Book Of Norm

Egypt has been given $60 billion in US aid over the last 30 years, mostly for its military and security services. From one perspective, the US has been back at its old Cold War antics: propping up an unpopular autocrat in order to prevent a popular uprising. And well.. thats kind of true. But there is more to the story. Mubarak has not always been unpopular, for much of his time he has been quite popular. He is now 82, and increasingly it is the hangers on, the yes men, running the country. And, for at least the last 10 years, they have been doing a terrible job. And of course, what it really comes down to is the economy, and the economy has not been good. The economy has been closed off, too many regulations, too much crap and too little capitalism. And what is the end result? A popular uprising lead by angry youths. But there is more to the story. What $60 billion has bought us is a stable partner in the Middle East. They have been critical in keeping peace in the region, and they ha...

China plans to take 9 urban centers and built a 16,000 square mile metropolis. And yes, in case you were wondering, 16,000 is huge, equivalent to a big chunk of New England (well, not counting Maine). The “Turn the Pearl River Delta Into One” 5 year plan seeks to take what is the heartland of Chinese manufacturing (based around Hong Kong - because that is where the money used to come from, and Shenzen, which China built as an internal rival to Hong Kong), and roughly 10% of the Chinese economy. Basically, right now all 9 cities have very different rules and regulations. China's central government is actually quite weak: traditionally, regional laws and rule were more important, while the central government would hand down objectives and 5 year plans and expect local governments would follow their intent. The objective is to level the playing field, and thus help businesses. The other part of the plan is, of course, huge infrastructure spending, including 29 new high-speed rail line...

The PlayStation 3 has been rooted. What does this mean? It means that when you go and play one of the popular games on the PS3, such as Modern Warfare 2 (until recently, my favorite game), everything is hacked. Basically, some kid figured out how to root the firmware on the PS3. This is a hack at the very basic level of the machine, and lets you do pretty much anything. Many "clans" (largely bunches of idiots who talk to each other on forums - though in the good old days of PC gaming clans had a lot more meaning originally) have rooted their systems and then have the games hacked so that they cant be killed, they have all the power ups and special weapons etc etc. Though in the game one would call these dumb dumbs "hackers" - they have no technical skills beyond being able to follow instructions posted onto a forum. PS3 took the kid to court, and tried to block the hack from going public, but was denied. I agree with the finding, but I hope that the company finds an...

First, a simple distinction. Remote controlled devices are not robots. The SWORD "robot" which so famously was deployed and then un-deployed from Iraq and Afghanistan is not a robot. It is a remote controlled vehicle. It has no "brains" - in only does what its human operator tells it to do. A few of the most famous "robots" are really hybrids. The Predator and Reaper drones which have made so many headlines are just this type. For anything complex, they are RC vehicles, controlled by human pilots on the ground hooked up with very low latency networks. But for simple tasks, loitering etc, they can be controlled by autonomous autopilot systems. Then there are the real robots. Robots that are able to be assigned tasks, from simple to complex, and figure out how to do them. On the cheap and common side of this there is the Roomba (mine is called Norm Jr.) which is able to figure out the size of a room and clean it. (mmmmm dirt) But the really cool ones. The ...

New research out of the incredibly productive Fraunhofer Institute! Foaming aluminium! No really. Sounds like a headline from 1942 Germany.. but this is actually a big advance. It could cut the weight of an average sized freight ship by 1000 tons, which is a big deal as these ships are major contributors to soot and CO2 etc etc (they burn bunker fuel. Bunker fuel is, quite literally, the shit left at the bottom of a barrel. No one even really knows exactly what it is made of, but it causes rashes if it touches the skin, it is barely viscous, and it has more--hydrocarbon--chains than Mr. T). The foaming aluminium is actually a perfect material for ships.. but methinks they will be finding other uses as well: The new material is lighter than water and has a high stiffness . Within seconds a cube made from aluminum starts to inflate into the shape of a sponge under the impact of heat. The secret of this reaction lies in the compounds of the new material. The metal is a mixture of aluminu...

There are some days I can get through with never getting pissed at Obama, never having to hear his name, never having to think about the way that he is ruining this country. And then there are days like today, when I read something which pisses me off so much that I wonder how the fuck these idiots ever came to power, how any individual in this country does not seem them for the incompetent self-aggrandizing idiots that they are. Obamacare was, in part, designed to screw the pharmaceutics companies. The number of times I have heard about how drugs are cheaper in Canada or Europe etc.. recently I had an idiot of an economics professor tell me all about how the drug companies are actually a cartel. Fucking moron. Shockingly, if you screw the drug companies, they don't have the economic incentive to develop new drugs. This is capitalism at the kindergarten level (still, much too advanced for the current administration). Of course, the way that the NYT puts it is this: "Promising ...

