I’m in San Diego for the Microsoft Management Summit 2006. My first impressions of San Diego are good. It’s a nice modern city. The Gaslamp Quarter is very nice, as is the hotel I’m in. Very Shinny! Here is a picture of the city taken from the floating museum, USS Midway.
Saw this on the Bad Astronomy blog. Some pictures of the open star cluster NGC290 which is in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Beautiful.
Saw this on Cosmic Variance. We are all still here thanks to the common sense, nerve and intelligence of the Soviet military officer Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov. See the details on Cosmic Variance, but basically he decided that a computer alert that the USA had launched a few missiles, likely with nuclear warheads, was a computer error rather than a real launch. So he failed to pass the info up the chain of command and therefore most likely averted a retaliation and possibly a full nuclear exchange.
I bought a MacBook Pro. I took it back a few days later. I already have a cooker in my kitchen. I didn’t need another one. Boy did that thing get hot. The serial number indicated it was manufactured in week 9. There is anecdotal evidence that those with week 12, 13 or later serial numbers run less hot. I’ll wait until later in the year and get one after a revision of the design I think.
Video available here. Seems like they reach a reasonable conclusion to me!