The Big Think

via BBC: NASA’s rover Opportunity is safe on the surface of Mars! Yee Haw.

via applelinks: Weta’s cyber Tolkien Trail was seeded by a dedicated server, safely isolated from Weta’s intranet and connected to a secure outside line.
Media was transferred from Weta to Pinewood Studios in London. There, Jackson’s 30-gig iPod was ready and waiting to upload Weta’s daily fresh-baked shots and sequences. His iPod was then delivered via sneaker net to his home a few minutes away from Pinewood.
Jackson then viewed those 1K-resolution QuickTime files on an Apple Cinema Display, tied to his G4 laptop, which drew directly from his iPod.
Jackson says the only thing he’d change about the setup is the $15,000 videoconferencing setup they used. Doing it now, he’d replace the whole thing with a $150 iSight.

Some potentially great news Via Yahoonews: BALTIMORE – NASA’s chief agreed Thursday to review his decision to cancel the Hubble Space Telescope’s final servicing mission and let it deteriorate and go out of operation. The decision comes after the space agency was bombarded by pleas to save the craft.
“It’s been overwhelming. My e-mail is overflowing,” said Steve Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

via applelinks:“After 10 months of trying to strike a deal with Disney, we’re moving on,” Jobs said. “We’ve had a great run together — one of the most successful in Hollywood history — and it’s a shame that Disney won’t be participating in Pixar’s future successes.”

Hilarious

Really, really bad toy idea. Seriously folks, what were they thinking?

Great short article in Wired mag about the recent competition to select 3 new Lego Master Model Builders.

via Washington Times: UPI: Documents from Saddam Hussein’s oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

True Majority has an excellent video starring Ben (of Ben and Jerry’s fame) that uses, er, oreo cookies to illustrate a way to fund social issues. Interesting.

Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has an interesting article on MP3, MSFT, and AAPL. Why he thinks your next music purchase shouldn’t be copy-protected.

link

Had a kernel panic while iChatting with Giles. Tried to ping him when he was listed as away. Not the first time this has happend. Also experienced one the other day while viewing a Quicktime movie in Safari.

Just got finished reading the (very lengthy) article “Confessions of a Used Car Salesman” over at Edmunds. We will be looking for a new car for Erin in the next few months. We’ll probably buy slightly used from a private party and we’re looking for a Toyota Corolla or Camry 2001 or newer. If you have any leads, drop me a note in the comments.

Recovering NASA MER Spirit has sent back a new picture!

News.com has a good article by Hassan Aref, the Dean of engineering at Virginia Tech who oversaw the development of the world’s third fastest supercomputer. Good geek stuff here.

Here’s a map, courtesy world66, that shows all the states I’ve visited so far:

create your own visited states map

via jpl/NASA:NASA memorialized the Apollo 1 crew — Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee — by dedicating the hills surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit’s landing site to the astronauts.

Speakeasy has some good advise for the Academy.

“‘Two years from now, spam will be solved,”
Bill Gates, January 2004

2 years from now we’ll see if his prediction is true. If not, I’m sure people will…. keep buying his lousy software.

“Nobody would ever need more than 640k of memory.”
Bill Gates, 1981

via yahoonews utch firm Philips Electronics said on Monday it was preparing to mass-produce a slim, book-sized display panel onto which consumers could download newspapers and magazines — then roll up and put away.