Watch Jonathan Ive’s Segment in Objectified [Apple]

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Objectified, Gary Hustwit's look at the world of industrial design, featured a lengthy section on Apple Chief Designer Jon Ive—and now that clip is online for impatient Apple fans to see. [Brainstorm Tech]

The clip is pretty interesting, even if you're not normally enamored with Apple. Ive is the most prominent tech designer of the last two decades, and I like his philosophy on "getting design out of the way." Hopefully the clip motivates you guys to go see the full movie, which is great, even if it doesn't reach the heights of Hustwit's previous effort Helvetica.







Robot Cow Rectum: For Educational, not Recreational, Purposes [Robots]

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The ‘Haptic Cow' recently won Sarah Baillie the Most Innovative Teacher of the Year Award. Hear that, Adam Frucci? It's for learning. Don't get any ideas.

Miss Baillie's invention solves one of the biggest problems in veterinary medicine. That is, once your hand is up an cow's butt you can't really see anything you're doing. Now, with robotic organs and a monitor, she can teach students exactly what they should (and definitely should not) be grabbing.

On a related note, Miss Baillie claims she is also working on a 'Haptic Horse.' Kent Smith may well have some ideas for her, as evidenced by this September Photoshop Contest entry:
If you'd like to be put in touch, Miss Baille, please let me know. [Wired]







Microsoft COFEE, Some of the Most Illegal Software You Can Pirate [Hacking]

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Apparently Microsoft's COFEE software that helps law enforcement grab data from password protected or encrypted sources is leaking all over the internet. So not only can you steal the software, but break the law by using it too.

Yep, it's all out there on the internet, but if you use it to grab private data from someone else's computer chances are you're in for a world of legal hurt. It's one of the few pieces of software I can think of where the subsequent use is more illegal than the act of downloading it.

But I know it's not the only one. What else can you guys come up with? [CrunchGear, Pirate Merch]







Unfinalized video miniDVD data recovery

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My Sony DCR-DVD108 camcorder signaled that the disc door had opened(it hadn't) and that I needed to power off and restart. I did that. Then it said recording wasn't allowed. I tried to finalize the DVD but the screen said finalizing was disabled. I tried many ways to recover the video, as did tw

Building a NAS? Skip the Performance Drives [Nas]

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A while ago I was considering putting low-powered 5400 RPM drives into a NAS. I was worried about performance, but Tom's Hardware shows us that drive speed isn't the bottleneck, and how slower drives can even beat faster ones.

The main bottleneck in any NAS is the RAID engine. Since many NAS units don't include a dedicated controller, oftentimes the speed of the drive just doesn't matter. If you're using a blazing-fast hardware RAID card in your own custom built setup, then drive speed might make a difference. But for most consumer units, the controller is the bottleneck.

With that in mind, you can go with slower 5400 RPM drives that reduce power consumption, generate less heat, and will likely cost less up front too. Even if you have a dedicated RAID card that could let a 7200 RPM drive do it's thing at full speed, I'd consider the benefits of low-power drives to outweigh the marginal speed increase you might see.

This chart shows the difference between Samsung 7200 and 5400 RPM drives in various RAID configurations:

Not much, right? So think twice before you drop more than necessary on 7200 RPM drives for your backup unit. Check out the link for the full test rundown. [Tom's Hardware]







The iPhone Nano Rumor Strikes Again: Coming to Verizon in 2010? [Rumor]

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The latest round of iPhone rumors reads like a roundup of everything we've heard before. Now the mythical iPhone nano is back, and supposedly said device will be coming to Verizon in 2010 featuring a new hybrid cellular radio.

Keep in mind this is all coming from an industry analyst report supplied to Apple Insider, and as with all analyst reports, take it with a huge chunk of rock salt.

Rumor has it that the new iPhone will have a hybrid UMTS/CDMA radio inside, so it'll work on nearly all major carriers. The report also cites that the device will have a 2.8" screen, downsized from the current 3.5" display.

That's nothing we haven't heard before, but the one thing that might make this report more believable than others is the tidbit about who'll make the thing. According to the document, Pegatron will build the phone and not Hon Hai, the current manufacturer.

