Chad's News

Be careful when connecting to airport wireless networks, especially if they’re free or unsecured. Problems range from legitimate but poorly secured networks to fake networks designed to grab your login credentials. According to the linked article, this problem is very rampant, and you shouldn’t do anything sensitive or confidential on these networks. This would mean not entering any login information, even to check email.

Link: http://www.foxnews.com/…
(via Slashdot)

First diamonds, then buckyballs and carbon nanotubes, but now we have a viable way to manufacture graphene, the next miracle material made strictly from carbon. Graphene is strong, thin, and very good at conducting electricity, which makes it useful for quite a few things. It’s been around for a long time (think pencils), but the problem has been how to manufacture it in a useful form. Expect to see more of this technology in the future.

Link: http://www.freep.com/…
(via Neatorama)

Update: The linked article no longer exists, so use this one instead.

Some of the most promising new features in upcoming web standards are being sabotaged by licensing, copyright, and patent issues. About a month ago Chad’s News wrote about the HTML 5 <video> tag. Since then, it came to light that the major browser vendors have irreconcilable differences over which video codecs should be used, mainly because of licensing and patent problems. The editor of the HTML 5 specification has given up and decided to remove the portions of the document that identify standard audio and video codecs. This is a significant blow to the advantages of having a <video> tag, and make the tag much less useful.

Then there’s the @font-face attribute in CSS 3. Currently, web sites are very limited in regards to which fonts they can use, because the fonts must be installed on the user’s computer. Microsoft addressed this problem in 1996 by creating 10 core web fonts that could be freely used by all browsers. You may not realize this, but nearly every web site in the world uses these fonts.

CSS 3 adds the @font-face attribute, which allows the web site designer to specify a font that’s physically located elsewhere on the internet. The problem here is licensing and copyright. The people who create fonts don’t give them out for free—they want to be paid for their work. The potential for font piracy is huge. Fortunately there appears to be some potential solutions. But if this issue cannot be resolved, then we’re back to the 10 core fonts.

The <video> tag, the <audio> tag, and the @font-face attribute were all created to address deficiencies in the current HTML and CSS standards. Unfortunately, they may be crippled from the start by licensing, patent, and copyright issues.

If you have a smartphone plan that allows Internet usage but charges extra for outgoing text or multimedia messaging, there’s a way to circumvent the messaging charges. Many cell phone plans include an email address that turns incoming emails into SMS/MMS messages on the recipient’s phone. Chad’s News wrote about this back in 2006, but teleflip.com appears to have gone belly-up. In the place of one central service like teleflip.com, the linked article has the SMS/MMS email addresses for various cell phone vendors. It’s a bit complicated, and you’ll have to know your recipient’s provider, but it saves money.

Thanks to Josh for this topic.

Link: http://www.iphonehacks.com/…

Physicist Richard Feynman explains the special design of train wheels that automatically corrects to keep the train on the tracks. It’s a simple and elegant solution.

Link: http://www.mentalfloss.com/…

If you have an older, less fuel-efficient car and are thinking about buying a new one, then the US government’s CARS program may be for you. It effectively raises the trade-in value of your clunker to either $3500 or $4500, plus whatever you can negotiate for the scrap value. My 1996 S-10 pickup qualifies and is normally worth about $1200, so this program can save some serious money.

Link #1: http://www.cars.gov/

Link #2: http://www.abcactionnews.com/…
(via digg)

Update: The program has been suspended as of midnight on July 30^th, because the government thinks it may have already run out of funds (based on pending sales).

Update #2: The US House of Representatives has allocated an additional $2 billion for the program. This still has to be approved by the Senate and signed into law. I’m not that impressed, however, considering that it took less than a week to burn through the initial $1 billion.

Update #3: An additional $2 billion has been added to the program. Note that CARS is popularly known as “Cash for Clunkers”.

Long time Chad’s News readers will recall this post, where we discussed the fate of Kodak in a world of digital photography. The next logical step has occurred, and Kodak is officially discontinuing its famous Kodachrome film.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Update: The last Kodachrome processing center stopped accepting film on December 30th, 2010, and shut down operations in mid-January 2011.

A 13-year old boy gave up his iPod for a week and used an old Sony Walkman instead. It took him 3 days to realize there was a flip side to the cassette tape. (I once owned the same Walkman model that he used.) His reactions are quite interesting and show how far we’ve come in the area of portable music. On another note, the Walkman was recently named as the top music invention in the last 50 years.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
(via Slashdot)

July 20^th is the 40-year anniversary of humankind’s first walk on the Moon. To help celebrate, here are Ten Things You Didn’t Know About the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. My favorite is #7: “When Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface, he had to make sure not to lock the Eagle’s door because there was no outer handle.”

Link: http://www.popsci.com/…
(via Neatorama)

Windows 7 will be available on October 22^nd, 2009. The retail versions (which account for less than 5% of total sales) will be slightly less expensive than the corresponding versions of Windows Vista. There will be at least six versions of Windows 7, but Microsoft is focusing on only three for retail purchases: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. For those interested, here’s a feature comparison page.

Upgrading from Vista will be relatively painless, but Windows XP users will have to perform a clean install of XP before upgrading. This means you are responsible for saving your data beforehand and restoring it afterward. Clean installs are also necessary when converting between 32-bit and 64-bit versions (and vice versa), as well as when you downgrade from a better version of Vista to a lesser version of Windows 7.

Run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to determine if your system is compatible with Windows 7.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://www.maximumpc.com/…
(via digg)

Link #3: http://www.pcworld.com/…
(via The Consumerist)

If you have a Google login and forget your password, you can have the reset code sent to your cell phone as a text message. Of course, you have to configure it with your cell phone number beforehand.

Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

“When you finally stretch and kick back from the laptop keyboard, it takes you a minute or two to remember where the hell you are. There’s the usual moment of disorientation, a kind of existential dizziness as you re-enter the everyday time-stream in which most people spend their lives: Hours have slid by unnoticed, feeling like minutes (except for the ache in your neck and the gritty heat in your eyes). Sometimes you doubt that any time has passed: But when you look at your clock you realize it’s nearly ten at night. … [You] blink as you stumble out of the office, noticing for the first time that you’re really hungry.” —Charles Stross, Halting State, pp. 66–67