I wrote about the shutting down of the fortune teller frauds in Philadelphia a while back. Sadly Philadelphia has reversed its decision. 😦
New version of Joost
I’ve installed and am trying out the new Joost beta version “Friends Edition 0.10.2”. The new designation “Joost beta – Now For Friends” marks the unlimited availability of invites to hand out.
I had gotten some invites a couple weeks ago and gave them out to readers who asked for them. So, if any reader wants a Joost invite leave a comment and I’ll send you an invite. To send an invite Joost requires your first and last names plus an e-mail address. To make sure the whole internet doesn’t see your e-mail address, simply put it in the e-mail address field of the comment submission form, that way only I will see it.
Launching version 0.10.2 for the first time I found it to be about the same as the previous version. The UI is changed slightly and I did get to watch a few minutes of video (previous record for length was about 15 seconds). My guess is that the only play for a short time problems are simply server overloads that will be corrected soon. It still has some quirks when on my secondary monitor, tray icon menu disappears, choppy playback in full screen mode but, other non-beta applications I use (e.g. MS Media Center, Adobe Reader) have annoying quirks on my secondary display too.
Overall Joost shows much promise and I intend to keep playing with it for a least a few months. In the meantime I can still get my fix of IP TV like DL.TV and Cranky Geeks automatically via Instant Media.
Tags: Joost
May 15th No Gas foolishness
This e-mail is going around:
Don’t pump gas on May 15th, in April 1997, there was a “gas out” conducted nationwide in protest of gas prices. Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight. On May 15th 2007, all internet users are to not go to a gas station inprotest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places. There are 73,000,000+ American members currently on the internet network, and the average car takes about 30 to 50 dollars to fill up. If all users did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take$2,292,000,000.00 (that’s almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companyspockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May15th and lets try to put a dent in the Middle Eastern oil industry forat least one day. If you agree (which I cant see why you wouldnt) resend this to all yourcontact list. With it saying, ”Don’t pump gas on May 15th”
In the words of Penn & Teller this is Bulls hit! (FCC friendly version 🙂 ).
Simply changing when or where something is purchased has very little impact on the base economics. Whether you buy gas on the 15th or, 14th or, 16th doesn’t significantly affect any oil company. What has an effect is reducing actual consumption so, if the originators of this chain mail really wanted to have an impact on oil prices they’d ask to make 5/15 a don’t use any gas day.
In addition to this not passing the business common sense test, there is also this outright misinformation:
in April 1997, there was a “gas out” conducted nationwide in protest of gas prices. Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight.
The US DOE keeps track of gasoline prices and provides the data in an excel spreadsheet. Examining the US Regular All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices excerpt for 1997 shows:
| Date | Cents per Gallon |
| Mar 03 | 121.5 |
| Mar 10 | 120.6 |
| Mar 17 | 120.0 |
| Mar 24 | 120.4 |
| Mar 31 | 120.0 |
| Apr 07 | 120.3 |
| Apr 14 | 119.9 |
| Apr 21 | 119.9 |
| Apr 28 | 119.5 |
| May 05 | 119.3 |
| May 12 | 119.3 |
| May 19 | 120.3 |
| May 26 | 121.2 |
| Jun 02 | 121.5 |
So where is that 30 cents/gal drop? There is a slight dip of 2.2 cents/gal centerd in May but that’s a far cry from 30 cents/gal.
See Also:
Snopes Article
U.S. Retail Gasoline Historical Prices
Independent Gasoline Price History adjusted for inflation
Happy Birthday Rolf Sievert
On May 6th 1896 Rolf Maximilian Sievert was born in Stockholm Sweden. Sievert devoted his life to the measurement and medical usage of ionizing radiation. His invention of the Sievert chamber for consistent measurement of radiation dosage helped pave the way for the safe control of ionizing radiation in medical applications. In recognition of his achievements, the SI unit for equivalent dose and efficient dose was designated the sievert, Sv, in 1979.
Professor Rolf Sievert worked with many organizations on radiation protection issues including the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute (SSI), the International Commission for Radiological Protection (ICRP) and, the International Commission for Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU, Chairman 1956 to 1962).
