Windows/Mac: Unfortunately the iPhone and iPod touch lack the ability older iPods had to run in Disk Mode. That's where iPhone Explorer steps in, allowing you manually manage files on your device, or just use it as a flash drive, without jailbreaking.

iPhone browser is a lightweight application that has an easy drag-and-drop interface that lets you browse the contents on your iPhone. You can manually transfer your photos, music or movies from your device back to your computer, or just add files to the iPhone and fill up the unused space as extra storage. There's even an image preview for transferring photos. The best part about the whole thing, though, is that you don't need to jailbreak to use it. If you do have a jailbroken device, though, iPhone Explorer becomes even more usefulIt can access the root of jailbroken phones and browse the files inside, with no need for complicated SSH setups.

The only issue I had was that multiple selection didn't work so wellwhether I was trying to transfer files to or from my iPod touch, doing it one file at a time worked much better than trying to do more. So if you need to transfer large batches of files, you may be better off putting them in a folder beforehand to avoid crashes.

iPhone Explorer is a free download for Windows and Mac OS X 1.5+, requires iTunes 8 or 9 to use.

A moonbow is a rainbow that appears in moonlight. Light from the moon must be refracted through a mist of water in order for us to see the effect. Photographer Wally Pacholka captured this effect at the edge of Haleakala crater on the island of Maui. The large star in the picture is Mars. Link to story. Link to Pacholka's website. -via Arbroath

PS: There's a state park near my hometown that has a moonbow every month if the weather is clear. Link

Chances are, even if you like your milk to come exclusively from cows, you know someone with lactose issues. Almond milk is a healthy alternative, and DIY web site Instructables shows you how to make it in your own kitchen.

Almonds are one of the healthiest nuts you can eat, but commercial almond milk is sadly more water than it is almond. By making your own, you control the ratio of nuts to water used in the process. Besides saving the energy required to produce, pack, and ship the product to your local grocer, you'll be saving a little cash too. If you've never tried it, it's a fantastic treat to a shake or smoothie with more nutrients to do a body good.

Fresh raw almond milk is delicious, healthy, unprocessed, and economical. There is no waste, no unrecyclable plastic-lined tetra-pak boxes or cartons to put in landfills and drink BPA out of, and this tastes much, much better than storebought. The resulting almond meal is a free bonus, useful in cookies, crumb crusts, porridge, granolas, or in lieu of bread crumbs in stuffings and dressings, breaded crusts, etc.

Hit up Instructables to read the full tutorial and check out the small ingredient list which is simply, water and almonds. Are you an almond milk fan? How about soy or rice milk? Sound off in the comments.

Windows/Mac: Unfortunately the iPhone and iPod touch lack the ability older iPods had to run in Disk Mode. That's where iPhone Explorer steps in, allowing you manually manage files on your device, or just use it as a flash drive, without jailbreaking.

iPhone browser is a lightweight application that has an easy drag-and-drop interface that lets you browse the contents on your iPhone. You can manually transfer your photos, music or movies from your device back to your computer, or just add files to the iPhone and fill up the unused space as extra storage. There's even an image preview for transferring photos. The best part about the whole thing, though, is that you don't need to jailbreak to use it. If you do have a jailbroken device, though, iPhone Explorer becomes even more usefulIt can access the root of jailbroken phones and browse the files inside, with no need for complicated SSH setups.

The only issue I had was that multiple selection didn't work so wellwhether I was trying to transfer files to or from my iPod touch, doing it one file at a time worked much better than trying to do more. So if you need to transfer large batches of files, you may be better off putting them in a folder beforehand to avoid crashes.

iPhone Explorer is a free download for Windows and Mac OS X 1.5+, requires iTunes 8 or 9 to use.

Things fall apart. Expect It. Plan for it.

A bunch of smart people are trying to figure out what "happened" at Toyota. The following story is starting to emerge:

Once upon a time there was a car manufacturer known for its reliable and innovative products. After years of being held as an exemplar of cultural alignment and production efficiency, the perfect storm of rapid growth, communication breakdowns, and inadequate oversight resulted in a series of product defects that has caused deaths and put many consumers at risk.

Is this the complete story?

Not even close. The complete story is too complex to be summarized in simplistic sound bites.

But stories make us feel better. If we can explain it, we can fix it. The reality is often too complex to be "fixed." Simplistic analysis of complex matters serves up a false sense of security that makes us believe we can create perfect systems.

Success in business, and in life, isn't about eliminating risks, it's about managing them. In spite of your best efforts, Murphy's Law will rule and stuff is going to hit the fan. The leader's job, in a world that is never simple or predictable, is to build safety nets so that when problems occur, they can be quickly reported and dealt with. Anticipating problems is the only prudent course in a world where every company has data issues, buggy software, and security incidents.

One of the fundamental risk management principles in IT and other engineering disciplines is the controls review. This process identifies potential exposures (for example, Toyota's acceleration problems) and what can be done to rapidly identify, report, and resolve them. In coping with daily pressures, controls reviews often go by the wayside. As a result, many potential unintended consequences remain unanticipated and uncontrolled.

Leaders understand that their companies are living a precarious existence. Almost two-thirds of C-level executives are convinced that their organizations are at risk from information- and technology-based disruption. As these leaders witness the Toyota story unfold, they are experiencing a strange set of emotions: relief naturally combined with anxiety knowing that their company may be next in line.

In the real world, bad things happen to good companies. Be sure, in every change you make, after you have designed what should happen, to take the same amount of time to plan for the unintended disruptions that, you hope, will never come to fruition.

novaPDF is a PDF printer driver that allows you create PDF documents from virtually any Windows program. You may use the software to convert web pages, emails, Office documents and any other file into the PDF format by simply selecting the Print command from the associated application.

There are a couple of reasons why you want to install the novaPDF driver on your system. For instance, it can automatically append the PDF output to an existing PDF file this comes quite handy when need to collection snippets from multiple web pages / documents into a single PDF file.

