June 27, 2003

This weekend is the London Airshow and Ballon Festival in London, Ontario. 11:55:02 PM

The first set of astronauts (victims?) for the private Canadian Arrow suboribtial rocket have been announced. The Canadian Arrow is a two-stage rocket; the first stage is an upgraded V2 rocket design. The goal of the rocket’s team is to win the $10 million US X-Prize, an award in a private space race to be the first team to complete two sub-orbital flights at least 100 kilometres high with a reusable craft. Another teams include John Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace and the current favorite Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites team. 11:53:47 PM

For a lot less than $90 million the producers of the this USA Today graphic on LeBron James's earnings can learn to multiply. $899 x 10,011 = $8,999,889 12:23:19 AM

The Washington Post held a public online chat with Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). In the chat he defended the policy of copy protecting DVDs, arguing that preventing people from making backups is not a problem. He stated: If you have a CD or a DVD in digital form then you already have your personal copy. DVDs are not like video cassettes they have a life longer than any human and if by some bizarre accident it is fouled you can replace it with another DVD from your local video store. If you go to a department store and buy a dozen wine glasses and three months later four of them are broken I don't believe the store will give you four new glasses as "back-up" glasses. He also argued that movies were in fact vulnerable to copying and needed laws against copying movies online enforced. He stated that research into faster networks was eliminating the protection movies had by their large sizes: I suggest that you keep in touch with experiments now going on which forcast an incredible increase in the speed of Internet delivery. In an experience at Cal-Tech a high quality DVD movie was downloaded in 5 seconds. This experiment is labeled FAST. In another experiement 6.7 gigabytes was hurled half way around the world in one minute. A movie has 4.6 gigabytes to give you some idea of the future rapidity with which we wil be confronted. It's interesting that Valenti is aware of such technology, no claims that 1 to 3 Bit/s DSL or cable lines are the most that people might use. 12:00:39 AM