Baseless speculation, or looming product launch? Whatever the case, I'm much less excited about these rumors now that Android handsets are available on Verizon. As great as an iPhone would be on Big Red, there are very solid alternatives that you can pick up today, so why wait? [Apple Insider]







99 ford ranger with no brake pedal at all

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I have a 99 ranger and resently I have changed both front calipers and the master cyl. and the rear springs, wheel cyls. and shoes. After changing all these parts and bleeding the lines i have no pedal. I have hooked it up to a computer to command it to bleed i manually bleed the lines and also us

I Spy With My Little Eye…

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Update:  SOLVED!!

How about a riddle for your Saturday?  I’ll give you some clues, and then post the answer in the comment section tomorrow morning (or sooner, if someone guesses the correct answer).  To be fair to everybody, the answer will be something well known that you will have been familiar with since your childhood.  Ready?

File:Question mark.svg

Although composed of several bodies, this is referred to as one object.

It is visible to the naked eye; in fact, it is an ancient eye test, and can still be used to measure “perfect” (20/20) vision.

File:Snellen chart.svg

This object is often used as a guidepost.

It is mentioned in Homer’s Iliad.

It is visible in the northern skies (north of latitude 25 degrees south) all year.

File:Red and green aurora.jpg

In about 50,000 years, it will be gone.

Do you know to what I am referring?  The first person to guess correctly can choose the subject of my next post (must be about astronomy;  must be researchable).

Good luck!

How Do You Get a Degree in Green Energy?

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Quick question for those of you who might have some background in this area:

My brother-in-law in interested in pursuing an education in green energy (meaning he wants to work with wind, solar, hydro, or geothermal energy in some capacity). He wants to work in that particular field, but he has n

THERMAL OIL BOILER

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Please give your idea and how to solve.

When the thermal oil temperature reach to 120^0 C, the circulating pump pressure drop to only 1.1 Bar.

And when the thermal oil temperature below 95^0 C, the circulating pump pressure was increase back to 7.5 Bar. I checked all lines and expansion ta

15 things that suck about the Palm Pre

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I’m coming from a Blackberry 8830, and after having a Palm Pre for a few days, I have quite a few criticisms. It’s not to say I don’t like the Palm Pre, but it definitely isn’t perfect.

  • BATTERY LIFE! I can’t stress this enough. The battery life is absolutely horrible. I’ve tried wifi on and off. I run no apps in the background. When the phone is open (ie the screen is on), I lose about 1% of battery every 2 minutes. Today, I woke up, unplugged the phone, looked at 3 emails, and I was already down to 94%. Two and a half hours later, with minimal use (ie, checking an occasional email as it came in), I was at 65%. I’m not signed into any IM app, since AIM is reported to have battery life problems. I have to charge it at least 2 times a day. I lose about 1% for every text message I send or receive.
  • The camera, at least in darker situations, seems to have a blueish tinge at the “top” of every photo (the top of the camera, so it may be on a side if the camera is rotated). No matter how I turn the camera, it’s always there. Below are some sample pictures showing it (click to see fullsized):cimg0005small
    Notice the left side here

    cimg0003small
    Again notice the left side

  • You can’t change the sounds for texts and emails and set the volume differently than the general system sound.
  • It doesn’t respect notification settings on email accounts. I have one account set to never show notifications when a new email arrives. I still get them.
  • Text entry: there are no arrow keys on the keyboard, so it’s almost impossible to move the cursor within a text field to edit text. You have to try to tap the screen at the right place, and you can never get it right; it’s always somehow one character in front or behind where you want to be. Having an option to delete the character to the right would help with this. On websites with small text entry fields, especially ones that come pre-filled in, it’s all but impossible to edit them. This was trivial on the Blackberry
    EDIT: Yes, I know about holding the orange button and scrolling, but this doesn’t work on small text entry boxes. You have to move your finger within the box (which is only sometimes 2 characters wide) instead of being able to slide it anywhere on the screen
  • Copy and paste: you can’t select any text that’s not in a text entry field. This makes copy and paste, in my opinion, useless.
  • Can’t forward text messages (or copy them…see above).
  • Google Maps:
    • Doesn’t have Google transit integration like the Blackberry
    • Can’t just tap a location on the map and say “directions to here”. You have to put in an intersection manually.
    • Very slow to load. It lags and doesn’t finish even rending the app itself for a few seconds (ie, only one side of the text entry box at the top is present).
    • GPS: my iPod can find my location in my apartment instantly. The Pre can’t find it at all; it just approximates it via triangulation.
  • Calendar:
    • You have to wait a second for it to “render” each day before you can scroll/move to the next day.
    • Birthdays don’t show up in the calendar. Birthdays show up for each contact (either from Google or Facebook), but they don’t show on the calendar.
  • Lags scrolling in the Launcher. Left and right are particularly bad, but up and down also lags. Isn’t it supposed to be hardware accelerated?
  • Email lags compared to the Blackberry.
  • MicroUSB: Why not just use miniUSB like everything else? I have plenty of miniUSB cables, and I could always find one at someone’s house if I was in a bind and needed a quick charge.
  • No microSD slot.
  • It would be nice to have a notification light for new messages
  • Keyboard is much more difficult to use compared to a Blackberry, but I’m already getting used to it.