For further reading:
Biography – Wikipedia
SI Unit the Sievert – Wikipedia
Rolf Sievert, the man and the unit – Karolinska Institutet
Radiobiology
BBC – h2g2 – The Measurement of Radioactivity
Moral Orel is back
In case you missed it, the second half of Moral Orel season 2 has begun. This has quickley become one of my favorite animated series and I have just learned that season 3 is in the works!
Who's Joe Lab?
On the way home from the office today I was stuck in traffic behind a car with a bunch of www.FreeJoeLab.com bumper stickers and the unusual vanity license plate of “PRISMS”. Being curious about this I checked out the web site once I got home. It turns out the site is about Joe Labriola a highly decorated Marine who served two tours in Vietnam. He is currently serving a life sentence in Massachusetts and has published a book of his poetry entitled “Prisms of War”.
After reading everything on that web site tonight, I can only say that it certainly appears there may have been an injustice done to Joe Labriola . However, the site does not contain much in the way of evidence to back up the claims of injustice. If the 1973 trial transcript was posted in its entirety it would help but there is only one page available there. I searched around a bit with Google but there is very little at other spots on the net about Joe. There is one poem on a guys My Space page, and mentions in newsletters from two political groups, MIM Notes 1997 and, MASSRAIL 1999.
If any law students happen to read this post please check out his site, I think Joe’s case would make a good project for you. I can strongly recommend that everyone read the articles on www.FreeJoeLab.com many are very sad or troubling making them a tough read but they are all informative and thought provoking so I feel it is well worth the effort.
Wise words from a Rabbi
From an article in the Hampstead and Highgate Express:
In the question and answer session that followed, Rabbi Sacks was asked how he would convince someone like scientist and atheist, Richard Dawkins of the benefits of religious identity.
Mr Sacks responded: “We need atheists to remind us things are not God’s will, God does not want hunger, injustice or violence. I am quite happy Richard Dawkins stops us having too much faith. There’s a lot more religion in the world than there was 25 years ago and there’s a lot more violence in the world than there was 25 years ago.”
U.S. Supreme Court issues patent system ruling
This is not a giant leap forward but it’s at least progress. From an article on CNET that I was pointed to by Harold on the PICList. On Monday the court ruled unanimously to change the rules set by the patent appeals court for determining patent validity. IBM’s assistant general counsel for intellectual property law, David Kappos said:
“What we have had is an era of extreme uncertainty caused by the issuance of many trivial and marginal patents under the old test,” he said in a telephone interview. “What we’re going to see now is actually more certainty because those trivial and marginal patents aren’t going to get issued.”
Anything that will help stop bogus patents is a good thing. I’m certain this ruling won’t be even close to a complete cure for the problems of the U.S. patent system but it’s a start. Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association commented:
“This may make the holders of some lousy patents a little less interested in going the litigation route because it may well be they realize that their chances of winning are lower”
But qualified this with:
“I have to mitigate that comment unfortunately a little bit by saying that an awful lot of litigation goes on here that isn’t expected to go to trial; it’s for extortion purposes.”
A great day for rational people and a bad day for the frauds
This is one of the most encouraging stories I’ve read in a while. Philadelphia PA is enforcing a law that was passed decades ago prohibiting fortune telling for profit. Far too many gullible people lose money they can’t really afford to these con-people. I think shutting them down is the right thing to do.
The AP story is here and a larger article from The Philadelphia Inquirer is here.
Now if only we can get this local law to become a federal law we can hit the frauds where they hurt, their wallets.
New Hearing Aid Technology
I read a couple of articles about interesting new technology for hearing aids in EETimes this week.
The first is about the Epoq hearing aid line from Oticon, the article is here. The MP3 player and cell phone integration is nice and should drive sales. What most interested me though was how they accomplished the continuous real time wireless communication within the tiny 1 mW total power budget typical of hearing aids. They did it by creating a magnetic-coupling system that requires only 300 – 600 µW for Tx and 300 µW for Rx. With this tiny power consumption they can still get 120kbit/s for up to 2 meters.
The second article is about AMI Semiconductor’s new 24-bit DSP chip the Ezairo 5900. These new technologies should help increase the utility of hearing aids and encourage more of the people with hearing loss to use them.
Paul Hutchinson's Blog 
