Blackmoor Vituperative

Michael Widenius, the original creator of the MySQL database system, announced in a blog entry on Thursday that he has left Sun Microsystems and is launching his own company. He is unsatisfied with the direction of MySQL development and believes that he will be able to make more meaningful contribution to the software from outside of the company.

[…]

It’s unclear how this move will ultimately impact the MySQL community, but it seems likely that the outcome will be positive. Widenius clearly wants MySQL to have a stronger community focus and is also still committed to making technical contributions. The departure of the project’s two cofounders in the aftermath of the acquisition doesn’t reflect particularly well on Sun, but it probably won’t have any direct impact on the company’s business interests or MySQL development efforts.

(from Unsatisfied with direction, MySQL creator leaves Sun, Ars Technica)

I happened to stumble across this article vilifying so-called Daylight Saving Time. The article itself doesn’t really say much that I have not said before, but it does have quite a few links that you may find interesting, as well as this public service announcement against the costly and absurd practice of setting clocks “forward and backward and upside down”.

Another piece of science fiction is on its way to being science fact. “Researchers at Stanford University have demonstrated quantum holographic storage, shattering long-held assumptions about the information limits of matter. Moving into the sub-atomic realm, they permanently stored 35 bits in the quantum space surrounding a single electron.” (from ZDNet)

As a friend whom I know by the name “Eridah” recently said (speaking on behalf of Apple), “We can’t simply use iTunes as a file manager for a device, oh no. That’s too complicated for our userbase. No we have to only allow syncing. And only with one computer. And if you plug it into another computer IT WILL DELETE YOUR SONGS.”

iTunes sucks. So, if you have an iPod (as I do), what do you use instead?

First, replace the firmware in the iPod with Rockbox. And make sure you get some fonts and themes for it.

Then, use MP3 files, the most widely supported format for digital music. Everything under the sun supports MP3. It’s not that I think MP3 is the best format for digital music (there are formats with better compression, or better music fidelity, or both). But it is widely supported, and at 192 or more kbps, I can very rarely hear any difference between the original CD and an MP3.

Finally, use MediaMonkey to organize your MP3 files.

Over the past 20 years, huge swaths of the sky have been searched for slowly moving bodies, and well over 1000 KBOs found. But these wide-area surveys can spot only large, bright objects; longer-exposure surveys that can find smaller, dimmer objects cover only small areas of the sky. A Mars-sized object at a distance of, say, 100 AU would be so faint that it could easily have escaped detection.

That could soon change. In December 2008, the first prototype of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) was brought into service at the Haleakala observatory on Maui, Hawaii. Soon, four telescopes – equipped with the world’s largest digital cameras, at 1.4 billion pixels apiece – will search the skies for anything that blinks or moves. Its main purpose is to look out for potentially hazardous asteroids bound for Earth, but inhabitants of the outer solar system will not escape its all-seeing eyes.

(from Is there a Planet X?, New Scientist)

The Laser Avenger is an infrared laser with power levels somewhere in the tens of kilowatts range mounted on a Humvee off-road vehicle. It is designed to take down the smaller variety of UAV, which are hardest for conventional air-defence weapons to target.

The power of its laser has been doubled since 2007, when it was shown off destroying a stationary improvised bomb. Now it has tracked three small UAVs – the exact model has not been given – and shot one of them down. The laser tracks an object and holds fire until the target is close enough for it to cause burning with a single blast.

(from Truck-mounted laser shoots down spy drone, New Scientist)