If you intend to share PDF documents on the web, you'll find novaPDF useful since it lets you add meta information (like title, subject, etc.) to PDFs that will ultimately help in improving the search rankings (SEO) of your PDFs. The generates PDFs have embedded fonts so they will look the same everywhere even if the fonts are missing on the other computer.

novaPDF works with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows including XP and Windows 7. Unlike other free PDF printers, novaPDF offers a standalone installer so you don't have to install extra software (like GhostScript or the .NET Framework) for generating PDFs.

How to get novaPDF PDF Printer for Free

Here's how Digital Inspiration readers can receive a free license of novaPDF:

1. Go to this page and request a license key for the software.

2. Once you receive the registration details via email, download the installer from novapdf.com [direct link to .exe file] and install the application.

3. When the setup has completed, you will have a printer called novaPDF in the Devices and Printers page (or Printers and Faxes' window depending on your Windows version).

You can now access this PDF printer directly from the Print menu of any Windows application that supports the Print feature.

For more PDF tips and tricks, check the detailed PDF Guide.

Free PDF Printer for Digital Inspiration Readers

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

The villagers go across the river Ganga on a 3 rupee ticket(5 if you have your bicycle) on a foggy winter evening.

Phil Haack writes about the lack of confirmation dialogs when deleting an item in the Netflix queue.

I have noticed something similar on the Amazon wish lists. It avoids an unnecessary click, but at the same time, allows you to quickly undo the action if you had accidentally clicked the first time.

This reminds me of one of my pet peeves: people who complain about the Delete confirmation dialog box for files. Generally, the person who makes this complaint cannot imagine how stupid the operating system architects and developers are there. The user wants to delete something. You have a Recycle Bin. Why doesn't the operating system just get out of the way? And who reads the dialog box anyway? One complainer suggested that this was just a way for the developer to shift responsibility onto the user. Since the user clicked Yes, the programmer is no longer responsible if the user accidentally made a mistake. And the implication is that the programmer is lazier and needs to own the responsibility. Or something of the sort.

Obviously, I have no idea what the intention of the programmers were. But let's assume that there was no confirmation dialog box and the second you clicked Delete, the file is deleted. That is great if you meant to hit the Delete key. But what if you had meant to hit the End key (to navigate to the end of a list of files) and your stubby finger pressed down both the Delete and End key. What would probably happen is that the currently selected file gets deleted, you navigate to the end of the file list and you don't realize that your file has just been zapped.

But what about the Trash can, you say? The problem is that if you don't know the file has been deleted, you may not bother to check its contents before emptying it, especially if you had been deleting other files. You may not even realize the mistake until days or weeks have passed and then even a disk recovery service may not be able to help you.

I elaborate on this seemingly minor issue because although user interface issues are more complex than they seem at first glance, because they don't seem so complex, everyone has an opinion. Even those who have no clue about user interaction or the design choices that made a choice necessary, even if it was not the most optimal. This was best illustrated by a recent comic How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell by Oatmeal Comics. As the author notes,

I actually had a client include their mother in the design process so that she could provide feedback and criticism. [...] You are no longer a web designer. You are now a mouse cursor inside a graphics program which the client can control by speaking, emailing and instant messaging.

It is a tough world out there for user interface and user interaction designers.

Are you planning to stroll through Times Square in New York City over the next couple of days? Even if you don't, you can still put your photo up on Kodak's big screen in the Square, and better yet you can control when it happens.

Kodak is running a promotional campaign in which anyone can have their picture appear on the big screen for 10 seconds. Detailed instructions are over here, but in a nutshell, you need to e-mail a photo to kodak@aerva.com, and wait for it to be approved (which Kodak promises will be as fast as possible and within a 24-hour period).

Once your photo gets approved, you will receive a code. Text it to the number provided, and your picture will appear at the next opportunity i.e., the next free slot in programming. Your picture, with the accompanying caption, will show up for 10 seconds.

Of course, if this campaign picks up (seeing as how a huge crowd usually populates Times Square on New Year's Eve), it might be hard to put your picture up exactly at midnight. If you miss your chosen slot, don't worry, you can repeat the whole process up to six times over a 30-day period.

Tags: Kodak, photo, times square, trending

The Nokia n900 is not a cool phone, OK? It's just not. But I admit, it can do some cool stuff, like play Duke Nukem 3D and double as a PS3 controller with the help of BlueMaemo. [MaemoCentral via MAKE]

Shared by Cedric
I'd like this :)

National Geographic shoves every morsel of its collection onto 160GB HDD originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 03:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Want a cleaner, less Farmville-filled Facebook experience? Try loading your friends' and fan pages' status updates, links, notes, and other material into an RSS reader. Facebook doesn't make it easy, but it can be done with some clever URL copying.

LiveJournal user Jamie Zawinski details the steps needed to pull the vast majority of Facebook material you'd (theoretically) want to see into an RSS reader like Google Reader or NetNewsWire. In most cases, it involves heading to the right page for your friends' Posts, Notes, and Notifications, looking in the right-hand sidebar box, and grabbing the feed URL for "My Friends' [Whatever]." In the case of status updates, which is what you really would want to grab from Facebook, it requires a little URL tweaking of one of the above feeds, explained at Jamie's post.

The real benefit to using Facebook in a feed reader? You avoid exposure to Mafia Wars, Farmville, and all that other application cruft, and get just the raw details on what your contacts are up to. You also, unfortunately, miss out on updates about your friends' photo album updates, for reasons unknown to anyone but Facebook's coders, but it might well be worth it for those who find visiting the social networking site's actual page a cluttered experience.

Something to keep you warm during cold winter nights, or cool during hot summer days: a chessboard in MySQL!

Note: You should see chess pieces here below. If not, you're not watching it using UTF-8, or get yourself a good browser!

