“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he [Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.“

– NASA Administrator Charles Bolden

Hmmm… there’s something missing there. Something about – oh yeah, that’s right = SPACE!

Here he is saying that line (and a lot more) on Al Jazeera:

iPhone users tend to call their phones, “iPhones” as opposed to just “phones” also. I remember this also being that case with the T-Mobile Sidekick. At first I thought this must have started because these devices are so much more than phones. It almost seems insulting call my Nexus One a phone. As phones go, the N1 one is great. It’s an excellent GSM device with a really nifty set of noise canceling microphones. (The fact that the iPhone is generally considered to be a terrible phone may have also contributed to people not referring to it as a phone.) But as with the iPhone and Sidekick, it’s so much more. Calling it a phone would be like calling my house a bed. I have an excellent bed, a Temperpedic, but that hardly sums up the value of my house.

But then I realized that while that may have contributed, that’s probably not how this started. It started with the Blackberry. People have always said, “I saw your email on my Blackberry.” But it’s not because the Blackberry did so much more that make phone calls -  it’s because the Blackberry did not make phone calls at all. For many years – nearly a decade – Blackberry users also carried cell phones. You had to call your Blackberry a Blackberry, because there was nothing else to call it.

The news, the internet, my email – they all tell me I should be pissed about this. A true American drives an American car, watches baseball, loves their mother (how the fuck did America co-opt that?), loves them some NASCAR, and hates anything made outside of the US. Oh, they buy it, they buy every bit of it – but they hate it. Otherwise they wouldn’t be a good American.

I hear they’re building a new superhighway from Canada to Mexico. It’ll cut right through America! GASP! People tell me to be very upset about this, although I’m still waiting to hear exactly why. I don’t mean this vague bullshit, “Well… the borders!” What about them?

I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Nobody tells me to boycott things made in North Carolina. Why is it okay for my to get furniture from North Carolina (drastically more expensive furniture) but it’s just wrong to get it from China? Why am I supposed to hate people from China? Why do you?

I rarely define myself as an American. I see no value in defining myself in such terms. At least no more than I define myself as a Virginian, or a resident of Quinton, VA. Us Quintonites – we gotta watch each other’s backs or those bastards from Providence Forge are going to move in our turf! I like the hardware store in Providence 1000x better than the one in Quinton, but shopping there might imply that I hate my mother.

Or does that only apply to International borders? And is that only international borders as they are currently drawn?

I have friends from all over the world. I’m a citizen of Earth. I’m human being. I’m a citizen of the Internet.

If you’re reading this and you disagree, you’re a hypocrite. Shut off your Chinese computer and go join a militia.

Well at least now I know why my knee has been hurting so much. Apparently I tore my meniscus, basically in half. They were able to stitch it back together, which is good news long term. But in the short term it sucks. Four weeks of wearing this ridiculous brace. Four weeks of not bending my knee. Don’t be fooled by the brace – it doesn’t support my knee when I bend it, it’s completely locked so I can’t bend my knee. I’m not even sure yet how long it will be before I’m back on the mats.

Ah, First World problems…

When we bought our 3 Nexus Ones (Nexuses One? Nexi Ones? Nexus Three?) there was no insurance available. We didn’t know that because the ordering process was so terrible. At some point a few weeks later T-mobile / Google / Asurion quietly made the Premium Handset Protection Bundle available for the N1. It’s $2.60 / month with a $130 deductible. With a two year commitment to these phones all three of us must have insurance.

But there’s a catch – you have to sign up for the Premium Handset Protection Bundle within 14 days of ordering the phone.  Well that was a problem for me, since 1) it wasn’t available within the first 14 days and 2) even if it was we wouldn’t have known to ask for it. As far I can tell they still don’t mention it on google.com/phone. So if you’re ordering an N1 you need to somehow know to call T-mobile and add the PHPB (with-in 14 days).

The insurance must be added within 14 days of opening your account, upgrading a handset, or completing an account change of responsibility. Wait – what was that last one?

Me: Is there any way I can add insurance to my phone now?
T-Mo Rep: Not at this point, it has to be done within 14 days…
Me: But if I transfer my whole account to my wife I can add insurance?
T-Mo Rep: That’s correct.
Me: I would like to initiate a change of responsibility for this account.
T-Mo Rep: No problem.

About an hour and a half of phone calls later the whole account has been transferred to my wife (still billing to the same credit card), and all three N1s have insurance.

You could, in theory, hash a string of any length. So there are an infinite number of inputs. Some of those strings will collide with the hash for your password. How many? Well, subset of that infinite number, but still an infinite number. A smaller infinite number, if you will.

What’s my point? Just that given an unlimited password field length you would have not one valid password, but an infinite number of valid passwords. I think.

But in a way this is also demonstrating a shortcoming in the technology behind these ads. Google displays ads relevant to the content you’re reading. It’s the first step on the road toward true customized ads for each individual, à la Minority Report. Shouldn’t Google know I already own an N1, and use that space more effectively?

All these ads got me thinking about Google’s advantage in the marketplace trying to promote a product like this. Motorola has spent piles and piles of money advertising the Droid on TV, the web, on billboards, and probably in print. How much has Google spent on all these N1 ads, considering they own the advertising delivery network?

It’s a good thing they aren’t evil!

A programmer writes a bit of software and offers it for sale for $5. When they reach 5,000 sales they release the source code under a GPL-like license and the product becomes free.

The programmer makes $25,000 for their effort, early adopters pay a small premium, everyone benefits from the new free software. The community decides as a group if they want to buy the source code.

Does anything like this already exist?