Check out this map from NASA for your once-in-a-lifetime eclipse event near you. South Carolina here I come!

From Wikipedia:

Here is my schedule for the Fall semester:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday

8:00 a.m. - Evidence
10:00 a.m. - Constitutional Law II
11:00 a.m. - Wills and Trusts
12:00 p.m. - Family Law

Tuesday, Thursday

10:00 a.m. - Professional Responsibility and Ethics

Tuesday

8:00 a.m. - Juvenile Mediation

I guess I’m once again on the other side of popular opinion in computers, but I rather like Vista. The reason for this may very well be that my standards for Microsoft are much lower than my standards for Linux, but I still arrive at the conclusion that Vista is not a bad operating system. Even though I turned off User Account Control after exactly one minute, four seconds of usage, it was a valiant effort by Microsoft to combat serious problems the majority of users continue to have.

The bottom line is that Vista is marginally better than XP (if you want a real review…). It is enough to move it from my ranking of third-best operating system (behind Linux, generally, and Tiger) to second-best. Don’t get too excited, though, Apply fanboys; Vista is (and Tiger was) a distant second to Linux, and from my perspective when I use my Linux box, it is hard to really tell who is in second anyway. (It’s only when I muck around with the common trash that I can even really tell.) The point is moving slightly behind to slightly ahead would normally be a great accomplishment, but in the end, it’s still second place.

In any event Vista is definitely not worth the price — as high as $400 for Vista Ultimate edition. I think it’s probably worth, to me, about a hundred bucks (hey, this is a compliment!). But, then again, aren’t the best operating systems free?

Check out this picture of the breakup of AT&T in 1984. It traces each of the smaller companies to today. How long until AT&T owns Qwest then Verizon?

Checkmate for checkers — Nature

Computer scientists at the University of Alberta have solved the game of checkers. This means that every conceivable game from start to finish has been mapped out, making a computer that utilizes the solved algorithms essentially unbeatable.

The team directed Chinook so it didn’t have to go through every one of the 500 billion billion (5 * 10[^]20) possible moves. Not all losing plays needed to be analysed; instead, for each game position, Chinook needed to work out only a move that would allow it to win. In the end, only 1/5,000,000 of the moves were computed.

Every time it was in the news that a human was playing a computer at chess (IBM’s Deep Blue, e.g.), I wondered when chess would be solved. Essentially, the computer (in either checkers or chess) would not need to be programmed with the logic, that is found in today’s A.I., to battle the human opponent. The current state of the board after each move would only need to be checked against a database of winning moves. Chess has considerable more possibilities than checkers; therefore, I would assume it is quite a few years off from being solved.

With regards to victory in checkers, though, humans have officially become second-class.

Metal chunk crashes through N.J. roof — AP

A chunk of metal fell through a roof in Bayonne, NJ, and NASA was called in to investigate. Now, the space organization is claiming it is part of a “wood-chipper.” Here we go again.

Finally, FAA spokesman Jim Peters said Wednesday, a colleague in his office solved the mystery: It was part of a commercial woodchipper. The same part from another woodchipper’s grinder had caused similar confusion last year, he said.

They are getting pretty slick. First, in 1947, the government claims that a “flying saucer” crashed in New Mexico. Later, a quick retraction was made where that debris was claimed to be a weather balloon. Now, the government thinks they can make us believe that this falling debris — which is clearly some sort of interstellar engine — was part of a wood chipper by simply saying it happened last year.

Bah.