CREATE TABLE `chessboard` (
  `x` tinyint unsigned NOT NULL,
  `a` enum('','','','','','','','','','','','',''),
  `b` enum('','','','','','','','','','','','',''),
  `c` enum('','','','','','','','','','','','',''),
  `d` enum('','','','','','','','','','','','',''),
  `e` enum('','','','','','','','','','','','',''),
  `f` enum('','','','','','','','','','','','',''),
  `g` enum('','','','','','','','','','','','',''),
  `h` enum('','','','','','','','','','','','','')
) DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

Populating it with Python using MySQL Connector/Python (only piece of script shown):

def create_board(db):
    c = db.cursor()
    
    table = """
        CREATE TABLE chessboard (
        x tinyint unsigned not null,
        a ENUM('','\u2654','\u2655','\u2656','\u2657','\u2658','\u2659',
            '\u265A','\u265B','\u265C','\u265D','\u265E','\u265F'),
        b ENUM('','\u2654','\u2655','\u2656','\u2657','\u2658','\u2659',
            '\u265A','\u265B','\u265C','\u265D','\u265E','\u265F'),
        c ENUM('','\u2654','\u2655','\u2656','\u2657','\u2658','\u2659',
            '\u265A','\u265B','\u265C','\u265D','\u265E','\u265F'),
        d ENUM('','\u2654','\u2655','\u2656','\u2657','\u2658','\u2659',
            '\u265A','\u265B','\u265C','\u265D','\u265E','\u265F'),
        e ENUM('','\u2654','\u2655','\u2656','\u2657','\u2658','\u2659',
            '\u265A','\u265B','\u265C','\u265D','\u265E','\u265F'),
        f ENUM('','\u2654','\u2655','\u2656','\u2657','\u2658','\u2659',
            '\u265A','\u265B','\u265C','\u265D','\u265E','\u265F'),
        g ENUM('','\u2654','\u2655','\u2656','\u2657','\u2658','\u2659',
            '\u265A','\u265B','\u265C','\u265D','\u265E','\u265F'),
        h ENUM('','\u2654','\u2655','\u2656','\u2657','\u2658','\u2659',
            '\u265A','\u265B','\u265C','\u265D','\u265E','\u265F')
        ) default charset='utf8'
    """
    c.execute("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS chessboard")
    c.execute(table)

def set_start_position(db):
    c = db.cursor()
    # Numbers correspondent to the ENUM fields
    wdata = { 'x' : 1,
        'a': 4, 'b': 6, 'c': 5,
        'd': 3, 'e': 2,
        'f': 5, 'g': 6, 'h': 4}
    bdata = { 'x' : 8,
        'a': 10, 'b': 12, 'c': 11,
        'd': 9, 'e': 8,
        'f': 11, 'g': 12, 'h': 10}
    
    stmt = """UPDATE chessboard SET a=%(a)s,b=%(b)s,c=%(c)s,
        d=%(d)s,e=%(e)s,f=%(f)s,g=%(g)s,h=%(h)s WHERE x = %(x)s"""
    c.executemany(stmt, [wdata,bdata])
    
    stmt = """UPDATE chessboard SET a=7,b=7,c=7,d=7,e=7,f=7,g=7,h=7
        WHERE x = 2"""
    c.execute(stmt)
    stmt = """UPDATE chessboard SET a=13,b=13,c=13,d=13,e=13,f=13,g=13,h=13
        WHERE x = 7"""
    c.execute(stmt)

Now you can select the chessboard:

mysql> select * from chessboard;
+---+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
| x | a    | b    | c    | d    | e    | f    | g    | h    |
+---+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+
| 8 |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| 7 |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| 6 |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
| 5 |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
| 4 |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
| 3 |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
| 2 |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| 1 |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
+---+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+

The possibilities.. oh yeah!

Merrick here...


Our longtime friend and frequent contributor Copernicus saw AVATAR and wanted to share some thoughts about the film's science. Copernicus is a quite a scientist himself, so this is a very fascinating read & we really appreciate his taking the time to put this piece together for us.


Here's Copernicus...

First, a little background: I'm a professor of astrophysics who has
searched for planets, worked on SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence) programs, and taught classes on life in the universe.
Right now, I'm helping to build a global network of telescopes to
search for planets and supernovae.

That is a long-winded way of saying that it is part of my job
description to think about the possibility of life on other worlds.
So when James Cameron makes one of the most expensive movies ever
made, and one that puts us right in the middle of an alien culture in
3D.... well to say I'm interested doesn't begin to cover it.

Since the movie has already been reviewed to death, I'm going to focus
on something that hasn't been covered yet the science. But while
this is interesting exercise, for me it is story first, and science
second. I'd put it like this:

Copernicus' Law of Science Fiction: Bending the laws of
physics out of service to the story is fine, doing it out of ignorance
is unconscionable.

I don't mind if the ships in Star Trek can go faster than the speed of
light otherwise the story would be pretty boring. And I know
there's no sound in space, but I want Star Destroyers to
rumble, and the Millennium Falcon to have that iconic whine. But if a
director casually gets science wrong for no real reason other than
that he is stupid or lazy (see ARMAGEDDON, THE CORE, and THE DAY AFTER
TOMORROW, to name a few), then to hell with him. If the filmmakers
don't respect the intelligence of the audience, I'm not going to
respect the movie.

Fortunately, James Cameron has a knack for science that rivals his
moviemaking skills.

THE SCIENCE OF AVATAR

Historically, movie directors have had their asses kicked by
astronomers as far as taking us to exotic worlds. For the most part,
movie planets look like an extreme form of Earth -- they almost always
have an oxygen atmosphere at an Earthlike pressure and gravity. Movie
planets don't even come close to matching the diversity of worlds in
our solar system: the surface of Io is a mottled, sulfurous
orange-yellow, constantly being repaved by volcanoes shooting hundreds
of miles into the sky. Titan has a thick smog atmosphere that blots
out the sun and rains hydrocarbons. Mars has planet-wide dust storms
and a 17-mile-high volcano that nearly reaches above the atmosphere.
Venus has a crushing, choking sulfur dioxide atmosphere with a
pressure 92 times that of earth, and a temperature that can melt lead.
Enceladus shoots ice geysers into space. And the real Pandora orbits
within the rings of Saturn. These are only a few of the hundreds of
planets, minor planets, and moons in our solar system: we've
discovered hundreds elsewhere in the galaxy, some of which seem even
crazier: super-Earths, nearly boiling puffed-up Jupiters, and objects
that may be free-floating rogue planets without a star.

