After faking the fireworks at the Olympics earlier http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Some-Opening-Ceremony-fireworks-were-faked?urn=oly,99745  You would think China had learned their lesson. It seems that China now had a successful launch http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_re_as/as_china_space_article_1 of their  manned space mission http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7634404.stm before it had left the ground, complete with dialogue.

I understand that many news agencies will pre-write some new articles so that it is ready to be published once the event happens but this was not that case. This was an entire narrative complete with faked dialogue and details, such as being complete ahead of schedule. This wasn't preparation it was simple deception. I guess it’s as simple as China is preparing for its fake moon landing program, to show it's just as advanced as the US in fake space programs.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/091008-san-francisco-hunts-for-mystery.html?hpg1=bn

City officials say they are searching for a mysterious networking device hidden somewhere on the network. The device, referred to as a 'terminal server' in court documents, appears to be a router that was installed to provide remote access to the city's Fiber WAN network, which connects municipal computer and telecommunication systems throughout the city. City officials haven't been able to log in to the device because they do not have the username and password. In fact, the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services isn't even certain where the device is located.

This is a follow up story to the IT admin who was fired then refused to give up his password. By the time his boss thought to ask for the password(s), he had already been fired. Any obligation he had to his boss had disappeared. The same goes for documentation and written procedures. I'm not going to document anything after I've been sacked. In this case the guy had been arguing for written procedures to be put in place, but no one in authority would sign them. It should be the managers that are taking flack for this.

Secondly they must be really incompetent to not be able to locate an IP address and kill the port it’s attached to. Every IP address on the network should be known. Either through DHCP or static IP address map. Then arp the unknown IPs to get a MAC address, then find the switch with rogue IPs hanging off it, and go manually looking at what is attached at the other end.

Of course this is the same city which published 150 usernames and passwords for network accounts http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/25/San_Francisco_DA_discloses_citys_network_passwords_1.html

Not many people may care but I haven’t read of this yet. One vendor I deal with is  Akonix I administer several of their applications http://www.akonix.com/  I was just notified that they have been acquired by Quest Software http://www.quest.com Now I get to look forward to a huge licensing price increase, we’ll at least it will make for interesting contract negotiations next year.

My iPhone running the 2.0.2 firmware will stop syncing with exchange mail as soon as I receive any SharePoint alert. The interesting part is the iPhone mail app reports that it cannot contact the server, however the OWA Mobile Admin reports that the phone is contacting the server and syncing properly. If you check this DO NOT remove the server side partnership, this will cause your iPhone to start syncing again, however it will create duplicate calendar items for every meeting in your calendar. Yep, sucks…

The SharePoint alerts show up fine in outlook and on the phone, but after downloading these alerts it will stop updating. If I delete the SharePoint alerts from my inbox (or move them to another folder) everything starts working immediately. The other interesting thing to note about this behavior is the battery drains very quickly when this happens, a full charge can be down to 20% in 3 hours. The phone also becomes a space heater and it is almost uncomfortable to hold.  I’m guessing from the constant data connection trying to sync my mail.

Here to the 2.1.0 firmware fixing everything and adding BT A2DP.

http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1026747  Physicists have discovered a new particle made of three quarks, the Omega-sub-b. The particle contains two strange quarks and a bottom quark (s-s-b). It is an exotic relative of the much more common proton and weighs about six times the proton mass. This is probably one of the last noticeable sub-atomic discoveries made somewhere else than at CERN since LHC is about to start the hunt for the Higgs particle that remains elusive even for the experiment that just discovered the Omega-sub-b.

From the article, this Omega-sub-b particle contains two strange quarks and a bottom quark and weighs about six times the mass of a proton.

A proton contains 2 up quarks and one down quark.

Strange quarks have a mass of 95MeV, bottom has 4.2GeV so the total mass of the Omega-sub-b would be 4.39GeV

Up quarks have a mass of 3MeV, down has 6MeV so the total mass of a Proton would be 0.012GeV

This would put the Omega-sub-b at 365.8 times the mass of a Proton.

Lastly I couldn’t resist, research has shown a diet rich in omega-sub-b particles may help lower triglycerides and increase HDL cholesterol.

I found the about:Memory from  http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/09/how-to-compare.html I’ve rerun the same 4 tabs after a fresh reboot, it has also been pointed out I was checking the size of the setup launcher the actual installer is around 7.34MB.

Google freekin rocks! I just installed Google’s new web browser Chrome http://gears.google.com/chrome the installer was 475KB (that’s right KB) up and running with a side by side comparison on a fresh reboot I opened the same 4 tabs. IE consumed a bit over 250 MB of memory where as Chrome was at 28 MB. And it’s fast, really fast. I’ll have to see if I can dig up some benchmark and post them. For a beta product it is far better than IE8 Beta 2 for that matter it’s better than IE7.