The entire universe

Today's XKCD depicts the entire unvierse, plotted on a logarithmic scale of distance from the Earth's surface.

Pretty nifty, eh?

Behind The Music: The Muppaphones

Ever wonder what happened to those stars of TV, the Muppaphones?

Talking to the Police by Professor James Duane

Professor James Duane gives a 47-minute lecture on why talking to the police without a grant of immunity is always a bad idea, even if (especially if) you are innocent. The first half of the lecture is the professor's lecture, the second half being commentary by a police officer who confirms everything and then describes many (all perfectly legal) techniques for getting people to confess.

Male dogs and other unusual words

This week, I started wondering if there is a term for a male dog. We all know the term for a female dog, but the males are usually just called "dogs".

Well, thanks to the internet, I now know that answer.

There are three terms used for a male dog:

• Stud - usually only used for breeding purposes
• Sire - but only if it has fathered pups
• Cur - although this usually implies one that is angry or ill or abused

And while on the subject, I was able to find out what male and female cats are called. Until now, I only knew the first of the following:

• tom - a male cat
• gib - a male cat that's been neutered
• queen - a female cat (usually only if she hasn't been spayed)
• clowder - a group of cats

And now you know too.

A terabyte in the palm of your hand

This weekend, I assembled a 1TB hard drive for my Mac. I purchased a Seagate Baracuda ST310005 1TB internal SATA drive at Micro Center for $210. I installed this drive into a Vantec NexStar-3 360UFS external drive case, which cost $70. This is an all-metal case that provides USB, FireWire and eSATA ports. It is currently attached to my Mac via FireWire, that being the fastest interface I currently have. (I may install an eSATA card for better performance, but not now.)

Overall, installation was very simple. The drive just snaps onto the circuit board in the case. The circuit board is also attached to a metal frame that contains the case's external connectors. Thanks to the standardized (and simplified) ports used by SATA drives, there is no need for actual cables. Just a simple connector that mates with both of the drive's connectors. The drive then attaches to the board's frame with four screws. It was important to use the screws that came with the case, and not the ones that came with the drive. The former are pan-head, while the latter are round-headed. The round-headed screws scrape the bottom of the case when the drive is inserted. After attaching the drive to the circuit board, the assembly slides into the case. A single wire attaches the case's in-use LED to the circuit board.

After assembling the drive, I attached it to my Mac. Although simple from a technical point of view, this was tricky trying to find a place for it on my desk. My other external drives (two hard drives and a tape drive) reside on top of my Mac. When I tried to put the new drive there, however, the power cord proved to be too short to reach the power strip on the floor. I found another location, on my desk, behind the monitor, only to find that the bundled FireWire cable was too short to reach from there to my FW hub. Fortunately, I have other FireWire cables and was able to swap it for a longer one.

After physically attaching the drive, the rest was smooth sailing. As soon as I turned it on, Mac OS informed me about the new drive and asked me if I would want to format it. I said yes and the system's Disk Utility launched. The drive was partitioned and formatted in a few minutes. Afterwards, I chose to explicitly zero-out the partition - this is unnecessary, but I do it with new drives, to check for any damaged sectors. That operation took nine hours. (This is a trillion bytes we're talking about!)

After formatting, the drive appeared on my desktop and Mac OS asked me if I wanted to use it to store Time Machine backups. Since this was my purpose for buying the drive, I said "yes" and it was automatically set up.

Time Machine took about four hours to make the initial backup of my data (about 90GB). Subsequent snapshots (taken every hour) take only a few minutes, because they only back up files that have changed.

I don't yet know what the overall reliability of this system will be, since it's a new drive and a new case, but so far I am suitably impressed. The drive case has no fans, so it gets a bit warm but the aluminum case seems to dissipate the heat well. It does not get hot to the touch, and I don't have any other devices stacked on it. Mac OS X seems to have absolutely no problem supporting a single disk volume of 1TB.

Update 6/13/2008:
See also my review on Epinions

The self-peeling potato

The Japanese seem to have a miracle solution for everything, including a clean and easy way to peel a potato:

Breaking matza in half - the Japanese way

I posted this last year to my LJ, but what the heck..

Delicious irony: Sony caught using pirated software

Ars Technica reports: Sony BMG's hypocrisy: company busted for using warez

Sony BMG, proud RIAA member and supporter of thousands of lawsuits against people suspected of distributing pirated music, has been caught red handed using pirated software on some of their own servers.

Insert obligatory comments about people in glass houses, karma, etc.

PlayStation scare tactics

According to Sony's PS3 network troubleshooting page:

Use only an Ethernet cable compatible with 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX or 1000BASE-T networks. Do not use a cord for a standard residential telephone line or cables of types other than those mentioned here. Using the wrong type of cord or cable can cause more electrical current than necessary to flow through the LAN connector, which may lead to heat build-up, fire or malfunction.

(emphasis mine)

So if you use phone wire instead of a Cat-5 wire, it can make the PS3 overheat and catch fire? If that's true, then the PS3's network interface is a complete piece of trash. With any other network device, using phone wire will simply not work - you won't be able to move any data, but it won't make the device catch fire!

So, is Sony simply exaggerating reality, or is their network hardware really that badly designed?

Or are they worried that someone will try and solder a power plug onto the end of a phone wire and shunt 120vac into the Ethernet jack? But even then, it should just blow out the PS3's circuits. It still shouldn't catch fire.

Farewell, Gary Gygax

I think this is a fitting epitaph for the creator of D&D.