So I can't think of a better use for 3d and a few hundred million
dollars of effects than filmmakers starting to raise the bar to
finally approach the awesome reality of nature. Due to the limits of
budgets, finances, and creativity, I can't think of another film that
has attempted something near the scale of what Cameron has done here.

I'll address the different aspects of the science in sections.

FLORA AND FAUNA

From a visual perspective, Avatar's Pandora is breathtaking. While
most movies have only hinted at the exotic nature of their worlds with
an establishing matte painting or two, here Cameron takes us on an
elaborate three-dimensional tour though various habitats, from the
treetops to the forest floor. He's created a whole ecosystem, from
semi-intelligent trees to giant land and air creatures. Most seem
inter-related via symbiotic relationships. In fact, Cameron has taken
the Gaia hypothesis, that the biosphere of the Earth is itself a kind
of living entity, and sexed it up the biosphere of Pandora is
essentially a god, and it's networked! Creatures can plug into each
other via what amounts to USB hair and fiber optic roots. While some
of these ideas are not without their faults (see below), Cameron gets
points for creativity this is true science fiction, not space opera.

I do have one minor complaint, that given their networking abilities,
the Na'vi should not be so technologically inferior to the humans. On
Earth, the largest barrier to technological progression was that
information that existed in the brains of primitive humans could not
be easily shared or preserved. As soon as writing was developed,
suddenly it was possible to store information outside of the brain,
and record and build upon knowledge. The knowledge available to a
human or tribe went from one brain's worth (and a minimal amount of
oral tradition), to thousands, and ultimately billions of brains'
worth. The result was a technological and social explosion. Hominids
have had technology like spears for about half a million years, but
only 7,000 years after the development of writing we had left the
planet. And the sharing of knowledge is still undergoing a revolution
with the development of the internet. Now we have instantaneous
access to the combined knowledge of the entire history of humanity.

Since the Na'vi have had the ability to download information and share
it in a massive network for long periods of time (evolutionary
timescales), they should be way ahead of us in terms of technological
development. Still, I have to give Cameron a pass here. It is
thematically necessary that the Na'vi are technologically primitive,
and their root-network is necessary to the plot. Maybe you could say
that they could have evolved more technology, but they don't need it
or want it. Still, that reeks of the Noble savage idea, and I have
to agree with Stephen Pinker that that is a bunch of hoo-ha.

But my major complaint from an evolutionary standpoint is that there
is no way in hell that life on Pandora would evolve to look so similar
to Earth life: there are humanoids, space horseys, hammerhead
rhinoceri, and pseudo-pterodactyl beasties. And to make it worse,
they have DNA, and the DNA is close enough to our own that Na'vi and
human DNA can be combined! Again, I have to give Cameron a pass.
First, it is easier for the audience to relate to familiar things.
And more than that there is a significant plot point that I won't
spoil towards the end of the film that hinges on humans and Na'vi
having similar DNA.

One way out of both my evolutionary nitpicks is the panspermia
hypothesis -- that life in the galaxy was seeded in multiple places by
an advanced civilization. But even then the odds against evolution
producing such similar animals on different planets is astronomical.
Since we have a clear record of evolution on Earth, some civilization
would have had to keep taking specimens from earth, first
pterodactyls, and ultimately humans (after they evolved), and then
would have had to deliver them to Pandora, possibly modified via
genetic engineering. That would be an interesting sequel: humans and
Na'vi come together to confront their godlike humanoid ancestors!

Grade on astrobiology: A for the scale of the ecosystem, C for being
too much like Earth call it a B overall.

WORLD AND STAR SYSTEM

Pandora is a moon of Polyphemus, a fictional gas giant orbiting Alpha
Centauri A. I've always wanted to know what the view would be from
the moon of a gas giant. Can you imagine a quarter of the sky being
taken up by a massive cloud-covered planet visible night or day? We
get to see it in Avatar, and since Jupiter is the king of the gods,
maybe majestic is an appropriate word to describe it. I wonder if
Cameron's choice to set this on the moon of a gas giant wasn't a slap
in the face to Lucas, as if to say this is RETURN OF THE JEDI done
right. (I know it is ambiguous in the Star Wars universe whether or
not Endor orbits a gas giant.)

But what had me really geeking out is the choice of the star system.
Alpha Centauri A is perfect. First, as the closest star system to the
sun (4.37 light years), it may well be the first star we travel to.
Second, it is familiar in that you can see it with the naked eye if
you live in the southern hemisphere it is the brightest star in
Centaurus. Actually, what appears to be a single star can be resolved
as a binary system if you use a telescope. It is Alpha Centauri A, a
bit more massive than the sun (1.1 solar masses), and Alpha Centauri
B, a bit less massive than the sun (0.9 solar masses). The choice of
G-type stars near the mass of the sun is great they last for
billions of years plenty of time for life to evolve. They are in an
elliptical orbit around a common center of mass, which means they come
together and drift apart over the course of one 80 year orbit. The
two stars get as close as 11 astronomical units (an AU is the average
Earth-Sun distance; 11 AU is about the distance to Saturn), and get as
far apart as 36 AU (about the distance to Pluto).

Would you see the companion star (Alpha Cen B) in the sky from
Pandora? That depends on where it is in its orbit. At the farthest
distance it would be a few hundred times the brightness of the full
Moon as seen from Earth. But your eyes are logarithmic detectors, so
it would actually only seem a few times brighter than we perceive the
Moon. At its closest approach, Alpha Cen B would be a few thousand
times as bright as we see our Moon. This is not all that bright in
comparison, on Earth the Sun is about half a million times brighter
than the Moon. So on Pandora, if Alpha Cen B is up in the daytime
then you might not even notice it, depending on how far away it is in
the sky from Alpha Cen A. But if it is up at night (as it would be
for half the year), it would never get completely dark the sky would
just be kind of dark blue.

