup! In our area, it would put us at about $100 a month for 11.2K of analog dialup bandwidth.

This is downright idiotic. Every day you hear about another area that’s already bursting with broadband, getting even more bandwidth down the pike!!! And here we sit on dialup! Still getting the same stupid rhetoric from Verizon, “Maybe in a year or two.” At that rate, after 8-9 yrs of asking, we should be on FiOS by now, right! NOPE!

Still on dialup.

And we are trying to run a home-based business this way believe it or not!

I have talked to COX.net, and after a very nice lady said she would have someone come out for a look see and then they would get back to me, I am still waiting to hear back … it’s been at least 2 months since she said they would call back. I guess I will have to call them back.

Charter.net is only 5-6 miles down the road, Verizon about 4 miles down the road, and from what I understand Cox.net brought fiber to within 3 miles of here and turned the corner to to the schools.

Broadband is so close you can almost taste it … but they won’t come into our small town.

According to Sen. Joe Biden, although we’ve led the world in educational standards historically, in the last 20 years, the rest of the world has caught up with the U.S. with “warp speed. Some of them have gone beyond us.”

That’s why Sen. Joe Biden’s talk that I found on SpeedMatters really struck a chord with me. I am so tired of not having broadband at our home. Here’s a link to the Youtube video of Sen. Biden’s talk.

EDIT: Of course you’d need broadband to take advantage of seeing the YouTube video … unfortunately!

DirectX 10 Hardware Is Now Obsolete

A friend today was telling me about a situation with new video cards, DirectX 10, games like Bioshock that are really frustrating to Gamers.

The copyright holders/developers of Bioshock apparently have an activation revoke tool. And I am sure they are not the only ones!

Most gamers knew that they were waiting for the changes in Vista to make gaming work right in Vista, but I don’t think they expected this!

If you want proof of the abuses of copyright holders and software developers and how they are abusing their place in the world through Vista the Enabler, apparently Bioshock is one to take a peak at.

Say you have a gamer who buys the game. He currently has a GeForce 88xx PCIe video card on a Vista system. He runs Windows Update which in turn installs the new updates for DirectX 10…which apparently shuts off (for no apparent reason) the eye candy the card is fully capable of doing in the game, and had before the update.

Out of frustration, he buys the next version of video card that supports the new updates to DirectX 10 …. for $549!!!

Now he figures he can go back and play Bioshock and really get a great game going! But NO!!!! HE goes back to play Bioshock only to find his activation was revoked for a change in hardware!!!

So after the third time changing hardware, he now has run out of activation credits.

Now he has to purchase the game again.

Then I go to do some searches in Google to see if others are having this type of trouble, and low and behold Slashdot has this: DirectX 0 Hardware is now Obsolete.

DirectX 10 Hardware Is Now Obsolete
Posted by Zonk on Sat Aug 11, 2007 05:41 AM
from the shouldn’t-have-blinked dept.
Windows Graphics Hardware Games
ela_gervaise writes “SIGGRAPH 2007 was the stage where Microsoft dropped the bomb, informing gamers that the currently available DirectX 10 hardware will not support the upcoming DirectX 10.1 in Vista SP1. In essence, all current DX10 hardware is now obsolete. But don’t get too upset just yet: ‘Gamers shouldn’t fret too much – 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and, more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about. The spec revision basically makes a number of things that are optional in DX10 compulsory under the new standard – such as 32-bit floating point filtering, as opposed to the 16-bit current. 4xAA is a compulsory standard to support in 10.1, whereas graphics vendors can pick and choose their anti-aliasing support currently. We suspect that the spec is likely to be ill-received. Not only does it require brand new hardware, immediately creating a minuscule sub-set of DX10 owners, but it also requires

Lots of very interesting comments at Slashdot on this.

All those folks that said, you don’t know what you are talking about. That I can still do everything on Vista that I could on XP and Win2K … read it and weep.

I kept saying it is not now! It’s later. Vista is the Enabler. The copyright holders and developers will not want to ‘sqeeze’ too hard till they have a decent number of suckers, errrr, users on Vista before ‘squeezing.’

Of course this is really not the first time (see WGA and other DRM issues, etc), but somehow all the other times was some sort of fluke that quietly gets fixed, or oh, that’s just the way it is with Vista. But now things are starting to change for users, eh? How many users will be affected by this do you think?

