Tag Archives: news

Thoughts

ComeAcross Podcast 10

➡ Download ComeAcross Podcast 10

Summary: Hurrah! ComeAcross is live! — Caveat Emptor, Davison Inventegration — The harmonica players in “One in a Million” — Star salaries coming down in Hollywood — How to steal someone’s identity with the aid of the US government — Google Translation is fantastic! — “Rhapsody in Blue” (1945) — An example of cable management — Goss resigns as CIA Director — The story of Comeacross and Doublecross — British court backs extradition of so-called “Pentagon Hacker” — The NSA wire-tapping scandal — A review of My Life of Travel — Video of “The William Tell Overture”, played with hands.

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Thoughts

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Wired News picked up an interesting article from the Associated Press about the NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), which describes the purpose and capabilities of this youngest of government intelligence agencies. Its director, Lt. Gen. James Clapper (Ret.) is stepping down next month, and he is proud of the work NGA is doing.

Their capabilities are rumored to far exceed those of commercial satellite imagery, and they’ve become very useful in the aftermath of last year’s hurricanes. That’s when they set up mobile stations in the backs of Humvees and provided displaced and worried people with satellite images showing the condition of their homes.

They also work together with security staff in public places, like hotels, to tap into lobby cameras and combine that footage with mapping and graphical data to help secure events or take action in case of a hostage situation or other catastrophe.

My reaction to this is mixed. On the one hand, it’s nice to see a government agency actually helping out when a natural disaster occurs, and on the other hand, I have to wonder about people’s privacy given their serious capabilities.

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Thoughts

Pet snakes in the Everglades

I thought I’d mention this Wired News article while I was on the subject of the Everglades. As if things aren’t bad enough down there with pesticide run-off, drought and species extinction, we now have pet boa constrictors roaming around and tussling with the alligators. Guess who’s behind this latest mess? Yup, you guessed it, it’s people. Forget invasive species, we’re the number one threat to both ourselves, and the planet.

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Events

I-95 is to be closed for days in Florida

A wildfire which has been burning since April 21 has now managed to close down I-95 for several days down in Florida, in the Daytona Beach area, from Port Orange to Edgewater. According to the FL Division of Forestry, 84 fires were still burning throughout the state on more than 36,800 acres. The fires are to be blamed for several deaths and multiple car accidents as well.

I lived in South Florida from many years. Could it be that the effects of over-development are starting to make themselves felt? The draining and covering up of large portions of the Everglades has been blamed for recent droughts, and as we know, droughts are at the root of wildfires.

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Events

Yesterday in 2003, iTunes Music Store passed 1 million download mark

Chris Seibold of Apple Matters has a great series of posts going on at his site — to which one can subscribe — called “This Day in Apple History”. For May 5, he had a post about the iTunes Music Store, which on 5/5/03, less than one week after its launch, announced it had passed the 1 million download mark for songs. I hadn’t known about this, and the information shocked me. If something bespeaks of popularity through sheer numbers, THAT does. I say this because when it launched, the Music Store was only for Apple computers, and its collection was approximately 200,000 songs – a mere fraction of today’s collection.

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