Technically, there is a third star in the system, Proxima Centauri,
but it is a tiny red dwarf a huge distance, about 12,000 AU, away it
is not even clear it is bound to the system. At any rate, it would
not be prominent in the sky as seen from Pandora. Incidentally, my
first job as a graduate student was to help calibrate the fine
guidance sensors on the Hubble Space Telescope to help my advisor look
for planets around Proxima Centauri. Sadly, we didn't find any.

It is an interesting question as to whether planets around either
Alpha Cen A or B could exist in stable orbits that would last for
billions of years. You might think they couldn't because the gravity
of the other star would perturb any forming planet.
However, simulations show that at least at Earth-like distances,
stable planets can form in that system.

Grade for astronomy: for the choice of star system, setting in on a
moon, and around a gas giant, Cameron gets an A+.

THE STAR'S EFFECT ON LIFE

Electromagnetic radiation comes in many forms, gamma rays, x-rays,
ultraviolet, visual, infrared, and radio. Our eyes evolved to see in
the narrow range that the sun has its peak output -- the visual band
-- and the flora and fauna of Earth evolved pigments and colors that
work at these wavelengths. But this isn't universal -- some animals
can see a narrower region of the spectrum than us, and others see
farther into the ultraviolet or infrared. Our cornea blocks most UV
light, but bees, for example, don't have one and can see farther into
the UV. They can see patterns in flowers that we can't.

In fact, colors are really something manufactured in our brain
physically colors are just different wavelengths of light ranging
uniformly from short wavelengths (violet) to long (red). What we see
as blue or green or red helps us differentiate sky from grass from
blood, but to a creature from another world, all these things might
appear as the same color. In fact, you could imagine that bats might
use echolocation to see rough surfaces as one color and smooth
surfaces as another. So since colors are something created by our
brains and not intrinsic to the universe (only wavelengths of light
are), it is virtually certain Pandorans would see color differently
than we do.

Alpha Cen A has almost the same temperature as the Sun, but it is just
a bit hotter. As a result, the star puts out most of its light at
visual wavelengths just like the Sun. But the star's output is only
part of the story the oxygen and ozone in our atmosphere block much
of the ultraviolet light from the Sun, and water vapor blocks some of
the infrared light. Pandora doesn't have an oxygen atmosphere (if the
movie mentioned what gasses it contains, I didn't catch it), so we
might expect more of the ultraviolet light to reach the surface. The
creatures there might be able to see farther into the ultraviolet.
There might be all kinds of patterns that the inhabitants of Pandora
can see that just look blue to us. Maybe that's which there are so
many blue colors in the film. To take this a step farther, I would
have loved to see a scene where a character sees beautiful colors or
patterns as an Avatar, only to have this beauty evaporate into a
uniform sea of blue when he sees the same vista with human eyes.

Another feature of Pandora adding to the ubiquitous shades of blue is
that bioluminescence seems to be a staple of the ecosystem. As
Massawyrm points out, this makes sense for a world that may spend days at a time
shrouded in darkness. Remember that a day occurs when Pandora rotates
on its axis. But it might take a month or so to orbit its gas giant,
which we know looms large in the sky, and could blot out the sun for
days.

Grade for the astrophysics: For the fact that this world doesn't have
an oxygen atmosphere, and the plausible use of color, A.

PHYSICS

Since Pandora is a moon and is presumably smaller than the Earth, the
gravity would be lower. This is alluded to in the film, and creatures
do grow larger and survive falls from greater heights than you could
on Earth. I wonder if Cameron dialed in a different gravity to the
physics engine rendering everything. To my eye, for at least the
human scenes, the gravity looked just like Earth gravity, but then
again if the gravity is close the differences can be subtle.
Virtually all science fiction movies feature planets with gravity at
1g, since, of course, until now, filming has always been done on
Earth. Since here so much of the world was created inside the
computer, I would have liked to see this aspect pushed a bit farther.

In one of my biggest pet peeves regarding the science of Avatar, there
is one scene where the gas giant, Polyphemus, can clearly be seen to
be rotating in the span of about a second or two. Let's say it
rotates about a degree out of 360 degrees in those 2 seconds. That
means it makes one rotation in 720 seconds, or 12 minutes! Jupiter
takes about 10 hours to rotate. So the gas giant in Avatar rotates
about 50 times faster than Jupiter. Winds on Jupiter can exceed 100
meters per second, so the winds on Polyphemus would have to exceed
5000 m/s this is supersonic and clearly implausible. Here's one
case where Cameron opted for visual effect over realism, but to me the
bargain isn't worth it. It looks unrealistic and takes me right out
of the movie. But I do like the look of the clouds on Polyphemus
they look like a cross between Neptune and Jupiter. The highlight is
a giant storm resembling Jupiter's Great Red Spot. That is
particularly appropriate for Polyphemus, named after a mythological
cyclops.

But my biggest beef in Cameron's trading physics for visuals is those
goddamn floating mountains. Seriously, floating mountains? How the
hell do they stay up there? This is such an egregious flouting of the
laws of physics that surely there is some reasoning behind it.

Between the fact that Pandora seems to be sort-of at 1g, the
impossible rotation of Polyphemus, and the floating mountains, physics
is one one area AVATAR gets a marginal fail on Copernicus' Law of
Science Fiction. But on all the other aspects of science, Cameron
gets either a pass or passes with flying colors.

The dream of interstellar travel will only become a reality far beyond
our lifetimes. But I love the fact that today I can be deeply
immersed in not just a plausible, but a compelling alien world just by
putting on a pair of 3D glasses and visiting my local theater. Even
if I have to drive 100 miles to see it in IMAX, that is nothing
compared to interstellar distances! And I love that there is a
filmmaker that plays more than lip service to the science in his
films, stimulating discussion and thought about distant worlds among
geeks everywhere. I was inspired to do astronomy after seeing STAR
WARS as a kid. I'm willing to bet that a fair fraction of tomorrow's
astronomers will have decided to devote their life to the discovery of
new worlds because of AVATAR.