Toyota has remained the #1 automaker in the world. Somehow. It produced 8.42 million units, while GM produced 8.39. Which is really kind of sad, because they both basically completely sucked it up this year. It does seem that VW, currently solidly in 3rd with 7.14MM and plans for world domination. No really, they said they will be the biggest and the best, and they will rule the world for 1000 years...

New research shows that quantum entanglement, that odd mechanism of quantum mechanics where two particles end up completely tied to each other, and can remain tied to each other across infinite distances.... and now, time as well. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/timelike-entanglement/ “You can send your quantum state into the future without traversing the middle time,” said quantum physicist S. Jay Olson of Australia’s University of Queensland, lead author of the new study. Basically, what this means is that things can remain "connected" across... well... anything. There already is a whole lot of bullshit about there about quantum whatevers which will make you live longer, be smarter, win the lottery etc. I am not saying that is the case. What I am saying is not that quantum entanglement gives you crazy new powers or even explains everything which I believe in (because many of these things are so common and so well proven, the generally accepted method of simply di...

I love airships . I do not however love this airship. This Belgian hippie designer decided that planes flying around all over the place is a huge waste. It isn't. I, for one, like getting between New York and London at 550mph. Hell, I am sad that I can do it at 1,500mph like you could 40 years ago... Instead, he thinks that going back and forth across the Atlantic using an airship which tries to run its hydrogen fuel cell off of rain and wind power, and has to sit and take breaks when it runs out... read on for more idiocy.. Zeppelins are pie-in-the-sky sort of dreams and every year or so there's a new concept for one, but they never seem to get built. Ever since the great Hindenburg disaster, people are wary of the concept altogether, not to mention, they're incredibly expensive. Lieven Standaert , a Belgian engineer, is hard at work designing a zeppelin that dispels all the major design issues of airships. He's proposing to build a long and pointy airship called the...

The Sahara has not been pulling its weight. Its been growing like crazy, gobbling up useful land for thousands of years. And what has it done for us? Norway and Jordan have decided enough is enough: this relationship is not going to be all take and no give any longer. How are they going to make the Sahara pull (a tiny fraction of) its own weight? By using solar energy, one of the Sahara's four abundant resources (the other three being sand, heat, and bones) these two countries plan on working together to create a desert oasis. Its a pretty cool project predicated on the fact that most of what you need to turn salt water into clean water is energy, and energy is something there is no shortage of in the Sahara. I hope however those greenhouses are insulated.. not designed to make things hotter.. Norway and Jordan Sign Agreement to Make Sahara Forest Project Oasis a Reality by Jessica Dailey , 01/18/11 filed under: Renewable Energy , Solar Power , Water Issues Way back in 2008, we re...

This is incredibly sad. It is not, however, that surprising. Nor is it anything new. This is not a result of the US invasion, it is the kind of thing that the US invasion, hopefully, will eventually alleviate in one of the worlds poorest countries. However, at the same time, the way that many in the US often deal with children (McDonalds and sugary foods) is not all that much better.. Afghan infants fed pure opium By Arwa Damon, CNN January 23, 2011 8:17 p.m. EST In a town where moms feed their kids opium, often entire families become addicted The nearest medical help is 4.5 hours away at a center with just 20 beds A doctor said: If a child cries, they give him opium, if he can't sleep, they use opium, if an infant coughs, opium. Parents in drug rehab said they never realized the dangers to their children Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan (CNN) -- In a far flung corner of northern Afghanistan, Aziza reaches into the dark wooden cupboard, rummages around, and pulls out a small lump of so...

In one fell swoop, Windows could pass beyond Apple OS and any others, and enter the realm of legendary awesomeness previously achieved only by Tom Cruise How are they going to do it? Rumor is that they are going to be releasing official support for Kinect on Windows 7 this summer. Which means that all of those hacks, all of that body-controlled internet surfing and game controlling goodness will be coming to a pc near you. Do you realize just how freaking awesome this will make internet on your TV, or for people like me who wear glasses and like to sit back with a giant (28in) freaking computer screen? Goddamn I can't wait, and hopefully this means Windows 8 has real, useful motion/touch control...

