ABC News: Fast-Food Ice Dirtier Than Toilet Water

A seventh-grader's science project... good hypothesis, good testing. Poor reporting in the ABC article.... only a particular strain of E.coli results in the illness outbreaks mentioned, and it's unlikely that the strain found in the fast-food ice was the virulent one. Nevertheless, it's quite gross.

ABC News: Fast-Food Ice Dirtier Than Toilet Water

Q - Windows emulation on Intel Macs

Hard on the heels of the successful installation of Windows XP on an Intel iMac comes this new project called Q. You create a virtual drive on your Intel Mac and install Windows (or hopefully whatever flavor of Linux you want) on it. Start it up and you've got Windows in a window. Yes, this is basically Virtual PC, but open-source and free. Apparently they are working on "virtualization mode," which would run the programs directly with the Intel CPU and not require any emulation. But even without that it reportedly runs pretty well.

This guy posted a brief description of Q and how to set it up. Sounds like I'll have to give that a shot if/when I get a MacBook Pro.

How to Run Windows on an Intel Mac with Q

Grade school memories

With the kids both in grade school, I tried to think back about the things I could remember from my early grade school days. It's not much, lemme tell ya.

* I remember my folding mat I used for naptime in kindergarten
* I remember going to the library next to Norman School and checking out books on UFOs from noted kook George Adamski
* I remember Ms. Zook
* I remember not being able to tie my shoes

Interestingly, all that is from kindergarten, and I think primarily from my first half of kindergarten, which was on the Kansas side. I did the second half of my kindergarten on the Missouri side and it was apparently far less memorable. To me anyway. Don't remember much about first through fourth either. I remember answering some math problem correctly. I remember singing "The 12 Days of Christmas" (yes, in its entirety) in front of some class. I remember Flutophone lessons. I think in fourth grade I remember a girl named Janatha. Oh, and I remember actually missing a word in a spelling test, when I used the British spelling of the word "theater." I was quite mad.

Hm, all this talk is dislodging more memories. I recall one teacher's punishment of drawing a circle on the blackboard and making the person put their nose up against it. I remember the excitement of being chosen to go clean the erasers on some strange eraser-cleaning thing in the basement.

Oops, that's it. No more memories until I hit Bryant and fifth grade.

PS3 in November 06

Sony finally fesses up that they won't be able to make their originally-planned Spring 06 release of the PS3. Now, however, they're claiming an early November release, worldwide (originally it was going to be a Spring release in Japan and Fall release in the U.S.). We'll see if they can do a better job of getting units into stores than Microsoft did with the 360 launch (which you STILL can't find in any quantity in a store).

The other interesting note about the announcement is that it will require the hard drive, and something about Linux being on there. This part is vague but I'll bet it made Linux hackers out there start salivating.

Next Generation - Kutaragi's 10 PlayStation Points

Too good to be true? Sony won't downrez Blu-Ray movies

One of the problems with the upcoming high-def disc formats is everyone's assumption that they won't play the full resolution through analog component connections, thereby requiring existing HDTV owners to either have a HDMI connector, or to get a new TV.

Turns out that the decision to downrez a movie is up to the studio that's authoring the disc... and one of the more influential studios has supposedly claimed that they won't be doing that with their movies. Sony, that is... the ones pushing Blu-Ray. If this is really true, and if other studios releasing on Blu-Ray follow suit, and if Sony can get the friggin' PS3 out the door at a decent price, that just might be enough to tip the scales toward Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. Interesting. IF true. I'm highly skeptical.

Sony decides against downsampling on analog HDTV

Apple's newest stuff -- Ars's take

A nice "day-after" summary of Apple's latest product announcements. People are yelping about the new Mac minis having integrated video, but if that integrated video can really handle playback of HD material, then Apple has a shot of turning the mini into a nice, relatively cheap frontend.

I particularly liked the comments about the new iPod HiFi, particularly after Jobs's comments that he is an audiophile and that he is getting rid of his stereo. What a huckster. Anyhow, another audiophile says that the iPod HiFi could actually be capable of good-sounding playback... "in which case it'd be a complete waste to play your average iTunes-store-sourced lo-rez lossy-compressed MP3 through it." Right on. I was listening to my iTunes-store-sourced version of "Baba O'Riley" yesterday and man, those cymbals were swooshing all over the place. Sounded bad.

Infinite Loop: The day after: iPod HiFi and Intel Mac mini