Mail Copernicus

-- Copernicus

Thanks for the enthusiastic response to the article. Thanks for all
the emails, and it is nice to see some interesting discussion in the
talkbacks (who knew?). A few updates:

People have sent links to several sources that explain many of the
questions I had. One is the pandorapedia. Another is A
Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of
Pandora. And people sent the script treatment. I have not read
the entirety of that last one yet, but the first two are interesting
reading.

Levitating mountains: As dozens of people have pointed out, the
mountains supposedly contain unobtainium, a room-temperature
superconductor. Superconductors expel magnetic field lines, and as a
result magnets can levitate above a superconductor. Here
superconducting mountains are apparently levitating over the strong
magnetic field of the moon or planet, or both. I had thought about
some kind of mechanism like that but dismissed it for two reasons:
(1) how could mountains form, stay in place, be weathered and shaped,
etc. (2) if there is unobtanium in the floating mountains, why not get
it there so as not disrupt the Na'vi. But I think I was just
short-sighted. In the case of (1), the intention is that the
mountains started out attached, but broke off and floated upwards at a
certain point, and now they sort of float around. I buy that, at
least enough for a cool movie scene. And for (2), maybe the
unobtanium in the mountains isn't the right kind, or isn't pure, or is
hard to mine. Interestingly, a geologist emailed me with another
sighting indicating the strong magnetic field of the planet: the stone
arches seen at the climax seem to be from mineral growth along
magnetic field lines. Awesome.

Plenty of people have asked where the water comes from for the
waterfalls in the floating mountains. To me, it is just like a normal
mountain, with the bottom missing. Where does the water come form in
normal mountains with waterfalls: rain and snow. Yes there was tons
of water, but have you ever been to Yosemite in the spring? When the
snow melts it all comes down at once, and it is an impressive sight.

And this is a little out of the purview of this article, but plenty of
people have also asked why the humans didn't nuke the planet from
orbit. (A) maybe they didn't bring any -- the proverbial "somebody's
gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes" problem, and (B) you people
scare me! Why doesn't the US just nuke countries we don't like? That
is not cool, man.

Planet rotation: Someone affiliated with the film who asked me not to
name them (but who ought to know) says the planet rotation scene was
intended to be time lapse. Brilliant. I'll have to see it again to
confirm that, but I'd buy it, because I think there were other shots
where the planet didn't seem to be rotating quickly.

Oxygen atmosphere: I said that Pandora doesn't have an oxygen
atmosphere, but I was wrong about that -- it does, but it has other
gasses that are poisonous to humans. Clearly Cameron, a fellow diving
and deep sea enthusiast, thought of this, because the people only need
simple gas masks to breathe, and not huge oxygen tanks.

DNA: The Pandorapedia says the Avatars don't have DNA, just something
analogous so that you can map to it. Great! Although, from my
memory, the movie implies they do have DNA. I'd need to see it again
to be sure. Maybe the character explaining it knows as much about DNA
as most people do and just got it wrong. If I had a nickel for every
time I was at a partly and someone told me that they heard that "they"
(meaning scientists) have broken the speed of light, teleported
something, etc.

Interstellar travel: From the pandorapedia: "Mission Profile: 0.46
year initial acceleration @ 1.5 g to reach 0.7 c; 5.83 years cruise @
0.7 c; 0.46 year deceleration; 1 year loiter in orbit around Pandora;
Mission Duration: 6.75 + 1.0 + 6.75 = 14.5 Earth years. However,
relativistic effects shorten the time onboard ship to slightly less
than 6 years each way."

Hmm, I don't think that calculation is quite right, but it is close
enough. To see, let's take the special relativistic part, the
cruising speed. If ET is Earth Time, ST is Ship Time, v is velocity,
and c is the speed of light, then ET=ST/SQRT(1-v^2/c^2). So
ST=5.83*SQRT(1-0.7^2)=4.1 years for the cruising. Even if you assume
there is no time dilation on the accelerating and decelerating parts,
then the trip is only 5 years, not 6. Maybe they are including the
hanging out on Pandora time. To do the calculation correctly I'd have
to drop some GR on you bitches, and I'm too lazy and you'd be bored.
70% of the speed of light is a good figure though -- it is almost
plausible! From what I've read of the ship technologies, they sound
very well thought out too.

Eyes: One of those sources mentioned that some of the creatures have
two pairs of eyes -- one visual, and one that sees in the IR for
nighttime hunting. Sweet! This is not without precedent. We have
two separately evolved "circuits" for vision in our brains -- one
primitive automatic one and another one for conscious sight. Look up
"blindsight," where people with damage to the latter circuit can't
consciously see, but can catch a ball. And of course we have two
types of cells for day / night vision in our eyes: cones that allow
you to see color when there is plenty of light, and rods that allow
you to see black and white only, but give you night vision. Try this:
put an eye patch on while you are inside for about 30 minutes, then
go out where it is dark and blink between your dark and light adapted
eyes. You can really see the color difference. It is awesome.

Wow, it appears that many of my nitpicks about the science were
actually taken into account by the filmmakers and there are answers.
I'm impressed! Hats off to Cameron and company for getting all this
right. I can't wait to use this film in my introductory astronomy
classes.

-Copernicus

We added a lot of great timesavers to the downloads library this year. Check out this list of the most highly rated items.

The TechRepublic downloads library built up tremendous momentum heading into the final days of 2009. Along with hundreds of PDFs that introduce need-to-know details on the latest technologies, explain how to solve problems, and help you handle tasks efficiently, we updated a few favorite custom tools and introduced some brand new ones.

