Some pissant A.C. seems to think it is his (or her) job to insist that I not "sign" my posts the way I always have. Why would anyone listen to criticism from a pissant A.C?

Cheers,
Dave

I am not a Windows troll.

I have read my older entries and realized I have aged and become less crazy about principles like I once was. I guess I view machines as tools now to get work done. In addition, from day one I hate people who choose to become zealots, and wear rose colored glasses with their heads in the sand to appear cool. This is true with GNU and Linux zealots as well. Dumb people or ill informed are one thing. No one but God knows everything about anything. However, ignorance with a smile is something totally different that does a great diservice to yourself and everyone around you. People need to learn and adapt to better themselves.

My views on Windows and Microsoft has shifted because they do good work in attacking bugs and being part of the security community. Also, I have given up on Linux for good as of March of last year when Gnome 3 and unity was coming out. IE 9 and Firefox 4 also came out with full hardware acceleration for Windows only. Windows 7 is MUCH MORE secure than its previous versions. I stand by my earlier principles. XP and IE 6 and 7 SUCK. But we should commend people or organizations that change and rightfully condemn those who do the opposite.

Instead of evangalizing people on Linux I choose to tell them to upgrade or get a Mac. My exwife was correct in wondering why I spend so much time reconfiguring computers with weird operating systems when her Vista box just works. I can't argue and I can't think of any non server related thing Windows can't do anymore. 1999 is over folks. Its time to move on.

Hey! I am a finalist in the National Science Foundation's Visualization Challenge: Check it out and vote: Metabolomic Retina The full list of entries is here.

Every generation needs an intellectual hero... Ours was Steven P. Jobs

New JonesBlog update. STS-135 Landing photos and my visit to Kennedy Space Center

A Photographic Study of The Fly with anatomical details and discussion of potential applications in unmanned aerial vehicles here.

New JonesBlog update. Lockheed Martin C-5M Super Galaxy

New JonesBlog update. Louisville, Kentucky

We are starting out on a new collaboration on retinal research. Fun stuff.

Jonesblog has finally made the transition to modern underpinnings. It is now running on Wordpress... Huzzah.

Anyone could send me an invite?

Use the address found in my Slashdot profile.

New JonesBlog update. Experiments
 

I had checked out... The environment was so complete that for a discrete moment I had completely forgotten that we were still in the continental United States. Perhaps it was the smell of kebabs cooking or the sound of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan playing from the electronics shop that also sold pirated Western DVDs or the afternoon call to prayer coming from the tops of the minarets in the local mosque. It could have been the women selling bread, fruits or flowers by the side of the road or the Arabic men playing backgammon in the cafe with shisha pipes. Toyota trucks or bicycles being repaired in the roadside repair shops under Iraqi flags added to the realism along with a tangle of wires on poles carrying telephone and electricity around town with satellite dishes for television on rooftops were added elements. But the thing that completed it was the sound of Baghdadi Arabic from a gentleman greeting us as we drove through town.

Read all about it here. Medina Wasl with the 3rd Special Forces Group

New JonesBlog update. Sundance New Frontier 2010 and a Banksy sighting

I ran up to Park City for the Sundance Festival and to photograph an art installation, the Cloud Mirror by Eric Gradman. The point of the Cloud Mirror is to search out information on the Internet about visitors and merge that information with a real time image of the person on an LCD screen in front of them using computer vision to augment reality. You see yourself reflected back live, in person on the LCD screen in front of you with a thought bubble out of a comic book superimposed next to your head displaying all sorts of information that can be dug up through the Internet. The Cloud Mirror searches Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, IMDB, sex offenders databases and displays activities, relationship status, your favorite movies, books, music, any status updates you post etc...etc...etc... along with snarky comments.

I flew down to Las Vegas to do some work that I'll talk about here later. But while I was in town, I took two days to document Media Day and Shot Show 2010 for a number of sources including Wired, The Firearm Blog and other resources. There was some interesting new technology including a new pistol from Armatix that uses RF signals to disable the sidearm if it is too far from the wristwatch the accompanies it. Also new ballistics computers that are mounted on rifles are discussed.

New JonesBlog update(s). Shot Show 2010 Media Day

Shot Show 2010. The Actual Shot Show

and a little after party. AAC Big Bang Party

New JonesBlog update. Bionic implants

The device seen in these images is called the Utah Electrode Array (WARNING: potentially graphic image after the jump of an implant in a human brain). The Utah Electrode Array is a brain implant technology developed here at the University of Utah by Richard Normann. The purpose of this device, built by currently built for us by Blackrock Microsystems is to transduce signals from external devices to deliver to the brain for interpretation. Alternatively, the device can record impulses generated in the brain for delivery of neural signals to external devices. Our potential interests in this approach are manifold, but real use and implementation of these devices is some years away still.