What say ye, now?

By the way, thumbsup to ID Software and others who create their games for OpenGL so it can be ported easily to other OSes like Mac and Linux/UNIX. And not be hit by this Microsoft operating system centric DirectX lockin crap.

Thanks Charlie for the confirmation so I could go looking for examples of this!

Thought for the Day – October 21, 2007

Don’t forget: 4AM Eastern overnight tonight – Orionids peak!

“Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
— Calvin Coolidge

Thanks to Tweeny for the new lease on life for Quotable Quotes!

Interoperability between OSes

Redhat is trying their level best to talk to Microsoft about interoperability.

Microsoft refuses to meet Redhat there. In eWeek‘s article “Red Hat to MS: Let’s Talk Interoperability,” Microsoft’s Muglia and Redhat’s Cormier have gone back and forth here.

From what I can see, Redhat wants to get interoperability going in a format similar to other hardware and driver standards. Microsoft doesn’t wish to do that at all. They already have a couple feathers in their hat and now it seems as though they think it should be their way or the highway.

For Muglia and Microsoft, it is not that simple. While it is one thing to talk about how open-source technologies could interoperate with Microsoft software, “you have to complete the picture,” he said, adding that Microsoft already supports Red Hat software in its current Virtual Server product.

While Muglia acknowledged that interoperability work could take place without tacking on the IP issue, he is reluctant to do so.

So, thanks again Novell/SuSE and Linspire for nothing. If you all had worked together with each other, to keep the discussion where it should have been, instead of listening to those other voices…interoperability would already be here….you heard it! It would already be here.

As Muglia said, they were reluctant to discuss interoperability without patents coming into play. He acknowledged that interoperability work COULD BE DONE WITHOUT TACKING ON THE IP ISSUE.

Of course it could! And it would have been done by now, if proprietary companies cared even the least little bit for, or respected their customer’s choices! They do not.

It’s never been about ability, it’s always been about proprietary company’s lack of desire to do so.

Sigh…

Single and Multi Color Printer Cartridges and Other Futility

Printer cartridges … don’t get me started!! LOL!

I was reading my WindowsSecrets Newsletter this morning (here’s the complimentary version of the issue to view) … and I was already intrigued by Brian Livingston’s article entitled, “SkipRearm doesn’t work, activation still broken,” then I started reading Scott Dunn’s article entitled, “Epson’s claims of cheaper ink are empty” and this hit a sore spot with me.

Cost per page is a very slippery slope.

Depending upon what type of “picture pages” (credit to Captain Kangaroo on that one) – meaning not the different types of pages, but the various colors that those pictures will include – will determine true cost effectiveness with print cartridges at any given time.

In an ideal world (without massively overstated copyright and patent laws), since the printer companies can make the cartridges for pennies, they should sell them for much less than they currently do, IMHO.

Elsewhere, I was reading about Apple’s iPhone costing twice what it cost to make it. LOL! And this is bad. Yes, it is. But not nearly as bad as the print cartridge percentages!! Some have done costing with printing, but has no one ever REALLY questioned this oppressive problem with printing costs/cost of printer cartridges??

We have an HP Wireless All in One printer, very nice printer in many ways. Since they charge about $10 per color cartridge, and about $18 for a black cartridge, it can be an expensive proposition with 5 or 6 cartridges in a printer. Less so, to some degree, if you replace each color only as needed, since that would be $10 instead of $36-56 or more per cartridge).

On the other hand, replacing an entire color (all colors in one cartridge) cartridge ($36-$56 or more) depending upon the printer, for ONE color that is out is totally ludicrous.

Many times you run out of one color long before the others. If you could have replaced that one color for a fraction of the cost, it is certainly better than throwing away a cartridge with maybe as much as 1/2 of the other colors still in the cartridge, because you happened to print a page or pages that use more of one color than the others consistently. This actually happens quite frequently. Even so, $10 a color is still highway robbery, IMHO. How many actual prints do you get for that $10??

Compare that with the cost of film developing a few years ago? Seeing any correlation?

And God forbid that your ‘intelligent’ printer decides that today it will have a superiority complex, and won’t except your new cartridge this time for some unknown reason, and says it’s still out of ink after putting in a brand new cartridge. Believe me, it does happen! It happened to us a couple months ago.