I just got back from a ski trip in which they rented us the Jeep Commander. This big boxy cherokee wannabee was Jeep's answer to the Expedition and the Suburban/Tahoe. Of course, no one let Jeep know that they missed their market by about 15 years... but leaving that aside for the moment. The Cherokee was two cars in one. Underneath it, it is the last generation Jeep Grand Cherokee, which is quite a good vehicle. I think I might buy one some time, if I ever give up on my '96 Tahoe (unlikely for a while). This means that suspension, engine, handling, transmission and chassis are all quite good. However, what they dumped upon this platform is fit for Fresh Kills island. (not kidding. Fresh Kills was the garbage dump for NYC for years. Can't make this shit up) The interior was obviously designed on a budget. And by budget, I mean the kind of cash that you would give your kid to go into the toy store in the mall so that they would shut the hell up. First off, when you get up in...

What is hacking? And when is it criminal? Right now two individuals are accused of "hacking" the AT&T iPad database to extract 120,000 email addresses, which since it was done right when the iPad came out, includes many rich important people and politicians. How did they hack the database? They figured out that AT&T security was so piss poor, that if you put the iPad identification number into a publicly available script on the AT&T page, you got sent back the email address for that ID number. So they simply wrote a script which "brute forced" the script - in other words it just guessed at numbers, and out came 120,000 email addresses. What did these dastardly masters of hacking (see below, what hackers usually look like) do next? They told AT&T! AHHH the HORROR. The CRIME. Those THIEVES. Because after they told AT&T they... did nothing actually. They never used the emails or made money off of this in any way. Now, Andrew Auernheimer, 25, and Dan...

Starbucks has released a 31oz coffee. Yes, 31oz. In other words, this where Starbucks sees its future growth:

The floods down in Oz have been pretty wild. Very wild in fact. The amazing bull shark, well know for its ability to swim up river and survive in brackish and to a degree even fresh water, has been seen swimming around Main St. of a fair size Australian town. Check the full article

Tunisia and Italy may not seem all that connected these days. In the way that we currently think of the world, Italy is Europe, and Tunisia "Africa." Except its the part of Africa which no one really talks about, because it is the white, Muslim, north-of-the-sahara Africa, which I think in most people's minds is this strange floating land without a real home. Historically of course, this region was dominated by one thing: the Mediterranean. The Med, or as the Romans knew it: the backyard pond, is a cultural region in almost the same way, or in some ways more, than Europe is. And right now, sorry to say, it is business as usual in two of the nations of the med. First of all, you have the Big Berlusconi in Italy. He has faced and faced down/paid off/subverted/arrested/intimidated/sat on more scandals than Washington has seen in the last 100 years. This has included innumerable sex scandals, including his estranged wife saying he was a sexual monster who enjoyed the company ...

Yes, cars with no keys sound cool. You just walk up to your car, it unlocks, you open the door, hit the big shiny warp drive start button and away you go. The issue is this: as fancy as this all sounds it is predicated on the idea that it only works when the key, and thus you, are very near the car. There is, however, an issue. Your little key fob puts out a very long combination to the car, identifying it as your key fob. Car company logic is that because this combination is very long, and has been verified by some Swiss gentlemen as having lots and lots of numbers in it, it will be very hard to crack. The whole shebang has been, however, very elegantly hacked. By a Swiss Professor no less. You see, you don't have to crack the combination at all. You just have to replicate it. And with wireless signals, thats quite easy. Turns out all you need is a (very little) bit of programing knowledge, a signal repeater and a bit of teamwork. Guy locks his fancy new car, walks away. You walk...

This is from Wired magazine, and is an incredible and wild story of someone setting out to prove their abilities and intelligence through crime. The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist By Rich Schapiro December 27, 2010 | 12:00 pm | Wired January 2011 According to the FBI's profile, the bomb builder was a "frugal person who saves scraps of sundry materials in order to reuse them in various projects." Photo: Michael Schmeling At 2:28 pm on August 28, 2003, a middle-aged pizza deliveryman named Brian Wells walked into a PNC Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He had a short cane in his right hand and a strange bulge under the collar of his T-shirt. Wells, 46 and balding, passed the teller a note. “Gather employees with access codes to vault and work fast to fill bag with $250,000,” it said. “You have only 15 minutes.” Then he lifted his shirt to reveal a heavy, boxlike device dangling from his neck. According to the note, it was a bomb. The teller, who told Wells ...