1: The XCopy Tool

The XCopy command has risen from the ashes of deprecation to save you time and make your file management tasks easier. This tool automates the process for XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

2: The ARP Gadget

Windows offers a command-line utility that lets you examine or modify the ARP cache. To make the tool easier to use, Greg Shultz has gadgetized' it for Vista and Windows 7.

3: The Netstat Gadget

The Netstat utility can help solve vexing connectivity issues - but its command-line interface isn't for everyone. This free Vista / Windows 7 gadget makes the tool much easier to use.

4: The Route Gadget

This handy gadget offers the diagnostic benefits of the Route command without the command-line hassles.

5: The Route Utility

This HTML Application uses the Windows Script Host and VBScript to give the Windows Route command-line tool a more friendly and efficient GUI front end. Use it the next time you need to troubleshoot Windows TCP/IP connectivity problems.

6: The PathPing Gadget

This Vista / Windows 7 gadget automates the powerful PathPing utility, making it easier for you to isolate the cause of network problems.

7: Windows Vista IPConfig Gadget

After building his Vista IP Configuration Tool, Greg Shultz responded to member requests and created this Sidebar gadget to make things even easier.

8: Windows Vista Registration Changer tool

When a system changes hands, it's a good idea to update the registration information to reflect the new user. This simple GUI app lets you quickly knock out the task so you don't have to wade through the Registry Editor to make the changes.

9: Windows 7 installation flowchart

A successful Windows 7 migration begins with careful planning and decision making. Rick Vanover built a flowchart to guide you through each step.

10: Unemployment Rescue Kit

When IT program manager Andrew Makar found himself the victim of unexpected downsizing, he mapped out a strategy for finding a new job - and it worked. The tips, tactics, and contact matrix tool included in this download will help you build your own plan of action for finding your next career opportunity.

Sign up for 10 Things the newsletter

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The most productive programmers orders of magnitude more productive than average programmers. But salaries usually fall within a fairly small range in any company. Even across the entire profession, salaries don't vary that much. If some programmers are 10x more productive than others, why aren't they paid 10x as much?

Joel Spolsky gave a couple answers to this question in his most recent podcast. First, programmer productivity varies tremendously across the profession, but it may not vary so much within a given company. Someone who is 10x more productive than his colleagues is likely to leave, either to work with other very talented programmers or to start his own business. Second, extreme productivity may not be obvious. This post elaborates on this second reason.

How can someone be 10x more productive than his peers without being noticed? In some professions such a difference would be obvious. A salesman who sells 10x as much as his peers will be noticed, and compensated accordingly. Sales are easy to measure, and some salesmen make orders of magnitude more money than others. If a bricklayer were 10x more productive than his peers this would be obvious too, but it doesn't happen: the best bricklayers cannot lay 10x as much brick as average bricklayers. Software output cannot be measured as easily as dollars or bricks. The best programmers do not write 10x as many lines of code and they certainly do not work 10x longer hours.

Programmers are most effective when they avoid writing code. They may realize the problem they're being asked to solve doesn't need to be solved, that the client doesn't actually want what they're asking for. They may know where to find reusable or re-editable code that solves their problem. They may cheat. But just when they are being their most productive, nobody says Wow! You were just 100x more productive than if you'd done this the hard way. You deserve a raise. At best they say Good idea! and go on. It may take a while to realize that someone routinely comes up with such time-saving insights. Or to put it negatively, it may take a long time to realize that others are programming with sound and fury but producing nothing.

The romantic image of an ber-programmer is someone who fires up Emacs, types like a machine gun, and delivers a flawless final product from scratch. A more accurate image would be someone who stares quietly into space for a few minutes and then says Hmm. I think I've seen something like this before.

Related posts:

Writes large correct programs
Experienced programmers and lines of code

Last summer, when Apple pulled third-party Google Voice applications from the App Store, one of them was VoiceCentral. Apple's subsequent rejection of the official Google Voice app spurred an FCC investigation, but Google Voice never made it to the app store and none of the other apps ever made it back in.

Well, that's not stopping the developers behind VoiceCentral. They are bringing back their app to the iPhone via the browser. They call it the Black Swan edition. You can get on a waiting list to be on the private beta here. The app is completely browser-based but has the look and feel of a regular app, complete with a dialer, list of transcribed voicemails, and SMS messages.

When you dial a number, Google Voice simply makes a call to your iPhone while simultaneously calling the number of the person you are trying to reach, so you still pay for the voice minutes. But the appeal of having Google Voice on your iPhone is the ability to read transcribed voicemails, or play them, and avoid SMS charges by texting through Google Voice. (You cannot yet do all of these things when you access Google Voice via the iPhone's browser directly).

The downside is that it cannot access your contact list on your iPhone through the browser. Although, VoiceCentral mimics the look and feel of the iPhone contact manager, you have to export your contacts to Google Voice first and access them that way. Another limitation is that the audio plays through the speaker instead of through the earpiece, but if you are using a pair of earphones that is not a problem.

VoiceCentral will probably be a paid app, but Apple won't get any of the revenues since it is simply a mobile Website. It even offers offline caching and takes advantage of the HTML5 features of mobile Safari. This could very well be the future of mobile apps. As mobile browsers become more capable, more and more developers are going to ask themselves why bother with the limitations of the App Store and be at the mercy of Apple's whims? And it won't just be developers like VoiceCentral who have no other choice.

Below is a promotional video which shows some of the features of VoiceCentral's Black Swan app. Remember, this is all happening in the browser:

This year's release of Firefox 3.5 gave us a lot of reasons to like it, but its extensibility remains everyone's favorite feature. These add-ons and theme tools were the most popular in the year gone by.

This list is culled from a straight listing of the most popular posts that offered a Firefox extension for download in 2009. We're not including posts about configuring Firefox, or even our own hand-rolled Firefox add-on packseven if they were pretty popular, too. Let's get to the good stuff.

Firefox 3.7 Theme Makes Your Browser Look Awesome

One of the greatest things about Firefox is that its development happens way out wide in the open. When the design workers start coming up with preliminary sketches of a new release, anyone can peek at them and even compile them into a theme, which does just what the headline suggests.