Other than all of these issues, I really like the phone. The browser is very fast and renders pages great. Multitasking is amazing. As mentioned, reading email is sluggish compared to the Blackberry, but it makes up for it in the read/delete status having 2 way sync with Gmail which wasn’t possible on the Blackberry with BIS. Many of these issues can probably be fixed by a software update; I have my fingers crossed.

A Force Fix for Healthcare

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You want a policy that will force health care to work? Fine. This will work.

All licensed medical third-party payers must publish a public, free, unrestricted web service from which anyone can simulate any and all medical insurance decisions. These insurance decisions include:

  • Determination of coverage and all policy purchasing qualifications
  • Premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and all other payer financial details
  • Reimbursement per submission, necessary medical documentation and justification, and all other medical provider-submitted details

No health insurance decision can be executed that cannot be publicly simulated via this web service in advance. Any simulation can be authorized by a patient policy holder and medical provider to become an executed health insurance decision. All documentation necessary to simulate all possible decisions must be published on a public, free, unrestricted website.

Each submission optionally includes a simulated date of submission. The web service will return the decision as of that date. In effect, one could map a decision given a submission from now each day back until the date of service implementation. Submissions without a date specified will be assumed to be for the current date.

Any health insurance decision that does not comply with this policy is grounds for a declaration of Policy Corruption by the federal government. Continued violations will result in the forced restructure of the third party payer. This restructuring will resemble an FDIC restructuring an insolvent bank, including a federally-insured ceiling policy in the event of an insurer failure.

Simply: given this submission, what do you do? In a payer contract, any inability to give an absolute answer to this question immediately can only be for two reasons:

  • flagrant incompetence (bad)
  • fraud (bad)

Why would there be any ambiguity? Think: there is no medical decision making. There is no clinical participation. There is no interaction with patients, the human body, or the environment. It’s simply: discrete data in, discrete data out. And: SOMEHOW decisions are being made. Are these decisions made by:

A) a consistent, understandable, fair, contract of discrete cause and effect? (good)

or

B) “some guy” making some arbitrary decision about who gets what whenever? (bad)

Because if you want A (good) and not B (bad), this test enforces it with an obvious true / false test without divulging trade secrets or private health information and without snowing regulators. (i.e. the Law and Order “we’ll fill your office with boxes of incomprehensible paper forms —that will teach you to mess with the Bureaucracy!” trick) And there is no need for new regulatory committees, laws, and policies. Any medical provider could very simply verify the integrity of the system: here’s what we submitted, here’s what you said you would do, did you do it? Y/N.

Further, it solves the incentive to health care providers to submit their claims electronically, and it stimulates entrepreneurs to build high-tech businesses using the new wealth infrastructure.

And finally, it’s a policy that can actually be DEFINED and ENFORCED to create real WEALTH and directly SOLVE THE PROBLEM of modernizing American health care by empowering the public with concrete data and services —rather than some vague and useless policy like “it is illegal to be inefficient, and you (somebody?) must complete all these forms to prove it.” That crap only makes more Yahbles. Yahbles are intellectual toxins that gradually weighs us down and makes our institutions sick. The Solid State health system clears the air and plants seeds of innovation and productivity.