adrenalineonline

As much as I hate Flash, it can sure do some cool stuff sometimes.

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A few times per year I come across a news article or interview which blows my mind around phenomena in our world which has existed since the beginning of time itself. I saw a show on Science Channel this evening which talked about quantum entanglement, the concept being that there are situations where two atoms become related to each other, or entangled, in exactly opposite fashions. For instance, an atom that is spinning vertically, will see its partner spinning horizontally. If the first atom’s rotation is changed to a horizontal spin, the partner instantly changes to a vertical spin. But here’s the mind blower – as these two atoms are moved apart, the unseen ‘communication’ between them which allows one or the other to “know” what its partner is doing, does not seem to be affected by distance. In fact, the distance is theorized to be infinite, so it would not make a difference if one atom was separated by a foot, a mile, a million miles, or separated by light years.

So what possible practical application could this have? Wikipedia hints to assembling quantum computers, or the basis for teleportation, but my simple mind looks to something more basic. Go back to the atom. It’s spinning one way or another, or maybe blinking, or maybe changing between colors. In any event, it is in one of two possible conditions, and its partner is in the exact opposite condition. One or the other, positive or negative, on or off. Binary. Binary, like your computer, and its hundred of thousands of binary calculations it just made as you were reading this. Binary is the method of communication, and can be compared to one of the earliest models of communication, morse code. Imagine, and that is really what we are all about, imagining, a device where messages between the earth and the moon, sent in simple binary, could be accomplished in less than a nano second. Or think bigger – between the earth an another galaxy, in the same amount of time.

An experiment in 2008 in Geneva Switzerland concluded that the channel of communication between the two atoms travels somewhere on the low end around 10,000 times the speed of light.

Einstein’s reaction to the phenomena has been quoted as “Spooky action at a distance.” My quote will be much simpler: “Dude…you’re freaking me out.”

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Surfing Google today would have brought you to an interesting launch page, where the Google logo was replaced by a bar code. I printed off the bar code and scanned it, hoping there would be some sort of unique message, but not surprisingly, it just said ‘Google’.

Want to make your own bar codes? With the right font you can generate bar codes with numbers or ASCII characters right from a word processor application. Despite the attempt by many sites to charge for this font which appears everywhere in our daily lives, the fine folks at BarcodesInc.com are giving away the basic edition for free:

http://www.barcodesinc.com/free-barcode-font/

Wondering what the bar code in this post says? You’ll just have to scan it to find out.

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So I am flipping through a weekly insert in our local paper for Fred Meyer, and my eye catches an ad for a new Samsung 42″ LED television for a little under $2500. I’m instantly confused and perplexed, as I often am, but this time it’s because I am rather surprised that a retail outlet such as the Fred Meyer electronics department, would be one of the premier resellers for cutting edge video technology. I shop at Fred Meyer all the time, love the place, but it’s not the first store to roll off my tongue when searching for the latest electronic gadgets. Also, I’ve been waiting for OLED technology to make it’s way from Japan for several years, and expected there to be quite the fanfare when these were being shipped and….oh, wait….did I say OLED? As in organic light emitting diode technology? The ad said LED… that’s the same thing, right?

Not even close. In fact, the cheapest OLED display I have seen manufactured that I could potentially get my hands on right now, is an 11 inch display being sold by Sony (XEL-1), for about $5000 USD. Organic LED eliminates the need for a backlight. Traditional LCD screens, like what your computer monitor is made from, utilize a backlight to illuminate the color in the LCD layer. With OLED, the screen itself becomes the source of illumination so no backlight necessary. Contrast that with an LED television available now for a reasonable price, the screen is actually an LCD screen, using LED’s for the backlighting source.

So if I were to buy a new TV today, would I skip the LED type? No way! They are awesome. The contrast ratio is fantastic, the color reproduction is great, and they are even more conservative on power requirements that today’s conventional LCD models.

My issue is not with the technology, it’s with the marketing of it. Not so long ago, plasma TV’s were being hyped as the must-have accessory for high definition signal viewing. But remember how they were being sold? “HDTV ready”, “HDTV capable”, and “HDTV monitor”. Not surprisingly, the HDTV part was usually in bold, and the ready, capable, or monitor part was usually not. This was because while true, the unit could reproduce an accurate HDTV signal, they did not have integrated tuners in them, so you were on your own when it came to piping in a hi-def source. That entailed buying a separate piece of equipment, just to tune in high definition broadcast signals, or in the clear QAM signals over the cable system (don’t get me started on the HDTV antenna marketing thing).

What I feel is happening is a subtle brainwashing of the consumer to accept all televisions marketed with LED technology as the same. Eventually, when the real LED TV’s hit the market, the OLED versions, there will be enough confusion so as the consumer will not be immediately aware of the difference between the two – other than the price of the OLED being much higher, which will allow the lower end LED model resellers to squeeze a little bit more of a high out of the LED bong pipe.

Ok, that was a horrible analogy, I’ll admit, but you can see where I’m going with this. Today’s LED television is LED BACK-LIT, it is not a true LED like an organic LED is, it’s just an LCD TV with a more efficient method of illumination. Don’t call it somethin’ it ain’t.

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Facebook slow on Firefox? It is for a lot of other people too. If you’ve tried the standard troubleshooting procedures such as creating a new profile, deleting “parent.lock” files, and most of the other things you run across using Google, check to see if you have the Skype browser extension installed. After three days of slow Firefox and a near WAF (wife acceptance factor) revolt which would have resulted in a browser switch to Internet Explorer, catastrophe was averted by simply discovering and disabling the Skype extension.

Skype is still usable after this change, however, you’ll loose the number highlighting that the extension provided.

To resolve, in Firefox, click Tools, then Add Ons, then scroll down to the Skype plug-in. Click the Disable button, and then restart Firefox. Updates to the Skype extension in the future may resolve this annoyance.

Back to enjoying the Firefox goodness and an IE free household (wipes sweat from brow…)

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