All-Glass Firefox Enables Slick Transparency Effects

Windows Vista and 7 feature some fairly nice looking transparency effects, but if your primary browser doesn't use them, it can feel a bit disconnected. All-Glass Firefox v2 tweaks your browser to look just, well, proper in its fancy-pants surroundings.

"Vacuum Places Improved" Speeds Up Firefox with a Click of Your Mouse

You can speed up Firefox by cleaning up its fragmented database, and the Vacuum Places Improved 0.3 extension automates that admittedly pain-in-the-butt process.

Gmail Redesigned 3.0 Focuses on Speed and Message Space

Google Redesigned, a multi-site suite that trades Google's blue/white/minimal look for a darker, sleeker feel, kepts improving its transformative powers this year, adding a host of improvements in its 3.0 release, and later releasing a new version with GReader Redesigned for the RSS hounds.

Dislike 0.2 Adds a Disapproving Dislike Button to Facebook

"I'm having SUCH a bad daythe cleaning lady TOTALLY left her Pine Sol smell all over my bed linens!" That, my friends, is why clever JavaScript tweakers created the Dislike extension.

TinEye Adds Reverse Image Lookup to Firefox

Many of the pictures and illustrations you find across the web aren't in their original formand many can be had at better, perhaps more wallpaper-worthy sizes. The TinEye extension makes it a simple right-click maneuver to search out similar copies of any image you come across.

SkipScreen Lets You Pass Go and Collect Your Download

Sometimes, great stuff has to be hosted on public download services, because the fileor the attention it's gettingis just too much for our meek little personal sites. And the download sites often make it as painful as possible to grab those files. SkipScreen acts as an automated intermediary, jumping through the necessary hoops and entering the key presses required.

FireFound Tracks Your Stolen Computer, Nukes Your Personal Data

This neat little extension, winnter of the Extend Firefox 3.5 contest, utilizes lots of Firefox's built-in features, like geo-location and the extension framework, to offer wary laptop users a way to nuke their personal data, passwords, and history if necessary, track where their machine is logging on after a theft, and cull all kinds of data from the thief. FireFound is, in other words, a smart thing to install if your laptop ever leaves the home.

Gui:config Gives Easy Access to Hidden Firefox Settings

A lot of helpful stuff is tucked away in Firefox's about:config menus. Gui:config brings them into focus and offers a graphical way to manage them. As the How-To Geek puts it, it's amazing that this isn't something being considered for mainstream distribution in the browser.

Memory Fox Manages Firefox's Memory Use, Aims to Keep It Low

(Windows only): Firefox is decently light with memory on startup, but extensions and plug-ins drag it down as you actually use it. Memory Fox monitors Firefox's memory use and, once it reaches your pre-set limit, whips it back into shape.

Daum Blue Firefox Theme is Clean, Simple, and Elegant

(Windows only): Well, the headline and picture kind of say it all about Daum Blue, but it's worth noting that beyond looks, it's also a fairly customizable, and looks even better on Vista and Windows 7 systems.

Decreased Productivity Helps You Browse at Work Without Getting Busted

Sure, kind of anathema for this site's stated mission, but giving your mind a break at work has real mental benefits, even if your boss doesn't think so.

UrlbarExt Adds Super Powers to the Awesome Bar

If you're likely to do more at a web site than just simply bookmark it, UrlbarExt is like a Leatherman for your AwesomeBar. Head to a site's root, search the site on Google, and do much more from a small array of address bar buttons.

Foxmarks Becomes Xmarks, Adds Search and Suggestion Features

Another headline that pretty much says it all. We weren't a big fan of Xmarks' new "discovery" features, but its growing reach into Chrome and other browsers make the former Foxmarks' expansion a good thing.

Magnetiser Downloads Torrents When No Torrent File Is Available

Given the recent legal crackdown on BitTorrent-centered sites, magnet links (explained here) are increasingly popular. Magnetiser makes it easy to track down a working torrent link to grab the file you're looking for.

Integrated Gmail Updates with Improved Looks and Handy Features

It must be mentioned that, beyond smooshing together Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader into one neatly-arranged Gmail page, Integrated Gmail also customizes every niggling detail of those combined apps, making it worth the try-out, even if you think you like your Google spaces separated into different tabs.

Omnibar Extension Collapses Firefox's Address and Search Boxes into One

Omnibar is one of the clever ways Firefox can make itself into a Google Chrome clone, and we love that kind of openness 'round here.

Invisible Hand Subtly Shows Best Web Prices

If you're always looking at online purchases and wondering if you could save more before pulling the trigger, Invisible Hand affirms your hunches for you, dropping down and showing lower prices wherever it can find them.

Ubiquity Sees Major Update, New Look, Better Performance

Mozilla's future-facing automation and shortcut engine, Ubiquity, continued to get awesome-r in 2009.

App Tabs Creates Permanent, Icon-Only Tabs, Firefox 4.0-Style

We dug the idea of permanent, favicon-only tabs when a helpful reader explained it to us, but the App Tabs extension took a multi-step process and made it far more simple.

Alright, I need some help here. I've definitely been around the Internet quite a bit, but I don't think I can figure every single meme hidden in this picture. Like that poster to the right of Pedobear. What's that about?

You can click the image for a bigger version.

This is actually making me suspect that I've been lurking in all the wrong corners of the web, because I have no idea when House became a meme. [Flickr via Ace of Spades HQ via Neatorama]

Update: As some of you have pointed out, this image is a collection of memes loved by the fantastic folks of reddit and created by the talented licenseplate. Licenseplate actually emailed me to say that there is a "final version" of the poster coming soon (and it sounds like it'll include even more of the craziness adored by redditors as well as the rest of us.) So, we'll keep an eye out.

Oh, and it turns out that the poster next to Pedobear is Karmanaut, reddit's resident comment karma hog. I think I haven't been lurking over there enough if I missed that reference.