In our older HP printers, there is no choice but to replace the entire cartridge to the tune of $36 because we ran out of red or blue or yellow, that is until we found a surplus store online that sell them for considerably less.

But there aren’t many options for the newer printers to get them at major discounts like the older printers. You will still pay 6.99-9.99 per color (more for the slightly bigger black cartridge) in the Wireless Photosmart FOR EACH COLOR – and there are about 5/6 cartridges in there. But that’s better than paying the cost of some of the other newer printers with less cartridges and some colors together in one cartridge for the $35-$50 or more range per cartridge.

The problem is not so much whether the printer has one cartridge or many, the problem is that the printer companies are sucking their customers dry. It’s like highway robbery. They hook people in with these very inexpensive printers (sold at a discount so they can make it up later on the cartridges, over and over and over) .. So they nickel and dime ya to death till the printer dies and they try another one from that company or another company that is just as inexpensive.

Throw away printers … that’s gotta be good for the environment, right? With all the electronic boards inside, etc.? I can just see them stacking up in the landfill.

Sometimes it’s almost less expensive in the long run to get a really cheap printer on sale, install the drivers, print till you run out of ink and then go buy another $49 printer … it’s cheaper than replacing the cartridges!!

This is the crazy world we live in. And hardware/electronics companies love it! Particularly printer companies.

Instead of seeing that they have the golden goose and if they would just treat customers fairly they could keep their golden goose happy and healthy, they get the greedy company syndrome, they do the same ‘ole, same ‘ole that other greedy companies seem to get themselves into….burn customers on every purchase and keep them over a barrel. It’s what I like to refer to as the ‘laundromat syndrome.’

Sometimes I think people get so fed up because they really have no choice if they like the printer they have, or maybe they don’t want to have to go through the annoyance of time and frustration installing over 300MB of drivers and software for yet another printer (and of course they all want to do that). Not only that, will they uninstall the old one first … likely not if they are not that savvy of a computer user. What a registry and hard drive and potentially compatibility nightmare over time.

I don’t know; it’s a real quandary. No matter what anyone says, you can’t seem to change the printer companies’ mentality because they are just that greedy! And amazingly enough, it is working for them! Why? Because they are ALL doing it! Every single printer company is price gouging, IMHO…Except maybe this Kodak one that Corrine is talking about in her blog posting…not bad really. Is that only for photo paper or normal pages too?

It’s that “dollar down and a dollar a week” mentality that started with the ‘ole ‘company store’ … “St. Peter don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store!” (credit to Tennessee Ernie Ford and his song Sixteen Tons). Except of course now in today’s society, it’s more like $100 down and a $1 a day or more!!

Every bank/credit card company, music and movie CD/DVD subscription services, magazine and book club, satellite/cable company, as well as printer and other hardware/electronics companies are trying to get you hooked on them for a dollar down and a dollar a week forever.

And why not, it worked for the utility companies and insurance companies, God knows the debt monster is working really well for the banks and credit card companies. Sheesh, it even works for charitable organizations, right? It’s only 50 cents a day, less than a cup of coffee….

But, it’s their golden goose and don’t you mess with their golden goose … they may not treat the goose well, but don’t you try to make life better for the goose by pointing out the futility.

The worst problem with so many of the “dollar down and a dollar a week plans” is that you don’t really own anything for that money. You pay, errr, overpay for the cartridges, then it’s gone. It’s hard to know what to spend all your dollar down and a dollar a week things on. If you are not careful, you will have no money to live on while you pay for everyone else’s livlihood.

Don’t get me wrong, many are very worthwhile, but even then you have to be cautious right? You can’t afford every subscription you think is worthwhile, can you?

But some ‘dollar down and a dollar a week’ things are totally gone before you know it (consumables like printer cartridges, etc.). Sad because then both the item and the money are gone forever.

I am not saying we need to cut out all consumables from our lives. If we did that we couldn’t eat now could we? 😉

I am saying we need to be cautious and we need to point out when things don’t make sense … like the cost of printer cartridges which are probably in the hundreds of percentages of mark up over cost of production … It has been said, that mark up of 45-50% is reasonable over cost. But some companies think that mark ups in the hundreds of percent are reasonable!?! Especially when the ‘consumable’ will be gone VERY quickly and they will have to feed the beast if they want to print.